Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

James Abram Garfield was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 1881 until his death in September of that year. A lawyer and Civil War general, Garfield served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives and is the only sitting member of the House to be elected president. His quote above is a very good commentary of a well known quote from the Bible:

So, Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ They answered him, ‘We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?’

Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.’  (John 8:31-34)

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person’s actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things.^[1] According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent.^[1][2] The discomfort is triggered by the person’s belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.^[1][2][3]

In When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World (1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world.^[1] A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance.^[1][2] They tend to make changes to justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance (rationalization) or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance (confirmation bias).^[1][2][3]

Coping with the nuances of contradictory ideas or experiences is mentally stressful. It requires energy and effort to sit with those seemingly opposite things that all seem true. Festinger argued that some people would inevitably resolve the dissonance by blindly believing whatever they wanted to believe.^[4]

Cognitive dissonance plays out in politics, religion, metaphysics and even in science. In other words in all spheres of human interest.

The following collection is to jolt our consciousness in all spheres including the current affairs:

Video: Prof. Omer Bartov of Brown University Distinguishing Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

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Video: French President Macron’s Full BBC Interview About Gaza

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If the Atheists and the Christians Debate, Islam Wins!

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The moral failure of Western institutions on Gaza is unparalleled

RAMZY BAROUD November 06, 2023 UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last month stood on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and besieged Gaza. Guterres was not the only […]

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London (CNN) A man has been arrested after a video capturing anti-Semitic abuse targeting Jewish children on the London Underground went viral. British Transport Police said the man, whose name […]

Debate: Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism

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Suggested reading for the best understanding of what is and what is not anti-Semitism If We give up Islamism and Jewish and Christian Sharia in State Affairs, What is Left […]

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If Atheists Debate Christians, Islam Wins — Bill Nye Versus Ken Ham

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Charles Darwin: An Epiphany for the Muslims, A Catastrophe for the Christians

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times The National Museum of Natural History, located on the National Mall just across from the Smithsonian castle, is America’s […]

Meeting the Quranic Adam with Charles Darwin

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times Acting on a tip from explorer of caves four years ago, scientists in South Africa discovered what […]

Bannu clerics in Pakistan force zoology teacher to denounce Darwin’s theory of evolution

Epigraph: He is Allah, the Creator, the Maker, the Fashioner. His are the most beautiful names. All that is in the heavens and the earth glorifies Him, and He is […]

Meeting the Quranic Adam with Charles Darwin

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times Acting on a tip from explorer of caves four years ago, scientists in South Africa discovered what […]