My dear Ahmed Zafire, please read the Quran together with the Hadith

Submitted by Jan (Belgium), Mar 21, 2006 at 11:50

My dear Ahmed,

You are insisting very much on reading the Quran with an open mind. Can you please explain me what this means!

Does it mean to swallow everything and to be filled with joy when Allah tells you to "beat your wives", "to wish everyone to hell over 200 times because he does not believe what you believe ", "to kill the one who leaves Islam", "to kill Hindus because they are polytheists", "to fight until the religion is all for Allah".

The Quran is full of this kind of stuff and I did not see any peaceful explanation for it!

Or does it mean to explain everything away: beating actually does not mean beating, killing does not mean killing, hell is actually heaven. Explaining away is something muslims only do in the West otherwise Islam would have been forbidden a long time ago. Explaining away is not done in countries where Islam is dominant.

Just one example: an Afghani has been sentenced to death very recently. The atrocity that he committed was not that he killed his mother-in-law. No, he did much worse! The crime against humanity was that he became a christian. Nothing can be worse than that! After hearing criticism from human rights groups, the judge simply tells that though he respects all religions, Islam prescribes the death penalty for apostacy and this is what should be done. I am not surprised of it. Not because the judge is a bad person. No because he is just following Islam honestly.

In general the biggest insult to Islam and the prophet that you can imagine is exactly the Quran, the Hadith and the earliest biography of Ibn Ishaq. In many respects the Prophet had much lower standards than usual in his time.

One example to explain this.

I understood from other postings that you are serving in the US army. Suppose that you are sent to Iraq. You are part of an operation to move insurgents out of Falluja and if possible kill them. The insurgents seem to have installed themselves in Falluja with their wives. The general responsible for your batallion instructs you not to kill any woman if she is not taking part in the battle. The operation was successful and all insurgents are killed. You go from house to house and you find their women. your General comes along and assesses the situation. He looks very surprised at the behaviour of his soldiers who have started to tie the women's hands before bringing them to prison. You hear him saying: "Hey guys, what are you waiting for?" You do not have any idea what he is talking about and ask to explain what he means. He yells and says : " go ahead! rape them! you have done a great job and you have deserved it!"

You are disgusted! He is an animal! How could you possibly rape those iraqi women who are shivering from fear that they will get the same fate as their husband. You contact the press to expose the atitude of the general and the next day it is front page news. The general is brought to court and serves a 5 year term in prison now. You are satisfied with what you did and that this beast is in jail now.

I am sure that this is how you would react and how you wish others to react.

Let's look at an episode of the life of the Prophet. As you are aware, the prophet fought many battles. The earliest biographer of the Prophet by Ibn Ishaq found it interesting to summarize the biography of the prophet with the number of battles that the prophet of the religion of peace fought. If I remember well they were 29 in 10 years' time.

Let's see how the prophet dealt with the "problem" of captive women. Here is an extract from the Hadith of Muslim and the verse in the Quran that is applicable is mentioned as well in the Hadith. I warn you, you will be disgusted.

Chapter 29: IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO HAVE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH A CAPTIVE WOMAN AFTER SHE IS PURIFIED (OF MENSES OR DELIVERY) IN CASE SHE HAS A HUSBAND, HER MARRIAGE IS ABROGATED AFTER SHE BECOMES CAPTIVE

Book 008, Number 3432:

Abu Sa'id al-Khudri (Allah her pleased with him) reported that at the Battle of Hanain Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) sent an army to Autas and encountered the enemy and fought with them. Having overcome them and taken them captives, the Companions of Allah's Messenger (may peace te upon him) seemed to refrain from having intercourse with captive women because of their husbands being polytheists. Then Allah, Most High, sent down regarding that:" And women already married, except those whom your right hands possess (4. 24)" (i. e. they were lawful for them when their 'Idda period came to an end).

For your reference, you can read the hadith on the website of the "Muslim Students Association of America and Canada": http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari. These guys are not ashamed to publish it because I guess they think it is true and an example worthwile to follow.

Read the mentioned hadith and verse 4.24 from the quran. Read it with an open mind and explain me how this episode shows that the prophet was a blessing for mankind.

I can tell you that the above is only kid's stuff. I can show you much worse.

I will also tell you that any muslim will avoid discussing the Quran and the Hadith but rather make statements like:

- read the Quran with an open mind
- you have to see the context: for every surah, you have a book of tafseer to explain the meaning
- you need to understand arabic to grasp the real meaning of the Quran
- you have to understand the meaning of it in the context of the 7th century
- you hate islam
- you are an islamophobe
- you are a racist
- the others were doing the same
- christians are also killing and nobody mentions their religion

I do not expect you to comment on the hadith that I indicated above and I do not blame you for it because that's how a muslim is brought up. Any criticism on islam or the prophet can be lethal.

I would recommend you 3 things: READ, READ, READ.

On the above mentioned website you can find all you need from the Quran and the Hadith with a search engine.

I recommend you to buy the book "Life of Muhammad : A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah (Hardcover) by Alfred Guillaume ". You can order it from Amazon.com and it costs about 50 USD. I bought it from an islamic website in Saudi Arabia myself. This book has not been burnt publicly by angry mobs in Beirout, though I did not see any book more offensive to the prophet than this one

If you have read all this, you will either become a terrorist or leave Islam. You will be a different person anyway. Please note that I recommend you to read what they teach at Al-Azhar in Cairo in order to convince you to leave Islam. Can you believe this?? It would be equivalent to say: read the gospel and you will see how evil Jesus was. I did not hear this one yet.

Peace be with you brother Ahmed and if I can help you with anything please tell!

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