The Truth About Muhammad | Robert Spencer | #SangamTalks

The Rohullah Khomeini the famous founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran was 28 years old when he married his bride who was 10 years old, he also recommended that muslim men marry girls before they reach puberty in other words when they’re 9-10 years old now this also an imitation of Muhammad as depicted in Islamic tradition. When Muhammad was 51 years old he married a 6 year old girl named Aisha and when consummated the marriage or in other words rapped her because of course she had no way to refuse consent fifth when he was 54 and

she was 9 because Muhammad is the excellent example as specified in Quran 33 21 as I noted before that also is an excellent example and there is considered to be no moral difficulty with seizing a child and raping the child because Muhammad did. Transcriber : Chandan Kumar I’m very-very happy to receive Robert Spencer again it’s been almost a year that he had his first talk with us he is an author of 21 books 2 of which are used as FBI training material to name a few of his books the Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and

the crusades, The Truth About Muhammad which is a talk today the history of jihad from Muhammad to Isis and Robert Spencer has been with us on numerous other occasions in our conferences he is on authority on jihad and Islam and the Jihadi aspect of Islam he is a very clear headed and a very fearless speaker about the true nature of Islam so much so he was banned from the UK in 2013. I think the best way to introduce Robert Spencer would be to introduce you to his thoughts no he is not an Islamophobe he says

anybody who is against be heading the stoning as punishment or jihad against unveiled believers or building mosques over race temples or holy places of other religions this is not Islamophhobia if this is Islamophobia then everybody should be an Islamophobe. So currently Robert is a director of jihad watch and you’ll be surprised I receive his newsletter every week you’ll be surprised as to see that the jihad is continuing it’s a continuous phenomenon on smaller scale in various parts of the world. Most welcome Robert very-very honored to receive you again and today’s talk is based on his

book The Truth About Muhammad. Thank you I’m very honored to be here again it’s always good to speak with you when we speak about Muhammad of course it is a controversial issue not because there is any doubt about the Islamic texts actually teach about Muhammad that’s quite clear anyone can get them and read them but there is great deal of misinformation and disinformation about Muhammad just as there is about jihad and about the history of Islam and jihad and a great deal of other related issues. So for example Karan Armstrong who is a very prominent

historian in the United States in England rather. She wrote a book several years ago actually two about Muhammad in which she said among other things that Muhammad is comparable to Gandhi in being a man of peace and inn striving to bring peace to all those around him she could only have said such a thing to an audience that didn’t know anything about Muhammad as he is depicted in the Islamic text because every bit of what ISIS the Islamic state does or the Taliban or the ISI in Pakistan or any number or other organizations that are

dedicated to following Muhammad and implementing his teachings everything that they do is based upon Islamic texts and ISIS is actually quite scrupulous n following the teachings of Muhammad the actions of Muhammad as exemplary in their actions in their what they do around the world even the most horrifying things that they do this is something that is denied or assumed to be false by most of the intelligence and law enforcement authorities in the world as the matter of fact you noted in the in introducing me very kindly that several of my books were used in FBI

training materials that was up until about 10 years ago and then they dropped them because the Obama administration determined that they were going to not have any mention of Islam or jihad in connection with counter terror training because Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. Unfortunately, the terrorist would tell you different and they would tell you that Islam has everything to do with terrorism and that everything that they’re doing is based on Islam. When we look at the life of Muhammad as depicted in the Islamic texts we can see that Muhammad according to the earliest

available Islamic sources was born in 570 in Arabia in Mecca and in the year 610 when he was 40 years old he was praying in a cave on a mountain outside Mecca and there appeared to him a being in standard Islamic history this is represented as the angel Gabriel and according to Islamic sources is was Gabriel the angel who appeared to Muhammad to give him the Quran over a period of 23 years subsequent to the first meeting. However if you look at the earliest records there is no mention of Gabriel and the being is not

identified. Muhammad is also depicted as being absolutely terrified by the vision that he received and not knowing if he was possessed by a demon which is a strange response to having an encounter with an angel he then went home shivering with fear and told his wife Khadija to cover him with the blanket because he was trembling and he told her what had happened ultimately she took him to her uncle Wadaka Bin Nalfal who was a Christian priest and he explained to Muhammad and all this remember is according to the earliest Islamic sources that he was

a prophet and that was Gabriel. However, there’s a very strange aspect to the stories and that is that Gabriel is terrifying in their first encounter it says that he pressed Muhammad so hard that he thought he was going to die. Now ordinarily when one encounters in various religious traditions when there are encounters with spiritual beings when one is terrified and threatened and frightened generally that being in not one that is bringing good and this is the dilemma that is presented to us in the earliest Islamic texts this is supposed to be the angel of Angel

Gabriel the messenger of Allah the only god and clearly however he is working on the basis of violence and intimidation he’s terrifying Muhammad into submission and them later there are other strange aspects of the story Gabriel starts to visit him regularly and then when he stops Muhammad goes to the top of the high mountain he’s going to throw himself off and commit suicide this is also a strange reaction to what is supposed to be a benign heavenly being in any case Gabriel is thus identified visits Muhammad on a regular basis for the next 23 years

and gives him what becomes the Quran the holy book of Islam and in the Quran the holy book of Islam we see the same violence and intimidation that Gabriel first displayed to Muhammad in the first encounter that they had it’s the same thing all the way through that the prophet Muhammad is supposed to submit and be the slave of Allah and then the non-muslim are supposed to submit and be the slaves of the muslims and all of the whole the whole superstructure of Islam women are supposed to submit and be slaves to men the whole

thing is based on submission and intimidation and fear, Nowadays of course we see this in the Taliban very clearly and the Taliban believe that they are carrying out the teachings of Muhammad and following the examples of Muhammad and so Muhammad said that Allah will pour molten laid into the ears of people who listen to music and so they go and break musical instruments this creates fear and intimidation among people who listen to music and the musicians themselves and in microcosm it is the same phenomena all over again that the people are terrified into submission and

that is the Islamic vision for the world. Very briefly the career of Muhammad started out in Mecca with him preaching now this is again a source of a great deal of or the focus I should say of a great deal of misinformation and disinformation because Muhammad is preaching he only gathers a small band of followers by the first 12 years of his career as prophet from 610 to 622 and he’s preaching tolerance in the Quran chapter 109 it says say to the unbelievers I do not worship but you worship and you do not worship what

I worship you will not worship what I worship and I will not worship what you worship to you your religion and to me mine now that is rather grudgingly put but its nonetheless a statement of tolerance let’s leave each other alone we have different points of view however this was only something that Muhammad preached when the Muslims were a small band when they grew larger and later on when Muhammad went to from Mecca to Medina another city in Arabia he began to teach warfare against unbelievers. When the Muslims grew in number and gained power. Not

this is very important because in Islam everything Muhammad did is exemplary. Chapter 33 verse 21 of the Quran says that Muhammad is an excellent example for you.An excellent example is not qualified in other words there is no limitation on that excellent example everything Muhammad did is good and to be imitated by the Muslim consequently when the Muslims are the small band and Muhammad is preaching tolerance when you have Muslims who are a small group in particular nation they will preach peace and tolerance when they grow in numbers and power then you will find they are

preaching a very different message. Muhammad in the year 622 was invited according to Islamic tradition by the people of Yathrib which was nearby city which later on became renamed as Medina or Medinavi the city of the prophet he was invited to come and be a political and military leader of the city as well as this the religious leader and they would convert to Islam once there he began to preach that Allah was giving him revelations about the necessity in the first place to fight defensive wars against the unbelievers and then to fight offensive wars against

the unbelievers in order to bring them under the hegemony of Islam to convert them to Islam or if they refuse to convert to Islam then to make them submit to the hegemony of Islamic law and to recognize their degraded status in this world as well as in the next as the punishment from Allah for refusing to accept Islam. The Quran is full of warnings that the unbelievers will be punished in this world and not just in hell fire and the punishment in this world is to be enforced by the Muslims themselves who will terrorize strike

terror in the hearts of the unbelievers this is in chapter 8 verse 60 of the Quran and bring them into submission to Islamic law which guarantees them a second-class status. Now this is something that Muslims have put into practice throughout history in the first era of Islam there were the caliphates the caliphs were caliph means successor and the caliphs were the successors of Muhammad as the political military and spiritual leaders of the Islamic world and just as Muhammad did they led offensive wars against the neighboring states in order to bring them under the hegemony of

the Islamic world when the Arabs first came out of Arabia after the death of Muhammad in 632 Islam was actually in an encoded state and was not fully formulated dogmatically as it is today however those conquests in Islamic tradition have been ascribed to the imitation of Muhammad who called for warfare against unbelievers making the heart of the Islamic world the middle east North Africa and Persia out of what had been Christian and Zoroastrian areas and they were conquered then according to the Quran they were subjugated under the hegemony of the Muslims. The non-Muslims were made

to submit. This is in direct exemplary imitation of Muhammad as being as commanding that Muslims must fight against the unbelievers first invite them to accept Islam then if they refuse ask them to pay the jizya which is a tax specified in chapter 9 verse 29 of the Quran a tax in tribute to the Muslims as a sign of one’s submission to their hegemony and if they refuse both to go to war against them this is the paradigmatic basis for Islamic warfare that conquered a tremendous area of the world by 732, 100 years after Muhammad died

there is a massive Islamic empire stretching from Spain into India and of course jihad against India was especially particularly virulent because they were not the Hindus in India were not considered people of the book that is the Quran’s designation for Jews and Christians and Zoroastrians and they were therefore eve treated even more violently and not immediately given the option to submit although that was later extended to them because the sheer numbers made it impossible for Muslims to kill them all although there were certainly attempt to do so. Now all of this comes from Muhammad’s life

war the war and the conquest is what he pursued in Arabia and then his followers in imitation of him brought to the rest of the world. There are also other aspects of Muhammad as exemplary. For example, in Afghanistan in 2003 or 04, when the Taliban was toppled supposedly toppled at least temporarily the American aid workers went into refugee camps of the displaced people in Afghanistan and they found that half the girls of second grade age were married and all of the girls third grade age and above were married and child marriage is phenomena all over

the Islamic world the Ayatollah Khomeini the famous founder of Islamic republic of Iran was 28 years old when he married his bride who was 10, 10 years old. He also recommended that Muslim men marry girls before they reach puberty in other words when they’re 9-10 years old. Now this also is an imitation of Muhammad as depicted in Islamic tradition when Muhammad was 51 years old, he married a 6year old girl named Aisha and when consummated the marriage or in other words raped her because of course she had no way to refuse consent fifth when he

was 54 and she was 9. Because Muhammad is the excellent example as specified in Quran 33, 21 as I noted before that also is an excellent example and there is considered to be no moral difficulty with seizing a child and raping the child because Muhammad did it also there is the sexual enslavement of non-Muslim women or what we would say in the modern world particularly in India love jihad in various permutations but its roots go back to Muhammad also there is a famous story for example of the raid of Khaibar. Khaibar was an oasis in

Northern Arabia where the Jewish tribes that Muhammad had previously exiled from Medina had gone to take refuge but Muhammad ultimately went and invaded Khaibar and incidentally it’s worth noting that he arrived there at night but waited to strike until the morning because he wanted to hear if there would be the Islamic call to prayer in the morning if there was not he would invade if there was he would not because he was commanded in his own words according to a tradition to fight against the people who until they confess that there is no God but

Allah and Muhammad is the messenger so if the people of Khaibar had confessed that there was no god but Allah and Muhammad was the messenger he wouldn’t have fought. Then, he did not hear the Islamic call to prayer so he invaded when he invaded, he wanted to get the money so he went to the treasurer of the community. The Muslims captured him, his name was Kinana and he had his followers build a fire on Kinana’s chest to torture him until he revealed where the treasury was. Kinana refused to do so and was ultimately put to

death then his wife Safiya Bin Huyai was captured and given to Muhammad. Now this is a woman who’s not only her husband was killed but her father was also just killed by the Islamic warriors in Khaibar and yet Islamic tradition says that Muhammad married her. Consummated marriage on the spot can you imagine this absolutely ghastly scene of dead bodies everywhere and Muhammad being so consumed with lust that he has to stop in the midst of this these dead bodies and rape this woman but this also is exemplary behavior because Muhammad is the excellent example of

conduct consequently you have all over Europe for example nowadays with the mass Muslim migration since 2015. A huge increase in the sexual assaults and rapes of non-Muslim women there and you have this of course in India with the kidnapping the abduction of Hindu girls, Sikh girls, Christian girls and they are to submit subjected to the same treatment this is all because this is something that Muhammad did and it’s also specified in the Quran in chapter 4 verse 3 that you can take marry up to 4 women but also take the captives of the right hand

and the captives of the right hand are these infidel girls specified in chapter 33 verse 50 of the Quran to be the spoils of war that seized in battle just like Sifiya Bin Huyai and used in this manner all of these things come back to Muhammad many years ago you don’t hear so much anymore but many years ago right after the United States got involved in Iraq and Afghanistan there were many news accounts that actually happens had Muslims pathologists claiming that beheading was completely against Islam and it had nothing to do with Islam, but this

was once again as is so wealth in the case based on counting on the ignorance of the audience not to be able to understand that they were being deceived. In reality beheading is specified in the Quran when you meet the unbelievers strike the necks chapter 47 verse 4. Consequently, the Muslims in according to Islamic tradition Muhammad practiced beheading, he beheaded between 600 and 900 of the Jews of the Quraysh tribe that he claimed had betrayed him and this was in accord with the Quran then in accord with the example of Muhammad and the Quran. You

have beheading whenever there is a conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims. You see this all the time as a matter of fact just this morning before beginning this program I was reading a news article about the protests in Kazakhstan that you may have heard about and 12 policemen were killed by the protesters one of them was beheaded and when you see story like that it is absolutely a direct result of the example of Muhammad and of course that’s just one very small example of hundreds and thousands of such stories from all over the world that can

be induced in this connection. Muhammad also taught that anyone who leaves Islam is to be killed whoever changes his religion kill him as a result of that teaching which is also continued and taught by all these schools and the schools of law and the various sects of Islam they all still teach whoever changes his religion kill him those who leave Islam are under an immediate death threat and you can look at what had happened with Wasim Rizvi since he left Islam and all the in the inundation of death threats that he has received this is

because of Muhammad. Every bit of the activity that you can see from Muslims in the modern world today is attribute it can be traced directly back to the example of Muhammad. Consequently, this is the primary responsibility of non-Muslims governing officials, law enforcement officials and intelligence officials. If they want to deal with this problem adequately they have to confront the fact that these values are what are being taught in mosques all over the world, because Muhammad as the excellent example is still being taught everywhere it’s just a matter of course every religion is going to teach

what is teaches and this is what Islam teaches but there is tremendous almost universal denial about this and every non-Muslim politician in the west from Merkel who is no longer chancellor of Germany but I’m sure that her successor is just as bad Macron in France, Boris Johnson in the UK, certainly Joe Biden and all their predecessors with the arguable exceptions of Trump, but not the complete exception of Trump, every last one of them teaches and the pope as well and every western authority teaches that Islam is a religion of peace that has nothing to do

with terrorism. I’m sure that this is true also in India every non-Muslim state seems to be absolutely fanatically committed to the idea that Islam is peaceful the first thing that we had to acknowledge is that, that’s not true that Muhammad taught warfare he engaged in warfare and he left an example of warfare and subjugation for his people and that if we do not confront this if we’re not realistic about this it’s just going to keep going on one thing that could be done by non-Muslims states if they had the courage would be to say that

Muslims are perfectly free to practice their religions that practice their religions in these various countries but only in so far as they do not conflict with the law of the land and so efforts to engage in violence against non-Muslims to subjugate them to impose Sharia would be unacceptable and prosecuted fully. For that to happen along with prosecution of child marriage, polygamy and so much else that comes from Muhammad’s example the world would be very different place I can give you one example in closing there was a camp a training camp discovered in the United States

a few years ago in new Mexico in a remote area and the training camp was actually taking children and training them to be suicide bombers and the idea was that they would go into schools and blow themselves up and kill large numbers of other children this was being run by a man named Siraj Wahhaj, Siraj ibn Wahhaj who is the son of very prominent Islamic spokesman in the United States Siraj Wahhaj and Siraj ibn Wahhaj had several wives he had actually come to the attention of law enforcement previously for leaving 1 wife without divorcing her

and marrying again polygamy is ostensibly illegal in the United States but because the United States is primarily interested in not appearing to be Islamophobic nothing was done about Siraj ibn Wahhaj’s polygamy and so he went to new Mexico and started this jihad training camp. If his polygamy had been prosecuted, as would be normal because it is illegal, he wouldn’t have been free to start the jihad training camp if the United States and other states were consistent in applying their own laws to Muslims which they are not doing because they are afraid, they’re intimidated and they

want to accommodate them then they would be a great deal less jihad activity around the world but that is unfortunately just the opposite of what is happening. On that happy note I will conclude and if you have questions we can discuss them now, thank you. You did not speak about this Zaynab. Zaynab is wife of Muhammad and it’s an interesting story because it coincides in many ways with the child marriage to Aisha and the rape of Safiyyah it’s a license for a certain kind of libertinism and a justification for all sorts of behavior that virtually

every culture in the world would declare to be immoral. Zaynab was the daughter-in-law of Muhammad this what you asked me about is that correct I just want to make sure I heard you right. Yes, she was the wife of Zayd who was the adopted son of Muhammad but at one point Muhammad according to Islamic tradition went to visit his son Zayd who was his adopted son and he did not find him at home he found Zaynab at home and he was she was not fully dressed when she answered the door and he was overcome the

story says by her beauty Zayd ultimately came to see him and said if you are so taken with her I will divorce her and you can marry her and her said no, no, no keep your wife and fear a lot but then Allah always ready to accommodate Muhammad told Muhammad I why are refusing what I want to give you I want you to marry Zaynab and he emerged from his trance of revelation and he said who will go tell Zaynab the good news that Allah has married her to me. And so he married his daughter-in-law

there were this was scandalous even then unlike the child marriage and as a result he had to outlaw adoption he said and this is all in chapter 33 m of the Quran chapter 33 verse 4 and 33 verse 37 he said you can’t have adoption and Zayd is no longer his son Zayd was known for years as Zayd ibn Muhammad but had to go back to being called by the name of his birth father Zayd ibn Harithah no adoption in Islam but all this was only because Muhammad wanted once again to satisfy his lust in

taking this woman who was his daughter-in-law. Unfortunately, this has condemned many children to lives of great misery because they can’t be adopted, they can’t go into a family that’s not their own this is yet another example of how the, the example the exemplary character of Muhammad has an extraordinary destructive effect on human beings all over the world. I like the way you continue to say the exemplary character, perfect character. There is a comment by George Carlin very famous one he says religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who

watches everything you do every minute of the day and the invisible man has a special list of something that he does not want you to do and if you do any of those things he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever, forever and ever till the end of time but he loves you, he loves you and he need money he always needs money he’s all powerful, all perfect, all knowing, all

wise and but somehow just can’t handle money. And in Islam I will also say that invisible man is very interested in your bedroom. Yes very. But it’s not just money either the Quran in chapter 9 verse 14 and 15 it says fight them and Allah will punish them by your hand and so to take the gentlemen’s very entertaining characterization you have the invisible man who is all powerful and created everything not able to punish those who displease him on his own and consequently he needs to enlist the services of other human beings in order to

punish those who displease him. You see note this is very important verse that is often overlooked fight them and Allah will punish them by your hands chapter 9 verse 14 in other words the Muslims are the executors of the wrath of Allah. They are the ones who are charged by Allah to punish the rest of us for not believing in Allah and this is the great reason why there’s a so much of this violence by Muslims against non-Muslims because that’s their job they are supposed to punish us. My question which you have partly discussed in

your lecture is why developed countries fail to take notice of Islam’s narrative that Quran mandates Muslims to spread their religion by power of soul. They don’t have political will to support country like India from onslaught of Pakistan. Is it their money power, Muslim’s money power and fear and why the examples given by you are not told to the common man non-Muslims? Thank you. Why they political nations are siding with India why U.S. fails to take an action against Pakistan and why is it the common people are not told about the examples that you mentioned. There

seems to be very powerful force that does not want these things to be known and it I do believe has a great deal to do with money as you noted that the Muslim nations are some of them are very wealthy and have close relations with the United States, economic relations, the Saudis and their oil and so on. And the Saudis in particular have spent millions and millions of dollars in American universities and so you have the huge prince Alwaleed Bin Talal center for Muslim- Christian understanding in Georgetown University in Washington DC very prominent university. In

Harvard you have another Alwaleed center Alwaleed is a billionaire a Saudi billionaire and he is a hardline Muslim and so when he gives these millions to the American universities he wants them to tow his line and they’re happy to do so because all they want is the money and so American universities instead of teaching the truth about these things they will teach that Islam is religion of peace and that the problem is all Islamophobes which means you and me who speak terrible things about Muhammad and Islam and make people dislike it. And this is not

just American universities either a few years back it was revealed that favorable coverage of various issues had been bought that is the American media CNN and the others were paid money to give favorable coverage to various issues when I saw that I immediately taught well I bet that’s the same thing that’s happening when it comes to jihad because there is nothing but favorable coverage of Islam and whenever there’s a jihad attack in the west the stories are all about the fear of backlash against innocent Muslims and not about the people the victims or jihad at

all and so I do believe a great deal of this is that these people are bought that for the sake of money they are not telling the truth about these issues. As a matter of fact, there’s been and it is the Islamic groups of thought of everything. We have to give them credit for planning. There is not an issue not an area of society where they have not entered and turned the narrative in the way that they want it. So why do we not speak why do people are not told about these things in the

schools if you read textbooks in the United States and I’m sure this is true elsewhere also Islam is peaceful, Islam is tolerance, Islam spread all over the world because it’s so wonderful whereas all the other religions are given very negative treatments and this American public school textbooks why because Islamic groups have targeted the textbook manufactures and told them we want to help you avoid Islamophobia in your textbooks and they’ve turned them around to make them into essentially instruments of processualization. It’s all about the money. A question from Bhaskar when and how did the ideal of

calling Islam a religion of peace emerge? That’s an interesting question, it actually comes from the 19th century there was a book published in the 19th century called Islam the religion of peace and it was the first effort in a major propaganda effort to fool non-Muslims about the nature of Islam. It’s gained particular energy and impetus in the beginning in the 1970s in the west at very least. There was a professor Edward Saeed who was actually a Christian Arab not a Muslim at all and Edward Saeed wrote a book called Orientalism and Orientalism was all about

how any criticism of the Islamic world from the west was just part of the colonial project it was colonialist oppression and as a result if westerners did not want to be colonialist and racist and imperialist then they could not say anything critical about Islam because that would be imposition of western values onto the Islamic world. Now of course you and I know this is nonsense because we are from the very different parts of the world and yet we encounter Islam in the same way and see that it’s aggressive belligerent, violent, expansionist, supremacist and so on

and this has nothing to do with colonialism it has nothing to do here you’re just as much victims of colonialism as any Islamic group if you want to speak in those terms it has to do with the nature of Islam itself but this was obscured by Edward Saeed to a tremendous degree his book Orientalism had immense influence all over western academia western intelligentsia. Now at the same time there was the push to say that Islam is a religion of peace that came from George W Bush after 9/11 on September 17, 2001 he went to a

mosque in Washington DC and he said Islam is peace and we want to emphasize this attack is nothing to do with Islam. The idea also comes from the fact that Islam really is a religion of peace but not in the way that we understand peace. The idea is that Muslims must wage war against the whole non-Muslim world and subjugate all non-Muslims under the hegemony Islam and then there will be peace and so Islam ultimately has goal of peace by conquest and subjugation therefore it’s a religion of peace. But all this is ultimately just an attempt

at deception and it’s very effective because most if you’re not a Muslim most people wouldn’t want to not be interested in reading the Quran or reading about the life of Muhammad mostly only Muslims are interested in such things and so they’re able to prey upon the ignorance of the non-Muslim and use this lie to foster complacency and to make us think well there’s not really a problem because the vast majority is peaceful and my friend Ahmed that I work with he’s a wonderful fellow he’s very gentle he would never hurt anyone so therefore there’s nothing

to be concerned about regarding terrorism. But this is this is a massive extraordinarily successful deception. Why don’t women in Islam don’t speak up? I mean they must be reading Quran; they must be reading all these quotes and you know they must be knowing what exactly it means but then how are they fooled. It’s very-very small percentage which actually comes out and speaks against Islam. In order to criticize Islam a Muslim woman would have to have a moral standpoint separate from Islam, which is Muslim woman is not likely to have. In other words when we look

at the world and we think about it in terms of what’s good and what’s evil or what’s right and what’s wrong we do so based on our own moral assumptions and beliefs and so a Muslim woman is taught Islamic assumptions and beliefs so she’s thought that she is a secondary human being to serve be a slave of the husband, to be beaten if she’s disobedient, to have polygamy if the husband wants, it’s in most of the women most of hellfire most of the people in hellfire are women and so on these things are taught to

her this is holy writ this is what Allah says the only god and the prophet the perfect man and the excellent example, so consequently there’s no standpoint on which the woman can have. There’s no standpoint the woman has to judge Islam. To judge Islam is already to place yourself outside the fold that means that Allah will punish you in this world and the next. So this is a very powerful appeal you take for example the Islamic republic of Iran and of course previous to 1979 it was a western style secular democracy and the women do

not wear Hijab and so lot of women protested when they said you have to wear Hijab and they didn’t want to wear it and many women were brought into line by the mullahs telling them that if they did not wear hijab they would be suspended by their hair upside down in hell forever now imagine if you really believed that it sounds ludicrous to us but imagine if you really thought that there is an Allah and he’s… there’s a hell and he’s going to put you in it upside down by your hair don’t wear this thing

you’ll wear it it’s only creates a difficulty when you have Muslim women move to a non-Muslim culture and then they’re confronted by a different way to live and sometimes that creates difficulty that’s actually when you have honor killings and so on in India as well as there’s been some that happen in the United States and elsewhere they start to live in a different way and then their brothers and their father they kill them because they have dishonored the family by living in a way that’s not Islamic and this is something that’s based on the Quran

where a boy is killed and the killer says I did it because he was going to grow up to be unrighteous and his parents deserved righteous child. So, it’s very difficult for Muslim women without any other way to look at the world to criticize Islam. Yes Dr. Spencer wonderful talk as usual my question was a bit related to the topic that you had mentioned so you know the narrative that’s been peddled widely through social media that the extreme form of Islam is primarily due to the Wahhabi ideology propagated by the Saudis right because they have

funded Madrasas all over the world and you have seen even in India Wahhabism seeping more in the last 20 years than before so there’s also this narrative being peddled that the Saudi prince Muhammad Bin Salman is taking measures to temper the extreme Wahhabis ideology so how much do you how much truth do you think there is to that I mean is he making an honest effort or you know is this just media propaganda and the second part of that question is that you know we know that the leftist stream academic stream in the United States

is they’re sympathetic to you know the Islamic Jihadist cause but they seem to be you know anti MBS so I really don’t understand that dynamic and that was the second part of my question thank you. Yes as far as MBS goes of course I don’t know whether he’s sincere or not but he has to tread very carefully and it’s interesting to note there was an interview with him recently where he was speaking about the reforms he was going to make in Islam and it was clear as he was speaking about this that he was extraordinarily

nervous and as matter of fact he kept on making a strange gesture with his with his neck as a matter of fact kind of jerking it up little bit like and doing this repeatedly throughout this part of the interview and yet the rest of the interview which was very lengthy he never did that and I think that betrayed that he was he’ very afraid of what could happen in this regard and maybe it has to do with his neck that he could be beheaded for apostasy if he goes too far because there is a death

penalty for heresy, a death penalty for apostasy, he’s treading a very dangerous line trying to limit the power of the Wahhabis and then the first part of your question a lot of people say that Islamic Jihad activity today all comes from Wahhabis there’s actually some truth to that but on the other hand if you think about Darul Uloom Deoband right in India you can see that there’s Jihad activity that has nothing to do with the Taliban I mean nothing I’m sorry everything to do with the Taliban nothing to do with the Wahhabis this is a

different school of Islamic thought and yet because Islam is what it is they come to many of the same conclusions as the Wahhabis. The history of Jihad also shows that Islamic Jihad activity doesn’t come from the Wahhabis because long before the Wahhabis there was Jihad violence and the Wahhabis only arose in the 18th century the latter part of the 18th century but there was a great deal of Jihad from the Mughals, from the Ottomans, from all number all manner of Islamic entities long before Wahhabism as far as the American universities go I do believe that

they are compromised to a tremendous degree by the very forces that MBS is trying to limit and that might explain their hostility to him. How much of this narrative control to protect Islam is because of communist Marxist who have taken control of who have taken control of every part of American and European society what is in it for them to defend Islam for they know that Islam finally will not let them survive even if they make it win. A great deal of the Islamic activity is because of the communists there’s no doubt about this. They

are close allies and lot of people are puzzled by this but it's because actually they have a shared authoritarian worldview, they Islam is against freedom Islam is the slavery of the human being and communism is the slavery of the human being they are both Utopian philosophies. They both are going to create a paradise on earth. The communists want to create the paradise of the workers ruling and the withering away of the state but what that means in practice is draconian punishments for any kind of descent and the gulags the massive prison camps in which millions

of people who anybody who steps out of line is are anybody who's stepped out of line are held in these camps so the idea is that you have a paradise created by a reign of terror that's Islam also. Sharia, Islamic law is supposed to be the perfect law of Allah and so you implement it in a society you have a perfect society it's Utopia but at the same time it is enforced by the beheadings the amputations the stoning the reign of terror so both the left and Islam they love authoritarianism and they want to establish

a paradise on earth created by a reign of terror and enforced by a reign of terror. Also, the left in trying to take over the west and destroy the United States they love Islam because Islam lends itself to authoritarianism if you look in Islamic history there's no history of democracies or republics Islam has a history of all over the world. Only Turkey was a secular democracy but old Turkey was created in the atmosphere of a rejection of political Islam and now Turkey of course is re-Islamizing so there's no democracy, there's no freedom, it's all just

obey the authoritarian ruler as a matter of fact Muhammad said it in a tradition obey your ruler even if he is an Ethiopian with a head like a raisin most people quote that to deal with the racism of the of the statement but even aside from that it's just a blanket statement to obey the ruler that's just what the communists want obey the authorities submit do whatever we tell you. You refer to some author if I heard you correctly who compared Muhammad with Gandhi. Yes Karen Armstrong, Karen Armstrong is a former nun a catholic nun

who left the monastery and became a very enamored of Islam and wrote hagiographical biographies too of Muhammad and a history of Islam which is highly misleading and apologetic. Would you be able to share some comparisons which she made between Muhammad and Gandhi, just curious? Yes, she claims that Muhammad taught peace and tried to make peace and that one of the reasons why he conquered Arabia was to pacify it and keep the various tribes of Arabia from warring against each other. But she plays fast and loose with the facts she ignored a great deal of what

is taught in Islamic tradition about what Muhammad did and said and she actively misrepresents the data for example she actually reviewed my book that is the subject of this lecture the truth about Muhammad and in her review of it she said Spencer never mentions that the Quran says warfare is an awesome evil she did not give the citation and I've read the Quran dozens of times I know I couldn't think of where on earth does the Quran say warfare is an awesome evil and finally I found it actually in chapter 2 verse 217 which I

will find if you will bear with me for a moment and then I will read it to you what she was quoting was the passage that actually said they ask you about warfare in the sacred month say warfare during it, is an awesome evil but to turn people away from the way of Allah and to disbelieve in him and expelling his people from the sacred mosque is more serious with Allah. Now you have to understand see this passage is talking about whether it is allowed to fight during the four sacred months that were in the

Arab calendar before Islam there were four months in which it was forbidden to wage war and they ask you about warfare in the sacred month say warfare during it is an awesome sin but to turn people away from Allah and to disbelieve in him and expelling his people from the sacred mosque is more serious with Allah. So, what it's saying is yes warfare is bad but these things are worse when these people are persecuting you it's worse so therefore you can fight them during the sacred month. That's what the passage is actually saying and she

took a little piece of it to give the impression that Islam says that warfare is evil. Islam never says warfare is evil. All it was saying was warfare during this particular period is evil however there are worse evils in these people who are persecuting the Muslims so warfare during the sacred month is okay. She's a liar in other words. You are described as anti-Muslim author what is your response to that and again my question that with your being banned from the United Kingdom and all these did you also get death threats and all, because we

have a few speakers who have kind of completely gone off the media? Oh yeah, I get many death threats they’ve actually tried to kill me twice I was the focus of two assassination attempts one was in Texas in 2015 when a couple of Isis gunmen from Arizona actually came out of their car and they were going to they drew their guns and they were going to come in and shoot me and a number of others but they were shot by our security forces outside our event and then I was poisoned in Iceland in 2017 by

someone who slipped some things into my drink in any case the I also actually just got some death threats quite recently on twitter a fellow was writing me in direct messages with all these videos of beheadings and then saying he was looking for my address in any case I'm not worried about that you know it's not like I’m going to live forever. If people don't speak about these things, then they're just going to continue so we have to stand up at a certain point. But in any case, I was banned from Britain actually for teaching

that Islam has doctrines of warfare against unbelievers that's actually what the letter to the from the UK home office to me said you can find it online at my website Jihadwatch and read the whole thing. It's really just saying in other words because you say unwelcome truths you are not welcome in the country as far as being anti-Muslim I reject that very strongly I am not anti-muslim that would be against some human beings and I'm not against any human beings I'm against this ideology to say that I'm anti-muslim would be to say that opponents of

the Nazis in Europe in 1940 were anti-German and that would have been ridiculous they were fighting for humanity against a great inhumanity and that is what I'm doing. There is one, one question here that is quite important, I think. So, you Mr. Spencer you have done great work about the life of Muhammad as for the Islamic sources but also about the genesis of Islam as per other sources of history and these two are quite in conflict. Now given the more recent knowledge by scholars like Christophe Luxembourg and so on about the alternative the non-Islamic history

of Islam the historicity and attenuate the life details of Muhammad are a bit problematic. So, this is a very wide topic I have many questions about it but in general you see where is your thinking going in reconciling these two views of history. I don't believe thank you that's a very important question and I'm honored by your being present here in any case there is no reconciling those two I many people actually say that I have contradicted myself by writing the truth about Muhammad and then writing did Muhammad exist and questioning the historicity of the

Islamic texts. Actually, these are two separate inquiries when we are discussing what Muslims believe which is very important to know because they are acting upon those beliefs every day around the world then we have to know what is the content of the Quran the Hadees and the Seerah literature the biography biographical literature about Muhammad. However, as a separate issue we can look at whether those various sources have any historical value and they have very little historical value the traditions about Muhammad's words and deeds although they are normative for Islamic law and behavior they have they

actually date from around 200 years generally after Muhammad is supposed to have lived and there is no record of Muhammad in contemporary sources from the 7th century when he is supposed to have lived so it's rather like discussing the Shakespeare play Macbeth. We could have a discussion we could have a show like this about Macbeth and we could say Macbeth plotted to kill Duncan and Macbeth said is this a dagger I see before me; it's handled toward my hand and so on and discussed all of Macbeth's motivations and his goals and his activities. But that

still would be it's just a play, it's not history and so while we can discuss what Macbeth said and did that does not give it any historical value, what we have with Islam is rather as if there were a large group of people who thought that the play Macbeth was wholly writ and that Macbeth was absolutely a historical figure and were imitating it and then it would be two inquiries one would be what Macbeth said and did which would be very important to know to deal with these people and second is this really actual history

or is it just a play and in the case of Muhammad there is no evidence that any such person existed he is a creation of various factions that created the Arab empire for their own goals and purposes unfortunately one of their primary goals was to create a warrior group that would preserve and expand and strengthen their empire and so they sanctified warfare and conquest as being pleasing to Allah and this is why we are discussing this today and why it remains a problem but there is no historical value to these stories. So, we have a

question any your views about the Deoban, Deobandis. Well of course they're the inspiration they're the source for the Taliban. The Islamic theology that the Taliban hold comes from the Darul Uloom Deoband comes from the Deobandi point of view. It's very it's essentially identical to the Wahabis but it's not the Wahabis and the reason why two Islamic groups that are distinct like the Deobandis and the Wahhabis have essentially the same point of view is because the Islamic texts are very clear and they do teach warfare against unbelievers they do teach the subjugation of the unbelievers under

the hegemony of Islamic rule. There is no sect of Islam that does not teach this. People speak about the Ahmadiyya or the Isma’ili Shia in this connection as being peaceful these are very small groups that do not have influence in the wider Islamic community, we're talking about less than one or two percent of Islam worldwide the mainstream the large groups of Muslims both Sunni and Shia all teach this warfare and conquest and subjugation. We have a question that barring fears and threats what could be the reasons why some people voluntarily convert to Islam? People are

taught a lot of nonsense to convert to Islam there have been many converts to Islam as a matter of fact who become disillusioned. I was in contact several years ago with a man who was a very prominent convert to Islam in the United States at one time as a matter of fact he won several awards from Islamic groups for his writing about Islam but he ultimately left Islam and he told me that the Islam that he was taught was not the true Islam he was taught that Islam was all about peace and brotherhood and as

a black American he was very interested in it because it was a rejection of racism then he became a Muslim and he said he had only read a little bit of the Quran before he became a Muslim. This is very common. And it's the same thing with many women they are told that Islam teaches dignity and modesty and that's the reason for the covering that a woman has her own dignity and is not just a tool for men. Of course, it's just exactly the opposite and the covering is all part of that mindset, but many

of these converts do not do not see this until they get in and then it's too late because you have the death penalty for leaving Islam. So many converts become all the more fanatical as they embrace the new religion fully and there are many converts as a result who have been involved in Jihad terror activity all around the world but there are also some converts who become disillusioned and they leave Islam after a short period because the dawah the proselytizing that's that is done to bring them in is often quite different from the reality of

Islam and they only find out about these things like the prohibition of music, the subjugation of women, all these things once they're in. I also have a view that any why we are attracted not just to Islam but to all the Abrahamic religions is the kind of support group that we find in the church, in the community, is the kind of support group that we find in the community, because in other religions you're largely left on your own here they will you know the gurudwara or the church or the mosque the… your local area mosque

will take care of you if you're not doing well in life. There's no doubt about that and that's very attractive particularly in the west today where there's no religion and there's a radical individualism that least people often atomize and isolated and they feel alienated from the entire world then they can convert and suddenly they have a group of people who love them and care about them and so I think the importance of that cannot be underestimated it only becomes a problem when you have people who love them and care about them tell them now in

order to please Allah you need to do violence to unbelievers. And how about the psychological condition where people like to be told what to do, they like to be subjugated. Well that can't be underestimated either this is extraordinarily important and people don't like to discuss it but the fact is that there are many-many human beings who would prefer slavery to freedom and they prefer to have a worldview that everything is set out for them and they don't have to make any difficult choices because it's all there already done and so Islam as a total explanation

of everything in life and they have laws and rules for every aspect of human behavior it can be very comforting for some people because they like having a rule for every aspect of human behavior and then they can know exactly what they should put they should do every day. Good evening, sir wonderful to listen to you. Never heard so many aspects of Muhammad earlier. Now this victimhood seems to be a very special characteristics of Muslims all over the world and how much of it is really inherited from the Christian forebears in Europe. Oh, victimhood oh…

you know I don't know the provenance of victimhood except I do suspect that it comes from actually not Christianity but the struggle against racism in the United States. Racism of course is the national trauma of the United States and it has created the idea that there are people who are victimized who need special assistance and special accommodation the Islamic groups in the United States and now also in Europe have made very skillful use of this. Portraying themselves as victims of racist Islamophobic counter-terror measures and necessary and thus needing special treatment and accommodation because they are

so discriminated against in the society. This is just playing on the historical controversies in the United States but in terms of Islam it doesn't have any substance. There haven't even been Muslims in the United States until relatively recently and they have not suffered and do not suffer widespread discrimination and harassment. The problem is that the society is now constituted in a way that victimhood is prized and valued and is essentially currency the gain… to gain power and influence and so the more of it you have the more power and influence you can get and so

they're playing the game very skillfully. That of course we see this incredible obtuseness of governments all over the world leaving aside a couple of governments like Japan and maybe Poland who are very clear about how the Islamic population has to be managed so to speak but somehow the entire liberal world and even India for that matter as much as people glorify the Modi government fact remains the same kind of obtuseness and if I may say mulishness on persisting with according them this legitimacy in the name of liberal democracy continues and what is the way out

that you see from here because I mean this is really I mean this seems to be no end to it. No matter what Muslims do, what they even express themselves clearly against the very governments that the very nations where they live and they find they find refuge, they speak against them. Yet I mean governments all over I mean they refuse to change their outlook. It's a liberal democratic trap if I may put it that way. I do believe that certainly the response of virtually all the governments around the world to Islam is based on falsehoods

and that consequently it cannot stand I don't know when or how it will fall but I do know that the fact that it's refuted on a more or less daily basis is a sign of hope that eventually I think it will become impossible for governments in India in Europe in North America everywhere around the world to ignore and deny this problem. Unfortunately, probably the jihad will have advanced a great deal more before it becomes impossible to ignore or deny. I learned Farsi for a while Persian and my teacher was a Shia and he used to

say that this he had a very clear distinction he says Shias are the one who gave us literature and arts and culture and Sunnis were Arabs they were tribes and he gives the example of how Persia was captured initially he said that it was the center of culture in the ottoman empire all over Asia in fact and then these Arabs they came on their camels they had the muscle car they subjugated Iran and so it's like a PhD professor being a slave and the uncut illiterate servant becoming the master suddenly and this situation could not

go on for very long so when Ali came a successor of Muhammad he saw that it is very difficult to like continue this kind of an arrangement so he asked them that okay you accept Islam but you can continue your own traditions. Yeah, well there's no doubt there's a lot of anti-Arab sentiment in Iran and that Iran, Persia had a tremendous history and tradition long before Islam which is unlike Arabia or other areas of the Islamic world and so there is resentment to a tremendous degree against Sunni Islam because it's identified with the Arabs and

against the Arabs among many Persians. At the same time of course we can see from the Islamic republic that there are some Shia Persians who are quite fanatical in Islam and there there's a phenomenon it's also true in Pakistan that a lot of non-Arab Muslims tend to become even more fanatical than the Arabs to try to prove that they're just as good Muslims as the Arabs and so they're all these things happening but there's tremendous discontent with Islam itself in Iran today because of the Islamic republic and because people who have lived under the Islamic

republic since 1979 have seen what Islam is all about and they don't like it and so there is a resurgence of Zoroastrianism the worship of the fire in Iran because they are many Persians in secret are recovering their ancestral religion and a tremendous falling away from Islam as a matter of fact there was a poll in the Islamic republic of Iran quite recently within the last few years where the number of people who professed Islam was in the 30s the percentage about 35 percent of people in Iran said they were Muslims which is extraordinary because

officially 99 of the people in Iran are Muslims. But a tremendous number have left Islam for various other things including fire worship. One of the things the American forces in Afghanistan found was an American who had become a Taliban, John Walker. Yeah, and so… one would think that people would be interested in following up with him and you know whether his views have changed or not but nothing is heard about him do you have any idea what he's doing now and what his music? Yes, I do he was freed from prison last year I believe

it was or maybe two years ago and he wrote an article recently about Islam Jihad Afghanistan the Taliban making it very clear that he hadn't changed his views at all. He has only been reinforced in Islam in his Islamic views. It's noteworthy that he's a convert and that he came out of the rootless and tradition less individualism of society in southern California and the materialism of it and embraced Islam as being an all-encompassing answer. Now because he has waged jihad against the United States and served time in prison, he's a hero to some Muslims and

I think we will likely be hearing more about him, more from him in the future. Robert what do you think it will take for all these ex-Muslims um in Iran for example to come out together what can be done to encourage them coming together? You know the Islamic republic was in very bad shape just last year. The Trump administration had placed sanctions on Iran that were creating great difficulty for the Iranian economy and people warned against this and said this will just turn people more away from America and make them embrace the Islamic republic but

it had actually the opposite effect and the people were demonstrating in Iran as they are again now saying you're giving our money to Syria and Lebanon to Hezbollah and to Assad and you should be giving it to the Iranian people and so it's possible of course now the Biden administration has given the Islamic republic a reprieve and removed the sanctions and is going to restore the nuclear deal but it may have been quite close to the toppling of the Islamic republic just last year and it still could happen.