Some basic remarks

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jul 24, 2007 at 19:19

Hi Chris G.,

Thanks a lot for your copious reply. Instead of responding to every single point, let me focus on a few crucial things.

First of all, I am not a religious person in any way. And it would be a long story to explain why. In short I find religion epistemologically indefensible. Its prepositions are unverifiable in the way scientific or common sense sentences are. Jehova's or Allah's "miracles" sound nice but are totally nonsensical are are at best misunderstandings.

This notwithstanding, religions have one tangible and verifiable aspect – its social, cultural and philosophical impact upon the community where they determine and control human behavior. It's a well-known fact that Greek polytheism was the midwife of modern science and philosophy. It provided much freedom to its believers. You could laughed at Zeus without being beheaded or stoned as it was the case in some other "tolerant" monotheistic creeds coming from the Near East. Islam is incompatible with any free exercise of thought (or science in a larger sense of free research). It gives no freedom to anyone neither to its believers nor to kaffirs. Hence its apt literal meaning -"submission", "slavery". Christianity and Judaism are tolerant because they have been tamed by Enlightenment and their historical experiences. In Islam Enlightenment will never happen for deep structural reasons within islam itself. It is a bidah (illicit innovation in faith).

I would never make any generalizations or equations between religions and/or secular ideologies. Islam is a singularity among them all - the only religion that kills its apostates!

(Bukhari, v. 9,57 Narrated Ikrima, "Some atheists were brought to Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's messenger forbade it, saying, "Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire)." I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Messenger, "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.") No other religion practises that.

> Well I have lived in that "corrupting" influence of multiple Muslim environments and have yet to be converted to Islam nor have I yet to deny the dangers of Islamic extremism. One of the chief problems that I see in your analysis (as well as that of many other conservatives) is that you tend to lump Muslims together far too much based on what you watch on the news.

I wish you were right, dear friend. For me the never-ending news of daily Moslem bloodshed is no news at all. It is just Moslem normalcy, historically speaking.

What is a news to me is that in all your long discourse you have never quoted the Quran, you have never adduced a hadith to support your good tidings of "moderate" , nay "secular" Islam . You seem to have a nice theory which stands in need of Allah's words to be valid in the Moslem eyes and minds.

Answer this question : "Who's the Moslem in your opinion"?

In my view it is someone who 1/ believes that there is Allah and 2/ the Quran is authored by Allah and 3/ that Muhammed is Allah's messenger (prophet ).

1/ If you think Allah is an empty nasty-sounding name with vague, nay stupid connotations , then you are definitely no candidate for becoming a Moslem.

2/ If you think –as I do- that the Quran is a piece of sh..., then you're assuredly no Moslem, not even a very moderate and secular one.

3/ If you think that Allah wrote the Quran but Muhammad was an impostor and a sadist, a thief, a warmonger and criminal, then you're no Moslem either.

Will you agree with that definition?

But if you do, you're trapped for ever! You have no way out of Islam to moderacy, let alone to secularism, democracy and all other notions so alien to Islam.

You can't discuss with Allah's words. They are clear enough on the crucial points.If you do you commit bidah. You can't deny Muhammed's acts and words call them criminal, useless, obsolete and fraudulent either. His extermination and expuslion of the Jews in Medina, his robberies, assassinations, harem orgies, revenge, cruelty, illiteracy, barbarity are all too well known to be kept in silence for ever. They will stick to you for ever as long as you remain a Moslem.

It's all for the time being,

Best, Ianus

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