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Frequently Asked Questions part 1
1-
Islam is a an old religion. Some of the its teachings
may not
applicable today. But Islam was and still
is a great religion with a billion of believers. Islam
played an important part in human civilization. The
greatness of a belief is not determined by the number
of its adherents but by its coherence and its inherent
truths, its usefulness and practicability. There was a
time that all the humanity believed that the Earth was
flat. All philosophers and prophets concurred and the
common sense confirmed it. Yet it was not true. Islam
did play an important part in human civilization. But
was that a positive or a negative role? How many human
lives were sacrificed at the altar of Allah? The
Prophet exterminated the Jews of
Arabia who called that land home for 2000 years.
They had alliances with their Arab compatriots and
intermarried with them. They were completely
Arabianized. There was no religious conflict in
Arabia. The Prophet not only introduced
religious intolerance, he undertook the ethnic cleansing of the
Arabia and instigated a divinely ordained hatred
between his followers and the Jews that is taking its
toll even up to this day. His command to kill the
idolaters destroyed much more human lives in 1400
years than Hitler succeeded to destroy in 13 years.
Yes Islam had a great impact on the minds of
his followers. But we paid and keep paying with our
lives for that impact. The suffering and backwardness
of Islamic nation is the result of that impact.
2-
What
about the great minds of Islamic world, like Zakaria
Razi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Khayyam, Ibn Arabbi, Al Muari and many more? Shouldn’t we thank
Islam for rearing these luminaries? We should thank Islam for rearing Khomeini, Bin Laden, Umar and Ali. They killed people inspired by Islam. The thinkers of Islamic world were almost all apostates. Ibn Sina did not believe in the immortality of the soul and did not believe in a god that cares about the creation. His concept of God was very much similar to that of Espinoza. He was attacked vehemently by Ghazali because of that. But he was a genius who started to teach medicine at the age of 20. His life was spared because he was much needed and because in those days we had tolerant governors who were more secular than religious. Khayyam was obviously an apostate as you can see from every robai that he composed. Hafiz memorized Quran before he reached the age of 15. But as you see there is no praise of Muhammad in his poetries when he became an adult and could think independently. Only a non-religious humanist would say: “Mei bekhor manbar besoozan, mardoom aazaari makon.” (Drink and burn the pulpit but don’t hurt people) This is totally opposite with the Prophet instructions who prohibited drinking wine, used the pulpit and ordered killing the non-believers. Ar Razi spoke fearlessly against all the religions calling the Prophets disdainfully “Billy Goats” and liars and so other great thinkers of the “Islam”. These truths have been kept hidden from us. We have been lied to constantly. First the Muslims persecuted these apostates and after their death they credited themselves with their great works and contributions to science and learning. The reason the Golden Age in Islamic world became possible was because the rulers in those days were more secular than religious and they tolerated the apostasy of the great minds who in turned contributed to science and made the Golden Age a reality.
3- Your criticism is Just about Islam or all religions? My
criticism is about all the religions. The very concept
of God sending messengers to be known and worshipped
is absurd. All those who come pretending to bring a
message from an invisible god that only they can see are
charlatans and their claims are bogus. I do believe
in a higher Reality and a Single Principle underlying
the creation, but not in an egotistic self-centered
petulant deity as depicted by these self-appointed
prophets.
4- You talk about the bad parts. How about the good parts? Do you see any good part in Islam or all what you see is bad? In every religion, there is something good, something bad and something very ugly. The good part is what is being preached, the inner peace and security that it promises. The bad part is the hidden agenda of their founders and how that religion is practiced. The ugly part is the terrible outcome and the disastrous toll that it takes from its followers and not followers. All the religions share the same characteristics. Except Buddhism that is not a religion but an agnostic philosophy of enlightenment. Buddhism makes no mention of God or any deity and Buddha never made any claim of receiving a revelation.
5- Do you suggest that Islam is bad for the people and they should accept other religions or no religion at all? What is good in your view for the people to believe in? What are your recommendations, if any? I
do not suggest people accepting any religion. I
suggest we turn to reason and rational thinking. I do
not “recommend” any religion. I recommend, doubt
everything and find your own light. I am grateful to a dear friend that I met online who introduced me to one of the greatest sears this world has known. His name is Krishnamurti. "The core of Krishnamurti's teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said: 'Truth is a pathless land'. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a fence of security - religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, and beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man's thinking, his relationships and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. This content is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all mankind. So he is not an individual." If
you look for meaning in life, don’t look for it in
religions. Don’t go from one cult to another or from
one guru to the next. You can expend all your life or
look for eternity and will find nothing but
disappointment and disillusionment. Look instead in
service to humanity. You will find “meaning” in
your love for other human beings. You can experience
God when you have helped someone who needed your help.
The only truth that counts is the love that we have
for each other. This is absolute and real. The rest is
mirage, fancies of human imagination, and fallacies of
our own making.
6- Is it right to be disrespectful towards any religion that we don’t believe in and spit on the image of their founders? No,
it is not right to be disrespectful towards anything.
Only those who have no respect can give no respect. Cursing, insulting and being rude
reveals our own lack of education, and character. We
(especially we Iranians) have to learn to talk and
disagree without insulting each other. We are not
barbarians; we don’t have to behave like them. We
used to believe in goftare nik, kerdare nik and
pendare nik (Good words, good deeds and good
thoughts). What happened to that? Islam took it away
from us. The Prophet himself used to invoke the curse
of Allah on his enemies, sometimes for 30 consecutive
days. He even cursed his own uncle and the dead
people. We don’t have to follow his example. We can
do better. We are the children of a great
civilization, with a great culture and have our own
great values.
7- People must respect other people's beliefs instead of insulting them and provoking them by offending that which is sacred to them. If
you believe people’s belief should be respected,
please tell us how do you justify the Prophet bursting
into Ka’ba and destroying the idols of the people
who believed in them? Muhammad not only insulted the un-believers and their sacred beliefs, he assaulted them, killed them and forced his version of truth on them. In
my school of thought, beliefs do not deserve any
respect. They must be confronted, scrutinized and if found faulty,
criticized and rejected. But people
must be respected. I
would respect the rights of a Nazi but I would speak
openly against his doctrine of hate. I respect the
Muslims but I cannot respect their religion that
respects nothing, not even human life. Let
me make it clear. I like the variety and believe in
unity in diversity. But I will fight against Nazism,
KKK,
Islam and other doctrines of hate. The reason I
fight against them is because if we don’t destroy
them, they will destroy everything in their path and
they will crush that very variety that you and I
cherish so much. How
can anyone justify these hate-laden verses of Quran?
They are not even respectful of people’s right to
choose and not even respectful of their lives. But I
do respect people’s right to choose and their lives.
9:123Oh ye who believe! Murder those of the disbelievers and let them find harshness in you. 9: 5 "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them" 9: 29"Fight those who do not believe in God and the last day... and fight People of the Book, who do not accept the religion of truth (Islam) until they pay tribute by hand, being inferior" 3: 85"Whoso desires another religion than Islam, it shall not be accepted of him; in the next world he shall be among the losers." 5: 11"And as for those who disbelieve and reject Our Signs, they are the people of Hell" 9: 28“O you who believe! Verily, the Mushrikűn (unbeleivers) are Najasun (impure). So let them not come near Al-Masjid-al-Harâm (at Makkah) after this year, …” 2: 193“Fight them on until there is no more tumult and religion becomes that of Allah” 22: 9“As for the unbelievers for them garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowls and skin shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods. “ 9: 23"O ye who believe! take not for protectors your fathers and your brothers if they love Infidelity above Faith: if any of you do so, they do wrong". 25: 52So obey not the disbelievers, but strive against them herewith with a great endeavor. 66: 9O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be stern with them. Hell will be their home, a hapless journey's end. 47: 4“When you meet the unbelievers, strike off their heads; then when you have made wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives.” 3:
28"Let not the believers take for friends or
helpers unbelievers rather than believers: if any do
that, in nothing will there be help from Allah. except
by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves
from them. But Allah cautions you (to fear) Himself;
for the final goal is to Allah." Muhammad was so indolent towards the belief of the Quraish that some of their leaders met with Abu Talib, Muhammad’s uncle and begged him to intercede and refrain him from insulting their gods. They said: This Nephew of thine hath spoken opprobriously of our gods and our religion: and hath abused us as fools, and given out that our forefathers were all astray. Now, avenge us thyself of our adversary; or, (seeing that thou art in the same case with ourselves,) leave him to it that we may take our satisfaction. Abu Talib answered them softly and they parted. But as Muhammad’s verbal abuse of their sacred belief did not diminish they went again to Abu Talib in great exasperation; and added: - “and now verily we cannot have patience any longer with his abuse of us, our ancestors, and our gods, wherefore either do thou hold him back from us, or thyself take part with him that the matter may be decided between us.” Katib al Wackidi, reports that Abu Talib addressed the Prophet and told him “Verily thy people ask of thee a reasonable thing, that thou leave off to abuse their gods, and they will leave off to abuse thee and thy God." To whom he responded “- if they brought the Sun to my right hand, and the Moon to my left, to force me from my undertaking, verily, I would not desist therefrom- until the Lord made manifest my cause, or I perished in the attempt.
8- What you write about the Prophet is offensive to those of us who believe in him as a messenger of God. You are insulting us and the religion of more than a billion people. I
do not insult people nor do I taunt their beliefs. I
am after facts and the truth. If I say something that
I believe is true and you are offended, it is not my fault. If I steal and you go around saying that
I am a thief, you are not insulting me. You are simply
telling the truth and it is your duty to warn others
who may otherwise become my victims. If my kids are
offended by that it is because they love me so much
that they cannot face the truth. What they have to do
is to prove my innocence or accept the fact that their
beloved father was not a perfect man. But if they
retort by calling you names then they are insulting
you. What I say about the Prophet are not insults but the truth.
If you think these are offensive words
please suggest other words that are less offensive. I
promise to use them instead. But if Muslims are
offended for they believe what I say is false then
they have to prove it to me that these stories are all
baseless.
9-
You
seem to think that Violence and
killing of non-believers is unique to Islam but fail
to point out that Judaism, the forerunner to both
Christianity and Islam, had similar commandments too. I agree the Bible recounts of terrible acts of violence committed by Moses and Joshua and most religions have violence associated in their annals. I am not a religious person and do not support any one of them. Even though not all of the religions call for killing the disbelievers like Islam does, they are all the cause of disunity and much bloodshed amongst the humankind. We have to get rid of them all. We must not tolerate violence in one religion because other religions have also violent teachings. It is as if that the followers of different religions are vying with each other in bigotry and fundamentalism; as if each is encouraging the other to dig deeper into their ignorance. Muslims, when face the dismal status of women in their religion console themselves with the fact that other religions also have discriminatory teachings about women, and the Christians take comfort in the fact that woman in Islam are nothing but man's property. This is absurd. Other religions are not the standard. We have to compare the teachings of these religions to the modern humanistic concepts of equality and oneness of humankinds. We are not in competition with each other. We are struggling to win at any cost. To win what? Winning to establish barbarity? There is nothing to win. It's all loss. This is a backward race to failure. We are racing towards the precipice. The winner is the one who gets out of this mad race sooner.
10-
What
you write are all facts and true. Yes
what I write is true, but I do not foment hate against
people. I
love all humanity and make no distinction between
Arabs, Jews, blacks or whites. The
reason I fight Islam is because it is a doctrine of
hate. I am against Islam for the same reason I am
against Nazism. Judaism and Christianity are also very
inhumane religions but there are only a few Christians or
Jews who have turned terrorists because of their
faith. But Islamic terrorists are destroying lives
everywhere and have plunged many countries into the
Dark Ages. We have to get rid of the
religions that inseminate hate in order to be able to
embrace each other as humans. You
must make a distinction between Muslims and Islam.
Muslims are the primary victims of this barbaric cult.
You must love them just as you love your own people,
despite their arrogance, bigotry and hatred
towards non-Muslims. I am not preaching turning the
other cheek, but we have to realize Muslims are hostages
of Islam too. Violence only breeds violence. It
is the hate, and the doctrines that promote hate that
we should make the target of our attack not the
people.
You
cannot say that God is an “unknowable essence” and
then say that he is the creator. If you say that he is
the creator, then you have already DEFINED him as the
“creator”. So he is no more an unknowable essence.
I
do not accept god as a creator because: ·
God as a
creator becomes a “being”. A being must have a
physical or a spiritual existence. Anything that
exists is limited in space and is subject to time. ·
If God
is the creator, he cannot be the creation. So where
the creation is, God is not. Take your own example of
Leonardo Da Vinci and Mona Lisa. They are two separate
entities and each can exist without the other. Each is
limited in time and space. If the relationship between
God and his creation is, as you described, that of the
creator and the created, then God and the creation are
two distinct entities and therefore God cannot be
infinite otherwise he would overlap his creation,
which is not possible because in that case we (the
creation) would be part of the creator. Which means,
God has created himself. ·
If God
is the creator, then there must have been a time that
the creation did not exist. Therefore before the
creation, God was not the creator. Just as Da Vinci
was not a painter before he started to paint;
and you are not the father of your son before he is
conceived. This creates the problem that God too is
improving and acquiring faculties that he did not
have. Before the universe came to be, he was not the
creator, and then he became the creator after he
created it. In other words God also changes. Therefore
God is neither perfect nor absolute. If God was
perfect, he need not change. He could not improve nor
become anything, like “becoming” a creator.
“Becoming” behooves the creation and not an
absolute and unchanging god. ·
If you
say that the creation always existed parallel to God
then God cannot be the creator because in that case
God and the Universe are twins that existed from
eternity, which makes the existence of God as the
creator superfluous. If the Universe is created, God must have
preceded it. That of course, as we saw above, is not
possible because in that case God would be acquiring
attributes like becoming a creator.
In conclusion, God cannot be the creator of the universe because
As
you see, even if you say that God is an unknowable
essence, as soon as you say he is the creator, you are
limiting him and denying his perfection and therefore
his godhood.
People
believe in myriad of things. There are those who
believe in sacred cows, others believe in snakes, a
number of people believe in voodoo, some believe in
resurrection of Jesus and yet others in Muhammad
splitting the moon. Whether these beliefs are based on
facts or fantasies they are no one’s business. As
long as these beliefs don’t harm me, I don’t have
to waste my time disproving them, even if I think they
are ludicrous. The
belief in God, on the other hand has become the force
behind the fanaticism and it is killing people.
Millions have died in the name of this god. There is
not a single cause for which people are so willing to
die and take the lives of others as for the belief in
God. So it is of paramount importance to make sure
that this belief is founded on solid facts and not on
superstitions. Upon
the closer inspection and by using logic we can see
there are many flaws in the theory of god as presented
to us by these self appointed prophets. God as a being
is specious and can be refuted by logics My
intention is not to prove or disprove the existence of
God. The belief in God is a personal matter. It’s
nice to believe in a big daddy that can come to your
rescue when you are in peril or when life turns doom
and gloom. I don’t want to take away peoples faith.
Religion is a pacifier; it’s useless but has great
psychological benefits. People are like children. I
don’t like cruelty to children and I will not take
away what gives masses of people peace and comfort. The
reason I bother to expose the fallacies of religions
and their petulant god is because this god, who is
nothing but the figment of our imagination, is
affecting our lives. It is dictating the politics of
our lands; shaping our governments and making us hate
each other. He is killing us. If
an epidemic breaks out, killing us so successfully as
religious hate is doing, we would strive hard to
eradicate it. But the belief in this god that no one
except a few men of dubious moral and ethical character
have ever seen is left unchecked to claim its victims
in every land. This
imaginary god is responsible for most of the killings that
are taking place in all parts of the world. Even if
our conflicts are of political or economical nature,
the schism that separates people is often religious.
People may fight over land, but the line of
demarcation is religion. We hate each other because of
religion. We are dieing, because of religion. Look at
Iran, Afghanistan, Palestine, Algeria, Kashmir,
Philippine, Timor and virtually everywhere Islam or
any other religion is taken seriously. I
say, if we are going to hate each other over religion,
if we are going to kill each other for the sake of
this god, it is important to stop for a moment and ask
whether he for whom we are willing to die and kill is
legitimate. |
