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Islam
A collection of links to sceptical sites on Islam.
See also links to sceptical sites on
Christianity
and
Judaism.
Please read the atheism page introduction
for background to this.
Summary:
Islam (like Christianity and Judaism) will survive.
But it (like Christianity and Judaism) must learn
to tolerate freedom of religion.
Introduction - The threat of violence
All discussion of religion
must begin by acknowledging that
Islam is different to all other religions
because of the threat of violence to its critics.
All other religions
can be criticised and even ridiculed without fear of violence.
Only with Islam is there a credible threat of violence to its critics.
Muslims can criticise Christianity
without any fear of violence,
but it is an unfair, one-sided debate.
Christians cannot criticise Islam
without an ever-present fear of Islamic violence.
It needs far more bravery to be on that side.
A simple, calm, rational debate between all religions is not possible
because the fear of Islamic violence is always in the background.
Obviously I, like the vast majority
of the world's population, (*)
think Islam is not true.
There is no evidence to support any of its claims about the universe and reality.
I also think it is one of the
two or three
main sources
of violence,
tyranny
and human rights abuse
in the modern world.
However, I am deterred from speaking all of my thoughts
because of the threat of violence.
As a result, on this website
I will freely tell you what I think about Moses, and
I will freely tell you what I think about Jesus,
but I will not tell you what I think about Muhammad.
I never in fact directly criticise Islamic teaching, Muhammad or the Qur'an.
I link to some sites that may, but I never do myself.
Someday, when Islam is a mature, modern, tolerant religion
and there is no longer a threat of violence,
I will discuss freely what I think about Muhammad and the Qur'an.
Let us hope we see such a day in our lifetimes.
I am not the author of the sites below!
These are links to other people's sites!
I am not responsible for what is at these sites!
|
Criticism of Islam from people I may not agree with
- Stephen Schwartz
is a moderate Muslim convert,
very anti-Islamism,
and I like some of his stuff.
There are interesting debates between him and those who take a more critical line of Islam itself:
- Andrew G. Bostom v. Stephen Schwartz
- Robert Spencer v. Stephen Schwartz
- One thing
Schwartz says,
that sums up why I am inclined to take his critics' line:
"I do not in general respond to comments on Islam by non-Muslims,
except when they are made by apologists for Wahhabism.".
By this argument, I have no right to criticise
the Bible
or the Pope,
and should just stay silent.
What nonsense.
- Schwartz is a moderate Muslim,
and if all Muslims were like him it would be fantastic.
But he is still committed to a belief in supernatural things for which there is no evidence.
- Christian sites
- The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910
- Books by Christians
- Hindu sites
- Again, like the Christian sites, I would take the
Hindu sites
with a grain of salt,
since they are criticising Islam not to promote reason,
but rather to promote a different supernatural belief.
Still, they may contain something useful.
- Truth Alone Triumphs
- Hindu books online
(including ones critical of Islam)
- Other sources with problems,
that still may contain something useful:
I am not the author of these sites!
These are links to other people's sites!
I am not responsible for what is at these sites!
|
Western writers have criticised Islam and Mohammed for centuries,
before becoming more timid in the modern age.
I am not the author of these sites!
These are links to other people's sites!
I am not responsible for what is at these sites!
|
Criticising the Qur'an can easily get you killed in some parts of the world,
a useful device to ensure the uncritical propagation of the
meme.
In contrast, criticism of
the Bible
is freely available everywhere in the western world -
because Christians and Jews tolerate
freedom of speech
and freedom of religion.
I am not the author of these sites!
These are links to other people's sites!
I am not responsible for what is at these sites!
|
Authors
- The heroically brave
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
(and search)
(Muslim who became an atheist)
-
Muhammad's example
(also here),
Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
August 2005.
She calls on the west to help Muslims reform:
"They know that Muhammad calls for the slaughter of infidels;
they know that the open society rightly condemns the slaughter of innocents.
They are caught in a mental cramp of cognitive dissonance and
it is up to the west to support the reformers in trying to ease them out of that painful contradiction.
...
The western cultural relativists, who flinch from criticising Muhammad for fear of offending Muslims,
rob Muslims of an opportunity to review their own moral values.
...
this attitude betrays Muslim reformers who desperately require the support
- and even the physical protection
- of their natural allies in the west."
-
Ayaan Hirsi Ali in New York, 2006.
- The left-leaning liberals of
PEN,
Ron Chernow
and Philip Gourevitch
have extreme difficulty with the concept, the very existence, of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
- She defines herself as an ex-Muslim atheist.
- She is so wonderfully optimistic:
"Perhaps thinking of the Iraq war, Mr. Gourevitch suggested that a foreign Enlightenment
can't be fast-tracked onto another culture. Ms. Ali replied smoothly that the Arab world
has managed to borrow many things from the West, such as cars and clothing styles,
so she saw no reason why they couldn't borrow values as well."
- She understands the west, and the left, so well:
"'My criticism of the West, especially of liberals, is that they do take freedom for granted,'
Ms. Ali responded. She noted that Western Europeans born after World War II are unused to conflict.
'They have lost the instinct to recognize that there can be such a thing as an enemy
or a threat to freedom'".
- Two heroes -
Ayaan meets Salman Rushdie.
- "Atheists will not help reform Islam"
- Some people complain that because ex-Muslims
like Ayaan are now atheists,
they will play no role in the reform of Islam.
-
But this discounts what happened with Christianity.
It was the
pressure from years of ex-Christian and semi-Christian
deists, agnostics, atheists, dissenters, and freethinkers
of all sorts, that made Christianity liberal and tolerant,
almost as much as any liberal movement within orthodox Christianity.
Christians did listen to ex-Christians and lapsed Christians,
and did change their actions in response.
So that today Christians have a firm belief in freedom of religion
whereas once they opposed it.
- So the ex-Muslims, if they are allowed to speak (and live),
will have a major role to play in forging a more tolerant Islam
that we all hope to see.
Submission
- "Fitna"
(and try here),
a short film criticizing the Quran,
by
Dutch anti-jihad politician
Geert Wilders
(who was in the same political party as Ayaan Hirsi Ali),
was released Mar 2008.
- There is some clear water between me and Wilders:
-
Wilders has said the Koran "incites hatred" and
"promotes violence" and
should be outlawed in the Netherlands.
-
I disagree that it should be banned,
on the grounds of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
There are no grounds on which you could ban the Koran
that would not also
ban the hate-filled, bloodthirsty
Old Testament.
-
Wilders also wants to prevent the building of
Islamic mosques and schools.
I am absolutely opposed to such ideas.
- It's not a bad film, but it muddies the waters a bit,
as Wilders tends to,
by presenting this as a war with all of Islam.
I deny this.
The situation is not as hopeless and desperate as that.
Only Islamism has to be defeated, not all of Islam.
- Here is the film:
-
Wikileaks:
- Google Video:
- Liveleak:
- YouTube:
- Dailymotion:
- Metacafe:
- Downloads:
- Sam Harris:
"The problem is not, as is often alleged, that governments cannot afford to protect every person who speaks out against Muslim intolerance. The problem is that so few people do speak out. If there were ten thousand Ayaan Hirsi Ali's, the risk to each would be radically reduced.
...
The lesson we should draw from the Fitna controversy is that
we need more criticism of Islam, not less. Let it come down in such torrents that not even the most deluded Islamist could conceive of containing it. As Ibn Warraq .. said in response to recent events:
'It is perverse for the western media to lament the lack of an Islamic reformation and willfully ignore works such as Wilders' film, Fitna.
How do they think reformation will come about if not with criticism?' "
The globalised world of the Internet, with its free speech everywhere,
poses an unbelievable challenge to all religions, but especially to Islam.
It will be interesting to see whether belief in Islam survives through the
21st century.
-
If you Google "Mohammed" as at Dec 2007, the top 10 sites in order are:
- Anti-Mohammed:
Wikipedia, full of criticism of Mohammed, and information Muslims would like to keep hidden.
- Anti-Mohammed:
The Catholic Encyclopedia's criticism of Mohammed.
- Anti-Mohammed:
Zombie's fantastic, blasphemous, forbidden Mohammed Image Archive.
- Anti-Mohammed:
The Jewish Virtual Library's criticism of Mohammed.
- Anti-Mohammed:
Bible Probe's criticism of Mohammed.
- Anti-Mohammed:
A parody anti-Mohammed site.
- Neutral:
A person called Mohammed.
- Neutral:
A person called Mohammed.
- Neutral:
A band called Mohammed.
- Neutral:
Information about terrorists called Mohammed.
-
Finally, at no.11,
the Muslim Student Association of the University of Southern California
delivers the first actual pro-Mohammed hit!
- This probably represents the world quite well.
80 percent of the world does not believe in Islam,
and 80 percent of the world does not admire Mohammed.
And the infidels that know most about Mohammed
are probably the ones who admire him the least.
So the hits give a good idea what the world thinks of Mohammed.
It's just that this would have been hidden from Muslims before the age of the Internet.
-
How can Islam survive in such an environment of free-wheeling criticism and free speech?
- Eradication of Islam
by Ali Sina
(see also here
and here)
- An Iranian predicts that Islam will collapse rapidly like
communism
when its people are finally allowed to read other ideas.
The Internet now allows such discussion
for the first time in the history of Islam.
-
Muslim apostates cast out and at risk from faith and family
by Anthony Browne
- The threats against apostates are disturbing,
but look at the optimism:
"One estimate suggests that
as many as 15 per cent of Muslims in Western societies
have lost their faith, which would mean that in Britain there are about 200,000 apostates."
Rather than Islam taking over
Europe,
Europe could be the place where millions of Muslims lose their faith,
just as millions of Christians have before them.
- Central Council of Ex-Muslims
(Germany)
- Central Committee for Ex-Muslims
(Holland)
- Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain
- I'm not a fan of their leader,
the anti-American communist
Maryam Namazie,
a secular activist from Iran
who regards
the effort in Iraq as "US state terrorism".
- But despite her, their manifesto
is great:
"We are opposed to cultural relativism and the tolerance of inhuman beliefs, discrimination and abuse in the name of respecting religion or culture."
They demand:
"Freedom to criticise religion."
They are against:
"restrictions on unconditional freedom of criticism and expression using so-called religious 'sanctities'."
-
Islam Beheaded:
The Information Superhighway and the Death of Mohammedanism
by David Wood,
says the Internet may be the greatest enemy Islam has ever had.
Rather than reform like Christianity, Islam may collapse like communism:
- "Muhammad's empire of faith has managed to thrive in the modern world for one simple reason:
Muslims have kept Muhammad's dark past a secret.
...
The truth about Muhammad has been one of the world's best-kept secrets.
For centuries, it has been virtually impossible to raise objections about
the character of Muhammad in Muslim countries,
for anyone who raised such objections would .. immediately be killed.
Outside the Muslim world, there has been little interest in Islam ...
But things have changed. Now many people are interested in Islam,
and Muslims aren't able to silence everyone. Moreover, with the advent of the Internet,
it is now impossible to keep Muhammad's life a secret."
-
Suicide of the West
by Theodore Dalrymple,
reviews some pessimistic books,
but then notes that the future is rarely predictable:
-
"Will these books appear to have been unduly alarmist in half a century's time?
I certainly hope so, and indeed suspect that it might be so.
We have had many perils and predicted apocalypses before.
Islamism, and indeed (in my belief) the whole of Islam,
is potentially very vulnerable to the corrosive effect of the intellectual acid-bath
of rational criticism."
-
Marxism's Successor
- Theodore Dalrymple on how Islamism may collapse,
and Islam itself too.
- Dalrymple's delicious disrespect for the daft ideology of Islamism:
"For the second time in living memory,
we find ourselves obliged by historical circumstances to examine doctrinal philosophies that,
from the abstract intellectual point of view, are not worth examining.
They belong, rather, to the history of human folly and credulity:
which is itself, of course, an inexhaustibly interesting and important subject."
-
It is, if you think about it, incredible that anybody could believe in nonsense
like political Islamism.
That any young Muslim man
could possibly believe that Islamism could create a better world.
- Optimism:
"Diseases of acute onset are apt to be cured quickly: if, that is, they do not kill first.
And in historical terms, our preoccupation with the threat of Islamism is very acute.
There is hope, therefore,
that Islamism will pass from the world stage as quickly as it arrived on it."
- And again, in the world of the Internet, more than Islamism may fall:
"Personally, I believe that all forms of Islam are very vulnerable in the modern world
to rational criticism,
which is why the Islamists are so ferocious in trying to suppress such criticism.
They have instinctively understood that Islam itself, while strong, is exceedingly brittle,
as communism once was. They understand that, at the present time in human history,
it is all or nothing.
...
Islamism is a last gasp, not a renaissance, of the religion"
In summary, by even engaging with the globalised world at all,
Islamists are taking a huge risk.
They are risking mass apostasy and the loss of Islamic faith even in their home countries.
It may be that if Islamists wish to protect their faith,
they should leave the West, leave Europe, return to their homelands,
and ban the Internet and all foreign media.
Soviet communism could not survive in the globalised age
of MTV, Madonna, Hollywood, Levis and Coca-Cola.
Islamism, and even Islam itself, will have just as much trouble.
And yet suicidally, Islamists are coming to the West,
and allowing TV and the Internet in their home countries,
which may be the process that will soon (before 2100) destroy their entire
traditional culture and faith.
Far from taking over the world, this may be Islamism's last stand
before its traditional countries are changed forever.
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