Countering reader Shirin's views

Submitted by Prashant (India), May 22, 2022 at 05:18

Dear Dr Pipes, Reader Shirin presented a huge apology for Islam in her above message entitled "American author's blatant racism". At the time of this writing, Shirin's message has received 16 dislike votes and 1 like vote. The numbers tell the story but it is good to counter Shrin;s arguments beyond the numbers so they do not misguide any innocent readers, Let me go step by step:

First, Shirin seems to imply that Torah is significantly harsher than the Quran. I think Muslims should stop relying on this argument. We all know that two wrongs do not make a right. If Torah and Bible are as bad as the Quran, Quran is bad nevertheless. So good luck, Shirin, you still need to fix the Quran. Further, I do the following experiment many times. I read random verses of the Quran and the new and old testaments. I find a lot of good wisdom in the Old and New testaments but I find the Quran to be a haphazardly assembled narration where after every few verses Allah (or who ever the Author is) goes into a diatribe again non-Muslims. Shirin should buy a good translation of Quran and do the experiment for herself. I think Bible's message of love and mercy has no parallel in Quran. Lastly, Quran was authored 600 years after the new testament and and even more after the Old Testament. No credit to the Quran if it was not an improvement over the two testaments. Being just as bad deserves no credit.

Shirin said that no genocide ever happened in the Middle East. When Muslims kill others, is that a sin or a virtue? Shirin has never heard the word 'Yezidi', I guess. I recommend that Shirin should read Nadia Murad's memoirs. Also, Middle East is just a subset of Islam. Islamic history is loaded with Examples of cruelty on humans and animals. I recommend that Shirin should read about the cruelty of Tamerlane. She should also read about various towers of skulls around the world. Muslim kings loved to make towers of skulls of the dead opponent. I can dig out the references for Shirin but it will be more educational if she does the research herself. Shirin should read about the skull tower in Serbia, Iraq and in India (by Akbar the great!!)

Shirin conveniently exonerates Muhammad. I recommend that she reads the Quran carefully. Quran 5-33 is just one of the many places where wanton and cruel murders of non-believers is recommended. Perhaps Muhammad can pull an excuse and say that he was just a messenger and Allah was the true agent behind the recommended cruelty!! If so, Muhammad's rote recitation of Quran did a lot of harm to humanity.

Shirin, now, establishes and equivalence between Hitler and Christopher Columbus. Goodness gracious. Is there a faster way to lose your credibility than comparing Columbus to Hitler?

After this Shirin tells us that message of Muhammad is better than the message practiced by white Europe. This statement of Shirin is a great example of subtle but omnipresent Islamic lies and misrepresentation. Shirin is comparing Muhammad's *written* message with white European's *practiced* message. Enough said already.

After this Shirin conveniently links Islam/Muslims to the Brown people. Talking about the color of people's skin is racist but it is fully good if Muslims do it. It has been a recent Islamic hobby to link Islam to brown people. No, thank you, Shirin. Not all brown people are Muslims and not all Muslims are brown. Some of the cruelest killers came from Islamic Turkey and they were not very brown. And, in any case, we do not like to refer to color of people's skins. Thanks to MLK, we like to refer to the content of people's character and we believe that excessive emphasis on religion impacts the content of Islamic character significantly negatively. I do not love much about the character of the followers of Taliban's, al-Qaeda, PLO, Hamas, Boko harams and the like.

I will end this article with a small reminder to all Muslims. Not all killing and murders are created equal. Human history is full of some human's torture of the others. But, killing others in the name of religion is more despicable than any other kind of killing and Muslims have killed others to advance Islam throughout the human history.

This should be a good rebuttal to Shirin. I would love to hear from her further.

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