Latest / Infidels / Why the West Misunderstands Islam and Pays the Price | Uzay Bulut
Transcript
- Infidel Awareness: Hi everybody, welcome to the Infidels podcast. I'm your host, Juliana Temurazi. Today's guest is Uzay Bulut, who's a brilliant journalist. We will delve deeper into her life's journey, how did she leave Islam, and what are her thoughts on the future of our world, especially our Western civilization. Uzay Bulut is a Turkey-born journalist and political analyst, formerly based in Ankara. As an exiled writer, she has worked and lived in various parts of the world. Her writings have appeared in many international outlets. She is currently at a IDI fellow. Balut's journalistic work focuses mainly on human rights, Turkish politics and history, and religious minorities in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Uzay, I'm so happy to have you here. Welcome. Thank you, Juliana. I'm grateful for this opportunity. You have such a fascinating story, really, Uzai. The fact that you've traveled throughout the world, you have lived among different cultures, you have an excellent understanding of Western civilization, as well as the minority lives in the Middle East. And I'm really excited to interview you today. Thank you for your time. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell our audience where you were exactly born and what was your upbringing like? I was born and raised in Turkey and I was born into a secular Muslim household and I grew up in a Muslim cultural environment. In the city where I was born and raised, there were no practicing Christians. It was just a Muslim city. But a hundred years ago, it was a city that has a large Christian community. before the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides. But growing up, I had no idea about the true history of our city and of our country. So I thought when I was a child, when I was younger, I thought this is a Muslim country and it has always been a Muslim country. And Islam was the only religion I knew about. So that's how I was raised. But I've always had issues and problems with Islam. I always questioned it. was never a true strong follower or believer of Islam. My main issue with the religion was the way women are abused and dehumanized in Islamic societies. So I would look at the news from Iran, from Saudi Arabia, and of course from Turkey, and I would see how women are mistreated, persecuted. And I really had a problem with this. said, I see a pattern here in every single Muslim country women are persecuted. They are not equal citizens. They are not respected. So even when I was a child, I had questions like this. And eventually, and this happened when I was at high school, I truly questioned Islam and I stopped believing it. So in high school, were you the only one that really question this or did you have a support network? Could you talk to your peers at all or were you, did you feel isolated and alone? Well, when I was at high school, I found a book written by an ex Imam. His name was Turan Dursun and he used to be an Imam and a Mufti and he was, he used to be a Muslim and he was educated in a majaza, meaning Islamic school, so he studied Islamic scriptures extensively. He knew Islam very well and he knew the Arabic language very well. But then he left Islam because he saw what he described was the darkness of Islam and he wrote so many articles, so many books criticizing Islam from a humanitarian perspective because he saw how Islam harmed human beings and cultures. and human rights and human rights. So I read one of his books. was about, the title was, This is Religion. And the first chapter was about Muhammad's personal sexual life. And when I read that chapter, it was the end of Islam for me because he, I mean, everything he wrote was based on sources, Islamic scriptures, the Hadith, Muhammad's statements, and his seerah, his biography. And I said, you know, a religion founded by a person like that, I don't believe this. This is not humane, this is not how I would think a religion from God would be like. So that's why I left Islam and After that, I also started learning about Christians who used to live in Turkey and their history and what was done to them during the Ottoman era and during the Republican era. And when I realized all these abusers, all these persecutions against Christians and other non-Muslims stem from Islamic teachings and Islamic scriptures, this was a strong motivation for me also to be a journalist and to write about these issues. So is it safe to assume that you leaving Islam was more intellectual initially? Because a lot of Muslims, as we see in Morocco, in Egypt, in Iran especially, Jesus Christ appears to them, or they have a dream, or they pick up the Quran and they read a little bit and they don't like it. But mainly there's a vision that comes to them from what we've heard, their testimonies. Your path was more intellectual, am I correct? Yes, my path was about researching what Islam is and seeing how human beings are treated under Islamic rule or in Islamic societies and then doing my own research on the history and on the scriptures of Islam. So it was an intellectual process. didn't basically I didn't like the culture that Islam created. and how the way Islam sees humanity, the way Islam divides humanity into Muslims and non-Muslims. I didn't like these things, so it led me to leave Islam. So for our audience, when you say this is a very profound statement you just made, that you don't like how Islam divides humanity, can you say more about that? What does that mean? So our audience understands it in depth. According to Islam, Humanity is divided into two categories believers Muslims those who believe that Muhammad is a last prophet and Infidels or coffers those who don't believe that and this kept the second category includes all non-muslims Christians Jews ex-muslims atheists Hindus Buddhist everyone and when we look at the Islamic scriptures the coffer or infidel that's not a neutral term According to Islamic scriptures, according to the Quran particularly, the coffer is hated, mocked, punished, disgraced, beheaded, crucified, killed, tortured. According to the Quran, non-Muslims can be killed, raped, enslaved, abducted. So this is how Islamic scriptures see the infidel or the coffer. So And that was and still is my main problem with Islam. The hatred, the intense hatred it creates for non-Muslims. And I think that's the main cause of why all these non-Muslims have been persecuted or even annihilated in the Muslim world since the seventh century. So the moment that you finally decided this is it, I cannot belong to this institution anymore, I cannot be a part of the Ummah anymore, what was that feeling like? Can you describe the human aspect of what you felt at that moment? I'm sure you were sort of torn, right? Because Islam was a part of your identity for so long, so what was leaving like at that moment? Islam was part of my official identity, but it was never like a strong faith for me. So it wasn't actually a traumatic or shattering experience to leave it. I left it and when I did more research on Islam and on the life of Muhammad, I was so sure this is not the correct religion. It's actually a very dangerous and destructive ideology. I left it peacefully. But I also, remember at high school there was a teacher who I knew was I'm at school, who I knew was a Muslim, I'm a strong Muslim, an observant Muslim. So I went to her and I said, I gave her the same book that I read and I said, could you please check this chapter? I read it and now I don't believe Islam anymore. I don't like what I'm reading. What do you think of this? She said, I will check it. And next week we met and she said, the writer is just taking things out of context. It's not important, it's not serious. So she didn't actually address any of the issues that were bothering me. She just said... the writer is not giving the correct context for what he's writing about, which is absolutely not true. He gave all the historical background information regarding what he was writing about. But what the teacher did was just dismissed my concerns, dismissed arguments or the information in the book, but I wasn't a person like this. I read the book, I continued to do my own research, and I checked the Quran. and the things that I read, I didn't like them. I could see, for example, I could see that the abuse of women in Islamic societies is actually caused by certain teachings in those Islamic scriptures. So when I couldn't understand these things, I left the religion peacefully and I did it intellectually. So I was short of my decision. And I know you're extremely passionate about the Middle Eastern. Christians, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Armenians, and others who have suffered tremendously. Tell me more about what draws you to those communities. I know you've extensively written about them. And I thank you. As an Assyrian, I thank you for that. But what draws you to those groups of people? And Jews, actually, you've written extensively about the Jewish community as well. So what draws you to us? Well, The first time when I started learning about Christians of Turkey, I was really fascinated by their religion, by their civilization. The first thing when I was very young, when I was a child, I realized that all the beautiful buildings, gorgeous buildings, historical structures that I saw in my city were actually built by Greeks because it used to be a Greek city. And then I... When I learned the true history of their destruction at the hands of the Turkish regimes, I felt so much sympathy for them and I felt so sad. Actually, a lot of people in Turkey have Greek, Armenian, or Assyrian ancestors, including me. I learned this later on in life. I also did a few years ago, maybe last year, a DNA test, which confirmed that I have Pontic Greek DNA. So first of all, the fact that Christians in Turkey and in the Middle East have been persecuted so horribly and to know that they are suffering like this just because of their religion or ethnicity I want to be their voice. I want to write about their stories and I want the world to know about them. I want to help secure some justice for them. And I mean, to me, it's a matter of justice and it's a matter of truth and it's a matter of human dignity. Like these people were treated so horribly. They were the indigenous people of the land. They deserve to stay there. They deserve to live on their own ancestral homeland, but they were uprooted from those lands or they were massacred. And to know these things and to stay silent, to me, that's impossible. How many people like you are there that you know that have left Islam, that are Turkish and that are passionate about the plight of the minorities in the Middle East? Well, there are some intellectual scholars who write about the Armenian genocide, the Assyrian genocide, some of them are Assyrian like you. And there are also Turks, but many of them are in exile abroad, not in Turkey. I think there are many people in Turkey who don't believe in Islam. Actually, Turkey is state institution of... Religious Affairs called Diyanet made a statement about this repeatedly and they said, look, we had a crisis in Turkey. This is a problem. So many people have stopped believing in Islam and people are leaving Islam in large numbers. This is a spiritual crisis for us. We need to do something about it. Like people are leaving Islam. So even the government made a statement about this because people can see what Islam does to their societies, their lives to human rights. They see Iran, they see Turkey, and they know that a lot of human rights abuses, injustice, and corruption actually stems from Islam. So they start questioning the religion. So I think there is hope for Turkey in that regard. People are changing, they are seeing the truth. It's so interesting that you say that there has been this concern expressed by the government. What is surprising to me as someone who fled the Islamic Republic many years ago, and I'm a proud American citizen, what is happening in the West is shocking. It actually, absolutely, I don't think shocking is even the term that I can express how afraid I am for the West. What is, in your opinion, what is happening to our Western civilization? What are we not understanding? about Islam that we're allowing this immigration jihad come and this cultural jihad happen right in front of our own eyes, what are we missing in the West? I think there's profound ignorance about Islam in so many people in the West. We just discussed how Islam sees the world, how it divides humanity into two parts and how it dehumanizes one part of that humanity. But I think in the West today, A lot of people are clueless about these things. They just think that all cultures are equal, all religions basically teach the same values. We are all the same. We all want the same things. There's a lot of cluelessness and ignorance about Islam and its history and teachings. I think that's the core of the problem. And of course, different groups have different agendas or much takes for supporting migration. Some people want to replace the West. or Europeans with Muslims, some political groups for their own political agendas and others. One can't see how Islamization will harm them and destroy them eventually. So they're just uninformed, ignorant about Islam, which is a problem, really. Sometimes when I talk to people in real life or online, I see that they just don't know anything about Islam's teachings or Islam's history and how minorities are treated under Islamic rule. So there are different reasons for that, but the West is absolutely in a spiritual and political crisis and Islam is an existential threat to the West today. So we keep on saying Islam, Muslim, what I'm not hearing you say Islamism, political Islam, why is it that you're not using those terms that are so widely used nowadays by politicians, by podcasters? Why is there a difference here? Well, Islamism, if people want to use that term, fine, but just know that Islamism is Islam. Who is the prophet of Islamism? We know who. Exactly. the same teachings, they have the same scriptures, the same history, the same traditions. So you can call it Islamism as long as you understand the threat is Islam. Islamism is not a different version or different interpretation of Islam. Islamism is, if you want to emphasize the political agenda of Islam, yes you can say Islamism, but just know that the problem, the threat is Islam, the religion of Islam. But there is real resistance. There is a real wall that is not allowing the information to be retained. We've been talking about this. Act for America, for example, has been talking about this since 2007, eight that I know of. Even I think she started in 2003 or four, Bridget Gabriel. But there is a real resistance among the feminists. the liberals, the Democrats, even some Republicans don't want to know the truth about this. Why is that? Are they afraid? I think fear is a big factor. A lot of people are scared of offending Muslims because they know that if they criticize Islam, they... But they're not afraid of offending Jews. They call for the murder of Jews left and right. So why this group and not that group? First of all, they are antisemites and they know that Jews are civilized people. Jews are not going to come and kill you for criticizing their religion. They are not like this. Muslims are like that. So they are scared of Muslims. Some of them are scared of Islam, yes. So they don't want to criticize it. But another reason is Islamic forces such as Qatar, Turkey and Iran are really manipulating these groups, I think, and they are funding Western universities, Western... institutions and they are helping shape the curricula at schools. A lot of reports have been written about these things. And also in the eyes of unfortunately so many liberals and westerners and feminists, they see the West as this source of evil, source of imperialism and colonialism. And they don't see that Islam is a much bigger and much more destructive colonizing force than anything else in history. Islam has colonized and conquered North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, parts of Europe, parts of Central Asia. They don't see these things. And after Islam colonized these places, after violently conquering them, they replaced their native languages with Arabic. They forced them to abandon their own religions, be it Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, you name it. And they really, Islam has really been a very destructive and transformational colonizing force throughout the world. But unfortunately, a lot of liberals ignore this reality. They just focus on the West and they see the West as some evil force. But if you want to criticize the history of colonization, Islam has really been the main colonizing force and except for a few historical cases such as Spain and the Balkans and Eastern European nations, when Islam colonizes a place it stays there. They never leave. I mean they don't recognize the rights of the indigenous peoples, they don't give them religious liberty, they don't recognize their human rights, it just stays. I mean the effects of the attack of colonization are permanent. But unfortunately, a lot of liberals in the West just choose not to see this reality. So can you tell our audience, in your opinion, what is the process of colonization of the West by Muslims? What does it look like? It starts with migration, or does it start before that even? Well, in the past, it used to be military conquest. We started in the seventh century. First it was the Arabs and then it was the Turkic tribes in Asia and then it was the Ottoman Turks. So Muslims tried to conquer those lands through military campaigns. Today it's migration and millions of Muslims are now migrating to the West and to Japan, to other non-Muslim countries and they are trying to transform the native cultures there from within. They are opening mosques and like we just talked about, are manipulating universities and institutions. They are gaining more power in politics and culture and that's how they achieve their colonization in a very planned and gradual manner. But we see a pattern there. We see it's happening all across the Western world. And so I can say that military conquests of the past have been replaced with migration today, Muslim migration. You know what hurts me deeply is when I drive around in Texas, especially where I live, I see churches being replaced by mosques and they are actually online. They're making animation of transformation of churches into mosques. I remember 36 years ago when I came to this country, I would see churches, would hear church bells, I would see synagogues, and I was elated that I was finally home. Living in Iran, we were harassed and persecuted repeatedly, especially, I mean, mainly after the 1979 revolution. And when we came to the States, we said, okay, we're finally free, we're finally home. And in many households, I don't know if you've, encounter this, but in many households we as migrants are thinking, where do we go from here? We see the invasion. mean, we Europe is lost and we see that the US is falling also, God forbid. do you encounter those conversations among your friends and your colleagues? I do and I feel exactly the same as you. When I see that Muslims are slowly invading Western countries, illegally particularly, they just arrive at the shores of Western countries, England, Greece, Italy, all over Europe, and they are not stopped. They arrive those countries illegally with the help of human traffickers. And then after they enter the country, they apply for political asylum and they gain it and then they become citizens. And then cultural Islamization starts, demographic Islamization starts. And to see this in real life right before our eyes is just hurtful because we know that, for example, where you come from, Iran used to be as Austrian nation. And you are a member of the indigenous Assyrian community in the Middle East. And the Middle East used to be majority Christian, Turkey, or... present day Turkey, which is called Anatolia. It used to be majority Christian. And today they're all predominantly Muslim and Christians are dying. Christians are a persecuted minority. We have seen these things. have, you have experienced these things and you flat the persecution. And I, as an exiled writer, cannot go back because of my writings, because I criticize the Turkish government. I criticize Islam. So the fact that the same ideology that has destroyed civilizations in the Middle East is now targeting the West, it is extremely devastating to see. Yes, I can tell you how your words just touch my heart so deeply. You write extensively about Africa. You write extensively about Southeast Asia. Where do you think which parts of the world are the hotbed of Islamic of I want to say Islamic extremism, but I don't even know if that's the term anymore. That's the essence. Islamic aggression is now very widespread and swear in Syria because the Al-Qaeda affiliated HTS group took over the country in 2024 and since then the Christian persecution has been escalating and so many Christians have been murdered, arrested and harassed, intimidated. Their churches have been destroyed. Just a few days ago, a young Christian man was murdered in Syria. So Syria is one of the most weird and urgent cases of Christian persecution right now because of the Al-Qaeda's takeover of the country. And also in Africa, in Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, although there are very few Christians in Somalia, just being a Christian there, if there's a terrorist organization called Al-Shabaab in Somalia and if they discovered that you're a Christian or an ex-Muslim, they execute you on the spot. And in so many countries across Africa, jihad is escalating. And actually, this has been the case for several years now. In Nigeria, over 100,000 Christians have been murdered within the past decade, for example. So I think in countries where there are still sizable or large Christian communities, Muslims are very aggressive because I think violence is the first stage of their jihad. And once they got rid of Christians, like they did in Turkey, they calmed down a little bit and then the persecution becomes more subtle. is more, it turns into a case of harassment, intimidation, threats, and they just don't want non-Muslims to feel safe and they want non-Muslims to leave their homelands willingly. But actually nobody leaves willingly. They are forced to leave. because they don't feel safe anymore. Yeah, I mean, in 2003, the Assyrian community was one and a half million in Iraq, our ancestral homeland, ancient Nineveh, ancient Assyria. Today, we have barely 100,000 people left. 25 years, what, 24 years later, 23 years later, this is astonishing. You're absolutely right, Uzay. For example, the Assyrian people in Iraq, our ancestral homeland, we were 1 and 1 million in 2003. Now, 23 years later, We have barely 100,000 people left. In Iran, for example, when I was there in the 1980s, there were 50,000 Assyrians and 200,000 Armenians. Today, there are 3,000 Assyrians left in Iran, 50,000 Armenians. So there is really mass exodus from the Middle East. And you know, I'm sorry, with all due respect, Christianity is not a Western religion. very much a Middle Eastern religion, right? And we see the diaspora really struggling to see our homelands being destroyed in the Middle East. And what do you think about the idea of Western civilization or Westerners being bankrupt spiritually? and continuously self-hating, ascribing to this self-hate ideology. What do you think about that? I've also observed this and I agree with your assessment, but I also find this self-hate insane. Why do you hate yourself for creating a wonderful civilization? That's your achievement. That's the achievement of your ancestors. And it's the result of millennia long hard work, tears and sacrifices. So how could you just ignore all these things? what your ancestors have created for you and then hate yourself for what? For becoming prosperous, successful, for being the most advanced civilization of the world? It's really insanity. And also I want to remind them the Middle East, the Levant, and particularly for example, Damascus, we just talked about Syria, Baghdad, and the Nineveh, and Constantinople in Turkey now, and- the rest of the Levant and North Africa. These places were also part of Christendom. There were also great cities, great centers of civilization. They were very diverse, religiously, linguistically and ethnically. They didn't speak Arabic or Turkish, they spoke Greek, Assyrian, Aramaic, Coptic and other languages. All of these wonderful civilizations were largely destroyed or erased by Islamic colonialism. If you want to hate something, if you want to oppose something, oppose this, oppose this ongoing destruction. Why do you hate yourself for being great? Why do you hate your ancestors for sacrificing so much for creating this beautiful continent of Europe? I mean, it's just, it's not rational. I agree. I agree completely. To me, I think some Jews and some Christians have forgotten their identity as those religious groups. Don't you think they should find their way back to their identity, to their religion, to their culture in order for them to really better understand where they're coming from in order for them to be able to debate a Muslim? What I'm noticing is we as Christians don't know our faith, really. And when a Muslim who has been raised since he was a child, He's able to defend his faith. He's able to quote surahs and scripture from the Quran. How many Christians are able to really defend their Christianity? I don't know that many who would be able to defend it by scripture, by their scriptures, by their teachings. So I'm really... Look, amidst, Cynthia Ozsak said, who is a Holocaust survivor, she said, amidst despair, there lies the sanity of hope. I get that, I see that. But unless the West wakes up to what's happening to it, we're going to lose this. Are you hopeful? And if you're hopeful, what evidence can you present that gives you that hope? I am hopeful because, thank God, Europe. and the United States and the rest of the Western world is still majority Christian and Muslims or Islamic groups are still a minority. The threat is real, it's an existential threat, but I also see a lot of backlash. I also see a lot of awakening, intellectual awakening, because people are seeing the impacts of Islamization right before their eyes. But I also agree with you so much. How many people in the West know about their history, know the history of Islam? know the history between Christianity and Islam. And I mean, Muslim armies were on the borders of Europe for centuries. They started from, they emerged from Arabia in the seventh century, then they invaded and conquered the entire Middle East. And then they invaded and conquered Constantinople. And they are the reason why the Eastern Roman Empire fell. And then they targeted Europe. They invaded present-day Greece and occupied it for 400 years. They invaded Hungary and Serbia and other countries in the Balkans. They were on the borders of Austria. They targeted Italy and they tried to invade the Vatican and they occupied the Arabs, occupied Spain for 800 years. So how many people in the West know about this history? And also of course, are they really studying the teachings of their religion? Are they familiar with biblical values, biblical teachings, how these teachings have contributed to the formation of Western civilization? mean, Judeo-Christian values. Are they reading their Bible? And before that there was ancient Rome, ancient Greece, and other ancient cultures in the Levant, including the Assyrian civilization and other ancient cultures in Europe. Do they really know the history of these civilizations? And I think A lot of people have just become comfortable. They don't want to learn or fight or resist what's happening. And because they become so comfortable, they take their freedoms for granted. They don't appreciate what they have. But as someone, for example, you who grew up in Iran as a Christian and you are an Assyrian who's civilization or empire. mean the Assyrian Empire was once the world's largest empire, the most powerful empire and unfortunately today Assyrians are stateless. So you know how political entities can change and how even empires can fall and I know that Turkey, Anatolia was once majority Christian. Today Christians there are a tiny persecuted minority. Demographics can change. Islam can easily conquer nations. And the result is always annihilation and subjugation for non-Muslims. I just hope that people in the West will choose to be more willing to see these realities, learn about these things, and fight to preserve their freedoms. Because freedoms are fragile. Democracies are fragile. They exist today, but they can be lost tomorrow. Wow, your powerful words are just beautiful. And I'm not going to ask you another question. I want to conclude this podcast on those final words that you presented. I'm sure we're going to have you back on again, Ozai. Thank you for your bravery. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for doing it so graciously, so elegantly. You're wonderful. Thank you for being with us today. Thank you for your kind words. And thank you for this opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. Until next time, friends, goodbye.