Islam: The Basics

?“I studied the Quran a great deal.?I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

Islam started in the seventh century in what is today Saudi Arabia, drawing strongly from the ideas of Judaism and Christianity. Despite some similarities, encounters between Christianity and Islam have almost always been ill-starred. Surprisingly, if you look at what is happening in the Middle East today, the relations between the Jews and Muslims were initially friendlier than that between Judaism and Christianity.

Part of Islam’s appeal is its utter simplicity. The word “Islam” means to surrender or to submit. A Muslim is someone who surrenders or submits to the will of Allah, their god. A person can become a Muslim by declaring that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his Messenger. However, once you are in, they don’t want you to leave.

?

Muhammad

Muhammad ibn Abdall ah ibn Abd al -Mutt al ib, the prophet of Islam, was born in Mecca in 570 CE. When he was around forty years old, he increasingly withdrew into the hills around Mecca to think and meditate. In about 610 AD he is said to have been visited by the archangel Gabriel, who revealed the holy scripture of the Quran, Islam’s holiest book, believed to be the perfect word of Allah, to him over a period of more than twenty years, until about eighty days before his death.

?Muhammad believed that the God that was already known to the Jews and the Christians chose him to be His final messenger on earth. Similar to Judaism and Christianity, he taught that there will come a final day when the world will end and that there will be a final judgment where everyone will be judged and rewarded or punished according to whether they were mostly good or evil. They believe that everything in the universe happens according to the will and knowledge of Allah. Despite this, they think that every person has a free will to choose either good or bad, but that Allah already knows what we will do. Muslims also believe that the worst parts of hell will be for those who reject Allah. That’s me, baby – I am a bad, bad, boy, along with all Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and members of other faiths.

Mohammad also taught that every Muslim has five duties, known as the Five Pillars of Islam which form the basis of his religion:

The first pillar is the declaration of faith. Every Muslim must declare that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is his prophet. Don’t you dare do it.

The second pillar is ritual prayer five times a day, at dawn, just after noon, late afternoon, just after the sun has set and also after dark, best done in a mosque, a Muslim place of worship where they meet for prayer, weddings, receptions and other functions, sometimes even to incite violence, but often nowadays you will see them taking over public spaces like public squares, parks, or even pavements and roads in formerly great cities like London, where they will bow down, head down and ass up, for Allah, indifferent to the inconvenience it might cause for others.

The third pillar is fasting during the month of Ramadan. During this time Muslims are not supposed to eat between sunrise and sunset. They are also expected to stay away from liquor, smoking and sex and to refrain from bad or frivolous thoughts, remarks or actions. They sure seem like a light-hearted bunch.

The fourth pillar is the duty to give alms to the poor. I got nothing bad to say about this one. Gimme!

The Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca is the fifth and final pillar. Once in their life, every Muslim is expected to make the pilgrimage to Mecca if at all possible.

People are willing to go to great lengths to fulfill this duty. Mansa Musa, the ruler of Mali set out in 1324 for Mecca, a dangerous and long return journey of over ten thousand kilometers and one that took many years to complete, first travelling north across the Sahara, then turning east to Egypt, and finally he travelled south to the Hijaz, a coastal region of the western Arabian Peninsula which borders on the Red Sea and where Mecca, and Medina, the two holiest cities to Muslims, are located, with five hundred slaves, each bearing a staff of gold weighing five hundred mitkal, around six pounds, walking in front of him. Slave masters took slaves along to serve as porters and guards and to take care of their personal needs. Owners sometimes even used their slaves as a sort of traveler's check, selling them when they needed money or goods. Rich travelers did this for centuries and continued to do it well into the twentieth century. As late as 1960, some Tuareg notables sold slaves in Arabia to pay for part of the pilgrimage.

Initially Muhammad’s teachings were not well received in Mecca because it was a polytheistic society, which means they believed in and worshipped more than one god, so Mohammad got frustrated and he fled to Medina. Here he mixed with Jews who influenced his ideas. He gathered followers and eight years later, he returned with them to Mecca and conquered it. When he died two years later, the whole of Arabia was under the Islamic yoke. His followers spread his religion quickly throughout the Middle East by the tip and the edge of their swords. Unlike Jesus Christ, believed by Christians, the world’s largest religion, to be the son of God, Confucius, the great Chinese sage who taught philosophy and who was the first man that we know of to come up with the golden rule of ethics, the idea that “what you do not wish for yourself, you should not do to others,” or Siddhartha Gautama, the man who became the Buddha, Muhammad was a warrior, a warlord, and a warmonger, who led armies into battle and ordered some of his followers to assassinate his enemies.

Muslims divide the world into regions that have submitted to their god’s rule, called the?Dar al-Islam, and those that have not, called the?Dar al-Harb, which means the Region of War. That tells you all you need to know about their attitude towards those who do not follow their beliefs.

One of Muhammad’s followers asked him “What is the best deed?” He replied, “To believe in Allah and his apostle. “ The questioner then asked, “What is the next? The prophet said, “To take part in jihad in Allah’s cause”.

The prophet was referring to holy war here.

Jihad

Jihad is an important concept in our understanding of Islam. It has two interpretations: It can refer to an inner struggle of an individual Muslim to live a good life and on the community level, to combat oppression, corruption, injustice and evil. On the other hand it can also refer to a holy war, which means taking up arms in a “just war” against evil to keep corruption from overwhelming the earth. War is thus justified when it opposes evil and sustains the good. However, it can also be interpreted as a call to Muslims to bring the non-Islamic world under the rule of Islam.

?“It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” ~ Hassan al Banna

Hassan al Banna was an Egyptian Imam, a Muslim religious leader who guides the prayer in a mosque, who, in 1928 in Egypt, founded the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that spawned al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group who shocked the world and rocked the United States to its very foundation, ?when on September 11, 2001, their terrorist killers flew two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, symbols of American prosperity, power, and pride, and crashed one into the Pentagon, America’s military headquarters, killing more than three thousand people, ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as Daesh, who tried to establish a new caliphate, an Islamic state governed according to strict Islamic laws, who murdered captives by executing them?en masse, sawing off their heads with knives, a slow, painful, brutal way to die, and who burned others alive, to “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah,” and also Hamas, the group of Palestinian thugs who have vowed to destroy Israel, even if it means killing innocent men, women, and children, even babies, if they have to.

According to tradition, the prophet, wrote letters to the other empires of the world, demanding that they submit to Allah. Islam looked to dominate the world from the first.

In 633, they attacked Persia and conquered the important Christian centers of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. Between 634 and 637, the Muslims overran Syria, Persia, Egypt, and Gaza. They invaded the kingdom of Armenia in 639 and conquered it in 694. The proud Persians begged for help from China in 638, but by 641, it too fell to the Muslim army. Once the East was secured, the Arab forces turned their sights to the west. In quick succession, Tripoli, Cyprus, North Africa, Carthage, Algeria, and Spain fell to the Muslims warriors. In 655, Mohammedan navies defeated the Byzantine fleet, and in 693, they defeated the Byzantine army at Sebastopolis in Cilicia.

By 715, Islam extended from China in the east to Northern India in the north, and all the way to the Pyrenees Mountains in the West. Yet, their ambitions did not stop there. They set out to subjugate the whole of Europe under the rule of Allah. In 716, Lisbon, the capital of Portugal fell to Muslim troops, and in 720, the Muslim Menace marched all the way to Narbonne in France. Finally, the Frankish leader Charles Martel, grandfather of the great Charlemagne, stopped their progress when he defeated the Muslims at the Battle of Tours in 732. In the East, they remained a menacing threat and finally conquered Constantinople on May 29, 1453.

The Mohammedans tried to conquer Europe again, but the valiant Knights of St. John, a Catholic military order, drew a line in the sand on Malta, their stronghold in the Mediterranean sea, and told and fought and showed the Muslims, you will not advance one step further, during the heroic battle that became known as the Great Siege. Despite these setbacks, I believe Muslims will try again to defeat the West. Muslims are to wage war against unbelievers and to subjugate them all under Islamic rule. That includes you and me, even if we don’t want to.

These and other of Muhammad’s teachings were written down in the Quran.

The Quran

Muslims believe that the Quran is God’s final revelation to mankind and that it is a copy of the original known as “The Mother of the Book” which is in heaven and that it has existed for all time. According to Islamic tradition it was initially written down on palm leaves, camel bones, and rocks. They also believe that the original Arabic version of the Quran is so perfect that it loses at least half its meaning when it is translated into another language. Most Muslims learn Arabic so that they can read it in the language it was intended to. Presumably they also believe that Arabic is the language of heaven, so any and y’all who want to go to paradise had better start learning it, which will be quite a challenge, since for an English speaker, Arabic is considered one of the most difficult languages to acquire.

The Quran also refers to several prophets that are mentioned in the Christian and Jewish scriptures, including Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, Enoch, Ezekiel, Elisha, Elijah, Job, John the Baptist, and Jesus Christ himself. Muslims believe that the teachings of these holy men are also valuable, but because they were written down a long time after their deaths, the compilers made some mistakes and that is why the revelation of the Quran was necessary to correct this.

In addition to the Quran there is the Hadith, which is a collection of the sayings of Muhammad that do not appear in the Quran but was recorded by his followers and scribes.

?

The Shariah

The Shariah is considered to be a divine law which draws from the doctrine of the Quran and the example of Muhammad’s life. Islam has never been just a religion, but rather a comprehensive prescriptive code or way of life that incorporates every sphere of human behavior, including moral prescriptions for the political, economic and social realms for individuals and even entire nations, a totalitarian system, which is anathema to Westerns concepts of individual freedom. While traditional Western values put the onus on the individual, Islam emphasizes the collective. Muslims are never allowed to be only individuals, to be themselves, but see themselves as part of the larger body of believers, the Islamic community, or umma. Every individual is seen as an “abd” of God, a worshipper and a servant at the same time. For Muslims there is no distinction between worshipping God and the rest of a person’s life; they see it as one whole.

That might explain why would-be dictators and actual ones like Adolf Hitler, whose party of German National Socialists, the Nazis, who ruled under the slogan of ein volk, ein reich, ein führer, which means one nation, one realm, and one leader, made common cause with the Muslims, apart from the general Jew hatred which drove Hitler’s ideology and also that of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who incited armed revolts against Jewish immigrants to Palestine and asked the Nazis to help the Muslims chase them away or kill all the Jews there. The Nazis guaranteed that the Mufti would control the Middle East once they had defeated the Allied powers and in return for their help, al-Husseini promised that he would call for an Islamic jihad to help kill the Jews everywhere and all over the world.

Clearly these were two charming people.?

The fact that Muslims think of themselves as one group might also explain why Muslim leaders don’t hesitate to let their own people be killed if it will advance the interests of the Muslim mob. Perhaps this also explains why Muslims have often made use of suicide bombers. From the time of the ancient Muslim sect of Assassins, who gave us that word – assassin, someone who murders?an important person for political or religious reasons - and who killed the enemies of their leader, the legendary “Old Man of the Mountains,” often at the risk of their own lives, Muslims have made use of suicide killers many times, sometimes even women and children, who are usually seen as the most vulnerable and precious members of society in the West, who offer up their lives by frequently, in modern times, blowing themselves up in crowded places like discos, restaurants and shopping malls to kill, maim, and disable as many infidels, those who do not share their beliefs, as possible, but I digress.

Apparently some folks like being told what to do or think, since Shariah law regulates every part of a Muslim’s life. It divides every action into one of five categories: compulsory acts, recommended acts, permissible acts towards which the law is indifferent, reprehensible acts, which are discouraged, but not punished, and forbidden acts.

Problematically, it is irreconcilable with international conventions like the United Nations’ universal declaration of human rights. For example, it prescribes the death sentence for any Muslim who becomes an apostate (I told you they don’t want you to leave), stoning for forbidden sexual acts (although, if you are the sultan, you can swing any which way you want, baby. Rank has its privileges), the amputation of a hand for theft, and also corporal punishment for other lesser misdemeanors.

?According to the Quran, Jews and Christians are not equals with Muslims. In Muslim lands they are considered to be “subject peoples,” who, according to Islamic law, must pay an additional tax called the jizya, they must keep to the side of the street, they may not build any new churches, nor may they build anything higher than or as high as the Muslims’ buildings, they may not openly display wine or pork (oink!), they may not recite the Torah or Evangel, which is the Christian gospel, aloud, which makes it very difficult for Christian missionaries who want to spread the good news among the Muslims, and they may not celebrate Jewish or Christian feast days in public. If Jews or Christians break these laws, they can be killed or sold as slaves.

Oh yes, slavery is still a big deal in many Muslim countries. I have spoken to a missionary who collects money and use it to buy the freedom of slaves in the Islamic Maghreb region in this modern day and age. Arguably, there is also another form of slavery prominent in Islam:

“The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men!” ~ Winston Churchill

The most obvious symbol of this is the burqa, the long, loose garment that covers a woman’s whole body from head to feet, leaving only a small slit for her eyes, worn in public by women in many Muslim countries. The Quran commands that women must “lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what must ordinarily appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers” and a few others (Quran 24:31), hence the burqa. Surely God did not make women so much more beautiful than men just so that they have to hide it from the world. Does the lily in the field hide its beauty? Surely not. If you’ve got it, flaunt it, sister, flaunt it.

The Quran considers women to be inferior to men, and that they must be ruled by them, as avouched in various verses:

“Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other.” (Quran 4:34). Damn right he did.

The Quran says a man can use a woman as he wills:

“Your women are a tilth for you to cultivate so go to your tilth as ye will” (Quran 2:223). I will baby, I will.

The Quran, that unfailing word of Allah, says that a woman’s testimony is only worth half that of a man:

“Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her” (Quran 2:282). Just don’t get them yakking off. You’ll never hear the end of it.

And the Quran allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls as well. Polygamy was not a problem for the Prophet:

“If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with them, then only one, or a captive that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” (Quran 4:3). The “captives of the right hand” (Quran 4:3, 4:24) refers to women who have been seized as “the spoils of war” (Quran 33:50) to be used for sex by the mighty, manly, Muslim warriors.

However, despite the fact that he had nine wives and many mistresses, Allah gave Muhammad, that lucky fella, special permission to have as many women as he wants. After all, he was special.

“O Prophet! Lo! We have made lawful unto thee thy wives unto whom thou hast paid their dowries, and those whom thy right hand possesseth of those whom Allah hath given thee as spoils of war, and the daughters of thine uncle on the father’s side and the daughters of thine aunts on the father's side, and the daughters of thine uncle on the mother's side and the daughters of thine aunts on the mother’s side who emigrated with thee, and a believing woman if she give herself unto the Prophet and the Prophet desire to ask her in marriage—a privilege for thee only, not for the (rest of) believers” (Quran 33:50). Being a prophet has its prerogatives and perks after all.

Mohammad, that magnificent, masculine, manly man, could have had almost any woman in the tribe, yet he chose to marry a six year old girl. At least he waited three years before he deflowered her - mighty nice of him. Despite the fact that child marriages were common at that time in Arabia, do you think that makes him a pedophile? A perverted, pedophile prophet?

Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian Islamic revolutionary, politician and religious figurehead, who became the supreme leader of Iran after the successful revolution in 1979, promoted child marriages by telling Mohammedans that it is a “divine blessing” to marry a girl before she begins to menstruate, to marry her before she becomes a woman, and he encouraged fathers to “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.”

‘If a husband calls his wife to his bed (probably to have sex) and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning.” That can turn out badly for the woman. Islamic laws says: “The husband is only obliged to support his wife when she gives herself to him or offers to, meaning she allows him full enjoyment of her person and does not refuse him sex at any time of the night or day.”

Islamic law also says that “the husband may forbid his wife to leave the home” and that “a woman may not leave the city without her husband or a member of her unmarriageable kin accompanying her, unless the journey is obligatory, like the hajj. It is unlawful for her to travel otherwise, and unlawful for her husband to allow her to.” Perhaps that is why women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Are the men worried they will run away? Why would they?

Well, the Quran also tells husbands to beat their wives if they are disobedient. How else will they listen?

“Good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them.” It is said that Mohammad even struck his own wife, Aisha. Clearly cowed, she said:

“O womenfolk, if you knew the rights that your husbands have over you, every one of you would wipe the dust from her husband’s feet with her face.” She knew her place, because Muhammad declared that women are the possessions of their husbands:

Sons seem to be more valued in Islamic society: according to the Quran, a son’s inheritance should be twice as big as that of a daughter:

“Allah thus directs you as regards your children’s inheritance: to the male, a portion equal to that of two females” (Quran 4:11).

Similarly, according to the Quran a woman’s testimony is only worth half that of the testimony of a man. (Quran 2:282). In cases where a woman claims that she was sexually assaulted or raped, she needs to provide four male witnesses, who saw the act itself, to attest to it. What if it was only her and the guy? If the woman can’t find four male witnesses, she can be charged with adultery, which carries a death sentence. Sharia makes it almost impossible to prove rape, which allows men to get away with it easily. #MeToo this.

In some Islamic countries, females are also circumcised, because clearly Allah did not make them well enough, and also to make sure that they do not enjoy sex too much, because if she does, she might be tempted to cheat on her dreamboat of a husband.?

Finally, if the woman upsets her beau too much, he can easily get rid of her. All he has to do is tell her: “I divorce you,” and it is so.

Yet the blue-haired, tattooed, tongue-studded, wild-eyed, not far from feral, feminists in the West, nary raise a peep about this.

For those Muslims who prefer boys, Allah promises that “round about them will serve, devoted to them, young male servants handsome as pearls well-guarded, youths of perpetual freshness” in Paradise. Is the Quran condoning homosexuality?

One the one hand, it tells the story of Lot, a righteous man who was saved by God when the Lord destroyed the two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, infamous for their wickedness, immorality, and homosexuality. Lot told the people of Sodom:

“For ye practice your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds” (Quran 7:81)

and

“of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males, and leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing all limits!” (Quran 26:165).

According to one hadith “if a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he must be stoned to death” and they don’t mean stoned with the ganja, oh no siree, they mean stoned with rocks. Muhammad says in another hadith: “Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him.” It seems clear as crystal that Islam is homophobic.

And yet, whereas in Iran they throw homosexuals off the roofs and stone them to death, there seems to be a strange contradiction in Islam about people who are sexually attracted to members of the same sex. For example the great poet Abu Nuwas glorified sodomy in his well-known poem “the Perfumed Garden.” He wrote:

“O the joy of sodomy! So now be sodomites, you Arabs. Turn not away from it — therein is wondrous pleasure. Take some coy lad with kiss-curls twisting on his temple and ride him as he stands like some gazelle standing to her mate — A lad whom all can see girt with sword and belt not like your whore who has to go veiled. Make for smooth-faced boys and do your very best to mount them, for women are the mounts of the devils!”

Perhaps this poem reflects his own preferences, but he was not the only one.

The Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Second, the mighty conqueror of Constantinople, was also a well-known sodomite, and I am sure nobody dared to deride his disposition and lived to tell the tale. Lord Byron, that great perverted prince of English poets, seemed to allude to Turkish homosexuality in his long poem Don Juan, and I have also heard tales of burly Afghan tribal leaders who, despite being pious Muslims, like to take their pleasure with young boys that they keep around for their convenience. The Foreign Service worker who told me about this practice, said: “Try winning those hearts and minds” - exotic Orientalism indeed.

Perhaps it is not surprising, since Islam does not have a moral code like the Ten Commandments that, according to Jewish tradition, God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, which forms the basis of Judeo-Christian values, and thus the basis of the West. Instead, Islam allows Muslims to lie, steal and kill if it advances the faith.

Muhammad said: “War is deceit.”

He asserted that political assassination for the honor of the Prophet, himself, and his religion, is acceptable, and that it is allowed for Muslims to practice deception in wartime, and with Islam, baby, it is always wartime – remember the House of Islam (them) and the House of War (the rest of us).

When Shi’ite Muslims were persecuted by Sunnis, they came up with the practice of taqiyya, which means concealment, which allowed them to lie about what they believe, allowing them to deny facets of their faith that the Sunnis did not favor.

The Quran warns: ?

“Anyone who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters unbelief—except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in faith—but such as open their breast to unbelief, on them is wrath from Allah, and theirs will be a dreadful penalty” (Quran 16:106). So under compulsion it is okay to fib.

The creed of kitman is closely related to this, and it means telling the truth, but not the whole truth, so help their god, with the intention to mislead the enemy. Jihadists often make use of these nifty loop holes that allows them to lie and deceive. Do you think we can trust what any Muslim says?

What about theft?

“As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is the reward of their own deeds, an exemplary punishment from Allah. Allah is Mighty, Wise” (Quran 5:38).

However, in war, Islamic heroes are allowed to take all the bountiful booty their hearts desire:

“Allah promiseth you much booty that ye will capture, and hath given you this in advance, and hath withheld men’s hands from you, that it may be a token for the believers, and that He may guide you on a right path.” (Quran 48:18–20),

as long as a fifth goes to Allah and charitable works (Quran 8:41).

Murder?

The Quran commands that “it is not for a believer to kill a believer unless it be by mistake” (Quran 4:92), but as for infidels, you and me, and everyone else who does not wear a thawb, the tunic worn by Muslim men, or a burqa, and who does not bow down to Allah the merciful, the Quran ordains Muslims to “slay the unbelievers” (Quran 9:5; 2:191). An Iranian Sufi leader, Sheikh Sultanhussein Tabandeh, explains that “Since Islam regards non-Muslims as, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim . . . then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain. A fine only may be exacted from him.”

Islam does not endorse the Golden Rule, Confucius and Jesus’s decree that “whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them,” (Matthew 7:12 in the Christian Bible), so don’t expect them to treat you as an equal.

Muslims openly proclaim that while the West values life, they value death and perhaps that is what they are becoming most known for.

Forms of Islam

Islam is divided into Sunni and Shia Islam. The Sunni is the largest group and represents about 87% of all Muslims. Shia Islam makes up about 13% and is predominantly found in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Lebanon and areas of Iraq.

The ethos of Sunni Islam is said to be very different from Shia Islam. The main disagreement between the two forms of Islam concerns authority. Shia Muslims believe Mohammad appointed his cousin and son-in-law, Hazrat Ali, to lead the community after him, that this divinely appointed Imam has the final authority to decide on matters that are not dealt with directly in the Hadith or the Quran, and that this sacred task must be passed on to his children and that it must continue in his bloodline, wheras the Sunni Muslims reject this, and allow for the consensus of the community to decide on these matters. The Shia tradition venerates some of their clerics as saints and also has an underlying veneration of suffering. There also developed a variety of sects in Shia Islam, for example the Sufis, a group of Islamic mystics who, like Christian monks, largely reject worldly matters, try to purify their souls by living ascetic lives, and explore the inner and esoteric dimension of the faith, contemplating the mysteries of Allah, trying to get closer to him, and to experience him by following spiritual learning known as tariqa.

What about Islamic achievements in the arts?

“…the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.” ~ Winston Churchill

Muhammad said: “Angels do not enter a house wherein there is a dog or some images (or pictures etc.) of living creatures (a human being or an animal etc.).” Perhaps that is why Muslims consider dogs to be dirty animals to this day.

Islamic law outlaws both music and artistic representation of the human form, so there is no Mozart, Beethoven, or Bach, so there is no Girl with a Pearl Earring painting, no Birth of Venus, no Mona Lisa, not even a Starry Night, no Venus de Milo sculpture, no Pieta, and no David.

Muhammad also forbade musical instruments:

“Allah Mighty and Majestic sent me as a guidance and mercy to believers and commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings, crucifixes, and the affair of the pre- Islamic period of ignorance. On the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress. Song makes hypocrisy grow in the heart as water does herbage.”

He also said: “This Community will experience the swallowing up of some people by the earth, metamorphosis of some into animals, and being rained upon with stones.” Someone asked, “When will this be, O Messenger of Allah?” and he replied, “When songstresses and musical instruments appear and wine is held to be lawful.” There will be peoples of my Community who will hold fornication, silk, wine, and musical instruments to be lawful,”

Clearly Mohammad was a fuddy-duddy, a prude, and a killjoy.

Not surprisingly, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini also inveighed against the evils of the beauty of form, harmony, and emotion produced by vocal or instrumental sounds, music and song:

“Music corrupts the minds of our youth. There is no difference between music and opium. Both create lethargy in different ways. If you want your country to be independent, then ban music. Music is treason to our nation and to our youth.”

True to form, when the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, they banned music, videogames, foreign films, and fireworks; basically they banned all fun and joy.

While many Muslims are proud of the architectural design of mosques, they were copied from the structures and shapes of Byzantine churches. Muslims also often desecrate the ancient sacred sites of other religions, which is a cultural loss for all of humanity. For example, in northern Cyprus, Muslims tried to turn the fourth-century monastery of San Makar into a hotel. In Libya, Colonel Qaddafi, who is thankfully now dead, had visions of turning the whole of Africa into a Muslim domain with him as its leader of course, turned Tripoli’s Catholic cathedral into a mosque, and in Afghanistan, the Taliban government destroyed the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan by dynamiting them to bits. If Muslims take over in Europe, all those beautiful cathedrals and Christian monuments could suffer the same fate

What about other intellectual endeavours?

“Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central

Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled—the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.” ~ again, Winston Churchill

Whereas Muslims once led the rest of the world in matters of the mind, most notably in mathematics and science, they lag behind the West today. In a way, it can be said that belief in Allah does not foster an interest in science.

?Saint Thomas Aquinas, the greatest Christian scholastic philosopher, said:

“Since the principles of certain sciences—of logic, geometry, and arithmetic, for instance—are derived exclusively from the formal principals of things, upon which their essence depends, it follows that God cannot make the contraries of these principles; He cannot make the genus not to be predicable of the species, nor lines drawn from a circle’s center to its circumference not to be equal, nor the three angles of a rectilinear triangle not to be equal to two right angles.”

But, according to Islam, Allah is completely free to do as he pleases. Al-Ghazali, a Sunni Muslim polymath, a fancy word that means a person of great and varied learning, as well as other Islamic scholars, challenged the very idea that there are laws of nature since that would be considered blasphemy, because it denies that Allah is completely free. The idea that Allah created the universe according to consistent, rational, predictable laws, or that he “cannot” do something, would limit his absolute sovereignty. For Muslims, the will of Allah, although it is inscrutable, controls all. So Christians spent their time trying to discover the laws of nature, while, in a sense, Allah killed the curiosity and innovation needed for scientific endeavors. Even so-called “Arabic numerals” did not originally come from Arabia, but from pre-Islamic India, and today, they are not used in the Arabic language.

Schools in the Muslim world focus mainly on teaching students to memorize and study the Quran. Far less books get published in the umma than in the West, so ideas to not circulate as freely.?

Perhaps it is best that it is this way, because it is the West’s scientific edge that keeps it from being overrun by hordes of merciless, menacing, Muslim barbarians.

John Wesley, the English cleric who founded the Christian revivalist movement known as the Methodists, wrote in his book The Doctrine of Original Sin:

“Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it . . . have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are raised from the foundation, and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth! Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind.”

Likewise, John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States of America, wrote that the essence of Mohammad’s doctrine is violence and lust, exalting the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature, and while his dogmas furnish human motives to action, there can never be peace on earth, nor good will towards men. Winston Churchill, the former Prime Minister of Britain, who successfully guided that country through its darkest hours during the Second World War, wrote that Islam in a man is as dangerous as rabies in a dog.

The West should pay more heed to these great men.

If you like what you just read, please follow me on Medium and share this with your friends. If you did not, I thank you for reading this far and I hope you will like my next post.

Thank you.

If you want to know more about this fascinating and timely subject, I recommend reading anything and everything by Robert Spencer. His work is being vindicated right now.

I especially recommend:

The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS

https://www.amazon.com/History-Jihad-Muhammad-ISIS-ebook/dp/B07D6X3TRT?ref_=ast_author_dp

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades)

https://www.amazon.com/Politically-Incorrect-Guide-Crusades-Guides-ebook/dp/B000X1T7MS?ref_=ast_author_dp

The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion

https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283#:~:text=In%20The%20Truth%20about%20Muhammad,the%20hard%20facts%20about%20Muhammad's

A Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t

https://www.amazon.com/Religion-Peace-Christianity-Islam-Isnt/dp/1596985151#:~:text=bloodstained%20as%20Islam's%3F-,In%20Religion%20of%20Peace%3F,hope%20to%20defeat%20Islamic%20supremacism.

Another great book is:

Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

https://www.amazon.com/Sword-Scimitar-Fourteen-Centuries-between/dp/0306825554

Islam at War: a History

You can download it here:

https://libraryoflights.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/islam-at-war-george-nafziger.pdf?

If you want to know more about the links between Nazi Germany and Islam, I recommend Islam and Nazi Germany’s War. You can download it here for free (It is in English):

https://www.academia.edu/37954830/islam_und_nazi_pdf

I also recommend that you read the Quran for yourself. Here’s the Oxford version for free:

https://ia801301.us.archive.org/5/items/OxfordQuranTranslation/Oxford-Quran-Translation.pdf?