Worldwide Caliphate - How Muslims view the Arab Spring?

"The West attempted to paint the uprisings as being secular and democratic in nature. Such rhetoric could not be maintained, however, since it was becoming increasingly clear that the call on the Arab street was for nothing other than Islam. (Pictures of crowds chanting in Arabic subtitled "The ummah desires the Islamic caliphate") What happened was that somehow or someway the call for an Islamic caliphate had to be satisfied..." [...]        "We're really living under the Islamic system now...there's no more democracy, no more secularism" [...]There was no question about it. The world was witnessing the end of western civilsation and the rise of a new era under the Islamic caliphate

When I first saw this "fictional futuristic depiction of the return of the caliphate" on YouTube I assumed it had been made by those worried about the spread of that extreme but minority form of Islam that hopes for and demands a world-wide caliphate under which every person in the world, whether they want it or not, would be subject to sharia law. Freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of speech should be sacrificed to Allah, such people believe.
My Muslim convert friend believes such a world would be desirable and that "democracy plays no part in Islam".
However, this film was in fact made by  Hizb ut-Tahrir, Australia.  I reproduce below the video description:

 Hizb ut-Tahrir, Australia will convene its major annual conference to address these uprisings, what the potential results are, the method for true Islamic change and the false ideas and approaches that will lead only to failure. Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia invites you to join us in not only looking at the Muslims world of today, but in casting our eyes forward and looking towards the Muslim world of tomorrow under the shade of Islam insha Allah.Where: The Bellevue Reception Centre | Restwell St, Bankstown When: Sunday, 16 September 2012 | 10:00am -- 3:00pm

An interesting and chilling insight into the minds of those who strive for and would delight in seeing a world where sharia rules with its medieval punishments for theft, homosexuality, adultery and sedition...such as 5.33 which demands crucifixion and amputation of alternate hands and feet for those who wish "to spread corruption in the land".

Pakistan Newspaper article blames Islamic ideology for Malala incident

Writing in the Pakistan daily paper, Pakistan Today, Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, the Business Editor, denounces the religious ideology that spawned the appalling extremists capable of shooting a young girl because she dared to voice her opinion that freedom of conscience was important. 

I will add nothing more other than to urge you to read and digest....

Don't blame the Taliban ...Let’s call a spade a spade instead
The Malala incident is déjà vu times million. You have religious ‘extremists’ manifesting brutality; the ‘educated’ class calls the act heinous, the ‘intellectuals’ label the offenders as beasts, the ‘liberals’ protest against the ‘cowardly act’ and while everyone is condemning the act, they remain shushed about the root cause of it all: the ideology. Throughout the past every single person who has denounced the Taliban has acted as an apologetic, justifying the religious ideology and claiming how those ‘uneducated morons’ have ‘unfortunately’ misinterpreted the teachings of peace and tranquility – no, they haven’t, ‘unfortunately’.
It is so painfully amusing to note how the ‘moderates’ and armchair revolutionaries, would sit there with a glass of vine in their hands, uninhibitedly hanging out with the opposite sex, not having offered a prayer or fasted for ages, claiming how the Taliban – who lead their lives strictly according to the Shariah – are infesting their religion of harmony. The poor chaps are only doing what their scriptures – the ones that the pseudo intellectuals extol, or don’t have the cojones to criticize – tell them to do. When you are being taught, through the scriptures that are universally recognized by the followers as ‘authentic’, that all the non-believers or threats to the grandeur of your ideology should be killed, you will kill them, where is the misinterpretation here?
Finding slaves or slave girls, repulsive; physically assaulting women, disgusting; cutting off hands for theft, inhuman; stoning people to death, beastly and then venerating the ideology that permits this at the same time is hypocrisy of the very highest order. You sit there, criticize and mock the Taliban that follow your religion in its true form while you live in oblivion with your extremely palatable, but simultaneously blatantly fallacious, brand of religion and then claim that the Taliban are misinterpreting and misapprehending your ideology? Oh, the irony.
Let’s stop carving out quasi religions, or defending ideologies that we’ve all grown up blindly following as the truth. Let’s call a spade a spade instead and realize that at the end of the day as much as you might have a cardiac arrest admitting it, the root cause of religious extremism is: religion – especially in its raw crude form, which again is the only ‘authentic’ form.
Every single religion has a violent streak. Every single one of them orders violence and killing in one form or the other for the ‘non-believers’. One can quote verses from every holy scripture depicting loathe and despise for anyone who doesn’t believe in the said scripture and its propagator. Sure, those scriptures would have the occasional fit of peace as well, but that only springs into the open when it is recognized as the only supreme authority. Every religion is a ‘religion of peace’ as long as it formulates the status quo; there is no concept of ideological symbiosis in any religion. When a tyrannical regime or dictator calls for peace with the condition that they would reign supreme we label them as oppressors, but when this is done in the name of religion we tout it as maneuvers of ‘harmony’.
The Taliban have defended the attack on Malala Yousafzai through scriptures and historic precedents. You can clamor all you want about how there is a lack of understanding on the part of the Taliban, but how on earth can you refute clear messages of violence and historical evidence – scribed by historians of your faith – depicting brutality on the part of some of the most illustrious people in the history of the religion? It is easy to launch vitriol against the Taliban for attacking a 14-year-old girl, but it is also equally hypocritical and pathetic when you eulogize people from your history who did the same in the past, who massacred masses, destroyed lands, pulverized places of worship, raped women, just because they ostensibly did it in the name of your religion. Don’t blame the Taliban for following their lead, don’t blame the Taliban for using violence as a means to cement religious superiority – something that has been done for centuries – don’t blame the Taliban for the fact that you don’t have the guts to call a spade a spade even though it has been spanking your backside for centuries now.
The fact that groups like Tehreek-e-Taliban-Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi exist is because Islam is still traversing its Dark Ages while other religions have gone through Reformation, resulting in a collective Renaissance – and that too half a millennium ago. None of the religion in its crude form can work in this day and age, and instead of taking the easy route and scorning at those that follow religious teachings in its original form, the more logical approach would be to accept the truth.
If you’re acknowledging Islam as the supreme authority, you have no grounds for hauling coals over Zia-ul-Haq for implementing laws from the Shariah, you have no grounds for attacking Mumtaz Qadri or feeling sorry for Salmaan Taseer who clearly spoke against the blasphemy law, you have no grounds for lauding Dr Abdul Salaam as a national asset who belonged to a sect that clearly defies Islamic teachings, and yes, you have no grounds for blaming the Taliban.
It’s time our ‘thinkers’ stopped taking the easy way out and finally picked a side. You either follow a religion in its true form or you’re irreligious. The Taliban know which side they are on. Do you?

"a surah like it" - a vain and foolish challenge

And if ye are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to time to Our servant, then produce a Sura like thereunto; and call your witnesses or helpers (If there are any) besides Allah, if your (doubts) are true. 2:23

Or do they say, "He forged it"? say: "Bring then a Sura like unto it, and call (to your aid) anyone you can besides Allah, if it be ye speak the truth!"  10:38

Or they may say, "He forged it," Say, "Bring ye then ten suras forged, like unto it, and call (to your aid) whomsoever ye can, other than Allah.- If ye speak the truth! 11:13

If anything proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the Qur'an is the product of a vain human, then this foolish and meaningless challenge, beloved of a certain type of Muslim, does.

Can anyone produce a play like King Lear or a poem like The Wasteland or a novel like Ulysses (actually, would anyone want to write a novel like Ulysses?)? Or for that matter a van Gogh painting or a Rodin statue or a Mozart opera?  Of course not! And what does that prove exactly? Nothing more than, at its best, the product of human creativity is inimitable. 

Can anyone make a pizza exactly like my wife? No. Is she therefore a divinely inspired pizza dough chef. Well she's good but , hell - it's asking an awful lot of a Margherita.

But let's imagine, for just one moment, that Mrs Spinoza's claim to divinity was reliant upon such a judgement. Let's further imagine that, as an understandable fan of Mrs. S and her pizzas,  I had decided I was to be the sole judge of any pizza challenger.
"Whoa! Hold on just a moment!" I hear you say. "What about objectivity? What about a fair and level playing field? Aren't you just a little bit biased"

And yet this is nothing more than what the miracle seekers are asking us to accept. "No-one has been able to meet the challenge in fourteen centuries!" they confidently announce.
"And, er, who has judged the challengers?" 
"Well, my friend, Muslims of course!" 

 al-Kawthar (reproduced below) which tells Muhammad to pray and sacrifice animals and that if he does so his enemies will be made destitute is the shortest surah. Is it really inimitable? :

1. Indeed, We have granted you, [O Muhammad], al-Kawthar.

2. So pray to your Lord and sacrifice to Him Alone [i.e. by way of slaughter of animal livestock].

3. Indeed, your enemy will be cut-off (from future hope). 

1. Inna a'taynaka al-kawthar
2. Fa-salli li-Rabbika wanhar
3. Inna shaani-aka huwal abtar  

I was going to have a go at the challenge but for the reasons above and the fact the Muhammad was in the habit of assassinating poets, I'll resist.

The challenge to write a surah like one in the Qur'an is ultimately futile. An omniscient creator would surely not make such an empty gesture.       

Reasoning the non-existence of God - a challenge to iERA

Here's our favourite philosopher-guru cum logic-chopper, Abdur Raheem Green of the iERA, telling us to use our common sense and logic (stop sniggering at the back there!) to reach the unavoidable conclusion that God exists.

 For Muslims, he says, faith is not mysterious, but rational and based upon evidence. He continues, appealing to our rationality and logic:

"Our universal human experience tells us that where we see order, something working according to patterns, then something or someone has ordered it."

I have a question (in fact I have many, but let's stick to the ones which leap up and shout, "Hey - ask the patronising idiot this one!")
Who ordered the pattern below, Abdur? According to your "common sense", the regular patterns we see here are either a mirage (they don't really exist) or the product of a conscious "creator wind".

Or how about this? Did a conscious "creator volcano" produce the basalt outcrops that form the famous Giants' Causeway in County Antrim on the North East coast of Northern Ireland? Or perhaps you believe the legend that tells of an Irish warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn MacCool), who built the causeway? Because according to your rational islam, when we see patterns "we know someone ordered it."

I can understand how uneducated, superstitious men might have wondered about such things and made up stories to explain the seemingly inexplicable. But how can someone with the benefit of a modern education still labour under such misapprehensions? How can the clowns at iERA receive the benefits of charitable status when their "education" is of such a level?

And it's not just static patterns that defy Abdur's and the miracle seekers' faulty reasoning. Here's an example from a famous set of  experiments called "The Game of Life" used by scientists to show how complex patterns can emerge from the unlikeliest of sources: in this case a basic set of rules along the lines of if an adjacent cell is empty move, if three cells surrounding an empty cell are "live", that cell comes to life etc etc. Press play to see how a totally unpredictable but regular and ordered pattern emerges.

Gary Lineker and "grass eating" Muslims

Gary Lineker must crawl over broken bottles to Mecca for the huge offence he has cause world-wide Muslim football audience by not realising the goal celebration by two Muslim players was a prayer.
It's not as though there have ever been weird celebrations to cloud the issue. Lineker should have known immediately what was going on. As Muslim blogger London Muslim says, Lineker is obviously a racist.

Egypt - MB's Islamic Utopia

I am told by my Muslim convert friend that Islam provides everything a state needs to establish  fair governance and an equitable distribution of resources. The laws and advice contained in the Qur'an and ahadith, if strictly adhered to, will inevitably and inexorably lead to the best society of which humans are capable.

However, ask any Muslim why the world's current Islamic states appear to be much less desirable places to live than their liberal, secular, democratic counterparts and you will usually get one of two answers which can be summarised as follows:
i. The West's interference in Muslim lands has made it impossible for nascent Islamic nations to find a secure place in the world. Imperialist realpolitik has meant support for regimes that terrorise their own populations whilst supporting Western interests; and Western interests are almost always diametrically opposed to Islamist interests. Thus supposedly Islamic nations have been such in name only: Libya and Egypt being two obvious examples
or
ii. Even in those countries where one cannot claim Western interference, there isn't a truly Islamic theocracy; ask a Western Muslim what he or she thinks of Saudi, for example, and you'll get the picture...

Any liberal with a conscience will have sympathy with the first argument, and this goes some way to explain the left's knee-jerk support of Islamist demands, even when they seem to fly in the face of the liberal shibboleths of free speech and gay rights (to name but two...). And one would be hard pressed to argue with the second argument.

But what we are seeing in Egypt and elsewhere now, promises to give Muslims a chance to see their Islamic utopia  become a reality. 

For an experiment is taking place which might just give Islam its first chance since the so-called "Golden Age" to show what it's capable of.  "The whole point of Egypt's revolution for the Muslim Brotherhood is to usher in the utopia that the full application of sharia would ostensibly bring" as The Economist magazine has it this week, and if the Muslim Brotherhood can succeed in creating a constitution wholly reliant upon sharia then we shall be able to judge Islam. 

This is, however, a two edged sword. There can be no more excuses. And so we watch the debates rage:

Al-Azhar University, a revered 1,000-year-old seat of Sunni Muslim teaching in Cairo, has come out strongly against any change [to the wording of the current constitution]. “The ‘principles’ of Islamic sharia is an inclusive term that reflects the consensus of Muslim clerics,” says one of the university’s scholars on the constitution-drafting body. “Scholars differ over the text for ‘rules of Islamic sharia’because these change all the time, while the constitution should express fixed principles.”Al-Azhar (pictured above) has even blocked a push by Salafists, a puritan strand of Islam that won a quarter of votes in last year’s parliamentary elections, to enshrine al-Azhar itself as the sole authority for interpreting sharia.[...] Historians, meanwhile, note that in past ages, as well as in countries such as Saudi Arabia today, the relatively thin body of accepted sharia laws has in practice needed bolstering by secular rules.

Hang on - what's this? Sharia needs bolstering by secular rules? But I thought Islam was a complete and perfect set of instructions for a society? Isn't the whole point of Islam that there is no division between religion and state?

So once again, are we to be denied the chance to see a truly Islamic society flowering? Will what many regard as Egypt's inevitable failure be blamed,not upon the barbaric and outmoded laws and rules that the Qur'an dictates, but upon the exigencies of secular administration?

Whatever happens, it's going to be an interesting experiment. Watch this space...

New number miracles discovered in Qur'an

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I have wonderful news. After intense study for many long periods of time I have discovered the following number miracles in the Qur'an, even more amazing and awe-inspiring than those already identified.
Let me start by giving you some of the astonishing miracles already discovered in case these have passed you by (these are readily available all over the internet and in all good book shops, but for reference and so you can check I'll link to the book, Astonishing Facts about the Quran available now as an ebook and to the site Miracles of the Qur'an ) and after each amazing number miracle I will reveal what I have discovered. (Please do check my maths on any Qur'an search engine). If any Muslim is offended at what I have discovered, please remember that it was the Muslim miracle seekers who started this whole business in the first place...

the word "Muhammad" appears 4 times in the Holy Qur'an ..the word "Sharia" appears 4 times!" ... as do the words SEX, PAIN,  LIE and MURDER. 

the words "wine" (khamr) and "intoxication" (saqara) are repeated in the Qur'an the same number of times: 6 ...do I need to add anything here? Seems to me Allah is doing our job for us...

day (yawm / يوم) (should that be yawn?) appears 365 times er...no it doesn't. And anyway, there are so many variants you can come up with any figure between 222 & 476! 

The number of repetitions of the words "plant" and "tree" is the same: 26 OMG - I'm a believer! "Breast" is mentioned twice as many times (6) as "naked" (3) and women have two breasts and we all like...(er, that's enough -ed) 

The word "payment or reward" is repeated 117 times, while the expression "forgiveness" (mughfirah), which is one of the basic morals of the Qur'an, is repeated exactly twice that amount, 234 times. Well, I'll be damned! "Muhammad" (4) used to "steal" (3) "slaves" (12) on his raiding parties (4x3=12!!)

The word "satan" (shaitan) is used in the Qur'an 88 times, as is the word "angels" (malaika). Again, is this really something you want to publicise? What does it prove exactly?

The word "land" appears 13 times in the Qur'an and the word "sea" 32 times, giving a total of 45 references. If we divide that number by that of the number of references to the land we arrive at the figure 28.888888888889%. The number of total references to land and sea, 45, divided by the number of references to the sea in the Qur'an, 32, is 71.111111111111%. Extraordinarily, these figures represent the exact proportions of land and sea on the Earth today. (I love this one! As b*llocks go, these are great, big sweaty pendulous ones. For starters, the ratio is CONSTANTLY CHANGING) The word "Prophet" appears 159 times. The word "False" appears 43 times. A ratio of 3.697 - amazingly the same ratio as the words "lies" and "war"!

And that's NUMBERWANG!