By Cal Thomas
After 12 years of fighting, the Taliban in Afghanistan have announced they are ready to talk peace with the United States. The Taliban opened a political office in Qatar. The talks will take place there, but without the Afghan government, which is refusing to take part in the “peace” talks.
President Obama says there will be “a lot of bumps in the road” during the talks. More like sinkholes. The history of talks with Middle East terrorist groups, apparently, has taught us little. It appears such groups use talks like these to mostly re-arm and/or advance their cause until they can either get back to the killing field or enforce their political and religious will on the masses.
What is there to talk about with the Taliban? How can any “infidel” Western diplomat believe anything they say about “peace,” since their definition of the word is likely much different than ours? The Koran teaches that it’s permitted to lie to infidels in order to achieve Islamic goals. It’s called “Al-taqiyya.”
“Taqiyya (deception) is of fundamental importance in Islam,” writes Raymond Ibrahim for the Middle East Forum. “Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it. We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream. … Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.” (http://bit.ly/11t39u6.)
Before 9/11, I attended an event in New York hosted by some female celebrities who wished to draw attention to the plight of Afghan women. I heard stories from female doctors and teachers about how the Taliban had made women’s lives miserable. They were not permitted to leave the house, unless accompanied by a male relative. A male relative had to deposit their bus fare in the coin box. Women were banned from working in public places. Women had to wear a burqa if they went outside and the windows in their homes had to be covered so no one could see inside. Girls and women were not allowed to attend publicly funded schools.
That is only a partial list of restrictions. According to various reports, there are others: Women are denied access to basic health care, but when they do get it, they cannot be treated by male doctors (this restriction extends to children); no exposed ankles, no laughing loudly or wearing shoes that make noise when they walk, no white socks, no makeup or nail polish. Women cannot use public taxis without being accompanied by male relatives and they must use special female-only buses whose windows are draped with curtains so no one on the street can see the passengers. Failing to adhere to these rules leads to public beatings, whippings, verbal abuse and even death.
There’s more, but I don’t have the space. According to RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, the Taliban has also issued a general ban — for both men and women — on listening to music, watching movies, television and videos or celebrating the traditional new year. If you were given a non-Islamic name, you have to change it to an Islamic one. Certain games are banned, including kite flying. “Non-Muslim minorities must wear a badge or stitch a yellow cloth onto their clothing to differentiate them from the majority Muslim population,” writes RAWA. Now what does that remind you of?
If the Taliban view things like exposed ankles and white socks as horrors offensive to their god, how do so-called infidels, whom they consider worthy of death, negotiate with them? If such twisted ideas are accepted as doctrine, what could the Taliban possibly give up in negotiations … and in exchange for what? Furthermore, if we reach an agreement with them, how will we know they’re even telling the truth?
By Raymond Ibrahim
One of the traditional purposes for studying History has been to learn from it, to see how past events can shed light on the present. This is possible assuming the history presented is true.
Unfortunately, in our postmodern era of relativism, history has become a malleable tool to justify one’s philosophical and/or political inclinations—with all the wild anachronisms, projections, and conjectures that entails.
Happily, there is a little known antidote to these distorted revisionist histories. Ironically we can often learn about the past by looking at the present—for the patterns of human nature do not change.
Consider the book The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, by one Candida Moss. Despite the fact that Christian martyrdom under the militant Roman Empire has long been an unquestioned historical fact, Moss claims that it was largely a “myth,” that many of history’s best known narratives of Christian martyrs were entirely fabricated.
This thesis, as most modern-day academic theses concerning early history, is fundamentally based on conjecture, projections, and above all, anachronisms—the sort that earlier turned Christ into a homosexual hippie and Muhammad into a humanitarian feminist. Neither Moss nor anyone else can prove or disprove what the primary historical texts say—that Roman persecution of Christians was very real, widespread, and brutal.
We weren’t there.
But from an objective point of view, is it not more reasonable to accept the words of contemporary eyewitnesses, than it is the conjectures of a politically charged book that is separated from its subject by 2,000 years?
Among other ideas unintelligible and inapplicable to the ancient world, Moss invokes “T-shirts,” “favorite athletes,” and “brands of soda” to “prove” that the ancient narrative of Christians tortured and killed for their faith was all a gag to make a profit: “Martyrs were like the action heroes of the ancient world,” Moss says. “It was like getting your favorite athlete endorsing your favorite brand of soda. …Of course, the prices were completely jacked up.”
In short, the merit of Moss’ thesis rests in the fact that it satisfies a certain anti-Christian sentiment—that it satisfies a modern-day political perspective—and not that it offers any facts or serious arguments. Indeed, by projecting cynical postmodern perspectives onto the mentalities of people, both Romans and Christians, who lived worlds and centuries away, the thesis is ultimately farcical.
Even so, let’s tackle the myth charge from a different angle. Let’s leave the question of eyewitnesses, texts, and traditions, and instead rely on common sense—that which is in short supply in the academic community—by considering the following question: If at least 100 million Christians are currently being persecuted today, in an era when Western ideas of humanitarianism and religious tolerance have permeated the rest of the world, thanks to globalism, is it not reasonable to conclude that 2,000 years ago, when “might made right” and brutally prevailed, that Christians were also being persecuted then, especially when contemporary sources clearly indicate as much?
Consider the modern Islamic world alone, where today’s overwhelming majority of horrific Christian persecution occurs, as documented in my new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians. Today in the 21st century, Christians under Islam are still being tortured, imprisoned, enslaved, and killed; their churches and Bibles are routinely banned or burned.
Why is that? Because Islam is a supremacist cult, which brooks no opposition and demands conformity, one way or the other: Islamic law (see Koran 9:29) teaches that those who come under its hegemony must either convert, or keep their faith but live as ostracized third-class citizens (dhimmis), or die.
The supremacist culture of the Roman Empire—an even older martial cult devoted to the gods of war—was not much different and demanded compliance from the subjugated, regardless of how modern, armchair historians try to romanticize it.
If today’s Muslims—who are acquainted with modern ideas of humanitarianism and tolerance—are still brutally persecuting the Christian minorities in their midst, are we seriously to believe that the warlike Roman Empire, which existed at a time when brutality and cruelty were the expected norm, did not persecute Christians, especially when the records say it did? The Roman punishment of crucifixion alone sheds light on the ruthless severity of the ancient empire.
Moreover, Christianity was and still is the one religion that refuses to comply with its supremacist overlords, that puts its beliefs above the preservation of life. Unlike other religions which approve of dissembling and outward conformity—Islamic law permits Muslims to outwardly renounce Muhammad, if doing so will save their lives—Christians have long had a habit of “annoying” their superiors by refusing to comply, even to save their lives.
Thus, just as Christ irked Pilate, the representative of the supremacist Roman Empire, by refusing to utter some words to save his life, his disciples and countless other ancient Christians did the same; and today, countless modern day Christians are doing the same. And in all cases, their supremacist overlords—whether pagan Romans or modern Muslims—persecuted, and continue to persecute, them for it. (Most recently in Iran, Islamic authorities are trying to force an American citizen to abjure Christ, even as he resists under torture.)
Historical texts aside, today’s Christian persecution is a clear indicator of yesterday’s Christian persecution—for those who exercise some common sense, that is.
By Raymond Ibrahim
While unrest in Turkey continues to capture attention, more subtle and more telling events concerning the Islamification of Turkey—and not just at the hands of Prime Minister Erdogan but majorities of Turks—are quietly transpiring. These include the fact that Turkey’s Hagia Sophia museum is on its way to becoming a mosque.
Why does the fate of an old building matter?
Because Hagia Sophia—Greek for “Holy Wisdom”—was for some thousand years Christianity’s greatest cathedral. Built in 537 in Constantinople, the heart of the Christian empire, it was also a stalwart symbol of defiance against an ever encroaching Islam from the east.
After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts, Constantinople was finally sacked by Ottoman Turks in 1453. Its crosses desecrated and icons defaced, Hagia Sophia—as well as thousands of other churches—was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph.
Then, after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, as part of several reforms, secularist Ataturk transformed Hagia Sophia into a “neutral” museum in 1934—a gesture of goodwill to a then triumphant West from a then crestfallen Turkey.
Thus the fate of this ancient building is full of portents. And according to Hurriyet Daily News, “A parliamentary commission is considering an application by citizens to turn the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul into a mosque…. A survey conducted with 401 people was attached to the application, in which more than 97 percent of interviewees requested the transformation of the ancient building into a mosque and afterwards for it to be reopened for Muslim worship.”
Even lesser known is the fact that other historic churches are currently being transformed into mosques, such as a 13th century church building—portentously also named Hagia Sophia—in Trabzon. After the Islamic conquest, it was turned into a mosque. But because of its “great historical and cultural significance” for Christians, it too, during Turkey’s secular age, was turned into a museum and its frescoes restored. Yet local authorities recently decreed that its Christian frescoes would again be covered and the church/museum turned into a mosque.
Similarly, the 5th century Studios Monastery, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, is set to become an active mosque. And the existence of the oldest functioning Christian monastery in the world, 5th century Mor Gabriel Monastery is at risk. Inhabited today by only a few dozen Christians dedicated to learning the monastery’s teachings, the ancient Aramaic language spoken by Jesus and the Orthodox Syriac tradition, neighboring Muslims filed a lawsuit accusing the monks of practicing “anti-Turkish activities” and of illegally occupying land which belongs to Muslim villagers. The highest appeals court in Ankara ruled in favor of the Muslim villagers, saying the land that had been part of the monastery for 1,600 years is not its property, absurdly claiming that the monastery was built over the ruins of a mosque—even though Muhammad was born 170 years after the monastery was built.
Turkey’s Christian minority, including the Orthodox Patriarch, are naturally protesting this renewed Islamic onslaught against what remains of their cultural heritage—to deaf ears.
The Muslim populace’s role in transforming once Christian sites into mosques is a reminder of all those other Turks not protesting the Islamization of Turkey, and who if anything consider Erdogan’s government too “secular.”
Their numbers are telling. In May 2012, Reuters reported that
Thousands of devout Muslims prayed outside Turkey’s historic Hagia Sophia museum on Saturday [May 23] to protest a 1934 law that bars religious services at the former church and mosque. Worshippers shouted, “Break the chains, let Hagia Sophia Mosque open,” and “God is great” [the notorious “Allahu Akbar”] before kneeling in prayer as tourists looked on. Turkey’s secular laws prevent Muslims and Christians from formal worship within the 6th-century monument, the world’s greatest cathedral for almost a millennium before invading Ottomans converted it into a mosque in the 15th century.
Calls to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque is not about Muslims wanting a place to pray—as of 2010, there were 3,000 active mosques in Istanbul alone. Rather, it’s about their reveling, and trying to revivify, the glory days of Islamic jihad and conquest: Reuters added that Muslims “staged the prayers ahead of celebrations next week marking the 559th anniversary of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet’s conquest of Byzantine Constantinople.” According to Salih Turhan, a spokesman quoted by Reuters, “As the grandchildren of Mehmet the Conqueror, seeking the re-opening Hagia Sophia as a mosque is our legitimate right.”
Sultan Mehmet was the scourge of European Christendom, whose Islamic hordes seized and ravished Constantinople, forcibly turning it Islamic. Openly idolizing him, as many Turks do, is tantamount to their saying “We are proud of our ancestors who killed and stole the lands of European Christians.” And yet, despite such militant overtones, Turhan, whose position is echoed by many Turks, still manages to blame the West: “Keeping Hagia Sophia Mosque closed is an insult to our mostly Muslim population of 75 million. It symbolizes our ill-treatment by the West.”
So keeping a historically Christian/Western building—that was stolen by Islamic jihad—as a neutral museum is seen as “ill-treatment by the West,” even as Turks continue destroying the nation’s original Christian heritage.
And the historical revisions continue. Last May 29th, when Turks celebrate the Fall of Constantinople, Erdogan himself declared that the jihadi invasion—which saw countless Christians enslaved, raped, or slaughtered—was the true “time of enlightenment.” After showing how Erdogan got it upside down, Ralph Sidway, an Orthodox Christian author, wrote:
Erdogan and Turkey celebrate the Fall of Constantinople, and the West congratulates them. “We are continuing to write history today,” says Erdogan, and write it — or re-write it — they do, under the somnambulant gaze of craven Western leaders too ignorant, or too fearful, to challenge Islam’s claim to moral superiority, historical righteousness and eventual world domination. By their policies, posture and pronouncements, Western European nations, and the United States, are conceding the future to a rapidly re-Islamicizing Turkey, and are aiding in Islam’s stated goal of a new, global caliphate determined to conquer us, just as it conquered Constantinople 560 years ago. Every Turkish celebration of 29 May 1453 is a gauntlet flung down in challenge to the West. Each such event which goes unanswered and unchallenged by the West is another nail in the coffin of Christian culture, human rights, and free people everywhere.
Indeed, at a time when Turkey is openly reclaiming its jihadi heritage, Europeans are actively erasing their Christian heritage which for centuries kept the Islamic jihad at bay. Among other capitulations, Europeans are currently betraying church buildings to Muslims to convert to mosques and scrubbing references of the historic Turkish jihads against Europe from classroom textbooks, lest Muslim students be offended.
Meanwhile, here are neighboring Turkey’s Muslims openly praising the same jihadi warlords who brutally conquered a portion of Europe centuries ago, converting thousands of churches into mosques, even as they openly prepare to finish the job—which may not even require force, as Europe actively sells its own soul.
By James Richard Edwards
The Muslim Brotherhood described their grand plan for cultural jihad to destroy the West in a 1982 document, The Project:
“Cultural invasion … A kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers [Muslims] so that it is eliminated and God’s religion Islam is made victorious.”
In Western Europe, Islam has achieved much of its goal of eroding Western values, culture and institutions from the inside. Islam has very keenly used the failed concept of multiculturalism to exponentially increase the Muslim population in Western Europe while concurrently instituting a policy of creeping yet deliberate institutionalizing of Islamic “states” within the host countries.
There are a few tactics that have greatly helped Muslims to achieve these goals. First, Muslims have demanded that the host nations incrementally adopt various aspects of Sharia law and Islamic traditions, or else risk being deemed discriminatory or “Islamophobic.” Meanwhile, Islamic immigrants increasingly elect not to assimilate into their host societies, choosing instead to cultivate ethnic separatism and push for the creation of a (Muslim-only) state-within-a-state. Finally, Western leaders acquiesce to many Muslim demands in order to avoid further Muslim violence and crime that has plagued Europe over the last two decades.
The ultimate goal of Islam and every practicing Muslim, “moderate” or not, is to further the cause of a global caliphate in which every nation would be Islamic and governed by Sharia law. In pursuit of this goal, Islam divides the world into two groups, the “House of Islam/Submission” (dar-al Islam) and the “House of War” (dar-al harb). The root word for Islam in Arabic is “al-Silm,” which means “submission” or “surrender.”
The House of Submission therefore, includes all of the countries of the world that are governed by Sharia law and have submitted themselves to Islam. Any country that has not submitted to Islam and Sharia law is considered a part of the “House of War.” The goal of every single practicing Muslim is to enslave and submit every country to Islam and Sharia law.
Islamic leaders realized in the early 1980s that the best way to destroy the West was not with violence, but rather a gradual destruction from within.
The strategy originated with the Muslim Brotherhood in “The Project,” which describes a very detailed strategy of “cultural invasion.” The project’s main goal is expressly stated as “establish(ing) an Islamic government on earth.”
The first step in the plan is to migrate millions of Muslims to the Western world, and this was accomplished in great part by using Western Europe’s failed policy of multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism is the opposite of integration, combined with an almost limitless open door policy. When foreign immigrants enter a country, rather than being encouraged or required to integrate into the host culture, different cultures are incentivized to maintain the characteristics of the culture of their home country.
Multiculturalism sounds like a wonderful idea on paper: many different cultures living in harmony in one host nation that doesn’t require or even suggest integration. In reality though, it is another utopian conception by liberal elites that sounds wonderful but ends up being extremely detrimental and an utter failure.
The Muslim population in Western Europe over the previous 30 years has exploded. Western Europe’s total Muslim population has tripled in that time period.
In Amsterdam, Brussels and Marseilles, for example, between 20 and 25 percent of the population is now estimated to be Muslim. In Birmingham, Cologne, Copenhagen, Leicester, London, Paris, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Strasbourg and The Hague, the Muslim population is now estimated to be between 10 and 20 percent. In Antwerp, Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna, the Muslim population is estimated to be between 5 and 10 percent.
In Britain, Mohammed (or some variation of the name) has been the most popular name given to baby boys every year since 2007.
Finally, the Muslim birthrate in Western Europe is more than twice that of native Europeans. If current trends continue, the Muslim population of Europe will nearly double by 2020, while the non-Muslim population will shrink by 3.5 percent. According to the Migration Policy Institute, based in Washington, at least 20 percent of Europe’s total population will be Muslim by 2050 (this figure would jump to well over 50 percent if Turkey joins the EU.)
At this point, it will be almost impossible for Europeans to maintain their culture if things do not drasticallychange.The fact that Muslims can enter Western Europe while maintaining essentially the same lifestyle coupled with the pathetic degree of political correctness coming from Western leaders makes for the perfect opportunity to gradually implement Sharia law and Islamic traditions in place of Western ones.
All over Western Europe, Muslims have created “no-go zones.” These are effectively micro-states that are governed by Sharia law and that police, and emergency vehicles from the host countries refuse to enter because the police are afraid for their safety (many European countries have disarmed the police as well as the citizenry).
In France, the government has issued warnings and provides leaflets to tourists cautioning of 751 designated areas not to enter. Holland has released a list of 40 “no go zones” they recommend avoiding. Sweden, especially the city of Malmo, has many of these areas. In Britain, there are many areas, including much of East London, that have signs at the entrance that say, “you are now entering a Sharia controlled zone.”
In Denmark, Britain, Sweden, and Germany Muslims have created “moral patrols” in the mold of the religious police of Iran that go around the no-go zones and enforce Sharia law.In Britain, more than 85 Sharia courts are in operation that are formally recognized by British law and the European Court of Human Rights. They govern issues ranging from family and marital disputes to property issues. Women, as usual with Islam, are severely discriminated against and face extreme hardship in front of these tribunals.
Muslims have also very successfully manipulated the welfare state. Recently, in Britain, Anjem Choudary, a very influential Muslim cleric, who has twice been banned under the Terrorist Act from running any Islamic organizations, recently was unknowingly taped telling his followers how to use the British welfare system to extract a “Jihad seeker’s allowance.” Choudary himself takes home over $39,000 a year in benefits in addition to living in a $400,000 house in East London, paid for by the British taxpayers.
Specifically, Chaudry stated, “We are on Jihad Seekers Allowance, we take the Jizya (protection money paid to Muslims by non-Muslims) which is ours anyway … They give us the money. You work, give us the money. Allah Akbar, we take the money. Hopefully there is no one from the DSS (Department of Social Security) listening.” Choudry is unemployed, and has never had a taxpaying job. He was born in Britain.
People from DSS were listening and did nothing about it. From Welfare benefits alone Choudary takes home $12,000 more than British soldiers get paid fighting Islamic extremists.
The Muslim crime statistics that are available are absolutely shocking. Many countries do not release crime statistics based on race or religion or country of origin so they do not incite more Muslim violence. For instance, Britain refers to Muslims in all crime reports as “Asians.” Every Swedish news outlet referred to the Muslim rioters that destroyed Stockholm in May of 2013 as “youths.”
Scandanavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) has released some statistics so we can get some sort of idea of the extent of Muslim crime in these countries. In Sweden, the country with the most lavish welfare benefits and open door, multicultural policy in Western Europe, 78 percent of rapes are committed by Muslim men, even though Muslims make up only 5 percent of the population. In the last 20 years with the huge influx of Muslims, Sweden has risen to the second highest percentage of rapes per capita in the world. Incidents of rape have risen 500 percent since 2003. One in four Swedish women, 23 percent, will be raped in their lifetime if trends continue.
In Norway from 2007-2011, every single rape in the country was perpetrated by “non-western immigrants,” which is the politically correct synonym for Muslims. One 12-year-old rape victim said her Muslim rapist told her the following: “He said he had the right to do exactly as he wanted to a woman.” Mind you, he is saying this to a 12-year-old. “Why?” “Because that is how it was in his religion. Women did not have rights or opinions, he was in charge.”
There have been many incidents of mass violence in the name of Islam over the last ten years in Europe, the most recent example being the riots in Stockholm, Sweden.
In Sweden, from May 19-May 28, 2013, Muslim rioters torched over 200 cars and numerous buildings and churches, causing over $10 million in total damage .
The Swedish police followed a policy of “non-intervention.” The spokesman for the police department explained further, ”We go to the crime scenes, but when we get there we stand and wait,” elaborated Lars Byström, the media relations officer of the Stockholm Police Department. ”If we see a burning car, we let it burn if there is no risk of the fire spreading to other cars or buildings nearby. By doing so we minimize the risk of having rocks thrown at us.”
The chief of police put it this way: ”Our ambition is really to do as little as possible.”
Whether you want to believe it or not, Islam and the House of Submission are at war with the West, and in Western Europe, they are winning. The fact that many refuse to believe this makes this enemy even more dangerous.
All things considered, I believe the following words of the great President Reagan are particularly poignant at this juncture: “We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and its been said if we lose that war, and in so doing, lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.”
Princeton University Professor Bernard Lewis recently told the German newspaper Die Welt that “Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century.”
Let’s pray that America does not follow Western Europe’s current course. If we lose our freedom here, there is nowhere to turn to.
When men kill in the name of Islam, they are making a bloody statement that Islam is the problem
By Daniel Greenfield
On a mild London afternoon, two Muslims rammed a car into a British soldier returning to the barracks after working at the Tower of London. They shouted Allah Akbar and hacked and slashed at his body in an attempt to behead him. By the time they were done, his body could only be identified through dental records.
Shortly afterward, British Prime Minister David Cameron said that “there is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act”. London Mayor Boris Johnson added, “It is completely wrong to blame this killing on Islam.”
Now former Prime Minister Tony Blair has thrown in his two pence writing, “There is not a problem with Islam. For those of us who have studied it, there is no doubt about its true and peaceful nature.”
Blair previously claimed to have read the Koran every day, but apparently did not get as far as Chapter 5, which contains the verses that the Muslim murderers quoted after their butchery. And that’s understandable. Between his business deals with the Qatari royal family, which is behind much of the terrorism in the Middle East, the Kuwaiti royal family and the royals of the United Arab Emirates, it stands to reason that Tony probably never got past a few verses a day.
It’s easy to picture Tony Blair after a hot muggy day of clasping the greasy hands of Emirs and Sheikhs and trading his expertise for blood money, remembering to always eat with the right hand, not the left, returning to his five star hotel room, climbing into bed with his room Koran, flipping it open to the first chapter, reading, “In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful” and deciding that sounds peaceful enough, letting his head hit the pile of plush pillows and calling it a day. If Tony had made it as far as Chapter 2, where the Koran proclaims “Fight in the cause of Allah”, then the expert on Islam might have been able to entertain some doubts about its truly peaceful nature.
In what the Daily Mail describes as a “brave assault on Muslim extremism”, Blair writes, “There is not a problem with Islam… But there is a problem within Islam – from the adherents of an ideology that is a strain within Islam.”
It is rather sad that political bravery now consists of admitting that there may be some sort of problem within Islam and that it “is not the province of a few extremists… the world view goes deeper and wider than it is comfortable for us to admit.” Having exhausted all his courage by admitting that there is a problem somewhere within Islam, Blair bravely avoids admitting it by babbling about international affairs and the need to intervene in Syria.
Over in Afghanistan, Lee Rigby, the murdered soldier, might have been credited with a brave assault on “Muslim extremism”. Blair, writing a Daily Mail article that concedes that the problem may be a bit bigger than just that legendary tiny minority of extremists is hardly in that category.
Political courage now involves minimizing a grave threat less than all the other politicians who are also minimizing the grave threat. If the political consensus is that the mountain is nothing but a molehill, the brave pol courageously comes out and says that it’s actually a minor hill.
But let’s take Blair at face value for a moment. If there is a problem within Islam, then how can the problem not be with Islam? If Tony Blair had picked up a virulent intestinal parasite on a trip to Dubai, wouldn’t there be a problem both within Blair and with Blair? If there is an epidemic of drug abuse in the United Kingdom, isn’t there a problem both with and within the UK? Can there really be a problem within Islam that involves the willingness of millions of Muslims to kill in the name of Islam that is not also a problem with Islam?
The purpose of Blair’s meaningless distinction is to contend that it’s not a structural problem with Islam, but some sort of aberrant mutation brought on by Western colonialism. The trouble with that is that it requires a willful refusal to address the actual text of the Koran and the entire body of Islamic history.
Even if we were to assume that the problematic “strain” of Islam is not universally representative, who exactly is Tony Blair to declare it so based on his casual readings of a book that contains more death threats per page than the Daily Mail’s comments section?
Governments are not supposed to define the nature of religion or pick and choose between various sects. And indeed the legality of declaring that one form of Islam is legitimate and another is not has frequently been challenged.
It is the role of Muslims to argue amongst themselves what is and isn’t legitimate Islam. Such an argument is currently being waged in Syria using the theology of heavy artillery and death squads. Perhaps Tony Blair should think twice before involving the UK in such an Islamic religious debate or trying to hold one at home.
No government should be determining what is and isn’t legitimate Islam. What they should be doing is addressing threats emanating from Islam. There is no need to study the Koran in order to understand those threats. Muslim terrorists have been willing to patiently explain that they are killing us in the name of Islam. We can take them at their word or, like Blair and Boris, foolishly argue the doctrines of their religion with them.
If Tony Blair returned home from Kuwait City with the Swine Flu, the authorities would quarantine him without making any fine distinctions as to whether there was something wrong with Tony or within Tony. Like the nature of the one true Islam, that is a metaphysical question that governments are not qualified to answer.
If the UK quarantines foreigners and even natives with the Swine Flu, which has killed far fewer Brits than Islamic terrorism, should it not begin quarantining the even more dangerous strain of Islam?
It was Blair’s government that brought the Islamic plague to the United Kingdom in large numbers as part of a deliberate policy to forcibly transform the UK into a multicultural paradise. That policy has led to constant killings by the affected and the spread of strains of Islam to non-Muslims like the two Woolwich attackers.
There is no question that Islam is the problem. When men kill in the name of Islam, they are making a bloody statement that Islam is the problem. The only remaining question is whether to stop importing more strains of the terrorist disease before it’s too late or to waste more time splitting hairs on what exact percentage of the affected are truly dangerous.
1 in 4 British Muslims said that the 7/7 bombings were justified. If 1 in 4 visitors from Pakistan were infected with the Swine Flu, there would be an immediate ban on travel from Pakistan. It may be time to apply the logic of the quarantine to stop the Islamic strain that Blair brought to the United Kingdom.
By Abid Ali
Understanding Muslims
Islam is a religion that stands on lies of the mullahs and ignorance of the Ummah. These two are perfect combination for each other. The former say or write whatever they wish and the later accept them without ever verifying. The Ummah completely rely on the supposed integrity of the Mullahs. Muslims are eager gullibles, who are happy to be fool because they are happy with their idiotic belief. Actually they deceive none but themselves.
They believe that Islam is true, the Quran is divine and Muhammad was a prophet of the Almighty, just because the Quran contains few noble and wise verses which are much fewer than the foolish, nonsensical, morally wrong, scientifically erroneous, and logically pervert ones. Any diabolical person can plagiarize noble thoughts but they fail to plagiarize noble deeds of really great and benevolent persons. Muhammad was such a person, who could steal the wisdom of earlier scripture but he could not emulate did of the old prophets.
Another reason for the expansion of Islam is the persecution of critics with blasphemy laws and the execution of Muslim apostates, forced conversion and high rate of procreation. Mullahs and Muslims never encounter a critic with reason and debate, but always try to silence them with threat, killing, persecution and bloodshed. Modern examples of persecutions are Taslima Nasreen and Salman Rushdie, Theo Van Gogh and Imran Firasat.
The biggest weapon the Ummah have is, ‘Ignorance’ – the ignorance of nothing but Islam itself—because they can debate, even fight, for Islam only when they don’t know anything about Islam. If they know, they would find it difficult to debate, as there are lots of things in the Quran and Ahadith, which are difficult to justify and defend. So, they are absolutely comfortable and happy with their ignorance. After all, at the end of the day, happiness matters, not the knowledge. If knowledge is painful, what is the use of it? That is why, there is a proverb: ‘Deeper the ignorance, the sweeter it is’. But there are some people like us prefer to acquire knowledge and know the truth, no matter how painful and uncomfortable these are. What is the use of being happy and sitting in the darkness!
Even most educated Muslims are highly devoid of reason when it comes to their faith and talk like a moron, a dumb and a fathead. Their education is limited to their technical knowledge, general information and brainwashing tactics of Islam. Even the most certified and academically elevated among them never verify or question their faith and the Quran. Not only they are the victims but also they victimize their children by commanding them to believe the Quran and Muhammad without any second thought. If Islam is true, it can be understood with reason and can stand the test of reason, then why must they instill their belief in children. People would definitely embraced Islam, if it is true and based on reason. Yet, Muslims are warned since their childhood not to question Islam or Muhammad and Allah, and not to read the Quran or Hadith with critical intention. Why, why are such warnings? If the Quran and Hadiths are errorless, we shouldn’t stop someone from reading it critically. The story doesn’t end here; Muslims are also warned not to read the books of other faith and the books critical to Islam. They are also advised to stay away from people, who ask questions critical about Islam and Muhammad.
Whatever alleged miracles of Islam and the Quran or about science in the Quran and Hadiths Muslims are told, they immediately believe them to be true without any question or verification, because they wish them to be true as those beliefs please their emotions and flatter their cherished belief. I have debated with more than twenty five Muslims, who claim that they are not Muslims just by birth but they analyze Islam themselves and found it to be true before embracing Islam whole-heartedly. But I talked to them, I found that they have zero or very little knowledge about the Quran and Hadiths, or they have never read them. What they have studied is the works of mullahs, for example, Miracles in the Quran, Science in Islam, Science in the Quran, Miracles of Muhammad etc. They neither verify them from the original sources nor analyze them with reason. What they demonstrated was not wisdom but sheer ignorance and nonsense. Some of them even expressed morally unacceptable views, like non-Muslims are filthy, they should be killed as they are rebels against God, their women should be made concubines of Muslims. The question is: What great deeds have these nuts done in the eyes of God before their birth that God would give them so much privileges and freedom just because they are born in Muslim family and thus became Muslim.
Muslims believe in Islam—firstly because they are indoctrinated since their childhood with the ideas that ‘Islam is the only true religion, Muhammad is the true and the last messenger, and all non-Muslims are misleaders and enemy of Islam and Allah’; secondly because they are flattered by their ego that their cherished belief cannot be wrong. They take it for granted that they are fortunate to be made Muslims by God and God loves them more than anybody else in this world. This is just a false belief, not knowledge, let alone being wisdom. Knowledge is something, which is attained by minds capable of reasoning, not instilled or inculcated in impressionable minds in the childhood. But a belief is needed to be inculcated in impressionable minds since the tender age; else it would fail to be successfully passed from one generation to the next.
Another fallacious belief that Muslims treasure is that if they pass on one message of Islam to another person or if one converts a non-Muslim to Muslim, they will get double rewards for it, one for his own deeds and one for the person who is converted.
Many Muslims brag that they are not Muslims by birth but by choice, and after carrying out thorough verification and research, they found Islam to be very practical and logical, and the Quran to be miraculous. It is very good if one verifies everything about an ideology and then embraces it. It should be appreciated. But when I drilled down a bit further into their verification and research on Islam, I found that their reading and research is based only on some secondary Islamic books by modern authors. For example, they read books which speak good about and glorify Islam and the Quran—like miracles in the Quran, Science of Hadiths, miracles of Muhammad, compatibility of Islam and Science etc.—that are written by Muslims and mullahs only, not by any scientist or psychologist or biologist, and they never check from the original source whether they are really written in the Quran or Hadiths.
Those who use threat instead of logical arguments to defend their ideology only show their intellectual impotence and ethically act as violent pimps of their indefensible creed. Muslims are exactly the same, as they use threat to suppress the critics of Islam and voice of truth. Had their ideology being found on truth, they would defeat the critics of their faith with the weapon of reason and rational substantiation. But just because their faith has no rational grounds, but is based on superstition, fallacy and weird claims, they are incapable of defending it in rational arguments, and they readily turn intolerant and are ever ready to persecute anyone at the slightest of criticism against Islam and Muhammad. In sum,
MUSLIMS = Logically blind + Intellectually impotent + Fanatically Fierce + Sensitively Insane + Morally Depraved + Ethically Demised + Educationally deprived
The educated act like educated, the ignorants act like ignorants, but when the educated act like ignorants, it takes Islam.
Their Silly Arguments
Muslims use an endless list of fallacious and silly arguments in their defence of indefensible Islam. Here is a list of those:
‘Out of Context’ Argument
When one raises questions about verses of the Quran or Muhammad’s actions from the hadith, all Muslims—be it mullahs or educated moderate ones—parrot only one thing in defence: ‘You are talking out of context’, ‘please find out under what circumstances Muhammad did so’, ‘there must be some reason for that’ and so on. But they themselves will never try to find out those contexts or circumstances under which Muhammad did so many malicious things, or nonsensical or violence-inciting verses were revealed. And when you show them the context of verses from the tafsirs, which often make Islam appear even more evil and atrocious, they immediately change tune to claim that ‘this verse is allegorical’ and on the worst scenario, they would say ‘this verse is sarcastic’. Just imagine that the creator of the universe is talking in allegorical or sarcastic terms for guiding humanity through His divine scripture.
‘Circular Logic’ Argument
Whenever one asks Muslims to prove their religion and prophet to be true, all of them answer in a similar and very absurd and illogical way. They explain:
Muslim: Muhammad is a true prophet because the Quran says so.
Inquirer: What is the evidence that the Quran is true and divine?
Muslim: The Quran is true because Allah says so.
Inquirer: How do you to be certain that Allah is the true God and the Quran is His divine words?
Muslim: Allah is the true God because Muhammad said so.
Inquirer: And how do you know what Muhammad was true?
Muslim: Muhammad is true because the Quran says so.
This is called circular logic, proving something from its own source. It is like saying: I am the God, and the evidence for this is that I am saying so. Remember, no one trust something that the claimer himself says. He has to prove himself either with evidences or with reason. The source of the Quran and Allah is only one and that source is Muhammad. Muhammad himself is claiming everything, and there is no evidence whatsoever that those claims are true and credible. Any thug and imposter can claim something in these ways. That doesn’t make that claim true. Not only that, whenever Muslims try to validate or justify any instruction or law of the Quran or of Islam—like the benefit of veil or growing beard or anything else—they give Quranic evidence in support of their claims, even to non-believers of the Quran. How foolish these behaviours are!
‘This is Not Islam’ Argument
Whenever pointed to evil acts committed by a Muslim, Islamic group or Islamic nation in the name of Islam, another excuse Muslims offer in Islam’s defence is: ‘This is not Islam’, ‘This has nothing to do with Islam’, ‘Nowhere does Islam command one to do so’. Be it 9/11 or 26/11 terror attacks or a condemnable act like the shooting of young girl Malala Yousufzai by Pakistani Taleban, their answer is always the same: “This is not Islam” to which is routinely added another excuse, “This must a ploy of the Jews and the West to defame Islam”.
Whenever something bad is done by Muslims, Muslims countries—immediately Muslims will blindly say the following:
- Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia’s political and social fallacies has nothing to do with real Islamic country.
- The Taliban's destruction of Buddhist antiquities has nothing to do with real Islam.
- The Taliban shot fourteen years old Malala Yousufzai for promoting girls’ education in Pakistan and killing six polio vaccinators of Pakistan from UN have nothing to do with real Islam.
- The forcible conversion of helpless Christians in Indonesia has nothing to do with real Islam.
- The genocide being perpetrated in Sudan by the Islamists in Khartoum has nothing to do with real Islam.
- Bomb-blasts in Mosques of Pakistan, Iran and Iraq; has nothing to do with Islam.
- The unwillingness of the Saudi authorities to allow women to drive has nothing to do with real Islam.
- The sectarian violence in Pakistan between Sunni and Shiite has nothing to do with real Islam.
- The practice of female genital mutilation by Muslims all over North Africa, Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia etc. have nothing to do with real Islam.
- Having sex with slave girls in Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with real Islam
- Women oppression and inequality with men has nothing to do with real Islam.
- The decapitations of the inhabitants of entire villages by jihadists in Algeria have nothing to do with real Islam.
- Acts of terror committed frequently around the world in the name of Islam have nothing to do with real Islam.
- The Hadiths depicting Muhammad (pbuh) as a pedophilic, murderous, thief have nothing to do with real Islam.
- The verses in the Quran and Hadiths justifying the slaughter of the Banu Qurayza by Allah's Apostle (pbuh) have nothing to do with real Islam.
They will keep adding such excuse after excuse such that it would appear: Islam itself has nothing to do with “real” Islam.
If this is not Islam, then what is Islam, where is it followed, and who are following it?
‘Everyone cannot understand the Quran’ Argument
Whenever one criticizes or asks questions about errors and contradictions in the Quran, Muslims repeat the reply like parrots that not everyone can understand the depth and wisdom of the Quran, many people get misled by reading the Quran itself. If ask back: What other meanings can one derive from verses of Quran, which misleads the readers also? Or who will decide who is actually misled by reading the Quran, who is not? Is it the non-believers of the Quran or the Muslims themselves? Questions such as these would lead Muslims to a point, when they will have no further answers to offer. And at such point, they will say: “This kind of questions will only weaken your faith and eventually would lead you to great loss”.
‘Islam is also a socio-political Religion’ Argument
Muslims claims that Islam teaches everything in life, from sex acts to politics. When they are pointed to any unconscionable or violent command in the Quran and Hadiths, for example, some Islamic teachings that deprive individuals of his/her rights or teachings that are perilous to certain person or gender, then immediately they try to show some social benefit of that law or teaching, while completely ignoring its detrimental aspects. This argument is a shameless trick used by Muslims to hide the Islamic blunder, which Muslims often make—some of them consciously, others plagiarizing subconsciously. This argument is a significant camouflage against the truth that Islam is a political cult.
‘Scientific laws may change but not the Quran’ Argument
On one hand, Muslims claim that science is not comparable to Islam, which is absolute and eternal divine truth, while science keeps changing. On the other hand, they try hard to show that Islam is compatible with science, and they keep trying to prove that there are all kinds of sciences in the Quran and Hadiths. At the other end, science never tries to claim compatibility with the Quran; science works on its own way. Therefore, Muslims by trying hard to show compatibility of the Quran with science unwittingly puts science above, Islam below, because nobody will try to show compatibility of something with another which is inferior. Similarly, they claim that the teachings of the Quran are above everything else, yet they send their children to school to learn science, which they consider backward and inferior to Islam, to knowledge of the Quran and Hadith. Who could be greater fools than Muslims, who knowingly send their children to learn a false, inferior and momentary thing? They claim all other scriptures like the Bible, Torah, Gita and others are either corrupted or not at all divine, and simultaneously they claim that Muhammad is predicted in those scriptures. None can bigger idiots than those, who make such self-contradictory claims?
‘Allah knows best & It’s Allah wish’ Argument
In a debate or discussion with Muslims or mullahs, when one asks a critical question about Islam for which they have no answers, they will immediately end the discussion with words like: “It is Allah’s wish”, “Allah knows best”. This means that they come to engage in debate with certitude when they know little in their own admission. If one comes to engage in a discussion or a debate and says, he doesn’t know, it is Allah who knows, then what is the point of discussion with him? I have debated with hundreds of such Muslims. Their answers were all the same and ended with same sentence: “It is Allah wish”. For example, when I ask them: Why did Allah take six days to create the heaven and earth in spite of the power of ‘Kun Fayakun’ and being omnipotent, they answered, “It is Allah’s wish”. Whenever I ask Muslims, why Allah asked Muhammad to marry a six-year-old girl and what Allah proved thus, their only answer is: “It is Allah’s wish”. When I asked, how a child would be treated on Judgment Day, who was born in an infidel family and died within 2-3 years of his/her birth, they answered: “Allah knows best”. When I asked them, how the population after Adam and Eve grew when they only had two sons, Abel and Cain, no sister, they answered: “Allah’s know. We are not supposed to know everything and cannot question him and his wisdom.” If Islam don’t have the answer for ‘wherefrom and how we have come to existence’, isn’t it foolish to believe Islam’s saying about where we heading to.
They win debates by saying only, ‘Allah knows”, and “Allah has every answer”. Thus, they are saved from answering crucial question leaving the critics unable to debate further, because Muslims can’t contact Allah for the answer and Allah will not answer before the Judgment Day.
‘Even hearing such things is sin’ Argument
Another very cunning and dishonest ploy Muslims employ in defense of Islam is that they leave a discussion or a debate by saying: “Oh God! We can’t even hear this sort of denigration about a great person like our beloved Prophet Muhammad” or “it is a sin to hear such defamation of our prophet”. This is a very great misdemeanor to defend Islam and Muhammad. If one is defaming my father, I am not supposed to leave the place saying, “I cannot even hear such things against a great personality like my father”. If I have confidence in the integrity of father, I will clear the doubts of the person raising such criticisms against my father’s character with refutation of the accusation with substantive evidence. Only if I have no confidence in my father’s character, I may leave the place with lame excuse like Muslims do regarding the weakness of Muhammad’s character, although it will be wiser for me to ask for evidence from the person so that I may enlighten myself about some unknown weakness that my father might have had. After all, we are only humans prone to erring.
On the existence of Allah and the sanctity of Islam, Muslims are always afraid of losing their faith and try to avoid such discussions at any cost, while atheists or agnostics are never afraid of such things. This is because, whatever beliefs Muslims cherish are not based on concrete reason or evidence but on superstition or blind faith. Faith is nothing but hope, and hope is the only lie that never loses its credibility. Atheists and agnostics live on evidence and reason while believers live on faith and superstition. That’s why the former don’t have controversies and contradictions among them and are open to discussion and doubt anything, even their cherished thoughts about the world. Edifice based on faith and superstition can’t be defended by reasoned argument, but only threats and violence, which followers of blind-faith religions have employed copious throughout history. So says Bertrand Russell: “Persecution is used in theology, but not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there are only opinions.”
‘This life is just a Test’ Argument
Whenever faced with questions like – why there is so much suffering and diseases in the world, why there are earthquakes, floods, cyclones and other natural disasters, from which even the followers of the Quran and Hadiths are not spared – Muslims readily claim that ‘This life is only a test’. For them, earthly life is temporal, does not deserve any serious attention and the earth is only an examination hall. Yet, they pay so much importance to their unimportant life on earth that they carry out the most horrendous acts like the 9/11 massacre in USA, 26/11 massacre in Mumbia, Madrid bombings, Boston blasts, shooting the little girl Malala, and such. In the examination hall only, their prophet had more than a dozen of wives and married a six-year-old girl (Aisha) when he was aged 50.
‘Islam is the fastest-growing religion’ Argument
In the defence of Islam, another frequent made vacuous claim of Muslims is: ‘Islam is the fastest growing religion’ in the world. So, it must be the truest religion on earth. First, this argument is completely fallacious. Islam is the fastest-growing religion does not mean that is the true or truest religion, because truth has nothing to do with majority, nor should it be judged on the basis of numbers. If this is so, then idolatry was truest religion 2000 years ago, because the world’s 99% people were polytheistic at that time. Believers of Hinduism were larger than Muslims over the greater part of Islam’s 1400-year history (until the last century), so Hinduism was true religion, Islam was false until then. Today, Christianity is believed by more people than Islam; so Christianity must be true, Islam is false. Or once, Christianity was the fastest-growing religion in earth; so Christianity was the true religion during those times.
Muslims are polyphiloprogenitive, i.e. they breed faster than others peoples. But that is the characteristic of all poor and uneducated people in any nations. Prior to Copernicus and Galileo, almost everyone agreed that the Earth was flat and the universe was geocentric. This consensus of virtually every member of human race did not make this belief true. As Bertrand Russell said: The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”
It is totally fallacious on the part of Muslims when they claim Islam to be true because it is most popular, like saying “thousands of people convert to Islam; so it must be true”. Hitler said, if a lie is repeated often enough and long enough, it would come to be perceived as truth.
Other similar Muslim claims are:
- Muhammad is most influential person in history as per Michael Hart’s “The 100”.
- The Quran is the most widely read book.
- Muhammad is the most common name.
Almost all people can make bricks. Far lesser number can make pots. There are far more patients than Doctors. Even among the Doctors skilled surgeons and experts are only a fraction. Very few people on earth understand Astrophysics. In all times, knowledge and skill have been rare commodities possessed by only a few. Ignorance has always been the part of majority. Ignorance of Muslims is not only amazing, but positively harmful to them as well as to the rest of humanity. Hitler was influential too. The Harry Potter series have been most sold books in recent history. The housefly is the fastest breeding insect and the fish is the largest breeding in number. If proliferation is the point to establish truth and majority is the sign of divinity, then houseflies are most truthful creature and fishes are most divine.
‘This was the custom of that time’ Argument
When one points out the evil practices and violence of Muhammad, Muslims come up with another excuse that ‘This was the custom of the time’. No matter you tell them, ‘Muhammad had slaves’, ‘Muhammad had concubines’, ‘He married a six-year-old girls, ‘He killed people’ or ‘He waged wars’, their answer would always be similar and simple, ‘This was the custom of the time’ or ‘War was sometime necessary to establish peace’. But when you ask them to produce example of another saints or prophets who did so, you will find them mum. Remember, morality is not a time-dependent, place-dependent, or person-dependent variable. Whatever is wrong for one person, it is wrong for another; whatever is wrong in on time, it is wrong for any time; whatever is wrong is one place, it is wrong in another place. Another question is that: Did Muhammad come to reform the social evils of his or to be a part of it? If he could not reform the evils of the contemporary society, instead practiced those evils, then why should one follow him?
‘It is our fault, not Islam’s’ Argument
Today, very few Muslims follow certain laws of Islam, like, keeping beard, say prayers five times a day, reproduce prolifically, and learning from Islamic teachers or mullahs. When one asks them: why don’t you follow Islam properly if it is a simple and beneficial religion, then you will definitely hear this answer: ‘This is our fault.” “If we cannot follow Islam, it is our fall, not of Allah; Allah has given us guidance, now it is up to us whether or not we follow it’. If such a vast majority of Muslims fails to comply with the Islamic laws, then we are obliged to say that Islam has failed as a religion.
‘The Error is in the translation’ Argument
When the contradictions, absurdities, or the violent verses of the Quran are pointed out, Muslims will ask aggressively: “Do you know Arabic?” When the non-Muslim replies, “No”, they triumphantly say, “You have to read it in original Arabic to understand it fully”, or “These verses/words are not there in the original Arabic Quran”, or, “The exact meaning of the verses of the Quran is lost in the translation”, or “There are many fake translations of the Qur’an to malign Islam” etc. With this, Western critics generally become silent. If critics ask them to name a translation that they read to understand the Quran properly, they would hesitate to tell any name, but if you press them, they would name those same translations which they were denying to inaccurate. So, the conclusion is that they can use any translations for their understanding of the Quran properly, but if the critics discover errors and contradictions in the same translation, it becomes inaccurate.
Now the essentiality of reading the Quran in Arabic to understand it accurately, the question is: How many Muslims have read the Qur’an in original Arabic? Since the majority of the Muslims are not Arabs, they also rely on translations. When they have not read it in Arabic or they even don’t know anything about Arabic, how could they claim that it needs to be read in Arabic to understand correctly? Therefore, the language argument is a dishonest Muslim tactic to defend the many problems inherent in the Quran. Language is no barrier for find truth, as those who translated must have done so with extreme care and analysis and consultation from various sources. Furthermore, if they think those translations are wrong then why there is no protest against those fake translations, like the way Muslims generally do for any criticism and denigration against Islam and Muhammad. And how many Muslims scholars and Muslims read the Bible in Greek or Aramaic, the Torah in Hebrew or the Gita in Sanskrit before they criticize those scriptures, which they are most active at.
If the translations of the Quran by greatest scholars of Arabic language and Islam are full of errors, then who in this world has understood the Quran accurately? Why God has created the Quran in such a language and expressions that is difficult to grasp and interpret by the most proficient in Arabic? Though the purpose is to guide the entire population of the world, while Arabic is the language of humankind’s most treasured sacred book that is understood by small population in the world. Did Allah want to spend half of our lives in learning a language and then understanding His divine instruction?
‘Islam is a misunderstood religion’ Argument
Another excuse used by Muslim apologists that aims to sanitize Islam from the practices of its followers when they are pointed to the evil, atrocities and outrageous activities of Muslims all the globe, like bomb blasts in the mosques in Pakistan, Iraq or any other, shooting by Taliban to a young girl (Malala), attacking and bombing schools of young children by the Taleban in Afghanistan and other shameful terrorist activities all over the world, and very old men, often clerics, marrying underage girls, they reply: ‘Islam is a misunderstood religion’, ‘those Muslims misunderstand Islam’. Such claims are made against by those devout members of Islamic organizations, who spend their entire lives learning about Islam. The irony is that the people who make the claims have very little knowledge of or even know nothing about Islam. For them, Islam comprises of only those soft outer layer such as shahada, prayers, fasting, zakat, hajj, and avoiding sins like adultery, alcohol and pork consumption. There are tens of millions of Muslims, whose understanding of Islam is limited to that polished image. They are the Muslims, who truly misunderstand Islam. They never read the Quran and Hadith to understand that their Islam is only a miniscule part of the whole gamut of Islam, which is purely a political game, set up by Muhammad to rule the world and bring the world under Islamic imperialism.
A religion that can be so extensively misunderstood for fourteen hundred years by its own followers is certainly not worth following, nor respect.
Almost every Muslim will make the outrageous claim that they are not true Muslims, they are not following Islam. Muslims of one sect claims the Muslim of another Islamic sect that ‘they are not Muslims’; ‘they are not following Islam truly’. Who truly follow Islam is a completely dark concept. Even if there some people who correctly follow Islam, their number must be miniscule or nearly non-existent.
It takes more exploration and learning to discover the inherent harder core of Islam, where the importance of jihad and rejection of the others become more highlighted. Unfortunately, by the time Muslims reach that level of knowledge, they have already committed themselves to the service of Allah and their brain damage is complete. They become the violent and outrageous Muslims. A few others desert Islam.
There was never a time when Islam had a one distinct picture that Muslims could see with clarity and agree on. From the beginning, Islam was destined to have multiple interpretations. The Quran addresses issues in a vague, not concise style that sets the ground for multiple interpretations. Muslims are told that they can find in the Quran all the information they need; but when they open the book, they find nothing but repeated vagueness. Instead of coming to the obvious conclusion that the Quran is nonsense, they try to extract any interpretation to support whatever imagination they have in mind. Seeking refuge in Hadith does not help, because different Hadiths give different pictures of Islam depending on which ones you want to believe.
Let us not forget that Islam, from its inception, has been used as a political tool to subjugate the masses. Today’s Muslims have the same problem in understanding Islam as their ancestors did over the past fourteen centuries. Muslims, who are biased to their own political views, can usually manage to find some kind of support in the Quran or Sunna.
Only 24 years after Mohammed’s death, a group of Muslims broke into Uthman’s house; the third rightly-guided Caliph and the Prophet dearest companion and son-in-law, and murdered him while he was reading the Quran. Those Muslims did not think for a second they were committing a murder, but were utterly convinced they were practicing jihad for the sake of Allah. Their judgment was based on their understanding of the Quran and Sunna. On the other hand, Uthman’s supporters, who also based their judgment on the Quran and Sunna, believed those men were murderers and deserved to be killed.
Caliph Ali, the fourth rightly-guided Caliph and also the Prophet dearest companion and son-in-law, and his supporters of Sahaba (Mohammed’s companions) were engaged for five years defending the Islamic state against their adversaries, who were also Sahaba. Both sides fought the war while holding the Quran and shouting “Allahu Akbar”, as they slaughtered each other for the sake of Allah. More recently, when the Muslim nations were divided over Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, both sides produced mountains of evidence, all based on sharia sources to prove that they were right and the other side was wrong or even committed kufr and deserves the death penalty!
A religion that can be so misunderstood for fourteen hundred years is certainly not worth following.
‘Red Herring’ Argument
This is one of the most common fallacies Muslims often make. It means whenever you point out an evil or an error of Islam, they would highlight the evil of other religions, instead of clarifying the criticism raised against Islam or the Quran. They present this fallacy as if you are an apologist of that religion, which they use as red herring. They don’t understand that highlighting evils committed by others does not dissipate theirs. When I raised the issue of polygamy of Muhammad, every Muslim shot back: ‘so what, even Krishna had several thousand wives’. What is interesting is that they often assert and believe that Ramayana and Mahabharata are only myths, yet they won’t refrain from highlighting those mythical stories to defend Muhammad, a real person, just to hide their own disgrace. If I point out that how can defend the Prophet by citing mythical stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, they often call me an apologist of Hinduism. Once I asked a Muslim why Muhammad fought so many wars, the person immediately retorted: “so what about the war of Mahabharata was also fought; Kanishka, a Buddhist, also waged wars and killed so many people. Then I asked him two questions: Is Mahabharata a real story and Was Kanishka a prophet of God? Then the person became quiet. In the first place, they are ignorant of the fact that highlighting evils of others does not justify the evils of their own. While debating, they rationalize as if Islam and other faiths are to have the same standard; they are not supposed to stand and fall together.
‘This Hadith is not authentic’ Argument
This argument is perhaps the last defence Muslims employ to save Islam. There are thousands of moral, scientific, and logical errors in the book of Hadiths, which itself is more than sufficient evidence to prove that Islam is a evil cult and Muhammad was a cruel imposter. But when questions raised on the integrity of Islam and Muhammad due to those numerous indefensible Hadiths, the sustainers of Islam come up with another explanation that those Hadiths (sayings and deeds of Muhammad as mentions in the books of Hadiths) are Da’eef (not authentic). On what basis they declare those Hadiths to be unauthentic is completely unexplained and cagey. If those Hadiths were not correct, then why the Muhadiths wrote those outrageous and incorrect things, still a nightmare for Islamic apologists? The acme of misdemeanor is that if those Hadiths are going to remain there even it is not authentic, so that they can bring them into play when needed.
‘Conspiracy of the West and Jews’ Argument
Whatever atrocities Muslims do all over the world, Muslims generally blame the conspiracy of the West and the Jews for those acts. Be it the 9/11 terrorists attacks, or the Madrid bombings or the 26/11 Mumbai massacre, Muslims tend to accuse anyone but Muslims for those evil acts. Even after the confession of Osama Bin Laden, Muslims still claimed that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job of the US government or committed by the Jews. Those, who commit those atrocities, Muslims believe, are actually agents of the West or Israel, who had taken proper training in Islam. All these they do are aimed at defaming Islam. This sort of lies released by renowned Muslim clerics or leaders eventually reaches the mouth of every Muslim, who learns it by heart, and like a parrot, speaks without any reasoning whatsoever. Why would the West and Israel try to defame Islam? Why they don’t carry out the same campaign against other religions, such as Hinduism or Buddhism? What they would achieve from these efforts? Would a person burn his own house in order to blame his neighbour? And if they undergo proper training in Islamic scripture just to malign Islam, why don’t they get inspiration from their learning the Quran, Hadiths and Sira, and become devout Muslim? Why Allah leaves them uninspired even after their reading the Quran? These are questions Muslims are afraid to ask. From the last question in this list arise Muslims’ fallacious argument discussed next.
‘Allah’s gives Hidayah as He wishes’ Argument
When one asks a Muslim: Why do so many Muslims leave Islam, especially after gaining good knowledge of Islam and the Quran? Or, why there are so many non-Muslim scholars of Arabic and Islamic literature who, despite having very deep knowledge of Islam, never embrace Islam? They would retort that Allah gives Hidayah, whomever He wills. They argue that Allah did not bestow Hidayah even upon Muhammad’s loving uncle and protector. Such arguments are nothing but fallacious defence to hide the evil and treachery of Muhammad. The reason why Muhammad’s uncle did not accept him as a prophet can be another. His uncle Abu Taleb did not only deeply love him, but also swore to protect him when the Meccan expressed their desire to harm Muhammad for his insulting their religion and customs. Yet, Muslims will never reflect on why such a loving uncle would refuse to believe Muhammad’s prophetic claim, or why Allah will not give guidance to such a devoted and loving protector of His beloved apostle? Logically, if there was only one person Allah decided to give guidance, it should have been his uncle Abu Taleb. It seems Allah provide guidance to only those, who blindly trust Muhammad’s words.
Other Arguments
Muslims use more tricks in the defence of Islam. Whenever they are face with some Islamic duty, which are weird or difficult to follow for moral or practical reasons, they make all kinds of groundless classifications to justify their inability to follow them. Suppose, they are face with modern-day reality, where they must embrace Bid’dah (innovation), they classify it into two types—namely Bid’dah-e-Husna and Bid’dah-e-Zalala. When faced with their duty of engaging in Jihad, they classify it as Jihad-e-Nafs and Jihad Amr. But, there are such descriptions in the Quran and Hadith.
When one criticizes Islam, they demand for his/her qualification, when for such one issues, one require no specific qualification is required other than their own logic and conscience to be able to judge right and wrong, to tell sinner and saint apart, to separate good from evil. Yet, Muslims themselves can go on criticizing every other religion as per their wish.
When an ex-Muslim is able to show a Muslim the unsavory truth of Islam and convince him to leave Islam, Muslims accuse that new apostate must be an idiot and ignorant of true Islam or must have been forced to leave Islam. Actually those accusations apply to themselves most perfectly as they are the real ignorants of Islam and the victim of the greatest lie of the universe. Moreover, force and persecution is the weapon of Islam, of Muslims, not of the liberals because Islam legally mandates the killing of apostate.
With advancement of knowledge and technology with time, Muslims innovate new justifications to defend their weird and irrational beliefs. Most recently, they innovated the excuse that Islam mandate debate in open forum with physical presence, not in writing on websites, blogs or emails. This they claim because they know well that no sensible critic would debate with Muslims on Islamic issues in front of a Muslim audience, who are ever ready to kill anybody on the slightest of criticism of Islam. So, this is nothing but a cowardly way to defend their indefensible ideology. If anything, debating on internet can be far more feasible, comfortable, cheap, authentic and intellectual than any debate with physical appearance. Debating face to face can be threatening; people can use shriek, sophism, chicanery or demagogy to win the debate.
Muslims always react with shriek and insolence when one says something critical of Islam. It is well known that Muslims almost nothing substantive to support their claim that Islam is a true religion and Muhammad was a true prophet of God. Muslims only can hurl abuses and threats to silence the critics of Islam. Shrieking and stridency is their weapon to support their illogical and evil cult. If their religion is founded to truth, they would defend it with reason and logical arguments, not with threats and persecution. It seems their Allah did not provide brains or their religion didn’t provide them grounds to defend their claims. Else, they need not behave like wild beasts when people criticize Islam; they can shut the critics with logical arguments and refutations.
If a people in a society do evil things, like sacrificing young children and engage in killing and plundering of opponent sects, and assume that those evil deeds are worship of God, without any inclination to listen to anything about their rituals and beliefs, and are ready to kill anyone who say anything against their (evil) beliefs, just like Muslims do, then can you tell me any method to guide them to right path. Remember, open scrutiny is the only way to separate the right from the wrong. No criticism no rectification.
Bertrand Russell asserts: “Thoughts are not ‘free’ when legal penalties are incurred by the holding or not holding of certain opinions, or by giving expression to one’s belief or lack of belief on certain matters.” And when there is no freedom of thought, criticism is not tolerated, and then no reformation or purification is expected. Those who use threats, not logical arguments, are not only pauper of evidence but also intellectually impotent and ethically wimp, who depend on the means of others. Muslims fit that bill perfectly, as they use threats to suppress the critics of Islam and voices of truth. If they were on the right path, they would defeat them with the weapon of reason and ample rational substantiation in support of their claims. Just because they have no rational grounds to defend their superstitious, illogical and weird claims, they are so intolerant and ready to persecute one at the slightest of criticism against Islam and Muhammad.
As far as Muslims’ fanatical attitude regarding Islam is concerned, the Great Philanthropist, Philosopher, Mathematician, Logician and Educationist Sir Bertrand Russell’s following words most fitting:
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of holder’s lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.”
‘…the problem with the world today is ignorant are cocksure and intelligent are full of doubts.’
Muslims keeps blabbering about truth, greatness and miracles of their faith, but when questioned about basis of their rock-solid confidence in Islam, about what miracles they have seen in Islam, they can comes up with nothing convincing. I have asked this question to thousands of Muslims. Most of them failed to tell me anything and when some of them come up with answers, those appear silly or ridiculous.
I concur with Ali Sina’s statement that “Muslims put off their brains with their shoes and sandals and stand blindly behind an illiterate Imam who barks the Quranic verses without understanding even a single letter of it.” The Islamic ills affecting Muslims is chronic, which will take a long, long time to be cured. It can only be accelerated by their study of Islam patiently and with an open mind. There are a lot to know about Islam, judge everything by listening to both sides of arguments—all with a rational mind, and only then can Muslims realize what is true about their faith.
“He, who decides a case without hearing the other side, even if he decides justly, cannot be considered just.”
God will not punish anyone of us for using our brain to ask logical questions about anything we believe or even for questioning God’s existence, at least until His existence has been founded on concrete evidence. But Muhammad and his Islam intimidate Muslims against using your brains concerning his claims. Muslims are turned so morally down, dejected, downhearted and depressed that they have no moral courage to question anything about Islam than blinding believing each and everything Muhammad, the 7th-century pedophile, looter, liar, lustful misogynist and narcissist said and base their moral founds on the same. He turned Muslims into zombies, who have lost God’s biggest gifts them—their brain and rationality—thanks to Muhammad lure for them of big-bosom houris in Islamic heaven and the fear of roasting and toasting in hell. No matter how qualified they are academically, how many certificates and diplomas they may have, they are prone to utter nothing but rubbish in the matter of religious beliefs. There are honored professionals among Muslims, such chartered accountants, doctors, and engineers, but end result is all the same—they generally remain devoid of reason, when it comes to their faith. Just as Bertrand Russell has written (Sceptical Essays): “When a man adds up an account, he is much more likely to make a mistake in his favour than to his detriment; and when a man reasons, he is more apt to incur fallacies which favours his wishes than such as thwart them.”
