Mr. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi

and

Dr. Khalid Zaheer

vs

Ali Sina

© 2007 Permission is granted to translate, publish and distribute this book by any means, including for financial gain.

About

This document is an extensive debate between Mr. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, one of the world’s top Islamic scholars from Pakistan and Ali Sina, one of the leading critics of Islam and the founder of faithfreedom.org.

This debate was arranged when someone invited Mr. Ghamidi to respond to Ali Sina’s criticisms of Islam. Mr. Ghamidi entered into this debate through his student, Dr. Khalid Zaheer.

An Invitation to Debate

From: Free Inquirer <[email protected]>

Invitation to a Debate

Sep 4, 2006

During the recent years, Islam has become the target of severe criticism and vilification, not just by members of other religions but also by a growing number of ex-Muslims. The Internet has allowed these critics to come out and speak their minds at an alarming rate. These criticisms have had devastating effects on the minds of the Muslim youths, who are unable to answer the critics on their own and are bewildered that the Islamic scholars also have not come forth with satisfactory answers.

In the interest of unraveling the truth about Islam and clearing the minds of the young Muslims, I am formally inviting the Islamic critic Ali Sina and the modern Pakistani ‘state appointed’ Islamic Scholar Javed Ahmed Ghamidi to engage in a debate on Islam.

ALI SINA

Ali Sina is probably one of the most eminent critics of Islam. He renounced Islam after reading the Quran and has managed to create a movement against Islam and has grouped together a large number of ex-Muslims who share his opinions on Islam. He has challenged Islamic scholars to disprove the fallacies that he has identified in the Quran and hadith.

JAVED AHMAD GHAMIDI

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi is a respected Islamic Scholar who has been recently appointed by the Pakistani Government to help facilitate the government in forming a ‘modern’ interpretation of Islam and to do ijtihad for the development of a cosmopolitan modern Islamic Society. Javed Ghamidi has been under the tutelage of Amin Ehsan Islahi and idealizes the writings of his teacher with utmost reverence. Initially expelled from Jamaat-e-Islami due to some difference with the party’s founder Maududi, Ghamidi has managed to develop a restricted following of his own. He has been actively involved in the government’s initiative to revamp and restructure Islamic ordinances in Pakistan like Hudood Ordinance and Zina Ordinance. He is also the president of the Al-Mawrid Institute based in Lahore. Javed Ghamidi also enjoys a good company of his students who teach in various places in Pakistan. Most notable are Moiz Amjad, Asif Iftikhar, Khalid Zaheer and others. Mr. Ghamidi operates through a network of Danish Saras (Houses of Learning) across Pakistan and has some major Islamic Sites to his credit. He also publishes various magazines in Urdu and English, such as Ishraq and Renaissance.

The Challenge to a Debate

This is an invitation to Ali Sina and Javed Ahmed Ghamidi to debate on the validity of claims made by Islam and whether Islam is a true religion. Both parties are invited to provide answers to each other’s arguments.

• The debate will be conducted over emails and will be published on the Faith Freedom International Web site for the benefit of common public.

• The points on which the debate shall be done will be agreed upon first by the two parties to ensure that the core issue is addressed properly. However it is preferable that Ali Sina’s arguments be thoroughly studied on http://www.faithfreedom.org /challenge.htm to restrict the debate only to main points of disagreement.

• Complete references should be given by both parties to support their arguments for the benefit of the reader.

• Any other points on which both sides would like to agree upon.

The debate is subjected to acceptance on both sides. Failure of acceptance of the debate by any one side shall be deemed as a failure to provide a logical and truthful response to support the other’s ideas or ideology.

Dear Free Enquirer,

I published your invitation to announce my acceptance to debate with Mr. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi. It would be an honor to discus important points of disagreement on Islam with such an eminent scholar. Please inform Mr. Ghamidi that I look forward to meet him virtually.

I have given countless proofs that Islam is not a true religion. Mr. Ghamidi is invited to disprove any of my claims, or if he prefers, he could give one single irrefutable proof that Islam is indeed a true religion sent by God.

In either case, should Mr. Ghamidi disprove any of my charges against Muhammad and Islam, or provide a single irrefutable proof that Islam is from God, I promise to publicly acknowledge that I have been mistaken and I shall remove my site faithfreedom.org permanently. Furthermore I am offering a US$50,000 reward to anyone who can show that Islam is a true religion, or that at least my charges against Muhammad are unfounded.

Greetings,

Ali Sina

I am glad to inform the dear readers of FFI that Mr. Ghamidi has expressed his readiness to discuss Islam with me. I would like to thank Free Inquirer for making this debate possible and for inviting Mr. Ghamidi and myself to take part in this informative and educational debate. I trust this would be a very fruitful discussion. I read some of Mr. Ghamidi’s articles and he has made a very positive impression on me. He is one of Pakistan’s most respected scholars and I am honored that despite his busy schedule, he has accepted this invitation. Mr. Ghamidi is a man of peace and a moderate Muslim. Here is the letter of acceptance that I received from his office.

Ali Sina.

From: “khalid zaheer” <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Mr Ghamidi’s Response
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006

Dear Free Inquirer

Thank you very much for taking interest in arranging a dialogue between Mr. Ghamidi and Mr. Ali Sina.

First of all, we would like you to correct this fact: Mr Javed Ahmad Ghamidi has not been appointed by the Government of Pakistan to help it in interpreting Islam in a modern way. Mr. Ghamidi was asked by the President of Pakistan to be a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology, which is a constitutional body that suggests responses to various issues confronting the people of Pakistan in the interpretation of the message of Islam. He accepted that offer in the spirit of informing the rulers about what he thinks is the right understanding of Islam quite the same way as he has been informing people about it in the last 35 years.

We welcome the initiative you have taken to enable Mr. Ali Sina to ask Mr. Ghamidi questions about of Islam that create doubts in his mind about the truthfulness of the claim that it is a message from God. Mr. Ghamidi has been performing this task for the last three-and-a-half decades and there is no reason why we wouldn’t want to share our research with a person like Mr. Sina. However, what he doesn’t want to do is to engage in a polemic which results in a senseless competition of rhetoric wherein the contestants are in reality playing a game in the garb of an academic debate. The difference between a polemic and a serious academic exchange is that one is a fiercely contested debate with a clear objective to not understand and accept what is true but to defeat the opposing party, while the other engages both parties in a serious exchange of views with a view to know and acknowledge what the truth is. The participants are close-minded in the case of the former and open to truth in the case of the latter. Mr. Ghamidi hates the former and welcomes the latter.

Finally, before starting this process, we would like Mr. Sina to have a look at the attached pages which outline the basic approach Mr. Ghamidi follows in forming his religious opinions. It is important that the sources of information he thinks are original for Islamic learning and therefore are the basis of his research should first be understood to preclude any possibility that Mr. Sina demands from him explanation of information and concepts that Mr. Ghamidi thinks do not belong to the original message of Islam.

After Mr. Sina has gone through this message along with the attached outline of Mr. Ghamidi’s approach to understanding the message of Islam, we would welcome suggestions from your side to convert this opportunity into a meaningful dialogue.

Khalid Zaheer

(This message has been written in consultation with Mr Ghamidi.)

http://www.khalidzaheer.com/about.html
Dr Khalid Zaheer is an associate professor of Islamic Studies and Ethics at Lahore University of Management Science (LUMS). He has a teaching experience of more than 16 years. Prior to joining LUMS, he taught at IBA and Punjab University for 12 years as a permanent faculty member. He has also taught at various other educational institutions in Lahore. Dr. Zaheer delivers lectures in Pakistan Administrative Staff College, National Institute of Public Administration, Pakistan Audit and Accounts Training Institute, and Lahore School of Economics. Dr Zaheer’s PhD dissertation focused on Interest-Free Banking. His areas of interest are Islamic banking and application of Islamic principles in contemporary business environment. He is a member of the task force constituted by the Ministry of Finance to propose measures to convert government domestic borrowing into project-related financing according to Shariah injunctions. He is also a member of the Board of Management of the Pakistan Baitul Mal. He regularly contributes articles to the monthly Renaissance, a leading religious English journal of the country. Dr. Zaheer has appeared in many television programs and has also given sermons at mosques.

Part I

Ali Sina’s response:

2006/09/16

Dear Mr. Khalid Zaheer:

I am glad and honored that Mr. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi has accepted the invitation of Free Inquirer to debate with me. I am also pleased that you have agreed to share your knowledge with us and respond to my questions. Unfortunately, most Muslim scholars are not as open-minded as your good self and Mr. Ghamidi. They seem to have boycotted me and prefer to ignore me. The truth is that the questions that I have raised are making the public – both Muslim and non-Muslim – talk. The reluctance of Muslim scholars to respond to my questions reflects poorly on them and also on Islam. Therefore, it is heartening to find a real scholar who is confident enough to not shirk from confronting a “renegade” apostate like yours truly.

You emphasized on the futility of engaging in “a polemic which results
in a senseless competition of rhetoric wherein the contestants are in reality playing a game in the garb of an academic debate.” I cannot agree more and let me add that I admire your positive attitude and your commitment to the truth. This is indeed a rare quality and it speaks volumes about your, and Mr. Ghamidi’s, integrity as true scholars. Our goal, as you stated, should be to unravel the truth and not to childishly try to win the argument at any cost. Since this debate will be posted on the Internet for everyone to see, I am sure our readers do not expect anything less from either one of us. An immature behavior would be tantamount to shooting ourselves in the foot.

When the objective is to find the truth, talking about “defeating the other party” is puerile. How can one be defeated when at the end of the debate truth triumphs and we all learn something? The triumph of the truth means victory for everyone. The one who learns more is the bigger winner and it is in this sense alone that I hope to be a winner. Only those who have inflated egos will feel defeated once proven wrong. I was born ignorant and still I am to a great extent. I learned everything I know from others. I am not ashamed for being ignorant. It is haughtiness, condescendence and obstinacy that are shameful. You know better than me that ego acts as a veil to enlightenment and understanding.

To know that you don’t know is the foundation of all wisdom. Willing to doubt what you know is the virtue of the sage. Haughtiness and arrogance are the traits of the fool.

Since we both are after the truth, I am sure this discussion will be a win-win case for both of us and also for our readers.

I read the page you sent me as attachment and I fully agree with its content. Let me assure you that I am not going to present any argument that is not in the Quran, the Sahih Hadith (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, and Sunan Abu‑Dawud), and the Sira (by Ibn Ishaq, Al-Tabari, and Ibn Sa’d) as evidence. I may quote Muslims scholars to make an example but our discussion will be only on the above-mentioned sources.

Let us begin without further ado.

I will address now Mr. Ghamidi. I will start with less contentious subjects and move on to more difficult ones. My first question is about intercession.

Dear Mr. Ghamidi: In your book Al-Bayan you have made it clear that intercession, as believed by many Muslims, is a myth. You quoted the following verses of the Quran to back up your claim:

[A reward] from the Lord of the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them; the most Gracious – there is no one who has the authority to speak on His behalf. On the Day when Gabriel and the angels will stand arrayed [before Him]. [The Day] when only they will speak whom the most Gracious allows and who speak the truth. (78:37-38)

In the footnote you wrote the following explanation: “This and the next two verses strongly negate the philosophy of mediation and intercession. The angels whom the polytheists believe to be their intercessors will themselves respectfully stand before the Almighty on the Day of Judgement. No one will have the position to speak on behalf of the Almighty. Only they will speak whom the Almighty permits and they too will not be able to utter anything false.” [1]

You also quoted verse 2:48:

And guard yourselves against the day when no soul shall be of use to another in anyway and no intercession shall be accepted and no compensation be taken from it and nor will people be helped.

Then you commented: “There is a negation of three things in this verse: intercession, compensation and help. However, this is just the negation of the outcome: actually the negation is of the existence of someone who can intercede, compensate or help. In other words, what is implied is that on that day there will be no intercession, compensation and help because there will be no person who would do these.” [2]

This sounds reasonable to me. In fact, there are many verses in the Quran that confirm what you said. Here are a few:

O children of Israel, call to mind My favor which I bestowed on you and that I made you excel the nations. And be on your guard against a day when NO SOUL shall avail ANOTHER in the least neither shall any compensation be accepted from it, nor shall intercession profit it, nor shall they be helped. (2:122-123)

O you who believe! Spend out of what We have given you before the day comes in which there is no bargaining, neither any friendship nor intercession… (2:254)

[W]hoever works evil, will be requited accordingly. Nor will he find, besides Allah, any protector or helper. (4:123)

And warn with it those who fear that they shall be gathered to their Lord – there is no guardian for them, nor any intercessor besides Him – that they may guard (against evil). (6:51)

Leave alone those who take their religion to be mere play and amusement, and are deceived by the life of this world. But proclaim (to them) this (truth): that every soul delivers itself to ruin by its own acts: it will find for itself no protector or intercessor except Allah: if it offered every ransom, (or reparation), none will be accepted: such is (the end of) those who deliver themselves to ruin by their own acts… (6:70)

Allah it is Who created the heavens and the earth, and that which is between them, in six Days. Then He mounted the Throne. Ye have not, beside Him, a protecting friend or mediator. Will ye not then remember? (32:4) [3]

The fact that Muhammad has no power to save anyone from hellfire is clearly stated in the verse: (39:19)

Is he on whom the word of doom is fulfilled (to be helped), and canst thou (O Muhammad) rescue him who is in the Fire?

This point seems to be clear enough!

Or is it?

Amazingly, despite all these verses, many Muslims believe that Muhammad has the power to intercede for them in front of Allah and save them from the fire on the Day of Judgment. Ukasha Al-Tayyibi has written a book to prove this very point. In the description of his book we find the following notes by his publisher:

On the Day of Judgement Prophet Muhammed (SAW) will be the only prophet who will be granted permission to intercede to save mankind from the terrors of awaiting judgement on the Day of Rising.

We must not fail to understand that matters which are great and insignificant, large or small are preordained and confirmed in the knowledge of Allah. Surely Allah Almighty has decreed and determined the states of the intercessor, and for whom he intercedes.

The author has taken an analytical approach to prove that intercession can only be granted by Allah’s permission, and the Prophet Muhammed (SAW) will intercede for mankind at five various levels, i.e. from the crossing of the sirat to the height of peoples rank within the garden of paradise.

Discussed topics include intercession only being granted by Allah’s permission, those who took Isa and Uzayr and the angels as lords and sought their intercession, the last day and intercession, the unbelievers seeking intercession, the intercessions of the Prophet (pbuh), his five intercessions, and various hadiths concerning intercession.
As you see, Ukasha Al-Tayyibi claims that his book is based on the Quran and hadith. I have not read his book, but I have found many Quranic verses, as well as hadiths that ratify his claim. I will quote a few and I am sure you’ll find more proofs in his book.

The Quran:

Who is there can intercede in His [Allah’s] presence except as He permitteth? (2:255)

This verse seems to imply that there is at least one person who can intercede with Allah. Let us see if there are more verses confirming this point.

No intercessor (can plead with Him) except after His leave (hath been obtained). (10:3)

On the day when We shall gather the righteous unto the Beneficent, a goodly company. And drive the guilty unto hell, a weary herd, they will have no power of intercession, save him who hath made a covenant with his Lord. (19:85-87)

On that Day shall no intercession avail except for those for whom permission has been granted by (Allah) Most Gracious and whose word is acceptable to Him. (20:109)

And We [1st person plural] did not send before you any messenger but We revealed to him that there is no god but Me, [1st person singular] therefore serve Me. And they say: The Beneficent Allah has taken to Himself a son. Glory be to Him [3rd person singular]. Nay! They are honored servants They do not precede Him in speech and (only) according to His commandment do they act. He knows what is before them and what is behind them, and they do not intercede except for him whom He approvesHim they tremble. And whoever of them should say: Surely I am a god besides Him, such a one do We recompense with hell; thus do, We recompense the unjust. (21:25-29)

and for fear of

[Say:] No intercession can avail in His Presence, except for those for whom He has granted permission. So far (is this the case) that, when terror is removed from their hearts (at the Day of Judgment, then) will they say, ‘what is it that your Lord commanded?’ they will say, ‘That which is true and just; and He is the Most High Most Great.’ (34:23) [4]

Verses 43:86 and 53:26 also tell us that no one can intercede with Allah except those whom Allah pleases.

In the above verses, we get the confirmation that someone is capable to intercede with Allah. So the issue is not resolved.

You may wonder why I highlighted the pronouns. We see sometimes Allah refers to himself in third person singular (He), then shifts to first person plural (We) and sometimes to first person singular (I and Me). Will you please explain this unorthodox way of speech? It appears that these are Muhammad’s Freudian slips of tongue. It is as if the Prophet kept forgetting that the Quran is supposed to be the word of Allah and Allah should not allude to himself in third person. We can find this error all over the Quran. I hope you will give some explanation to this conundrum as well. Is the Quran really the word of God or that of the illiterate Muhammad?

Anyway, let us continue with our main discussion. The following verses are interesting because Muhammad actually starts interceding with Allah for his followers right away even before the Judgment Day.

Those who sustain the Throne (of Allah) and those around it sing Glory and Praise to their Lord; believe in Him; and implore forgiveness for those who believe: “Our Lord! Thy Reach is over all things, in Mercy and Knowledge. Forgive, then, [Now this is clearly Muhammad supplicating to Allah] those who turn in Repentance, and follow Thy Path; and preserve them from the Penalty of the Blazing Fire! And grant, our Lord! That they enter the Gardens of Eternity, which Thou hast promised to them, and to the righteous among their fathers, their wives, and their posterity! For Thou art (He), the Exalted in Might, Full of Wisdom. And preserve them from (all) ills; and any whom Thou dost preserve from ills that Day,- on them wilt Thou have bestowed Mercy indeed: and that will be truly (for them) the highest Achievement.” (40:7-9)

These verses surly can’t be the words of Allah. If they are the words of Allah, whom is Allah supplicating to? If they are the words of Muhammad:

(a) Why they are in the Quran?

(b) Don’t they contradict Quran 2:48, 2:122-123, 2:254, 4:123, 6:5, 6:70, 39:43‑44, 82:18-19, and 17:56-57 as discussed above?

The Hadith

Narrated ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar:

The Prophet said, “A man keeps on asking others for something till he comes on the Day of Resurrection without any piece of flesh on his face.” The Prophet added, “On the Day of Resurrection, the Sun will come near (to, the people) to such an extent that the sweat will reach up to the middle of the ears, so, when all the people are in that state, they will ask Adam for help, and then Moses, and then Muhammad (p.b.u.h).” The sub-narrator added “Muhammad will intercede with Allah to judge amongst the people. He will proceed on till he will hold the ring of the door (of Paradise) and then Allah will exalt him to Maqam Mahmud (the privilege of intercession, etc.). And all the people of the gathering will send their praises to Allah.” (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 2, Book 24, Number 553)

This hadith sounds absurd. The Sun coming down to scorch people and they sweat so much to get drowned in their own sweat is surly an artwork of imaginative power. But that is not my point. The point I want to make is that this hadith also states that someone very special has the power to intercede with Allah and make him revise his plans. I wonder who that person might be! Let us find out.

The Prophet added, “Then the prophets and Angels and the believers will intercede, and (last of all) the Almighty (Allah) will say, ‘Now remains My Intercession.’ He will then hold a handful of the Fire from which He will take out some people whose bodies have been burnt, and they will be thrown into a river at the entrance of Paradise, called the water of life…” Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 93, Number 532s

This hadith makes one to think that Allah is interceding himself. Isn’t that an absurdity? Unless Allah has some sort of mental disorder such as schizophrenia, making him talk to himself and pleading with himself to do what he wants to do, the above hadith makes no sense at all. Now, let us see who else beside Allah is given the power of intercession.

Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah’s Apostle said, “For every Prophet there is one invocation which is definitely fulfilled by Allah, and I wish, if Allah will, to keep my that (special) invocation as to be the intercession for my followers on the Day of Resurrection.” Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 93, Number 566

Wait a minute! Here Muhammad is wishing to become the intercessor for his followers. But didn’t you say that no one can intercede with Allah and that his decisions are irreversible? Oh well, I wish to become a billionaire. There is nothing wrong in wishful thinking. After all you think Islam can be a moderate religion. Isn’t that a wishful thinking? It does not mean all the wishes are going to be fulfilled. But it looks like Muhammad thought that his wish is already fulfilled. See the following hadith:

Narrated Ma’bad bin Hilal Al’Anzi:
We, i.e., some people from Basra gathered and went to Anas bin Malik, and we went in company with Thabit Al-Bunnani so that he might ask him about the Hadith of Intercession on our behalf. Behold, Anas was in his palace, and our arrival coincided with his Duha prayer. We asked permission to enter and he admitted us while he was sitting on his bed. We said to Thabit, “Do not ask him about anything else first but the Hadith of Intercession.” He said, “O Abu Hamza! There are your brethren from Basra coming to ask you about the Hadith of Intercession.” Anas then said, “Muhammad talked to us saying, ‘On the Day of Resurrection the people will surge with each other like waves, and then they will come to Adam and say, ‘Please intercede for us with your Lord.’ He will say, ‘I am not fit for that but you’d better go to Abraham as he is the Khalil of the Beneficent.’ They will go to Abraham and he will say, ‘I am not fit for that, but you’d better go to Moses as he is the one to whom Allah spoke directly.’ So they will go to Moses and he will say, ‘I am not fit for that, but you’d better go to Jesus as he is a soul created by Allah and His Word.’ (Be: And it was) they will go to Jesus and he will say, ‘I am not fit for that, but you’d better go to Muhammad.’

They would come to me and I would say, ‘I am for that.’ Then I will ask for my Lord’s permission, and it will be given, and then He will inspire me to praise Him with such praises as I do not know now. So I will praise Him with those praises and will fall down, prostrate before Him. Then it will be said, ‘O Muhammad, raise your head and speak, for you will be listened to; and ask, for your will be granted (your request); and intercede, for your intercession will be accepted.’ I will say, ‘O Lord, my followers! My followers!’ And then it will be said, ‘Go and take out of Hell (Fire) all those who have faith in their hearts, equal to the weight of a barley grain.’ I will go and do so and return to praise Him with the same praises, and fall down (prostrate) before Him. Then it will be said, ‘O Muhammad, raise your head and speak, for you will be listened to, and ask, for you will be granted (your request); and intercede, for your intercession will be accepted.’ I will say, ‘O Lord, my followers! My followers!’ It will be said, ‘Go and take out of it all those who have faith in their hearts equal to the weight of a small ant or a mustard seed.’ I will go and do so and return to praise Him with the same praises, and fall down in prostration before Him. It will be said, ‘O, Muhammad, raise your head and speak, for you will be listened to, and ask, for you will be granted (your request); and intercede, for your intercession will be accepted.’ I will say, ‘O Lord, my followers!’ Then He will say, ‘Go and take out (all those) in whose hearts there is faith even to the lightest, lightest mustard seed. (Take them) out of the Fire.’ I will go and do so.”

When we left Anas, I said to some of my companions, “Let’s pass by Al-Hasan who is hiding himself in the house of Abi Khalifa and request him to tell us what Anas bin Malik has told us.” So we went to him and we greeted him and he admitted us. We said to him, “O Abu Said! We came to you from your brother Anas Bin Malik and he related to us a Hadith about the intercession the like of which I have never heard.” He said, “What is that?” Then we told him of the Hadith and said, “He stopped at this point (of the Hadith).” He said, “What then?” We said, “He did not add anything to that.” He said, Anas related the Hadith to me twenty years ago when he was a young fellow. I don’t know whether he forgot or if he did not like to let you depend on what he might have said.” We said, “O Abu Said! Let us know that.” He smiled and said, “Man was created hasty. I did not mention that, but that I wanted to inform you of it.

Anas told me the same as he told you and said that the Prophet added, ‘I then return for a fourth time and praise Him similarly and prostrate before Him. [I will be told] ‘O Muhammad, raise your head and speak, for you will be listened to; and ask, for you will be granted (your request): and intercede, for your intercession will be accepted.’ I will say, ‘O Lord, allow me to intercede for whoever said, ‘None has the right to be worshiped except Allah.’ Then Allah will say, ‘By my Power, and my Majesty, and by My Supremacy, and by My Greatness, I will take out of Hell (Fire) whoever said: ‘None has the right to be worshipped except Allah.’” [5]

This hadith not only contradicts your claim that there are no intercessors with Allah, but it is also actually a very ridiculous story. Muhammad here is portraying the entire Divine system as a big joke. This story sounds naïve. Should we really, in this age of enlightenment, read such tales and believe in them? In this hadith, Muhammad is predicting what people would do in the Day of Judgment, how they will run to various prophets and how these poor fellows (the prophets) would feel helpless to intercede on their behalf until our hero, Muhammad, would valiantly go to the fearsome Wizard of this Universe to ask forgiveness for his followers and Allah grants all his wishes. All Muslims will be eventually forgiven: Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Khomeini, mass murderers and terrorists will all be saved from hellfire by Muhammad, as long as they had a small amount of faith in him. The unbelievers will of course be left to burn in Hell for eternity because they had the trepidation to use their brain and not accept things that made no sense to them.

I like how Muhammad bargains with Allah going back and forth and each time getting a little more concession. How can one not be grateful to this hard working and kinder‑than‑God prophet?

Now, this story has not yet happened. It will happen on the Day of Judgment. But Muhammad already knew exactly how it is going to happen and what Allah is going to do and say on that Day. It sounds goofy but it makes a fine children’s story.

The absurdity of this tale is beyond description. What Muhammad is trying to say is that, ‘it really does not matter how much crime you commit, heaven is a hanky‑panky place and if you just believe in me and become my follower, I will pull some strings with Allah and rescue you from the hellfire. Your actions are secondary. You could be a murderer, a rapist, a thief, a pedophile, etc. You will be still forgiven if you just accept me as the prophet of God. Just have an itsy bitsy blind faith in me and I will save you from the fire.’

And I thought the purpose of God in sending prophets was to teach people how to live righteously and not to sin. How silly of me! Now I know that all that we must do to go to paradise is to have a little faith in Muhammad. Our conduct is not that important.

Actually, many Muslims happily live by this dictum. They commit all sorts of perversities and sins, and yet they have strong faith in Islam and Muhammad to the extent that they would happily slit the throat of anyone who slights Islam. That is the extent of their religiosity.

Abul Husain Muslim also reports a few hadiths that support the claim that Muhammad will be the sole intercessor with Allah on the Day of Judgment, who would be sitting on the right hand of Allah advising him how to run his business, whom to punish and whom to reward.

It is reported on the authority of Abu Zubair that he heard from Jabir b. ‘Abdullah, who was asked about the arrival (of people on the Day of Resurrection). He said. We would come on the Day of Resurrection like this, like this, and see, carefully, that which concerns “elevated people”. He (the narrator) said: Then the people would be summoned along with their idols whom they worshipped, one after another. Then our Lord would come to us and say: Whom are you waiting for? They would say: We are waiting for our Lord. He would say: I am your Lord. They would say: (We are not sure) till we gaze at Thee, and He would manifest Himself to them smilingly, and would go along with them and they would follow Him; and every person, whether a hypocrite or a believer, would be endowed with a light, and there would be spikes and hooks on the bridge of the Hell, which would catch hold of those whom Allah willed. Then the light of the hypocrites would be extinguished, and the believers would secure salvation. And the first group to achieve it would comprise seventy thousand men who would have the brightness of full moon on their faces, and they would not be called to account. Then the people immediately following them would have their faces as the brightest stars in the heaven. This is how (the groups would follow one after another). Then the stage of intercession would come, and they (who are permitted to intercede) would intercede, till he who had declared: “There is no god but Allah” and had in his heart virtue of the weight of a barley grain would come out of the Fire. They would be then brought in the courtyard of Paradise and the inhabitants of Paradise would begin to sprinkle water over them till they would sprout like the sprouting of a thing in flood water, and their burns would disappear. They would ask their Lord till they would be granted (the bounties) of the world and with it ten more besides it. [6]

Not only Muhammad thought that he will have the power to intercede with Allah and influence the Almighty’s decisions, he said that even his followers will have that power.

‘Abdullah b. ‘Abbas reported that his son died in Qudaid or ‘Usfan. He said to Kuraib to see as to how many people had gathered there for his (funeral). He (Kuraib) said: So I went out and I informed him about the people who had gathered there. He (Ibn ‘Abbas) said: “Do you think they are forty?” He (Kuraib) said: “Yes.” Ibn ‘Abbas then said to them: “Bring him (the dead body) out for I have heard Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: ‘If any Muslim dies and forty men who associate nothing with Allah stand over his prayer (they offer prayer over him), Allah will accept them as intercessors for him.’” [7]

Isn’t that nice? You can commit all the sins in the world and if you have forty people coming to your funeral praying for you, Allah will accept their intercession. What if you don’t have forty friends? My experience tells me that wealthier people have larger funerals. They serve banquets and draw huge crowds. Poorer people often die alone or with few friends and relatives around them. This hadith not only shows Allah’s injustice, but it is also absurd that he should listen to intercession of people and forgive a sinner. This is not my idea of justice.

Whether it is forty or four billion, it seems absurd to me that humans should have the power to influence God and make him change his mind.

Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: “I shall be pre-eminent amongst the descendants of Adam on the Day of Resurrection and I will be the first intercessor and the first whose intercession will be accepted (by Allah).” [8]

These hadiths, and the above-mentioned verses, show not only the inherent contradiction in the Quran, but also that Muhammad wanted his followers to be at awe with his powers and know that it is he who has the authority over their destiny, so they better submit to him and serve him in this world.

You say that intercession is a myth. Please take a look at the verse 3:159 where allegedly Allah is telling Muhammad “and ask pardon for them”. He is telling his prophet to intercede to him on behalf of his followers. This makes no sense. If Allah wants to forgive someone, why is he asking Muhammad to intercede? Does he need someone lobby him to do what he wants to do? Another verse repeats the same absurdity:

So know (O Muhammad) that there is no god save Allah, and ask forgiveness for thy sin and for believing men and believing women. Allah knoweth [3rd person] (both) your place of turmoil and your place of rest. (47:19)

According to this verse Muhammad was a sinner. If a sinner, he cannot be a perfect example to follow and the verse (33:21) that makes such claim is false. Also:

And when it is said to them, “Come, the Messenger of Allah will pray for your forgiveness”, they turn aside their heads, and thou wouldst see them turning away their faces in arrogance. (63:5)[9]

If Allah does not accept intercessions, what are the above injunctions for? Why is He telling Muhammad to ask forgiveness for the believing men and believing women?

The difficulty does not end there. Despite the above verses where allegedly Allah tells his prophet to pray for the forgiveness of his own sins and that of his followers, there are verses that actually contradict them and say that such prayers will not be accepted.

And do not plead on behalf of those who act unfaithfully to their souls; [speaking in 1^st person] surely Allah does not love [shifting to 3^rd person] him who is treacherous, sinful. (4:107)

Ask forgiveness for them (O Muhammad), [speaking in 1^st person] or ask not forgiveness for them; though thou ask forgiveness for them seventy times Allah will not forgive them. [switching to 3rd person] That is because they disbelieved in Allah and His messenger, and Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk. (9:80)

And never (O Muhammad) [1^st person] pray for one of them who dieth, nor stand by his grave. Lo! they disbelieved in Allah and His messenger, [switching to third person] and they died while they were evil-doers. (9:84)

And Noah called upon his Lord, [3^rd person] and said: “O my Lord! surely my son is of my family! and Thy promise is true, and Thou art the justest of Judges!” He said: “O Noah! He is not of thy family: For his conduct is unrighteous. So ask not of Me that of which thou hast no knowledge! I give thee counsel, lest thou act like the ignorant!” [Why when talking to Abraham Allah uses the correct pronoun, and when speaking to Muhammad he mostly uses a wrong pronoun, suddenly speaking of himself in 3^rd person?] Noah said: “O my Lord! I do seek refuge with Thee, lest I ask Thee for that of which I have no knowledge. And unless thou forgive me and have Mercy on me, I should indeed be lost!” (11:45-47)

The Quran tells us that Abraham prayed to Allah for the forgiveness of his parents.

O our Lord! cover (us) with Thy Forgiveness – me, my parents, and (all) Believers, on the Day that the Reckoning will be established! (14:41)

Forgive my father, for that he is among those astray. (26:86)

Yet, Abu Huraira narrates a hadith from Muhammad saying that Abraham’s prayers will not be accepted.

The Prophet said, “On the Day of Resurrection Abraham will meet his father Azar whose face will be dark and covered with dust. (The Prophet Abraham will say to him): ‘Didn’t I tell you not to disobey me?’ His father will reply: ‘Today I will not disobey you.’ Abraham will say: ‘O Lord! You promised me not to disgrace me on the Day of Resurrection; and what will be more disgraceful to me than cursing and dishonoring my father?’ Then Allah will say (to him): ‘I have forbidden Paradise for the disbelievers.’ Then he will be addressed, ‘O Abraham! Look! What is underneath your feet?’ He will look and there he will see a Dhabh (an animal,) blood-stained, which will be caught by the legs and thrown in the (Hell) Fire.” [10]

Isn’t it funny that Muhammad knew the discussion that would take place between Abraham and his father in future when he actually could not predict what would happen to him the next day or at least know where Qinana, the youthful leader of Khaibar, had hidden his treasures so he did not have to torture that wretched soul to death to make him talk? Anyway, that is another subject. This hadith confirms your belief that Allah will not accept anyone’s intercession. However, it contradicts all the other verses and hadiths that I quoted above.

So praying for the deceased is not permitted, especially if the deceased was an unbeliever. At least this is what some of the verses say. However, cursing people is okay. Sura 111 is nothing but curse. Allah reveals a sura to curse Muhammad’s uncle and his wife.

Perish the hands of the Father of Flame! Perish he! No profit to him from all his wealth, and all his gains! Burnt soon will he be in a Fire of Blazing Flame! His wife shall carry the (crackling) wood – As fuel!- A twisted rope of palm-leaf fibre round her (own) neck!

Is really this sura from Allah? Why would Allah need to curse anyone when he can crush them and destroy them so easily? Isn’t it more logical to believe that at least this sura was made up by Muhammad out of frustration and rage? Which is more logical? Is Allah insane or this sura is made up by Muhammad?

Muhammad confesses that at least in one occasion, he received Satanic Verses, thinking to be from God. Could Sura 111 also be of the same category?

Sometimes one verse in the Quran is contradicted by the subsequent verse. For example the verse 2:254 says:

O you who believe! Spend out of what We have given you before the day comes in which there is no bargaining, neither any friendship nor intercession, and the unbelievers.

And the following verse 2:255 contradicts it and says:

Who is there can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth?.

Far from being a clear book, the Quran is replete with contradictions. That is why Muslims can find anything they want in the Quran and interpret it in any way they wish. Osama Bin Laden can find verses that justify his crimes against humanity and you can find verses to portray Islam as a moderate religion. I will discuss these contradictions in my future discussion with you, one at a time. My goal is to prove that far from being a book of guidance, the Quran misguides people. Muslims will do much better if they stop following this book of confusion and rely on their own intelligence to find their way, just like other people do.

I hope to convince a good number of Muslims that Islam is a lost paradigm. We should not waste our time trying to reform it. Islam can’t be reformed. It must be discarded. The Quran is not the word of God. One error in this book disqualifies it as the word of God. If you bear with me I will show you hundreds. We have just started. This was only a token of the humongous errors and contradictions that exist in the Quran – only a drop from an ocean of asininity.

I remain cordially yours.

Ali Sina

Part II

Date: Sep 27, 2006

Dear Mr Ali Sina

I don’t want to waste your time and that of the visitors of your site by
presenting apologies and excuses for being late in the response. I hope and
pray that the future responses wouldn’t be delayed by as long a duration as
the one this message has taken.

I must clarify, by way of a disclaimer, that, now that myself and Mr Javed
Ahmad Ghamidi are living in two different cities, at least temporarily, what
I am writing is in consultation with him on the basis of a telephonic
conversation. I am taking the liberty of writing a much briefer message than
what it should have been if I were to mention everything he had suggested.
The reason why I am doing so is that I personally believe that relatively
brief messages help in attracting a larger readership than the longer ones.
So, for instance, whereas Mr Ghamidi would have liked me to quote ten
examples to prove a point, I would, for the sake of brevity, confine myself
to two. However, if you would so demand, I would go for the longer versions
of responses too.

Having said that, here are the responses to the, basically, two problems
you’ve raised on Qur’anic teachings:

1) As for the problems of understanding in the Qur’anic description of
intercession in the life hereafter, you’ve agreed in your message that if
that understanding was to remain confined to what is mentioned in the
following Qur’anic verse, it would be reasonable and logically acceptable:

“[A reward] from the Lord of the heavens and the earth and all that lies
between them; the most Gracious – there is no one who has the authority to
speak on His behalf. [It will happen] on the Day when Gabriel and the angels
will stand arrayed [before Him]. [It will be the Day] when only they will
speak whom the most Gracious allows and who speak the truth.” (97:37-38)

We believe that what the rest of the Qur’an says is consistent with the
above statement. The following explanation is an attempt to clarify position
on the issue: There can be three categories of individuals from the point of
view of their attitude and performance in the trial of this worldly life:
the good performers who would succeed in the next life on the merit of their
own deeds; the criminally inclined, obstinate individuals who wouldn’t
deserve any mercy from the Almighty; and the in-between performers who mix
good deeds with bad ones but nonetheless are not obstinate transgressors.
While the first category wouldn’t need any intercession, the second category
wouldn’t deserve one. Intercession would only be needed by, and allowed to,
people belonging to the third category.

In our worldly life, we too tend to make a distinction on the basis of
attitude while dealing with people who do things that are wrong. An employee
who is not extremely efficient but is not seen to be disloyal to the
organization gets, or deserves to get, a treatment which is different from
the one meted out to the one who is both inefficient and disloyal. Likewise
is what God Almighty is going to do in the next life: His
less-efficient-but-loyal servants would receive His mercy, albeit through
the agency of intercession. The disloyal criminals would deserve no mercy.

Intercession would be used as a mode of applying God’s mercy for the
less-efficient-but-loyal servants for two reasons: The treatment meted out
to them and the high performers should remain distinct and the highest
performing servants should get the additional reward of getting the honour
of successfully interceding for some other people. Indeed this process of
intercession would not violate the basic principle outlined in the
above-quoted verse: “[It will be the Day] when only they will speak whom the
most Gracious allows and who speak the truth.” (97:37-38) In other words,
the Almighty would Himself identify the people who would be allowed to
intercede and the ones they would be allowed to intercede for. In the
process of intercession, they would not speak anything but the truth.
Wherever the Qur’an talks about intercession, it does so within the
parameters of the above-stated principle.

As for the mention of intercession in ahadith, we have already stated that
the only two reliable sources of knowledge of Islam are Qur’an and sunnah,
While the Qur’an is the book of God that was preserved through the process
of memorizing from the first generation onwards in a way that its
originality is beyond doubt, similar is the case of sunnah, the religious
practices of the prophet– in fact the earlier prophets too — that he
performed in the presence of his companions who emulated him even after his
death and the next generations followed suit. The authenticity of
originality of these sunnah practices — like for example, prayers,
pilgrimage, burial rites etc. — are at par with the Qur’an. Both have been
passed on from generation to another in accordance with God’s scheme to
preserve the last religion revealed by Him.

The case of ahadith is not the same. These reports about the prophet’s life
are a record of what he did, said, or what happened during his lifetime,
compiled by individuals at their own initiative. Unlike the Qur’an and
sunnah, the contents of ahadith do not contain a completely authentic
description of the prophet’s mission. There could be both inadvertent errors
in the hadith literature as well as mentions that resulted out of deliberate
attempts at distorting the true picture of Islam. The important thing is
that while the Qur’an and sunnah are end result of the God-ordained
arrangement, ahadith are the result of human effort. We therefore don’t take
the responsibility of defending what is mentioned in this literature.

2) The other problem you have pointed out in the Qur’an is regarding the
inconsistent use of pronouns for God. To understand why it has so happened,
one must appreciate that the Qur’an is not just a bland piece prose in
Arabic that was revealed to hand down some instructions to the prophet. It
is a masterpiece of Arabic literature. Like other literary masterpieces, the
use of pronouns in the Qur’an, as indeed in the case of many other aspects
of its styles of presentation, should be viewed from that perspective. The
use of third person pronoun by an author may be considered an error by a
reader not fully conversant with literary writings. To someone who knows the
subtle delicacies presentations that are expressed in the highest level of
literary taste, usage of the same pronoun can raise that work from the level
of ordinary prose to a much higher level of literary taste. The Qur’an was
revealed not just to influence the ordinary people of the Arabian society;
it had come to have a deep impact on the elite of the society who wouldn’t
have been impressed by a message that expressed itself in a simple, dull
language. Thus Qur’anic style of presentation should not be critically
examined from the point of view of ordinary logic. It has to be appreciated
from the standpoint of the richness of its literary stature.

Zamakhshari, a twelfth century exegete, whose literary appreciation of the
Qur’an is widely acknowledged, has given several examples of the usage of
third person pronouns by the top-grade classical poets of the Arabian
society. If needed, I will quote them. The Qur’an had not just to match them
in the beauty of their literary style. It had to outperform them to reach
the hearts of the elite class and, through them, the ordinary people as
well. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that God uses He and Him for
Himself on several occasions. In case such usage is to be criticized, it
should be done on the parameters of literary appreciation of the classical
Arabic.

Just to help appreciate our point, I am mentioning a couplet each from Iqbal
and Ghalib, the two most outstanding Urdu poets of the Indian subcontinent.
The translations are my own:

Urdu:
Iqbal bara ubdaishak hay man baatoon main moh laita hay
Guftar ka who ghazi to bana, kirdar ka ghazi ban na saka

Iqbal is a great sermonizer: He wins the hearts through what he says
Despite winning the verbal battle, he couldn’t win the battle of character

Urdu:
Atay hain ghaib say yeh mazamin khyal main
Ghalib sareere khama-e naway-e saroosh hay

Ideas come to him from the heavens
Ghalib is only the scribe of the voices of angels

In both cases, the great poets are using third person pronouns for
themselves. Anyone who would accuse them of committing logical error in
presentation would attract the criticism that he is devoid of a taste for
appreciation of literary masterpieces. Likewise is true for the Qur’an.
Khalid Zaheer

Date: Sep 30, 2006

Ali Sina’s Response

Dear Mr. Ghamidi and Mr. Zaheer;

Greetings and thank you for the response! You have been brief and to the point. I will try to do the same.

1– In your introduction to Sura Naba, Mr. Ghamidi, you quoted the verses 78: 37‑40 and in the footnote you wrote:

“This and the next two verses strongly negate the philosophy of mediation and intercession.”

I agreed with that and affirmed that intercession makes no sense.

But then I pointed out that many Muslims believe that intercession is possible, and I quoted several verses that make that belief plausible.

However in your latest response you indicated, “intercession would only be needed by, and allowed to, people belonging to the third category.”

So obviously I had not understood you correctly at first or you are having a second thought. It appears to me that now you are saying that intercession is possible. Is my understanding correct?

If intercession is not possible, I would like you to explain why in so many places Muhammad claims that he will be the intercessor and that others to whom permission has been given can also intercede.

If intercession is possible, then we have a logical problem to solve. Doesn’t God know everything? What can possibly any intercessor tell Him that He does not know already? The Quranic verses say that intercession would be allowed to those who speak the truth. This makes no sense. Can anyone tell a lie to God when he already knows everything? Why does he need the opinion of others when he knows best? What is the point in talking to God when he already knows what we are going to say, and we know that he knows what is in our mind?

Furthermore, if God’s wisdom, compassion and mercy exceed those of his creatures, why would he need any creature of him to tell him, “please be more forgiving and merciful”? Can possibly anyone be more merciful to other humans than God?

When I agreed with you, it was because I understood you say the Quran “strongly negates the philosophy of mediation and intercession”. But this does not seem to be the case. So, I can’t agree with you and you should explain logically why an all-knowing, all‑wise God needs intercessions by his creatures. Is there anything that God does not know that the intercessor can inform him? The philosophy of intercession denies not only the omniscience of God, but also his mercy and fairness. It implies that Muhammad and “those to whom permission is given” know things that Allah does not know, or that they are more forgiving and merciful that God.

You brought the example of an employee who is loyal but not very efficient and that his employer tolerates some of his ineptitudes in consideration of his loyalty. Let us agree with this premise. The question is why this employer needs someone to intercede with him on behalf of this lousy but loyal employee. An intercessor would only make sense if the employer does not have the full knowledge of the situation. So he would ask the opinion of the superior of this employee who knows him best. But if God knows everything better than anyone else, and is wiser than all his creatures and his prophets, why would he need anyone’s opinion? Doesn’t this imply that Muhammad knows something about humans that Allah does not know?

According to Islam, Allah is perfect while Muhammad and Muslims are not. Will you please explain why a perfect being would listen to the opinions of imperfect creatures? If the claim that Allah knows best is true, then intercession by creatures is not needed and is sheer arrogance.

The concept of intercession is nothing but blasphemy. Muhammad is claiming to have the power to act as God’s advisor. He even grants this preposterous privilege to his followers. If someone deserves a break because of his loyalty or for any other reason, shouldn’t God know that better than his prophet? By claiming that he has the power to intercede with God, Muhammad is assuming the role of the Almighty’s partner.

You wrote: “In other words, the Almighty would Himself identify the people who would be allowed to intercede and the ones they would be allowed to intercede for. In the process of intercession, they would not speak anything but the truth.”

I can’t understand the logic of this protocol. Let us say God decides to punish someone for a sin. Has he made his decision wisely or not? Is his decision based on knowledge or is it based on ignorance? Then he appoints some good Muslims to intercede on behalf of this individual. These Muslims prostrate in front of Allah and tell him, “Oh Allah, please forgive this man because he was a loyal Muslim,” and Allah, after hearing some supplications, plays with his beard for a moment and says, “Okay, because you interceded I changed my mind and will forgive him.” Doesn’t this sound ludicrous? If this individual deserves to be forgiven why won’t God forgive him in the first place? What these Muslims can possibly tell God that He does not know, and how can a bunch of humans influence the decision of the maker of this universe? Is God so whimsical? Doesn’t this imply that his original decision was not right? If it was right, why change it? If it was not right was it based on faulty information or poor judgment?

Funny thing is that Allah already knows that his decision is not right and the person deserves better treatment. So he asks his prophet and some good Muslims to beg so he can change his decision and make it right.

We should also remember verse 7:188, where allegedly Allah tells Muhammad to say:

I have no power over any good or harm to myself except as Allah willeth. If I had knowledge of the unseen, I should have multiplied all good, and no evil should have touched me: I am but a warner, and a bringer of glad tidings to those who have faith.

There is also a hadith where Muhammad said:

By Allah, I do not know what Allah will do with me though I am Allah’s Apostle. ‘[Bukhari Volume 2, Book 23, Number 334]

In one of his sermons, calculated to instill the fear of Allah and the day of reckoning in the hearts of men, Muhammad said:

O people of Quraish be prepared for the hereafter, I cannot save you from the punishment of Allah; O Bani Abd Manaf, I cannot save you from Allah; O Abbas, son of Abdul Mutalib, I cannot protect you either; O Fatima, daughter of Muhammad, even you I cannot save. [Abdul Ghani, USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts, “Description of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)”, www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/prophet/prophetdescription.html.]

How, then, can such a person, who has no power over anything except what Allah tells him, and does not know what will be his own end, claim to know that he will be an advisor to Allah on the Day of Judgment advocating for Muslims?

Imagine Allah sitting on his throne and condemning a Muslim to Hell, knowing that this person deserves better. So he turns to Muhammad and winks. Mo goes on his knees and supplicates to Allah to forgive that man. Then Allah smiles and tells that Muslim, “I have forgiven your sin because of Muhammad. Now you go to Paradise and be thankful to Muhammad.”

This is comedy. It is clear that Muhammad said something at one time and then forgot and said something else at another time. The whole story is just ludicrous. This is enough proof that Muhammad was making things up.

Now imagine this scene happening billions of times, once for every Muslim that ever lived and had a grain of faith in Muhammad. (All Muslims have that much faith or they would not call themselves Muslim.) Let us say there will be about 10 billion Muslims in total, since the beginning of Islam to the Day of Resurrection and let us say it takes just one minute for Muhammad to intercede on behalf of each one of them. That is really fast justice. At this rate, if Muhammad and Allah work nonstop, 24 hours per day and all days of the year, the Day of Judgment will have to last 19,000 years. Now imagine you have lived 60 or 80 years in this world and will have to stand in line for over 19,000 years to receive your judgment. If there are twice that many Muslims, then the Day of Judgment will last 38,000 years. If the intercession ritual takes more than one minute per person, the waiting time will be longer. If Allah and Muhammad take coffee breaks, you’ll have to stand in line a few extra thousands of years. We are not even counting the time that it will take to process the non-Muslims, because we assume that they will all be herded to hell like the Jews being sent to Nazi gas chambers, and Allah will not waste a minute of his time on them.

If the Quran says intercession is possible, the Quran is engaging in a logical fallacy. It is undermining the omniscience of God and is confuting His superior wisdom and mercy.

My dear erudite friends, I think you have a big logical problem in front of you. You either must accept intercession or reject it. If you reject it, then explain why Muhammad claims to have that power, and if you accept it then you are engaging in blasphemy.

2– In response to my second question asking why Allah in the Quran abruptly changes pronouns and sometimes refers to himself in third person, you said that it is because the Quran “is a masterpiece of Arabic literature”.

I agree that sometimes a speaker or a writer speaks of himself in third person and this is acceptable. However this is not the recipe to transform a dull writing into a masterpiece of literature. The Quran is not a masterpiece of literature by any standard. If we continue this debate long enough, I will show you the errors in the Quran that prove clearly the author of this book has been indeed an illiterate man and not the almighty God. Switching from one pronoun to another without notice only creates confusion and it does not transform a prosaic writing into a masterpiece of literature.

Sura Al-Fatiha, the first sura of the Quran, is the one that all Muslims read regularly. Let us read it again.

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds.
The Beneficent, the Merciful.
Master of the Day of Judgment.
Thee do we serve and Thee do we beseech for help.
Keep us on the right path.
The path of those upon whom Thou hast bestowed favors. Not (the path) of those upon whom Thy wrath is brought down, nor of those who go astray.

Are these the words of God? Who is God supplicating to?

This topic in my view is clear. The following is my next question:

A Beast as the Messenger of Allah

When Muhammad claimed to be a prophet, people who knew him best laughed at him. They asked for proof. He had none. Then they asked why God does not send an angel, so they could be sure of his message. Muhammad’s response to them was that God sends human prophets to humans.

People said:

You are no more than a human being like us! You wish to turn us away from what our fathers used to worship. Then bring us a clear authority. (14:10)

This is logical. If Muhammad did not present any proof, how could people know he is telling them the truth? (See also 23:47.)

Allah responded by asking:

Is it a wonder for mankind that We have inspired a man among them? (10:2)

He further complained:

That was because there came to them their Messengers with clear proofs (signs), but they said: “Shall mere men guide us?” (64:6) [Hilali-Khan translation.]

Well, I would like to see that clear proof. If we had clear proof we would not be having this discussion. Then Allah gives his reasons why messengers to humans are always humans and not angels or something else.

And naught prevented mankind from believing when the guidance came unto them save that they said: “Hath Allah sent a mortal as (His) messenger?” Say: “If there were in the earth angels walking secure, We had sent down for them from heaven an angel as messenger.” (17:94‑95)

We never sent before thee any messengers but lo! They verily ate food and walked in the markets. And We have appointed some of you a test for others: Will ye be steadfast? And thy Lord is ever Seer. And those who look not for a meeting with Us say: “Why are angels not sent down unto us and (Why) do we not see our Lord!” Assuredly they think too highly of themselves and are scornful with great pride. (25:20- 21)

And We have not sent before you but men from (among) the people of the towns, to whom We sent revelations. (12:109)

And We sent not (as Our messengers) before thee other than men, whom We inspired. Ask the followers of the Reminder if ye know not? We gave them not bodies that would not eat food, nor were they immortals. (21:7-8)

Ibn Kathir in the tafseer (Quranic exegesis) of Sura Al-Isra explains:

And there are many other similar Ayat. Then Allah says, pointing out His kindness and mercy towards His servants that He sends to them Messengers of their own kind so that they will understand what he says and will be able to speak to him directly. If He sent to mankind a Messenger from among the angels, they would not be able to deal with him face to face and learn from him, as Allah says: “Indeed, Allah conferred a great favor on the believers when He sent among them a Messenger from among themselves” (3:164)

Ibn Kathir is right; there are other verses. What I quoted so far is enough to make us understand that for men, only men will be sent as messengers. But we find that Allah contradicts himself.

And when the word is fulfilled concerning them, We shall bring forth a beast of the earth to speak unto them because mankind had not faith in Our revelations. (27:82)

Here Allah is promising that he will send a beast to bring his message to mankind. Doesn’t this belie everything he has said in all those above-mentioned verses? Do beasts of the earth speak Arabic better than angels? What kind of beast will be this messenger of Allah? Will it be a jackass, a camel, a crocodile or a chimpanzee? How would we recognize it? According to Islam, jinnis can also appear in the form of animals. Why can animals speak to humans and angels can’t?

Then again, didn’t Muhammad claim to be the last prophet? (Quran 33:40.) If he was the last one to bring us a message from God, then what is this beast going to be? If this beast is going to bring us a message, he is a messenger and the title of khatama alnnabiyyeen (the last of prophets) that Muhammad claimed for himself should go to this animal. If 33:40 is right, then the verse 27:82 must be wrong.

Furthermore, it is not true that angels don’t bring messages from God to humans. The Quran itself testifies that at the time of Solomon there were two angels in Babel, Harut and Marut, who spoke to people and said “We are only a temptation, therefore disbelieve not (in the guidance of Allah).” Then the Quran says:

And from these two (angels) people learn that by which they cause division between man and wife; but they injure thereby no-one save by Allah’s leave. And they learn that which harmeth them and profiteth them not. (2:102)

Also the Quran says an angel appeared to Zechariah the father of John (Yahya) and brought him the glad tiding that he is going to have a son:

Then the angels called to him as he stood praying in the sanctuary: That Allah gives you the good news of Yahya verifying a Word from Allah, and honorable and chaste and a prophet from among the good ones. (3:39)

Don’t these two verses contradict the previous verses that deny the possibility of angels coming to humans as messengers?

A little further down (3:42, 45) again it is an angel who brings a message to Mary the mother of Jesus, informing her that she is going to have a son. In another part of the Quran, the same angel is appearing to Mary and says:

“I am only a messenger of your Lord: That I will give you a pure boy.” (19:19)

Either angels can be messengers of God to humans or they can’t. In either case, some of the verses of the Quran must be false.

The difficulty does not end here. The above verses are emphatic that the messengers that Allah sends to each species will be of the same species. However, the Quran says that Muhammad was sent as a messenger also to the jinn.

And when We turned towards you a party of the jinn who listened to the Quran; so when they came to it, they said: Be silent; then when it was finished, they turned back to their people warning (them). (46:29)

Then the jinnis said to each other:

And whoever does not accept the-Divine caller, he shall not escape in the earth and he shall not have guardians besides Him, these are in manifest error. (46:32)

The same claim is made in Sura Al-Jinn (72:1-14).

There are also many hadiths that talk about Muhammad going to the jinnis and teaching them Islam. For brevity I pass them up.

How could Muhammad, who was a man, at least according to his own claim, become a messenger to the jinn when in so many verses he said to each species will be sent a messenger of their own kind?

The Quran claims that both jinnis and men have received messengers from among them.

O assembly of jinn and men! Did there not come to you messengers from among you, relating to you My communications and warning you of the meeting of this day of yours? (6:130)

According to the Quran also angels have their own messengers:

Allah chooses messengers from angels and from men, for Allah is He Who hears and sees (all things). (22:75)

All praise is due to Allah, the Originator of the heavens and the earth, the Maker of the angels, apostles flying on wings, two, and three, and four; He increases in creation what He pleases; surely Allah has power over all things. (35:1)

So how could Muhammad go to the jinnis and become their messenger and how come to us humans, a beast will be sent to deliver the message of Allah? Could it be that Muhammad was actually a jinni, deceiving people and posing as a prophet?

Let us ignore all these verses and accept the ones that say messengers to men will be always men. Was not Muhammad a man? Was not Gabriel an angel? Don’t the verses that deny the possibility of angels acting as messengers of God to men belie the entire claim of Muhammad? Muhammad claimed that the Quran was dictated to him by an angel and in the same Quran we read that God does not send angels as messengers to humans. Don’t these contradictions prove that Muhammad was a liar?

I remain sincerely yours.

Ali Sina

Upon informing Mr. Zaheer that I have published my response, he wrote:

Dear Mr Ali Sina

I am finding it difficult to access your site. Can I get your response
directly? Thanks.

Khalid Zaheer

This is regrettable. It seems that they have blocked faithfreedom.org in Pakistan. Several Islamic countries have blocked us. For 1400 years, Muslim leaders have kept the masses ignorant. In this way they could rule them better. But for how long can they keep people in the dark?

Part III

Date: Oct 5, 2006

Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer’s Response

Dear Mr Ali Sina

This message is in response to your message to me dated September 30, 2006.
I am responding to it after Mr Ghamidi went through the contents of it and
apprised me of his views.

Before we comment on the essentially two points that were the subject of our
first discussion, I would want to mention the followed two things as a
prelude:

i) As I mentioned in one of my earlier messages, since we are doing quite a
few other things apart from participating in this discussion, the responses
from our side can take longer than what many people would expect. But please
bear with us; it is in the interest of the quality and usefulness of this
discussion that we take our time and not hurry through with our responses.

ii) Ours is a serious academic debate and not an attempt at providing
emotionally consoling material to our respective fan clubs. In fact, if I am
not mistaken, what brings us together despite the vast differences in our
ideologies is the concern that some people, both religious and
non-religious, don’t allow their followers to face realities the way they
are. We are confident that we, the participants on both sides of this
discussion, are equally concerned that the truth should be allowed to lay
bare before our readers and that no method be adopted that would take their
minds away from what is being discussed. It is this concern that compels us
to request you that no third point be raised before the first two are taken
to as far as they can go in deciding the truth about them. Raising new
points when the earlier ones haven’t as yet been resolved helps only in
distracting the reader from concentrating on the real issues of the
discussion. We want to move step-by-step no matter how long it takes for the
journey to end. We have come together to uncover the truth. Let us do it in
the best possible way.

Now let me comment on the first two points you have mentioned.

i) Your criticism on the Qur’anic presentation of intercession is that it is
inconsistent and self contradictory. You have not been convinced by our
response that the intercession to be allowed by the Almighty would be
applicable to the case of marginal performers only. We will present our
understanding from another perspective now and then take up your
reservations one-by-one to show that your criticism doesn’t logically apply
to the Qur’anic concept of intercession.

Let us take the following Qur’anic passage: “The (acceptance of) repentance
is binding on Allah in the case of such people only who do sin in an
emotional state and then repent immediately afterwards. Such are the people
whose repentance Allah shall most certainly accept. And Allah is most
knowledgeable and wise. And repentance of such people is not going to be
accepted who continue to sin until death reaches any one of them and he says
“I repent now”, nor indeed (is repentance) of those (going to be accepted)
who die as disbelievers. For such people we have prepared a painful
punishment.” (4:17-18)

The above passage outlines three categories of people on the basis of their
responses to the sins they commit. There are those who sincerely repent
immediately after they commit a wrong act. There are others who don’t repent
until death reaches them. The case of both categories has been clarified in
the above passage. However, the case of another category of people has not
been mentioned in this verse: those who commit evil but don’t repent
immediately nor do they delay their repentance till viewing the signs of
death. Their case has not been clarified in this passage of the Qur’an. The
Almighty has neither declared that they will be forgiven nor has He
announced that they are going to be punished. What if a person belonging to
such a category was to seek justice from God Almighty on the Day of
Judgment? And what if another person, let’s say my ordinary self, was to ask
the Almighty to forgive him? What objections can be raised against the
possibility that such an event will take place before the Almighty makes a
clear pronouncement to that effect? Intercession will be nothing more than a
request tendered by some individuals to the Almighty to forgive those people
whose case will be unclear on the basis of the principles of justice clearly
outlined by the Almighty. Such an act will neither be an attempt to add
anything to the His knowledge nor will it be instrumental in altering His
decision. It will be a mere plea expressed by some individuals to seek mercy
for some others who will be falling on the margin of good and bad
performers.

On the basis of the above explanation, I am now mentioning our brief
comments on some of the observations you have made. (Your observations in
quotation marks are followed by our comments.)

a) “You are having second thoughts (about the concept of intercession).” We
have consistently mentioned the same understanding of intercession. That
understanding is based on one logical, coherent idea that runs through all
the statements of the Qur’an relevant to that question.

b) “Doesn’t God know everything?” Given the clarification mentioned above,
this question doesn’t even arise. The fact that a person will plead mercy
from God for someone else in no way undermines belief in God’s omniscience.

c) “Can possibly anyone be more merciful to other humans than God?” This
comment too is not applicable to the explanation we have offered above. In
fact, it would be the supreme kindness of God that would allow some people
to plead mercy for those people whom He will have already decided, but not
openly announced, to forgive. It would be a gesture of graciousness on His
part to allow some other people too to participate in that process. In other
words, God Almighty could have shown kindness to people on the margin of
success-failure boundary directly, but He will let others too to become a
part of that process. By embracing others in His process of mercy, God will
elevate those others to a very high status of recognition in the eyes of the
rest of mankind.

d) “The philosophy of intercession denies not only the omniscience of God
but also his mercy and fairness.” For omniscience and mercy, kindly refer to
our earlier remarks. As for the possibility of a compromise in the principle
of fairness, it needs to be pointed out that forgiveness for people who
would fall on the margin of good and bad performers would be nothing but a
delicate balance between the principle of mercy and fairness coming together
to simultaneously play a role.

e) “Do Muhammad and other devout Muslims know the secrets of people’s heart better than God?” I hope it is clear by now that this question also doesn’t
apply to the Qur’anic concept of intercession.

f) “Funny thing is that Allah already knows that his decision is not right
and the person deserves better treatment. So he asks his prophet and some
good Muslims to beg for him to change his decision and make it right. If it
was the best decision, how could anyone dare to ask him to change it?”
Again, our hope is that, given our clarifications, the concept would start
making sense to all sensible people and would not remain funny any more.
Allah Almighty will not change His decision. He will only allow His decision
to become manifest in a different way to indicate that while those who are
being forgiven didn’t strictly fall in the category of clear winners, they
are still getting the benefit of His mercy.

ii) You have moved on by making a passing remark that the mere fact that
examples of third person pronouns used by authors for themselves do exist in
literature of high quality is not an evidence of the fact that such shifts
in the Qur’an also enable its text to belong to the same category. Let’s
discuss this more deeply. Let us have your arguments that support your
claim. We have to decide at this point as to whether your claim is correct
or not. We will have no problems in accepting your claim provided you
present your case properly. Let us go into the classical Arabic literature,
the most outstanding example of which we believe is the Qur’an, and find out
whether what you have casually referred to is actually true. This discussion
must not move on even a step further from here unless this issue is
resolved. We will wait for examples from classical Arabic literature coming
from your side that would show that sudden shifts of pronouns by the author
are unheard of and that it has been a blunder on the part of the author of
the Qur’an to have done so. We will then, God willing, proceed to tell you
through several examples from masterpieces of Arabic literature as to why we
believe that such shifts were common place in that literature. We hope that
you do not object to our claim that since your criticism is on a particular
style of communication adopted by the Arabic Qur’an, it is the standards of
classical Arabic literature, especially belonging to the era when the Qur’an
was being revealed, and no other criterion, that should be employed to come
to any definite conclusion about the relevance of your criticism. We would
like to have your clear view on this point in your next response.

You have suggested a third topic for discussion. We very politely request
that the discussion on the third topic will make sense only after the first
two have been discussed thoroughly. As we have pointed out earlier, we must
help readers to make up their minds on the two points you have raised. It’s
only after the matter on these two issues has been settled that we should
move on to others. We assure you that if you have hundred more points that
you think can be raised against the claim that the Qur’an has divine
origins, we will discuss each one of them in the same spirit and enthusiasm
as we are taking up these two. And in case you will be able to academically
prove your point convincingly, you will not find us unwilling to acknowledge
that you have done so. Let this debate remain a serious academic exercise in
which each point which is being taken up for discussion is debated
threadbare. Only then would the truth would unfold itself.

Thanks.
Khalid Zaheer

Date: Oct 9, 2006

Dear Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer,

Thank you for your response. You made a very important statement. You said “what brings us together despite the vast differences in our ideologies is the concern that some people, both religious and non-religious, don’t allow their followers to face realities the way they are. We are confident that we, the participants on both sides of this discussion, are equally concerned that the truth should be allowed to lay bare before our readers and that no method be adopted that would take their minds away from what is being discussed.”

I am very pleased to read that. It is in this regard that I regret the decision made by your government, to which you are a religious adviser, to block faithfreedom.org from being accessed in Pakistan. Even though I am certain you had nothing to do with this decision, the timing has raised questions in the minds of some people. One friend from Pakistan wrote:

Mr. Ali Sina

For the whole of past week I was trying to access your website to follow up on the debate between yourself and Mr. Javed Ahmed Ghamidi. And I was not able to do so. I thought maybe Faithfreedom Int’l was experiencing some technical difficulties and such other problems. But at the back of mind there was this nagging suspicion that perhaps the Pakistani authorities may have blocked your website.

And it so happens I was right, yesterday through an anonymous online proxy I was able to get through to Faithfreedom.org. Yes I live in Pakistan.

For the past 2 years I was able to access your website without any difficulties and let me tell you that you have opened my eyes about the true nature of Islam, and suddenly now that you are debating with a prominent Pakistani scholar your website gets banned/ blocked in Pakistan. Is this a mere coincidence or can we safely assume and count two and two together and reach a logical conclusion.

I hope you realize this can only be interpreted as an effort to keep people in the dark. It absolutely violates what you and I believe: That no one has the right to withhold the truth from people. Even though I am sure you had nothing to do with this reprehensible act of censorship, the timing has raised a few eyebrows. They have done a big disservice to you. To reassure the skeptics that you do not agree with this decision, you may want to publish our debate in your site as well. This gesture will send a clear message to everyone that you truly believe in freedom of information and do not approve censorship of thoughts. It also can be seen as proof that you are convinced of the strength of your argument.

Of course, it would be commendable if you speak to the authorities in Pakistan and let them know that this banning is reflecting poorly on you and on Islam, and that they should lift it at once. You may want to remind them that Islam is truth and truth does not need the heavy hand of censorship — all truth needs to triumph is freedom. If they believe that Islam is truth, what are they afraid of? If we at FFI lie, we are inviting Muslim scholars to write to us and point where we have gone wrong. We provide an open forum for anyone to refute our claim, which Muslims use freely, but to insult us and not to refute us.

Now, as for me introducing a third question, I don’t think this is an attempt to distract the readers. As far as the first two points (intercession and the use of pronoun) are concerned I have said what I had to say and I rested my case.

The point is not that you and I should agree. We will probably never agree and frankly, knowing how dangerous Pakistan is, and how your lives could be taken away by angry mobs if you agree with me, I do not expect and do not want you to agree with me, at least not publicly. I want you good people to live long, and help your nation to move away from fanaticism and towards moderation and modernity. If you agree with me, that would be your end. So this is not what I am seeking.

I have received word that according to a Hyderabad (India) local news magazine Muslim Jagaran, Syed Yousaf Bin, the chief patron of the Ulema Board, in Hyderabad has issued a fatwa against my person. According to the sources he has decreed, “if anybody kills Dr. Ali Sina, he will be rewarded with Rs.1,000,000 (Indian rupees one million)”. Syed Yousaf Bin was the person behind the fatwa against Indian tennis sensation Sania Mirza.

Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui, a leading cleric of the Muslim organization the Sunni Ulema Board, has also warned me and others behind faithfreedom.org of the consequences that we would have to face if we don’t close our website. “According to Islam, the criticisers of Islam should be stoned to death,” he is reported to have said.

Safdar Nagori, who was the secretary-general of the extremist Islamic outfit S.I.M.I (Students Islamic Movement of India) until the organization was proscribed under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002, has been reported to have said, “Dr. Ali Sina would be killed within a month, irrespective of wherever his hideout is.”

This is happening in the secular India. If anyone issues such blatant death threats and solicits murder in a real democracy, he would have to spend years in jail. India, the largest “democracy” of the world is obviously a banana republic. Muslim thugs roam around freely issuing fatwas and offering rewards for the assassination of the critics of Islam and no one dares to call them to account. How poorly this reflects on India and Indians who bend backwards to appease Muslims in their country! Now Muslims in India constitute only 12% of the population. But they are procreating faster than the Hindus. What they would demand when they become 20%? Another partition?

This is happening in India. What would they do to you in Pakistan, which prides itself to be a fanatical Islamic country and a dictatorship, if you agree with anything I say?

One million rupees are just US$21,893 in today’s rate. I thought I was worth more. But I am not complaining. Jesus was sold for only thirty pieces of silver. This is way more. However, why kill me? I am offering US$50,000to anyone who can disprove me with the promise to remove the content of this site and publish a statement saying, “I stand corrected on Islam. Islam is a true religion. Allahu Akbar.”

Wouldn’t that be more effective? Imagine the impact of such a confession worldwide! Muslims don’t have to kill anyone for that. All they have to do is write one page disproving me. By killing me, they only prove what I say about Islam is true. Since this site is now managed by several volunteers (none knows the others in real life), it will continue its job without me. My assassination will become another news sensation and another nail in the coffin of Islam. Killing people is foolish. It worked in the time of Muhammad and made him succeed by casting terror, but it won’t work today.

With every act of violence, the world is realizing that Islam is barbarity and is more repulsed by it. Have you looked at the polls lately? More and more people are becoming disgusted with Islam. It is not because of what we write in FFI, it is because of what Muslims do.

Those who think the world can be intimidated with terror are fools. They do not understand the resolve of free people to keep their freedom. These people have shed their blood in two revolutions, one in the heart of Europe and the other in America, to gain their freedom, and have fought two World Wars to keep it. They are not going to capitulate to a bunch of ragged-head lousy barbarians. There is a limit to their patience. They won’t take this terrorism for too long. Once their patience wears out, Muslims will pay dearly and wet and dry will burn alike. So, please wake them up. Help them see their follies. Stupidity does not pay off. I pray for your success, even though I do not hold my breath and doubt you can do much because this tree is rotten from its roots. I, along with other good people in FFI, am working towards the same objective, but with a different strategy. We are axing down this rotten tree. We know it can’t bear sweet fruits by pruning. If you succeed before we do and end this madness and terrorism, I promise to stop. But I know you won’t and we will.

The purpose of this debate is not that you and I come to an agreement. The purpose is that you and I shed light on two different sides of the coin so our readers can see both points of views and make their minds.

Let me put it this way: I am accusing Muhammad of being a false prophet. You are trying to disprove me by showing that he was indeed a messenger of God and all charges made against him are unfounded and false. In other words, I am playing the role of the prosecutor and you are playing the role of the defense attorney. You and I need not agree. All we have to do is expound our respective cases clearly for the jury and convince them to agree with our viewpoints. The jury is the public. Let you and I do what we are supposed to do and let them come to their verdict.

As I see, the second round of our discussion on the topics of intercession and the use of third person pronoun by Allah in the Quran is a repetition of what each one of us said in the first round. I believe both of us explained this point exhaustively. I think our readers have enough information from both sides to make an intelligent decision. So let us move on.

I remain sincerely yours.

Ali Sina

Part IV

Date: Oct 22, 2006

Dear Mr. Ali Sina

I am responding to your message dated October 10. I had the opportunity of
talking to Mr Ghamidi directly this time to get his response on your last
message. This is what we have to say on the points you have raised.

Our discussion is for the moment concentrating itself on the contents of the
message of Islam in general and the Qur’an in particular. Your view is that
the Qur’an is not God’s book and therefore Islam is not His message. Our
belief is just the opposite of it. We don’t endorse many of the things which
the contemporary Muslims are doing in the name of Islam. In fact, we both
are concerned, for very different reasons though, that the present-day
Muslim attitude should change. You seem to hold the opinion that the fanatic
Muslim attitude can only change if they give up Islam; we believe that
Muslims can only behave properly if they understand and follow the true
Islam. However, for the purpose of making this discussion truly purposeful,
we would suggest that we be very clear that we are trying to understand
whether Qur’an is the word of God or not. For the sake of that purpose, we
would request that we focus our attention on this single point and not allow
any amount of external circumstances to distract us from it.

In your first message to us you raised these two points against our claim
that the Qur’an was the word of God: i) The Qur’anic understanding regarding
intercession contains contradictions and ii) the policy for usage of
pronouns in the Qur’an for God seems to be inconsistent. We responded by
presenting our understanding on both. In your second message you disagreed
with the points we had mentioned to defend the Qur’anic presentation, to
which we responded in our second response. In your third message (dated
October 10) you have urged us to move on and leave it to the readers to
conclude from what the two of us have mentioned in our respective messages
on the two topics. We are now doing exactly that, assuming that you have
nothing more to say in response to what we have mentioned in defense of the
Qur’anic teachings on intercession and its usage of pronouns for God.

Your third criticism on the Qur’anic presentation is that there doesn’t seem
to be any consistency in the manner the Qur’an presents the idea of who
should guide whom. At times it seems that it is only men who can guide men;
on other occasions we are given to understand that angels can come to guide
men, and on still other occasions we get the impression that jinnis can also
get guided by men. The most prominent part of your comment appears when you present a passage from the Qur’an that mentions the fact that the Qur’an has
informed us that at a certain stage an animal would also come to play a role
in guiding men. There is thus, according to you, a complete absence of
consistency in the manner the Qur’an presents its methodology of guidance.

Before responding to the point raised by you, we would want to emphasize
that when one tries to understand the contents of a book as a sincere
student who is not out there to pick faults in it but is involved in the
serious business of understanding the text, it is important that one
appreciates how the book itself presents its arguments and the premises on
which those arguments are based. If we were not interested in sincerely
understanding your messages and were bent upon picking faults in them, we
could have pointed out several contradictions in what you have written to us
as yet. However, that would have been a sheer waste of time and an exercise
in futility. It is only after you have sincerely understood a text by
appreciating the methodology of presentation which the author of the text
himself is suggesting that you have a right to criticize the text or else it
would come under the category of non-serious criticism. After you understand
the scheme of presentation of a text, you have a right to criticize both
that scheme as well as the text on the basis of your observation that the
text is violating the principles stated by itself.

Now let us briefly mention the scheme presented by the Qur’an regarding the
delivery of God’s message. We have been informed in the Qur’an that the
message of God Almighty comes to the messengers through angels. It is these
messenger men who then deliver the message to their fellow humans for the
purpose of ensuring that the addressees receive it in the most effective
manner. When the message is communicated to humans through fellow men, they are in no position to present any excuse in their defense for denying them.
The Qur’an is very clear in its claim that it is only men who can deliver
the message of God to their fellow men for the latter to receive it in a
manner that its claim to divine origins becomes unmistakable. The reference
to the fact that jinn also hear the Qur’an and get guided by it is in the
context that since some jinn could hear Qur’an and understand it, they too
accepted its claim of divine origins. Had men been able to hear and see
jinn, they too would have been obliged to acknowledge the truthfulness of
genuine messages of God delivered to that category of God’s creation.

As for the mention of the animal, the Qur’an clarifies on several occasions
the fact that after people refuse to accept God’s message through the normal
process of its presentation, He can use any of His signs to let such people
know that their denial was not based on any evidence. For instance, on the
day of judgment, it is mentioned that the limbs of human body would play the
role of witnessing against the perpetrators of crimes. The reference to an
animal in a Qur’anic passage is of similar nature. In our opinion, the
following is the correct translation of the relevant passage: “You (O
prophet) cannot force the dead to listen to your message nor can you force
the deaf to hear the call even when they are turning their backs in
disinterest. Likewise you can’t guide the blind in their misguidance. You
can only guide those who are willing to believe in our signs and in
submitting themselves to the message. And once the message will be delivered
in an undeniable form to them, we might bring out a beast from the land to
confirm that these men were not willing to believe in our signs.” (Qur’an;
27:80-82) The passage is mentioning that the appearance of a beast, if at
all it happens, would only be meant to reinforce the earlier process of
communication from the prophet as a final measure confirmation that the
deniers were indeed guilty of rejecting a message that was so obvious that a
beast could also confirm its divine origins. In other words, the evidence of
the beast will not be meant to convince any of the humans to accept the
message. Instead, it will be used as a final measure to expose the
indefensible stubbornness of the deniers of the message of God.

We would be glad to know if the above presentation doesn’t make sense to
you. We would also like to know the reasons why you think this presentation
is suggesting that the Qur’an is inconsistent in the manner it suggests its
message should be communicated to men.
Khalid Zaheer

October 24, 2006

Dear Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer,

I am glad to hear from you again. I am also glad that Ramadan is over and you’ll have more time to be with us. We really enjoy and value your company and learn from your insights. This exchange of ideas will benefit everyone. Truth is the sparks when opposing ideas clash. I am certain that if we divest ourselves from prejudices and preconceived ideas, at the end we will find the truth.

Now, let us continue with our discussion. Yes, I have nothing else to add to the subjects of intercession and the wrong use of the pronoun in the Quran. As for the first topic I am satisfied with what I have already said and so rested my case. As for the use of the wrong pronoun in the Qur’an, you say it is to add beauty to the language and that it should be seen as poetry. I don’t know how happy Muhammad would be with this characterization. Apparently he was disdainful of poets to the extent that he wanted to commit suicide when he had that strange vision in the cave Hira and thought he had become a poet. He said there are two groups of people whom he despised most: poets and kahins (soothsayers).

Furthermore, the Qur’an, on repeated occasions, reiterates its claim to be a clear book (5:15), easy to understand (44:58, 54:22, 54:32, 54:40), explained in detail (6:114), conveyed clearly (5:16, 10:15) with no doubt in it (2:2), with clear ordinances (98:3), of divine nature (10:37), and full of wisdom (36:2). Yet you tell us that we must first learn its “scheme of presentation” in order to understand its meaning. If that is the case, then what shall we make of the above claims of the clarity of the Qur’an? If we first need to learn the “scheme” of the book before we begin to understand it, then the claim that the book is clear and easy to understand is false. Please show me one verse where it says before understanding this book you must first learn its scheme of presentation. What is this scheme of presentation? Will you please explain it to us?

Anyway, by equating the Qur’an to poetry, you basically disarm me completely. I can no longer point to its grammatical, linguistic, scientific or even logical errors because it is a book of poetry and poets are licensed to break all sorts of rules. That is the distinction and the privilege of poets. We let them indulge in fantasies and breach all the norms of language, and commonsense if necessary, to stir our soul. If we accept the Qur’an as a book of poetry, we have to acknowledge that it is a very bad poetry.

Then again, the Qur’an adamantly denies being a book of poetry. “It is not the word of a poet; little is it that you believe” (69:41), and, “We have not taught him poetry, nor is it meet for him; it is nothing but a reminder and a plain Qur’an.” (36:69)

The Qur’an claims to be plain. Why would you need to study the “scheme of presentation” to understand a plain and clear book?

The main problem in considering the Qur’an as a book of poetry is that as such it ceases to be a book of guidance. You can say it is an inspirational book but you won’t be able to call it a book of guidance. A book of guidance must be clear and must not leave room for interpretation. This is the claim made in the Quran. If you want to go from A to B, you need a clear roadmap that tells you exactly how to get there. You don’t want a poetic direction so confusing that would leave room for different interpretations, or you would get lost. The very fact that you and I both agree that Muslims are lost is proof that their alleged book of guidance is not guiding them. It is only a bad poetry disguised as guidance. Its spiritual message, if any, is unclear and unintelligible, while its message of hate and violence is loud and clear.

You think that by shifting from one pronoun to another, the Qur’an becomes a literary work of art. Personally, I do not see much beauty in the Qur’an, but I have no doubt that you do. Let us say beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and move on to the next topic. There was a time that I thought the Qur’an is beautiful. One of the suras I used to think was beautiful to recite was Sura Al‑Masadd (111). It rhymed. Then I found out that it is nothing but curse. You must agree that in Arabic it rhymes nicely. If you don’t know what it says, you may actually enjoy it.

You wrote:

“It is only after you have sincerely understood a text by appreciating the methodology of presentation which the author of the text himself is suggesting that you have a right to criticize the text or else it would come under the category of non-serious criticism. After you understand the scheme of presentation of a text, you have a right to criticize both that scheme as well as the text on the basis of your observation that the text is violating the principles stated by itself.”

Are you suggesting that we should first take a course on how to read the Qur’an before reading it? Will you please tell us why a book that claims to be so clear and easy to understand is so complicated? The Qur’an says that the unbelievers are “the vilest of animals” (8:55). How should we interpret this verse? In what scheme these insulting words mean something different than what they appear to mean? This to me sounds like hate speech. How would Muslims react if someone says Muslims are the vilest of animals? The Qur’an encourages Muslims to slay the unbelievers wherever they find them (2:191), to not take them as friends and helpers (3:28), to fight them and show them harshness (9:123), and to smite their heads (47:4). Under what light should we read these, and many other, gory and hatemongering verses so we could instead love all mankind, respect others, mingle in amity with people of all faiths, and be kind, loving and accepting of everyone? Don’t you think these verses are responsible for the fact that Muslims are violent and intolerant of others?

Let us say you are right and there is a scheme of presentation that Muslims have failed to see, and that is why they have behaved like savages during these 1400 years. Doesn’t this make Allah a cruel and cynical deity? Why would he confuse people with ambiguous messages? If Allah wanted us to love all mankind, why did he not say so? Why did he say ‘kill the unbelievers wherever you find them’? Why there are no verses saying, ‘people of all faiths are your brothers and sisters; love all mankind as members of your family’? Why did he say: “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah; and those who are with him are harsh against unbelievers, (but) compassionate amongst each other”? (48:29):

You ask me to be a sincere student and not to “pick faults”. Is that your definition of sincerity? I think that is the definition of gullibility. If I try to see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil, I will end up believing in evil. Will you accept any scientific theory in this way, so lackadaisically, so uncritically? Why should we not be equally, if not more, rigorous in probing religions before accepting them?

If a message is from God, it should not have any faults. If it has a single fault, then it is not from God. What you are suggesting is a recipe for disaster. What if a charlatan claims to be a prophet of God? How do I know this person is not lying if I don’t try to see his faults? There have been many cults that have seduced many people, leading them to perdition. Just think of cults such as Aum Shinrikyo, whose followers mindlessly believed in what their guru told them and released sarin gas in the subways of Tokyo, killing a dozen of innocent commuters and injuring hundreds of them for life. What about the cult of the Peoples Temple, whose members committed mass suicide in the jungles of Guyana after happily poisoning their own children? What about the cult of Heaven’s Gate, the Branch Dravidian, or hundreds of other cults whose followers believed and did not ask some basic questions? They did exactly what you suggest. They tried to be sincere and did not try to find faults in these cults. Can you question their sincerity? They proved their sincerity by sacrificing their lives. Do you question the sincerity of the suicide bombers? Sincerity alone, if not guided by reason and critical thinking can be deadly. Haven’t you heard the expression, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions?”

If someone claims to be a messenger of God, we must not accept his claim unless all our questions are answered, and we are satisfied that there are no holes in his claim. If there is one, then he is not a messenger of God but a liar, an impostor or a madman. God does not err and his religion must be logical. So don’t be shy. Try hard to find faults in the claims of prophet pretenders and believe only if you find none. Do not let them intimidate you by saying it is not up to you to test God. You are not testing God. You are testing their claims. If they are indeed messengers of God, they should be able to answer all your questions. If they threaten you with hell, then leave them because they are charlatans and liars. This is the only way to find the truth, not by uncritically accepting any nonsense. Do not let anyone fool you with empty promises and bogus claims. The message from God should come with the proof from God, and that proof should satisfy our intellect and not insult it.

The reason we have so many faiths, religions, and sects, despite the fact that at most only one of them can be true, is that people believe in them without questioning them. They are eager to prove their sincerity and believe blindly without asking for the proof. They believe, mislead by the feel-good factor and after being swayed by some logical fallacies.

You wrote:

If we were not interested in sincerely understanding your messages and were bent upon picking faults in them, we could have pointed out several contradictions in what you have written to us as yet. However, that would have been a sheer waste of time and an exercise in futility.

No, it wouldn’t. The reason we are having this debate is to find the flaws in each other’s arguments. This is not an exercise in futility but the point of this discussion. We want to come to the truth. How else can we do that if we do not highlight each other’s errors? You and I see the same things from different perspectives. From your vantage point you can see things that I don’t, and vice versa. From where I am standing, I may see an object as a disk. Seeing the same object from a different angle, you could say, “No, you are mistaken; it’s a cylinder.” There may be a depth to the object that I can’t see but you can. If you and I point to each other’s errors, this is not a slight. We are humans. Our vision and understanding are limited by our vantage point. We don’t and can’t have the full picture of everything. So it is okay for us to err. And it is okay that we point out to each other’s errors.

The day I was born I was the most ignorant person in the world. Everything I know, I learned from others. Others like you, who corrected me and showed me my errors. There is no shame in being wrong. We are humans and as such fallible. If I had never come out of Iran, I doubt I would have known what I know today. I probably would have believed in exact same things you believe. In fact in many ways I identify myself with you. I had the same humanitarian ideals that you have while I believed in the same faith that you believe in, and I could not see the discrepancy and contradiction between my stated belief and my purported love for mankind. We are to a great extent products of our environments.

As a self‑proclaimed ignorant, I attest that there is no shame in being ignorant. Shame is in obstinacy and in not willing to see the truth after it has become clear. We can err. However, when an alleged message of God is so beset with errors, we must question its source. The Qur’an claims to be the verbatim words of God. God is not fallible. Therefore if we find one error in the Qur’an, it’s enough to disqualify it as the word of God.

There are hundreds of blunders and absurdities in the Qur’an. How can an infallible God err so much? If there were only one or a handful of errors, we could still argue that those verses have crept into the book in later stages. But when the book is replete with scientific heresies, historic blunders, mathematical mistakes, logical absurdities, grammatical errors and ethical fallacies, we must question the legitimacy of its divine origin.

Therefore, what you define as “sincerity”, in my view is nothing but gullibility. Believers force themselves to believe in absurdities and call that sincerity. They interpret lack of critical thinking, i.e. simple mindedness, as “purity of heart”. A sincere seeker is one who questions and is not satisfied with half‑baked answers. A sincere seeker is a doubter. He does not rest until all his questions are answered. How can you claim sincerity when you give up questioning and believe in absurdities? This is recklessness, not sincerity. “If God did not want us to use our brain”, asked Galileo, “why he would give it to us?”

Logic is the measure of what is right and what is wrong, not the bogus claims of charlatans and impostors who want us to have faith in them and not question them. A true God would not expect us to believe in anything unless clear proof is given. Muhammad himself, on many occasions, claimed that his message is clear. I want to see it. It is not clear to me and to billions of others who do not believe in him. We want proof. Where is the proof? The proof must be logical, irrefutable and conclusive. If I can find a single hole in it, that claim cannot be from God. If I tell you the earth is round, I can prove it. I do not expect you to have faith in my words, and you should not believe me if I resort to violence and force. If I tell you Gabriel visits me every night with a message from God and we play backgammon together, you must ask for proof. If I can’t prove my claim, chances are that I am either an impostor or a loony. It would be foolish for anyone to believe in my claim, especially if I demand sacrifices from others and live an ungodly and pervert life as Muhammad did.

Why should we believe in Muhammad and not in equally‑unproven claims of other prophet-pretenders and impostors? We know about all the bad things that Muhammad brought to the world, such as religious intolerance and misogyny that did not exist in Arabia before him. (Arabs even believed in a prophetess, Sajah, and women like Salma who fought against Khalid ibn Walid and Aisha led armies. Such things are inconceivable today.) “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,” said the wise Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, six hundred years ago. The only answers Muslims had to this question, when it was repeated by Pope Benedict XVI, were riots, burning of churches and killing an elderly nun and her bodyguard. Will you answer this question now? Will you tell us what new Muhammad brought that was not evil?

You wrote:

We have been informed in the Qur’an that the message of God Almighty comes to the messengers through angels.

Informed by whom? By the Quran itself? Isn’t this circular reasoning? How do you know this is true? We ask, what is the proof that Muhammad is a true messenger? You answer: “it is written in the Qur’an.” We ask, how can we know that the Qur’an is the word of God? You say because Muhammad said so. This is a logical fallacy, not proof. If there is one error in the Qur’an, then Muhammad is proven to be a liar and if Muhammad is a liar, then the entire story of an angel bringing God’s message to him is a fairytale. Since you are yet to prove that the Quran is error-free, we cannot believe in silly stories such as Gabriel brining the message of God to Muhammad.

Abdullah ibn Abi Sarh, who was Muhammad’s scribe, realized that Muhammad was making the Quran up. He was not an illiterate man like Muhammad and often suggested better sentences to compose the Quranic verses that Muhammad happily would agree to. He escaped and went back to Mecca and told his story to everyone, which prompted Muhammad to decide to kill him even though he promised he would not kill anyone in Mecca if they surrendered. He was saved thanks to the intervention of Othman who was his foster brother.

In response to my question about a beast acting as a messenger of Allah, you wrote:

As for the mention of the animal, the Qur’an clarifies on several occasions the fact that after people refuse to accept God’s message through the normal process of its presentation, He can use any of His signs to let such people know that their denial was not based on any evidence. For instance, on the day of judgment, it is mentioned that the limbs of human body would play the role of witnessing against the perpetrators of crimes. The reference to an animal in a Qur’anic passage is of similar nature

First of all, disbelief does not need evidence; it is the one who makes a claim that has to provide the evidence. People don’t need evidence to not believe in Muhammad, or Jim Jones, or David Koresh. Those who believe in them and try to force that belief on others have to show the proof. Second, I am afraid you are engaging in the fallacy of false dilemma. You bring one unproven and unsubstantiated claim such as human limbs acquiring a mouth and testifying against their owners (themselves) to prove that it is possible for animals to talk. This is like saying since 1+1= 3, then 2+2=13. Shouldn’t you first prove the claim that human limbs testify against themselves before you use it as evidence to prove animals can also talk?

This is the problem with Islamic thinking. We accept one fallacy, and since we have become believers, we accept any absurdity afterwards. The following three paragraphs are from my book, Understanding Muhammad.

When Muhammad recounted his tale of ascending to the seventh heaven, Abu Bakr was stunned. He did not know what to make of this. This sounded utterly mad. He had two choices. He had to either admit that Muhammad was a loony and leave him or believe in his fantastical tales. There was no middle ground.

Ibn Ishaq says when Muhammad made his vision known, “many Muslims gave up their faiths. Some went to Abu Bakr and said, ‘What do you think of your friend? He alleges that he went to Jerusalem last night and prayed there, and came back to Mecca!’ He replied that they were lying about the apostle, but they said that he was in the mosque at that very moment, telling people about it. Abu Bakr said, ‘If he says so, then it is true. And what is so surprising in that? He tells me that communications from Allah, from heaven to earth, comes to him in an hour of a day or night, and I believe him, and that is more extraordinary than that at which you boggle!’”

The logic is flawless. Basically what Abu Bakr was saying is that once you give up your rational faculty and believe in an absurdity, you might as well believe in anything. Once you let yourself to be fooled, then you should be prepared to be fooled again and again because there is no end to foolishness. How many people would let a 54‑year‑old man sleep with their 9‑year‑old daughter? Such thing requires extreme foolishness.

This much foolishness, that you erroneously call “sincerity”, is only possible through blind faith. You are engaging in the same logical fallacy that Abu Bakr dabbled. You say, ‘since I have accepted the fairytale that human limbs will testify against their owner , why should I not believe in this balderdash story of an animal messenger?’

Animals preaching the message of God and limbs testifying against their owner in the afterlife are very much like the fantastic adventures of Alice in the Wonderland. Methinks that the author of Islam, like Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures, suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy.

In my book Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allâh’s Prophet, I have brought ample evidence to show that Muhammad was mentally sick. I would be delighted to send two copies to you fine gentlemen. I promise to publish your refutation of it in faithfreedom.org right next to where I advertise my book so people can read your refutation even before ordering my book. Compare this offer to the fact that, in my previous email, I asked you to publish our debate in your site and you did not even acknowledge the request. Compare this offer to the fact that Pakistan has blocked faithfreedom.org.

You talked about sincerity! If I am wrong and you have shown my errors, why not let the world see it? I am giving you the opportunity to expose my errors and prove once and for all that I am mistaken. I am not beating my chest. As I said the only victory I seek is the victory over my own ignorance. But how can we qualify this ban? This message will get through eventually. It is too late to stop it. But this ban will be a thorn in the side of Islam. It will be perceived as an admission of defeat.

The evidence of the beast will not be meant to convince any of the humans to accept the message. Instead, it will be used as a final measure to expose the indefensible stubbornness of the deniers of the message of God.

What is the purpose of that? Isn’t hell enough proof? Why do we need an animal telling us what we will find out soon on our own?

I think you are not comfortable with the fact that this beast is portrayed as the last messenger – a title Muhammad reserved for himself. You see the contradiction and try to minimize the role of this messenger beast. In either case the problem does not go away. The existence of this beast as a messenger of God does not only contradict other verses of the Qur’an, but it is also absurd and the way you put it, redundant.

You say that the correct translation of the verse is:

“And once the message will be delivered in an undeniable form to them, we might bring out a beast from the land to confirm that these men were not willing to believe in our signs”

Why “might”? Are you in doubt about this claim? The Arabic verse is:

وَإِذَا وَقَعَ الْقَوْلُ عَلَيْهِمْ أَخْرَجْنَا لَهُمْ دَابَّةً مِّنَ الْأَرْضِ

I don’t think there is any question about this happening. All the translators of the Qur’an agree that this beast “will” or “shall” be brought forth from the earth to speak and there is no doubt about it.

Anyway, I don’t know why this would make any difference. Even if the emergence of this beast is only a probability, as you say, it is still irrational.

As for the mention of the animal, the Qur’an clarifies on several occasions the fact that after people refuse to accept God’s message through the normal process of its presentation, He can use any of His signs to let such people know that their denial was not based on any evidence

The only thing that God should do is to arm his prophets with logical arguments. Any other “sign” is futile. I won’t believe in a donkey or a lizard speaking in Arabic. I believe in logical arguments. Why can’t Allah provide any?

Criss Angel is a magician. I believe he is the world’s top magician. He is even better that Zakir Naik. Dr. Naik plays magic with words. He has fooled many Muslims into believing that the Qur’an contains science. But he can only fool those who are willing to be fooled. I have caught all his tricks and have exposed this charlatan in a book entitled World’s Greatest Showman. Criss Angel uses different props. I have not been able to catch his tricks. He flies, walks on water, passes through glass, divides people in two halves without hiding the body in a box, and does other amazing and unbelievable things. However, he is only a magician. Suppose someone comes and performs magic. Why should we believe in him? It is time that Allah treat us humans like grownups and stop performing ‘miracles’ to impress us. All he has to do for us to believe is to give us logical arguments that satisfy our intelligence. Here is where Allah and his messenger have failed miserably. At least Jesus did some of the things Criss Angel does. Muhammad could not even do that. He acknowledged that other prophets had performed miracles, but claimed that his only miracle is the Qur’an. As we are finding out, this book is anything but miraculous.

I look forward to hear from you soon. After you present your counter-argument, I will show yet another gross blunder of the Qur’an.

I wish you all the best, and please remember that I am a fan no matter how we disagree on trivialities. To me, what really matters is the substance and in substance I have no disagreement with you. You and I mean good and work for the same ideals. I hope one day we can meet, and I would like to squeeze your hands in friendship and perhaps talk about other stuff that we both agree on. It would be an honor to have friends like you. I love good people. It makes no difference to me whether they are Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, or believe in nothing. I value goodness. Beliefs are irrelevant. Some people are color-blind. I am religion-blind. I hope one day, everyone becomes religion-blind. That would be the day of the unity of mankind. What divide us are beliefs and ideologies. These are not facts. They are just creeds. Belief is acceptance of a proposition without evidence. Wouldn’t it be nice to get beyond them and discover that after all we are one people?

I remain sincerely yours.

Ali Sina

Part V

Dear Mr Ali Sina I have received the response from you today. Call it my laziness or lack of understanding of the technicalities of internet, I am solely responsible for this delay. On top of it, your response is pretty “loaded”. It will take a little while more before I get back to you. The purpose of this message is to assure you and the visitors to your site that delay from our side shouldn’t be construed as withdrawal. The discussion is very much on. Khalid Zaheer

Dear Prof. Zaheer,
I published your message for everyone to see. Please don’t worry about time. We all know how busy you and Dr. Ghamidi are. As for not understanding the technicalities of computer and the Internet, welcome to the club. I must confess that our entire site is set up and operated by other friends. Our wonderful administrator is the one who has set it up, repairs it and keeps it greased so it runs smoothly. Left on my own, I would be left in the cold. I hope now you feel a bit better.

Actually, we are so grateful that you realize the importance of this debate and answer the questions that many have about Islam. These questions must be answered sooner or later. They have never been answered. In the past, when fundamental questions like the ones we discuss were raised, the ignorant mullahs’ response has always been intimidation and violence. Scholars in the Muslim world were naturally fearful for their lives to ask these questions openly. Hafiz and Khayyam resorted to very subtle questioning of Islam through their poetries. If anyone was reckless enough to challenge Islam directly, they would have been put to death and their books would have been destroyed. The rationalists were all exterminated. Al‑Ghazzali vaunted that if Plato and Abu Ali Sina were alive, he would have killed them. Zakaria Al-Razi wrote a book refuting all prophets, calling them bearded billy-goats, liars and charlatans. All that is left from his book are a few paragraphs, and that is thanks to an Ismaili scholar who wrote a refutation to Al-Razi’s book and quoted those paragraphs in order to refute them. Here is an extract from what this great rationalist wrote:

“All men are by nature equal and equally endowed with the faculty of reason that must not be disparaged in favor of blind faith; reason further enables men to perceive scientific truths in an immediate way. The prophets—these billy goats with long beards—cannot claim any intellectual or spiritual superiority. These billy goats pretend to come with a message from God, all the while exhausting themselves in spouting their lies, and imposing on the masses blind obedience to the “words of the master.” The miracles of the prophets are impostures, based on trickery, or the stories regarding them are lies. The falseness of what all the prophets say is evident in the fact that they contradict one another: one affirms what the other denies, and yet each claims to be the sole depository of the truth; thus the New Testament contradicts the Torah, the Qur’an the New Testament. As for the Qur’an, it is but an assorted mixture of ‘absurd and inconsistent fables,’ which has ridiculously been judged inimitable, when, in fact, its language, style, and its much-vaunted ‘eloquence’ are far from being faultless. Custom, tradition, and intellectual laziness lead men to follow their religious leaders blindly. Religions have been the sole cause of the bloody wars that have ravaged mankind. Religions have also been resolutely hostile to philosophical speculation and to scientific research. The so-called holy scriptures are worthless and have done more harm than good, whereas the writings of the ancients like Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, and Hippocrates have rendered much greater service to humanity.

“The people who gather round the religious leaders are either feeble-minded, or they are women and adolescents (suggestible). Religion stifles truth and fosters enmity. If a book in itself constitutes a demonstration that it is true revelation, the treatises of geometry, astronomy, medicine and logic can justify such a claim much better than the Qur’an”

For the first time in history, the critics of Islam have the chance to ask these old questions and not fear for their lives. All that Muslim authorities can do is block sites like ours. But these cowardly acts will not help them in the long run because the Sun is out, and no matter how much they try to close the shutters and hide themselves in the basement, the penetrating light of the truth will eventually reach the masses.

Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say that this is a historic debate. I can rehash the old unanswered questions raised by great minds such as Al-Razi and Khayyam. You and Dr. Ghamidi are celebrated Islamic scholars and now for the first time the public has the opportunity to hear both sides of the story and see how these old questions are answered.

We look forward to your response and I remain cordially yours,
Ali Sina

Part VI

Nov 15 2006

Dear Mr Ali Sina

Let me briefly state where we have reached as yet in our discussion. You first criticized the Qur’an for being inconsistent in its scheme of ideas on the question of intercession. Your other objection was on the alleged haphazard use of pronouns in the Qur’an. While you have conceded that you have nothing to add to what you’ve already mentioned on the former issue, you have added a new dimension of criticism to what you had previously written on the latter. You have made a very strong case against the claim that Qur’an is a piece of poetry. I have to say that in an attempt at doing so, you have put in my mouth words I never said and then have gone on to criticize them. A basic confidence one should have in one’s counterpart in a discussion is that he/she is trying to understand and present one’s case correctly before criticizing it. I never mentioned that the Qur’an is a piece of poetry. What I said was that it is a message expressed in the highest level of literary excellence. In trying to prove my point, I quoted two great Urdu poets, Ghalib and Iqbal, to show how they too, in their literary presentations, used pronouns the way the Qur’an has done. I had to give their references because you had created an impression that it is absurd to believe that God, the author/first-person singular for Qur’an, should use first-person plural and third-person singular pronouns as well for Himself. Since you found the idea of shifting pronouns funny, I had to tell you that by the very act of criticizing Qur’anic text on the basis of such an argument you have indicated a worrying absence of appreciation for literary presentations in yourself. To say that Qur’an is a piece of highest literary excellence and that it doesn’t violate any of the rules of literary masterpieces is one thing and to call it poetry is quite another thing. Your subsequent criticism on the assumption that Qur’an has been claimed to be a piece of poetry was therefore irrelevant to our discussion.

In your criticism on the question of miracles you have again committed the same mistake: I didn’t even talk about miracles. It seems that you have questions about Islam that are causing you to be agitated against the faith and in your exuberance to get answers to them you assume that all Muslims, including us, are saying the same thing on those issues. My mention about the possibility of a beast declaring that “these men were not willing to believe in our signs” was not a statement meant to affirm the appearance of miracles. It was a part of my response to one of your objections. Your objection was that the Qur’an was inconsistent in informing us as to who has been appointed by God to guide man. At times it is suggested that only men can guide men. On other occasions it is stated that angels guide men. On still other occasions one gets the impression that Jinn also get guided by men. And, what agitated you the most was that, on one occasion at least, according to the Qur’an, it will be a beast who will guide men. I had explained, in response to this criticism, in my previous message that “the evidence of the beast will not be meant to convince any of the humans to accept the message. Instead, it will be used as a final measure to expose the indefensible stubbornness of the deniers of the message of God.” The idea was to show that, unlike your claim, the Qur’anic presentation on who guides whom was fully consistent. When we’ll talk about miracles we will let you know, God willing, that their appearance is as clear and understandable as any other scientific reality. However, we have not as yet reached the stage of discussion where we are talking about miracles.

You have criticized the following part of my translation of the verse “we might bring out a beast from the land to confirm…” by claiming that many notable English translations of the Qur’an are giving an understanding different from mine. I would say that if a statement has been translated by giving due consideration to all aspects of the principles of usage of that language and the context in which it was stated, then the mere claim that other people do not understand that statement the same way is not necessarily a strong evidence to refute the validity of the translation. Indeed for a commoner there might be a reason to be unconvinced about a translation which is different from most others, but those who are keen to know the text in its correct meanings at an academic level must give a good thought to all arguments provided to support a particular translation. I have translated the verb “akhrajnaa” into English with “We might bring out” because in the classical Arabic verbs carried a number of possibilities. Depending upon what the context was, a verb could be taken in the meanings of its ordinary sense, the sense of it being intended, its possibility of happening, its happening at an initial level, its happening at the ultimate level etc. I have translated the verb appearing in the relevant verse to convey the meanings of its (the verb’s) possibility because the context accepts that understanding more than any other. That paves the way for me to address another criticism you have raised: If the Qur’an was so clear, as its author claims, why does it lend itself to so many interpretations? The answer to it is that the clarity of a text is its intrinsic quality. Whether someone would be able to understand it would depend on whether he is making a genuine attempt at doing so or not. The Qur’an was indeed absolutely clear and effective to its immediate addressees. Whether they accepted its contents or rejected it, the meanings it was conveying were unmistakable. The people of the later times had to be well versed with the language and idiom of the Arabic of the era when the Qur’an was getting revealed. Added to that difficulty was the problem that people already had interpretations in mind that prevented them from searching objectively the true meanings of the text. However, even today if one were to know the language of the Qur’anic times (for which the Qur’an itself is the best source) and decides to ignore all extraneous influences in favour of the Qur’an, its text is remarkably clear. The difficulty in understanding the Qur’an is similar to the difficulty one faces in understanding all other clear masterpieces the appreciation of subtleties of whose language and style of expression have become extinct save to those who have undertaken the trouble to master them. My request to you in my earlier message to make an attempt to understand the scheme of Qu’anic presentation the way the Qur’an presents itself was also meant to do the same thing: To ask you to try to understand the Qur’an the way it is. This is exactly how every text is expected to be understood if it is to be appreciated seriously. You have picked this point of mine too for criticizing in a manner which makes no sense at all. All genuine critics would first satisfy the authors of the texts they are criticizing to ensure that they have understood the meanings of the text properly before criticizing them. If you are criticizing the meanings of a text which its author doesn’t even agree that it is emerging from it, how can you criticize it? And if you are criticizing it then what are you trying to achieve in doing so? To all neutral followers of the discussion it would only be an attempt at criticizing a text simply for the sake of it in a non-academic, non-serious manner. I had requested you earlier that it serves no purpose to burden the readers with scores of topics at one time. In doing so you can do a good job at stirring the emotions of some feeble-minded followers, but you do no service to the cause of a serious discussion like the one we are engaged in. Let’s have an exhaustive discussion on the topics we have already touched upon first. If we decide by mutual consent that nothing more needs to be said about them, we can move on to the new areas for discussion. We promise that we will answer each and every question you will ask on the subject under discussion. However, if you are going to throw all your confusions at us at one time, we would beg to excuse from participating in the discussion any more. A good tennis player can return a serve, howsoever good it may be, but he cannot return several serves thrown at him simultaneously. The spectators too are not going to enjoy such a silly game.

You have mentioned that we have not responded to your offer of posting your messages on our site. Let me tell you that the reason for our reluctance to make the discussion available on our sites is not the fact that you are writing against Islam. The reason it is not happening is that your tone is uncivilized. We too strongly believe in freedom of thought and expression.

However, freedom of expression is one thing and insulting someone’s revered personality is quite another. While discussing a controversial matter, a decent person would stick to the topic under discussion and not go about making disparaging remarks about individuals who are held in high esteem by the other debating party. We are engaged in a serious academic discussion and not in a match of hurling invectives at each other.

If you are discussing the possibility whether a person is a murderer or not with someone who doesn’t share your view, you are expected to stick to the arguments which would lead the other to believe that the accused was indeed a criminal. Before you prove it to the other person that the accused was a killer, you can’t go on to insult and disparage him. A young man ‘A’ considers ‘B’ his father while ‘C’ claims that ‘B’ is not A’s father. So long as C hasn’t been able to convince A, the latter is convinced that B is his father. Any insulting and uncivilized mention that the truth was otherwise would be unacceptable to all decent people of the world. This truth is quite clear to every intelligent, cultured person. Unfortunately, it is being openly violated regularly in your messages. We Muslims consider Muhammad as the chosen messenger of God. We love him more than we love our parents because we are convinced that he was God’s messenger. On the other hand you keep using for him the filthiest of words you can find from the dictionary. You then expect us to post your mails on our sites. We are prepared to post all decent messages of disagreement on our websites. However, we will not, God willing, ever allow any insulting language to be posted about anyone, not even about those with whom we disagree strongly. You have every right to say that the Qur’an is not the word of God and that Muhammad was not his prophet so long as you are not convinced about our claims. We can go on discussing our respective views in the light of our arguments. We welcomed the initiative taken by you to initiate this discussion. However, if we see any nonsense hurled at our prophet in your future messages to us, this discussion would discontinue there and then. As always, this message has been written after I was briefed by Mr Ghamidi.
Khalid Zaheer

Dear Professor Zaheer and Dr. Ghamidi,

The fact that I rested my case on the question of intercession does not mean that I have “conceded”. It means that the case, as far as I am concerned, is explained thoroughly and I see no new information presented by you that needs to be addressed. However, since you raised the point again I will explain what I believe to be obvious.

You stated that verses 4:17-18 talk about three categories of people:

A) Those who sin and repent immediately;

B) Those who sin but don’t repent until they are near their death; and

C) Those who do not believe in Allah and never repent.

Then you said that the situations of A and C are clear, but what will happen to people in category B is not explained in the Quran. You added:

“What if a person belonging to such a category was to seek justice from God Almighty on the Day of Judgment? And what if another person, let’s say my ordinary self, was to ask the Almighty to forgive him? What objections can be raised against the possibility that such an event will take place before the Almighty makes a clear pronouncement to that effect? Intercession will be nothing more than a request tendered by some individuals to the Almighty to forgive those people whose case will be unclear on the basis of the principles of justice clearly outlined by the Almighty.”

The reason I did not see a need to answer this argument is because I had already answered it. I do not believe in overkill nor do I consider it scholarly. My objective is to clear the misconceptions and not to rob the nose of my opponents to the ground. I get no pleasure in doing that unless my opponent has been overtly obnoxious and arrogant; then humiliating him publicly is therapeutic for his inflated ego. In this case my opponents are two very respectful scholars. My disagreement with you is in the form and not in the substance. The substance is love for humanity, tolerance and respect for human life. In this we both agree. Our differences, although not insignificant, are secondary.

Anyway, in my earlier message, I asked what possibly a creature of God like your good self can tell his maker that he already does not know? Are you claiming to be wiser, more compassionate and more merciful than God? Suppose I am a sinner who has sinned out of ignorance and weakness, not out of malice, and really deserve forgiveness. Doesn’t God know this already? Why would he need you to tell him what he already knows? Are you kinder to me than he is? Do you know the secrets of my heart, my weakness and my sincerity better than him? I hope you responded in the negative to all these questions. So isn’t it presumptuous to tell God how to run his business? You want to be more companionate than God. This is even worse than trying to be more catholic than pope.

You are not kinder than God, nor wiser than him, and not privy to the secrets of people’s hearts. So what qualifies you to tell the creator of the universe what he should do with me? Assuming that there is a life after death and there is a God that punishes and rewards, it is only logical that you seek forgiveness for yourself and I for myself. It would be arrogant for us miser creatures to tell God what to do as if we know better.

Now, the problem does not end there. Muhammad also thought that not only would God listen to his prayers, but he would also listen to his curses. In the verse 3.61 he challenged his opponents to face him in a “cursing tournament” to see who is right. He said, “Come, let us call our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves – then we pray and invoke the Curse of Allah upon those who lie.” Wow! What a foolproof system to find the truth.

But don’t be fooled yet. Muhammad might have impressed his gullible followers with these empty threats, but in real life he was more pragmatic than to relay on mere curses. He did not just sit there, cursing his opponents and waiting for Allah to act. He got into action himself. He sent spies to the towns of his to be victims to assess the situation, and cowardly ambushed them when they were least expecting.

About eight years ago, a credulous Muslim challenged me to the same. I encouraged him to curse me. I told him that Muhammad’s cursing seasons lasted thirty days and recommended that he should not stop cursing until his wish is granted. Looks like Allah has not been attentive to this poor Muslim’s curses. Maybe more Muslims have to join the battle and curse me in congregation. How about a big Ummah day of cursing? That is an idea! Hey, it is in the Quran, so it must work. Alas, few Muslims believe in the power of cursing and instead, like their prophet, they resort to terrorism and violence to prove their point.

Do you really think that the maker of this magnificent universe is a toy in the hands of his creatures? Now if this is really Allah who is making that call, don’t you think that he is a fool? Why would he need people to curse each other? If he already knows who is right and who is wrong, why does he not punish the wrong party, assuming that this is the only way he knows how to make his truth prevail?

This verse depicts Allah as a despicable being who instead of reason resorts to violence to prove he has the ultimate power. This verse alone is enough to prove that Muhammad was a charlatan and had zero understanding of truth. Sadly, so few of his followers have discernment. People are so desperate to be fooled that prefer to keep their eyes shut, lest they see the light and find the truth about the deplorable predicament in which they are trapped.

You wrote: “Such an act will neither be an attempt to add anything to His knowledge nor will it be instrumental in altering His decision. It will be a mere plea expressed by some individuals to seek mercy for some others who will be falling on the margin of good and bad performers”.

If your plea is not going to give any new information to God and will in no way affect his decision, what is the point of making that plea? You might as well beseech forgiveness from a wall. Isn’t that an exercise in futility?

You wrote that the Quran says “intercession would be allowed to those who speak the truth.” Can anyone lie to an omniscient God? Then again, what is the point in saying anything to God who knows everything better than you?

I explained these things already. These logical arguments debunk the whole theory of intercession. You did not bring anything new to the table. Therefore I rested my case. This does not mean I conceded.

You wrote: “In fact, it would be the supreme kindness of God that would allow some people to plead mercy for those people whom He will have already decided, but not openly announced, to forgive.”

Really! I think it is sardonic to tell people pray earnestly when their prayers are not going to have any effect and the decisions are already made. How much respect does a judge deserve when he makes his decision first, and then listens patiently to the witnesses? Such a judge must be sick in the head. He would be giving people false hope. If the decisions are already made, what is the point of supplicating and praying? Such a sadistic god is scornful and not worthy of any praise. It is amazing that you can’t see the irony.

One reader commented: “When Allah has already decided to forgive, there is no point in someone else to plead mercy for those people. Whether they plead or not, the decision is already been made to forgive.”

Does this point need further clarification? As you can see, the whole concept of intercession is absurd. As rational people we must reject the very notion of intercession. I was glad to read that Dr. Ghamidi had already done that. But then when I quoted the Quranic verses that speak of intercession, you changed your position and felt the need to defend something totally irrational.

Now let us read the verses 4:17-18 again:

Repentance with Allah is only for those who do evil in ignorance, then turn (to Allah) soon, so these it is to whom Allah turns (mercifully), and Allah is ever Knowing, Wise. [Category A]

And repentance is not for those who go on doing evil deeds, until when death comes to one of them, he says: Surely now I repent; [Category B] nor (for) those who die while they are unbelievers. [Category C] These [B & C] are they for whom We have prepared a painful chastisement.

As you see, your understanding of these verses is not correct. Those in categories B and C will not be forgiven. You would be wasting your time praying and interceding for them. Verse 4:18 says that those who delay repentance will not be forgiven. You yourself are saying that God’s decision will not change. Will you then explain why you would bother to intercede? By defending the concept of intercession, you are contradicting the above verse. But actually it is the Quran that contradicts itself. You are educated and smart men, and yet by trying to defend a lunatic man you are engaging in all sorts of irrationalities. Why? Why do we have to sellout our intelligence to defend a madman of the seventh century? Why it is so hard to wake up and to realize that you have been conned? Truth is manifest like the Sun; why don’t we want to see it?

This is what faith does to people. Rational people do all sorts of mental acrobatics to prove something irrational because otherwise their entire belief system crumbles. Since irrationality cannot be defended rationally, they end up saying irrational things. This is not a slight on you. I did the same when I was a believer. I said so many stupid things to cling to my faith until I could no longer fool myself, and once I admitted that one thing is wrong, it had a domino effect and one after another I saw more absurdities that I had refused to see before.

Islam is a house of cards. One lie is supported by another and all of them hold this religion together. When one lie is removed this entire edifice will fall. All you have to do is admit to one tiny error, and at once you will see hundreds and thousands of them. That means the loss of faith.

But losing faith is a painful rebirth. That is why Muslims cling to each and every absurdity so tenaciously. It is much easier to lie to ourselves and prolong our sojourn in the womb of ignorance than see the truth and face the uncertainty of freedom.

As for the second topic you clarified that you never said the Quran is poetry and that I am putting words in your mouth. Well, that is why we are having this discussion. If there is something I misunderstand, you can correct me. It is good that both of us agree that the Quran is not a book of poetry.

However, you claim that because the Quran is an excellent piece of literature, it does not have to abide by the rules of grammar just as poets often break these rules. I stated that we allow poets to break all sorts of rules, including those of logic to inspire us but this privilege is not extended to someone claiming to have brought a divine book of guidance. Every book has to abide by its own rules. You would make a grave mistake if you try to write a book on science in a poetic language. When writing about science, what matters is clarity. This is also true about a book of guidance.

I also said that switching from one pronoun to another does not transform a prosaic writing into a masterpiece of literature. The main requisite for a book of guidance is clarity. Poets can be as ambiguous as they want, but messengers of God should not. On one hand you say the Quran is not a book of poetry, and on the other hand you want us to overlook its poetic vagaries. You want to have your cake and eat it too.

A book of guidance must not contain any ambiguity. The excellence of the writing should be attained while adhering to the rules of grammar, and at the same time the book must be clear. The Quran does neither of the two. The Bible is an excellent literature. It is a readable book, and unlike the Quran that is tedious, it is enjoyable. The Bible does not break any grammatical rules to defraud its readers by pretending to be an “excellent literature”. It is an excellent literature precisely because it sticks to the norms of grammar and correct speech. Why is the Bible a masterpiece of literature? It is because its authors were learned rabbis and scholars while the author of the Quran was an illiterate man.

You accuse me of being “agitated against the faith” and in my exuberance to get answers to them I assume that all Muslims, including you, are saying the same thing on those issues.

I am only questioning the Quran. What you believe or don’t believe is not of my concern. My objective is to prove that the Quran is not a divine book. I know that both you and Dr. Ghamidi are sensible and rational people, and have a hard time believing in the nonsense of Islam. All I want to do is to show how precarious your position is. As rational people you cannot defend Islam, which is utterly irrational.

Rationalism and Islam don’t mix any more than water and oil do. Take the example of intercession. What I read from Dr. Ghamidi in his site was very rational. He had quoted the verses (78:37-38) and in the footnote he had written: “This and the next two verses strongly negate the philosophy of mediation and intercession.” However, when I showed that the Quran says quite something else as well, you and Dr. Ghamidi changed your position on this subject and started to defend something you do not believe.

Now you face a dilemma. You either have to reject the Quran or defend two contradictory positions. These positions are mutually exclusive, but you cannot reject either one because that means accepting that the Quran is a book of lie.

When one accepts Islam, one enters down the rabbit hole and end up in the Wonderland where everything is nonsense. Nothing is what it is, because everything is what it isn’t. And contrary-wise, what is, it wouldn’t be and what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?

The Quran has as many holes in it as wire mesh, You will eventually have to make a choice between reason and Islam. What I want to arouse in you and in our Muslim readers is cognitive dissonance. Then it would be up to you to choose between reason and Islam. I am confident that with the spread of truth, Muslims will have enough of this nonsense and they will want to go home to reason – straight home.

Many people have chosen belief over reason. They are comfortable believing in absurdities and regard fideism superior to rationalism. I have no argument with them. Our paths simply do not cross. Intellectually, we operate in different planes. I live in the real world, where things are as they are. They live in the Wonderland where nothing is what it is, because everything is what it isn’t. However, if you claim that Islam is compatible with reason, you are coming into my world. This is the world of reality. Therefore I will ask questions and want proof.

On the question of an animal acting as a messenger of Allah you repeated what you already had said earlier that it is “used as a final measure to expose the indefensible stubbornness of the deniers of the message of God.” I have already answered this point in my previous message, and therefore I won’t take our reader’s time repeating it.

You also say that the fact that other translators have translated the verse 27:82 differently does not mean that your translation is not right. As I said, even if we translate the verse in the way you have done it, i.e. assume that the emergence of this beast is only a probability; it is still irrational and does not change anything. If I tell you that tomorrow cats will rain; that would be an illogical statement. If I tell you that cats MAY rain, it does not become any more logical. Cats will never rain and animals will never become messengers of God. This idea is nonsense. Only Alice and Muhammad could come up with such fairytale where animals speak. Alice was dreaming, Muhammad was hallucinating.

On the subject of the clarity of the Quran you say “the clarity of a text is its intrinsic quality. Whether someone would be able to understand it would depend on whether he is making a genuine attempt at doing so or not.”

I beg to disagree. An obtuse text is obtuse no matter who reads it. You may not qualify me as capable of understanding the Quran because I have rejected it completely. Mind you, this has not always been the case.There was a time when I too, like you, believed in this book, and admitting that it was all wrong was a painful experience. Now, let us say Allah has sealed my heart and as a result I do not understand it anymore. (That in itself is an interesting topic to discuss.) What about the Muslims who sincerely believe in it? Why do they understand the Quran in so many different ways? You disagree with the understanding of the suicide bombers, but do you doubt their sincerity? They are ready to die to prove their faith. Why they do not understand the Quran in the right way, the way you do? How many sects exist in Islam? Muslims read the same book but understand it in so many different ways. Why? Do we need more proof that this book is not clear? There are Muslims with whom you disagree. Some of them have even attempted to assassinate you. Isn’t this enough proof that the Quran is not clear for them (or possibly for you)? Are you suggesting that you are the only one who reads the Quran in the right way?

You say: “Qur’an was indeed absolutely clear and effective to its immediate addressees.”

Apart from the fact that you can’t possibly know this and are making an unsubstantiated claim, let us say that you are right. What about others who were or are not immediate addressees, like you and I and billions of others? Shouldn’t the book of God be clear for all times? If the Quran is for all people and for all times, why should only a handful of the immediate addressees be able to understand it? This argument makes Allah unfair and a cynic who plays pranks on humans. Furthermore, since by your admission the Quran is not clear for people of our time, it is not longer a valid book of guidance.

You say, “Even today if one were to know the language of the Qur’anic times (for which the Qur’an itself is the best source) and decides to ignore all extraneous influences in favour of the Qur’an, its text is remarkably clear.”

Since you are making a claim I need clarification. Based on your claim I take that you are among those who understand the Quran. I am going to ask you to explain a few verses of this book. Let us start from the start. The Quran begins with “Alif, Lam, Mim”. What does that mean? There are many other disjointed letters in other suras. Can you please explain to us the meaning of these letters? Then it says:

Dhalika alkitabu la rayba feehi hudan lilmuttaqeena.

Dhalika means “that”. Which book this verse is talking about? If it is talking about the Quran, then the right pronoun is “this” book, hadha alkitabu. Most translators have used their logic and corrected Muhammad’s error. So they have translated dhalika as “this”. Arberry and Palmer, however, have stood by the correct meaning of the word and have translated it as “that”. Obviously the Quran is not clear to the extent that it has even confused its translators. Can you explain why instead of this, Allah says that? Is this also to make the book an excellent work of literature? It looks like Allah did not know how to use pronouns.

Then the verse continues: la rayba feehi (there is no doubt in it). I am sorry to inform you that the majority of mankind doubts this book and that is why they are not Muslims. Yours truly is one of them and I am putting all my doubts in this site for everyone to see and answer. So far no one has been able to do that. Let us hope that you will.

In my previous email I asked you to interpret the following verses:

“The unbelievers are the vilest of animals” (8:55);
“Slay the unbelievers wherever they find them” (2:191);
“Fight them and show them harshness” (9:123);
“Do not take them as friends and helpers (3:28); and
“Smite their necks” (47:4).

Will you please explain what do you understand from these verses? Since my heart is sealed, all I can understand is what I see and what I see is a message of hate and violence. You seem to understand the Quran differently. Please tell us: What are the real meanings of these seemingly satanic verses?

I had promised to ask a new question this time. I will wait until you clarify the above verses. I see you have a lot to explain and I am don’t want to burden you.

You stated: “The difficulty in understanding the Qur’an is similar to the difficulty one faces in understanding all other clear masterpieces the appreciation of subtleties of whose language and style of expression have become extinct save to those who have undertaken the trouble to master them.”

I am not sure which masterpieces you are referring to. But all the literary masterpieces I know are clear. All the philosophical theories presented by both antique and present thinkers that I have read were clear to me. The books discussing scientific theories are absolutely clear. I can read Dante, Shakespeare, the theory of relativity and the quantum physics and understand them. All I need are the meanings of the words, which I can find in a dictionary and I can easily understand what they say. Even the Bible and the Vedas are fairly understandable. That is not the case with the Quran. I do not find any other book as obtuse as this book. The only clear message in the Quran is its message of violence. When it says strike terror, smite the necks of the unbelievers and chop their fingertips, or fighting is good for you it is very clear. Other than that, nothing in this book is clear. If you allow me to go forward I will show how contradictory and confusing this book is. But maybe I am wrong. Will you please give us one example of literature that lends itself to this many interpretations as the Quran does?

If the Quran was clear why have so many scholars had to write so many books of tafseer and compendiums to this book? You can read the Bible and understand it with no help from another book. But to understand the Quran you need tafseer. Doesn’t the very existence of so many books of tafseer belie the claim that the Quran is a clear book?

Also if the subtleties of the language and style of expression of the Quran are lost to the masses of people, as you have stated, then doesn’t this mean that the book has ceased to be a clear book of guidance for all times? Are you telling me that now only an elite can read and interpret the Quran, and the rest of us should depend on them alone to tell us what God says? In that case Islam’s days are over and it is time for Allah to send another messenger to speak to us in a language that we all can understand.

You insisted again that I should try to understand the scheme of Qur’anic presentation the way the Qur’an presents itself.

What makes you think that you understand the Quran better than me? For one thing you read the Quran subjectively, i.e. through the eyes of a believer. As such you are unable to see its errors objectively. This is normal. Believers are lovers and they cannot see the faults in the object of their love. This is your handicap, which has become clear in our discussion. In the case of intercession you wrote, and I repeat:

“Such an act will neither be an attempt to add anything to His knowledge nor will it be instrumental in altering His decision. It will be a mere plea expressed by some individuals to seek mercy for some others who will be falling on the margin of good and bad performers.”

The contradiction in these two sentences is clear to any objective observer, but as a lover and a believer, you are unable to see it despite the fact that both of you are very rational persons with trained scientific minds. Both of you are very intelligent and smart men. However you are forced to defend a very stupid and ignorant man and this is the result. If Islam was from God, it would have been logical. If God’s decision will not be changed what is the point of seeking mercy?

In the case of the wanton use of pronouns in the Quran, you say these errors are to make the Quran a masterpiece of literature. his beauty you are alluding to escapes the rest of mankind. Only Muslims see beauty and art in this jumble known as the Quran. So again, yours is a subjective observation. I am afraid you are the ones who are disqualified to understand the Quran properly, not me. Faith blinds. You say you love your prophet more than you love your parents. Would you trust a son to act as the judge in a case involving his parents? Because of this excessive love for Muhammad, you are blinded to all his evilness and are disqualified to judge his actions and his words. You are the last persons fit to pass judgment on the Quran and yet you say I am not allowed to do that. Far from it! I am the most qualified to do that because I have overcome my blind faith and now I can see this book in a very objective way that you can’t.

Despite that, you have the opportunity to explain the above Quranic verses and tell us in what scheme you interpret them to make them sound less violent and less hatemongering. The ball is in your court.

You complained that I have burdened the readers with “scores” of topics that you fear will stir emotions in “some feeble minded followers.”

I hope by followers you mean those who follow this debate because I do not have followers and think “following” is demeaning for rational people. You are right; only feebleminded people are followers. I am glad to say that the standard of the essays in faithfreedom.org is a tad above what you find in other sites. I may be a mediocre writer myself but with the exception of me our writers are among the best. As a result, only intellectuals and strong-minded people find this site attractive. If you were talking about Muslim, those who can reason are not feebleminded. They are rational people who can see right from wrong and make their own decision. Feebleminded people get offended and they go away.

Anyway, so far I have presented no more than three topics – the intercession, the wanton use of pronouns and the animal messenger. These are not “scores” of topics. Are there other topics on the table that I am not aware of? If you already feel overwhelmed by just three topics, are you sure you can defend the Quran that contains hundreds of absurdities, contradictions and errors?

I think these topics are exhaustively explained and our readers are also eager that we move to other topics. If you think you have not said everything and still want to add more, the floor is all yours. I am done and I have rested my case. I believe these three topics are crystal clear and there is no need for me to add anything more. Adhering to Occam’s razor and the lex parsimoniae (law of succinctness), I feel no more discussion are needed for me to make my case any stronger.

You said that you believe in freedom of thought and expression and the reason you are reluctant to publish our debate in your site is that my tone is “uncivilized”. I am sorry that my tone has been uncivilized but I assure you that I have not been aware of it myself, maybe because I am too brute and churlish to even notice how uncivilized my tone is. I would really be grateful if you could kindly point out exactly where I have been uncivilized so I can correct myself and be more civilized in the future. I am not being sarcastic. I sincerely strive to improve myself everyday in every way and would like to act like civilized people. Will you kindly help me by being more specific and show me exactly where I have been uncivilized?

Also if I am uncivilized isn’t it to your advantage to publish my uncivilized messages on your site so everyone in Pakistan can see them and not be fooled by me? I have published all the insults that Muslims have hurled at my person. I do that because I want to show how these people lack civility and how vile they have become thanks to Islam. Are you trying to protect my reputation by hiding my incivility from your readers? Your job is to save the reputation of Muhammad, not mine. On the contrary, you must expose me. So I urge you to publish our debate.

You added: “freedom of expression is one thing and insulting someone’s revered personality is quite another.”

I will have to disagree with you here. Freedom of expression is also freedom to insult someone else’s revered personality. Without such freedom there is no freedom. Beliefs don’t have to be respected. They must be scrutinized, questioned and, if proven wanting, discarded. There are all sorts of beliefs out there. If one has to watch his tongue lest he say something that may offend someone else’s belief, then one cannot say anything at all. There are people who have great reverence for Hitler. Are you suggesting no one should say anything against Hitler because someone might be offended?

At this moment most of the North Koreans are led to believe that Kim Jong-Il is some sort of divine personage. Should we hold our tongues and respect this brute monster because there are people who love him and will be offended if we criticize him? The followers of Jim Jones worshiped that psychopath to the extent that when a few of them managed to escape his cult, others assassinated them. This is true in the case of all cults. Cultists love their leader to the point of worshiping him and are extremely offended if anyone criticizes their leader. In fact this is the main difference between a cult and a religion. Jesus has been vilified on many occasions. Someone with questionable taste placed a crucifix in a jar of urine and called it art. Christians were upset, but mainly because the City of New York had allowed this aberrancy to be shown in the City’s Museum at tax payers’ (their) expense. The protest was against the Museum, not against that idiot “artist”. He was never threatened and he has no fear for his life. In contrast, Muslims rioted and killed innocent people when a few cartoons of Muhammad were drawn. This alone is enough proof that Islam is a cult and not a religion.

Who said beliefs should be respected? Only those who cannot defend their belief rationally demand protection against criticism for their faith. Because their faith is disgusting, they want to force others to respect their faith through legislation. If Muslims could answer the criticisms raised against Islam, they would not act so violently. They resort to censorship and violence because they have failed in the arena of reason. Why the followers of no other religion act in this way and why the followers of cults do? It is because this behavior is cultic behavior. Islam is not a religion but an overgrown cult.

Take a look at the forum of our site. It is free for all to come and say anything they want. Many Muslims take this opportunity to come and insult me and yet no one will censor them. Insults don’t hurt. I welcome good logic and can easily refute bad logic. So why should we ban people at all?

Several Muslim countries have blocked our site because they are afraid of us. We are only a handful of ordinary people and yet, to use Muhammad’s favorite expression, we have “cast terror in the hearts” of Muslim authorities worldwide, but unlike him without ever resorting to any violence or calling for it. This is the awesome power of truth.

Furthermore, I am not insulting Muhammad but telling things as they are. Muhammad slept with a child. The English word for an adult who finds a child sexually attractive is pedophile. These are the most despicable creatures I can think of. He raided unarmed civilians, killed their men and captured their woman and children, while looting their herds, camels and everything they owned. Such a person in English is called a marauder and a gangster. He slept with women captured in his raids right after slaying their husband, father and many of their relatives and allowed his followers to do the same. This in English is called rape. He ordered his followers to assassinate his critics. Such a person is called an assassin. He massacred entire populations while they were his prisoners of war. Such a person is called mass murderer.

How do you want me to say these truths about this man without hurting your sensitivity? Why instead of playing victim don’t you answer these charges and refute them once and for all? I have made these charges against Muhammad for many years and millions of people have read them and have spread them. I am offering to remove these charges and apologize publicly if someone can prove me wrong. So if I lie, all you have to do is catch my lies. By censoring my site and by not publishing our debate you only validate what I say. You can keep the Pakistanis in the dark a little longer, but the world is awakening and this means the end of Islam is approaching. This site is blocked in many Islamic countries. However the truth is spreading like wildfire. Others are taking up this torch and are taking this message far and wide.

Now, let us turn the table and see how good Muslims are in respecting the beliefs of others. Don’t Muslims burn churches and synagogues? Don’t they insult the deities of Hindus? Didn’t they demolish the statute of Buddha in Bamiyan?

You may say that those Muslims who do such things are ignorant, but what about Muhammad? Didn’t he insult the Christians’ belief of Trinity, which he did not even understand? Didn’t he insult and eventually destroy the icons of the Quraish? What right did he have to ram into al-Ka’bah and smash the icons that people held sacrosanct? That temple belonged to the Pagans. He had no right to confiscate it and destroy their idols.

You may say, ‘but Muhammad did this because he was right and others were wrong.’ Isn’t this what everyone thinks about his own belief? Should anyone who thinks he is right kill those who disagree with him and destroy their houses of worship? Don’t you agree that the reason Muslims have caused so much havoc throughout these centuries, destroyed thousands of temples in Iran, India and elsewhere and killed your and my ancestors is because they followed the examples of their prophet? Yes it is despicable for you and me to take the side of those who butchered our forefathers.

You ask me not to accuse Muhammad of any crime until I can prove my case. I have actually proven all my charges against him already. If you allow me to carry on, I will prove them to you too. I think you should let go of these three topics. You have already made your point and now you are repeating yourself. Let us move on.

As I said, if you can disprove any one of my charges I will remove them and apologize publicly. So instead of getting offended, let us go through these charges and see if you can show to the world that I am mistaken. This will have a much bigger impact than saying I should not say anything bad about Muhammad because your skin is delicate and your feelings are tender. Such an evasive strategy hardly convinces anyone. Muslims have been playing that game of victimization ad nauseam and people are developing an adverse reaction to it. The world has had enough of Muslims’ sensitivity and they do not give a damn anymore. It is time to tell the truth. If you can’t stand the truth, that is your problem. Prove me wrong or put up with the rising anger of the world. We have had it up to here with Islamic violence and their game of victimhood. Enough with hypocrisy, enough with lies, enough with terrorism and taqiyyah and enough with Muslims’ baby cry!

Then you conclude your message with an ultimatum that “if we see any nonsense hurled at our prophet in your future messages to us, this discussion would discontinue there and then.”

First of all none of my charges against Muhammad are nonsense. These are grave and serious charges that definitely show Muhammad was not fit to be called a good man, let alone a messenger of God. What he did deserves contempt, not praise. Anyone doing a fraction of what Muhammad did today would be rotting in jail or would be condemned to the electric chair. Second, how else am I supposed to prove my case if I am not allowed even to bring my charges against your defendant? You are asking me to prove my charges without even laying any charge against him. How can that be done?

The reason Islam has survived so long is precisely because of this fallacious strategy. Muslims will resort to threats in order to intimidate their critics and silence them and then claim victory. That is why a real discussion between Muslim scholars and the critics of Islam has never taken place. The reason is that Muslims cannot tolerate criticism of their prophet. Why? It is because they can’t respond to them. As soon as they realize their position is precarious, they find an excuse to cop out.

I know all this talk hurts you. It hurt me too when I first saw the light of the truth. However, I was all on my own. I could not withdraw from the debate because this debate was taking place in my head. Yes, it was painful. But I was already in the throes of the cognitive dissonance and had to choose. I am happy that I chose reason over blind faith. I decided that an irrational god is no one but Satan and did not want to believe in Satan. You and other Muslims must make this choice too.

How do you think your pulling out at this stage will be interpreted by our readers? You can bring all the face‑saving excuses in the world, saying I am uncivilized, I insult your prophet, your feelings are hurt, etc., but people are smart and they know why you don’t want to continue. They only conclude that you have run out of answers. If you had answers you would patiently go through all my charges and contest them one by one. So far I have asked only three questions and they look to you as “scores” and you already want to back out.

If I am lying, I am influencing millions of people. Why not bite the bullet, continue this debate, expose my lies and put an end to me once and for all? If you are right, in the end the victory will be yours and who laughs last, laughs more.

Actually if you can prove me wrong I will be grateful. This is a golden opportunity. Forget about me. Look with indulgence at my incivility and at my unscholarly nonsensical rambling. Keep in mind that it is not for me that you write. You are writing to enlighten many people, both Muslims and non‑Muslims, who wonder why no Muslim scholar has yet managed to answer me and to put an end to this site. Many of them have started to believe that maybe I am right after all. Many have left Islam already. These people will talk to other Muslims and make them doubt too, and the snowball will keep growing until it falls on Islam like an avalanche. If Islam is the right religion, shouldn’t you overlook my incivility with your magnanimity and forbearance and think about helping these people whom I am misleading?

Please don’t leave us dear Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer yet. The night is long and we have just begun. I only served you a little appetizer. You must try the main course. I have prepared for you a great feast. The dishes are ready in the kitchen. Allow me to set the table. I promise to bring one dish at a time so you don’t get indigestion. One is more succulent than the other and I want you to relish each one separately.

All the best.

Ali Sina

Part VII

Dec 2, 2006 Dear Mr Ali Sina One always learns new things while interacting with people. I had thought prior to receiving your last message that respect for the revered personalities of others was a virtue common to all humans. I am more enlightened now to know that it is not. It now seems that respecting others’ revered personalities is an outcome of a feeling which like the ability to smell you either have in you or you don’t have. Now that I know that you have been deprived of that sublime virtue, I won’t complain any more to you for not demonstrating the presence of it in you. I promise you that and apologize for criticizing you for doing something you couldn’t have done otherwise.

Estimated erudite scholars, Dr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer:

Respecting beliefs is not a virtue at all. It is actually a fallacy. What is the definition of belief? Belief means accepting a postulate without evidence. Once you have evidence, then it is no longer a belief but a fact. A child may believe that if he eats watermelon seeds, watermelon plants will grow in his tummy. This belief does not have to be respected. Of course, you will smile and may even listen to his stories attentively. You don’t ridicule him or put him down. He is after all a child. You love the child but it is ludicrous to say we must respect his silly beliefs too. As he grows and can understand things better, you explain to him that watermelons don’t grow in the tummy.

Now what if this child becomes an adult and still wants to hold on to his foolish beliefs? (Much of the beliefs people hold sacrosanct are more ridiculous than the belief of watermelons growing in the tummy.) Do you still have to tolerate his foolish thoughts? Yes! As long as his beliefs do not harm others, you should tolerate them. It is not up to us to decide what people should believe and what they should not believe. This is the essence of freedom of thought. You and I may not agree with Hinduism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism or the Bahá’í Faith. Since these beliefs are not intrusive, we have no right to stop them and force those who believe in them to abandon their beliefs. However, we must not tolerate beliefs that harm others. If a religion teaches to slay those who do not believe wherever you find them, they are unclean, do not associate with them and do not take them as friends, they are worse than animals, God hates them and they are fuel for hellfire, such a religion is dangerous. All mankind must come together to eradicate this evil religion of hate. A similar doctrine of hate brought much death and devastation in the last century. Everyone had to join force to fight it. We must not let this happen again. We must eradicate every evil doctrine. Intolerant beliefs should not be tolerated. When humanity fought to put an end to Nazism, everyone vowed “never again”, but a similar or even more dangerous doctrine or hate is raising its ugly head again. People are not opposing it because it is disguised as a religion. We must unmask it and say no to it. Islam has brought more death and devastation than Nazism. It must be stopped before it burns the world. Another man in Iran is echoing the exact words of Hitler. He denies the holocaust while he is promising to deliver another. Hitler’s book has been the top bestseller in Turkey for several years now. Hitler is a hero to many Muslims. The Qur’an is more violent than Mein Kamph. We must not let Muslims do what Nazis did. Never again, we must let evil become strong.

Let me recapitulate:

• Beliefs do not have to be respected. All beliefs are subject to scrutiny and criticism and this is an essential part of freedom of expression. One must be free to deny and even to blaspheme God. No idea is beyond criticism.

• We must be tolerant of all beliefs even if we do not agree with them and retain the right to criticize them. The right to criticize all beliefs does not preclude respecting the right of others to believe in those very beliefs we criticize. As Voltaire said, “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.”

• Intolerant beliefs must not be tolerated. Freedom must be preserved and this means we must fight and eradicate intolerant doctrines. They must be hunted down and uprooted. You are free but if you are a danger to others, you forfeit your freedom. This applies as much to people as it does to ideologies.

Free and civilized societies must protect the rights of ALL their citizens to be free. By “ALL” I mean everyone and not just the majority. Without freedom of thought and belief, there is no freedom. So, what if a group of people decides to impose its beliefs on others? In that case it is the responsibility of the state to subdue this group in order to protect others. Intolerance is not a right. You have the right to criticize any belief but you do not have the right to be intolerant, promote hate and call for violence. Those who do that must be stopped by law. If they do not understand logic they must be stopped by force. Your freedom ends where the freedom of others begins. This is the limit of freedom in free societies where everyone is free. Islam is uniquely evil. It is the only religion that promotes intolerance and hate. Therefore it is incumbent upon all freedom lovers of the world to fight it and eradicate it.

Muhammad did not respect anyone’s belief. It is not for this that we blame him. We blame him because he was intolerant of those beliefs.

I can also see that there is an absence of appreciation of certain other matters in you as well. To you, trying to help a young man realize in a discreet manner that his parents weren’t bound in a wedlock when he was born is quite the same as saying to him on face that he was a bastard, because your dictionary suggests that that’s the right word for such children. Again, since it’s not your fault that you aren’t aware of the delicacies of a cultured communication between two decent people, I am not going to accuse you for not having demonstrated such appreciation in our discussion and would not blame you for violating the expectations of such communication. Again, it’s a promise.

You are not the only one accusing me of being tactless. I am not prefect, and maybe my approach is not the best approach. Just the other day a friend wrote and said the same thing. I told him that I have been debating with Muslims, since 1998. At first, when I started, I adopted a very soft language. I even used the PBUH salutation every time I mentioned the name of Muhammad deferentially. I must have debated and exchanged emails with thousands of Muslims. Eventually I fine-tuned my methodology and language. I learned through experience that direct and blunt talk is more effective than trying to sugarcoat the words lest I offend someone’s sensitivity. Now, I believe in the power of shock therapy. Based on my experience, it works best with Muslims. You know about shock therapy, don’t you? Shock therapy is the deliberate induction of shock for the purpose of psychiatric treatment. It has been shown that states of shock can induce improvement in the patient’s mental state.

Now, I am not saying that Muslims should be subjected to electroconvulsive therapy such as passing an electrical current through their brain (Although it may be worth a try). I want to apply the shock by exposing them, from early on, to the naked truth about Muhammad. This is how I came to my senses. My shock came to me after I read the Qur’an and I saw the sheer inhumanity of this book. Most of the testimonies of people leaving Islam also have elements of shock in them.

I find Muslims almost dead. They are so weighed down with nonsense and absurdity that it is difficult to make them reason or react to anything. You think calling Muhammad a pedophile is shocking. Believe me, to many Muslims, even this is not shocking. Read our forum and the debates we had with Muslims and you’ll see that not only they are not shocked by this knowledge, but they even defend this despicable act of Muhammad. We have had Muslims telling us that they would give their daughters in marriage at nine, just to make the point that there is nothing wrong in this shameful practice. We tell Muslims about Muhammad’s massacres and they defend him. We speak of how he tortured Kinana to death and on that very night took his young wife, Safiyah, to bed and they do not blink. They justify his lootings, his assassinations and all his crimes. Nothing shocks Muslims anymore. They are like dead. This is the death of conscience. A human who has no conscience is no better than an animal. This is a tragedy my valued friends.

Does shock therapy hurt? You bet it does. But it works. We have had people offended, cursing us and swearing at us, and yet these very people came back to say we were right, Islam is indeed evil and Muhammad was a monster.

I have seen result in my “shock therapy” and that is why I do it. I don’t say my way is the best way. I say to those who tell me tone down, to start their own site and present the truth the way they think is more appropriate.

One site cannot be everything to everyone. It would be very noble to start a site that tells the Muslims “you are children of love” rather than bluntly telling them “you are bastards.” I am all with you. Do it! You have all my support. But that is not my methodology. Why don’t you start such a site? You are the best to do it. You believe in Muhammad and love him and you can gently tell Muslims that some of their actions may not be right. Then again, isn’t this what you are doing already? Hasn’t this been done before, millions of times? What is the result? See where the Muslims are today! Just as the bitter fruit of oil palm will never become sweet as date by pruning the tree, Islam will never become tolerant through reforms. This tree must be chopped down and fed to the fire.

Some people want to dismantle the edifice of Islam slowly, brick by brick. I say good luck to them. It will take another thousand years to do it, if ever. I don’t have that much time here and I don’t think humanity can afford to wait any longer either. I want to uncork the Champaign and celebrate the end of Islam, with my friends at FFI. I leave others with their chisels and hammers at the rooftop and go to the foundation. I know about Islam’s major structural flaw and want to take advantage of that. Islam is built on quicksand, i.e. on lies. All I have to do is to expose its foundation and let the sand wash away from beneath it. This mighty edifice will fall on its own. It will happen at once.

Five years ago I said the end of Islam will happen, give or take, in thirty years. I am now more certain than ever. I must say that I do not believe in prophecies. No one can predict the future. But I believe in projects and goal settings. Things do not happen on their own. We are the architects of our future. We can make things happen. We can build the future the way we want it. I want to be part of that construction crew and help build a world where no one detests another human being because his or her faith is not right. This is my dream. But I am not a dreamer. I rely on planning, strategies and smart work.

There is another problematic aspect of your messages which has been causing miscommunication between us: You say in your last message, for instance, that you have asked only three questions and not, as I accused you of, scores of them. In the meanwhile, you accuse the messenger of Islam of getting people killed, sleeping illegitimately with women etc. If these subjects weren’t meant for discussion why were they brought forth in your message at all? Of course, such things help in creating stir amongst the readers who, as a result, are easily distracted from concentrating on the issues at hand. To understand what you are doing, take an example: Let’s assume that you were attempting to prove that a certain young man was a bad person and you say that for the moment you were bringing only three reasons to prove your point: the young man steals, uses foul language, and teases ladies in the streets. However, while talking about him you also say, by the way, that the young man was also guilty of murder, rape, and torturing other people, but you clarify that you were accusing him of committing the first three crimes only for the moment and request for the other three to not be counted as allegations. For what purpose then, one may ask you, the latter three crimes have been mentioned? Of course, the only reason their mention has been made is the contribution they promise to make in stirring the emotions of those people whose concentration you don’t want to be fully absorbed in the three points you have initially raised for discussion. If the first three points are being debated, let them first be discussed exhaustively before any new are brought forth. Likewise, there was no reason to mention references of all your writings on subjects that have hitherto not been brought on the table for discussion. What I have been emphasizing all along is that either you bring a matter for discussion and do full justice with it or you don’t mention it at all. These tricks of cleverly influencing the minds of readers by referring to matters that aren’t being discussed are normally indicative of the writer’s lack of confidence in the strength of his arguments in the topics he has already raised for discussing. If you want to say that the prophet of Islam was guilty of killing people, then say that you want to discuss it as a topic. While talking about intercession and bringing forth references of your articles which are accusing the messenger of even more serious crimes is indicative of a complete absence of the sense of serious discussion. It is simply emotional rhetoric and, I repeat, it serves to simply influence the easily distracted (whom I called the feeble-minded) readers.

You have a valid point. I am not in disagreement with you. However, please acknowledge that the life of Muhammad was full of crimes. One can’t talk about him without talking of his crimes. I assure you that I did not bring up these things as new subjects or as you say to “influence and distract the feeble minded.” This is a heavy subject and those who read it are generally people with strong views and opinions of their own. As I said before, feebleminded people often get offended by this site and don’t read through it. Many of them also can’t access this site because it is blocked in their countries.

You made an example. Let me use that for clarification. Suppose while you accuse this man of the charges that you bring against him, the judge asks you, “When did you see him using foul language and teasing that woman?” and you respond, “Just before he took his knife and stabbed her.” Although your accusation that the defendant is guilty of murder is not yet proven, you are not at fault in saying that.

Notwithstanding, and to show my good will, I will be extra vigilant to not say anything that you may find the need to rebut beyond the topic that we are discussing. I hope this will expedite our discussion and we can go swiftly over each topic and move on. I have tremendous respect for you because I find you sincere and truthful individuals. This is not what I would say about most Muslim apologists. The very fact that you accepted this invitation to debate is proof enough of your sincerity and conviction. You believe that Islam is true and are not afraid to share what you know with the world. Many other scholars have been invited to debate but they brought excuses, made some ad hominem remarks against me and backed down. They accused me of “misleading innocent Muslims”. If that is true, isn’t it their duty to guide Muslims by showing them my errors? I am giving them ample opportunity to do that. They can write anything they want and I will publish that or they can use the forum. So aren’t they failing their duty to help Muslims see the truth?

What I do and say are not out of malice. Even my enemies acknowledge that I am sincere in my views. There is no personal gain for me in doing what I do. In fact I had to readjust my lifestyle and renounce many luxuries that previously I took for granted in order to be able to carry on with my campaign of eradicating Islam. If what I do is out of ignorance, then no harm will come to me. Unlike the terrorists I am not hurting anyone physically and if I hurt their feelings, that is their problem. Let them grow tougher skin. But what about these “scholars” who accuse me of misleading Muslims and then withhold the truth from people and snob when they are asked to come and show my errors? Who do you think God will punish? If I am wrong, then I am only an ignorant. However, they are guilty of far bigger sins – the sin of haughtiness, of withholding the truth and of pride.

You do not belong to that crowd. You are good people. Now, one of us is wrong (i.e. if both of us are not wrong, which is often the case when two people disagree.) That is no sin. We are both open to learn new things. I learned from you to focus on one charge at a time. Being a positive thinker, I pretend you were not being sarcastic and have learned that beliefs do not have to be respected. People have to be respected but beliefs are there to be scrutinized and criticized. So things look upwards.

You have restarted the debate on the usage of shifting pronouns and the alleged inconsistency in the mention of intercession in the Qur’an. You are most welcome to do so. I mentioned to you the example of two poets who, like the Qur’an, used third person singular pronouns for themselves despite being the authors of those duplets simply to show that if the Qur’an was doing likewise, it was not a mistake; instead, it was completely in line with the tradition of high-class literary presentations. Interestingly, you mention that the Bible is a more clearly written work whose language doesn’t create the kind of problems the Qur’an creates. How would you react to the frequent use of the of expression ‘son of man’ Jesus Christ uses for himself? Of course, in your literary taste that too should count as a mistake. To us, whether it is the use of ‘son of man’ for Jesus in the Bible or He, We, or I for God in the Qur’an, none are mistakes in the use of nouns or pronouns. Instead, if properly understood, they lift the presentations of these works to a high level of excellence, for the appreciation of which one should have that, what seems now, rare gift of literary taste which, I claim, has as yet eluded you too, although, I am sure, it hasn’t eluded all the readers of your site.

Okay, I think we both said enough on this topic. Let us move on.

The case of intercession is also not getting the right appreciation from you. I would like you to realize one thing more: When you say that a certain matter is illogical, absurd, or intellectually unacceptable, it is not enough for you to just say that you don’t like the matter or that had you been in charge of the affairs, you would have done such and such thing differently. It is imperative that you show most clearly that the matter you are criticizing is indeed absurd from all points of view. For instance, it is rational to claim that a certain country was run undemocratically if the head of the state was taking all key decisions on his own. However, it would be unfair to declare it undemocratic if the country was properly following a presidential form of government, like in America , simply on account of the fact that the critic himself was from Britain and was more convinced that the parliamentary system of government was more democratic. Likewise, it is important that the process of accountability in the hereafter should appear to be absolutely fair. However, intercession in the form of request to the Almighty that in no way is going to influence the fair nature of accountability in the hereafter cannot be picked for criticism on account of it making the process appear unfair. You ask what the intercessor is going to add to the knowledge of God by interceding on behalf of someone else. My answer is, indeed nothing. But who said that intercession was going to add anything to God’s knowledge. God Himself makes the clarification in the Qur’an that intercession shall not add anything to His knowledge: “Who is there who can intercede before Him except by His leave. He knows what is there before them and behind them.” (Qur’an; 2:255) The intercession allowed is going to take care of the sensibilities of good people for others. God wants us to have feelings of sympathy for others. He allows those feelings to be expressed before Him in this world in the form of prayers for others, which again are expressions of sympathy and love for others and not an attempt to add to God’s knowledge or to appear more merciful than Him. He tells us that He is going to allow the same thing to happen in the case of some pious people on the Day of Judgment too. Where has this concept gone wrong? Where does it suggest that something is going to be added to God’s knowledge by the one who is going to intercede? Clearly, it appears that if you were God, you wouldn’t have allowed such subtleties of human nature as pleading on behalf others to be given the chance of expression on a day when it is going to matter the most for everyone. Thanks God we have a highly considerate, sympathetic God!

So your understanding is that Allah wants us humans to have empathy for each other but in practice He will do as he pleases anyway and will disregard our feelings for one another. That sounds quit silly on Allah’s part and frankly quite cruel. If he asks us to pray for one another, he must answer those prayers. Otherwise he is taking us for a ride. How do you feel knowing Allah is not going to answer your prayers for your beloved dad and yet he tells you pray for him? Wouldn’t that make you feel foolish and let down?

You have also alleged that we are emotionally attached to the man we believe to be the prophet of God and therefore despite attempting to be rational individuals we are caught up in a situation of cognitive dissonance. As a result, you believe, we cannot be expected to be fair in a discussion that has been undertaken to ascertain whether the person was a messenger of God or not. For one thing, if your observation is correct, please admit the other side of the problem too. You too are emotional about him. In your case, though, the emotions are negative. If we are incapable of rationally thinking about him because we are overly attached to him positively, you too should be considered unqualified to say anything about him objectively because of your overly negative attitude.

Absolutely! I have never tried to hide the fact that I am biased against Muhammad and Islam. However, I am not prejudiced. There is a difference. If I did not know much about Islam and, say, I was indoctrinated from childhood to dislike Islam then you could say I am prejudiced. Judging something before having the full knowledge of it is prejudice. However, once you come to know something up close and then reject it, you can no longer be accused as being prejudiced, because your aversion of that thing is based on knowledge and not on ignorance. If you know a snake is poisonous and warn others, you are just being wise. That is not called prejudice.

My aversion of Islam is based on the knowledge of the fact that it is deadly and dangerous. Thanks to this knowledge, I believe I am totally qualified to pass judgments on it. The ex-Muslims are the most qualified people to speak about Islam. We do not speak out of ignorance, prejudice or blind faith. There was a time that we were ready to die for our faith. Now that we have learned the truth we want to save mankind from it. We have seen the real face of it and, more than anyone else, know the threat that it poses to the peace of the world and particularly to the Muslims themselves. Our own relatives are in danger. The city of my birth, where my relatives and my childhood friends live, can go up in smoke because of Islam and the insanity that it has instilled in some of my people. Why has there always been war between Pakistan and India? What was the need for Pakistan to begin with? The very existence of Pakistan, as a separate country, hostile to its own kinsfolk on the other side of the border, is a testimony of the insanity of Islam. The very concept of Pakistan is stupidity upon stupidity. You could have been part of the great nation of India. Now you spend most of your wealth building atomic bombs to kill your own kin just because now you distinguish yourselves as Muslims. Haven’t enough people died because of this lie?

It would be unethical if we stayed silent after what we have learned. Let us say people start getting sick and dying in your township. No one knows the cause of it. Somehow, you come to learn that the water reservoir is poisoned. If you remain silent, you are guilty as hell. You must speak out and warn everyone not to drink the water. That is what we are doing at FFI. We are warning everyone, Muslims and non-Muslims, that Islam is poison. This doctrine is killing us. We must get rid of it if we want to save the world.

What is the right approach if someone says the cause of the epidemic death is the city water? Would you force him to shut up? Would you silence him because what he says may cause public panic or make you, the owner of the reservoir lose profit? That would be criminal. What if he is right? The right approach is to test the water. That is what we are asking everyone to do. We are asking the world to examine Islam. Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions lest you hurt Muslims’ sensitivity. To hell with their sensitivity! Ask the questions because this is a matter of life and death. Those who own this water system advertise it and tell us it is safe, are dying themselves. They must prove that what they sell is safe. We see the result and see that they are sick and dying. Their disease is affecting everyone and others are dying too. Are they going to be offended if we tell them your water is poisoned? Why should we give a damn? Let them be offended. There is much more at stake than the feelings of these people. They are not only offended, but their source of income is also in danger, so they kill anyone who says this water is poisonous. That is why we are forced to hide our faces and use the Internet to warn the world. And what do you do? You gag us and block our site so our voice does not reach the Muslims. This makes you an accomplice of the terrorists.

I have received countless emails from Muslims who told me they were once filled with hatred of everyone and now that they have left Islam they have started learned how to love all mankind. This is my reward. I don’t need a newer car, vacations and dining out. I get all the highs I need when I receive such confessions and know that I made a difference, that my life has a purpose and that I have been an instrument of peace. Would you believe that this was my childhood prayer? Now, my prayer is being answered. What else do I need? Every time someone writes to thank for helping him see the truth, for abandoning the doctrine of hate and for learning to love all mankind, I get the same sensation that one gets when he wins a lottery. That may happen to a few once in a lifetime, but I get that feeling time and again and as the site reaches more people, it is bound to happen more.

What about you? How would you, Dr. Ghamidi, feel when one day you realize you blocked this site in Pakistan and as such prevented many youths from seeing the truth who in turn went on to become terrorists, killed themselves and other innocent people? How will you face your creator and answer to him for what you have done? You did it out of ignorance and “good faith”. The road to hell is paved with good faith. Meanwhile lives were lost, people were maimed for life and so many people agonized for the loss of their loved ones. I don’t believe in intercession so don’t come to me for help. You would be on your own on that day my friend.

Having said that, let me tell you that we both, myself and Mr Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, have not followed the normal pattern in becoming believing Muslims. The religious view of Mr Ghamidi’s father was very different from what his view is. He has earned every bit of his faith and attachment to Islam rationally. His emotional attachment to the messenger of Islam is only the natural outcome of his understanding that Muhammad was the messenger of God. Having reached that understanding intellectually, it was but natural that he became emotionally attached to him. That is exactly what he has taught us all along: to not allow our emotions to have the better of our intellect. It is only through the censure of intellect that emotions should be allowed to play a role in our life. It is because of this approach that he has disagreed with the traditional scholars in the manner he understands the teachings of Islam in a number of areas. It is because of the same approach that he confidently accepted the offer to have an open discussion with you on Islam. He believes that the message of Islam is the ultimate message from God Almighty for the entire humanity. He is confident that the message is so rational that every truth-seeking individual would be affected by its veracity provided it is presented properly and the addressee receives it with an unbiased attention.

I have no doubt that you and our revered friend Dr. Ghamidi are not the average kind of Muslims I am dealing with on a daily basis. I can see clearly you are different. I already mentioned that by accepting this invitation you proved your sincerity. You are not only learned but also wise and rational. You are above all polite, which is the hallmark of all great people. You are also fair-minded. This is a quality scarcer than diamond. It is because of these noble traits that I am confident you will eventually come to see the truth. The reason you do not agree with me is because you have not been exposed to the truth yet. All your life you were fed with lies. The truth was hidden from us. I did not know the truth either. I found it on my own and it was not easy. Now that I have found it I want to share it with everyone. I am glad that I was born in this day and age that technology allows me to do what others that preceded me could not do. If we continue this debate, you will come to see what I saw too. What you would do with it then is up to you. I do not expect you to do what I do. And as you said, my approach may not be the best approach anyway. You will find your way to bring the Muslims out of darkness and with your knowledge of Islam you can become a shining star and change the course of history. I see that potential in you. (Anytime I say “you” I mean both of you) I am really nobody. This cause is ready to receive its giants – men and women who would make history and will pass to history. There is no nobler cause than awakening the Muslims and saving mankind from another disaster.

My entry into Islam in the real sense was also the result of a serious Intellectual exercise. I considered myself a non-believer when I was a teenager despite being a born Muslim. My decision of not accepting Islam from inside then was, I admit, an emotional, irrational decision. When I started taking its message rationally, things started falling into their proper places. A brief description of how it all happened is mentioned in my website www.khalidzaheer.com under the title “A Quarter of a Century Ago”. In brief, I can say that as a teenager I wanted to reject Islam for emotional, non-intellectual reasons and for that purpose I looked for arguments to do so. However, when I allowed myself the privilege of intellectual objectivity, I was able to see the light of the day.

You say that your reversion to Islam was the result of a serious intellectual exercise. I read your testimony and saw nothing of that nature. Your beloved father passed away and suddenly you felt distraught and sought your refuge in your ancestral religion, just like anyone from any religion would do. What part of this is intellectual exercise? You were young, impressionable and easy to fleece. Have you read the stories of the suicide bombers? Many of them have been irreligious all their lives. Suddenly, a life crisis hits them and they seek Islam, are filled with zealotry, and then go on to blow up themselves and other innocent people. Thank heavens when this happened to you Islamic terrorism was not yet a vogue; otherwise you were a perfect candidate to become a terrorist. Today’s Muslim youths who have similar experiences become suicide bombers.

You were influenced by Bertrand Russell. You rejected God and afterlife. Suddenly you could not bear the pain of losing your dear father to nothingness. You needed the comfort of believing that he is still alive. So you went to Islam because Islam claims dead people will go to heaven. This is called emotive decision not rational decision. Let us call the spade a spade.

I am not saying that God and the afterlife are fairytales. Most of mankind believes in them and I see no harm in such belief. Personally I never called myself an atheist. I do not believe in the God of most religions. I believe in the Single Principle underlying the creation and that is my God. That is beyond the point. Let us say God exists and He is the creator of the universe. What do Allah and Muhammad have to do with God? This is like you deciding to believe in God and go to David Koresh. There is no proof that Muhammad was a prophet of God. All evidence points to the fact that he was an insane man. I have written a book to prove just that. Here, we are talking about Muhammad, not God. Many people who believe in God do wonderful things. They help those who are in need in anyway they can. They build hospitals, feed the hungry, build schools and try to improve people’s lives. What do the believers of Allah do? They build mosques and madrassas to raise more terrorists, to spew hate, and to wage jihad. The money raised by the charity of other people goes to help humans who are in need. Muslims pay their charities to expand Islam and promote more hate. I am not against God. I am against Muhammad and his fictitious Allah.

When you read the Qur’an you were vulnerable and as such not objective. In that state of mind you could not have been rational. I read the Qur’an when I was not in any emotional turmoil. I simply wanted to increase my knowledge and deepen my understating. Unlike you, I was not desperate to believe. I was shocked by the asininity and violence of this book.

In your testimony you wrote, “If you approach the Qur’an with strings of conditions attached to your probing, you are bound to fail in your quest.”

The only condition I had was rationality. The only expectation that I had was that the book of God must make sense. It didn’t. That was enough evidence that this book is not from God. It is insane to read a book and accept anything it says unconditionally. You presumed a priori that the Qur’an is the word of God and then accepted anything it says unconditionally. If this is not lunacy what is? Do you see now how the foundation of your faith is based on a fallacy? How are you going to answer to your creator when He asks you, ‘why did you believe in the messenger of Satan, didn’t you see he was a pervert and his book was full of errors?’ Would you then say, “Oh dear God, I just surrendered my intelligence and allowed to be fooled unconditionally taken by empty promises and let myself be scared with dreadful tales of hell”? If God gave us brain, it is because he wanted us to use it. Did you use yours when you read and accepted the Qur’an unconditionally? If you did and if all what you read was rational and logical as you say, you must be able to explain that to us logically. Do not expect us to throw away our reason and just believe because you tell us how good you feel. You can feel good by using narcotics. Religion is equated to the opium of the less brainy people. Give one single proof that the Qur’an is the book of God and I will throw away this site, which is the fruit of years of my tireless work, in a heartbeat.

People follow all sorts of charlatans believing them to be divine beings. In my book Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allâh’s Prophet, I have talked about cults and how they control the minds of people. Please read the story of John de Ruiter. This conman passes himself as the son of God and there is no dearth of fools who believes in him. They go to his seminars and he sits there in absolute silence. Half an hour passes and he says nothing, just staring ahead like a mummy. You can hear a pin drop. Then some of his brain‑dead devotees start sobbing. This creates a creepy and suggestive atmosphere, which impresses some feebleminded ones who come out thinking this fool is the personification of God. There is a psychiatrist among his followers who says in his thirty years of practice he has never seen a “saner” person than John de Ruiter. For your information this loony is also a sexual pervert. This is the trait of all insane cult leaders. Should we believe in him? What is his proof? Nothing! It is all sensationalism and playing with emotions. That is how you fell for Islam. Your faith in Islam is just as valid as is the faith of the unfortunate followers of John de Ruiter and other narcissist self‑proclaimed prophets like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Shoko Asahara, Sun Myung Moon, etc. As long as you can’t prove Islam logically, do not call your faith logical. You are a victim of emotionalism. There is nothing rational in your approach and conversion. Emotions mislead people. Millions of people have been misled by emotions and then went on to commit the most insane acts of inhumanity. It is foolish to follow one’s emotions.

I am not saying you should abandon your love for God. You can still love God without following any religion. Your late father may at this very moment be lying on his belly close to my grandfather drinking wine while both of them are being massaged by two gorgeous naked houris. (I know that my grandmother would not like this, but hey, she is just a woman, why she should matter?) They are semi‑drunk and laugh their heads off at you and me and what we say to each other. That is all good and dandy. I have no problem with that belief and I wish it were true. My point is that if you want to follow a religion, there are good religions to follow. Follow Christ. He was a good man and his teachings are good. Follow Buddha, to become enlightened like him. Follow Krishna or Zoroaster. If you have to follow someone, at least follow someone good. I am not a follower, but if you have to be one, why follow the most evil man that ever walked on earth? If there is an afterlife, Muhammad is surely in the pit of hell for what he did. Don’t hasten to join him.

In your testimony you wrote: “However, if you surrender yourself to that greatest treasure of knowledge unconditionally, its marvelous wisdom will never disappoint you.”

First of all you don’t “surrender” to knowledge. You grasp it. It is an “AHA”. It is a victory. This Freudian slip of tongue shows what you have found is ignorance. Otherwise you would not have used the term “surrender”. 2+3=5. This is truth and knowledge. You don’t have to surrender to it. It is something you grasp. It is a fact that is self evident and can be proven. But if I tell you 2 + x = 5 and if you believe it without knowing what xx is a number that makes the equation false? You are relying on me being truthful, but have you checked my credentials to see whether I fit the profile of a truthful person? Now what if I demand you to believe and threaten to kill you and promise that God will burn you for eternity if you don’t believe? Would you believe then? I hope not! Then you would know that I am a psychopath for sure. So why do you believe everything Muhammad said unconditionally and without checking his credentials? This man lived a very unholy life. He benefited immensely by making people do anything he wanted including raiding innocent people, bringing him the booty, which included young women, and enriching himself. How can he be trusted when he says the most absurd stories about receiving messages from an angel and you can see for yourself that none of his claims add up?

stands for, then you are surrendering your intelligence to me. What if

So with all due respect to you my dear friend, you have fallen into the trap of a charlatan and have embraced ignorance. Am I wrong? Prove me wrong. Give me one, just one evidence that the Qur’an is the word of God and I too will become a believer. You say you made a rational choice. Well, show it to us! Talk is cheap. I want some proof. You talk the talk, but are you able to walk the walk?

We are not the only two, unique Muslims who have a different story of intellectual journey towards Islam to relate. I know directly many converts to Islam who, not through any propaganda campaigning, entered the fold of Islam willingly on being struck by the intellectual superiority of the Qur’an. No indecent rhetoric can ever stop that flow from continuing. Despite many foolish things Muslims of today keep doing every now and then, the flow of humans into Islam seems unstoppable right under the very nose of the Western society. Had Islam not had its own intrinsic intellectual, moral, and spiritual power, it would already have gone into extinction because of the irrational attitude of many born Muslims. All that I am trying to say is this: Please don’t make unsubstantiated claims about the faith of all Muslims. There is a difference between those who are Muslims by birth and those who are Muslims by rational choice.

I read your story and it is clear that your choice in coming to Islam has not been rational but very emotive. I haven’t read the story of Dr. Ghamidi yet and frankly I have never read a story of someone converting to Islam rationally. All the stories I read so far, and I have read hundreds of them, show that people who converted to Islam were moved by their emotions and most of the time during a hard time in their lives when they were suggestible and easy to fall prey to any bogus promise for its feel good factor. At the time that you wanted to believe your father is not lost for ever, you had only Islam to give you that promise. What if you were born to a Christian or Jewish family? Then you would have sought these religions as solace and would have become a devout Jew or a Christian. Isn’t it clear that your going back to Islam has been anything but rational?

Now, as for your claim that everyone is converging to Islam, I am sorry to burst your bubble. Today, the fastest growing movement is that of the ex-Muslims. Smart people are leaving Islam everywhere. It is not because of what Muslims do, but because the truth is getting out and good people, caught in this web of lies are finding out that they have been fooled.

If Islam had any intellectual or moral base as you claim, you would not have blocked faithfreedom.org in Pakistan. Truth does not fear lies. It is the other way round. It is darkness that is afraid of light. We do not ban Muslims from writing in our forum. They are most welcome and they do come to advertise their religion. Unfortunately, they often end up insulting us before going. Any rational person can see we are not afraid of confronting Islam, logically. It’s the Muslims who are afraid of us. As Muhammad used to say, “we have cast terror in their hearts.” The moment Pakistan blocked this site, they sent a clear signal that Islam is false and that in an arena where reason alone is the rule of the game, Islam is the loser.

You have asked a question about the beginning of the second chapter of the Qur’an. You are most welcome. The verse says Alif Laam Meem. Dhalika al-Kitabu Laa Raaiba Feehe. The meaning of this passage is this: Alif Laam Meem are three alphabets of Arabic language. There are many surahs (chapters of the Qur’an) that begin in similar styles. It was a known style in the literary presentations of the Arabs that a presentation would begin with some alphabets that would identify it from other presentations. The passage simply means: “This is Alif Laam Meem. This chapter (is a part of) the awaited book (al-kitab); there is no doubt about it.” In other words, the first statement is introducing the name of the surah (chapter) and then it goes on to mention that this surah is a part of the book, i.e. the Qur’an, which is the promised book that the open-mined, religious people amongst the Jews and Christians were awaiting. The negation of doubt is regarding the fact that the Qur’an is the book religious Jews and Christians were awaiting. Please let me know where you are finding it difficult to understand this passage. I will elaborate it more for you.

So you say that these disjoint letters at the beginning of some suras are a system for identifying the suras? Will you please explain how it works? They seem to be by themselves a source of confusion. A clear classification is something like Sura 1, Sura 2, Sura 3, and so on, and it should be either chronological or arranged by content, which the Qur’an is neither. You could even replace the numbers with letters if you like. In those days people used abjad. However, the classification in the Quran is not clear at all. If I find a page from Chapter 6 of a book, at the top it says Chapter 6 or it has the title of the chapter. If I find a sura of the Quran that starts with Y S, TM, or ALM, how do I know which chapter it is? Both Suras 2 and 32 start with ALM. How can two distinct suras have the same distinguisher, and why don’t most of the suras have any distinguisher? The Quranic suras are named and numbered. So what is this identifier you are talking about for? Yes, please do elaborate! What you explained so far did not explain anything. Furthermore, you did not say why the Quran says there is no doubt in it when most people doubt it and why Allah is so confused about the pronouns that he calls “this” book, “that” book. You also did not explain those violent and hate laden verses I asked you to explain.

Finally, I would like to comment on your mention that we should continue to debate if not for the sake of helping you in removing doubts about the teachings of Islam then at least for the sake of the large number of readers who visit your site regularly. I would like to remind you that we started this discussion to respond to your questions on Islam. We have already undertaken a number of projects to promote the true message of Islam (which is, by the way, what causes my responses not to be prompt). We would like to focus our attention on them for the moment. However, it is our commitment that whoever shows keenness in knowing about Islam or has reservation about our religion he/she wants to be responded to, we are available, as far as is possible for us, to all such people. It is in this spirit that we are responding to your messages as well. If in the process some other people are also reading our messages, it is a bonus advantage for us. However, those others are not the reason why we are responding to your messages. Now that we are clear that you have an excuse for using the language that to us is objectionable, we are not making any threats to withdraw from this discussion on that count. May God guide us all to the right path! Khalid Zaheer

I am glad to hear that you are willing to continue. It is an honor for me. It is really important that we continue this discussion. Your readiness to continue only is proof of your sincerity and your conviction. This is not about winning and losing. You are men of erudition and your main concern is to get at the truth. The silly thought of “who is winning” is for, as you say, the feebleminded ones. Great men like your good selves are after the truth and above these puerile considerations. When the truth is exposed everyone is victorious.

I have not used offensive language. It is beyond my control that you take offence of what I say about Muhammad. You love this man and I am accusing him of horrendous crimes. It is natural that you would be offended. But if I am not allowed to say these things lest I offend you, then what is the point of this debate?

Anyway, I think we have clarified a lot of misunderstandings and particularity those three topics are explained exhaustively by both sides. I would like now to move to the next topic.

Question # 4

This response became too long. So, I will ask a very short question.

Will people be raised from dead on the Last Day to receive their punishment and rewards as verses 2.260, 21.21, 6.36, 7.57, 30.50, 35.9, 43.11, and 72.7 indicate, or do they receive it right after their death as it is stated in verse 3.169?

There seems to be a contradiction. Please explain.

2.260, And when Ibrahim said: My Lord! show me how Thou givest life to the dead, He said: [Note how Allah is referring to himself in 3rd person. It is all over the Qur’an.] What! and do you not believe? He said: Yes, but that my heart may be at ease. He said: Then take four of the birds, then train them to follow you, then place on every mountain a part of them, then call them, they will come to you flying; and know that Allah is Mighty, Wise.

21.21, Or have they taken gods from the earth who raise (the dead).

6.36, Only those who listen; and (as to) the dead, Allah will raise them, then to Him they shall be returned.

7.57, And He it is Who sends forth the winds bearing good news before His mercy, until, when they bring up a laden cloud, We drive it to a dead land, then We send down water on it, then bring forth with it of fruits of all kinds; thus shall We bring forth the dead that you may be mindful.

30.50, Look then at the signs of Allah’s mercy, how He gives life to the earth after its death, most surely He will raise the dead to life; and He has power over all things.

35.9, And Allah is He Who sends the winds so they raise a cloud, then We drive it on to a dead country, and therewith We give life to the earth after its death; even so is the quickening.

43.11, And He Who sends down water from the cloud according to a measure, then We raise to life thereby a dead country, even thus shall you be brought forth;

72.7 And that they thought as you think, that Allah would not raise anyone:

3.169 And reckon not those who are killed in Allah’s way as dead; nay, they are alive (and) are provided sustenance from their Lord;

Part VIII

Dear Mr. Ali Sina I have divided this response of mine to your message number six (dated December 4, 2006) into five parts. The first part will briefly let you know my views on some of the objections you have raised in your last message to the contents of some of my earlier messages. The second one talks of the basic problem which, in my opinion, has caused you to not be able to understand the message of Islam properly. The third part informs you about what my approach has been in understanding and accepting Islam. In this part I will respond to your objection that my entry to Islam was on emotional grounds. The fourth part responds to your real objections on the prophet of Islam which although you have never failed to mention, they were, for some queer reason, not formally put on the table for discussion. I am doing that job myself now. 1) You have raised objections to two points I raised in my earlier responses: You believe that the Qur’anic concept of intercession doesn’t make sense to you because if intercession was not going to be accepted then there was no point for it to be allowed at all. And if it was to be allowed, there was again no point in doing so when there was no possibility of it adding anything to God’s knowledge. Moreover, you believe the concept of intercession is pointless because the one interceding cannot do in mercy better than God. Let me say that you have missed the point again. Prayers for others in this world are an expression of one’s sympathy for others mentioned before the Almighty. It is for God to decide whether those prayers are to be responded to positively or not. However, if they are not going to be heard, they are still worthwhile in that they allow our sincerest emotions to be expressed in favour of our dear ones. Without sincere prayers for others, this world would have lost an extremely sublime aspect of humaneness and sympathy. The prayers in the hereafter, in the form of intercession, shall be allowed only to a few privileged people (privileged on account of their good performance in this world) and such prayers are going to be heard, because God Almighty would allow in the hereafter, unlike in this world, only those prayers to be expressed that are going to see the light of the day.

Dear Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer,

Thank you for your response. On the subject of intercession we seem to be going in circles. The way you explained my argument on intercession shows that you clearly understand the problem I am posing. However, you seem to avoid the question altogether and instead you talk about how important it is for us humans to pray for each other and care for one another. That is an entirely different subject. It has nothing to do with the contradiction of which we are talking about. The problem is simple to understand. It just has no answer. To be fair you must admit that on this subject Muhammad has goofed.

If the intercession is going to be accepted, it means that God will change his decision upon the request of his creatures. This means that his original decision was not as good as those suggested by his creatures. If on the other hand his decision is not going to change then the whole concept of intercession is farce. It is actually a cruel joke to tell people to pray for one another when those prayers will have zero effect, because the decision is already made. If the decision of God is already made and everything is predetermined, then our fates are already established even before we came to this world. Intercession means pleading with God to change his decision. Perhaps we should also talk about the concept of predestination, which is related to this subject and is another gross fallacy of Islam. We will talk about that in another time if we ever get beyond these three points.

The other objection was on the beginning part of the second chapter of the Qur’an. As I mentioned earlier, the beginning letters (Alif Lam Mim) constitute the name of the chapter (surah) and the later sentence refers to it to inform that the chapter is a part of the book of God that was prophesied in the scriptures of the people of the book (Jews and Christians). The statement goes on to claim that there was no doubt about the truthfulness of this fact. You object to this claim on this plea: If there wasn’t any doubt about it, why didn’t many people accept it? You have raised a similar objection on the claim I made about the meanings of the first few statements in the said chapter. Let me clarify that when a statement is made that there was no doubt about what was mentioned, it only promises that the truthfulness of the claim in the statement would be unfolded to the people who would satisfy the conditions of understanding it. If a teacher of mathematics solves a question on the board before a group of students and claims that what he had done was absolutely clear, his claim cannot be refuted on the basis of the fact that a few students couldn’t follow it. It needs to be seen as to what caused those students to not have been able to understand the answer when others like them were able to grasp it. If you and many others are claiming that they have not been able understand the fact that the Qur’an is the book of God despite your best efforts and therefore the claim is faulty, I would respond by telling you that I have tried to understand it on my part and I have been able to fully appreciate the veracity of its claim. So it’s my claim against yours. To me there must be something wrong in your claim because it has worked perfectly well in my case. I will not accuse you of not doing well enough to understand it, but I will be quietly confident that the claim of the Qur’an is correct because my experience, as indeed the experience of hundreds and thousands of others, is clearly supporting it. Should I believe in what you are saying or have confidence in what I myself have experienced?

Facts are not subjective. 2 + 2 = 4, and the Earth revolves around the Sun even if you and I may think differently. So the argument of “your word against my word” is not a valid one when it comes to logical and scientific facts. Your word against mine is a valid argument only when we are asked to relay an event that we both have witnessed and there is no other way to know what happened except through our words. You claim that the Quran is the word of God. The fact that you strongly believe is not proof for others. There are people who strongly believe in faiths that both you and I know are false. The message of God must be clear and unequivocal. There should be no doubt in it and it must be easy to understand. If the eternal fate of mankind depends on it then it must be clear. If it is not clear then God is unjust. He can’t punish humans for disbelieving in things that he has failed to explain clearly.

You say that the Quran is clear and the problem is with my understanding. That is why we are having this debate. I am asking questions and you are trying to explain. So far you have failed to explain convincingly the questions that I have asked. Therefore, I am justified to doubt while I see no justification for your faith. Unless you prove that the Quran is logical your faith is not based on facts.

Alif Lam Mim and other intermittent letters at the beginning of some of the suras are not the names of those suras. Each sura has its own name. If I tell you verse 3 in Sura Alif Lam Mim, you won’t be able to find it because these letters appear at the beginning of Suras 2, 3, 29, 30, 31 and 32. Therefore clearly you are wrong. Alif Lam Mim can’t be the name of six suras.

Sura 7 starts with Alif Lam Mim Sad;
Suras 10, 11, 12, 14 and 15 start with Alif Lam Re;
Sura 13 starts with Alif Lam Mim Ra;
Sura 19 starts with Kaf Ha Ya ‘Ain Sad;
Sura 20 stats with Ta Ha and Ta Ha is also the name of this sura;
Suras 26 and 28 start with Ta Sin Mim;
Sura 27 starts with Ta Sin;
Sura 36 stats with Ya Sin and Ya Sin is also the name of the sura;
Sura 38 starts with Sad;
Suras 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 and 46 start with Ha Mim;

Sura 50 starts with Qaf and it is also the name of the sura; and
Sura 68 starts with Noon, and Noon is also the name of the sura.

As you can see, there are 28 suras that start with these letters. Only four of them are named the same as the letters with which they start. All other suras have other names. Some of the suras share the same letters. The rest of the Quranic suras have no such letters. You say these letters are the names of the suras. I am showing you that they are not. No one knows shat these letters are. This belies the claim that the Quran is clear.

You are constantly trying to explain the unexplainable and the illogical. This is impossible. All you have to do is admit that the Quran is wrong.

2) Now I’ll tell you what has been the basic problem in your approach. Your problem in understanding Islam has been that you want to see Islam the way you think Islam should have been if it was the religion of God. I think this is not an academic approach. What it causes to happen is that when you find the message of Islam not conforming to your standards, you reject it, claiming it to be false because it falls short of your self-created standards. Now while there may not be anything wrong with your standards, you will have to face up to the reality that Islam never claimed to be your brainchild. Islam claims to be God’s message that has come to enlighten peoples of all times to come. The only way of understanding it therefore is to understand it the way it is in an unemotional way, without attaching any strings to the process of your understanding. Having done that objectively, you then have a right to criticize it if it falls short of the standards of intellectual scrutiny. The investigation thus should not make an attempt to ascertain whether the teachings of Islam are in accordance with your taste of the ideal or not. It should be evaluated on the basis of its own claims and standards. Of course, you have a right to question those standards too, but your questioning should be based on broader universal principles rather than the principles of your own age or philosophical leanings. Your standards are the standards of one mortal human or those of humans of just one era. The universal religion of God must satisfy the condition that it should appear to be the message of God right from day one for all times to come. Such a message must go through the process of gradually uplifting the standards of nations it directly came into contact with. It should never lose sight of the ground realities of the immediate addressees of the message. While doing so, however, it should never compromise on the universal ideals of morality. Your persistent insistence, for example, that the understanding of intercession given in the Qur’an is unacceptable betrays that you claim that it is incorrect simply because you believe that had you been God you wouldn’t have allowed things to happen the way they have been suggested in the Qur’an. What I am humbly suggesting to you is that you assume for the time being that you are trying to understand the message of a God who is somebody other than you and He has decided that a few people should be allowed to speak on behalf of some other people. Having understood that concept, you then have a right to say that the methodology suggested is unfair or is senseless. I would like to hear that claim from you if that is what you believe after you have fully understood the idea, keeping in mind the assumption that there could be a God more sympathetic, wise, knowledgeable, and fair than you are. I have a strong feeling that your mind is not allowed the privilege to fully grasp the Qur’anic concept of intercession because your own ideal of how a fair trial of accountability should take place makes a preemptive strike at that concept to stop it from reaching the receptive side of your mind. That, to me, is the biggest hurdle in your way to understanding the different aspects of the message of Islam.

Let me see if I understand what you are saying. You want me to accept the Quran first as the message of God and then conform to it, agreeing that since I am a mortal human with limited understanding I should not judge the wisdom of God that is superior to mine but rather try to persuade myself that he knows best and submit blindly. Since I come from where you stand, let me even give you a hand and make an example that I used to make during my years of pre‑enlightenment. Let us say you are sick and you go to a doctor. He may prescribe some medicine that may not be agreeable to you. However, you still trust his knowledge and take the medicine because you know that he knows what you don’t. This is the gist of your argument. You say that it is not up to us humans to judge the divine prescription that is for all times with the standard of our time, which is only a fraction of it.

Here is where the biggest fallacy lies. You put the cart in front of the horse. You start with the assumption that the Quran is the message of God and then try to conform to it. The problem is that once you accept the Quran as the word of God, there is nothing left to question. Yes, I would trust the doctor and will follow his recommendations even if they make no sense to me. However, before doing that I would certainly make sure that he is qualified as a doctor. It would be foolhardy to blindly follow the instructions of someone who claims to be a doctor without checking his credentials. I must make sure that he is licensed before and only then follow his prescriptions. Likewise it would be foolish to accept anyone who claims to be a messenger of God before checking his credentials. Before accepting the Quran as a prescription from God and following it blindly, we must make sure that Muhammad was indeed a real messenger of God and not a conman charlatan.

Furthermore, even if I may not understand some of my doctor’s recommendations, nothing stops me asking and understanding them. I can research and find everything about my sickness and how to get the cure. I do not have to have blind faith, even in my doctor. Everything is there for me to understand.

You say that Muhammad was the messenger of God. Where is his credential? There are countless psychopaths and charlatans who claim to be messengers of God. David Koresh, Jim Jones, the Japanese Shoko Asahara, the Korean Sun Myung Moon, and even Charles Manson all claimed to be humanity’s saviors and messiahs, and many followed them. In many cases the result was devastating. Those who followed these mentally sick men did exactly what you say. They believed first and tried hard to dismiss their doubts.

It is amazing that you call blind faith “objective”. What part of your belief in Islam is objective? You say the message of God should not be judged based on the criteria of right and wrong of our time because it is for all times. Isn’t this a fallacy? Is this your definition of objectivity? If a message does not conform to the moral and logical standards of our time, it is not for our time. Isn’t our time part of the time continuum?

Are you saying that sometimes in future peoples’ standards will change and then they will have no problem with the Quran? If that is true, let us shelf the Quran and wait until such time arrives. It is unfair of God to send a message to us when it makes no sense to us and it goes against our commonsense and our morality. God gave us intelligence; he most likely wanted us to use it. What sense does it make to give us intelligence and then tell us to disregard it when it comes to accepting His word? How can we then distinguish His message from those of thousands other charlatans and swindlers? They all demand blind faith while they have no proof. And you are telling me that God also has no proof?

Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, explained this concept of blind faith that is demanded virtually by all religions, very eloquently. He wrote: “Blind thine eyes, that thou mayest behold My beauty; stop thine ears, that thou mayest hearken unto the sweet melody of My voice; empty thyself of all learning, that thou mayest partake of My knowledge.” Then he clarifies: “Blind thine eyes, that is, to all save My beauty; stop thine ears to all save My word; empty thyself of all learning save the knowledge of Me; that with a clear vision, a pure heart and an attentive ear thou mayest enter the court of My holiness.”[11]

If this is the standard then all beliefs are acceptable. This is prescription for blind faith. The values of things are determined by comparing them to their likes. If comparison is disallowed, how can good be distinguished from mediocre and bad? If this is the standard, I can claim to be the strongest, the wisest, the most handsome, and the most learned man in the world, provided you do not compare me with anyone else. Isn’t this what you are saying when you say we should evaluate Islam, with no strings attached?

All those who claim to have brought a message from God fail to give clear and objective proof for their claim and use the same fallacy. Hellen Schucman, the founder of the sect “A Course in Miracles”, claimed to have received dictations from Jesus. She has many followers, among them possibly Oprah Winfrey. The “Workbook for Students” is a course written for those who want to learn about this sect. It consists of 365 lessons, an exercise for each day of the year. Their site claims, “This one-year training program begins the process of changing the student’s mind and perception.” In the introduction to the course it states:

“Some of the ideas the workbook presents you will find hard to believe, and others may seem to be quite startling. This does not matter. You are merely asked to apply the ideas as you are directed to do. You are not asked to judge them at all. You are asked only to use them. It is their use that will give them meaning to you, and will show you that they are true.”

By using this method, you do not need to explain anything. People will eventually believe by doing repetitive constant exercises. This is the process through which children are indoctrinated by their parents. Children do not question the validity of the beliefs and practices of their parents. They simply emulate them, and eventually those beliefs and customs become part of their own belief system. Schucman demanded that her followers relinquish their rational thinking and submit to her like sheep. A Course in Miracles continues:

“Remember only this; you need not believe the ideas, you need not accept them, and you need not even welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist. None of this will matter, or decrease their efficacy. But do not allow yourself to make exceptions in applying the ideas the workbook contains, and whatever your reactions to the ideas may be, use them. Nothing more than that is required. (Workbook, p. 2).”

Nothing more than that is required? What else is left to require? Once you submit your intelligence and rational thought to someone else and believe uncritically, you lose your rational faculty and become a slave of that person, putty in his hand. I already mentioned the story of Abu Bakr who, once accepted the irrational claim of Muhammad to be a messenger of God, was forced to accept any absurdity that he said, even though at first it shocked him. When people told him that Muhammad had claimed to have flown to Jerusalem in one night, Abu Bakr thought this is a lie. But once he ascertained that Muhammad did actually say this, he forced himself to believe. When Muhammad asked him to let his 6-year-old child marry him, he at first was shocked, but since he had surrendered his intelligence he had no choice but to accept. Once you submit your intelligence, you become blind and you will do anything. You would murder your own parents and children if asked to. Blind faith reduces man into a brainless zombie. You become bereft of rational thinking and of your humanity.

You say “The only way of understanding it therefore is to understand it the way it is in an unemotional way, without attaching any strings to the process of your understanding.”

First of all there is a contradiction in this statement. Unemotional thinking is the territory of rational thinking and not of faith. Faith, by its very nature is imbued with emotionalism and irrationality. The fact that you think your, or anyone’s faith, is unemotional is a fallacy. Faith is an emotional exercise and has nothing to do with rationality. Imam al-Ghazzālī (1058 – 1111) said: “Where the claims of reason come into conflict with revelation, reason must yield to revelation.” A similar thesis in defense of foolishness is presented by Saint Paul in 1 Cor. 1:20‑25 where he argues “the foolishness of God is wiser than (the wisdom of) men”. The statement “Credo quia absurdum” (I believe because it is absurd), often attributed to Tertullian (ca. 155–230), is based on this passage of Paul. In DCC 5 he said: “The Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd.” Upon this belief in absurdity, fideism is founded and it is the position that has been adopted by Muslims. This fideistic approach allows the believers to abandon reason and accept whatever Muhammad said, even his blatant crimes, without questioning. Isn’t this what you did also? You already confessed that you killed your conscience and accepted things that originally you thought were inhumane and ridiculous, once you accepted Muhammad. You destroyed your humanity through your faith. This is the problem with faith. That is why good people cheerfully commit all sorts of crimes when they are influenced by faith. That is why religion is compared to opium of the masses.

What is amazing is the fact that so many intelligent people act so unintelligently when it comes to religion and adopt fideism instead of rationalism. This is the foundation of all faiths. I am stupefied that you describe the process by which you brainwashed yourself and then call it “objective.”

Now, you may ask if all faiths are fideistic and irrational why FFI has singled out Islam. Why are we not critical of other faiths? The answer is that our movement is not about fighting religion. We believe in freedom of faith. We love to see people have the freedom to believe in anything they choose even if that thing is not our choice. As a matter of fact the editors and pundits of FFI come from all walks of life and religious convictions. We have Christian priests who write for this site. We have Hindus, Jews and people of other faiths among our pundits. Our objective is not to combat religion but rather make it easy for people to follow any religion they wish. FFI is a common front of people of all faiths and non-faiths who want to protect their freedom by combating totalitarian ideologies of intolerance such as Islam. Islam is uniquely evil. It is an intolerant and fascistic ideology of hate. If the majority of people convert to Christianity, Buddhism or Hinduism, I still can have the right to not believe and live my life the way I choose. I will lose this freedom if Islam becomes dominant. We can either fight for the “truth” which is subjective and for which there will never be a universal consensus or fight for human rights and freedom of belief. These two concepts are diametrically opposed to each other. FFI has opted to fight for the latter and leave the choice of faith to each individual. FFI does not promote any ideology except freedom of faith.

We can’t accept the message of Islam in this day and age because it is a message of intolerance, discrimination and violence. Are you saying that in future people will have no problem raiding villages and towns with no warning, killing their men, looting their properties and taking their women and children as slaves like Muhammad did? Muhammad assassinated his critics. Are you saying that a time will come when everyone will understand assassination is divine? Muhammad raped women captured in his raids and allowed his followers to do the same. (Q. 4:24) This to me, and to the people of conscience in our time seems horrible. Will it come a day when humanity will finally realize that raping women captured in war is a good thing to do and will have no problem accepting what Muhammad did? The morality of our time says all humans are created equal and must have equal rights irrespective of their faiths or gender. Will in future, people finally come to see that equality is wrong and discrimination against non‑Muslims prescribed in the Quran is good? Will finally people come to appreciate the superiority of men over women and understand the wisdom of Muhammad who said women are deficient in intelligence? Will one day everyone embrace the Islamic “universal ideal of morality” and come to grasp the wisdom of beating women as prescribed in the Quran?

You claim that Islam brings universal ideals of morality and then go on to say that I should not judge it in accordance to the standard of morality of our time. Don’t you see there is a contradiction in these two statements? If the message of Islam is universal, then it should conform to all times including ours. Islam did not conform even to the morality of 1400 years ago. Read Socrates, Plato, Confucius and Buddha to realize that superior morality existed much before Muhammad was born. Even the Pagan Arabs were far more moral than Muhammad and his followers. The Arabs had chivalry. They honored sacred months and never shed blood in those months. Muhammad did. The Arabs honored women. They had women generals. Salma and Aisha are two examples. They even had women prophetesses. Sajah was a prophetess contemporary of Muhammad and she had many followers. After Islam women were reduced to chattel. They are deemed to be dirty, deficient in intelligence and faith.

Furthermore, we are living in this day and age and we have our own morality and commonsense as yardsticks. I don’t know about the future and how people will think. By using the morality of our time I see that Islam is evil. Will in future people think all those evil things that Muhammad did and said were divine? I don’t know. I would be surprised if they did but even then it has nothing to do with us. Today we must use our own sense of right and wrong to evaluate the faiths that are presented to us.

Now, you may say that the morality of Islam is superior and that we all must drop our morality and accept what is said in the Quran. That is actually what you did. In that case we must compare the two. What yardstick we have for such comparison? We have our own intelligence and our own sense of fairness widely known as the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule is the infallible measure of right and wrong. The essence of the Golden Rule is “do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you.” Using the Golden Rule as our yardstick, we can see that what Muhammad did was evil.

Muhammad himself knew that what he was doing was evil. One day a group of Bedouins stole his camels and killed his shepherd. Muhammad sent men to find them. He then ordered their hands and feet cut and left them under the scorching Sun to die a long agonizing death. It is clear that he did not like people stealing his camels and killing his men. However, the irony is that he had stolen those camels himself and had killed their owners. When he came to Medina he was penniless. He raided villages, killed unarmed men and looted their cattle and herds. He did to others what he did not like to be done to him. He broke the Golden Rule.

His followers do the same all the time. They simply have no concept of the Golden Rule. They come to non-Muslim countries, enjoy equal rights and even demand privileges, build mosques and promote their faith freely. At the same time they deny the basic human rights to non-Muslims in Islamic countries. And they see nothing wrong in this. They think this is the way it should be. Why Muslims, as a lot, lack conscience? It is because they follow Muhammad who lacked conscience.

Look at yourself! You were a good man. You had conscience before becoming a faithful Muslim. You knew wrong is wrong and did not like discrimination and evil. Once you submitted to Islam, you lost your conscience. Now the thought of sending all non‑Muslims to hell, killing the apostates, beating wives, stoning adulterers, discriminating against the followers of other faiths, chopping the hand of thief and other savageries prescribed in the Quran no longer bother you. Even if they do, you try to silence your conscience and accept all these barbarities blindly, because you have stopped using your brain and have submitted your intelligence to Muhammad. The irony is that you call this objective.

The problem with Muslims and your good selves is that you commit a major logical fallacy of accepting Islam as true before checking the credentials of its founder. It should be the other way round. Let us first make sure that Muhammad was not a liar and then accept him. You would not accept any belief before convincing yourself that that belief is indeed right and not the invention of a psychopath conman. Then why when it comes to Islam you suddenly do everything in the reverse order? Judge Muhammad and his claim with the same yardstick that you would judge Jim Jones, David Koresh or any claimant and you’ll see that he fails miserably.

3) Now I will tell you what my approach was when I started understanding Islam after having spent a few years in the wilderness of faithlessness. You have claimed that there wasn’t anything rational about my approach. My question is: How did you learn that? My brief article doesn’t mention anything to suggest that. You have used a technical term of Psychology to explain the phenomenon of my conversion. That fact points to another weakness in your approach: You have certain theories of Psychology in your mind which are like nets eager to catch fish and as soon as you fancy a fish fitting into any of your nets, you throw it towards the fish to catch it. I will now tell you, for your benefit, what I went through in my journey towards faith to help you realize that you were emotionally biased when you claimed that my conversion to Islam was an emotional decision. When I lost my father, I wanted to know the reality of this life. I had either to lead this life with carefree abandon, the way I had been doing before, or I had to become more careful on realizing that life had a purpose. I was gifted with a rare opportunity to not be attracted towards the glamour of this life temporarily at least because of the tragedy I had faced. I was not in a desperate hurry to cling on to some faith. If anything, it was a desperate attempt to find the truth. There is a huge difference between the two approaches. In your enthusiasm to reject my experience as nonsense you jumped to the former possibility simply because it helped the cause of your theory that Islam is a false religion. Given your present state of mind you had no choice. In the array of nets at your disposal there isn’t any at the moment that has been designed to catch the fish of the truthfulness of Islam. So even if the fish comes your way, you wouldn’t be able to catch it. In the absence of that net, your involvement in this discussion would remain confined to your efforts to actualize your eagerness that Islam is proved to be a false religion. Such efforts on your part may be a good fish-catching exercise but it can never be an academic approach. I will tell you why I am saying that my quest, when I was reading the Qur’an then, was by and large an academic one. I divided the passages I came across in the Qur’an into three categories: There were passages that immediately struck me as the most outstanding I had ever come across; there was information in it that I told myself I would never accept; and there were passages about which I had reservations in my mind. While the first category of passages kept me going, the other two were a continuous source of challenge to the possibility that I would accept the book as divine. I ask all your readers to go through the Qur’an with an unbiased approach and they all are going to experience what I experienced. If anyone is claiming that no part of the book, from cover to cover, is making any impact on him/her, he/she is talking nonsense and belying the experiences of millions of intelligent people. I have no hesitation in saying that the first category of the passages of the Qur’an – the one that struck me as simply brilliant – was the most dominant. It always tended to undermine the other two. However, I managed to keep my wits intact and did not give in until the problems created by the other two were properly sorted out. The passages that struck me as being out of this world were the ones that invited me to believe in the attributes of mercy, knowledge, wisdom, and providence of God through the evidence of the God-created nature scattered across in abundance both in the outside world and the inside of my soul. On reading those passages which to me form, even today, the most striking part of the Qur’an, my heart would keep telling me that these couldn’t have been authored save by the one who was the designer of my soul as well as the creator of this world. What was remarkable in all these passages was that they didn’t have anything wrong even from a scientific point of view. It was only later that I came to learn that many objective readers of the Qur’an, some of who were even non-Muslims, have attested to the fact that the information contained in the Qur’an makes no violation of any of the confirmed principles of established scientific facts. This fact alone is remarkable given that the of Qur’an alludes to numerous phenomena the nature and makes mention of certain facts which had not been discovered anywhere in the world at the time when the book was being revealed. There were three ideas attributed to the Qur’an about which I had decided that I won’t accept them come what may. One of them was the understanding that Muslims were destined to enter the paradise and the non-Muslims were destined to the hell-fire for ever. It sounded so ridiculous to me then and it does so even now that I told myself that I just cannot accept any such suggestion. The other idea attributed to the Qur’an was that it apparently seemed to be suggesting that whoever becomes a non-Muslim after having been a Muslim, he ought to be killed. The third one was the understanding that the Qur’an apparently claims that only God knows what is in the wombs of women when they are pregnant. I could not fool myself by believing that what apparently was mentioned was the truth given that, thanks to the recent advancement in ultrasound-based technology, the gender of the unborn baby could be identified unmistakably. These three serious problems however didn’t deter me from continuing to read the Qur’an with an open mind because the merits of the book mentioned above were equally unmistakable and I was in no hurry to jump to any conclusions. On later investigation it transpired that what I had decided to be unacceptable claims in the Qur’an were never a part of the book. I later realized that what I had initially thought to be Qur’anic concepts were not there in the Qur’an at all. In reaching those conclusions I didn’t rely on anyone else’s opinion. Nobody else could have mattered when I was in the process of making the decision of my lifetime. It really boosted my confidence in the veracity of the book’s claim that it had divine origins. Unlike you, I didn’t jump to any hasty decisions nor did I start any malicious propaganda against the faith without understanding what its own correct version is saying. I continued to give due weight to the merits of the book and its apparent demerits. My persistence was ultimately rewarded. The category of Qur’anic teachings that created nagging questions in my mind comprised of the sort of objections that were raised by many Western scholars. You too keep mentioning some of those objections. To this category of passages belonged those verses which inform us that the prophet had several wives, that he engaged himself in wars against his enemies, and the fact that his followers expanded the frontiers of the Islamic state forcibly to a vast area of the world. I will respond to these questions in the fourth part of this (rather long) presentation. At this stage I just want to ask your conscience this question: Was this approach really a blindly emotional one? The approach I adopted in the process of understanding Islam was to call a spade a spade and a rose a rose. I struggled for months to decide whether the spade of the text was the real face of it or was it the rose part of it that was real. I could see that it couldn’t have been both together. All throughout this struggle, I had one big question in mind: Was God Himself speaking in the Qur’anic text or was I being led to believe so by the man who presented it? You have forced me, and I thank you for doing that, to revisit the moments – I can comfortably say, the most important moments of my life – when I was reading surah al-Ahzab, the thirty-thirty chapter of the Qur’an, which mentions a few details of one of the battles the prophet and his companions were forced to face, the incident that led him to marry one of his cousins, and the general question of plurality of his wives. Until then I was confused about the question whether the Qur’an was God’s word. However, after reading that chapter very carefully I decided that it indeed was, and I bowed down my head in submission to God and in gratitude to Him that He had shown me the way. I later realized that the process I had followed was the very process God Almighty had described in the Qur’an: “Allah becomes the protecting friend of those who want to believe; He brings them out of the darkness (of unfaith) to the light (of faith).” It was a process of critical examination of a text with a view to establishing whether its claim to divine origin was correct.

I am glad you wrote this. It shows there is actually not much distance between us. You read the Quran and found some horrible things as well as some passages that in your view were “brilliant,” “out of this world” and that you thought they could not have been written by anyone but God. So you decided to believe in that book as the word of God and tried to silence your conscience and find justifications for things that you found unconscionable such as killing the apostates, discrimination against non-Muslims, the claim that the unbelievers will all go to hell and other errors such as only God knows about the gender of a child in the womb, etc. Thus you concluded that your approach has been academic, and rational.

Let us analyze this. If the Quran is truly the word of God, could it possibly have any errors in it? Certainly not! So if you find errors, even one error, it shows that this book is not from God. Assuming that there are “brilliant” passages in the Quran as you have supposed, since God is presumably perfect he can’t err. So you have two choices, either reject the Quran in its entirety or accept it in its entirety. I chose the first route and you the second. Now let us see who made the right choice.

The problem with your approach is that now you have to go against your own conscience and do the things that you abhor such as killing apostates, beating wives, discriminating against non-Muslims, stoning adulterers, etc. You may not like to do these things yourself, but since you already accepted Islam as the message of God you can’t oppose those who do. You may follow your conscience and do not do evil personally but you have become part of the machinery that does that.

Does this reduce your culpability? I don’t think so. The Nazis committed many crimes against humanity. They did things that were unthinkable. Not all the Germans liked that. Germans are no more violent than any other nation. Those who did such things were a small minority. However, they could commit all those atrocities because they had the backing of the masses of the peaceful Germans. Could Hitler have come to power if he did not have the support of the masses? He was voted into office by the majority of Germans. People loved him and believed in him. The average Germans did not commit any crime. However, they supported those who did. Can we say they were innocent? Of course not! They were guilty as hell and they know it. They carry the burden of that guilt up to this day.

Likewise, when Muslims follow the Quran and do those barbarities that you don’t like you are guilty too. Wherever there is a blood of an innocent person shed, even half a world away, in the name of Islam, part of that blood stains your hands and the hands of every Muslim. Any person who supports Islam is guilty of all the crimes committed in the name of Islam.

In an army, not everyone carries a gun to kill; there are hosts of other people who help with the logistics of that army. Actually the entire country is in war because everyone finances the war with his tax money. Now, if my country goes in an unjust war, I may have little control over it because the governments often don’t listen to ordinary people. So I have no choice. However, one can leave Islam. Islam is a belief and not a citizenship. All one has to do is stop going to the mosque, stop paying money to Islamic “charities” that we all know is spent to spread Islam, and withdraw from Islamic activities. By accepting Islam, you automatically become part of the same army of hate that is killing people everywhere and whether you agree with the terrorists or not you are now part of them. In this case you are guilty because you have a choice and you choose to belong to this terrorist cult and follow a terrorist false prophet. “Moderate Muslim” makes as much sense as moderate Nazi, or moderate gangster. What does moderate Muslim mean? Does it mean that you moderately hate non‑Muslims, moderately kill the apostates, moderately despise women and moderately beat them? Moderate Muslim is an oxymoron. You are either a Muslim and therefore a terrorist, a terrorist sympathizer, supporter, and ally, or you are not a Muslim.

Now, let us get to the REAL question. Is there anything in the Quran that is out of this world? Absolutely not! I am offering US$50,000 dollars to anyone who can show me one example of a thing that is out of this world in the Quran. We have talked a lot. It seems that you are not willing to go forward. We are stuck in the first 3 questions. I see you have not even responded to my question number 4. There are hundreds of errors in the Quran and I would like to show you at least a few of them. However, I think it is time to get to the crux of the matter. Since you don’t seem to be willing to go forward, I challenge you to show me one passage in the Quran that is out of this world as you say and I will not only remove faithfreedom.org, I will also give you the reward. I have heard all those claims and along with other pundits of FFI have debunked them all. All those claims about science in the Quran are nothing but wishful thinking of believers and are ludicrous. Unfortunately you have no access to our site. You can’t read many articles that we wrote showing how all those claims made about the Quran being scientific are bogus and nonsense. The person who is good in spreading this charade is Dr. Zakir Naik. I have refuted each and every one of his claims. You can read my refutation of his claims in faithfreedom.org.[12] Send me what you think are “out of this world” passages of the Quran and let us see if they really are.

I will answer to your point number 4 in another occasion. Your response had only 4 points, not 5 as you stated in the beginning.

Kind regards,

Ali Sina

Part IX

Dr. Zaheer wrote:

4) I would now like to tell you briefly what I think is the correct approach in rationally understanding the issue of the killing of human beings that took place during the prophet’s time and the plurality of his wives. One thing that a reader of the Qur’an cannot miss is the fact that taking a human life has been condemned in it as one of the biggest crimes. “… whoever killed a human being, except as a punishment for murder or for sedition in the earth should be looked upon as though he had killed all mankind. And whoever saved a human it is though he had saved all mankind.” (Qur’an; 5:32) If the Qur’an announced this fact on the one hand and the one who presented the book as God’s message was Himself frequently committing the very same crime on the other, then the allegation against him shouldn’t just be that he took many lives, it should also, in that case, be an allegation of openly violating his own stated principles. It would mean that the presenter of the following message was himself guilty of violating it: “Believers, why do you say something you don’t do; the fact that you say what you don’t do annoys God greatly.” (Qur’an; 61:2) Moreover, the implication of it would be that those who followed the presenter of such a message were all extremely naïve. Could that be true or is it that the critics are missing an important point? Likewise, the Qur’an condemns committing zina (the act of extra-marital sex) as one of the three biggest crimes — third only to polytheism and murder — in the eyes of God. If you are accusing the presenter of Islam of committing that very act, your allegation is even more serious than it is considered for an ordinary person who commits it.

Greetings Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer:

This is my response to the rest of your last letter. It became too long and I decided to divide it in four parts. The first part was Part VIII, the rest comes in Part IX, X, and XI.

Muhammad on many instances did things that not only were against the universally acclaimed ethical principles, even by the society in which he lived, but he also went against his own stated rules. He basically did whatever he pleased and when that shocked his followers he pulled a verse out of his sleeve and attribute it to his imaginary Allah to justify his actions and silence any critic. With a verse under his belt, anyone whispering a word against his indecency was denying God and of course, as a denier of God his situation was clear. That was faslul-khitab (the end of discussion) Examples abound. Here are a few:

The Qur’an limits four wives for the believers. However Muhammad thought that he should not be restricted by his own rules and therefore made his Allah reveal the verse 33:49-50 telling him that he is exempt and can have any number of women, as wives, concubines, slaves or “gifts” (habba) as he pleases. Then he added “This only for you, [O Muhammad] and not for the Believers (at large) in order that there should be no difficulty for you. And Allâh is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

What difficulty? The difficulty of having to control his lustfulness, of being a decent human being, faithful to one woman! Are we to believe in a man who found it difficult to control his basest animal instincts as the “best of creation?” Don’t actions speak louder than words? On one hand he lived like the vilest beast and on the other hand he spoke of himself so loftily putting words in the mouth of the Almighty to praise him. Remember that while still in Mecca, living off the wealth of his wife, Muhammad did not dare to bring another woman to the house of Khadijah. All his sexual vagaries started when he came to power. Are we to believe that as a young and virile man he did not have difficulty sleeping with an older woman and his difficulties appeared in the last ten years of his life that he was old and beset by all sorts of ailments? Or shall we interpret this as another sign of an aging man gone wild with his newfound liberties and like a child, left unchecked in a candy store, was unable to set the limits?

One day Muhammad visited his wife Hafsa, daughter of Omar and upon meeting her maid Mariyah, he lusted for her. He sent Hafsa for an errand telling her a lie that her father wanted to talk to her. When she went out of the door he took Mariyah to the bed of Hafsa and had sex with her. Hafsa came back when her father told her that he had not sent after her and found what was going on and why Muhammad wanted to get rid of her. Hafsa became upset and started to make a scene. (Ah! Women will be always women!) To pacify her, Muhammad promised to prohibit Mariyah to himself. (Hence the name of the Sura Tahrim) However, he still lusted after her. How could he now break his own oath? Well, that is easy when you have a god up in your sleeve. So his god revealed Sura Tahrim and told him it is okay to break his oath and have sex with that slave girl who is lawful to him. Actually the maker of the universe acting as a pimp was upset with Muhammad and even rebuked him for denying the carnal pleasures to himself and for promising to be decent once in his lifetime, just to please his wives.

O Prophet! Why do you ban (for yourself) that which Allâh has made lawful to you, seeking to please your wives? And Allâh is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
Allâh has already ordained for you (O men), the dissolution of your oaths. And Allâh is your Maula (Lord, or Master, or Protector, etc.) and He is the All-Knower, the All-Wise. 66:1-2.

How nice!

Ibn Sa’d writes: “Abu Bakr has narrated that the messenger of Allâh (PBUH) had sexual intercourse with Mariyah in the house of Hafsa. When the messenger came out of the house, Hafsa was sitting at the gate (behind the locked door). She told the prophet, O Messenger of Allâh, do you do this in my house and during my turn? The Prophet said, control yourself and let me go for I make her haram to me. Hafsa said, I do not accept, unless you swear for me. That Hazrat (his holiness) said, by Allâh I will not touch her again.”[13]

As usual, Muslims have justified Muhammad for the breach of his oath. It does not matter what Muhammad did. Muslims will always justify his actions. They have submitted their intelligence to him and have stopped thinking. Ibn Sa’d continues: “Qasim ibn Muhammad has said that this promise of the Prophet that had forbidden Mariyah to himself is invalid – it does not become a violation (hormat). [14]

If his oath had no validity, why he made it and if it was valid, why he broke it? There are countless other examples that Muhammad broke his own promise. Here, he had sworn by God and not even that was an impediment to him. His god was a figment of his own imagination and he was not that stupid to let his imagination stop him from having sex with the beautiful Mariyah. The whole idea of inventing that god was to approve whatever he desired and not to lay restrictions on him.

One day Muhammad went to see his adopted son Zeid and there he saw his wife Zainab, in her revealing home clothing. He was aroused by her beauty and could not control his desire. When Zeid learned this, he felt obliged to divorce his wife so Muhammad could have her. Now, it is interesting that a few years earlier, when Muhammad claimed to have ascended to heaven, he said that there he met a woman. He asked about her, they said she is Zainab, the wife of Zeid. (Somewhat anachronistic; but, hey, it’s Muhammad’s heaven made by his wild imagination. So time can be backward or forward in heaven.) Later he told this story to Zeid who, thinking that his marriage has been arranged in heaven, married her. However, when Muhammad saw her semi nude, he forgot all about his own heavenly story. Of course, no one better than him knew that the whole story of Mi’raj (ascension) was his own fabrication.

His marriage to Zeinab, his own daughter in law, confounded even his followers who were by all means low in intelligence, as generally they are today. To silence them, his Allah came out of his sleeve with a verse saying Muhammad is not the father of anyone but the messenger of Allah and the last prophet. He claimed that his marriage to Zeinab was arranged by God to show people that adoption is a bad thing and it should be annulled. As you can see, just because he could not control his lust, he made his bogus deity tell people that adoption is wrong and thus deprived countless orphans of having a second chance at life. Doesn’t this alone disqualify him as a messenger of God? How can the Almighty be offended by adoption, which is perhaps one of the most humane and lofty human institutions? Is Allah really the Almighty, or is he Satan?

Muhammad reintroduced the Pagan tradition of fasting during the month of Ramadan. However he found it difficult to abstain from food and water, from dawn to dusk, so he ate whenever he pleased. Ibn Sa’d writes: “The Messenger of Allâh used to say ‘We the prophets are required to eat our morning food later than others and hurry in breaking our fast in the evening.’”[15]

These are just a few examples of how Muhammad did as he pleased and made his Allah approve whatever he did. The young and perceptive AishaI feel that your Lord hastens in fulfilling your wishes and desires.” [16]

noticed this and perhaps sarcastically, or innocently, said to him “

***

As for the verse 5:32 that says whoever kills one person is as if he has killed all mankind, please note that this verse has nothing to do with the teachings of Muhammad. Here Muhammad is rehashing the Talmudic tale of Cain killing Abel and this verse is part of the Judaic scriptures. The logic of this nonsensical statement is that according to the mythology, Abel and Cain were the progenitors of all mankind and by killing one of them; his potential offspring would not have had the chance to be born. This is fairytale. The evolution explains things differently and this Judaic explanation that Muhammad has plagiarized now seems absurd.

Muhammad rehashed a lot of Judaic narratives. You don’t kill all mankind if you kill one person. If you kill one person you have killed one person and if you kill two you have killed two, and so on. The verse makes only sense in the context of the story that it was written and it is only a fable.

Why are Muslims so fond of using this Judaic fable as part of Muhammad’s sayings? It is because there is so little good in the Quran that they can brag about.

Before I respond to these allegations, let me clarify that despite considering the acts of taking somebody’s life and having sex with women as criminal, all (or almost all) civilized societies have devised rules that allow the same very acts as legitimate within the limits allowed by those rules. For instance, murder is a crime, but most societies don’t consider it a crime if a person who has himself been declared guilty of murder by a court of law and therefore deserving capital punishment is killed. If an individual who is championing the cause of human rights declares that the state where capital punishment was awarded to the criminals guilty of murder was a criminal state, he is moving beyond his limits in doing so. And if he starts using foul language against such a state because that state doesn’t agree with his point of view on capital punishment, he is not only uncivilized, he is also guilty of misguiding people by using emotional rhetoric. Indeed, he has a right to dispute intellectually that a murderer, despite being a criminal, should not be killed. Likewise, the other group can continue to claim that the killer deserves to be killed. However, by moving outside the domain of intellectual debate and making one-sided conclusions, if the person starts using his website, for instance, to call such a state criminal and its rulers, monsters, it would reasonable to conclude that there is likely to be something seriously wrong with his mental balance and the readers of his site should be made aware of it.

My erudite friends: I am afraid you are using a wrong analogy. The argument that in some countries capital punishment by death is still practiced is a red herring. Here we are not talking about the punishment of murderers but the persecution and killing of innocent people who want to have freedom of belief. You must really underestimate the intelligence of your readers by presenting this as an argument. No civilized society allows killing people who think differently. In fact, in all civilized societies, those who dissent with the ruling faction form their own opposition parties and openly criticize them. Their rights are protected under the law. Not only are they allowed to criticize the governing rulers, every four years or so, they are given the chance to topple them in a general election. In civilized societies your rights as an individual are protected and you are free to express your views openly. You can criticize anyone and anything in liberty. There are no holds barred! Nothing is sacrosanct. You can criticize political ideologies, religions or even God. That is why free societies progress. Progress is the result of freedom of thought. Where thoughts are stifled, censored and banned, progress is stifled, censored and banned.

Islam claims to be a religion that wants to rule the world. In other words, it is political and wants to have absolute control over every aspect of the lives of all the inhabitants of the Earth, whether Muslims or not, and at the same time it does not tolerate criticism and wants to put to death those who do so. As such it is an impediment to freedom, progress and the expansion of knowledge. It would be insane to let this totalitarian doctrine come to power. We must fight it tooth and nail and be prepared to respond to its aggression with force. Freedom is not free. Those who take their freedom for granted will lose it. The advance of Islam must be stopped at all levels. Since Islam is not just a religion but a totalitarian political ideology, it is the responsibility of political parties and the governments to fight against it.

Despots cannot tolerate dissent. Saddam Hussein is reported to have called his generals only weeks after he had usurped the power and after stating that he had been informed about an impending coupe against him, he took his revolver out and shot a number of them on the spot. No trial was needed and no guilt had to be established. The mere suspicion of opposition to him was enough to kill any number of people. He massacred entire populations simply because a group of them were dissidents. This kind of behavior is the hallmark of the governance of all despots such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Khomeini. These men were monsters. There is nothing wrong with the mental balance of those who call them with that name. In fact one should question the wisdom of anyone who is unable to see anything wrong in these evil men, or worse, believes that they were worthy of praise.

Muhammad ruled in the same fashion that these despots did. You do not disagree with that, but you think he was justified to rape and murder because he received his orders from God. This is a big hurdle for you to overcome. You must first tell us why God, instructed his prophet to act like a criminal. This, for sure, baffles people and any rational person, familiar with what Muhammad did, is impelled to believe that he was a psychopath criminal.

This is a major blunder on the part of Allah. By licensing his prophet to act like a gangster he has made it impossible for good humans to believe. Two kinds of people can believe in such a man, a) those who see nothing wrong in rape, looting and murder of innocent people; and b) those who although know these actions are wrong are so brainwashed that are unable to think rationally and they condone whatever Muhammad did blindly. Rational and decent people will always be aghast when they read the tales of murders, assassinations, rapes and lootings committed by Muhammad and his companions. Not everyone is able or willing to fool himself with the fairy tale that God ordered his messenger to act like a beast. Would you follow a man that did what Muhammad did if his name was Charles, David or Jim? You certainly won’t. Why then when it comes to Muhammad you abandon rationality and become willing to close your eyes to his crimes? Isn’t this the most important decision of your life? Shouldn’t you use everything at your possession, particularly your rational ability to make sure that you are not following a wrong path into hell? What kind of people does Allah want to pick as his own – criminals and brainwashed zombies or decent humans? If the latter, why did his messenger not act in a decent way, to attract decent people? Assuming there is a day in which you have to appear in front of your maker, what would you tell him if he asks you “why did you not look at the actions of Muhammad? Wasn’t that enough proof that this man was an impostor, liar and deceiver? Didn’t I give you a brain? Why did you not use it?” Do you have a good answer to this question? Are you sure you can fool God with silly alibis such as, “I was so afraid to doubt that buried my intelligence under piles of falsehoods and wishful thinking and refused to think?” Will you be able to say I saw something out of this word in the Quran? What would you do if He tells you that you have been deceived by Satan and that you should have judged him by his fruits?

God gave us humans the rational faculty to distinguish between right and wrong, to choose the good and to shun the evil. It is unbefitting for God to send a messenger that does evil things and then expect us to overlook all that and still believe. The rules of God are consistent. See how nature works! The laws of physics don’t change and they are predictable. That is why we know they are not made by a whimsical capricious god. God will not trick us. How can we know a claimant is from God and not an impostor if not by evaluating the consistency of his actions and words?

God warned us against Satan. Jesus, whom you believe to be a true messenger of God, warned people to watch for false prophets. When asked how to recognize them, he replied, ‘by their fruits’. The fruits of Muhammad are all bitter and poisonous. Yet, you tell us that since he was a messenger of God, it is not up to us humans to judge him by his fruits? Doesn’t this belie what Jesus said? If what you say is true, Jesus was a liar. He fooled us. He should have said, ‘follow the one whose actions are most despicable, who sheds the blood of innocent people for only disagreeing with him, who from rags comes to riches by robbing caravans and by looting villages and towns, who raids nomads and villagers with no warning and cowardly kills their unarmed men then takes their wives and children as slaves and rapes any woman that he pleases, for he is indeed the true messenger of God.’

Tell us, Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer: Why does God play these kinds of tricks? Why does he want to deceive humans, and instead of sending a holy man he sends one whose actions are indistinguishable from other contemptible monsters of history to guide us to the right path? Isn’t it God’s fault for misleading us? No, it is not God’s fault. The only correct answer is that Muhammad was an impostor. God warned us against him. All we have to do is to listen to what Jesus said and we would know that Muhammad was a false prophet. We can recognize this impostor by his fruits. The writings are on the wall. If you choose to close your eyes and not see, you have no one to blame but yourself. If there is a Day of Reckoning, you must answer to your creator for the wrong path that you choose today. The evidence against Muhammad is overwhelming. You have no excuse. For surety the excuse of “I followed the majority,” is not going to be accepted and you know that.

Muhammad claimed to have sublime morals (Q.68:4), and to be a good example to follow (Q.33:21), a mercy for all creatures (Q.21:107), and an honorable messenger (Q.81:19). He bragged a lot about himself. Are any of these claims true? If not, then he lied and he cannot be the prophet of God. Would an honorable person have sex with the wife of another man after capturing her in a raid? Is having sex with an 8-year-9-month‑old child a good example to follow? If today anyone does what Muhammad did, he will be taken to prison and perhaps locked for good. “Honorable?” “Good example?” This is how narcissists describe themselves. This is the image Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Saddam tried to portray themselves. While they were the vilest creatures, they claimed to be better than anyone else and killed any person who disagreed. How can intelligent men such as your good selves overlook all these evidence and still believe in such a man?

As a child my mother told me a story about Muhammad that I have not yet read in any reliable source. She said that one day a woman complained to Muhammad that her little son was eating too many dates and she requested that he tell the boy not to. Muhammad told her to come back the next day. When the next day she came, he told the little boy not to eat too many dates. The mother was surprised and asked why you did not say this yesterday? Muhammad replied, ‘because yesterday, I was eating dates myself and I could not tell the boy not to do what I myself was doing.’ Now, this is a nice story, the kinds of stories parents tell their children to make them love Muhammad. It is however apocryphal, or if true, it was only Muhammad’s way to feign piety to fool the gullible. Muslims are taken in by these silly and often false tales. The truth is that Muhammad’s words and deeds were very different. He prohibited killing with his mouth but he killed thousands of innocent people because they were not swayed by his lies. As a narcissist he could not tolerate dissent and thought might is right. He told others to be kind to orphans, when in practice he orphaned thousands. He prohibited stealing but he robbed caravans and looted many towns and villages. How did he accumulate his immense wealth? Wasn’t everything he owned spoils from his raids? Was that also an order of Allah? Why did Allah need the possession of a bunch of Arabs? How much shall we fool ourselves? He tortured to death Kinana, the young husband of Safiyah (whom he took to his tent that very night and had sex with), to make him reveal the whereabouts of the treasures of the Khaibar. Was that also ordered by God? Couldn’t this god who was fast to reveal a verse to justify his prophet’s sexual vagaries and meet his every needs tell him the whereabouts of the treasures and save that poor soul from torture? Muhammad prohibited sex out of wedlock but he prescribed and practiced rape of women captured in war. In other words sex between two consenting adults was a sin punishable by stoning but raping a captive woman was good and dandy.

How can any person believe in this monster? Where is the Muslims’ conscience? Sadly, blind faith takes away our humanity. These things will make any decent person cringe but I know that they make no dent in the faith of the believers. Why? It is because they have submitted their intelligence to Muhammad. And you tell me Islam is rational? Not everything Muhammad said is wrong. There are also some true statements that were said by many before him. One such statement is the verse 8:22 that you quoted. “Indeed the worst beasts in the eyes of God are those men who are deaf, dumb, and blind in that they don’t use their intellect.” Doesn’t this apply to Muslims?

***

I know nothing can change the mind of one whose mind is set and nothing will wake up one who does not want to wake up. I have a different strategy to help Muslims. I am making these facts known to the non-Muslim world and urging them to spread it for their own good and the good of their children. Let the entire world know the truth about Islam. If what I say is not the truth, tell us the truth. I will publish whatever you write.

I know how much Muslims care about their image. I know a thing or two about narcissistic personality disorder. This was the disorder of Hitler, Saddam, Stalin, and also Muhammad. Consequently, all those who have entered in his bubble universe and try to emulate him are also affected by it. Those who follow evil men, become like them.

The narcissist is mostly concerned about his image. Once their image is soiled worldwide, Muslims will be so humiliated and shamed that they will have no choice but to get serious and come to their senses. Islam must be attacked from every direction. One front of this war is psychological warfare. Muslims are filled with vain glory and false pride. This pride must be crushed with humiliation, derision and public condemnation. When the truth about Islam is spread, Muslims will feel embarrassed of that name and this is the beginning of the end of Islam and their ticket to freedom and enlightenment. We will be victorious because in a confrontation between truth and falsehood truth will always win.

Likewise, a case can be made of having sex with women. All decent societies agree that the very same act of physical relationship between a man and a woman which is otherwise condemnable is perfectly acceptable if the couple is married. The Western society has already reached a stage where it is not considered reprehensible if a couple is cohabiting with mutual consent and they are living like husband and wife, making a commitment that they will remain loyal to each other, even though they haven’t formally solemnized their marriage in a church or some other officially designated place by making public pronouncement of their relationship. Now, if I were to criticize such an act, I should criticize the basic principle underlying that arrangement, rather than go about condemning as people guilty of fornication those men and women who are thus living together. If I will do that and run a website where every now and then I write articles using filthy language to condemn such people, I will be behaving like an idiot who has gone out of his senses. Similarly, a society has a right to disagree with the concept of polygamy, but it has no right to declare a man with two wives a criminal who belongs to another society when polygamy is an acceptable arrangement in his society.

Again, you are engaging in the fallacy of wrong analogy. Yes, polygamy is barbaric and it must be outlawed. A society that does not grant equal rights to its women is an unjust society. Inequality of rights is at the core of polygamy. The fact that a society follows a barbaric rule does not make that rule legitimate and tolerable. Slavery is wrong as it has been always. It is absurd to say that if slavery is legal in a country, that country must be respected and not criticized. This argument comes from the same mentality that thinks might is right. It would be idiotic to tolerate slavery just because it is the law of a country. The same can be said about polygamy. Polygamy should be banned and countries that practice it must be denounced and kicked out of the community of civilized nations. Polygamy is abuse of human rights; it has no place in the civilized world.

In free and democratic societies a man and a woman may decide to share their lives together but may not wish to register their union anywhere. This is their prerogative and it is not up to anyone to put his nose in other people’s lives telling them how they should live. Even if a couple does not register their marriage, that union is recognized as “common law” and the couple has the same responsibilities and rights towards each other that married couples have.

However, here we are not talking about polygamy but rape of women captured in war. How can anyone follow a man who raped his captives of war? What kind of god would pick such a person to act as his messenger or condone these despicable acts? What Muhammad did and said in the Qur’an in this regard is unconscionable. Polygamy is bad, but rape is quite something else. Having sex with women captured in war is one of the most hideous acts imaginable, especially when their husbands are still alive.

When Pakistani solders invaded Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) in 1971, they raped the women, both Hindus and Muslims, because a Pakistani cleric declared them kafirs. The soldiers of your country massacred 3,000,000 innocent Bangladeshis and raped 250,000 women. How could anyone do so much evil in such a massive scale? It is because they were Muslims and they did what Muhammad did. There was no pang of conscience and no apology was ever issued. The soldiers saw nothing wrong in what they were doing because they were following their religion just as you see nothing wrong in what Muhammad did. How would you feel if someone does to you and your wife what Muhammad and his gang did to their victims?

In Iran the young virgin girls were systematically raped by their Muslim captors before being executed. According to the Shiites God will not send virgins to hell. So to free the hand of God, these Muslim men were told to rape their captives before executing them. They did it cheerfully and were convinced that they will be rewarded for their “good” act.

Is it really difficult to see the evil that Muhammad committed? Is it really difficult to see that Muslims do evil because they follow an evil man? Do you think God will reward stupid people who don’t want to think?

One should first know what rules are being followed in a society and then judge the members of that society according to those rules. Of course, one has the right to disagree with those rules. But disagreeing with someone else’s principles is one thing and condemning him as criminal for not conforming to one’s own principles is quite another. While the former attitude falls in the category of participation in an intellectual debate, the latter belongs to the territory of mild lunacy.

So, in your opinion, those who criticized Hitler, Saddam, Stalin or Pol Pot were lunatic? Muhammad acted in the same way these monsters did. No, my learned friends! An evil practice does not become legit just because it is the law of the land or is alleged to be from God. It becomes legit only if it conforms to the Golden Rule. A rule that does not conform to the Golden Rule is not from God. The Golden Rule should be our balance. What you are prescribing is moral relativism. One must question the validity of the rules followed in a society with the Golden Rule and the principle of fairness.

Why should criticizing Muhammad be lunacy? The only answer you gave so far is that he was acting under the direction of Allah. You want to shift all the blame on Allah. Is Allah a psychopath? How could any real God instruct his messenger to behave with so much depravity? Is this what you call rational faith? The fact is that mistaking a pervert man like Muhammad for prophet is lunacy.

You must either claim that whatever Muhammad did were good and therefore cheerfully accept the same to be done to you and your family or denounce his actions as evil and repudiate him. If you don’t want to be treated the way Muhammad treated his opponents then what he did was not good. Your alibi that since he was a messenger of God he was licensed to do evil is illogical and unacceptable. If so, then one can also suspect that David Koresh and Shoko Asahara were messiahs. Just like Muhammad, they made big claims and like him they lived a vile life. What distinguishes Muhammad from these other sociopaths?

You have not given any evidence to the claim that Muhammad was a messenger of God. You just chose to believe in him and then submitted your intelligence to him. Out of hundreds of errors, absurdities and blunders, I only asked four questions. Are you honestly satisfied with the responses that you have given? You are smart men – far too intelligent to fool yourselves. I see that you avoided answering my fourth question altogether.

However, you stated something important, which is the crux of the problem. You said that despite the fact that even you can see part of the Qur’an is unjust and wrong, you have chosen to submit to it unreservedly because you also saw a part of it is “brilliant” and “out of this world.” Well, tell us about it. Let us now ask you to lead this discussion. I will no longer ask questions even thought I have hundreds of them. Let us now see one of those brilliant and out-of-this-world statements in the Qur’an that have swayed you and see if you indeed have stumbled upon something truly magnificent and divine that the rest of us have missed. Or maybe, it’s your wishful thinking that is playing tricks on you and you have been misled by your uncritical faith and desire to believe. You say Islam is logical! Okay, bring your proof on. We are eagerly looking forward to hear your undeniable and irrefutable hujjat (evidence).

Part X

Dear readers: Please pay close attention to what Mr. Ghamidi writes. I think this is the climax of our debate and it is indeed the main fallacy that has kept Muslims trapped in the web of lies of Islam. Once the trap is identified, it is much easier to avoid it and I hope after this, those Muslims who are sitting on the fence can see for themselves that Islam is nothing but a huge hoax. I earnestly hope and expect that Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer also will see it. They are intelligent and good humans. They are trapped, not through their faults. All of us who were once believers were also trapped in the same web of lies. It is our circumstances that have set us free. I have no doubt that if I had not left Iran during my early teens, I would most likely rehash today the same things Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer are so convinced of. The environment influences the way we think. Those living in Islamic countries are kept in total darkness. Our respectable scholar friends contributed to that darkness by banning faithfreedom.org in Pakistan. They genuinely think they did the right thing. I know the feeling and do not blame them. Before my awakening when a friend expressed her curiosity to read Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses,” I was angry at her and rebuked her for having such thought. Even though Mr. Ghamidi has blocked this site in Pakistan, to his credit, he has left the line of communication open and we are still talking. It shows he is more enlightened and open minded than yours truly, during my years of faithfulness and oblivion. This is no small feat for a Muslim who has lived his entire life in one of the most benighted Islamic countries such as Pakistan, where the general population is immersed in lies and is cocooned in fallacies. While the masses of Iranians have had enough of Islam, the average Pakistanis would vote for Osama Bin Landen to become their president in a heartbeat. We must always keep in mind the milieu from which Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer come from. They are rare gems in a mine of coal even though as Muslims they think it is their responsibility to keep that coal in more darkness.

Now let’s first take up the case that people were killed during the time of the prophet. I will mention for you here a few relevant translated passages of Mr Javed Ahmed Ghamidi’s book “The Islamic Shari’ah of Jihad”: Peace and freedom are two essential requirements of a society. Just as various penal measures help in protecting a society from the evils and excesses committed by an individual, resorting to armed offensives sometimes becomes essential to curb the evils perpetrated by countries and nations. As long as diplomatic relations and negotiations can be used to resolve matters, no one would endorse the use of force for settling affairs. However, if a nation threatens to disrupt the peace and freedom of the world and its arrogance and haughtiness exceed all bounds, a stage may come when the use of force and power becomes essential to keep it in check. In such cases, it is the inalienable right of humankind to forcibly stop its subversive activities until peace and freedom of the world are restored. The Qur’an asserts that if the use of force had not been allowed in such cases, the disruption and disorder caused by insurgent nations would have reached the extent that the places of worship would have become deserted and forsaken, not to mention the disruption of the society itself: “And had it not been that Allah set aside one people with another, the monasteries and churches, the synagogues and the mosques, in which His praise is abundantly celebrated would be utterly destroyed.” (22:40) This use of force is called jihad.

Let me interrupt you Mr. Ghamidi and tell you that I fully agree with what you said about peace and freedom being two essential requirements of any society and that they must be protected, if necessary through the use of force. I fully agree that if peace and freedom of the world are threatened, the entire world must rise to subdue the party that poses that threat. This happened in the first half of the last century when everyone formed an alliance to combat Nazism because it threatened the peace and freedom of the world. During the Persian Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, again we saw all nations coming together to fight him and push him back. Just as no civilized society would tolerate a group of thugs and gangsters threaten the citizens and will use force to quash such hoodlums, the community of nations should also not tolerate a country threatening the peace and freedom of other nations. Like your good self, I am a fervent advocate of peace and freedom and I don’t think freedom is free. Freedom must be earned and protected sometimes through war. So, as you see, far from being a pacifist, I strongly support war against aggression, bullishness and despotism. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

The part that you and I do not see eye to eye is the definition of peace and freedom. To me, peace is attained through fairness where equal rights of everyone is protected and freedom is when each person is free to believe in whatever he pleases and do whatever he wishes provided that his freedom does not infringe upon the freedom of others. Muslims, however, use the same terms but they intend entirely different things. Let us first resolve this problem. We must understand each other’s language before we can talk.

When Muslims say peace, they mean non-Muslims should be subdued and humiliated to the extent that they have no strength to rebel. Peace, according to Islam, is therefore achieved through domination and subjugation. This is the kind of “peace and order” Saddam had established in his country. No one could whisper a word of dissent or he was put to rest in peace. To the end he defended his actions and claimed that as the president of Iraq, he acted in accordance to the law – his own law – to secure peace and order in the country. Narcissists are unable to see the harm that they cause to others and have no pang of conscience. They justify all their evil deeds.

Freedom for Muslims also has a totally different connotation. For them freedom is attained through submission to Allah. Paradoxically, you are only free when you have no thoughts of your own and have submitted your entire will to Allah and his messenger. Also this “freedom” is reserved only for Muslims. Non‑Muslims must be subdued, humiliated, and taxed, or simply put to death.

Now that we clarified the difference between Islamic concept of freedom and freedom as the rest of the world understands it, and learned the difference between Islamic idea of peace and peace, the way others view it, you can see that if Muslims achieve their desired “peace and freedom” the rest of us will lose ours. It is important that we understand Muslims and what they mean when they use familiar words. If a wolf invites a sheep to dinner, it is likely that he does not have a meal for two in mind. Unless you know what Muslims really mean, words can be deceiving. As Mr. Ghamidi has made it clear, when Muslims talk about peace and freedom they mean our subjugation and dhimmitude, or death. The concept of win/win and fairness is absent in Islamic psyche. Muslims are not satisfied; in fact they feel “oppressed” until they subjugate you or kill you, until you submit to them feeling subdued and humiliated. (Q. 9:29)

Mr. Ghamidi’s definition of peace is as follows, which I quote again because of its importance:

The Qur’an asserts that if the use of force had not been allowed in such cases, the disruption and disorder caused by insurgent nations would have reached the extent that the places of worship would have become deserted and forsaken, not to mention the disruption of the society itself:

As you see, the definition of freedom for our illustrious scholar friend is shoving religion down the throat of people with force.

Here is where the problem lies. Muslims want to establish their version of “peace and freedom” through warfare or as they call it “jihad” which means we would lose ours. Therefore, if we want to protect our peace and freedom we must make sure that Muslims don’t succeed in theirs and respond to their jihad and aggression with bigger force. It must be clear by now that Muslims want nothing short of our submission. Sadly, our peace and freedom and theirs are mutually exclusive because our understandings of these terms are different.

***

How can we protect our peace and freedom? This is an important question. The answer is a tough pill to swallow, but we must do it for our good, the good of our children and also for the good of Muslims.

There are three ways we can do it. The best way is, of course, to help them see the light and win them as allies and partners, so they stop seeing others as kafirs and their enemies as deserving death and hellfire. This is what FFI is hoping to achieve and we are succeeding to a great extent. However, I am not naïf. Religion is a powerful narcotic and Islam is the most potent of all. We may open the eyes of a few, but the majority of Muslims will never wake up. In fact the masses of Muslims in Islamic countries are barred from accessing sites such as ours. Keeping Muslims ignorant is the duty of every Muslim and particularly their leaders.

The second alternative, that probably is more practical, is to reduce them to such a state of poverty that they forget about jihad and can think of nothing but how to earn their next meal. Only then will jihad be will temporarily abandoned. According to the examples set by Muhammad, when Muslims are weak they are not supposed to wage Jihad. They have to sign peace treaties, wait for a better opportunity and strike when they are powerful and their chances of victory are great.

Dr. Sobhy, a Muslim scholar, in a footnote, commends the opinion of another scholar named Zarkashi who says: “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 according to the strength or the weakness of the Muslims.”[17]

Dr. Muhsin Khan the translator of Sahih Al-Bukhari and the Qur’an into English writes: “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 “[18]

This sentiment was expressed by Dr. Mahathir, the ex-Prime Minister of Malaysia who in the OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference) summit that he was hosting in his country in 2003, attended by the leaders of 57 Islamic countries, urged Muslims to put aside terrorism and instead learn science and technology, improve their economy, become strong and with that wealth acquire “guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships” and then jointly attack “their detractors and enemies” when their victory is assured. Dr. Mahathir was hailed as a moderate Muslim.

So, it is easy to see that to keep our peace and freedom, Muslims must be weakened and reduced to poverty, otherwise they will do what Dr. Sobhi, Dr. Khan, Dr. Mahathir and Mr. Ghamidi say they should. We would be fools if we don’t take these “moderate” scholars and Muslim leaders seriously.

This does not mean we should actually do anything to Muslims. It means we should leave them to their own devices and loosen their hands to destroy each other. Left to themselves, Muslims will self destruct. It is important that we subdue Islamic countries that pose danger to us, but we must not go out of our way to help them create democracy and improve their lives. Apart from the fact that Muslims have no use for democracy and despise it, as it is clear from what Mr. Ghamidi wrote, they will never be our friends and allies. Today in Iraq, the Sunnis and the Shiites are killing each other. We should get out of their way until they have had enough of it and sincerely want peace, the real peace, our version of it that means fairness for all and not their version, which means subjugation of others. Both Sunnis and Shiites are our enemies. So whom are we aiding? We must cripple the Islamic regime of Iran or better topple it, because it is posing a serious threat to the peace of the world and get out of that region. Let nature take its own course. As the ancient Chinese sage Laozi said, by doing nothing we will accomplish more than by doing a lot. Let them wage jihad against each other. Muslims need to taste Islam in their flesh before they can say enough. That is what they are asking us too. They want America out of the region so they can tear each other apart. After nearly three decades of Islamic rule, the majority of Iranians have had enough of it. I can say they are the only people in that region who are ready to get rid of Islam if given the chance. They paid the price to learn this lesson. Other Muslims must pay also to learn their lessons.

The threat of the Muslim immigrants living in the West should not be underestimated. Islam must be declared a subversive political movement and banned, and these Muslims who riot and burn our cities must be systematically rounded up and sent back to the country where they or their fathers or grandfathers came from as soon as they express anti‑Western sentiments. This is consistent with what Muslims do to non-Muslims in Islamic countries. Non‑Muslims in Islamic countries have no human rights. Jews have been living in Iran for at least 2500 years and they still are not recognized as full citizens. The Armenian and Assyrian Christians have been living in Iran for several centuries and they too are not treated as full citizens. As for Zoroastrians, the original owners of Iran, only a handful of them are left. Most of them sought refuge in India, and in recent years they immigrated to Europe and America. The Bahá’ís fare worse, because they are deemed to be heretics. Muslims should be treated in accordance to the Islamic laws when they reside in the West. They should be treated as dhimmis, taxed and made to lose their freedom. I bet a taste of their own medicine will sober them and they will come to see the evilness of Islam. As long as they are not the recipients of the Islamic injustice, Muslims will never see its evilness. So as you see, leaving them to kill one another is actually good for them too. The alternative is disaster.

The third alternative is confrontation. This means many of us would be killed in continuous Islamic terrorism and a nuclear holocaust, which would trigger the total destruction of the Muslim world and the massacre of all of them in retaliation. There is a limit to human patience. Beneath this veneer of civility we are all animals and the sense of self preservation overrides all other sentiments. We do not have to get to this stage if we let Muslims do what Muslims do best, i.e. kill one another.

I have been debating with Muslims for the last nine years and I don’t think I have ever seen anyone laying bare the truth about the danger of Islam as clearly as Mr. Ghamidi, so eloquently, has done it. I urge all those who read this chapter to please let others read it too. Mr. Ghamidi is not just any Muslim. He is one of the top Islamic scholars of the world. He is also not a fanatical Muslim of the Taliban brand. He is, by all accounts, a moderate Muslim. He has actually received death threats and there have been attempts against his life by the more extremist Muslims. Yet this is how he thinks, expressed in clear language.

Mr. Ghamidi supported Dr. Amina Wadud when she led a congregation of men and women Muslims in prayer, when most Muslims condemned her. This tells you how advanced are his thinking. He is exceptionally enlightened. However, don’t be fooled. Just as he changed his mind and started defending intercession after having denounced it in his website, when I showed him that the Qur’an supports intercession, he will also change his position on the subject of women as soon as I show him that his views on this subject are contrary to the Qur’an. It would be interesting to learn what Mr. Ghamidi thinks about wife beating. That would be something to discuss in future when we talk about the status of women in Islam. For now, let us focus on the topic at hand. Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer are brilliant scholars and naturally good people, but at their hearts they are Muslims. A Muslim, is a Muslim, is a Muslim. Muslims fight amongst each other and denounce one another, but this does not mean that either one of them has the interest of humanity at heart.

Mr. Ghamidi believes that freedom means forcing people to worship in mosques, churches and synagogues and those who promote rationalism, or other religions of which Muhammad was ignorant are causing disruption and disorder. As a Muslim, he thinks that the gravest crime that deserves capital punishment is not worshipping Allah. Ironically, Christians and Jews have little freedom in Islamic countries. They can’t, for example, restore their churches without the permission of the government, which is often denied, and they themselves are systematically persecuted. Needless to say, that they are prohibited to proselytize their religions. So, what it boils down to is that only Muslims are entitled to freedom. The rest of mankind must either be put to death or reduced to dhimmitude if they do not want to convert.

One of the scourges of the Islamic republic of Pakistan is its blasphemy law. This law is contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is a blatant affront to the dignity and freedom of humans. Does Mr. Ghamidi support this law? Well, by what he has stated in this article, he clearly does. If I am mistaken, I would like to hear his opinion on that.

Let us continue with Mr. Ghamidi’s essay:

This use of force is called jihad, and in the Qur’an it can be classified in two distinct categories: Firstly, it is done against injustice and oppression. Secondly, it is done against the deniers of the Prophet (sws) after the truth of his message had become evident to them.

Okay, we need to consult our Islamic dictionary to understand what Muslims mean by oppression and injustice. The word in the Qur’an, often translated into oppression and injustice, is fitnah. (See verse 2:193) Fitnah means sedition or disrupting the order. According to Muhammad, those who opposed him were making fitnah. So, whenever Muslims complain of oppression, they mean opposition to Islam. I can’t tell you how many times Muslims have complained that I am oppressing them. Now, any sane person can see that I have no means of oppression. All I have is a website where ex Muslims, non-Muslims and even Muslims express their views freely. How can free thought be oppressive to Muslims? If Muslims feel oppressed by that, relief is a click away. However, Muslims feel oppressed because we are exposing their belief and they can’t refute our arguments logically. This causes them pain and stress. In their view, I am making sedition, disrupting their peace and as such I am an oppressor. Consequently Muslims feel absolutely justified to kill me. The thought that all humans are entitled to their thoughts and free to express them, does not enter into their crania. The comprehension of such a simple truism is beyond their ken. They may go as far as telling you that you are free to think what you want as long as you keep it to yourself. They simply cannot tolerate criticism and they go berserk if someone does it, as we all saw during the riots for a bunch of cartoons or for the comments made by the Pope.

The second category of people that should be put to death, as stated in the Qur’an, is those who still decide to not believe in Islam after they are invited to convert or as Mr. Ghamidi says; have received the evidence of Islam. In simple language, once you are called to accept Islam you must either convert or be put to death.

The evilness of such doctrine is self explanatory. Each person has a different understanding of the truth. Even among Muslims, there are hundreds of sects and each thinks others are heretics and only they have found the truth. According to this mentality, all those who think they have found the truth (and this means every person in the world) can, or even must, force others to submit to their way of thinking under the pain of death. Of course, non-Muslims are not intolerant of those who do not agree with their faiths. A Hindu, for example, will never kill another person merely because his faith is different. No Jew, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Bahá’í, Zoroastrian or atheist will kill you because he thinks your faith is wrong. This kind of intolerance exists only in the most evil totalitarian doctrines such as Nazism, Bolshevism (communism) and Islam.

Now, let us suppose everyone converts to Islam. Will this end the bloodshed? Of course not! Despite the fact that hundreds of millions of people have been killed by Muslims during these 1400 years, this number thwarts in comparison to the number of Muslims that have been put to death by fellow Muslims of other sects. Muslims kill more Muslims than they kill non-Muslims. If ever the world is converted to Islam, these bloodsheds over whose interpretation of the Qur’an and Hadith is correct will only augment and mankind will be ushered into an era of perpetual killing and mayhem. This means the end of civilization and return to barbarity. Those who think Satan exists are fully justified to say Islam is his way to destroy the world.

We can clearly see that Islamic countries are barbaric. However, the West still exerts a powerful influence on Muslims and holds them from reverting to total barbarity. Muslims want to impress the West and therefore they feign civility. To Muslims, image is everything. Once the whole world becomes Islamic, (this is only per se, because Islam is exposed and it will fall shortly) this planet will become the planet of the apes. The extremists will be emboldened and the insanity that now is reigning in Islamic countries will be magnified a hundredfold, civilization will end and dark ages will begin. Imagine the entire world ruled by invigorated Taliban! They were the only Muslims who did not care about the opinion of the world. Even the wicked Iranian Mullahs and the Saudis are concerned about their image. Since there is no possibility of dissent in Islam and learning any knowledge contrary to the Qur’an is strictly prohibited, the dark age imposed by Islam will never end. The Islamic mentality of might is right will disallow any thinking person to express his views and this planet will be doomed.

Mr. Ghamidi continues:

The first type of jihad is an eternal directive of the shari‘ah (Islamic law). As stated earlier, it is launched to curb oppression and injustice. [Read “opposition”] The second type, however, is specific to people whom the Almighty selects for delivering the truth as an obligation. They are termed as witnesses to the truth; the implication being that they bear witness to the truth before other people in such a complete and ultimate manner that no one is left with an excuse to deny the truth. Bearing witness to the truth in such a manner is called shahadah. In the history of mankind, for the very last time this status was conferred on the Prophet Muhammad (sws) and his nation, the Banu Isma‘il (the children of Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham): “And similarly, We have made you an intermediate community so that you bear witness [to this religion] before the nations, and the rasul bear such a witness before you.” (2:143)

Let us dissect this point as it is crucial. What does shahada mean? Shahada means stating that there is no other God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger, forcefully and emphatically. That is the evidence that Mr. Ghamidi is talking about. Shahada means you must accept Islam or die. This, to Muslims, is proof. Muslims don’t think there is any need for logical argumentation as in their view the claim of Muhammad is self evident and those who do not see it are deaf, dumb and blind or arrogant. As you can witness, in all the debates that they held with this author, virtually all of them, with only a few exceptions, resorted to ad hominem, when they failed to defend Islam logically. I was threatened to be found and killed mercilessly or that I would burn in hell. Muslims believe might is right and all they need to do to prove that Islam is true is to overpower their opponents with brute force and threats. If that fails, insults will do.

You can read this sentiment expressed clearly in their emails to me, in the Muslims’ Comments section of this site. They challenge me to meet them face to face if I am truthful. “If you are telling the truth, then why are you afraid of dying? Come forth and show your face,” is the recurring theme in most emails they write. Muslims genuinely believe that once they kill the critics of Islam the supremacy of Islam is established and the hujjat (evidence) is completed. This is what the Muslim historians have claimed after Asma and Abu Afak were assassinated in Medina a few months after Muhammad established his rein of terror in that city. The ethos of might-is-right is the law of jungle that dominates the Islamic mindset.

In logics, this is called argumentum ad baculum. Argumentum ad baculum is when one tries to overpower his opponent with violence and threat of violence, and force him into submission. This threat can be of two kinds, overt and covert. The overt form is the use or threat of physical violence such as “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them.” (Q. 9:5) The covert form is threatening the detractors with divine retribution, such as, “On the Day of Judgment We shall make him taste the Penalty of burning in Fire.” (Q.22:9) There are many examples of both overt and covert threats in the Qur’an and in the history of Islam. Muslims believe threat is a good substitute for logical arguments. This was the way Muhammad made his conquests; he raided unwary villages with no warning, when people had gone out after their daily business and were not armed and after slaughtering their men and taking as slaves their women and children he claimed Allah made him victorious. It was actually terrorism and cowardice that made him victorious. He would besiege a fortress and tell its inhabitants to submit or to face extermination. He called that ultimatum itmam al hujjat (giving the undeniable proof).

***

Dear Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer: Up until now I have been asking questions showing the errors of the Qur’an and you were defending that book. You gave your responses to the first three questions (I leave that to the readers to decide whether they were satisfactory or not) and you avoided the fourth. The fourth question was about whether souls will go to heaven/hell right after death occurs or they will disappear into nothingness until corpses arise in the Last Day to receive their judgment. Both these contradictory statements are made in the Qur’an. Which one is true and which one is “satanic”? (put in the mouth of the prophet by Satan). Both can’t be true.

I know this is a thorny question and few Muslims think about it. Since this question has no answer, it is better not to think about it because it may cause doubt and that is something that must be avoided at all costs. Muslims’ solution to keep their faiths strong is to keep their heads deep in the ground. No wonder you blocked this site in Pakistan. If you had satisfactory answers to all my questions, why not let Muslims see the fallacy of my argument?

Believe me, this is not the most difficult question. I did not want to scare you so I asked the easy ones first, hoping to increase the heat gradually. I am sorry that you stopped answering them already. Or perhaps it is a good sign. It shows that you are thinking and realizing that this book you call the word of God is full of gross errors, absurdities and contradictions and that you can not logically defend it. The seed of doubt is sown in your mind. Unless you kill it because of your love for worldly power, this small doubt will grow and will have a domino effect. Soon you will come to see more errors in the Qur’an on your own and things that before made sense to you, will no longer do. This is the beginning of your enlightenment. You are good men. You don’t belong to this evil cult. You are smart. This cult is made for stupid people, not for people like you. This was how I received my enlightenment. It all started with a small doubt and then it grew like a snowball until I was freed completely. The process was painful but the pain was not caused by finding the truth. It was caused by shattering the lies. The more I was attached to a lie, the more painful it was to get rid of it. Truth does not hurt. Nothing feels better than freedom of mind. I have been on both sides of the fence and I can tell you, enlightenment and freedom are better than slavery of mind – much better.

The question remains how you could earn your living without Islam. Well, that is something you should resolve. I know a few people who also dependent on Islam for their livelihood and who have done it. You can too. Like you, they are good people who genuinely believed in Islam. My recommendation to them was to go slow. Find something honest to do. Making money by spreading lies and obscurantism is not an honest way of living. Whatever you do, please do not let the commodities that Islam offers you in this world impede you from accepting the truth.

***

Now, let us change roles. Please tell us about that hujjat, that “undeniable evidence” that you are talking about. Please give us one example of it. I can show you hundreds of very stupid mistakes in the Qur’an and all I ask is that you show me one undeniable proof and I will declare you the victor of this debate and remove this site.

It is only logical to believe that if the Qur’an was from God, it should not have a single error. Only one error is enough to disqualify it as the word of God. We find hundreds of them in that book. However, let us be illogical. Let us overlook all the errors of the Qur’an and try to find a single “out of this world” verse in that book as if that would be enough to make Islam a true religion. This is how you, Dr. Zaheer, and most other Muslims have come to believe in this book, and that is why despite all the evil in it you can’t let it go. Many Muslims are smart. They see there are parts of the Qur’an that are unjust or plainly wrong, however they close their eyes to all that and are hooked by something that they think is miraculous and out of this world. I was one of them myself. It was not that I could not see anything wrong in Islam. But I silenced my conscience telling myself, “look at the big picture.” Eventually I realized the big picture is made of all these errors and stupidities and it is very evil. There is, of course, nothing miraculous in the Qur’an. So, please show us at least one example of that undeniable proof. The ball is now in your court.

Once the process of shahadah is complete, the truth is unveiled to a people in its ultimate form, and, if they still deny it in spite of being convinced about it, they are punished in this very world. At times, this punishment is through earthquakes, cyclones and other calamities and disasters, while, at others, it emanates from the swords of the believers. As a result, those who have denied the truth are totally vanquished in their land and the truth reigns supreme in it. In the case of Prophet Muhammad (sws), the Divine scourge took this very form. Consequently, just as his Companions (rta) were asked to wage war against oppression and injustice, they were also asked to wage war to punish the rejecters of his truth once it had become totally manifest to his addressees. This was actually a Divine plan executed through human beings. They themselves were not authorized to even think of such an undertaking. It is to this very fact which the following words of the Qur’an allude: “Fight them and God will punish them by your hands.” (9:14)

My erudite friends: you are building a tall tower, by placing one fallacy upon another. First of all, where is that “unveiled truth in its ultimate form?” I read the Qur’an and found nothing but factual inaccuracies, scientific heresies, historic blunders, mathematical mistakes, logical absurdities, grammatical errors and ethical fallacies. We have shown hundreds of those errors in this site and you can find more elsewhere. Will you now show us that undeniable truth of which you are talking?

Secondly, if you interpret natural disasters as punishment of God, then God must be punishing Muslims more because more of them die in these natural calamities. Of course it is absurd to think that the wise and compassionate maker of this universe resorts to such senseless acts of terrorism and kills wholesale so many people indiscriminately in order to punish some. If God had such a low self esteem that the disbelief of his own insignificant creatures hurt his feelings and if killing them was the only way he knew how to deal with this pain (which would make him a true psychopath narcissist unworthy of worship), couldn’t he just kill the disbelievers selectively through, say, heart attack, stroke, cancer, etc, or just blow them into pieces and leave innocent children unharmed? Why is it that in these “acts of punishment” as you define them, mostly children are killed, who are by all accounts innocent? How can learned and intelligent men of your stature make such a statement?

Thirdly, you say that Allah gave Muhammad and his nation the right to wage war against the unbelievers whose mere disbelief is oppressing him. Will you please tell us, if this was what he wanted, and if he has any power, why he needed henchmen? Can’t Allah kill those who disbelieve in him without asking humans to shed the blood of humans? Is the god of Islam helpless to kill his detractors? Why Allah relies on his followers to do his dirty work for him like a gangster godfather? Doesn’t he know that humans are fallible and as such it is possible that many of them kill others thinking they are doing God’s work when in reality they are mistaken? Tell me, are Shiites right when they kill the Sunnis or is it the other way round? Who gave them this idea that by killing they are doing God’s work? Don’t you see that the root of all these fratricides and problems affecting the Islamic world is the Qur’an? What kind of god is this Allah that orders people to shed the blood of their kind?

Fourthly, earlier, in defense of intercession that you yourself had originally repudiated, you said that God wants us to be compassionate towards one another and that is why he wants us to intercede for each other. Why this same god now wants us humans to shed the blood of our kind and become murderers and assassins? If he wanted people to have compassion for one another, shouldn’t he have told them to be tolerant and forgiving of each other? What kind of people he wants to collect in his paradise? Are you sure he is God and not Satan? Allah’s teachings are satanic. As they say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. If the teachings of the Qur’an sound satanic and the result is death and constant war, it is likely that it is a book of Satan and not of God. This is how you should have interpreted the parts of the Qur’an that you thought are out of this world. However, I assure you that there are no such parts in the Qur’an. So even if Satan has dictated this book of violence and absurdity to Muhammad, he has not given him a single secret of the unknown.

Can’t you see how Muhammad fooled and manipulated the ignorant people around him to wage war and conquer the world for him? This man gave his foolhardy followers vacuous promises of debauchery and eternal sex, and they killed and died for him to make him the emperor, so he could have everything he promised them in the other world, in this world. As a viceroy of God, he assumed all His powers and had control over life and death of everyone. This is the wet dream of a narcissist psychopath. And you can’t put the two together and read the mind of that sadist? This man, like Hitler, was a psychopath narcissist. All he cared for was domination. Allah was only his alibi. There is no way that the Almighty God can be as stupid and as evil as Muhammad portrayed him.

Islam is blasphemy. It is an insult to God. How can the almighty maker of this universe be so evil as Muhammad has described him? On one hand Muhammad called Allah merciful and on the other, he portrayed him as a petulant, needy, unforgiving, and ruthless tyrant. How can anyone worship such a miserable, despicable deity? Allah is not God. He is the figment of the sick mind of a psychopath narcissist. He is everything Muhammad wanted to be. He is nothing but that mad man’s alter ego, his other alias. A billion people worship the creation of the mind of a narcissist and because of that, act like narcissists. They think they are superior and kill anyone who disagrees with them. And you have the chutzpa to call others idolaters? Islam is idolatry. Anyone whose god is loving, forgiving and tolerant believes in the real God even if he calls it with many names. Allah is an evil deity. This makes Muslims the only idolaters and Satan worshippers in the world. If anyone has to be sent to hell or punished for idolatry it is Muslims. What idolatry is greater than worshipping the fantasies of a mentally deranged man? If this is not tragedy, what is? Now that we have a better understanding of the world around us, we can see that nearly every statement in the Qur’an is false. One error is sufficient to discard that book and not even hundreds of them perturb your faith. Is this how you perceive logic?

Compare Muhammad to Jesus. How can God send two men, so diametrically different, as messengers to mankind? Is God getting senile by any chance? Was he drunk when he sent Muhammad? No sane person could say that Jesus and Muhammad are part of the same school and put them in the same category.

How can you be sure that it was not Satan who visited Muhammad claiming to be Gabriel? Do you have “undeniable evidence” to refute this hypothesis?

Paul in a letter to Galatians 1:8-9 says: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!”

In another place he says, “And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.”[19]

Muhammad’s actions were satanic. The Qur’an is also satanic. Isn’t it logical to conclude that Allah is Satan and the ghost that visited Muhammad was Lucifer posing as Gabriel? Look at the misery of Muslims in Islamic countries. This is not because Muslims are less intelligent than other nations. It is simply because they follow a satanic cult. How else can you explain the fact that virtually all Muslim countries are backward, barbaric and poor? The only exceptions are those that pump oil from the ground with the kafir technology to be used in kafir‑made cars. When that dries up, this Islamic euphoria will also dry up. Muslims will put aside Jihad when hungry and weak. So we should keep them hungry and weak for their own good. Why is it that the more Islamic is a country, the more backward it becomes? If Islam is good, why do you want Muslims to be moderate? Should we be moderate in something so good?

Part XI

The following is another chapter of the book written by Mr. Ghamidi, where he explains the concept of jihad. As you read this piece, I would like you to keep in mind that Mr. Ghamidi is a moderate Muslim. This article will show you how moderate Muslims think and you will learn about their stance on jihad and how they think the non-Muslims should be treated.

[Ghamidi, Javed A. (2005); “The Islamic Shari’ah of Jihad” translated by Shehzad Saleem; pp. 3-5; Lahore : Al-Mawrid, Institute of Islamic Sciences ] For the second objective, the words used in Surah Baqarah and Surah Anfal (the second and the eighth chapters of the Qur’an) are “Allah’s religion reigns supreme” and “all of Allah’s religion reigns supreme” respectively. Prior to them, the word “fight them” directs the Muslims to wage war. The antecedent of the pronoun “them” in this statement is the Idolaters of Arabia . Consequently, these expressions mean that in the land of Arabia the religion of Islam would reign supreme. This purpose could only have been achieved in two ways: either the followers of all other religions were to be put to death or they were to be subdued and subjugated completely. Consequently, after many phases interspersed with periods of both war and peace when the disbelievers were totally humiliated, both these ways were adopted. Muslims were directed to kill the Idolaters of Arabia if they did not accept faith and to let the Jews and Christians live on their own religions if they accepted to pay jizyah (the non-Muslim tax) and live a life of total subjugation to the Islamic state established in Arabia .However, the active adversaries among them were put to death or exiled whenever it became possible. It has been written at the very beginning of this article that the various measures adopted by the Prophet (sws) and his Companions (rta) including warfare were all Divinely ordained. These measures do not belong to the common shar’iah law of Islam. Rather they belong to a specific law that can be termed as the law of itmam al-hujjah (unveiling of truth in an undeniable form). This law can be summarized thus: When the truth of a rasul’s (messenger’s) message is unveiled to a people in its ultimate form such that no one has any excuse to deny it, the rejecters of this truth are punished in this very world.

There seems to be a gross miscalculation on the part of Allah, who appoints fallible people to judge the faith of others and if, in their opinion, it does not measure up, kill them. Consequently, Muslims, following this directive, engage in acts of terrorism and wage war against others and each other. It is natural that each person thinks he has found the truth. These directives of Allah entitle them to declare war on those who do not think like them and kill them, with clarity of conscience, thinking that they are doing God’s work. It is irrational to believe that God needs humans to do what should be strictly his work.

The history of this worldly Judgment as mentioned in the Qur’an shows that the nature of the punishment meted out is generally of two forms: In one form, a rasul (messenger) has very few companions, and, also does not have a place to migrate. In the second one, he migrates with a considerable number of companions. In fact, even before he even does so, the Almighty arranges for them a territory where they can migrate and live there as its sovereigns with freedom. In both these cases, the established practice of the Almighty regarding His rusul (messenger) manifests itself – the practice which the Qur’an describes in the following words: “Indeed those who are opposing Allah and His Messenger are bound to be humiliated. The Almighty has ordained: ‘I and My Messengers shall always prevail’. Indeed Allah is Mighty and Powerful.” (58:20-1) In the first case, this humiliation takes the form of Divine punishment that descends upon the adversaries of a rasul (messenger) in the form of raging storms, cyclones and other calamities, which completely destroy them. It is evident from the Qur’an that the nations of Noah (sws), Lot (sws), Salih (sws) and Shu‘ayb (sws) along with some other nations of rusul (messenger) met with this dreadful fate. The only exception to this were the People of the Book (the Israelites) who were not destroyed because, being the People of the Book, they were basically adherents to monotheism. Their humiliation took the form of constant subjugation to the followers of Jesus (sws) till the Day of Judgment.

If we are to believe that these natural calamities are Divine punishments, then we must conclude that God punishes Muslims most because they generally are affected more by these natural calamities. Furthermore, if Allah has such a low self esteem and is offended so much by the disbelief of his creatures that only by killing them can he feel better; why not kill only those who disbelieve? Can’t he make his detractors fall dead with a stroke, with a heart attack, or by blowing them into pieces? Why should he resort to these acts of terrorism, killing so many people indiscriminately? Generally in these “acts of God” children are the ones who suffer most. If truly God is this insane, he is for sure unworthy of praise. These natural calamities have nothing to do with God. They are acts of nature. It just happens that we are in the way and get caught. The claim that natural calamities are acts of God is yet another fallacy. Only this illogical claim is enough to discredit Islam or any religion that makes such a ridiculous claim.

In the second case, a rasul (messenger) and his companions subdue their nation by force, and execute them if they do not accept faith. In this case, his addressees are given some more respite. In this period, the rasul (messenger) does itmam al-hujjah (unveiling of truth in an undeniable form) on the inhabitants of the land to which he had migrated. He morally purifies and reforms his followers and prepares them for a final onslaught with evil. He also consolidates his political power in the land so that he is able to root out the disbelievers and establish the supremacy of the believers through this political power.

Is reducing people into assassins and murderers moral purification? What kind of morality are we talking about? Muhammad was given asylum in Medina and his payback was to divide the population and then subdue, banish and massacre its original inhabitants. Is this moral? No wonder this is what Muslims intend to do in Europe. The point is that Muslims have a totally different understanding of the term evil. In the Muslims’ eyes, assassination, raiding, looting, raping and even genocide are not evil and immoral acts when the victims are non-Muslims. However, freedom of thought is an evil thing that has to be eradicated.

It was this situation which had arisen in the case of the rasul (messenger) Muhammad (sws). After itmam al-hujjah (unveiling of truth in an undeniable form), it was the Jews who were subdued first. They had been granted amnesty because of various pacts. Those among them who violated these pacts were given the punishment of denying a rasul (messenger) of God. The prophet (sws) exiled the tribe of Banu Qaynuqa‘ to Khayber and that of Banu Nadir to Syria. The power they wielded at Khaybar was crushed by an attack at their strongholds. Prior to this, Abu Rafi‘ and Ka‘b Ibn Ashraf were put to death in their houses. The tribe of Banu Qurayzah was guilty of treachery and disloyalty in the battle of Ahzab. When the clouds of war dispersed and the chances of an external attack no longer remained, the Prophet (sws) laid siege around them. When no hope remained, they asked the Prophet (sws) to appoint Sa‘d Ibn Mu‘adh (rta) as an arbitrator to decide their fate. Their request was accepted. Since, at that time, no specific punishment had been revealed in the Qur’an about the fate of the Jews, Sa‘d announced his verdict in accordance with the Torah. As per the Torah, the punishment for treason was that all men should be put to death; the women and children should be enslaved and the wealth of the whole nation should be distributed among the conquerors. In accordance with this pronounced verdict, all men were executed.

And you don’t see anything wrong in this picture? Muhammad treacherously assassinates his critics, among them a centenarian man called Abu Afak and a nursing mother of five named Asma. He banished entire tribes, looting their property and butchering hundreds of men, falsely accusing them of conspiring against him with his enemies, the Ahzab (Confederates). If that accusation was true, then why the Ahzab left and did not attack Medina? Lies and deception were the traits of Muhammad. He made this false accusation to justify his evil acts, kill those who had hurt his gigantic ego by rejecting him, and took possession of their wealth. Who was Sa’d to pass such a cruel judgment on so many innocent people? Wasn’t Muhammad in touch with Allah? Why this Allah who was so fast to reveal verses to justify Muhammad’s lustfulness and often acted as his pimp, when it came to such an important decision that involved the lives of an entire population, left it all to a ruffian thug, a wounded and dying man in pain, a bodyguard of Muhammad, to pass judgment? Was that judgment fair? Even if the psychopath Muhammad rejoiced and said Sa’d had judged with Allah’s wisdom, why did Allah not stop this insane butchery? Assuming the lies of Muhammad about the Banu Quraiza were true, did all the men in this tribe deserve death? Did that warrant such punishment? Muhammad ordered the inspection of the genitals of boys to determine if they had grown pubic hair and if they had, he counted them amongst men and beheaded them. Is this justice? What was the guilt of the women and children who became slaves? Here is where, Mr. Ghamidi, you have to show your humanity. It is here that you have to denounce Muhammad and say in a clear language that what he did was evil. By justifying this monstrous crime one become less human. What defines us as humans is our humanity. In 1979, the Pakistani soldiers and the Pakistani president committed despicable acts of barbarity in Bangladesh, massacring 3,000,000 unarmed civilians and raping 250,000 women (God knows how many more did not report out of shame or were part of those killed after being raped). This is a real crime, not like the bogus accusations made by Muhammad against the Banu Quraiza. What do you think should be done to the entire Pakistani nation? Should every Pakistani man be put to death and all their women and children taken as slaves? This is what Muhammad did to the Banu Quraiza. It is unconscionable to defend those acts. Everything Muhammad did was egregious. Any person who can’t see the evilness of this massacre must have evil in his or her heart.

No other incident worthy of note took place regarding the Jews until in Surah Tawbah (ninth chapter of Qur’an) the final judgment was declared against them: “Fight those who believe not in Allah or the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the People of the Book, until they pay the jizyah (the non-Muslim tax) with willing submission and are subdued.” (9:29) This directive related to both the Jews and the Christians. The punishment mentioned in these verses was in fact a show of great lenience to them because of the fact that they were originally adherents to monotheism. In reality, they had become worthy of death and destruction after deliberately denying Muhammad (sws). However, they did not benefit from this lenience because after the death of the Prophet (sws) they once again resorted to fraud and treachery. Consequently, the Jews of Khaybar and the Christians of Najran were exile once and for all from the Arabian peninsula by the Caliph ‘Umar (rta). This exile in fact thus fulfilled the following declaration of the Qur’an about them: “And had it not been that Allah had decreed exile for them, He would certainly have punished them in this world; and in the Hereafter theirs shall be the torment of the Fire.” (59:3) When the Idolaters of Arabia had been similarly subdued, it was proclaimed in Surah Tawbah (the ninth chapter of the Qur’an) that in future no pact would be made with them. They would be given a final respite of four months and then they would be humiliated in retribution of their deeds and would in no way be able to escape from this punishment (Qur’an; 9:1-2). Consequently, Makkah was conquered and just as some of the active adversaries among them had been executed when they were caught as prisoners in the battle of Badr and Uhud, similarly at this occasion also such adversaries were put to death.

Here Muhammad put to death people who had ridiculed him. You can’t escape the wrath of a narcissist after humiliating him. To a narcissist this is the gravest crime. He is mostly concerned about his ego. Among the victims of Muhammad were a street performer poet Ibn Khatal and his two dancing girls, who had mocked him when he was in Mecca. He did not forget that. A narcissist never forgets and never forgives. The god of Muhammad resembles him. Allah too is a vengeful psychopath narcissist because he is Muhammad’s own alter ego.

Prior to this, the directive had been revealed about them that it should be proclaimed at the time of the great pilgrimage, hajj-i-akbar, (9th Hijra: the ninth year after the prophet’s migration to Madinah) that once the forbidden months would be over, Muslims should slay the Idolaters wherever they find them except if they accept faith, establish the prayer and pay zakah (the religious tax). However, those among them who were bound in time-barred pacts with Muslims were an exception to this directive. Muslims were asked to honour these contracts until their stipulated time period was over if their adversaries abided by them. The implication was clear: once the time period expired, these adversaries would also meet the fate that had been ordained for all the Idolaters of Arabia. They were to be killed in case they did not accept faith. This declaration was made in the Qur’an in the following words:

I think the implication for us also must be clear. Muslims will make treaties as long as they are weak. Once they become strong, they do not need to make any treaties anymore and will fall on the weaker nations, forcing them to convert or be killed. Dr. Ghamidi is spelling the evilness of Islam in a very clear language. We would not pay heed to what he says at our own peril.

“And a declaration should be made from Allah and His Messenger to these people on the day of the great hajj (pilgrimage) that Allah is free from [all] obligations to these Idolaters and so is His Messenger. So if you [O Idolaters!] repent, it is better for you, but if you turn away, then know that you cannot escape from the grasp of Allah. And give tidings [O Muhammad (sws)!] of a painful torment to these disbelievers. Except those of these Idolaters with whom you have a treaty, and who have not shown treachery in it nor have supported anyone against you. So fulfill their treaty to the end of their term. Indeed, Allah loves those who abide by the limits. Then when the sacred months [after the hajj] have passed, kill these Idolaters wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush. But if they repent and establish the prayer, and give zakah (the religious tax), then leave them alone. Indeed, Allah is Ever Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (9:3-5)

Thank you Mr. Ghamidi for your candidness and for not trying to dissimulate the truth. You stated the facts better that I did. These confessions coming from you carry far more weight than when they are said by me in the form of accusations. You are a Muslim of the moderate variety and yet you see no wrong in all these evil deeds and acts of intolerance and inhumanity perpetrated by Muhammad. You are not trying in any way to pretend to be apologetic but are telling things as they are. The implication for us kafirs should also be clear. Muslims are not going to deal with us any better than their prophet dealt with the non-believers of his time, should we let them get the upper hand. If now they show restraint and are not engaged in wholesale massacre of non-Muslims, it is because they are weak. As Mr. Ghamidi explained, Muhammad did not kill anyone when he was living in Mecca, as he was weak and knew that he could be punished for his crime. Once he was safe amongst his followers and untouchable, he committed all sorts of crimes, assassinations and murders. Today Muslims are weak. They do as their prophet did. They wait until they gain the strength. Then they will not stop until they subdue each and every person on this planet, kill them or reduce them into dhimmitude.

With these measures, the basic objective of war stated by the words “all of Allah’s religion reigns supreme” was achieved in the ultimate sense. However, it is explained above that as per the law of itmam al-hujjah (unveiling of truth in an undeniable form), all these measures were an obvious outcome of the fact that first the shahadah (bearing witness to the truth) was established through the Prophet (sws) on the Idolaters and the People of the Book of Arabia and second because of this worldly retribution that took place in Arabia, this shahadah was established on certain nations outside Arabia. Consequently, it was as a result of this that after the truce of Hudaybiyyah, the Prophet (sws) himself, singled out these nations by writing letters to them. The territories of these nations were almost the same as those which in the Torah are called the inherited land of the progeny of Abraham. In all, they were written to the heads of eight countries. Consequently, after consolidating their rule in the Arabian peninsula, the Companions (rta), in order to implement this judgment of the Almighty, launched attacks against these countries giving them two options if they wanted to remain alive: to accept faith or to accept a life of subjugation by paying jizya (the non-Muslim tax). None of these nations was an adherent to polytheism in the real sense, otherwise they would have been treated in the same way as the Idolaters of Arabia. It is evident from these details that all these armed campaigns and offensives were not merely qital (war), they were in reality a punishment of the Almighty. This punishment, which is meted out to those who deliberately deny the truth of a rasul’s (messenger’s) message, is an established practice of Allah. As a Divine scheme, it descended first upon the Idolaters and the People of the Book of Arabia and then to certain other nations outside it. Consequently, it is absolutely certain that fighting those who have deliberately rejected the truth and forcing the vanquished to lead a life of subjugation by imposing jizyah (the non-Muslim tax) on them is no longer allowed. For Muslims, the sole ground of war now is injustice and oppression. They cannot wage war on any other ground any more. (ibid, pp. 27-33)

Hold on dear Mr. Ghamidi. The fact that what Muhammad did was utterly evil is beyond proof. You justify all his crimes because in your opinion he was following the orders of the Almighty. This is however what you have yet to prove and we are waiting for that “undeniable proof”.

Please tell us: How did you conclude that those directives have ended and the further attacks of Muslims on non-Muslim nations are unwarranted? Is this a personal opinion or is it something you can back up with the Quran? All other Muslims who engage in Jihad today seem to have missed this verse. Will you please show us where does it say, after the conquest of these eight nations, jihad must end? I can show you that Muhammad broke even his own (allegedly Allah’s) words in the Qur’an. In no less than two places he said he came for the Meccans and for its surroundings. (6:92, 42:7) Also, in verses 32:3 and 36:6 he said that he was ordered to admonish people whom no warner has come to them. This excludes the People of the Book. Muhammad lied and made rules as situations dictated.

The fact of the matter is that the prophet, may God be pleased with him, as a true follower of Qur’anic teachings, was extremely careful on the question of taking the life of fellow humans. He never allowed anyone to kill another human being without a legitimate reason.

Legitimate reason? Do you really think the massacre of an entire population is legitimate under any circumstance? Is it legitimate to raid and massacre those who want to worship a god different to yours or do not worship at all? Do I and those who think like me have the same right to massacre the Muslims because we are convinced that Muslims are blasphemers and idolaters and that Allah is Satan?

During the first thirteen years of his stay in Makkah as a prophet, he and his companions were criticized, condemned, and even persecuted by the leaders of the tribe of Quraish for accepting a faith different from theirs. However, he always advised his companions to remain patient on the face of adversities. On migrating to Madinah, battles were imposed on him by the enemies which when they were fought they were fought gallantly. During these battles, clear instructions were given that no non-combatant person should be touched nor the assets not relevant to the battle be destroyed.

The above short paragraph contains no less than five fallacies.

1- The first fallacy is that when Muhammad was in Mecca, he had no more than 70 or 80 followers; most of whom were renegade youths or dispossessed slaves and therefore he had no choice but to refrain from any violence. Only when he came to Medina and could get away with his crimes did he show his real face. Even the most hardened criminals act with self restraint when they know they can’t get away with their crimes. Only if they can behave when they are free, can we say that they are reformed. Son of Sam is an American psychopath who had killed many people just for the fun of it and for having the public attention. Now that he is caught and has no possibility of killing he has become a born again Christian, feigning piety and preaching “hope”. This monster would again start killing if he could get away. The fact that Muhammad did not kill anyone when he could not do it is not proof that he was a good man. Even Hitler did not kill anyone while he could not do it.

2- The second fallacy is the claim of persecution. The Quraish did not persecute the Muslims for their faiths. They were polytheists and as such they could not care less what others worshiped. Polytheists are tolerant of differing beliefs by their very nature. It’s only the monotheists who think they are the sole possessors of the absolute truth and often are intolerant of other faiths. In Arabia, prior to Islam, there were a multitude of faiths, all living side by side in harmony. Although Arabs fought with one another for the same reasons that other people fought in those days, religious animosity and persecutions were unheard of. The Ka’ba alone housed 360 deities, each a patron of a different tribe. There were also many Christians, Jews and Sabaeans who practiced their faiths freely. Khadijah was a Hanif (The term usually used is ‘Hanif’. Also, Hanifi can be confusing because it can refer to those who follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence.) and her cousin was a Christian monk. So accusing the Quraish of persecuting the Muslims for their faith is preposterous. Muhammad taunted the Meccans for 13 years and they did not harm him. There is no proof whatsoever that they intended to kill him when he claimed to have received intimation from Allah that this was what they were planning to do. In verse 8:30 Allah guesses that they were about to “keep you in bounds, or slay you or get you out (of your home).” The All-knowing Allah is unaware of what the Quraish were about to do. It is clear that this verse was concocted by Muhammad himself. As a narcissist he was paranoid. Paranoid people have a persecution complex. This was true of Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson and virtually all other psychopath narcissists. The origin of this bogus claim should be sought in Muhammad’s psychopathology and not in the actions of the Meccans.

3- The third fallacy is your claim that war was imposed on Muslims by the Quraish. It is amazing that you should say that when just a few paragraph earlier you stated “Consequently, after consolidating their rule in the Arabian peninsula, the Companions (rta), in order to implement this judgment of the Almighty, launched attacks against these countries giving them two options if they wanted to remain alive: to accept faith or to accept a life of subjugation by paying jizya (the non-Muslim tax).”

None of the victims of Islam, including the Quraish, initiated the hostilities. All hostilities were initiated by Muhammad and his marauding gang. It was Muhammad who kept raiding the Meccan caravans and making life impossible for them, forcing them to come to the defense of their caravan at Badr and then try to attack Medina during the Battle of Al‑Khandaq to put an end to the nightmare that Muhammad had caused them. The first bloodshed in Islam was the blood of a Meccan, Amr bin Al-Hadrami? that Muhammad’s men killed cowardly during an ambush in Nakhlah, during the sacred months, while treacherously posing as pilgrims. Ghazwa means raid not defensive war. Muhammad launched 78 ghazwas in the last ten years of his life.

You are not twisting the truth. You are simply repeating a lie that all Muslims so uncritically rehash and none pauses for one minute to see the contradiction. This is a lie concocted by Muhammad, who on one hand was the victimizer and on the other hand claimed to be the victim. Not a single person among his one billion followers wonders how one can reconcile the claim of persecution with the ghazwas and the Quranic verses that call for murder of the unbelievers. No wonder Muslims on one hand praise Osama Bin Laden and the terrorists and on the other hand they deny that Islam has anything to do with terrorism and point fingers at the CIA and the Zionists instead. I am not blaming you Mr. Ghamidi, because I too was caught in this web of lies. I simply did not think about the contradiction. It was much easier not to think and just believe uncritically. You are a smart man. Once you manage to break the shackle of Islam, and see it from outside, you will be able to see countless contradictions and absurdities, far better than I am able to. That is because you are an expert in Islam while I am only a layman.

4- The fourth fallacy is your claim that “clear instructions were given that no non-combatant person should be touched nor the assets not relevant to the battle be destroyed.” Since, virtually all the wars of Muhammad were raids and his victims were unprepared and unarmed, they cannot be considered as combatants. Muhammad’s raids were cowardly acts of terrorism launched on unwary citizens. He himself bragged that he owed his victories to terror.

5- The fifth fallacy is about not destroying the assets of his victims. The hadith and Sira clearly mention even to the head count, the amount of cattle and herd that Muhammad looted in each raid. Also it is recorded that he cut and burned the palm trees of the Banu Nadir and Ta’if when he laid siege on them. In the Qur’an he made his sock puppet Allah to approve those crimes.

As we have seen above, apart from fighting the battles imposed upon them, the prophet and the Muslims had another law to follow: Muhammad, God’s mercy be on him, was a messenger (rasul) of God. The law of the Almighty concerning his chosen messengers has always been that He never allowed their immediate addressees the privilege of living beyond a certain limit of time in case they went on rejecting their messages. It was on the basis of this law that the people who received the message from Noah and refused to accept it were ultimately drowned. Likewise, thousands of people were killed during the time of Moses for committing polytheism while he was around. Similarly, in the case of the last prophet, after the true message from God was made manifest to his immediate addressees they were, according to the same divine law, condemned to be killed on the expiry of a specified deadline.

The stories of Pentateuch and Joshua are fables. The Deuteronomy that is allegedly one of the books of Moses, contains his obituary stating that Moses was a great man whose tomb is lost and no one knows where he is buried and that since him no other prophet as great as him has risen among the Israelites. Now how can one write something like this about himself? The Old Testament is a book written by a few rabbis around 700 BC, when the Jews were in captivity. It is hot air and bravado of a vanquished people who were oppressed and made up these stories about how they were once powerfully chastising others. None of that is true. Please read the book Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard E. Friedman. Muhammad’s crimes are real. They actually happened. And you want to justify real crimes with fairytales? Assuming the stories of the Bible about the genocides of Moses are true, you can’t justify one wrong with another. We must denounce both of them.

Viewed from this context provided by the Qur’an, which, I insist, is the only valid context for any serious student of Islam, what was done by the prophet and his companions was not a criminal act of killing, it was the Godly act of removing people from the scene according to His rules. Do you want to blame God for killing people?

First of all you have not given a single proof to the claim that Muhammad was the prophet of God. So the question is moot! It is like I ask you “Do you deny the money I gave you?” when in fact I gave you no money. Secondly, even if he did these things as instructed by Allah, which is enough to conclude that Allah is evil and he can’t be the almighty compassionate creator of the world, it defies his wisdom to create humans knowing that they would become unbelievers to then punish them in such a savage way. Only Satan can be so careless about destroying what God has created.

To sum it up, since I am convinced through my rational reading that the Qur’an is the word of God and that Muhammad is His messenger, what the Qur’an says is what God wills. If you disagree with what the Qur’an says, limit yourself to sorting that problem out rationally. The prophet only implemented God’s will. The reports of how he did his job have reached us through less-than-fully-reliable human sources of history. Those reports too, therefore, should be read through the scrutiny of the Qura’nic message, which is the only fully authentic divine text under the sky.

You are convinced through your rational reading? If so share those rational proofs with us too. We can’t wait to see them.

I hope that given the above-stated explanation, I don’t need to go into details to explain why the prophet married several ladies. The answer is that he was, like some of the earlier prophets were, allowed to do so by God. The reason is that the messengers of God needed to have special privileges to have families for them to be able to accomplish the task of effectively establishing the dominance of the message they were sent by God with. In order to enable the prophet to provide comfort to the families and tribes who lost their dear ones on account of the implementation of the law explained above, the prophet was given the privilege of resorting to polygamy.

First you say you don’t have to justify anything that Muhammad did and have decided to believe in him no matter what, uncritically. This is the truth and this is the cause of the downfall of Muslims. It’s called blind faith. Then you go on to give your justification as to why he had so many women. Do you really buy your own reasoning? Did Muhammad have to have sex with a score of young girls to accomplish his task as a messenger of God? Did Jesus fail fulfilling that task by being celibate? Why did Muhammad have to have sex with these women and how by having sex with them he was providing comfort for families? Which families were comforted through Muhammad’s copulations? The families of most of these girls, who were the shares of Muhammad from the booty, were massacred. So explain please about this “comfort” because you have left me dumbfounded. This logic beats me.

Who said messengers of God need to have privileges? If so, what sets them apart from charlatans and conmen like James Jones, Shoko Asahara and David Koresh? Shouldn’t a prophet of God act with self restraint and dignity to set a good example? What example did Muhammad set? Isn’t he the reason why Muslims are so barbarous, backward and uncivilized? They all try to emulate their prophet and demand special privileges wherever they live.

There is a hadith that says when Muhammad raided the town of Bani Jaun , he entered in a house and Jauniyya, a young girl from Jaun, accompanied by her wet nurse was brought to him. The Prophet said to her “Give me yourself as a gift.” The girl responded “Can a princess give herself to an ordinary man?” Muhammad raised his hand to strike her, when she exclaimed, “I seek refuge with Allâh from you,” and he stopped.[20] Was this also ordered by God?

Again, someone who doesn’t believe in the Qur’an should try to concentrate on the basic question of why he doesn’t believe in it. I insist that the process demanded for believing in it is a completely rational process. However, without accepting the book as God’s, if somebody criticizes others for leading a life in accordance with it, he is like the person who claims that all people who get married in the church are fornicating because he doesn’t believe that the church has the authority to allow people to have a physical relationship with anyone else.

Actually one should not wonder why he does not believe in any book. You should rather ask yourself why you choose to believe in a certain book. If the belief in the Qur’an is rational, then share that with us in a rational way. So far we have not heard anything rational. When Dr. Zaheer claimed that his reversion to Islam was rational and explained the details, it was clear that it was anything but rational.

I would like to reemphasize that the act of killing humans is not allowed under any circumstances save the ones the Almighty has spelt out. After the messenger of God has completed his mission and left this world, no one else has a right to kill a fellow human except for the two reasons (i.e. killing and creating disorder) mentioned in the beginning of this message. For those reasons too, only a formal state has the right to take action. If Muslims are killing fellow humans today in the name of religion it is, according to their own book, as if they are killing the entire humanity. The solution to the problem is to inform Muslims about the correct understanding of Islam. The solution is not to condemn Islam to extinction. While the former solution is difficult but achievable, the latter is impossible and disastrous.

Muslims kill today for the same reasons you say they should. They think anyone resisting Islam is opposing it and anyone who opposes Islam is creating disorder. Therefore his blood is halal. Muslims correctly understand Islam. Assuming others don’t, obviously you believe that you do. The way you described Islam for us is sheer evil. Islam is correctly understood and that is why the Muslim world is in shambles and there is so much killing going on. The solution is in abolishing Islam.

In FFI we are trying to understand Islam correctly. We have an open forum where everyone can post and express his or her point of view freely. Truth can manifest only when opposing ideas collide. For the first time in history, we are analyzing Islam critically without the fear of being killed. For the first time truth and falsehood are placed next to each other for the world to see. Up until now, falsehood in Islamic countries had succeeded because truth had been censored and those who spoke it were put to death. Falsehood needs censorship, truth doesn’t. We must know the truth for only truth will set us free.

However, reform is only a chimera. Islam cannot be reformed. Take a look at what you wrote. Are you a reformed Muslim? Is this the kind of reform you are talking about? I am afraid it is not good enough. You are saying anyone who criticizes Islam must be put to death, anyone who is an idolater must be put to death, and the people of Book must become dhimmis and pay the religious tax. If your reform includes censorship of thoughts and killing the apostates, that is not reform. When you censor thoughts, you are invariably helping lies. Truth does not need the heavy hand of censorship to prevail. It actually needs freedom of thought to prevail. It’s only lies that need protection through censorship of opposing thoughts. Muslims don’t need reform. It is Islam that has to be reformed and that requires throwing out most of the Qur’an.

You described Islam very well and what you described is evil. This debate is a clear proof that Islam cannot be reformed; however, it can be eradicated. We cannot tell Muslims that ‘Muhammad was a messenger of God but please do not follow him because then you would be acting like a criminal.’ We can however show them that this man was a charlatan psychopath and that it is not befitting for rational and decent people to believe in a fiend like him. The eradication of Islam is within our reach and with the truth out, it is going to be inevitable.

Why do you think it would be disastrous to get rid of a lie? The disaster is in believing a lie. Islam is the disease of the mind and the society. Would it be disastrous to get rid of a disease? Please tell us what disaster will take place if everyone realizes that Muhammad was a conman and decides to throw the Qur’an, this book of asininity and violence, into the dustbin? This is absurd. It’s an unfounded fear. It is only the addiction to Islam that makes you think you depend on Islam. You will be far better without this disease and addiction.

Muslims are triumphalists and constantly beat their chests saying, “Islam is the fastest growing religion,” Now, the only way Islam is growing is through procreation. If that is something to be proud of, then rabbits beat Muslims. However, once it becomes clear that many people are actually leaving Islam, their zealotry will die and those Muslims, who are desperate to keep their income, will start talking about reform to keep people from leaving. Killing will have no effect because now, the apostates are in touch with each other and they know they are not alone. They are also smart to know how to stay alive and promote their cause.

So, what would be the result of this massive exodus? The mosques will be empty and under-funded, and the Mullahs will have to find a decent job to make their living and become productive. The madrassas will be closed and the children will go to real schools to learn real knowledge. The youths will not opt to become jihadis and suicide bombers but rather become scientists and entrepreneurs. Half of the Muslim population, the women, which is unproductive today and is kept in ignorance, will be free to enter into the work force and compete with men. The governments, instead of making “Islamic atomic bombs” to wipe Israel off the map or destroy India, will start cooperating with all the countries of the world to improve science and technology, and all this money that now is funding the military will be spent for the well-being of the citizens. All these changes will catapult the ex-Muslim countries into the acme of power and glory. So, what disaster are you talking about? The only people who would face disaster will be the mullahs and those who make a lucrative living by selling the lies of Islam to the foolhardy masses and are hard at work to keep them in the dark. Everyone else will benefit.

Many of us who have left Islam are happier. Now we live free without the constant fear of the bogyman Allah and the hatred and distrust of the kafirs. Now we can love all mankind as our brothers and sisters and truly feel we are humans, part of the human race, without the constant paranoia that someone is trying to destroy us. Now, we see no enemy around us. We see all mankind as members of one family and related to each other. The only enemy left is ignorance, which is keeping a big portion of humanity in slavery of mind, and that is what we are fighting to eliminate.

Once the truth about Islam spreads, first the non-Muslim world will start to wake up and then it would be the turn of Muslims to see the light and come to their senses. Once the elite start seeing the light and start leaving Islam, the masses will soon follow. The elite are already leaving Islam. Soon we will have millions of Wafa Sultans, Nonie Darwishs, Walid Shoebats, Ibn Warraqs, Ayaan Hirsi Alis, openly condemning Islam. These are the lights of mankind and particularly the Muslim world. On the heroic efforts of these enlightened souls rests the peace of the world and the unity of mankind. Kudos to all the valiant apostates of Islam! They are the lions and the lionesses of the field of understanding. I sincerely hope that you will join them too and lead millions out of the darkness of ignorance. Don’t be a slave of a psychopath charlatan. Muhammad lied. He can only lead you to hell. Join the army of light, lead it to more victories, hoist the standard of freedom, become a torch of guidance, make history and become part of the history. This is the century that will be recorded in history as the century of freedom from ignorance, the century of unity of mankind. Make sure that your name is written in gold at the very top of this glorious page along with the names I mentioned above.

Finally, I would like to comment on your following statement: “Belief means accepting a postulate without evidence. Once you have evidence, then it is no longer a belief but a fact.” If that is the definition of belief, then Islamic beliefs don’t fall into that category. They fall into the category of facts which cannot be seen but the evidence of their existence is so clear that those who deny them may fall into one of the following two categories: They are either not prepared to accept the reality expressed before them or they have not been properly informed about them. Can a believer in a book which makes the following statements be a blind follower in any matter of his life: “Tell them: ‘Bring forth a book straighter than these two (i.e. Qur’an and Torah), I will be the first to follow it, if you are really truthful in your claim’” (Qur’an; 28:49). “Indeed the worst beasts in the eyes of God are those men who are deaf, dumb, and blind in that they don’t use their intellect.” (Qur’an; 8:22) “Believers, stand firm on the principles of justice, bearing witness to it for God. And let not the enmity of a nation incline you not to be fair. Be fair, that is closest to the God-fearing attitude. Indeed God is aware of all that you do.” (Qur’an; 5:8). Khalid Zaheer

If Islam is fact, as you claim, now is your chance to show us that fact. You may as well forget whatever I wrote, if you please, and just give us one fact that shows without any doubt that Islam is a message from God. We are waiting.

Kind regards

Ali Sina

Part XII

date Jan 30, 2007

Dear Readers: I and Mr Ali Sina have agreed on a few things. We’ve agreed that unlike what was happening before, each message from our side is going to be posted in an unbroken form immediately after it has been received, even if the next response is posted within a p of a few hours of that posting. I believe that it is unfair that a message should be broken by a participant into different passages with each passage being followed by the other participant’s rebuttal. However, I take Mr Ali’s words that he didn’t do it with the purpose of distorting the quality of my messages in the eyes of the readers. I am accepting his explanation because my religion demands that I do so. Each message from now on is going to talk about one subject only. It’s not going to be of more than one thousand words. A deviation of two hundred words would be tolerated although not appreciated. Each message will have to appear within a week of the message received from the other participant in the debate. I requested but Mr. Ali didn’t agree that Mr Ghamidi’s name be removed from the list of participants in the debate. I have agreed to his suggestion but would want to clarify that the quickness of responses demanded by the new rules would sometimes mean that I will be posting my replies without consulting him. I hope that by following these rules, our discussion is going to be more fair and useful. I am starting this new series of exchanges with clarification of a simple point. Mr Ali has asked me to start this series by mentioning any one miracle of the Qur’an. The following is my response to his demand. Those who demand that a miracle be shown to them if they were to take the Qur’an seriously are repeating the demands of the disbelievers at the time when the Qur’an was being revealed. The Qur’an insisted then, and therefore it does even now, that those who will believe in the book of God are the ones who have cared to preserve their God-given nature and who use their intellect properly. The book clarifies that no amount of miracles would ever convince a person to believe who is otherwise not inclined, because he doesn’t deserve, to believe. As for those who deserve to believe, they don’t need any miracles. Their purity of nature and clarity of thinking would lead them to believe. The phenomenon of acquiring belief should not be confused with blind-following of a creed by a population which teaches it to its new generation and the process goes on apparently mindlessly. According to the Qur’an, you move from the darkness of unfaith to the light of faith gradually. Although the journey of faith involves intellectual reasoning, it is a primarily a test of character. You need to keep reflecting, reading, enquiring, and forming opinions in response to a claim that a certain message is from God. During this process, you are confronted with questions for which you seek answers. To me, a debate like ours is a part of the process of strengthening of belief. We hear the other side, consider honestly whether they are making a decent point, look at how Islam is responding to the questions raised etc. In the process, at times faith progresses, at times it stays stationary, and at times it weakens. Questions gather in mind and we continue to grapple with them. In other words belief -– the confidence that there is a God, that He has sent His messengers, and that He will cause the Day of Judgment to occur – is not a state of mind that is either inherited or is caused to happen overnight. It is a hard-earned feeling which continues to alter in its strength exactly in accordance with the quality of an individual’s performance, both moral and intellectual. Faith progresses when we perform well in the moral domain of our life. When we speak the truth, help others in their needs, struggle to uphold all the good things in life, including the laws given to us by the Almighty, and do all this to please God and earn a reward in the Hereafter, we are progressing in faith. Had there been a magical wand that would have caused people to see that what was being claimed to be from God was right, it wouldn’t have been a test of anything but eyesight. Acquiring faith, on the contrary, is a test of real character. You have to listen to everyone carefully; you need to sift what is correct from what is not; you have to remain focused on knowing the truth; you cannot afford to be emotional and biased; and you cannot reject a person who claims to be from God simply because you have been condemning him in public with filthiest of words at your disposal. In other words you simply cannot be dishonest in forming opinions and pursuing the truth. How can an extraordinary physical phenomenon ever help in this process? A final word: When a messenger of God is delivering His message to the people directly, the likelihood that the message is going to be genuinely misunderstood is minimal. When the same message is delivered by people other than the messengers, especially in the later times, like Muslims are doing now, the possibility that many non-Muslims are genuinely disinclined to believe that it is from God is higher. How is God going to deal with such individuals? The Qur’an is absolutely clear that the fate of every individual is going to be decided on the basis of pure merit: Those who delivered the message are going to be questioned on the manner they did it, and those who received it are going to be held accountable on the manner they responded to it. God, the Knower of everything, would then decide about everyone on the basis of pure merit. Khalid Zaheer (Words: Excluding this explanation, 1000)

Dr. Zaheer and I had this discussion in private. He suggested putting a limit to the length of the responses. I said that even though space and time are important in a face to face debate, in a written debate we have the luxury to explain our views in detail, and that the quality of our debate should not be compromised by the length of the responses. Sometimes one paragraph may contain several fallacies that each require several paragraphs to respond to. If the respondent is restricted giving all the evidence, it would appear that he has not enough evidence. This would give a false victory to the one who makes the false claims, not because of the strength of his argument but because of technicalities. I don’t think we want to mislead our readers and win the argument through technicalities. We are discussing the truth or falsehood of Islam and not our abilities as debaters. Each side should have ample opportunity to explain his point of view exhaustively. Also, I suggested that Dr. Zaheer continue consulting Mr. Ghamidi. He is a scholar of world repute and his insight will help all of us understand Islam better. Mr. Ghamidi has earned his respect not just by me but by all of our readers and we all want to benefit from his erudition.

Furthermore, it seems to me that Dr. Zaheer is under the impression that by presenting the debate in a different format, the readers will come to a different conclusion. I sincerely doubt that but as I promised to him, I will publish his articles first in their entirety and then respond to them section by section, even if this means publishing them twice. I do this in all my debates and urge my opponents to do the same. I do not want to leave anything out. In this way, all the points raised are answered and nothing is left out. As the readers can see a lot of my questions have been left unanswered.

As for miracles, this is the claim made in the Qur’an and by Dr. Zaheer. I am asking him to show us that “brilliant” and “out of this world” evidence that he claims to have found is in the Qur’an. Mr. Ghamidi repeated several times that Muhammad made “itmam al Hujjat” I want that hujjat. You can’t claim that the Qur’an is miraculous and out of this world and then when asked for evidence back off and say that there are no miracles and if you ask for miracles then you don’t deserve to believe.

Is there any miracle in the Qur’an? If there is, please produce it. If there is none then stop making that claim. Saying you have to have a pure heart to understand is not a good answer. Who are you to judge the purity of my heart? I do have a pure heart and I have demonstrated it. My heart aches when I see that a woman is stoned to death, a Jew is mistreated, innocent people are blown apart by Muslim suicide bombers, and women are subjugated and beaten. It was my purity of heart that made me see Islam is evil. But if by purity of heart you mean credulity and willingness to close my eyes to the evil and absurdity, then I think we have different understandings of this term.

Yes. I am repeating the demand of the disbelievers of the time of Muhammad. I never said I have found something new. These questions are old, as old as Islam. However they have never been answered. Those who asked these questions were silenced with brute force. Now is the time to answer them. Are you able to do that? We are listening. It is you who said the Qur’an is out of this world, miraculous and brilliant. Now show us what you claim. You say the journey of faith requires intellectual reasoning. Please share that reasoning with us. That is all we are asking. If you had said that your faith is blind, then we had nothing to disagree. However, when you say your faith is logical then you must be able to prove it. If Islam is the only true religion then it must have proof. Otherwise anyone can, and in fact does, make that claim.

You need to keep reflecting, reading, enquiring, and forming opinions in response to a claim that a certain message is from God.

That is what I did my respected friend, and that is how I found the Qur’an is full of nonsense and I am sharing my findings with my readers. I showed you four of them so far and I can show hundreds. You on the other hand claim to have found something out of this world in this book. Please tell us about it. If what you found is objective, you can share it logically. If you can’t, then it is not objective. You chose to believe in the same way people of all faiths and creeds choose to believe in their religions. You and I know that most of those beliefs are false. So tell us what sets Islam apart from the rest. I see Islam is as illogical as other faiths with the difference that Muslims are militant and want to impose their illogical faith on others with violence. I have no problem with illogical beliefs. But I have a problem when people want to shove their illogical faiths on me.

In your last response you emphatically stated that Islam is not faith but fact. Here you are saying that the belief in God is “a hard-earned feeling.” These are two contradictory statements. Facts have nothing to do with feelings. My feelings tell me that the Earth is stationary and the Sun is revolving around it. All my senses confirm this. But this is not the fact. My senses are deceiving me. It would be foolhardy to rely on my senses and my feelings to find the truth. Only logic is the measure of the truth. You say Islam is the only logical faith. Great! Please share that logic with us.

Faith progresses when we perform well in the moral domain of our life. When we speak the truth, help others in their needs, struggle to uphold all the good things in life, including the laws given to us by the Almighty, and do all this to please God and earn a reward in the Hereafter, we are progressing in faith.

You are not answering the question. Are you insinuating that those who are not Muslims do not perform well in the moral domain or do not help people in need? During the earthquake in Pakistan and the Tsunami, it was the non‑Muslim nations who helped most. The Muslim countries’ help was shamefully dismal. Statistics show (and if you disagree, I can take the time to bring the evidence) that the non-Muslim countries are far more humanitarian that Muslim countries. When in Bam an earthquake killed over 50,000 inhabitants, Israel immediately offered to help and to rescue people trapped under the rubbles. The Mullahs turned that offer down and let people die an agonizing death. Have you apologized for what your country did to the Bangladeshis in 1971? Please do not lecture about “moral domain” to us. What moral domain do Muslims have? None! Do Muslims help anyone who is not a Muslim? Muslims’ charities are earmarked to promote Islam and not to improve the lives of people. There is always a string attached to every help Muslims give to others. If they help the poor, it is to enlist their youth in Jihad.

Had there been a magical wand that would have caused people to see that what was being claimed to be from God was right, it wouldn’t have been a test of anything but eyesight.

My esteemed professor: I am not asking you for a magic wand. You said your belief is all logical. I said, fine, please tell us about it. What is it that Allah wants to test us for? Does he want us to be stupid? Does he reward stupidity and punish intelligence? You said Islam is fact. I ask you to show us that fact. If you can’t then at least please withdraw that claim and be honest about it.

I am not asking you for an extraordinary physical phenomenon. The Meccans asked this and Muhammad said categorically that he can’t perform any miracles, even though he admitted that other prophets prior to him did perform such miracles. He claimed that his miracle is the Qur’an. I read that book and saw no miracle in it but absurdity and violence. You say you converted to Islam because you saw something out of this world in it. So obviously you saw the miracle. If what you found is logical and objective you should have no problem sharing it with us. Let us say I don’t have a pure heart, as you claim. Thousands of others are reading our debate and for sure many of them must have pure hearts. So tell it for them. If my heart is sealed, theirs is not. They will benefit from your insight and their faith will strengthen.

A final word: When a messenger of God is delivering His message to the people directly, the likelihood that the message is going to be genuinely misunderstood is minimal. When the same message is delivered by people other than the messengers, especially in the later times, like Muslims are doing now, the possibility that many non-Muslims are genuinely disinclined to believe that it is from God is higher.

Is that logical? We can read about the claims of Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, etc and they make as much, or perhaps even more, sense today than when they first postulated them. How is it that the truth of Islam fades with time? Isn’t truth eternal? If Islam is eternal truth, it should make sense all the time to everyone. Only then could God punish those who disbelieve. Since according to your own confession the proof of Islam has evaporated with time, God has no moral ground to punish anyone for disbelieving in something that cannot be proven and sounds illogical. Just because a bunch of illiterate bandits in the 7^th-century Arabia found Islam true, is not good enough for us to accept it.

Conclusion: I asked you four questions. You responded to three of them and your responses were inadequate. You did not respond to the fourth question. Finally you said that since you have seen something out of this world in the Qur’an, you have accepted that book as the book of God and you have closed your eyes to all its errors and violence. That logic is beyond my comprehension but I agreed with it for the sake of argument. So we decided to change strategy. This time I asked you to show us that undeniable evidence you talk about. Now you don’t seem to have any and say I do not deserve believing. Is this response logical or is it ad hominen? Assuming I am not worth believing, what about our readers? Don’t you think among them there must be someone with a pure heart who desperately needs some evidence to believer?

Where shall we go from here? You can’t disprove my accusations that the Quran is full of errors and you can’t give a single argument to support your claim that this book is out of this world. What shall we talk about now?

PS. I have exceeded the limit of 1000 words that you imposed on me. Do I lose now? Does this mean that Islam is true?

Part XIII

The message of Dr. Zaheer was published in its entirety in the site. Here is that message and my response to it point by point.

February 6, 2007

Dear Mr Ali Sina The good thing about the new scheme of our debate is that I, despite being otherwise very slow in responding, have been able to write a message within a week’s deadline available to me according to the new rules.

Dear Dr. Zaheer,

I don’t think we both agreed on those new rules that you suggested. As far as I am concerned you can respond anytime you like and your response can be as long as you wish. We are discussing the truth or falsehood of Islam, a religion that is believed by over a billion people and is responsible for their miseries and the suffering of the rest of mankind. This belief is threatening the peace of the world and could cause a major holocaust in which millions, if not billions, could perish. Should we sacrifice the truth with deadlines and by not exposing the whole truth because of the restriction on the number of words we are allowed to use? Who will benefit from this? Let the truth be said, Dr. Zaheer. If that is what you and I care about, we must not restrict ourselves with these rules.

I must say however, that I am both amazed and slightly disappointed at your quick, almost immediate responses to my messages. The problem with your swiftness in responding is that it doesn’t allow you any time to digest my point of view. Even if I was to take your word that my view is completely unworthy of your consideration, you still need to spend some time thinking about it. My immediate response to what you write normally is that most of your stuff is either based on such misunderstanding that emerges from incorrect information or you are so exceedingly enraged at Muslims, in some cases for good reasons, that your emotions have the better of your intellect when you are reading my stuff and when responding to it. However, my problem (well, privilege) is that I am bound by the Qur’an, God’s word, to listen to (and read) carefully and then to follow what is good in it. “Good believers are those who listen carefully to what is said and follow what is good in it.” (39:18) “(The servants of the Compassionate God) are the people who when they are reminded through the verses of their Lord, they don’t pounce upon them deaf and blind.” (25:73)

Dear Dr. Zaheer: Your views, just like your good self, are very worthy. However, you must realize that I have had thousands of exchanges with Muslims and believe me, there is nothing they say that is new to me. The reason I do not have to think about what Muslims write is because I have heard them thousands of times and I have answered them all already. They all use the same fallacies. These were the same mental blocks that I myself had. You do not say anything that I myself did not say during my days of faithfulness and oblivion. I already did my thinking over what you say a decade ago. Also I respond as I read. This saves me time.

Your habit of cutting into pieces my answers is problematic. You seem to believe that a building, for instance, is nothing but the total of all the raw material that it comprises of. I believe the total of all these parts in one structure is much more than its parts broken into pieces. You simply cannot compare the two. I would therefore, request you that you trust the memory of your readers and discontinue with the approach of cutting and answering. Let the readers have a full picture of what you and I say separately and then decide.

Well, this time I published your entire message first and a day later I am responding to it piece by piece. Do you think in this way you have scored more points and people are going to think you are right? I doubt it. You can present the truth in any shape or form, it will shine always. Let me quote one friend’s comment on what you wrote in the site, since I know you can’t access the site:

“It is the practice in the academic world to dissect and put grouped sentences under microscope. This is to bring greater objectivity in the issues debated. I don’t see how cutting into pieces changes the meaning, unless along the way Ali Sina deceitfully deleted some passages to his advantage. According to my knowledge after following the debate, Dr. Zaheer has not once complained about such an academic crime. That leads me to believe that Ali Sina has published everything in full. Besides, I don’t see how Dr. Zaheer’s response could mean differently if cut into pieces. I think Dr. Zaheer should at least give us an example to prove his point. He owes this to the readers. Or else, this is such a lame excuse.”

You have talked about the fact in one of your earlier messages that Muhammad and Jesus, may God shower His mercy on both of them, couldn’t have come from the same God. I am giving a brief test for the readers to decide which of the following passages has come in your opinion through Jesus and which one from Muhammad. Take the first one: “Don’t think that I have come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” Now take the other one: “Listen, good behaviour can’t be the same as the bad one. So repel (bad behaviour) with an attitude that is good, and what you will find is that, as a result, the one with whom you had enmity has become your bosom friend. And this (behaviour) can’t emerge from anyone except those who are patient; and this (behaviour) can’t emerge from anyone except those who are most fortunate. And if Satan whispers in your heart (something to dissuade from it) then seek refuge in God; indeed He is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.” It may come as a surprise to some you that the first passage is from the Bible (Gospel of Matthew; 10:34) and next one is from the Qur’an (41:34-36).

I think you are misunderstanding what Jesus said. In Matthew 10:34 Jesus is not advocating violence and war. He is saying that because of their beliefs, the Christians will have their families rise against them and even slay them. In no place in the New Testament do you find Jesus advocating violence and hate. Remember that he preached turn the other cheek, forgive the sins of others so thine own sins can be forgiven and let the one who has not committed sin throw the first stone. Advocating hate and violence is not consistent with the whole message of Jesus. On the other hand the Qur’an is full of violence. The message of Muhammad does not become a message of peace and love if he plagiarized a few good words to fool the foolhardy. You can quote any criminal saying wonderful words. This does not transform that criminal into a saint.

Of course, you can claim that there are many verses in the Qur’an which talk about the fact that Muslims should fight the disbelievers and kill them. It was to help you understand the true meanings of such verses that I sent you the proper context of them through the meanings clarified of them by Mr Ghamidi. It would indeed be a gross misrepresentation of the constitution of a country if a person starts propagating that it promotes the killing of people even though the only mention of killing in the constitution is where the punishment of a murderer has been written.

It seems to me that perhaps because of the length of my responses, you did not read what I wrote in response to this point. You accuse me of not mulling enough over your responses when I actually know the answer by heart because I heard these same fallacies a thousand times, and yet you do not even read what I write. Let me repeat what I said before.

We are not talking about the killing of murderers but about the killing of those who disagree with Islam. In no civilized society are people put to death for merely disagreeing with the government or with the constitution. People who disagree with the ruling party form their own opposition parties and, with immunity and under the protection of the law, try to topple the government through the legal means provided to them. Anyone can criticize the constitution and even advocate for changing it and or amending it. The objectors of conscience are not put to death. In Islam the apostates and those who criticize Islam are put to death. By comparing apples to oranges you are engaging in a logical fallacy.

If I reduce the size of my responses, will you promise to read them from now on? What is the point of writing if you don’t read what I write and repeat the same thing again?

The possibility of killings mentioned in the Qur’an are either meant for those who were guilty of murder, or causing mischief on earth, or those who were declared unworthy of living in this world anymore after they had denied the clearly communicated and understood message from God. The same punishment was meted out through the great flood to the people who denied Noah. The only difference was that whereas in the case of Noah it came in the form of natural calamity, in the case of Muhammad and his followers it came through the swords of his companions. Had Jesus survived in the company of a large group of followers, his disbelievers would have met with the same fate. In his case however, the punishment took the form of subjugation of Jews, his rejecters, to the Christians, his believers, for all times to come. In fact, the same law applied in the case of Moses as well. And why should it not apply to all of them? After all, they all come from the same God.

Killing those who commit murder is another topic that does not concern our discussion. Here we are talking about the other two categories of people that according to Islam must be killed – those who cause “mischief” and those who are “unworthy of living in this world anymore after they had denied the clearly communicated and understood message of God.”

I already explained that the world fitnah is translated as mischief, opposition and even persecution. What constitutes “mischief?” Anyone who opposes Islam or criticizes it is deemed to be causing mischief. The other category is people who decide to exercise their freedom of conscience and not believe in Islam.

This is evil. That is why we want to expose and eradicate this evil cult. Humanity has fought for its freedom of thought and we must not give in to a barbaric cult that wants to take our hard earned freedom from us.

However, the question that I kept asking and you failed to answer is: Where is that clear proof you are talking about? I asked you many times to give me one logical proof that Islam is from God. You talked about everything under the Sun but did not answer this question. In your last message all you have done is say how bad my debating habits are but avoided the question that I asked you.

Where is the proof that Islam is from God? This is a simple question. Why is the answer to it so hard? Isn’t it because the more you think about it the more you realize that there is no evidence? Up until today, you had not paused to think about this. You are not alone. A billion Muslims, including yours truly had not thought about it. Now you can see for yourself that there is no proof. Muslims believe in Islam merely out of blind faith and because of conditioning. They are not allowed to question it. They simply are forced and brainwashed to believe it. Do you know that the people of North Korea worship Kim Jong-il? Do you think that that monster is worthy of worship? This is called brainwashing. Stalin did the same. When you disallow any criticism and force your only version under the threat of death, you brainwash people. That is what Islam does. If Muslims were left to investigate the truth and compare, only the brain dead and the criminals would have been interested in Islam. In America it is mostly the jail inmates who find Islam attractive. There are also good people who are deceived. Most of them leave this cult when they learn the truth and then they join us and become staunch critics of Islam. I hope that now you can see that you have been brainwashed too. All along you believed that there is undeniable proof in Islam. You were so convinced that you accepted this challenge to debate with me, and when you failed to answer my questions about the evilness and absurdity of the Quran, you said, all I have to do is see the evidence that you saw in the Quran and then I will forget about all the rest. So I asked you for that evidence and suddenly you can’t find it. Shouldn’t you leave Islam now? You and Mr. Ghamidi are good men. You don’t belong to this evil cult. Islam is made by Satan to make people hate one another and kill each other. God would never order what Muhammad asked his foolhardy followers to do. He would never have allowed his messenger to behave so despicably the way Muhammad has behaved.

You have mentioned that you were able to point out many fallacies in the Qur’an which I couldn’t respond to properly. I frankly don’t remember any. You raised a naïve criticism on the use of different pronouns in the Qur’an for God, and I had to tell you that there was something lacking in your understanding of how pronouns are used in the classical literature. You pointed out that the concept of intercession in the Qur’an negates the knowledge and mercy of God. I had to help you understand that it wasn’t a negation of any of His attributes. It was only a case of God’s mercy reaching some less-deserving people in a different way.

The questions that I asked were not naïve and your responses were not logical. They were based on faith. People with faith accept anything. The contradiction on intercession is obvious, just as the contradiction in the question number 4, about what happens after we die is obvious. Do we go straight to hell or heaven or do we disappear into nothingness to rise on the Day of Judgment? Despite repeating this question several times, so far you have not even acknowledged it. Why? If you had a good response you would have answered it when asked the first time. That is why I prefer to respond to each argument that my opponent raises point by point. I wish you did the same. I am afraid you did not make me understand. I doubt you yourself are satisfied with your answer. The errors in the Quran are obvious, except to the believer. Then again, the believers are blind. How can they see those errors?

You mentioned that the beginning letters of many Qur’anic surahs didn’t make any sense. I will give you an example to tell you why in this case too your objection is wrong. There is a Qur’anic surah (chapter 68) that begins with an Arabic letter ‘Nun’. The same letter is also an Arabic word which means fish. The brief surah mentions prophet Jonah who was swallowed by a fish. Doesn’t it make sense that a chapter begins by a symbolic mention of something that is later discussed in its contents?

You did not read my previous responses. I don’t think I have to repeat. I made my point very clear.

I don’t have a great deal of difference of opinion with you on the fact that the present-day Muslims are performing poorly. However, the attitude of Muslims has nothing to do with Islam. A vast majority of Muslims never entered their faith through a process of proper investigation. They are free, like all other humans, to behave the way they want to. They have no special privilege in the eyes of God on being born Muslims. If they will perform well, they will get rewarded; if they will not, God will not spare them simply because they were Muslims. The Qur’an says: “It is neither (O Muslims) your wishful thinking (which is going to matter) nor the wishful thinking of the people of the book (i.e. Jews and Christians); whoever does anything wrong, he will get punished for it, and he will not find besides Allah a protector or a helper.” (Qur’an; 4:123) Khalid Zaheer (Words: 1198)

Muslims are performing poorly is an understatement. They are acting barbarously. They are acting like savages and yes Islam has everything to do with it. You yourself say that those who do not believe in Islam after being given the clear proof should be put to death. Apart from the fact that despite my repeated requests you have not yet shown us the proof, you know that you can’t because there isn’t any, how can any civilized person say those who do not accept my version of the truth should be put to death? You are not born evil and are not a bad person naturally but what you have embraced and now defend is evil. Is it civility to kill someone just because he does not find any truth in the unproven and unsubstantiated faith that you have espoused? Isn’t this the reason Muslims are constantly in war with each other, blaming one another as heretics?

You blame other Muslims. Forget about them. What about yourself? What is the difference between you and Osama Bin Laden? Please explain this to me because I see none. Both of you want to kill those who disagree with Islam, both of you want to spill the blood of those who decide to use their brains and leave Islam. And you criticize and look down at other Muslims? You are mistaken my respected friend, you became evil the moment you embraced Islam.

The tragedy is that you don’t know even what evil is anymore. Killing people for what they say or believe is evil. We are not talking about killing the murderers. I did not shed a tear when Saddam was hanged. But how can we call ourselves civilized and endorse or promote a doctrine that teaches killing those who do not agree with it?

If this is the standard then I have more rights to kill the Muslims. You have failed to give a single proof about the clarity of Islam, when I have given hundreds of undisputed proofs that Islam is false. The very fact that I allow all Muslims to publish their rants in our site and never censor them, even when they insult me, is proof that I am not afraid of what they say. On the other hand you banned faithfreedom.org in Pakistan. If what you say is true, then why not let everyone see this truth? Why don’t you publish our debate in your site so everyone can see how you established the superiority of Islam? We both know that you know that Islam is defeated.

Everyone thinks he has the truth. This is the fact of life. If we thought our beliefs are false would we hold unto them? Does this mean everyone should start killing those who disagree with his version of the truth? What insanity is this?

Muslims are performing poorly? Are you okay yourself? Should everyone become intolerant like you and then the world will become a paradise?

You did not read my long response or you would not say these things. These are embarrassing statements. They are below great scholars such as you two. And you say Islam has nothing to do with the dismal and barbaric way that Muslims think and behave?

Dear Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer. Islam is evil. Anyone who embraces this cult becomes evil. I only know few good humans who called themselves Muslims. One such person was my grandmother. But the fact is that that blessed soul had no idea how evil is Islam. She died blissfully and in ignorance. Had she known what I know, she would not have remained in this cult one single day. Good people cannot tolerate evil. As we Persians say, the proof of a perfume is in its fragrance. I like that better than its English version that says the proof of the pudding is in eating it. You advocate killing people for not agreeing with your faith and you call yourself good? Evil is he who evil does. Let me give you the news. As long as you believe in an evil man and promote his evil cause, you can’t be good. As long as you think people should be put to death for what they believe, you are not good. God does not need murderers and assassins. You are not doing God’s work. You have become agents of Satan doing his work. As long as you remain Muslims, your thoughts are satanic, your deeds are satanic and you do evil because you have embraced an evil cause. Is this really what you want to do?

It’s time to wake up my respected friends. It is time that you come to your senses and realize that this road that you have taken will take you to hell, both in this world and in the next. People are waking up everywhere. Good people are leaving Islam and are joining the human race. We are one people, one family called mankind. It is not befitting for us to divide ourselves between “us” and “them” for a stupid ideology that cannot be proven and then start killing one another. What tragedy is greater than this? What insanity is bigger than this? How much stupidity is enough? How much?

First you said that there are no errors in the Qur’an. I showed you four out of hundreds and you failed to disprove anyone of them and in fact neglected the fourth altogether. Then you deny the obvious and call that “naïve”. Then you said that since you have seen something out of this world in the Qur’an you are willing to close your eyes to all its errors and evilness, which you yourself said you had seen, and accept that book as a divine revelation. So I asked you to tell us about that thing you saw that impressed you to this degree that you are willing to forego your humanity and shed the blood of innocent people for. In these last two responses you talked about everything but what you were supposed to talk about. Mr. Ghamidi repeated several times that Muhammad gave undeniable evidence “itmam al hujjat.” I asked you to show us that hujjat. Will you now talk about that? Are you really able to show us that “out of this world” thing that you say you saw in the Qur’an?

Part XIV

February 19, 2007

February 13, 2007 Dear Mr Ali Sina When I say that many modern-day Muslims are not following Islam, I say so because Islam’s message is extremely tolerant. I’ll give you two examples. At the time of the prophet, Allah’s mercy be on him, there were some hypocrites who would come to his gatherings and would teasingly say ‘ra‘ina’ by twisting their tongue so that instead of its customary meanings (i.e. may I beg your pardon) it should mean “O our shepherd”. The Qur’an asked the believers to abandon that word altogether and use another, synonymous word ‘unzurna’ in case they want to ask the prophet to repeat what he was saying. (2:104) Had the message of Islam been violent, the Qur’an should have asked such people to be taken to task immediately.

Dear scholar friends Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer.

This time I delayed my response because you had complained that I respond too quickly and the readers cannot absorb what you said properly. I am sure this time they have absorbed everything you said fully since your response has been published nearly a week ago.

I must admit that you have a very unorthodox way of defining tolerance. Muhammad could not tolerate anyone criticizing him and ordered the execution of those who, many years earlier, had ridiculed him. He even had zero tolerance for those who wanted to believe in their own faiths and did not want to submit to his unsubstantiated claims. I am at lost trying to understand your definition of tolerance. This story you are telling us is not the sign of Muhammad’s tolerance but an indication of his paranoia and intolerance. Muhammad was a narcissist and as such he was insecure of himself and suspicious of everyone. So he prohibited people saying an Arabic word because he suspected they were saying something different to mock him, and you think just because he had not “taken to task immediately” i.e. did not order their execution, he was a tolerant man? Is this your definition of tolerance? No wonder you call yourself tolerant and moderate when you repeatedly have stated that anyone who does not believe in Islam or anyone who leaves it does not deserver to live in this world. The irony is that Muslims are the most intolerant people on the face of the planet and despite that they think to be tolerant.

My erudite friends, allow me to explain the concept of tolerance as I, and the rest of non-Muslim portion of humanity understand it. Tolerance means you are fair, objective, and permissive toward those whose opinions and religions differ from yours. It means that you treat others with the same respect and consideration that you would like to be treated. How can you be tolerant when you say those who reject Islam do not deserve to live in this world? How would you like to be put to death because of your faith? What would you say to a person who believes you don’t deserve living in this world because your religion is different from his? Would you call such a person tolerant? If not, then you are not tolerant and neither was your prophet.

Likewise, there were others who used to make fun of Islam in their gatherings during the time of the prophet. The Qur’an asked the believers to leave their company when people were ridiculing their religion and to rejoin them when they engaged in some other discussion. (6:68-69; 5:57-58) Again, going by the impression you are creating about Islam, such people should have been asked by the Qur’an to be killed or at least inflicted with exemplary punishment.

Sura 6 is a Meccan Sura. When Muhammad said these things, he was weak and when one is weak one can’t be intolerant. You can be intolerant only when you are strong. When Muhammad went to Medina and became strong he became very intolerant. Sura Al-Maeda is Medinan and there is nothing tolerant in verses 5:57-58 that you quoted. Here Muhammad is saying “take not for friends and protectors those who take your religion for a mockery or sport,- whether among those who received the Scripture before you, or among those who reject Faith”. How do you interpret this as a tolerant teaching? If you find someone urging others NOT to take Muslims as friends and allies because they ridicule Trinity, would you say that this person is a tolerant person?

Muhammad was not tolerant. He remembered those who ridiculed him and years later, when he came back to Mecca he sought them and took his revenge despite having promised that if the Meccans surrender with no fight he would spare their lives.

The Qur’an should be read in its context. The so-called tolerant verses of the Qur’an are all Meccan verses while the Medinan verses are violent and intolerant. The following are examples of the kind of verses that Muhammad wrote in Mecca.

1. Be patient with what they say, and part from them courteously. (Q.73:10)

2. To you be your religion, and to me my religion. (Q. 109:6)

3. Therefore be patient with what they say, and celebrate (constantly) the praises of your Lord. (Q.20:130)

4. Speak good to men. (Q.2:83)

5. We well know what the infidels say: but you are not to compel them. (Q.50:45)

6. Hold to forgiveness; command what is right; But turn away from the ignorant. (Q.7:199)

7. Pardon thou, with a gracious pardoning. (Q.15:85)

8. Tell those who believe, to forgive those who do not look forward to the Days of Allâh. (Q.45:14)

9. Those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians – any who believe in Allâh and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. (Q.2:62)

10. And do not dispute with the followers of the Book except by what is best. (Q.29:46)

Now let us compare them to those written later in Medina when Muhammad became powerful.

1. Oh you who believe! Murder those of the disbelievers and let them find harshness in you. (Q.9:123)

2. I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off. (Q.8:12)

3. Whoso desires another religion than Islam, it shall not be accepted of him. (Q.3:85)

4. Slay the idolaters wherever you find them. (Q.9:5)

5. Kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from wherever they drove you out. (Q.2:191)

6. Fight them on until there is no more dissention and religion becomes that of Allâh. (Q.2:193)

7. Fight them, and Allâh will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame. (Q.9:14)

8. Make no excuses: you have rejected Faith after you had accepted it. If We pardon some of you, We will punish others amongst you, for that they are in sin. (Q.9:66)

9. You who believe! Verily, the Mushrikûn (unbelievers) are Najasun (impure). So let them not come near Al-Masjid-al-Harâm (the grand mosque at Mecca ) after this year. (Q.9:28)

10. Fight those who do not believe in Allâh and the last day… and fight People of the Book, who do not accept the religion of truth (Islam) until they pay tribute by hand, being inferior. (Q.9:29)

There is a big difference between the Meccan and the Medinan verses. We see that Muhammad is transformed from a preacher to a despot and when he had the power, he did not have to play the “nice guy” and started showing his real face unmasked. And it was ugly, very ugly.

As for the battles with non-believers and the later possibility of killings of some people, I have mentioned it several times that such events happened either when battles were forced upon Muslims or when at the culmination of the prophetic mission God inflicted his punishment on the intransigent disbelievers as had always been His way in the case of all earlier messengers like Noah, God’s mercy be on him.

As for your first alibi, at no time had the non-Muslims imposed any war or Muslims. All the wars and hostilities were initiated by Muhammad and his followers just as the Muslims today are the initiators of virtually all hostilities with others.

As for your second alibi, the fables of the Bible are just that – fables. You yourself do not believe in the Bible and at anytime it contradicts your faith you disregard that book, except when you want to justify the evil deeds of your prophet. Furthermore the so-called punishments of God are acts of nature. The biblical prophets had nothing to do with hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, etc. Whether these phenomena are ordered by God intentionally to kill people indiscriminately or not is another story. I already talked about that in my previous responses. Let us assume these natural calamities are sent to men deliberately by a malicious and vengeful god. Okay, we have no control over what this god does. All we can do is get away from the danger and abort his malicious attacks on us. Thanks to the science it is now easier to predict when these calamities are going to hit and seek safety. So as you see, we humans are gradually making this old guy helpless and toothless. Anyway, my problem is when a human assumes the role of God and starts massacring innocent people. This is something we must not tolerate. What right did Muhammad have to do that? Your justification of Muhammad’s killings is no different from that of Hitler who wrote:

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.[21]

(By the way, I don’t believe Hitler was religious. However, he did use religion, especially some old anti-Semitic sermons by a Christian preacher, to rally his more religious followers.) Anyone can claim to be sent by God doing the Lord’s work to justify his crimes with divine authority. Playing God is the wet dream of the narcissist. In Uganda, a mad man, Joseph Kony, calls himself messenger of God. He is the founder of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). He kidnaps children and transforms them into killing machines, much like what Muhammad did. He takes them back to their villages and orders them to kill their parents with a machete, to prove their faith. If they refuse he massacres the entire family. Just like your psychopath prophet this mad man also has divine justification for his crimes. Muhammad, like Kony and Hitler, was sick in the head.

What about you Dr. Zaheer and Mr. Ghamidi? How can you, who are sane and intelligent people, believe in a monster like Muhammad and justify his crimes? If you believe in God aren’t you afraid to stand if front of him one day and respond for your belief in an evil man like Muhammad? How can you cover your shame when your maker asks you, ‘Did you think I am so stupid to send a criminal as a prophet? Didn’t you think that by taking a pervert sadist like Muhammad as my messenger you were committing blasphemy?’ The followers of Kony are children. They are brought up by this monster and murder is the only life they know. They can’t be blamed. What are your excuses? Even though you, like all other Muslims, have been brainwashed since childhood, you are now adults and quite intelligent. You have no excuses for following a psychopath mass murderer.

As to the question why you can’t see the clear communication that took place during the time when the punishments were inflicted, the answer is that you are not living in the times of a messenger. Had you been there at the time of any of the messengers, you would have received the message quite as clearly and would have either believed or perished (or lived a life of subjugation). For all the other times, it’s a matter for the people to decide on the basis of their own understanding and the decision about them would be taken on the Day of judgment by the All-Knowing God whether the message was convincingly communicated to them or not, and if it was, whether their response was acceptable or not.

I already answered this. You don’t seem to read what I write or pay much attention and yet you accuse me of not pondering upon what you say and respond quickly, despite the fact that I respond to every paragraph you write. What you say is not news to me. These were the same fallacies I used to believe for years. I thought a lot about them 13 years ago and now I have the answer. I do not have to solve a problem that is already solved. However, you have no clue about my side of the story and why I say Muhammad was an imposter and instead of reading my arguments and trying to refute them, you simply avoid reading them. As a result you keep repeating the same things in each message.

Even if the prophethood of Muhammad was obvious to those around him, as you say, it is not obvious to us. The truth of his claim is not clear to me and despite asking you several times to give us the evidence that he was a prophet of God, you have not done it yet. You have not done it because you can’t. All you can say is that those who saw him were convinced. How do you know that? Maybe many of them were not convinced but afraid to speak out or leave him. This kind of response does not satisfy me. I dismiss it as fallacy. This fallacy that is so close to Muslims’ hearts and they use it often is called argumentum ad verecundiam. Those who followed Jim Jones also saw the evidence that he was a great Messiah. They were so convinced that when Jones told them to drink poison and die, they did it happily. Also those who believed in David Koresh, Charles Manson or Shoko Asahara were convinced. Like Muslims they went around killing innocent people. Is the strength of faith enough proof of the veracity of their claim? Each person has to see the proof for himself. You claimed that you have such proof and that your reversion to Islam was logical and not emotional. So where is that proof? Now that I am asking you to show that proof, you renege and talk about everything else but the proofs. You trust the intelligence of some Arabs who lived 1400 years ago and think if Islam was good for them, it is good for you too. What about others who did not see such evidence in Muhammad and did not believe in him despite the fact that they knew him since childhood? Why should I believe that Abul Hakam, Abu Lahab, Abu Sufyan and Nadr ibn Harith were less intelligent than the slaves Aba Dar, Bilal, the violent and bigoted Omar and the butcher Ali?

You are engaging in fallacy after fallacy. It is not logical to put your faith on the understanding of a bunch of Arabs of the 7th century who engaged in highway robbery and rape. You must see the proof for yourself. You claimed to have seen it but now you are saying something else and are shying away from giving that proof. If you saw the proof, show it to us.

When Galileo claimed that the Earth is rotating around the Sun, when Darwin presented his theory of evolution, or when Einstein stipulated that 90% of the mass of the universe is made of dark matter, these were theories. But because they were true, the passage of time revealed their truth. This is the characteristic of truth. Truth has a tendency to self-manifest. And you are telling us that the truth of Islam has faded in time? If Islam is true how can such a thing happen? This is not logical. If the perceived evidence of the truth of Islam has disappeared, it is because it was never there. If we adhere to the law of logics, we should only conclude that because truth is emerging, falsehood is vanishing. That is why what the ignorant people of the 7th century Arabia thought to be true, does not appear to us as true. We are more intelligent than those barbarians. Those ignorant people had no problem accepting a God that orders robbery, assassination and rape. Now we know that no real God would send a fiend like Muhammad to guide mankind. That is against intelligence and commonsense. The messenger of God must be flawless. Muhammad was evil in the true sense of the word. I do not believe in Jesus as a divine personage but I can’t denounce him as evil because he was not. That is why Islam seems false to us and it didn’t to those savages. They were barbarians and ignorant and we are intelligent and civilized. Anyway, if the evidence of the truth of Islam has evaporated, as you claim, we can’t be held responsible for rejecting it. God gave us intelligence to use it. Once we use our intelligence we see that Islam is nothing but a satanic cult. A just God would not punish us for rejecting something that is illogical and seems to be evil.

Now, let us be honest Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer. Do you have any proof that Muhammad was a prophet of God or is the proof lost? It’s either one or the other. You made both these contradictory claims, as if you want to have your cake and eat it too. If you have the proof, show it to us without further ado and if the proof is lost then admit that there is no proof and do not make such claims and please admit that your faith is subjective.

Had the divine law of worldly punishment for the disbelievers of the messengers not been implemented at the time of the prophet, it would have meant that He was inconsistent in dealing with the nations who receive the message from His messengers directly. God has always been consistent in treating the enemies of His messengers. It is only He who can decide to take life. He sometimes does it through natural calamities and on other occasions through humans

Which God are you talking about? That is not the God that Jesus or Zoroaster talked about. In fact Allah is completely inconsistent with the God of Christianity. Jesus said turn the other cheek and Allah says “retaliation is prescribed for you in the matter of the slain, the free for the free, and the slave for the slave, and the female for the female.” (Q.2:178) In other words, if someone kills your slave, you are allowed to kill his slave and if someone kills your son or daughter, you can kill his son or daughter. What can be more stupid than this? Even Muslims who blindly follow everything Muhammad said do not practice this insane injunction. When a prostitute was brought to Jesus, he said let the one who has not committed sin throw the first stone while in a similar incident Muhammad urged the Jews who had abandoned the barbaric practice of stoning to stone a woman accused of adultery. Jesus sat with sinners, ate with them and befriended them; Muhammad said the unbelievers are filthy (najes) so Muslims do not associate with them. Jesus said forgive the sins of others so yours can be forgiven in heaven; Muhammad was utterly incapable of forgiving people who had done nothing but mock him. Because Allah is incompatible with the God of Jesus we must not accept him.

Either Muhammad was lying or Jesus was a liar. Their messages are incompatible and their gods are different. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know which one of the two was lying. Muhammad said that Jesus was a messenger of God. If he was not, then Muhammad has said a lie and therefore he can’t be a messenger of God. If Jesus was a messenger of God, Muhammad can’t be because these two men stand on opposite poles. One is the personification of everything that is divine and the other is the representation of everything that is demonic and evil. Furthermore Jesus warned people of false prophets and he even gave a clue to detect them. He said you would recognize them by their fruits. Look at the fruits of Islam. I think it is enough evidence to conclude that Muhammad was a false prophet. The fruits of Islam are ignorance, bigotry, fanaticism, intolerance, violence, misogyny, discrimination, terrorism, dictatorship, wars, poverty and misery.

However, unless we have a direct sanction from God, we humans can’t do it on our own. Since the termination of the process of revelation, nobody has a sanction to kill anyone anymore except if the state awards capital punishment for killing or causing mischief on the land.

The terrorists think they have direct sanction to do what they do and they are right. In no place in the Qur’an does it say Jihad must stop after the death of Muhammad or at any other time. In fact in his death bed Muhammad urged his followers to go to war in Tabuk. Jihad must continue until the entire world becomes Dar al-Islam. However, since Muslims are divided and each group denounces others and calls them heretics, if they conquer the world they will start killing one another on a massive scale. Islam is a cult of terror and murder. Mr. Ghamidi himself has been the target of Islamic assassination and at the same time he prescribes death for unbelievers and apostates. As long as you are a Muslim, and follow a terrorist mad man you do what he did and you can’t be called tolerant. It makes no difference which school of thought or sect one belongs to or how one interprets the Qur’an. All the Muslims believe in the same book of terror and follow the examples set by the same chief terrorist. The difference between the Muslims is in their flavor. In essence they are all made of the same substance and have the same characteristics. You have been honest enough to show us what a moderate Muslim means. If you are the example of a moderate Muslim, then Islam is dangerous and it must be eradicated.

Killing people for what they believe or don’t believe is not something the civilized world can tolerate. You think your understanding of the truth is perfect and so does everyone else. If we each start killing each other because our truths are different, what will become of this world? How can a real God say such a stupid thing? Humans are fallible. People genuinely and with all good intentions make mistakes and interpret things, including books claimed to be words of God, in different ways. If each one of us thinks that he has divine sanction to kill those who disagree with what we think is truth then everyone should start killing everyone else.

Assuming Satan wanted to destroy mankind, what better way could he devise than sending someone as the messenger of God who would tell people to kill those who do not believe?

That brings me to the question of the rewards and punishments immediately after death. You have advertised quite strongly in your website that I am shying away from answering it. I apologize for missing it out completely. The mention of people getting fed after death is of course not in the material sense. The word ‘rizq’ in Arabic is used, as indeed it has been done in the Qur’an, to mean the source that enables you to sustain and grow whether materially, intellectually, or spiritually. Those who are living at the time of messengers have the message communicated to them most clearly and therefore their accountability is already completed in this world. They thus get rewards and punishments for their performance immediately after death. However, such rewards and punishments are given in a non-material form after death and they will take a physical form after the Day of Judgment. For instance, the Qur’an mentions about a believer at the time of Moses, who was threatened by Pharaoh of dire consequences thus: “So God rescued him from their evil designs and Pharaoh and his companions were engulfed by a severe punishment: (It is) the fire they are brought before every morning and evening; and on the day when judgment would take place (it would be said): Enter (O Pharaoh and) his companions an even more severe punishment.” (40:45-46)

After realizing that I am not going to give up, you finally came up with this answer. Is this response supported by any other verse in the Qur’an or any hadith? This is not a minor statement but a major difference between those who lived at the time of Muhammad and the rest of mankind. It basically shows that God has a two tier system, of which we were not aware yet. If this answer is true and as you say, the companions of Muhammad, who had received his direct message, had the added advantage of surviving in the form of spirit while the rest of mankind would disappear to only rise at the Last Day, this would have been trumpeted in various verses and huge discussions would have been dedicated to it. Nothing of that exists in the entire Islamic literature and the Ulama who have even discussed in detail which foot one has to enter the toilet, on which side of the body one has to place most of his weight during defecation and how many rocks one has to use for cleaning purposes after responding to the call of the nature, have been uncharacteristically silent on this very important subject. Can you tell us why? I will tell you why. It’s because such a thing does not exist in Islam. You just made it up. What else could you say in the face of this obvious discrepancy within the Qur’an?

Every Muslim believes that the souls survive death and are alive. At the same time they also believe that the dead will rise at the Day of Judgment. These are contradictory beliefs. Yet Muslims do not seem to have any difficulty believing in both these mutually exclusive beliefs.

According to Islam the archangel Israfil will sound a horn sending out a “blast of truth”. Muslim apologist, John Esposito, in The Oxford Dictionary of Islam says that according to traditions, Muhammad will be the first to be brought back to life.[22]

Will you please explain how the companions of Muhammad can enter in a spiritual state of existence until the Last Day when he himself doesn’t? And if Esposito is wrong, can you show us a few hadiths or Quranic verses to corroborate your claim?

What about the punishment of the grave? How do you explain this?

Ibn Abbas narrated: The Prophet once passed by two graves and said, “These two persons are being tortured not for a major sin (to avoid). One of them never saved himself from being soiled with his urine, while the other used to go about with calumnies (to make enmity between friends).” The Prophet then took a green leaf of a date-palm tree, split it into (pieces) and fixed one on each grave. They said, “O Allah’s Apostle! Why have you done so?” He replied, “I hope that their punishment might be lessened till these (the pieces of the leaf) become dry.”[23]

If there is no consciousness after death until the Last Day, how can corpses in the grave be punished? This hadith is reported in several places. Another version of it says that Muhammad actually heard the voices of two humans who were being tortured in their graves.[24] Shall we believe in the hallucinations of this mad man?

You have mentioned that I am no different from Osama bin Laden. The difference between me and Osama is that while I believe that the message of Islam is extremely tolerant, as demonstrated by the verses referred to above and many more, he has mistaken the passages that were meant for the times of the messengers alone to be applicable to all non-Muslims of the world.

The only difference is the way you interpret the Qur’an. Can you convince bin Laden or any Muslim that your interpretation is the right one and theirs is not? I think bin Laden’s interpretation is the correct one. Furthermore, both of you believe that unbelievers do not deserve to live in this world and that along with the apostates, they should be killed. I honestly do not see much difference between your position and his. All Muslims, irrespective of how they interpret the Qur’an, are victims of a lie. The Qur’an is a very confused book, but not when it comes to killing. The message of hate and violence in the Qur’an is loud and clear.

I believe Osama belongs to the category of people who when they make up their mind about something they are not prepared to change it.

What about you? Are you capable of changing your mind? I believe you are. But you are not showing it in public. Of course you can’t do that and I am not going to press you to do it. I leave that to you and your conscience. Faith blinds, I hope this is not true in your case.

One friend wrote and said he had communicated with you and you were confident that you are winning this debate. In that case may I ask to please publish it in your site so everyone in Pakistan can see how you came out victorious? If you don’t I am afraid that this friend will start thinking that you were bluffing and that you have serious doubts about your self declared victory.

When they engage in a dialogue with others, they are not even listening; instead, they are preparing their rebuttals against it. All such people, whether Muslims or non-Muslims, are condemned by the Qur’an: “You think they are listening to you even though they are not… it is equal whether you invite them or not….” It is this attitude which to me is the most dangerous: Those who pose as if they are engaging in an open dialogue even though they have made a firm commitment that they are not going to accept anything against what they have already decided. I find this attitude more disgusting than anything else. It is this sick mind that is the cause of most woes of our world.

Haven’t you made your mind already? Isn’t this what all believers do? I have made my mind because I have not seen the evidence of the truth of Islam. On the contrary, I have plenty of evidence against it. However, should you give any evidence in support of Islam, I will acknowledge it and agree with you. Will you please give us a proof to back your claim that Islam is true? Until then you can’t pass judgments saying I am not listening or it makes no difference whether you give the proof or not. First you have to present your proof and if I can’t refute it and I still deny it, then you can pass those judgments.

You have accused that the Qur’an has plagiarized the Bible. I am sure you haven’t read the two books carefully or you wouldn’t have made that statement. The Qur’an states some of the things mentioned in the Bible more clearly and more convincingly. It points out the mistakes in the Bible; and it also confirms certain aspects of the Bible as correct and authentic. Moreover, it makes an emphatic claim that the arrival of prophet Muhammad was clearly prophesied in the earlier books.

No, dear Dr. Zaheer! The Qur’an does not mention anything that is in the Bible more clearly. It simply alludes to those stories casually as if realizing that its audience is already familiar with them and therefore there is no need to explain them in detail. If one has not studied the Bible and has never heard of Job, Noah, Abraham or Moses, one cannot understand the Quran. However, sometimes there are discrepancies between the stories of the Bible and the allusions made to them in the Qur’an. This is due to the fact that Muhammad was an illiterate man with little knowledge of the Scriptures. He relied on hearsay to rehash those stories. For example, he thought that Mary the mother of Jesus is part of the Trinity. At no time has this been the case. By witnessing the reverence that the Christians had for Mary, he came to this erroneous conclusion. In another place he confuses Mary the Mother of Jesus (Maryam in Arabic) with Miriam the sister of Moses and Aaron (also Maryam in Arabic). When those who knew the Bible caught his errors he lost his temper and became angry; lashing out at them, he said the Bible is mistaken. This is consistent with his narcissistic personality disorder and megalomania. His gigantic ego would not allow him to admit that he had been wrong, and instead of apologizing he pulled out his sock puppet Allah out of his sleeve to support him.

Tabari says a group of Jews asked Muhammad about the creation. He told them

“God created the Earth on Sunday and on Monday. Then he created the mountains on Tuesday. On Wednesday he created the cities, the vegetation, the rivers, and every development and ruin. [This is a word‑by-word translation. God created the cities and even the ruins before he created Adam.] On Thursday he created the skies and the angels, which lasted to three hours before the end of Friday. Then during the first hour of the remainder of Friday he created ajals, the times of the deaths [I assume it means he established the time of the death of humans]. In the next hour he created the diseases [Yes that is exactly what it says. He created the diseases even before he created Adam] and in the third hour he created Adam. The Jews said; if you had said that God rested on Saturday we knew you were telling the truth. The Messenger of Allah became angry and Allah revealed the verse (46.33): “Have they not considered that Allah, Who created the heavens and the earth and was not tired by their creation?”[25]

The fact that the fable of creation mentioned in the Bible and the Qur’an is an absurdity and that any sane person reading this fable can see it is unscientific is another subject. The point that I want to make is that Muhammad often made errors when plagiarizing from the Bible. He was not a scholar but a very ignorant man, and he got angry if someone pointed his mistakes out.

I have a theory to explain why people get angry when they are engaged in a debate. When you have a response to what the other person is saying or you are prepared to admit that you could be wrong, you wouldn’t ever get angry. However, if you don’t have a genuine response to the other person’s points and you don’t even want to admit that you are wrong, you lose your temper. A normal, decent person is always polite. Khalid Zaheer (Words: 1138)

Thank you for your explanation. I could not agree more. That is exactly what I thought when I read the above story of Muhammad reported by Tabari. Do you still want to follow an indecent and impolite man?

Part XV

From Dr. Khalid Zaheer: February 26, 2007 Dear Mr Ali Sina Mr Ghamidi neither believes that any non-Muslim is allowed to be killed because of his faith nor is an apostate eligible for that punishment according to the Islamic law. You seem to carry a pre-conceived understanding about Islam in your mind and when you read my messages, you read what is already imprinted in your mind about Islam. No new information seems to be finding a way into it. The Qur’an has been consistent in saying from the very first day of its revelation that the disbelievers shall be punished if they would refuse to accept the truth from God as delivered to them by the messenger. In many of the Makkan surahs (the chapters that were revealed when the prophet didn’t have any political authority in Makkah) the Qur’an very clearly warned the disbelievers that their fate would be no different from that of their predecessors who denied their respective messengers: like them, the contemporary disbelievers of the present messenger shall be punished by the Almighty. After mentioning the punishment that were meted out to the disbelieving nations of Noah, Hud, Saleh, Lot, and Moses, may God be pleased with all of them, the Qur’an, in one of its earliest revealed surahs, poses this question: “Are your disbelievers any better than their predecessors or do they have immunity in the scriptures (from being punished for their misdeeds)?” (54: 43) It is therefore a very superficial understanding of the prophet Muhammad’s, God’s mercy be on him, mission that he changed his ways at different stages of his career to suit his political ambitions. His message was remarkably consistent all throughout his twenty-three years’ long prophetic mission. No one could have imagined that a lone individual preaching the message of God with such confidence that he was threatening his politically and militarily strong disbelievers of dire consequences if they were to persist with their attitude of denial could ever have seen the days when the promises he was spelling out through the book of God would materialize with such amazing precision that his later detractors would be forced to charge him with ingenious political conspiracy. Which religious charlatan has ever been able do accomplish such a miracle to come about that would enable him to declare prophetically from the very first day of his mission that the stronghold of his opposition would crumble like house of cards if opposition to him would persist? You have asked to show where exactly was the miracle found in the Qur’an. My response to it is that the entire text of the Qur’an is a miracle. Let’s ask people to read the Qur’an and form their own opinions. We don’t need to convince or dissuade people from doing so. They will make up their own mind. If they don’t find God speaking most eloquently His message for the humans in it, they are under no obligation to believe in it. However, without objectively going through a text which claims to be from God and forming opinion on the basis of a disgruntled ex-Muslim would not be an objective truth-seeking exercise. My own experience is that an objective reading of it shows amazing results. However, there is one condition for that result to be achieved: a strong yearning to seek the truth. So let’s encourage people to read it directly. If people are sufficiently dissatisfied after reading it, your objective would be achieved. We had mentioned it at the beginning of this debate that we understand Islam’s message through the Qur’an and sunnah, the two undisputed sources of Islam’s message. The other sources have to be seen in the light of these two. We do not take the responsibility of the details of all the historical incidents that have been reported by sources that are less than fully reliable. Therefore, claiming that the prophet said such and such thing because a certain book mentions that is not a good enough reason to show that he really said so. This is another remarkable feature of the message of Islam. It doesn’t leave the believers to rely on hearsay. The authenticity of the Qur’an is undisputed as indeed is the sunnah (religious practices like formal prayers etc.) The incidents reported about the history of Muslims cannot be completely relied upon. Their record has to be interpreted in the light of Qur’an and sunnah to decide whether such reports are acceptable or not. The kind of criticism you are making against Islam is not surprising for any keen reader of the Qur’an. Indeed the Qur’an itself mentions several criticisms of the opponents with such clarity and responds to them with such conviction that the reader grows in confidence in the authenticity of its claim to divinity. You have talked about Hitler and others as having unleashed their terror in the name of God and therefore they too belonged to the same category as the prophet of Islam. I would have loved to read Hitler’s work if he would have claimed to be from God and would have justified his acts on the basis of a convincing book. As I have mentioned earlier, the Qur’an most clearly presents the reasons why some people were declared eligible to be killed during the messenger’s time. Equating the killings during the two periods as the same is a reflection of a very superficial understanding of the two periods. You have accused that there is inconsistency in facts about Jesus Christ in the Qur’an. What is the basis of your claim? Is it really certain knowledge that Christians never considered Mary as a part of divinity? The Qur’an never claimed that Christians have included Mary as a part of their belief in trinity. However, it claims something else: that Muhammad and his mission have been mentioned in the earlier texts. The present Bible, both the Old and New Testament, bears witness to the fact that despite changes due to translations and attempts at altering the text, the Qur’anic claim can still be clearly seen in it. There is a mention in it that Ishmael, the ancestor of Muhammad, was the son sacrificed by Abraham; that Ishmael’s progeny would proliferate as a consequence of it; that Makkah was the place where Abraham took his son; that there would be a Moses-like prophet with attributes resembling no one but Muhammad; that the one to come would be accompanied by a ten-thousand-strong army (the exact number of people who accompanied him in the conquest of Makkah); that he would come after Jesus and Elijah (John the Baptist); and that he would only come after Jesus has left this world. After all these mentions, Muhammad, Allah’s mercy be on him, emerged as the promised messenger of God with a claim that he has arrived in confirmation of what has been mentioned in the earlier books. Some one has asked me as to why Mr Javed Ahmed Ghamidi is wasting his time in this debate. My response is that I have already clarified that he is not a part of it any more. Mr Ali however wants his name to be continued to be displayed as a participant. Khalid Zaheer (Words: 1200)

2007/02/27

Dear Dr. Zaheer:

There is a difference between warning people of divine chastisement and raiding them, killing them, looting their belongings, and enslaving their wives and children and raping them. All monotheistic religions engage in the same scaremongering that if you don’t believe in God, He will be offended and will punish you. This threat is harmless, unless you choose to believe in it. If you decide not to believe, it can’t hurt you. What the Jehovah’s Witnesses think will happen to you and me after we die, does not affect us. We will not go to hell because they think we will. However, it would be a different story if they decided to raid our homes, slit our throats and enslave our wives and children, or bomb us. Then their belief is no longer funny. We must take serious action and stop them.

If I threaten to kill you and then do good on my threat, am I a prophet? According to your reasoning, I must be. What other proof would you need to believe in me? My prophecy came true with precision.

It is mind-boggling that intelligent people should engage in such logical fallacies. What is so miraculous about issuing a threat and then carrying it out? If the victims of Muhammad had perished by natural calamities, without his intervention, after he had forewarned them, then you had a point. That never happened even though at times Muhammad spent thirty consecutive days cursing his enemies. Where is the miracle in threatening people and then cowardly raiding them with no warning and butchering them when they are unprepared and unarmed?

You say that all one has to do to see the miracles in the Qur’an is read it. I did that and what I found was violence, absurdity and hate. You don’t deny that but you say that there are also miracles in that book and so we must not dismiss the book just because it is a violent book. You think that violence is from God. This is absurd reasoning but where is the miracle? Please show them to us. Some speculate that Nostradamus had prophetic visions. Admittedly there are many passages in the book of Nostradamus that can be seen as prophetic. Those who make such a claim can back up their claim with concrete evidence. They quote hundreds of his quartets that seem to have come to pass. Not everyone agrees with them but it is undeniable that sometimes his prophecies can be seen as accurate. Can you show us any passage in the Qur’an that even remotely predicts something that happened that was not self-fulfilled by Muhammad himself and his followers?

When I say that the Qur’an is full of errors, contradictions and nonsense, I am showing them to you. All I am asking is that you show us one of the miracles of the Qur’an. You have not done that and you are unable to do it. It’s because this perceived miracle that you are talking about is subjective. It is your wishful thinking that makes banal words seem prophetic and miraculous.

You say that your experience tells you that an objective reading of the Qur’an shows amazing results. If your reading is objective, you should be able to communicate it. That is the difference between objective and subjective. If you can’t express something verbally and logically, then it is not objective, but rather subjective.

You say that one must have strong yearning for the truth in order to see the miracles in the Qur’an. To find the truth, you must first doubt. As long as you are a believer you only yearn to validate your belief. You need to be detached to find the truth. It is your strong yearning to believe that makes you see miracles in the Qur’an. A Persian song says, ‘I am so much in love with you that whoever I see from afar, I think it’s you.’ Muslims are like that. They are so much enamored with Muhammad and Islam that they see miracles in the most banal things. They see the name of Allah written in clouds, in a tomato, on goats, etc. The Christians on the other hand see the images of Jesus and Mary everywhere. These are all wishful thinking. The miracles of the Qur’an are of this kind. They are wishful thinking of the believers.

There is a difference between yearning to find the truth and yearning to believe. The first is objective. You empty your mind from all preconceived ideas and prepare yourself to find things that may be contrary to your belief. The other is trying desperately to validate what you already believe.

You say that only the Qur’an and the sunnah are reliable and what the historians of Islam have written may not be true. I have been quoting from both the Qur’an and the sunnah. Some Muslims are even embarrassed by the hadith and dismiss it as hearsay. That is okay. The Qur’an is enough to show Islam is false.

You say the Qur’an responds to its critics with such clarity and conviction that the reader grows in confidence in the authenticity of its claim to divinity. Will you please show us where we can find this clear response? You have been making this claim since day one and I have been asking you to show that clear proof. Where is the proof Dr. Zaheer?

I compared Muhammad to Hitler and Joseph Kony who also claimed that they were doing God’s work. You wonder whether Hitler could justify his acts on the basis of a convincing book, and reaffirmed that “the Qur’an most clearly presents the reasons why some people were declared eligible to be killed.”

What are those reasons? I asked you this question many times. All you could tell me was that Muhammad was a messenger of God and as such whatever he did was justified and it is not up to us to question him. You even said that if I have a problem with that, I must first come to terms with the fact that Muhammad was a prophet of God and once that is established there should be no question why he did what he did. Your rationale is that Allah knows best and it is not up to us humans to question his wisdom. So even though Muhammad and Hitler acted similarly, we should not compare the two because Hitler did not have divine license to kill whereas Muhammad did. This rationale defies logic. God’s actions cannot be illogical, unjust and cruel. The very fact that Muhammad acted like Hitler and Kony puts him in their category. A true messenger of God should not act like a criminal sadist. However, I even accepted to agree with this illogical premise and asked you to show us the evidence that Muhammad was indeed a true messenger of God and not a false prophet. I have been asking this in every response I have written to you. You have not given evidence to this claim yet.

Admit it, the only proof you have that Muhammad was a prophet of God is his own words. This is the same proof all cult leaders and impostors can give you. That is not enough for rational and thinking people.

You claimed that the truth of Islam is objective. You said that there are undeniable and clear proofs that Islam is a true religion. Where is that proof? Why do you beat around the bush and don’t give it to us? When I say Muhammad was a pedophile, a rapist, an assassin, a highway robber, a torturer, a liar, a deceiver and a mass murderer, I back up every accusation with examples of his life. I challenge anyone to refute my proofs and I have promised to remove my charges, apologize publicly, and even pay to anyone who can prove me wrong. Your claim that the Qur’an is a miracle is nothing but wishful thinking. There is no miracle in that book of nonsense and asininity.

If you are so sure that the Qur’an is a miracle then why you are so afraid of FFI? When you put light and darkness next to each other, light always wins. If the Qur’an is light and FFI is darkness, then why did you block FFI in Pakistan and why don’t you publish our debate in your site? Your argument is stronger and more convincing. Isn’t it? You are winning. Aren’t you? So why not let Muslims read it and become reconfirmed in their faiths? Often, my respected scholar friend, actions speak louder than words.

You say the Qur’an gives clear reasons why some people were eligible to be killed, but when asked to give those reasons you did not seem to have any. Doesn’t this mean that you are willing to kill innocent people for no clear reason at all? If Islam is a lie, you are advocating killing innocent people for a lie. What can be more evil than this? If you were not a Muslim, would you even entertain the thought of killing other humans only because their faith is different from yours? Certainly not! This murderous trait in you is not innate. It is all due to your indoctrination. Sadly, you are not alone. All Muslims who know Islam well think like you. That is why I said, there is no such thing as moderate Muslim. We have either ignorant Muslims, those who don’t know Islam, or terrorist Muslims. Moderate Muslim is oxymoron. It’s like “spherical cube.” It makes as much sense as moderate Nazi, gentle torturer, honest thief and truthful liar. You are either an ignorant Muslim or a terrorist Muslim but you can’t be a moderate Muslim because such a creature does not exist. It is a myth like the unicorn. Most ignorant Muslims leave Islam after their knowledge of Islam increases. Some of them become terrorists.

How can we live together in this world dear Dr. Zaheer, when you are saying in our face that those of us who do not share your views do not deserve to live? Do you see now why I only oppose Islam and do not care about any other religion? No other religion teaches this much hatred and violence as Islam does. All other religions are mixed bags of good and bad. Islam is the only religion that has nothing good in it. If one believes in Satan, one is forced to admit that Islam is Satan’s way to destroy mankind.

Will you tell us, if God wanted to kill those who disbelieve in him, why he created them in the first place? Didn’t he know that they will become disbelievers? And if he has to kill them why does he not kill them himself? Why is he depending on Muslims to do his dirty work?

In my previous response I talked about Joseph Kony. This psychopath says that his followers should place obedience to him above everything else and love him more than they love their own parents. Eerily, these were the very instructions of Muhammad too. Now the question that I would like you to answer is what does Allah want to achieve by asking the Muslims to murder the unbelievers? If the point is to kill them because they don’t deserve to live in this world, as you say, he can easily do that himself. Why does he delegate this dirty job to his followers? What kind of believers does he want to rear? Have you ever thought of it? Do you have an answer for it? Next time, please concentrate on this question. Don’t you think this is the reason why Muslims are so violent and are killing one another so much? Each group accuses others of being kafirs and then goes about spilling their blood. This is a diabolic teaching, not a divine one.

You have accused that there is inconsistency in facts about Jesus Christ in the Qur’an. What is the basis of your claim? Is it really certain knowledge that Christians never considered Mary as a part of divinity?

Yes it is really certain that at no time did any Christian denomination worship Mary, the mother of Jesus, as one figure of the Trinity. The three persons in Trinity are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Mary has never been part of this trio. Muhammad has goofed when made that claim. If you don’t believe me, it is up to you to bring one historic text showing there were a group of Christians who worshiped Mary. This alone should be enough for one who really yearns for truth, to see that Muhammad was a liar.

The Qur’an never claimed that Christians have included Mary as a part of their belief in trinity.

I thought you were questioning my claim that the Christians did never include Mary in the Trinity. Now you seem to be saying something completely opposite to what you said in your previous sentence. Now you deny that Muhammad ever included Mary in the Trinity. No, problem. Here is the Qur’anic verse that shows Muhammad thought Christians worship Mary:

Qur’an 5:116
And behold! Allah will say: “O Jesus the son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah’?” He will say: “Glory to Thee! Never could I say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart, Thou I know not what is in Thine. For Thou knowest in full all that is hidden.

Now, let us look at this verse closely. Allah is saying that Allah [sic] will ask, “Did you [Jesus] order people to worship you and your mom?” And the poor Jesus starts denying and defending himself against this calumny. Doesn’t Allah know already what Jesus said and what he did not say? Why does he ask this foolish question from Jesus when he should be the first to refute this calumny and defend him? This verse makes no sense at all. Let us say your son is accused of something that you know for surety that it is not true; for example he is accused of stealing something in England when you know your son has not been in England. Will you ask your son, “Did you do it?” That would be foolish. You know he did not do it and you should be the first to come to his defense and witness on his behalf.

Let me plagiarize the style of the Qur’an and compose a sentence like the verse 5:116.

“Tomorrow Ali Sina will ask Dr. Zaheer: ‘Did you say that you are Japanese?’ Dr. Zaheer will respond, ‘I never said that.’”

If I know you never said that and I am already saying that when asked you will respond in the negative, then why would I ask this stupid question from you?

Is this the book you call a miracle? Can anyone write anything stupider than this? This verse is ridiculous from every angle you look at it.

However, it claims something else: that Muhammad and his mission have been mentioned in the earlier texts. The present Bible, both the Old and New Testament, bears witness to the fact that despite changes due to translations and attempts at altering the text, the Qur’anic claim can still be clearly seen in it.

Well, here is your chance to show that to us. You have made many claims about the Qur’an but have not given any proof to back those claims. If you show us one verse in the Bible that points to Muhammad in a clear and unambiguous way, in a way that I can’t use the same verse to prove my divinity, I will forego all the blunders and absurdities in the Qur’an and become a believer. This is the second question that I would like you to answer in the next round.

There is a mention in it that Ishmael, the ancestor of Muhammad, was the son sacrificed by Abraham; that Ishmael’s progeny would proliferate as a consequence of it; that Makkah was the place where Abraham took his son; that there would be a Moses-like prophet with attributes resembling no one but Muhammad; that the one to come would be accompanied by a ten-thousand-strong army (the exact number of people who accompanied him in the conquest of Makkah); that he would come after Jesus and Elijah (John the Baptist); and that he would only come after Jesus has left this world. After all these mentions, Muhammad, Allah’s mercy be on him, emerged as the promised messenger of God with a claim that he has arrived in confirmation of what has been mentioned in the earlier books.

You are referring to the chapters 16 to 22 of Genesis. Let us see what these chapters say.

In Chapter 16 we read that since Sarah, the wife of Abraham, could not bear a child, she suggested that her husband sleep with Hagar, her Egyptian maidservant, so she could bear him a child. When Hagar became pregnant, she also became rude to her mistress Sarah. Sarah complained to Abraham who told her to do with Hagar as she pleases. Hagar then fled to the desert and bore her son Ismael near a spring, called Beer Lahai Roi that was between Kadesh and Bered, beside the road to Shur (nothing to do with Mecca). An angel of God found her and inquired what had happened to her. When Hagar told her story, the angel told her to go back to her mistress and be an obedient maidservant to her and said that she would have numerous descendants. The angel also told Hagar that her son will be a “wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him. And he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” (Genesis 16:12)

Now, this is not flattering at all. Hagar, the alleged mother of the Arabs, is rude and ungrateful. She bites the hand that feeds her. She can’t handle being treated with respect. She needs to be treated like a servant so she can be respectful. Ismael is also referred to as a wild jackass of a man who fights with everyone and is hostile to all his brothers. Considering how Arabs behave, one is amazed to see that sometimes what the Bible, this book of fairytales and absurdities, can get is so right. I see nothing in these Biblical verses for you to brag about. Is this what you wanted to show me in the Bible?

In Chapter 17 of Genesis God appears to Abraham when he is already 99 years old and promises that he will give him a son, Isaac, and says: “I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come.” (Genesis 17:7) He also says that through Isaac, Abraham will have many descendants and that “The whole land of Canaan,.. I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you.” (Genesis 17:8) Is he talking about Ismael? No! He is talking about Isaac and his descendants. So if you believe in the god of the Bible then you know why Arabs are losing in Palestine. It is because they are in breach of the everlasting covenant of God. They are fighting against the will of God. The Land of Canaan is promised to the children of Isaac in an everlasting covenant.

Muhammad said that the covenant of God is null and void because the Jews rejected him. Now we have evidence that Muhammad was a liar and the Jews were in their right mind to reject him. God does not break his covenant even if humans do. That would not be godly. The promise that God gave to Abraham was not conditional. Allah is whimsical. He lies, deceives and plots. According to the Qur’an he is khairul makereen (the best of deceivers). However, a true God cannot be like that. Makr (deceit) is not a divine quality. This Quranic verse is enough proof that Allah is not God.

Then Abraham asks that God also bless his other son, Ismael, and God agrees to increase his descendants too. Between you and me, I think that was very shortsighted of God. He knew that the descendants of this wild donkey of a man will have their hands against the hands of everyone else and will be hostile to all mankind. He should not have given in to Abraham in order to please him and he should not have made the descendants of Ismael populous. That was a big mistake. Now we are facing a world crisis because there are too many wild donkeys that kick hard and have even learned to make bombs. Imagine how dangerous it would be if donkeys had horns. Muslims with bombs are more dangerous than donkeys with horns.

When Isaac was born, Ismael, who was 14 years older, started to abuse him. [His descendants and their lackeys (non Arab Muslims) are doing the same to the descendants of Isaac, even though they are a hundred fold bigger. Nothing has changed.] Sarah said to Abraham “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac” (Genesis 21:10). [Well, even though the Arabs have 500 times more land than the Jews, and their land has oil, the descendants of Ismael have no eyes to see the children of Isaac and want to take their tiny land away from them and drown them in the sea. Like father, like son.] So Abraham and Sarah kicked Hagar and Ismael out of their house again.

Abraham was saddened because, after all, Ismael was his son. God told him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” (Genesis 21:12) Did you hear that? Please read it again. However, God added: “I will make the son of the maidservant into a nation also, because he is your offspring.”

The Qur’an says that it was Ismael that Abraham wanted to sacrifice. This is wrong. According to the Bible, God said to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering.” (Gen. 22:2)

Now, we know that Isaac was not the only son of Abraham. However, God did not even count the other jackass of a man as the son of Abraham. He was simply not important to be counted. Abraham loved only Isaac. Yes, God promised that Ismael will have a lot of descendants. He promised the same to rabbits and pigs too. Having a lot of children is not the sign of importance. The poorest and the most ignorant nations of the world are more procreative. Where in the Bible does it say that one of the descendants of this wild donkey of a man will become a prophet and will lead mankind to God?

You have claimed a lot of things, but you are yet to give evidence to those claims. You even went as far as saying that Islam is not “faith” but “fact”. And yet, despite repeated requests, you have not shown any fact. Now you say that there is mention of Muhammad in the Bible. Will you show that to us? Which chapter? Which verse?

Some one has asked me as to why Mr Javed Ahmed Ghamidi is wasting his time in this debate. My response is that I have already clarified that he is not a part of it any more. Mr Ali however wants his name to be continued to be displayed as a participant.

Dear Dr. Zaheer. I think we already knew from day one that you are the one who are writing these articles and not Mr. Ghamidi. You stated several times that you consult with him before writing your responses. Has anything changed? Have you stopped consulting him, and if yes, why? Does Dr. Ghamidi think it is waste of his time to help you defend Islam in front of thousands of people? In the course of a few years this debate will be read by millions. Does he still think it is not worth his time? There are thousands of people, particularly Muslim youths, who read FFI. Doesn’t he think that it is his duty to show them that I am mistaken so their faiths become stronger? There are also many non-Muslims who read this site and they too are eager to see the undeniable truth of Islam. You don’t want them being misled by me. Do you?

There are Muslims who write to various scholars inviting them to debate with me. These scholars either do not respond or respond by telling the Muslim to stay away from me. I wonder why? I hope it is not because they think this would cause embarrassment to Islam. Why not take advantage of this opportunity and show the truth of Islam to the world?

You claimed the Qur’an has undeniable evidence and irrefutable proof and that once that is established then everything else becomes irrelevant. Although I do not agree with this logic and believe that even a single error in the book claimed to be verbatim word of God disqualifies it as such, I stopped asking you questions about the Qur’an so you could show us that proof and agreed to abide even by this unreasonable premise. However you did not show us any proof. So I go back asking questions. Here are the two questions I would like you to focus on the next time.

Question #5

If God must kill the unbelievers, why does he not do it himself? Why does he ask Muslims to soil their hands with blood and become murderers? What kind of people does Allah want to collect around himself as his followers? Will the paradise be full of assassins, murderers and terrorists? Why has Allah placed so much emphasis on fighting and killing and rewards those who kill for him more than those who don’t?

Question # 6

Will you please show us one example where Muhammad is referred to in the Bible? Muhammad said that the Bible mentions his name (Ahmad). I never saw him mentioned in the Bible.

If you like shorter responses, you may respond to these two questions in two parts.

I remain cordially yours.

Ali Sina

Part XVI

March 5, 2007 Dear Mr Ali Sina You mentioned in response to my last-but-one message that you were responding to it late because you wanted to give the readers time to digest it. However, in response to my last message you were as swift as usual. I take it is a compliment for my last message. If I ignore the foul language, the exaggerated rhetoric, and the unnecessary repetition from your last message and mention some of the prominent points that need to be responded, those were these: i) Whatever I have mentioned as yet to prove the divine origins of the Qur’an was subjective. ii) I haven’t been able to present a clear miracle in the Qur’an. iii) It doesn’t make sense that God should ask Muslims to punish the non-Muslims when He could have punished them Himself. iv) The fact that God would ask Jesus on the Day of Judgment if he made his mother and himself a part of divinity even though He would already know the answer doesn’t make sense. v) Mr Ghamidi should continue to be a part of this debate because it would be read by a large number of Muslim youth too and he should come to the rescue of their faith because your arguments are distancing them from their faith. I will now take up these points one by one. The Qur’anic message is neither subjective nor objective for the reader. It is subjective and vague for someone who is not interested to accept it, and objective and clear for the one who is genuinely interested in knowing whether it is from God or not. The example of it is like that of a new moon on the horizon. It is there for beholder to see, but not everyone can manage to do so. Only those who have clear eyesight and eagerness to see can manage it. Others too can do it if they sincerely look at the right direction. However, the one who doesn’t want to see can deny vehemently that there wasn’t anything visible and can make fun of others who can see. The Qur’an tells us that faith comes to those who want to believe; God becomes their protecting friend and brings them out of the darkness of unfaith to the light of faith. As for those who don’t want to believe, they are left to exercise their choice of not doing so. That is how the trial of this life is: You believe if you are eager to do so; you don’t believe if you are not. As for the miracle in the Qur’an, I have already presented to you the biggest of them all: the fact that the Qur’an presented from day one with unambiguous clarity that Muhammad, God’s mercy on him, is the messenger of God. It warned its immediate addressees that the implication of this reality is that like in the case of all the nations prior to him who rejected their respective messengers, Muhammad’s nation too would face the same fate. At the time in Makkah when he was accompanied by a handful of socially, economically, and politically weak companions this clear warning was subjected to ridicule by disbelievers quite the same way as you are doing now long after that miracle has clearly taken place right before the eyes of the entire world. If you don’t want to see it, there is no way I can manage to force you do so. The trial of this life is a test of character, which demands that you bow down before the truth that unfolds itself before you. However, if you have some hidden reason to deny the truth, God is not going to force you to believe. I would like to ask you as to how have you rejected this miracle? Do you think that the prophet did not clearly prophecy that his enemies are going to be annihilated? If you will say so, I will present the entire Qur’an to prove you wrong. If you say that he did it but there wasn’t anything unusual in his feat as many others have done so like him, I would ask you to name those other individuals who started their mission with similar unambiguous clarity that their message would prevail on the basis of the rule of God that every nation that receives messengers faced similar consequences. You will have to mention a few names and their achievements with clear evidences to show that what Muhammad did wasn’t a miracle of God. If you are unable to present any names and their achievements similar to his, you are admitting that the dominance of Arabian Peninsula achieved by the prophet after he had prophesied it was a miracle of God. God punished the enemies of the messengers through the swords of his companions because it was one of the ways He had at His disposal. All resources of this world belong to Him including humans. He does His task in different ways. Even if the enemies were to be destroyed through natural calamities, who could have stopped you from criticizing that too? The important thing is that you too accept that enemies of the prophet were punished the way it was prophesied. However, their punishment doesn’t satisfy your moral taste. I am sure you must be having reservations about the way people got killed in Noah’s flood too. Of course, it happened because God didn’t have you as His consultant and He did things the way He chose to. I am sure that you are far more intelligent than what appears from the questions you have raised against the process of accountability about Jesus. That is precisely what I am trying clarify about the trial of this worldly life: It is not quite as much a trial of intelligence as it is one of character. Since you are bent upon ridiculing the contents of the Qur’an, you have raised the silly question as to why would God ask Jesus if he declared his own divinity and that of his mother. Of course, in the process of a fair trial a judge asks all questions that are important for the trial to appear fair and transparent. It has nothing to do with the fact whether the judge already knows those facts or not. Your prejudice has clearly clouded your intellect to raise such an unintelligent question. You have mentioned that Mr Ghamidi should worry about the fact that thousands of young Muslims are reading this debate. Why should he worry when he knows that all truth-seeking people, Muslims or non-Muslims, would resort to the book of God, the Qur’an, to find which of the two contestants in the debate is presenting the correct version of the Qur’an. The first chapter of Gospel of John confirms that at the time when John the Baptist and Jesus Christ had come to this world, the learned Jews were waiting for another ‘the prophet’. The eighteenth chapter of Book of Deuteronomy promises that a Moses-like prophet would come. Let the people of the world decide who the awaited prophet was. Khalid Zaheer (Words: 1193)

Dear Mr Ali Sina You mentioned in response to my last-but-one message that you were responding to it late because you wanted to give the readers time to digest it. However, in response to my last message you were as swift as usual. I take it is a compliment for my last message.

Dear Dr. Zaheer:

I am accusing your prophet of the most horrendous crimes and instead of trying to defend him you seem to be more interested in talking about the rules of the debate. We are in round seventeen of this debate. Don’t you think it is time to answer to some of the charges brought against Muhammad or try to give proofs that he was not a liar?

If I ignore the foul language, the exaggerated rhetoric, and the unnecessary repetition from your last message and mention some of the prominent points that need to be responded, those were these: i) Whatever I have mentioned as yet to prove the divine origins of the Qur’an was subjective. ii) I haven’t been able to present a clear miracle in the Qur’an. iii) It doesn’t make sense that God should ask Muslims to punish the non-Muslims when He could have punished them Himself. iv) The fact that God would ask Jesus on the Day of Judgment if he made his mother and himself a part of divinity even though He would already know the answer doesn’t make sense. v) Mr Ghamidi should continue to be a part of this debate because it would be read by a large number of Muslim youth too and he should come to the rescue of their faith because your arguments are distancing them from their faith. I will now take up these points one by one. The Qur’anic message is neither subjective nor objective for the reader. It is subjective and vague for someone who is not interested to accept it, and objective and clear for the one who is genuinely interested in knowing whether it is from God or not. The example of it is like that of a new moon on the horizon. It is there for beholder to see, but not everyone can manage to do so. Only those who have clear eyesight and eagerness to see can manage it. Others too can do it if they sincerely look at the right direction. However, the one who doesn’t want to see can deny vehemently that there wasn’t anything visible and can make fun of others who can see. The Qur’an tells us that faith comes to those who want to believe; God becomes their protecting friend and brings them out of the darkness of unfaith to the light of faith. As for those who don’t want to believe, they are left to exercise their choice of not doing so. That is how the trial of this life is: You believe if you are eager to do so; you don’t believe if you are not.

Things are either subjective or objective. I know of no other category. Something is objective when it is not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice. Objective arguments are based on facts and facts are demonstrable. A subjective argument, on the other hand, exists in the mind and belongs to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought.

When you say there are miracles in the Qur’an, this statement is either objective or it is subjective. If it is objective you must be able to clearly explain it with external facts. For example, the claim that the Earth is revolving around the Sun is an objective claim because it is demonstrable. There is no subjectivity here and you can’t deny it unless you deny the facts. On the other hand, the claim that the Moon is beautiful is subjective. I am sure if you get closer to this planet you won’t find it very attractive. If the miracles in the Qur’an were as clear as the Moon in the sky, all you had to do was to point to them in the Qur’an and everyone would see them. You have not done so despite my repeated requests. Not only can you not point to these miracles, you even accuse those who do not see what you claim to see as not being objective or not having pure hearts. So in lieu of reason, you resort to ad hominem and accuse us of being blind. Therefore it is fair to say that this proverbial Moon that you see in the sky is a hallucination. It is only in the heads of those who choose to believe. If it was real and objective you could show it to us.

You say “The Qur’an tells us that faith comes to those who want to believe.” The translation of this is, ‘Only those who want to be fooled will be fooled.’ This is the same argument that the believers of all faiths and cults make. They say you must have a pure heart and want to believe in order to see the truth of our faith. We discussed this point before. There are thousands of beliefs out there. They are all contradicting each other. Not all of them can be true. We must choose, at most, one of them and discard the rest. Which one? Here is where we have to be objective. If all you have to do is to want to believe then how can you be sure that you are not falling into the trap of a charlatan like Jim Jones, Shoko Asahara, David Koresh, Sun Myung Moon, Sai Baba, John de Ruiter, Joseph Kony, Charles Manson and countless other psychopath liars? Please tell us what sets apart Muhammad from these con men? How do we know that Muhammad did not belong to this lot? What did he do and say that sets him apart?

When you want desperately to believe in something you fall into traps. Islam appeals to people who are impressionable and gullible. Consider your own case. You converted to Islam after your father passed away, at a time when you were extremely vulnerable and desperate to believe in something. It just happened that you were born in a Muslim family and Islam was the only religion you knew. Had you been born into a family with a different faith, you would have found your solace in that faith. At first you said that your coming to Islam has been very objective. Now you say that Islam is neither objective nor is it subjective. Of course, this is not possible. One is either pregnant or one is not. You are engaging in the most elemental logical fallacy to cling to your faith and somehow justify your belief. You are far smarter than that and I hope that you realize that these arguments make no sense.

Wanting and being eager to believe will for sure lead you to wrong paths. If you really want to find the truth you must be detached. We should use the scientific method to find the truth. Scientists do not go to the lab with preconceived ideas desperately trying to validate what they already think is true and discarding any evidence contrary to their preconceptions. They put aside all their biases and try to find the truth accepting the fact that truth may be very different from what they had originally postulated. This is how one finds the truth, not by eagerly wanting to believe. Now it is clear why you are unable to see what the rest of the world can see. Your methodology is wrong. Instead of desperately wanting to believe you must be detached and become willing to doubt and to question.

Every great achievement in the world has been attained by men and women who were capable of doubting. This world is built by doubters and not by believers. Doubters are leaders of thoughts. Believers are followers. We say those who are unable to doubt and believe unquestioningly have sheep mentality. There is no pride in believing. Those who are not capable of doubting believe. God gave us a brain to doubt, to question, to wonder and to discover new frontiers and not to believe. Galileo was a doubter. Copernicus was a doubter, Darwin was a doubter. Newton, Einstein and all those who left their mark in the history of science and human understanding were doubters. Zakaria al-Razi, Ibn Sina, al‑Farabi and Khayyam were all doubters. On the other hand, Khomeini was a believer. Not all the believers are stupid but all the stupid people are believers.

As for the miracle in the Qur’an, I have already presented to you the biggest of them all: the fact that the Qur’an presented from day one with unambiguous clarity that Muhammad, God’s mercy on him, is the messenger of God. It warned its immediate addressees that the implication of this reality is that like in the case of all the nations prior to him who rejected their respective messengers, Muhammad’s nation too would face the same fate. At the time in Makkah when he was accompanied by a handful of socially, economically, and politically weak companions this clear warning was subjected to ridicule by disbelievers quite the same way as you are doing now long after that miracle has clearly taken place right before the eyes of the entire world. If you don’t want to see it, there is no way I can manage to force you do so. The trial of this life is a test of character, which demands that you bow down before the truth that unfolds itself before you. However, if you have some hidden reason to deny the truth, God is not going to force you to believe. I would like to ask you as to how have you rejected this miracle? Do you think that the prophet did not clearly prophecy that his enemies are going to be annihilated? If you will say so, I will present the entire Qur’an to prove you wrong. If you say that he did it but there wasn’t anything unusual in his feat as many others have done so like him, I would ask you to name those other individuals who started their mission with similar unambiguous clarity that their message would prevail on the basis of the rule of God that every nation that receives messengers faced similar consequences. You will have to mention a few names and their achievements with clear evidences to show that what Muhammad did wasn’t a miracle of God. If you are unable to present any names and their achievements similar to his, you are admitting that the dominance of Arabian Peninsula achieved by the prophet after he had prophesied it was a miracle of God.

So you think because Muhammad said, ‘If you don’t believe in me you will be subdued,’ and then raided his victims and subdued them, he was a prophet? This is a blatant logical fallacy. I already answered this fallacious argument in my previous response.

Muhammad signed an agreement with the Meccans that for ten years there should be no hostility among them. Then he broke his treaty after two years, as soon as he became strong, and raided that city. The Meccans were taken by surprise. They were not ready for this raid and not prepared to defend themselves. They had no choice but to negotiate their surrender. What part of this is a miracle? This is a tale of treason and deceit.

If Muhammad had threatened his enemies with divine chastisement and then a calamity had fallen on them without his intervention, and if this had happened every time that he warned people, so no one could discard it as a fluke, then you had a point. But I see no miracle in threatening people and then raiding them and killing them when unarmed. The miracle is in the fact that a billion Muslims see this dastardly act of treachery as a miracle. If what Muhammad did was a miracle, then Genghis Khan also performed many miracles. What was the difference between Muhammad, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Macedonian and Napoléon? The only difference I can see is that Muhammad also lied about being a prophet and those who are gullible enough to believe in him perpetuate this lie and pass it on to the next generations.

It is depressing that intelligent men such as your good selves make these absurd statements. Truth cannot be established by demonstrating who is more ruthless and brute. This is how a narcissist thinks. Muhammad was a narcissist and as such he believed that might is right. By entering in his bubble universe, Muslims have become extensions of his narcissistic mind and they collectively believe in the same absurdities that their prophet believed in. It is illogical to say that because someone was more cunning, was more ruthless and had vanquished his opponents, he must be right. This is the law of jungle. Argumentum ad baculum is not for rational humans. What you think is the greatest miracle of all is nothing but a great fallacy. Truth cannot be determined by the use of force and by subduing your opponent with violence.

God punished the enemies of the messengers through the swords of his companions because it was one of the ways He had at His disposal. All resources of this world belong to Him including humans. He does His task in different ways. Even if the enemies were to be destroyed through natural calamities, who could have stopped you from criticizing that too? The important thing is that you too accept that enemies of the prophet were punished the way it was prophesied. However, their punishment doesn’t satisfy your moral taste. I am sure you must be having reservations about the way people got killed in Noah’s flood too. Of course, it happened because God didn’t have you as His consultant and He did things the way He chose to.

Whether I like God killing people in natural calamities or not is another story. My question was why Allah asked his believers to murder their kind when even most savage animals rarely do such a thing. If Allah is so desperate to be worshiped and so offended when not, that the only way for him to feel relief is by killing those who reject him, then why does he not kill the rejecters himself? You did not answer this question. You simply said because he can do whatever he likes. This is not an answer. My question was why Allah wants humans to become murderers. If murdering was such a good thing, why do most of good people abhor it? Why do we humans not naturally enjoy the sight of carnage? This tells me that our creator has not made us natural killers. How can Allah be the same creator? How can God make us abhor killing and then order us to kill our kind? What kind of spiritual education is this that involves bloodshed and murder?

If Allah had directly destroyed those who rejected Muhammad then we would know that Muhammad had indeed an invisible friend behind him who was ruthless and bloodthirsty. Of course this would not have meant that Allah is God, but at least we knew that someone called Allah exists outside Muhammad’s imagination. However, when we see Allah completely helpless and Muhammad is doing all the killing himself, we are forced to come to the conclusion that Allah is nothing but Muhammad’s sock puppet and a figment of his own imagination.

In many hadiths we read that Muhammad used to curse his enemies for thirty days and yet no harm came to them. They only were vanquished when he cowardly raided their homes and treacherously took them by surprise. These actions are not godly. How can Muslims not see that? How do you distinguish an evil man and a holy man if not by their actions? You believe that Jesus was a prophet of God. What do you think he meant when he warned people of the false prophets? He said you will recognize them by their fruits. Can’t you see that the actions of Muhammad were all evil? Can you show me a man as evil as him? You overlook all this man’s evil deeds because in your opinion he was a messenger of God. I can’t begin to fathom the absurdity of this line of reasoning. My reasoning tells me that no real God would send a murderer to guide mankind. You think that it is possible for God to send a man who acts like a gangster to guide mankind to the true path. Do you have any proof that he was a prophet? You have produced none so far. You gave big promises that there are miracles in the Quran, but all your claims are debunked, one after another.

I am sure that you are far more intelligent than what appears from the questions you have raised against the process of accountability about Jesus. That is precisely what I am trying clarify about the trial of this worldly life: It is not quite as much a trial of intelligence as it is one of character. Since you are bent upon ridiculing the contents of the Qur’an, you have raised the silly question as to why would God ask Jesus if he declared his own divinity and that of his mother. Of course, in the process of a fair trial a judge asks all questions that are important for the trial to appear fair and transparent. It has nothing to do with the fact whether the judge already knows those facts or not. Your prejudice has clearly clouded your intellect to raise such an unintelligent question.

I don’t think my question was unintelligent. However since the point is clear, there is no reason for me to dwell on it further. I only add one thing and that is in a trial the judge questions all the parties because he does NOT know the facts and wants to find out the truth. If a judge has already made his mind, before even the trial begins, he is presiding over a kangaroo court. Is this how divine justice in Allah’s court works? What is the point of setting up such a mock trial when the outcome is already decided? Allah knows the facts and so does the defendant. All he has to do is tell the sinner, ‘I am going to send you to hell for such and such violations.’ Trial means finding the facts in order to determine the guilt or innocence. If the facts are already known to the judge it is foolish to set up a kangaroo court and conduct a mock trial.

No matter how you look at Islam it turns out to be a foolish religion.

You have mentioned that Mr Ghamidi should worry about the fact that thousands of young Muslims are reading this debate. Why should he worry when he knows that all truth-seeking people, Muslims or non-Muslims, would resort to the book of God, the Qur’an, to find which of the two contestants in the debate is presenting the correct version of the Qur’an.

There is only one version of the Qur’an. I am trying to show the world that this book is satanic, while you are trying to make them believe it is a miracle.

The first chapter of Gospel of John confirms that at the time when John the Baptist and Jesus Christ had come to this world, the learned Jews were waiting for another ‘the prophet’. The eighteenth chapter of Book of Deuteronomy promises that a Moses-like prophet would come. Let the people of the world decide who the awaited prophet was. Khalid Zaheer (Words: 1193)

Deuteronomy 18:15 reads: “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.”

You say this is about Muhammad? Don’t you see that the verse clearly says that this prophet will be raised, “from among your own brothers?” Was Muhammad a Jew? How can anyone in his right mind think this verse is about Muhammad who was not a Jew?

It is important to get into details. It is then that I can show with clarity that every argument Muslims use to prove Islam is a true religion is false.

Now, I am going to ask another question.

Question # 7

If Allah knows who will be a believer and who will be a non-believer and if he has preordained everything, why did he create the non-believers, only to burn them for eternity after they die?

Part XVII

Dear Mr Ali Sina I am sorry for the slight delay in my response. I have to carefully sift the unnecessarily sensitizing stuff from the real gist in each of your messages. In the last message, the following were the real points: i) My claim that there could be realities which are subjective-cum-objective was rubbish. ii) Those who already want to believe are gullible idiots and the bright achievers are the ones who doubt. iii) There was no difference between the case of the prophet of Islam and the other bogus religious personalities whose fakeness is already established. iv) If God had to destroy His enemies, He should have done it Himself. v) The prophecies of the Bible do not fit into the description of the prophet of Islam.

I am delighted that you write and please do not worry about the delay. As for points i) and ii), I would not use that language. As for the rest, you got my message right.

i) Unfortunately, in the jungle of your rhetoric there was no response to my example of the new moon. I gave you a very simple example of a case to help you understand how realities could be subjective-cum-objective. I will eagerly wait for your comment on it.

I believe I already gave my response. You said that the Moon is there but only those who have clear eyesight can see it. This is the same kind of reasoning that Muhammad used to make. Anytime people asked him for proof, he would say you are deaf, dumb and blind and can’t understand the clear proof I am giving you, or that Allah has sealed your hearts. Well, 1400 years later, we are asking the same questions and you are giving the same answers. I am afraid this is not a very convincing argument. Any person can accuse those who disagree with him of being deaf, dumb and blind. This is called ad hominem and it is not a logical argument. “If you do not agree with my illogical claims, you are blind,” is not a logical argument.

You are telling us that the proof of Islam is as clear as the Moon in the sky. We ask you to show that proof to us. You have not done it. The only proof you have given so far is the claim that Muhammad was mentioned in the Bible, which we will discuss bellow.

The other proof you gave was that Muhammad foretold that he would subdue his opponents and he did it. This, as I explained earlier, is not a valid proof either.

I do not recall you gave us any other proof as to why we should accept Muhammad as a prophet of God. So it is not fair that you call me blind for not believing in your unproven claim.

Let me give you an example of blindness. Let us say I claim that my friend Joe is a prophet of God; however I have no convincing proof to support that claim. You on the other hand make hundreds of very convincing arguments that Joe cannot be a prophet. For example, you say that Joe is a convicted felon, has been involved in armed robberies and has killed a few people. He has also kidnapped an airplane full of passengers and after killing the men, has raped the women at gunpoint. So, based on all these evidences and his asinine statements about science such as splitting the Sun, sperms being created from the shoulder bone, etc, you say Joe cannot be a prophet. But I am a believer and say that I have seen Joe performing miracles such as multiplying food, materializing an apple out of thin air, reading my mind, etc. You tell me that this Joe is a magician and that all his so called miracles are visual illusions and tricks. However, I am reluctant to listen to you and continue believing in him despite all the evidence against him. Then you can say I am blind and you would be right. However, it would be ludicrous if I call you blind for not believing in Joe since I have failed to give any proof. Replace Joe with Mo and you will see who is blind.

ii) If you are thrilled by the idea that you belong to the class of intelligent people and we to the unintelligent, let it be that way. I would just want to remind you that I have been an admirer of Bertrand Russel. I hope you would agree that he was slightly more intelligent than you are and yet his critical essays on religion didn’t affect my faith; in fact, they strengthened it. I grew in strength through those writings because I knew that I was reading someone who could be as ruthless as anyone in criticizing my beliefs while I am carefully considering each point he is raising and yet he hasn’t been able to remove me from my conviction. The same thing is happening in my exchanges with you. The desperate use of foul language that emerges from your messages, believe me, makes me even more confident. When one is confident one doesn’t need to be desperate in one’s expression. You then go on to claim that we are gullible idiots who have been brainwashed!

First of all I did not use foul language. Would you please give one example? I have accused Muhammad of the crimes that he committed. If he killed, then he is a killer. If he raped, then he is a rapist. If he robbed then he is a robber. These are not insults but facts. If you disagree with me, all you have to do is prove me wrong and I will withdraw those charges.

You say that you read Bertrand Russell and your faith in Islam grew. Is that an objective and a logical argument? If your inability to see the superiority of the wisdom of Russell over Islam constituted proof of his lack of logic, then many people read the Qur’an and are not impressed by it. Is that enough to prove that the Qur’an is nonsense? Or perhaps you are the paragon of all wisdom and only you can decide who is right and who is not? I hope this is not what you say. So as you see your argument is flawed to begin with. You must tell us exactly which arguments of Bertrand Russell you reject any why you think they are illogical. I read the Qur’an and found that book is full of nonsense. Why should anyone care what I think? If I had not given examples of the errors of the Qur’an no one would have paid much attention to what I say. The same is true with you and your opinion of Bertrand Russell. Now, I am not a Russell follower. However, he was a brilliant man. I would not be swayed by your dismissal of him unless you tell me which parts of his views are wrong. Anyway, let us not get distracted. Russell is not the subject of our discussion. Let us focus on Muhammad and his claim.

iii) I was expecting that in response to my last message you would mention, to prove me wrong, names of many other religious people who, like the prophet of Islam, made clear claims in the early part of their missions that they had brought the message of God and that if they were rejected their enemies would be destroyed. You didn’t mention a single individual. Let me give you a clearer view of what the prophet’s miracle was. In surah al-Qamar (moon) which was revealed in the fourth year of the prophetic mission when the prophet was accompanied by a handful of followers, the Qur’an says thus: “The folk of Lot rejected warnings. Lo! We sent a storm of stones upon them (all) save the family of Lot, whom We rescued in the last watch of the night, as grace from Us. Thus We reward him who gives thanks. And he indeed had warned them of Our blow, but they did doubt the warnings. They even asked of him his guests for an ill purpose. Then We blinded their eyes (and said): Taste now My punishment after My warnings! And in truth the punishment decreed befell them early in the morning. Now taste My punishment after My warnings! And in truth We have made the Qur’an apt as reminder; but is there any that gets reminded? And warnings came in truth unto the house of Pharaoh, who denied Our revelations, every one. Therefore We grasped them with the grasp of the Mighty, the Powerful. Are your disbelievers (O Muhammad) better than those, or have you some immunity in the scriptures? Or do they say: We are a host victorious? The hosts will all be routed and will turn and flee. Nay, but the Hour (of doom) is their appointed trial, and the Hour will be more wretched and more bitter (than their earthly failure). (Qur’an; 54:33-46) Look at the connection the Qur’an is making between the fate of the earlier nations and the destiny of the rejecters of the prophet; look at the confidence and certainty with which the worldly doom of the enemies is being predicted. Are you still insisting that some other miracle be shown to you? Behind the smokescreen of your rhetorical criticism there is a clear acknowledgement that the miracle did take place but since it falls short of your expectations you don’t want to accept it.

Is this your proof? Do you really expect people to believe in these fairytales of the Qur’an? These fables constitute proof for you because you are a believer. To the rest of us who think the Qur’an is the delirium of a mentally deranged man they mean nothing. Can you show the authenticity of these stories from any book of history? These are fairytales. Some of them are taken from the Bible and the rest either is made up by Muhammad or existed in the lore of the Arabs. Apart from the fact that the story of Lot narrated by Muhammad is different from the one mentioned in the Bible, in no other book do we find any reference to Lot, Abraham or Moses. Archeologists have found a lot about Pharaohs, yet they have found no evidence of the claims made in the Bible about what Jehovah did to the Egyptians and yet these events were of great portent. No mention of Moses exists in any archeological find. The Old Testament, particularly the books of Pentateuch, is fairytale. Do you expect us to believe in the Qur’an that plagiarizes this book of fables as evidence? So in your opinion just because Muhammad said Allah punished those people who rejected his prophets, we should believe? What if Muhammad lied? We have no evidence that any of the claims made in the Qur’an are true. We have plenty of evidence that Muhammad lied on many occasions. Why should we assume that these stories are true?

Furthermore, in these stories it is allegedly God who punishes those who disbelieve. In the case of Islam Allah is unable to harm his enemies and relies entirely on his henchmen followers, who like zombies kill his opponents with no thought of their own. There is a big difference between the killings perpetrated by Muhammad and what happened to the people of Sodom as described in the Bible. The Sodomites perished by a natural disaster, while the victims of Muhammad were killed by him, cowardly and treacherously. Anyone can be a terrorist. Muhammad’s acts of terror do not prove his claim.

If I tell people I have magical powers and can hurt those who do not believe in me, and then something were to happen to all those who disbelieve in me, then you will not be blamed to believe that maybe I do have magical powers. However if I send a bunch of hoodlums to beat and kill those who disbelieve in me, you will not conclude that I have magical powers but rather that I am a gangster, a mafia godfather. Muhammad claimed that if anyone disbelieves in him he will be humiliated. Yet nothing happened to those who disbelieved in him until he raided them. Does this constitute proof of his prophethood? Any gangster can do what Muhammad did. Do you see how baseless the proofs you are giving us are?

iv) God destroyed the nation of Lot Himself. Are you comfortable with that decision? Who can stop you from criticizing that decision as well? The important difference between your approach and mine is that while you are insisting that unless the reality appears the way you expect it to be, you won’t accept it, while I believe that the reality has to be seen and acknowledged in its real form. If I tell you that if you were to ascend to a high altitude without taking oxygen along, you could die and you respond by saying that you didn’t accept that such a thing could happen because you didn’t like the idea, what can be done of you? The Sun shines brightly, whether you like it or not. Muhammad, Allah’s mercy be on him, was able to overcome his enemies exactly the way God’s book predicted. The fact that you don’t like the way it happened doesn’t change the reality an inch.

You did not answer my question. My question was if God wanted to kill people why would he not do it himself? Why does he ask Muslims to act as his assassins and henchmen? Why does he want to convert Muslims into murderers?

Whether I am comfortable believing in a terrorist god or not is beside the point. The point is that the story of the destruction of Sodom by God because of their impiety is not a fact but a fiction. We can’t quote the fables of the Bible to prove the Qur’an is true. This is circular reasoning. This is like I tell you I can walk on water and the proof is that I did it when no one was watching. This does not constitute proof to you. The evidence should be independent of me. As the claimant my own testimony does not count. Did any reliable person see also this miracle happening? If not, then you should not believe me, particularly if you have seen me lie on many occasions and if I have committed many sins. Since we have no evidence that a person known as Lot existed and there is no other book beside the Bible talking about him (The Qur’an only rehashes what the Bible says and even then Muhammad makes mistakes), we can’t accept this story as fact. In those days people did not have television and this much entertainment that we have today. When the Sun went down, they gathered around the fire and narrated stories. These are fireside stories. As rational intelligent people of the 21^st century, we must not believe in them.

If you tell me in high altitudes there is little oxygen, I can verify the truth or falsehood of that claim personally. Is there any way to verify the claims made by Muhammad about God destroying people for disbelief? Absolutely not! So it would be foolish to believe in something that can’t be proven, and it sounds irrational. Why should we believe in the claims of Muhammad and not in equally irrational and unproven claims of other false prophets and pretenders?

Last year there was an earthquake in Pakistan that killed thousands of people. A year before that there was a tsunami that killed nearly one hundred thousand people, mostly Muslims. The year before that there was an earthquake in Bam, Iran that killed over 50,000 Muslims. Is there a message in these? Is God punishing Muslims for believing in a false prophet? I know that some Mullahs were going around telling the gullible Pakistanis that Allah is punishing them for not being good Muslims and not sending their children for Jihad. Now, how can we determine what message actually God is sending? Is he sending these calamities because Muslims follow a false prophet or is he killing them because they do not follow him enough? Do you see the absurdity of your logic? Any person can interpret these natural calamities according to his own penchant. It is foolish to think that these natural events have anything to do with us.

Let us say your backyard is flooded and a colony of ants living there is drowned. Now imagine one ant tells the other ants that this happened because you did not believe in me when I told you I am the messenger of the landlord. Wouldn’t that be ludicrous?

As far as this universe is concerned, you and I and our entire species are less significant than ants. In the great scheme of things we don’t even count. This Earth is living its own life doing what it is supposed to do as a living planet. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, rains, and droughts are all functions of the life of the Earth. Earthquakes must happen because tectonic plates are constantly in motion. They have been happening for billions of years before we humans existed and will continue to happen billions of years after we are gone. The same can be said about other functions of the Earth. Nature is not aware of our existence. It does its own things. If we have the bad luck to be in its way when it is most active, we can get crushed.

Now, we have ways to predict these acts of nature. We can get out of the way and stay safe. Also we can build better houses to withstand many of these natural disasters such as flooding, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. We can overcome the effects of drought. Does this mean that we have tied the hands of God and he can no longer kill us in his traditional way, i.e. the divine terrorism? To think that these natural phenomena have anything to do with God is childish. It is depressing that intelligent people should think like that. And you are leaders of the community. If leaders think like this, what can we expect of the average Muslims? This is the cause of our backwardness. The enlightened people see the problem and try to solve it, come with ways to overcome the difficulties while Muslims say this was the test of God and continue in their ignorance. As long as Muslims hold to these childish beliefs, there is no hope for them. Why is it that the possibility of a Jew winning the Nobel Prize is 2,800 times greater than a Muslim winning that prize? It is because of this mentality. While the enlightened people of the world rely on their own powers and face every problem as a challenge, for Muslims, everything is inshallah. How can they progress with this primitive mentality?

When humanity was passing through the stage of its childhood, people felt helpless. They depended on the forces of the nature. They thought that drought, rain, fertility, health, disease, and natural phenomena were controlled by gods. They prayed to these gods for everything, sacrificed for them, and slaughtered animals, or even humans, to appease their gods. They had shamans and medicine-men with power to intercede on their behalf. These men wielded absolute power. Islam is also a primitive fear-based religion and Muhammad is a shaman. He claimed to be the intermediary between a vengeful and unforgiving deity that controlled everything. According to Muhammad Allah has created everything good everything and evil. Yes, even evil is created by Allah. Islam is extremely primitive. It is no different than Voodoo, Shamanism or any other animistic religion. While the animists believe in many gods, Muhammad preached one god. This is the only difference. The philosophy of Islam and animism is the same. Muhammad’s mind was very primitive. It is foolish to believe in him. I am giving proof after proof that he was a liar. Where is the proof that he was a prophet?

v) You claim the prophecy in the Book of Deuteronomy was for a Jew prophet. Let’s look at the prophecy: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not give heed to my words which he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.” (18:18-19)

First of all I do not believe in prophecies. I don’t believe that the authors of the Bible could foresee the future. They miserably failed to decipher the mysteries of the world around them and made countless statements that are scientific heresies. Such men could not certainly see the future. Therefore, those words are neither for Jesus nor for Muhammad. They refer to Joshua, whom Moses was preparing to succeed him. Note that the verse 18:15 emphasizes that this prophet will be someone from among the Jews (your own brethren). In the verse 18 it shifts from second person to third person and says “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers.” How can we explain this difference? This is because allegedly Moses is speaking of a future generation. This is the only way to explain the discrepancy between verse 15 and 18. “Your brothers” and “their brothers” is the same only if you think of the same people and their descendants. If I address you and tell you that the Pakistanis did such and such thing 50 years ago, I could use both third person plural or second person plural. I could say “you people” or say “your ancestors”. Both forms of speech are correct.

Moreover, in what ways does this verse refer to Muhammad? I could claim that it refers to me. I have as much evidence to back up my bogus claim as you have to back up yours.

There are five features identified in the prophecy: a) He would be a prophet like Moses. Only Muhammad, Allah’s mercy be on both, was a prophet like Moses: Both had natural births and deaths; both had families; both had large followings; both brought books which had laws from God; both migrated with their followers. b) He would be from amongst their (Jews’) brethren. The brothers of Children of Israel were the Children of Ishmael and Muhammad was from that branch of Abraham’s family tree. c) God would put His words in His mouth. There is no text that fits into this description except the Qur’an which is the very word of God, fully preserved. d) He shall speak to them all that God would command him. The Quran tells the prophet: “Messenger, convey to them whatever has been revealed to you from your Lord; for if you don’t do so, it will be as if you have not communicated the message (at all)”. (5:67) e) He shall speak those words in God’s name. Each chapter of the Qur’an begins with this verse: “In the name of God, the most Merciful, the One Whose mercy is lasting.” Khalid Zaheer (Words: 1197)

a) In what ways was Muhammad like Moses? If having a natural birth and death is evidence of similarity between the two, can you show me one person who did not have natural birth and death? In that case all humans qualify.

b) From amongst your brethren, means from amongst YOU the Jews and not from among the Arabs. I already mentioned what the Bible says about Ishmael and that this man was referred to as a “donkey of a man” that would have his hand against every boy’s, and who would fight with everyone. I also quoted the Biblical verse where God, talking to Abraham, speaks of Isaac as the “only son” of him even though we know Abraham’s first son was Ishmael. This verse makes it clear that Ishmael had no place or rank in front of the Jewish god. He did not even count.

c) To make such a claim, you first must prove that the Qur’an is the word of God. You have not done that yet. Anyone can make such a claim. In fact all the Biblical prophets claimed that it is God that speaks through them. Even today, charlatanical cultists such as Warren Jeffs, John de Ruiter, Sai Baba and others have made this very claim. As long as you can’t prove that the Qur’an is the word of God, this claim is no more valid than those made by other charlatanical prophet pretenders.

d) In this point you make the same unsubstantiated claim as in the previous one and the answer is the same. So far you have not given a single proof that the Qur’an is the world of God. If the Qur’an is a book of satanic verses, these claims must be also false. So not too fast please. First you have to prove that the Qur’an is the word of God and then claim that among all other words of God, it best fits the requisites of the verse Deuteronomy 18:18.

e) And you think just because Muhammad initiated his suras with the mantra “in the name of Allah,” it is proof that he really spoke in the name of God? My erudite friends: Speaking in the name of God means speaking truthfully and promoting divine wisdom and love. None of the words and actions of Muhammad were godly. If my actions are unjust, I do not become a just person by saying “in the name of justice.” What kind of god is this Allah that is so petty, so ruthless, so unforgiving and so vengeful? Forget the letterhead – pay attention to the content of the suras. The Qur’an is a demonic book. It is written in the name of Satan. If Satan wanted to fool people through a fake religion, would he start his letters with “in the name of Satan?” Of course not! He would claim to be God, or an angel of God, and once he has the confidence of the gullible, he would convert them into murderous beasts, instilling evil in their minds and hatred in their hearts, inciting them to kill their fellow beings in the name of God. Furthermore, Sura 9, the last revealed sura, does not start with the basmala because the mercy has been lifted.

In my previous message I asked you about predestination. You did not answer that. Instead you chose to present your proofs that Muhammad was a prophet of God. That is fine. The reason I asked you that question was because I kept asking you for proof and you were not giving them. Now you finally are presenting your proofs. I have answered these claims. So please present more proofs if you have. I think we are now moving forward. It is important to get to the bottom of it and understand the things that attract Muslims to Islam. The point is not that you and I agree. The point is that you prove the prophethood of Muhammad to the world. Several readers have asked me to print this debate or make it available in PDF format for easy download. I would certainly be glad to do that. So please present everything you consider to be undeniable proof. I will add my two cents and let our readers decide.

I remain cordially yours and again reiterate my deepest respect for you and Mr. Ghamidi. Our disagreement is on ideological level. On the human level I have utmost respect for both of you.

Part XVIII

March 19, 2007 Dear Mr Ali Sina Please let me know in your next message the reason why I should not consider it to be a moral victory for myself in the fact that despite declaring that you will give a week’s time to your readers to absorb my message before they read your response to it, you have reversed your policy. What is so dangerous in my innocuous, brief messages that compels you to attach your rebuttals immediately?

You may certainly claim moral victory. Winning is the farthest thing in my mind. All I want is to make the truth known.

When Saddam was defeated in the first Gulf War, he went on TV and claimed moral victory. In fact he even celebrated it with fireworks and jubilees. When in the summer of 2006, Hezbollah was defeated by the Israeli army, they also celebrated their “victory.” Throughout history we see people who are defeated in battles claiming moral victory. Obviously this has some psychological effect on them and makes their defeat more bearable. If you consider this debate a battle where one has to win and the other to lose, then you have my permission to claim moral victory. As I stated in my first message, I see this as an opportunity to expose the truth. The victory is the victory of truth over falsehood and when that happens we are all victorious.

Assuming you can impress people for a week until my response is published, for one week you feel good. Then what about after I post my response?

Our debate will be read for many years to come. What about those who would be reading it in future? Should we ask them to read your replies and stop for a week and then read mine?

Furthermore, people are not naïve. You can rest assured that readers will not be swayed by my illogical arguments if they are not rebutted by you and vice versa. Please give some credit to our readers. We are writing for intelligent people, many of whom are much smarter than yours truly and I am sure you are not claiming to be the smartest person in the world either.

If you would have concentrated on my example of the new moon, you would have appreciated what I was trying to say in my theory of subjective-cum-objective realities. You know that we Muslims are eager to spot the new moon for confirming the advent of Ramadan and Eid. The moon is not clearly visible. However, with some concentration, which demands willingness to see it, one can get a clear view of it. When one catches a glimpse of it, it becomes increasingly visible. To the one who is not willing to see, there is no moon on the horizon. Imagine the lack of willingness of the person who has joined the moon-sighting group with pre-decided agenda that the moon hasn’t appeared! Likewise is the case of faith in the claim that Qur’an is the word of God. If you are willing to see it, you can get, to begin with, an initial glimpse of it. If you are committed to not seeing it, nobody can help you in getting its glimpse. Willingness to believe doesn’t demand that you be a gullible idiot. It demands that you be an honest, open-minded person, who is willing to call good as good and bad as bad. When you raise certain objections against the message of Islam, I can see your point. When you stubbornly reject all clear indications that lead one to see that it is a message from God as nonsense, I start losing confidence in my assumption that you are an open-minded person. The lack of willingness can owe itself to a number of causes. In your cause case it is the open, declared hatred for the message of Islam. Of course, you present various reasons for it. Some of them do merit attention. However, the trouble is that when responses are offered to you, your rebuttals are, as if, already prepared. Your commitment to rejecting Islam is so unequivocal that you have become a biased enemy of it. I pray that you become a more open-minded and rational individual. I have a nice feeling that in praying for you, I am following the footsteps of my prophet, who always prayed for his enemies until such time that he received a confirmation from God that they didn’t deserve his prayers any more.

Your example of sighting the Moon is clear. The point is, is it me who is denying the obvious or is it you? Have you given any clear proof that Islam is from God? The answer is no. I have been asking this question since the beginning while you preferred to beat around the bush and avoided the question. The only proofs you gave so far are 1) Muhammad was mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:18; and 2) He said he will be victorious and he was. I discussed these two points and I showed that the first is wishful thinking. Anyone can take some vague verses from an old book and claim they refer to him.

You deny all the evidence that Muhammad was a criminal and cling to a vague sentence in the Bible; the very book that you say is corrupted and should not be relied upon, to prove Muhammad was foretold. This is wishful thinking. You are the one that is unable to see the Moon in the sky, not me. In fact you deny even the Sun in the sky. The evidences I have given about Muhammad being a liar are clearer than the Sun.

In the sentence that I highlighted, you wrote “Willingness to believe doesn’t demand that you be a gullible idiot. It demands that you be an honest, open‑minded person, who is willing to call good as good and bad as bad”

Well, willingness to believe always requires you to abandon skepticism and this means agreeing to be gullible. However, I could not agree more on the second sentence. Was Muhammad a good man? Are raiding innocent people, massacring unarmed civilians, stealing their belongings, and taking their women and children as slaves and raping them a good thing? How would you feel if a lunatic claimed to be a prophet and did the same to you, while his followers asserted that he is justified to do what he pleases because he is a messenger of God and that you deserve to be punished because you do not believe in his “clear” warnings? Would you call that still “good”?

When I asked you to respond for the evil deeds of Muhammad all you could say was that he was a messenger of God and therefore authorized to do anything. You argued that I must first solve that problem for myself and once I am convinced of the prophethood of Muhammad, I must shut up and blindly accept whatever he did. According to your reasoning, the messenger of God is above the law and scrutiny and he can act like a criminal and it is not up to us humans to question what he do. You call this open mindedness and the sign of a pure heart. .

I even agreed to go along with this warped thinking and asked you to give us the proof of your claim that Muhammad was a prophet of God. You gave none!

You say the Qur’an gives clear reasons why some people were eligible to be killed. When asked to give us those reasons, all you could say was that one must have a pure heart to see them. I am sorry; heart purity has nothing to do with truth. You need rational thinking to find the truth. You need a pure heart for not oppressing people who are different from you and to feel the pain of those whom you abuse and not to abuse them. You can’t have a pure heart if you say those who do not believe in what I believe do not deserve to live in this world. This is not a pure heart. What you say should be done to the unbeliever, stems from a very impure heart and I am talking about Muhammad’s here. The problem of Muslims is uncritical thinking.

You don’t have to have a pure heart to see the Sun and the Moon in the sky. You don’t have to have a pure heart to understand that it is not the earth that goes around the Sun but the other way round. You don’t need a pure heart to understand the concept of the Big Bang, or evolution. To understand the truth you don’t need pure a heart. This is a fallacy. All you need is a rational brain. God has endowed all of us with a brain. The problem is that some people are so caught in absurd thinking that they refuse to use theirs. Heart has nothing to do with truth. If you practiced what you preach, i.e. “call good as good and bad as bad” you would not remain a Muslim a single minute. If what Muhammad did to his victims was done by someone else, would you still call it good? What Muhammad did was evil. The only reason you accept them as good is because these evil deeds were perpetrated by him and you are unable to accept the fact that this man was evil. Your love for this monster acts as a veil for you. You know stealing, raping, cowardly massacring civilians, butchering prisoners of war and enslaving free people are bad. But when these evil deeds were perpetrated by Muhammad, suddenly you think they are good. If this is not brainwashing, what is?

In the recent messages, I have been mentioning that the biggest miracle of the prophet of Islam was that he declared from the very first day that his enemies are going to be annihilated, like it happened in the case all the earlier messengers. This fact is so clearly documented in the Qur’an, the fully preserved book of God, that every sane person can see it. You objected by asking as to why God had to ask humans to kill fellow humans on His behalf. I would say that your question is partly relevant. You should have said that a very strange, out-of-this-world thing did happen but you were not comfortable with the manner it occurred. This would have indeed been a rational stance. However, your exaggerated anger at the way it happened on the basis of your information which is incomplete and only partly reliable, has blinded you from seeing the truth of the claim. Thus, like in the case of somebody uninterested in seeing the new moon, you are uninterested in seeing the truth in Islam.

Whenever two people want to engage in a war, both brag that they will be victorious. Eventually one side will be victorious. This does not prove that the victor could foresee the future. In the case of Muhammad, he was the only one declaring war on others. Actually he never declared them. He even signed peace treaties, only to break them when he willed. The non-Muslims had no intentions of waging war against him. He took them by surprise and raided them when they were least expecting. These were shamelessly cowardly attacks on civilians. They were terrorist acts. And you boast that because Muhammad won through his terrorist forays, he proved to be a messenger of God and the greatest miracle was thus accomplished? I don’t know even how to answer to this much absurdity. I leave that to the readers to make their minds. This point is clear to all the non-Muslims. Now it is the turn of the Muslims to see the light and do the right thing. Is this your “out of this world” miracle? Muhammad said he will be victorious and then he raided unwary people and butchered unarmed civilians and won, and this proves that he was a prophet of God and anyone who cannot see this “out of this world miracle” is blind and can’t see the Moon in the sky and should be killed?

To question and doubt is a good thing. Believe me, I do a lot of it while reading the Qur’an. My reference to Bertrand Russell’s writings was also meant to bring home the same point. I never mentioned that I was giving my arguments to prove him wrong. You spent unnecessary words to dismiss something I never claimed. However, to question and doubt for the sake of knowing the truth is one thing and to do it for its own sake is quite another. I use the tool of questioning and doubting to enhance my faith. Thanks God, it hasn’t failed as yet.

Questioning and doubting to enhance one’s faith is not the way to find the truth. You are only seeking validation in what you already believe. When your intention is to enhance your faith and not find the facts that may destroy it, you overlook all the evidences contrary to your belief and only pick those things that confirm it. The reason you can’t find the truth is because your method is wrong.

The right way to find the truth is the one taught to us by Descartes. He doubted everything, including the world around him and assumed that there is a demon making this world appear to him the way he sees it and that everything is just figment of his imagination. Then he concluded that he must exist in order to be able to imagine this world, and if he can think, he must exist (Cogito, ergo sum.)”

To find the truth, you must empty your mind from all preconceptions. Assume that you don’t know Muhammad and then come to learn the facts about him. You will read that he took women captured in his raids and raped them, slept with a child, looted and committed genocide, and did other atrocious things. Will you accept such a man as the best human and an example to follow? If you are a decent person I doubt that you would. That should be enough proof to reject Islam. Then you want to know the evidences that he presented for his claim. You see the only evidence his followers give is the fact that he said he will become victorious with terror and he was. Is this proof? In logics this is called argumentum ad baculum and it is listed among logical fallacies. Thinking that might is right is a very primitive thinking. And this fallacy is your biggest argument in support of Islam. You even call it the greatest miracle.

Your response to my claim that the prophet of Islam was the prophet promised in the Book of Deuteronomy was also disappointing. Your seemingly strong answer was based on one policy you consistently follow: Criticize whatever can be picked for criticism and ignore what can’t be answered. My questions to some of the points you have raised are these: Does the reality that Ishmael was the son of Abraham and therefore the brother of Isaac change because there are certain derogatory remarks mentioned in the Bible against him? Is it not a strange coincidence that the prophecy mentions that God would put “My words in his mouth” and it is only the Qur’an that claims, with undeniable evidence, to be the very word of God, completely preserved? Call it a mantra or whatever, is it not perplexing that the prophecy is stating that the prophet to come would present God’s word in His name and the Qur’an does just that before each chapter. There were many similarities mentioned between Moses and Muhammad in my message and you picked for criticism only the one I had mentioned to distinguish them from Jesus Christ, Allah’s mercy be on all. That’s a style quite peculiar to you. What about the other similarities? The prophecy states that the prophet to come would be like Moses and the Qur’an says: “Indeed We have sent you as an evidence against your nation quite the same way as We sent a messenger to Pharaoh.” (Qur’an; 73: 15)

The claim that Muhammad is foretold in Deuteronomy is absurd. Of course I can’t accept such a baseless claim. Anyone can pick something from any book and interpret it the way he wants to.

Does the fact that the Bible speaks derogatorily of Ishmael eliminate him as the legitimate heir of Abraham? Yes it does. According to the Qur’an, verses 11:42‑43, Noah’s son was perished because of his rebelliousness. The fact that he was the son of Noah did not give him any privileges. So, according to the Qur’anic logic, being a son of a prophet does not give one any advantages. Therefore, if the Bible calls Ishmael a jackass of a man and God ignores him completely while talking to Abraham and refers to Isaac as his ONLY son, it is clear that Ishmael is out of the picture. He will have many children who will be hostile, fighting with everyone and causing sedition and war, but there is no mention that a prophet will rise from among them. If God wanted to anoint one of Ishmael’s descendants as a prophet, he would not have demeaned him to this extent that would call him an ass of a man. It is clear that God of the Bible has no respect for Ishmael and his descendants.

The clear message of Deuteronomy is that we should look down at the Arabs and belittle them. Now this I say if you really believe in the Bible and want to use it as evidence. As far as I am concerned the Bible is a book of fables and rational people should not pay any heed to what it says. Arabs are no less than any other people. The problem is that most of them are infected by the virus of Islam. Once they are cured, they can be as good as anyone else. This is true also about Iranians, Pakistanis, Turks and all other Muslims. No nation is superior or inferior to other nations. It is how we think and behave that makes some excel over others. We can change our thinking and actions through proper education.

In order to claim that the prophecy “I will put My words in his mouth” is about Muhammad, you must first prove that Muhammad was from God. This you have not done yet. Once you do that, then we can determine whether these words refer to Muhammad or to someone else. This is like someone claiming that Cinderella’s lost shoe is hers when she has no feet to begin with. .

The following is what one of our readers wrote about your claim that: Each chapter of the Qur’an begins with this verse: “In the name of God, the most Merciful, the One Whose mercy is lasting,” and that this is the fulfillment of “He shall speak those words in God’s name.”

He wrote: “As everybody knows the basmala is an addition to the text and is a simple formulaic expression of Christian derivation. The Moslem exegetists themselves cannot agree on whether it is part of the revelation or a pious addition. The phrase “b’ ismi ‘llah” is actually a [H]ebraism and corresponds to the biblical “be shem YHWH”, which means “by (the power) of YHWH’s name”, where YHWH is actually the deity’s name while Allah is not. The calc phrase in Arabic therefore doesn’t mean anything, unless an Arabic-speaking Jew reads it and understands that the word Allah is used in the same way as “adonai” in the Bible in order to observe the tabu related to the utterance of the divine name. As for the rest of the formula, both the adjectives [R]ahman and [R]ahîm are Aramaic borrowings. Aramaic was the language of the Middle‑Eastern Jews and Christians before they were almost completely [A]rabised. Aramaic was not the language of the Arabs from Hijaz. I hope this rings a bell as to where and when the Qur’an [sic] was compiled. I’d like to know from either Mr Ghamidi or Mr Zahiri if they are really sure the adjective [R]ahîm means “the One Whose mercy is lasting” or if either of them was just expressing a personal opinion about the [I]slamic deity.”

You say that the prophecy states that the prophet to come would be like Moses and the Qur’an says: “Indeed We have sent you as an evidence against your nation quite the same way as We sent a messenger to Pharaoh.” (Qur’an; 73: 15)

Do you call this evidence? This is circular reasoning. This is the “claim”, not the “proof.”

Let’s clear these points first, and then proceed to other issues. God willing, I stand committed to answering all your questions, whether relevant to pre-destination or anything else. Khalid Zaheer (Words: 1023)

I think the points are clear. You have made your views known and so have I. Let us now move on and if you have no further evidence and “out of this world” miracles to prove that Islam is from God, please answer my question about predestination. If you have more “out of this world” proofs, please present them first. After all you said once the claim of Muhammad is proven to be true, one must not question anything else and accept whatever he said and did blindly. I find this reasoning absurd. In my view, all we need to prove that a claimant to infallibility is a liar is one error. However, in order to show that I am willing to go the extra mile and compromise, I agreed to withdraw all my charges should you show your, “out of this world” and “undeniable” proof. So far, you gave us circular reasoning, ad baculum, wishful thinking and even ad hominem accusing me of not having a pure heart and therefore not being able to see the Moon in the sky. I saw no proof yet, just logical fallacies.

Part XIX

March 25, 2007 Dear Mr Ali Sina Let me make another attempt to explain to you where you might stand, in my ordinary opinion, viz-a-viz the example of new moon I have been giving in the last few messages. The new moon, to me, is the message of Islam claiming itself to be from God and you are one of the persons who have to decide whether it’s there on the horizon or not. When I ask you to look at the moon, you have two possible obstacles in your way: a cloud cover and your unwillingness to see. While I do acknowledge that there is a cloud cover (and I really thank you for pointing that out), I am urging you to make sure that the factor of unwillingness on your part should not be an obstacle. I am aware of the fact that you have already rejected the possibility that the moon is there, but I still believe that you are an open-minded, truth-seeking person who has been swayed by some partly genuine reasons. To me those reasons are the result of incorrect information and misunderstanding.

Dear Dr. Zaheer,

What you say here does not really help. Anyone can say these things about his opponents. These statements constitute ad hominen and they are not a substitute for logical arguments. This is a polite way to say you are deaf, dumb and blind, or you have some sickness in your heart that does not allow you to see the truth. These were Muhammad’s favorite arguments. Unfortunately since Muslims read them in the Qur’an they think they are convincing divine arguments when in reality they are logical fallacies.

I asked you to give us proofs that Muhammad was a prophet of God. At first you said there are brilliant, undeniable, miraculous, out of this world proofs, but you would not give them to us. When I insisted you finally gave two:

1- Muhammad said he would be victorious, and he was; and

2- There is a mention of another prophet like Moses in Deuteronomy 18:18 and this must be referring to Muhammad. We saw how both these claims are fallacious. Osama bin Laden also warned in an interview a year before his terrorist act on America that he would do something big and, “you will hear about it in the news.” Then he did it. In his twisted Islamic thinking and the thinking of all the Muslims, this proves the truth of Allah. The thinking of Muslims is indeed warped. This is psychopathology. One reader of our discussion posted a message showing that this other prophet Moses was talking about was no other person than Joshua whom Moses was preparing to succeed him. So you did not give us any proof that Muhammad was a prophet. Now you say that my vision is covered with clouds and that if I purify my heart, I will be able to see what you see. These talks are not worth to be debated. I am giving you logical proofs that Muhammad could not have been a prophet. The proof is that he raided people in the middle of the night and after cowardly butchering unarmed people he shamelessly took their children and wives and reduced them into slaves and sex slaves. This man was a terrorist. No decent human would accept such a fiend as a prophet. Most Muslims do not know the truth about Muhammad. Many of those who are learning the truth are leaving Islam. It is sad to see that some Muslims have become so blinded by their zealotry that none of the crimes and evilness of Muhammad bothers them. It is they who have sickness in their hearts.

Do you have any other “out of this world” and undeniable proof to show that Muhammad was a prophet of God?

I have seen your article that talks about the errors in the Qur’an. I have read several times your anger at the way some Muslims are behaving. You also have historical references that make you believe in the peculiar perception of the prophet of Islam that you mention quite often. The kind of empathy my religion wants me to have for you, inclines me to believe that what you are going through, given your state of information, is understandable. The only point I am making is that you are overreacting at unreliable information and in the process refusing to consider the possibility that there is a moon on the horizon. Let me make another attempt to remove some of the cloud cover.

Islam does not teach you to have empathy for those that disagree with it. Can you show me where it teaches such a thing? Islam teaches you to kill them. So you are either playing taqiyyah (hiding the truth for a higher good) or are introducing a bid’a (innovation).

Muslims, like all other humans, have many good qualities but those have nothing to do with Islam. If Muslims are good it is despite of Islam. In your previous messages you were emphatic that those who disagree with Islam after being called to accept it do not deserve to live and should be killed. That was when you were talking like a Muslim. Now you are contradicting your previous statement. Obviously there is a battle raging within you, between your own humanity and your faith in the demonic cult of Islam. You know you can’t have both. You either must espouse Islam totally and lose your humanity or embrace your humanity and leave Islam.

You have mentioned in one of your articles I read that there is a contradiction in the Qur’an in that it talks about the possibility of God’s day to be as long as one thousand years and on another occasion as long as fifty thousand years. You have also mentioned that at times there is a mistake in the counting of the number of days in which this world was created. You have mentioned that the Qur’anic description of the location from where semen and milk emerge is scientifically inaccurate. You are also angry at the fact that the prophet of Islam married a six years’ old girl. And there are many more problems you mention in your various articles. I am sure it is not quite as much the apparent problem in the Qur’anic presentation as your anger that is keeping you away from appreciating that the contradictions and problems are only apparent and not real.

You are in denial. The contradictions in the Qur’an, as well as the questionable conduct of Muhammad, are very real. If they were not real you, or someone else could point out our misunderstanding. In my rebuttal of Dr. Naik’s claim that the Qur’an contains scientific facts, I showed that everything this book says is wrong and all of Dr. Naik’s claims are chicanery and false. All we need to know that Muhammad was not a prophet of God is one single error and we have hundreds.

Before I mention my brief responses to your concerns about Islamic teachings, I would want to inform you that my teacher, Mr. Ghamidi, decided not to deliver Qur’anic lectures anymore, back in the early 1970s, when he came across the possibility that there was a mathematical error in the Qur’anic law of inheritance. Thereafter, he devoted his time and knowledge of Arabic language to understand what the book was really saying. As a consequence of his research, he came to the clear understanding that the commonly understood version of the law was incorrect and that what the Qur’an was saying was error free. What I want to assure you is that you are not dealing with a bunch of gullible idiots.

Let us put these derogatory remarks and character assassinations aside. I don’t think they have any place in an intellectual discussion like the one we are having.

A few days ago a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my door and we engaged in discussion. The husband told me that only Earth has inhabitants. Now this is quite illogical when you consider the size of the universe and the insignificance of our little planet in it. Only in our galaxy, the Milky Way, there are over 400 billion stars, each like our Sun, and there are between 400 billion to a trillion galaxies in the universe. How can one claim with certainty that only Earth has intelligent inhabitants? I asked why then God created all these galaxies and stars. He said, because he wanted us to enjoy their beauty at night. Then we talked about evolution and the wife said, “You have faith in evolution”. This fine couple was well dressed and I am sure they were educated. Now how can one qualify these absurd claims? The answer is faith. When faith enters, reason goes the other way. This is true for people of all faiths. That is the nature of faith. It simply kills reason.

The Mu’tazilis wasted their time trying to find harmony between faith and reason. They argued that intellect (aql) is enough to distinguish right from wrong. For example, we know instinctively that justice (adl) and telling the truth (sidq) are morally good. Therefore, God is under moral obligation to be just and truthful. Likewise, we know injustice (zolm) and mendacity are evil (qubh). Consequently, God cannot do evil. This philosophy precludes the need for revelation because it accepts the fact that humans are intelligent enough to distinguish right from wrong. However, in the Qur’an and hadith there are passages and stories that depict Allah and his messenger as unjust, evil and even stupid. How did they get around that? They conceded that there are certain acts that the human intellect is incapable of assigning moral values to them. These are only known through revelation and they become known to be morally good if God orders them, or morally wrong if God forbids them.

With this concession, the Mu’tazilis dug their own tombs. By giving up the precedence of intellect over revelation, they allowed irrationality to dictate over rationality and therefore rendered futile their entire argument about the harmony between reason and faith. This is like you and I enter into a partnership agreeing to be equals and make our decisions based on mutual consent, with one clause stating that if there is a disagreement between us, my vote prevails. This clause renders futile the entire agreement of equal partnership. In matters that you and I both agree, there is no problem. However, when we disagree it is always my word that rules. So where is the equality?

As you can see, the doctrine of harmony between faith and reason is rendered null and void the moment you give precedence to revelation. The Mu’tazilis vanished because the harmony between reason and faith is a fallacy. It is essentially an oxymoron. The moment you acknowledge revelation as a true source of knowledge, you deny the human intellect. The reverse is also true. If you give precedence to reason, revelation becomes superfluous.

The reason Muslim scholars of the 10^th century declared that the gates of ijtihad (religious discourse) have been closed was because they realized that by recognizing revelation as the ultimate source of guidance, there is little left to reason and to discuss. All major issues of the faith have been resolved and no new inquiry is warranted.

Today we have a bunch of self proclaimed Muslim reformists going around deluding themselves and the westerners claiming Islam has also a peaceful side which they are trying to revive. They talk about ijtihad and y claim that they want to remain Muslims because only from within can they reform Islam. They are deluded. Islam cannot be reformed. It is rigid like fossil. You cannot reform it, but you can smash it.

If you embrace reason, you must eschew faith and if you follow faith, you are forced to abandon reason. Faith and reason are mutually exclusive. Their harmony is only a chimera and a fraud. Those who advocate such a doctrine are fooling themselves. These people will abandon reason every time reason challenges their faith. Reformation in Islam is misguided. It only buys more time for Islam. Islam must be eradicated and Muslims must be set free from this web of lies. You can’t fight one lie with another lie. To get rid of a lie we need to tell the truth.

You say that Mr. Ghamidi saw the mathematical error in the Qur’an in regards to inheritance and instead of admitting that the book is not infallible, he devoted his time and knowledge of Arabic language to understand what the book was really saying. Is that a rational approach? Once it became evident to him that there is an error in the Qur’an, it should have become obvious that this book is not from God. What does he expect to learn from a book that claims to be infallible and yet is riddled with errors? Then you say that “as a consequence of his research, he came to the clear understanding that the commonly understood version of the law was incorrect and that what the Qur’an was saying was error free”. You are losing me here. How can the Qur’an have errors and be error free at the same time? I don’t understand. You seem to be contradicting yourself. Please explain, how did he come to such conclusion?

Now I briefly mention my response to your criticisms: Qur’an clarifies that God’s days are different from ours. Like the duration of days of the moon and Mars are different from the days of earth, similarly the days (or more clearly durations) for getting different tasks done are also different. That’s why there is a mention that God’s day is the equivalent of 1000 years of our earth in one passage and that of 50,000 years in another.

There are two errors in this explanation. Firstly these two claims are contradictory and secondly both of them are unscientific.

I understand that the duration of a year is different in each planet. Mars’ year is about 2 ½ times longer than Earth’s. (Cheer up, because according to the Martian calendar, you and I are still teenagers.) Jupiter takes 12 Earth years to go around the Sun, while Saturn makes the trip in just under 30 years, Uranus in about 84, Neptune in 165, and Pluto in just short of 250. The Sun and its planets, traveling at a speed of about 240 km/second take 225 million years to revolve around the galactic center. (Doesn’t that make you dizzy? Poor Muhammad could not even understand these astronomical numbers.) The time it takes for each orbit of the Sun is called cosmic year or a galactic year. The Sun has completed about 20 orbits since the solar system was formed. For each orbit, it traveled 150,000 light years of distance. Our Sun is 20 galactic years old. It is expected to live another 24 galactic years before it exhausts its nuclear energy. It will die at the young age of 44. What will happen to it depends on whom you ask. If you ask the scientists, they will tell you that as the Sun grows old, its outer layer will expand. It will exhaust its hydrogen and then helium and its core will contract. It cools and become less bright. It will become a red giant star. Eventually the helium atoms in the core will fuse together, forming carbon atoms and releasing energy. After this phase, the outer layers of the Sun drift off into space, forming a planetary nebula exposing the core. Most of its mass will go to the nebula leaving it cool. It will eventually shrink to only a few thousand miles in diameter! At this point, it will be a white dwarf, a stable star with no nuclear fuel. It radiates its leftover heat for billions of years until it will become a cold dark black dwarf. By then it will be a dead star (replete with diamonds, highly compressed carbon).

However, al-Tabari will have none of this nonsense. He goes straight to the source of divine knowledge and quotes Muhammad who said the Sun and the Moon will go to heaven for their obedience to Allah.

The point I made was about the contradictions. In one place the Qur’an says that the length of each day of Allah is equal to 1000 earthly years and in another place it says it is equivalent to 50,000 earthly years. Now which version is true?

The truth is that both of them are absurd. This very claim presupposes that God is living on a planet that has longer days and that he is very much like us humans – bound by time. For an eternal God who is the maker of time, time should have no existence. Time did not exist prior to the Big Bang. Both time and space were created with the matter. Saying that God’s day is equal to 1,000 or 50,000 earthly years reveals Allah and his messenger’s total ignorance of the modern science.

Quantum mechanics, i.e. the physics dealing with the very minute subatomic world, challenges the conceptual primacy of time itself. According to the string theory, subatomic particles, the quarks, constantly fluctuate. These fluctuations are well understood mathematically and have been precisely documented experimentally. However, when it comes to time and space, on extremely short time intervals (about a tenth of a millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second) and distance scales (about a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a centimeter), quantum fluctuations so mangle space and time that the conventional ideas of left/right, backward/forward, up/down, and before/after become meaningless. It is hard for us to even envision such a thing. It means that if you are a quark, you can arrive in a place before reaching there or be in two places at once. Consequently when the entire universe was condensed in a single point, so dense that mater could not exist, time and space could not have existed either. The singularity, the primordial point of existence had no dimensions and was time free. So as you see, saying the day of God is equal to 1000 years or 50,000 years is nonsense. Such talks are fit only for an ignorant man of the 7^th century. They are certainly not fit for us who live in the 21^st century.

In this author’s humble opinion, once we understand the world of subatomic particles, we would be able to explain thoughts and a lot of mysteries such as intelligence, creativity, imagination, telepathy, premonition, dreams and what we call psychic power and paranormal. Subatomic particles can appear as either matter particles or energy waves, meaning that they are made from pure energy. That is the substance thoughts are made of. Quantum mechanics may one day answer a lot of our questions regarding what our ancestors called “spiritual realm.” Everything has a scientific explanation. The subatomic world, which is the foundation of the visible atomic world, is yet to be understood. The answer to our enigmas is in the science, not in religion. There is no need to resort to hocus pocus, occult and divine to resolve anything. Science will eventually answer all our questions, including where we get our morality. Religions have been found wrong on everything that could be proven, such as the origin and the shape of the universe and things relating to this world. How can we trust their tales of the other world? There is no other world but this. Part of it we see and know, and the other part is yet hidden and we are only beginning to discover.

Today scientists are seeking to combine quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of gravity (the general theory of relativity) which would bring us the discovery of the “theory of everything.” As Brian Greene in New York Times writes “we are on the verge of another major upheaval, one that will pinpoint the more elemental concepts from which time and space emerge. Many believe this will involve a radically new formulation of natural law in which scientists will be compelled to trade the space-time matrix within which they have worked for centuries for a more basic “realm” that is itself devoid of time and space.” [26]

This is where the enlightened world is today. And where are the Muslims? They are busy discussing the duration of the day of Allah. How pathetic!

The poverty and the backwardness of the Ummah begin in their minds. They have nothing to do with Palestine or Zionism my erudite friends. These are all excuses. They have everything to do with Islam and the garbage that Muslims gobble in lieu of science.

The mention of the number of days in the Qur’an that gives an apparent understanding, if one were to naively count the figures, that God created this world in eight days, is because of the fact that the mention of creation of the earth in two days (41:9) is again included in the mention which clarifies that our earth was created with all its potential in four days (41:10). In other words, in order to arrive at the number of days it took for the creation of the heavens and the earth one should not include the two days mentioned in verse 41:9, because they have already been included in the next verse. Thus the mention is completely consistent with the rest of the mentions in the Qur’an that the heavens and the earth were created in six days.

Like your above example about the duration of the day of God, these statements in the Qur’an not only contradict each other and are mutually exclusive, they actually contradict science and commonsense too.

I already discussed this contradiction in my rebuttal of Dr. Naik’s story of the Creation of Universe in the Qur’an. There is no need to repeat that. Your explanation does not solve this contradiction.

However, this contradiction pales in comparison when you consider the absurdity of these verses. There is no point to rehash how the world has come to be. These verses only betray the ignorance of their author. Can possibly the maker of this universe have said such a balderdash about the universe? These are all proofs that Muhammad was an ignorant man of the seventh century. He had no clue how the universe had come to be. If these proofs can’t convince you, what does? How can the maker of the universe be so wrong as how the universe is made? What other proof you need to see that Muhammad was a liar? For how long do you want to deny the obvious? And you call ME blind?

As for the errors in the description of production of semen and milk, I agree with you that if the Qur’anic mention is inaccurate, its claim to be divine crumbles. However, before one reaches that conclusion, let’s be sure about two things: i) The Qur’an is actually making that claim and ii) the scientific investigation has made it conclusively clear that the information in the Qur’an is wrong. What if an objective investigation leads one to a different conclusion? Likewise, what if it is conclusively shown that the ages of Aisha, the wife of the prophet, were sixteen and nineteen years at the time of marriage and consummation of it respectively?

That is very interesting. I think you are seeing the light finally my dear professor. Welcome to the world of enlightenment. It’s time that you surrender to higher reason. Resistance is futile. You know the answer to all these questions better than me. Yes the scientific investigation has made it conclusively clear that the information in the Qur’an on just about everything is wrong. The function of the mountains is not to keep the earth from shaking with us. The mountains are not like pegs. The earth is not flat like a bed. The Sun is not revolving around the Earth. The stars are not in the lower heavens. The Moon is not a lamp. Sperms are not created in the backbone. The cow’s milk is not produced from amongst its dung and urine. Fetus is not formed the way the Qur’an says. The explanation of water cycle in the Qur’an is wrong. Animals do not have societies like ours. Ants do not understand human language. There are also other claims made in the Qur’an that are outright ridiculous such as pigs and monkeys being descendants of the Jews (or that Allah transformed the Jews into swine and apes), an animal will rise to call people to God, jinnis and angels, and many other asininities that you find in the Qur’an.. The Qur’an is a book of asininity. It is not befitting for rational people to call themselves Muslims. This name is an embarrassment. Soon, as these facts become known worldwide, this name will become synonymous to stupid as it is becoming synonymous to terrorist. Don’t call yourself a Muslim. Leave Islam now. It is embarrassing to belong to this religion of stupidity.

As for the age of Aisha, how are you going to show that she was 16 or 19? All the mutawatir (diffusely recurrent) hadiths say that she was 6 years old when Muhammad married her and took her to bed when she was 9 years old. There are no other versions of this story.

The other day I asked a Jew who had converted to Islam and had joined our forum, what he thought of the Qur’an’s claim that Allah transformed the Jews into pigs and monkeys. He responded, “I am not a scientist to answer that question.” Does this gullible soul think that maybe a scientist can explain this absurdity? Of course not! But he simply refuses to think about it. He wants to avoid the question because he knows that this could lead him to awakening and the realization that he has been fooled. That is painful. When I asked what he thinks of the massacre of the Jewish tribe of Bani Quraiza that has been described in detail in dozens of traditions and books of history written by Muslims themselves, he said that no mass grave has been found and also the traditions vary in the account of the number of people massacred, so the whole story is fabricated. This is what happens to one’s brain when one becomes a Muslim. One loses his or her rational faculty and becomes incapable of thinking logically. Doesn’t he know that corpses turn to dust in only a few decades? Billions of people are buried under the earth, do we find their remains after hundreds of years, especially in cities where people built houses and dug the earth many times over? Sure he does. It is simply not convenient for him to think. He likes to be fooled and will do anything to remain that way. Waking up and realizing how foolish he has been to embrace a demonic cult whose founder hated the Jews with all his being is painful. Truth is not painful; it is the shattering of lies that is painful. How is he going to face his friends and relatives, now that he is even wearing Muslim clothing and has a website promoting Islam? How is he going to explain the embarrassment of being a first class idiot to himself and to those who know him? Accepting that one has been fooled is painful. It is much easier to remain a fool and deny it. This poor man has no choice but to dig his head deeper in the sand and play stupid.

Doesn’t this apply to all those Muslims who read this site (faithfreedom.org) and see how Muslim scholars miserably fail to refute a single argument that we present against Islam and yet find no courage to break their shackles and set themselves free? Doesn’t this apply to you and to Mr. Ghamidi? What would you do without Islam, when Islam is the source of your livelihood? Breaking the chains of slavery of mind is far more difficult than breaking the chains made of iron. Been there, done that. I should know.

What distinguishes us humans from animals is our rational faculty. So do you see the tragedy? These crazy beliefs dehumanize us. Not onlydo we start babbling nonsense, we even start acting as savage animals and kill each other for an utterly foolish belief.

You justify killing those who reject Islam and say they deserve it while you are still waiting for science to prove the apparently absurd claims made in the Qur’an. Shouldn’t you at least delay the killings until the proof is found, just in case?

You say “I agree with you that if the Qur’anic mention is inaccurate, its claim to be divine crumbles” At the same time you express your wish that the proof will be found in future. So why don’t you leave Islam now and wait until the proof is found. If the proof is found, both of us can join Islam. If God is just, he will never punish us for not accepting something without proof. If he is not just, he is unworthy of praise. He is certainly not God.

For me to accept Islam, you have to find a new Qur’an completely different from the present one and a new Sira presenting a completely different Muhammad. I will not accept this Qur’an and this Muhammad even if you find one hundred miracles in the Qur’an. If you find anything out of the ordinary in that book I attribute it to Satan and not to God, because the teachings of the Qur’an are satanic and not divine. So far there is no indication that even Satan had anything to do with that embarrassingly stupid book. The Qur’an is raving of a psychopath and nothing more.

The day that the Qur’an is proven to be true, is the day that the Sun will dawn from the west. Actually Muhammad said that this too is going to happen. Here are the words out of the horse’s mouth:

Narrated Abu Dharr:
I entered the mosque while Allah’s Apostle was sitting there. When the Sun had set, the Prophet said, “O Abu Dharr! Do you know where this (Sun) goes?” I said, “Allah and His Apostle know best.” He said, “It goes and asks permission to prostrate, and it is allowed, and (one day) it, as if being ordered to return whence it came, then it will rise from the west.” Then the Prophet recited, “That: “And the Sun runs on its fixed course (for a term decreed),” (36.38) as it is recited by ‘Abdullah. [Bukhari 009.093.520 Also 004.054.421 and Muslim 001.0299]

This is easy to verify. I live on the other side of the world, right beneath your feet. When the Sun sets in your neck of the woods, it rises in mine and vice versa. So between the two of us we have its itinerary all covered. How about you and I watch carefully and see where it stops to prostrate, then write down the exact time and with this we can scientifically determine the coordinates of the throne of Allah. I think that would be the greatest discovery of all times and would certainly make you and I go down the history and maybe even win the Nobel Prize. If we keep our eyes open, we might catch the Sun in the act of prostration. It can’t hide from us.

Silly scientists think day and night take place because of the rotation of the earth around its own axis. Why don’t they read the Qur’an and hadith to learn the truth?

A few more things might help: The fact that Pharaoh’s body shall be discovered in later times has been predicted in the Qur’an most clearly (Qur’an; 10:92). The book of God makes an accurate mention of the fact, as against the common contemporary wisdom of those times, that pearls and corals emerge from both sweet and salty waters (55:22). The book changes its style to accommodate the possibility that the details of a child in the mother’s womb are not beyond the possibility of human knowledge (31:34).

Qur’an 10:92 says, “But We will this day deliver you with your body that you may be a sign to those after you, and most surely the majority of the people are heedless to Our communications.” What is so miraculous about this verse?

Qur’an 55:22 says “There come forth from them pearls, both large and small.” What part of this statement was unknown to people of the time of Muhammad or any people of any time? Didn’t people know that pearls come in all sizes, some large and some small?

Qur’an 31:34 says “Surely Allah is He with Whom is the knowledge of the hour, and He sends down the rain and He knows what is in the wombs; and no one knows what he shall earn on the morrow; and no one knows in what land he shall die; surely Allah is Knowing, Aware.”

This verse actually is saying no one but Allah knows what is in the womb. Now, any one can make an ultrasound and determine the sex of the child. So the Qur’an is wrong again. I am surprised you seem to be helping me to reveal the errors of the Qur’an. Are you already on our side?

Also everyone knows that Allah does not send the rain. The rain falls because of very natural phenomena. If a stone rolls down a mountain, it is not falling because Allah makes it fall. It just follows the law of gravity. These kinds of arguments only prove the shallowness of the mind of Muhammad. The next part of this silly verse says “no one knows in what land shall he die.” Now does that prove that Allah knows it or that Allah is God? If so why he did not inform Muhammad of his own impending death? We know that Muhammad had no knowledge of the future or the past. When people of Medina accused Aisha of adultery the poor Muhammad was truly distressed and did not know whom to believe. Only after he decided to believe Aisha, nearly a month after she was accused, did Allah send down a revelation confirming what Muhammad had thought was true. Where was Allah all this time? Also when in Khaibar Muhammad wanted to find out the whereabouts of the treasures, he tortured Kinana. Why he did not ask his Allah to tell him where the hidden treasures are? When a woman whose male relatives were massacred by Muhammad prepared for him a lamb tainted with poison, Allah did not stop his prophet from eating. Only after he ate some and one of his followers fell dead, did he realize the lamb was poisoned. If Muhammad had any knowledge of the unknown, why did he use to send spies to the towns of his victims to see when they are most vulnerable to raid them? Couldn’t Allah or his angel reveal the unknown to him?

Some minor facts might also help.

Okay. We are now done with the “out of this world” and the “miraculous” and ready for the minor stuff.

If the readers pick a concordance of the Qur’an — the book that mentions all verses in which a particular word has been used in the alphabetical order — and count the number of times the word ‘yaum’ (day) has been mentioned, they might be surprised by the fact the total count stops at 365! Also the word ‘shahr’ (month) has been used twelve times. There are many other unannounced surprises in store to help you to ‘see the moon’. The only condition is that you should be willing to do so. I can assure you that the cloud cover would disappear.

These are not miracles. You can find numerical oddities in any book. Ivan Panin claimed to have discovered numerical patterns in the Hebrew scriptures and in the Greek text of the New Testament. His patterns involved counting of letters and words as well as gematria (numerical values of letters).

Michael Drosnin wrote a bestseller called “Torah Code“(also known as The Bible Code). He claimed words and phrases are found by picking equally spaced letters from the Hebrew text of the Torah.

If you have enough time on your hand you can find a lot of patterns in any book. When you have millions of star eyed believers with billions of hours on their hands, it is natural to find a lot of such “miracles”. None of these claims are worth a second thought.

One of our Muslim readers asked what in my view constitutes a miracle. I will answer that here.

If any of these so called messengers and prophets could have said something that would have been useful to mankind, I would have accepted that as miracle. For example, if they had shown how to make anesthetic, I would have recognized that as miracle. Imagine how much pain people endured when they needed amputation or surgery. If these self proclaimed prophets had told us about viruses and how to prevent contagious diseases, then I would have accepted that as miracle. If they had said that the Earth is revolving around the Sun in a clear language and that the Sun and the Moon are not “lamps” in the sky but one is a planet like the Earth and the other is a star, or that all living organisms are made of billions of tiny cells each carrying a code that is the blueprint of that organism, then I would have accepted that as miracle. There is nothing in the words of any of these prophets that was unknown at their time by their contemporaries. They simply rehashed the false knowledge of the people of their own time. Now their followers desperately try to attribute some hidden meanings to what these prophet pretenders said. For example, we often read Muhammad talking abut the “worlds of God”. We all know he is talking about the physical world, the world of the mythical jinnis, the worlds of angels, spirits and other fairy beings. I recently read somewhere a Muslim saying by “worlds” Muhammad must have been alluding to the multiverse. You know the theory that says beyond this universe there must be countless other universes that may or may not be similar to ours but belong to other time-space quanta and therefore we will never know about them. This theory is based on the fact that the same laws that made the Big Bang happen must have made other big bangs happen too. When nature does something, it does it in abundance. However, the Big Bang makes the need for a creator redundant. Poor Muslims do not understand this and in their zest to make the Qur’an look miraculous make claims that actually deny God. That is how believers fancy. They try to interpret every word of their holy book and find miracles in the most banal things to justify their faith in absurdities. Doesn’t the very notion of the Big Bang that so many Muslims talk about, reject the Qur’anic fable of creation?

These facts are there simply because the Qur’an says: “Say [O Muhammad], ‘O mankind, indeed I am the messenger of Allah to you all, [from Him] to whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. There is no deity except Him; He gives life and causes death.’ So believe in Allah and His messenger, the unlettered prophet, who believes in Allah and His words, and follow him that you may be guided.” (Qur’an; 7:158) Khalid Zaheer (Words: 1191)

Facts are there simply because Muhammad says so? Who is Muhammad to say so? You have not established the authority of Muhammad yet. What facts? You have shown no facts so far. This verse is also a claim and not a proof. You are again engaging in circular reasoning presenting the claims made by Muhammad as proof of his claim. The answer to the question “what is the proof that Joe Blow was a prophet?” is not, “because Joe Blow said so.” What if Joe Blow was a lair? You must first prove Joe’s or Mo’s claim and only then you can use their words as authority. As long as you have not done so, Muhammad is just another pretender. Muhammad’s words can only be used as confessions against him and not as proof of his claim. This law applies to everyone and Muhammad is no exception.

Kind regards,

Ali Sina

Part XX

Dear Mr Ali Sina The world of truth and knowledge is an emotion-free world. It allows neither excessive love nor exaggerated hatred. If you are in the world of politics, literature, or even sports, your excessive emotions can be an asset for you. However, if you are in the pursuit of truth, your emotional frenzy can easily distract you from your real objective. When you are seeking truth unemotionally, you cannot afford to make hurried statements of hatred on receiving information that is making sense even though it is running contrary to your accepted views. If you do so, you cannot bring sane people close to your way of thinking. We had communicated to you at the very outset that we base our understanding of Islam on Qur’an, which is a fully preserved text of God, and sunnah, the completely authentic religious practices of the prophet. These two sources constitute the real, reliable message of Islam. The rest of information on Islam is all debatable, because it was gathered by humans. However, in your enthusiasm to make fun of Islam, you quote hadith, refer to Mu’tazilite views, employ some Shi‘ah concepts (like taqiyya), and whatever comes your way to achieve your already decided objective.

Dear Dr. Zaheer;

You raise a very valid point that to find the truth one must not fall into the quagmire of emotionalism but rather be detached and open, and accept the possibility that one may be wrong. I can’t agree more. However, you must admit that it is hard for a believer to be unbiased in regards to his or her faith. This is the nature of faith. You made it clear that you love Muhammad more than your own parents. How could you be objective when someone questions that man’s honesty, ethics, morality and even his sanity? I have been there myself. I know the difficulty that a believer faces. I wrote about my ordeals and the seven harrowing valleys that I had to cross in the wilderness of uncertainty before I could reach the citadel of enlightenment. Are you sure your understanding of Islam is not boggled by your faith? Faith is the antithesis of reason. It is interesting that you should advise me to not be emotional when you defend faith that is entirely an emotional experience. You presented no rational arguments that Islam is from God.

I think you are confusing passion with emotion. I am passionate about fighting Islam while you are emotional about this belief.

You say that you have based your understanding of Islam on the Qur’an, and the sunnah. I quoted from the Qur’an and hadith (sunnah) to prove my case against Muhammad. If I mentioned the Mu’tazilis, it was to demonstrate that Islam and rationalism do not mix and that there have been others who have tried and have failed.

As for taqqiyah, it is not just a Shi’ite concept. Taqiyyah (lying, misrepresenting, deceiving, hiding the truth) is very much Islamic. It was practiced by Muhammad himself. Your good self also made use of it in your debates. An example of that just happens to be your next paragraph.

The claim that Aisha, the wife of the prophet of Islam, was eighteen years old, two years after her marriage and a year before the consummation of it, is confirmed by the fact that her elder sister, Asma, who was ten years older, died at the exact age of hundred. She died in the year seventy-two Hijrah. This establishes her age at the time of migration to Madinah (Hijrah) as twenty-eight and that of Aisha as eighteen. Islam and the personalities associated with it became well known when Islam started dominating the political scene of the Arabian Peninsula . This only happened after the Hijrah. Prior to it, information was sketchy and unreliable. The only narrator who mentions her age as six at the time of marriage is the one whose memory became unreliable when he reported this information.

You argue that Aisha was 18 years old when Muhammad married her and to prove that you quote a hadith that says Aisha’s sister Asma who was ten years older than her, died in the year seventy-two Hijrah at the age of 100. So when Muhammad migrated to Medina she must have been 28 years old and Aisha 18 years old.

You want me to accept this hadith as proof and overlook dozens of other hadiths narrated by Aisha herself (and others) who clearly state she was 6 years old when Muhammad married her and nine years old when he consummated his marriage with her. In these hadiths Aisha says:

Allah’s Apostle said to me, “You were shown to me twice (in my dream) before I married you. I saw an angel carrying you in a silken piece of cloth, and I said to him, ‘Uncover (her),’ and behold, it was you. I said (to myself), ‘If this is from Allah, then it must happen.[27]

This hadith shows that Aisha was only a toddler rapped in a cloth and carried by an angel when Muhammad had such dream about her. In other places she has said “that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old.”[28] And “Allah’s Apostle married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house when I was nine years old.”[29]

The same hadith is reported in several places, which makes is mutawatir, (recurrent) and therefore most likely to be true.

In one hadith Aisha narrates,

The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became Allright, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age.[30]

Please pay attention to the details of the above hadith. Aisha was playing at swing with other girls. Is this the kind of play 18 years old women play? Her mother grabbed her by the hand and rubbed her face with water. How many 18 years old women you know that require their mothers washing their faces? This hadith is also mutawatir [31]

In another hadih she is reported saying

When the Prophet married me, my mother came to me and made me enter the house (of the Prophet) and nothing surprised me but the coming of Allah’s Apostle to me in the forenoon.[32]

Nothing surprised her more than Muhammad coming to her in the same morning? Why this should be surprising? Isn’t it because this little girl had no idea why this old man was pulling down his pants and doing things to her that she had no idea about?

In one hadith she is reported saying that when she was taken to the house of Muhammad as a bride she was nine and her dolls were with her.[33]

In another hadith she narrated:

I used to play with the dolls in the presence of the Prophet, and my girl friends also used to play with me. When Allah’s Apostle used to enter (my dwelling place) they used to hide themselves, but the Prophet would call them to join and play with me. (The playing with the dolls and similar images is forbidden, but it was allowed for ‘Aisha at that time, as she was a little girl, not yet reached the age of puberty.) (Fateh-al-Bari page 143, Vol.13)[34]

Do 18-year-old women play with dolls?

Aisha has also said that she was born when her parents were already Muslims.[35] Muhammad married Aisha only a month after the death of Khadijah at the age of 51. If Aisha was 18 at the time of her marriage she would have been seven years old when Muhammad started his prophetic carrier at the age of 40.

You overlook all these sahih and mutawatir hadiths and cling to a haidth about Asma. Why is there a discrepancy between this hadith and a score of others that say Aisha was 6 years old when Muhammad married her? The answer is that in those days people did not have ID cards. Even my own grandmother was not sure about her age. It is only in the last seventy/eighty years that we in the Middle East have ID cards and record the exact date of our birth. Arabs did not pay attention to their birth and still do not celebrate their own birthday. When you are very old, everyone around you is younger. No one knows when you were born. Curiously, we tend to see older people much older than what they actually are. People can easily think you are 100 years old when you are only 90. It is also a trait of us humans to exaggerate and talk in hyperbole. Abu Afak, the Jewish man whom Muhammad ordered to be assassinated in Medina, was said to be 120 years old. People did not live that long in those days. So it is very likely that Asma was only 90 years old, but those around her thought she was 100. You say she was “exactly 100 years old” How did you determine that? “100” is a round figure which means very old. How can this one hadith debunk a score of hadiths that repeat Aisha was 6 years old when Muhammad married her?

Now, you must admit that the very fact that you want to make the age of Aisha older is because you know that it is despicable for an old man to have sexual feelings (let alone acting upon them) for a little child. You are embarrassed by this fact. This speaks highly of you. It shows that you are a man of integrity and honor. Unfortunately, as you well know, the majority of Muslims have no problem with the fact that Muhammad married a 6‑year‑old child. As a result, children are married to old men because they consider this shameful practice to be the sunnah of their prophet.

Since you do not belong to these misguided Muslims, and know what they are doing is un-Islamic, will you please tell us what have you done to stop this evil practice and ban child marriages in Pakistan? Have you, or your esteemed teacher, Mr. Ghamidi, ever written against pedophilia that is so rampant in Islamic countries where it is even recognized by law? If you show us one article that either one of you have written denouncing pedophilia, I would know you are sincere. If up to this day you have remained silent in the face of this despicable crime, all I can conclude is that you know the truth but you are not “truth lovers” and are playing taqqiyah at this moment in order to save the image of Islam because you know how damaging this shameful act is. This makes your sin much graver. Those Muslims who think what Muhammad did with Aisha was good and dandy, can be forgiven for they are ignorant. We can’t forgive you for ignorance. You are guilty of cover up and hypocrisy. You lie to save the image of Muhammad. Which is worse? Being ignorant or lying to cover up a crime?

After this understanding has become evident, as a sane, truth-loving person you should stop insisting on this point. I am sure you have many other points that you can still raise against Islam. However, when you behave like a stubborn person in the wake of reasonable information, you don’t allow proper academic debate to take place. If you have, let’s say, a thousand things to say against Islam, and I answer one of them to the satisfaction of a reasonable, rational man, the list of objections must come down to nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine. It doesn’t matter a single bit if you have a large following of emotionally charged enemies of Islam at your back. Within Muslims too we have a big number of people who hate the West and non-Muslims in the same irrational way. This world would remain a troubled place so long as individuals bearing such unreasonable attitude stay.

You maintain that after reading the story of Asma, as a “sane, truth-loving person” I should stop insisting on this point. If your argument was valid, I would have. However, in this instance your evidence is weak. The overwhelming evidence point to the fact that Aisha was nine years old (eight years and nine months in solar years) when Muhammad took her to bed. As a sane and truth loving person, I think it is you who must admit to the fact that what Muhammad did with that little girl was improper and unholy. The problem is that millions of little girls were victimized and continue being victimized because of what that fiend did. This is the tragedy. When sane people follow an insane man, they emulate his insanity.

You accuse me of being a “stubborn person in the wake of reasonable information”. Do you still insist on this charge? Isn’t perhaps the reverse true? If Aisha was 18 when Muhammad married her, why are there so many hadiths saying she was six years old, playing with dolls? Why is it that no Muslim scholar has ever denounced this practice or has challenged the authenticity of these hadiths? Why is it that only now that the world is paying attention and only for the consumption of the Westerners you come up with these denials?

My maternal grandfather was over 50 when he married my grandmother who was 15. He was a just man. However, this was no happy marriage. He died leaving a young wife and several toddlers behind. She could not bear the burden and died soon afterwards. My mother and her siblings grew as orphans. The stories of our people are intertwined with pain, all because of this insanity sanctioned by the despicable conduct of Muhammad. Good people do evil things because they think it is authorized by God. My grandfather was not a bad man. He simply saw nothing wrong in marrying such a young girl because he held Muhammad as his example. Your case is different; you know what Muhammad did was wrong and yet, instead of condemning him, you strive to cover up for him to save his name. You participate in deceit and lie to mankind for your faith.

You say that I may have many other points that I can still rise against Islam and should let go of this one because in your opinion it is already contested. Is it really?

Assuming one or a few of my claims against Islam are unfounded, would that make Islam a true religion? If I am mistaken, it only proves that I am fallible. Have I ever claimed something else? The point that escapes you is that if Islam was a true religion, it should not have a single error in it. One single error is enough to prove that it is false. Interestingly you acknowledge that there are many other valid arguments against Islam but you seem to be reluctant to accept this one.

Yes, we humans should look at each other’s good points and close our eyes to one another’s faults. That is because we are all fallible. It is better that we watch for the beam in our own eyes and not the speck in the eyes of others. This principle does not apply when you want to evaluate the truth or falsehood of someone claiming to be a messenger of God. In that case you must not close your eyes but keep them wide open and try to find errors in what he says. Only if you find none, should you believe. You close your eyes to thousands of errors, absurdities and evilness in the Qur’an and cling to a few vague notions that you think are miraculous when in reality they are not. It is your wishful thinking and misunderstanding caused by your desire to believe and your religious fervor that make you see miracles in the most asinine statements of the Qur’an. If this is not emotionalism, then what is?

I can’t see how intelligent people can get influenced by the fact that a man has got nothing to say except negative comments against a message which is defending itself on rational grounds. Furthermore, the critic has also gone back on his policy of allowing the readers the time-space to read the message from the other side to absorb. Do you think your intelligent readers wouldn’t be able to see the lack of confidence clearly appearing from the u-turn in your policy?

Did you defend Islam on rational grounds? In that case please rest assured that intelligent people will accept your argument and will dismiss mine. The whole point of this exercise is to show both sides of the argument. Smart people will only agree with what is logical. If you are convinced that your arguments have been logical, I see no reason for concern. The fact of the matter is that by not publishing our debate in your site and by swiftly banning faithfreedom.org in Pakistan you give the impression that you are not that sure about the strength of your argument. You want people to believe in you when you are in doubt. You are sending contradictory messages. Your words claim victory, but your actions concede defeat.

So you think because I respond to you quickly, instead of waiting a week or more like you do, it shows that I lack confidence? Apart from lack of confidence I have other flaws that you kindly did not highlight. Nonetheless, my personal shortcomings do not invalidate the strength of my arguments. If you find flaws in what I say, please point them out, and please tolerate my personal defects as I am not the subject of the discussion.

You didn’t make any comments on the fact that Mr Ghamidi was able to find the correct understanding in the inheritance law of Qur’an. As a truth-seeking person, you should have asked me what the problem was and how was it sorted out. You didn’t do so because, as you have stated in your last message, you have decided not believe in the Qur’an no matter what evidences are provided to support its claim. Is it a rational way of debating serious matters?

You expect me to make comments on things that you did not mention. There are mathematical errors in the law of inheritance. You say that Mr. Ghamidi knows about them. Despite that he has been able to explain them. Why you didn’t present his discoveries? You are most welcome to write back and tell us about it. If anyone can disprove any of my charges against Islam, I will withdraw that charge.

I do not know how mathematical errors can be explained. According to the Qur’an (4:11, 4:12, 4:176) the share of the inheritance of

Wife (1/8) is:	=	3/24
Daughters (2/3)	=	16/24
Father (1/6)	=	4/24
Mother(1/6)	=	4/24
Total	=	27/24

This is bigger than the total funds available.

Here are a few more examples that show the law does not work:

Husband, (1/2) = 1/2 Brother (everything) = 2/2 Total = 3/2	Parents 1/3 = 4/12 Wife 1/4 = 3/12 Total = 7/12
Husband, (1/2) = 3/6 Sister (1/2) = 3/6 Mother (1/3) = 2/6 Total = 8/6	Husband, (1/2) = 3/6 Sister (1/2) = 3/6 Mother (1/3) = 2/6 Total = 8/6
Wife1/4 = 3/12 Mother 1/3 = 4/12 Sisters 2/3 = 8/12 Total = 15/12	Wife1/4 = 3/12 Mother 1/3 = 4/12 Sisters 2/3 = 8/12 Total = 15/12

There are many other scenarios where the portions do not add up, such as:

scenario		fund distributed	surplus
Only a wife:	=	1/4	3/4
Only a mother:	=	1/3	2/3
Only a daughter	=	1/2	1/2
Two daughters	=	2/3	1/3
Only a Sister	=	1/2	1/2
A mother and a sister	=	1/3 + 1/2 = 5/6	1/6
A wife and a mother	=	1/4 + 1/3 = 5/12	7/12
A sister and a wife	=	1/2 + 1/4 = 3/4	1/4

How can Mr. Ghamidi know about these errors and at the same time call the Qur’an “error-free”?

Which evidence are you talking about? You presented none. What I said in my message is that even if you could present evidence that Muhammad had access to certain secret knowledge, this still does not prove that this knowledge had come to him from God. It could have come from Satan. The reason for that is because the message of Islam is a satanic message of hate, violence and death. There is nothing godly and holy in the Qur’an and the life of Muhammad to conclude that he was a messenger of God. Nonetheless, I told you on several occasions that I will withdraw my charges against Muhammad and will shut down Faith Freedom International should you prove that there is anything out of this world and miraculous in the Qur’an. I said that despite the fact that the Qur’an is a satanic book, Satan has withheld any secret knowledge from Muhammad. There is nothing extraordinary and out of this world in that book. I showed how every one of the claims that you made about the Qur’an being miraculous is wishful thinking and false.

The message of Jesus is a message of love. The message of Muhammad is a message of hate. These two men were howling from two opposite poles. If the message of Jesus was divine, that of Muhammad must be coming from the depth of hell. Of course I would not accept Islam as a religion of God if you show something “out of this world” in the Qur’an. However, you did not do it. There is nothing brilliant, miraculous or out of this world in this book.

You’ve mentioned that the Qur’an doesn’t encourage its followers to empathize with others. I am repeating a part of a verse whose translation I sent you earlier: “And let not the enmity of a nation incline you to be unfair”. (Qur’an; 5:8) I know your reaction would be to condemn it as a plagiarized concept of the Bible, because you are not trained to listen to the other side with an open mind. All you do is prepare your rebuttals when you are listening.

My dear friends: You are smart men. You know that if a person wants to deceive others he will say words that are pleasing. We all receive these emails known as “Nigerian Scams” where the sender salutes you in the name of God and presents himself as the wife of so and so deposed president with millions of dollars to deposit in your account so you could spend it in the name of Jesus for godly causes. Should we give these charlatans some credit because they open their letter in the name of God and speak about love and charity? Please do not expect us to be naïve. The actions of Muhammad speak louder than his words. Of course he had to say something good to fool the gullible. Those gullible people, who followed him and committed atrocities, thought he was the messenger of God. Had Muhammad not fooled them with these vacuous nice words, would they have believed in him and sacrificed their lives and wealth for him? The proof of the pudding is in eating it. Was Muhammad fair to those who did not believe in him? Is it fair to raid people in the middle of the night, slay their unarmed men and take their women and children as slaves? You are rational persons. I expect more from you. Do you really expect us to be fooled by some inane clichés that Muhammad pronounced here and there and overlook his evil deeds?

When I was a child, there was a radio show that I used to listen to. It was called “A City within Our City”. The producer would interview an inmate every week. These criminals would narrate their life stories, telling how they were drawn to crime. At the end of each session he would ask if the prisoner had any advice for the youths. These criminals had the best advices. I recall thinking to myself, if we only followed the advices of these murderers and gangsters the world would be a paradise. Words are cheap. Even Ahmadinejad, the Hitler wannabe clown President of Iran, who harbors the dream of starting a new holocaust is reported to have said a lot of good words, such as “we want peace for all mankind” and other clichés such as these. Do these vacuous statements make this ruffian a man of peace?

I have already explained that the mention of killing of an individual in the Qur’an has to do with the divine punishment the Almighty inflicted on the people who denied the message of the messengers of God. It has got nothing to do with the rest of the people. The Qur’an is very clear about it. The killing of the men of a Jewish tribe during the time of the prophet took place because they had violated their terms of contract with Muslims by conspiring against them and then they themselves proposed the name of an ex-Jew who converted to Islam for deciding their fate. The proposed judge decided their fate on the basis of what was mentioned in the Torah.

What you did not explain are:
a) What is the proof that Muhammad was a true messenger of God?
b) Why would a loving God want to kill those who disbelieve in him?
c) Why does God not kill his deniers, and ask humans to shed the blood of their kind?

This is like I point a gun at you and tell you that you should surrender to me with no fight because I am a policeman and that resisting an arrest is against the law. Well, this sounds logical. However, the problem is that I have not produced my credentials as police and in fact I have acted like a thief, a murderer, an assassin, a rapist and a very evil man. Should you still believe my claim and surrender with no fight?

You start with a fallacy and build on that justifying one fallacy with another. You are convinced to be right when you have given us no proof. The very foundation of your belief is wrong and therefore every argument that you build on it is wrong.

I showed that it was not the Bani Quraiza who violated the term of the contract but it was Muhammad who broke every one of his treaties and even made his sock puppet Allah approve them. Sura 9 is called bara’a, precisely because in this sura Allah orders Muhammad to break all his treaties. This is a lie that Muslims have been rehashing since the time of Muhammad. The very history that their historians have recorded shows that it was Muhammad who violated his treaties and not the other way round. Nonetheless, setting an example for his followers, he always blamed his victims, accusing them of conspiring against him to justify his “preemptive” forays.

It was not the Bani Quraiza who proposed Sa’d ibn Mu’az to pass the verdict. It was Muhammad who did it and the reason is that he perfectly knew how this ruffian despised them. He knew that Islam had changed his heart and now he felt nothing but hatred for his former allies. Sa’d was the bodyguard of Muhammad. He slept in the mosque where Muhammad lived. He visited the Bani Quraiza when the confederates had surrounded Medina and upon being received coldly he vowed to Muhammad to kill them all. Muhammad knew perfectly what the decision of Sa’d would be. Furthermore Sa’d had been fatally wounded by the Confederates and was in excruciating pain. He blamed the Bani Quriaza for it for not coming to the aid of the Muslims. His wound had closed and he was recovering. But Muhammad wanted him to pass that judgment. Only he was so ruthless that he would order the massacre of the entire tribe. So Muhammad asked him to ride a donkey and make two or three miles of journey. The journey reopened his wound and increased his pain. In such a state, he was unfit to pass judgment. He died as a result of the renewed bleeding. Muhammad got what he wanted and that fool went to hell. Muhammad wanted the Jews dead, but he wanted someone else to pass this judgment so he could wash his hands and claim innocence. This is the kind of mind games and manipulations that psychopath narcissists play.

Was what Muhammad did to those people fair? It is amazing that in one breath you quote us a verse where Muhammad talks about fairness and in the other you defend something as hideous as the massacre of an entire tribe and enslavement of its women and children without seeing the contradiction. Assuming the charges that Muhammad brought against the Bani Quraiza were true, were all the members of this tribe guilty, including the adolescents who were massacred with men? What about the women and the children who were taken as slaves and raped? Is this your standard of fairness?

We went over this before my respected scholar friends. I brought the example of the atrocities and the crimes that the Pakistani solders committed in Bangladesh and asked whether it would be justice to kill all the Pakistani men and enslave their women in retaliation for the treachery of the Pakistani army and their leaders. This is exactly what Muhammad did, despite the fact that the Bani Quraiza were not guilty of any crime. They were accused unjustly because Muhammad needed their wealth and they were a nuisance to him. One breath taken in fairness is worth a hundred years of mindless worship. Do you still insist that this man was a messenger of God?

You are not impressed by the verse of the Qur’an that predicts most clearly that the body of Pharaoh is going to be preserved (10:92), something that happened more than thirteen hundred years after the Qur’anic prediction. The mummified body of Pharaoh in the Cairo museum is a living proof of the truthfulness of Qur’an as the word of God. No angry detractor of Islam can do anything about it. However, you had to resort to a translation that made the understanding appear less clear. I encourage your readers to take a look at the translation of the Qur’an available with them and find out for themselves whether the prediction is clear or not. And if the prediction appears clear, does it not make the information exceptionally special that an event that was to take place hundreds of years later, was predicted beforehand?

I read about this claim and all it shows is the intellectual bankruptcy of Muslims. The verses 10:90-92 say “And We took the Children of Israel across the sea, and Pharaoh and his hosts followed them in oppression and enmity, till when drowning overtook him [Pharaoh], he said: ‘I believe that there is no god but He in whom the Children of Israel have believed, and I am from the Muslims.’ Now [you believe] while you have rebelled before and been among the evil-doers. So today We save you in your [dead] body, that you may be a sign to those who come after you. And verily, many among mankind are indeed heedless of Our Ayah [proofs, evidence, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, …etc.).”

Muslims then claim that according to the above verses the body of Pharaoh was not taken by the sea so that Pharaoh may become a sign to those who come after him.

The person who confirmed this charade was Dr. Bucaille who, despite writing a book claiming that there are many miracles in the Qur’an, did not convert to Islam. He received a lot of money as a result from the Saudi king; and his book is sold like hot cake all over the Islamic world. However, he was not that foolish to believe in his own lies. Why would someone who claims that the Qur’an is a book of miracles not convert to Islam? How much does this say about the sincerity of this man?

Bucaille wrote that he conducted “research” and “in June 1975, the Egyptian high authorities very kindly allowed me to examine the parts of the Pharaoh’s body that had been covered until then. They also allowed me to take photographs. What may already be derived from this examination is the discovery of multiple lesions of the bones with broad lacunae, some of which may have been mortal although it is not yet possible to ascertain whether some of them occurred before or after the Pharaoh’s death. He most probably died either from drowning, according to the scriptural narrations, or from very violent shocks preceding the moment when he was drowned or both at once. Those who seek among modern data for proof of the veracity of the Holy Scriptures will find a magnificent illustration of the verses of the Qur’an dealing with Pharaoh’s body by visiting the Royal Mummies room of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo!”[36]

First of all Pharaoh is not a proper name but a title, like king, president, and prime minister. Which pharaoh is he talking about? Why would a man who calls himself a doctor make such a stupid mistake? It is because the Qur’an makes the exact same mistake and Bucaille is writing a book for Muslims to make them happy and to laugh at their naïveté on his way to the bank. He is not writing a book to correct the errors of the Qur’an but to validate the belief of the Muslims that it is a miracle.

Muhammad talks of pharaoh thinking that pharaoh is a proper name. The biblical fable of exodus says that the pharaoh that had enslaved the Israelites drowned in the sea along with his men. However, everyone knew that in Egypt the bodies of pharaohs were preserved. The practice of mummifying the corpses of pharaohs predated Muhammad by at least 2,000 years. Not realizing that there were many pharaohs, the illiterate prophet concluded that Allah must have saved Pharaoh’s body as a sign. A sign for what? He does not explain that. Why would Allah do such a thing? It must be because Pharaoh had submitted to Allah right before his death, our illiterate prophet assumes. Muhammad did not know that there were many pharaohs. Had he known that, he could understand that the one who was drowned was a different pharaoh than the pharaohs that are preserved. This verse was his response to this conundrum. By inventing this story, he could reconcile the Biblical fable that says pharaoh was drowned with the fact that the pharaoh’s body had been preserved.

So as you see, this verse is not a miracle. It shows the confusion of an ignorant man. What prediction are you talking about? Are you saying that the Arabs did not know that the corpses of pharaohs were mummified and preserved and Muhammad was the first Arab to say that? How could that be possible? Do you have any evidence to prove this absurdity?

The charades of Dr. Bucaille are no less ridiculous than those concocted by Muhammad. He says that upon examining the corpse of the Pharaoh, it was clear to him that he had died of drowning (and brings the scriptures as proof) or of a shock. How can one come to such a conclusion by examining the dried up cadaver of a 4000-year-old mummy? To make mummies, the Egyptians used to remove all the interior organs, including the brain. Without the organs, how did Dr. Bucaille conclude that the pharaoh that he had examined had died of drowning? He knew that those who would read his book are not educated people and would believe in any gobbledygook to support their faith. So he made up stories that any scientist would laugh at and the poor Muslims gobbled them unquestioningly. Why is Dr. Bucaille’s “discovery” not mentioned in any scientific journal and no other Egyptologist knows what he has discovered? Bucaille is not a forensic doctor to make such an autopsy and even a forensic doctor cannot determine the cause of the death of 4000-year-old mummy.

How did Bucaille determine that it was this particular Pharaoh that was persecuting the Israelites? And again, why is there no mention of Moses and why hasn’t any of the portentous calamities that the Bible says befell on Egypt in any hieroglyph been discovered so far? As far as Egyptologists are concerned, Moses and his grand exodus are nothing but myths. The tales of the Bible are not corroborated by archeological finds.

In your peculiarly nonchalant style you have dismissed the fact that the Qur’an has mentioned the possibility that the information about what lies in the wombs of mothers can be available to humans. I encourage your readers to have an independent look at the verse (31:34) and see whether the Qur’an does it or not. And if it does really mention the possibility that information about what lies in the wombs can become available to humans even though the context demanded the mention of it to be made in a different style, does it not constitute a very surprising piece of information for all those who don’t believe the Qur’an to be the word of God?

I already discussed this verse as an example of the errors of Muhammad and I am surprised that you are presenting it as proof of the miracle of the Qur’an. Let me quote the verse.

Surely Allah is He with Whom is the knowledge of the hour, and He sends down the rain and He knows what is in the wombs; and no one knows what he shall earn on the morrow; and no one knows in what land he shall die; surely Allah is Knowing, Aware.

This verse is written to show that Allah knows things that no one else can possibly know such as the sex of the baby in the womb. This is confirmed in a hadith:

Allah’s Apostle (p.b.u.h) said, “Keys of the unseen knowledge are five which nobody knows but Allah . . . nobody knows what will happen tomorrow; nobody knows what is in the womb; nobody knows what he will gain tomorrow; nobody knows at what place he will die; and nobody knows when it will rain.” [37]

Now any medical doctor can determine what is in the womb and the meteorologists can predict when it will rain up to five days ahead. The only miracle I see is that intelligent men such as you are unable to see this verse is wrong and think it is a miracle.

You have also mentioned that the information regarding the fact that pearls and corals are to be found in both types of water was known to people of that time. Of course, you did so because it suited your stance, without being aware of the fact that it was not known to Muslim exegetes of even much later times. It was only recently (in the 1970s) that Mr Ghamidi’s teacher, Mawlana Amin Ahsen Islahi, informed his student that he was going to write in his exegesis the fact that they were found in both waters because it has been clearly mentioned in the Qur’an (55:22) even though the contemporary knowledge of the world claims the reality be otherwise. He said so because all exegetes of the Qur’an unanimously claimed something that was going against the apparent meanings of the text. He said to his student with supreme confidence: “By God, if such an observation has not been made as yet, God, the author of the Qur’an, would make it happen in the future to prove His book’s veracity.” Mr. Ghamidi informed him that the Qur’anic claim was already a known reality.

The verse 55:22 says “There come forth from them pearls, both large and small.” Why in your opinion is this verse miraculous? People have been diving searching for pearls and corals, both in sweet and in salty waters for thousands of years. Pearls come in various sizes. Why do you think stating something so obvious is a miracle? Are you telling us that there are Muslim clerics who are so stupid that they even argue about this point and that some of them think all pearls come in one size? Don’t they know that pearls grow?

It is mind boggling to see the kind of verses that you pick to show that the Qur’an is miraculous. Muhammad said some pearls are large and some are small. It is a miracle. He said rain falls from the sky. It is a miracle. He said all animals come in pairs. It is a miracle. He said every living being depends on water. This is a miracle. He said embryo looks like leech. It is a miracle. He named bee in feminine gender (using the same word all other Arabs used for bee). It is a miracle. What part of these banal statements is miraculous? These silly claims prove only one thing and that is that Muslims are bereft of commonsense.

The other facts like the number of times the word day (yaum) has been used in the Qur’an is 365 have been rejected by you with a claim that such information was a mere coincidence which is found in many other books. This remark of yours is quite as silly as your earlier one which claimed that the Bible could be employed to show a prophecy about your arrival in this world as it did about the prophet of Islam. I thank you for sparing me from mentioning a large number of similar “coincidences” in the Qur’an because you have now given a clear indication that you are bent upon rejecting everything that is going to be presented to you to support the claim that the Qur’an is a word of God.

I have not counted the number of times “yaums” is repeated in the Arabic Qur’an, but the number of “days” repeated in the English Qur’an is 509 times and not 365 times.[38] The truth is that Muslims lie to attribute miracles to the Quran. This is very normal for them to do and they actually think it is their religious duty to lie in order to make Islam look miraculous.

Nonetheless, one can find oddities in any book and this does not constitute any miracle. Apart from the fact that there are 354 days in an Islamic year and not 365, what does this prove? The only thing that would prove a book to be from God is that its message must be godly. The message of the Qur’an is demonic. If the Qur’an contained some useful tips such as how to make aspirin, how to prevent contagious diseases or how the universe is made, we could have accepted it as miracle. The information in the Qur’an is absolutely useless and wrong. Assuming there are some oddities in the Qur’an why should we consider them as proof that this book is from God? If I claim to be a physician I must be able to cure. If I am ignorant about medicine, the fact that I can make summersault and swallow sword does not prove that I am a physician.

I am surprised at the arrogant claims you are making on the basis of some scientific theories you have come across. The fact of the matter is that the world of scientific theories has seen so many changes that someone who believes in them as statements of ultimate truth is well advised to go through an understanding of history of scientific thought.

My respected professor: I am afraid you don’t seem to have a clue about science. Science is constantly advancing. It is expected that our understanding of it change. This does not make science invalid. It makes it living. It is like a tree. It’s never the same because it keeps growing. This is a plus, not a minus. Two years from now, the state of the art computer that you are using today would be obsolete and ten years from now you have to throw it in the dumpster. Does this mean the computer that you are using today is worthless? Tomorrow’s science will evolve and would make today’s science obsolete. This does not mean that today’s science is false and that truth can be found elsewhere. The bogus claims made in the Qur’an are true. The fact that every day we are discovering new mysteries about our earth does not mean that one day we will find out that the Qur’an was right and the Earth is actually flat like a bed (mehad) or that the stars are in the lower heaven, or that sperms are generated in the backbone, as the Qur’an says.

Science is expanding and therefore our knowledge of it is relative. This does not mean that something that is absolutely false has a chance of being proven to be true one day.

You have also referred to the fact that it was wrong to claim that God sends rainfall since we now know that there was a certain sequence of events that causes rainfall: Since we know now that there is a cause-effect relationship in the phenomena of nature that results in rainfall, there is no need to assume the role of God in its happening. Your observation is quite as absurd as that of someone who would claim that it was obvious that Mr. Ali didn’t write his articles himself because we now know scientifically that it was his brain that sent signals to his fingers which held his pen, which was then used by those fingers to write on the paper!

Ali Sina is a visible one single living being, whereas god is not. When someone is referring to Ali Sina it means all the parts of his body, but when we refer to god what are we referring to? Is to clouds, water vapor, air, and the sea?

Assuming that there is a God who is moving everything in the universe, what this has to do with Muhammad, David Koresh or Joseph Kony? Every time we ask for proof of the claim of Muhammad, Muslims want to prove to us the existence of God. This is a red herring. If you wish to believe in God, please do so. I have utmost respect for the believers in God. I am myself a believer in God, although I understand it in an entirely different way that the religionists understand it. God has nothing to do with Allah and Muhammad. Recently I saw a few videos of Muslims who had converted to Christianity. Their testimonies were moving. What moved me was not their belief but the love that they had found. If I believe in God, I would believe in a loving God. I have found God in my love for humanity. They found it in Jesus. We went through different paths, but we came to the same destination. They were empty and some of them full of rage and hate, after leaving Islam and finding Jesus they were reborn. [39]

On the other hand I saw also videos of people who converted to Islam. They have become monsters, filled with hatred, and think murder of children and innocent people is acceptable. Yvonne Ridley is one such person and Joseph Cohen,(now Yusuf Khattab) is another.

I have no problem with God and people who believe in God. I have a problem with Islam because it is satanic. I call upon you and all the Muslims to leave Islam. If you don’t find rationalism to your liking then choose a godly religion. Do not be a slave of Satan, for Allah is no God.

I also want to clarify that the Qur’an neither asks Muslims to hate Jews nor Christians. I have clarified this misunderstanding in detail in my article “Can Non-Muslims Be Made Friends.” It is available on my site www.khalidzaheer.com. Furthermore, there is no mention in the Qur’an that the ancestors of Jews were apes and pigs. It only mentions that some of them were turned into animals as a punishment for their misdeeds. The Qur’an has warned Muslims of similar punishments if they were to go astray. (See Qur’an; 4:123) The book of God lavishly praises the pious Jews and Christians while it condemns those who were otherwise. See, for instance, Qur’an; 3:75, 3:113).

You seem to be convinced that it is perfectly okay to slay the idolaters and the fact that the Qur’an is not as harsh on the people of the Book as it is on idolaters is a great thing. Not so my learned friends. All humans have equal rights.

Furthermore, according to Muhammad, even the Jews and the Christians are to be counted amongst the polytheists because:

They believe in idols and false deities and say of those who disbelieve: They are better guided in the path than those who believe. Those are they whom Allah has cursed, and whomever Allah curses you shall not find any helper for him. 4:51-52

The Quran is full of contradictions. When Muhammad was still weak and was humbugging the Jews to accept him as another Biblical prophet, he lavished them with praises and rehashed the Biblical lore. He even chose Jerusalem as his qiblah. In one verse he said:

Surely those who are Jews, Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve. 2:62

When he realized that they were not going to buy his charade, he changed his tune. He no longer was interested to narrate Biblical stories. Instead the verses of the Qur’an became angry and despiteful of the Jews and the Christians. Here is a sample:

Abasement and humiliation were brought down upon them, [the Jews] and they became deserving of Allah’s wrath; this was so because they disbelieved in the communications of Allah and killed the prophets unjustly; this was so because they disobeyed and exceeded the limits. 2:61

We said to the Jews who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath: “Be ye apes, despised and rejected.” 2:65

The Jews and the Christians should be disgraced in this life and would be punished in the next world for believing in parts of their scripture and not in other parts 2:85

Allah has cursed them on account of their unbelief; 2:88

Jews are the greediest of men for life (greedier) than even those who are polytheists; 2:96

Allah is the enemy of those who reject faith 2:98

None rejects Islam except those who are perverse 2:99

Whoever disbelieves in Islam it is a loser. 2:121

Those who reject the clear proofs of Islam will be cursed by Allah and those who curse shall curse them (too). 2:159

Those who die in disbelief, on them is the curse of Allah and the angels and men all. 2:161

And they shall not come forth from the fire. 2:167

They are deaf, dumb and blind and do not understand 2:171

The Christians and Jews who conceal any part of the Book that Allah has revealed and take for it a small price, they eat nothing but fire into their bellies, and Allah will not speak to them on the day of resurrection, nor will He purify them, and they shall have a painful chastisement. 2:174

The unbelievers beckon you to fire. It is better not to marry them until they believe. 2:221

They [Christians and Jews] say: The fire shall not touch us but for a few days; and what they have forged deceives them in the matter of their religion. However they are mistaken and will not fair well in the Day of Judgment 3:24-25

Allah does not like the unbelievers 3:32 and Muslims should not take them as friends 3:28

Believe no one unless he follows your religion [Islam]. 3:73

Muslims should not take for intimate friends from among others than their own people. 3:118

And we will cast terror in the heart of the disbelievers [like the Jews in Medina , Khaibar and other places]. Their adobe will be the fire 3:151

Those who ascribe a partner to Allah (like Christians who believe in [the] Trinity) will not be forgiven. They have “invented a tremendous sin.” 4:48, 4:116

As for those who disbelieve in Our communications, [do not convert to Islam] We shall make them enter fire; so oft as their skins are thoroughly burned, We will change them for other skins, that they may taste the chastisement; surely Allah is Mighty, Wise. 4:56 [Yep, great wisdom]

Those who assert that they believe in what has been revealed to you and what was revealed before you, [Christians and Jews] they desire to summon one another to the judgment of Satan, though they were commanded to deny him, and Satan desires to lead them astray into a remote error. 4:60

Those who do not believe in Muhammad are “hypocrites turning away from you with (utter) aversion.” 4:61

Those who believe fight in the way of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of Satan. Fight therefore against the friends of Satan. 4:76

Jews will suffer a painful chastisement because they lend money. 4:161

Allah made a covenant with the children of Israel , ..But on account of their breaking their covenant We cursed them and made their hearts hard;… and you shall always discover treachery in them excepting a few of them; 5:12-13

[With the] Christians, We made a covenant, but they neglected a portion of what they were reminded of, therefore We excited among them enmity and hatred to the day of resurrection. 5:14 [Nice work! And you thought God wants peace on Earth.]

In blasphemy indeed are those that say that Allah is Christ the son of Mary. 5:17

Don’t take Jews and Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them. 5:51

Jews and Christians are losers 5:53

Don’t take Jews and Christians as guardians who mock your religion. 5:53

Most of the Jews and Christians are transgressors. 5:59

Those who befriend those who disbelieve; certainly evil is that which their souls have sent before for them, that Allah became displeased with them and in chastisement shall they abide. 5:80

Jews called some of messengers of God liars and some they slew.5:70

Christians will go to hell for saying Jesus is God. “Surely whoever associates (others) with Allah, then Allah has forbidden to him the garden, and his abode is the fire”. 5:72

Fight against Christians and Jews “until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.” 9:29

Jews and Christians imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them. 9:30

Islam must “prevail over all religions, however much the disbelievers are averse to it” [through force]. 9:33

Many [Jewish and Christian] doctors of law and the monks eat away the property of men falsely, and turn (them) from Allah’s way; and (as for) those who hoard up gold and silver and do not spend it in Allah’s way [give to Muhammad], announce to them a painful chastisement. [which was done by Muhammad] 9:34

One Day He [Allah] will say, [to Christians] “Call on those whom ye thought to be My partners,” and they will call on them, but they will not listen to them; and We shall make for them a place of common perdition. 18:52

It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son… and woe to the unbelievers because of the (coming) Judgment of a Momentous Day! 19:35-37

Allah taunt the Christians on the Day of Judgment and will say “Where are those whom you deemed to be My associates?” The Christians bring some excuses but “it will be said: Call your associate-gods. So they will call upon them, but they will not answer them, and they shall see the punishment” 28:62

The Christians who ascribe partner to Allah “would certainly be of the losers.” 39:65

There is more, but this should suffice as evidence that Muhammad hated the Jews and the Christians as much as he hated the polytheists. He hated anyone who disagreed with him. He was a narcissist and as such intolerant of rejection. Rejecting a narcissist is the biggest sin you can commit. He will kill you for that. Narcissists are psychopaths and the Qur’an is a manifesto of a psychopathic mind.

Also, I would want to reiterate that the most significant evidence of the fact that the Qur’an was God’s word and Muhammad, alaihissalaam, His prophet can be seen in the clear declaration of the Qur’an that the message of Islam that started with one individual was bound to dominate. It provided historical evidence of it that such a thing has happened many times in the past and is again destined to happen, come what may. Your response to it that it was similar to Osama’s claim that he would resort to destruction of the West suggests that you don’t even know what you are talking about. The Qur’an doesn’t even predict, to begin with, whether the prophet would necessarily survive to see the revolution himself or not. (See, for instance, Qur’an; 43:41-42). The entire book is full of this theme. No zealot enemy of Islam can stop people from appreciating this clear sign of God’s prophecy in the Qur’an which materialized with unmistakable clarity.

You keep repeating this argument as if it has as big effect on you. What you say is a combination of at least three logical fallacies called argumentum ad baculum, argumentum ad antiquitatem and argumentum ad numerum. The gist of these fallacies is as follows:

Argumentum ad baculum: (from Latin: Argument from the stick). According to this fallacy an argument that can win through force (stick) must be right. Adherents of this fallacy often resort to violence, threats and censorship to impose their irrational and unsubstantiated point of view. This argument remains unchallenged as long as the force is exercised. It relies entirely on the threat of violence or it will be defeated. Islam has been successful because it has managed to eliminate all criticisms through violence and threat. Where Muslims rule, the critics of Islam are jailed and executed and where they don’t, the critics are assassinated. Muslims riot and demand respect for their belief. The assassination of Theo van Gogh, the jailing of Muslim dissidents in Islamic countries, the riots over the speech of the Pope and the banning of sites critical of Islam such as faithfreedom.org are examples of argumentum ad baculum.

Argumentum ad antiquitatem: (appeal to antiquity). This fallacy asserts that if something has survived the test of time it must be good. This is a fallacy because it does not take into consideration that perhaps the thing that has survived has done it thanks to the use of force and by silencing any whisper of criticism. The opposite of this fallacy, argumentum ad novitatem, claims that the new is better than the old.

Argumentum ad numerum and its closely related argumentum ad populum consist in asserting that if a large number of people favor something, that thing must be good. This is certainly not true because considering the silliness of humans and their penchant for fables, generally masses of people are more likely to be wrong than right. At one time everyone believed that the Earth is flat and the centre of the cosmos. Despite the popularity of this belief it was never true. Truth cannot be attained through the consensus of the majority.

So the claim that Islam must be true because it has survived for 1400 years, and because it has many adherents, or because of the false claim made by Muslims that it is the fastest growing religion are all logical fallacies. None of them prove the truth of Islam. Argumentum ad baculum is the logic of the primitive man where the stronger is always right. Unfortunately, Muslims are among the very few humans who still hold unto this fallacy and believe that since Muhammad managed to subdue his opponents, even through treachery and dastardly acts, is message must be from God. Rational people are amazed at this much absurdity but to Muslims winning by bullying constitutes the biggest proof.

The verses 43:41-42 that you quoted above clearly reveal the narcissistic personality disorder of Muhammad. Please read my book Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allâh’s Prophet where I have analyzed the mind of the Arabian prophet. That book will help you interpret the Qur’an and understand the mind of Muhammad.

Now that I am writing to you this last message in this series of my exchanges with you, I want to give you my honest opinion as to why you find yourself in such state of mind as you are in. You were brought up in an environment where many religious views that were expressed before you were irrational. To begin with, you blindly accepted them. However, when the absurdity of some of those views became evident to you instead of probing the truth about whether they were really Islamic or not you started hating Islam. You thus became a reactionary. Now, you have lost your balance and you don’t want to hear anything in favor of Islam; you have gone mad in hating it. If you would have managed to study Islam independently through Qur’an and sunnah with an open mind and would have learnt the classical Arabic in which the Qur’an has been expressed, you would have been able to appreciate the sublime, error-free message of God. You wouldn’t have, in that case, made such absurd remarks as the ones in which you claim that the Qur’an says that the sun is a lamp etc. nor would you have claimed that the Qur’an says that the sun moves around the earth. You would have understood the right meanings of all such verses as they appear if properly placed in their context. My effort all throughout these exchanges had been to somehow pacify your feelings and bring you back to sanity so that you could correct the wrong you had done.

I agree that I grew up in an environment where lies were thought as truth and I had accepted them for their face value and uncritically. Haven’t you? Haven’t all the Muslims? Are Muslims allowed a comparative study of all religions and beliefs? You and all Muslims are fed the same lies that I was fed. You know zilch about any other belief system. All you know are the lies of Islam. Censorship does not allow you to learn alternative views and you now make sure others also remain ignorant by becoming part of this machinery of suppression of information.

However, I do not agree with your claim that I have not searched to make sense of what seemed to be senseless. I did that with far more sincerity that you are prepared to do. My apostasy took two years and another two for me to decide to become an instrument of change. I did my homework and I am still doing it. You and I exchanged many ideas. I repeatedly asked you to present your proof. You did your best but as any reasonable person can see, your best was not good enough. You and Mr. Ghamidi know this also. You are intelligent and knowledgeable persons. Of course you know that your arguments were weak. The very fact that you are not publishing this debate in your site and have banned faithfreedom.org in Pakistan is a loud and clear admission that in an arena where logic rules, Islam loses. You accuse me of having lost my balance and being insane, which prevent me from accepting what you claim to be the “out of this world” truth of the Qur’an. This is ad hominen and a fallacy. You failed to provide a single proof and now content yourself calling me insane. Let us say you are right. We already agreed that we are writing for the benefit of others. If you are convinced that your logic is superior and that you have managed to prove Islam right, I urge you to publish our debate in your site. People are smart. They can see I am unbalanced and what you say is logical and undeniable. So what are you afraid of? Only by publishing this debate you would show that you believe that you had the upper hand.

However, that was not to be. Now I am begging leave from you. I cannot spend any further time in exchanging messages with you. Let the readers decide what they believe has been the outcome of these exchanges. I pray to God that you come out of this phase of insanity. While you are still in it, there is hardly any communication possible with you. The Qur’an advises me to say “Salam” to people who are hard nuts to crack. That is what I am doing to you now. I thank you for allowing my messages space in your site. Khalid Zaheer

Farewell my erudite friends. It was an honor and a pleasure to exchange these notes with you. I must admit that despite our differences of opinions, you have made a very positive impression on me and I grew respecting and admiring you more. I have debated with many Muslims but with the exception of a few, none were as scholarly as you. Your tone and language and your adherence to decorum, despite being hurt by my relentless pounding on your cherished faith, only demonstrate your greatness.

I also commend you for being an excellent debater. Your problem was not your skills but the indefensible position that you tried to defend. This is like going to war with no ammunition. You may be the best fighter but if all you have is an air gun, you will not win. Islam gives you nothing but lies. How can one win with sheer lies? In this debate truth has won and this makes both of us victorious.

Unlike you, I am not disappointed that you did not budge from your position. I did not expect such a thing. I fully understand your predicament. You depend on Islam for your livelihood. Islam brings you prestige and it places food on your tables. It would be egotistic on my part to ask you to leave Islam openly. I know the hurdles that you face. The very thought of what would happen to you if you decide to doubt Islam sends shivers down your spines. You will do everything to not see the truth because in your case truth is far more painful than, say, in my case. I was living in the West, and I had my profession. I had many friends who were not Muslims. I could easily make the transition without suffering any consequences. Despite that I fought tooth and nail to cling to this lie. In your cases, you would not only lose your jobs, friends, prestige and family, but also your lives. This is not what I wish for you.

Let me tell you that there are many who are in your predicament. They know the truth about Islam. Despite that they remain silent and continue doing what they do. However, in their hearts they are no longer Muslims. A few of them even wrote to me. I have received emails from enlightened ex-Muslims who have told me about their apostasy while still pretending to be believers. I always tell them to use kitman and gradually try to sever their ties from Islam. One such person was a member of an Islamic council like CAIR in a western country. Another was an Imam in a Muslim country and another was a teacher in an Islamic school. I received an email from someone representing a group of people from one of the most cardinal Islamic countries, whose position is so sensitive that I can’t even give you a hint nor the country from which he was writing. He told me their group fully supports FFI and that they are tying to bring some changes from the top (at great risk to their lives). I am sure there are many more.

Let me quote you a part of the testimony of Aisha. This is what she wrote:

I ran into your site six months ago. At first I thought you were absolutely mad and made a vow to study Islam harder and become a better Muslimah. My faith, however, had to be restored because your articles are written in a very powerful and uncompromising way. I decided to show some of your articles, especially about misogyny, to my Imam.

He is not hateful at all and strongly condemns all acts of violence. Even though he is imam and a well-educated man in the Islamic science, I now doubt he has ever read the Quran! He is so peaceful and is often denounced by hard-line Muslims.

When I headed for the mosque, I thought we would just laugh together at your stupidity.

I handed your articles to him. To tell the truth, I expected him to burst out into laughter, but he began to read your writings carefully. When he finished, he told me that he had learnt the truth. My eyes were blank and I barely could respond to him. He then continued. As a matter of fact, he has known that Islam is false for some time. He said he was too old (70 years) to change his life and so he kept on preaching sermons in mosques. Of course, he chose some more or less peaceful verses from the Quran. But it was not all! I will just quote what he said. “I’m old. My life is coming to an end. But you, Aisha, are young. Run, girl, run before it is too late!”

Can you imagine how shocked I was by his words? I’ve mentioned that he is such a nice and lovable man so I simply couldn’t help believing him. I, however, decided to carry out my own research.

I leave you with these notes and wish good health and happiness for both of you. Remember that you don’t have to do anything to leave Islam. All you have to do is to admit to yourself the truth. Leave it at that and do not talk about that to anyone.

Islam’s end is near. This edifice of lies will fall soon. If we are not killed in an Armageddon, caused by Islamic madness (Pakistan is in grave danger. Your atomic bomb could spell the end of your ersatz country), we will see the end of Islam in our own lifetime. This is not a prophecy. I am only forecasting the future the way an economist forecasts the future of the stocks. The writings are all on the wall. Islam is about to fall. What I can’t tell you is whether this would be a violent fall, in which billions would perish, or it would be a peaceful one, collapsing from within, the way communism did. We are doing our best at FFI to make Islam implode, rather than explode. We are puncturing holes in it and deflating it before it explodes. We hope that it would have a peaceful end and not a violent one. For that, of course, Muslims must wake up and end this insanity.

Within the coming quarter of century or so, Islam will be eradicated. Many people wonder how a religion, believed so fiercely by over a billion people, can be eradicated in such a short time. To these “unbelievers” I say, one billion people are one billion individuals. It does not take centuries to make an individual see the truth. For some it may take days and for others it may take years, but the bottom line is that no one wants to continue fooling himself or herself and live in a lie. Once Muslims are shown the truth, they will eventually leave Islam. There would be resistance at first, but at the end the truth will prevail. Therefore, our challenge is to make the truth reach to this billion plus individuals. This is a big challenge because the bulk of Muslims are poor and uneducated. They are cut off from the rest of the world and live in a cocoon of lies. Nonetheless, technology is coming to our aid. It is difficult to keep the light out when the Sun is at its zenith. Those who learn the truth will pass it to others and this message will spread exponentially, like wildfire.

We actually do not have to reach to every Muslim. Once a couple of hundred of million Muslims leave Islam, the rest will follow. Islam is based on hypes. It’s lies such as “Islam is the fastest growing religion”, and “the Qur’an contains science and miracles” that fills Muslims with pride and bravado. Once the reverse is demonstrated to be true, this house of cards will collapse. To bring Islam down is easier than anyone can imagine.

You played a magnificent role in our struggle to find the truth. I sincerely thank you for your courage, your sincerity and your perseverance. You demonstrated to be true scholars and real gentlemen. I hope that you would join us soon. Good people such as you don’t belong to Islam. Islam is made by a psychopath terrorist and is only good for terrorists. You do not belong to this benighted crowd.

This debate will be available as an e-book for free download and in print, at no cost.

The lies of Islam must be deflated with truth. Only truth will save mankind from its looming doom. I don’t know whether it is too late already or not, but we must try. I urge all those who read this debate to send it to others and encourage Muslims to read it. Truth will set them free and will bring peace to the world. So let the truth spread.

I remain respectfully yours,

Ali Sina

[1] Shehzad Saleem, Renaissance, “Suras Mursalat – Naba”, http://www.renaissance.com.pk/seocqur97.html.

[2] Shehzad Saleem, Renaissance, “Researcher’s Companion to Ghamidi’s Al-Bayan: Sura Baqarah (40-60)”, http://www.renaissance.com.pk/MayResearCmp2y4.html.

[3] See also: 39:43-44, 82:18-19, 17:56-57.

[4] See also 2:254–255.

[5] Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 93, Number 601

[6] Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Number 367

[7] Sahih Muslim, Book 4, Number 2072

[8] Sahih Muslim, Book 30, Number 5655

[9] See also 4:64; 9:103; 24:62; 60:12.

[10] Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 55, Number 569.

[11] Bahá’u’lláh, Bahá’í Reference Library, “The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh”, (PHW 11), http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/b/HW/hw-84.html

[12] Ali Sina, Faith Freedom International, “World’s Greatest Showman”, http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/NaikCampbellintro.htm

[13] Tabaqat volume 8, page 223

[14] ibid

[15] Tabaqat, Volume 1, page 369

[16] Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 6, Book 60, Number 311

[17] Sobhy as_Saleh, Mabaheth Fi ‘Ulum al- Qur’an, Dar al-‘Ilm Lel-Malayeen, Beirut, 1983, p. 270

[18] Introduction to English translation of Sahih Al-Bukhari, p.xxiv

[19] 2 Corinthians 11,14-15
[20]

Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 63, Number 182

[21] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 65

[22] J. L. Esposito, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam,: Oxford University Press,2003, p.264 (ISBN 0-19-512558-4)

[23] Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 4, Number 217

[24] Bukhari Volume 8, Book 73, Number 81

[25] Tabari Vol I Page 30 Persian translation

[26] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/01/opinion/01GREE.html?th

[27] Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 87, Number 140

[28] Sahih Al-Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64

[29] Sahih Muslim, Book 8, Number 3310:

[30] Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 58, Number 234

[31] Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 41, Number 4915, also Number 4916 and Number 4917

[32] Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 62, Number 90

[33] Sahih Muslim, Book 008, Number 3311

[34] Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Book 73, Number 151

[35] Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 58, Number 245

[36] M. Bucaille, The Bible, The Qur’an and Science: Dar al-Ma’arif (1977)

[37] Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 2, Book 17, Number 149

[38] http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=simple&q1=day&size=All

[39] Faith Freedom International Forum, “On videos: Testimonies of Apostates”, www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39980