If it was not for the existential danger that Islamic extremists pose for Western societies and to the peoples within them, then these extremists would be figures of fun like the Flat Earthers or the ‘space is fake’ crowd. After all there’s a great deal to laugh at when it comes to Islam and that’s coming from a person who lives in a roofless tent for seven days in the autumn. Orthodox Islamic beliefs about science, women and how to organise a society are often the opposite to what is provable reality. Maybe that’s why so many Islamic nations and Islamic societies are riddled with abject poverty, oppression and ignorance and are often societies where life is cheap rather than something to be preserved.

Despite years of interest in Islam and questioning this ideology Islam still gives me WTF moments. One of those moments comes courtesy of Memri TV via Liza Rosen’s X account and shows a popular Muslim influencer speaking at a mosque in the US state of Michigan and railing against toilet paper. Yes, you read that correctly, this Muslim is calling Westerners and especially Americans ‘backward’ because we use toilet paper.

This character seems to believe that because his view of Islam is that it is unchanged from the time that the illiterate warlord that founded this ideology, that it is some sort of strength. Well it isn’t. Humanity has come to the point where we are on the brink of becoming and interplanetary species partially because both Christianity and Judaism, the influential religions of the West, have after many hundreds of years learned to accept new knowledge. Some in Islam as we see cannot even accept the progressive innovation of toilet paper.