Hi,
I am a revert to Islam and as you already know I have been having
doubts. I have waves of belief and disbelief. I don't really know what
to believe and what not to believe. You make some valid points about
Islam but I am still compelled to believe. You left Islam, when did
you leave it, how old were you, did you have any difficulty?
What are the key points that made you leave. Are there many Muslims
leaving Islam. I have to think allot about my belief, but for now I still
believe. There have been many Islamic thinkers in the past centuries and
for them Islam seemed fine, how come it is not fine for you. I look
forward to your reply friend.
C..
Dear C.
You are not “compelled” to believe in
anything (Unless you live in an Islamic country, which I suppose you
don’t). You have chosen to believe and you can also choose not to
believe. Humans are capable to believe in anything and when they do they
can kill or die for their faiths. But that does not prove the truth of
their beliefs. Faith is human’s most powerful faculty. It must be guided
by reason or it will very dangerous.
I realized the falsity of religion in general and
Islam in particular only a few years ago. And yes it was very difficult. I
went through a range of emotional upheaval, from anger to shame, from
confusion to guilt, from desperation to sadness, from bewilderment to void
ness. Until I finally accepted that this is not my fault. I am not the one
who is guilty. This is all false.
I already explained my reasons
for leaving Islam. And yes I am not the only one. Majority of Muslim
intellectuals do no more believe in Islam any more. Many of them don’t
bother even to talk about it. They just abandon the practice and the
belief, without making too much noise. This is understandable since the
consequences could be not so pleasing.
You wrote, “There have been many Islamic
thinkers in the past centuries and for them Islam seemed fine, how come it
is not fine for you.”
This is the biggest mistake that we people make.
We assume that others must know better and blindly follow them. They in
turn follow blindly others who have followed blindly yet others before
them. We are not sheep. We are given a brain to use it and we are
responsible for our own lives. Not just because something has
unanimous acceptance is true. The Earth was never flat even when the
entire world, including all our thinkers, philosophers, sears and prophets
used to think so.
Another important point is that most of the great
brain of Islam like Ar Razi, Avicenna, Averroes, Khayam, Ibn Arabi and
many more were apostates and constantly harassed and persecuted.
Thank you for writing.
Ali Sina
Dear Ali,
Thank you for writing me that email. Those Quran and Hadeeth references
shocked me. How could a religion promote injust behaviour like that. What
you wrote made me think, I really have to think about my belief in Islam
and whether I want to continue. I am quite conflicted as I like to think
that I live according to humanistic values like democracy, freedom of
thought and equal justice for all people, but these are obviously in
conflict with Islamic values. How would society look if we lived according
to these hadeeths? It would definetly be oppressive. But these hadeeths
that you have put forward, what can an Imam say to counter them, he can
say nothing, then why is Islam the fastest growing religion in the world,
how can people continue to be Muslims when this is what they are told to
do? It is shocking. I will think alot, I live in a western country where I
am as you say not compelled to believe anything,
I do not have to be a Muslim if I don't want to. Do you believe in God,
do you follow any other religion? I look forward to your reply with any
other comments that you may have.
Regards,
C.
Dear C.
Thanks again for the e-mail. You may find Cocooned
in Lies and Who
Feeds Fundamentalism answering some of your above questions. To
learn about my spiritual belief please have a look at the articles in the
section About
God
Hey Ali Sina, why don’t you do some research on how technology can
help Iranian people rather than digging old books on who did what to whom
a 1000 years back!! Idiots like (you) are so dumb when it comes to up to
date topics such as science and technology !
Babak
Dear Babak,
It is true; our country is lagging behind
industrial and civilized nations in science and technology. But it is my
belief that what distracts us is our antiquated doctrines and beliefs. I
see Islam as a hurdle to progress and rational thinking. We have to learn
first how to walk before we can learn how to run. The Europe was
languishing in the claws of religion until they entered a new era of
reason, and revolutionized their thought with the renascence of new ideas.
It was only then that they penetrated into mysteries of science and
invented new technologies. We could keep borrowing their science and
technology but if our mind is still shacked in primitive concepts imposed
on us by dogmas of our grandfathers we can never assimilate them properly
nor be participants in the advancement of the world civilization.
I believe an overall review of our own belief
system is essential, if we don’t want to fall prey to the insinuation of
other charlatans like we did two decades ago.
Kind regards
Ali Sina
Question a)
Why God NEEDS to be known?
BoR
Answer: Islam does not teach that God
"needs" to be known. Here, you erect a strawman in order to take
it down.
A. Sina
If your god Allah
does not “need” to be known, why is he so upset when people fail to
know him to the extent that he would burn them in his cosmic rotisserie
for ETERNITY. (Wow. that is a looooong time!).
If not knowing him would only affect our own spiritual development
depriving us from his blessings, etc. it is understandable. But Muhammad
was very graphic in depicting a terrible Hell and a vengeful Allah that
would “punish” those who
decline to know him. There are many verses that show Allah would send the
disbelievers to hell like this one "And as for those who disbelieve
and reject Our Signs, they are the people of Hell"
Q.5: 11
I don’t think (I need to go over them. One should suffice)
Question b)
If
He is so desperate to be known, why he dose not reveal Himself to everyone
just the way he revealed Himself to his prophet?
BoR
Answer: From
leading question to leading question ... here the strawman erected in
"a" is used to question the mode of revelation.
A. Sina
I think Allah’s
desperation to be known is quite obvious from every verse of Quran.
Otherwise why he threatens people with chastisement? Why he ordered his
messenger to go about KILLING the unbelievers? Suppose you invite me to a
banquet, if I decline I am the looser. But if you come after me and punish
me for not coming to your feast there is something else going on. You must
be mentally sick or something. Is Allah a sick god? Why he wants to punish
people for not wanting to recognize him?
Question c)
Why he plays hide and seek and then
punishes those who fail to recognize him?
BoR
Answer: Having built up his strawman in
"a" and "b", our highly pseudointellectual Mr.
afreethinker now assumes that He - Allah SWT - "plays" hide and
seek. That is not a belief of Islam, either.
A. Sina
The question in
“a” and “b” were not answered. But this is a separate question.
You cannot deny that Allah wants to be known. According to Islam he has
created the whole universe so that people “know him and worship him”.
This is the purpose of creation, according to Islam. "I
did not create Jinn and Men except that they may worship me"
[Qur'an 51:56].
Allah wants to be
known and worshiped. That is established throughout the Quran. He is so
offended that people worship other deities save him that he would order
his messenger fight and kill them and in the after life he would roast
them in Hell for ever. That is the entire and the ONLY message of Quran.
My question is why he dose not make himself known to people by revealing
himself to them. If he did that to Moses and Muhammad, and they survived
why he does not do it for everyone else? This is a simple question and if
you had an answer you would not be dodging it.
Question d)
Why his messenger acted so ruthlessly and lived such immoral life as to
cast doubt on his integrity and truthfulness?
BoR
Answer: This leading question assumes that His
Messenger SAW lived an immoral life such as to cast doubt on his integrity
and truthfulness. No facts have been adduced to support such a ridiculous
proposition. Oh, I'm aware that he's posted all kinds of irrelevant
nonsense from Christian websites about supposed wrongdoings, which on
careful inspection always turn out to be taken out of context, or outright
lies. These all cast doubt on Mr. afreethinker's integrity and
truthfulness.
A. Sina
I consider
Muhammad's assassinations of
his enemies cowardly acts
I also believe
that raiding innocent people, killing them for not believing in what you
believe is unethical and immoral.
It is also
unethical to sleep with a score of women some not even your wives. (Mariyah)
It is extremely
immoral to ask someone to sleep with you on the same day that you killed
her father, husband and many of her relatives. (Safiyah)
Which one of these
stories are taken "out to the context"? What are their
real contexts?
I think “the
facts have been adduced” beyond a shadow of doubt and never denied or
rejected. What I posted from Christian sites is not irrelevant. They need
to be answered. Just because they are posted in a Christian site they
don’t become automatically null and void. Also there are many questions
that I have asked in my own website and I am not a Christian. So you
either deny the charges against Muhammad or accept them.
Question e)
Why his words in Quran are so contrary
to science, logic and common sense?
BoR.
The words of the Qur'an are meant to educate us
about HOW TO LIVE. Those who do not follow those words act contrary to
science, logic and common sense, as the world wars, the death camps, the
cold war, the spread of AIDS, abortion, and so on all silently attest in
the mass graves of hundreds of millions of people. And humanism is the
cause.
A. Sina
These are mere
assertions that any one says about his religion. We need proof. If Quran
was from God, it should not have one single error. God is perfect and so
should be his word. But since Quran contains thousands of errors of every
kind what guarantees you have that it can actually guide you? Look
at the result, the more a country is Islamic the more it is backward and
barbaric. “Ye shall recognize them by their fruits”.
Dr. Bilal Philips (bilalphilips)
“Salaam alaykum, there are so many errors in the
article, (Safiyah)it sounds like a
Jewish writer with an axe to grind and is full of misinterpretations
(deliberate or otherwise). Suffice to say that the waleemah wasn't
marriage but the marriage feast held "after" the marriage. So
his case for sex before marriage due to excessive lust falls flat on its
face. He chooses statements and interprets them as he wills and rejects
clarifiying because they don't suite his premise. But all the texts are
from the same source. Even his opening salvo about Safiyyah's rejection of
the Prophet's advances wasn't mentioned in the text at all but was in the
writer's mind as he assumed that she must have rejected them. Etc., etc.
It's a typical example of missionary/Jewish anti-Islamic writing, and you
can find much more in the libraries, bookstores and the internet.”
Answer
It is said, “The best defense
is an offence”. It seems that Muslim apologists have taken this to heart
quite literally. Dr. Bilal Philips instead of defending Muhammad for his
apparently immoral and unethical behavior in the case of Safiyah accuses
me of being a “Jewish writer”. In this way he brushes off the
importance of what the prophet of Allah did as if any argument presented
by a Jew is automatically worthless.
For Dr. Bilal's information I am not a Jew. Never was and never will be. I
was born in an Islamic family and my family tree traces my ancestry back
to Ali Ibn Abi Talib and his wife Fatimah the daughter of Muhammad and
also I don’t have an “axe to grind” against Islam. My goal is to get
to the truth even if that truth is painful.
Walima is the marriage banquet it is not the marriage ceremony. The actual
ceremony called aqd usually precedes the celebration. However the hadith
dose not mention any aqd taking place between Muhammad and Safiyah. In
fact the Ayat Q.4:
24 and Q.
23: 1-7 allow having intercourse with captive women whom one’s
“right hand possess”. So according to this Ayat Muhammad did not have
to marry Safiyah for having intercourse with her. It was a right given to
him by Allah.
The following Hadith shows that
after the Walima or the festivity, people still did not know whether
Safiyah is going to become one of Muhammad's wives or will remain just a
slave that prophet's "right hand possess"
Sahih
Muslim Book 008, Number 3328:
"...And the people ate
to their fill, and they said: We do not know whether he (the Holy
Prophet) had married her (as a free woman), or as a slave woman. They
said: If he (the Holy Prophet) would make her wear the veil, then she
would be a (free married) woman, and if he would not make her wear the
veil, then she should be a slave woman. When he intended to ride, he
made her wear the veil and she sat on the hind part of the camel; so
they came to know that he had married her."
Muhammad had intercourse with
other women without marrying them. One of them was Mariyah
the Coptic maid of Hafsa.
Khadijah
I did read your article and I found it well written
and very powerful. I am going to be re-reading it and doing much
consideration of it's contents..
I find that I am totally unaware and uninformed regarding some of these
stories on your site...mainly about the Jewish wife of the Prophet...
regarding this and other things on your site... are these true hadiths?
(Khadijah is a white American woman who had converted
to Islam and even wore Niqab. but she left Islam after learning more about
it)
Answer
Dear Khadijah
The hadithes that I quoted regarding Muhammad’s lust for beautiful women
in my article “Safiyah the Jewish
Wife of Muhammad” are from Sahih Bukhari. They are authentic and
accepted by all the Muslims specially Sunnis. That however could change.
Now that I have raised questions about its immoral content, some Modernist
Muslims, who are willing to do all kinds of mental gymnastics and
intellectual dishonesty to save their beloved prophet from blemish, may
deny their authenticity. Some time ago I had a discussion with a
pseudo-intellectual Muslim who once nailed down, claimed that not all the
hadithes that are called sahih (authentic) are sahih!
However, you must realize that these hadithes were reported by devout
Mulsims. These Muslims went on their limbs to attribute a miracle to
their prophet. By reporting these lies, these ruffians hoped to gain
recognition and make a show of piety amongst their peers. So all those
hadithes that portray Muhammad with superior powers are fabricated.
Muhammad performed no miracles as he himself admitted in Quran (See my
article on Miracles. However there
is no reason for anyone to fabricate hadithes that report how Muhammad
attacked Keibar, killed the father, husband and many of Safiyah’s
relatives and wanted to mount her on the same night when she was still in
shock of losing her loved ones. There is no reason for a Muslim to
fabricate the fact that he (Muhammad) took possession of Safiyah, because
she was the prettiest of all the women captured. But the part that says
she came to Muhammad because she knew he was a prophet is, as I explained
in the same story, ridiculous and false.
Dear Khadijah, I am pleased to see that after your strange odyssey in the
barren land of Islam; chasing a mirage in that desert of desolation you
are finally approaching the shores of reason. I was brought up in that
arid land of fallacies myself and know that there is no truth there. A
billion people are chasing a mirage. Their thirst is never quenched, they
find nothing but death, misery, hate, intolerance, prejudice and
inequality, yet they are unwilling to stop and think. They encourage each
other to carry on and ask themselves: “could all these billion people be
wrong?”
Now that you are coming ashore, I invite you not to abandon those lost and
wayward souls to them selves. Love them and help them. Learn the truth
about Islam and help them see it also. Look into my website. I have put
together a library of books that shed light on the true nature of this
cult. There are more materials; I will keep adding as I find them. I
believe that there is nothing more worthy than awakening Muslims from
their slumber. Share the story of Safiyah with other Muslim women and ask
questions.
If you are concerned about violence against women and their rights: fight
Islam.
If you are concerned about human rights and discrimination against
minorities: fight Islam.
If you are concerned about world conflicts and the loss of millions of
lives: fight Islam.
If you are concerned about animal rights for sacrificing millions of
animals in a barbaric ritual of Hajj, and their cruel slaughter for
producing Halal meet: fight Isalm.
If you care about science, knowledge and the advancement of human
civilization: fight Islam.
alisha_i
There are a lot of unauthentic hadiths,
but for u to use that as a spring board to abusive Prophet Muhammad and
Islam is mean to say the least.
Do u have anything better to do ?
Answer
Dear Alisha,
All the hadithes that I quote are taken from Sahih Bukhari. Bukhari’s
hadithes are called Sahih because the early Muhadethin (knowledgeable
scholars of hadith) considered them to be authentic (Sahih means correct
or authentic). If you knew about “Ilmul Hadith (the science of hadith)
you would not call those hadithes unauthentic. They have passed rigorous
tests of authenticity to merit the title of “Sahih”.
It is not up to you or any one else to call them unauthentic because they
go against your conscience. You and I cannot sit and choose what we like
from the hadithes and discard what we don’t like. What criteria shall me
use? Are we supposed to learn about the real Muhammad as he was or the
ideal Muhammad that we have created in our imaginations. Who are we
supposed to follow? A mythological superman who never existed outside our
fantasies or the real Muhammad ibn Abdullah? What is our authority to
become the arbitrator of the authenticity of the hadithes?
Yes there are many hadithes that are false. I explained that in my message
to khadijah. Those hadithes or parts of them that portray Muhammad as a
man of miracle are false. Muhammad attested in Quran that he performed no
miracles except Quran, (that is of course full of errors). Also those
hadithes that give some legitimacy to one sect (madhab) over the others
may also be false. Shiites have a hadith that says Muhammad lifted Ali and
announce whoever obeys him must also obey Ali. There is another hadith
that says a similar story about AbuBakr. Hadithes like these are probably
false, because someone had vested interest in fabricating them. But the
stories of Muhammad attacking Kheibar, killing the residents, exiling
them, capturing Safiyah and demanding to perform sex with her in the same
day that he killed her father, husband and many of here relatives is
history. This was a big event. People could not have just invented it. And
no one would have gained anything from it. It is detrimental to Muhammad.
Devout Muslims, who like you, would do anything to save their prophet from
blemish would not have fabricated such thing. To what ends?
A zealot Muslim could have said: I heard the prophet say such and such.
Whether he was saying the truth or not, depended on his honesty. But
something like the prophet’s battles, his conquests and his wives are
part of the history. Someone could not have just fabricated it. If you
want to deny that, then by what proof can you be sure of the very
existence of Muhammad? If you deny the historic facts of ahadith, then you
are opening the door for someone to deny the historicity of Muhammad
himself. I don’t think that is the rout you what to go.
A hadith is not unauthentic just because it goes against our sophisticated
and humanized conscience. There are many verses of Quran too that are
illogical and barbaric, are you going to say they are also false?
Instead of living in denial, we have to face the truth and accept the fact
that our fathers were misled. It is up to us to mend the errors and build
a new and a better society, free of prejudices, superstitions, xenophobia,
intolerance, abuse and hate. We can never build peace and prosperity on
falsehood.
As to your question: whether I have anything better to do; my answer is
that I see nothing as worthy as awakening my fellow Muslim brothers and
sisters from their slumber. I see the abuse of women in Islamic countries,
the beating of them, the honor killings, and the humiliating Hijab as a
direct result of Islam. I see the conflicts, the killings, terrorism and
the tension in all Islamic countries as a by-product of Islam. I believe
that my effort in unveiling Islam saves lives. That is why I believe what
I do is really important. Unfortunately I have to work to pay my bills;
otherwise I would have dedicated my life to this most sacred task.
I also invite you to investigate Islam with open mind. Cast aside the
excessive love that blinds. Read Quran and hadithes and contemplate. Do
not assume if it is in Quran it is right. Question what you read and if it
goes against reason, know that it is not from God. God is never
irrational. Doubt everything and find your own light.
Please read my article “Cocooned
in Lies”. You may find more answers to your question.
Regards