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Cowardly Faith
Oh my Lord, if I worship Thee from fear of Hell, send me there;
~ Rabi’a al-Adawiyya (717 AD 801 AD age:84)
Oh my Lord, if I worship Thee from desire for Paradise, exclude me thence;
But if I worship Thee for Thine Own sake, hide not from me Thine Eternal Beauty.
Motive For Murder
Turn the unbelievers’ night into a day, demolish their homelands, and turn their blood into rivers.
~ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (1971-07-28 age:46) ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) leader.What is the motive for all this mayhem? He wants to kill all the unbelievers — people who reject the fantastic claims of Islam as unfounded. Basically, he wants to kill people for being rational. That is as idiotic as wanting to kill everyone who does not believe in Bigfoot. Why should he care? Is he that insecure in his own belief he requires universal acceptance of it? He is behaving like a door-to-door Mormonism salesman who decapitates his potential customers when they say they are not interested.
Hamid Al-Ghazali
Anyone who refuses to marry is shirking his farmwork, wasting the seed, and leaving idle the appropriate tools created by God; he sins against the purpose of creation and wisdom visible in the evidence of natural structure. The man who refuses to marry has severed a chain of being, a previously unbroken chain linking his own existence to that of Adam.
~ Hamid Al-Ghazali (1058 1111-12-19 age:53) conservative Islamic theologian who is mainly responsible for ending the golden age of Islam by convincing people that science was wicked and that they needed to adopt a strict fundamentalism.
Hamid Al-Ghazali
You should never increase in knowledge until you also increase in humility.
~ Hamid Al-Ghazali (1058 1111-12-19 age:53) conservative Islamic theologian who is mainly responsible for ending the golden age of Islam by convincing people that science was wicked and that they needed to adopt a strict fundamentalism. He believed the only source of truth was the Qur’an.
Hamid Al-Ghazali on a Women’s Duties
She should stay at home and attend to her spinning. She should not go out often. She should not be well-informed. Nor must she be communicative with her neighbours, and only visit them when absolutely necessary. She should take care of her husband, respect him in his presence and in his absence, and seek to satisfy him in everything. She must not leave the house without his permission, if given his permission, she should leave surreptitiously. She should put on old clothes and take the deserted streets and alleys and avoid markets, and make sure that a stranger does not hear her voice or recognise her. She must not speak to a friend of her husband’s even in need. Her soul worry should be her virtue, her home, her prayers and her fast. If a friend of her husband calls when the latter is absent, her must not answer the door or reply to him to safeguard her and her husband’s honour. She should accept what her husband gives her as sufficient sexual needs in any moment. She should be clean and ready to satisfy her husband’s sexual needs in any moment.
~ Hamid Al-Ghazali (1058 1111-12-19 age:53)
Islamic View
~ From the Hadith [commentary on the Qur’an ] collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi and Bayhaqui
- God has no mercy on one who has no mercy for others.
- None of you truly believes (in God) until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.
- He who eats his fill while his neighbour goes without food is not a believer (in God).
- The truthful and trustworthy businessman is associated with the prophets, the saints and the martyrs.
- Powerful is not he who knocks the other down, indeed powerful is he who controls himself in a fit of anger.
- God does not judge according to your bodies and appearances but He scans your hearts and looks into your deeds.
- A man walking along a path felt very thirsty. Reaching a well he descended into it, drank his fill and came up. Then he saw a dog with its tongue hanging out, trying to lick up mud to quench its thirst. The man saw that the dog was feeling the same thirst that he had felt so he went down to the well again and filled his shoe with water and gave the dog a drink. God forgave his sins for this action.
- The prophet was asked: Messenger of God, are we rewarded for kindness towards animals? He said, There is a reward for kindness to every living thing.
Graham’s Anti-Muslim Propaganda
We’re not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He’s not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God and I believe it [Islam] is a very evil and wicked religion. … When you read the Koran and you read the verses from the Koran, it instructs the killing of the infidel, for those that are non-Muslim.
~ William Franklin Graham III (1952-07-14 age:65) Billy Graham’s son.Obviously, Muslims have killed infidels, but I read the Qur’an cover to cover and I found nothing encouraging or forgiving the practice. In fact, the Qur’an demands much more temperate behaviour than the bible does. I feel confident in accusing Graham of lying about having read the Qur’an.
Islamic Arrogance
Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms helping itself from earlier books and traditions as the occasion appeared to require. Thus far from being born in the clear light of history… Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or surrender as a maxim to its adherence and demands deference from non-believers in the bargain. There is nothing, absolute nothing in tis teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance. Christopher Hitchens on Islam and Muhammad
~ Christopher Hitchens (1949-04-13 2011-12-15 age:62)
Sectarian Thinking
In Lebanon, there are as many laws as there are sects, with 18 different laws on personal status [marriage] for Lebanon’s 18 officially-recognised religious sects.
~ Al Jazeera (2006-11-15 age:11) source
Triumph Of Islam
Either we shake one another’s hands in joy at he victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.
~ Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-09-24 1989-06-03 age:86)People who do not feel a need to avoid death are a particularly dangerous class of lunatic, particularly if they have access to weapons of mass destruction. They are too easily tempted to use them for trivial purposes like forcing others to pretend to agree on one particular bogus description of an imaginary deity.
Fairytales
Not knowing the answer to a question is not a valid excuse for making up a fairytale to explain it.
~ Armin Navabi (1984 age:33) Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God
Miracles
Close analysis of miracles have never led to any proof for a supernatural explanation, and, in fact, many have proven to be cheap magic tricks, hallucinations or primitive misunderstandings of natural phenomena.
~ Armin Navabi (1984 age:33) Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God
Error in the Qur’an
He is the one who has set free two bodies of flowing water, one palpable and sweet and the other salt and bitter; Yet has he made a partition between them, A partition that is forbidden to be passed.
~ Qur’an (610 AD age:1407) Surah Al Furqan 25:53Mohammed would not have had much experience with flowing water. This is simply false. When rivers meet, especially when one is muddier than the other, you can easily see it takes a while for them to merge. There is no partition. Taste the water near a river mouth. It changes gradually from fresh to salty as you move from the mouth. That is how ancient sailors knew they were getting near land.
Qur’an Gender Equality
I never fail to reward any worker among you for any work you do, be you male or female, you are equal to one another.
~ Qur’an (610 AD age:1407) Surah 3:195 Ali Imran
Allah
~ The Qur’an (610 AD age:1407) : Surah Fatir (3:16-17)
aligner If He so pleased, He
Could blot you out
And bring in
A New Creation.Nor is that (at all)
Difficult for Allah.
Justice in the Qur’an
~ The Qur’an (610 AD age:1407) : Surah al-Maidah (2:8)
aligner O ye who believe!
Stand out firmly
For Allah, as witnesses
To fair dealing and let not
The hatred of others
To you make you swerve
To wrong and depart
From justice. Be Just: that is
Next to Piety: and fear Allah.
For Allah is well-acquainted
With all that ye do.
Vengeance in the Qur’an
If a man is slain unjustly, his heirs shall be entitled to satisfaction, but let him not carry his vengeance to excess, or his victim is sure to be assisted and avenged.
~ The Qur’an (610 AD age:1407) Al Isra 17:33
Islamic Immunity to Reason
Islam has some of the best defenses against other god viruses and has the potential to be more parasitically aggressive when consolidating political power with a society.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture.
Allah Turned His Back
The poor Muslims must imagine that Allah has turned his back on them. He let Jews evict the Muslim Palestinians and effectively enslave those left behind. He allowed the Serbs to massacre them. He let Americans barge in and steal their oil, seed genomes and anything else of value, shredding people of all ages and genders with high explosives, burning them with napalm and white phosphorus — not to mention routine torture.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Alternatives to Christianity
Nearly all the 60,000 religions threaten me harm if I don’t subscribe. I have only had a close look at Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Scientology and a few obscure ones. I have bad news for you Christians. Islam is much scarier and its threats are much more believable. So if I am to believe in a god, why do it the Christian way? Christians who know only their own religion are not competent to answer.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Ambiguity
The original copies of the Qur’an were written in a early form of Arabic without dots. Each word then had about 35 meanings. Later, when dots were added to resolve the ambiguity scholars had to decide if the faithful were rewarded in paradise with virgins or grapes.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Apostasy
Children born to Muslim parents are immediately subjected to indoctrination in the faith. If they get older and want to leave, they may not. The punishment for leaving is death. This not just a religious law. It is the civil law in Muslim countries. There is no freedom to choose your religion. This is in complete contradiction with Muslim teaching which asserts there is no coercion.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Cannot Change
It is obvious to everyone that the main reason Islam is evil is that it has no means of changing to adjust to the modern world. Christianity has exactly the same problem, only worse, since it is even older.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Charlie Hebdo Murders
The murders were incredibly stupid. Why?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- They tar the reputation of every Muslim. Nobody wants to live anywhere near someone so touchy they murder 12 people in response to a mere insult. Innocent Muslims all over the world are going to bear the backlash.
- If you make bizarre claims such as Muhammad jumped to heaven on a horse, without any evidence to back them up, you must expect ridicule.
- Neither Allah, Muhammad nor the terrorists were in the least harmed by the insult. The terrorists are making a mountain out of a molehill. I think they imagine the more outrage they show, the more devout others will think them.
- Since they show no respect for other religions, it is rather thick of them to expect others to show exaggerated respect for Islam.
- The non-Muslim world will not rest until all the perpetrators are run down.
Cheating on God
I have always been amused at the Orthodox Jews and their mad deliberately malfunctioning elevators for use on the Sabbath to weasel around holy prohibitions. The Muslims have that same lawyerly bent. The Qur’an forbids Muslims from charging interest on loans. They too figured out legalistic ways to cheat. They provide a property as collateral for a loan. The lender gets the rent from the property for the duration of the loan as the interest. Originally, the debtor would sell a slave to the lender. Then he would immediately buy it back, at a higher price, but payable at some date in the future. The slave acted as collateral for the loan and the difference in the two prices served as the interest.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Christianity vs Islam
Though Islam is more hostile to outsiders than Christianity, Mohammed is a much kinder sympathetic character than Jesus. Mohammed claimed no divinity, just that he took dictation for god.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Definition of Islam
Islam: the exaltation of cruelty.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Deliberate Blindness
The Qur’an erroneously states that fresh and salt water do not mix. You can take a group of Muslims to watch a river enter the ocean, or perform an experiment in the lab to demonstrate this is not so. However, they will still insist fresh and salt water do not mix. They are so afraid of social disapproval and violence from fellow Muslims, they will lie about what they just saw. Further, I have heard Muslims citing this lack of mixing as proof of the divine scientific wisdom of the Qur’an. It is like crazies hammering nails into their heads to keep themselves stupid.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Downside of Islam
Islam teaches people to be huffy. It teaches hundreds of new petty reasons to feel outraged and justified in killing others. It ensures Muslims cannot play well with others.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Drawing Mohammad
Islam considers it very wicked to draw Mohammad. As a result, nobody has the foggiest idea what he looked like. Presumably he has typical Arabian features, but that is it. So how can anyone draw him and how can anyone looking at a picture know it is Mohammad? Mohammad is a very common given name. So even if the picture is labeled Mohammad, how is anyone to know the drawing is not one of those Mohammads?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Ending Islam
Islam, like all religions is made up. Because it is a relatively recent religion, it does far less violence to science than other religions, however, it too has its flaws which show it is fiction. Islam is motivating ISIS and other terrorists attacking the west. Even the suicide attackers themselves are doubtful what they are doing is Islamic. The USA should fund a massive non-violent initiative to seed doubt about Islam and martyrdom.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Enough of Superstition
The religiously superstitious are working hard to globally revive polio, most notably in Pakistan. Ironically, the Qur’an has absolutely nothing to say about polio vaccines. They were not even invented until the 1950s. It is just plain superstition and rumour running rampant, nothing to do with religion at all. Generally we try to bend over backwards to accommodate religious and superstitious nonsense, but when it results in child deaths, it is time to put our feet down.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Evidence Allah Composed the Qur’an
The most convincing argument that Muslims have offered that their religion is valid is that most Arabic speakers consider Mohammed to be a poet in the Arabic language head and shoulders above all others. Therefore, he must have been taking divine dictation. They even claim that better poetry, if it ever written, will trump the Qur’an.
I can’t verify this since I don’t speak Arabic and I am not familiar with Arabic poetry. I have heard recitations from the Qur’an and they are unusually sonorous and haunting, so the claim is plausible. I accept the claim, even though I suspect Muslims can’t help but be biased evaluating the poetic skills of the founder.
On the other hand, Milton composed his verse as if taking dictation, just the way Mohammed did. Poems such as Paradise Lost could also conceivably have been interpreted as divine dictation. Shakespear is considered by most English speakers as head and shoulders above all other playwrights. However, that does not make him infallible. Islam makes extraordinary claims. It needs extraordinary evidence to back them, if they want to persuade me.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Expecting Respect From Other Religions
Every religion looks absurd to the adherents of other religions. Thus it is futile to expect adherents of other religions to show reverence for the holy figures and symbols of yours. Muslims imagine they are a special case and have the right to demand that everyone affect respect for Mohammed, the Qur’an and Allah.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Faith
Let’s say you saw some Somalian refugees who had a very hard life, yet did not get discouraged. You asked them how they managed to remain optimistic, and they told you it was their Muslim faith. Does this mean the tenets of their faith are true, or that pretending there is a cosmic helping hand is comforting?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Fear of the Image
One the ten commandments concerns graven images. Literally this would forbid all created images and statues. Islam takes this commandment quite seriously. They forbid all representational art. They allow geometric art and sometimes flower designs. Modern Muslims are particularly scrupulous about avoiding depicting the prophet Mohammed. Christians interpret graven image to mean only the worship of wooden idols, which nobody particular wants to do anyway. Why did the ancients make up such a commandment and treat it as so important? Think of a painting. It necessarily is only an approximation to the person it is supposed to represent. People seeing it treat the image as if they were seeing the original person. The facsimile becomes their idea of how that person actually looked. Leonardo’s graven image of the Mona Lisa has long ago superseded any reality of what she actually looked like. The ancients may have feared this power to distort and wanted to curb it.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Female Circumcision
What is revolting about Christians is they defend the practice of female circumcision in the religion of Islam not the children.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Gay Muslims
Gay Muslims is as nutty as Jewish Hitler youth. Islam is the sworn enemy of all gays.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Give In Secret
Christians say that philanthropy should be done in secret. I disagree. When it is done in public it inspires others to do likewise. The Ismaili Muslims have raised this to a fine art. When the Aga Khan comes to visit, they auction off the chair he sat on to raise funds for charity. The person with the chair gains prestige.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Golden Age Of Islam
From 800 to 1100 AD Baghdad was the center of learning for the world. Scholars of all faiths gathered at this Islamic city to study science, astronomy, mathematics, navigation, engineering… They named ⅔ of the stars. They preserved and translated the ancient Greek texts. Then along came Hamid Ghazali (1058 1111 age:53). He convinced people that all learning apart from the Qur’an was the work of the devil. All innovation and learning shut down. The Islamic tradition of despising science persists to this day.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Hamid al Ghazali
During the years 800 to 1100 Baghdad was the intellectual capital of the world. Scholars from all over the world of all faiths converged to study, discus and experiment. This was the golden age of Islam. This age preserved the writings of ancient Greece, named the stars, developed the Arabic numerals and developed algebra.
Then Hamid al Ghazali (1058 1111 age:53) came along. He believed that science and learning were wicked. He managed to convince his society and all Islamic societies thereafter to worship ignorance. Islam has been stuck in a dead end ever since.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Hastening Islam To Obscurity
From the point of view of a westerner, Muslims are insanely unreasonable about criticism of their religion or religious figures. Imagine a Christian TV faith healer killing people who questioned his claims that he could heal people by prayer. The problem is Muslims have been trained since birth that they must defend Allah. (I find it odd that anyone thinks an omnipotent god needs defence.) They also have been conditioned to believe there is no doubt whatsoever to anything written in the Qur’an.
If they were factually correct, their touchiness would perhaps be excusable. It is just that they have offered almost no evidence to support their claims. The fact both the Catholics and Muslims sometimes resort to intimidation to defend their beliefs is further evidence neither have any evidence. We westerners have the right to criticise Islam, but then we also have the right to poke a fork in a toaster.
Like all unsubstantiated beliefs, Islam will eventually fade away. The question is how to effectively and tactfully hasten it along to obscurity.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Headgear Laws
Muslims and Sikhs often demand exemption from the usual rules for headgear or face covering. Often these rules are arbitrary. In that case, everyone should be given permission to ignore the rules. I think it is improper when only one religion is given this privilege. All religions and atheism should be treated equally. The state should not favour one religion.
Other times, the rule is not arbitrary. It is required for safety, legal identification, terrorist security, or a level playing field. In that case the rule should be enforced for everyone. Believers in superstitions involving headgear are free to play some other sport.
When Muslims appear in court in a hijab, they are spitting in the face of long-standing Canadian court traditions, just as intransigent as Islam. They are demanding the law be set aside, just for them, just because they are Muslim, and they assert their religious beliefs must take priority over everything else including the law. It is pretty high handed. One young woman claimed the court’s refusal to comply with her demand to wear a hijab meant that she was being treated as less than human. She was the one demanding to be treated as exalted and above the law. She was being treated exactly as any other Canadian citizen would.
In court, if the face is exposed, I can see no logical reason why the hair should not be covered. The law should be changed. However, Muslims should not expect to be above the law, to be given a special privilege denied to others, in the meantime.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
How Did You Decide?
All fundamentalists believe that everything in the bible is true. It is the word of god. They believe it so strongly, they happily ignore the obvious errors and contradictions in the bible.
You get nowhere if you ask them why they think that. To them, it is self evident, like the fact the sun sets each day. They have no evidence. They feel no need for evidence. They just feel in their guts this absurdity is so.
What is going on? I think it is simply that the parents browbeat this belief into them when they were too young to reason, using threats of eternal torture to seal the belief. We are dealing with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).
To an infant, such threats are real. These victims are no more rational than children kidnapped by Boko Haram or ISIS, and threatened with decapitation to accept Islam.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Huffy Muslims
Muslims are trained to show exaggerated respect for the Qur’an, Mohammed (peace be upon him) and Allah. They are also trained to be huffy about anyone who shows insufficient respect. They expect non-believers to show the same respect for Islamic customs as believers. They believe they are correct and everyone else is wrong. This is not even debatable. So a Muslim will accuse you of insulting Islam or being Islamophobic for even a tiny transgression. Christians have so much intersectarian fighting, they are used to insulting each other and rarely complain about insults.
It seems to be, if anyone should be able to psychologically handle an insult, it would be a deity. They are allegedly omnipotent.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Iranian Sanity
In 2005, Supreme Leader Khameini of Iran issued a fatwa declaring that nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam. Who would have thought an ayatollah would have more common sense than the presidents of the USA.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
ISIS
ISIS is a group gone mad. Not only are they suicidally attacking many different counties simultaneously, they are killing anyone, even fellow Muslims who do not believe exactly as they do. Oddly, they have used beheadings and other theatrical barbarities to inflame world opinion against them. Now they have gone so nuts, they are trying to erase all history of the time before Islam by destroying museum artifacts and bulldozing archaeological sites. They are even destroying mosques built by anyone other than ISIS so narrow minded have they become. Since they are totally unwilling to tolerate other religious beliefs, I don’t think the rest of the world should feel constrained to tolerate them. They are a suicide cult. Their goal is death, not victory. Normally, I oppose violence, but this time I think it would be best if we eliminated them as quickly as possible before they do more harm.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source
Islam
A Muslim is like a little boy lying under the covers, reading scary stories. He turns out the lights. He sees a rustle in the cupboard and is seized with terror. He cannot move. He is paralysed by his own imagination.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islam and Palestine
Killing is always abhorrent in Islam, but it is considered justified when a people is driven from their lands or killed for their religion. It is always wrong to start a war. Of course, these three conditions all permit Palestinians to kill the invading Jews and could well be said to require it.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islam is the Best
Odd as it sounds, by experiment I have found Islam to be the best religion. Why? I define best to mean successfully encourages people to behave in a kind way toward others, not truest. When I was in Indonesia, I missed my rendezvous and there was no a way to make contact. The name of the hotel I was supposed to meet was the wisma which its turns out means hotel in Indonesian. About ten strangers brainstormed and ran around helping in various ways. Everywhere I went, people talked to me and were friendly. I once passed out from heatstroke and strangers ran to me with water. Islam is the prevalent religion in Indonesia. Back home, embezzlers wiped me out. I was left alone to shut down my business and somehow find room in my apartment for all the equipment. The person who came to my aid was a stranger and a devout Muslim. I have met some individual Christians who are exceptionally caring, but the average Christian closes his heart completely to strangers.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islam is a Religion Peace
I know lots of peaceful Muslims. The question is are they peaceful because they are Muslim or despite they are Muslim?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islamic Bullies
Islam bullies others with terror into practicing the superstitions of their religion by threatening to kill anyone who does not pretend to revere their prophet in the way they demand he be revered. That alone is enough reason to work to eradicate Islam.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islamic Cheek
Muslims have some cheek to complain I don’t believe in their god or show their traditions sufficient respect. They don’t believe in anyone else’s god and show no respect for anyone else’s traditions.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islamic Imposition
When Muslims insist noone draw Mohammed, not just Muslims, what are they doing? They are imposing their religious superstitions on others. They are trying to force others to show phony respect for their religion, to create the illusion that the world in general holds Islam in higher esteem than it actually does. We must tell them to get stuffed. We enjoy freedom of religion, which includes freedom from the tyranny of Islam. In return, of course, we must not impose our religious superstitions on them.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islamic Rape
A British woman was vacationing in 2016-11 in Dubai in the UAE (United Arab Emirates). Two men raped her. She reported the incident to the police. They charged her with having sex outside marriage. The penalty is 7 months in jail.
Islam has frozen in stone the ludicrous paternalistic notions of 14 centuries ago.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islamic Rules
More so than any other religion I have studied, Islam could be characterised as a list of things you must do and must not do. There are no reasons given for these rules and no negotiating with them. They are like the rules of chess. For a society to flow smoothly everyone must obey these rules, like traffic signals.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islamic Threats
When Muslims threaten to kill those who criticise Islam, if people are silent or offer praise, it looks to all as if they did it out of fear rather than respect. Further, such threats imply Islam is weak and need defending. Further, it implies there are no plausible arguments to defend Islam. Such threats have the exact opposite effect from that intended.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islamic Vandals
The Taliban smashed ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. Later ISIS smashed ancient Assyrian artifacts. They felt threatened that people might abandon worship of Allah and worship these artifacts. They imagined smashing these artifacts would enhance Islam. All this does is make Islam look nuts and childish. It will scare off potential converts and make cultured Muslims leave the faith in shame. Ancient artifacts belong to humanity, not to a tiny group of Taliban. They are barbaric vandals, similar to the French who destroyed Leonardo da Vinci’s bronze horse by using it for target practice.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islamophobia
I have watched all kinds of people, atheists, government people, Christians… wrestle with the problem of Islamophobia. People want to point out the serious negatives of Islam without being accused of being bigots while treating Muslims fairly. Some dance around the issue by claiming it is ok to criticise Islam but not Muslims. I think the fundamental principle should be telling the truth without exaggeration, e.g. The Qur’an says that you should kill apostates (people who leave the faith) but the vast majority of Muslims do not do that. That leaves saying things like I think you should go back to the middle east. I don’t like the smell of middle eastern food. These are expressions of opinion. Even though they are in bad taste, I think they should be tolerated. Any denial of civil rights or calling for denial of civil rights should be treated as bigotry. So Trump’s travel ban was clearly bigotry. You want to clamp down on people saying untrue things about Muslims intended to mislead people into thinking they are far more dangerous than they really are.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islamophobia
Some people have a phobia of mosques. If they went inside and saw what happens they would discover most of it is calisthenics, where even the elderly, in a spritely way, leap to their feet and back down to press their foreheads to the ground, all the while reciting prayers in Arabic, mostly of the form God is amazing, God is great… Nothing at all to be afraid of.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islam’s Beefs with Christianity
Islam has historical beefs with Christianity it has not forgiven. One was the Crusades, when Europeans came to Palestinian and slaughtered every Islamic man, woman and child for no reason. The other was the capture and enslavement of millions of Muslims, forcing them to renounce their religion and work in the fields of the southern United States.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Jihad
In Arabic, the word jihad just means effort. It has nothing to do with war. The Qur’an says you must defend yourself and the non-Muslim citizens of your town if attacked, but only after repeated and serious provocation and all other means have failed. You not are supposed to go out killing people to convert them. Of course, some Muslims have done this, but they don’t have a scriptural OK for it. The notion of holy war was invented by Pope Urban II, who offered indulgences to anyone who would go to Jerusalem to slaughter the Muslims living there, thus starting the Crusades.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Judging Islam
There are a number of ways of judging Islam:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- By how plausible its religious assertions are. Like Christianity it contains impossible assertions without evidence, but not nearly so many.
- By its fellowship. Christianity is split into 43,000 who spit at each other. Islam is split into about three who kill each other. In Islam, everyone in your mosque is your brother in law.
- By its embracing of superstition. The Christian bible is full of violent irrational superstitions, but most Christians ignore them, except for Genesis. Muslims are also creationists. They take the Qur’an literally and kill apostates or those who make drawings of Mohammed.
- By the frequency its adherents become terrorists and kill in the name of religion.
Justifying Mayhem
Most of the old testament is about Yahweh’s violent behaviour, or violent behaviour committed to appease him. The Qur’an is mostly threats of what terrible things will happen to you if you don’t accept the Qur’an. It also calls in a few places for killing infidels. Most sane believers ignore all this. However, people with terrorism in their hearts will cherry pick their favourite holy book for justification for mayhem.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Leaving
Once you join Islam or Catholicism, there is no way to officially leave. You can just walk away, but in some countries if you walk away from Islam, they kill you.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Library of Alexandria
The Persians invaded Alexandria in Egypt and destroyed the great library at Alexandria. Their leader said Any book that disagrees with Islamic teaching should be burned, and any book that agrees with Islamic teaching should be burned as superfluous. This contempt for learning and contempt for any non-Islamic source is mainly why I detest Islam and wish it be swept from the earth. They are unbelievably conceited.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Misplaced Priorities
On the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), I heard a man in Iraq complain that ISIS had murdered all his brothers and nephews, however, what bothered him far more was ISIS had not handed over the bodies for proper ceremonial burial.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)Mohammed the Lawyer
If Mohammed were alive today, he could earn a living as a corporate lawyer. He noticed that there were inconsistencies in the Qur’an, so he made a rule. If a later verse contradicts an earlier one, the later one trumps. This brilliant stroke eliminated all the inconsistencies. He never did explain why Allah did not explain it correctly the first time. Then when his work was published, the surahs (chapters) were not organised chronologically, but by length with the longest first. This left everyone free to argue which verse was the official one.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Mohammed’s Winged Horse
Islam claims Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse. I don’t believe this story. Why?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- There are no winged horses.
- There is no air between the earth and the moon/heaven. Air is needed for the horse, for Mohammed and for the wings to beat against.
- Mohammed had a history of visions. He visited many times with his invisible friend the angel Gabriel. It seems most likely this night flight was a vision too.
- The moon is 384.40 megameters (238,855.09 miles) away. If the winged horse could fly at 40 km/hr (24.85 mph), it would take 400 days to get there. Yet Mohammed reputedly made the journey in one night.
- By the laws of physics, winged horses cannot fly. They are way too heavy. Their wings are way too small, and they would require far more than one horsepower. Consider the largest birds, the condors. The have much larger wings and weigh much less than a horse. Imagine you were going to fly a horse from ranch to ranch in some sort of small plane. The minimum horsepower you would consider for its engine is 13.42 kilowatts (18 horsepower). There is no way you could do it with just one horsepower of horse muscle power.
- It may just be the illustrations, but winged horses don’t appear to have any musculature to drive the wings.
- Birds have a special high-efficiency respiratory system and hollow bones to allow flight; horses do not.
- To deal with all these problems, you have to presume miracle upon undocumented miracle. That is the hallmark of a liar’s tale.
Muslims Must Read the Qur’an
It quite cheeky to claim you are or are not a Muslim without reading the Qur’an cover to cover first.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
No Evidence for Islam
If Muslims had anything to defend their beliefs they would offer it in debate. Instead they imprison people who question their dogma. That indicates they have nothing to support it.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Obsolete Islam
Islam reflects the thinking of 1400 years ago. Muslims want to freeze time. Not even the Amish live that far in the past.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Opposing Islam
If you oppose radical Muslims trying to destroy democracies and install theocracies, logically you should also oppose radical Christians attempting the same thing.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Pakistan
Pakistan is the most pathetic nation on earth. It is absurdly overpopulated. It wallows in squalor. It is run by the military and wealthy elites. Its people cling to an ancient, barbaric and psychotic form of Islam. They fail to notice it is at the root of their problems. It keeps them stuck in medieval superstition.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Pakistan
Pakistan is one of most horrible places on earth live. Few Pakistanis have seen life anywhere else, so they are unaware what a hell they have created for themselves, and how big a part fundamentalist Islam has played in creating that hell.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Palm Seedling
Islam teaches that if you have a palm seedling in your hand on judgment day, your first priority should be to plant it. Christians have no equivalent teaching.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Qur’an Fail
He is the one who has set free the two kinds of water, one sweet and palatable, and the other salty and bitter. And He has made between them a barrier and a forbidding partition.
~ Qur’an, 25:53This is simply not true. Muslims usually lie about this. You can easily check for yourself if this is true. Rent a small boat. Take it to the mouth of the river. Taste a sample of the water. Keep moving further out to sea tasting samples. If the Qur’an is correct, the samples should taste perfectly fresh, then suddenly taste fully salty. If I am correct, and the waters do mix, then the samples should gradually get saltier and saltier.
If you think about it, the notion of not mixing is preposterous. At the mouth of every river would have to be an enormous pool of fresh water, all the water that had ever flowed down the river since the beginning of time. There would not be any room left in the oceans for salt water.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Qur’an is a Forgery
The Qur’an just a book. If Allah had written it, it would have been error free. The author of the book should know all the things a creator of the universe would have to know, e.g. atoms, quantum mechanics, black holes… The author of the Qur’an knows bugger all about how universes are constructed. Therefore the Qur’an is a forgery. It was written by a human or humans.
A Muslim’s whole belief system collapses if Allah is not the author of the Qur’an. Without a legitimate Qur’an, they have no way of knowing anything about Allah.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Qur’an Is Not All Allah’s
Muslims like to claim that the Qur’an is the literal, pristine and unadulterated word of Allah, with not so much as a comma changed. The problem is some the Qur’an is clearly Mohammed speaking to Allah and one part is clearly some angels speaking to Mohammed, completely setting aside the issue if any deity had any part at all in its authorship. I am not referring to the Hadith, the commentary which were added later by Islamic scholars. I don’t even see the point of this pretence. The convolutions, justifications and surreptitious amendments to support the lie just throw the whole book into disrepute. There is nothing shameful in Mohammed recording some of his own thoughts too, especially when he clearly labeled them as his own.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Race Between Islam and Christianity
Because Islam has no fear of mathematics and science, in the middle ages, the Islamic world vastly outstripped the Christian in mathematics, science and architecture. However, the Christians were much more willing than the Muslims to abandon the rigid patriarchal tribal social rules of their holy book. This allowed the Christians to outstrip the Muslims in the 20th century. The Christians for the most part have abandoned morality in the broad sense of fair play and embraced corporate cut-throat ethics. This may well lead to their decline in the 21st century. No one wants to do business with a man trying to cheat him.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Source Of Belief
Why would a Muslim believe Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse? Because someone, probably a parent, told him the Qur’an was the work of a god, even though it has no hallmarks of divine authorship. It contains nothing only a god would have known. It contains many falsehoods where a god would surely known better. Why would he believe it then? Peer pressure. Muslims threaten with death those that question the Qur’an. Further, he might swallow the contention that the Arabic poetry of the Qur’an is supernaturally good. In English translation, it is tedious. I cannot speak for the Arabic version.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Stop Subsidising Terrorism
The seedbed for terrorists are fundamentalist Islamic schools. We can’t very well ban them, but we can stop subsidising them with government funds, so long as we treat other religions the same way.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Stop Violence Against Women
Fight violence against women, worldwide, except in Muslim countries, because that is Islamophobic.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Touchy Muslims
Why are Muslims so touchy, so easily offended? They kill cartoonists who depict Mohammed. They kill apostates who decide Islam is not for them. They kill people who criticise any aspects of the teaching or any cleric. They kill people who don’t write about Islam in a strictly orthodox way. They kill people in other Muslim sects that differ in the most trivial ways.
The short answer is the Qur’an teaches them this sort of obnoxious behaviour is required of a good Muslim.
But why are they so sensitive? I think the problem stems back to the time of Mohammed. Islam was a tiny sect. Most non-believers of that time would have considered its teaching mad. Early Muslims wanted desperately to sell Islam to the world. They wanted to hide its flaws. They felt the best way to do that was to kill or threaten to kill anyone who dared criticise it.
They next needed to convince people the Qur’an was ultra holy. They created rules (much like those used in American flag worship) for how the Qur’an had to be handled. Mohammed could not be depicted. Then they started demanding others, including non-believers, follow these exaggerated respect rituals on pain of death. By persuading non-believers to conform, it gave prestige to Islam.
Unlike Christianity, Islam is far more concerned about your public outward behaviour than what is in your heart. You are free to disbelieve whatever you want, so long as you conform publicly. It is thus easy to bully people into calling themselves Muslims, just out of social pressure. The touchiness is just a step along the bullying recruitment process.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Toxic Beliefs
Religions, particularly fundamentalist religions, instill toxic beliefs in their adherents. Some of these beliefs, near the top of the list, society can tolerate. Others, near the bottom it cannot.
- Claiming that miracles happened in the past, e.g. that Mohammad flew to the heavens on the back of a horse.
- Claiming that prayer will help someone recover from illness.
- Insisting that only ineffective means should be used to treat sick children.
- A belief that their religious beliefs and their desires trump everyone else’s. For example, a group of Muslims moved in next to a pig farm in the USA. The owner’s family had been running the pig farm for 200 years. The Muslims then demanded the farmer stop raising pigs because, in their view, living near pigs was wicked, and the farmer had no right to do it under Islamic law and they wanted to build a mosque on the land they purchased. The farmer countered that the Muslims should not have moved in next door knowing there was an existing pig farm. US law permits raising pigs so Islamic law was irrelevant. The Muslims offered no compensation. They behaved in a preposterously high handed way based on their belief in their own superiority to non-Muslims.
- Discriminating against gay people and killing them for religious reasons. Christians mostly call for others to kill gays. Muslim extremist groups kill gays and also kill anyone who calls for gay equality. In many parts of the world, e.g. Africa and the middle east, the state kills gays at the urging of religion.
- Belief that you should kill anyone who does not have the exact same religious beliefs as you do. The bible commands you to kill not only all non-believers but all people living in the same village. Thankfully, most modern Christians ignore this verse Deuteronomy 13:13-17. ISIS, Boko Haram and other fanatical Muslims routinely kill infidels.
The question remains, just how far should we go to eliminate these toxic beliefs? Just how tolerant should we be of this nutty, hurtful behaviour? My thinking is we should be equally firm when the behaviour is motivated by religion and by malice. We must not let religious bullies control our lives. Giving in to them just encourages them.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Turnabout is Fair Play
Radical Muslims who dynamited the ancient Buddhist statues have no right to complain when a radical Christian burns a Qur’an.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Veil
The veil was a Greek invention that Mohammed brought back from a trip to Syria. Its purpose was not modesty, but keeping the dust out of a woman’s throat. The Qur’an has nothing to day about female dress other than that it should be modest. The hijab was originally a Hindu garment. Ironically, in Egypt the veil has become a symbol of female liberation. They have become extremely expensive, high-fashion garments.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) I learned these things on 2012-02-12 in a lecture by Dr. Roger Allen, Professor Emeritus from the University of Pennsylvania.
Which is Worse Christianity or Islam?
The bible commands 100 times more unfair bloodthirsty behaviour than the Qur’an, yet thankfully most Christians ignore it. Cherry-picking the Qur’an for commands to evil is not enough. You must show that most Muslims follow them if you want to show Islam is worse than Christianity.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Why Allah Did Not Dictate the Qur’an
Muslims assert two things:
- The god Allah created the universe.
- Allah dictated the Qur’an, word for word to Mohammed.
The creator of the universe would had have been familiar all manner of information about how the universe is constructed including: advanced mathematics, atoms, black holes, DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid), elements, evolution, exoplanets, expansion of the universe, galaxies, gamma rays, germ theory, gravity, ions, metallurgy, Newton’s laws of motion, paleontology, plate tectonics, quantum mechanics, quarks, radioactivity, relativity, spectroscopy, speed of light, stars, String theory, thermonuclear reactions, X-rays… However, the author of the Qur’an does not know the first thing about any of this. So how could such an ignorant deity have constructed the universe? A deity may well have created the universe, but it wasn’t Allah.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Islamic Fundamentalism
The sun circles the earth because the sun is smaller, as is evident in the Qur’anic verses. No verse in the Qur’an indicates that the earth is round or that it rotates. Anything that has no indication in the Qur’an is false.
~ Fadhel al Sa’dmodern day researcher on astronomy in Iraq
Why does it sound so absurd when a Muslim says it, but is treated seriously when a Christian says it.
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