Boreal

Dr. Delic's Challenge

In July 2007, the Ottawa Citizen published a letter from a reader who wrote that as a Muslim his “heart bleeds but one has to accept the reality that Islam is not compatible with today’s humanistic, pluralistic and secular society.”

It did not take long for the defenders of the party line to make their displeasure known in their own letters to the editor. The most accusatory, lengthy, and somewhat slanderous letter was from imam Dr. Zuad Delic, the national executive director of the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC). You may remember the CIC as being the prime mover behind the failed attempt to bring Sharia law to Canada.

Dr. Delic wrote that the writer's claims, including the one about Islam not being compatible with today’s humanistic, pluralistic and secular society, were “inaccurate and misleading”; that his letter “failed to acknowledge the causes of this so-called incompatibility derive from historical, economic, cultural and political circumstances; not from within the formative principles of Islam.”

The imam then writes that a “more informed reading of Islam's Holy Text (the Koran), along with the life and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad reveals a religion whose core values emphasize respect, mercy, compassion, love, understanding, co-operation, consultation, genuine equality, and peace with justice.”

A reading of the Koran will show that Dr. Delic (and the Citizen) are being disingenuous in the extreme, and that the opinion expressed in the first letter is the more honest.

When any of the noble sentiments expressed by Mr. Delic are found in the Koran, or in the sayings the Prophet, the few that you will encounter generally apply to Muslims only, and are far from universal declarations - Allah loves exceptions.

As to love, there is none of it in the Koran as we know it. Love in the Koran is the mercy and compassion that Allah will show the believers by not roasting them in His Hell for an eternity, if they are steadfast in their absolute unquestioning loyalty to Him and His Messenger – the rest of us can go to Hell, literally.

There is genuine equality among male believers, but women believers, in the Koran, are nothing more than chattel to be used and abused by their male owners and disposed of at their leisure.

And let us not forget that the Koran, to quote French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker, writing in the September 28, 2006 edition of Le Figaro, “is a book of incredible violence (Le Coran est un livre d'une ’inouïe violence)”.

Take up Dr. Delic's challenge and get acquainted with the Koran. Expect to be surprised, and not in a pleasant way.

Bernard Payeur