Glad I caught you. If you can spare the time there are a few issues, misunderstandings perhaps, that I would like to raise with you. Can it hurt to bring them out into the open?
Firstly, there is your god Allah. He appears to hate me with a passion. Apparently he intends to torture me forever with fire and each time my skin burns away he will replace it “so I may feel the scourge”. Is this any way for a modern god to behave? In the days when desert tribes worshipped rocks it might have been acceptable but today I really think he has to consider his anger issues. It is not as though I have done him any harm that I know of, just declined to believe in him. You would think an omnipotent being would be too busy regulating the intricate arrangements of the quantum world or designing galaxies to worry about little old me. Frankly, and I’m sorry to say this, his excessive concern over what everyone thinks of him smacks of immaturity.
Then there’s the man who created him, Mohammed. Quite honestly he appears to have been a cruel and vindictive warlord. If he came back today he would surely be shipped off to The Hague to face charges of robbery, murder, rape, enslavement and genocide. Just to mention a couple of his victims, there’s Umm Qirfa the old woman he had tied by the legs to camels and pulled apart, and Kinana ibn al-Rabi the treasurer of a vanquished Jewish tribe. Mohammed ordered him to be tortured until he revealed where the treasure was hidden. A fire was lit on his chest until he was nearly dead then he was beheaded and Mohammed married his wife Safiyya. I hear people justifying some of Mohammed’s thirteen marriages as being motivated by charity towards widows and cannot help thinking “That’s chutzpah!”
Well, that’s all water under the bridge. What bothers me is that I’m told you regard Mohammed as “the perfect man and the example for all Muslims”. That seems like a problem to me.
So much for the pleasantries. Let’s get down to the key question. Is Islam inherently and implacably supremacist, by fair means or foul, or not? That’s what really concerns me. I have been asking around and I think it is. Who told me? Well firstly there is Allah himself:
Koran 8:39
“And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world]. But if they cease (worshipping others besides Allah), then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do.”
I know it is the Hilali-Khan translation, the most incendiary of all, but it does only make explicit what is left implicit in the others and after all it is the version favoured by all those Saudi funded mosques. Wasn’t it in some of those that investigative reporters found Imams saying things like this:
“You cannot accept the rule of the kaffir…we have to rule ourselves and we have to rule the others”
and
“You are in a situation in which you have to live like a state within a state, until you take over”?
Then there is Mohammed, in a letter to Haudha bin Ali, governor of Yamama inviting him to convert or take the consequences:
“Peace be upon him who follows true guidance. Be informed that my religion shall prevail everywhere. You should accept Islam, and whatever under your command shall remain yours”. (The Sealed Nectar:Biography of the Noble Prophet)
And lastly, representative of a number of influential Islamic scholars, Ibn Khaldun, mediaeval historian:
“In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force”.
If these quotes accurately reflect Islamic beliefs then clearly Islam can never live as equals with another culture. It must either dominate or bide its time until it can, just as Mohammed did in Mecca and Medina. That is why, with continuing immigration from warring countries on the other side of the Mediterranean and greater Muslim fertility, I foresee increasing strife between Muslims and everyone else in Britain.
Do not think I hate Muslims but I do pity them and I have to accept that some of them are my enemy. I just do not know which ones. Many, probably yourself included, manage to live in peace with their neighbour but I believe this to be despite their religion which calls for the opposite. It seems clear to me that the bombers and the beheaders are simply following the instructions on the tin and that they would fit right in with Mohammed’s companions. It is Muslims who wish to live peacefully who are obliged to do back flips to avoid the militant aspect of their religion.
Our leaders try to reassure us that there are moderate Muslims and extremist Muslims (otherwise known as radical, Islamist, fundamentalist or militant Muslims). You will know as well as I do that this distinction is never used in Muslim countries, nor it seems even much among British Muslims as we found out when a TV company looked for moderate Imams and could find none who accepted the term.
Correct me if I am wrong, and I would dearly love to be wrong, but I think that there are just more or less observant Muslims, particularly when it comes to Mohammed’s call to Jihad. Some manage to convince themselves that Islam can be just a matter of private devotion like other religions, some spread Islamic practices like Halal into the public space and demand special dispensations for prayer facilities or the right not to be offended, and then there are those who actually heed the call to holy war in Syria or in Britain.
It seems to me that Islam is like a black hole around which believers orbit, more or less affected by its gravitational pull. There are those who maintain a stable orbit at a safe distance, observing prayer and Ramadan and so on, and there are those who venture too close and get sucked in, never to be seen again unless it is on the TV news screaming “Allahu akbar” over some atrocity. The ones I am really interested in though are those further out trying to live the sort of life which other religions and viewpoints would recognise as decent and moral, a life in which non-Muslims, ex-Muslims, women, children and homosexuals are seen as being of equal worth. I hope increasing numbers of those people will manage to escape the malign influence of Mohammed entirely and join the community of apostates, most of whom have to hide the fact for obvious reasons.
Sadly, I believe that Muslims and the rest of us are on a collision course unless something gives. Perhaps it will be the rest of us and that appears to be a possible outcome given the refusal of our leaders and the mainstream media to acknowledge the supremacism at the heart of Islam. They beguile us with idiotic terms like “Islamophobia” but the trouble is we all have eyes to see what is happening around the world and on our streets.
Naturally I hope for another more benign outcome, a large scale collapse of belief in Islam as young Muslims weigh “Islamic science” against real science, the 7th century against the 21st. So far the signs are not good. Weren’t we surprised when polls appeared to show that young Muslims are actually more devout than their parents? Faith schools are also hardly a promising development, allowing the teachings of Mohammed to go unchallenged in the classroom or the playground. Nevertheless, I put great hope in the internet which allows Muslims to bypass their local Imam and get independent information from the many Islam critical sites. For the first time in 1400 years the Mosque’s monopoly on information is being challenged. Who knows what the ramifications could be?
Go on, give it a go. After all, you are only a Muslim because you were indoctrinated at an age before you were able to critically assess what you were being told. You didn’t stand a chance. It’s all made up, honest. No virgins for you, no eternal torment for me. You can just step away from Mohammed and his demand for world domination. Isn’t it the best hope for us to get along?
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