Mumin Salih : Quranic Contradictions & Bewilderment of the Muslim Mind

Quranic Contradictions & Bewilderment of the Muslim Mind

by Mumin Salih

21 Feb, 2009

There is nothing new about the existence of contradictions in the Quran. Both Muslim scholars and former Muslims are aware of this issue; the only difference is that Muslim scholars call it ‘apparent contradictions’, because they believe they have explanations for all of them. However, ordinary Muslims are largely unaware of this subject; and the minority, who are aware of it, have been led to believe that it is just another ploy brought about against Islam by its enemies. With a stigma like that, the whole issue becomes, from the Muslims’ point of view, invalid and not worth looking at.

I became aware of some of the Quranic contradictions decades ago, when I started to step away from the darkness of Islam. Once I freed my mind, and read the Quran with critical eye, all those contradictions and errors of all kinds started to become a focus of my attention and increasingly clear to me.
Islam was never irrelevant to me; I always had an interest in my religion from the time I was in high school. It may sound strange that my interest in Islam remarkably increased once I started doubting it. By the time I became convinced that Islam was not the religion, I was not an average Muslim; my knowledge in Islam was remarkably broad and deep compared to others. I continued my readings and research about Islam even after I left it; I still do.
I read the testimonies of Ali Sina, Abul Kasem, MA Khan and many others who left Islam; their stories echoed mine. None of us rushed to leave Islam. Instead, all of us did extensive research to find the carefully hidden truth. And yes, it was hard and shocking that some of us left Islam with tears, while others went through phases of depression. There is no religion that controls its followers like Islam, a fact that only former Muslims can fully comprehend.
It is this extensive research about Islam, which we did in the past and continue doing, which makes me believe that the only people, who know Islam well, are the ones, who left it. We do not want to be called ‘ulema’ or Islamic scholars; we leave that honour to Muslims, but we are the people, who know Islam inside out. None of us can recite the Quran by heart, as Muslim scholars do, and none of us will even try that wasteful mental activity, but we fully understand what is in the Quran.
There are days, sometimes weeks, of researching and amending before we publish our articles on this site, to make sure that we give the reader the truth as best as humanly possible. Our articles on Islam come with a lifelong guarantee: if you find a fault, we will apologise and convert to Islam. If Muslims find any inaccuracies in any material that we publish about Islam, they would be from our sources: the Quran, sunna and other recognized Islamic books.
Currently, Abul Kasem is publishing his series on contradictions in the Quran. I read some of them with amazement; I never realized that the Quran has so many of them. I am sure Abul Kasem, as well as other critical readers of the Quran, are equally surprised at the sheer number of them. This is why the author (Abul Kasem) as well as the editors of FFI sought others’ opinions (including mine) regarding Kasem's articles in this series. This is a credit to them; it only indicates the high level of scrutiny behind every published article. Muslims, predictably, are outraged by any suggestion that the Quran may harbor contradictions. I, therefore, advised Kasem to omit some of contradictions, because, I thought, they are not conclusive.
Verses 41:11 and 21:30 carry with them this sort of less than conclusive contradiction. Both verses describe the creation of the universe; one verse claims that the sky was a smoke, the other claims that the sky was joined with the earth. Of course, scientifically both claims are utter rubbish, but when the Quran makes a mistake why it doesn’t stick to it? I suggested to Abul Kasem not to include this contradiction on the basis that it might be a different stage of creation. This is like accepting a below-normal answer from a child, because he is too young.

My concern here is why do we have to lower our standard when it comes to the Quran? We would reject this from a student or anyone else, but why do we accept it from Mohammed (transmitter of the Quran)?

41:11
Allah designed the sky as a smoke; He rose towards the smoke, asked the smoke and the earth (i.e. earth was already created) whether they would come together willingly or unwillingly (the smoke is the steam of water—ibn Abbas).
Contradiction: 21:30 says heavens and the earth were joined together as one solid mass, then Allah separated them.

Verses 41:37 and 12:100 also carry with them one of those less-than-convincing contradictions: one verse asks people not to worship others than Allah, while the other asks some people to worship Joseph! I suggested not including this contradiction in the series, lest some Muslims come up with a claim that prostrating is not the same as worshipping; it can be a sign of respect. But would Islamic clerics be happy, if they see a Muslim prostrating to another person?

41:37
The sun and the moon are the signs of Allah, but do not worship them; prostrate only to Allah who has created them.
Contradiction: 12:100 says Allah allowed Joseph’s brethren and his parents to prostrate before Joseph.

Abul Kasem’s series raises the question:

• Why, when it comes to the Quran, we always have to shelf the rules and give all kinds of exceptions?
• Why do we have to go into disagreements and different interpretations, whenever we read the Quran?
• If we mortals can write clear and straight forward articles, why cannot Allah?
  
  

Debating Muslims
I do not normally get involved in planned and lengthy debate with Muslims, but it is unavoidable for me to defend the views expressed in my articles. Occasionally, I receive polite emails from Muslims, who wish to correct ‘my misunderstanding’ of the Quran. Their politeness soon proves to be a mask that conceals their hatred. It is striking, but not at all surprising, how little those Muslims know about the Quran or Islam. When the debate is about a confusing verse, they say the verse is crystal clear and the confusion is in my mind, but of course they disappear once I point out that tafseer books had many different interpretations to that verse, which only means the verse was not clear even to those highly reputable scholars. Such Muslims, who do not speak Arabic at all and hardly any good English, suggest to me to learn more to improve my knowledge of the Quran.
Debating Arab Muslims is even more depressing, because it exposes the masked illiteracy among the Arabs. The standard of writing amongst Arabs is getting worse and worse; and it is those people, who write to us, with broken sentences, to say there are no contradictions or errors in the Quran. The great Wafa Sultan, who is a talented Arabic writer, once wrote that the Arab writers do not read what they write; otherwise they wouldn’t submit their articles for publication. How true! Articles in Arabic newspapers shamelessly appear with errors of all kinds, a sign of the low respect to their readers. This is the kind of people, who claim that the Quran is free from errors or contradictions.


What do Muslims think?
Some Muslim scholars are aware of the existence of contradictions and mistakes in the Quran. This is why, they wrote many, rather more contradicting and confusing, books to justify them. This fact establishes a common platform that we, Muslims and non-Muslims, agree on, albeit, giving it different names: contradictions vs. apparent contradictions. I find it difficult to believe that a person with integrity can read about the details of Mohammed’s murders and crimes and still remains a Muslim, let alone justify them. Even today, I keep wondering whether those Muslim scholars, who write books about Mohammed, really believe what they write. However, many of those Muslim scholars make their living from marketing Islam, and some did so well that they have become celebrities. Others had their moral code completely thrown into disarray by Islamic brainwashing. However, the vast majority of ordinary Muslims have no idea at all about those contradictions.
It is for the sake of those Muslims, who have never been told the truth, and for the sake of clarity and academic objectivity, that we need to publish these contradictions. The contradictions may be less obvious in some verses than in others; some may appear as inconsistencies or uncertainties. Muslims are welcome to refute them with convincing clarifications, and we will be happy to change our minds about them.

The Quran does not only contain contradictions, it is also filled with errors of all kinds, but this is outside the scope of this subject. I understand, and fully accept, that Muslims believe their book contains no errors or contradiction whatsoever, which I also used to believe. What is not acceptable is to see an error, and defend it, despite being unable to refute it.


Why the Quran contains so many contradictions?
It is unlikely that Mohammed could have included errors in the Quran deliberate. The Quran was revealed over a long period of time, about 23 years. This, on its own, can explain many of the contradictions and repetitions. It is possible that Mohammed (or Allah?) simply forgot the exact wording of the earlier verses. It is also possible that some of the verses were added or changed at a later stage. The Quran was written on primitive material using primitive Arabic script, where many letters have similar appearance, which also can provide an explanation to this confusion. We also must keep in mind the possibility that the Quran had multiple authors.
The Quran was not an important part of the Arabic culture during the first half of Mohammed’s career as a prophet. Mohammed was branded as insignificant mad person and nobody took him or his alleged revelations seriously, just like we do not take seriously any insignificant person, who preaches in the streets.
It is interesting to know why the Quran has so many errors and contradictions, but it is essential that we expose them. It is time for Muslims to admit their existence and reach the inevitable conclusion that the Quran is manmade and Mohammed was a liar.

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Mumin Salih is a Middle Eastern ex-Muslim. He can be contacted at rawandi@googlemail.com

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http://www.islam-watch.org/MuminSalih/Quranic-Contradictions-Bewilderment-of-Muslim-Mind.htm

Sami Alrabaa : Middle East Mired in a Culture of Hatred

Middle East Mired in a Culture of Hatred

by Dr. Sami Alrabaa

25 Feb, 2009

A Palestinian presenter at Hamas Al-Aqsa Television asks a little girl on a program for kids, "What do you want to become when you grow up?" The girl replies, "I want to become a mujahida [fighter]. I want to liberate Palestine. I want to throw all the Jews out of beloved Palestine. But before I die and join the Palestinian martyrs in paradise, I want to kill as many Israelis as possible like Reem Riyashi."

This is the kind of culture Hamas TV is spreading around among young Palestinians and other Arabs in the region. Hamas has its own satellite TV channel, radio station and newspapers and has used them to garner political support during its power struggle with Fatah.

Back in 2007, Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV aired a weekly show featuring a Mickey Mouse look-alike who urged children to support armed resistance against Israel. The character was beaten to death in the show's final episode by a character portraying an Israeli. The Hamas media effort is bankrolled by its leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal, who sends suitcases of cash, filled with money from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria, which are smuggled into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt.
Secular and moderate Palestinians are appalled by the extremist propaganda of Hamas TV. Iyad Barghouthi, the director of the Ramallah Human Rights Center, says Al-Aqsa TV is a disturbing milestone in the rise of Islamist forces. Hamas's practices are reminiscent of those of the Taliban, he said. Barghouthi told Der Spiegel on-line, "Al-Aqsa TV is not only encouraging violence, it is also spreading fanatic Islamism and racism."
Hamas defied widespread criticism among Palestinians for using a young mother as a suicide bomber and even published photographs of her and her two small children, posing with weapons. Reem Riyashi, 22, blew herself up in 2004 and killed four Israelis at a Gaza border crossing after faking a disability to bypass a security check.
The anti-Israel media landscape throughout the Arab world is no better. In particular, the Syrian, the Saudi, and the Egyptian media are hawkish and propagandistic. Fair and objective analysis and information are non-existent.
The Syrian Minister of Tourism, Saadalla Agha al-Qalaa, told the newspaper Tishreen: "The Zionists are spreading bad propaganda about Syria to prevent tourists from visiting our country." That is apparently the main reason why few tourists, especially Westerners, come to Syria to spend their holidays, rather than the bad services which the country offers tourists. When I was in Damascus in 2006, I watched how tourists had to wait at least an hour before their passports were processed at the airport police control. There are only two categories of hotels: either first class or no class at all.
The Ba'ath regime is not interested in tourism. Tourists could infect the local population with ideas about democracy and human rights. Tourists would also tell the Syrians another story about the "decadent" and "unfair" West.
When I visited the southwestern border of Syria with Israel several years ago, I told my companion, a member of the Ba'ath party, "Look how green the Israeli side of the Golan Heights is." He interrupted, "It is all propaganda. With the help of the Americans, the Israelis have made it green, just to show off." I countered, "Why don't you allow the locals who were displaced during the 1973 war to return to their homes and make this part of Syria also green?" He responded, "It's dangerous. The Israelis could attack us any time."
Not just the media blame Israel for all the problems the Arab world has. School text books in all Arab countries depict an aggressive image of Israel. The gist of this image goes like this: Israel is an alien limb in the heart of the Arab nation. Palestine must be liberated from the Zionists as Saladin liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders.
The culture of hatred must stop. Western governments must pressure Arab countries to introduce genuine freedom of speech, i.e., free media. Arab journalists and writers who deliver balanced articles on the Arab-Israeli conflict are banned from publishing. Arab regimes are suspicious of these people and, more often than not, they are arbitrarily put behind bars and accused of spying for the arch enemy, Israel.
I am one of those who have tried to publish articles in the Arab press about the Arab-Israeli conflict telling readers that the image of Israel as presented in the belligerent Arab discourse is distorted and fabricated. I have also stressed that if the Arab countries were as democratic as Israel, the conflict would disappear, and Israelis and Arabs would live in peace, side by side. If Arabs were objectively informed, they would choose to coexist with their Israeli neighbors. Ethnic and religious minorities are integrated in Israeli society and enjoy the same political rights as Jews. Muslim and Christian Arabs, for example, sit in the Knesset and say whatever they want and a Muslim Arab is a cabinet minister.
My articles have never been published. Arabs are not allowed to know the truth. Western governments have to re-educate, at least, their Arab allies, as the Allies did with the Germans after World War II. The war on terror does not make any sense unless the root causes of extremism are uprooted in the media and in the schools.

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Dr. Sami Alrabaa, an ex-Muslim, is a sociology professor and an Arab/Muslim culture specialist. Before moving to Germany he taught at Kuwait University, King Saud University, and Michigan State University.
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http://www.islam-watch.org/Sami/Middle-East-Mired-in-Culture-of-Hatred.htm

MA Khan : Islam and the Clash of Civilizations

Islam and the Clash of Civilizations

by MA Khan

04 Mar, 2009

Challenging Nobel Laureate Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 thesis that with the fall the Marxist Communism, the world will converge towards nonconflictual liberal-democracy as its final destiny, Samuel Huntington proposed his Civilization Clash theory in 1993. Contradicting Fukuyama’s optimism of a more peaceful world-civilization ahead, Huntington emphasized that conflicts in the world were not over, but future conflicts will be fought along civilizational fault-lines over cultural or religious differences, not between states over ideological (political) or economic reasons. “The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future,” he predicted.
Huntington identified eight major civilizations—Indian, Chinese, Asian, Islamic, and Western etc.—and emphasized that instead of converging towards universal liberalism globally, human consciousness within these civilizations is accentuating; people are becoming increasingly parochial and conscious of their cultural, religious or civilizational values and differences.
Huntington analyzed how these civilizations would likely interplay in reshaping the emerging world-order. His thesis gets significant space for Islamic resurgence, simply because, in recent decades, religious revivalism in an intolerant and violent form amongst Muslims much outweighs the rejuvenation of civilizational or religious consciousness amongst other peoples.
On the ongoing civilizational clash of Islam with the rest of humanity, Huntington wrote: “The overwhelming majority of fault line conflicts, however, have taken place along the boundary lopping across Eurasia and Africa that separates Muslims from non-Muslims”. He added: “wherever one looks along the perimeter of Islam, Muslims have problems living peaceably with their neighbors.” Islam has “Bloody Borders”, he asserted.
His analysis vis-à-vis Islam in his thesis has become a bone of contention; he came under intense attacks over this from his critics, led by Edward Said.
One likes it or not, Huntington’s thesis is already becoming a reality. Even the followers of Hinduism and Buddhism—both apolitical and pacifist creeds in principle and historically—are becoming increasingly jingoistic, political and even militant. There have been attacks on Christians and churches by Hindus in India and Buddhists in Sri Lanka in recent years. This trend, in all likelihood, would heighten over coming decades.
Despite the denials of his critics, Huntington’s analysis regarding Islam’s clash with its neighbors is based on undeniable ground reality, which has greatly heightened since his theory was proposed in 1993, most prominently after the 9-11 attacks.
A cardinal fact that one may miss in Huntington’s book is that the civilizational clash of Islam is not new; it is as old as Islam itself: fourteen centuries old. Islam was founded by Prophet Muhammad as a “totalitarian and globalist creed” in the 7th-century Arabia at the cost of his non-Muslim neighbors: Pagans, Jews and Christians. The Prophet himself had cleansed Arabia of the Pagans. On his deathbed (632), he had ordered his followers to cleanse Arabia of remaining few Jews and Christians, whom he had allowed to live as ignominious dhimmi subjects in peripheral areas. The second caliph Omar (d. 644) put Muhammad’s last wish to action, denuding Arabia of non-Muslims. He expelled the Jews of Khaybar in 638, for example.
The clash of “Islam versus the rest of humanity”, initiated by Prophet Muhammad at its founding, was widened against all humanity and perpetuated by Muslims over the centuries. It could not be otherwise, because Islam was born in Arabia as Islamic God Allah’s master-plan, His politico-military tool, for creating a global Islamic state by making Muslims His “agent and inheritor of the earth” [Quran 6:165] and promising to make Islam victorious over all peoples and places [Quran 8:39]. Since then, Muslims, including its classical scholars, have divided the humanity into two houses, two civilizations: Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (House of War).
Islam’s central mission over the centuries has been to turn the non-Muslim Dar al-Harb into Dar al-Islam through Jihadi wars to realize Allah’s global imperial dream. Classical Islamic literature is very candid about this. And Islam’s history reflects exactly that. Islam has achieved stunning success in this mission. Where is the great pre-Islamic civilization of Coptic-Paganic Egypt, Zoroastrian Persia, Eastern Christianity of West Asia, Paganic-Animist North Africa, where Islam reached quite early by the sword. They have all vanished. Estimated 120 million human lives were lost to Islamic swords in Africa and 80 million in India. Some 60 million Christians and millions of Buddhists also perished. Readers may consult my just-released book, Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism and Slavery, in order the grasp the whole picture of Islam’s historical and ongoing clash with the rest of humanity.
It should be pointed that Judaism and Christianity had their own problem. If the account of the Old Testament is to be believed, at the founding of Judaism, Moses led his enslaved, oppressed Hebrew people out of Egypt to Israel, which was to become their G’d-given homeland; the indigenous people there suffered. But Judaism’s clash with its neighbours theoretically ended there; it was not supposed to spread out of Israel. In reality, they soon became victim of harrowing persecution at their very homeland; their right to live there has been under constant threat, which continues today. Most of all, they have mended their ways: they live in complete harmony with people of all faiths: from India to North America.
Christianity had problems somewhat similar to Islam’s: it dreamt of taking over the world through the instruments of force until the days of Renaissance. Then came the Age Enlightenment, which pushed Christianity out of politics. It has distanced itself from political spheres and violence for long.
The same cannot be said of Islam. It has changed little from what it set out to be at its birth. Its clash with global humanity in its age-old violent form continues to this day. Muslims continue to use the instrument of violence and intimidation. The conflicts in Kashmir, Mindanao, Southern Thailand, the Balkans, Chechnya and parts of Africa, plus the violent campaigns of Islamist Al-Qaeda and like-minded terror groups, are a continuation of that. The same applies to Muslim immigrants’ clash with their host societies in the West: their refusal to integrate, open disobedience to respect Western laws and persistent efforts to introduce Islamic laws even in public spheres—social, political and financial.
One agrees with Huntington or not, the clash of Islam with the rest of humanity, amongst his theorized conflicts amongst various civilizations, is obviously in the act and will undoubtedly intensify in coming decades. Whilst achieving stunning success in its clash with greater humanity over the past 14 centuries, Islam is most firmly placed than ever to finish off the job—that is, take over world and institute the governance of the Quran and prophetic tradition—the ultimate ambition, it was born to accomplish.
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 http://www.islam-watch.org/MA_Khan/Islam-and-Clash-of-Civilizations.htm

Violent Sexual Obsession and Rape as Expression of Islamic Spirituality

Violent Sexual Obsession and Rape as Expression of Islamic Spirituality

by Skeptic Infidel

19 Mar, 2009

"Allah is our goal
The Prophet Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah is our leader
The Qu’ran is our constitution
Jihad is our way
And death in the way of Allah is our promised end."

“The Message of the Teachings”, By Hasan Al-Banna, Founder, Muslim Brotherhood

It has often been said that life imitates art.
In the mid-1980’s, there was a low-budget alien from outer-space movie, entitled I Come In Peace, the premise of which involved an alien being arriving on Earth, who upon encountering a human being would declare, “I come in peace,” and then brutally murder that person.
On and on throughout the movie, the alien commits murder after horrific murder, each proceeded by a declaration of peaceful intent.
For decades, with increasing frequency and destructive intensity, an alien Islamic world has time and again wrought death and destruction upon the world at large; each time preceded and followed by declarations of peaceful intent.
While the non-Muslim world largely continues to believe those declarations, those, who have preyed upon it, have without remission also openly declared their intention to continue doing so.
For whatever reason, the Western world seems to want to believe the former and not the latter, even though the latter is always accompanied by evidence of blood and carnage, and death in the way of Allah as a promised end.
Over several decades, law enforcement agencies, have developed an evolving science of criminal profiling, allowing them to discern in most cases the personality type of specific categories of criminal predators.
While there are many personality traits, and often widely divergent personality types involved, the one trait that is uniform to all violent predators is a narcissistic personality. With the exception of the truly insane, ALL criminal and anti-social behavior is volitional. People do the anti-social things they do, because they choose too, because they WANT too. They do so because of the psychic and emotional rewards such behaviors offer. The one constant is that of narcissistic self-indulgence and self-focus, and the unwillingness or inability to care about or even recognize the humanity of others.
Other than within Islam, nowhere have such behavior and narcissism become a necessary element of spiritual expression.
While proclaiming a direct prophetic lineage extending from Abraham, inclusive of many biblical prophets including Moses and Jesus, Mohammed preached a religious doctrine, in which all are compelled to believe in God, or suffer death; eliminating the principle that one could believe or not believe, or choose or not choose the salvation of God, with God now requiring the absolute submission and surrender of free will of man.
Within Islam, faith was to become less a mechanism for coming to a belief in God, than for demonstrating that one has submitted to God.
Central to the Islamic faith is the principle of predestination, with Mohammed preaching the belief that all that has ever happened, and all that ever will happen, has been predetermined by Allah from the beginning of eternity, with the idea of agency and free will of man being not only irrelevant, but an affront to the will of Allah.
Conveniently, predestination excused the murderous violence of Muslims, in that such violence was clearly the will of Allah and one obviously does NOT condemn the will of Allah.
Quite conveniently, the will of Allah removed from Muslim men any personal responsibility for their violent, predatory behavior.
The Islamic faith is perfect as are the faithful men who profess it. Therefore, while a man may commit a sinful act, it is the act that is imperfect and not the man.
The paradoxical nature of sin within Islam is that while the Koran addresses the sins of man, it specifically attributes all that is evil in the world to the actions of non-Muslims.
If there is sin within Islam, it is clearly the fault of others.
Alas, nowhere within his “perfection” of spiritual doctrine, was there a greater and more radical redefinition of spiritual concept and principle, than with the societal role and treatment of woman, signaling that perhaps God had suddenly developed profound women “issues.”
Mohammed justified his radical redefinition of spiritual principles upon the basis of the Islamic doctrine of “naskh,” or doctrine of abrogation, under which well established religious principles may be changed at the will of Allah, as such change conveniently suited the purposes of Islam, and by the word Islam, pretty much Muslim men.
There was uncomfortably, and remains within this principle, a decidedly large logic problem, in that it implies that an infallible, all powerful and all knowing deity has either been wrong or has changed his mind regarding principles of spiritual salvation.
Also, relative to the Islamic principle of predestination, the doctrine of abrogation seemingly presumes that Allah was predestined to be wrong or predestined to change his mind, while also convenient introducing an element of moral relativity, justifying any action that benefited Islam, and again, pretty much Muslim men.
This principle also redefined the nature of “good and “evil”; making “good,” any act or situation beneficial to Muslims, and “evil,” any act or situation not beneficial to Muslims. If an act or situation, no matter how destructive or repugnant, benefits Islam, it is by its very nature moral, justifiable, and entirely acceptable under this principle.
Conveniently, as a means of disavowing the horrific or inconvenient within Islam, Muslim apologists often point to the Koran as proof that a particular horrific or inconvenient aspect of their culture is in fact, not really a part of their culture after all, because it is not specifically referenced within the Koran.
Arguing that something not specifically addressed within the Koran is not Islamic is a convenient mechanism for dissembling with the truth as there are a great many aspects of Islam that are unquestionably Islamic, also not specifically mentioned within the Koran.
There are in fact within Islam, not one, but three sources of religious authority, (1) the Koran, the actual words of God as transmitted through Mohammed; (2) the Sunna, the actions of Mohammed, or how he lived his life, and depending upon one’s particular sect, (3) the Hadith, or the things which Mohammed said, approved, or disapproved.
Shari’a law is considered to be the divine word of God, governing and dictating every aspect of human interaction; extending primarily from two sources of authority, the Koran, and the Sunna, with most of Shari’a extending not from the Koran, but from the Sunna.
Its rule is absolute and applies to all Muslims and non-Muslims living within Islamic society, as well as to the behavior of faithful Muslims living outside of Muslim society.
The laws of Shari’a encompass five categories, that which is obligatory, that which is recommended, that which is neutral, that which is disapproved, and that which is forbidden.
No reasoning Muslim would ever disavow Shari’a as not being fundamental to Islam, and it is Shari’a, rather than the Koran itself, upon which the West should focus its attention, as it is Shari’a that directly and unequivocally sanctions the horrific and inconvenient within Islam.
As specifically stated within Shari’a law, it is a heresy and an offense punishable by death to criticize or ever question the tenets of Islam, which has become a not uncommon constraint often applied to those who question or criticize Muslim men.
Since Islam is perfect, any criticism of a faithful Muslim may be by extension presumed to be criticism of Islam, and therefore intolerable, ESPECIALLY if such criticism is uttered by a woman.
As a matter of perspective, there is the belief within Islam that there are three things that invalidate the prayers of a faithful Muslim, the presence of a dog, a donkey, or a woman. If either intrudes upon a man in prayer, God will refuse to accept such prayer, which would seem to suggest that God considers these creatures as loathsome; raising the obvious question, “What kind of God doesn’t like dogs?”
Perhaps he has a greater appreciation for cats.
Regardless of God’s preferences, Mohammed clearly was a prophet who thought at the very least that women, if properly housebroken, made good pets, and while he often voiced his opinion that it was more than acceptable on occasion to beat a dog, a donkey, or a woman, the Koran was surprisingly mute on the subject of if and when a woman made a mess on the carpet, whether it was ever acceptable to rub her nose in it, and so that debate within Islam rages and continues.
The word Islam means to submit, or to be in submission, and nowhere within Islam is such submission more rigidly enforced than upon women who are required always to be in obedient submission.
A Muslim woman, who is therefore disobedient, oppositional; critical or rejecting of a Muslim man, may be by extension, considered to be an apostate and rejecting Islam, which is an act and a heresy for which the punishment is or may be, death by beheading, depending upon the momentary disposition of the males within her family.
It is this principle of Islamic perfection that makes possible the most barbaric and inhumane acts of violence toward women without comment or condemnation arising from within the Muslim community.
Occasionally, when such actions have been perpetrated or have become known within the non-Muslim world, vague apologetic statements of condemnation do occur, usually along the lines of, “Islam condemns the murder of innocent people”.
What non-Muslims need to understand about such statements is that they apply only to faithful Muslims, and are expressed solely for assuaging western sensibilities.
The concept of innocence does not apply to non-believers or apostates, as innocence is a state of being to which only a faithful Muslim may make claim. With such statements, Muslim apologists speak only of themselves.
Within Islam, the concept of murder, or the shedding of innocent blood, applies only to a faithful Muslim, as the blood of a non-believer or an apostate is the blood of one who is NOT an innocent. While it is possible to kill a non-believer or apostate Muslim, it is NOT possible to murder a non-believer or apostate Muslim.
While the murder of a faithful believer may be condemnable within Islam, killing a non-believer or an apostate is entirely irrelevant, and not even a serious topic for discussion.
What is not well understood by non-Muslim’s, is that within the category of an apostate, may readily fall those women who criticize, or are in any way oppositional, or rejecting of a Muslim man, and whose subsequent butchery is considered not only NOT murder, but an act of compassion and righteous redemption.
Nowhere within any other religion has the butchery of a human being ever been considered an act of spiritual redemption or affirmation, and while completely alien to western theology, within Islam, the beheading of a disobedient woman may actually be seen as an act of benevolence and compassion toward her, by removing from her the possibility of committing further mortal offense before God.
In an extremely perverse sense, the honor killing of a woman may actually be seen religiously, as a benevolent blessing upon her by those who engage in the righteous act of slaughtering her. Within such a religious culture, such an act is less condemnable than commendable, hence the absence of outrage and the resounding silence within the Muslim community.
Islam is a male oriented religion serving the spiritual needs of men, with women serving their temporal needs and desires, and it is a given that when one refers to Islam, one is referring only to men.
It has been said that to be born female within Islam is both a curse and a potential death sentence, wherein being female is to suffer a life long form of Stockholm Syndrome in which survival is wholly dependent upon identifying with ones tormentor.
Islam’s regard for women was directly ordained and supported by Mohammed in both word and deed, proclaiming that women were in every way inferior to men, physically, emotionally, morally, spiritually, and intellectually.
As specifically determined and approved by Mohammed, the sexual submission of women was and remains absolute and expressly ordained by Islamic law and spiritual principle.
Mohammed viewed women as not only inferior, but as potential agents of Satan sent to test and tempt the righteous, and among his prophetic revelations was the admonition to the faithful, that Hell was overwhelmingly populated by thankless and disobedient women.
Because of the deficiencies of women, their inheritance was set by Mohammed at half that of a man.
The testimony of a woman was also valued at half that of a man, with the consequence that no woman could ever of her own accord sustain a legal claim against any man.
Obedience and absolute sexual servitude were required of women, with any woman being disobedient or denying her husband or master, sexual congress, being cursed and rightfully subject to corporal punishment (Koran 4:34).
The Koran teaches that a man may go into a woman whenever he chooses, and to enjoy her in whatever manner he chooses, with condemnation, curses, and beatings, being the wages of sin for a woman who denies her husband or master the use of her body, so much so that a woman who wishes to pray rather than engage in intercourse is guilty of a grievous sin.
By Mohammed’s determination, there is within Islamic doctrine the belief that men are pure and women are impure, with the world religiously divided into two halves, one half, Dar-al-Harb, (the world of war) consisting of unbelieving infidels and disobedient women, and a Muslim half, Dar-al-Islam (the land of Islam, or the world of peace) consisting of righteous believers, who pursue as an act of faith, war against the former; demonstrating their spiritual obedience to God by first subjugating the impure within their own home, and within their own society.
Islam’s scriptural authorities require faithful Muslim’s to “humiliate” non-believers, and to bring them to an understanding of their state of degradation. The humiliation and degradation of women has become, despite Islam’s denials, an extension of this spiritual directive, with sexuality being the tool for the expression of Islamic dominance, as well as a weapon with which to punish the disobedient and the unbelieving.
Muslim male supremacy requires all women to submit, including women within non-believing countries, and as noted specifically within the Koran AND Shari’a law, there is no such thing as the rape of an unbelieving female, as such intercourse, forcible or otherwise, was approved by Mohammed as an absolute right of entitlement of Muslim men, as specifically addressed by the Koran in 4:24.
Additionally, in order for a Muslim woman to maintain an accusation of rape against a man, that act must be witnessed by four men, who likewise must be willing to testify against the accused Muslim male (Koran 24:13).
That there is even a perceived need within Islam to delineate under what circumstance rape is approved or disapproved, or that religiously sanctioned rape was even a subject for Mohammed’s spiritual consideration, is to the Western mind both instructive and appalling.
Throughout the non-Muslim world, rape committed by Muslim’s is a religiously sanctioned and overt, deliberate act of subjugation, and while the epidemic of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants worldwide may seem like random acts of criminality, they are in fact specifically sanctioned within both the Koran and the Sunna.
That non-Muslim women are specifically targeted is indicative of this aberrant sexual expression as a form of warfare, as an act of taking that belonging to an infidel, as a rightful entitlement of the faithful, and as an act of expressing moral indignation at the offensive and open rebellion of such women by their failure to be in submission to God, and by the term God, Muslim men.
But it is not only non-believing women who are violated with impunity.
Within Islamic communities, Muslim women and girls who have no male family members too protect them, are routinely raped, sodomized, and violated by Muslim men who know that there is virtually no possibility of societal condemnation and no threat of retaliation. Young women and girls who complain become outcast or worse, possibly suffering death for their accusation, or for having dishonored their families.
Within Denmark, for example, Muslim men comprise less than 4% of that country’s population, but commit an estimated 80% of all sexual assaults.
Within Paris, another European city with a sizable Muslim minority, rapes of Muslim and non-Muslim women, are at epidemic proportions with roving gangs of Muslim men gang raping women and girls with absolute impunity, certain that neither their own, nor the French judicial system can or will hold them legally accountable.
In 2002 however, several Muslim girls within the Parisian Muslim community did the unthinkable and complained to police that they had been gang raped by Muslim men.
Upon their arrest, local police were picketed by the wives, mothers, and sisters of the accused, incensed that their men had been arrested for something that was clearly not their fault. In the eyes of these women the young girls were at fault for their own violation, and saw their own male family members as having been victimized by them.
It is a given within a religiously sanctified, Islamic rape culture, that Muslim men are not only NOT legally accountable for rape, but are NOT responsible for their own sexual behavior or for any behavior or circumstance that reflects poorly upon them.
Perversely, in many Islamic communities, it is not at all uncommon for young female family members, to be freely offered up to the men of other families, to be gang raped by those men, as a means of settling some offense or dispute between the families.
But it is not just women and girls within Islam who are often victims of sexual predation, but also adolescent boys.
Along with its culture of rape is the often and pervasive sexual exploitation of young males, and it is within Islam, often the elephant within the room about which no one wishes to speak.
Though condemned by the Koran as an activity expressly forbidden between adult males, it is an extremely common and prevalent practice engaged between adult males and children.
As engaged in between adult males, it is condemned, and often subject to extreme sanction, including execution. However, as engaged in between adult males and pubescent and even pre-pubescent boys, it is a millennial Islamic institution, supported by scriptural references and promises to faithful Muslim’s that there will not only be for their sexual pleasure within paradise, the Houris, immortal females of unsurpassed beauty and purity; free of all of the “inconveniences” of mortal women, but sensuous young boys, “as precious as pearls”.
There is within this negative sexual dynamic a trickle down effect, from adults, to older, to younger boys.
Older boys, who have been feminized, in turn feminize younger boys, who in turn feminize even younger boys. Fellatio and anal intercourse often become individual and even group activities in which boys as young as six or seven years of age regularly engage with adults and with each other. The cultural effect of such endemic feminization within a hyper-masculine culture that loathes and denigrates femininity as impure, is that generations of boys grow to adulthood, denying, yet acutely aware of their exploitation, shame, sexual confusion, rage, and fragile sense of masculinity.
Islamic society is a society where rage, shame, and victimhood are pervasive, dominating cultural characteristics, with, contrary to the representations of liberal western media, the source of most of its rage, humiliation, and victim mentality, to be found within a culture of shameful and often violent sexual exploitation not only of women and girls but also of adolescent male children, acts that ARE specifically referenced within the Koran, the Sunna, and the Hadith. It should also be noted that within Shari’a, the sexual penetration of an infant is not recommended.
There is also within Islam, a cultural dynamic seen nowhere else within any society, and that is the degree of disconnect between education and brutal inhumanity; where one is as likely to find a university educated Muslim reveling in orgiastic, sexual bloodlust, and brutality toward others, as one who is illiterate.
While elsewhere within the world there is a perceptible correlation between education, civility, humanity, and respect toward others, within Islam such is the exception rather than the rule.
Clearly there is a component within Islam that drives this behavior that is absent within other cultures, a component that is without question, internal rather than external to Islam.
The hyper-masculinity of Muslim men with their obsession with their own perfection and the imperfection of women, has mutated into the widely accepted Islamic custom of honor killing, as a perverse form of denial of imperfection. A female whose behavior, real or imagined, might bring dishonor upon her family, is killed to remove any imperfection that may reflect upon the perfection and perceived masculinity of the men within her family.
Compounding the horror and perversity of such acts is that it is seemingly not merely sufficient to kill the offending female, but to do so in as vicious and brutal a manner as possible, almost as if the degree of masculinity recovered and reaffirmed is somehow in direct proportion to the degree of butchery involved.
Often such acts are in similitude of the dynamic of Muslim gang rape, where several male family members participate in the slaying, each acting in reassurance of their own masculinity, as well as for the approval of the other men within their family and community.
Perversely, such acts of horrific brutality often become a source of family pride as they become publicly known within the community, and where having acted as a butcher of women within ones family is to be accorded reverence by ones peers, and perhaps even an elevation in ones social status.
While such acts are rationalized as acts to restore family honor, family honor is in reality the expression of impotent rage at the possibility that others may see in the transgression of the offending female, the weakness and masculine impotence of the men within that family, unable to control the actions of someone as insignificant, impure, and inferior as a female.
Within Islam, the focus of honor is always upon the male and his perceived masculinity within his community.
To a Muslim male, life is theater in which his masculinity is always on stage, always in the spotlight, and always subject to scathing review, and where the possible treachery of impure females always poses a threat to that communal perception.
There is within Islam, an extremely dysfunctional, psychosexual dynamic that along with its rape culture and sexual exploitation of adolescent males foments a desperate rage that Muslim men have with life and that which carries, nurtures, and gives life. The degree of fear, loathing, and even hatred for all that is female, expresses itself in the rage and brutal violence that Muslims exhibit not only toward women and toward each other, but toward the world at large.
There are among such men, an endless supply of Jihadists and potential martyrs, who may be easily manipulated into believing that their redemption and value as beings lies in the violent sacrifice of their own lives as well as the brutal slaughter of others.
It is within this cultural dynamic that is to be found the source of the gross overkill and sexual torture that has become the common and consistently characteristic signature of Muslim violence toward their non-Muslim and apostate captives.
On September 1, 2004, in the Russian Federation town of Beslan, Muslim terrorists descended upon a school, taking more than 1,100 people hostage, including nearly 800 school children.
Over the next several days Russian security forces attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution, ultimately failing, with the resultant carnage of the deaths of 334 hostages of which 186 were children. Nearly all the survivors were in some manner wounded, if not emotionally scared for a lifetime.
On November 26, 2008, in Mumbai, India, Muslim terrorists simultaneously undertook coordinated attacks upon as many as eight separate targets, and over the next two days fought pitched battles with police and security forces, eventually resulting in the deaths of at least 173 and injuries to more than 300 additional people.
In each instance, immediately upon seizing a target and establishing a defensible perimeter, some portion or room of the seized building, was established, solely for the purpose of pursuing a large scale assembly line process of rape, sodomy, sexual torture and mutilation, and seemingly as an after act, the ritual beheading of captives.
Immediately upon seizure, and while in the process of ongoing negotiation with Russian security forces, those within selected from among their captives, those who would be sexually violated and abused; they were in their regard as captors, equal opportunity violators, with men, women, boys and girls, each in their turn grossly violated, sexually mutilated, and as an after act, killed.
More than 100 were children.
On and on, hour after hour, while terrorists engaged in the artifice of negotiation, each in their turn took their merciless pleasure with their chosen victim captives, much of which was recorded on video film for the later amusement and sexual pleasure of those involved and for the pleasure and amusement of their associates.
There exists in fact within the Islamic world, a tremendous demand for such videos, and they are often to be found in the possession of apprehended terrorists, often along with an appreciable collection of kiddie porn.
To its shame and discredit western media and academia remain virtually silent on the prevalence of such forms of Islamic spiritual expression.
Mumbai, was in its relation to those taken captive, an identical replay of the sexual horror of Beslan, where sexual-psychopathology WAS central to the spiritual expression of religiously sanctioned violence.
From the objective perspective of a criminal profiler, a crime scene evidencing a protracted torture and profound suffering of the victim, indicates that the death itself was only incidental or secondary to the primary act of inflicting protracted suffering, a character trait consistent with sexual-psychopaths for whom their true satisfaction is found within the ongoing act of torture and not the inevitable conclusion. For such killers, the actual demise of their victim is anticlimactic.
Clearly, while the ultimate objective of the terrorists was to inflict death upon as many of their captives as possible, their main focus was unquestionably indulging and satisfying their own horribly perverse sexual urges.
There have been innumerable books and articles written upon the subjects of sexual dysfunction within Islam, homosexuality, pedophilia, psychopathology, sexual-psychopathology and a near endless list of maladjusted behaviors, characteristic of Islam; a recitation of their observations upon what is unquestionably, exclusively and universally, a form of Islamic violence, and spiritual expression.
Yet, while the west, its media, academia, and politically-correct leadership, endlessly debate whether hyper-violent Muslim’s are representative of Islam’s central character, there is no such debate or confusion within an Islamic world that knows exactly who these people are and what they honestly represent.
That the Islamic world remains largely silent in the face of each, increasing outrage reveals exactly how the Muslim world feels about the behavior of their profoundly destructive brethren, and how acceptable their behavior really is within the Islamic communities including those within the west.
The degree of western success or failure in understanding the problem of Islamic bloodlust violence will certainly depend upon how objectively it defines the problem.
The problem, to the degree it has currently been defined, has been entirely defined by the Islamic world itself.
Apologists within the Muslim world have conveniently defined the problem of horrific, sexual violence as being perpetrated by radical, fringe elements within what they otherwise characterize as the religion of peace.
Their characterization has been widely accepted and embraced within the west and is misdirection away from the real issue.
Rather than Muslin hyper-violence being characterized as characteristic of radical Islam, the problem is more accurately characterized and defined as being a problem of active Islam.
The politically-correct West continues to it’s discredit to characterize Islam as being divided into spheres of RADICAL Vs. MODERATE, when the more accurate characterization is that of a problem of ACTIVE Vs. PASSIVE Islam.
Those who engage in extreme violence as acts of spiritual expression, are in fact ACTIVELY and FAITHFULLY acting out in accordance with, and supported by the Koran, Shari’a, and a millennial history of Islamic culture, and they are supported and even encouraged by those who PASSIVELY embrace and silently accept their brutally inhumane actions.
To argue that the problem is largely the actions of a minority is to dismiss the fact that the majority support and embrace the same religious doctrine, the same Shari’a laws, and the same cultural norms.
Sexual behavior is widely presumed to be personal behavior except among those of the politically-correct liberal left, who consider ALL behavior as political; because all behavior is political, the liberal institutions of the west persist in characterizing the excessive violence of Islam, regardless its overtly sexual content, as proceeding from the political rather than the personal, thereby entirely missing the point and the root cause of such violence.
The failure to correctly assess the true character of Islamic violence will continue, and as long it remains characterized as political expression, such violence will continue as liberally understandable, and tolerable, if not acceptable.
The liberal, western world continues to relate to the Islamic world as if there existed between competing and opposing cultural and religious ideologies of agency and compulsion, a point of common intersection.
The misconception blinding the west in their belief that the Muslim world can be accommodated and that Islam and the West share interests in common, is its misperception that the desire of innumerable individuals within Islam to embrace democracy is an opportunity to institute democratic ideals, if not western culture.
What they fail to understand is that within Islam, those who desire to be free of Islam’s religiously sanctioned violence are Islam’s heretics, its true radical fringe, and its walking dead who have rejected Islam’s narcissistic, malignantly violent, ideology and by that rejection, have become apostate.
There will never come a time within Islam where the blasphemous heretic will dominate or come to power, a reality that Western liberal democracies are just not willing to face. When push comes to shove, Muslims who viciously prey and war upon each other, and those who passively stand by, will ALWAYS choose to ally themselves with one another against the infidel and the apostate.
There is within this faulty belief system, an appalling ignorance and arrogant condescension toward the Muslim world that presumes that Islam’s cultural norms are the moral equivalent to those of the west.
By failing to hold Islam accountable to a minimal standard of human decency, and by engaging Islam and its outrageous violence upon a non-judgmental, morally equivalent plane, our efforts only serve to reinforce Islam’s outrageous sense of entitlement. Our indulgence and silence, and our tolerance for Islam’s destructive behavior will only breed more, rather than less of such behavior, and serve to encourage the moral certainty of active Islam.
The West’s continuing pursuit of a passive strategy as the only safe, politically acceptable solution to Islam’s ultra-violence and of hoping desperately that Islam’s moderates (passive Islam) will somehow influence Islam’s radicals (active Islam) to change their ways is hopelessly misguided.
The idea of placing the fate of the West in the hands of those, who have neither an active nor passive interest in Western culture and values, is an interesting one, and extends from a political culture that has become increasingly seen within Islam as overwhelmingly feminine, and therefore overwhelmingly loathsome.
Like any good enabler and abused woman, we within a liberal western culture, passively hope and wait for the abuser to change his ways, while adopting a dependent posture of submission and weakness, and hoping to GOD, that the next time he is enraged, he does not sexually torture, behead, and deliver us a death in the way of Allah as our promised end.
In the mean time, regardless of what we do to placate, our noses will continue to be rubbed in it.
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http://www.islam-watch.org/Others/Violent-Sexual-Obsession-and-Rape-as-Expression-of-Islamic-Spirituality.htm

Tarek Fatah : From Bangladesh to Darfur: How Internalised Racism Has Permitted Lighter Skinned Muslims to Slaughter Their Darker Skinned Co-religionists

From Bangladesh to Darfur: How Internalised Racism Has Permitted Lighter Skinned Muslims to Slaughter Their Darker Skinned Co-religionists

by Tarek Fatah

23 Apr, 2009

Speech by Tarek Fatah
The Durban Review Conference (Durban II)
Geneva, Switzerland
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=164051190246

Dear NGO colleagues and delegates,

I speak to you deeply disappointed that my colleague Milly Nsekalije, a survivor of the Rwandan massacre could not share her story with all of you because in the eyes of some since she is not 100% Tutsi, she cannot have been a victim of the Genocide.

What does it say about the state of racism in our world when the victims of a genocide practise exclusion on the basis of the so-called purity of blood lines and ethnicities.

Worse than her exclusion from today’s event is the fact that it has happened at a conference meant to combat racism, when it fact, in my opinion, whether it was yesterday’s speech by Mahmood Ahmadenijad or this afternoon’s barring off Ms. Nsekalije, we have turned the concept of racism upside down.

Having said that, please allow me to dwell on how racism plays out its dirty game, not just as a Black-White divide, but also as a cancer that affects relations between people of colour, often sharing the same religion, but different shades of brown or black skin.

When the issue of racism comes up, the internalised racism that devours the people of the developing world in Asia and Africa, from within, rarely comes up for discussion.

This afternoon I would like to shed some light on two genocides—one in 1970-71 and the other that continues as I speak. In both instances the root of the problem lay in how one group of Muslims felt they were racially superior to their victims, who also happened to be Muslims. In both cases the doctrine of racial superiority and the practise of institutional racism went unchallenged even after the horrible consequences of such racism was evident and for all to see.

Bangladesh

The first genocide took place in then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh and second is taking place in Darfur. Let me dwell on the Bangladesh genocide first.

In 1970 in Pakistan, my country of birth was divided between two wings; an eastern part that is today known as Bangladesh and the western rump that survived a subsequent war with India as the state we know as Pakistan.

East Pakistan was inhabited by the darker skinned Bengali people who happened to be the majority community of the country, but found themselves ruled by a lighter skinned minority from what was known as West Pakistan—separated by a 1,000 miles.

In the first 25 years of the country, the racist depiction of the darker skinned Bengalis as an inferior and incapable people became the unquestioned dogma among the ruling minority. In addition to the racist depiction of the darker-skinned Bengalis, their culture was portrayed as unislamic and being influenced by Hinduism. Their music, cuisine and attire were mocked while their language was banned and led to widespread protests and deaths in 1952.

In 1970, after suffering under the minority rule of West Pakistan for 25 years, the people of East Pakistan voted to elect a party based in their region and gained a clear majority in the country’s national parliament.

However, the racist view that Bengali people were incapable of ruling the country or that they were traitors to the fair-skinned minority of West Pakistan, led to a military intervention and widespread massacres in which one million people were killed in a ten-month period.

The killing of the Bengali people by the West Pakistan army stopped only when India intervened and defeated the Pakistan Armed forces, but not before hundreds of Bengali intellectuals, professors, poets, authors, musicians and painters, were rounded up and massacred in the final act of mass murder that started with the tolerance of racism as an act of faith.

One million Muslims were murdered by fellow Muslims in an orgy of hate that defied the teachings of Islam and the very Prophet Muhammad who was being invoked by the Pakistan Army. At the root of this sad blot on Islamic history and all of humanity lay the view that people of darker skin are inferior to those for geographic reasons have for no fault of theirs, a lighter skin colour.

One would have hoped that the lessons of 1970-71 would have been learnt in the Muslim World, but the sad fact is that the ubiquitous racism that resides inside the Islamic world has faced no opposition. On the contrary there is near universal denial about this cancer, not just among the governments that rule with oppressive instruments of power, but also many NGOs and civil society groups in the Muslim world.

Darfur

The latest manifestation of racism leading to a genocide is in Sudan where the Arab Janjaweed militia and the Arab government in Khartoum has resulted in the killing of 500,000 Darfuri Muslims whose only fault is that they are Black and thus considered as inferior to the ruling classes of that country.

The mistreatment of Black Muslims by those who feel they are superior because of their lighter skin colour has been historical. Only in the Middle East can one get away by addressing a Black man as “Ya Abdi”, which translates to the horrible words, “Oh you slave”.

The acceptance of racism among the dominant community in the Arab world has today resulted in not just the genocide of Darfuris, but also the celebration by the Arab League of the man charged by the International Criminal Court, President Bashir of Sudan.

It is time that the medieval doctrine of the inferiority of non-Arab Muslims to Arab Muslims is laid to rest. It is necessary that Arab countries and leaders of Arab NGOs denounce this doctrine that has led to the discrimination of darker skinned Muslims by Arab governments in counties as far apart as Dubai to Darfur.

Behind the genocide of Bengal and Darfur, separated by 30 years, is the unchallenged doctrine of racial superiority of one ethnic group over another that has gone unnoticed and unpunished by any institution anywhere in the world.

This doctrine of racism has brought untold misery on the victims of this cancer, but this becomes worse when such racism is given a religious validation. In this day and age, we have fatwas from contemporary Islamic scholars who maintain that a non-Arab Muslim like me would be committing an act of sin if I considered myself equal to an Arab.

Fatwas from the 14th century have been dusted off the shelves, re-furbished and published on on-line Islamist forums to justify the superiority of one group over the other. This has provided the moral justification to the mass murder being committed on the Black Muslims of Darfur, which unfortunately, has gone unmentioned even at this conference.

Conclusion
Let me conclude by suggesting that if racism is a mountain that we all need to conquer, then we have not yet come to a place where we can see this mountain in the horizon, let alone be at base camp.

Ladies and gentlemen, sisters and brothers, if we cannot allow a woman to speak here because she is of mixed blood or the fact that untouchability in India is not on the agenda in Geneva, or that nations of the OIC seek the right to restrict free speech, or a demagogue from Iran with blood on his hands has the audacity to lecture us on human rights, then all I can say is that in the words of Robert Frost, we have miles to go before we sleep…
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Tarek Fatah is the author of highly acclaimed recent book, Chasing Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State.

Puneet Madan : The Genesis and Working of Radical Islam

The Genesis and Working of Radical Islam

by Puneet Madan

07 May, 2009

Puneet Madan on the inaugural Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam Rally in New York on May 3, 2009:

We are a multi-lingual, multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic group that have gathered in Times Square, New York, today (May 3, 2009) under the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam (HRCARI) banner to reaffirm the most basic of principles that our ancestors stood for when, over six decades ago, they established the United Nations, the cornerstone of a hoped-for global democracy. In doing so, they hoped to ensure that never again would humankind face the persecution it suffered during the tragedies of the mid-20th century. The establishment of the United Nations was to be the beginning of a new era in which people of different religion, cultures, castes, and color would together create a new global society, a humanistic society, finally overcoming the fascism and imperialism of the times past.

HRCARI reaffirms the most basic principles human rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to vote, and the assurance that all human beings are equal, regardless of his social, cultural, gender, racial, sexuality or religious status.

For many in our world, democracy is considered the essence of human freedom. However, for others, the term “democracy” has come to imply only the right to vote. This is exemplified in the many Islamic countries that hold elections, even while exhibiting nary a trace of freedom. The most famous recent example of elections without the "essence of democracy" include the 2006 election of Hamas in the Palestinian Territories. The reality is that freedom, as a concept, has been defined straight out of existence. While most people in the world define freedom and human rights according to the universalistic notions set forth in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNUDHR), and other documents such as the United States’ Declaration of Independence, radical Muslims have defined “freedom” to mean the freedom they enjoy to exploit human suffering and dignity, a "freedom", they believe, is granted them by their age-old religious scripture. They are, in short, demanding that the democratic, freedom-loving world be tolerant to their intolerance.
In the 1930s, when Jews were forced to wear arm bands in Nazi Germany, the world ignored their plight. One of the excuses for ignoring Jewish suffering during the Holocaust was a perceived need to be "sensitive" to the plight of Nazi Germany. It is still an open question why and how the world ignored and appeased the Nazi threat for as long as it did, until action was finally taken. But it is clear that by ignoring the Nazi threat, the world permitted a massive human tragedy, the Holocaust, to happen. The United Nations was founded in the wake of that tragedy in order to prevent another Holocaust.

Ironically the same story repeated itself in 1999, when the Taliban forced Afghan Hindus and Sikhs to wear orange armbands. They also were responsible for the genocide of the Hazara Muslims in Northern Afghanistan. Let loose, the Taliban grew into a global threat by 2001, and we are still living under the shadow of that threat. Today, the media and politicians are attempting to claim there is a “moderate Taliban.” The term “moderate Taliban” is an oxymoron in itself. Once again we are making deals and compromising the very definition of the “universal human dignity” in order to be “sensitive” towards the demands of perpetrators of genocide.
Presently, whenever a terrorist kills innocent people in horrific events such attacks on September 11, 2001 (New York), March 27, 2002 (Passover bombing in Netanya, Israel), March 11, 2003 (Madrid bombing), July 7, 2005 (London bombing), and November 26-28 2008 (Mumbai attacks), the majority of “mainstream politicians” run out to make apologies on behalf of the terrorists. There is also denial of the problem of radical Islam by the “mainstream media,” which does not refer to radical Muslims by their true identity: radical Muslims or Islamic terrorists. Instead, they have been referred to as “South Asians”, “militants" etc. When this is combined with a politically correct mentality, which requires universal tolerance—that is, tolerance even of intolerant radical Islam—a deadly “cocktail” is created. The last time such a confluence of events occurred was during the lead-up to the rise of Nazis in Germany, culminating in the World War II. It is important to note that we must discuss the background of radical Islam, because its history, thus far, has been ignored. The root of radical Islam must be understood in order to prevent further genocide.
We, the Indians, would like to inform Americans and the world of the full scope of the problem of radical Islam that we endured. During and before the 1920s, there was a mass-murdering rampage undertaken by India's radical Muslims, under the guise of evicting the British from India. In truth, these murders occurred as part of the khilafat movement, in order to found a radical Islamic state, a pan-Islamic caliphate, in the “British Jewel” of India. Today’s radical Muslims are, kind of, a continuation of same radical Islamic movement, having the same goal as those of the 1920s: founding of an Islamic caliphate of the global scale. However, since the history of radical Islam is unknown, or forgotten, it is mistakenly believed that radical Islam is a new phenomenon, a direct result of “Western imperialism” or other external factors.

In the year 1926, there was a summit in Mecca that gave birth to two Radical Islamic movements—the Muslim Brotherhood and Tablighi Jamaat—to combat the “non-Islamic” world on the western and eastern boundaries of the Arabian peninsula.^[1] The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini was a key participant in this summit. He was in fact a key architect of the Jewish Holocaust and of the radical Islamic terrorism in Palestine. In addition, the radical Deobandi Muslim cleric, Maulana Ilyas, traveled back to India and created the Tablighi Jamaat. As such, in the “Western front”, Hassan-al-Banna and his associate Amin al Husseini received funds from Deobandi radicals, as well as from the Nawab (governor) of Hyderabad, India. This ultimately led to the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, which later adopted the Mawdudi vision of the 'Ummah', or the society that decide how to impose religious apartheid on global level.

The Mecca Summit of 1926 quickly resulted in a series of murders of many opponents of the Aryan Race theory in India. As an example, the murder of high profile spiritual Hindu guru Swami Shraddhanand is still well-known. Although the political body maintained that the serial killings of 1926 were done by scattered religious fanatics and lacked any broader political connections, the actions of these murderers points to a different reality. The period between 1926 and 1932 was perhaps the earliest and most dynamic phase during which radical Muslims realigned themselves into a threat of global proportions. An example of early hate education and the tie-in to genocide can be traced back to 1926, when a radical Muslim, known as Inayat Allah Khan al-Mashriqi, translated Hitler's “Mein Kampf” into Urdu. This hate-text was then widely sold in mosques, and the sale of Mein Kampf in the Urdu-speaking world rivaled that in pre-Nazi Germany of 1926.
In the year 1929, there was a massacre of Jewish men, women, and children in the city of Hebron, in the British Mandate of Palestine. This massacre caused the British establishment, out of fear, to evict the victims of the massacre, the Jews, from the historic city of Hebron. What is not well-known is that the Hebron massacre itself was financed through an early version of “Sharia finance”: money was sent in from around the world, especially from India, in order to finance the massacre. Responding to the Hebron massacre, in addition to transferring all Jews out of Hebron, the British also tightened the control of the transfer of money between radical Muslim groups. The money transfer system was completely blocked by 1933, creating what today is known as the financial crisis of the Jerusalem-based Supreme Muslim Council (1932–1935). In 1933, the radical Islamic lobby came up with the idea of creating a pseudo-religious money transfer system to fund their violent and extremist activities in name of Islam: this banking system is today recognized as the “Sharia banking.”
After the British choked out the money-flow to radical Islamic groups, 1936 marked a new beginning for the radical Islamic movements, as the funds to support their hate-campaign now came from Nazi Germany. Amazingly, the two groups formed after the 1926 Mecca Summit, the Muslim Brotherhood and Tablighi Jamaat, now came together under one umbrella to work with the Nazis. During World War II, ‘Berlin Radio’ broadcasted Amin al-Husseini's sermons, in which he asked Muslims in India and beyond to attack anyone helping the British war effort against the Nazis. Indeed, there were, thereafter, nationwide attacks against the Hindus, who had sided with the British to fight the Nazis. In response, the British decided to lock up India's entire Muslim and leftist lobby.
After World War II, the British freed all the radical Muslims, who had contributed to genocide alongside the Nazis. Despite the fact that Amin al Husseini was an architect of the Final Solution, he was never prosecuted, and in fact died in 1974 at a ripe old age, never having to answer for his crimes.
If this was not egregious enough, the British political lobby pushed for the partition of India, without recognizing the human tragedy this would cause. Even until today, there are political lobbies, including British backed Indian leftists, that refuse to acknowledge the Indian partition genocide, denying due respect to its victims. Such Denialism has become the prime source of a never-ending cycle of barbarity. We see denial of genocide even today regarding the 1915 genocide in Armenia, the ongoing genocide in Sudan, and the incitement to genocide, on a daily basis, against the Jews in the state-sponsored media of Islamic countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. This global Denialism will not let our civilization properly mourn the victims of radical Islam or prevent its recurrence.
Ironically, what the "mainstream media" highlights concerning Islamic violence is just the backlash by the victims of radical Islam, not the actions of the instigators, the radical Muslims. The portrayal of the backlash by the victims as the source of the problem, the "mainstream media" is, in fact, fueling resentment amongst Muslims and helping their recruitment to radical Islamic groups for waging Jihadi warfare. The best example of this phenomenon is the Gujarat riots of 2002 (India). These riots were provoked by the Godhra train-burning incident, in which 58 Hindus were charred into coals. The media, callously disregarding the Ghodra train-burning, heaped tremendous attention upon the Hindu backlash, the so-called Gujarat riots, and its Muslim victims. The media also implicitly excused dozens of suicide bomb attacks by radical Muslims, which occurred soon afterward, by citing the legitimate Muslim resentment over the Gujarat riots. None of the "mainstream media" outlets ever stopped to query the psychological state of Hindus when the riots occurred. In fact, the Indian government had ignored for decades the plight of the Hindu victims of radical Islam, prior to the 2002 Gujarat riots. Then there was the Godhra train burning incident ahead of the riots, in which a mob of radical Muslims set fire on a train containing Hindu pilgrims, including women and infant children, burning them alive. This occurred at the same time as mosques were blaring on their loudspeakers messages to kill the "kuffar," i.e. the Hindus.
The vast majority of the "mainstream media" and politicians refused to acknowledge these facts. It is also true that Muslims suffered extensively during the 2002 Gujarat riots, which HRCARI will never excuse, or endorse. Nonetheless, the Godhra train-burning incident (the instigator of Gujarat riots 2002), the Mumbai train bombings and the London tube bombings are intimately connected: their motivation is radical Islam; the perpetrators are radical Muslims. Why the media, the politicians, refuse to make and highlight this obvious link between these horror acts of terrorism? The horrendous Godhra terror incident was the handiwork of the Tablighi Jamaat, the same group which worked as an intelligence agency for the Nazis, also worked as a proxy in recruiting the Jihadis for the London Tube bombings and the Glasgow airport attack. But hardly any media outlet will ever publish this fact. Instead, the "mainstream media" pretends that all cultures are equal, and we should "give respect" to the culture of radical Islam than confronting this hateful ideology.
When will we acknowledge that the paganic 'multicultural’ system is, politically, a failure? How long will we continue shying off from standing up for human dignity in the name of political correctness? When will we recognize that the society we created after World War II was secular, not multicultural? Modern democracies hold the sacredness of life as their core value, not any obsolete ancient scripture. In modern democracy, all human beings are equal.
Ironically, the Muslim world has rejected the secular notion of human rights after World War II; it never joined the universalistic effort to prevent future human tragedies. And let me be clear that I am counting in this, those Muslims around the world, who applaud the fanatics. At the same time, we are deeply thankful to the handful of Muslims, who have joined us today in this stand for human rights and dignity for all.
For whatever reason, be it oil-money spent to propagate extremist forms of Islam, or due to cultural reasons, the majority of Muslims have not spoken out against the radical Islamists' rampant violence and violation of human rights worldwide. This needs to change for success of our mission, and it is a hopeful sign that some Muslims have stood together with us today; they are starting to speak out against radical Islam. They need to take a clear stand against the radicals and intensify their unequivocal condemnation of violence and violation of human in Islamic countries. We are eager to join Muslims for calling in one voice for the equality of all before the law, and the enforcement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights everywhere without exception.
We are here today to call for universal human rights and dignity. We hope that this global campaign will continue to be strengthened until uniform human rights and dignity is ensured to all regardless of faith, color, caste, or race.
Before closing, we want to pay our respect to all the innocent victims of all types of fascism. This is a moment we provide recognition of this, but we will continue our fight to prevent future occurrence of genocide, a mission in which the United Nations has failed miserably.

[1] Al-Karmil, May 30 1926, issue no. 1186.