In an interview with Shia Followers, Jack Perry, a writer and political commentator, said American Muslims should “reach out to churches and synagogues and build interfaith alliances.”
In the United States, Muslims should “join interfaith movements to protest the immigration policies and concentration camps… Reach out to the political movements taking a stand against the tyranny. Don’t let them silence you. Tomorrow might be too late,” he said.
Following is the full transcript of the interview:
According to a new survey, nearly one-in-five Americans would deny Muslims who are U.S. citizens the right to vote. What’s your take on this?
Jack Perry: Well, the problem is that many Americans have lost sight of what the Bill of Rights actually means. That’s, in part, due to the United States government couching wrong actions in words and phrases that disguise the true meaning. Such as: “We’re fighting for freedom!” Actually, no. We’re fighting imperialist wars to bring the Middle East into the U.S. Empire. But people believe this and, thus, they think “freedom” means fighting wars to defend it. Which we are not doing, in reality, but they think this to be so. See, if you repeat a lie often enough, people will come to believe it to be the truth. And the government knows this.
Why is this important to understand? Because these same Americans think the 1st Amendment freedom of religion only pertains to Christians and maybe Jews. They claim “America is a Christian nation!” Now, the founding documents of the United States do not say that anywhere. But this lie has been repeated enough to the point they believe that. So, in a sense, they think Muslims aren’t entitled to the same rights because they’re not Christians. Of course, if this is the case, neither are Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, or other religions.
Also, more than one in five Americans cannot even tell you what one of the Five Pillars of Islam actually is. Therefore, they don’t even know who they are talking about when they claim to know so much about the subject. Truth be told, many Americans that profess to be Christians probably couldn’t even recite the Ten Commandments or name one of the Beatitudes of Jesus if stopped on the street and asked. So, understand, you’re dealing with a tremendous amount of ignorance in the United States. Not only about the religion of Islam, but even about the religion of Christianity that they claim to be adherents of.
One final point about ignorance. The United States is the last nation on Earth who does not use the metric system. The United States stubbornly clings to the obsolete Imperial/Standard measuring system. That says it is proud to be ignorant and backwards. Yet, it accuses other nations of this. Is it not amazing?
In your opinion, what are the root causes of anti-Muslim sentiments in the United States? What role does the U.S. government play in this regard?
Jack Perry: It is ignorance and racism. These are the things the United States wishes to keep hidden, but it has long been a problem in the United States. Americans see Muslim women wearing a hijab and they think, “Why can’t they assimilate into our culture?!” What culture? The one with a skyrocketing suicide rate because it is so vacuous, empty of meaning, holds human beings as without value, and is basically a financially-motivated nihilism? It is plain to see that assimilating into such a culture as that is a serious mistake. I, myself, refuse to assimilate into it and I was born here. Muslims are accused of “terrorism”, yet, the violence on American streets is not in any way even remotely linked to Islam.
Be that as it may, when it comes to mass murder in the United States, the overwhelming numbers of those are done by non-Muslim Americans. The usual weapon of choice is the civilian version of a weapon designed for the military: The AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. This weapon was designed to maximize wounding by the bullet it fires. You can walk into any gun shop in most states and buy this weapon. Any calls to ban this weapon outright are met with howls of outrage about “our freedom” and “our rights”. And guess who says this? The same people who engage in anti-Muslim sentiments about “Muslims are violent terrorists!” Therefore, I ask you, who is the actual sponsor of terrorism here? Is it not the people who defend easy access to a weapon that has killed several hundred people here in the United States in horrific mass shootings? And mass shootings in schools often enough, may I add.
How does U.S. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric affect the issue?
Jack Perry: Donald Trump knows to play to the ignorance of those who are also ignorant enough to believe his economic policies will work. There they are, getting poorer daily, but they think it’s some poor Muslim or poor Hispanic responsible for their plight. It’s a winning tactic, though. It worked for the Nazis. It works for Trump. And, look, we’ve already got the concentration camps built. Right now, they’re being used to house the “illegal aliens” as they call undocumented immigrants and refugees. But who’s next? I think we can venture a guess. Probably political dissidents, probably Muslims. Probably anyone the government accuses of terrorism. They got away with the secret prisons and torture, they’re getting away with concentration camps, and people sit there not seeing that this has happened before. In Nazi Germany.
The peril is real. Americans don’t want to see it because then they have to admit the freedom, the liberty, the patriotism, and all of that is a lie. They would have to admit they live in a police state. Which we do, because Border Patrol now commonly boards buses and trains across America demanding to see people’s papers and asking if they’re citizens. See, the Nazis started with those kinds of things. Americans look at movies like “Schindler’s List” and ask, “How could the Germans have allowed that to happen?” Well, now we know, don’t we? Because the Nazis started with people the majority of Germans were not willing to stand up for or even speak up for. Right now, in America, that’s Muslims and the “illegal aliens”. By the time Americans figure out the mess they’ve gotten themselves into, it’ll be too late.
What should Muslims do about this issue? To what extent are ideologies such as Wahhabism and Salafism to blame for Islamophobia?
Jack Perry: Fanatics exist in all religions. Christianity has fanatics (American Evangelical Christians) right now trying to get the Third World War started because they believe in a misinterpretation of the Book of Revelation. They think they must cause World War Three to force the Second Coming of Christ. This is absurd, of course, because it’s tantamount to saying they can manipulate God into doing their will. Which negates their own profession of the Lord’s Prayer they’re all supposedly saying in church. Specifically, the part which says, “Your will be done”, meaning, God’s will. Not the will of evangelical Christians. The fact is, these are a very tiny minority of Christians. But they have successfully placed their own people within the United States government and, thus, seem to be bigger than they actually are. Plus, they have access to mass media because of several wealthy ministries that successfully fleece their flocks to finance this fanaticism.
The reason I bring this up is to provide an example of how a tiny majority of fanatics builds into a dangerous movement that appears to have some majority consensus behind them. They do so, as I demonstrated above, by controlling or having controlling members in a government. By having access to mass media. And by having vast resources of money. Once these three things are met, a fanatical religious ideology moves from beyond a dangerous cult status (such as Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate, for example) into a threat to world peace. But the religion from which it came is not to be blamed. In truth, the fanatics are not accepted by the majority within the faith and this is why they splinter off to form their own sect.
What Americans need to understand is they are not immune to this, as I pointed out with American Evangelical Christians. Islamophobia is basically saying that if a person got sick from tainted lettuce (as recently happened in the United States), we should immediately suspect not just all lettuce, but all green vegetables as being tainted. Instead of seeing that the lettuce was tainted because the grower of that particular brand bypassed health safety rules, the lettuce itself is blamed. Even though people have safely eaten lettuce for thousands of years, no, blame the lettuce. And all green vegetables just to be on the safe side. In fact, ban all of them. Again, this is absurd, but that is the entire logic behind Islamophobia.
So, Islamophobia is not just the result of fanaticism and misinterpretation of religion and/or the Scriptures of the religion, but also ignorance. What should Muslims do? In the United States, join interfaith movements to protest the immigration policies and concentration camps. Look into something called The Poor Peoples Campaign. Reach out to churches and synagogues and build interfaith alliances. Reach out to the political movements taking a stand against the tyranny. Don’t let them silence you. Tomorrow might be too late.
Jack Perry is a writer who lives with his wife in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. When talking about the ambitions and goals of the United States government, Jack warns: “Always Assume It’s A Scam.” Jack writes, bakes bread, and is a Path pilgrim and wayfarer of this world.
