Boreal
Remembering Uzza
If Islam Was Explained to Me in a Pub
Critics Are for Killing
Uzza:
It was at Badr that Muhammad first informed his followers of the concept of life
in the grave after he was seen shouting at dead Meccan corpses that had been
thrown down a well after the battle. He explained that dead people cannot talk
but they can hear.
Archie: That sounds a lot like zombies.
Uzza: It does, when you think of it. Islam teaches that our existence has four stages: life in the womb, life in the world, life in the grave where the undead can be found, and the afterlife. Islam teaches that when a person dies, his zombie essence, to use your expression, sinks into the ground. Even Muhammad will not escape life in the grave.
Bob: After all he did for God; I almost feel sorry for the guy.
Uzza: Do not! Muhammad is more fortunate than most as he is visited many times a day by angels who bring him the blessings of the living. Whenever you hear a person say "SALLALLAHU 'ALAIHI WA SALLAM" − in English, "May the blessings and the peace of Allah be upon him" − whenever Muhammad's name is mentioned, an angel, some say, visits him in his grave to tell him that so-and-so sends his blessing.
Archie: “Many times a day...” If every Muslim sends only one blessing on any given day, that's more than a billion and half visits a day. That is [taking out a cellphone to do a quick calculation], that is more than 17,000 long-winded “bless you”s every second of every day.
Uzza: That may be why some say that the angels tell Allah that so-and-so has sent his blessings on Muhammad and for a god like Allah, who sees and hears everything, listening to a billion conversations simultaneously, even a million what you called “bless you”s per second, would not escape His attention, especially when bestowed on the apple of His eye[79].
Gerry: But why bother asking Allah to bless his pet prophet who should not have any trouble getting into Paradise, being His latest and greatest?
Uzza: Because a verse in the Koran tells the believers to do just that[80]. They do it not to help Muhammad get into Paradise − as you pointed out, he does not need anyone’s help to get there − but to help themselves. Muhammad said that for every blessing bestowed on him, Allah forgives the blesser ten sins[81].
Archie: That would explain why all those TV preachers can't complete a sentence without sending the Prophet their blessing.
Uzza: [laughing] I should not laugh, but that is funny.
Gerry: What about the ordinary undead, Uzza? Do they get daily visits to relieve the boredom of years, thousands of years for many, below ground with nothing to do, nothing to read?
Uzza: If a person dies a believer and is literally in Allah’s good books, they are provided with a spacious grave, a cave below ground complete with curtains and a bed. Every day an angel will visit them to open the curtains and show them Paradise, their destination on Judgment Day.
Archie: And the unbelievers? I can’t wait to hear about their hole-in-the-ground.
Uzza: An unbeliever’s grave will be a cramped space with walls constantly closing in on them, making every breath a laboured one. And every day an angel will come to visit them and open the curtains to show them where they will spend an eternity on fire, Hell!
Gerry: Psychological and physical torture combined to achieve maximum terror. Who would have thought of that?
Archie: A BLOODY SADIST, THAT'S WHO!
Uzza: Muhammad said that we would faint in terror if we could hear the screams of those being tormented in their graves.
Archie: That is insane!
Bob: Aren't sadists insane people?
Uzza: GOD IS NOT A SADIST, and neither is Muhammad. And neither is insane.
Archie: Could have fooled me.
Uzza: Muhammad was a product of his time and what he revealed was simply what people believed then. What is insane is that suicide bombers are encouraged by Islamists − and we let them − to believe that martyrs skip the life-in-the-grave part and go directly to heaven to enjoy all it has to offer because Allah said that those who die in His Cause are with him in Paradise well provided for[82], not in the grave[83].
Archie: That has to be a real incentive for believers who are into instant gratification, houris and all.
Uzza: That is not funny!
Archie: No, it isn't!
Bob: So, the Jews were not spooked by the Prophet admitting to the existence of zombies.
Uzza: The idea of life in the grave has its roots in Jewish folklore. Muhammad admitted as much to his child-bride Aisha who said she heard the story about people tortured in their graves from some old Jewish women, only to be told by her husband that they were telling the truth[84].
Bob: If the Jews were not spooked by zombies, why be scared by the believers attacking and plundering another caravan, which you said is what they did all the time?
Uzza: Badr was different. A rag tag bunch of believers had defeated the equivalent of regular army troops. It was a real confidence booster and that confidence was reflected in what Muhammad did next, which made the Jews apprehensive.
Archie: Real nasty things, I'll bet.
Uzza: The victory at Badr, and the prestige and plunder that came with it, emboldened Muhammad to silence his most vocal and persistent critics: the poets. The first poet to be killed was al-Nadr. The Meccans had praised his verses as superior to those of Muhammad. When he spotted al-Nadr among the prisoners captured at Badr, Muhammad had him beheaded on the spot.
Archie: And they call him the Prophet of Mercy[85]. What garbage!
Uzza: Next to die was the poetess Asma bint Marwan[86]. She was stabbed to death while sleeping with an infant suckling at her breast.
Bob: Holy shit! That’s really horrible!
Archie: Yeah, and it took one fucked-up holy shit to do something like that.
Gerry: Don’t you mean “unholy” shit?
Archie: NO!
Uzza: The Jewish poet Abu Afak was also killed while he slept[87]. After every murder the assassins would go to the Mosque to inform Muhammad and be praised for what they had done at his insistence. Two other poets of note who were killed on his orders or urging were Ka'b bin Al-Ashraf[88] and Abu Rafi[89].
Archie: I'll bet if cartoonists had existed they would have suffered the same fate.
Uzza: Islamists consider Muhammad the personification of the perfect human being whose every action is to be emulated as closely as possible. He used targeted assassination to silence his critics and advance Allah's Cause. Therefore, from an Islamist's point of view, they are simply doing what Muhammad would do if he were still here to those who made fun of his perfection or Allah’s revelations.
Bob: I thought only God was perfect?
Uzza: That Muhammad is considered the most perfect of human beings does not mean he is as perfect as God. However, when you question the perfection of what Islamic scriptures proclaim is the greatest prophet of all times sent to correct the errors of those who came before, you are impugning God's choice as His last and greatest spokesperson. When Muhammad had his critics killed, it was not because he was insulted but because they had insulted God.
Gerry: So, a tradition that started with the Prophet murdering his critics was not because he was thin-skinned but to protect God's reputation for perfection.
Archie: I don't buy it.
Uzza: [getting angry] Muhammad was not yet born when Hypatia of Alexandria was set upon by crazed monks. Cheered on by Cyril, the Christian bishop of the city who she had criticized, "they dragged her from her carriage and into the cathedral, where they stripped her; gauged her eyes out, skinned her alive, and tore her to pieces with jagged tiles ripped from the mosaics"[90]. What does your god tell you about not complaining about the speck in another man's eye while ignoring that large piece of wood in your own?
Gerry: [calmly] If I remember my history, Hypatia died in the fifth century, the beginning of the Dark Ages.
Uzza: And that is where we are going back to, thanks to your stupidity. At least Muhammad knew exactly what he was doing, and Islamists are following his example and achieving the promised victories.
Gerry: What could we have done differently when our politicians were falling over themselves to prove that they were the most tolerant and passing laws to prove it?
Uzza: God's first instruction to Muhammad was to read and he would be successful. And he did, and what he was told to read was the Koran[91].
Bob: But I thought the Prophet could not read or write?
Footnotes
[79] That Muhammad was the apple of Allah’s eye is evident in revelations such as the following where Allah expresses His love for him and where He threatens to do serious damage to anyone who would harm him or cause him distress.
33:56 Allah and His angels bless the Prophet. O believers, bless him and greet him graciously, too.
33:57 Those who cause Allah and His Messenger any injury, Allah has cursed them in this life and the life to come and has prepared for them a demeaning punishment.
Muhammad never knew his father who died before he was born. His mother passed away when he was six or seven years old. When you read the Koran, especially the verses such as the aforementioned, you can’t help thinking that Allah was the type of father a fatherless child might imagine.
33:56 Allah and His angels bless the Prophet. O believers, bless him and greet him graciously, too.
Anas bin Malik said: "The Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) said: "Whoever sends salah upon me once, Allah (Subhanahu-wa-Taala) will send salah upon him tenfold, and will erase ten sins from him, and will raise him ten degrees in status."
Sunan an-Nasa'i 3.1298
3:169 And do not think those who have been killed in the Way of Allah as dead; they are rather living with their Lord, well provided for.
[83] On May 22, 2017, an Islamic terrorist detonated a homemade bomb filled with shrapnel as people were leaving the Manchester Arena following a concert by Ariana Grande, killing twenty-three people, including the attacker, and wounding 139, more than half of them children. The following is from a debate between two Muslim clerics, Dr. Jamal Rifi and Sheikh Mohammad Tawhidi, hosted by Australia’s Channel Seven following Manchester Arena massacre in which the two argue the role religion played in the attack.
Tawhidi on the radicalisation of the Manchester bomber and his generation:
Basically we need to be very realistic when dealing with this matter. You have a twenty-two year old who gets radicalised over two, three sermons in a Friday mosque gathering … this age is an age when someone would expect people to be going out, having fun. But no, we have a large number of youth that are being radicalised. This happens because of the books that we have, the Islamic scriptures that we have; they push the Muslim youth to believe that if you go out there and kill the infidels, that's how you will gain Paradise.
On the massacres being a continuation of a very old war:
For the past one thousand four hundred years we have had a religion of war, that is exactly what we have had, this is not something I am imagining, these are facts. We’ve had many wars. How did Islam spread from Saudi Arabia down to Indonesia and Bosnia, all spread by the sword. We had many wars. For someone to come and say that Islamic scriptures have nothing to do with it, I mean, that’s against the facts, that’s not true. Islamic scriptures are what is pushing these people to behead the infidels. Let me tell you something, the people that are beheading, that mister, the person that killed the young girls in Manchester did so believing he was going to dine with the Prophet Muhammad that very night, that is what the Islamic scriptures tell them.
[84] Narrated Aisha:
Two old ladies from among the Jewish ladies entered upon me and said' "The dead are punished in their graves," but I thought they were telling a lie and did not believe them in the beginning. When they went away and the Prophet entered upon me, I said, "O Allah's Apostle! Two old ladies" and told him the whole story.
He said, "They told the truth; the dead are really punished, to the extent that all the animals hear (the sound resulting from) their punishment."
Since then I always saw him seeking refuge with Allah from the punishment of the grave in his prayers.
Bukhari 75.377
[85] Muhammad acquired the unlikely moniker Prophet of Mercy after the fall of Mecca when he publically spared the lives of some of his opponents while quietly having those with no protectors assassinated, e.g., poets, female singers and apostates. Other vulnerable human beings for whom the Prophet of Mercy had no compassion were women and girls who committed illegal intercourse, even when the less than self-evident crime resulted in a pregnancy. One of the more wretched decisions of the Prophet of Mercy:
Malik related to me from Yaqub ibn Zayd ibn Talha from his father Zayd ibn Talha that Abdullah ibn Abi Mulayka informed him that a woman came to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and informed him that she had committed adultery and was pregnant.
The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said to her, "Go away until you give birth."
When she had given birth, she came to him.
The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said to her, "Go away until you have suckled and weaned the baby."
When she had weaned the baby, she came to him.
He said, "Go and entrust the baby to someone."
She entrusted the baby to someone and then came to him. He gave the order and she was stoned.
Al-Muwatta 41.41.1.5
“Have you slain the daughter of Marwan?” This was the word that was first heard from the Apostle of Allah, may Allah bless him. When Umayr replied that the job had been carried out with success, Muhammad said, “You have helped God and His apostle, O Umayr!” When Umayr asked if he would have to bear any evil consequences, the apostle said, “Two goats won’t butt their heads about her.” Muhammad then praised Umayr in front of all gathered for prayer for his act of murder, and Umayr went back to his people.
Ibn S’ad
He waited for an opportunity until a hot night came, and Abu Afak slept in an open place. Salim b. Umayr knew it, so he placed the sword on his liver and pressed it till it reached his bed. The enemy of Allah screamed and the people, who were his followers rushed him, took him to his house and interred him.
Ibn S’ad
[88] Narrated Jabir bin Abdullah:
Allah's Apostle said, "Who would kill Ka'b bin Al-Ashraf (Ka'b, a poet, who wrote poems lampooning of Allah's Messenger) as he has harmed Allah and His Apostle?"
Muhammad bin Maslama (got up and) said, "I will kill him."
So, Muhammad bin Maslama went to Ka'b and said, "I want a loan of one or two Wasqs of food grains."
Ka'b said, "Mortgage your women to me."
Muhammad bin Maslama said, "How can we mortgage our women, and you are the most handsome among the Arabs?"
He said, "Then mortgage your sons to me."
Muhammad said, "How can we mortgage our sons, as the people will abuse them for being mortgaged for one or two Wasqs of food grains? It is shameful for us. But we will mortgage our arms to you."
So, Muhammad bin Maslama promised him that he would come to him next time.
They (Muhammad bin Maslama and his companions came to him as promised and murdered him. Then they went to the Prophet and told him about it.
Bukhari 45.687
[89] Narrated Al-Bara bin Azib:
Allah's Apostle sent a group of Ansari men to kill Abu-Rafi. One of them set out and entered their (i.e. the enemy’s) fort. That man said, "I hid myself in a stable for their animals. They closed the fort gate. Later they lost a donkey of theirs, so they went out in its search. I, too, went out along with them, pretending to look for it. They found the donkey and entered their fort. And I, too, entered along with them. They closed the gate of the fort at night, and kept its keys in a small window where I could see them.
When those people slept, I took the keys and opened the gate of the fort and came upon Abu Rafi and said, 'O Abu Rafi.' When he replied me, I proceeded towards the voice and hit him. He shouted and I came out to come back, pretending to be a helper. I said, 'O Abu Rafi’, changing the tone of my voice.
He asked me, 'What do you want; woe to your mother?'
I asked him, 'What has happened to you?'
He said, 'I don't know who came to me and hit me.' Then I drove my sword into his belly and pushed it forcibly till it touched the bone. Then I came out, filled with puzzlement and went towards a ladder of theirs in order to get down but I fell down and sprained my foot.
I came to my companions and said, 'I will not leave till I hear the wailing of the women.' So, I did not leave till I heard the women bewailing Abu Rafi, the merchant of Hijaz. Then I got up, feeling no ailment, (and we proceeded) till we came upon the Prophet and informed him."
Bukhari 52.264
[90] Cahill, Mysteries of the Middle Ages, p. 29.
96:3 Read by your Most Generous Lord,
96:4 Who taught by the pen.