February 19, 2006

The religious scams …

This one is going to be a bit of a circular reference :p Funky Dung posted an entry where he linked to a post made by me and in going back and reading his entry, I came across the Apostates of Islam.

When I first read the site, I was like, "OK, this seems to be by Muslims who’ve gotten tired of all the negativity attached to Islam at the moment". I didn’t agree with their viewpoint but everybody is free to make their own choices, right? 🙂 The reason I didn’t agree with their viewpoint was because if you give up your religion just because people have misconceptions about it and because there are people in your own religion who don’t understand what the religion is all about, then it just means that you didn’t have enough faith or didn’t truly understand your religion either. However, religion is all about faith and you should follow the path that you truly believe in.

But then, I saw the link that the Apostates of Islam posted for Muslims. When I went to this page and read what they had to say, my conception of this site changed rather dramatically – but probably not in the way the site owners intended it to :p This site is certainly not created by "former" Muslims. In fact, I don’t believe any Muslims had any hand in the site at all. If they did, then they are as equally ignorant of Islam as the terrorists whom they claim to abhor. The site is basically religious propaganda :p It starts with a twist on a Quranic verse which is supposed to cleverly reveal to Muslims how wrong Islam is. If the Muslim is uninformed, then perhaps it will have effect. The verse they quote is from Surah At Taubah – verse 5. This verse is supposed to indicate that Muslims are supposed to kill non-believers at every opportunity.

The fact that most people ignore, either conveniently or out of ignorance, is that every Quranic verse was revealed for a specific event or under some context. This particular verse gives some of the context if you read from verse 1 – instead of just taking verse 5. It says that there was a peace treaty between the Muslims and the Mushriks (pagans) of Makkah. This treaty was violated by the Mushriks of Makkah. A period of four months was given to the Mushriks of Makkah to make amends. Then comes verse 5 about killing of disbelievers, which pertains to only a particular period when the disbelievers had rejected a treaty. To draw this particular event out and to say that you are supposed to kill all non-believers for all eternity is just plain ridiculous. But then again, as P. T. Barnum never said, "there is a sucker born every minute" and the Apostates of Islam, amongst others, seems to be simply trying to draw the newborns in :p

The problem is not with Islam, or with any other religion in the world. The problem is with humanity. We find it easier to wallow in ignorance, in prejudice, in hatred and in bigotry than to actual think for ourselves or to understand our fellow human beings. So if anybody ever wants to start an Apostates of Humanity site, then sign me right up … but then again, maybe not … I’d rather try to change humanity than to leave humanity behind :p

 

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Posted by Fahim at 7:44 am  |  No Comments