No, I will not keep silent about Islam

The following is a reply to a Muslim who asked me to study Islam a bit more before offering my opinion. I mustn't have studied enough because I am not a Muslim — what more evidence of my lack of study does he need?

I am really not going to fall for this keep-looking-harder-and-reading-more-until-you-agree line of argument. I have been getting it for the past ten years from Christians but the more I look into Christianity the more I discover that they are wrong, that their religion is manufactured, that their scriptures are full of absurdities and terrible reasoning and their own perceptions of their religion and its effect upon the world are at odds with reality to an extent which approaches the status of a full blown delusion.

So far the more I have looked at Islam the more I discover that it too is filled with absurdity and clear evidence of human origin and an even more obvious stamp of Machiavellian design by its human architect. Islam is also very clearly damaging to the cause of humanity. Islam fires up terrorists and tears down democracy. It empowers ignorant and extreme men to feats of intolerance and violence. Under Islam people suffer and nothing has respect except religion and the memory of the prophet - not humanity, not the natural world, not freedom, not truth and certainly not tolerance of alternative views.

I am an atheist. What is my place in an Islamic regime? Would I have the freedom to encourage Muslims to reject their oppressive dogma?

The political aspects of Islam are totally in contradiction with the requirements of tolerance and liberal democracy. Islam is antithetical to liberal secular democracy. If people want to maintain freedom, democracy and a liberal society Islamism must be treated the same way as other totalitarian political movements such as communism and fascism.

Islam itself must not be allowed free reign because it seeks to define aggressive political actions such as building of alternative nations and the waging of war as if they were religious rites worthy of mutual tolerance and respect. This is absurd. Mosques teaching children that they owe respect to Allah alone is politically unacceptable, the rules of religious toleration do not apply to acts of sedition.

If you don't want to eat pork I don't have any problem with that, don't eat it. But if you want to remove pork from the menus of my country's schools that is no longer a matter of religious toleration, it has crossed the line and has become political, different rules apply. Muslims who think they can shield behind religion while they play politics, insurrection, treason and civil war are wrong.

When your religion starts to change my life it ceases to be your religion and it becomes my politics.

I don't believe that religion is a reason to give people additional rights. The reason I don't care whether you don't eat pork has nothing to do with the definition of religion and some special kind of respect that religion requires, it is a matter of personal freedom. You are free to have the diet you want and to talk about your diet to anybody who wants to listen, and to meet with whoever you want to talk about it. I have no problem with mosques as book clubs and diet clubs. I do have a problem with any book clubs which force attendance and beat children until they agree that their book was dictated by God.

My point of view has its own consistency. Religion deserves no special respect or favours. It is a hobby. Hobbies are usually something people are free to indulge in. If they get out of hand and they trample over the civil rights of others, they can be controlled.

Of course you would like to stop people talking about Islam in ways you don't like but it is not going to happen. Your hobby has no right to exist without criticism or to silence its critics, even those who spew bile and hatred out of ignorance.

You can't step away from Islam's bloody history of war, torture, imperialism and oppression unless you change and reform Islam into something else and you create a new religion with a new name. The religion of Muhammad is the religion of imperialism, bloodshed and constant war. Wherever there are enough Muslims there is conflict. In my local community Muslims are less than 3% (of the adult population at least), they're outnumbered by gays, they live quietly and peacefully. In towns where Muslims are a larger minority there is violence, Muslim gangs prey on non-Muslims, no-go areas are created. In countries where Muslims are a significant minority there is terrorism and bloodshed. In countries where Muslims are the majority minorities are violently persecuted. This has been the case for centuries. Periodic waves of violence swept through Moorish Spain and the Jewish minority was subjected to violent oppression, for just the same reason that Christians in Pakistan and India today are persecuted by their Muslim neighbours.

You can say that it is not Islam's nature to be violent but that sounds as feeble as the battered girlfriend who says she loves him really and he's not violent most of the time. You're in denial. Step away from the monster.

I will not stand by and allow Muslims to paint all criticism of their ideology as ignorant. Islam is an ideology not merely a religion. It seeks to control all aspects of human life from the inner operations of the mind to the head of state and Muslims think they have the absolute right to world domination. Islam is a totalitarian ideology and it is the enemy of human freedom. If you think I am going to change my mind on this you have another thing coming.

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Don't speak to me in a language you yourself claim I cannot understand. I don't want your blessings and your superstitious incantations and I don't regard them as respectful to me. If you respected me you would not speak to me in a language you say I am ignorant of. Spouting Arabic spells at me is the very opposite of respectful to me. You are trying to assert your moral and religious superiority. You are not trying to be respectful to me as a person you are trying to score points off me and put me down.

Muslims never approach the kuffar with their own greetings. If the ambassador of Britain goes to see the head of an Islamic state the ambassador will say the Arabic salaam. To return the favour when the roles are reversed - the Muslim will say the Arabic Salaam. You're like vegetarians - you expect to be given vegetarian food in my house and serve vegetarian food to me in your own. If you are replying to an Englishman's message in English he'd appreciate it if you spoke in English the whole time. Savvy?

So to show some respect to you I will say that you come from a beautiful country which has some of the most beautiful women in the world and some excellent and affordable hashish. It's just a shame that it is spoilt by Islam. You have read the page on my website where I talk of the Cedars of Lebanon and the other page where I converse with a Lebanese atheist.

No?

But still you claim I am ignorant and not at all intellectual. On the basis of what? That I disagree with your analysis of your religion. That's what it comes down to isn't it? It doesn't matter how much or how little I know about Islam you will always say I need to study more and understand better, and read it in the original language or study harder, or take extra lessons in ancient Arabic, or enrol in an Islamic school or something. Muslims will always claim that anybody who doesn't agree with them is ignorant and yet they'll happily parade well coached and beaten five year old children as experts in the Qur'an.

Have you read any of my website? There's 813 pages of it as of this morning. That's pages in the web sense, to print it out would obviously require a lot more paper pages than that as some of the pages are quite big. It's taken me ten and a half years to produce and you've dismissed it all in - how long? Of course you don't need to read it because you know it's wrong. I at least have looked at the Qur'an and the Hadith and have seen enough to know what they are and what they are not.

After years of taunting by Christians I read the whole bible. I picked it up and started with the preface and read right through to the end. And what happens now when I debate with Christians? They tell me to stop being ignorant and to read the Bible. So I tell them I have read it. Every turgid word. That's three weeks of my life I'll never get back. And their response - they say I am lying! Why on Earth would I want to go through that whole process again? If I read the whole Qur'an I am not going to see anything that I can't see by reading the bits that are constantly debated. The Bible didn't have any hidden pearls that I had not been aware of that changed my understanding of the religion. I came away from reading the Bible more certain than before that it was just Hebrew mythology and full of nonsense and horrendous attitudes the world would be better off without. I did find some new insights by reading it but it certainly did not transform my understanding of the Bible or of the religions which are based on it.

The most convincing parts of the Qur'an have been quoted at me and I have checked them out in context and I have not been impressed. You really don't need to read the Qur'an in Arabic to know that it's made up by a charismatic charlatan warlord any more than you need to go to Antarctica stark bollock naked to know that it's cold.

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No, I will not keep silent about Islam

Ding Ding! Round Two!

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© 1999 - 2010 by Martin Willett.

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