Golden
Eggs
of Rotten
Islam:
Freethinkers of Islam
by
Sher Khan
Muslim
apologists always huff and puff, claiming the golden ages of Islam
produced many great Muslim minds. It is partially true, there were numbers
of scientists, doctors and philosophers in the era of powerful Islam but
they were not real Muslims, by any stretch of the imagination.
Imagine a
ruthless Mullah father with many children! Every evening he returns from
work, cranky and ready to beat the whole family. As soon as he steps in,
everyone maintains pin drop silence and stay far away from him. Almost
same thing happened when Muhammad established his kingdom. There was no
trace of doctors, chemists, poets or philosophers while he was in power;
they had to hide to save their lives. As soon as Mohammad died, scholars,
academics and intellectuals came out of their shelter and flourished
again.
Jabir
Ibn Haiyan (?-803)
 Muslim
apologists claim that Jabir Ibn Haiyan was the father of chemistry though
Chemistry was practiced from ancient ages. Egyptians used distillation
process in 3000 years BC and the Greeks in 1000 BC. Zosimus of Panopolis
wrote "The Divine Art of Making Gold and Silver", in the
4th century. Jabir Ibn Haiyan should not be called the founder
of Chemistry, which is nothing but the usual deceiving technique of Muslim
apologists. However, he did contribute a lot in this area of science and
prepared varieties acids such as, nitric, hydrochloric, citric and
tartaric acids. He practiced medicine and chemistry under the patronage of
an Abbasid caliphate Harun al-Rashid.
Interestingly,
Jabir Ibn Haiyan was not a very religious person. A Muslim apologist
writes, �His religious views and philosophical concepts, embodied in
the corpus have been criticized but, apart from the question of their
authenticity, it is to be emphasized that the major contribution of
Jabir lies in the field of chemistry and not in religion.�
Whenever Muslims are embarrassed with facts, they bring the question of
authenticity, a known technique that they always use. As human beings, we
surely are grateful to Jabir for his contribution to humankind. One
logical question pops up; if Muslims disagree with Jabir�s religious
views then why are they proud of Jabir and claim him as a Muslim
scientist?
Ibn
Sina (980-1037)
 Ibn
Sina, also known as Avicenna was another prominent figure, who excelled in
medicine but his contribution to science and philosophy is also greatly
remembered. Muslims proudly call him the doctor of doctors and enjoy
virtual pleasure, alleging him as a golden egg of golden Islam. Despite
taking the credit, Muslim countries never benefited from his works,
however many hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and hotels of Islamic
countries are named after him. Ironically,
European universities added Ibn Sina�s medical and philosophical works
to their curriculum but they remained unknown to the witch factories aka
madrassas of the Muslim world.
Apparently,
Avecinna believed in one god and accepted the authority of Muhammad as the
lawgiver of Islam. Well, did he have any choice? A learned person like Ibn
Sina was well aware of the punishment for apostasy. He surely did not want
his head be chopped and play soccer with it. However, his freethinking
mind did not accept the absurdities of Islam. He opined in his
autobiography under the chapter of �THE AFTER LIFE�. � �The
after life is a notion received from religious teaching; there
is no way of establishing it�s truth save by way of religious dogma and acceptance
of the prophet�s report as true; there refers to what will befall
the body at the resurrection and those corporal delights or torments which
are too well-known to require restating here.� (from �Avicenna on
Theology� by Arthur J Arberry). Arthur J Arberry nicely explained
Avecinna�s conviction in his commentary, �And on one most important
point of doctrine he was unquestionably,
gloriously heretical; he rejected unreservedly the resurrection of the
body, and with it the literal acceptance of those passages in the Koran
describing in graphic physical terms the pleasure and the torture of the
damned.�
What a
blasting blasphemous heresy! A major portion of �holey� Quran is
stuffed with resurrection and/or judgment day business. Quran is all about
killing kafirs in this life, establishing Islamic kingdom, and punishment
or reward with strippers after life. Quran confirms in verse - 50.42,
�The Day when they will hear a (mighty) Blast in (very)
truth: that will be the Day of Resurrection.� Not only in this verse
but the same assertion was repeated in eighty four places in the Quran.
How naively Ibn Sina rebuffed the central idea of Quran is an interesting
approach that deserves to be contemplated.
Arberry
made the most interesting assessment of Avecinna in the following
commentary, �Even during his lifetime Avicenna was suspected of
infidelity to Islam; after his death accusations of heresy, free thought
and atheism were repeatedly leveled against him.�
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