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Hi guys,
This is Fanar, the Islamic Cultural Centre in Doha, Qatar, next to the harbour and the
souk, a market. It is an imposing building and fascinating, especially if lit up at night.
It houses a very nice reception area, several auditoriums, 2 mosques and a library. One
of my Korans actually comes from that library. To think that a Muslim somewhere paid his
zakat to get an atheist his free copy of the Koran.... What a strange and wonderful world.
This was the venue which had the professional Muslim apologist Hamza Tzortzis, a Greek convert
to Islam, deliver a series of speeches, one them being on the Islamic perspective on violence,
terrorism and jihad.
At times, his old days over at radical Hisb ut-Tahrir shine through the veneer. The thin
veneer. I felt physically and psychologically dirty and nauseated after only 15 minutes
of listening to him and realised that this was most probably the reason that this particular
speech was deleted from YouTube, meant to disappear. Another reason might be that it
was deleted the exact day a young man in Woolwich was executed by some Muslims, who thought
that slaughtering a man in Britain would serve well as a show of displeasure at having UN
sanctioned troops from different countries in Afghanistan.
So Lee Rigby was murdered on 22nd May. Hamza and Adnan's disclaimer video was published
on 22nd May. The Codename Terror video disappeared. Was it because the video directly contradicts
the disclaimer issued by iERA or was it because it can be seen as the kind of incentive for
exactly the kind of action we saw that day? We will never know, but let’s take a closer
look at that video and its contents anyway, even if it was taken down after a while to
understand the mindset of apologists and the attitude towards terrorism.
Hamza Tzortzis delivers a 50 minute speech on terrorism and Islam, looking at different
areas and from different perspectives. I will put a timeline with some thoughts of mine
on my blog if anyone is interested. Ok, so
He starts off with the usual superstitious, ritual mumblings to please his god and abruptly
declares that Muslims speak the truth.
After 2 minutes he dives straight in and declares that fighting is a human phenomenon.
Just as a quick reminder: Hamza has no clue what science means and has no scientific education
whatsoever. I don’t even know what education he has, but it is definitely not in biology.
Also, he freely admits he doesn’t know anything about evolution and will not commit either
way.
Here, we see that he has no idea about the fights in the animal world over resources,
territory and mating rights. He has no clue that even plants and trees fight wars over
the same things. He sees humans as being separate entities from the rest of the living world.
So he lays out the topics he will cover and after 5 minutes starts off with citing a Prof.
Carter he, who says that many people died in the 20th and the 21st century. Astonishing.
For those who have not seen any videos with Hamza, what I am making fun of is his habit
of adding he/she/they to the numerous names he drops constantly. So here it was Prof Carter,
he.
Do I really need a professor telling me that many people died? What we will see throughout
this speech is that Hamza will quote names. And more names. And then some. Some of these
are obscure idiots or, as one critic put it, living in a “hostile dream world”. Some
are serious historians or scientists, where Hamza will not understand them and deliver
his usual mixture of lies and fabrication, delivering the goods in his role as entertainer
and actor.
Hamza tries to do 3 things: 1. Use a strawman fallacy to make Islamic
terrorism look better than it is by terming wars as government terrorism
2. Whitewash jihad to represent a purely defensive reaction to the evil and violent actions of
others 3. Make it look as though the Muslim conquests
and looting of other countries was a humanitarian mercy mission
He claims that because many people have died, more people have died under the banner of
secular ideologies rather than the banner of religions. Does he provide any proof for
this? No.
He now does something he is really good at, quote mining. Here, he quote mines the Koran,
Therefore We ordained for the Children of Israel that he who slays a soul unless it
be (in punishment) for *** or for spreading mischief on earth shall be as if he had slain
all mankind; and he who saves a life shall be as if he had given life to all mankind.
where he leaves out the first 11 words of this sentence, which specify this is intended
only for Jews and then, to make up for it, he suppresses the words which determine when
Muslims are allowed to kill non-Muslims.
Please remember that we are only 5 minutes into an almost 1 hour video and already we
have lies, deception and endless logical fallacies. His approach and that of iERA is by now drawing
criticism by fellow Muslims who accuse him of speaking without knowledge and using arguments
which make it easy for atheists to gain popularity points and cause confusion in the heads of
naïve Muslims. They warn others of Hamza whom they describe as coming “along with
glitter and fanfare” and “because its leaders are apparently refuting atheists and
philosophers - when in the process - they are spreading poison that is concealed and
potentially deadly.” This is a true story. Just as non-Christians today laugh about Dr.
WL Craig, non-Muslims laugh about the antics of Hamza, Adnan and co.
Hamza does not care about reason, facts or logics and we are now told that the real terror
– as opposed to the unreal terror, I suppose - is committed by countries. States. Governments.
How exactly are entire countries committing terrorism?
Well, he now tries to cite a Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, which is tough for him, as he
does not speak Polish. …….
He doesn’t speak Arabic, nor does he speak ancient Arabic, makes endless mistakes in
English
and doesn’t seem to speak any language properly, well, maybe Greek and now delivers a pitiful
performance with a name.
What is more than just pitiful or a simple language inability or me being a prick for
making fun of his mistakes is the following quote, attempting to use undefined numbers
to make a point.
Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former National Security Advisor for the U.S. government,
paints a chessboard of worldpower – but 20 or 30 years ago. He is criticised for his
limited scope nowadays, but Hamza likes the numbers he provided.
Hamza quotes him continuously for the rest of this video as having said in a chapter
on "The Century of Megadeath" in his book “Out of Control: Global Turmoil” that
"Lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated reasons" amount to wardead alone
being 87.5m people.
Not 3000 killed in 9/11 which is wrong and he disagrees with, not around 60 people in
7/7 in London, which is wrong and he disagrees with. He probably also disagrees with 11M,
anything having happened in Madrid in 2004, where almost 200 people were wounded or killed.
He simply disagrees and calls all those attacks as being wrong, as in, never happened like
that.
But he looks at, what he calls, the “root type of terrorism”, where countries or states
have, through politically motivated killings, annihilated 87.5 m people. So Muslims committing
acts of terror are ok as long as they stay below that 87.5m deaths number, which he seems
to think is quite high. He thinks that, by setting up this primitive and dishonest strawman
argument of nations committing acts of terror, will minimise the impact of the number of
Muslim driven terrorist attacks in comparison.
Now let’s just take a quick look at what terrorism means.
Terrorism does not have a universal definition, but is different from a war, where war is
declared by a nation on another nation and the 2 armies slug it out. Terrorism, even
though there are so many different definitions, is when civilians kill other civilians based
on an ulterior motive without any declaration or announcement.
When Hitler’s armies invaded Poland, France and Britain declared war on Germany 2 days
later. Did France and Britain commit acts of terrorism when attacking the German army?
Hardly. But Hamza sees this differently. Throughout the video he will continuously throw this
number of 87.5m around.
But where does he get this number? If you look at the source itself you discover that
Hamza has not understood what Dr. Brzezinski said.
1st of all, he doesn’t speak of “politically motivated reasons" but rather “politically
motivated carnage". A minor mistake, maybe, but carnage is slaughter, as in war; a massacre,
not the reasons, the ideology or motivators behind it.
Here are the facts when you actually look for the numbers:
"Lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage":
Fatalities: 167,000,000 to 175,000,000 War Dead: 87,500,000
Military war dead: 33,500,000 Civilian war dead: 54,000,000
Not-war Dead: 80,000,000 Communist oppression: 60,000,000
2nd, We have the wardead with 87.5m and the notwardead at 80m, where the Communists account
for 60m, which leaves 20m, - not high enough for Hamza, who sees the number of 87.5 in
front of him. This shows that Dr. Brzezinski broke the numbers down, which Hamza, in his
dishonesty does not show. He simply declares the higher number as being the result of what
he terms “terrorism”. Hamza ignores that out of the 87.5m 33.5m
are military personnel, which never ever falls under terrorism in a war. A World War at that.
The civilian casualties were killed by a war and by military personnel and also don’t
fall under the definition of terrorism. So all we have is a terrible war with millions
dead which are suddenly re-declared as victims of terrorists.
And 3rdly he also ignores the 80m who died due to ideologically based terrorism and totalitarian
genocide.
What is telling is when going through his numbers he’d really like to use the highest
of the numbers and starts off saying 100 something
and then realises this is just a little too high. This happens when you are blind with
rage and don’t expect anyone in the audience will check what you claim. Especially, when
you coat it with the righteousness which comes with attributing the solution to all this
to one of the gods.
Where were all the gods when this happened? Giving the Mets their first away victory or
the guy down the hall the promotion he had been praying for, for the last 2 years?
Yeah, let’s – and stop making a war sound like terrorism with a bigger budget.
But Hamza stays with this figure and makes the terrorist attacks like in Beslan, New
York, London, Bali, Madrid, etc look as though they were minor incidents.
So apart from looking like a human monster, he makes factual error after error. For example
he says that the 87.5m deaths occurred in the 21st century, twice.
Making the same mistake twice is not a disaster as such, but he constantly does this, saying
things like the Big *** happened 1400 years ago in a different speech amongst other verbal
malfunctions. But I mention this because he seems to have a general problem with understanding
the concept of numbering centuries as he informed me that when I wrote something on his Facebook
page - in the days when I was still allowed to write something there - that there are
Koranic texts from the 6th century that I was talking about the years around 620 CE.
So there seems to be a misunderstanding in his brain about this, but nobody in the audience
corrects him.
They believe.
We hear that there is a definition for terrorism, but that the UN never agreed on one. Well,
did they or didn’t they?
What is interesting is that he lies in one case and hides the facts in the 2nd instance.
In 1992 the UN did come up with a definition
Hamza says it was “killing of innocents for politically motivated reasons”, which
is total nonsense which he simply made up. This is what the United Nations produced as
Nothing about “innocents” or “politically motivated reasons”. He just lies, as he
has done so many times before.
But it gets even worse and here it gets not only worse, but quite bizarre.
The UN wanted to update it 20 years later.
They decided on "Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke
a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for
political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations
of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature
that may be invoked to justify them."
This was contested and there was an update meeting, a committee was assigned, which came
up with suggestions. And then they were stopped by representatives of – who would have thought
- Islam. The prime reason is the standoff with the Organization of the Islamic Conference
(OIC),
who want to exclude blowing up certain civilians from the reach of international law and international
organizations The Muslims wanted to ensure that religiously motivated terrorism is excluded
and call it the “right for self-determination”. This right should probably allow people to
blow up themselves or others to self-determine themselves. This allows people from Gaza to
chuck rockets into Israel, for Muslims to fly planes into buildings, blow up schools
or trains – all for self-determination, of course.
So Hamza mentions the lack of a clear definition of terrorism today by the UN – but conveniently
forgets to mention why there is none. It’s the pathetic attempt by representatives of
Islamic organisations trying to white-wash Islamic terror as legitimate – just as they
are trying to label the presentation of Islamic facts as blasphemy. These Muslims are trying
to legalise their own terrorism and outlaw everybody else’s.
Pathetic. Despicable. Sad.
Hamza now goes off into a topic he clearly does not understand at all: philosophy. Remember
that if he starts waffling, he keeps on adding the word “philosophically” to make it
sound important. Well he now starts by saying that Muslims need to be just and that they
“have an epistemic duty”
Epistemology is the philosophical study of belief and all things pertaining to truth.
Epistemic duty is the idea that there are truths that people have a duty to believe.)
Hamza now restates his misconception regarding the 87.5m people who died through politically
motivated reasons and then uses this as a base to justify terrorist actions committed
by Muslims via the high number of state backed acts of terror of non-Muslim countries.
Hamza uses the next lie, the number of casualties in Iraq. He does not reveal which Iraq war
he is referring to, whether the Muslims versus Muslims war Iran against Iraq, the Muslims
versus Muslims war Iraq against Kuwait or the attempts by the UN to push Iraq out of
Kuwait again or the ill-advised war against Iraq by the US and the UK, which ended in
2011.
He also does not specify what is included in this number and on what basis. As it stands,
we have several, very different estimates, yet they all range from 50,000 to 200,000,
depending on the definition. A site with very clear and open definitions comes to the conclusion
that we are talking about 174,000 people documented as “killed in violence” in Iraq since
2003. Sad and avoidable, especially since people are now themselves disposing of unloved
dictators who committed genocide or killed entire groups during their reign. And since
the retraction of foreign troops in Iraq in 2011, the violence and killings have not stopped
at all.
But if Muslims kill other human beings for their ideology, is this really terrorism?
For me it is. And for Hamza? Hamza applies double standards here, calls this “being
naughty” - if it’s Muslims who are doing the killing. If non-Muslims kill, it’s labelled
terrorism.
Now this slimebag wants to get Jihad into a legitimate light. How does he do this? Well,
he declares the war in the Middle East a war for oil and strategic dominance. Then he goes
on to say that Libya was an endeavour by the Europeans to gain access to the resources
of the African continent, which is in the interests of America.
What? What does that mean? Why would Europe need additional access to Africa? And why
in the interests of America? This guy is so clapped out it is unbelievable.
We are barely past the 14 minute mark and Hamza now tries to justify Jihad and a violent
book, the Koran. He says that the creator of mankind knew they were going to have wars,
which I presume he could have stopped if he was all-powerful and just a tiny bit merciful
- but elected not to. The all-powerful creator was and still is unable to produce peaceful
humans, or doesn’t want to. Because we were going to have wars, the all-knowing creator
issued rules - which would be totally misinterpreted by humans in the 21st century, something this
god apparently did not know at the time.
Hamza now waffles and describes some rules which everyone knows are the opposite of what
is in the hadiths, such as burning trees and killing women and children and livestock.
He says Abu Bakr issued 10 rules – not a god, but Abu Bakr he – which included being
nice to prisoners of war. Yet we know that
"Abu Bakr instructed one of his commanders to lay waste every village where he did not
hear the call to prayer."
We know that Muhammad, if he really existed as described in Islamic texts, tortured, mutilated,
beheaded and finally married a woman whose husband and father she had just seen killed
by his men.
Is that the role model for Muslims in the 21st century Hamza is suggesting?
If you go through the list you will easily find the total opposite somewhere in the texts.
The prohibition of mutilating dead bodies for example is immediately watered down when
you see the loophole, when it is in retaliation. Just as an example, When Muhammad saw this,
he was so furious that he promised: ‘If Allah gives me victory over the Quraish (his
own tribe) at any time, I shall mutilate thirty of their men!’
So for every command which on the surface sounds reasonable and positive, you get the
opposite, a double standard, and are quickly yanked back into reality, which is not as
nice and pleasant as professional liars and apologists like Hamza want you to believe.
I felt dirty at this moment, filthy dirty, physically and psychologically ill from listening
to such an evil, despicable person and I had to take a break. I just couldn't handle it.
For reasons of brevity I have decided to skip a few pages where I take the claims Hamza
makes about Zionists or the various hadiths regulating the behaviour of Muslims and demonstrating
that they either say the opposite or that opposing hadiths exist and it’s a matter
of choosing and picking.
We pick up at around 24 minutes, where Hamza decries the unfair usage of the word jihad
as ”when Muslims go and fight”, used by Fox News and other dubious and ridiculous
media outlets.
Instead, Hamza now says that jihad is a liberating concept. Jihad is “when Muslims go and fight”
- but there are rules as discussed before. He tries to differentiate between 2 forms
and invents a new expression, which he seems to think will fool people.
1. Defensive 2. Progressive Jihad
the defensive jihad is war, where Muslims gather to expel the armies which have invaded
their region.
Did they do this when Kuwait was invaded? No.
Does this include blowing yourself up and killing 30 Muslims?
What about a Muslim suicide bomber killing 78 people, including 34 women and 7 children
in Sep 2013? Is this what Hamza labels as “defensive jihad”?
Progressive Jihad. Is practically undertaken by a legitimate Islamic state according to
some ulema. No such state exists today. The ultimate objective is dawa. In reality.
Dawa via Jihad is removing the obstacles which prevent the establishment of the peace and
justice and mercy of Islam. Removing oppressors, showing that the state is a humanitarian state.
Therefore Islam demonstrates it is humanitarian.
Yes, as long as you join in the ranks of the Muslims. If not, you die.
What if a nation does not actually want the peace and justice and mercy of Islam?
So where does this progressive jihad fit in? Where does this expression come from, which
he has invented?
Secondary goals of progressive jihad: Removing oppression
Defending the weak Implementing the justice and the mercy of
… and this is where the problem comes in. Who in a free country wants the ruthless,
cruel, restrictive ethics of the 7th century imposed on them? I don’t know anyone. On
the other hand, if Muslims on “progressive jihad” or whatever jihad go to Iceland,
there is no oppression and there are no weak to defend, but they implement sharia, which
Hamza calls the “Mercy of Islam”
What mercy of Islam? Islam is a highly misogynistic and violent ideology and does not show any
mercy. 1000s are executed in Muslim majority countries for as little as making a joke which
contains the name Muhammad or a couple of harmless Twitter messages. What mercy is shown
when Muslims go and kill people?
Coptic Bishop John of Nikiou, Heraclius abused people, Bishop John says when Muslims saw
the hostility they helped the Muslims.
Hahaha, I suppose he got a bit confused there.
He continues saying that the non-Muslims welcomed the victory of the Muslims.
And looks very proud of himself.
But why would the Egyptians welcome this victory? How would they know that the Muslims were
better oppressors than the Romans? How would a Coptic Bishop know this?
Sadly for Hamza, reality was different from his little day-dream.
Someone who wrote a historical text in Wikipedia does not agree with the version Hamza is trying
to dish out and cites 7th century John of Nikiou: “John credits the Muslims for not
destroying Christian holy places, but he also records the numerous atrocities committed
against the Egyptians and the prohibitive new taxes placed on the native population.
In some cases, the taxes were so burdensome that families were forced to sell their children
into slavery.“ So much for the claim that the locals helped the Muslims. They did nothing
of the sort.
A.J. Butler's “The Arab Conquest of Egypt”, also paints a very different picture.
On page 365 he writes: “The whole country is described as suffering
oppression at the hands of the Muslims”
The conditions are laid out where, on page 321 he writes:
“For the payment of tribute and taxes constituted them a protected people (ahl adh
dhimmah) with a status implying these privileges. The tribute was fixed at two dinârs per head
for all except very old men and children, and the total capitation-tax was found to
amount to 12,000,000 dinârs, or about £6,000,000 but in addition to the capitation-tax, a land-tax
or property-tax was imposed.”
Umar in particular was only interested in one thing: money. He asked ‘Amr, the Muslim
administrator for more money with higher taxes and ‘Amr just sent back the message: Egypt
works like the Nile, not like Umar. Umar got so angry with this that he sent his particularly
cruel cousin with a small army to Egypt, where they plundered everything they could get their
hands on. They marvelled at the buildings in Alexandria, the likes of which they had
never seen and without taking the seasonal fluctuations of the Nile and the subsequent
income from barter and trade into consideration, simply destroyed whatever they saw. They uncovered
a stash of gold coins and when a traitor told them there was more hidden under the incredibly
beautiful and monumental lighthouse they destroyed that too, until they were told they had been
fooled.
So after reading some historical texts we see that the statement that “The non-Muslim
Egyptians welcomed their liberators” is anything but true.
After 30:00 minutes, Hamza says that Oppression and all forms of genocide would justify his
“progressive jihad” and spells out the process:
1. Invites anyone to accept belief 2. Invites to immigrate
3. War
Then he says that this is to remove the political structure or the barrier to the promotion
of peace and justice of Islam.
In other words, “progressive jihad” first tells people they should join Islam, and if
these people don’t want this, the Muslims go to war against these people to install
the Islamic version of what they call “peace” and “justice” the sharia. But remember:
this is not terrorism – this is the liberation of people who are not oppressed and peaceful
and not in need of any liberation. How stupid, gullible and naïve does he think people are?
I will skip the next section, where Hamza tries to put the blame on Islamic terrorism
on others. He also continues his attempt ate belittling terrorist actions by Muslims saying
that “We must condemn terrorist acts – but we have to be nuanced.”
And then again assigning the blame for Islamic terrorism on “We have to understand the
role of negative Western foreign policy” and that “this has exasperated the sense
of injustice which facilitates this terrorism”.
Totally deluded, void of any pity or compassion for the victims, Hamza goes on and on, telling
his audience that jihad brings peace, the Islamic version of peace and that victims
of Muslim attacks should blame their governments. He also keeps on asserting that the citizens
of the countries which were invaded by the marauding hordes of the Caliphs cheered them
on and welcomed them, thinking that there were really regions, nations, people calling
for Muslims. Calling to Muslims: please oppress us, rob us and impose your 7th century superstitions
and backward ideology on us.
We know today that historical Muslims were only interested in plundering and looting
the regions they invaded and then moved on, like locusts. It was only much later that
Muslims turned to the spiritual side of Islam and started exploring the political as well
as the religious aspects of Islam.
I will not go into the remaining ludicrous and really pretentious arguments and the fabricated
points in his attempt to make Islam look as though Muslims only react to violence. Hamza
lies and suppresses reality and facts, where the incredibly simple question of why Muslims
kill Muslims or why a Muslim country can justifiably attack or invade another Muslims country destroys
his entire approach.
There is no such thing as a single Islam or THE Muslim. It is all down to personal interpretation
and the peaceful Muslim does not exist, the same way as the violent Muslim does not exist.
This is another demonstration of Hamza Tzortzis, his dishonest and deceptive tactics and his
attempt of keeping Muslims away from the truth and under the control of his fundamentalist
ideology, Islam.
Thanks for your time.