Kafi questions the motives and the sincerity of this site

"Kafi, HM Tarique I." <[email protected]>

Dec. 25, 2002

Hello:

Please allow me to thank you for the rich language you use in your web site; being a non-native speaker of English, I found your phrases and words very rewarding. However, I could not help suspect your motive. Don't misunderstand me, I humbly implore you. I am not a free thinker, since we all are products of our conditioning, education and time. But I trust my ability to detect integrity. In spite of my ignorance and lack of knowledge in any of the Abraham's religions, I sensed something unhealthy in your web site. I dare to express my feelings.

At first I was elated to think that "what a courageous effort this web site is!" Then, as I proceeded I saw a pattern, a plan,-- a sign of group-efforts in your affair of vilification of Islam. Maybe you are 100% right about Islam's Prophet and atrocities committed by Islam's soldiers. But your goal is to "brianwash" a mass not to help them seek truth. I noticed several efforts on this site to exploit average human psyche, through very slective approach of words and subjects:

(1) Selection of an "Ex-Muslim" image

(2) Selecting "Middle-Eastern" back ground --the above two help to win immediate credibility from less intellectually inclined readers.

(3) The essays and articles are too excuisite and rich (100% error free presentations) to be argued.

(4) Presentation of the facts in a way so that Islam's image will certainly appear inferior.

(5) Occasional mentioning of "humanity," "love," "justice," etc. to give the articles and the web site a neutral aura, which distracts readers from the very fact that the data presented are selected only to prove Islam's negative sides.

(6) The author (or should I say Authors?) seems not to mention (maybe smaller in comparison with Islam) anything about Christian Inquisition, Crusaders' rampage, live burning conducted under Vatican's authority, etc. And actually he does, only in reference to argue with those who mention it. So that it appears that the articles consider all sides equally. But the selection of location and style to do so make the whole difference.

(7) We have to understand who come to this web site most. Most often readers here are eager to find points again Islam (which they find plenty here), but are less analytical and are intellectually less capable to notice the fact that the web site is created to INFLUENCE a mass, instead of disseminating enlightenment. Enlightenment comes through all-encompassment, not by selective exclusion and inclusion of historical data. One kind of fact always contrast another kind. Dark contrasts light. Vilifying one obviously glorify the other--especially when the audience are less sophisticated and ready to be influenced. Although the author mentions other religion (yet ALMOST never), he shows dark sides of Islam only.

So, Mr. Sina, it seems that your grand motive is not for humanity as a whole; it's very obvious that you are fulfilling some interests. Deliberately or not, I am uncertain. Yes, the whole effort is very intelligently done. Very few tactics will work as great as this. And the best strategy to create a tunnel vision in a society is keep society's members ignorant of this very underlying purpose of creating tunnel vision. The best way to spread public "Propaganda,"(please forgive me, but your too narrowly focused attitude seems to be a propaganda effort, however right your data maybe) is to give it a "non-Propaganda" image through logic, aura of neutrality and personalization.

From that standpoint, you seem to have succeeded. It makes me feel disappointed. Because, at first I thought about this endevor as an expression of human courage and intellectual honesty. But then, the barely detectable plan, to exploit human psyche, by creating an image of reliability and theosophical neutrality, bothered me so much! I do not know what kind of impact it will have on the civilization, but any negative attemp always result in a negative outcome. Yours seems to be a negative approach. May Almighty/God/Allah (whoever He is) help us.

Good night.

Sincerely

Kafi

Dear Kafi,

Thank you for your email and for expressing your concerns about my motives so politely and candidly. Believe me, it is not every day that I receive such educated and sincere letter from someone who disagrees with me. It seems that one of the conditions of faith is to be rude to those who do not believe. So it is actually me who should thank you for excelling above the crowd.

You say that you noticed a plan,-- a sign of group-efforts in our affair of vilification of Islam. Which led you to believe that my goal "is to 'brainwash' a mass not to help them seek truth".

Well, allow me to congratulate you on your first discovery. Yes it is true that I intend to expose Islam and unmask its ugly face both to the Muslims and non-Muslims. And it is also true that in my struggle I found hundreds of ex-Muslims and others with similar goals and instead of working as individuals we are coming together and are becoming a movement. I don’t think I have kept this a secret. So I don’t think you have to guess my motives or agenda because I have made it very clear. But you say; what we are doing is brainwashing and giving a tunnel vision of Islam.

I hope you realize that brainwashing requires coercion. In what ways a website on the Internet can coerce people? There are thousands of sites filled with Islamic propaganda. People can read them and compare what we say with what they read in those sites. Is this how brainwashing works? Of course not! Brainwashing is when you do not allow the person to get any other fact to compare, you hammer the same ideas over and over into his head and not only do not allow him to get any alternative information but would censor and prohibit the information opposing to yours. This is how brainwashing works.

Now let us see how Islam is being taught to Muslim kids. Islam is taught from the early childhood as the only true religion and Quran is drilled without understanding its meaning. No Islamic country would allow any book, film, documentary or leaflet opposing Islamic views. Anyone who dares to criticize Islam will risk losing his or her life. Dr. Younis Sheikh, a Pakistani teacher once said to his students that Muhammad’s parents did not observe Islamic rules of hygiene because Islam was not yet born and the rules were not in place. This seems to be stating the obvious but he was accused of blasphemy, jailed, condemned to death and eventually another prisoner was provided with a gun to shoot him in his prison cell. In such atmosphere of fear, how can you teach the truth? This is brainwashing Sir! This is tunnel vision. Islam uses brainwashing to indoctrinate its followers. Muslims are not allowed to think on their own and doubt the Quran, Muhammad or his Allah. Death will await the person who dares to question Islam. No person born to Muslim parents is allowed to change his religion. He will be killed as an apostate.

So as you see dear Kafi, I am not brainwashing people. I give them the information and encourage them to read the Quran and hadith and go through all Islamic sites so they can be sure what I say is true. Do you know any Islamic country, school of thought or site that gives to Muslims this freedom?

I appreciate your honesty and integrity for not claiming to be a freethinker but the product of your environment and upbringing. I do empathize and understand you perfectly because that is where I come from too. There was a time that as a believer I did not think it is right for Muslims to read any anti Islam material. I even was very crossed with those who enquired about Salman Rushdi’s book. I was not agreeing with Khomeini’s fatwa against him but I thought his book should be banned. This way of thinking, for me, was automatic. In my view Islam was the religion of God and no one must be allowed to critique or god forbid criticize the word of God. I was honestly incapable to understand that if Islam is really true, it does not need censorship and that it must be able to defend itself against all attacks. I thought it is my duty to hide all the ugly things and present Islam in its best light. So I tried to become an apologetic and brush off all the criticisms hurled at Islam. Actually I thought it is not appropriate to listen to criticisms of Islam so I avoided them altogether. Mind you I became an anti Islam activist not by reading any anti-Islam book but by reading the Quran in its original language and understanding it fully as it was revealed and not through the apologetic interpretation of its translators.

You also criticized my approach for being “selective” and accused me of being manipulative. Let me answer you point by point.

(1) Selection of an "Ex-Muslim" image

I was born to Muslim parents and was a believer up until a few years ago. What image do you think I should have chosen? Many of the members of Faith Freedom International who contribute to this site also have a similar background. If not ex-Muslims and Muslim dissidents, what do you suggest we should call ourselves?

(2) Selecting "Middle-Eastern" back ground --the above two help to win immediate credibility from less intellectually inclined readers.

I am an Iranian, my ancestors were Iranians; most of the ex-Muslims in our group come from Arab, Pak, Turk, Indian or Indonesian Islamic background. What nationality you suggest we should pretend to be? Apart from my nationality, I am a seyyed or a direct descendent of Muhammad through Ali and Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah. I am not proud of it at all. In fact after 60 generations or so there is virtually zero genes of that mentally sick man left on me. But do you think I should lie about it and deny that I am a seyyed?

(3) The essays and articles are too excuisite and rich (100% error free presentations) to be argued.

Well thank you for the compliment but actually they are not error free, I often go over them and keep correcting them and improving them. But are you suggesting I should write erroneous articles to prove my honesty?

(4) Presentation of the facts in a way so that Islam's image will certainly appear inferior.

I am presenting the facts. If those facts make the image of Islam to appear inferior you don’t have to shoot the messenger. I quote the Quran and the Hadith; if by doing so Islam is trashed then perhaps the problem is with Islam. Why don’t you try to trash my site by presenting only those parts that are bad? Can you do that? If Quran was the message of God and if Muhammad was his messenger, I would not have been able to find not even one thing wrong in it.

The very reason I attack Islam is because it is a cult that preaches discrimination, hate and practices injustice. It is for humanity, love and justice that I write. Would you have preferred if I advocated hate and violence? Why these concepts are not the emphasis of the Quran? Why Islam does not preach humanity, love and justice? Why the message of Islam is only believing, killing, punishment, hell and fear? What is the spiritual message of Islam for humanity? The emphasis is to believe, believe by sword and coercion, believe by fear of after life, believe for lust of celestial houris and after life debauchery. Then what? What is the spiritual message of Islam? Nothing! There is no message. The message is to believe in Muhammad and his imaginary Allah and nothing else. If Muhammad was a messenger of God, what is his message? Does he tell you how to overcome hate? Does he teach you how to fill this world with love, how to establish unity, how to be enlightened, how to solve scientific problems, how to cure diseases? No! There is no other message than “believe”. All this man cared for is to control others and what better way that claiming to be the messenger of God? He did not talk about spiritual qualities such as humanity, love and justice. Do you think I am doing something wrong taking about these spiritual values?

All those things about Christianity and other religions are history. Today the Christians do not practice inquisitions, crusades or burn witches. Vatican’s temporal powers are stripped away, and Christians are not using terrorism as a tool to expand their religion. Furthermore there are many other books and sites that have exposed all the flaws of Christianity and other religions. What is more is that most Christians know it too. This site is about Islam and not other religions. We do not have enough material criticizing Islam because enlightened Muslims feared their lives to do that and those who did, paid dearly for it. This is the first time that ex-Muslims find the liberty to criticize Islam and there is much to criticize. You want me to say that other religions are also bad so the site could look more balanced. First of all I do not care whether a religion is false or true. As a matter of fact I believe all of them are false. What concerns me is which religion preaches hate. Today, no church, no synagogue, no pagoda or temple teaches hate like it is taught in the mosques. None of the religions is endangering the lives of the people like Islam does. If Christians, Hindus or Buddhists become terrorists, (which in comparison to Islam is negligible) they do that despite the teachings of their religions. But Muslims become terrorists by simply reading the Quran and practicing it. In fact Islam is such that mostly criminally inclined people are attracted to it, hence its popularity among the prison inmates in USA. These criminals do not come out of prisons reformed after converting to Islam, but rather they channel their hatred of the society in a much more organized and motivated way. They become far more dangerous after they convert to Islam than when they went to jail.

This is unkind of you to say. People who surf the net are not as low brained as those going to the mosques listening to the sermons of the Mullahs. These people go through all the sites and make their own mind after analyzing the facts. If what we present here weigh more than the thousands of Islamic sites, they will agree with us. That is how knowledge is sought. This is not brainwashing and tunnel vision as in Islamic countries; this is enlightenment.

It is not up to me to present Islamic views. I have to present my own views. How can I write articles contrary to my own views? Should I publish articles written by Muslim apologists? Islamic articles are already available on the net. It is not difficult to find them. If I publish Islamic articles I will be accused for choosing the weak ones. Let people read what they want to read. People can make their own mind after reading my views and the views expressed by Muslims in thousands of Islamic sites. Do any of these Islamic sites carry our articles? Does anyone of them carry a link to us? When they attack us, they are afraid to mention our name; least people discover us and read the other side of the story. No Islamic forum on the Internet would allow a member post a link to faithfreedom.org. They immediately delete that link and if the member persists, they will ban him. Why don’t you go and tell these sites to be fair and let their critiques also express their views so people can see the other side of Islam too? Would you do that? Of course not! You actually do not believe in presenting both sides. You just don’t want the negative side of Islam be presented. Period.

But we have a forum. Anyone can write whatever he wants and we never censor thoughts. Muslims are invited to join us in our forum and tell their side of the story. If we lie, they can tell the truth and truth always wins. Does any Islamic site allow that? I do not have to publish pro Islam articles. Islamic propaganda is readily available on the net. What is not so readily available are articles exposing the fallacies of Islam! Faithfreedom.org is filling that gap. There are other anti Islam sites too, but unfortunately they are either pro-other religions or hate sites against the Muslims. Our site does not promote any religion or ideology and is free of racially motivated hate talk.

Why don’t you join our forum? You imply that we are not presenting the other side of the sotry. Well that is your job. Who better than a Muslim to speak for Islam? Would I be a credible advocate for Islam? But you can defend Islam. Come to our forum and tell us why you think we are wrong. I promised that should anyone prove our claims against Muhammad and Islam wrong; I will remove this site not before acknowledging publicly that I was wrong and Islam is true. Now would you accept this challenge? What else I can do? You see? It is not me who lacks sincerity. If you think we do not present all the facts, show the facts that we are hiding. Let the world know the truth. But if you avoid coming forth, isn’t it fair to assume that you have no facts? Isn’t it fair to assume that Muslims have lost in this debate and the only reason they expanded was through violence, deceit, wars and coercions? Isn’t it fair to say that Muslims perpetuate their religion through tunnel vision and brainwashing?

This debate continues in the forum