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Posted on 01/11/2004 1:13:44 PM PST by dennisw
The real Islam
A blistering summary of the real Muhammad and the real Islam, by Jack Wheeler. The author concludes that the bad, violent, and dictatorial Islam can be turned into a good, humane, and free Islam if it submits to democracy and human rights. But this seems more more a hope than a reality, since Wheeler’s own uncompromisingly negative portrait of Islam strongly suggests that it is inherently unreformable. Thus he quotes a Moslem dissident who says: “Mankind will not lose a single moral precept if Islam is not there tomorrow,” an assessment which even strong critics of Islam must question.
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THE ALLAH THAT FAILED
Jack Wheeler
January 7, 2004
Let’s say there’s this fellow named Joe. He makes a living as a highway bandit robbing travelers. Any victim who gives him any trouble he kills. Joe has a special hatred for Jews. “Kill Jews wherever you find them,” he tells the members of his gang. At age fifty, Joe tells his best friend that he fallen in love with his daughter and wants to marry her. She is six years old. They are “married” and Joe starts having sex with the little girl when she is nine years old.
Joe tells his gang that God talks to him. As the Messenger of God, every word of Joe’s is the Word of God. Anyone who refuses to believe this, Joe has his gang members kill them.
Here’s the question: Is Joe a criminally insane pervert and moral monster, or is he worshipped by hundreds of millions of devout followers who deeply believe that he is the most moral human being who ever lived?
The answer is: he is both. Joe’s real name is Ubul Kassim, an Arabian bandit chieftain who became known as Mohammed (“The Praised One” in Arabic) and founded the religion of Islam.
According to official Islamic tradition, Mohammed personally conducted at least 27 bandit raids, married Abu Bakr’s daughter Aisha when she was six and started sex with her when she was nine, married a total of thirteen women and had nine wives at the time of his death (including Aisha), ordered that his enemies have “their hands and legs cut off, that their eyes be branded with heated pieces of iron, and that their cut hands and legs not be cauterized until they die,” and claimed that God told him to “kill any Jews that fall into your power.” (Quotes from Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Mohammed—the original and most authoritative biography written in the 8th Century—Oxford Univ. Press, 1987)
Let’s state it clearly. To compare Mohammed to such founders of other major religions as Jesus or Buddha is obscene.
Followers of Mohammed are the world’s penultimate example—along with Michael Jackson fans—of people who rather than believing only what they see, they see only what they believe.
Moslems today are afraid to see anything they don’t believe in, because they are afraid of the terrible question asked by modern Islam’s greatest philosopher Mohammed Iqbal:
O Allah, why are Your blessings showered on the homes of unbelievers, strangers (to Islam) all, while on the poor Moslem Your wrath like lightning falls?Allah is the God that has failed.
While so much of the rest of the world continues to progress culturally and economically, the Islamic world—especially its Arabic core—remains mired in dictatorship, poverty, ignorance, and violent resentment.
Over half a century ago, Arthur Koestler compiled the testimonies of ex-Communists, who had passionately believed in the God of Communism, witnessed its evil from the inside, and had the moral courage to use their rational brains and denounce it. Koestler entitled his book The God That Failed (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1950).
An Islamic Koestler has now emerged, who has the courage to acknowledge the totalitarian parallels between the ideologies of Communism and Islam, and has compiled the testimonies of ex-Moslems into an anthology he almost entitled The Allah That Failed, but instead chose Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out (Prometheus Books, 2003).
This Islamic Koestler’s name is Ibn Warraq. The stories he and his fellow Islamic apostates tell are riveting—all the more so when you realize that under Islamic Sharia law, apostasy is punishable by death. One of the Sharia’s chief formulators, Ismail al-Bukhari (810-870 AD), quoted Mohammed as saying, “Kill him who changes his religion.” The Sharia tradition of death for apostates is further based on Sura 4:89 in the Koran, in which Allah demands that apostates be seized and put to death.
No other major religion commands its apostates be killed. The concept of apostasy does not even exist in Buddhism and Hinduism. Judaic doctrine proscribes at the most expulsion and social ostracism. The Christian Inquisition’s burning of heretics was a long time ago.
The twin beliefs that Allah commands Moslems to kill apostates and make war upon unbelievers are why Islam at its core is the most intolerant and violent religion on earth.
Allah commands Moslems in the Koran (Sura 8:12) to “cast terror into the hearts of the infidels—cut off their heads, cut off the tips of their fingers,” and (Sura 8:39) to “make war (jihad) on infidels until their idolatry shall cease and Allah’s religion shall be supreme.”
Such a religion preaching intolerance and violence has no future in today’s world. More and more Moslems are realizing that Allah is the God That Failed. They realize that, in the words of Bangladeshi writer Mohammed Bin Abdullah, “Mankind will not lose a single moral precept if Islam is not there tomorrow.” From Morocco to Indonesia, more and more Moslems are understanding that the basic precepts of Islam are antithetical to human rights and political freedom.
Terrorism is the last gasp of Old Islam. The Old Islam of intolerance and violence is dying. Will a New Islam, reformed and tolerant, emerge from its ashes? Only if Islam submits. “Islam” is Arabic for Submission. Only by submitting to Civilization’s basic values of human rights and political freedom will Islam have a future—and by no longer submitting to the Allah That Failed.
© 2004, To The Point, Inc.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 10, 2004 08:36 PM | Comment | Subscribe | Send
I refer the reader again to http://www.prophetofdoom.net/ which provides definitive references to Mohammedan teaching and should persuade the careful reader once and for all of the dangerous an vile nature of this religion.
It is highly doubtful that the reform Mr. Wheeler calls for is even possible so long as the substance of the teachings of this religion continue.Posted by: Joel LeFevre on January 11, 2004 12:02 AM
Wheeler makes the case against Islam pretty plain. It is a shame that he punts at the end, but that presumably is what one must do to remain welcome in polite society.
Salvation for Moslems is the same as for all the rest of us: acknowledging Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The values Wheeler ascribes to Civilization are those of Christianity, arising from the fusion of divine revelation, Hebrew religion and spirituality, and Greek and Roman political philosophy. A Christian Middle East would not be a garden spot (largely Catholic Latin America is mostly a shambles), but it would not be the incubator of murderous violence that the Moslem Middle East actually is. Whatever the ADL and AJC might think, Israel’s future would be far safer with Christian neighbors than Moslem.
If what Whittaker says is true, there is an extraordinary evangelical opportunity arising. I wonder; Moslems have always been pretty intractable about their religion. Can Christian churches in post-Christian societies summon the missionary zeal to preach the Gospel to the Moslems? One would think the Roman Catholic Church, with its vast numbers of communicants and its global spread, would lead the charge. As our current pontiff seems to prefer kissing the Koran to condemning what it says, I’m afraid we may miss what opportunity there is.
If, as Wheeler says, Islam is slipping (I hope he is right), how truly orthodox the next pope is becomes even more important. HRSPosted by: Howard Sutherland on January 11, 2004 08:45 AM
As to whether Islam is reformable, I believe we have at least one positive example in the case of Turkey, and awareness of this was heightened at the recent spectacle of the chief Islamic religious official joining the chief Rabbi at memorial services for those killed in the synagogue attack. The father of one of the killers, a muslim, also appeared to apologize and bemoan the misguided actions of his son. However, Turks seem to be far less messianic or fanatical in their religious attitudes than the semitic Arab peoples, and what Ataturk had to do to secularize Islam was extreme, down to banning items of traditional clothing such as the fez. Iraq may offer some grounds for hope: it has apparently long been the most secular Arab society, perhaps due to the necessity of balancing off Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds.Posted by: thucydides on January 11, 2004 09:17 AM
I will not hold my breath until the Muslim world converts to Christianity (which brand?) Thucydides is right to praise the effective reforms in Turkey. By the way the fez was not, contrary to myths widespread among Muslims and Westerners, a traditional hat, but an item that appeared in North Africa in the nineteenth century, Ataturk’s real breakthrough was the abolition of the veil for women. While its use had decayed for quite a while in Turkish cities, in the villages of Anatolia outlawing the veil was about like making Western women run around topless!Posted by: Alan Levine on January 11, 2004 09:56 AM
Mr. Levine,
I won’t be holding my breath either. As for which brand, why, Catholicism, of course!
One question to ask about Turkey (I do not know the answer) is how much that country’s secularism is now part of the fabric of life and how much is due to Kemalist officers’ keeping a lid on Islamism. Islamists are winning Turkish elections. Given that suicidal “Europhiles” like Chirac want to welcome Turkey into the EU, it’s a pretty important question. HRSPosted by: Howard Sutherland on January 11, 2004 12:42 PM
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Imagine a new document from Abu Bakr, properly written on papyrus or skins from his day with materials then in current use. In it Abu Bakr states that Mohammad, in his presence and that of his cousins and brothers (who have also signed the document) revealed that in the future a new prophet called Martin Luther will show a new way, and that all true Moslems must join the Swedish Lutheran church.
It can be done but will it?
My wish is that my grandchildren will be born into a world where Islam exists only in history books.
Presumably then, we should be seeing a rising tide of good Muslims ratting out their terror-intent brethern? I'm not holding my breath (although it would be gratifying to see it happening.)
How can our president say Moslems and Christians and Jews worship the same God?
Turkey and Saudi Arabia are the only two countries in the world which have exterminated or expelled practically all other religions, especially Christianity in the case of Turkey (1894-1895 masscres of Armenians, 1915 massacre of Armenians, 1915-1923 massacres of Aemenians, Greeks, Assyrian Christians, etc.)
By contrast, there are millions of Christians in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and so forth, although there is constant pressure on them.
Exodus 22:20
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