Dec. 15. 2001

Yahia H El-Shall <yelshall@juno.com>

 Mr. Sina, 

My name is Maryam El Shall.  I'm a University student in the states and I am a Muslim.  I stumbled on your website quite accidentally thinking that it was an Islamic rather than an anti-Islam website and I must admit that you elicited from me the reaction I'm sure you hoped for; I was horrified.  I was horrified at the twisting of facts and the removal of Quranic verses from their context.  

Your reaction of reading my web site is not unknown to me. I too went through the same stages of shock and denial when I found that Quran contains many verses that could be taken by any terrorist to justify their crimes. But unlike you I did not have the luxury to blame someone else. The shock I received was because I read the Quran. And I could not say I am reading the Quran out of context.

I was horrified at the prejudice and the bigotry that lies behind this website, for you do not have to believe in Islam, nor is that the purpose of my writing, but there is no need to attack it and those who believe in it. 

Bigot is one who does not wish to see the truth. Bigot is one who's heart is filled with hatred of those who do not think like him. This is not I. There was a time that I had the same thoughts about Islam as you have today. But I was open minded enough to accept the truth even if it was hurtful. Today I am against those violent teachings in Islam but not against the Muslims. I challenge you to go through my site and if you find one sentence where I have shown hatred against Muslims I will remove this site. Of course I do not hate Muslims. My whole purpose in writing is to help my fellow Muslim brothers and sisters to wake up from their slumber and realize that Islam needs to be reformed and that the teachings of Quran in this day and age are not conducive to any good. Those teachings are responsible for our backwardness, poverty and miseries.  Muslims are the main victims of these antiquated beliefs. 

I love Muslims. Most of my relatives are Muslims. Most of my friends are Muslims. There is Muslim blood in my veins. I attack the absurd teachings of Islam but not those who believe in them. I consider those who believe in Islam honest and good people many of whom are misguided.  Many Muslims agree with me that Islam needs to be reformed and this is my goal. 

But what horrified me most, is that you claim to have once been a Muslim.   

I think you will get used to it.  More and more people are discovering that most of the teachings of Islam are not applicable for our times and many are even leaving Islam. Today Islam is a religion in demise. Muslims are the fastest growing population because they procreate faster than any other group. Poor people breed more. But the Muslim intellectuals are leaving Islam in huge numbers. Today Islam is the religion of less educated people. Unless something is done the majority of educated Muslims will not be able to assimilate the absolutists and intolerant teachings of Quran and a massive exodus of brain will take place in Islam.  

Now, I don't know whether or not to believe this, but you seem so sincere in your confusion that I'm inclined  to.  It seems to me that you were not taught the meaning of Islam.  It seems to me you studied Quran and hadith and history without anyone ever telling you the importance of faith.     

Of course I am sincere. No one is paying me to write and keep up this web site. I do that because I sincerely believe old teachings of Islam is holding Muslims backward. Yes I studied Quran and hadith on my own. I think this is what all Muslims should do. In several places Quran claims to be an easy book to understand, where there is no doubt in it. So you should not rely on human explanation to understand the worlds of God. If it is easy to understand, you and I do not need the help of another persons to tell us what Quran says. But if it is not then Quran is saying a lie and also Allah is very unjust for not revealing a book understandable by everyone. You rely on others to interpret the Quran for you. How do you know that these people are sincere or their understanding is right? Who’s interpretation  is right? Khomeini interpreted Quran in his way and he was an authority for many. Do you agree with him? Bin Ladan’s understanding of Quran is different also. Do you agree with him? Who’s interpretation is the right one? There are hundreds of sects in Islam each interpreting the Quran in a different way. Which interpretation is correct?   

You speak of the importance of faith. What is faith? Belief in things that make no sense? Belief in things without evidence? Why this should be important? Isn't this faith what is holding us backward? We don't need faith. We need reason, logic, understanding and knowledge. We need doubt. It is skepticism that has made the world advance not faith. Faith is for credulous people. Faith is synonymous with credulity, gullibility and naiveté. Why faith should be important? Intelligent people do not believe. They question, they think, they ponder, they scrutinize and they doubt.  That is how the scientific mind works. That is how discoveries are made and knowledge advances.  If Galileo had faith, he would never have found that the Earth is moving around the Sun. If Darwin had faith he would have never discovered the evolution. No my dear; I have no faith. Faith is for small people -people who cannot doubt or think on their own. Great men and women don't believe, they doubt. This is what distinguishes a freethinker from a believer. 

Mr. Sina, we are human beings, limited in our understanding of both this world and the one to come.  How can you be so arrogant as to proclaim to know more than the rest of us?  

It is not arrogance to tell the truth even if that truth contradicts the common belief of millions. You accuse me of what Socrates, Galileo, Jordano Bruno, Copernicus and Darwin were guilty of. Truth cannot be attained by consensus of the majority. Until a few centuries ago all humanity believed that the Earth is flat. Did this universal accord made any difference in the shape of the Earth? You call me arrogant for saying things contrary to the common belief of billions of people. Mind you, even those who claimed to be prophets were called arrogant for speaking things contrary to the belief of the people of their time. Now you have no difficulty to believe in them just because the majority believe in them, but you have difficulty to accept the truth even when it is backed by reason and proof? 

How can you question God?  

If there is a God he must be pleased of me for using my brain. I am sure if God did not want us to question him he would not have given us a brain. He would have made us zombies. Alas, so many people are created with the gift of rational thinking but never dare to use it. This is the difference between the animals and the humans. Animals believe what they see. They are not curious to find out the truth behind the things. Humans are not satisfied with the obvious. They want to discover the essence and unravel the mysteries of things. But the majority of humans are not yet mature. Their brain is not evolved. They have not developed their humanness. Their brain is at the stage of infancy. They believe what they are taught and do not question.     

Who created you, Mr. Sina?  Do you believe that you came from nowhere? Please, let us be a little humble in our endeavors to understand life. 

Perhaps I am the product of evolution. But let us assume I am the creation of a god. Can you tell me who created God?  If God is uncreated, may be we are uncreated too. If we need a creator, why God does not need one? To say man is the creation of God because everything needs a creator is a mute argument for it has to answer; who created God.  For more on this subject please see this article.         

Humility is not in blindly believing in absurdities. It is in recognition that the truth could be different from what we have been brought up to believe and all that we believe could be wrong. I humbly acknowledged my ignorance and set to find the truth through rational thinking. It is now up to you to be humble and acknowledge that all the truth is not what is being taught to you and you too may have made a mistake.

Anyway my purpose is not to disprove God. I do believe in a Single Principle underlying the creation and that you can call God if you wish. My goal is to fight against beliefs that cause disunity among the people and divide us. Although I am not a believer I am not against Faith. I am against Hate.    

Now, there is no compunction in Islam.  If you do not believe in it with your heart, then perhaps it is better that you are not a Muslim.  But to spread lies and hate and to feed into a frenzy and prejudice that has tainted the Western view of Islam for years is just irresponsible. 

You claim my words are “lies”. This is your belief and not mine. I may be misguided but not a liar.  The only way to prove me wrong is for someone to demonstrate my mistakes. I have made a challenge to all the Muslims to prove me wrong and no one has done so yet. 

You say I spread “hate”. Can you show me where I spread hate? Is fighting against Nazism spreading hate? Is trying to destroy racism or in this case religious apartheid hate mongering? I am fighting to eradicate Islamic fundamentalism because it is spreading hate. It is absurd to call me hate mongrel. All you have to do is to demonstrate that I am wrong and the teachings of Quran are teachings of tolerance and universal love.  Can you do that?

You mentioned the “Western view of Islam”. I am not concerned about what the Westerners think about Islam. In fact one of my obstacles is the Western prejudice that tend to believe all religions are good in their essence and one should be tolerant towards all religions. This is a fallacy. Not all beliefs are good. Many of them are evil. Though we should tolerate all the people of the world we should not tolerate every doctrine. Some of these doctrines aim to destroy democracy and the very freedom of expression that the Westerners grant them. Islamic fundamentalism should not be tolerated. It is evil. We should study the Quran and take out those teachings that promote the hatred of the Jews, the Christians and the atheists. We should take away the secrecy of hadithes and view them as the biography of Muhammad compiled by his fallible believers and not as the divine guidelines. We can fight against terrorism motivated by religious frenzy only by knowing what Quran teaches and reforming it. Quran cannot be taken literally. There are many verses in Quran that cannot be practiced without causing a major world catastrophe. The verses that I quote are not taken out of context. This the the preferred apologetic line of the defenders of Quran, But no one says what is the right context of these verses. Those who say such thing are the ones who have not read the Quran. Had they read that book they would know that there are may verses insisting the believers to acts of violence. Those verses must be revised.  

We are not all terrorists.  In fact, and this may come as a surprise to you, the majority of us are not terrorists.           

 Of course you are not all terrorists. I am a born Muslim and I am not a terrorist either. None of my family members and friends is terrorist. There are many saints among Muslims. I am not talking about Muslims. I am talking about the teachings of Quran that call for violence. Many of those teachings can supply admonition for the terrorists.  They can find justification for their acts of terrorism, violence and hate. Look at these verses of Quran and click on the hyperlined numbers to read them in their “context”. You say that these verses are misunderstood, then let us change them so no one can misunderstand them. These are the very verses that the Taliban uses to commit their crimes. These are the verses that Khomeini kept quoting to murder hundreds of thousand of people in Iran. These are the verses that inspired the terrorists to destroy the WTC and the Pentagon. If they are misinterpreted and misunderstood by so many Muslims, let us delete them from the Quran.  How can one say Islam is a religion of peace while there are so many verses in Quran that call for killing, maiming and crucifying the unbelievers? The average Muslim does not know these teachings. Most of them are very good people. But those who follow these teachings of Quran become Khomeinis and Bin Ladens. This is what we have to aviod.     

Most Muslims are poor and struggling just to survive from day to day.  Many of us are doing the same thing you and most other Westerners are doing: we're trying to make a better life for ourselves and our children.  

I agree that Most Muslims are poor. Have you ever asked why? Isn’t it because they are unproductive? Isn’t this because they are kept in ignorance? Isn’t this because freedom of expression in Islamic countries does not exist, democracy is absent and therefore human minds remain undeveloped? Doesn't this perhaps tell us that Islam needs to be reformed?  

I disagree that many of us are doing the same things most Westerners are doing. In Islamic countries we eulogize Jihad, we waste our time in studies that foment ignorance such as Fiqh and Sharia that are useless religious rituals. We  stop working five times a day to pray. In Iran the Muslims who gather to say their Friday congregational prayer have been chanting their favorite slogan “Death to America” for the last 23 years every Friday. If the intent of prayer is to make one more spiritual then how is it that Muslims act often with savagery when they go to their mosques, say their prayers and listen to the sermons of their religious leaders? Islam has not certainly made us more spiritual. There are more wars and fights amongst us than any other people. But Islam has contributed to reduce our productivity. Because many Western sciences are despised and even banned in many more fundamentalist Islamic countries, ignorance is rampant in these countries. In Pakistan and Afghanistan children do not go to schools to learn physics and chemistry. They go to Madresa to learn how to perform Vodu, Qosl and Tahara. (the rituals of ablution and toilet cleanliness) How can we become rich if our people are not competent and competitive with other people?  A good example of that is Pakistan. Half a century after secession, Pakistan and Bangladesh are among the poorest countries of the world while India is thriving and it is expected to become the third biggest world economy by 2030. Another example is Iran. Prior to the Islamic revolution Iran was a relatively prosperous country, 23 years after the revolution it is a poor third world  country where people are forced to sell their kidneys to feed their children. This is despite the humongous oil revenue.     

We do not drink. We do not gamble.  We do not commit adultery, or kill or lie or steal or divorce our husbands and wives the minute we can no longer get along or destroy our families for the petty reasons that so many families are destroyed in the states.  And why, because our religion tells us not to.  

You do not drink!  Is that a virtue? Everyone in the world knows that alcoholism is a disease. It is an addiction that is often caused by psychological or emotional complications. But what is wrong by moderate consumption of alcohol?  What is wrong in drinking a mug of cold beer in a hot day? What is wrong in drinking a glass of wine at lunch or dinner? What is wrong to toast with Champaign in a celebration?

There is nothing wrong is drinking itself. The problem is with the abuse of drinking. Not everyone who drinks become alcoholic. The abuse of anything is wrong. The same psycho-emotive problems that make one addicted to alcohol are responsible for eating disorders such as bulimia and over eating. Could you say eating is bad because some people abuse it? Sex is also very much abused. Rape, sexual addiction, pedophilia are all sexual abuses, can you say sex should be banned because some people abuse it?     

You think Muslims are superior because they do not drink. But forget that they do things that drinking is nothing compared to them, like honor killing. What a twisted sense of morality! 

Yes Muslims gamble too. But if you mean gambling in Islam is prohibited, this is not a good thing. No society encourages gambling. Everyone knows that gambling is bad. But in civilized societies we do not think this is governments’ business to tell people how to live their lives or punish them for deciding to live the wrong way.  

You say we do not commit adultery. Of course you (the Muslims) do. But this is legalized and only is the privilege of men. Married men can still fool around and desire other women. As long as they call it second, third or fourth wife it is okay. In Iran the Shiites have revived a tradition of Muhammad who allowed men to “marry” temporarily women for a defined fee and a defined period of time. This is called Siqa. Muslim men are also allowed to have sex with captured women in wars even if those women are married. (Q.4:24)

As you see in Islam adultery is institutionalized and is sanctioned by Allah.  

You say you don’t kill. You must be joking or perhaps you have not read the Quran and the history of Islam. Killing the unbelievers (kafirs) is the third most meritorious act for Muslims. Why do you think so many Muslims are terrorists? Have all of them misunderstood the peaceful message of Quran? Why then you don’t tell them this? Why no one goes to Palestine to tell those terrorists who blow their bodies to kill the Jews that Islam means peace? Are these people misinterpreting the Quran? Then why there is no program to rehabilitate these misguided Muslims? Why is it that only those apologists of Islam that are in the West believe that these terrorists are misguided? And why they keep only telling us about the "real Islam" and not to the terrorists?  

You say we do not divorce from our husbands and wives. I believe you are not aware of the Islamic law. A man can divorce his wife by pronouncing “I divorce thee” and that is it. Women have no right to divorce. This privilege is reserved to men. If some Islamic countries recognize some rights for their women those laws are inspired by secular West and are not from Quran.   

Surely there will be those who deviate from the path.  We can not account for those.  We can only account for ourselves and try to do better.  And that's what we've been trying to do as a community since Sept. 11.  So what is it, exactly, that makes us so bad?  I have never hurt anyone.  I have never so much as taken a drug or tasted a drop of alcohol.  My father has one wife as did my grandfather and my great-grandfather before him and by great-great-grandfather before him. My brother is not a terrorist.  

Also my father has one wife, no one in our family married more than one wife. No one in my family drinks and no one uses drug. No one of my relatives is a terrorist nor they approve of it. I am not talking about Muslims but about those teachings of Quran that are used by the terrorists to commit their crimes against the humanity.

No one forced me to cover my hair.  Many of my female cousins back home in Egypt don't even cover theirs.  

Covering your hair is a teaching of Islam. Muhammad ordered his wives to cover themselves.  (Q.,33:53) If you and your cousins do not cover yourselves you are not good Muslims. Just as if you befriend the Jews and the Christians (Q.3: 28) or do not fight against the unbelievers, besiege them and kill them Q.9: 29) you are not a good Muslim. A good Muslim is supposed to make jihad against the unbelievers. (Q.8: 65)

So where, Mr. Sina, do you get this picture of Islam?  And where do you get the motivation to paint it so? 

What you describe is NOT the picture of Islam. It is the picture YOU have of Islam in your head. The Islamic terrorist have an entirely different picture of Islam in his head. But one will get the real picture of Islam only after reading the Quran. I suggest you start reading carefully that book to get the real picture of Islam too. All I say is please read the Quran so the truth become manifest to you. Do not read a passage here and a passage there. Sit down and read that book from cover to cover. I bet if all Muslims did that, most of them like me would agree that many parts of Quran are no more applicable in our times. There is no other book more damaging to Islam than Quran itself. If it is not revised Islam will not survive. As an Egyptian you are lucky for you can read the Quran in Arabic. The true harshness and cruelty of Quran can be much easier seen in the original Arabic. The translations of Quran are invariably softer than the original version.       

  I can not believe it is anything other than blind prejudice and so I would never take a word you say, no matter how intelligently spoken, seriously, because I know it all stems from hate.  You, sir, are the one who appears blind.  

So you wont accept anything that goes against your preconceived cherished belief even if that thing is said intelligently, logically and rationally? And you call me blind!  

What else besides prejudice and hatred would possess someone to invest so much time into a website against a group of people who have never done the world any harm?  

LOVE!. The answer is love. I love my people and I love humanity and that is why I expend so much time fighting against hate, killing and terrorism. Where is my message of hate? I have shown the message of hate in Quran. Go through my site and find one sentence where I have been hateful against any group of people. All I propose is to take out the parts of Quran that feed into the Islamic terrorism. This does not mean that Muslims.  According to Quran Muhammad encouraged his followers to distrust the Jews, the Christians and kill all the nonbelievers. Can you find one hateful message in my writings similar to those I have found in Quran? 

You want to write terrible things about Osama bin Laden and his Qaeda network, go ahead, I think every TRUE Muslim would encourage it, because Osama bin Laden is an outcast of Islam as he is of humanity. 

Osama bin Laden is a product of those harsh teachings of Islam. He is a man who truly believes in everything that is written Quran and follows that book to the letter. I am not going to criticize Osama for trying to live the religion that he believes. I criticize those Muslims who uphold the entire Quran as the words of God and criticize Bin Laden for living according to those teachings. This is hypocrisy.   

Islam teaches cover yourself, you don’t and you pride yourself in disobeying the instructions of your prophet. Islam prohibits music and you listen to it. Islam allows a man to marry several women, your family does not and you pride yourself for not following what Allah considers lawful. Islam says clearly “not to take the Christians and Jews as friends” You do and then are proud that you do not have prejudice. Tell me why you should be more proud for NOT following the teachings of your beloved prophet? Why do you follow a man who's teachings you deem to be inferior to the humanistic standards of the secular world? If you are a “true Muslim” you should wear hijab, not travel alone without a Mahram, obey your husband (Q.66:10), be a tilt to him (Q.2:223) accept co-wives (Q.,4:3), accept being beaten by your husband because Quran gives him the authority to scourge you (Q.4:34) and never complain if your testimony in the court of law is half of that of a man (Q.2:282) and your inheritance also is half of a man (Q.4:11-12). Do you really think Islam has any future with teachings such as these?

Do you know how many women do not report violence against them in Islamic countries because they cannot produce a male witness other than their male assaulter? Do you know how many women will never report being raped because this would dishonor their family, which would force their own family to kill them? Furthermore as a defender of Islam you should agree with the Prophet who said, “women are deficient in intelligence"

I doubt you are that kind of woman. I suspect you are quite a liberated woman who likes her independence and the equality that the secular West has bestowed upon her. I imagine you are going to university and aspire to become a professional, to work and contribute to the world. In that case you already live the reformed Islam. What I propose is let us make these changes in the Quran so no Taliban or Hezbollah can abuse the teachings of Quran and justify his crimes by quoting the violent verses of that book. Why do you want keep unto a book that you don’t like to follow?  

            And don't depend on the ignorant to feed your arguments.  Don't show pictures of poor Palestinian children and their ignorant parents dancing in the street to say that Muslims approve of terrorism.  Those people are themselves caught in a struggle for existence they believe is caused by the U.S.  They've never known anything else and they don't understand the magnitude of the tragedy of September 11.  Listen instead to what the clerics and Muslim leaders have said time and time again.  

Listen to clerics and Muslim leaders? Which one of them? Those who are in the West trying to befool the westerners with their lies or those who are in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan who practice and impose Islam? Why instead of listening to clerics you don’t read the Quran and the hadith? Where in Quran says listen to the clerics?  

Look for the answers in the Quran. 

I looked for the answers in Quran and what I found was disturbing. That is why I suggest that Quran must be reformed. I urge you to read the Quran too. I am sure you agree with me that many of the teachings of Quran can not be applied anymore and they must be revised.   

            Does it not say that to kill one human being is as though one has killed all of humanity?  With all the Quran you quoted in your website, I wonder why you failed to quote this one.  Perhaps it did not fit your agenda of spreading hatred.  

The problem is that Quran is not a consistent book. Part of it was written in Mecca when Muhammad was weak and needed support. That part of Quran is full of good words such as what you mentioned. But when he went to Medina, became powerful and enriched himself by raiding merchant caravans, his teachings also changed. Then he started to call for killing, maiming, and crucifying those who did not accept his message. Read this article to see Muhammad’s metamorphosis from preacher to despot. 

I do not expect you to be much affected by this message.  I only want you to realize what a terrible thing you are doing and to tell you that as long as there is one Muslim who is not the way you have so horribly described him, than what you are doing is unjust. 

I think I explained this several times. There is not just one but millions of Muslims who are exemplars for goodness. Many of them I know personally and love them dearly. My fight is not against Muslims but against violence that Quran preaches.  Muslims are victims. They are like patients and the violence prescribed in Quran is the disease. I want to eradicate the disease not kill the patients. Good people will do good and evil people will do evil but as  Steven Weinberg says "For good people to do bad things, it takes religion". Unfortunately many verses of Quran encourage good people to do bad things and that is why we should get rid of them.    

I would also like to tell you that I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry you've wasted so much of your time spreading hate.  It will only reach those who are as filled with hate as you are.  Islam will prosper and Muslims will continue to thrive and do wonderful things. 

I do not spread hate but love. If you take away that prejudice from your eyes you would see that there many hate messages laden in Quran that any decent human being would want to get rid of them. Would you call those who fought against Nazism hate mongrels?  Would you say those who opposed the South African apartheid prejudiced? Are those who fight against human right abuses, bigotry and hate, hateful people? If so I am guilty as charged.

We are a peaceful people.  We are loving and we are forgiving.  

I am not talking about you or any other Muslim. I am talking about some of the very hateful messages of Quran. I have made a list of few of the verses of Quran that clearly depicts Allah as a non loving or non forgiving god. 

In Quran  4:48 we read:  “Allah forgiveth not that partners should be set up with Him; but He forgiveth anything else, to whom He pleaseth; to set up partners with Allah is to devise a sin Most heinous indeed.”

In other words Bin Laden who masterminded the killing of thousands of innocent people will be forgiven because he believes in Allah but Gandhi will not be forgiven because he was a polytheist. How can Muslims love and forgive when their god is not loving and forgiving?    

You can only convince igorant people of anything else, and if it does something for you to know that those are the type of people you are attracting, than I encourage you to keep right on doing it.  I only thought I should tell you what you what all you can't see in your blindness.

Thanks,

Maryam

maryamelshall@hotmail.com

No, I can never convince ignorant people.  “The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye;” said Oliver Wendell Holmes  “the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract” I only write for enlightened people.

Regards

Ali Sina

Thu, 20 Dec 2001

 Dear Mr. Sina,

There are several places where I feel you either misread or misinterpreted my letter.  First of all, I do cover my hair and I am a practicing Muslim in every sense.  I do read the Quran and I find nothing disturbing about it.  It neither preaches hatred nor violence, thank you very much.  Any call to fight is in self-defense.  As you know, the prophet Muhammed was in a struggle for his very existence.  Muslims were ostrasized from the community because Islam preached social justice and this did not fly with the wealthy merchants of Mecca who made their living by exploiting the poor.  Muslims were denied food and many of the townspeople refused to do business with them.  When the prophet fought, it was in defense of his people and in defense of God's word.  He fought, Mr. Sina, for those who could not fight for themselves.  And, as you know, as a result of war, there was a shortage of men.  Polygamy in Islam arose out of necessity and not as a result of man's lust as you would have so many believe.  The prophet married more than one wife for this purpose.  Furthermore, that women are not allowed the same right is for purely common sense reasons, which you, being the intellectual, rational thinker you so proudly call yourself, ought to understand.  First, there was not and still is not a shortage of women.  Secondly, men could thrive in society alone whereas women were dependant on men, a situation much ameliorated by the Quran as women were given rights of inheritance, property ownership and testimony.  Thirdly, there were no paternity tests at that time, Mr. Sina.  How was a man to know whether or not his wife was carrying his child or if that child belonged to another man?

    We do not find perfection in all of these cases not because there is any mistake in the Quran, Mr. Sina, but because as humans, we are fallible.  This is something we must always keep in mind.  To suggest that the Quran be changed, Mr. Sina, is a very arrogant statement.  Who are you to change it?  If you do not believe, that is your prerogative.  But those of us who chose to value the Quran and realize that what may appear to be a failing in the Quran is really a failing in ourselves.

    As for your constant apologies to Muslims and your proclamation that you are not attacking us, this is, Mr. Sina, not acceptable.  An attack on Islam and a suggestion to change the Quran is an attack on Muslims and I do take it very personally.  Your words are both an insult and an affront to Islam for you not only spread untruth about Islam and the Quran, but you take it for granted that all the billions of Muslims who practice Islam are stupid and ignorant.  You are not the only one to read the Quran, Mr. Sina.  I can assure you that I do and that thousands and thousands before you have, but only you and a few others have come to such mistaken conclusions.  Finally, I would just like to say, that if Muslims are good people, as you've admitted, would you mind telling me where they get their morality from? 

Please do not continue to take your facts out of context.  Please do mention how the prophet Muhammad was attacked by the Meccans for preaching Islam.  Do mention how the Jews threw rocks and pig feces and intenstines on the prophet while he prayed.  Please mention how the Muslims were ostrasized and forced to leave their homes just for believing in Allah and following his messenger.  The prophet fought in self defense and this is the context of those passages you are so fond of dwelling on.  I know that and true Muslims know that as well.  You are not fooling anyone, Mr. Sina, and I will tell you again that what you are doing is very wrong and very unjust.  I'm very sorry for you.  You have lost one of the most beautiful things God has ever bestowed on this earth.

Maryam 

Dear Maryam, 

Have you seen this quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes? 

“ The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.”  

Klytn@cs.com