Behrouz

Why did I leave Islam 

My problem with Islam is not new or thought of after the Islamic revolution in Iran, but began many years before most people in the world had heard the name Islam.  I believe, and I want people to answer to this question not to me but to themselves, Islam became an international problem after the Iranian revolution and when Saudi Arabia began the struggle to gain leadership in Islamic world by spending billions of petro-dollars to aid revolutions, wars in places such as Afghanistan and Tajikestan, helping the destruction of peace in Palestine by promising money to Yasser Arafat if he would not sign the peace agreement without giving Jerusalem to Muslim world, helping the terrorist group such as Islamic Jihad in Turkey, and other terrorist groups in Philippines, Indonesia, India, and many other places.  There are documents that Bin laden, the notorious terrorist organizer and on United States most wanted list , is supported by Saudis and still has his wealth there, but because of oil problem, no one wants to go against the Saudis. Saudi Arabia is practically in war with Iran, although through other groups, for the domination in Islamic countries.  This is when Islam became an international problem and known to most people in the west.  Even during the Lebanese civil war, till the killing of the U.S. Marines, most Americans didn’t know where Lebanon is and what is happening there. Islam became an international problem, but I had philosophical and humanitarian problem with Islam.  It was because of my quest for peace and happiness in mind, soul and life. I was still a teenager and growing in a fundamental religious family when I realized what they are teaching me does not give me satisfaction and what I was looking for. 

It all began with the teacher of Koran in school, when he refused to translate what we were reading in Arabic.  Why should we read something and believe in it when we don’t understand it? It was easy to find out.  The father’s library contained several copies of Koran with Persian translation.  I picked up one that was easiest to read.  The teacher was right, if we read Koran in Persian, not one will believe in Islam any more. There are many problems in this book. 

Then, in my quest for truth, I met an old friend of my father, a Catholic priest who secretly had become a Buddhist when he was in Tibet.  We talked.  He didn’t admit the whole truth till he was sure I could understand it.  Facing the truth is some times more difficult than understanding it.  I found it among Muslims.  You talk to them, they understand what you are talking about they even accept the facts, but they face the truth, they run, they are afraid to accept the truth.  Koran has given them the fear they cannot easily go over it.  The hell and the heaven, the fire, the death, the Day of Judgment, give man a shiver, unless you try to understand the concept.  Then comes the most difficult part, you should move against all that you have been taught, tradition and the way of life your family has followed.  The shiver comes then, but one has to learn how to fight fear.

We talked, us, the Catholic Buddhist and me.  We talked about enlightenment, truth, man and his quest for happiness, peace of mind and soul and at the end teaching of Buddha. 

What made me interested in the beginning was the difference between the life of Prophet Mohammad and Buddha, even in the childhood.  While studying Buddha’s life, I faced with the problem of a 25 year old man marrying forty years old widower, rich but ugly.  Didn’t he marry her for her money? Then came the time Khadijah died and Mohammad began marrying and having sex with eight, nine years olds and just couldn’t stop.  My question was, if he was a prophet, why did he go so much after sex?  Why couldn’t he have enough?  Did he have a sort of a complex after living years with an old woman and now suddenly couldn’t get enough?  What sort of a man is he?  Forget about him being a prophet. 

Then, the wars, killings, murders, lootings, attacking the caravans, genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavery, hatred, revenge and every thing others told mankind not to do, Islam is teaching the followers to do.  Where does all of this come from? 

According to Koran, 144.000 prophets existed before Mohammad, beginning with Adam, and ending with Mohammad.  All came to life in the desert of Arabia. Just one should think about this a moment.  Among all the civilized lands in the world, from China and Japan, to Iran, Greece, Rome and Egypt, why should all the prophets come from the most uncivilized, un educated and uncultured land in the world?  Isn’t it because is all a fairy tale? 

The, the second question; how can a people with almost no civilization or culture that live in a semi-wild life of Bedouins or Badavis, who roam the desert for food that hardly can be found, who need some one to show them a way of life, wanted to teach the world the right way of living?  Isn’t this a kind of joke? 

No, unfortunately it wasn’t a joke and it caused the destruction of some of the most advanced civilization and cultured in the world and it has not yet stopped after 1400 years. When you buy a new shirt and throw away the old one, one has to think first what was wrong with the old shirt.

It is difficult to go chronologically through what went in my mind. After all, years have passed, but I try to bring in as many reasons as possible and what the salesmen say, throw in also few personal experience. 

Some years before the revolution, when I was traveling the world as a journalist and correspondent for the Iranian radio and television, I had a job for few days in United Arab Emirates.  We met and a great man of knowledge and dignity, whom later Khomeini ordered his execution, were invited by one of the Sheikhs to a wedding.  It is unusual in Arabic countries to be invited to a wedding, it is generally done in secret, no one should know.  But this one was an exceptional one.  The sheikh was marrying a boy; a young boy aged eleven.  Some one felt we need an explanation.  He told us it is of importance that a man, an important sheikh have few boys in the Harem.  Of course they were castrated before.  And to make the problem better understood, he recited two verses from Koran. “ …. and there shall wait on them young boys of their own, as fair as virgin pearl. “52:24   And  “ …..  They shall be attended by boys graced with eternal youth who to the beholders eyes will seem like sprinkle pearls. “76:19   

Recently some event happened in Egypt.  The Islamic court is prosecuting thirty young homosexuals as homosexuality is prohibited in Islam.  One wonders, if it is prohibited, then why god promises the believers boys?  Reason is simple.  In the wedding in Emirates, you do not deal with homosexuality, but pedophilia. In another word, as having sex with a boy is not homosexuality, it is permitted, but if two men fall in love with each other, it is a sin and crime. 

Then I would like to have a word with Louis Farakhan. Islam is anti-black, anti Jews, anti-Christian, and anti anything that can smell civilization or culture. In Sura  A’lay Imran god says that all whose faces are white shall be saved and those with black faces shall be damned.  Verse 105-107. 

Then the worst atrocity, genocide and ethnic cleansing, that history knows. There is only one verse in Koran about what Muslims did to the Jewish people of Medina.  In around the year 70 A.D. the Romans began exterminating the Jews or exiling them to the worse places possible.  Few tribes of Jews, later joined also by some Jews from Yemen, settled in Medina and surrounding areas.  They built villages and towns and began trading and crafting.  This was the first century A.D., meaning almost six hundred years before Islam and Mohammad. 

When Mohammad began preaching the religion, he was weak, no army, not too many followers, so he called upon the Jews and the Christians for help and he got a lot even though no one became Muslim.  He told them as they are followers of book and God, they are alright and  “ Lakum Dinakum Vali-ed-din “, you with your religion and we with ours.  But when he became powerful, won few wars and thousands followed him, he first asked the Jews to pay non-believer tax, which meant every thing they earn, they asked them to leave Medina.  After 2000 years, they had nowhere to go.  So the two tribes, Bani Nadir and Bani Ghariza where declared the enemy of Islam and attack began. They were besieged and then when there gave up,  all men were executed, their head cut off by Ali and Zobeir, and the woman captured as slave and their property confiscated.  Two of the prettiest girls went to Mohammad’s harem.  Historians, though Muslims, write of 900 heads cut off in one day.  Koran,  Sura 33, verse 26, mentions this events and why the heads had to be cut off.  The Jews were eliminated, and dead does not write or talk, so we have to be satisfied with what the Muslims wrote.  One scholar writes that 1400 years old event should not be judged by today’s standard. Humanity and morality does not change in time.  Those children and pregnant women who were killed and their heads cut because they were worthless to the Arab savages, had no sins to pay for, they just died because of the selfishness and immorality of one man, Mohammad. 

Christians were not much better off also.  They had to pay every thing they gained, leave their villages that were located either in or around Mecca and

Medina. Many were killed, their women and children sold as slaves.

“  Slay them wherever you find them.  Drive them from the places belonging to you. “  Sura 2 Verses 190-193

“ When the sacred months are over, slay unbelievers wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush everywhere for them. “  Sura 9 verse 5.

“ Prophet make war on the unbelievers and hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. “ Sura 9, verse 73 

One can go on verse after verse in Koran to see that Islam is but a religion for the Bedouins of the desert for whom humanity and morality does not exist.  It is their goal to achieve power in any way they can or they know and that is the sward and killings.  What is also interesting is, in all of this “holly book“ there is not, I repeat, there is not one line to tell you what a human, a good and decent man should be except one should accept Islam or face death. 

The word DIN that is used in Koran so many times is not actually Arabic. The Arabs did not have this word. It is Persian and has the root also in Chinese, Japanese and Sanskrit.  The word Dhyana in Sanskrit, Chan, pronounced Jan, in Chinese and Zen in Buddhism and Japanese means road or meditation, it does not mean religion.  Din means the same thing in Persian and the language that Avesta was written is called Din Dabire, meaning language or writing of Din.  In Islam, din is no more a road but a goal.  In another word, din does not teach you what to be or how to be a human, but you have to accept the goal which is Islam and if you don’t, you are an infidel, and doomed for execution and killings.  You can read this in more than 250 verses in Koran that forces the believers to kill, not necessarily fight, the infidels. 

Then, there is another problem with Islam.  Islam is the religion of the rich.  If you are rich, you can almost do any thing you would like, if you pay for it. 

The word  “ Ghasas or Gasas “  means paying for a crime.  If you kill someone and you have money, you can pay the blood money and you are saved.  If, you have money, you can pay your way to heaven. 

What do the poor do? Nothing!  There are verses in Koran blaming the poor for most of the sins. One look at the Saudi Arabia today and you understand what was going on during the period of Mohammad.  In Saudi Arabia, you can get your head cut off for adultery, but there is not one sheikh or rich who does not have a few blond whores in their houses and when they travel to Las Vegas, they gamble, drink, sleep with prostitutes and all first degree crime in Arabia and you can even get executed, meaning practically losing your head.  One of the late kings died of alcoholism.  But for the poor, they can do almost nothing, they have to live like slave in a country that the sheikhs live like kings.

Women are also enslaved.  “ Men have authority over women because God has made one superior to the other. Good women are obedient.” 4:34 

I sometimes wonder, if a man is a Muslim, well he can be, he is the superior, but why the women volunteer to become slaves? Why do they accept a religion that does not even consider them a full human? 

One of the months in Arabic is Moharram-ol-harram, meaning that is this months Muslims were prohibited to attack the caravans and loot and kill.  The rest of the eleven months were open season for all those who were not Muslims.  When Ali complained about the month,  Moharram was also free and looting and killings went on all year round.  There is not a single book in the world, may be writings of the Nazis of Germany, that has do so much with killings, destructions, murders, lootings, rape, slavery and every evil that men can come out with.  Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murders is a part of Islam and one can read verses after verses in Koran.  Only the history of the Mayas in South America has a similarity to what Islam believes in.  And what is surprising, that a billion people still believe in it. Of course, mostly don’t know what their religion is all about. 

Someone, a few months ago told me that a billion people couldn’t be wrong.  My answer was, a billion people till a few hundred years ago believed earth is flat and sun goes around the earth.  More than half a billion still believe this. 

I don’t want to go through every verse and every Sura to prove what is wrong, there are Korans available in every language and they are all the same and tell the same story, one can read is they have the urge to find the truth.

I should now think about blasphemy, one of the Ayatollahs can come out with the Fitwa, just as they did with Salman Rushdi, but the happiest moment is when the Fitwa comes out.  This means that these grand Ayatollahs and the sheikhs do not have the logic to come into dialogue or even arguments.

They know what is wrong, they know Islam better than any one else and they know what is wrong, just like the dictators know exactly what they are doing.

Valayat Faghih in Iran who is now Khamenei and those Grand Muftis of the Arabic and Muslim countries are the new dictators and the popes who used to order the people to be burned alive.  They are fighting for their powers just what Mohammad did.  Religion is just an excuse as nationalism for the dictators like Pinoche and Hitler.  What they are doing with people is what Stalin did with the people who lived in Russia, accept or die.

 I invite any Ayatollah and Islamic scholar like Hosein Nasr to come and give me one line from Koran that shows what a human being should be, how we should live, and what is the morality to guide us to happiness.  I don’t want the answer that by accepting Islam …… no, this religion called Islam, what good has it done to the human race?

 This Hosein Nasr, many years ago, when he was the chief of staff to Queen Farah of Iran, collected every thing that was in Iranian museums, made by Iranians and a part of Iranian culture, and took them to London for an exhibition and called it “ Exhibition of Islamic Culture and sciences.”  No one asked him, hey you, traitor, he who sold Iran to Fundamentalists, if there was any Islamic culture and sciences, Saudi Arabia should have been the cultural center of the world.  And why is it when there are thousands of Iranians poets, philosophers, artists, architects and thinkers, Saudi Arabia has not come out with one? Why do you call every Iranian thinker and Muslim thinker?  Have you every heard any one calling Beethoven, Schiller, Shakespeare , Schopenhauer, Michael Angelo, or Leonardo De Vinci a Christian musician, philosopher, artist or poet,  why did you call Shahabeddin Sohrevardi a Muslim scholar?  That is treason to Iran and what is Iranian.

Behrouz