A Convert to Islam on RD.net

Well, well... I have been informed that RD.net now has a resident convert to Islam named "Big Bang". He had said in one post that he was a "revert to Islam" ('revert' a rehabilitative term used by Muslims suggesting that all children are born Muslim and only stray later to things like Christianity, or Hinduism... a fundamental Muslim doctrine) and he followed this with "alhamdililah" (of course a mistransliteration and mispronunciation of alhamdulilah, perhaps he should have done some more research before "reverting"). I was reading (more like wading) through some of his posts, and found quite a gem, one which demands a riposte, but since I have been banned by the rationalist Gestapo, I will comment here, and hopefully this post will come to light just enough to dispel this Promethean effort in ass clownery.

The post by the self congratulatory Big Bang can be found here:

http://www.richarddawkins.net/articleComments,3609,Why-Women-Are-Bound-to-Religion-An-Evolutionary-Perspective,R-Elisabeth-Cornwell-PhD,page2#341960

I shall cite portions and respond.

"The wrongs that women suffer in Muslim lands is due (i
repeatedly point this out but it conveniently gets ignored) to ignorance and
cultural factors you sick and blind islamaphobes. "

I hear this bit of apologetics quite regularly, with the usual interstitial bouts of outright denial. This is quite a broad comment he has made here, unfortunately he does not bless us with a citation, or even a half assed reason. No doubt the suffering of women is due to "cultural" factors, the culture of Islam is at fault. Many apologists have said that it is the Arab culture that degrades women and that Islam would liberate women if only the Arabs would implement the Shariah fully. Let's not forget that Muhammad said that the Arabs were the best of people and that the Qur'an is an explicitly immutable Arabic text (Inna Anzalna Qur'anan Arabiyyan.... "Verily we have revealed an Arabic Qur'an"). The fact is that all the unpleasant aspects of Arab culture were enshrined in Islam, and this is precisely the cultural factor at work. If one looks at the opalescent profile of worldwide Islam we see certain unifying factors.... the relevant one here is the degradation of the woman in society. The only unifying factor is Islam, as I am sure Mauritanians have little in common culturally with Malaysians, save for Islam.

"Still, women are more oppressed in the west. They get raped
left,right and center and rarely are the rapists punished. In the name of 'art'
they sell their mothers,daughters and sisters. Adultery, family breakdowns and
all the ill-social and consequences are there for all to see. "

"Raped left, right and center", Oxford comma omitted for effect, apparently. Anyhow, this seems to me inaccurate, but let's assume it isn't... the perpetrators of rapes are hunted by law enforcement and prosecuted. The women are given counseling if they choose, and medical treatment. Unfortunately in many Muslim countries gang rape is an institutionalized form of punishment for perceived infringements of "honor", most recently in Pakistan. How are victims treated? A woman in Saudi Arabia was raped, when she reported the rape she was condemned as an adulterer and sentenced to 100 lashes. One could reasonably conclude that this would make rapes go unreported. What makes this comment even more sadly amusing is that in Islam a man's wife may not refuse him sex... in essence, spousal rape is acceptable. It is nothing short of shocking idiocy that a Muslim would criticize the western world for "adultery"... Islam permits adultery, in point of fact, by allowing a Muslim to keep women as sex slaves (concubines, referred to in the Qur'an as "what the right hand possesses"), and that these slaves cannot refuse sex. In one instance of epileptic fit Muhammad both sanctioned adultery and rape, and our local Muslim convert accuses the west of social dysfunction... ridiculous.

"Although the Muslims are in the worsest state in their
history, they are still BY COMPARISON socially(family/community) morally and
spiritually superior. We do not want your material and individualistic lifestyle
imposed on us, it brings nothing but misery."

What a joke. Palestinians dressing their children up as suicide bombers, terrorists in Afghanistan using 10 year olds as suicide bombers, rape victims lashed, gays hung, ad nauseum. What can one say.... other that "worsest" isn't a word.

"Islam is the solution, the only solution."

Dare I say.... 'final solution'?

A Comment on RD.net and the Wilders Debate

Since I have been banned from RichardDawkins.net I am forced to comment here about the insanity there. The following comment was brought to my attention by the ever prescient and entertaining Styrer. He asked for my commentary, and I plan to give it to him. Here is the link to the comment in question:


http://www.richarddawkins.net/articleComments,3597,Dutch-MP-refused-entry-to-Britain,BBC,page4#339916

Here is the relevant portion of text of the comment:

"Not that I am against [crucial edit] opposing Islam as a
religion, but not from the point of view of privileging Christianity and/or
Judaism, as Wilders
does. The Abrahamic
religions are after all cut from the same cloth; they have all drunk from the
same poisoned well of tribal barbarism.

Where I disagree with Hitch (and
Sam) is that Islam is inherently more barbaric or conducive to violence. Wrong.
The societies in which Islam predominates are today more backward, that is the
difference. When those societies were relatively more advanced (eg 10th century), Islam was
relatively more enlightened, and tolerant, than Christianity"

It is difficult to know where to start with this bit of regurgitated nonsense propaganda. But I shall give it a whack. Whether or not Wilders priveleges Christianity is irrelevant, and is also his right, just as Muslims are free to privilege Islam in their proselytizing of infidels. The Abrahamic religions are cut from the same cloth indeed, yet they maintain remarkable differences. The Qur'an is rife with calls for violence and oppression, those verses do not need to be recited here as they can be found by even a doltish self flagellator with a google search. One often hears the ignorant retort "Well the Old Testament says awful things as well", oh and indeed it does, but the Torah (OT) is a book that functions as a description of the history of a people. When god told the Jews to murder a tribe of people, it was just that, limited to the tribe mentioned. These are as much descriptive as anything else. Now the Qur'an doesn't speak specifically about tribes, it speaks generally of disbelievers. Thus the calls for violence don't have a limitation, one delineated in the text. If we leave the Qur'an we find ample reinforcement in the Hadith (sayings of Muhammad) for this near limitless violence.

"The societies in which Islam predominates are today more
backward, that is the difference. When those societies were relatively more
advanced (eg 10th century), Islam was
relatively more enlightened, and tolerant, than Christianity. "

This here, right here, is what drives me up the damn wall. This kind of parroting of myth and half truth is where our problem lies, this fetishization of all things non-Western. The inversion of reality, that a barbaric faith is ACTUALLY the exact opposite. Islam is clearly barbaric and violent, so the intellectual exercise to say the exact opposite is of primary importance. What nonsense. These places are backwards precisely because of Islam, how else do you explain countries awash with unprecedented oil wealth where female rape victims are beaten for adultery? What is the critical element here? Islam.

Let's move on to this 'golden age'. Indeed Islam produced some great scholarship as it spread like a pack of locusts across the globe. Devouring local knowledge, and rehashing it and producing new knowledge. But this was quickly put to death. After the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid ushered in a period of mihna, in which literalism and rationalism were pitted against one another. The literalists (Asharites), armed with the totality of Islamic canon promptly thrashed the rationalists (Muatazilites). The rationalists were run out of town, tarred and feathered for heresy. And by no small coincidence the vast majority of scholarly production came from the Muatazilites. Rationalism was crushed, Baghdad was sacked by Hulagu, the library burnt, the Caliph stuffed in a carpet and rolled down the stairs of his palace.

The notion that Barbarians can bring benefit is not particularly special, by comparison Genghis Khan was a brutal but just leader. A man who had many redeeming qualities, but never enough to rehabilitate the destruction he wrought. Islam destroyed itself, setting quite a precedent, namely that when the texts are examined, a literalist will win. The Qur'an is not a book of allegory and metaphor, it is a book of clear and timeless commands for domination and austerity, no western scholar proved this, Muslims did. It did not help that Sunni scholars determined that the doors of Ijtihad (interpretation of the religion) were closed, leaving the Sunni world with four schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Shafi'i, Maliki, and Hanbali) all vying for who shall be most austere as well as patronage of the ruler of the day, whomever it was.

Is it any wonder that the period between the destruction of Islamic rationalism and present day has been a descent into further barbarity... by the miracle or miracles reflecting the very texts Muslims deemed literal and eternal? The citation of the Golden Age of Islam as a meritorious period is simply disingenuous in the extreme, it is not meritorious, it is an example of how an honest adherence to a religious text will destroy a functioning society.