On Democracies and Death Cults by Douglas Murray

The book is On Democracies and Death Cults by Douglas Murray. It was originally published in 2025 by Broadside Books. I read the 2025 hardcover edition. I read it in April of 2025.  

The title refers to the difference between Israel and Palestine. Israel is a democracy and Muslim Palestine is a death cult. Murray is commenting on the sentiment that has been expressed by Muslim Palestine, “we love death more than you love life.” Sadly Murray is exactly right. Islam is a death cult. They love death for themselves and their enemies. 

I read this because I saw Douglas Murray debate Dave Smith on the Joe Rogan podcast. Dave Smith is a comedian and anti-war activist. Douglas Murray is a journalist and political commentator. While I didn’t care for how Murray conducted himself in the debate I agree with everything he said. 

Dave Smith takes the extremely convenient stance of “war is bad.” But he’s completely naive on how the world really works and the sinful condition of human hearts. He believes the lie that all humans everywhere want the same thing, that all people want freedom and healthy families and prosperity for kith and kin. That’s not true. 

Douglas Murray deals in the world of reality where some people want war and bloodshed. Islam and the Palestinian people are a bloodthirsty death cult. Israel wants to live in peace with its neighbors. Gaza and their proudly elected government, Hamas, want Israel to be annihilated. 

Murray has spent a lot of time in Israel and Gaza as an investigating journalist and this is his book on that reporting. 

In this book Murray exposes the aftermath of the October 7th attack on Israel by Gaza that kicked off their current war. He goes through in excruciating detail the carnage of the atrocities committed by Hamas against innocent Israeli civilians. He documents not only their actions but their attitude and perspective around their actions. That’s what’s so unique about this war. Hamas is completely devoid of any honor in the way they wage war. They hide behind civilians. They set up their missiles in hospitals and schools because they know that Israel won’t shoot there. They see the death of their civilians as good martyrdom. They’re proud to kill and die for Allah. Hamas takes food and aid that is meant for the Gaza people and uses it for themselves. Destroying Israel is the only thing that matters to them even beyond the safety and well-being of their own people. It’s disgusting. 

Israel is at a complete disadvantage. The IDF wear military uniforms. They follow the international rules of war. They announce in advance when they will strike a Hamas base because they know it’s filled with civilians. They also drop leaflets over areas where they’re about to drop bombs so civilians can seek shelter. But of course all of these efforts to save innocent life make it hard for them to hunt down Hamas. 

There’s a hypothetical scenario that is commonly offered that illustrates the perspective of the two sides of this conflict perfectly. If Gaza were to lay down their arms today there would be peace and a two-state solution tomorrow. If Israel were to lay down their arms today they would be annihilated by Gaza tomorrow. 

One of the reasons I know Dave Smith is on the wrong side of this argument and not a genuine broker is because his response to that hypothetical is to disparage making hypotheticals all together. He says it’s useless to consider hypotheticals like this because we can never know what would happen in a made-up scenario. But this misses the point. The point is not to predict what might happen. The point of this hypothetical is to highlight the opposite perspectives both sides have in this conflict. It illustrates their mindset and what they really want. That’s something Dave Smith and people on his side of the argument refuse to acknowledge. 

My main takeaway from this book is that I don’t hate Islam enough. Not Muslim people or Arabs in general, but the religion of Islam. Islam is a bloody stain on humanity and the quicker it’s eliminated the better. The Western mind needs to shift to see Islam for the death cult it really is.

I want to read the Quran and learn more about Islam so I can attack it more effectively. I feel bad for muslim people who have been brainwashed into this demonic death cult. As a Christian my approach should be to share the gospel with muslims and call them to repentance and forgiveness of this evil religion. 

I was surprised to learn about the Nazi roots of current radical Islam. 

“But there was one Nazi leader who managed to leave the inferno of Europe with his head held high. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, distinguished himself in 1941 by actually going to Adolf Hitler and offering the services of his people. It was the Mufti’s view that he and Hitler should be in alliance because they had a natural common enemy—the Jews. Newsreel footage from their meeting shows the Mufti doing a Nazi salute before shaking Hitler’s hand, as well as inspecting Nazi troops.” (p151-152)  

Amin al-Husseini would go on to found the Muslim Brotherhood which is the foundation of today’s radical Islam. 

Gazan homes are filled with Nazi, anti semitic literature. 

“Copies of Mein Kampf in Arabic were one of the most common books they came across in civilian homes, as well as tracts like “How to Kill Jews.”’ (p128) 

  

I learned a lot from this book. I want to read more of Murray’s work. He has several other books about the survival of Western Civilization. I think he has a good read on the pulse of societies and where we are culturally and politically. 

I’d recommend this to anyone who is interested in learning more about the Israel Palestine conflict. Murray is a good writer. This book is short and concise. It’s a good primer for understanding the Middle East conflict. 

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Quotations

“”” 

The excitement in his voice was obvious. “Hi Dad,” the three-minute call begins. “Open my WhatsApp now and you will see all those killed. Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!” (pxvi) 

“””” 

None has had to fight against an opposition whose leadership (as intercepted messages from the leader of Hamas in Gaza have made clear) sees the loss of their own civilians as desirable because of the advantages it can bring them in the war for international public opinion. Because in this era war is not just waged on the battlefield, but in the efforts to delegitimize a conflict abroad, turning victims into culprits and culprits into victims. It seems to me that the right of Israel to fight and win such a war is vital not just for the sake of that country, but so Britain, America, and every other Western country will be able to fight such a war if—or when— the time comes. (xix) 

“””” 

Even the most cursory look around Israel-even a walk around any Israeli city-would reveal a population that is bewildering in its racial and religious diversity. 

No black South African under apartheid was allowed any legislative or political role. Yet Khaled Kabub (an Arab Muslim) is a current Israeli Supreme Court justice, and not the first. (p10-11) 

“””” 

Born in 1962 in Khan Younis, when Gaza was still ruled by the government of Egypt, Sinwar was recruited into Hamas by the group’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He soon rose to become one of the heads of the group’s internal security unit, tasked-among other things-with finding and punishing Palestinians accused of “collaboration” with Israel. In 1988, one year after the outbreak of the First Intifada, Sinwar was arrested and imprisoned for the murder of four Palestinians he had believed were informers. He told his Israeli interrogators that he had killed them himself, strangling one with his bare hands and suffocating another with a kaffiyeh. Sinwar reportedly admitted to these crimes without any remorse and in fact boasted that he regarded these killings as a religious duty. 

He continued his work from inside the Israeli prison in which he was held. Sinwar was believed to have been the person who ordered the beheading of two Palestinian prisoners whose heads and body parts were thrown out of their prison cells with the instruction to the Israeli guards to “take the dog’s head.” (p30) 

“””” 

Throughout the months of protest many people noticed that the protesting students at Columbia, Barnard, and dozens of other American campuses all had a similar costume. Keffiyehs, obviously-aping their Palestinian heroes. But added to this form of radical chic there was a widespread wearing of face masks from the era of Covid. 

There was a virtue in wearing these masks, of course, which is that if you are joining in calls for terrorism against a minority, it may be wise to cover your face—as the Ku Klux Klan also did. (p100) 

“””” 

What is interesting about this is that it is the absolute antithesis of what communication in a university is meant to be about. Academic life is meant to be about reasoning, winning arguments with facts and persuasion. What the protesters were doing was the opposite of such communication. (p102) 

“””” 

There’s more than one irony in this, but in the years since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Khamenei and his predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, have killed, tortured, and imprisoned thousands of Iranian students— especially when they have come out and protested against their own government. In 2009 alone, during the thwarted “Green Revolution,” many students came out onto the streets of Iran. The government’s Basij security forces shot the student protesters in public. (p104) 

“””” 

Leftists supported Israel for a number of reasons, but one that has often been a baseline of left-wing politics was support for the perceived underdog. From 1948 to 1967, Israel was the plucky underdog in the Middle East. Its neighbors had attempted to wipe it out but the Israelis had seen them off 

Then in 1967, and even more so in 1973, something changed. If Israel had been David up until this moment, a number of its supporters now saw it as having transformed into Goliath. The fact that Israel was still a tiny country with a tiny population in comparison with its neighbors was not the point. It now came to be seen by many as the overdog. (p108) 

“””” 

The Arab countries that repeatedly invaded Israel and sought to steal the land accuse Israel of stealing land. Muslim countries accuse Israel of “colonialism” yet the whole history of Islam has been a history of colonialism. The only reason the Islamic empire grew was what we would now call “colonialism.” 

Groups like Hamas that delight in their bloodlust accuse the Israelis of being insatiable killers. Palestinian groups and their supporters who encourage their youth to view death through “martyrdom” as the highest form of valor claim that the Jews are bloodthirsty child-killers. (p114) 

“””” 

They now went straight to the children’s bedrooms, since that was where tunnel entrances and weapons were generally located-including under kids’ cots. While Israeli families built safe rooms to protect their children from rockets, these Gazar families actually used their families to protect their rockets. (p127-128) 

“””” 

Copies of Mein Kampf in Arabic were one of the most common books they came across in civilian homes, as well as tracts like “How to Kill Jews.” (p128) 

“””” 

Muslims, they had no problem at all putting tunnel entrances and hiding large stores of weaponry-again against every rule of war-inside Gaza’s mosques. Whether schools, hospitals, or mosques, Hamas’s cynical strategy turned out to work. If they could hide their armory in civilian buildings, then whenever the IDF even searched such a building Hamas could rely on the world condemning Israel for such a flagrant breach of etiquette. (p128) 

“””” 

Recently, he said, “a group of old women and old men” came out of*a building waving a white flag. Suddenly someone came out from among them and started shooting at the soldiers. They knew that because of the civilians, the Israelis could not shoot back. (p130-131) 

“””” 

In Gaza and Lebanon it was the Israeli way of war to drop leaflets, take over radio and television channels, and send millions of text messages to warn residents when a building was going to be hit. (p131) 

“””” 

One of the people who had been holding them was one Abdallah Aljamal. During the war Aljamal had filed many articles about the humanitarian suffering inside Gaza. One of the news sites that he had contributed for was Al Jazeera. And it turned out that while filing these articles about the suffering of the people of Gaza he had failed to tell his readers that he was holding Israeli hostages in his own home, where they were being tortured daily. (p135) 

“””” 

But there was one Nazi leader who managed to leave the inferno of Europe with his head held high. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, distinguished himself in 1941 by actually going to Adolf Hitler and offering the services of his people. It was the Mufti’s view that he and Hitler should be in alliance because they had a natural common enemy—the Jews. Newsreel footage from their meeting shows the Mufti doing a Nazi salute before shaking Hitler’s hand, as well as inspecting Nazi troops. (p151-152) 

“””” 

I thought not of Hannah Arendt, but of Gitta Sereny, who actually spent her life studying evil. I remembered something Sereny had said toward the end of her life: she had come to the conclusion that evil is a force that sometimes seems to just descend on the world. But the fact that it exists, and is a reality, was to her mind impossible to deny. (p161) 

“””” 

Just over two weeks after October 7, 2023, Hamas official Ghazi Hamad had given an interview to Lebanese television channel LBO TV in which he laid out his views. “Israel is a country that has no place on our land,” he began. 

He continued: “The occupation must come to an end.” 

“Occupation where?” asked the interviewer. “In the Gaza Strip?” “No,” Hamad replied. “I am talking about all the Palestinian lands.” 

“Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?” asked the interviewer. 

“Yes, of course,” Hamad replied, before continuing: “The existence of Israel is illogical. The existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood, and tears. It is Israel, not us. We are the victims of the occupation. Period. Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do. On October 7, October 10, October 1,000,000everything we do is justified.” (p173-174) 

“””” 

What can Western liberal societies do in the face of such movements? What can people who value life do in the face of those who worship death? 

He [Haniyeh]is not upset, he is not even perturbed. If anything he is joyful. In a statement following the news, he thanked Allah for the “honor” bestowed on him for what he referred to as the “martyrdom of my three sons and some grandchildren.” Perhaps it should not be surprising. This was a man who had spent his life extolling the “martyrdom” of Palestinian children. To choose just one example among many, on January 17, 2017, he said, “Children are tools to be used against Israel. We will sacrifice them for the political support of the world. ” (p175) 

“””” 

Every college student and adult knows the banalities to trot out: that people around the world are the same everywhere and essentially want the same things; that everybody wants to just live in peace and bring up their family in safety. Yet some people do not. Not because they are born that way but because they have been raised that way. (p176)