It is important to understand that the human mind is not a perfect discerner of objective reality. It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Similarly, it can be said that reality is in the mind of the beholder. The outside world only supplies bits and pieces of raw material that the mind puts together to form its perception—reality.
Depending on the type and number of bits and pieces that a given mind receives and its already in-place data, its reality can be very different from that of another mind.
The more prescribed and homogeneous a group, the greater the group’s consensual reality, since the members share much in common experiential input and reinforce each other’s mindset. Thus, members of a given religious order, for instance, tend to think much more similarly to one another than to members of other groups with different experiential histories.
Various approximations of the objective reality, therefore, rule the mind. The degree to which these approximations deviate from the larger group’s consensual reality determines their delusional extent and severity.
A narcotic mainliner, for instance, under the influence of the drug, may become convinced that a bug is burrowing under his skin. In his absolute, although false, certitude of the reality of his perception, cocaine users are known to take a knife to their own body to dig the burrowing bug out before it has penetrated too deeply.
A methamphetamine user’s reality is often distorted differently. Under the influence of the drug, an intense paranoia overtakes him. His reality is dominated by the belief that one or more people are lurking about to harm or kill him. He may wield a deadly weapon, searching for the assailants from room to room, from closet to closet.
If you believe that a bug is camping deeply in your body, you might try to dig the non-existent bug out. If you believe that people are lurking around the house to harm or kill you, you go after them before they get you. If you believe that all the troubles of the world are due to the evil-doings of the non-Muslims who war against Allah, then you do all you can to fight and kill them, particularly since Allah tells you in the Quran it is your duty to do so. (2:191-193) (3:151)
The drug-induced delusions are hallucinations. They are dramatic and usually transitory, while religiously-based implantation of ideas program the mind with lasting delusions.
Delusions, even when they are at great variance from the objective reality, can rule the mind without the need for drugs or because of neurological dysfunctions or other factors. The young and the less-educated are most vulnerable to believing charlatans, con artists, and cunning clerics’ claims as truth and reality.
A tragic example of the young’s susceptibility to induced delusion is the case of thousands of Iranian children who were used as human minesweepers in the last Iran-Iraq war. The mullahs issued made-in-China plastic keys for paradise to children as an enticement to go forward and clear the minefield with their bodies ahead of the military’s armored vehicles. The children believed the murderers and rushed to their deaths, thinking that they were headed for Islam’s glorious paradise.
The repeated, intense indoctrination of the children even changed the perception of some of the charlatan mullahs. They believed their lies, took their keys to Allah’s paradise, and rushed to their death, clinging to the plastic trinkets. Hence, some of the puppeteers, in this instance, became puppets themselves. Such are the follies and fallibilities of the human mind.
Therefore, it is understandable that many higher-up Islamic puppeteers, who are usually brainwashed from early childhood, devote their fortunes and persons to implementing their deeply engrained delusions.
Deluded by the threats and promises of Islam, poor or rich Muslims vie with one another to further the violent cause of Allah.
Many non-Muslims are also victims of a different, yet just as deadly, delusion. They believe that Islam is a religion of peace, only a small minority of Muslims are jihadists, and Muslims can be reasoned to abandon the Quran-mandated elimination of the non-believers. These well-meaning simpletons are just as deluded as the fanatic jihadists by refusing to acknowledge the fact that one cannot be a Muslim and not abide by the dictates of the Quran.
