The Understanding Islam Project
Let's break down the Islamaphobia permeating the west...
This book is not intended to convert anyone to Islam—although it will.
Listen, I'm Quinn O'Flynn, and I want to tell you about my latest project because it's actually really exciting, and I think it's going to change a lot of hearts, particularly in the West.
If you don't know this about me, I'm an agnostic atheist. However, I've been living in a Muslim country for the last three years, and it has been a remarkable experience. Before you ask: no, I am not converting to Islam. I am still an agnostic atheist. But what has happened is that I've developed a deep reverence and respect for the faith. Living here has helped me break down all of the anti-Islamic brainwashing we were fed in the West. It allowed me to just look at things out of pure curiosity and say, "Hey, what is this really like? What do these people actually believe? How do they pray? What do they think about this or that?" It allowed me to break all that stuff down.
So, this book is written from my perspective: someone who was fed all that propaganda through TV, media, and movies, but who then lived here and actually experienced the reality. Again, it is not meant to convert anyone. I don't want you to think, "Ah, Quinn is trying to convert me." What I am trying to do is give you a tool to dismantle the brainwashing we've received so that we stop hating on each other and start respecting each other again.
Now, having said that, many of you actually will convert because Islam is very beautiful. You will be attracted to it, you'll want to go deeper, and you will.
The book is now out and available on my website, and I'd like to ask for your help in pushing it. I want to give this to as many people as possible. As usual, all of my books are free—all four of my current ones cost nothing, though you can make a donation if you choose. I want them to be accessible to everybody. And please, if you can, do make a donation, because I'm just a broke, starving writer trying to change the world, and I still have to eat.
But that is the core point of this book. It is going to be available to just give out to anybody. Eventually, I want to recruit some of you to serve as the "next steps." If people have questions, want to go deeper, or want to learn more, perhaps we can set up a chat group where they can ask questions. We can take this as big as you want to go.
If Islam is important to you, and it matters to you to break down the stereotypes surrounding it, please support this project and support my work. We are doing good things here, and we are changing lives and hearts in the West.
I appreciate you all. Love you.
You can find my books and support my work here.
In Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved the narrator notes that, like the South, the Civil War era northern states also hated Black people but happened to hate slavery more. Of course, this succinct summation of the callousness, if not ugliness, of the politics of difference and scale is applicable elsewhere, today: for example, they may hate libertarians but hate liberals more; hate Hispanics but abhor Chinese people even more; and loath Jews but despise Muslims far more, etcetera.
Mostly relevant to the social and political turmoil seemingly everywhere are the words of American sociologist Stanley Milgram (1933-1984), of Obedience Experiments fame/infamy: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception [and] awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”
There’s relatively little compassion in the world when compared to the very plentiful anger or rage. I’ve noticed myself getting angrier over the last few years, especially about domestic and global injustices, or at least how I perceive them as such. Maybe my anger is largely related to the Internet’s ‘angry algorithm’ sending me the stories, etcetera, it has (unfortunately correctly) calculated will successfully agitate me into keeping the (I believe, overall societally-/socially-damaging) process going thus maximizing the number of clicks and scrolls I’ll provide it to sell to product advertisers.
At least as individuals, we can try to resist flawed human nature thus behavior, however societally normalized it may be, once we become aware of its potential within ourselves. Once cognizant of it, perhaps enough of us could instead perform truly humane acts in sufficient quantity to initiate positive change on a large(r) scale.
As for racist and other bigoted sentiment, it is typically environmentally developed/acquired during childhood, often enough even passed down generationally, if not also genetically. Especially if it’s deliberate, exposing very impressionable cerebrally-developing children to such an environment of baseless contempt and overt bigotry amounts to a formidable form of child abuse.
If the parents won’t do it for plain moral reasons, they then should do their own children a big favor by NOT passing down onto them such destructive anti-social/-societal sentiments and perceptions (including stereotypes and ‘humor’), since such rearing can readily make life much harder for those children.
It fails to prepare them for the practical reality of an increasingly diverse and populous society and workplace. It also makes it so much less likely those children will be emotionally content or (preferably) harmonious with their multicultural and multi-ethnic/-racial surroundings.
Happy to help you with this.