Introduction

Throughout the Islamic history there have been people who were better off with Islam, or even owe their living to it, but most Muslims would do better without their religion. People like Qaradawi, Zaghloul Najjar and Zakir Naik and thousands of others would have no place in a productive secular society. Had such people existed seventy years earlier, they would have enjoyed nothing of the fame and luxuries they enjoy today.

I know very well how difficult it is to make that giant leap from Islam into enlightenment. This is especially true for those who were indoctrinated from an early age and grow up with minds conditioned to suspend rational thinking once it doesn’t fit with their indoctrination. Sadly, once the brain is matured and the hard-wiring is complete, it takes an immense  amount of intellect to undo such wiring.

However, leaving Islam should be easier for certain groups of people who, logically, should have never felt comfortable in a religion that constantly triggers painful feelings hammering their pride, intelligence and ego.

The Jewish Muslims

Yes, there are Jews who convert to Islam! I know this is beyond anyone’s comprehension, but it is true. They voluntarily choose to believe in an ideology that calls for their extinction and describes them as the descendants of pigs and apes. Some of the Jewish converts do not only feel comfortable with the prospect of annihilating their race but they can’t wait for it to happen.

There are some ‘non-Muslim’ Jews who are sympathetic to Islam and to Muslims’ cause; I did notice a few times that the ‘liberal’ people who stepped forward to defend Islam were actually Jews. When it comes to criticizing Islam, I am told the Israeli media has a politically correct culture which is not very different from that in the West.

I don’t believe Einstein was a Jew!

The Ahmadiyya Muslims

The Ahmadiyya is a new sect of Islam that appeared only over a century ago. In the West, they live in peace and harmony with the Christians, Jews and other religious groups, but not with Muslims. Of course, they cannot enjoy peaceful living in Muslim countries, where they are rejected, attacked and killed. Also, their homes and houses of worship are attacked, burned and destroyed. Wherever Islam is in control, Ahmadis are persecuted.

I honestly don’t know what keeps these people in Islam. I don’t know why they want to belong to the people who reject and persecute them. In the West, they are very active defendants and propagators of Islam, the religion behind their persecution, which they describe as tolerant and peaceful.  Their founder promoted a pacifist Islam that is contrary to the way Muhammad lived and prospered. Why those people still want to call themselves Muslims is beyond rational explanation.

Muslim Women

It is often claimed that Islam honored women, which is not true. This claim is based on the fact that women are not required to work in Islam because their husbands or male relatives have the duty of supporting them. This is exactly the view held in the dark ages. In Muslim societies, women may work harder at home than their husbands do at work, but their work is not even recognized. Of course, Muslim men do not do any work at home.

It is also claimed that women’s status in Islam was improved compared to pre-Islamic Arabia because the number of wives a man can have is limited to only four. This is just laughable; is it good for a woman to be part of four wives?

We know that women were not treated fairly even by nations with major civilizations. It is understandable for ancient societies to have their own, albeit backward, traditions. But we live in the twenty first century and nations around the world reviewed their old traditions and refined them to meet the acquired sophistication and intellectual achievements, which is why women have equal rights to men. This development was not possible with Islam, which maintained the bad traditions it inherited and stamped them with a religious seal so they can never be changed. And there we are, fourteen hundreds years on, and we still believe that women are inferior to men in wisdom, inheritance rights, social rights and political rights.

The Quran is a book written by men for men; it offers nothing to women. Apart from a couple of verses which address Mohammed’s wives, there are no verses at all that address ordinary Muslim women. The Quran actually referred to women, not as part of mankind, but as part of humans’ possessions, such as gold, silver and cattle (1).

Islam authorizes men to discipline and beat their wives for the mere suspicion of disobedience, and, if desired, to divorce them at the drop of a hat. It used sexual temptation, such as unlimited number of sex partners, as a recruitment tool for men to join Mohammed. Islam teaches that a man has the right to have sex on demand without any consideration to his wife’s willingness, and her refusal will open the gates of hell for her as the angels will curse her all night long. Islam is too generous to men; it spoils them in this life and the after-life. On the other hand, a woman’s fate, in this life and the after-life, is dependent on her husband’s happiness through her abilities to please him.

Mohammed said that women are deficient in both intelligence and Islamic religion. Of course, he meant Muslim women because other women have no religion at all. Does that explain it?

Non-Arab Muslims

Non-Arab Muslims tend to be more fanatic to Islam than the Arabs and more difficult to reason with even in matters that require Arabic knowledge. This can be difficult to understand especially that they are not supposed to be Muslims at all. According to the Quran, Allah made two promises to non-Arabs:

The first promise: No nation will be punished until they receive a prophet,

Q.17:15

“…And never would We punish until We sent a messenger.

The second promise: Every prophet will speak to his nation in their own language.

Q.14:4

And We did not send any messenger except [speaking] in the language of his people to state clearly for them…”

It is evident from the above two verses that Non Arab Muslims should take it easy and wait for their own prophets, who will speak to them and explain the details of their religion in their own languages. Besides, they have nothing to fear because of the above divine promise that they will not be punished. Some may argue that there are other verses that say otherwise which only proves that the Quran contradicts itself, therefore, not worth paying attention to.

There is an abundance of evidence that Islam is racially biased favoring the Arabs. There is no shortage of verses and hadiths that proudly say Mohammed was an Arab and the Quran is in Arabic. Muslims claim that Mohammed was oppressed and persecuted by the Meccan Arabs. They also claim that the Meccan Arabs waged wars against him when he was in Medina. After the siege of the Trench in 627 AD, Mohammed had ‘suspicion’ that the Banu Qurayza Jews collaborated with his Arab enemies. Based on that ‘suspicion’, Mohammed literally committed genocide against the Banu Qurayza. On the other hand, after conquering Mecca, he pardoned all the Arabs who actually carried out the siege and fought against him in other wars. The difference between Mohammed’s reaction to the suspected plot and the confirmed hostility speaks volumes. Mohammed was racially biased not only to the Arabs but also to his own clan, the ‘Quraysh'. He preferred the ‘Muhajeroon’ (immigrants to Medina), who all came from his own tribe, to the ‘Ansar'(Medina locals who became Muslims), who supported and welcomed him with open arms  in their city. After Muhammad’s death, all the Caliphs until the fall of the Abassid dynasty were from ‘Quraysh'; the ‘Ansar' disappeared completely from history.

For Non Arabs, the reality is that once they accept Islam, they also accept to be secondary to the Arabs and dependent on them. Practicing Islam requires a thorough knowledge of the Arabs’ language, history and culture, which only the Arabs can do. The only way to avoid being so dependent on the Arabs is to be exact copies of them. Indeed, many nations in the fertile crescent (greater Syria and Iraq) did just that with the result that they became “copy Arabs” and lost their original identities.

Islam puts the Arabs in the leading position all the time, just because they are Arabs, and they can speak the Arabic language. Non Arabs didn’t benefit at all from Islam. On the contrary they lost a great deal. The Persians, for example, traded one of the world’s greatest civilizations for Islam. Non-Arabs often say they are Muslims because they are convinced of Islam, which is a delusion. It is not possible for a person, whose first language is not Arabic, to read a few verses of the Quran and claim they are so powerful and must be divine. Such an assertive conclusion requires a thorough knowledge of the Arabic language, which most of the non-Arabs do not have. Non-Arabs can’t admit to the uncomfortable reality that they believe in Islam, not because they are convinced, but because they take the Arabs’ word for it.

The Quran’s Language was Mohammed’s language, as spoken by his tribe in Mecca. As Islam spread to distant tribes of Arabia, who spoke different dialects, the tribal Arabs felt offended to be required to read the Quran in another tribe’s dialect. With no hesitation at all, Mohammed allowed each tribe to read the Quran in its own dialect. But that flexibility was a privilege only to the Arabs, and it didn’t extend to other nations, who must learn a completely different language in order to practice their religion.

Black Muslims

It is a disgrace that many blacks choose to be Muslims. My question to them is: has there ever been a black person in a respectable position in Islam? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

The only black person worth mentioning in Islamic history was Bilal, who was a slave. He was one of the ‘firsts’ (sabiqoon), or the early converts to Islam (the handful who converted to Islam in Mecca). Allegedly, he was the person who paid the heaviest price for his conversion as he was tortured badly by his master in Mecca, until Abu Bakr bought him and set him free. Bilal’s role in Islam was limited to the call for prayers (azan) because of his voice; other than that he was given no other responsibilities despite being one of the firsts and his record of endurance for the sake of Islam.

The Arabic word for slave is “abd”, which is rarely pronounced on its own but attached to the word “aswad" meaning black thereby linking slavery with the blacks. Pre-Islamic Arabia had a sizeable black population who served as slaves, something that continued in Islam. White slaves were usually enslaved after wars and were treated better than black slaves. According to his Sira (biography), Mohammed once traded two of his black slaves for a white one, which suggests that a black slave had only half the value of the white. The white slaves were referred to as ‘Mamluk’, meaning owned. In Egypt, the Mamluks became powerful enough to seize power and controlled   Egypt for centuries. It is not uncommon for the Arabs to describe a black person as “abd”, even though he may not be a slave, in which case the word is used to mean black.

Slavery boomed in Islam thanks to Mohammed’s frequent wars. It is a common misunderstanding that Islam encouraged Muslims to set free as many slaves as possible. There are verses in the Quran that specify spending money or freeing slaves as penalties (called kaffara) for minor sins. Slaves were used in ‘kaffara' because they have monetary value in them, just like other possessions. It is wrong to understand from those verses that Islam encourages Muslims to end slavery just as it is wrong to understand from them that Islam encourages Muslims to stop earning money. Mohammed had many slaves in his collection when he died, so did the four rightly guided caliphs and his companions (Sahaba).

It is sad to say that after their African conquests, Muslims abused black population by taking millions of them as slaves. The role played by Muslims in facilitating the trade slave across the Atlantic is well known. It is estimated that two million black African slaves were transported from Africa to Islamic countries in the nineteenth century alone, with further eight millions perished in the process (2). Black slaves were considered sub-humans and were castrated to stop them from reproduction. Slavery is still practiced in parts of Africa, like Mauritania, despite it was made a criminal offence in 2007, but no one has been sentenced.

Slavery is endemic in the Arab Gulf’s culture. It was officially banned in the 1960s (because of outside pressure), but continued to exist in various forms after that. In the Gulf, Arab families do not function without the services provided by multiple servants of modern slavery. They live in an area attached to the house so they are available for work 24/7.

Muslims’ treatment of black Africans amounts to centuries of systematic exploitation and genocide. It is a disgrace that no Islamic leader or institution has ever apologized for those appalling crimes against humanity. This is in line with the Muslims mentality that Muslims can never be wrong, but others can. Turkey still won't acknowledge the Armenian genocide, let alone apologize for it.

The Palestinians

The Palestinians’ plight is because of religion, and Islam fails them badly as it misleads them and  sides with their enemy.

As far as the Palestinians know, they have always been in Palestine, a land they inherited from their fathers and grandfathers. The Jews claim the land is theirs even though their ancestors have been in and out because of wars. The Jews were oppressed throughout history by many nations but not by Palestinians. Displacing the Palestinians on the basis of such a historical claim is not fair. It makes more sense if the Jews claim Medina, or even the Hijaz area, where their ancestors lived until they were butchered, enslaved and driven out by Muslims who still occupy that land. Muslims still feel proud of those atrocities, they never apologized for them and have no intention to ever do.

However, the Jewish real motivation is religiously based. They claim they have God-given rights in Palestine, and they produce the Torah as evidence. They also secured similar rights from the colonial powers who flooded the country with European Jewish immigrants. The Palestinians, most of whom have become Muslims, reject the Jewish claim because they believe the Torah is corrupt. Unfortunately for them, their religion lets them down badly because the Quran also seems to agree with the Jewish claim (3). To make matters worse, Islam demands that Palestinians fight the Jews until trees and stones speak that there are Jews hiding behind them. In other words, Islam wants the Palestinians to fight the Jews forever without giving them rights in Palestine.

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References:

1)    Q.3:14 Beautified for people is the love of that which they desire - of women and sons, heaped-up sums of gold and silver, fine branded horses, and cattle and tilled land. That is the enjoyment of worldly life, but Allah has with Him the best return.

2) M A Khan (2009)Islamic Jihad, A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism and Slavery,   p287

i universe, NewYork

3)    Q.5:21. "O my people! Enter the holy land (Palestine) which Allâh has assigned to you, and turn not back (in flight) for then you will be returned as losers."

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