Faith beyond boundaries

He's been called an infidel by conservative sections of the Muslim community for re-building the Ganesh Dham Mandir in Rajasthan, but Ashiqali Mohibali Nathani, whose grandfathers migrated from Pakistan during Partition, says his faith is not misplaced.
A compulsive loner, Mahant Shri Prabhudasji Maharaj is not your everyday dharma guru. Unlike the countless "charismatic" babas who spout gyan, on and off, 95-year-old Maharaj is introverted, soft-spoken, and shy to a fault. But the frail, disheveled-looking Prabhudasji is transformed when he sees Ashiqali Mohibali Nathani, in his trademark white kurta-pyjama, walking up the steps of Ganesh Dham Mandir. Gone is the reluctant talker in the revered baba who mostly answers in monosyllables. Nathani, a Muslim devotee, is special to Prabhudasji and the Ganesh Dham Mandir Trust, and the baba chats with Nathani like he does with no one else.

And there is a valid reason for this bond between the mahant and his Muslim devotee. Nathani, a Mumbai-based industrialist, has rebuilt a Hindu temple - the Ganesh Dham Mandir, on the outskirts of the famous Ranthambore National Park. The temple, with lord Ganesha occupying its sanctum sanctorum, is neither lavishly decorated nor architecturally rich. Yet, ever since its inauguration on January 27 this year, it has become more than a pilgrimage centre. "It is a symbol of communal harmony. With this, I want to send a message that astha (belief) is beyond boundaries, " says 60-year-old Nathani who spent Rs 1. 5 crore to rebuild the temple and a spacious one-room flat for Prabhudasji which the latter rarely uses. "Maine isko mana kiya mere liye ghar mat banao, lekin nahin mana" (I asked him not to build a house for me, but he didn't listen to me), says the swami who prefers to stay at the old, decrepit ashram, sharing the courtyard with a cowshed, on the same premises.

Nathani says he first visited Prabhudasji's ashram in February 2009. Nitin Shirge, one of the directors in the company Nathani owns, would talk very highly of the mahant's miracles. "My company was in a financial crisis as a bank had blocked the release of funds we had deposited with it. When I told this to Baba, he looked heavenwards and said "sab theek hojayega" (everything will be fine). Within a few days of our return from Baba's ashram, the bank released the funds, " recalls Karachi-born Nathani, whose grandfathers, partition refugees, had left their successful leather business behind in Pakistan for an uncertain future in India.
His faith in the old baba strengthened, Nathani wanted to do something for the Ganesh Dham Temple and the ashram the baba had built 25 years ago. The temple was in bad shape, its walls un-plastered, roof leaking and floor unpaved. Many moneybags, before Nathani, had promised to rebuild the temple but they never kept the promise. Prabhudasji says he had laughed when Nathani promised to rebuild it. "I was surprised that, unlike others, Nathani kept his promise, " says Prabhudasji.

Predictably, Muslims, especially the residents of neighbouring Khiljipur village, are not happy with Nathani's gesture. Named after the 14th century ruler Alaudddin Khilji who besieged the Ranthambore Fort after defeating Raja Hamir Dev in 1301, Khiljipur has an old mosque. It is believed to have been built by Khilji who, along with his soldiers, had camped there for months.

"Idol worship is forbidden in Islam. A Muslim ceases to be a Muslim if he builds a structure which houses idols, " pronounces Mohammed Aslam, the medieval mosque's caretaker. Nathani, meanwhile, claims that he has done nothing wrong. "Idol-worship may be an un-Islamic act, but Allah never said that Muslims should not build places of worship of other religions. I don't care if they call me a kafir (infidel), " asserts Nathani who has received a few threatening calls ever since he funded the temple's reconstruction. "You will burn in hellfire; never get into paradise, " are some of the dire warnings Nathani has been handed out by some fellow Muslims. "One fellow even threatened to defame me and wanted my photograph. I told him I would send him a bunch of them if he provided me his address, " laughs Nathani, a widower who lives alone and is reconstructing another temple in Kanpur.

Nathani says he is grateful to his grandfathers who migrated to a secular India from Pakistan. "Perhaps they had envisioned that the scourge of fundamentalism would tear Pakistan apart one day," says Nathani


What is your opinion of Nathani?

Source: The Times Of India

Aborted foetuses: Genocide in our midst

Over six million Jews were killed during the holocaust. About 8, 00, 000 people were killed in the Rwandan genocide. Even today, these large-scale massacres evoke horror and condemnation across the world. But digest this: Over the last decade alone, an estimated 8 million girls have been eliminated in India. It is believed that most of them were aborted as foetuses for being the 'wrong gender'. Yet, this tragedy has not evoked the kind of outrage that a holocaust or the Rwandan genocide did.

Activists in India who have been working for decades on the issue of the girl child say that this large-scale murder of girls also qualifies as genocide - which is defined as the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. "It fits the definition of genocide and ought to evoke the outrage reserved for something as horrific as genocide. However, the government has hardly done anything despite the women's movement in the country flagging this problem as far back as the mid-seventies. Even after an alarm was raised following the drastic fall in child sex ratio that became evident in the 1991 census, the government has shown little interest in putting an end to this ghastly crime, " says Sabu George, whose PIL in the Supreme Court in 2000 had forced the government to take some steps towards implementing the law (brought into force in 1994) to stop sex determination and sex selective abortion.

Only Vietnam and China are the only other large countries that share India's ignominy of having such an abnormally skewed sex ratio at birth. Demographers and sociologists are unequivocal in their conclusion that this kind of an imbalance could only happen through pre-natal sex selection or aborting female foetuses.

It is a known fact that boys are slightly more likely to die in infancy than girls. To compensate, more boys are born than girls, a trend seen worldwide and for hundreds of years, which is conjectured to be nature's mechanism to ensure that there will be equal numbers of young men and women at puberty. Worldwide, the normal sex ratio at birth (SRB) is about 950 female babies per 1, 000 male babies, a ratio that has been so stable over time that it appears to be the natural order. But in India, the SRB is around 890 and in China about 875.

With China and India accounting for one-third of the world's population, their poor SRB also skews the world's SRB. Almost 70 per cent of the countries including all the African countries record SRB that is well over normal. However, India and China, along with a few other heavily populated countries such as Russia and Japan, being in the poor SRB club ensure that the SRB for the world is pulled down to just 935.

Interestingly, it is beginning to be acknowledged that in a large number of highly industrialised countries like the US, Canada, Netherlands and the Scandinavian nations, there has been a definite fall in the number of boys being born. In fact, in the two decades between 1970 and 1990, the proportion of male births went down by one whole per cent worldwide. The change is small but real and no one quite knows why and different reasons such as pollution and delayed conception are offered as possible explanations. Even with this minor change, the global SRB continues to fall thanks to girlkiller nations like China and India.

GLOBAL SEX RATIOS AT BIRTH

BELOW 900 Vietnam, India, China

APPROX 940 Russia, Germany, Australia, Japan, Canada

OVER 950 UK, US, France, Mexico, Pakistan, Brazil, Egypt

OVER 960 Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh

OVER 970 South Africa, Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda 

Source: The Times Of  India

March Against Misogyny

"Avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized" 

 An outrageous comment made by a 'sick in the head' cop in Toronto, shot up the epic Slutwalk. Need I say I love it when women act bold? :)

On January 24, 2011 Constable Michael Sanguinetti was a speaker at a York University safety forum,where he was addressing the issue of crime prevention. It was in this context that he commented: "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized."Co-founders Sonya Barnett and Heather Jarvis therefore decided to use the word slut in their demonstration. The organization's website observes that whilst historically, the term ‘slut’ has carried a predominantly negative connotation, the purpose of the SlutWalks is to redeem the name from its negative connotations. The organizers also write that women "are tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by our sexuality and feeling unsafe as a result." They continue:

"Being in charge of our sexual lives should not mean that we are opening ourselves to an expectation of violence, regardless if we participate in sex for pleasure or work."

This is turning into  global movement, and at a great speed that too. London, Sydney, Chicago, Glasgow and other major cities have already Slutwalks, with young women attending in great numbers.

You go girls!

Who Needs Life When There's Honor?

I came across this funny video on YouTube. It sums up the Muslim's 'precious' honor so well.

Forced To Live In The Closet

Pretense. It suffocates you, smothers you, takes away the very essence of who you are. Being forced to live a lie, for fear of your life, your marriage, your family, your children.

While I've been playing the "I'm still a devout Muslim" act solely for the purpose of my safety (if my safety wasn't the issue, I wouldn't bother to pretend, I believe if people really do love me they'd accept me for who I am) for a good while now, I've recently come across so many Ex-Muslim women, either Muslims since birth or converts, being forced to keep their apostasy a secret for reasons different than mine.

Its a sad sight to watch these women wanting to come out as non believers, but refrain from doing so, for they fear their husbands will divorce them, their children will be taken away from them and they will be scarred by the merciless society for life.

It makes you wonder what the reason is behind the Islamic double standards. For example, if you chose to convert to Islam, oh my god, you're the smartest, greatest, most amazing person in the eyes of a Muslim.
But what happens when you decide Islam doesn't make sense to you, if you converted, it was a mistake and if you were born to Muslim parents, well, Islam wasn't really your choice?
The hatred, the despise directed towards you is disturbing. People tell you how you've let them down, denied what Allah has chosen for you, how you're stupid and irrational and deserve to burn in hell. They want to break all relations with you, shun you and in some (sad) cases, even want to see you dead.

Why is apostasy such a taboo in Islam? Is it because it shakes the belief of the so called devout Muslims themselves, or is it that they fear it will probably make other less bigoted people in the community want to think and eventually, leave religion too? Why is an apostate treated like a disease, while a convert to the community will receive all the praise and approval you can dream of?

It is difficult to understand the mind of a devout Muslim, even for me, when I (sort of)used to be one too. What do you think is the reason, that apostates of Islam (mostly women that too, most of the time the men aren't given such a hard time) have to go through what they do? Your thoughts. Thank you :)

My Religious Mother

It breaks my heart to look into my mother eyes. Not that I feel guilty to look into them, no, I haven't done anything wrong to feel guilt of any sort. What breaks my heart is that I don't see an ounce of trust in them, and I fear I even see hatred.

You would think I hate her, I mean, she's threatened to kill me over religion, as if the God in her head is more precious than her own daughter. It made me upset and angry all I felt all the emotions in that category but I don't hate her, nothing near it.

Sometimes I wish I could talk to her and tell her about the things she doesn't see about her religion, but her delusion is too strong to penetrate. Anyone makes a statement that even remotely implies the deception of Islam her defenses flare up as if someone was after her life.

It is safe to say my decision has in fact affected her, making her violent towards me and my siblings, making her indoctrination more forceful than it was for me, making her cynical and distrusting.

Do I blame her for what she has become? Some people may say that she is an adult who should be able to think rationally and not lash out her frustration on her children; but in her defense, I think its the only way she knows, the only way she's seen and the only way she's learned.

I don't hate my mother, I feel like nothing could make me. I just feel sorry, for her and myself. It breaks me to think that she might hate me, I can ell by the way she looks at me. But that doesn't stop me from wanting the freedom I dream of, and I hope she will learn to come to terms with it.

Islam & Psychology of the Musalman

An excerpt from the essay by André Servier. Paris, 1923. Translated by A. S. Moss-Blundell.

Mind of the Musulman

From the point at which we have arrived in this essay, it is not impossible to understand and to explain the psychology of the Arab, and consequently of the Muslim. For the Muslim, whoever he may be, subjected for centuries to the religious law, in itself an expression of the Arab mind, has received so deep an impression from it as to have become totally Arabized. To understand the psychology of the Arab, the mechanism of his brain, is by the same token to account for the psychology of any given Muslim. The African Berber thinks on the same lines, and acts on the same lines as the Syrian, the Turk, the Persian, the Cossack, or the native of Java. All these people being Islamized think and behave as the Arab does.
The religious law, of Arab inspiration, that has been imposed upon the Muslim world, has had the effect of imparting to the very diverse individuals, of whom that world is composed, a unity of thought, of feeling, of conceptions, and of judgment. The scale that has served to measure this thought, these feelings, etc., is an Arab scale; and consequently the minds of all Muslims have been leveled to the stature of the Arab mind. 

The chief characteristic of the Arab, and therefore of the Muslim, is a fixed belief in his own intellectual superiority. Incapable as he is, through the barrenness of his mind and the poverty of his imagination, of conceiving any other condition than his own, any other mode of thought, he firmly believes that he has arrived at an unequaled pitch of perfection; that he is the sole possessor of the true faith, of the true doctrine, the true wisdom; that he alone is in possession of the truth, no relative truth subject to revision, but truth intangible, imperfect-able [which cannot be corrupted] — absolute Truth. 

As an example of this pretentious claim, we may quote one of the most influential members of the Committee of Union and Progress, Sheik Abd-ul-Hack, a civilized Young Turk; writing a few years ago in a Muslim review, published in Paris, he said:

"Yes! the Muslim religion is in open hostility to all your world of progress. Understand, you European observers, that a Christian, whatever his position may be, by the mere fact of his being a Christian is regarded by us as a blind man lost to all sense of human dignity. Our reasoning with regard to him is as simple as it is definitive. We say: the man whose judgment is so perverted as to deny the existence of a one and only God, and to make up gods of different sorts, can only be the meanest expression of human degradation; to speak to him would be a humiliation for our intelligence and an insult to the grandeur of the Master of the Universe. The presence of such miscreants among us is the bane of our existence; their doctrine is a direct insult to the purity of our faith; contact with them is a defilement of our bodies; any relation with them a torture to our souls. Though detesting you, we have condescended to study your political institutions and your military organization. Over and above the new weapons that Providence procures for us through your agency, you have yourselves rekindled the inextinguishable faith of our heroic martyrs. Our Young Turks, our Babis, our new Brotherhoods, all our sects, under various forms, are inspired by the same idea, the same necessity of moving forward. Towards what end? Christian civilization? Never! Islam is one great international family. All true believers are brothers. A community of feeling and of faith binds them in mutual affection. It is for the Caliph to facilitate these relations and to rally the Faithful under the sacerdotal standard."

Convinced that he is the elect of God (Moustafa), assured that his people is the one nation chosen among all others by the divinity, the Muslim has the certitude of being the only one called to enjoy the celestial rewards. And so, for those who do not think as he does, for the wanderers who do not follow the straight way, he feels a pity made up of contempt for their intellectual inferiority, of horror for their decadence, and of compassion for the frightful future of punishment that awaits them. 

This conviction, which nothing can weaken, inspires the Muslim with an inalienable attachment to his traditions. Outside Islam there can be no safety; outside its law, no truth, no happiness. The evolution of foreign nations, the increasing accumulations of their knowledge, scientific progress, the improvements effected by human effort in material well-being leave him indifferent. He is the Believer, par excellence, the superior, the perfect Being. 

This conception, as has been truly remarked, divides the world into two parts: Believers and Infidels. The Believer is in a state of perpetual war with the Infidel, and this right, this duty of eternal war can only be suspended: 

"Make war," says the Holy Book, "on those who believe neither in God nor in the last judgment, who do not regard as forbidden what God and his Prophet have forbidden, on those who do not profess the true religion, until they, humbled in spirit, shall pay tribute with their own hands.”

The Muslim, convinced of his own superiority, will not suffer any teaching. As typical of his mode of reasoning, we may quote the words of a Young Tunisian, Bechir Sfar: "The North of Africa is inhabited by an amalgam of peoples who claim descent from a celebrated race, the Arab race, and who profess a religion of unity, the Muslim religion. Now, this race and this religion conquered and colonized an empire more vast than the Roman Empire. The North Africans alone have to their credit sixty years of domination in the South of France, eight centuries in Spain, and three centuries in Sicily. . . . This slight digression is made with the object of recalling to those who might be tempted to forget it that we belong to a race, to a religion, and to a civilization equal in historical glory and in the force of assimilation to any other race whatever, to any other religion or civilization of ancient or modern peoples."

 
Intellectually, the Muslim is, nevertheless, a paralytic; his brain, subjected in the course of centuries to the rough discipline of Islam, is closed to all that has not been foreseen, announced and specified by the religious law. He is, therefore, systematically hostile to all novelty, to all modification, to all innovation. 


Whatever exists has been created by the will of the Almighty. It is not for man to modify His work. If God had wished that what exists should be different, he would have made it so, irrespective of all human volition. To act is thus, to some extent, to misunderstand the divine decisions, to wish to substitute human desires for them, to commit an act of insubordination. Such a conception puts all progress out of the question; and, in fact, immobility is the essential characteristic of every Muslim community. 


As has been remarked, 

"The Muslim, remaining faithful to his religion, has not progressed; he has remained stationary in a world of swiftly moving modern forces. It is, indeed, one of the salient features of Islamism that it immobilizes in their native barbarism the races whom it enslaves. It is fixed in a crystallization inert and impenetrable. It is unchangeable; and political, social or economic changes have no repercussion upon it.”

Renan has shown that the Semites were incapable of rising to the conception of a general idea. A Muslim would willingly associate with Europeans in Christian anti-clericalism, but he would never tolerate the least attempt against his own belief. One instance, among a hundred others, may be given of this assertion: Some years ago there met at Algiers an Oriental Congress, at which European, Egyptian and Turkish savants were present. They dealt first with biblical exegesis. Certain linguists sought to prove that several passages in the Old Testament were apochryphal and that they had consequently no historic value. Nobody protested. But, when these same savants wished to exercise their erudition and their critical powers upon the Koran, their Muslim colleagues protested with the most lively indignation against what they considered as sacrilege. The discussion became so heated that the Governor-General had to intervene. 


As has been seen, the Muslim escapes from all propaganda; he even escapes from violence, because Islam authorizes him to bow for the time before superior force, when circumstances require it. The religious law in no way imposes upon him an attitude which might expose him to danger or to reprisals. It even permits him, in case of extreme peril, to transgress the dogmas. The commentators on the Koran quote numerous examples of this liberty: Ammar Ben Yasir was excused by the Prophet himself for outwardly praising pagan gods and insulting Mohammed, at a time when in his heart he was firmly attached to the Muslim religion. This procedure was admitted by the earlier doctors of the Law. Afterwards, it was recommended to employ ambiguous expressions as far as possible, words of double meaning, to give less force to these denials. The practice was called taqiyyah, after a passage in the Koran. It was used by the Shiites in their constant propaganda against the Ommeyads. 


We even find taqiyyah used to satisfy private interests, in oaths for instance; it consists in the use of words with a double meaning or in mental reservation.The Muslim may, therefore, bend to foreign authority when he is not strong enough to resist; he may even make terms with it, and accept titles and favors; but, as soon as he feels himself in a position to revolt, he should immediately do so; it is an imperative duty. 


In the twelfth century, Averrhoës wanted to Islamize Greek knowledge, in order to incorporate it into Islam. He was looked upon as an ungodly man and was persecuted. In modern times, the same attempts have been made from time to time, and have ended in the same failure. It is not without profit to dwell upon these efforts, as they explain the poverty of the results attained by the efforts of European nations in Muslim countries: France in North Africa; England in India and Egypt; Holland in Sumatra; and Italy in Tripolitania. 


The various societies for social emancipation, Masonic Lodges, League of the Rights of Man, Educational League, the Positivist Society, etc., have, since the middle of the nineteenth century, multiplied their efforts to spread their liberal doctrines among Muslims. They have failed in their task because the neophytes to whom they addressed themselves were not sincere. Those who seemed completely emancipated showed, at the touch-stone of events, that they had preserved their prejudices, their hatreds, and their Oriental mentality entire. 


A curious example may be quoted: A member of all the Societies of free thinkers, and notably of the Positivist Committee, of which he was the delegate for Turkey, Ahmed Riza, in his newspaper Michveret, covered with obloquy the means of government employed by Abd-ul-Hamid; he demanded liberty of the Press; he proclaimed the equality of the races of the Empire, and the necessity of the existence of political parties; in this, he spoke as a free thinker, as a disciple of the French Revolution. But he changed his note as soon as he was in power. As president of the Ottoman Chamber, he had no word of pity for the victims, no word of indignation for the assassins, after the massacres of Adana, when more than twenty thousand Armenians were done to death; he allowed the new law against the Press to be voted, which suppressed all independence of thought in Turkey. In July, 1910, he silenced those liberals in the Chamber who demanded the abolition of the state of siege that had been in force since the revolution of the 18th April, he raised no protest against the executions of liberal politicians by court-martial. In Paris, he declared himself a free thinker, but at Constantinople, he regularly performed the namaz (prayer) in the Chamber, so as to assure the religious party of his profound faith. 


More recently, in 1922-1923, the government of Ankara furnished a fresh example of incurable Muslim fanaticism. This Government, which claims to be actuated by modern ideas, deposed the Sultan whom it accused of making terms with foreigners and of not showing himself sufficiently firm in defense of the interests of Islam. One of its members, Abeddin Bey, deputy for Logiztan, tore off his necktie in the tribune and made the assembly, before rising, vote the prohibition of the use of wearing apparel made abroad. Other deputies declared their determination to restore the faith to its primitive austerity. They demanded punishments for Turkish women of easy virtue who sold their favors to infidels. They made the wearing of the orthodox head-dress obligatory; they forbade the use of alcohol, and even of wine; they decreed the closing of the European schools. During the war against the Greeks, the Turkish journals called the Muslim soldiers: Moujahid (from Djihad, holy war), that is to say combatants for the faith, soldiers of the holy war; and those who fell on the field of battle, Chahid, i.e., martyrs. 


One might multiply examples to prove that the Muslim is beyond the reach of foreign influences; that, in spite of appearances, he preserves his peculiar mentality, his profound faith, his deep-rooted hatreds; that he is refractory to all civilization.
The Muslim community can neither be modified nor improved; it is crystallized in an unassailable formula; its ideal is exclusively religious, or rather, it is two-fold: one half religious, the other political — Mahdism and the Caliphate.

 
Mahdism is the realization on earth of religious aspirations, through the intervention of a personage chosen by the divinity — the Mahdi; it is the supremacy of the Islamic faith over all other religions.
The Caliphate is the ideal of the Islamic State, placed under the sceptre of a Caliph. It is the liberation of the Muslim peoples bowed beneath the infidel yoke; it is the restoration of the defunct splendor of the Muslim 

Empire, such as it was under the successors of the Prophet, under the Ommeyads and the Abbassids.
These two forms of the Muslim ideal are not always in perfect accord: they sometimes clash, although, after all, their aim is identical, namely, the triumph of Islam.
The hopes of the Caliphites center by preference upon the most powerful independent Sultan, who is the protector and the natural champion of Islam; at the present moment it is the Ottoman Sultan; but the office and the sentiments upon which it rests are always international. 


The Mahdist movements, on the contrary, are essentially the expression of local discontent. It is the Muslim form of that hatred which among all nations and at all times arrays the conquered against their conquerors. So long as Islam exists, the Mahdist doctrine will be the spark that may at any moment set ablaze the discontent of the natives. There is no colonial policy capable of indefinitely avoiding these fatal sentiments and the sudden troubles to which they may give rise. 


The doctrine of the Caliphate, on the other hand, is essentially political; it is of a higher, more complex order; its conception calls for a more developed intellectual culture; it is that of the Young Turks, of the Young Egyptians, of the Young Tunisians, of the Young Algerians; and tomorrow, it will be that of the Young Moroccans, as soon as the instruction now being given in the French schools shall have partially civilized the natives of Morocco. At the outset, the Caliphate idea was religious, like every other manifestation of the Muslim spirit; but it was not long in extending its borders to embrace politics, and to dream of a formidable Muslim power, which should present itself finally as a quasi-laic restoration of the vanished Oriental civilization, in opposition to the Christian civilization of Europe. In other words, it is Muslim nationalism; all the faithful of Islam forming part of one ideal country. 


The strangest part of it is that this doctrine of the Caliphate has borrowed its essential principles from Europe. At the time of the fall of Abdul-Hamid, the Young Turks firmly believed that they were reviving the French Revolution; a number of them were Freemasons. One of the masters to whom they appealed, Al Afghani Leijed-Djemmal-ed-Din al-Husseini, who died in 1897, belonged to an Egyptian Lodge; he was honored by the friendship of Renan, who has devoted a eulogistic note to him, reproduced in his Essays.
Ahmed Riza Bey and Dr. Nazim, two influential members of the C.U.P., used to belong to the Positivist Society of France; but both of them have kept their Muslim mentality, in spite of appearances.
Sawas Pasha, an Ottoman Christian and a liberal thinker, but who thinks as a Christian and not as a Muslim, says, in his Studies on the theory of Muslim Law: "One can render not only acceptable to, but even compulsory on the Muslim conscience all progress, all truth, every legal disposition, not hitherto accepted by the Mohammedan community or inscribed in its Law." 


Attempts to civilize the Muslims, inspired by this formula, ended in failure, because they came into collision with a religion fiercely conservative and an intransigent fanaticism. It may be admitted that, theoretically, fanaticism is not incurable; but it has to be recognized nevertheless that Muslim fanaticism is absolutely irreducible. That is why the Khairallah effort of the Young Turk party towards progress was, from the outset, checked by the mass of the faithful, hostile to all innovation. To maintain itself in power, this party was obliged to deny the principles it had in the first instance proclaimed. 


The revolutionary idea had germinated in the minds of the Jewish and Christian populations subject to Turkey; and it was they who prepared the movement of emancipation; but as soon as it became an accomplished fact and the Muslim Turks attempted to set up regular authority, they reverted to the narrow ideas of religious nationalism and fanaticism. The formidable insurrection in the Yemen, which tended to the dethronement of the Sultan of Turkey in favor of a Caliph of Arab race, was nothing but a movement of reaction against new ideas: against Western ideas. It may be compared to the Wahabite movement, and had the same object — the restoration of Islam to its original purity, by ridding it of European admixture.
More recently, the popular movement which committed the actual direction of the Ottoman Empire to the government of Ankara, was inspired by identical sentiments, and the first act of the government was to depose the Sultan on the ground of too great a complaisance towards foreigners.
One of the most eminent Orientalists of the present day, Snouck Hurgronje, whose works have thrown a startling light upon the psychology of Muslim nations, has proved irrefutably the falsity of the theories of Sawas Pasha. It will be useful to sum up his argument:
The Creed and the Law of Islam have become in the course of their evolution less and less flexible; the political and social happenings of modern times afford ample proof of this. The question is not what we, with our methods of reasoning, are going to do with the dogmas of Islam, but rather what Islam itself, following its own doctrine and its own history, wishes to deduce from them. 


Islam would have to deny in toto its historic past to enter upon the path traced for it by Sawas Pasha. Doubtless, whether they like it or not, the Muslims have to accommodate themselves gradually to the manners and institutions proceeding from modern Europe; but it is not to be imagined that the juridical theory, springing from the very heart of Mohammedan populations, which has maintained itself against all contrary influences, is going to yield today to any action coming from outside. Islam, as soon as it sees itself attacked, withdraws to its strongest positions. 


The Muslim certainly makes some concessions which do not affect any religious principle: for instance, he accepts the railway, the telegraph, the steamship; but the civilization which has produced these things, together with its legislative principles, is, for all the faithful, an abomination that they will only tolerate under compulsion. As for the young men educated in French schools, they calmly superimpose foreign science upon their traditional faith, without making any attempt to reconcile the two. 


Islam forms a block of intangible traditions, of prejudices, of bigoted faith. The Muslim, bound by his religion, cannot accept Western progress. The two civilizations are too different, too much opposed ever to admit of mutual inter-penetration.

 

Islam was not spread by the sword

“Islam was not spread by the sword,” I’ve been hearing these words since forever.  “Islam is the religion of peace, when people were introduced to Islam, they felt like Divine Knowledge had been revealed to them, like Allah had chosen them and readily accepted Islam.”

History states quite the opposite. History records years of Muslims invasions and oppression, murder rape, loot and barbarian rampages. True, history is full of such incidents and such behavior is not confined to Muslim invaders, but Muslims do have a specialty of covering their bloody past and projecting themselves as the peace loving, friendly and just lot that they are. No, not a single life was taken when they were bringing Islam out of their little cocoon in the Middle East. It was all song and dance, everyone accepted Islam just like that, no questions asked, no one beheaded. Sounds fishy to me…

Perhaps the followers of the Religion of Peace are oblivious of Mahmud of Ghazni, the most prominent ruler of the Ghaznavid dynasty, with his iconoclastic plundering and destruction of Hindu temples, all in the name of jihad. Mahmud’s invasion is described as one in which he “put thousands of Hindus to the sword” and made a pastime of "raising pyramids of the skulls of the Hindus".

Or perhaps they even choose to ignore Firuz Shah Tughlaq, another star in the bloody history of the Religion or Peace. Under his rule, the Hindus, the infidels were forced to pay Jizya tax and if the infidels dared to build temples, to practice their religion in their homeland, they were executed. But the most heinous act by this slave of Allah was execution of Brahmans who refused to convert to the one and only true religion. A disturbing account of one such incident is found in the "Tarikh-i-Firuz Shah" is a historical record written during his reign that attests to the systematic persecution of Hindus under his rule:

An order was accordingly given to the Brahman and was brought before Sultan. The true faith was declared to the Brahman and the right course pointed out. But he refused to accept it. A pile was risen on which the Kaffir with his hands and legs tied was thrown into and the wooden tablet on the top. The pile was lit at two places his head and his feet. The fire first reached him in the feet and drew from him a cry and then fire completely enveloped him. Behold Sultan for his strict adherence to law and rectitude.

As gruesome as Firuz Shah’s atrocities were, they were no match for Timur’s, or Tamerlane, as he is known in the West. Timur’s exploits are best described in his own words, found in his memoir, Tuzk-i-Timuri. In them, he vividly describes the massacre at Delhi:

In a short space of time all the people in the [Delhi] fort were put to the sword, and in the course of one hour the heads of 10,000 infidels were cut off. The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the infidels, and all the goods and effects, the treasure and the grain which for many a long year had been stored in the fort became the spoil of my soldiers. They set fire to the houses and reduced them to ashes, and they razed the buildings and the fort to the ground....All these infidel Hindus were slain, their women and children, and their property and goods became the spoil of the victors. I proclaimed throughout the camp that every man who had infidel prisoners should put them to death, and whoever neglected to do so should himself be executed and his property given to the informer. When this order became known to the ghazis of Islam, they drew their swords and put their prisoners to death.

One hundred thousand infidels, impious idolaters, were on that day slain. Maulana Nasiruddin Umar, a counselor and man of learning, who, in all his life, had never killed a sparrow, now, in execution of my order, slew with his sword fifteen idolatrous Hindus, who were his captives....on the great day of battle these 100,000 prisoners could not be left with the baggage, and that it would be entirely opposed to the rules of war to set these idolaters and enemies of Islam at liberty...no other course remained but that of making them all food for the sword.

I could go on about the ransack and destruction of various Hindu temples during Aurangzeb’s reign, in place of which he constructed mosques. Or about Tipu Sultan, the bigoted ruler, who forced conversions of Hindus and Christians under his jurisdiction.  There was also the Nizam of Hyderabad, who called the Hindus in his state traitors, treated them like second class citizens and even persecuted 1,50,000 Hindus during the period of India’s Independence, in order to declare Hyderabad a complete Islamic state.

The atrocities of the slaves of Allah in the Indian subcontinent might as well be the most disturbing and gruesome of their barbaric plundering, but their brutality in the Persian Empire was nothing less. In an attempt to establish Allah’s rule in Persia, to bring the true religion to the fire worshipping infidels, the Arabs conquered Persia in the mid 7^th century and their deeds there are nothing but monstrous. The Arabs set out to destroy Zoroastrianism and establish Islam as the official religion of the state. The Zoroastrians were given the state of dhimmis and were subjected to persecutions, harassment and discrimination that began in the form of sparse violence and forced conversions.  Failure to pay Jizya tax resulted in imprisonment or persecution. Zoroastrian slaves captured in war were only given freedom if they converted to Islam. Fire temples were destroyed and mosques were built in their place. Laws were imposed restricting the social and political participation of Zoroastrians, with the intention that they would be forced to convert to Islam. Many Zoroastrians converted to Islam to escape from this torture the Muslims inflicted upon them in their own homeland. Over time, the persecution of Zoroastrians was increasing and the number of believers was steadily declining. An Iranian scholar commented, “Why so many had to die or suffer? Because one side was determined to impose his religion upon the other who could not understand."

In later years, Zoroastrians were subjected to public humiliation, when the Muslims declared them najis (impure) unfit to live with and hence forced them to evacuate cities, restricting them from the fields of society, education and work.

The Battle of Ullais was followed by what could be called the most gruesome depiction of the Muslim conquests in Persia. Khalid ibn al-Walid vowed in his prayer to Allah: “O Lord! If You give us victory, I shall see that no enemy warrior is left alive until their river runs with their blood!"

And so he did. After the war, Khalid ibn al-Walid ordered all the prisoners of war to be decapitated. In the river Khaseef the blood was still not flowing, as Khalid had pledged, until on the advice of Qa'qa ibn Amr one of the commanders of the Muslim army, Khalid ordered the dam on the river to be opened. The river then flowed with blood, and it became known as the River of Blood. When the city of Estakhr in the south, a Zoroastrian religious center, put up stiff resistance against the Arab invaders, 40,000 residents were slaughtered or hanged. An instance of religious oppression is recorded when an Arab governor appointed a commissioner to supervise the destruction of fire temples throughout Iran, regardless of treaty obligations. One of the Umayyad Caliphs was quoted saying, "milk the Persians and once their milk dries, suck their blood".

The Muslims mercilessly continued to torture the Persians, so much that some of them fled to India and the rest were forced to convert to Islam gradually. There is much that hasn’t been covered in the history of the Religion of Peace’s mission to bring the ‘light of Islam’ to their Asian brothers and all of it is equally barbaric and repulsive. The Abbasids (who probably were the worst oppressors of all times), The Ummayads, The Safarids, The Samanids, all destructed the rich land of Persia, in the name of Allah. There were repeated periods of forced conversions by The Samavids and those who refused, it is said that rivers ran red with their blood. During the Qajar dynasty, traveler A.V.W. Jackson noted that Zoroastrians lived in constant fear of persecution by Muslim extremists and their lives were in danger whenever the fanatical spirit of Islam broke out. The humiliation they faced went to such an extent that they were not allowed to step out during the rainy season, because the water that touched their bodies and fell on the ground would pollute the Muslims. Arab Jizya collectors would mock Zoroastrians for wearing Kusthi and would rip it off, hanging the cord around the necks of the beleaguered faithful.

I cannot talk enough about the plight of the Zoroastrians under the Muslims and the horrors they had to face. These are the deeds of the slaves of Allah, the god who claims to be The Most Merciful, whose religion is that of peace of brotherhood. And they say Islam was not spread by the sword…

Coming to the modern world, we have Muslims crying about how the Jews are torturing the Palestinians, how the Americans are killing their brethren in Iraq and Afghanistan, how the whole world is conspiring against them, planning the destruction of the innocent followers of Allah’s true religion. What we don’t hear them crying about is how their fellow Muslims are killing both, non Muslims AND Muslims in so many parts of the world.

Yes, there are Palestinians who suffer every day; yes, a lot of Iraqis and Afghans are in fact victimized by America, I don’t deny that. I feel for them, for their children who are in misery. But I also feel for the Copts in Egypt. You won’t hear a Muslim raising his voice against the discrimination of Copts in Egypt, how their religious freedom is hampered, how converts from Islam to Christianity are brutally murdered. No, you won’t hear them talk about how Christian girls in Egypt are kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam, how they are raped and forced to marry Muslim men.

The Muslims do not care about Sudan, where 1.5 million Christians have been persecuted by the Janjaweed, the Arab Muslim militia, and even suspected Islamists in northern Sudan since 1984. It is a violation to religious freedom when France bans the Burka, but it somehow isn’t an issue when Saudi Arabia imposes the same on every woman, Muslim or not, prevents public practice of any religion but Islam, where converts from Islam are executed. No, that’s completely alright.

The Indonesian Muslim extremists continue to demand imposition of Sharia and have burned estimated 600 churches till date. The Iranian Government persecutes converts to Christianity from Islam.

Muslims love to rant about how America and Israel are on a mission to destroy their ummah, conveniently ignoring the age old Shia Sunni wars, where both groups, especially in Afghanistan are on a rampage to wipe out each other. Suicide bombings in hospitals, weddings, offices streets are so common. The Shias are known for torturing to death or summarily" executing "hundreds" of Sunnis "every month in Baghdad alone," many arrested at random. Persecutions of the Ahmaddiya sect, clashes between the Chinese Muslims and Uyghurs, violence against Alawites in Syria, persecution of Takfiris, Ajlaf and Azral Muslims, all of this by Muslims themselves.

Do these people even deserve to be so much as associated with the word peace? Where do the moderates go, when the Muslims shed blood in so many parts of the world? What happens to their voices then? Do they have no compassion for those victimized by Muslims? Why is there no hue and cry every time a Christian child is killed in Egypt by the Muslims? Or when Muslim children themselves are targeted by these self proclaimed peaceful bandits?

Your thoughts. Thanks :)

The Atheist Blogroll

Freedom To Choose has been added to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see the blogroll in my sidebar. The Atheist Blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers around the globe. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts  for more details.

On Children

I read this beautiful poem by Khalil Gibran. No one could've said it better. I wish someone would show this to my parents...

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Freedom from Religion

I was born to Muslim parents. A mother who had been very religious all her life, and a father who had become zealously religious (coming from a relatively liberal background) after his marriage to that woman.

As with every child born to Muslim parents, the adhan was recited into my ears and thus it was decided. My religion, my deen, was to be Islam, Islam was what I was supposed to be holding true till the day I die. Allah was the one whom I was supposed to be worshiping till my last breath.

Growing up, I was learning to read the Quran in Arabic, Allah’s language, I was learning to pray, fast and do everything Allah’s Prophet Muhammad taught the Muslim ummah to do. I loved the look on my mother’s face every time I recited a new surah for her, every time she was praised for bringing up a good Muslim girl. At the age of 12, I told my parents I wanted to observe hijab. They were so proud of me, everyone was. I was told Allah was pleased with me and that made me very happy at that time. To please my creator so he would save me from hellfire, the scariest thing I’d ever heard of, that was my goal.

Like any other child I was curious and I had many doubts and questions. My mother used to read to me stories of prophets: Adam, Nuh, Ibrahim, Yusuf, Musa, Isa and all the others. It was these stories that created first doubts in me back then. Why, for example, did Allah create Satan if He knew what he was going to do? Why did Allah have to test Ibrahim? Didn’t Allah see the future? Didn’t Allah himself determine the future? And how about us? Has Allah also determined which of us go to Heaven and which of us go to Hell? How was this life a test, if the result is what Allah wants it to be and is in fact predestined from the very start?

Every time I asked I got the same answer: Islam is blind faith, Islam demands blind faith Allah doesn’t want you to question (5:101). Besides, Allah knows best.

So the questions were left unanswered and I was forced to bury them, because Allah apparently didn’t want me to think about them. There was one question I didn’t ask, I somehow understood it was controversial and I kept it to myself. Though I couldn’t help wondering, what if we have the wrong God? What if Allah wasn’t God, what if it was Krishna or Jesus or some other God unheard of? What then?

Whenever I thought of this, I felt guilt, shame and disgust towards myself. I asked Allah to forgive me for having such thoughts and guide me, I tried doing every thing I could to please Allah, so that he’d be pleased and let me into Paradise. It became an obsession.

At 15 I had read the Quran several times in Arabic, but I felt the need to read it in a language I understood. I felt it imperative to understand what Allah was commanding mankind to do in His final book. So I took to reading the Quran in English.

At first I was fascinated, thrilled even by Allah’s words, but that died out soon enough. As I read on, I was surprised to find absurd, illogical stories, barbaric laws and more misogyny than I had ever come across. All those questions I had as a child and many more began to race through my head and I repeated to myself the same sentence my mother told me as a child: Allah knows best.

No I didn’t think a man should be permitted to hit his wife or even have more than one wife, to control them and ‘use’ them whenever and however he wanted to.

No I didn’t think a woman’s testimony was worth half of a man’s, or that men were better than women or that her period was dirty, an illness.

But it didn’t matter what I thought, this was what the Creator of the Universe had decided and this is how it was suppose to be. So once again I buried my doubts and continued reading.

Around this time I heard of EDMD – Everybody Draw Muhammad Day - on Facebook. I had never been more outraged. These people were mocking Prophet Muhammad, the noblest man to ever walk the surface of the Earth, the man Allah Himself chose as His Messenger, the best among the best of mankind. And these people, these ignorant people wanted to mock and disgrace this great man?

EDMD was something of a reality check for me. Up until now I assumed everyone in the world either belonged to one the Abrahamic religions or was a Hindu, those were the only religions I had seen. And as a good Muslim would, I hated them. I hated the Jews and Christians because they were enemies of Allah, of the Prophet and of the Ummah, constantly conspiring to destroy us. I hated the Hindus because they associated partners with Allah.

But on EDMD I found that not only people had myriads of very different religious ideas, but also that there were people who didn’t worship any god, or even said god didn’t exist at all. Atheists. I thought they were crazy, absurd for saying that the Universe wasn’t created. Where did it come from then? At that time, they were another group of people for me to hate. Another group of people who denied the true religion, Islam and had strange ideas I’d never heard of.

I was there, defending Islam, conveying its meaning to these delusional people, whose ideas came from Allah knows where. Here I was forced to confront the doubts and questions I pushed at the back of my closet, that I didn’t want to think about and so much more.

I heard of things about the Muslim Ummah I was unaware of. How Theo Van Gogh was brutally killed in the middle of the street by a Muslim for making a movie critical of Islam. How people were killed in Islamic countries for converting to other religions. How homosexuals were executed in public and so much more that Muslims never spoke of. All we cried about is how the West was destroying our countries and killing our people or how the Jews were torturing the Palestinians or how the Hindus discriminated against us in India but we never, ever spoke about how so many Muslims were being killed by Muslims themselves, how Muslims were killing non Muslims in so many places. All of that just didn’t matter. It was only important when we were victimized by someone else. That’s all we cared about.

I was questioned about Prophet Muhammad’s lifestyle. The man I held to be the perfect example to follow didn’t seem so perfect anymore. His marriage to 9 year old Aisha when he was 53 (it doesn’t matter if it was a custom then, Muhammad was supposed to the ultimate example for all times), his massacre of the Banu Qurayza tribe, his multiple wives and concubines and they way he “acquired” them. The robberies, rape and murders his men carried on by his command disgusted me. I was ashamed of looking up to this man but I was also afraid of admitting it. So I found myself trying to justify all of it and the more I tried, the more I realized I didn’t think it was right.

I decided to read the Quran again and not shut my thought process this time. When I did, I felt like the whole religion was falling apart. I found the story of the cow in Surah Baqra absolutely ridiculous, the story of Solomon and his talking ants silly to the maximum, the story of the elephants in Surah Feel absurd. None of it made sense. I was afraid to admit it to myself, but it was becoming undeniable. So I prayed to Allah to help me out of it. I thought He was testing me and I asked for help. But none came. Slowly I did admit that I didn’t agree with what the Quran had to say, I didn’t agree with Allah’s law and His Prophet’s teachings. I began viewing the Quran critically and now became bold enough to point out errors, in grammar; Allah is very confused when it comes to using pronouns.

I started to question the very core premises of Islam: for example, Allah’s hell clearly didn’t seem to be a form of justice, but a threatened eternal, unlimited, brutal punishment for a limited “crimes” committed in a limited and short lifetime, the gravest of which was disbelief, the most heinous deed a person could do, in the eyes of Allah. Forget genocide, child rape, atrocious things like that – disbelief and/or shirk is what Allah cares about the most.

Allah’s dislike of, hatred even, for women, His own creation, and constant discrimination against them, was another thing that repulsed me. His constant calls for war against those who “deny” Him when He doesn’t bother to provide any meaningful proof of His existence … I could continue on and on and on.

I began studying the origins of Islam and it did seem very blatantly man made, created by Muhammad to control the Arabs and make them dance to his tunes.

Islam’s obsession with controlling every single thing, from how you position your feet while you pray, to how you clean yourself after defecating, to how men grow their beards, to how one should position himself while sleeping, to literally making regulations about passing gas, all this small-minded pettiness pointed towards an origin in a mind of an obsessive man, a petty control-freak, hardly a God who created the whole Universe. It seemed to me that such a majestic creator of something so vast would not be weirdly fixated on one tiny planet in one corner of a Galaxy and bothered to send “guidance” only to a single, geographically firmly constrained region of this tiny planet, the Middle Eastern deserts. An impotent God, because not only did He fail to protect the books He supposedly sent earlier but also the “final” book He swore to protect. It isn’t true that the Quran is in its original from, the way Muhammad apparently ‘revealed’ it, one needs to do very little research to realize that, but Muslims choose to ignore that and rant about how their perfect book is “unchanged” and “perfect”. As if it meant anything at all to begin with.

Islam isn’t divine, Allah isn’t a god and Muhammad was a liar, it took me a while to realize that but I did. It is not rocket science, all you need is a little rational thinking and honesty, it is difficult to let go of something you’ve been holding to be true for as long as you can remember but it doesn’t feel good to believe a lie and it can be a great relief to finally let go of ghastly and primitive desert superstitions.

Words of Muhammad or Allah?

Muhammad’s Quran portrays a rather peculiar image of God. Muhammad’s God, Allah has a too many human, fallible characteristics, to be a Perfect Creator, the Creator of the infinite Universe.

Allah is insecure, jealous; hate mongering, cruel, fickle and all too easily available at his beloved Prophet, Muhammad’s disposal to be divine.

For example, Allah’s insecurity is evident in verse 22 of Surah Isra

Set not up with Allah any other ilah (god), (O man) or you will sit down reproved, forsaken (in the Hell-fire).

But if Allah is the only god, then why must he worry about rivalry? This hatred for his imaginary rivals, is it not psychopathic? Is the creator of the universe a lunatic? If there is no other god but him, why is he so nervous?

Allah craves to be worshipped, craves attention and threatens to torture those who fail to oblige eternally. He commands killing those who refuse to acknowledge him as their creator, those who fail to give him his due credit.

Our solar system is not even a speck in our vast galaxy and our vast galaxy is not even a speck in the unending universe. And yet, yet the Creator of the universe insists that we bow down to him in submission five times a day else accept the fact that we will spend eternity in damnation.

What is strange is that Allah finds it worthwhile to come to the assistance of his beloved messenger, whenever he may need him. Allah is available when the messenger needs to drive away guests from his house, marry the wife of his adopted son or when he needs more women to fulfill his carnal desires.

A number of Quranic verses only too clearly tell you that Islam is not from the Lord, that the creator of the Universe did not write the Quran, that he did not reveal it to Muhammad 1400 years ago and a good number of those show you how Islam was a cult, started by who craved complete control and obedience, who was looking to fulfill his unending sexual desires.

Quran 33:55

O ye who believe! Enter not the Prophet's houses- until leave is given you- for a meal, (and then) not (as early as) to wait for its preparation: but when ye are invited, enter; and when ye have taken your meal, disperse, without seeking familiar talk. Such (behavior) annoys the Prophet: he is ashamed to dismiss you, but Allah is not ashamed (to tell you) the truth.

It is amazing, truly remarkable, that Muhammad’s Allah, who out of all the issues in the world that needed attention, chose to talk about annoying guests in his prophet’s house. Are these the words of a god?

Allah willingly interfered in Muhammad’s sexual life, when he needed a new wife to add to his harem or just another playmate:

33:50

And any believing woman who dedicates her soul to the Prophet if the Prophet wishes to wed her;- this only for thee, and not for the Believers

Of course, these favors, these exceptions were especially for Muhammad from Allah, who was ever ready to please him, like Aisha once said:

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 62, Number 48: Narrated Hisham's father:

Khaula bint Hakim was one of those ladies who presented themselves to the Prophet for marriage. 'Aisha said, "Doesn't a lady feel ashamed for presenting herself to a man?" But when the Verse: "(O Muhammad) You may postpone (the turn of) any of them (your wives) that you please,' (33.51) was revealed, " 'Aisha said, 'O Allah's Apostle! I do not see, but, that your Lord hurries in pleasing you.' "

When it came to ‘disciplining’ his wives, the lovely husband that Prophet Muhammad was:

33:30

O Consorts of the Prophet! If any of you were guilty of evident unseemly conduct, the Punishment would be doubled to her, and that is easy for Allah.

Or satiating his materialistic greed:

8:41

And know that out of all the booty that ye may acquire (in war), a fifth share is assigned to Allah- and to the Messenger,

Or his obsession, his thirst for control and obedience:

4:115

If anyone contends with the Messenger even after guidance has been plainly conveyed to him, and follows a path other than that becoming to men of Faith, We shall leave him in the path he has chosen, and land him in Hell,- what an evil refuge!

4:80

He who obeys the Messenger has obeyed Allah; but those who turn away - We have not sent you over them as a guardian.

Allah has prepared a blazing fire for those who reject Allah and his apostle, Muhammad...48:13

Allah had a verse ready every time. Or were these the words of a mere mortal human, looking to fulfil his wicked desires by terrorizing the people with punishment and eternal torture.

Would a god be so sadistic, so cruel and so utterly insecure and pathetic?

Isn’t the Islamic God, Allah only too human to be divine? Is his book truly perfect?

Are these not the words of a man and not of a god?

Who I am

Being a girl born to religious Muslim parents, my whole life has been chalked out for me, I'm to get married, have kids, be a great Muslim daughter, wife, mother and any other role someone else wants me to play. That's basically how it us for us girls, we're not allowed to choose for ourselves, live for ourselves.

At 17, I decided I want to change that.

I turned 17 today, 9th March 2011. I've been dreaming of having a life of my own, studying what I want, living how I want, marrying someone I want to, if at all I do and not someone my parents pick for me. I've had dreams- dreams to be independent and be in charge of my life, not do what other people decide for me. I want to be able to make choices for myself, be it what I wear or what I study or whom I see or what religion I want to follow.

When my mother learnt I was an atheist, that I denied her beloved god and his prophet, denied everything she taught me about her perfect religion, the one and only accepted by god almighty, she threatened to kill me. I've been pretending ever since. I have so much to say, so much that I think about and I've been keeping it to myself until now.


Why am I blogging?
I don't really know. I guess there is a lot I want to discuss, a lot I want to share and a lot I want to express.


I try to be the normal religious Muslim kid I used to be. I wear the hijab, I pray, fast and greet every Muslim I know with a smile and a salaam. But I don't want to do it anymore. It disgusts me, being a part, or even pretending to be, of the most vile cult you would come across in my opinion. 


I'm going to change that, I know I will, I just don't know how.

Regards

Turning point

A couple of months before I finally told myself that I didn't believe in Allah or Muhammad, that I was lying to myself and that I wasn't really a Muslim, I didn't even want to be, I had a friend show me a video.
I could say this video was the turning point, that after I saw this I realized I didn't agree with Islam, with anything it said and I had to stop fooling myself.

This video had the prominent Islamic scholar, Dr. Zakir Naik, answering a woman's question about Islam allowing a man to beat his wife. I was horrified then, and I'm horrified every time I watch it.
 Dr. Naik compares beating your wife to beating your five year old son. As if she was as naive or foolish as a five year old boy wanting to jump out from a window.

Is that the respect this man gives the women in his life? His wife is suppose to 'obey' him? Like she's his slave or property who must do what he tells her to? That she must be beaten if she breaks a rule? He somehow assumes that he is smarter than her, knows whats good for her better than her and hence she must listen to him, do what he says, or tolerate a beating. Keeping in mind in fact, that she has no right to correct him in a similar manner when he errs. Yes, Islam treats men and women equally, doesn't it?

Do you agree with him? Would you hit a woman, no matter what she did? Would you compare her to a naive 5 year old? Don't you think she has the right to do what she wants without worrying about a 'beating' from her loving husband? Comments below

Regards