Why believe in Allah?

Having just returned from a working holiday to Bordeaux, I thought I'd prolong the Gallic atmosphere here at Rational Islam? by looking at some French Islamic sites. And my goodness, what a depressing lot they are.

Admittedly, whether they be French, British, Malaysian or Saudi ... the reasons given for believing that Allah is our Creator and the Qur'an His last testament to humanity always tend to be depressingly similar since the 1980s. No surprise there, I suppose. But just once, wouldn't it be refreshing to read about someone who has made up their own mind for their own reasons instead of trotting out the same old nonsense? How genuine a faith can it be, for example, when you have to ask other people for reasons why God exists?
Here, for example, is a site where visitors are asked to help with the following request:

Mes frères et soeurs je viens à vous car j'aimerai expliquer à un athée le fait que dieu tout puissant existe je suis musulmane dieu merci. (Brothers and sisters, I'm here because I'd like to explain to an atheist the fact that God the all powerful exists ... I am a Muslim, thanks to God.)

The most popular answer lists, inter alia, three reasons - those ubiquitous "proofs"  relied upon by those unwilling, for whatever reason, to research for themselves and thus discover they have been systematically lied to to keep them from leaving Islam.

Let's examine them quickly and try to dispense with each one as simply as possible:

1) Les miracles scientifiques du Coran (The scientific miracles in the Qur'an): 
Boll*cks. (Too simple - ed) Yes, I know - but I get so angry seeing the same mendacious drivel trotted out.There is not a single scientific fact contained in the Qur'an not known to humanity at the time Muhammad wrote the Qur'an. These claims of miraculous science can all be traced back to The Commission on Scientific Signs - a Saudi initiative set up by a mullah three sandwiches short of a picnic in the 1980s. Anyone mentioning "scientific miracles" has fallen for the Saudi bulls*t and forfeits all rights to be taken seriously. Please see the group calling themselves the iERA for further evidence. The irony is, of course, that traditional Muslims get as frustrated as the rest of us with the lies spread by these characters.  As the the Ottoman scholar Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, famously said: The Qur'an is not a science book, and so does not need to dwell on cosmological matters.

2) Le grand défi de produire un seul chapitre semblable aux chapitres du Coran (The challenge to produce a single surah like one in the Qur'an) 
Meaningless. Think about it for just one second. The challenge itself is one of the strongest indicators of fallible, human authorship. No-one can dance like me, for example. (Believe me, ask Mrs Spinoza...) Does that make my inimitable boogieing divine? I'd like to think so, but I'd be hard pressed to expect my followers to swallow it. I used the analogy of pizza baking last time I examined this claim. Put more simply still: Write me a play like Shakespeare, why don't you. Can't? Oops...

3) Les prophéties bibliques concernant la venue de Mohammed (The Biblical prophecies concerning the coming of Muhammad)
There are none. This lie requires all sorts of linguistic gymnastics which even my convert friend seems to have given up on...A good example of these contortions is the claim that Jesse is really Ishmael. Here's a post I did a while back on that one. And this is how I concluded: 

To summarise then: we have the Judeo-Christian Biblical tradition established for millennia which maintains that a direct descendant of King David will be the Messiah. We have Jesse whom no one can dispute is the father of King David.  And we have a verse which states a great prophet will be "a shoot out of the root of Jesse". The verses referring to the root of Jesse also include numerous references to Israel and the Jewish nation. And Muslims maintain this verse, by a strange contraction of the name (why use such a bizarre contraction in a prophesy anyway?) using a discredited method of a follower of the Bahá'í Faith from a century ago, refers to Mohammad. How can people believe this utter nonsense?

I just hope the atheist mentioned by the French poster was able to explain to his Muslim friend that none of her supposed proofs held water.

"By all means believe what you will", he might have said, "but don't rely upon others to convince you that your delusions are real. At least have the energy and curiosity to think things through for yourself."

And finally, whilst we're in a francophone state of mind, here's a superb article by a young female French speaking Arab apostate explaining her lack of belief and why she came to France: Apostasie: moi, arabe et athée.

Compare the lucid and intelligent reasoning of this young woman to the confused gullibilty of those posting answers on the French Islamic site. Are they much different, after all, to Tom Cruise explaining his "devotion" on Oprah's couch? 

What if...

Those darned questions that keep Western revert to Islam, Charlie "Muhammad" Brown, awake at night...
What if the Creator is a kind-hearted, intelligent liberal?
What if He actually approves of people being allowed to find love in any way they choose as long as it harms no-one else?
What if He found the idea of a "chosen people" laughable?
What if He disapproves of treating the sexes differently?
What if He thought women in a marriage had just as much right to make the decisions as men?
What if He thought the idea of leaving scientific clues to his omniscience in a book just a little bit beneath him?
What if He asks why I believed everything I read instead of using my intelligence to question?
What if He thinks blind faith is just plain stupid?
Oh good grief! What if He is a WOMAN?

Oh the Shiites hate the Sunnis, and the Sunnis hate the Shiites...

...and everyone hates the Jews! (with apologies to Tom Lehrer)

Do any Muslims ever consider, I wonder, the likelihood of an omniscient, omnipotent and beneficent Creator allowing his worshipers to descend into the sort of murderous sectarian anarchy which is engulfing more and more of the Islamic world at the moment? 

If God is indeed all-knowing, all-powerful and loves his creation so much that he spent twenty odd years dictating the minutiae of how to be a good Muslim to a chap in the desert, and then sent armies of angels to ensure unlikely battles were won against the unbelievers to lead to massive world-wide expansion (deep breath)...  is it really too much to also expect Him to have sorted out who was going to ensure the peaceful continuation of the faith after the demise of his prophet? Really? I mean why take such a close, some might say obsessive, interest in the spread of the "one true faith" only to to suddenly abandon His responsibility?

I mean...Come on, God... for f*ck's sake! - Can't you get a grip on your lunatic followers?

I'm not for one moment claiming Christians have been any better. Those of us living in the peaceful West must be grateful we weren't around for our own bloody sectarian nightmares between the Protestants and the Catholics but at least we (well most of us) have got beyond the atavistic tendency to want to burn, torture or generally give a pretty hard time to our neighbour just because he or she believes in a different version of a merciful, loving creator.
In fact, thank Evolution, most of us in the West have now abandoned completely the notion of one particular sky fairy looking out for our welfare because we believe in him.
What a tragedy that for such a large proportion of mankind the nightmare is still a reality.

Woolwich attacks - false flag ... again

It will come as no surprise, but is no less sickening for all that... we are beginning to see the inevitable.
We saw it, after all, with 9/11. We saw it with 7/7.
My convert friend refuses to accept either atrocity was carried out by those following his faith. It was western governments, security forces and of course....the JEWS!
There are claims now emerging that Woolwich was a false flag operation.
On the anti-Semite site run by bonkers Canadian professor Michel Chossudovsky called rather grandly Global Research we see this:

Woolwich London Killing: Terrorism or False Flag?

Chossudovsky, by the way, has been described in various quarters as one of "Canada's nuttiest professors, those whose absurdity stands head and shoulders above their colleagues" link

The article has this to say about the recent events. Look away now if you are easily offended by rank stupidity.

These type incidents automatically raise questions. Answers are needed before jumping to conclusions. The timing of Wednesday’s killing is very suspicious.
COBRA refers to the room where committee members meet – Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. A terrorist alert was imposed. Heightened security steps were taken.
These measures don’t commonly follow street killings. It doesn’t matter how gruesome. Most incidents get scant coverage. Many go unnoticed.

The article goes on to quote Peter Eyre, "a Middle East consultant, geopolitical analyst, investigative journalist, anti-war activist, and valued Progressive Radio News Hour guest."

“The gruesome scene of a decapitated actor with no police or paramedics at the scene and no blood,” he said.
The “offenders are shot by armed police who are in attendance in the background but the murder scene has not been secured!!”
Many awakened “to this amazing Shakespearean play that has unfolded in Woolwich, London where all the actors were so bad they would not even qualify for an interview as an extra in some third rate movie!! S)o much vivid violence and yet still no blood at the scene…why?”“(B)ecause the actors had not had time to splash it around before they filmed the scene.”“(I)t was however added later as the picture (in his article) shows…the blood is only on the pavement and not on the road!!”“(D)o you think they attempted to copy the Boston Bombing but somehow did not get it right?””

So, innocent Muslims were framed for 9/11. Innocent Muslims were framed for 7/7. Now innocent Muslims were framed for Woolwich.

Black is white. White is black. And I'm a small rodent called Gerald. 

Please wake me up when the nightmare is over.

Oxford abusers "attended the Mosque"

The Guardian today carries an interesting aside to the deeply disturbing story of the systematic grooming and abuse of vulnerable young girls in the town.

Across the Cowley Road the leaders of the Central Oxford mosque are equally horrified that men who attended prayers inside its doors – men who had wives and children and were well known in the community – could have been responsible.

In a previous post I suggested that religion rarely makes bad people do good things but can and does make good people do bad things. I took as my example of the latter the Boston bombers, the younger of whom (Dzhokhar Tsarnaev) had received a $2,500 scholarship from the city of Cambridge, Mass. and was hoping to become a dentist.

Now we have an horrific example of how religion fails to make bad people do good things or,more pertinently in this case, doesn't stop bad people doing some of the most evil things imaginable.

Bangladesh - Allah, take note...

Allah must be delighted with the news emerging from Bangladesh at the moment.
We know that God (whether He be the one found in the Jewish Bible, the New Testament or the Qur'an) is obsessed, above all else, with being given due recognition by mankind for His creation. We also know (because He never let's us forget it) that He is a jealous God; there is nothing worse in His book(s) than worshiping other gods, or shirk as it is known in Islam.
Now, in any country not labouring under the yoke of religious mania, the news that 585 of their fellow citizens had perished when a factory collapsed would have been greeted with outrage by the inhabitants. Especially when it became clear the reason for the collapse was the greed of the owners and the shameful turning of a million blind eyes belonging to westerners more interested in buying cheap jeans than in caring for the abused workforce who produced them.
And indeed there was outrage in Bangladesh the day after this appalling tragedy. There were street protests. There were howls of anguish and impassioned debate. Three people died and hundreds were injured.
But the poor deluded Bangladeshis chose not to come out on the streets in support of their fellow workers being abused by grasping bosses but - and I still find this difficult to believe even as I write - rather in support of a newly formed Islamist group demanding, inter alia, the death penalty for those who insult Islam.
If ever an illustration were needed of how religion warps the perspective of those whom it infects,  there it is in glowing red of the tyres set alight in the streets and the bestial howls of the crowd screaming: "One Point. One Demand: Atheists must be hanged!". If ever I need an answer to the question: Why are you running this blog -what do you have to fear from Islam or any religion? I shall simply ask in return why the pointless deaths of those factory workers was deemed less worthy of protest than the demands for the deaths of those who can't believe in the merciful god of Islam.

Lessons from the Boston bombers

Two articles in today's Sunday Times serve to illustrate why I continue to question my friend's conversion to an ideology that seems to me to be the antithesis of what humanity should be striving to achieve, namely leaving the world in tact and a better place for our children .

The first is an article by the Chairman of Quilliam, an organisation which has founded a youth movement in Pakistan to counter extremist ideas. Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist, imprisoned for his extreme views, looks at how the global jihadist movement has changed in the last ten years from the credo of a group to the "mission of an insurgency" seen across the Arab world and beyond. The central tenet of this shift from a local to a global struggle is that the jihadist's "people" stop being his neighbours or fellow nationals, and instead become brothers and sisters of the ummah. Hence the enemy become "non-Muslims", "the only war that of Islam versus the non-believer" and it becomes justifiable to strike America and her allies in any way because of their interference in countries which are on the brink of creating a state where the ummah can live as they wish. Thus we see young Chechens blowing legs off marathon runners in Boston not because they believe that it will free their countrymen from Russian hegemony, but because they were brainwashed in their local Mosque into believing that such actions would ultimately help the global struggle against the kuffar.

The second by Andrew Sullivan, very pertinently, tries too understand how and why the left refuses to see religion as the cause of the Boston bombings. It quotes Tsarnaev's uncle describing his nephew's shift to "extreme devotion": "I was shocked when I heard his words, his phrases, when every other word he starts sticking in words of God", and asks why commentators such as the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald should desperately search for some other motive (societal alienation, mental illness, instability) when "history is crammed with violence committed in the name of God". We have seen how Christianity can "become murderous": from the crusades to the religious conflicts of the 17th century when it was founded by a supposed peace loving prophet. Why is it so unlikely that a religion founded by an "explicitly political conqueror"  should be used by today's terrorists to justify their abominations? The tendency to take religion to its extreme, violent form is "not the exclusive province of any faith". But what we should understand here is that those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam are simply expressing a faith without doubt or humility. "It is past reason". It is, as Muslims love to tell us, total surrender, and it knows no restraint.
So why should we not believe Tsarnaev when he tells us his motives. He is, as Sullivan says, not crazy - just terrifyingly consistent.
He may be the exception. We know that most Muslims are peaceful and caring and love their families and hope for the same things we all do: a better world for their children. But it is also true, it seems to many of us, that Islam has a difficult problem with modernity. It cannot, like Christianity moderate doctrinally because the Qur'an is the uncreated word of God. It cannot be subjected to objective scholarly criticism or be re-interpreted in the light of scientific advance. Nor can it accept the existence of those who choose not to believe in one God or no God at all. And it is universal in its aims.

These, to me, are disturbing characteristics in isolation, but terrifying when put together.