Assassination,

Humanity vs. Muhammad bin Abdallah 

Part I 

Nov. 16, 2003

This is the long overdue trial of Islam and here are the protagonists

Defendant: Muhammad bin Abdallah

Plaintiff:  Humanity (The non-Muslim portion)

Prosecutor: Ali Sina  

Defense Attorney: Raheel Shahzad  (Any one else is welcome to join)

Courtroom: Public Opinion

Jury: You 

Nov. 16, 2003

Dear Mr. Sina,  

Since you have allowed me the role of defense counsel, I think then this would mean we employ the same style as one would employ in a courtroom. Which basically means that evidence, hearsay, assumptions, leading the witness, etc (as matters of legal discourse) may have a place in this debate too and their use or misuse may be pointed out by either party. I think this is only fair because some discipline needs to be used to keep both sides honest. 

OK so as a starting point, you have leveled some charges against a human being. And this distinction is very important for you and me to assert because we have to judge the individual through our assumed moral code. It seems only fair that the charges if brought upon a human being, need then to be defended through the notions of all things human. That Muhammad was a human being is not in dispute at all. He was born and then died. That's a strong indicator of him at least conforming to the most basic premise of being a human. The divine connection then is a special characteristic placed upon this human being. And this divine connection is the crux of a large part of our case. 

Hence if it is not in dispute that he was a human first then I would like to present the definitions of Human (from dictionary.com), which at least may assist the defense in guiding  the arguments.

• Of, relating to, or characteristic of humans: the course of human events; the human race.
• Having or showing those positive aspects of nature and character regarded as distinguishing humans from other animals: an act of human kindness.
• Subject to or indicative of the weaknesses, imperfections, and fragility associated with humans: a mistake that shows he's only human; human frailty.
• Having the form of a human.
• Made up of humans: formed a human bridge across the ice.

So why is the definition of human necessary here at all? In my estimation because what we understand a human to be is guided through our moral code today. And recognizing that we are talking about a human being is central to the issue as we move ahead in this. One of the interesting definitions above is the third one (indicative of the weaknesses or imperfections and fragility)

So the first assumption you have already thrown into the case is your own ideal of what a messenger's human standing and qualities should be. This assumption is not created by you in a vacuum, but is to me a product of your deeper appreciation that a God (or at least your interpretation of God) exists. The second assumption you have declared in the statement is that God is good, and possesses the qualities you have listed above. I am not saying that the assumptions are illogical or need to be thrown out, but you have setup a context for God and Messenger through your own interpretation what qualities are positive and God is the embodiment of these qualities. I can also then extend from this that the God you have interpreted is the antithesis of evil and God is not capable of either allowing evil to persist or the plan for our existence was devoid of evil. This also then means to me that evil is not of God creation, but a human created entity as a result of resistance to the good God. Further, that Satan then has no real existence because God is good, and evil is a human product, and anything that is evil or something that does not conform to your and my definition of "good" cannot be from the God. You used the words "must be endowed" and that to me means that the premise of what God should be doing is already established. You then state "spiritual qualities" which further establishes that you actually have a belief system that recognizes that there is something called "spirit". Hence, now we are making the connection between Muhammad and spirituality. I am not sure whose definition of spirituality we need to establish here. I can infer that "spiritual qualities such as love, compassion, honesty, self-restraint" is desirable. What is not clear to me is that does spirituality as you stated have only these qualities or spirituality extends beyond the listing of human elements stated by you. 

But regardless, let me briefly tackle the words you have used to establish the "law" that has been broken: 

A) Love - What kind of love are you including here? Is it different based on times, or is it a constant? And is it for other humans, or does it include all things of world and of the other dimension? And does this love include love only of human-approved items or love for anything desired by a human is included? Can love include sex? And if a man claims (and feels) to have fallen in love with another man's wife, is this acceptable as morally upstanding by us? If such claim is made, is it reasonable to accept that there is no lust involved, or is declaration of love for another man's wife an automatic negation of love (as it would then this would mean that a moral code is being broken, not because the love is any less desirable, but because the legality of the woman's status as already married is the real issue). 

B) Compassion - Most of the things about love mentioned above are applicable here, with one addition. Is the intensity of compassion an important element, or should compassion also have a barometer of its strength? 

C) Honesty - Is honesty desirable in all instances or can there be exceptions? 

D) Self-Restraint - Is this restraint from innate evil acts to perform acts that the heart desires, or is this restraint from the acts, which may confound people of past and future? Or both? 

The reason I expanded on this is because establishing a law is first needed in absolute clear terms, for then only can the breaking of this law be defined and then the defendant charged, and then if the absolute clear law as stated is found to be broken, then yes guilt can be established. However, if the law itself is open to interpretation, then the juries will never agree on establishment of guilt because there is no absolute law to begin with. As an example, many laws in USA are either overturned or repealed because of the problem of being either not conforming to a common logic, or being too vague. Many people walk away free without conviction because the law itself is not clearly defined. So the premise is, without an establishment of a clear law, it cannot be really broken.

Now we move from the qualities as you listed above (which i can combine to mean human traits of personality) to the realm of intelligence and knowledge. Your objection is based upon the premise that intelligence is a prerequisite for a divine Being in relation to humans, and that the humans should be capable of understanding divinity from the worldly perspective and divinity needs to be manifested with total clarity. Absurdity and Inanity also needs to be then in terms of violation of intelligence. But the problem with this premise is that intelligence also is then a relative term. And intelligence is difficult to quantify because it may differ for people based on the subject matter at hand. I may be very intelligent about matters relating to computers for example, and have no clue about medical science. I may be absolutely stupid about chemistry too regardless of how many books I read about it. So intelligence has to be established as to applying to which aspect. I think it is safe to say that you are talking about intelligence in the realms of "logic". Logic being a set of mutually exclusive sets of perceptions, where the commingling of two different perceptions produces no answer, hence the brain refuses to process it.  

For example: 1) John and Mary traveled to Bermuda on a Boat 2) A boat can not move if more than one person is occupying it. Contradiction within the statement defying logic. Hence the two statements in combination are absurd. There cannot be any way of using 1 and 2 as written together above without actually the author stating something additional, or for logic to succeed, some assumptions will have to be used. Because on surface, the above two statements defy logic if said together. 

So on this point, your objection really is two-fold: a) The Quran as a collection of sentences is absurd defying logic and b) since it defies logic, the author must be a human because the ability to defy logic can only be achieved by a human. God then is either required to conform to the logic of each human at the same time and with clarity, or else He has no right to say anything. 

As for the collection of sentences of Quran in totality (verses), that is not the focus of this section of debate so I will come to that in a later part. But the extension certainly applies to then the charge leveled against a human called Muhammad. Hence, the law we are establishing then has to include the violation of intelligence, in addition to what I have said so far about the violations of the personality code. 

I really am trying to do that. I hope I am not veering off too far way.

I am taking each sentence you wrote and carefully answering to the best of my ability given some of the limitations.

Ok so let's address the assassinations then, and then in a later part I will elaborate. And I do want to remind you that the law being established is expanding or either we then have to split the law into separate portions, which then would have their own problems of not being mutually exclusive. 

Assassin, from what I understand came from the word "Hashishin" (some order of Muslims who killed at the orders of some Sheikh back in 17th century and the sheikh prescribed hashish for some reason. not entirely clear). So assassination is a fairly recent definition. And assassination means then: 

• One who murders by surprise attack, especially one who carries out a plot to kill a prominent person.

Now this definition does not address anything about the virtue or vice of the one being murdered. Neither is the cause being tackled as being one of justice or other. There's also the absent the idea of guilt or crime of the person being murdered in this definition. So pretty much, it can be boiled down to just mean murder. But I think that poses a logical problem for me, if it means only murder by surprise. Is there any room for this act being justified ever? Or it's just that the murder has to happen with the one who is being murdered be informed by a telegraph or email beforehand? Also, is there any way that the assassination be a desirable result? For example, if murder by surprise is assassination and which should be classified as an absolute law that at any time can be applied to any period of history or future, then the party committing it can be classified as guilty. So, if a battalion of US soldiers enter someone's backyard in Iraq and kill the inhabitants of the house, regardless of the vices of those killed, will the US soldiers be called assassins? But if you do not consider them assassins because they are fighting for a perceived just cause according to the interpretation of the US stance on nuclear weapons, then why are some others called assassins who may be fighting their own cause? So if the reason or cause for the murder by surprise is not known exactly, then it's assassination. Otherwise it's something else, which can be stamped as morally upstanding by those who are interpreting the cause in the first place. 

By this logic, Muhammad cannot be charged with assassination because his purpose was very well stated. Whether I or you disagree with his stated reason is not the issue here so far. I am not prepared to label my client as an assassin because you have used a word to define the law being broken as "assassination", which by definition only means murder by surprise. But I have tried to demonstrate that this definition is too loose because murder by surprise can also be used as a meaningful tactic in wartime by countries today. Hence, if the purpose of the surprise murder is stated clearly, then it cannot be classified as a crime of assassination. I think your disagreement with the cause that my client was pursuing is leading you to label him as an assassin. But in light of what I have stated for the jury, your label is unfair and unnecessary. My client can be guilty of the law we establish first, and if you want to accuse him and find guilty of assassination, you have to state your position as to what an act of assassination is supposed to encompass. If you mean that he murdered and we forget the word assassin, then murdering also has similar issues of not being very clearly defined. But I’m trying to add more here in interest of brevity. 

I do however want to state clearly here that the word "assassin" has a certain connotation, which I think is unfair to my client. 

:) Yes I know the list can be overwhelming. But I have done a lot of research as the defense counsel, and based on rules of this debate, I can only tackle one issue at a time, which I think is desired by you too. 

You have pointed out that I verify the authenticity of the sources, which I think is an unfair demand. This does not mean that I have not tried to verify or have rejected them, I'm only saying that your accusation is based on your insistence that I use the same source to defend my client as you find appealing to your own position. This also does not mean that I have some hidden revolutionary new source that no one knows about, but if we are establishing a law that was broken within the realm of logic and this world, then you are limiting my sources by excluding some of the most important sources that I may want to use, namely commonsense and logic itself. If you as the prosecutor are allowed the liberty to use any source as you deem befitting, then I should be at least given the fair chance of stating whether I believe in the source or not, and whether it conforms to my own stated position or not. Because unless you establish some common source that we both can refer to and absolutely agree on its usefulness for both sides, I will be overwhelmed in defending the client. Even the Supreme Court of USA has established points of references for every case it hears. If it had to decipher each and every source of law that ever existed or exists today, it will go nuts just trying to pour over all the material. 

Hence rules of evidence need to be established at least to have some sanity surrounding this debate. Past cases adjudicated one way or another is not evidence to me, they are just cases which may or may not have any application today. Opinions or hearsay are also not evidence. Stated Positions or Prejudiced slants are also not evidence. So unless there's some common understanding of evidence, it's pretty much a free for all kind of case, where guilt is assumed before adjudication. 

I propose that we limit our use of the material that can be referenced to establish the law and then argue over guilt or innocence. 

I would like to mention that my job is not really to prove innocence, my exercise is to demonstrate that the guilt cannot be proven or established beyond any doubt. Proving innocence is practically impossible given the limitations of passage of time, but if a human being is accused of a crime, then at least he needs to be defended against the establishment of guilt. 

Hence to conclude this part of my response, I should summarize my opening statements:

1. Your accusations have many built-in assumptions
2. Your standards of norms and intelligence are not entirely clear based on accusations
3. Your use of the word "assassin" is difficult to establish and is inherently judgmental in favor of the one who got killed
4. The sources of evidence need to be clear and limited in scope.
5. "Innocence until proven guilty beyond doubt" is my current stated position

I will continue in my next response about the specific cases of "assassinations", address the issues of accusations of pedophilia and marriages of Muhammad, and about the Quran. Let me remind you and the readers that when you take into account that the faith basis of millions of people is at stake here, I think this task is a noble cause both for you and I think for me. I also ask the readers to please keep an open mind about both sides of the issue, and not let your own preset feelings about matters of faith guide your logic. 

I am only but an individual trying to make sense of my faith and those who hold a different point of view.  

R Shahzad

Nov. 16, 2003

Dear Mr. Shahzad,  

I accused your defendant Muhammad of being an assassin and from the several cases available I presented just four. 

You did not deny the charges and the authenticity of my exhibits. That is of course hard to deny since these cases are reported in basically all original Islamic sources such as Ibn Is-haq’s Sirat Rasoulallah, al Waqidi, al Tabari and several sahih (authentic, verified) hadiths.  

Since the evidence is undeniable, instead you tried to redefine the notion of human being and assassination.

In your defense you stated that Muhammad was just a human and explained to us what human means. I agree with those premises. You emphasized that as a human, Muhammad was subject to weakness or imperfections and fragility. I agree with that too. However none of those justifies assassinations. All criminals are humans and the same rule of human weakness applied to them too. Is that an excuse to acquit them all? Hardly so!

I doubt any jury in his right mind would acquit a criminal on the ground that he or she is just a fallible human being. We are all fallible human beings but not all of us are assassins. You would have had a better chance to plead innocence by reason of insanity for your client.   

Then you moved on to redefine the concept of good and evil and stated that my notion of good and how I envision God are subjective. 

You spoke of human love being relative and asked whether when we speak of love we should not also take morality into equation.  

You wondered whether compassion needs a barometer of strength.

You questioned the desirability of honesty in all cases and wondered whether there can be exceptions when being dishonest is more desirable.  

And about Self-Restraint 

These questions are irrelevant to the case.  

You stated that the reason you present these questions is because you are not sure that the right and wrong as seen by humans are actually so. In other words you try to question the validity of human notion of good and evil. And based on such premise you claimed that since we cannot be certain that what appears to be good is actually good and what appears to be bad is actually bad then we cannot say assassination is bad because it could be good. And concluded: “without an establishment of a clear law, it cannot be really broken.”

I do not think that good and bad are so relative that we can’t know whether assassinating someone on the ground that he or she disagrees with us is a good thing or not.

May be good and evil for us humans are relative. But our intelligence, no matter how imperfect and relative it may be, is the only tool we have to tell apart good from bad. It is absurd to say that assassination could be a good thing because we are fallible humans and can’t know the difference between good and bad.

Love and compassions are also human qualities. Morality is another subject that we can talk about in another occasion. The point is that a human being who is bereft of these qualities does not qualify to be called with that name. We call such person, “monster” not human.

And as for your question about honesty, the answer is that honesty is always desirable and dishonesty is always undesirable. There are no exceptions.

What you are advocating here is moral relativism. In other words you say evil is justifiable when doing good is not expedient. This is absurd, because it licenses any person to do evil at any time that it suites him. 

I am not shocked at all of your philosophy. You are expounding the Islamic philosophy very eloquently. As a confirmation of your statement and to show that Islam is indeed a moral relativist religion that allows dishonesty, assassination and other vices any time that it suites its followers, I will quote a statement by Iman Ghazali the most eminent Islamic scholar ever.  

I disagree with moral relativism. I am a follower of the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule states: "Do not do to others what you do not want to be done to you". 

I do not want to be assassinated and hence I do not assassinate others. 

I do not want another person invade my town kill me, loot my belonging, enslave my children and sleep with my wife. So I do not do such things to others.  

I do not enjoy being second class citizen, being subdued and humiliated and pay penalty for my right to believe in the religion of my choice, hence I do not do this to others.

I do not like to have a tutelary who can beat me if I fail to obey. Therefore I do not treat my wife in this manner.  

I do not like to be dealt with dishonestly, be lied to and cheated. Therefore I think dishonesty is evil and there are no exceptions to this rule.   

Continuing with the same line of moral relativism, you argued  that the human intelligence is also relative and it cannot comprehend the divine wisdom.  

My response is also the same. Human intelligence may be imperfect but that is all we have. Our limited intelligence is the only parameter or tool we have to distinguish the right from the wrong and evil from the good. 

Otherwise, how would we tell apart a charlatan and an impostor from a true messenger of God? There are thousands of impostors who lay claim to prohethood each year. How do we know they are not telling the truth and Muhammad was? We have to use our intelligence. Yes, the same imperfect and fallible intelligence. If the actions and words of these self-proclaimed prophets defy our intelligence then we know that they are impostors. It would be unfair for God to send a messenger that says and does things contrary to our intelligence. As Galileo said, if God did not want us to use our intelligence, why he would gave it to us?   

By weighing up the Quran and the deeds of Muhammad with our human intelligence, we can safely determine that he did not qualify to be a messenger of God. Unless you are of the opinion that God is so pathetic that would choose a pervert criminal psychopath thug to guide us to the right path. 

On the main subject of our discussion, namely assassination, you explained the root and the meaning of the word (which I find unnecessary because it makes your long responses, longer)

I am afraid you are confusing the issue. We are not talking about the virtue and vice of the victim but the virtue and vice of the assassin. The question that you have to answer is whether assassination is a virtuous act befitting of a messenger of God or is it an evil deed. The guilt or innocence of people should be determined by a court of law, not whimsically by anyone who just feels he has to assassinate someone because this person is bad mouthing him.  

Then you equated assassination with murder and wondered:

Here you are not questioning the immorality of assassination but whether the assassin should inform his victim of his intentions. I think you miss the whole point. I am not trying to convince you but the jury (our readers). And the jury needs no more convincing.  

I am going to quote you verbatim your own statement. I think your own words incriminate your client (and his followers) more convincingly than anything I can say.

Thank you for being so explicit. I do not think I need to add anything more. I can rest my case at this moment. However since many of our readers are also Muslims and since I know how Islam affects human mind and values and distorts them to the extent that the victim become jaundiced, I would like to shed some light on this kind of typically convoluted Islamic thinking and hopefully rescue some from this disease of the mind and soul called Islam.  

Yes if that happens, those soldiers will be charged with war crime and will have to stand trial.  

This twisted Islamic thinking that likes to portray Muslims as victims, with no evidence at all, while justifies all their crimes perpetrated against others is typical also. 

The US soldiers do not enter in people’s houses and murder them indiscriminately. They may enter in people’s houses in the search of weapons or to capture a combatant enemy. However they will not open fire on the residents unless they are attacked first. 

That is not comparable to the assassination expeditions of Muhammad. From the links that I provided, we learn that Muhammad sent someone to assassin a 120-year old man because he was telling the people of Medina to not be fooled by him. When Asma bent Marvan, a poetess and a mother of five small children complained about that dastardly act, he sent another man to assassinate her too in the middle of the night while she was in her bed nursing her infant. I hope you also read the case of Ka'b ibn Ashraf and Abu Rafi. These are the kind of crimes perpetrated by your defendant whom a billon gullible people blindly have accepted as a messenger of God. And yet look how he mocks everyone and how he makes his ever handy god to praise him so loftily: 

"And surely thou hast sublime morals" (Q.68:4).

“Indeed in the Messenger of Allah you have a good example to follow" (Q.33:21).

We sent thee not, but as a Mercy for all creatures. (Q.21:107).

Verily this is the word of a most honorable Messenger, (Q.81.19)

We want to shed light on these facts and unmask Muhammad, so haply we save the Muslims who are primary victims of this lie and save the world from an unnecessary calamity.  

However, we are helpless to save those whose minds and values are distorted to a point of no return. Islam is indeed the disease of the mind. We want to help Muslims recover but we can’t help everyone. I am afraid you are one of those who are beyond recovery.

A man that justifies assassination, questions whether dishonesty could sometimes be good and has succumbed to Islamic moral relativism to such an extent that cannot see the obvious is beyond reach of reason.

I nevertheless thank you for your honesty in this case, even though you think dishonesty sometimes is necessary, for not deny futilely the authenticity of the hadiths and other historic sources that reveal the crimes perpetrated by your defendant Muhammad. You even admit that you do not have “some hidden revolutionary new source that no one knows about”. You only contend that since assassination, dishonesty and other vices "can sometime be good" and we humans cannot tell one way from other, Muhammad cannot be accused of any crime.  

In other words, your position is to mock human conscience, human intelligence and our commonsense. You state that man cannot know what is wrong and what is right and therefore any vice committed by Muhammad could actually be a virtue in disguise.  

Is that true in the case of all criminals? .... Or Muhammad is the exception? 

Interestingly you suggested we use “commonsense” and “logic” to determine the guilt or innocence of Muhammad. 

What commonsense and what logic are you talking about? Isn't it obvious that assassination is not right? That pedophilia is not good? That raiding, looting and enslaving women and children is wrong? 

Yet again, you ended up contradicting yourself by stating that

Now it seems that you are implying that the sources that I provided, namely the sahih hadith and early books of history written by early Muslim historians may not be valid. If so can you present another version of history of Islam? Of course there is none and you already acknowledged that you do not have “some hidden revolutionary new source that no one knows about”. 

I do not have to prove any guilt because it is confessed. It is enough to read the books of history and the hadith, written by devout Muslims to see how they bragged about these crimes perpetrated by their prophet.

The prosecution in the case of Humanity vs. Muhammad bin Abdallah rests. 

It is now up to the jury to deliberate on the verdict.

Ali Sina

____----****O****----____

For the next court session, I invite you to refute my charge against Muhammad being a lecherous womanizer. I contend that considering his lack of moral fortitude Muhammad could not be a messenger of God. He was simply a successful and ruthless cult leader who beguiled the foolhardy ignorant people of his time to satisfy his own ambitions and lusts.    

In the following links I have presented my claim with enough evidence to back it up. 

• Juwayriah  
• Safiyah: the Jewish wife of Muhammad 
• Adoption in Islam and Muhammad's Marriage to Zainab Bint Jahsh.  
• Mariyah The Coptic Sex Slave of the Prophet  
• Propaganda from an apologist: a straight reply 

Please read all of them. 

P.S. I do not want to sound timumphalist as I know this is one of the "virtues" of Muslims. However judging by your poor performance in this first round I invite you to gang up with other Muslims and build up a stronger defense. 

I invite any other Muslim who wants to join the defense team and salvage the lost honor of their prophet to pitch in.  

If you are a Muslim who are dismayed and think someone else can do better a job than Mr. Shahzad, please invite him. Tell him it is vital because the honor of Islam is at stake. 

I hereby promise once again; should anyone prove my charges against Muhammad to be false. I will not only withdraw this site but also will appear in any television and radio and announce to the world that I was wrong and Islam is true. 

There are over a billion Muslims in this planet. Is there not just one who can prove me wrong?  

Even the hypocrite and the paid western apologists of Islam are welcome to join the defense. Please tell your Saudi sponsors to fill up your bank accounts again as you are going to defend Islam once more rehashing the lies that Quran is scientific and Islam is peaceful and shut down this pesky site that has brought so much humiliation and disgrace to the religion of Allah and his messenger. 

It must be noted that the humiliation and disgrace of Islam means freedom and glory of its primary victims, namely the Muslims. 

Freedom and glory for all the people of the world is what Faith Freedom International is striving for. 

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