Ibn Warraq, Taslima Nasrin, Ali Sina & Faith Freedom Foundation's Statement of Sept. 11, 2001 Attack
Murtaad Munaafeq
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For Inquiries: Contact Ali Sina at faith_freedo...@yahoo.com
A Call To Muslims of the World
From Faith Freedom Foundation
"Wherever ye are, death will find you, even if ye are in Towers, built
up strong and tall" (Quran 4:78)
Dear Friends,
The tragic incident of September 11 has shocked the world. It is
unthinkable how anyone could be so full of hate as to commit such
heinous act and kill so many innocent people. We people of Muslim
origin are as much shaken as the rest of the world and yet we find
ourselves looked upon with suspicion and distrust by our neighbors and
fellow citizens. We want to cry out and announce that we are not
terrorists, and those who perpetrate such despicable acts are
murderers and are not part of us. But, in reality, because of our
Muslim origin we just cannot erase the stigma of "Islamic Terrorists"
from our identity!
What in general Muslims would say:
"Islam would never support killing innocent people. Allah of Holy
Quran never advocated killings. This is all the work of a few
misguided individuals at the fringe of the society. The real Islam is
sanctified against violence. We denounce all violence. Islam means
peace. Islam means tolerance."
What is the real truth?
This is what most Muslims think. But is it true? Does Islam really
preach peace, tolerance and non-violence? Those Muslims who
perpetrate crimes in the name of Allah think differently. They believe
that what they do is a Jihad (holy war). They say that killing the
unbelievers is mandatory for every Muslim. They do not kill because
they break the laws of Islam but because they think this is what a
true Muslim should do. Those who blow up their own bodies to kill more
innocent people do so because they think they will be rewarded in
Paradise. They hope to be blessed by Allah, eat celestial food, drink
pure wine and enjoy the company of divine consorts.
Are they completely misguided? Where did they get this distorted idea?
How did they come to believe that killing innocent people pleases God?
Or is it that we are misguided? Does Islam really preach violence?
Does it call upon its believers to kill the "non-believers"? We
denounce those who commit acts of violence and call them extremists.
But are they really extremists or do they think they are following
what the Holy book of Quran tells them to do? What does the Quaran
really teach? Have we read the Quran? Do we know what kind of
teachings are there? Let us go through some of them and take a closer
look at what Allah says.
What the Quran Teaches Us:
The Quran tells us to: "not to make friendship with Jews and
Christians" (5:51), fight them "until they pay the Jizya (a penalty
tax for the non-Muslims living under Islamic rules) with willing
submission, and feel themselves subdued" (9:29). "Kill the
disbelievers wherever we find them" (2:191), "murder them and treat
them harshly" (9:123), "fight and slay the Pagans, seize them,
beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem" (9:5).
The Quran says that all those who disbelieve in Islam will go to hell
(5:10), they are najis (filthy, untouchable, impure) (9:28), and
orders us to fight the unbelievers until no other religion except
Islam is left (2:193). It prohibits a Muslim to befriend a
non-believer even if that non-believer is the father or the brother of
that Muslim (9:23), (3:28).
It says that the "non-believers will go to hell and will drink boiling
water" 14:17). It asks the Muslims to "slay or crucify or cut the
hands and feet of the unbelievers, that they be expelled from the land
with disgrace and that they shall have great punishment in the world
hereafter" (5:34). And tells us that "for them (the unbelievers)
garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their
heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skin shall
be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods"
(22:19-22) and that they not only will have "disgrace in this life, on
the Day of Judgment He shall make them taste the Penalty of burning
(Fire)" (22:9).
The Quran says that "those who invoke a god other than Allah not only
should meet punishment in this world but the Penalty on the Day of
Judgment will be doubled to them, and they will dwell therein in
ignominy" (25:68). For those who "believe not in Allah and His
Messenger, He has prepared, for those who reject Allah, a Blazing
Fire!" (48:13).
As for him who does not believe in Islam the Prophet says that after
he dies it will be announced with a "stern command": "Seize ye him,
and bind ye him, and burn ye him in the Blazing Fire. Further, make
him march in a chain, whereof the length is seventy cubits! This was
he that would not believe in Allah Most High. And would not encourage
the feeding of the indigent! So no friend hath he here this Day. Nor
hath he any food except the corruption from the washing of wounds,
which none do eat but those in sin." (69:30-37).
The holy Prophet prescribes fighting for us and tells us that "it is
good for us even if we dislike it" (2:216). Then he advises us to
"strike off the heads of the disbelievers"; and after making a "wide
slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives" (47:4).
Our God has promised to "instill terror into the hearts of the
unbelievers" and has ordered us to "smite above their necks and smite
all their finger-tips off them" (8:12), and "to strike terror into
(the hearts of the enemies" (8:60).
He has made the Jihad mandatory and warns us that "Unless we go forth,
for Jihad) He will punish us with a grievous penalty, and put others
in our place" (9:39). Allah speaks to our Holy Prophet and says "O
Prophet! Strive hard against the unbelievers and the Hypocrites, and
be stern against them. Their abode is Hell, - an evil refuge indeed"
(9:73).
He promises us that in the fight for His cause whether we slay or are
slain we return to the garden of Paradise (9:111). In Paradise he will
"wed us with Houris (celestial virgins) pure beautiful ones" (56:54),
and unite us with large-eyed beautiful ones while we recline on our
thrones set in lines (56:20). There we are promised to eat and drink
pleasantly for what we did (56:19). And have sex with "boys like
hidden pearls" (56:24) and "youth never altering in age like scattered
pearls" (76:19).
As you see, Allah has promised all sorts of rewards, gluttony and
unlimited sex to Muslim men who kill the unbelievers in his name, not
forgetting even those with pedophilic inclinations. We will be
admitted to Paradise where we shall find "goodly things, beautiful
ones, pure ones confined to the pavilions that man has not touched
them before nor jinni" (56:67-71).
In the West we enjoy freedom of belief but we are not supposed to give
such freedom to anyone else because it is written "If anyone desires a
religion other than Islam (submission to Allah), never will it be
accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those
who have lost (all spiritual good) (3:85).
As for women, the book of Allah says that they are inferior to men and
their husbands have the right to scourge them if they are found
disobedient (4:34). It advises to "take a green branch and beat your
wife", because a green branch is more flexible and hurts more.
(38:44). It teaches that women will go to hell if they are disobedient
to their husbands (66:10). It maintains that men have an advantage
over the women (2:228). It not only denies the women's equal rights,
it decrees that their witness is not admissible in the courts of law
(2:282). This means that a woman who is raped cannot accuse her rapist
unless she can produce a male witness. Our Holy Prophet allows us to
marry up to four wives and he licensed us to sleep with our slave
maids and as many 'captive' women as we may have (4:3) even if those
women are already married. He himself did just that.
[A word of warning for those who may
find their version of Quran is
translated differently from those
appearing in this article: Almost
all the translators of the Quran
have deliberately tried to soften
the harsh verses of the Quran.
Yusufali especially goes out of his
way to twists the meaning of the
words and hide the harshness of the
Quran. For example he translates the
verse (38:44) that says "take a
green branch and beat your wife" as
"take a little green grass and
strike therewith". Or when he
translates the verse (4:34) that says
"beat your wife" he cannot help it
but to add the word (lightly) in
parenthesis which was obviously not
in original Arabic.]
Dear fellow Muslims:
Is this the Islam you believe in? Is this your Most Merciful, Most
Compassionate Allah whom you worship daily? Could God incite us to
kill other peoples? Please understand that there is no terrorist gene
but there could be a terrorist mindset. That mindset finds its most
fertile ground in the tenets of Islam. Denying it and presenting Islam
as a religion of peace similar to Buddhism, to the lay public, is
suppression of truth. The history of Islam between 7th and 14th
century is riddled with violence, fratricide and wars of aggression,
starting right from the death of the Prophet and during the so-called
'pure' or orthodox caliphate. And Muhammad himself hoisted the
standard of killing, looting, massacres and bloodshed. How can we deny
the entire history? The behavior of our Holy Prophet as recorded in
authentic Islamic sources is quite questionable from a modern
viewpoint. The Prophet was a charismatic man but he had few virtues.
Imitating him in all aspects of life (following Sunnah) is firstly
impossible and secondly dangerous in the 21st century. Why are we so
helplessly in denial on this simple issue?
When the Prophet was in Mecca and he was still not powerful enough he
called for tolerance. He said "To you be your religion, and to me my
religion" (109:6). This famous quote is often misused to prove that
the general principle of Quran is tolerance. He advised his follower
to speak good to their enemies (2: 83), exhorted them to be patient
(20:103) and said that "there is no compulsion in religion" (2:256).
But all that changed drastically when he came to power. Then killing
and slaying the unbelievers was justified in innumerable verses with
harshness and without mercy. The verses quoted to prove Islam's
tolerance ignore many other verses that bear no trace of tolerance or
forgiveness. Is it normal that a book revealed by God should have so
many serious contradictions?
The Prophet himself set the example of unleashing violence by invading
the Jewish settlements breaking the treaties he had signed with them
and banished some of them after confiscating their belongings
massacring others and taking their wives and children as slaves. He
inspected the youngsters and massacred all those who had pubic hair
along with the men and those who were younger he kept as slaves. He
distributed the women captured in his raids among his soldiers keeping
the prettiest for himself (33:50). He made sexual advances on Safiyah
a Jewish girl in the same day he captured her town, Kheibar, and
killed her father, husband and many of her relatives. Reyhana was
another Jewish girl of Bani Quriza whom he used as sex slave after
killing all her male relatives. In the last ten years of his life he
accumulated a score of wives, concubines and sex slaves including the
9-year-old Ayesha.
These are not stories but records from authentic Islamic history and
the Hadiths. It can be argued that these behaviors were not unknown or
unusual for the conquerors and leaders of the mediaeval world but
these are not the activities befitting of a peaceful saint and
certainly not of someone who claimed to be the Mercy of God for all
the creation. There were known assassinations of adversaries during
the Prophet's time that took place at his behest. Among them there was
a 120 year old man, Abu 'Afak whose only crime was to compose a lyric
satirical of the Prophet. (Kitab al Tabaqat al Kabir, Volume 2, by Bin
Sa'd, page 32). Then when a poetess, a mother of 5 small children,
'Asma' Bint Marwan, wrote a poetry cursing the Arabs for letting
Muhammad assassinate an old man, our Holy Prophet ordered her to be
assassinated too in the middle of the night, which was carried out
while her youngest child was suckling from her breast. (Sirat Rasul
Allah (A. Guilaume's translation "The Life of Muhammad") page 675,
676).
Dear conscientious Muslims: Question yourselves- isn't this compulsive
dogma of following a man who lived 1400 years ago, leading us to doom
in this changing world? Who are we deceiving? See how our Umma
(people) have sunk into poverty and how we lag behind the rest of the
world? Isn't it because we are following a religion that is outdated
and impractical? In this crucial moment of history, when a great
catastrophe has befallen us and a much bigger one is lying ahead,
should not we wake up from our 1400 years of slumber and see where
things have gone wrong?
The hatred has filled the air and the world is bracing itself for its
doomsday. Should we not ask ourselves whether we have contributed,
unwittingly, to this tragedy and whether we can stop the great
disaster from happening?
Unfortunately the answer to the first question is yes. Yes, we have
contributed to the rise of fundamentalism by merely claiming Islam is
a religion of peace, by simply being a Muslim and by saying our
shahada (testimony that Allah is the only God and Muhammad is his
messenger). By our shahada we have recognized Muhammad as a true
messenger of God and his book as the words of God. But as you saw,
those words are anything but from God. They call for killing, they
are prescriptions for hate and they foment intolerance. And when the
ignorant among us read those hate laden verses, they act on them and
the result is the infamous September 11, the result is human bombs in
Israel, massacres in East Timor and Bangladesh, kidnappings and
killings in Philippines, slavery and genocide in Sudan, honor killings
in Pakistan and Jordan, torture in Iran, stoning and maiming in
Afghanistan and Iran, violence in Algeria, terrorism in Palestine and
misery and death in all Islamic countries. We are responsible because
we endorsed Islam and hailed it as a religion of God. And we are as
guilty as those who put into practice what Quran preaches and
ironically we are the main victims too.
If we are not terrorists, if we love peace, if we cried with the rest
of the world for what happened in NYC, then why are we supporting the
Quran that preaches killing, that advocates holy war, that calls for
murder of non-Muslims? It is not the extremists who have misunderstood
Islam. They do literally what the Quran ask them to do. It is we who
misunderstand Islam. We are the ones who are confused. We are the ones
who wrongly assume that Islam is the religion of peace. Islam is not a
religion of peace. In its so-called pure form it can very well be
interpreted as a doctrine of hate. Terrorists are simply doing that
and we the intellectual apologists of Islam are justifying it.
We can stop this madness. Yes we can avert the disaster that is
hovering over our heads. Yes we can denounce the doctrines that
promote hate. Yes we can embrace the rest of humanity with love. Yes,
we can become part of a united world, members of one human family,
flowers of one garden. We can dump the claim of infallibility of our
Book and the questionable legacy of our Prophet.
Dear friends, there is no time to waste. Let us put an end to this
lie. Let us not fool ourselves. Islam is not a religion of peace, of
tolerance, of equality or of unity of humankind. Let us read the
Quran. Let us face the truth even if it is painful. As long as we keep
this lie alive, as long as we hide our head in the sands of Arabia we
are feeding terrorism. As long as you and I keep calling the Quran the
unchangeable book of God, we cannot blame those who follow the
teachings therein. As long as we pay our Khums and Zakat our money
goes to promote Islamic expansionism and that means terrorism, Jihad
and war.
Islam divides the world in two parts: Darul Harb (land of war) and
Darul Islam (land of Islam). Darul Harb is the and of the infidels,
Muslims are required to infiltrate those lands, proselytize and
procreate until their number increase and then start the war and fight
and kill the people and impose the religion of Islam on them and
convert that land into Darul Islam.
In all fairness we denounce this betrayal. This is an abuse of trust.
How can we make war in the countries that have sheltered us? How can
we kill those who have befriended us? Yet willingly or unwillingly we
have become pawns in this Islamic Imperialism. If this sound to you
abhorrent, we ask you how can you support a doctrine that is so
deceiving, so cunning and so ruthless? Let us see what great Islamic
scholars have to say in this respect.
Dr. M. Khan, the translator of Sahih Bukhari and the Quran into
English wrote: "Allah revealed in Sura Bara'at (Repentance, IX) the
order to discard (all) obligations (covenants, etc), and commanded the
Muslims to fight against all the Pagans as well as against the people
of the Scriptures (Jews and Christians) if they do not embrace Islam,
till they pay the Jizia (a tax levied on the Jews and Christians) with
willing submission and feel themselves subdued (as it is revealed in
9:29). So the Muslims were not permitted to abandon "the fighting"
against them (Pagans, Jews and Christians) and to reconcile with them
and to suspend hostilities against them for an unlimited period while
they are STRONG and have the ability to fight against them. So at
first "the fighting" was forbidden, then it was permitted, and after
that it was made obligatory "[Introduction to English translation of
Sahih Bukhari, p.xxiv.]
Dr. Sobhy as-Saleh, a contemporary Islamic academician, quoted Imam
Suyuti the author of Itqan Fi 'Ulum al- Qur'an who wrote: The command
to fight the infidels was DELAYED UNTIL THE MUSLIMS BECOME STRONG, but
when they were weak they were commanded to endure and be patient.
[Sobhy as_Saleh, Mabaheth Fi 'Ulum al- Qur'an, Dar al-'Ilm
Lel-Malayeen, Beirut, 1983, p.269.]
Dr. Sobhy, in a footnote, commends the opinion of a scholar named
Zarkashi who said: "Allah the most high and wise revealed to Mohammad
in his weak condition what suited the situation, because of his mercy
to him and his followers. For if He gave them the command to fight
while they were weak it would have been embarrassing and most
difficult, but when the most high made Islam victorious He commanded
him with what suited the situation, that is asking the people of the
Book to become Muslims or to pay the levied tax, and the infidels to
become Muslims or face death. These two options, to fight or to have
peace return cccording to the strength or the weakness of the
Muslims." [ibid p. 270]
Other Islamic scholars (Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi, Ga'far ar-Razi, Rabi'
Ibn 'Ons, 'Abil-'Aliyah, Abd ar-Rahman Ibn Zayd Ibn 'Aslam, etc.)
agree that the verse "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them" (9:5)
cancelled those few earlier verses that called for tolerance in Quran
and were revealed when Islam was weak.
Can you still say that Islam is the religion of peace?
Conclusion:
We know too well that it is not easy to denounce our faith as it means
denouncing a part of ourselves. We are a group of freethinkers and
humanists with Islamic roots. Discovering the truth and leaving the
religion of our fathers and forefathers was a painful experience. But
after learning what Islam stands for, we had no choice but to leave
it. After becoming familiar with the Quran, the choice became clear:
it is either Islam or it is humanity. If Islam is to thrive, humanity
has to die. We decided to side with humanity. We are still Muslims
culturally but we no more believe in Islam as the true religion of
God. We are humanists. We love humanity. We endeavor for the unity of
humankind. We work for equality between men and women. We strive for
secularization of Islamic countries, for democracy and freedom of
thoughts, beliefs and expressions we have decided not to live anymore
in self-deception but to embrace humanity, enter into the new
millennium hand in hand with people or other cultures and beliefs in
amity and in peace. We denounce the violence that is eulogized in
Quran as holy war (Jihad). We condemn killing in the name of God. We
believe in sacredness of human life, not in the inviolability of
beliefs and religions. And we invite you to join us and the rest of
the humanity and be part of the family of humankind with love,
camaraderie and peace.
Regards,
On behalf of Faith Freedom Foundation
(Signed)
Ibn Warraq
Taslima Nasrin
Ali Sina
About the Faith Freedom Foundation:
***********************************
Faith Freedom Foundation is an organization of freethinkers of Muslim
background and secular individuals who uphold the concept of secular
humanism.
The Faith Freedom Foundation Manifesto:
***************************************
FFF is opposed to all religious intolerance, bigotry and hate inspired
by religious zealotry. FFF is not against beliefs that do not advocate
violence, intolerance and hate. We respect people's religious
convictions and defend their right to practice their faith. But we
take a firm position when those convictions infringe on the rights of
other people to have their beliefs. FFF does not target any religion
in particular but at this moment, our main focus is on Islamic
extremism.