Boreal
Remembering Uzza
If Islam Was Explained to Me in a Pub
Who Are You Calling Stupid?
Uzza:
I have talked too much. Maybe I should leave.
Archie: I'm sorry; it's just that sometimes the stupidity of the Arabs just pisses me off.
Uzza: ARABS ARE NOT STUPID! I am not Arab, but I know they are not stupid, just like the vast majority of Muslims, who, by the way, are not Arabs, and are also not stupid. If Muhammad had not revealed the Koran when he did, an Arab, not a Jew, would probably have discovered relativity, and long before Einstein did.
Gerry: How so?
Uzza: The pagans Muhammad was trying to convert had a very modern outlook on the nature of our existence. When told that it was Allah who caused them to grow old and die, and if they worshipped Him and only Him, He would bring them back to life and admit them into His Paradise, they said this was nonsense. They told anyone who would listen that there was only this life and that it was destroyed by the passage of time; what we know today as entropy. When Allah heard this, He repeated what they said in His Koran and accused them of not knowing what they were talking about. He said they were only "conjecturing"[116].
Gerry: Conjecturing correctly, as it turned out.
Bob: What has the discovery of this entropy got to do with relativity?
Uzza: [looking at Bob, then at Archie] And you call Arabs stupid. Entropy is all about the impact of the passage of time, which Einstein identified as the fourth dimension.
Bob: Who are you calling stupid?
Uzza: It was nothing. I did not mean it. [turning to Gerry] If Allah had not insisted that what we now know as entropy was nothing but conjecture, an Arab would undoubtedly have discovered relativity long before Einstein did. They were that smart!
Archie: What happened?
Uzza: Is it not obvious?
Archie: But if I said it I could be arrested.
Uzza: And I could be killed. The Koran asks us to believe with certainty in what it contains[117]. To believe with certainty in revealed truths is to abandon our ability to reason and arrive at logical conclusions. The result of this capitulation to what the pre-Islamic Arabs called nonsense was the Arabs of T. E. Lawrence.
Bob: Are we talking about Lawrence of Arabia?
Uzza: Yes. As much as he loved and admired the courage and perseverance of the Arabs with whom he fought against the Turks, he never understood their outlook on life. What he wrote about them in Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a sad testament to what happens to even the brightest when scriptures overwhelm the mind. “They were a people of primary colours, or rather of black and white…” he wrote, “a dogmatic, narrow-minded people… they only knew truth and untruth, belief and unbelief… they never compromised… their imaginations were vivid, but not creative”[118].
Gerry: But Muslims, Arabs and Persians in particular did make substantial contribution to science, astronomy and mathematics in particular?
Uzza: That was mostly during the short-lived Muslim Renaissance.
Bob: There was a Renaissance before the Renaissance?
Uzza: Between the 8th and 10th century, when Islam was in its infancy, there emerged an Islamic school of thought largely influenced by Plato and Aristotle, whose works − and those of other Greek philosophers − were translated into Arabic[119], and which became known as Mu’tazilism or Philosophy of Rationalism, or simply Islamic Philosophy. The most emblematic philosopher of the period, al-Kindi, wrote: "We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign people. For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than truth itself."
Bob: WOW!
Uzza: Mu'tazilites argued that the Koran should not be taken literally, and that human reason was more reliable than scriptures.
Bob: WOW again!
Uzza: The leaders of the believers of the time, the most noteworthy being Caliphs al-Ma'mun, Mu'tasim Billah and Wathiq, actively supported this sensible open-minded interpretation, allowing it to thrive until dogma reasserted itself with a vengeance and revelation again smothered reason.
Gerry: That is really too bad.
Uzza: For both you and us. Today, the man most responsible for Mu’tazilism is reviled by Islamists and al-Ghazali, the man most responsible for its demise, is celebrated as one of the greatest thinkers of all times. It is not a coincidence that most of Islam’s substantial contributions to the advancement of science were from this period when Mu’tazilism was accepted by the Caliphate as a legitimate Islamic school of thought.
Gerry: That would also explain why the Muslim world, which constitutes 21 percent of the world’s population, has produced only 10 Nobel Prize laureates, with only two in the physical sciences, physics and chemistry, while the Jews who constitute about .02 percent of the world's population have taken an incredible 892, 22 percent of all Nobel prizes given out to-date.
Uzza: Depressing, is it not?
Bob: Not if you're Jewish.
Uzza: [makes Uzza smile, if only for an instant] Not to be overlooked are the requirements of an Islamic education where priority is given to learning Arabic and attempting to memorize the Koran in its entirety; the negative impact on critical thinking is just as damaging, if not more, than the time not available to non-religious subjects, which Islamists consider very much a pre-occupation of the ignorant, as is time not spent at prayer or glorifying Allah. If excessive worship is the answer, the world may eventually owe Islam an enormous debt.
Archie: I apologize. What I took for stupidity is simply, from your explanation, the result of indoctrination. But, surely, the preachers and the so-called Islamic scholars who believe in flying horses, a flat Earth and Paradise a few miles up are not praying with a full set of beads.
Uzza: The imams and scholars are the smartest of the smart. I doubt very much that they believe in what you said is a fairy tale. They know that religion is not so much about belief but about control, control over people who want to believe − and that is most of us − that there is more to our existence than meets the eye.
Gerry: Then you agree with Marx that religion is an opiate exploited by people who would rule over us.
Archie: That would explain why the faithful tend to be immune to a slow-burning planet. They're all stoned on religion.
Uzza: That is funny, what you just said Archie, but also what Gerry said, because that is almost exactly what the leaders of Mecca said to Muhammad when he told them he was sent by God to instruct them on how to behave: that he wanted to rule over them[120].
Gerry: Speaking of who said what. An author whose work I read a long time ago wrote that religion was invented when man first became aware that he was mortal and could not deal with it. Unable to accept death for what it was, man-made death a rite of passage, not an end, but a new beginning.
Uzza: If religion was invented to allay a fear of the end of existence, then Islam probably took it the furthest, making death something you yearn for. And where martyrs are concerned, something they would do ten times over, Muhammad said, because of the dignity Allah bestows on martyrs[121].
Archie: Ah, the dignity of it all. Makes you want to puke.
Uzza: One of the most effective battle cries of the Koran, and there are many, is about this yearning for death: "You were yearning for death before you actually met it. Now you have seen it and you are beholding it"[122], Allah said. The suicide bomber is a modern reminder of the effectiveness of Allah’s siren-like call to martyrdom[123].
Archie: More like sirens. This yearning for death is really a yearning for sex, isn’t it? For normal people there is nothing dignified about that.
Uzza: Allah bestowing dignity on martyrs is probably Muhammad’s way of saying martyrs get more sex. Sex is Allah's way of gaining and rewarding the loyalty of men, of getting men to do His bidding. Having concluded that men aspire to no higher ideals than to fornicate their brains out, He promises them sex in spades in this world and even more in the next if they do as they are told in this one.
Archie: And the only way he gives them sex in spades in this one is by giving women no say in the matter. Am I correct?
Uzza: Allah said that “men are in charge of women”[124] and can beat them if they do not behave as the Koran demands[125], and that includes if they refuse their husband’s request for intimacy, the inalienable right of every man guaranteed by the Book. A revealed truth of Allah is that women are like fields to be ploughed at the plowman’s discretion[126]. Brides acknowledge this debasing truth from above, that they have no more rights than a parcel of dirt when it comes to sex and procreation, when they sign the mandatory pre-marital agreement granting their husband-to-be complete control over what Allah and Muhammad refer to as her “private parts”[127].
Archie: Meaning their husbands cannot be convicted of rape, no matter what.
Uzza: Not under the Sharia. Then again, if you believe that women are harlots yearning to be dominated sexually but will not admit to it, you are just giving them what they secretly desire.
Bob: So, it’s not just men whom Allah believes are obsessed with sex?
Uzza: With so many women gravitating to Islam out of their own free will knowing what to expect, Allah may be right on both counts[128]. But I think we are better than that.
Gerry: So do I.
Archie: I never thought I’d hear you say that, Gerry.
Gerry: There is a difference between pursuing and wooing the object of your affection and treating her like the wonderful person she is, in the hope you can come to an understanding, and not like a manufactured facsimile with no more rights than an inflatable doll.
Bob: No more self-abuse and inflatable dolls because the girlfriend has a headache. Sex on demand, I could go for that.
Uzza: And many men do. Sex may be Islam’s greatest draw.
Archie: What's in it for the other women?
Uzza: What other women?
Archie: Like the masked women you see on television who defend Islam. They scare me more than the men. They are so in-your-face!
Uzza: The veiled women; and you have answered your own question.
Archie: How's that?
Uzza: Some women, just like many men, enjoy bullying people, especially men. They too feed on the fear they instill in the people they intimidate. For the veiled women you say intimidate you, you are an inferior and many take pleasure, I am sure, in the fear they instill in you by standing up for a religion that uses terror as a means to an end.
Archie: Why would they consider me an inferior?
Uzza: You are an inferior as far as Islam is concerned, an inferior in faith who must inevitably be made to submit to Allah's Will, or be killed.
Bob: But didn't you just say that women are inferior to men?
Archie: And didn’t Allah say that women were so stupid that they could not remember things as well as men, which is why a woman’s testimony is worth less than that of a man[129]?
Uzza: Both Allah and Muhammad are in agreement; women are not very smart[130], with Muhammad going as far as comparing them to donkeys and asses[131]. Their lack of prowess is one reason Allah put men in charge. Another reason Allah made them lifetime wards of men, again according to His spokesperson, is that women are inferior in faith as evident by their periods[132], during which she is shunted aside during religious services and observances.
Bob: What does menstruation have to do with anything?
Uzza: I do not know, it is just another obsession of Allah and Muhammad where women are concerned, and further proof that females, in both intellectual and physical attributes, leave a lot to be desired.
Archie: Let me get this straight. Both God and His Prophet said that women are stupid and infirmed. That means to be a believing woman you have to agree that you are stupid and suffer from a repugnant disease which you acquired upon reaching puberty.
Uzza: No, only that you are not as smart as a man. As to the restrictions placed on them during their time of the month, it is just something they have to put up with; they do not have to believe that they are impure. This is just something that Allah and Muhammad, like so many gods and their spokesmen before them, who did not understand the role menstruation plays in the reproductive cycle, made up, as far as I am concerned, to further diminish our sex.
Archie: Fine, but if they agree they are stupider than me, what gives them the right to lord it over me?
Uzza: They may be inferior in beliefs to a believing man, but they are superior to every unbeliever and that includes all of you, and that is all that matters. Which is why they are entitled, from their perspective, to bully you and get the satisfaction that their husbands, brothers, uncles and fathers must get from bullying them. To bully you, with their approval I might add. Bullying, women being the main beneficiary, is endemic in Islam. It begins at home and spreads from generation to generation and within the umma.
Archie: Bullying is beneficial?
Uzza: It does get people to behave like Allah intended and the unbelievers to be wary of denying Islam whatever it wants. From an Islamist’s point of view, as Martha Stewart used to say, “and that is a good thing.”
Archie: A good thing, my ass!
Bob: What is an umma?
Uzza: It is the community of believers. It is just another transliteration of an Arab word, and a very evocative one at that, that you see imams use during their sermons, and believers, when talking among themselves in a language other than Arabic, as a reminder that it is us against them.
Bob: Transliteration, what's that?
Uzza: It is basically spelling a word in the alphabet of another language so that you can pronounce it.
Archie: When you said that, as far as Islam is concerned, we are inferiors in beliefs who must be dealt with one way or another; is that what they mean when they say Islam is a supremacist religion?
Uzza: For Islamists, absolutely.
Archie: Is that like the superior race?
Uzza: No, but the methods used to achieve their goal by both claimant to a greater right to life and the bounty of this world[133] are not dissimilar.
Bob: [in a whisper] Are we talking genocide?
Uzza: The greatest mass murder of an indigenous people may not have been committed by Hitler, Mao or Stalin but by the Mughals.
Bob: What are Mughals?
Uzza: Not what, but who. Mughals is the name given to Muslim invaders and rulers of much of the Indian sub-continent. Indians believed in more than one god; they were and are polytheists. The Koran is clear on the concept: polytheists are the worst[134], they must convert or die, and tens of millions of them were slaughtered by the Mughals[135], not having the option of the People of the Book to pay a ransom to keep on breathing and worshipping their gods.
Bob: Were the Jews of Badr worried that they too would be killed for their beliefs?
Uzza: Yes and no.
Archie: What kind of answer is that?
Footnotes
45:24 They say: “There is nothing but this our present life. We die and we live and we are only destroyed by time.” However, they have no certain knowledge of this; they are only conjecturing.
45:20 This (Qur’an) is an illumination for mankind, a guidance and mercy unto a people who believe with certainty.
They were a people of primary colours, or rather of black and white… They were a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns. They did not understand our metaphysical difficulties, our introspective questioning. They only knew truth and untruth, belief and unbelief, without our hesitating retinue of finer shades. This people was black and white not merely in clarity, but in apposition. Their thoughts were at ease only in extremes… they never compromised; they pursued the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity. They were a limited, narrow-minded people, whose inert intellect lay fallow in curious resignation. Their imaginations were vivid, but not creative.
T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
The motives of the translators [of Greek works in science and philosophy into Arabic] and their patrons, the ['Abbasid] caliphs, may have been partially practical; medical skill was in demand, and control over natural forces could bring power and success. There was also, however, a wide intellectual curiosity, such as is expressed in the words of al-Kindi (c. 801-66), the thinker with whom the history of Islamic philosophy virtually begins:
We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign people. For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than truth itself.
A History of the Arab People, Albert Hourani, Harvard University Press 1991, p. 76
38:6 And the dignitaries among them went forth saying: “Go on and be steadfast regarding your gods. This is indeed a matter premeditated (Muhammad…. [wants] to subjugate us and rule us as his subjects, Moududi).
[121] Narrated Anas bin Malik:
The Prophet said, "Nobody who enters Paradise likes to go back to the world even if he got everything on the earth, except a Mujahid who wishes to return to the world so that he may be martyred ten times because of the dignity he receives (from Allah)."
Bukhari 52.72
Dignity and better accommodations:
Narrated Samura
The Prophet said, "Last night two men came to me (in a dream) and made me ascend a tree and then admitted me into a better and superior house, better of which I have never seen. One of them said, ‘This house is the house of martyrs.’"
Bukhari 52.49
3:143 You were yearning for death before you actually met it. Now you have seen it and you are beholding it.
[123] The first mention of martyrdom:
3:140 If you have been afflicted by a wound, a similar wound has afflicted the others (the unbelievers). Such are the times; We alternate them among the people, so that Allah may know who are the believers and choose martyrs from among you. Allah does not like the evildoers!
The role of martyrs made clear:
3:141 And that Allah might purify the believers and annihilate the unbelievers.
Martyrs will be the first to enter Paradise.
3:142 Or did you suppose that you will enter Paradise, before Allah has known who were those of you who have struggled, and those who are steadfast.
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 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 a way of harming them; for Allah is Sublime and Great!
[125] The Koran in revelation 4:34 grants the husband the right to beat his wife, but it is a saying of Muhammad that pretty much guarantees the wife-beater immunity from prosecution.
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
2:223 Your women are a tillage for you. So get to your tillage whenever you like. Do good for yourselves, fear Allah and know that you shall meet Him. And give good news to the believers.
Another (not widely held) interpretation of this revelation is that it is not about sex on demand but who gets to decide what position.
Narrated Jabir:
Jews used to say: "If one has sexual intercourse with his wife from the back, then she will deliver a squint-eyed child." So this Verse was revealed: "Your wives are a tilth unto you; so go to your tilth when or how you will." (2.223)."
Bukhari 60.51
A reported saying of Muhammad belies this interpretation.
Ali reported God's messenger as saying, "When a man calls his wife to satisfy his desire she must go to him even if she is occupied at the oven."
At-Tirmidhi
[127] Narrated Uqba:
The Prophet said: "The stipulations most entitled to be abided by are those with which you are given the right to enjoy the (women's) private parts (i.e. the stipulations of the marriage contract)."
Bukhari 62.81
[128] Young. British. Female. Muslim.
While less than 2 per cent of the population now attends a Church of England service every week, the number of female converts to Islam is on the rise. At the London Central Mosque in Regent’s Park, women account for roughly two thirds of the 'New Muslims' who make their official declarations of faith there – and most of them are under the age of 30.
The Sunday Times, May 29, 2010
[129] If revelation 2:282 had been interpreted as Allah stating that women were not good at business, this would have been the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, it has been taken as meaning that women require more witnesses in different court proceedings that have nothing to do with commercial or financial transactions, such as accusations of adultery or sexual assault (underlining mine).
2:282 O believers, when you contract a debt for a fixed period, write it down. Let a scribe write it for you with fairness. No scribe should decline to write as Allah has taught him. So let him then write and let the debtor dictate. He should fear his Lord and not diminish the debt in the least. If the debtor is feeble-minded or week or ignorant, then let his guardian dictate with fairness. And call to witness two witnesses of your men; if not two men, then one man and two women from such witnesses you approve of, so that if one of them (the two women) fails to remember, the other will remind her. The witnesses should not decline [to testify] when they are called upon [to do so]. So do not be averse to writing down the debt, be it small or large, as well as when it is due. This is more equitable in Allah’s sight, more suitable for testimony and less likely to rouse your doubts. If it is an instant transaction among yourselves (involving no debt); then it is no offence if you do not write it down. And let there be witnesses when you sell one to another; but neither the scribe nor the witness should be harmed, because if you do that, it is an act of transgression. Fear Allah; Allah teaches you. He has knowledge of everything.
[130] Narrated abu Said al-Khudri:
The Prophet said, "Isn’t the witness of a woman equal half that of a man?"
The women said, "Yes."
He said: "This is because of the deficiency of the woman’s mind."
Bukhari 48.286
[131] Nowhere is the low esteem and contempt in which Muhammad held females more evident than in the hadiths about women interfering with a man's prayers. A sample:
Narrated Aisha:
The things which annul the prayers were mentioned before me.
They said, Prayer is annulled by a dog, a donkey and a woman (if they pass in front of the praying people).
I said, "You have made us (i.e. women) dogs...
Bukhari 9.490
Ikrimah reported on the authority of Ibn Abbas, saying: "I think the Apostle of Allah said: 'When one of you prays without a sutrah (a barrier), a dog, an ass, a pig, a Jew, a Magian, and a woman cut off his prayer, but it will suffice if they pass in front of him at a distance of over a stone's throw.'”
Abu Dawud 2.704
Aisha said [to Muhammad]: "You have made us equal to the dogs and the asses."
Sahih Muslim
[132] Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri:
Once Allah's Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) of Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, "O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)."
They asked, "Why is it so, O Allah's Apostle?"
He replied, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you."
The women asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?"
He said, "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?"
They replied in the affirmative.
He said, "This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?"
The women replied in the affirmative.
He said, "This is the deficiency in her religion."
Bukhari 6.301
[133] Hitler, in Mein Kampf, looked to the East for what he called lebensraum, literally “living space” for the master race. This living space was to be acquired through extermination, enslavement and sterilization of non-Aryan races. It was the moral duty of every NAZI to ensure the survival of the master race by whatever means at his or her disposal.
35:39 It is He Who made you successors in the lands. Then he who disbelieves, his unbelief will recoil upon him; and their unbelief will only increase the unbelievers in contempt in the sight of their Lord. No their unbelief will only increase the unbelievers in perdition.
Will the practitioners of the master religion, one day, with the authority granted them by the Koran as “successors in the lands,” see it as their religious and moral duty to cull a starving planet to ensure not only the survival but the supremacy of the master religion and those who believe? Will this piece of entitlement dogma lead to even greater atrocities than when it was the alleged superior race which laid claim to exclusivity of living space?
9:113 It is not for the Prophet and those who believe to ask for forgiveness for the polytheists even if they are near relatives, after it becomes clear to [the believers] that they are the people of the Fire.
[135] Based on Muslim chronicles of the period, and the demographic calculations done by historian K. S. Lal in his book Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, it is estimated that between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, the population of Hindus decreased by 80 million. For much of that period the death rate among Hindus exceeded their birthrate. If the eminent historian’s estimates are even remotely accurate, this period would have witnessed the largest cold-blooded killing of an indigenous people in all written history.