Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,
‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve a many curious things to shew when you are there.” …

We watched the History Channel the other night… “Inside Islam: why the book of Islamic law makes it so difficult for Muslims to separate religion and politics“. I thought it was going to be interesting, and so it was… how Islam beguiles us with a pleasantly peaceful picture of itself to lull us lackadaisically into a lethal lair.

I watched almost mesmerized as a softly spoken turban-headed imam told his version of Islam while all the time had to be knowing that his Qur'an teaches nothing of the sort. All the same, I noticed the parts he missed out - firstly, the bit about Muhammad, his cruel and ruthless bloody raids on the caravans of the Quraysh, the plundering and raping and murdering, and revealing messages from Allah that justify his actions. From being a tiny despised community in Mecca, Muhammad’s followers moved to Medina and, striking terror into the hearts of their enemies, quickly became a violent force with which the pagans of Arabia had to reckon. I was waiting to hear that bit, but it never came. Instead we heard tolerant peaceful Qur’anic surah (verses) but our teacher forgot to mention that they have actually been cancelled according to Islamic theology. He also forgot to tell us that the Qur’an commands Muslims to make war on Jews and Christians, indeed on all infidel or unbelievers, until they submit to Islam or else be killed.

We were told how Muslims have always lived amicably alongside Jews and Christians, allowing others to practise their own religions and different lifestyles. But this imam forgot to mention the heavy poll tax (jizya) that was put on them, with laws about their dress that must distinguish them as Dhimmis (guilty ones) and deny them rights afforded Muslims. Dhimmis were to feel themselves subjugated - belittled, humiliated, subdued. Islamic apologists claim that dhimmitude is a thing of the past, yet nowhere in the Islamic world today do non-Muslims enjoy full equality of rights with Muslims.

Then the imam turned his attention to Islamic culture, and how much it blossomed while Europe blundered through the Dark Ages. But the truer picture is that this flowering did not come as a result of Islam itself, but from the non-Muslims who served their Muslim masters in various capacities. Their claim to the invention of the astrolabe is undone by the fact of its development and perfection long before Muhammad was born. It is true that Muslims established the first pharmacies and required standards of knowledge and competence from doctors, but it was the Belgian physician Vesalius who published the first accurate description of human internal organs - Muslims were forbidden to dissect bodies or to make artistic representations of the human body. The Muslim al-Khwarizmi is given credit for mathematical discoveries, but the principles he worked on without adding much that was new had already been discovered centuries before he was born - including the notion of zero which Muslims attribute as their own invention. In fact, Islam killed scientific and philosophical inquiry. With the common assumption among them that the Qur’an is the perfect book, no other book was needed and nothing from any other source, especially from the infidel, was seen as necessary anyway. The imam didn’t deal with any of these little details but softly intoned his advocacy of his faith as the great fertile fathering of modern thought and invention.

We heard how the Christian Crusaders had stormed into Muslim lands in the 11th and 12th centuries and committed their terrible atrocities for which we “people of the book” must hang our heads in shame. It was not mentioned that Muhammad, his followers and successors, had seized Christian lands - Jerusalem and the Holy Land - some 450 years earlier because Islamic theology has it that if any land has ever, at any time, belonged to the House of Islam, then it belongs for ever. The imam preferred the idea that the Crusades were acts of unprovoked aggression by Europe against the Islamic world. There was no room for the longer view that has the Crusades being a delayed response to centuries of Muslim aggression which grew more fierce than ever in the 11th century. I heard not a murmur along the lines that these wars were for the recapture of Christian lands and the defence of threatened Christians, not religious imperialism with the objective to convert Muslims (or anyone else) to Christianity by force.

So… we heard what a tolerant and peaceful religion is Islam. We heard not a sound of the deception that is Islam although its silence was louder than all the words from the imam’s lips. We were all to believe these softly spoken words of a very peaceful sounding man.

… Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little Fly,
Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by;
With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,
Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue —
Thinking only of her crested head — poor foolish thing! At last,
Up jumped the cunning Spider, and fiercely held her fast.
He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den …

So what do you believe, my reader?

And now dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne’er give heed:
Unto an evil counsellor, close heart and ear and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly.

(The Spider and the Fly ~ Mary Howitt)