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Dear
Friends, The tragic
incident of September 11 has shocked the world. It is unthinkable how anyone
could be so full of hate as to commit such heinous act and kill so many innocent
people. We people of Muslim origin are as much shaken as the rest of the world
and yet we find ourselves looked upon with suspicion and distrust by our
neighbors and fellow citizens. We want to cry out and announce that we are not
terrorists, that those who perpetrate such despicable acts are murderers and are
not part of us. But, in reality, because of our Muslim origin we just can not
erase the stigma of "Islamic Terrorists" from our identity! What in general
Muslims would say: "Islam
would never support killing innocent people. Allah of Holy Quran never advocated
killings. This is all the work of a few misguided individuals at the fringe of
the society. The real Islam is sanctified against violence. We denounce all
violence. Islam means peace. Islam means tolerance." What is the real
truth: This is what
most Muslims think. But is it true? Does Islam really preach peace, tolerance
and non-violence? Those Muslims who perpetrate crimes in the name of Allah
think differently. They believe that what they do is a Jihad (holy war). They
say that killing the unbelievers is mandatory for every Muslim. They do not kill
because they break the laws of Islam but because they think this is what a true
Muslim should do. Those who blow up their own bodies to kill more innocent
people do so because they think they will be rewarded in Paradise. They hope to
be blessed by Allah, eat celestial food, drink pure wine and enjoy the company
of divine consorts. Are they
completely misguided? Where did they get this distorted idea? How did they come
to believe that killing innocent people pleases God? Or is it that we are
misguided? Does Islam really preach violence? Does it call upon its believers to
kill the "non-believers" ? We denounce those who commit acts of
violence and call them extremists. But are they really extremists or do they
think they are following what the Holy book of Quran tells them to do? What does
the Quaran really teach? Have we read the Quran? Do we know what kind of
teachings are there? Let us go through some of them and take a closer look at
what Allah says. What Qur'an
Teaches Us: Quran tells us
to: "not to make friendship with Jews and Christians"
(Q. 5:51), fight them "until they pay the Jizya (a penalty tax for the
non-Muslims living under Islamic rules) with willing submission, and feel
themselves subdued" (Q. 9:29). "kill the disbelievers
wherever we find them" (Q.2:191), "murder them and treat
them harshly" (Q. 9:123), "fight and slay the Pagans, seize
them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem"
(Q. 9:5). Quran says that
all those who disbelieve in Islam to hell (Q. 5:10), they are najis (filthy,
untouchable, impure) (Q. 9:28), and orders us to fight the unbelievers until no
other religion except Islam is left (Q.2:193). It prohibits a Muslim to befriend a
non-believer even if that non-believer is the father or the brother of that
Muslim (Q. 9:23),
(Q. 3:28). It says that the
"non-believers will go to hell and will drink boiling water"
(Q. 14:17). It asks the Muslims to "slay or crucify or cut the hands and
feet of the unbelievers, that they be expelled from the land with disgrace and
that they shall have great punishment in the world hereafter" (Q.
5:34). And tells us that "for them (the unbelievers) garments of
fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water
whereby whatever is in their bowels and skin shall be dissolved and they will be
punished with hooked iron rods" (Q. 22:19-22) and that they not only
will have "disgrace in this life, on the Day of Judgment He shall
make them taste the Penalty of burning (Fire)" (22:9). Quran says that
"those who invoke a god other than Allah not only should meet
punishment in this world but the Penalty on the Day of Judgment will be doubled
to them, and they will dwell therein in ignominy" (Q. 25:68). For
those who "believe not in Allah and His Messenger, He has prepared,
for those who reject Allah, a Blazing Fire!" (Q. 48:13). As for him who
does not believe in Islam the Prophet says that after he dies it will be
announced with a "stern command": "Seize ye
him, and bind ye him, And burn ye him in the Blazing Fire. Further, make him
march in a chain, whereof the length is seventy cubits! This was he that would
not believe in Allah Most High. And would not encourage the feeding of the
indigent! So no friend hath he here this Day. Nor hath he any food except the
corruption from the washing of wounds, Which none do eat but those in sin."
(Q. 69:30-37) The holy Prophet
prescribes fighting for us and tells us that "it is good for us even
if we dislike it" (Q.2:216). Then he advises us to "strike
off the heads of the disbelievers"; and after making a "wide
slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives"
(Q.47:4). Our God has promised to "instill terror into the hearts of
the unbelievers" and has ordered us to "smite
above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them" (Q.8:12).
and "to strike terror into (the hearts of the enemies"
(Q.8:60). He has made the
Jihad mandatory and warns us that "Unless we go forth, (for
Jihad) He will punish us with a grievous penalty, and put others in our place"
(Q.9:39). Allah speaks to our Holy Prophet and says "O Prophet! strive
hard against the unbelievers and the Hypocrites, and be stern against them.
Their abode is Hell,- an evil refuge indeed" (Q. 9:73). He promises us
that in the fight for His cause whether we slay or are slain we return to the
garden of Paradise (Q. 9:111). In Paradise he will "wed us with Houris
(celestial virgins) pure beautiful ones" (Q. 56:54), and unite us with
large-eyed beautiful ones while we recline on our thrones set in lines (Q.
56:20).
There we are promised to eat and drink pleasantly for what we did (56:19). And
have sex with "boys like hidden pearls" (Q. 56:24) and "youth
never altering in age like scattered pearls" (Q. 76:19) As you see,
Allah has promised all sorts of rewards, gluttony and unlimited sex to
Muslim men who kill the unbelievers in his name, not forgetting even those with
pedophilic inclinations. We will be admitted to Paradise where we shall find
"goodly things, beautiful ones, pure ones confined to the pavilions
that man has not touched them before nor jinni" (Q. 56:67-71). In the West we
enjoy freedom of belief but we are not supposed to give such freedom to anyone
else because it is written "If anyone desires a religion other than
Islam (submission to Allah), never will it be accepted of him; and in the
Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those who have lost (all spiritual good)
(Q. 3:85). As for
women, the book of Allah says that they are inferior to men and their husbands
have the right to scourge them if they are found disobedient (Q. 4:34). It advises
to "take a green branch and beat your wife", because a
green branch is more flexible and hurts more. (Q. 38:44). It teaches that women
will go to hell if they are disobedient to their husbands (66:10). It maintains
that men have an advantage over the women (Q. 2:228). It not only denies the
women's equal rights, it decrees that their witness is not admissible in the
courts of law (Q. 2:282). This means that a woman who is raped cannot accuse her
rapist unless she can produce a male witness. Our Holy Prophet allows us to
marry up to four wives and he licensed us to sleep with our slave maids and as
many 'captive' women as we may have (4:3) even if those women are
already married. He himself did just that. [A word of
warning for those who may find their version of Quran is translated differently
from those appearing in this article: Almost all the translators of Quran have
deliberately tried to soften the harsh verses of Quran. Yusufali especially goes
out of his way to twists the meaning of the words and hide the harshness of
Quran. For example he translates the verse (Q. 38:44) that says "take a
green branch and beat your wife" as "take a little green grass and
strike therewith". Or when he translates the verse (Q. 4:34) that says
"beat your wife" he cannot help it but to add the word (lightly) in
parenthesis.] Dear fellow
Muslims: Is this the Islam you believe in? Is this your Most Merciful, Most
Compassionate Allah whom you worship daily? Could God incite us to kill
other peoples? Please understand that there is no terrorist gene but there could
be a terrorist mindset. That mindset finds its most fertile ground in the tenets
of Islam. Denying it and presenting Islam as a religion of peace similar to
Buddhism to the lay public is suppression of truth. The history of Islam between
7th and 14th century is riddled with violence, fratricide and wars of
aggression, starting right from the death of the Prophet and during the
so-called 'pure' or orthodox caliphate. And Muhammad himself hoisted the
standard of killing, looting, massacres and bloodshed. How can we deny the
entire history? The behavior of our Holy Prophet as recorded in authentic
Islamic sources is quite questionable from a modern viewpoint. The Prophet was a
charismatic man but he had few virtues. Imitating him in all aspects of life
(following Sunnah) is firstly impossible and secondly dangerous in the
21st century. Why are we so helplessly in denial on this simple issue? When the Prophet
was in Mecca and he was still not powerful enough he called for tolerance. He
said "To you be your religion, and to me my religion" (Q.
109:6). This famous quote is often misused to prove that the general principle
of Quran is tolerance. He advised his follower to speak good to their enemies (Q.
2:83), exhorted them to be patient
(Q. 20:103) and said that "there is
no compulsion in religion" (Q. 2:256). But all that changed
drastically when he came to power. Then killing and slaying the unbelievers was
justified in innumerable verses with harshness and without mercy. The verses
quoted to prove Islam's tolerance ignore many other verses that bear no trace of
tolerance or forgiveness. Is it normal that a book revealed by God should have
so many serious contradictions? The Prophet
himself set the example of unleashing violence by invading the Jewish
settlements breaking the treaties he had signed with them and banished
some of them after confiscating their belongings massacring others and taking
their wives and children as slaves. He inspected the youngsters and massacred
all those who had pubic hair along with the men and those who were younger he
kept as slaves. He distributed the women captured in his raids among his
soldiers keeping the prettiest for himself (Q. 33:50). He made sexual advances on
Safiyah a Jewish girl in the same day he captured her town, Kheibar, and killed
her father, husband and many of her relatives. Reyhana was another Jewish girl
of Bani Quraiza whom he used as sex slave after killing all her male relatives.
In the last ten years of his life he accumulated a score of wives, concubines
and sex slaves including the 9 year old Ayesha. These are not
stories but records from authentic Islamic history and the Hadiths. It can be
argued that these behaviors were not unknown or unusual for the conquerors and
leaders of the mediaeval world but these are not the activities befitting of a
peaceful saint and certainly not of someone who claimed to be the Mercy of God
for all the creation. There were known
assassinations of adversaries during the Prophet's time, that took place at his
behest. Among them there was a 120 year old man, Abu 'Afak whose only crime was
to compose a lyric satirical of the Prophet. (Kitab al Tabaqat al Kabir, Volume
2, by Bin Sa'd, page 32) Then when a poetess, a mother of 5 small
children, 'Asma' Bint Marwan, wrote a poetry cursing the Arabs for letting
Muhammad assassinate an old man, our Holy Prophet ordered her to be assassinated
too in the middle of the night, which was carried out while her youngest child
was suckling from her breast. (Sirat Rasul Allah (A. Guilaume's translation
"The Life of Muhammad") page 675, 676). Dear
conscientious Muslims: Question yourselves- isn't this compulsive dogma of
following a man who lived 1400 years ago, leading us to doom in this changing
world? Who are we deceiving? See how our Umma (people) have sunk into
poverty and how we lag behind the rest of the world? Isn't it because we are
following a religion that is outdated and impractical? In this crucial
moment of history, when a great catastrophe has befallen us and a much bigger
one is lying ahead, should not we wake up from our 1400 years of slumber and see
where things have gone wrong? The hatred has
filled the air and the world is bracing itself for its doomsday. Should we not
ask ourselves whether we have contributed, unwittingly, to this tragedy and
whether we can stop the great disaster from happening? Unfortunately
the answer to the first question is yes. Yes, we have contributed to the rise of
fundamentalism by merely claiming Islam is a religion of peace, by simply being
a Muslim and by saying our shahada (testimony that Allah is the only God and
Muhammad is his messenger). By our shahada we have recognized Muhammad as a true
messenger of God and his book as the words of God. But as you saw, those words
are anything but from God. They call for killing, they are prescriptions for
hate and they foment intolerance. And when the ignorant among us read those hate
laden verses, they act on them and the result is the infamous September 11, the
result is human bombs in Israel, massacres in East Timor and Bangladesh,
kidnappings and killings in Philippines, slavery and genocide in Sudan, honor
Killings in Pakistan and Jordan, torture in Iran, stoning and maiming in
Afghanistan and Iran, violence in Algeria, terrorism in Palestine and misery and
death in all Islamic countries. We are responsible because we endorsed Islam and
hailed it as a religion of God. And we are as guilty as those who put into
practice what Quran preaches and ironically we are the main victims too. If we are not
terrorists, if we love peace, if we cried with the rest of the world for what
happened in NYC, then why are we supporting Quran that preaches killing, that
advocates holy war, that calls for murder of non-Muslims? It is not the
extremists who have misunderstood Islam. They do literally what Quran ask them
to do. It is we who misunderstand Islam. We are the ones who are confused. We
are the ones who wrongly assume that Islam is the religion of peace. Islam is
not a religion of peace. In its so-called pure form it can very well be
interpreted as a doctrine of hate. Terrorists are simply doing that and we the
intellectual apologists of Islam are justifying it. We can stop this
madness. Yes we can avert the disaster that is hovering over our heads. Yes we
can denounce the doctrines that promote hate. Yes we can embrace the rest of
humanity with love. Yes, we can become part of a united world, members of one
human family, flowers of one garden. We can dump the claim of infallibility of
our Book and the questionable legacy of our Prophet. Dear friends,
there is no time to waste. Let us put an end to this lie. Let us not fool
ourselves. Islam is not a religion of peace, of tolerance, of equality or of
unity of humankind. Let us read the Quran. Let us face the truth even if it is
painful. As long as we keep this lie alive, as long as we hide our head in the
sands of Arabia we are feeding terrorism. As long as you and I keep calling
Quran the unchangeable book of God, we cannot blame those who follow the
teachings therein. As long as we pay our Khums and Zakat our money goes to
promote Islamic expansionism and that means terrorism, Jihad and war. Islam divides
the world in two parts: Darul Harb (land of war) and Darul Islam (land of
Islam). Darul Harb is the land of the infidels, Muslims are required to
infiltrate those lands, proselytize and procreate until their number increase
and then start the war and fight and kill the people and impose the religion of
Islam on them and convert that land into Darul Islam. In all fairness
we denounce this betrayal. This is an abuse of trust. How can we make war in the
countries that have sheltered us? How can we kill those who have befriended us?
Yet willingly or unwillingly we have become pawns in this Islamic Imperialism.
If this sound to you abhorrent, we ask you how can you support a doctrine that
is so deceiving, so cunning and so ruthless? Let us see what great Islamic
scholars have to say in this respect. Dr. M.
Khan, the translator of Sahih Bukhari and the Quran into English wrote:
"Allah revealed in Sura Bara'at (Repentance, IX) the order to discard (all)
obligations (covenants, etc), and commanded the Muslims to fight against all the
Pagans as well as against the people of the Scriptures (Jews and Christians) if
they do not embrace Islam, till they pay the Jizia (a tax levied on the Jews and
Christians) with willing submission and feel themselves subdued (as it is
revealed in
Q. 9:29). So the Muslims were not permitted to abandon "the
fighting" against them (Pagans, Jews and Christians) and to reconcile with
them and to suspend hostilities against them for an unlimited period while they
are STRONG and have the ability to fight against them. So at first "the
fighting" was forbidden, then it was permitted, and after that it was made
obligatory "[Introduction to English Dr. Sobhy
as-Saleh, a contemporary Islamic academician, quoted Imam Suyuti
the author of Itqan Fi 'Ulum al- Qur'an who wrote: ?The command to fight the
infidels was DELAYED UNTIL THE MUSLIMS BECOME STRONG, but when they were weak
they were commanded to endure and be patient. [ Sobhy as_Saleh, Mabaheth Fi 'Ulum
al- Qur'an, Dar al-'Ilm Lel-Malayeen, Beirut, 1983, p.269.] Dr. Sobhy, in a
footnote, commends the opinion of a scholar named Zarkashi who said: "Allah
the most high and wise revealed to Mohammad in his weak condition what suited
the situation, because of his mercy to him and his followers. For if He gave
them the command to fight while they were weak it would have been embarrassing
and most difficult, but when the most high made Islam victorious He commanded
him with what suited the situation, that is asking the people of the Book to
become Muslims or to pay the levied tax, and the infidels to become Muslims or
face death. These two options, to fight or to have peace return according to the
strength or the weakness of the Muslims." [ibid p. 270] Other Islamic
scholars (Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi, Ga'far ar-Razi, Rabi' Ibn 'Ons, 'Abil-'Aliyah,
Abd ar-Rahman Ibn Zayd Ibn 'Aslam, etc.) agree that the verse "Slay
the idolaters wherever you find them" (Q. 9:5) cancelled those few earlier
verses that called for tolerance in Quran and were revealed when Islam was weak.
Can you still
say that Islam is the religion of peace? Conclusion:
Faith Freedom Foundation This message was sent by Faith Freedom Foundation to several news papers for publication. Faith Freedom Foundation is an organization of freethinking Muslims and Secular Individuals who uphold the concept of secular humanism
Important: This message was written by Faith Freedom Foundation and was sent to several media for publication. However many websites have published it without acknowledging its source. We are pleased to see the message circulating throughout the web but without signature it loses its impact. It is important to note who is making the call. If you come across this message in other sites without acknowledgment of its source please ask the Webmaster to rectify the omission and let us know. My email is: afreethinker@hotmail.com Thanks for you cooperation.
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