We sat down with a leading Shariah lawyer from Iran, Daniel Akbari, to discuss his illuminating new book "Honor Killing: A Professional's Guide to Sexual Relations and Ghayra Violence from the Islamic Sources, in which he seeks to awaken Americans to the generally antithetical nature of Islam to Judeo-Christian society, and specifically Shariah-dictated domestic violence towards women -- up to and including so-called honor killings -- and how we in the West can prevent such atrocities.
During the extensive interview, which you can skip to here, we had a chance to ask him a series of questions on the nature of Islam, its goals, tactics, how Western Muslims become jihadists, and all manner of other topics.
But it was in response to a question on whether there is such a thing as moderate Islam that Mr. Akbari, a man who studied at the seat of Shia religious learning at the Tehran University School of Law, and specialized in criminal and family law before leaving Iran, gave perhaps his most stunning response of all, stating:
[sharequote align="center"]"[T]hese people...deceive Americans not to resist the process of Islam" [/sharequote]
What Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey says is actually perfect and totally Islamic because Islam is Islam. We don't have such a thing like -- "radical Islam extremism" -- many things that are said in Islam like beheading, like stoning, like flogging -- they are not extremism acts, those are pure Islam....The second thing is, this is not "extremism," this is "fundamentalism." People who believe in [the] Koran understand it and practice it and take it serious.
About moderate Muslims, we have to...make a distinction between those people who come from Islamic backgrounds, come from [the] Middle East, their names are 'Mohammed'...they might not believe in [the] Koran at all. They might just be atheists. They just come from that region.
Who are moderate Muslims in reality according to Akbari?
...Moderate Muslims actually are kind of like CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations] people -- people who are Muslim Brotherhood types...and these people fight for Islam, love it, but they give a peaceful feature, and good-looking [nature] to Islam, to...deceive Americans not to resist the process of Islam.
[instory-book ISBN="9781496957030"]
Sometimes they deceive Americans this way that "We are the same as your neighbor who is from the Middle East." That neighbor might be an atheist, might be a Buddhist at heart. Just by nature and feature, people might assume [him or her] Islamic....Moderate Muslims, as we might know as Muslim Brotherhood, they are the backbone of jihad.
Without them, there...[are] not gonna be any jihadis. They support jihad financially. They recruit here for jihadists -- they recruit in this country. They have their own Islamic centers. They go to jail and recruit for ISIS.
So without these moderate Muslims -- I'm not talking about just people coming from [the] Middle East -- I'm talking about those who fight for Islam, or those who love Islam and pay for jihadists and also support to...try to recruit people, or sympathizers. My point about moderates is kind of different than what Americans might say.
Moderates are not anybody from [the] Middle East with an Islamic name.
My point about moderates are people who have Islamic organizations in an organized way, fight to improve Islam, I call those people moderates. To my eyes, those moderates are no different than ISIS or other jihadists.
During the interview, we also had the opportunity to discuss a series of other topics with Mr. Akbari including:
Note: The links to the book in this post will give you an option to elect to donate a percentage of the proceeds from the sale to a charity of your choice. Mercury One, the charity founded by TheBlaze’s Glenn Beck, is one of the options. Donations to Mercury One go towards efforts such as disaster relief, support for education, support for Israel and support for veterans and our military. You can read more about Amazon Smile and Mercury One here.
–
Follow Ben Weingarten (@bhweingarten) and TheBlazeBooks on Twitter and Facebook.
You can find all of our Blaze Books interviews on Soundcloud and Stitcher, and subscribe to our podcast automatically via iTunes.
