A Taste of Islam: An Interview with Bill Warner
Posted by Mark Tapson Bio ↓ on Jan 16th, 2012
In the years after the 9/11 attacks, more non-Muslims than ever before have studied Islam to understand the religious motives of those who had declared war on us. And yet non-believers who are alarmed at what they have found in the foundational texts of Islam are always told by apologists that we don’t understand the true Koran, that we labor under misconceptions about the Religion of Peace, that we don’t understand the complexities of sharia, that our objections and criticisms stem from racism (even though Islam is not a race) and an irrational fear of Islam and its adherents. The problem always seems to lie with us. What is the truth and how can we get to it behind the contradictions and the mystification?
Bill Warner has the answer. The founder and director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI), he holds a PhD in physics and math. He has been a university professor, a businessman, and an applied physicist. But Dr. Warner has also had a lifelong interest in religion and its impact on history, and so the day after 9/11 he decided to make the source texts of Islam available for the average person who wants to know more.
As part of that effort, Mr. Warner has produced a dozen books, including a Koran, a biography of Mohammed and a summary of the political traditions of Mohammed. He writes articles and produces news bulletins that record the suffering of the victims of political Islam. And he has spoken nationally and internationally about Islamic political doctrine.
This Tuesday in Los Angeles, Mr. Warner will present “A Taste of Islam.” See here for information about attending.
Mark Tapson: Mr. Warner, your background is in physics and mathematics. How did you come to devote yourself to the study of religion and to feel compelled to share your insights on political Islam? How did the field of statistics shape your perspective on Islam?
Bill Warner: I was raised in a very religious family and read the Bible a great deal. I studied physics and math, but my interest in religion expanded to the effects of religion on history. After graduate school I was attracted to mysticism and Eastern religions. So, forty years ago, I looked into Sufism, mystical Islam. I went to Sufi dances, learned zikr (a Sufi devotional practice), met Sufi masters and read Sufi literature. But, there was always this jarring background noise of the history of Islam. So, I left my study of Sufism.
Twenty years later as a professor I had Muslims in my classes and they sparked my interest in the Koran. It was a tough read, but I read it cover to cover. The text was literally a puzzle, but I set it aside until 9/11.
On 9/11 as soon as the second plane hit the second tower, I knew it was an act of jihad. I stood up, turned off the TV and I haven’t watched it since. In that moment it came to me that the rest of my life would be spent explaining the meaning of Islamic texts.
I sat down and reread the Koran, read the Sira (Ishaq and Al Tabari), read the Hadith (Bukhari and Muslim). These are the absolute foundational texts of Islam, the source code, the DNA. I was following Sun Tzu’s advice; know your enemy and attack your enemy’s strategy.
My attack was to reveal the Koran, Sira and Hadith in a rational form that was easy to read. This became the Trilogy Project. I assembled a team of volunteers and paid writers and editors. From the beginning, I knew that it was the political aspect of Islam that offered the only chance of success. The religious aspect has too much misunderstood protection of the First Amendment.
MT: What is the Trilogy Project?
BW: The approach to the Trilogy was new and unorthodox, and its only chance of success lay in a scientific approach to the texts. Every paragraph can be verified by going back to the source texts. These books are not opinion, but give us the facts of the sources. For this reason, nearly every paragraph has an index number that allows it to be verified.
The greatest fun was solving the Koran puzzle. The Koran must be the most famous book that is not read or understood. The first step, which is not unique to me, is to lay out the Koran in the correct time sequence. The bookstore Koran is arranged by chapter length, and is not in the right time order. It was created by Uthman, the third caliph. The bookstore Koran is Uthman’s Koran.
If you take the life of Mohammed, the Sira, and lay it out alongside the Koran in the right time order, it is like matching a key to a lock. What is happening to Mohammed is reflected directly in the Koran. So if you integrate the life of Mohammed into the same text as the Koran and use separate fonts, so there is no confusion, you get a recreation of the Koran of Mohammed, the historical Koran. The Koran becomes an epic story that begins with a hymn to god and ends with the triumph over the world—the annihilation of all other civilization.
In 2006, I published the complete foundational doctrine of political Islam in three volumes. The Trilogy Project was finished. Now anyone can read and understand the Koran, Sira and Hadith. You can know Allah and Mohammed from the source texts.
This system of knowledge integrates the entire body of Islam into one view. If it is in the Trilogy, it is Islam. If it is Islam, it must be in the Trilogy.
Once the Trilogy was assembled, there was a bonus prize. Part of making the texts readable included sorting and reordering of the ideas. Once the work was all correlated, concepts leapt off the page. The ideas of Islamic ideology stood out. The simple statistical method of counting the words devoted to ideas clearly showed the themes of the doctrine.
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