Former Iraqi MP Ayad Jamal Al-Din: We Must Impose Equality upon Muslim Countries; Even if ISIS Is Eliminated, Thousands of Similar Organizations Will Emerge

Former Iraqi MP Ayad Jamal Al-Din called upon the Islamic states to amend their constitutions to include equality between religions. "If you want to rule according to your shari'a," he said, "establish a United Nations of your own." In a scathing indictment of the implementation of religion, Jamal Al-Din said that the humanity and peaceful teachings of Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad had evolved into the Crusades and into the "criminal and barbaric" Islamic conquests, and he talked about the ethnic cleansing of the Jews through the ages, fueled by Christian belief of their culpability for the killing of Jesus. In the two-part interview, which aired on the Christian Al-Hayat TV on April 13 and 20, he warned that as long as schools, mosques, and media in the Muslim states laud the first Caliphate, "even if ISIS is eliminated, thousands and thousands of similar organizations will emerge in its wake."

Interviewer: "You consider religion to be good at the source, but say that it can later be directed toward violence, and can be used by the political authority. You say it can be distorted and used for other goals…"

Ayad Jamal Al-Din: "All religions are like that."

Interviewer: "But what if a religion is corrupt at its source? Let me give you an example. Buddha, for instance, was not violent, and nor was Christ. But if we examine the biography of Muhammad – at least as it reached us – we see that he was indeed a violent invader. In the ten years he lived in Medina, he either participated in or dispatched 83 raids. So violence was an essential part of the origin of Islam. It is not something that developed three or four centuries later, or with the Abbasid or Umayyad dynasties. Ever since the second year to his hijrah to Medina and to this day, it has been violent."

Ayad Jamal Al-Din: "I do not blame you for this interpretation, because this is, more or less, the way the Muslims themselves see it. Most Muslims are proud of what you perceive to be a flaw in the Prophet Muhammad.

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"Take, for example, the symbol of Christianity – the cross. The Christians are used to it, and they kiss it, and so on. But it is a symbol of hatred, of crime, of murder. It’s a gallows. The [Christian] religion has turned a gallows into its symbol, and they place on it a man with a broken neck. It is exactly like the Saudi flag, which bears a sword used for killing, or the Iranian flag, which has a bunch of swords, forming the words 'There is no god but Allah.'"

Interviewer: "But let me interrupt you…"

Ayad Jamal Al-Din: "No, don’t interrupt me. Let me finish."

Interviewer: "Okay, I will comment afterwards."

Ayad Jamal Al-Din: "My belief is that the prophets were pure – Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, Abraham, all of them – and that the fault lies with their followers. This is what I believe and say. Following the death of Jesus, the Christian priests blamed the Jews for a crime – which according to Islam, did not take place, but even if it did happen, and Jesus was killed…They blamed the entire Jewish people, even though it was perpetrated – if it happened – by one person of a group of people. Even if we assume that the entire Jewish people of those times conspired with the Romans to kill Jesus, how is it the fault of generations of poor Jews over the past 2,000 years? They stand accused and are being killed. Hitler was not the first to perpetrate a Christian genocidal holocaust against the Jews. There were several holocausts…"

Interview: "In your view, Hitler perpetrated a Christian holocaust?"

Ayad Jamal Al-Din: "Yes, and the proof that Hitler was a product of the Church lies in the fact that the Pope supported him."

Interviewer: "No, he didn’t."

Ayad Jamal Al-Din: "The Pope supported Hitler in the crime of ethnically cleansing the Jews."

Interviewer: "Well, I say that Hitler admired Islam and said: I am closer to Islam than to Christianity."

Ayad Jamal Al-Din: "Let me tell you, Hitler did not perpetrate the first Christian holocaust against the Jews. This is undeniable. The killing and ethnic cleansing of Jews by Christians for 2,000 years in Europe, for a crime that either never happened, or else, if it happened, was done by people 1,500-2,000 years earlier – how is this the fault of contemporary Jews?! The poor innocent Jews could not breathe a sigh of relief until secularism took root. But then along came Hitler, who is a product of the Church's ideology of (ethnic) cleansing.

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"The teachings of Jesus evolved into the Crusades. I denounce the Crusades, not Jesus. The teachings and humanity of the Prophet Muhammad evolved into criminal and barbaric conquests. These conquests swept Egypt and Mesopotamia, which were the epitome of civilization in those days. Nomadic Arabs, who had nothing to drink or eat, went there claiming to be guiding them toward Allah. They destroyed the civilizations of Iraq, the Levant, and Egypt, under the banner of spreading Islam. Who told you to spread Islam by the sword? What kind of faith can penetrate people's hearts through the sword? People were coerced to believe in Islam, out of fear of the sword – just like ISIS does. ISIS takes pride in this criminal history, and tries to duplicate it.

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"I am optimistic that the dreadful ghoul of Islamic terrorism is destined to decline and end up in the garbage, just like the evil of the Church in the Middle Ages, after free-thinking philosophers appeared, and people believed in the necessity of secularism, and realized that secularism is not anti-Church or anti-Christianity, but rather, calls for freedom of all religions and all ideologies. Under secularism, all people enjoy the same rights. The word 'equality' is the watershed separating religions from the post-religion era.

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"If ISIS is eliminated, thousands and thousands of similar organizations will emerge in its wake, as long as there are schools, mosques, and media that promote terrorism, embodied in the 'purity,' the 'beauty,' and the 'tolerance' of the Caliphate, which existed 1,400 years ago. As long as the school, mosques, and media of the Muslims laud the first Caliphate, you can expect thousands and thousands like Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, in every place and throughout the ages. This will only come to an end when the first Caliphate is criticized, deconstructed, and understood for what it was.

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"The principle of equality must be imposed upon the Islamic states. The 55 Islamic states should be given the following choice: If you want to be a member of the United Nations, your constitution must state that Muslims and non-Muslims are equal – that Muslims, polytheists, infidels, atheists, Christians, and others are all equal."

Interviewer: "If they don’t want it, it should be imposed upon them."

Ayad Jamal Al-Din: "Exactly. This should be done in order to save Islam and the Muslims from their reality. If they want to be members of the U.N., they must include equality in their constitutions, and implement this equality in their laws on all the citizens. Or else, if you want to rule according to your shari'a, establish a United Nations of your own."