Islam...

Submitted by MarkJ (United States), Feb 20, 2006 at 13:58

I say the following in all soberness, with no intent to unnecessarily antagonize or purposefully inflame the feelings of anyone. I am not trying to gratuitously insult anyone. But I think that a person must be willing to calmly state facts and truths when the circumstances demand it, whether it may anger others or not. And this clash of Western and muslim civilization is such a circumstance.

Islam is not a religion in the true sense, as I understand religion. A true religion is a set of beliefs which celebrate life and beauty and the good, and which understands God the Creator as a being of infinite grace and wisdom and love. No true religion could, in my view, ever include beliefs like those in Islam: that God wants people to be murdered for not believing Islam or not believing that Mohammed was his prophet. Does any reasonable person believe that God would tell a person like Mohammed the kinds of things that the Koran contains? That it is OK to murder, rob, and rape people who are not "believers"? This is an obscene set of beliefs. It is an abomination in the sight of God, I suspect - to see some of his children murdering others (in quite horrible ways like sawing off their heads) because they claim that He gives them authority to do so.

It is quite evident I think that Mohammed was in fact simply a tribal war chief of the Middle East in the 7th century who either made up the Koran wholesale or was possessed of a type of mental illness that led him to have hallucinations that he was being spoken to by God. He then proceded to use war and conquest to force his beliefs on subject populations. He is, essentially, a successful cult leader, a Hitler who didn't lose the war. He incorporated enough of the Jewish and Christian tenets in his faith to give it a sheen of legitimacy, while shaping it in general to give himself the moral authority to make the conquests that he sought and to glorify himself for posterity.

Thus Islam is simply a very old cult, and not a true religion. It does not deserve respect in any meaningful sense as do the religions which give a true sense of God as a being of infinite love and compassion. There are certainly portions of the Koran that speak of love and kindness, but the portions that make it clear that deception, murder, rape, and robbery are permitted against non-believers put the lie to the idea that Islam is a true religion worthy of respect.

We must start from this point, acknowledging openly the truth about the nature of Islam. If we start from the position that Islam is worthy of respect and we should not malign or insult Islamic beliefs, we are starting from a false premise. Of course we can fear the murderous intent of the followers of the Islamist cult; that is reasonable and prudent. But let us not start out by giving credence to the idea that Islam is worthy of respect ...

I understand that these ideas may be considered "hostile" but they are not said with hostile intent. They are said with the intent of cooly evaluating the nature of Islam and the threat facing the West.

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