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Muhammad has been deifiedReader comment on item: Not Child's Play: The Teddy-Bear Intifada Submitted by Andrew Stunich (United States), Dec 3, 2007 at 16:03 Islam claims to be monotheistic, but my study reveals that, at best, Muhammad simply promoted a pre-existing pagan God named Allah to an exclusive position and eliminated worship of the other Gods that had been worshiped with Allah in pre-Islamic times. Muhammad then assigned new rules and regulations as having emanated from that pre-existing pagan God as allegedly revealed to him. Such a situation hardly constitutes monotheism in the Judeo-Christian sense. In my view, the claim that Islam is an "Abrahamic religion" because of its distortion of and lip service given to earlier Biblical stories is untenable. Moreover, Islam seems very much polytheistic despite its doctrinal assertions to the contrary. A religion that claims that Muhammad must be obeyed just as Allah is obeyed and which claims that his life is the perfect example for living for all time and that he is without sin has created a God whether the religion expressly acknowledges it or not. That the religion's adherents resort to violence when the God is allegedly insulted over the naming of a teddy bear "Muhammad" by young students who probably meant it as a compliment rather than an insult reveals how deified Muhammad has become. Islam can only be legitimately declared a monotheistic religion if its adherents will admit that Allah is nothing more than a pseudonym for Muhammad or Muhammad's alter ego. We can also learn a great deal about Islam from the teddy bear incident. Note how crowds will angrily protest such a de minimus (minor) issue as allegedly insulting the religion; yet, horrific violence done in the name of the religion provokes no such response. That horrific violence done in the name of Islam is not perceived as the ultimate insult to the religion speaks volumes. Could it be that most Muslims do not believe that violence truly insults the religion? What other legitimate explanation is there? Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". << Previous Comment Next Comment >> Reader comments (51) on this item
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