So I've been learning about Islam...

I love to learn about everything, especially things that others are afraid to even try to understand. This brings me to Islam. I've long thought that, as is with any war, there are always two sides who equally think they're fighting a righteous fight. I had been led to believe that Islam was basically a religion of peace that has of late been characterized more by its marginal fundamental extremists than by the majority of peace-loving Muslims. The letter I'm posting below from www.faithfreedom.org made me rethink a few things...It's not as if I'm saying all Muslims are extremists--obviously they're not. What I am saying is that I think just as many Muslims have been misled about Islam as Christians have been misled about Christianity. There are so many parallels. If you have the time to read it, you should. We as Americans should be learning as much as we can about why we're fighting terrorism, instead of just accepting it at face value.



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Dear brothers and sisters in humanity. Dear fellow Muslims.

What the Qur'an Teaches:

The Quran tells us to: "not to make friends with Jews and Christians" (5:51), fight them "until they pay the Jizya (a penalty tax for the non-Muslims living under Islamic rules) with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" ( 9:29). "kill the disbelievers wherever we find them" (2:191), "murder them and treat them harshly" (9:123), "fight and slay the Pagans, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem" ( 9:5).

The Quran says that all those who disbelieve are najis (filthy, untouchable, impure) (9:28), and orders us to fight the unbelievers until no other religion except Islam is left (2:193). It prohibits a Muslim to befriend a non-believer even if that non-believer is the father or the brother of that Muslim (9:23), (3:28).

It asks the Muslims to "slay or crucify or cut the hands and feet of the unbelievers, that they be expelled from the land with disgrace and that they shall have great punishment in the world hereafter" (5:34).

The holy Prophet prescribes fighting for us and tells us that "it is good for us even if we dislike it" (2:216). Then he advises us to "strike off the heads of the disbelievers"; and after making a "wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives" (47:4). Our God has promised to "instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers" and has ordered us to "smite above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them" (8:12). and "to strike terror into (the hearts of the enemies" (8:60).

He has made the Jihad mandatory and warns us that "Unless we go forth, (for Jihad) He will punish us with a grievous penalty, and put others in our place" (9:39). Allah speaks to our Holy Prophet and says "O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the Hypocrites, and be stern against them. Their abode is Hell,- an evil refuge indeed" (9:73).

He promises us that in the fight for His cause whether we slay or are slain we return to the garden of Paradise (9:111). In Paradise he will "wed us with Houris (celestial virgins) pure beautiful ones" (56:54), and unite us with large-eyed beautiful ones while we recline on our thrones set in lines (56:20). There we are promised to eat and drink pleasantly for what we did (56:19). And have sex with "boys like hidden pearls" (56:24) and "youth never altering in age like scattered pearls" (76:19)

In the West we enjoy freedom of belief but we are not supposed to give such freedom to anyone else because it is written "If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah), never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those who have lost (all spiritual good) (3:85).

As for women, the book of Allah says that they are inferior to men and their husbands have the right to scourge them if they are found disobedient (4:34). It advises men to take a green branch and beat their wives, because a green branch is more flexible and hurts more. (38:44). It teaches that women will go to hell if they are disobedient to their husbands (66:10). It maintains that men have an advantage over the women (2:228). It not only denies the women's equal rights, it decrees that their witness is not admissible in the courts of law (2:282). This means that a woman who is raped cannot accuse her rapist unless she can produce a male witness. Our Holy Prophet allows us to marry up to four wives and he licensed us to sleep with our slave maids and as many 'captive' women as we may have (4:3) even if those women are already married. He himself did just that.

[A word of warning for those who may find their version of Quran is translated differently from those appearing in this article: Almost all the translators of Quran have deliberately tried to soften the harsh verses of Quran. Yusufali especially goes out of his way to twists the meaning of the words and hide the harshness of Quran. For example he translates the verse (38:44) that says "take a green branch and beat your wife" as "take a little green grass and strike therewith". Or when he translates the verse (4:34) that says "beat your wife" he cannot help it but to add the word (lightly) in parenthesis.]

When the Prophet was in Mecca and he was still not powerful enough he called for tolerance. He said "To you be your religion, and to me my religion" (109:6). This famous quote is often misused to prove that the general principle of Quran is tolerance. He advised his follower to speak good to their enemies (2:83), exhorted them to be patient (Q. 20:103) and said that "there is no compulsion in religion" (2:256). But all that changed drastically when he came to power. Then killing and slaying the unbelievers was justified in innumerable verses with harshness and without mercy. The verses quoted to prove Islam's tolerance ignore many other verses that bear no trace of tolerance or forgiveness. Is it normal that a book revealed by God should have so many serious contradictions?

The Prophet himself set the example of unleashing violence by invading the Jewish settlements breaking the treaties he had signed with them and banished some of them after confiscating their belongings massacring others and taking their wives and children as slaves. He inspected the youngsters and massacred all those who had pubic hair along with the men and those who were younger he kept as slaves. He distributed the women captured in his raids among his soldiers keeping the prettiest for himself (33:50). He made sexual advances on Safiyah a Jewish girl in the same day he captured her town, Kheibar, and killed her father, husband and many of her relatives. Reyhana was another Jewish girl of Bani Quraiza whom he used as sex slave after killing all her male relatives. In the last ten years of his life he accumulated a score of wives, concubines and sex slaves including the 9 year old Ayesha.

These are not stories but records from authentic Islamic history and the Hadiths. It can be argued that these behaviors were not unknown or unusual for the conquerors and leaders of the mediaeval world but these are not the activities befitting of a peaceful saint and certainly not of someone who claimed to be the Mercy of God for all the creation.

There were known assassinations of adversaries during the Prophet's time, that took place at his behest. Among them there was a 120 year old man, Abu 'Afak whose only crime was to compose a lyric satirical of the Prophet. (Kitab al Tabaqat al Kabir, Volume 2, by Bin Sa'd, page 32) Then when a poetess, a mother of 5 small children, 'Asma' Bint Marwan, wrote a poetry cursing the Arabs for letting Muhammad assassinate an old man, our Holy Prophet ordered her to be assassinated too in the middle of the night, which was carried out while her youngest child was suckling from her breast. (Sirat Rasul Allah (A. Guilaume's translation "The Life of Muhammad") page 675, 676).

Dear conscientious Muslims: Question yourselves- isn't this compulsive dogma of following a man who lived 1400 years ago, leading us to doom in this changing world? Who are we deceiving? See how our Umma (people) have sunk into poverty and how we lag behind the rest of the world? Isn't it because we are following a religion that is outdated and impractical? In this crucial moment of history, when a great catastrophe has befallen us and a much bigger one is lying ahead, should not we wake up from our 1400 years of slumber and see where things have gone wrong?

The hatred has filled the air and the world is bracing itself for its doomsday. Should we not ask ourselves whether we have contributed, unwittingly, to this tragedy and whether we can stop the great disaster from happening?

Unfortunately the answer to the first question is yes. Yes, we have contributed to the rise of fundamentalism by merely claiming Islam is a religion of peace. We are responsible because we endorsed Islam and hailed it as a religion of God. And we are as guilty as those who put into practice what Quran preaches and ironically we are the main victims too.

If we are not terrorists, if we love peace, if we cried with the rest of the world for what happened in NYC, then why are we supporting Quran that preaches killing, that advocates holy war, that calls for murder of non-Muslims? It is not the extremists who have misunderstood Islam. They do literally what Quran ask them to do. It is we who misunderstand Islam. We are the ones who are confused. We are the ones who wrongly assume that Islam is the religion of peace. Islam is not a religion of peace. In its so-called pure form it can very well be interpreted as a doctrine of hate. Terrorists are simply doing that and we the intellectual apologists of Islam are justifying it.

We can stop this madness. Yes we can avert the disaster that is hovering over our heads.

Dear friends, there is no time to waste. Let us put an end to this lie. Let us not fool ourselves. Islam is not a religion of peace, of tolerance, of equality or of unity of humankind. Let us read the Quran. Let us face the truth even if it is painful. As long as we keep this lie alive, as long as we hide our head in the sands of Arabia we are feeding terrorism. As long as you and I keep calling Quran the unchangeable book of God, we cannot blame those who follow the teachings therein. As long as we pay our Khums and Zakat our money goes to promote Islamic expansionism and that means terrorism, Jihad and war.

Islam divides the world in two parts: Darul Harb (land of war) and Darul Islam (land of Islam). Darul Harb is the land of the infidels, Muslims are required to infiltrate those lands, proselytize and procreate until their number increase and then start the war and fight and kill the people and impose the religion of Islam on them and convert that land into Darul Islam.

Conclusion:

We know too well that it is not easy to denounce our faith as it means denouncing a part of ourselves. We are a group of freethinkers and humanists with Islamic roots. Discovering the truth and leaving the religion of our fathers and forefathers was a painful experience. But after learning what Islam stands for, we had no choice but to leave it. After becoming familiar with the Quran, the choice became clear: it is either Islam or it is humanity. If Islam is to thrive, humanity has to die. We decided to side with humanity.

Regards,
On behalf of Faith Freedom Foundation
Ibn Warraq
Ali Sina
Taslima Nasrin
fatemolla
Abul Kasem
Anwar Jamal
Syed Kamran Mirza
Hashan Chowdhury
R J Akash
Shabbir Ahmed
Robin Khundokar
Eshon Waheed
Shabnam Nadiya
Mohammad Nawaz Khan
Habib Sarwar
Adnan
S. Smith
H. B. Tharle (Audrey)
Kausik Sen
Avijit Roy
Sandip Dasverma
Paramanab
Bishnu Dey

[www.faithfreedom.org]