Some Random Thoughts about Islam

It seems that lots of people these days from the media to our very own president are anxious to assure us that Islam is a religion of peace. I always get suspicious when someone insists on this statement being true when I also know that 90% of the world’s terrorist groups are Muslim. Something doesn’t compute. And so I’ve been looking into Islam -- so much so that I even bought a copy of the Koran (Qur’an) so I could see for myself exactly what this fastest growing religion in the world is all about.

The first thing that struck me on reading the Koran is that much of it seems to have been lifted from the Bible, though often subtly tweaked and twisted. Some even estimate that 85% of the Koran is based on Jewish and Christian traditions. Many of the familiar Biblical faces are in there from Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael to Jesus and Mary. Of course, Muslims don’t believe Jesus was the son of God, nor do they think he was crucified, but that it was someone else in his place. In fact, the Koran insists over and over that God has no son. It’s even written along the top of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Methinks they do protest too much.

What’s also really interesting -- and also very telling if you ask me -- is how the Koran states that Jesus was perfect and without sin and yet Muslims are supposed to emulate Mohammad, a ruthless, treaty-breaking bandit who plundered and killed without mercy and who had wives as young as 9 years old.

Even more disturbing is that Muslims are commanded to be actively involved in the extermination of Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims. Any Muslim who doesn’t do this is a sinner. Plus they’re allowed to lie about their intentions, since lying to non-Muslims is perfectly acceptable. So is making treaties you have no intention of keeping. Muhammad did this when he made a treaty with the Jews because he was too weak to defeat them and then, when he had gathered enough strength to prevail, he broke the treaty and slaughtered them all.

Unlike the Bible, the Koran says that women are inferior to men, that they are in the same category as mute animals. A man can beat his wife. He can lock her in a room until she dies. He can use his wife (wives) in any way he chooses. The practice of honor killing, where a Muslim father kills his daughter or a brother kills his sister because they feel she has shamed the family by dating a non-Muslim or refusing to wear a veil or whatever is now a growing trend in the West. It’s happening right here in the United States. Sharia/Muslim law finds this perfectly acceptable and calls for no punishment for the murderer. As if all that isn’t bad enough, Mohammad said that hell is mostly filled with women.

Islam is called a religion of peace, but if you criticize it, the reaction is pure violence. Look at the riots that occurred over a mere cartoon in a Danish newspaper. Just the other day, Random House pulled a book it was about to publish about Mohammad's wife, Aisha, all on the advice of one university professor who told the publisher Muslims might not like it. So now we're allowing a religion we don't even follow to scare us into muzzling our own freedom of speech!

Criticizing the Koran also incurs the death penalty. You can study it, but you can’t question its authority, at least not in Muslim countries. There’s no such thing as a Strong’s Concordance to the Koran. You're not allowed to point out the inconsistencies... and there are plenty to go around. For example, in one place it says Allah created the world in 8 days, in another it says 4, and in yet another it says 6. On the other hand, the Bible has undergone the most intense scrutiny for thousands of years and yet it still stands.

The word Islam itself means ‘submission’ and not ‘peace’ as many people think. It seems to me the peace aspect of it only comes after you’ve been forcibly ‘converted’ at the point of a sword to become Muslim yourself.