Islam: No concept of human right

What peaceful religions do (opinion)

I grew up a Muslim and both my parents and my brother still identify as Muslims. For years, I have defended Islam against what I considered unfair accusations. That said, I have recently come to admit to myself that Islam is not, in fact, a religion of peace. I know I will get a lot of push-back on this but the fact is that the majority of religion-inspired terrorism today is linked to one of the many ideologies of Islam. Will anyone argue that every single Islamic terrorist is a bad Muslim? I don’t want this to be construed to mean that most Muslims are violent or prone to becoming terrorists. No, what I’m arguing is that it is no coincidence that rational people choose to interpret Islam as exhorting them to acts of violence.

I am an apostate. I can’t write this sentence without feeling that I’m skirting death. Because that is the sentence prescribed by Islam. Would most of the people I grew up with be for my execution? No. Can I be sure that at least some wouldn’t? No. That’s really sad.

As you can see, many Muslims around the world are very comfortable with Islamic law. This itself isn’t a problem. Many Americans would be comfortable with Biblical law. The problem is when you dive deeper into what kind of things the supporters of Islamic law advocate…Stoning for adultery? Executing someone for leaving Islam? How can anyone defend this? This is not in response to Western imperialism. This is not calumny. This is purely Islam, leading millions of people to casually be okay with executing a person, simply for having a different opinion. This is not what peaceful religions do.

Salman Rushdie wrote a novel in 1988… there are still people today who would kill him. This is not what peaceful religions do. People are getting murdered for drawing cartoons of Muhammad. Murdered!!! This is not what peaceful religions do.

ISIS. Al Qaeda. Kharijites. No matter how far back you go in Islamic history, there have always been these extremist groups killing people they didn’t think were pure enough. This is not what peaceful religions do. The penalty for theft is amputation. This is not what peaceful religions do.

The penalty for sex outside marriage (including gay sex) is 100 lashes. This is not what peaceful religions do.

You can tell me that these people are not real Muslims. But that doesn’t cut it. If anything, they’re following a purer form of Islam. Everything they do is sanctioned somewhere in the Qu’ran or Hadith. The truth is that Islam has no concept of human rights. It’s not surprising, for a religion that came out of 7th century Arabia, since human rights are a very modern concept. That’s exactly the point, though. Why anyone thinks we should adopt the worldview of people living 1400 years ago is beyond me. In a society governed rationally, people would feel free to discuss obsolete rules and mores and to advocate moving beyond them. Unfortunately, you can’t make progress in the Islamic world because people literally risk death for doing nothing more than expressing themselves. If people can’t even let their Muslim neighbors disagree with them on matters of faith without feeling the need to put them to death, is it any wonder that they are driven to try to murder non Muslims for perceived slights against their religion? Is it any wonder that it is not Mormon or Buddhist extremists that are hijacking planes and bombing places around the world? Is it any wonder that this “religion of peace” leads so many young men and women to leave their countries for the sole purpose of waging war? Is it any wonder that after 9/11, when I was in high school, some of my Muslim friends were celebrating Bin Laden’s perceived triumph?

Having grown up Muslim and still thinking of Muslims as my brothers and sisters, though it pains me to state it, I need to repeat this truth: Islam is not a religion of peace.

I’m getting a lot of pushback from Muslims who feel that I’m

Unfairly attacking Islam

Playing the victim card.

Pandering to Islamophobes.

So, let me take a moment to answer these.

Although a lot of people are crying foul over my answer, no one has refuted the data I’ve provided above. I intended this to be not an attack on Islam; instead I wanted the figures provided above to be a mirror to Muslims who cared to take a look. What I was saying was this: Millions of everyday Muslims still hold to opinions that would have been the norm in 7th-century Arabia but that in today’s world of human rights are rightly going to be perceived as barbaric. Islam, like other religions, needs to adapt in order for its adherents to live harmoniously with people who disagree with them. And as long as people who live in countries governed according to Islamic principles don’t allow freedom of expression, progress will continue to be stifled and no change will ensue.

I don’t consider myself a victim. I’m a very fortunate individual with a loving family. I don’t want to insinuate that I live in fear of my family murdering me and I think the words above make that clear. What I was trying to express is that in every Muslim community, there are people who take their rules very seriously. My family has thankfully never lived anywhere where Sharia law was in effect. That said, I have some people related to me who are adherents to Wahhabism. If they had their way, sharia law would be the law of the land and I’m not sure that I could count on their mercy should the decision to try (judicial sense) and execute me for apostasy be up to them.

I really hope this doesn’t come across to most of my readers as pandering to Islamophobes. I have no interest in making people hate my own family. My overall point is that you can choose to be a religion that people fear criticizing for fear of violence OR you can be a religion of peace. You can’t have both. Let me illustrate this: if I drew a picture of Jesus being sodomized by a donkey, Christians would be offended but I wouldn’t fear for my safety. But there are literally tens of millions of Muslims who think people should die for making a simple drawing of their prophet! You can’t have such opinions and call yourself peaceful. Sorry. If you really believe in an all-powerful god, why do you believe it is your job to defend him? Shouldn’t he be able to defend himself without your help? Why do you feel the need to execute people on his behalf?

My fervent hope is that there will over time be a process of internal reform that will allow Islam in its entirety to enter the modern world. If every Muslim was a Reza Aslan, this conversation would hardly be necessary.

Abrahamic religions are never peaceful. They might call their religions as religion of love, religion of peace, etc But none of those are true and everyone (including the followers) knows it.…

Imagine a club where:

The founder of your club directly or indirectly killed hundreds during his lifetime.

Heaven is reserved for club members, rest everyone is going to hell no matter how good they are.

You get heaven for killing anyone outside of that club.

If you leave the club you die.

If the club members happen to be homosexuals, they die.

If you say anything against the club founder or club, you get killed.

Will you call such a club peaceful? If your answer is yes. Then, yeah lsIam is the most peaceful religion known to man.

Muslims are peaceful and behave peacefully when they are the minority, but once they become the majority, they start behaving warlike and impose Islam on non-Muslim minorities. That’s a historical fact and it is based on Mohammed’s teachings. Islam started out as a peaceful religion founded by Mohammed in Mecca; he borrowed and “stole” several Judeo-Christian verses for the purpose of attracting Jewish and Christian followers to his new “religion”, but he had very little success in converting them. Eventually he and his converts were chased away from Mecca and migrated to Medina. It was in Medina where Mohammed changed his tune from being peaceful to warlike, and started making declarations to fit his goal of conquest. He abrogated the peaceful verses that he had proclaimed while he was in Mecca and replaced them with violent verses when he moved to Medina; in other words, the peaceful verses had become null and void and that the violent verses would now become the true essence of Islam (thus the word Islam means total submission to Allah). Anyone who did not submit to Islam would be either killed, or subjected to paying the jizyah (protection tax). And if you think that Islam spread through the Indian subcontinent by means of peace, you are totally delusional and dead wrong. Any Hindu historian will tell you that Muslim invaders from the Arabian peninsula slaughtered anyone who stood in their way, destroyed hundreds and thousands of Hindu temples, raped and enslaved millions of Hindu and other non-Muslim women, and slaughtered approximately 100 million Hindus. So yes, Islam is NOT a religion of peace as what many “moderate” Muslims and the liberal media and Islam apologists claim it to be.

A.A. IBRAHIM