Criticizing Islam like any other religion

The debate on Islam in the mainstream media has become somewhat toxic, dominated by far right wingers, internet trolls, racists and their like, and it numbs the serious debate in many parts of the world. This is unfortunate in my opinion, because we should not stop exposing religions (especially the dominating ones) for what they represents. Since I’ve always criticized religion I feel I’m on the safe side to continue, and take my chances leaving Christianity alone for once and concentrate on the 3^rd worship release of Abraham’s faith; Islam.

Photo by David Evers

I own a copy of the Koran, just saying. I like to know what I’m up against, and find it quite useful to have the holy books of different religions. The book is, according to Muslims perfect. Not in a metaphorical way, no it is THE absolute, definitive an ultimate book. Nothing in the book is supposed to be anything but perfection and it holds all you need to know about God, faith, society, governance and rules for how to live your personal life. There are extensions to it though, to tell you about modern stuff which God and Mohammed couldn’t talk about back in the days. Like why hair extensions is forbidden, and other things God is very concerned about. 

The fact that this binary scripture understanding is in the core of Islam makes the whole religion ridiculous of course, but also probably more dangerous than other religions.  While other religious people can hide behind metaphors and interpretations of their old texts and apologize historical behavior based on “they didn’t know better” or “they used religion, but it doesn’t represent the religion” etc. Other religions at least have the opportunity to evolve and adjust along the continuous development of human society, often reluctantly because of their dogmatic premises yes, but still.   

Islam is different. Since everything is perfect they can’t change or take anything out, only extend it where needed. So when I meet or listen to a so called “moderate Muslims” I always wonder what that actually means. 

Then a few months ago I read this article in The Guardian. First I liked what I read “This is a good article. He explains how most Muslims are pro-democracy and free speech and personal freedoms and therefore the term should be ‘Muslims’ and ‘fanatics’ or something. Not moderate and ordinary Muslims”, I thought. But then the numbers from the survey he used in the article hit me. “27% (of the Muslims asked in the survey) did have some sympathy for the motivations behind the Paris attacks and 45% said clerics preaching violence against the west could be justified as being in touch with mainstream Muslim opinion.” – eh.. 45 percent!? That’s a pretty large part. Is this moderate? Here we have a survey that randomly pick 1000 British Muslims and 270 of them sympathize with the terrorists that attacked and killed most of the editorial staff in a magazine, and 450 of them have the opinion that most Muslims support violence against the west? Don’t get me wrong, I still find the article a good read, and wish the author good luck in reforming Islam. But the numbers in that survey scares me. I wonder, is this representative for the mainstream Muslims all over the world? 

 

In my opinion Islam at its current evolvement stage is nothing but bad. Well, I believe all religions are bad but Islam is especially bad. Not only does the religion hold all the common “bads” like discriminating women, deny free speach and denying personal freedoms in all aspects of life, it also want a Islamic run state by definition. Not as “we hope everyone convert to Islam”, no it’s very concrete. It’s the state governance they want, and by force if necessary it seems. It’s like the Catholics religious goal where to put the papal seat back into power, like in the old days. There's plenty of reasons to fear that.

Muslims tell us that Islam is a religion of peace. Well it certainly doesn’t look like it. And if peace includes sharia, I disregard the talks about being peaceful altogether. And sharia is main stream Islam, let’s not forget. In this massive survey done in 2013 we are shown how the majority of Muslims worldwide want sharia to be the official law.  If you’re not familiar with sharia, give a few hours of your life to read about it here.

I fear religion because it makes good people do bad things. It makes people outsource their thinking and rely on faith and dogmatic scriptures instead of being rational and motivated by progress and knowledge. It never ends well, not even for the suppressor.  The modern human should first and foremost struggle for a free world where there are room for all sorts of behavior and thought and where mutual understanding and acceptance should be a virtue not a punishable sin. Islam is against this, as I understand it, and we should do everything we can to expose the true nature and origin of it in the public domain.