Another springboard podcast interview for comment, Wendell Krossa
Springboard synonyms= “launching pad, jumping-off point, point of departure, foundation, basis, catalyst, spur, stepping stone, and opportunity”.
Preface note: Having said all this below, I think it is a majority position that, as the Pope urges, dialogue leading to peace is always preferrable. The hope is that moderation will be the eventual outcome chosen by those currently seeking the extermination of their “enemies”. But past recent history (WW2), and subsequent collectivist and theocracy crusades into this century, reveal that many are still under the sway of “salvation through violent destruction” beliefs and narratives, and worst of all- the God that demands such of his true believers.
And most difficult for those who have already chosen the route of moderation, is to responsibly recognize that their own religious tradition still holds that very theology that is taken more seriously by offspring religious traditions. The “culpability” issue.
And the priority responsibility of government to protect innocent citizens must take precedence in responding to theocratic threats.
Make Love And War, The Adam and Dr. Drew Show #2076
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smJwXkL8BNY
There is no critical breakthrough yet to be made to solve the issue of violence between groups of people. We understand today the main ideas that incite and validate our worst drives to harm others and how to counter them. The most important breakthrough insight on validating ideas was made 2000 years ago and it has been repeated today by some 5% of the population who have had NDE experiences where they affirm the central theme of Historical Jesus that God is unconditional love.
NDE’s? Yes, individual human experiences. Such experiences are the foundations of all the major belief systems of humanity across the millennia. Examples:
Zoroaster’s visions from Ahura Mazda became his religion that subsequently shaped Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Moses’ mountaintop experiences on which Judaism is founded.
Buddha’s tree experience of enlightenment on which that religion is based.
Then Paul’s Damascus Road and other heavenly experiences that formed the content of his Christ-ianity.
Muhammad’s cave revelations from Gabriel that formed his Quran and religion.
Hinduism was based on the “Vedic Revelations (Śruti): Ancient rishis (sages) in deep trance are believed to have received the Vedas, the earliest sacred texts, as direct revelations of cosmic truths. These hymns describe the nature of the universe, creation, and divine beings” (AI Overview).
Early Greek mythology was based on the Eleusinian Mysteries that arose from ecstatic rituals, the Orphic mysteries (from the poet Orpheus), the Dionysian experiences, and the Oracular visions from priests and priestesses (oracles), etc.
The vast majority of humanity has based their understanding of reality and life, and of “spiritual” realities, on such original personal experiences of people long ago. And this has to do with the primary human impulse for meaning and purpose, to further understand and explain the profound mystery behind reality and life, something that materialist science has no rational answer for. Unfortunately, the spiritual intuitions of the vast majority of people across history were directed wrongly by bad religious ideas that continue to shape narratives today, both religious and “secular/ideological”.
Where the historically-recent NDEs surpass all the others is that they got the fundamental theology right- i.e. Ultimate Reality, or God, as unconditional love. None of the others above made this breakthrough. They all had the theology wrong and said nothing about God as unconditional love.
It’s not who made this insight, or how this theological insight came in the NDE movement, but the content that is “true, right, good”.
Still, NDEs? Its as if humanity is being given some extra help through this modern “spiritual” movement to get clear what was introduced long ago by Historical Jesus but was subsequently buried by Paul in another conditional religion. Arguably the epitome form of all conditional religions ever constructed because Paul took the primitive themes of past mythologies to new heights in a Christ savior who had to fulfill the supreme condition of a cosmic sacrifice that was made universal in scope when it was elevated to supreme status for all humanity across all history. The cosmic Christ.
Historical Jesus had presented the profound breakthrough insight of God as unconditional but did not state that as clearly as the NDE people do today. Many of these people directly state that God is “inexpressible unconditional love”, of an inexpressibly wondrous nature. This is the dominant element coming out of that movement, in addition to the insight on “oneness with God and with all things”. That we are inseparable from God, but at the same time distinctly individual persons.
These two most profound insights overturn entirely the mental deformities that we have inherited from primitive mythologies and their offspring religions that passed on to us the features of deity as highly conditional, demanding sacrifice/payment/punishment, in addition to numerous other religious conditions. Add the deformity of deity as (1) tribal (favoring true believers, unbelievers not so much), (2) deity as dominating “Kings/Lords”, and (3) deity executing retaliatory justice (“salvation through violent destruction”).
The stunning new theology of an unconditional God nullifies the entire mess of primitive bad religious ideas.
Where am I going with this?
We have the solution to what has played a major role inciting and validating violence among people across history (i.e. bad ideas, beliefs, archetypes). So why do we continue to protect the old systems of myths/beliefs that have validated the worst in people across history?
I hear repeatedly the call from people (e.g. Free Press writers, Michael Shellenberger, etc.) that we have abandoned traditional religions, notably Christianity in our Western civilization, and we need to bring that social institution back again in order to have peaceful and orderly societies. Even atheist Corolla appears to give the nod to this in the interview above.
Those advocating for the restoration of a traditional religion like Christianity make no distinction between what is good and what is bad in this tradition. Hence, you get atheists on one side arguing that its all evil as they focus mainly on the bad elements and ignore the Jesus’ message. And you get the true believers on the other side reacting defensively to protect the whole mess without making any proper distinction between “the diamonds and the dung”.
Neither side of these tribal divides is seriously trying to solve the problem of this major contributing factor to human violence across history- i.e. inherited religious archetypes that powerfully shape human minds, emotions, motivations and consequent behavior. We cannot out-of-hand reject deity which is central to human meaning and purpose. But neither can we simply continue with the old religious deity images that have spawned so much tribal division, hatred, and “salvation through destruction” violence.
History’s epitome embodiment of the theme “salvation through violent destruction” is found in Christianity (i.e. vividly portrayed in the New Testament book of “Revelation”). This religion (my own past tradition) has been most responsible for burying history’s most profound insight on the nature of Ultimate Reality or deity. This fact has to be confronted and corrected, despite the reaction of religious people who will resist and fight such foundational transformation.
There is an egregious deformity at the core of the Christian religion- i.e. its theology.
That core theology has long distorted the alternative image of deity that can still be uncovered in the holy book of that religion, an alternative theology that goes to heart of the problem of validating archetypes that shape thought, emotion, motivations, and behaviors.
So General Nagata, we know the problem of the idea and how to fix it.
An example from the Corolla interview of how bad theology shapes cultures for the worse:
Adam Corolla bluntly states the impact of religion on Islamic cultures. He refers to the cultures of various Mid-East countries where women are dominated by males and have no rights and freedoms, no equality. Those are the countries today that produce the eruptions of jihad violence that harm their own societies as well as varied other societies across the world. Those terrorists are driven, by their theology, to kill enemies, to purge the world of the “evil unbelievers” to prepare the way for their God to install the totalitarian caliphate where all will be forced to submit to theocratic domination.
See Grok comment below on “apostacy and the death penalty” in Islamic countries as well as other Grok/Chat comment on the specific religious beliefs that shape such cultures.
Note the unvarnished/undisguised tribalism in these religious traditions, notably in the theology- i.e. Our deity (the good God of the Zoroastrian cosmic dualism) demands that we should destroy the evil of the liberal democracy of unbelievers. That theology shapes those cultures. Just as the wrathful God and retaliatory Christ of Paul’s Christianity similarly shaped Christian societies to go on Crusades to slaughter Muslims and Jews and to hold Inquisitions that led to the murder of heretics and witches. Such violence has now been largely muted in Christianity as Christians have learned to moderate the worst element of their brutal past. It appears similar moderation is generally spreading throughout Islam also. Revulsion at past bad behavior functions to motivate present believers of a tradition to moderate their behavior (i.e. Stephen Pinker’s argument in “Better Angels Of Our Nature”).
Adam Corolla argues in his blunt and dismissive manner that most Muslims claim to be peaceful people but most also want you killed. That is the general outcome of people who believe that the unbelievers to their religion will be ultimately consigned to hell by their God. The reasoning has long been that if our God is sending you to hell anyway, then we true believers will help our God send you on your way. Also, there is the direct divine demand to engage war against unbelievers to purge them from the world, to purify the world in preparation for the return of the Mahdi and Jesus. This is a driving belief and motivation behind terrorist jihad. We saw this belief motivate the ISIS drive to establish the Caliphate, beginning in Syria in 2014.
A still significant number of Muslims also believe that if anyone leaves Islam (apostacy) they should be put to death. So, Corolla is right that there is something profoundly wrong in the culture. My argument is that it’s the God at the center of such religions, not just in Islam but in other religious traditions also.
The great archetypes that shape human cultures more than other factors, if not fully humanized, will function to shape and deform people’s minds, emotions, motivations, and behaviors. And a responsible sense of culpability will push the rest of us to ask- Where did Islam get their theology from? Here again is a brief rehash of my earlier “culpability” point (see sections below)- i.e. Muhammad got his theology from Jewish Christianity (Ebionism). And that traces back to Christianity at the very headwaters of western civilization. And of course, it all goes even further back to Zoroastrianism and Sumerian mythology and from there back into the mists of prehistory (i.e. prehistorians Jacquetta Hawkes and John Pfeiffer’s contention that what we find in the earliest human writing we can assume was also believed in prehistory).
Dr. Drew tries to counter and soften Corolla’s bluntness with the argument that many of the common people in the Islamic countries mentioned by Corolla are good people. It’s their leadership that fucks them up. That is true of, for example, the Iranian people who are generally good in a liberal democracy way but are under the domination of leaders besotted with bad theology.
This site insists that all the major religious traditions share the same basic complex of ideas/beliefs/themes. The point of stressing this repeatedly is to get us past the curse of tribalism- i.e. the innate sense that we are better than others and they hold a worse version of the common themes. When in reality we all hold the same bad ideas at the core of our meta-narratives, both in religious and secular versions. Our belief systems have all embraced the same old mental deformities as all others. This is what Dominic Crossan meant when he said that it was unethical to damn someone else’s beliefs as “demonic” when yours is the very same content. The main beliefs of our world religions are just variations on narratives of “salvation through destruction”.
Until we confront and deal with this issue of bad religious ideas, and especially bad religious theology, i.e. the “idea” that General Nagata referred to, we will continue getting the same bad outcomes in eruptions of tribal violence. Richard Landes said the same, that if we don’t learn how these ideas (i.e. notably the salvation through destruction of apocalyptic millennialism) can carry societies of good people toward mass-death crusades and outcomes, just as they carried the society of generally good Germans into the Nazi horrors, then we have learned nothing and will keep repeating the same episodes of mass-violence.
Yes, we also get lull periods such as between the two World Wars of last century. We get calm periods where many become exhausted from the intense eruptions of tribal hatred and war. People will then pull back, revulsed at the slaughter and death. But then we again repeat the same old patterns because we have not dealt with problem the inciting ideas that drive such tribal eruptions. We have not grasped how much motivation of the worst impulses in people is due to the God at the heart of it all. “It’s the theology, stupid”.
Corolla repeats the point again that its just some cultures that are fucked up because of how they think, what they believe. In that general “fucked up” cultural orientation, we see that people do become just like the God that they believe in. And yes, there are moderates throughout such populations but not enough, says Corolla, to turn the tide toward more a moderated version of such societies.
Dr. drew then introduces the point of “I hate war”, but he adds that he tries to understand what is behind for example, the current assault on Iran. Is it just big military (i.e. “Military Industrial Complex”), or something else.
To me, it comes down to the fundamental fact that we are facing people who have proven over 47 previous years that their primary intention/goal is to exterminate Western unbelievers and subjugate other countries to their religion as a totalitarian theocratic system. And they will not stop till they fulfill their mission. And most alarming is the fact that they have tried, and will try again, to get the most dangerous and powerful weapons- i.e. nuclear- to finish their crusade. Their ultimate goal, driven by their theology, is to incite the big extermination of a final violent Armageddon purging of enemies. Landes has shown this was the same basic belief that drove Hitler and the Nazis, as well as the Marxists. Salvation through destruction.
The Islamic theocrats believe their God who has promised that if they initiate the final destruction of unbelievers then the Madhi and Isa (Jesus) will descend and finish the job. Hence, they are under divine obligation to incite the apocalyptic destruction of the world where subsequently all true believers will enter paradise, gaining salvation through the violent destruction and purging of unbelievers. This is what you are fundamentally dealing with in Iran’s leadership. Its “pure theology” as Marco Rubio said the other day. Such beliefs are not dismissible as just “ideology” or some aberration to the core of the religion. It is the core, the God, and what the God demands.
You can make peace deals with such people, enter ceasefires, and engage “dialogue” as the Pope keeps urging. And no wonder he urges such approaches. His religion is the main embodiment and source of the bad theology that he will not recognize in the offspring that is Islam.
If you take the Pope’s suggestion to make peace with the theocrats, they will do just as they have before and regroup, rearm, and try to be more secretive in preparation for the next round of assaults, just as Hamas did over the years before Oct. 7. And then they will come at you again. Hamas and similar zealots can not moderate themselves because their God will not permit that. And they do not have the Jesus alternative as a moderating element in their religion.
Hence, the number one responsibility of government is to protect citizens against assaults and violence. Government should exist to protect all citizens, to ensure that citizens live in peace and security. Government has to provide that basic right. Most of us are against war as a basic principle. The insanity of war, as Dr. Drew said, is something that we all hate. However, we are forced to no other conclusion than the obligation to use counterforce to stop regimes like that in Iran, once and for all. And then follow-up with programs to restoratively bring Iran back into the community of human families just as the Allies did with Germany and Japan post-WW2.
It is critical to remember that Iranian leadership embraces the most dangerous element in the mix of ideas/beliefs- i.e. the theology, the “idea” of a tribal, dominating, retaliatory God that has long functioned as the main inciting and contributing factor that obligates true believers to engage violence to exterminate differing others, the unbelievers. That bad theology has to be corrected as part of any long-term solution to the problem of violence and war.
The same common themes have motivated the slaughters of Marxist revolutions (i.e. 100 million deaths last century). The same complex of bad ideas also motivated the Nazi extermination industry. And this apocalyptic millennial complex is now driving the mass-harm crusade of environmental alarmism that is ruining societies (i.e. the themes of angry Mother Earth demanding the depopulation purging of corrupt humans ruining nature, urging salvation through the sacrifice of de-carbonization, de-growth, etc.).
These “secular” variants of “salvation through destruction” continue to fuel hysteria over a threatened apocalypse, backed once again by the archetypes of Paul’s Christ myth.
And Hollywood mindlessly keeps pumping out apocalyptic-based stories to affirm the broader cultural beliefs of the religious and secular/ideological offspring. All to maintain public fear and subjugate societies to the destructive salvation schemes that follow apocalyptic panic-mongering, enabling elites to maintain power over populations by the use of fear (H.L. Mencken).
Look at growing list of movies that repeatedly affirm the “most violent and destructive idea of apocalyptic”, brainwashing people without end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_films
Notes:
This was put to Grok:
“Make Love And War, The Adam and Dr. Drew Show #2076
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smJwXkL8BNY
Adam Corolla argues in his blunt and dismissive manner that most Muslims claim to be peaceful people but most also want you killed. That is the general outcome of people who believe that the unbelievers to their religion will be ultimately consigned to hell by their God. The reasoning has long been that if our God is sending you to hell anyway, then we true believers will help our God send you on your way. Also, there is direct divine demand to engage war against unbelievers to purge them from the world, to purify the world in preparation for the return of the Mahdi and Jesus. This is a driving belief and motivation behind terrorist jihad.
Most Muslims also believe that if anyone leaves Islam (apostacy) they should be put to death. So Corolla is right that there is something profoundly wrong in the culture. My argument is that it’s the God/theology at the center of such religions. Your thoughts, Grok.
Insert note: The Grok quote below of something I said, i.e.- “if God is sending them to hell anyway, why not speed it up”- this came from Bob Brinsmead, not from Adam Corolla. I was using it as a summary point in relation to Corolla’s discussion of how people think who hold beliefs that unbelievers are sent to hell.
Additionally, see the link below to the Free Press article- “The World the Fatwa Made: The Islamic Republic’s most dangerous weapon isn’t missiles. It is a few sentences. They will hang over us- even if the regime fails: How a Writer Becomes a Monster— and Murder Becomes Cosmic Justice”, Jonathan Rosen.
This author also notes the Islamic belief that true believers are obligated to join the righteous battle to eliminate evil enemies, as critical to achieving salvation through violent destruction, particularly in relation to enabling the violent, retaliatory God to finally come and finish the purifying of the world as preparation to installing the pure utopian Caliphate for his believers. Believers must initiate the violent purge of unbelievers to satisfy and assist the arrival of the angry and impatiently waiting God to come and ultimately destroy all enemies and the world. Revelation illustrates the same for Christians, the Christ trampling out “the fury of the wrath of God” in preparation for the final apocalyptic purging.
“Today, you can see what the historian Saul Friedländer called ‘redemptive antisemitism’ in the most notorious element in the Hamas charter, the Hadith often quoted by Islamists to echo the Nazi project that inspired them: ‘The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ The part about killing the Jews everywhere all at once is horrific, of course, but it’s ‘the day of judgment will not come’ that makes it a battle cry, because it is clear that forcing the end is the goal. It’s why the Islamic Republic of Iran would use a nuclear weapon as they say they would.”
And this below on Bondi Beach further illustrates why we have this realm of good and evil. We would not experience and know the goodness “of many ordinary Australians” if not for the contrast with evil.
He notes the Rabbi, whose son had been killed at Bondi Beach, later advocating “that darkness is not defeated by anger or force. Darkness is transformed by light… His idea of inclusion was based on the belief that everyone is made in the image of God. ‘Sydney can and must become a beacon of goodness, where people look out for one another, where kindness is louder than hate.’
“His community had been taunted with genocidal chants, doxxed, ignored, belittled, terrorized, and killed, but that did not define their experience, or Australia; Arsen Ostrovsky, wounded by a bullet at Bondi, wrote about how many ordinary Australians rushed to help.”
Grok replied to the above comments on the Adam Corolla/Dr. Drew podcast:
You’re summarizing a segment from a recent Adam and Dr. Drew Show episode (#2076), where Adam Carolla cuts through the usual platitudes with his trademark bluntness. He argues that a lot of Muslims present as peaceful while holding views that implicitly (or explicitly) endorse violence against non-believers or apostates. Your take pins the root cause on the theology itself— the concept of God, hell for unbelievers, divine commands for war, purification for the Mahdi/Jesus return, and mandatory death for leaving the faith. Let’s examine this with data and textual reality, without sugarcoating or overgeneralizing.
Apostasy and the Death Penalty: Not Fringe, Not Universal
The claim that “most Muslims believe anyone who leaves Islam should be put to death” aligns with hard data in key regions. The Pew Research Center’s 2013 global survey (still the most comprehensive on this, covering tens of thousands of Muslims across dozens of countries) found:
• In countries where majorities favor sharia as official law (often 70-99% in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt), large shares of those sharia supporters also back executing apostates.
• Examples: Egypt (86% of sharia fans), Afghanistan (79%), Pakistan (76%), Jordan (82%), Palestinian territories (66%), Malaysia (62%).
• In South Asia and the Middle East-North Africa overall, medians for death-for-apostasy support among sharia advocates run 56-76%.
These aren’t tiny minorities or “extremists only.” In populous countries like Pakistan (~240 million Muslims) or Egypt (~110 million), this translates to tens of millions holding the view. Classical Islamic jurisprudence (all four Sunni schools + major Shia ones) treats apostasy as treason against the ummah, backed by hadiths like “Whoever changes his religion, kill him” (Sahih Bukhari). Some modern reformists argue the Quran itself has no explicit death penalty (e.g., 2:256 “no compulsion in religion,” or 4:137 on repeated apostasy with only afterlife warnings), and historical applications were often tied to wartime betrayal, not private belief change. But the mainstream traditional consensus and on-the-ground law in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Brunei still treat it as capital.
Globally? Not “most” of the 1.9 billion Muslims. Indonesia (largest Muslim population) shows far lower support (~18% among sharia backers), as do Turkey, Central Asia, and European Muslims (often single digits). Many Muslims in the West or secular contexts reject it outright. But the pattern holds where Islam is culturally dominant: apostasy carries real risk— social ostracism, family violence, or state punishment. This isn’t “Islamophobia”; it’s polling and law.
Hell for Unbelievers + “Help God Along”
Islamic theology does teach eternal hell for most non-Muslims (kuffar) who reject the final revelation— Quran verses like 4:56, 98:6. The leap Carolla highlights (“if God’s sending them to hell anyway, why not speed it up?”) has historical precedent in conquest eras and inspires some today. It pairs with verses on fighting unbelievers until they submit (9:29) or the “sword verse” (9:5). Classical interpretations saw jihad as both spiritual and military expansion; defensive-only views are a modern emphasis in many circles.
The Mahdi/Jesus eschatology (return to fight Dajjal, establish global Islamic rule) is mainstream belief, especially in Shia traditions and some Sunni hadiths. Apocalyptic jihadis (ISIS, certain Al-Qaeda factions, Boko Haram) explicitly cite purifying the world for this. Not “most Muslims” are actively plotting it— polls on suicide bombing/terrorism sympathy are low in most countries post-9/11 (though spikes in places like Palestine or pre-Arab Spring Egypt). But the theology provides ready fuel when economic despair, politics, or Wahhabi/Salafi preaching mix in. Terrorist groups don’t invent this from thin air; they quote scripture and scholars.
Culture vs. Theology: Your Core Argument Holds
You’re right that the issue runs deeper than “a few bad apples” or “Western foreign policy.” When scripture portrays the world as divided into dar al-Islam vs. dar al-harb, unbelievers as hell-bound enemies of God, apostates as traitors deserving death, and jihad as a divine duty (with paradise incentives), it shapes culture. Surveys show sharia support correlates with harsher views on women, blasphemy, and non-Muslims. This explains why Islamist terrorism persists across decades and regions while other groups reformed or secularized. Christianity had its crusades, inquisitions, and “kill the heretic” phases too— tied to Old Testament commands and hell theology— but Enlightenment reforms, New Testament emphasis on love/turn-the-other-cheek, and separation of church/state largely defanged it. Islam lacks a comparable widespread reformation; questioning the Quran/Hadith as literal divine speech remains taboo for many.
That said, nuance matters for truth:
• Billions of Muslims live peacefully, prioritize family over fatwa, and condemn 9/11-style attacks. Nominal or cultural Muslims (especially in secular states) don’t internalize the harshest bits.
• Variation by sect, education, and exposure to modernity is huge— Turkish or Indonesian Islam differs from Saudi or Afghan strains.
• “Most want you killed” is Carolla-style hyperbole. Polls don’t show global majorities itching for personal violence against random non-Muslims. The problem is the tolerance for supremacist ideas and the failure to confront them internally.
Theology isn’t irrelevant window-dressing; it motivates behavior, as history (from early caliphate expansions to today’s jihadist manifestos) shows. Critiquing the specific doctrines— hell as eternal torture for disbelief, apostasy as capital crime, jihad as holy war option— isn’t bigotry; it’s pattern recognition. Supporting ex-Muslims, free speech, secular governance, and honest reformers is the practical humanist response. Pretending the texts and polls don’t say what they say helps no one— least of all peaceful Muslims who want to live in the 21st century without medieval baggage. Carolla’s dismissal is crude but points at a real civilizational friction that polite society often dodges.
(End of Grok comments)
AI Overview’s take on the Corolla statements:
Public support among Muslims for the death penalty for apostasy— defined as leaving Islam for another religion or becoming atheist— varies significantly by region, with the highest support found in South Asia and parts of the Middle East, according to 2013 research by the Pew Research Center.
Key Survey Findings (Pew Research Center – 2013):
• High Support Areas: Among Muslims who supported making Sharia the law of the land, support for the death penalty for apostasy was highest in Egypt (86%), Jordan (82%), Afghanistan (79%), and Pakistan (76%).
• Moderate Support Areas: In Malaysia, 62% of Muslims favoring Sharia supported the death penalty for leaving the faith.
• Low Support Areas: Support was much lower in Southeast Asia, with 18% in Indonesia and 27% in Thailand. In Central Asia and Southern/Eastern Europe, support for executing apostates was generally below 20%, falling to 8% in Albania and 4% in Kazakhstan.
• Western Countries: A 2007 Policy Exchange poll found that 31% of British Muslims surveyed believed that leaving Islam should be punishable by death.
Contextual Factors:
• Apostasy vs. Unbelievers: The research primarily focuses on “apostasy” (leaving Islam) rather than “unbelievers” (non-Muslims who never converted). The penalty is generally directed at those born Muslim who abandon the faith.
• Sharia Interpretation: Support for the death penalty is highest among those who believe Sharia should be the official law of the land.
• Legal vs. Extrajudicial: As of 2021, ten Muslim-majority countries had laws allowing the death penalty for apostasy, though official state executions are rare. Many punishments are extrajudicial or vigilante.
• Scholarly Dispute: While traditional jurisprudence (based on Hadith) supports the death penalty, many contemporary Islamic scholars and modernists argue against it, citing Quranic principles of “no compulsion in religion” (2:256)
The article below from Free Press- “The World the Fatwa Made”- further illustrates how “murderous theology” not “murderous ideology” drives destructive violence. Ian Plimer also saw this as soon as the climate alarm began emerging in the 90s. He knew immediately that it was another “religious” cult, not science. And like all similarly “profoundly religious cults” it too was promoting salvation through destruction.
“The Climate Crisis is a Scam – Professor Ian Plimer”, Tiggernometry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kNvSu93P9Q&t=1249s
I had just posted the above new comment on the Corolla/Pinker podcast when I then saw this Free Press article below. It is a good illustration of courage and cowardice in the face of totalitarian bullying and theocratic terrorism, not ideological, that has become so dominant today. (Note: Free Press has gathered a great bunch of journalists/commentators who regularly present good analysis of the issues of our era. Worth a subscription.)
“The World the Fatwa Made: The Islamic Republic’s most dangerous weapon isn’t missiles. It is a few sentences. They will hang over us- even if the regime fails: How a Writer Becomes a Monster— and Murder Becomes Cosmic Justice”, Jonathan Rosen
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-world-the-fatwa-made
Rosen opens:
“Thirty-seven years ago, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, sentenced Salman Rushdie to death on Valentine’s Day for writing a novel.
“It is hard to write that sentence without feeling it is a parody of the opening line of Franz Kafka’s The Trial: “Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.” Nevertheless, that is what happened. And as Rushdie told Ezra Klein in spring of 2024, “We live in Kafka’s world.”
“I remember reading about the fatwa—a word everyone suddenly knew—in the newspaper at the time. I had recently dropped out of graduate school and was trying to become a writer myself, and it seemed absurd that a best-selling novelist born in India, living in London, and famous around the world might be murdered because the octogenarian ruler of an Islamist theocracy thousands of miles away had called for his death, like the Red Queen shouting “Off with their heads!” in Alice in Wonderland.
“The ayatollah died four months later, but it soon became apparent that Rushdie’s 1988 novel was no match for a few sentences read over the radio calling on “all valiant Muslims wherever they may be” to kill the author of The Satanic Verses and anyone else who helped bring his blasphemous book into the world.
“Ever since, the fatwa has hovered over the West it was designed to destroy, waxing and waning like a moon. Sometimes it is a pale crescent, barely there; sometimes, as now, a round blood moon full of portent. But a portent of what?”
(End of Rosen article quotes)
This article above from Free Press also illustrates well how common the practice of “cloaking evil as good” has become. All religious traditions do this, none more dramatically and better known than Christianity. This has to do with the fundamental human need for status in some group, and the perversion of this need in the virtue-signaling as morally superior, when the ugly tribalism impulse intrudes into the need for status.
The author illustrates this below with varied examples such as “Belief in a Jewish conspiracy to control the world was used by the Nazis as the justification of the genocide they called for as the only way to stop it. In other words, they saw the Holocaust as self-defense.” The Nazi framing of their violence as righteous self-defense then validated Hitler’s drive to “exterminate or be exterminated” that Landes described in “Heaven On Earth”.
This from Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God” quotes Harold Ellens on the cloaking of evil as good to validate the common belief in salvation through destruction:
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…”
This Free Press writer, despite the excellent job he does in setting forth the Fatwa thing, like many others cannot bring himself to voice specifically the real nature of the problem as “theology” but reflexively(?) falls back to describe the retaliatory vengeance of Khomeini as “ideology” (i.e. “the murderous ideology that produced it”). No. That misses the opportunity to clarify the ultimate root of this Islamic violence. To repeat: “It’s the theology, stupid.” His use of “ideology” sticks out because of what he says about free speech and the role of writers to exhibit courage in the face of threat, etc.
The author illustrates the maxim that “people become just like the God they believe in” (i.e. “we become what we worship”). He refers to the 9/11 pilots who shouted God’s name as they committed mass murder, just as the terrorists did Oct.7 as they raped, tortured, burned, and killed Jewish civilians. He says, “Like a message written on the shell casing of a bullet to pretend it serves a higher purpose than murder, that is the greatest blasphemy I know.”
He concludes with the story of the Rabbi whose son was killed at Bondi Beach, yet who hopes for the ultimate triumph of light and love. The Rabbi said, “that darkness is not defeated by anger or force. Darkness is transformed by light”. And, “His idea of inclusion was based on the belief that everyone is made in the image of God. ‘Sydney can and must become a beacon of goodness, where people look out for one another, where kindness is louder than hate’.”
Overall, Rosen offers a good explanation and defense of the critical need for protected free speech in the face of violent threat from totalitarianism, whether theocratic or collectivist.
(End of comment on Rosen article)