The myth; Islam is Opposed to Slavery
Islam is intolerant of enslaving human beings. The religion eradicated the institution of slavery thanks to the principles set in motion by Muhammad, who was an abolitionist.
The Truth: There is not the least bit of intolerance for slavery anywhere in the Quran.
In fact, the “holy” book of Islam explicitly gives slave-owners the freedom to sexually exploit their slaves – not just in one place, but in at least four separate Suras. Islamic law is littered with rules concerning the treatment of slaves, some of which are relatively humane, but none that prohibit the actual practice by any stretch.
The very presence of these rules condones and legitimizes the institution of slavery. Adding to this is the fact that Muhammad was an avid slave trader. After providing ample evidence of his activities according to the most reliable Muslim biographers, the Center of the Study of Political Islam summarizes its findings as such:
Muhammad captured slaves, sold slaves, bought slaves as gifts of pleasure, received slaves as gifts, and used slaves for work. The Sira is exquisitely clear on the issue of slavery. (Muhammad and the Unbelievers: a Political Life) Even the very pulpit from which Muhammad preached Islam was built by slave labor on his command!
91 verses in the Quran tell Muslims to emulate the example of Muhammad. As such, the deeply dehumanizing horror of slavery has been a ubiquitous tradition of Islam for 14 centuries, including the modern plight of non-Muslim slaves in the Sudan, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and other parts of the Muslim world.
There has never been an abolitionary movement within Islam (just as the religion produces no organized resistance to present-day enslavement). The abolition of slavery was imposed on the Islamic world by European countries, along with other political pressures that were entirely unrelated to Islamic law.
Although horrible abuses of slaves in the Muslim world were recorded, there has been little inclination toward the documentation and earnest contrition that one finds in the West. The absence of a guilty Muslim conscience often leads to the mistaken impression that slavery was not as bad under Islam - when it is actually indicative of the explicit tolerance the religion has for the practice
So narcissistic is the effect of Islam on the devoted, that to this day many Muslims believe in their hearts that the women and children carried off in battle, along with their surviving men folk, were actually done a favor by the Muslim warriors who plucked them from their fields and homes and relegated them to lives of demeaning servitude.
Shame and apology, no matter how appropriate, are almost never to be found in Dar al-Islam. Caliphs, the religious equivalent of popes, maintained harems of hundreds, sometimes thousands of young girls and women captured from lands as far away as Europe and consigned to sexual slavery. Hungarians were hunted like animals by the Turks, who carried 3 million into slavery over a 150 year period in the 1500-1600's. In India, 200,000 Hindus were captured and transported to Iranian slave markets in just a two year span (1619-1620) by one of the kinder Muslim rulers.
African slaves were often castrated by their Muslim masters. Few survived to reproduce, which is why there are not many people of African descent living in the Middle East, even though more slaves were taken out of Africa in the 1300 years of Arab slave trading than in the 300 years of European slavery. The 400,000 slaves brought to America, for example, have now become a community of 30 million, with a much higher standard of living than their African peers.
There is no William Wilberforce or Bartoleme de las Casas in Islamic history as there is in Christianity. When asked to produce the name of a Muslim abolitionist, apologists sometimes meekly suggest Muhammad himself. But, if a slave owner and trader, who commanded the capture and sexual exploitation of slaves, and left a 13-century legacy of divinely-sanctioned slavery, is the best that Islam can offer in the way of an abolitionist, then no amount of sophistry will be enough to convince any but the most ignorant.
Further Reading:
Slavery in Islam (TROP)
Slavery in Islam (Answering Islam site)
The myth; Islam is Completely Incompatible with Terrorism. Islam is completely incompatible with acts of terrorism. It is against Islam to kill innocent people.
The Truth: Islam does prohibit killing innocent people. Unfortunately, you don't qualify.
Even though many Muslims earnestly believe that their religion prohibits the killing of innocent people by acts of terrorism, the truth is certainly more complicated. This is why Muslims on both sides of the terror debate accuse the other of hijacking Islam while insisting that they are the true believers. It is also why organizations that commit horrible atrocities in the name of Allah, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, receive a significant amount of moral and financial support from the mainstream.
In fact, the definition of "terrorism" in Islam is ambiguous at best. And the definition of an “innocent person” in Islam isn't something that Muslim apologists advertise when they say that such persons aren't to be harmed. The reason for this is that anyone who rejects Muhammad is not considered to be innocent according to Islamic teaching.
Consider that a great deal of the Quran is devoted to describing the horrible punishment that awaits those who refuse to become Muslim. How can Muslims say that the subjects of such divine wrath are innocent persons?
The most protected and respected of all non-Muslims are the dhimma, the “people of the book.” Specifically , these would be Jews and Christians who agree to Islamic rule and pay the jizya (tribute to Muslims). Yet, the word “dhimmi” is derived from an Arabic root that means “guilt” or "blame." ["...the dhimmi parent and sister words mean both 'to blame' as well as safeguards that can be extended to protect the blameworthy" Amitav Ghosh, "In an Antique Land"].
So, if even the dhimma have a measure of guilt attached to their status (by virtue of having rejected Allah’s full truth), how can non-Muslims who oppose Islamic rule or refuse to pay the jizya be considered “innocent?”
Even within the Islamic community there is a category of Muslims who are also said to bear guilt – greater, even, than the average non-believer. These are the hypocrites, or “Munafiqin,” whom Muhammad referred to in the most derogatory terms. A hypocrite is considered to be a Muslim in name only. They are distinguished from true Muslims, according to the 9th Sura, by an unwillingness to wage (v.81, 86) or fund (v.121) holy war. True believers fight and are harsh to unbelievers (v.123).
The Muslim terrorists who frequently kill Muslims in the name of Allah do so believing that their victims are Munafiqin or kafir (unbelievers). This is a part of Sharia known as takfir, in which a Muslim can be declared an apostate and then executed for their role in hindering the expansion of Islamic authority. (A true Muslim would go to paradise anyway, in which case he or she could hardly be expected to nurse a grudge amidst the orgy of sex and wine).
In addition to the murky definition of innocence, there is also the problem of distinguishing terrorism from holy war. Islamic terrorists rarely refer to themselves as terrorists, but usually say that they are holy warriors (Mujahideen, Shahid, or Fedayeen). They consider their acts to be a form of Jihad.
Holy war is commanded in the Quran and Hadith. In Sura 9:29, he establishes the principle that unbelievers should be fought until they either convert to Islam or accept a state of humiliation under Islamic subjugation. This is confirmed in the Hadith by both Sahih Muslim and Bukhari.
In many places, the prophet of Islam says that Jihad is the ideal path for a Muslim, and that believers should “fight in the way of Allah.” There are dozens of open-ended passages in the Quran that exhort killing and fighting – far more than there are of peace and tolerance. It is somewhat naïve to think that their inclusion in this "eternal discourse between God and Man" was of historical value only and not intended to be relevant to present-day believers, particularly when there is little to nothing within the text to distinguish them in such fashion.
Combine the Quran's exhortation to holy war with the ambiguity of innocence and a monumental problem develops that cannot be patched over with mere semantics. Not only is there a deep tolerance for violence in Islam, but also a sharp disagreement and lack of clarity over the conditions that justify this violence - and just whom the targets may be.
Even many of those Muslims who claim to be against terrorism still support the “insurgency” in Iraq, for example, and often entertain the allegation that there is a broader “war against Islam.” Although American troops in Iraq are trying to protect innocent life and help the country rebuild, Muslims around the world and in the West believe that it is legitimate for true believers to try and kill them.
Enjoying the sanction of holy war, the Mujahid thus reasons that it is permissible to attack fellow Iraqis – the ones helping the Americans - even if they are part of a democratically-elected Iraqi government. These non-combatants and combatants alike are believed to be the “Munafiqin” or "Takfir" assisting the enemy “Crusaders.”
Although we use Iraq as an example here, this is the same rationale that is ultimately behind all Islamic terror, from the Philippines to Thailand. Wherever the Muslim religion is a minority, there are always radicals who believe that violence is justified in bringing Islam to dominance - just as Muhammad taught by example in Mecca and other places, such as the land of al-Harith.
And what of the so-called “innocents” who suffer from the bombings and shootings? Even in Muhammad’s time they were unavoidable. The much-touted hadith in which Muhammad forbade the killing of women, for example, also indicates that there were such casualties in his attacks on other tribes.
If there is any doubt that he believed that the forbidden is sometimes necessary, it should be put to rest by an incident in which Muhammad's men warned him that a planned night raid against an enemy camp would mean that women and children would be killed. He merely replied “they are of them,” meaning the men.
This is the slippery slope opened by the sanction of holy war. What starts out as the perception of a noble cause of self-defense against a supposed threat gradually devolves into a "let Allah sort them out" campaign through a series of logical steps that are ultimately justified by the sublime goal of Islamic rule.
Islam is not intended to co-exist as an equal with other religions. It is to be the dominant religion with Sharia as the supreme law. Islamic rule is to be extended to the ends of the earth and resistance is to be dealt with by any means necessary.
Apologists in the West often shrug off the Quran's many verses of violence by saying that they are relevant only in a “time of war.”
To this, Islamic terrorists would agree. They are at war.
The myth; Islam is a Democracy. Islam is compatible with democratic principles. The religion itself is a democracy.
The Truth:
A democracy is a system in which all people are judged as equals before the law, regardless of race, religion or gender. The vote of every individual counts as much as the vote of any other. The collective will of the people then determines the rules of society.
Under Islamic law, only Muslim males are entitled to full rights. The standing of a woman is often half that of a man's - sometimes even less. Non-Muslims have no standing with a Muslim. In fact, a Muslim can never be put to death for killing an unbeliever.
The Islamic state is guided by Islamic law, derived from the Quran and Sunnah. A body of clerics interprets the law and applies it to all circumstances social, cultural and political. The people are never to be placed above the Quran and Sunnah any more than man should be above Allah.
It is somewhat debatable as to whether there are any states in the Muslim world that qualify as actual democracies. There is no denying, however, that the tiny handful that are often held up as democratic nations are ones in which deep tension exists between the government and religious leaders, as the latter often complain that democracy is an idolatrous system imposed on them. Islam does not facilitate democracy.
The Legacy of Islamic Imperialism
Muhammad died of a fever in 632 at the age of 63, with his violent religion spread over most of Arabia. His method of forcing others to convert under duress had several negative consequences, beginning with the civil wars that were immediately engaged in following his death. Many tribes wanted out of Islam and had to be kept in the empire via horrific violence.
Abu Sufyan, the Meccan leader who was literally forced to "embrace" Islam at the point of a sword actually had the last laugh. He skillfully worked his own family into the line of succession and his son, Muawiya, became the heir to Muhammad's empire at the expense of the prophet's own family. In fact, Abu Sufyan almost lived to see his son and grandson actually kill off Muhammad's own grandchildren under the banner of Islam.
Muhammad's failure to leave a clear successor resulted in a deep schism that quickly devolved into violence and persists to this day as the Sunni/Shia conflict. His own family fell apart and literally went to war with each other in the first few years. Thousands of Muslims were killed fighting each other in a battle between Muhammad's favorite wife, Aisha, and his adopted son, Ali.
The real losers, however, were the infidels. Through Muhammad's teachings and example, his followers viewed worldly life as a constant physical battle between the House of Peace (Dar al-Salaam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb). Muslims are instructed to invite their enemies to either embrace Islam, pay jizya (protection money), or die.
Over the next fourteen centuries, the bloody legacy of this extraordinary individual would be a constant challenge to those living on the borders of the Islam’s political power. The violence that Muslim armies would visit on people across North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe and into Asia as far as the Indian subcontinent is a tribute to a founder who condoned subjugation, rape, murder and forced conversion in the cause of spreading the rule of his religion.
An estimated 270 Million people died at the hands of Muslims, which continues to this very day.
In Muhammad's words: "I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.' And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them..." (Bukhari 8:387)
It is certainly the basis not just for modern day terror campaigns against Western infidels (and Hindus and Buddhists) but also the broad apathy that Muslims across the world have to the violence, which is an obvious enabler.
As Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir recently put it: "If the West wants to have peace, then they have to accept Islamic rule.
http://www.arabslavetrade.com/
Arab slaves
Islam is intolerant of enslaving human beings. The religion eradicated the institution of slavery thanks to the principles set in motion by Muhammad, who was an abolitionist.
The Truth: There is not the least bit of intolerance for slavery anywhere in the Quran.
In fact, the “holy” book of Islam explicitly gives slave-owners the freedom to sexually exploit their slaves – not just in one place, but in at least four separate Suras. Islamic law is littered with rules concerning the treatment of slaves, some of which are relatively humane, but none that prohibit the actual practice by any stretch.
The very presence of these rules condones and legitimizes the institution of slavery. Adding to this is the fact that Muhammad was an avid slave trader. After providing ample evidence of his activities according to the most reliable Muslim biographers, the Center of the Study of Political Islam summarizes its findings as such:
Muhammad captured slaves, sold slaves, bought slaves as gifts of pleasure, received slaves as gifts, and used slaves for work. The Sira is exquisitely clear on the issue of slavery. (Muhammad and the Unbelievers: a Political Life) Even the very pulpit from which Muhammad preached Islam was built by slave labor on his command!
91 verses in the Quran tell Muslims to emulate the example of Muhammad. As such, the deeply dehumanizing horror of slavery has been a ubiquitous tradition of Islam for 14 centuries, including the modern plight of non-Muslim slaves in the Sudan, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and other parts of the Muslim world.
There has never been an abolitionary movement within Islam (just as the religion produces no organized resistance to present-day enslavement). The abolition of slavery was imposed on the Islamic world by European countries, along with other political pressures that were entirely unrelated to Islamic law.
Although horrible abuses of slaves in the Muslim world were recorded, there has been little inclination toward the documentation and earnest contrition that one finds in the West. The absence of a guilty Muslim conscience often leads to the mistaken impression that slavery was not as bad under Islam - when it is actually indicative of the explicit tolerance the religion has for the practice
So narcissistic is the effect of Islam on the devoted, that to this day many Muslims believe in their hearts that the women and children carried off in battle, along with their surviving men folk, were actually done a favor by the Muslim warriors who plucked them from their fields and homes and relegated them to lives of demeaning servitude.
Shame and apology, no matter how appropriate, are almost never to be found in Dar al-Islam. Caliphs, the religious equivalent of popes, maintained harems of hundreds, sometimes thousands of young girls and women captured from lands as far away as Europe and consigned to sexual slavery. Hungarians were hunted like animals by the Turks, who carried 3 million into slavery over a 150 year period in the 1500-1600's. In India, 200,000 Hindus were captured and transported to Iranian slave markets in just a two year span (1619-1620) by one of the kinder Muslim rulers.
African slaves were often castrated by their Muslim masters. Few survived to reproduce, which is why there are not many people of African descent living in the Middle East, even though more slaves were taken out of Africa in the 1300 years of Arab slave trading than in the 300 years of European slavery. The 400,000 slaves brought to America, for example, have now become a community of 30 million, with a much higher standard of living than their African peers.
There is no William Wilberforce or Bartoleme de las Casas in Islamic history as there is in Christianity. When asked to produce the name of a Muslim abolitionist, apologists sometimes meekly suggest Muhammad himself. But, if a slave owner and trader, who commanded the capture and sexual exploitation of slaves, and left a 13-century legacy of divinely-sanctioned slavery, is the best that Islam can offer in the way of an abolitionist, then no amount of sophistry will be enough to convince any but the most ignorant.
Further Reading:
Slavery in Islam (TROP)
Slavery in Islam (Answering Islam site)
The myth; Islam is Completely Incompatible with Terrorism. Islam is completely incompatible with acts of terrorism. It is against Islam to kill innocent people.
The Truth: Islam does prohibit killing innocent people. Unfortunately, you don't qualify.
Even though many Muslims earnestly believe that their religion prohibits the killing of innocent people by acts of terrorism, the truth is certainly more complicated. This is why Muslims on both sides of the terror debate accuse the other of hijacking Islam while insisting that they are the true believers. It is also why organizations that commit horrible atrocities in the name of Allah, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, receive a significant amount of moral and financial support from the mainstream.
In fact, the definition of "terrorism" in Islam is ambiguous at best. And the definition of an “innocent person” in Islam isn't something that Muslim apologists advertise when they say that such persons aren't to be harmed. The reason for this is that anyone who rejects Muhammad is not considered to be innocent according to Islamic teaching.
Consider that a great deal of the Quran is devoted to describing the horrible punishment that awaits those who refuse to become Muslim. How can Muslims say that the subjects of such divine wrath are innocent persons?
The most protected and respected of all non-Muslims are the dhimma, the “people of the book.” Specifically , these would be Jews and Christians who agree to Islamic rule and pay the jizya (tribute to Muslims). Yet, the word “dhimmi” is derived from an Arabic root that means “guilt” or "blame." ["...the dhimmi parent and sister words mean both 'to blame' as well as safeguards that can be extended to protect the blameworthy" Amitav Ghosh, "In an Antique Land"].
So, if even the dhimma have a measure of guilt attached to their status (by virtue of having rejected Allah’s full truth), how can non-Muslims who oppose Islamic rule or refuse to pay the jizya be considered “innocent?”
Even within the Islamic community there is a category of Muslims who are also said to bear guilt – greater, even, than the average non-believer. These are the hypocrites, or “Munafiqin,” whom Muhammad referred to in the most derogatory terms. A hypocrite is considered to be a Muslim in name only. They are distinguished from true Muslims, according to the 9th Sura, by an unwillingness to wage (v.81, 86) or fund (v.121) holy war. True believers fight and are harsh to unbelievers (v.123).
The Muslim terrorists who frequently kill Muslims in the name of Allah do so believing that their victims are Munafiqin or kafir (unbelievers). This is a part of Sharia known as takfir, in which a Muslim can be declared an apostate and then executed for their role in hindering the expansion of Islamic authority. (A true Muslim would go to paradise anyway, in which case he or she could hardly be expected to nurse a grudge amidst the orgy of sex and wine).
In addition to the murky definition of innocence, there is also the problem of distinguishing terrorism from holy war. Islamic terrorists rarely refer to themselves as terrorists, but usually say that they are holy warriors (Mujahideen, Shahid, or Fedayeen). They consider their acts to be a form of Jihad.
Holy war is commanded in the Quran and Hadith. In Sura 9:29, he establishes the principle that unbelievers should be fought until they either convert to Islam or accept a state of humiliation under Islamic subjugation. This is confirmed in the Hadith by both Sahih Muslim and Bukhari.
In many places, the prophet of Islam says that Jihad is the ideal path for a Muslim, and that believers should “fight in the way of Allah.” There are dozens of open-ended passages in the Quran that exhort killing and fighting – far more than there are of peace and tolerance. It is somewhat naïve to think that their inclusion in this "eternal discourse between God and Man" was of historical value only and not intended to be relevant to present-day believers, particularly when there is little to nothing within the text to distinguish them in such fashion.
Combine the Quran's exhortation to holy war with the ambiguity of innocence and a monumental problem develops that cannot be patched over with mere semantics. Not only is there a deep tolerance for violence in Islam, but also a sharp disagreement and lack of clarity over the conditions that justify this violence - and just whom the targets may be.
Even many of those Muslims who claim to be against terrorism still support the “insurgency” in Iraq, for example, and often entertain the allegation that there is a broader “war against Islam.” Although American troops in Iraq are trying to protect innocent life and help the country rebuild, Muslims around the world and in the West believe that it is legitimate for true believers to try and kill them.
Enjoying the sanction of holy war, the Mujahid thus reasons that it is permissible to attack fellow Iraqis – the ones helping the Americans - even if they are part of a democratically-elected Iraqi government. These non-combatants and combatants alike are believed to be the “Munafiqin” or "Takfir" assisting the enemy “Crusaders.”
Although we use Iraq as an example here, this is the same rationale that is ultimately behind all Islamic terror, from the Philippines to Thailand. Wherever the Muslim religion is a minority, there are always radicals who believe that violence is justified in bringing Islam to dominance - just as Muhammad taught by example in Mecca and other places, such as the land of al-Harith.
And what of the so-called “innocents” who suffer from the bombings and shootings? Even in Muhammad’s time they were unavoidable. The much-touted hadith in which Muhammad forbade the killing of women, for example, also indicates that there were such casualties in his attacks on other tribes.
If there is any doubt that he believed that the forbidden is sometimes necessary, it should be put to rest by an incident in which Muhammad's men warned him that a planned night raid against an enemy camp would mean that women and children would be killed. He merely replied “they are of them,” meaning the men.
This is the slippery slope opened by the sanction of holy war. What starts out as the perception of a noble cause of self-defense against a supposed threat gradually devolves into a "let Allah sort them out" campaign through a series of logical steps that are ultimately justified by the sublime goal of Islamic rule.
Islam is not intended to co-exist as an equal with other religions. It is to be the dominant religion with Sharia as the supreme law. Islamic rule is to be extended to the ends of the earth and resistance is to be dealt with by any means necessary.
Apologists in the West often shrug off the Quran's many verses of violence by saying that they are relevant only in a “time of war.”
To this, Islamic terrorists would agree. They are at war.
The myth; Islam is a Democracy. Islam is compatible with democratic principles. The religion itself is a democracy.
The Truth:
A democracy is a system in which all people are judged as equals before the law, regardless of race, religion or gender. The vote of every individual counts as much as the vote of any other. The collective will of the people then determines the rules of society.
Under Islamic law, only Muslim males are entitled to full rights. The standing of a woman is often half that of a man's - sometimes even less. Non-Muslims have no standing with a Muslim. In fact, a Muslim can never be put to death for killing an unbeliever.
The Islamic state is guided by Islamic law, derived from the Quran and Sunnah. A body of clerics interprets the law and applies it to all circumstances social, cultural and political. The people are never to be placed above the Quran and Sunnah any more than man should be above Allah.
It is somewhat debatable as to whether there are any states in the Muslim world that qualify as actual democracies. There is no denying, however, that the tiny handful that are often held up as democratic nations are ones in which deep tension exists between the government and religious leaders, as the latter often complain that democracy is an idolatrous system imposed on them. Islam does not facilitate democracy.
The Legacy of Islamic Imperialism
Muhammad died of a fever in 632 at the age of 63, with his violent religion spread over most of Arabia. His method of forcing others to convert under duress had several negative consequences, beginning with the civil wars that were immediately engaged in following his death. Many tribes wanted out of Islam and had to be kept in the empire via horrific violence.
Abu Sufyan, the Meccan leader who was literally forced to "embrace" Islam at the point of a sword actually had the last laugh. He skillfully worked his own family into the line of succession and his son, Muawiya, became the heir to Muhammad's empire at the expense of the prophet's own family. In fact, Abu Sufyan almost lived to see his son and grandson actually kill off Muhammad's own grandchildren under the banner of Islam.
Muhammad's failure to leave a clear successor resulted in a deep schism that quickly devolved into violence and persists to this day as the Sunni/Shia conflict. His own family fell apart and literally went to war with each other in the first few years. Thousands of Muslims were killed fighting each other in a battle between Muhammad's favorite wife, Aisha, and his adopted son, Ali.
The real losers, however, were the infidels. Through Muhammad's teachings and example, his followers viewed worldly life as a constant physical battle between the House of Peace (Dar al-Salaam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb). Muslims are instructed to invite their enemies to either embrace Islam, pay jizya (protection money), or die.
Over the next fourteen centuries, the bloody legacy of this extraordinary individual would be a constant challenge to those living on the borders of the Islam’s political power. The violence that Muslim armies would visit on people across North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe and into Asia as far as the Indian subcontinent is a tribute to a founder who condoned subjugation, rape, murder and forced conversion in the cause of spreading the rule of his religion.
An estimated 270 Million people died at the hands of Muslims, which continues to this very day.
In Muhammad's words: "I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.' And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them..." (Bukhari 8:387)
It is certainly the basis not just for modern day terror campaigns against Western infidels (and Hindus and Buddhists) but also the broad apathy that Muslims across the world have to the violence, which is an obvious enabler.
As Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir recently put it: "If the West wants to have peace, then they have to accept Islamic rule.
http://www.arabslavetrade.com/
Arab slaves
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