https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2015/07/08/when-muslims-betray-non-muslim-friends-and-neighbors/

With his trademark irony, Solzhenitsyn repeats that none of this was done to torture the prisoners! What he means, we soon understand, is that such treatment was so routine it did not count as torture. Why treat people like this? If the point was to kill them, it was a lot easier to shoot them straight off, as, in fact, was done to millions. If the point was to provide manpower for the slave labor camps, as Anne Applebaum has suggested, then why let so many laborers die en route?

To answer this question, one must first grasp Bolshevik ethics. So far as I know, it has no precedent in world history. [I don’t think he considered Islam past and present]
…
Bolshevik leaders insisted, the only standard of right and wrong was success for the Party. The bourgeoisie falsely claim we have no ethics, Lenin explained in a 1920 speech. But what we reject is any ethics based on God’s commandments or anything resembling them, such as abstract principles, timeless values, universal human rights, or any tenet of philosophical idealism
…
Until recently, I supposed such statements meant that if it should be necessary to kill people, then it is permissible to do so. That is what the anarchist Peter Kropotkin had maintained, but the Bolsheviks rejected this formulation as sheer sentimentality. Kropotkin’s way of thinking suggests that revolutionaries must meet a burden of proof to overcome the moral law against killing: no more killing than necessary. For the Bolsheviks, there was no such moral law. The only moral criterion was the interests of the Party, and so they trained followers to overcome their instinctive compassion. Reluctance to kill reflected an essentially religious (or “abstract humanist”) belief in the sanctity of human life.

In short, all things equal, violent means were preferable. Mercy, kindness, compassion: these were all anti-Bolshevik emotions, and schoolchildren were taught to reject them. I know of no previous society where children were taught that compassion and mercy are vices.
…
We sought an explanation for those prisoner cattle cars, but it should now be clear that it is not cruelty that requires explanation but the reverse. To ask the reason for cruelty is to ask the wrong question. People sometimes ask the reason for slavery, but since slavery was practiced everywhere for most of human history, the right question is the opposite one: why was slavery eventually abolished in many places? In the Bolshevik context, it is mercy and compassion that require explanation.

Solzhenitsyn turned down this coveted offer [to work for the NKVD]out of some inner intuition “not founded on rational argument. . . . It certainly didn’t derive from the lectures on historical materialism we listened to: it was clear from them that the struggle against the internal enemy was a crucial battle front, and to share in it was an honorable task. . . . It was not our minds that resisted but something inside our breasts. People can shout at you from all sides: ‘You must!’ But inside your breast there is a sense of revulsion, repudiation. I don’t want to. It makes me feel sick. Do what you want with me. I want no part of it.” And yet, he reflects, some of us did join, and if enough pressure had been applied, perhaps all of us would have. In that case, “what would I have become?” The passage that follows is one of the book’s most famous:

So let the reader who expects this book to be a political exposé slam its covers shut right now.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? . . . From good to evil is one quaver, says the [Russian] proverb. And correspondingly, from evil to good.

The contrary view, held by ideologues and justice warriors generally, is that our group is good, and theirs is evil. “Evil people committing evil deeds”: this is the sort of thinking behind notions like class conflict or the international Zionist conspiracy. It is the opposite of the idea that makes tolerance and democracy possible: the idea that there is legitimate difference of opinion and we must not act as if God or History had blessed our side as always right. If you think that way, there is no reason not to have a one-party state. The man who taught me Russian history, the late Firuz Kazemzadeh, used to say: remember, there are always as many swine on your side as on the other.

A heart is not good or evil once and for all. Sometimes a heart “is squeezed by exuberant evil[;] and sometimes it shifts to allow space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances . . . close to being a devil, at times to sainthood.” We are never closer to evil than when we think that the line between good and evil passes between groups and not through each human heart.

Islam’s success is directly related to Muhammad’s claim that the Qur’an consists of Allah’s direct testimony. To embrace Islam one has to accept that claim and once accepted, revision becomes impossible because fallible mankind is literally incapable of ‘correcting’ (revising) infallible Allah’s words.

An example of that type of impossible to revise claim is the Ten Commandments, which Moses declared to be not his words but Yahweh’s… literally written in fire upon stone tablets by the ‘finger’ of God. If a Jew rejects Moses’ claim of the Ten Commandments divine authorship… then what theological support is left for Judaism?

However… If the conversation goes on long enough you hear some very jarring statements. They think they can have the economic fruits of the west without the cultural roots. Some even think westerners are foolish and naive. They certainly see the secular west’s recent moral decay and are repulsed by it.

They are by no means interested in reformation, or leaving islam.

islam is still very much a tribal religious-cultural identity. Leaving islam leaves one bereft as no “lapsed catholic” ever experienced.

And obviously it’s still violently coercive and honor-driven.

2. Taqiyya? You can bet that the extensive muslim prison network contacted this guy.

No indication in the article that his parents or community ever disapproved.

And he’s now in cybersecurity.

40 years ago i attended university with this guy:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Barghouti

He spent a lot of time chatting up the Jewish students, dontcha know. Now he runs a prominent BDS organization.

The arabs – like the chinese and the russians – play much longer cultural/political games than Americans.

This recalls the self-regarding Romans who thought the were “educating” the sons of barbarian chieftans in the ways of the west. Didn’t work out that way…

3. All those with hopes for a muslim reformation – Google “history of modern Turkey”.

“To revise the Qur’an, so as to reinterpret it in a less extremist manner thus requires that Muhammad’s claim to divine authorship of the Qur’an be rejected. But to reject such a basic, foundational claim implicitly declares Muhammad to be either a liar or deluded.
In which case, Islam’s entire theological foundation collapses.” [Aside: Islam has generally been more successful (so far) than Christianity has in maintaining this position vis a vis their scripture.]

I happen to agree with this. When I decided not to descend into an epistemological discussion, I was thinking of Khalid’s comment that “people individually have to decide”. My descent into epistemology would have followed the “how do you decide” question down the rabbit hole.

Islam demands a belief in objective truth as revealed from God to Muhammad. Should they ever descend into relativism, it will be easy to forego the difficult parts in their scriptures.

I always look forward to your posts. This is the only political blog I ever comment on, though often everything has been said by the time I arrive so I remain mum.