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 fully what I think about Muhammad or the Qur'an.
I keep it understated, unsaid and intellectual.
I am cautious about not inflaming the primitive, violent brain of the jihadist.
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.
(*) It is often forgotten that
80 percent
of the world's population
(5 billion people)
think Islam is not true.
Kurt Westergaard
drew a
cartoon of the alleged "prophet" Muhammad
which suggested Islam is violent.
To prove him wrong, angry Muslims ...
issued death threats,
offered a $1m reward for his execution,
and organised plots to kill him,
and now he has to live under police protection.
They also
burnt Christian children alive
in protest at the depiction of Islam as violent.
In 2010 a Muslim fanatic tried to kill him.
World population of Muslims and infidels.
It is often forgotten that
80 percent
of the world's population
(5 billion people)
thinks Islam is not true.
After 1,400 years of preaching, conquest, genocide and forced conversion,
still only 20 percent of the world's population thinks Islam is true.
Europe and North Africa and the Middle East
were all Christian
in 600 AD
(before Islam was invented).
Such a shame that Islam was invented.
From here.
Spencer is not at all as clear on freedom of religion as, say,
Rusty Shackleford.
For example,
Spencer says that:
"it is entirely reasonable for free people to oppose the construction of new mosques in non-Muslim countries."
I disagree.
Freedom of religion is a fundamental right.
Banning new mosques (or banning Islamic clothing) is a denial of religious freedom.
Spencer supported the EDL.
He
rather ignored the fact that Britain is a democracy,
and issues of policy should be settled by debate, rather than by uneducated rioting street mobs.
It is noteworthy that Spencer doesn't admire a group that attacks the American police.
But attacking the British police is apparently OK.
Spencer has been hostile to Ukraine in its struggle for freedom against the barbaric
Russian invasion of 2022.
Look at this garbage
for example.
I generally zone out Spencer on topics other than jihad.
Spencer is more pessimistic than me:
Spencer also tends towards pessimism about the possibility of
spreading democracy and human rights
to Islamic countries, and thinks the West should concentrate on defending itself
(immigration, hate preaching, demands for sharia, terror plots).
Hugh Fitzgerald basically agrees with the left
that America should give up on Afghanistan
(but for different reasons than the left).
Roland Shirk
criticises neocons, and says they are as naive as the left in thinking the Islamic world can be reformed:
"Neocons cannot face the truth about Islam ... We're presenting them with the reality that our enemies cannot be persuaded, will not be bribed, and are no longer intimidated. At best they be contained".
Raymond Ibrahim
points out that western Muslims live in freedom and still turn to jihad,
so why should we expect that bringing freedom to the Islamic world will end jihad?
The sub-section
"Political Assassinations: The Massacre of the Jews"
discusses Muhammed's conduct in warfare,
his treatment of opponents,
and his opposition to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
The sub-section
"The Doctrines of the Koran"
discusses monotheism.
People like Moses, Muhammed and St.Patrick
are praised
for introducing monotheism
instead of the native polytheism, paganism and idolatry.
But as Warraq points out,
monotheism is in no sense intellectually superior to
polytheism - indeed it is a backward step
since it is much more violent.
The sub-section
"Human Rights and Islam"
discusses the almost total incompatibility between
human rights and traditional Islam,
just as
traditional Christianity
is totally incompatible with human rights.
Ch.9
(and here)
("The Arab Conquests and the Position
of Non-Muslim Subjects")
Ironically, given how much Muhammad talks about Hell,
Dante places Muhammad in
"Bolgia 9" of the
8th circle of Hell
in his
Inferno.
See
Canto 28
of the
"Divine Comedy".
It is claimed that
William Gladstone
said about the Quran something like:
"So long as there is this book, there will be no peace in the world."
I have been unable to find proof of this.
Another claim is that
Gladstone
said something like:
"So long as the Muslims have the Qur'an, we shall be unable to dominate them."
I have been unable to find proof of this.
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:
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.
Obviously, I have little in common with
evangelical Christians
like Jerry Falwell
and Pat Robertson.
They criticise Islam not to promote reason,
but rather to promote a different supernatural belief.
But you have to admire that evangelical Christians
are not afraid of Islam.
If anyone will fight for the freedom to criticise Islam
in public without fear of death, they will.
There was a happy ending.
The prosecution for "breach of the peace" failed.
The city of Dearborn had to
apologise and pay compensation.
Everyone involved - including the police - should be disciplined or sacked.
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.
The book
Rangeela Rasool,
a Hindu criticism of Muhammed,
was published in Lahore
under British rule in 1923.
The Hindu Raj Pal was the publisher (but not the author).
Raj Pal was murdered because of this book in 1929 by an angry, uneducated, illiterate
young Muslim fascist,
Ilm-ud-din.
The British naturally executed him,
but this violent young religious maniac is a hero to many Pakistanis today.
He became a poster boy for Pakistan's blasphemy law,
which is used to persecute religious minorities and critics,
and silence all discussion of Islam and Muhammed.
Ali Sina finds Obama's
absurdly inflated view of himself
disturbing.
I agree, but he then
compares Obama's psyche to that of the
"madmen of history - from Hitler to Stalin, Mao, Kim, Osama, Khomeini, Saddam and Idi Amin.
These men wreaked havoc and killed millions.
...
Once a madman is in power it is already too late. Nothing can stop a mad leader except death or war."
This is silly stuff.
Why not compare Obama to other narcissistic Western politicians in recent history,
of whom there are many.
It makes one wonder if Ali Sina really understands the West.
Dumb politicians like Obama get elected now and again.
But they are subject to so many checks and balances, and the need for re-election,
and falling opinion polls,
that they always moderate their tune.
Western democracy always survives them.
It will survive Obama.
I'm not happy Obama got elected,
and I was shocked that he was re-elected.
But it's not the end of the world.
He's not all bad.
He's killing jihadis without trial, for example.
And in 2016 he will be gone.
America will survive.
Ali Sina's crazy talk about Obama.
He says Obama is a traitor:
"My advice to Barack Obama is to pack up and seek refuge in Kenya before Americans discover you are a fraud and a traitor.
This man is on a mission to destroy America.
...
Obama should be brought to justice, tried and preferably electrocuted for high treason."
This is disappointing stuff.
He may understand Iran, but I don't think he understands the West.
On a small point, Ali Sina
makes a common error
by saying:
"Hitler, prior to coming to power had not killed anyone."
This is not true.
"if America had a legitimate president, my advice would be ban Islam and make the practice of Sharia illegal."
(*)
Though he then seems to contradict himself:
"If there was a patriotic president in office, I would have told him to ban all Islamic groups that work against America and its constitution."
Surely he wants all Islamic groups banned,
not just those that work against America?
(*)
Sharia must be barred from any place in western law.
But it must be legal to follow sharia rules
in your private life.
And it must be legal to ignore and despise such rules.
Like any Muslim cleric, he complains about
"the rampant immorality" of the West.
He rails against porn, gays, naturism, swinging and sexual freedom.
"Homosexuality is a disorder no different from zoophilia (bestiality), ... pedophilia, and a host of other paraphilias (sexual deviances)."
More:
"Homosexuality is a sexual disorder, like sadomasochism, fetishism, zoophilia and pedophilia."
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.
The Fall of Islam
by Ali Sina
- 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.
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"
Christian anti-Muhammad sites
and Jewish anti-Muhammad sites
and atheist anti-Muhammad sites
are high up the list, and easy to find,
as are things like
Zombie's fantastic, blasphemous
Mohammed Image Archive.
It is impossible to keep curious young people
from seeing the criticisms of Muhammad by non-Muslims across the planet.
The anti-Muhammad sites are just a click away,
and are causing much-needed apostasy around the world.
Even the neutral Wikipedia is a disaster for the faithful,
since it is
full of criticism of Muhammad, and information Muslims would like to keep hidden.
The Internet represents the world.
80 percent of the world does not believe in Islam,
and 80 percent of the world does not admire Muhammad.
And the infidels that know most about Muhammad
are probably the ones who admire him the least.
So the Internet gives a good idea of what the world thinks of Muhammad.
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?
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.
The CEMB is somewhat compromised by their leader,
the anti-American, anti-Israel communist
Maryam Namazie.
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'."
They have an intelligent reply,
Fitna Remade,
to the simplistic
Fitna.
"ex-Muslims have embraced the British dream like no others by adopting the mainstream British mode of belief, that is unbelief and scepticism".
"In reality the ideal for British social cohesion would be for lots of Muslims (and Hindus and Sikhs) to become atheists, agnostics or very wishy-washy Anglicans. That we can't admit this is at the heart of the integration problem facing an unbelieving society."
"how does one become British now? Sitting in a pub talking about how there is no God seems pretty close to me."
Why I left Islam
by female ex-Muslim "Ishina".
Absolutely brilliant. Beautiful and true. Every Muslim in the world should read this.
Some highlights:
"First, the theological claims of Islam have been proven to be false again and again by people much more informed and eloquent than me.
...
Maybe millennia ago when books were simply not available the Quran might have stood out as the most profound and pertinent thing heard in that region, but what are people's excuses these days?"
"What exactly is the Message? What could be so important that the Grand Architect of the Universe took time out of its schedule to communicate with humanity for the very last time? What's all the boasting about?
Never before has one boasted so much about so little.
... Annals of petty local feuds, regional drama, and the defunct tribal taboos of an ignorant culture that thought the earth was flat."
"What about philosophy in the Quran? Here is what I can write about the philosophy in the Quran: Nothing. There's nowhere to start. Islam is philosophically sterile. It's almost as though philosophy didn't even exist as a great tradition hundreds of years earlier
...
What a pathetic, infantile stab in the dark at philosophy Islam offers us. What kind of unfortunate and simplistic proto-mind can be satisfied by it? What appetite do I have that otherwise intelligent and respectable Muslims do not? It is a mystery to me. I am literally baffled at the hold these desert fairy tales have over people to this day. How amazing it would be if something so vapid and mundane would placate my wondering mind."
"As soon as I actually found out about Mohammed and his sleazy, violent, entitled and indulgent life, the spell was broken. ... How anyone with a working conscience, a love of humanity and want for equality and respect can read about the life of Mohammed and remain impressed - or worse, in full awe of the man - is a mystery to me. ... The more I learned about the Prophet, the more I found him repulsive even for a man of his time."
"There are better role models in this beautiful world than the so-called Prophet. There are better contributions to the knowledge of the world than the cancerous, poisoned chalice known as the Quran. There is better wisdom out there to find".
Ex-Muslims Forum
sums up why, despite everything, there is hope, for the first time in 1,400 years.
Islamists need to leave the West, stay home, and ban the Internet
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.
The story of thousands of years of religious terror in a nutshell:
Two sweet, innocent American Muslim boys
are sent to Pakistan by their family
and brainwashed in a Taliban-linked
Pakistani madrassa for over three years.
They resist for a long time
but finally start to believe the nonsense they are taught.
They emerge as hate-filled young Islamist nutcases.
So sad to watch their childhoods taken away.
And this story has repeated for thousands of years as
ignorant old men, of many different and opposing creeds,
all over the world, destroy childhoods
and churn out starry-eyed young believers in (and killers for)
their nonsensical, made-up supernatural ideas.
Trailer for documentary "The Karachi Kids".
See hi-res version.
The network of
black metal
bands,
"The Arabic Anti-Islamic Legion"
(and facebook)
represents something genuinely new in the world.
This is
a group of
young people from
around the Middle East
who grew up being oppressed by Islamists -
and now hate Islam.
See article, July 2012.
See the comments, where some people dispute that these bands are for real.
I don't find their disputes very convincing, but it's possible of course.
What is interesting is whether the oppression by Islam of young people will eventually lead to a major backlash.
Just as millions of young people of Catholic background can't stand the Catholic church,
so millions of young people in the Middle East are sick of being oppressed by Islam.
It may be
that a mass apostasy from Islam
of millions of its young people
will be one of the major themes of the coming century.
Website
(via here
or here
or here)
to help people safely leave Islam. "You have a right to be free.
...
Whether you wish to convert to Christianity or some other religion, or have no religion at all, you have a right to live in peace, free from fear.
If you are in the U.S. and are being harassed or threatened for leaving Islam, you have recourse." Robert Spencer:
"America is the land of the free, and apostates must know they are free here and safe here.
Rifqa Bary can do it. So can you. Freedom of religion is an unalienable right. Sharia law holds no weight or legitimacy here. Apostates are free to leave Islam and to be who and whatever [they] want to be."