Islam is usually described as a monotheistic religion of peace and human equality. While the "religion of peace" theory has been lambasted and exposed for the lie that it is, it is the stressing of human equality that hasn't received as much attention. Far from being a religion of human equality, Islam is perhaps the most blatantly racist and misogynistic "religion" in human history.

Sadly, it is this image of Islam that seduces new converts in the Western world and across Asia and Africa. While the latter seek emancipation from long-standing divisions and discrimination of a racial, regional, socio-economic and tribal nature, most Westerners readily hail Islam as the most prominent movement of human equality in the East. Originating in an exotic and mystical part of the world, it is seen as cleaner than the Western equivalent, which is tainted as hypocritical given the extensive history of Western nations practicing racism, slavery and colonialism. Many Westerners do not oppose the violent nature of Islam, which is seen as a tool to cleanse societies of resistance to the "religion of equality." Even the most hardcore Islamists such as Dr. Israr Ahmad of Pakistan's Tanzeem-e-Islami appear like straight-talking "men of peace" when they stress the equality of human beings (and not "peace") as Islam's primary requirement. Peace is a quantity attained when a person and a community submits to Allah - resistance to Islam is thus to be eradicated, so that the "Ummah" may attain peace through submission. This explains the pampering of Muslims and the comparative lack of opposition to Islamic terrorism in guilt-ridden European nations, as opposed to the self-built, anti-colonial consciousness of Americans.

To completely tear down this deception, it is important to point out the following:

1.  Misogyny in the Qur'an and Shariat - the Holy scripture, the direct word and law of Almighty Allah decrees that:

• women are half as intelligent as any man,
• in inheritance and economic rights, women are to receive only half of what a man may claim,
• a man may obain a divorce by saying the word thrice in the presence of witnesses,
• the testimony of a man is worth that of two women,
• if a woman charges a man of rape, she must provide four male witnesses to substantiate the claim; or else the woman is to be severely punished.

Quran'ic verses exempt one's female slaves from the injunction of fair treatment and protection - to heinous consequences.

So why are women like Yvonne Ridley and Karen Armstrong attracted to Islam? Yvonne Ridley is most likely the victim of the Stockholm syndrome - sympathy and attachment to her Afghan kidnappers. Given that most of woman-kind was inhibited for all but the last 50 years, it is not hard to imagine why most of woman-kind is still find it easier to play the conventional role. Ever been in the dating world? Many women are genuinely threatened by the sexual freedom of other women and uncomfortable with the self-assertive independence of modern women. Many women also appreciate the dominating or forceful courtship of men. Submission to Almighty Allah in order to enjoy a pious, peaceful and stable personal life and the protection of wider society and men is appealing to many women. While many Muslim women protest personal abuse and legal discrimination, very few go to the extent of revoking their submission to Allah. It is easy to rebel against a mere man - not so in the case of the divine. Fulfillment to many women is a stable and secure family life, and not necessarily personal wealth and accomplishment.

2.  Diminishing human beings and slavery in the Qur'an - all non-Muslims are officially branded "Najis" (filthy, untouchable) and described as monkeys, apes, deceivers and war-mongers. The Qur'an (and Shariat, Hadiths) prescribe in explicit verses the enslavement, humiliation and exploitation of non-Muslims as "Dhimmis" forced to pay "Jaziya."

While slavery has always existed in all socieies, systematic, racial slavery was introduced to Africa by Arab merchants and conquerors more than 3,000 years before the Europeans got round to it. The introduction of Islam did not diminish this, but intensified it more than ever, giving it the power of religion and divine justification. The Islamic conquest of North Africa, Persia, India and Central Asia led to the enslavement of millions, who remained in bondage despite the conversion of many to Islam. African slaves were dragged away from their homes to faraway lands, living in perpetual servitude to Muslim masters. The few notable examples of emancipation after conversion to Islam are hollow, as the freedmen retained their inferior status of servitude owing to their conquered status, lack of belonging in any native tribe or family, foreign color and lack of social or economic status. Most filled the ranks of the servants or militias; some were touted as adopted sons, but they remained servants to their adoptive fathers and his biological family and never considered progenitators of the family line. Islamic conquerors such as Timur, Mahmud of Ghazni, Mohammed of Ghor and Nadir Shah killed millions of non-Muslims (and even Muslims), raped millions of women, destroyed hundreds of cities and dragged away with them as bounty, hundreds of thousands of captives. As a gift to the Holy Caliph, the first Muslim conqueror of India, the 19-year old Mohammed bin Qasim sent three virgin princesses of a conquered kingdom to serve as concubines - misogyny and sexual slavery combined. Freshly converted African Muslims were lured away to Arabia on the pretext of performing the prescribed pilgrimage of "Hajj" or "Umrah," only to end up being sold into slavery upon their arrival, never to see their families and homes again. The converted rulers of African kingdoms were encouraged to supply their Arab patrons with fresh slaves, Muslims and those who resisted conversion. The tradition of systematic, approved slavery that began with the Islamic states of North and West Africa culminated with these very states offering the same "goods" to newly-arrived and wealthy European merchants and colonists. Islamic states in Africa such as Egypt, Morocco, the Hausa states, Sudan and the Sukoto caliphate supplied millions of slaves over time to both Muslim Arabia and the Western colonial powers.

3.  Racial extermination in Islam - the Qur'an describes Arabic as the divine, purest language ever; the Arab prophet is considered the greatest man of all, to be emulated by all Muslims; Muslims in the four corners of the world must turn to the Arab cities of Mecca and Medina to offer prayers and must visit either city at least once in a lifetime, and donate money as religious charity there. Arabs take claim as the first and foremost Muslims, the owners of Islam and leaders of all Muslims - why? Not only because Allah revealed this religion to an Arab, claimed ancient Semitic myths and heroes such as Abraham to have lived in Arabia and established his holiest cities in Arabia (superseding Jerusalem), but revealed as his Holy word, Holy law and religion the many existing laws, social practices, culture and language of pre-Islamic Arabs, thus effectively saying that Arabs practiced much of Islam even before Mohammed (as opposed to the criticized "People of the Book," who corrupted Allah's message).

When the Muslims conquered Africa, the indigenous civilizations that had previously thrived in Egypt, Nubia (southern Egypt and Sudan), Carthage (modern Libya, Tunisia and Algeria) and Mali were exterminated - literally. Not the language, not the cultures nor the inhabitants escaped the fury of Islam - indigenous peoples and tribes were slaughtered by the millions, displaced and pushed to the south. The traveller and chronicler of Islamic history, Ibn Battuta documents the extensive racism prevalent not only against Africans, but also Indians and Persians - Muslims! Arabic, Arab culture and the Arab race became "native" to North and West Africa. It is not necessary to mention the continuing racial extermination continuing today in Africa - the Sudan Darfur crisis.

Islamic racial extermination has extended in different ways: being the "purest" language, Arabic has taken over the scripts, grammar and vocabulary of Farsi, Pashto, Shahmukhi Punjabi (in Pakistan), Kashmiri, Sindhi (in Pakistan), Balochi, Turkish and Urdu. Attempts to "Islamize" the Bengali language led to major protests and the eventual secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971 (not to mention the racial genocide perpetrated by the Pakistani army and Islamic militias in the name of the Islamic nation, killing an estimated - and disputed - 1 million people). A prominent example of a racial and religious genocide perpetrated by Muslims is the massacre of millions of Armenians by the Caliphate of Islam, the Ottoman empire.

Racial "neurosis" has gripped the peoples of Pakistan and other Islamic nations, as documented by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul in his work Beyond Belief: Amongst the Converted Peoples, with many Pakistani families and tribes claiming to be descendants of Arab and Central Asian warriors as opposed to acknowleding the truth - that they are descendants of the filthy, "naji," polytheist Hindus and Buddhists. Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian Islamists such as the Jamaat-e-Islami party seek to adopt Arabic as their common language.

4.  "Divide and Rule" is a common strategy employed by Muslims across the world to overwhelm non-Muslim societies and nations, as is evidenced in Lebanon, Cyprus, Ivory Coast, India, Macedonia, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Iraq, Bosnia, Bangladesh, Israel, Kosovo, Thailand, Sudan, Burma, Nigeria, Chechnya, Indonesia and Pakistan.

More than 20,000 Bosnian Muslims joined the Nazi German Army, upon the prompting of the Mufti of Jerusalem (an Arab) Haji Amin al-Husseini - with the specific purpose of helping in the extermination of entire Jewish populations. What prompted the Muslims of Bosnia, who lived alongside Serbs, Croats and others to do this? One may be tempted to argue that the rivalry between Balkan states and the Ottomans was responsible, but why then should the Muslims side with a racist European regime to specifically target Jews? What, pray, did the Jews of Poland, Hungary, France, Germany and Russia do to the Bosnian Muslims? For that matter, what exactly did the Jews of Palestine do to the Bosnians?

The classic example of the division of India in 1947 is even more ridiculous. For a thousand years, Muslim regimes massacred tens of millions of Hindus, destroyed thousands of temples and towns and exterminated Buddhism from India. Under British rule and the fall of the last Muslim regimes, the Muslims (who composed of approximately 25% of the population) sought an over-inflated one-third reservation in legislatures and government services, including separate electorates - that Muslims would vote separately for a separate set of candidates than the Hindus. All this inspite of the fact that not any Indian political party (not even the Hindu Mahasabha) had adopted any proposal against the interests and freedom of Muslims. The Indian National Congress went as far as to guarantee secularism and even accept the system of communal electorates and reservations in 1916.

When it came to the struggle against Britsh rule, the Muslims refused to co-operate with the Indian nationalists - the first mass agitation launched by Muslims was the Khilafat movement - to preserve the throne of the Sultan of Turkey, the Caliph of Islam. It was clear that the Muslims did not care about their country, were over-obsessed with religion to the extent of agitating for a foreign king while their own country was mired in slavery and seeking over-inflated and un-democratic representation to wedge against the Hindus, who formed the democratic majority. To add to the ridiculous - Muslims demanded the separation of Muslim Sindh from the Hindu-majority Bombay province, while insisting that the Punjab and Bengal not be divided to preserve Muslim-majority rule. Well, what do you expect when the Muslims spent the thousand year presence of their religion in India in killing Hindus and destroying Hinduism?

When it became apparent that the Congress would not cave to Muslim demands (which it correctly identified as separatist, un-democratic, over-inflated and "un-equal" in respect to India's Hindus, Sikhs and Christians), the Muslims sought the division of the country. In this process, the Muslims literally wrecked the first-ever democratic national government in Indian history and sought 50-50 representation in the Indian government. Upon the formation of their "Pakistan" - "Land of the Pure" - a clear insult to the filthy, untouchable "najis," as Dr. Ali Sina and V. S. Naipaul point out; after all, what is the difference between the Punjabis of Pakistan and India, the Sindhis of Pakistan and India? Only Islam, right? It is not enough, however, given the discrimination and violence against Muslim migrants to Pakistan from the Indian heartland, called "Mohajirs." The government and religious militias began a systematic process of exterminating Hinduism - destroying temples, forcibly converting Hindus and Sikhs to Islam, killing those who refused and driving out large communities. While modern Pakistan was successfully purged, the state of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) underwent repeated processes of anti-Hindu exodus and massacre in 1947-50, 1970-71 and continuing today - millions of Hindus have been forced to seek refuge in India - the refugees in India during the Bangladesh Liberation War consisted almost entirely of Hindus. Even today, Bangladesh retains the draconian Pakistan-era law decreeing the properties of Hindus as "Enemy Properties" and denying them legal protection and economic rights. In the past decade, the Islamization of Bangladesh has led to the forced conversion, deaths and displacement of millions of Hindus, as evidenced from the decline of the Hindu proportion in the population from 10-15% to 7%. Not even the so-called secular Awami League (which sought an alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami in the early 1990s) has lifted a finger to protect Hindus.

Today, Muslim insurgencies (revolving around the demand for Muslim supreme rule and Shariat) have wrecked dozens of nations across Asia and Africa - do you suppose this is due to any reason apart from Islam? How else could such insurgencies, revolving around the exact same demands occur in different parts of the world with radically different situations, cultures and peoples? The killing of black Muslims and Christians in the Sudan is similar to the extermination of Hindus, Ahmadis and Balochis in Pakistan; the conquest of Afghanistan by the Taliban is identical to the campaign of the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. Peoples of the same ethnicity, same language, cultures and economy who have lived side-by-side for thousands of years, are being torn apart by Islamic theology and the need for Muslim rule ("Dar-al-Islam") and Shariat. The Lebanese Civil War was about Islam - the people are fairly racially and ethnically homogenous. Despite Islam's supposed emphasis on equality, it did not stop Muslims from introducing systematic hatred and oppression against their fellow men.

Where is the equality in demanding over-inflated Muslim control in non-Muslim lands. What is this draconian insistence on separation from non-Muslims, if human equality is the norm for Islam? Even if you argue that equality applies to those who have accepted Islam, the argument is sharply hollow - what, pray, did the black Muslims of Darfur do to suddenly become victims of extermination? Why did the Bengali Muslims suffer the brutality of their West Pakistani brethren? Why were Balochi Muslims massacred in the 1970s by the all-Muslim Pakistan army? Why did the Pashtun, Punjabi and Sindhi Muslims feel any need to gang up against their Mohajir brethren? Why are Pashtuns being imported from Afghanistan to overwhelm the Balochi and Kashmiri populations in their own lands? Why is their a vicious and bloody rivalry between the Shias, Sunnis and Ahmadi branches of Islam, to the point of systematic discrimination and subjugation, massacres, destruction of holy mosques in places like Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (the guardian of Islam) and other Muslim nations? What did the Kurdish Muslims do to deserve the brutal attack of Iraqi and Turkish Muslims? Why are the Ahmadi Muslims, who are Muslim in every way, shape and form except in their faith in Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, had worked for the Khilafat and Pakistan agitations and embraced the evil traditions of Islam, today considered officially "non-Muslims" and enemies of Islam? Even this harsh treatment and the killing of thousands of Ahmadis is not enough for these blind peoples to awaken from the tyranny of Islam and assert their self-respect. No, they are continually agitating for their inclusion in this Satanic cult, to be identified as the same people who perpetrated massacres, hatred and oppression against them.

The religious leadership of Islam and the Islamic saints leading the religious political parties such as the Jamaat-e-Islami has openly decreed Muslims living in non-Muslim lands as "najis" and polytheists by association - thus, their lives and freedom are as worthless as the non-Muslims, who are targeted for extermination. No tears will be shed over the loss of Muslim life in places like India, Thailand, China, Russia or the Philippines.

The Beslan tragedy is the most horrific modern expose of Islam's evils and the lie of its focus on human equality - not even innocent, harmless children, most of whom don't know what religion or politics means, were spared of Islamic brutality. Not the children in Iran, who are Iranian in every racial, ethnic and national sense of the term, were spared of segregation and humiliation in schools and community activities - why? They happened to be Baha'i - followers of a peaceful, tolerant faith whose only crime is that it seeks to combine Islam with other religions to stress universal equality of religions. It can be guaranteed that none of those Baha'i children actually understand the theme of religion, let alone the difference between Islam and Baha'ism.

The evil of Islam is tremendous and dangerous - it has torn apart families, communities and nations; led people to destroy their own culture and history in favor of an alien one and commit atrocities against people for no justifiable reason whatsoever. Even if a person or community adopts Islam, it is given no "equality," nor spared of the institutions of slavery, racial discrimination and religious violence.

Here is the fabric of Islamic equality -

(1) Half of humankind is disqualified from socio-economic or religious equality, dignity or respect - the women who give birth and are mothers, daughters and sisters.

(2) No non-Muslim is to be considered anything more than a disease-spreading bacteria or virus - to be cleansed and destroyed.

(3) Enslavement of people, including Muslims is to be practiced without hesitation.

(4) The killing of people who obey the Qur'an, the Shariat and worship Allah, Mohammed and the Kaaba is justified, as can be seen in Iraq, Sudan and Pakistan.

(5) The ripping apart of families, communities and nations to enforce the literal Shariat and the superiority of Allah-worshipping Muslims is justified.

The consequence of this reality is the inevitable destruction of Islam - even if Islam succeeds in becoming the only dominant religion, what is there to stop this cycle of destruction and oppression? Once they eliminate non-Muslims, they will turn to the Shia-Sunni conflict (which is on-going as it is), then comes the racial element, with the Islamic leaders seeking to exterminate all cultures, languages and traditions but the "pure" Arabic ones, as literally decreed by Allah, his prophet and Islam. If at all they succeed to this point, then will begin the termination of rival Arab tribes - not surprising, given that Arab-only conflicts like Iraq-Kuwait, Iraq-Saudi Arabia, Hamas-Fatah have wrecked havoc in the last 15 years alone.

Given that Hindu society is working hard to rid itself of caste-based discrimination, that Western Christians are accepting bishops, priests and even possible Popes of Eastern European, African and Asian descent, that Christian churches are steadily becoming more tolerant of homosexuality, that Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs have found a common conscience and sense of brotherhood - why is it that Islam has never ever sought to reform itself? Why is this supposed teaching of equality never invoked to stop these horrific crimes?

It is not possible to overrule the direct words and law of Allah, as revealed by Allah himself through his prophet. If you do so, you will automatically terminate Islam and consign the Qur'an to the trashbin. This will happen eventually anyway. At some point or another, the cascading and perpetual cycle of darkness will force the human mind to rebel and seek the liberating light of peace and freedom. No amount of submission to Allah or anyone else will lead to the peace that we crave - let's hope we realize this sooner rather than later.