Attacks on Islam

I mentioned in my last post that I've recently begun reading Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq. I'm now in the fourth chapter and it's obvious that his book is an all-out attack on Islam.

He states that his inspiration for writing the book was the Salman Rushdie affair. Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses in 1988. The phrase "satanic verses" refers to some Quranic verses supposedly produced and later retracted by Muhammad about the pagan Meccan goddesses being daughters of Allah. The publication of Rushdie's book caused an outrage in the Muslim world and a fatwa was issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini. Warraq was disturbed by Western criticism of Rushdie and even support of the fatwa.

In the introduction, Warraq states that he wouldn't be offended if his book were called an extended bibliography and that is an accurate description; he mainly gathers together, filters, and summarizes writings by many authors throughout history, both Muslim and non-Muslim. He draws extensively on Islamologists who have done extensive research on the veracity of the Quran and Hadith.

As the title of this post suggests, his book is beyond critical to the point of being hostile. As with all of my reading, I take it with a grain of salt and don't just blindly accept all of the claims made but it does raise a number of good points about which to think. Since he is very hostile, he makes no attempt to sugar-coat his arguments or keep them politically correct. This allows him to bluntly state his point and be very clear.

I haven't even finished the first four chapters but he's made many connections between the beliefs and practices of Islam and those of its immediate influences, Judaism and pre-Islamic Arabian paganism. He states that Muhammad, having initially learned pieces of Judaism and Christianity on his travels, set out to become a Jewish prophet. After failing to convince the Jews of his prophethood, his goal changed to simply creating a new religion for the Arabs and reached back to their Ishmaelite and Abrahamic roots, seeing himself as a new Moses for the Arabs. Islam obviously takes many stories and tenets from Judaism but many connections are made to Jewish writings outside of the Old Testament with which Christians would not be familiar. He draws many parallels between practices at Hajj and pre-Islamic pagan rituals, which aren't very hard to accept. Additionally, he makes a very good point that the Quran makes comments about the Christian trinity being composed of God, Jesus, and Mary, which is blatantly wrong and, one would think, something it should get correct considering it is refuting the trinity. In fact, the Quran's understanding of the trinity, leading to most Muslims' understanding of the trinity, is a pretty far cry from the accepted trinitarian theology.

He then produces many arguments stating that the Quran and Hadith were actually created after the fact to legitimize a created religion and the battles, hijrah, and various other events in early Islam never actually happened.

In any case, there's a lot of stuff to think about and carefully analyze and I still have the majority of the book to read.

The Guts to Criticize and Do It Well

In today's khutbah, the speaker talked about proper Islamic dress in daily life but especially for the mosque. It wasn't anything very ground-breaking; he just reminded people that Muslims are supposed to dress respectfully and modestly. However, for some reason I was impressed at even this slight criticism. I guess I've gotten used to people being afraid of possibly offending anyone. I agree that you should avoid offending people if possible but when correcting someone and setting them straight, it's necessary to somehow show them the error of their ways.

I was impressed at how tactfully today's criticism was made. There was no finger pointing. The perpetrators themselves were hardly mentioned, for the most part the whole khutbah was about the reasons behind the dress code. Verses from the Quran and hadith were mentioned and explained. Everything was very tasteful and I don't believe anybody felt singled out or offended.

The point of this post, however, has nothing to do with Islamic dress. My point is that the speaker was not afraid to criticize. In today's world of personal rights and ultra-politeness (although that only seems to apply to not offending people but not to manners or common courtesy) most people are afraid to speak up about something being wrong. This timidity to speak up is what leads to cursing becoming a common part of regular speech, inappropriate dress everywhere, wide acceptance of sex and nudity, and other little problems that sum up to one big problem throughout society.

I know I've read either in the Quran or in hadith, possibly both, how to criticize others. It says to take them aside and tell them their error in private. There's no need to make it into a public embarrassment. If they still don't correct their ways, then do it again. Finally, if they continue to do wrong, then bring it to the attention of others. This shows a great deal of respect, consideration, and maturity, in my opinion and now I see that it's not just taught but also practiced this way.

I know in church we're often told to lead good lives and the goodness of Jesus, the prophets, and the saints are extolled but rarely are we actually criticized on any particular aspect of our lives. I do recall a priest one time at a university church giving a sermon on the evils of drunkenness (a problem on college campuses) and the virtues of moderation in all aspects of life. It was done just as tastefully and tactfully as today's khutbah but I don't recall any other real criticism. My experiences are also limited to only mainstream, moderate churches. I get the feeling that more fundamental, extreme churches might be more willing to criticize vocally based on my experiences debating some fundamentalists. However, in those situations, there is definitely an extreme lack of tact and compassion. As opposed to my "love the sinner, hate the sin" mantra, they seem to adopt a "hate the sinner and the sin" attitude, forgetting that they themselves are also sinners regardless of how hard they might try. I feel like there is always plenty of finger pointing and condemning when God is the only one capable of doing that.