Boreal

FADE TO BLACK

Triumph of the Irrational

Foreword

"The twenty-first century belongs to Islam." Stephen Prothero

The world, from the point of view of Islam, is divided into the "House of Islam" and the "House of War", and this latter designation should indicate how many Muslims believe their differences with those who do not share their faith will be ultimately resolved.

While there are undoubtedly some "moderate" Muslims who have decided to overlook the irrescindable militancy of their religion, Islam is undeniably a religion of conquest. The only future devout Muslims can envisage—as Muslims—is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, subjugated, or killed. The tenets of Islam simply do not admit of anything but a temporary sharing of power with the "enemies of God."

Sam Harris, End of Faith, W. W. Norton, 2004, p. 110

All religions are stupid, but Islam is the stupidest of all.

Michel Houellebecq

Assuming that we are genetically programed, as some research suggests, to believe in a higher being therefore predisposed to believe in religion, are we also genetically inclined to believe in Houellebecq’s stupidest.

Houellebecq is wrong! Islam is not the stupidest, but the smartest as is evident by its success at recruiting that leaves other religions in the dust and democracies gasping, despite it having the most easily ridiculed scriptures and rituals and a tradition of abject violence.

From Remembering Uzza - If Islam Was Explained to Me in a Pub:

Archie: [throwing his hands up] You just can't win! Western civilization is about to be defeated by an army of morons.

Uzza: You underestimated the forces aligned against you. Your defeat was engineered by the greatest strategist and military mind of all times. He even left a blueprint that, in your arrogance, you could not be bothered to read.

If you can’t be bothered to read the Koran to save yourselves, this book about the book, and the illiterate who revealed its content, may do in its stead. It’s not that much longer than Allah’s book, and you won’t have to read it more than once to understand what it’s all about. 

Be warned, this book pulls no punches in placing in a modern context how a militant, merciless religion born in the depth of the Dark Ages today threatens to undo the Renaissance, which marked the end of the Catholic Church’s dominance in Europe allowing for a flowering of the arts and sciences, and the Enlightenment, which ushered in the Age of Reason: Mark Lilla's 'fragile exception'.

After centuries of strife, the West has learned to separate religion and politics – to establish the legitimacy of its leaders without referring to divine command. There is little reason to expect the rest of the world – the Islamic world in particular – will follow.

We in the West find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still inflame the minds of men, stirring up messianic passions that can leave societies in ruin. We had assumed that this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones; that political theology died in 16th-century Europe. We were wrong. It's we who are the fragile exception.

The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West (2007), Mark Lilla, professor of the humanities at Columbia University

Cover

Evidence suggests that the universe will expand forever and one by one the stars will burn themselves out, leaving the universe a dark, forbidding place. Islam would anticipate this far off darkness for our little corner of the Cosmos.

Every woman in a normal, rational, egalitarian society has a chance to shine like the proverbial star and make everyone's world a brighter place; but not the furtive figures hidden underneath black tent-like garments leaving a madrassa in the northern Afghanistan province of Kunduz in the following photograph, on which the cover of Fade to Black is based. The locals, in a BBC posting, The Afghan madrassa accused of radicalising women dated March 15, 2014, referred to the women in the photograph as “the tent wearers.” 

The tent wearers are students of the Ashraf-ul Madares (madrassa) established by two influential mullahs to teach women the Islamic way. The dark full-body covering is the most outwardly visible sign of an education steeped in Islamic dogma which forbids them to appear in public unless fully cloaked.

What women and girls are forced to wear in Afghanistan is emblematic of the dark future envisioned by Islam.

***

Taliban rejects UN concerns over laws banning women’s voices… [a] spokesman for the Taliban’s warned against “arrogance” from those who may not be familiar with Islamic Sharia law, particularly non-Muslims who might express reservations or objections.

Associated Press, Aug 26, 2024

Women and girls have now been forbidden to speak in public if there is a male within earshot other than a husband, a close male relative, or a man they have suckled, who will speak on their behalf. Suckling a non-relative made him, according to Muhammad, the equivalent of a close relation of the woman or girl who offered him her lactating breasts to suck on. He will lose all interest in her sexually because her milk has rendered her unlawful for him to marry.

Aisha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Salim, the freed slave of Abu Hadhaifa, lived with him and his family in their house.

She (i. e. the daughter of Suhail) came to Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) and said: Salim has attained (puberty) as men attain, and he understands what they understand, and he enters our house freely.

I, however, perceive that something (rankles) in the heart of Abu Hudhaifa, whereupon Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) said to her: Suckle him and you would become unlawful for him, and (the rankling) which Abu Hudhaifa feels in his heart will disappear.

She returned and said: So I suckled him, and what (was there) in the heart of Abu Hudhaifa disappeared.

Sahih Muslim 8.3425

Whether it be about the magical properties of breast milk, or what a woman must cover, and when she may speak when venturing outside the home, etc. has to do with Sharia law, i.e., God’s law, the law derived from the Koran and the sayings and example of Muhammad.

My Koran

Reading an accessible translation of the Koran by native Arab speaker Majid Fakhry was what got me interested in writing about the book. In the translator’s own words, “We have tried to express ourselves in a simple, readable English idiom.” Publishers Weekly wrote of Fakhry’s notable accomplishment that it “succeeds in expressing the meanings of the original Arabic in simple readable English.” For how his interpretation compares to other mainstream translations read Appendix: Majid Fakhry vs. Yusuf Ali and Others.

When Fakhry‘s crisp translation is not sufficient, it is Moududi I most often turn to. Abul A’la Moududi’s (also spelt Maududi) [1903-1979] credentials as a pre-eminent Islamic scholar are impeccable: journalist, theologian, Muslim revivalist, Islamist philosopher, and first recipient of the King Faisal International Award for his services to Islam and Islamic studies. Of his more than 120 books, he is most famous for his magnum opus, The Meaning of the Qur'an.

Hadiths

Hadiths are mostly hearsay evidence, passed on from generation to generation, of what Muhammad said and did, including his lack of disapproval of actions taken in his presence, as in the following where laughter ensued:

Umar then came forward, and when he had asked and had been granted permission he found the Prophet sitting sad and silent with his wives around him. He told that he decided to say something which would make the Prophet laugh, so he said, "Messenger of God, I wish you had seen the daughter of Kharija when she asked me for extra money and I got up and slapped her on the neck."

God's messenger laughed and said, "They are around me as you see asking for extra money."

Abu Bakr then got up, went to Aisha and slapped her on the neck, and Umar did the same to Hafsa...

Sahih Muslim 9.3506

(Aisha was the daughter of Abu Bakr, and Hafsa the daughter of Umar. Both gave their daughter in marriage to God’s spokesman. Abu Bakr would succeed Muhammad as leader of the believers. His short reign as caliph would be followed by the caliphate of Umar.)

Hadiths are the holiest scriptures in Islam, after the Koran, and are an integral part of Islamic law.

The authenticated sayings and example of the Prophet Muhammad, along with Koran, are the basis of Sharia law. Given the fact that [hadiths are] often used as the lens through which to interpret the Koran, many Muslim jurists consider [them] to be even a greater authority on the practice of Islam.

Sam Harris, The End of Faith - Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, 2004, W. W. Norton & Company.

For example, Revelation 4:34 grants a husband the right to beat his wife, but it is a saying of Muhammad that pretty much guarantees the wife-beater immunity from prosecution.

4:34 Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made some of them excel the others, and because they spend some of their wealth. Hence righteous women are obedient, guarding the unseen (their sex) which Allah has guarded. And those of them that you fear might rebel, admonish them and abandon them in their beds and beat them. Should they obey you, do not seek ways of harming them; for Allah is Sublime and Great.

Narrated Umar ibn al-Khattab:

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife.

Abu Dawud 11.2142

Most hadiths were collected approximately 200 years after Muhammad's passing by men who travelled the land seeking people who may have known of people, who knew of people, who were contemporaries of Muhammad, and passed down to future generations what they remembered of what he said and did, or did not do.

The task of collecting and classifying the hadiths was mostly completed by the end of the 9th century. A fatwa was then issued declaring that all the knowledge about the nature of our existence and whatever information humanity needed to know to conduct its affairs as God intended was in the Koran, and in the sanctioned collections of sayings and actions of Muhammad to which no further hadiths could be added.

The Pseudo-Science of Hadith Authentication

Sunni Islam considers the hadiths collected by six men—al-Bukhari, Imam Muslim, At-Tirmidi, Ibn Majah, Abu Dawud and An-Nisa’i—as the “six canonical collections.” Al-Bukhari's (d. 870) collection of 7,275 hadiths is considered the most authoritative.

The process by which the strength or weakness of a hadith is assessed is considered the Science of Hadith. The process, which involves the weighing of a chain of hearsay evidence to establish a level of credibility for the transmitters, has little in common with the type of empirical proof required in the physical sciences.

What Islam considers a scientific method is really a methodology that examines provenance to establish the validity of a statement made by Muhammad. An authentic or good, i.e., hasan, hadith is a legal precedent. A weak, i.e., da’if, hadith is one where there is a break in the chain of transmission and/or the integrity of the narrator(s) is suspect, or simply not enough people remember hearing about it. A weak hadith can still be considered a legal precedent depending on the circumstances and the school of Islamic law.

All hadiths quoted in Fade to Black are authentic hadiths from the Sunni cannon except for one from the Shia Wasa'il al-Shia book of reputable hadiths.

References

Fade to Black, as can be expected from the culmination of a quarter-century effort to get you to take an interest and to fear the irrational, contains many excerpts from my other books on Islam, the Koran and Muhammad.

THE KORAN

Jihad in the Koran

Getting to Know Allah

The Islamic Hereafter

Women and the Koran

Shared Prophets

From Merchant to Messenger

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Let Me Rephrase That

Children and the Koran

Teach Your Children Well

THE PROPHET

1001 Sayings and Deeds of the Prophet Muhammad

PLAYS/SCRIPTS

Remembering Uzza: If Islam Was Explained to Me in a Pub

Alice Visits a Mosque to Learn about Judgement Day

REALITY

Love, Sex and Islam

Islamophobia