truth doesn't have a version ...man does.

Submitted by trans-parere (Canada), May 22, 2008 at 22:35

Dear Khawla

I have read the history of Islam and especially the life and times of Muhammad. Just not a history modified to be either contrary to or pro religion. I have chosen reading materials that speak historically referencing what existed before and after the fact and how the changes took place. I have also read much about the history and archeology/anthropology of Medina as well as that of Mecca.

I have studied the middle-east not from the perspective of the religious, rather from the military/geographical/trade. And Islam ventured out beyond it's home tribal confines to corrupt existing [foreign]religions, cultures and tribes. Defeating those tribes and supplanting that culture and religion with Islam and Islamic law. These are historical facts. I would use the same language if I was speaking about Christianity's spread across Europe, the Mongol invasions, or the advance of the Roman or Ottoman empires.

I have heard others repeat the lie that Muhammad and Islam was peaceful and that everyone ran to embrace Islam. It's not true. Historically Islam was forced on everyone as the religion went about it's crusade to establish Islam as the single and only religion and law over the world [as understood at the time/times]. What Muhammad started in violence against his own people some Moslem's today still revere and always quote from the Koran relating to Islam's conquering of Medina, Mecca and the local tribes. They use Muhammad's own life as language that allows such violence as written in the Sira. And their choice interpretation of jihad is not internal struggle, rather a right to commit murder. They never use Koranic verses or quotes from the early peaceful writings.

I think this is something very obvious to Moslem's everywhere, yet only a few Moslem's are forth-right enough to admit this Islamic schism. Peaceful Islam and violent Islam and political Islam are not viewed as different aberrancies of Islam by people in the west. It's viewed as all being one Islam. And this leads to much of the cultural distrust between people, cultures and nations. There is just no one person who speaks for the direction and intent of Islam and Moslem's. Thus leaving Moslem communities around the world subject to the religious/political will of the local leadership, having to defend that [religious/political will] as Islam with no prior consultation as individuals as to that direction, let alone any direction with in Islam. Moslem's are in a constant state of submission to someone else's will. And that is only admirable if there is a preconditioned surrender with in the family/clan/tribe.

The only thing new that Muhammad brought to the middle eastern religions was the righteous acceptance of using violence and social suppression to acquire converts and expand across lands not affiliated by culture, religious belief or social [tribal] construct.

I have no religious or political motivation to malign Islam or Moslem's. I personally do not care for the politics of Islam and would never willingly live my life subservient to [any man] or [any religion]. I do not hold with the idea that the individuals highest moral value is submission. There are some nice passages in the Koran that I like but the ideology has too much of the slave mentality interwoven into it and I am no ones slave. My God would deny my existence if I came before my God as a slave. I was not given the gift of life to be a slave to my God or to man, rather to husband God's world and be a positive contribution to the human experience which God knows is full of trials and tribulations. My God wants mankind to take responsibility for mankind and to choose the language of love over the language of hate. My God wants me to choose the best of all things and to see that reflected in my soul when he calls me back to the eternal.

I would never say you can't practice Islam. I would not suggest you not be a Moslem and not practice your faith as your told. I would ask you however, that if you want to be respected and valued as a human being that you denounce what violent Moslem's are doing to the world in the name of Islam and stand up with those of us who wish all of mankind to stand as free individuals and members of a common global humanity and not the limited, narrowly focused, one of many, contrary religious viewpoints, that hold intransigently to that which has been the cause of most of human suffering the world over.

cheers
trans-parere

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