Some points to ponder regarding Islam
Reader comment on item: Militant Islam's New Strongholds
in response to reader comment: Mr. Pipes: Milistant Islam spreads in Latin America

Submitted by Bhumi Putra (India), Apr 23, 2008 at 17:14

Let us try to find an answer to these. Particularly, the Moslem brothers should try.

1. Malaysia, with a slender majority of Muslims, is an Islamic State. Countries with huge majority of Christians or India with such majority of Hindus are not Christian or Hindu States.

2. In Malaysian cities where non-Muslims are in a majority, elections are not held. Kuala Lumpur with a huge non-Muslim majority has always had a Muslim mayor, nominated by the Government.

3. Muslims have multiplied four fold in India, much faster than Hindus, since Independence while Hindus in Pakistan have been reduced to an insignificant number.

4. Muslims are the only immigrant minority who create trouble in the country to which they migrated and prospered economically. Today, they are threatening the British Government with danger to civilians unless the foreign policy is modulated to their dictates. The country which gave them shelter is being asked to make foreign policy not as the nation feels fit but as this immigrant minority dictates.

5. In most of the conflicts in the world, one party is Muslim.

6. In all non-Muslim countries, there is respect for rule of law. Legitimate violence is the preserve of instruments of State and any other actor using violence is condemned as outlaw. In Muslim countries, the non-State actors using violence are glorified.

7. In none of the religious capitals of the world, persons of other faiths are barred from entering the city. Only in Mecca, they are not only barred, the punishment is death.

8. No other religion of the world berates the followers of other faiths in such crude terms as does Islam. No other religious book legitimizes the killing of persons of other faiths or destruction of their places of worships and religious icons.

9. In India, millions of Hindus visits the shrines of Muslim saints. Do the Muslims reciprocate?

10. When a Muslim marries a non-Muslim, why is it that it is the latter that has to change faith?

11. The Muslim aversion to music and arts in general is difficult to explain in rational terms. No other religion, not even the extremely orthodox Catholic Christianity had such aversion.

12. Islam is the only religion (except the few Mormons) which legitimises polygamy even in 21^st century. All others who permitted it earlier have changed with times.

13. The position of women in Islam has continuously deteriorated. Practices in some other cultures might still be abhorrent but these do not have State sanction. In Islam, the wrapping up of women is mandatory. Inequality, polygamy but not polyandry, evidence of women being equal to half a man, asymmetry in divorce laws, all point to a belief that women are to be subjected to total control by men which the holy book says in so many words. Practice of septuagenarians marrying teenagers is prevalent only among Muslims perhaps following the example of the Prophet

14. Islam is the only religion founded on negative concepts. The Book exhorts to do things in a manner opposite to that of Kaffirs.

15. Islam is the only religion founded by a totally illiterate Prophet.

16. Only Islam permits rejoicing at the destruction of places of worship and religious symbols of other faiths and considers it an act of merit. The writings of Muslim historians who wrote from tenth to eighteenth century in India are replete with expressions of jubilations and praise for the perpetrators when such acts were done. In 21^st century, persons of other faiths entering through Jeddah airport are frisked for any scriptures which, if found, are torn on the spot and thrown in the dustbin. Religious icons, if found, are crushed underfoot by the soldiers in the presence of the owners. There are numerous records of Hindu idols being placed at the entrance of mosques, which were trampled by everyone who entered the mosque. Even the Prophet destroyed the 360 images in Mecca when he gained control of it. All this has religious sanction and is not considered an aberration. Even modern Muslims take pride in these acts and are not willing to concede that these were acts of religious bigotry.

17. The apostasy laws of Islam, which provide death penalty for any Muslim trying to change his faith, are the only one of their kind in the world. These are all the more irrational when one notices that Islam, being a proselytizing religion, would not have come into being except through apostasy by adherents of some other faith.

18. While we keep hearing of Islam being a religion of peace and of brotherhood, very few Muslims, if any, are willing to say that this extends to persons of other faiths. The peace and brotherhood of Islam is confined to co-religionists while there is much overt hostility, scorn and derision for other faiths.

19. While Muslims have reacted strongly to religion-specific security measures being contemplated to solve the problems created at the airports by the threat in August 2006 by certain Muslim elements to passenger air transport, they have been comfortable with religion specific measures taken by many Islamic countries:

a. In Pakistan, non-Muslims constitute separate electorates.

b. In many Islamic countries, non-Muslims are given distinct passports.

c. In several of the Islamic countries there are different visa requirements for non-Muslims.

d. Mecca is the only religious capital of the world where it is an offence for non-Muslims to enter. The penalty is death. In India, there is hardly any important Hindu shrine which was not demolished and substituted by a mosque during the centuries of Muslim rule or where a mosque has not been constructed adjacent to it. In some cases, as in Ramtek in Vidarbha, a shrine finding mention even in writings of Kalidasa, you are greeted by a mosque as you enter the expanse of the hilltop shrine.

e. There are hardly any Muslim majority countries which have not been declared Islamic countries. There is hardly any non-Muslim majority country which has been declared a theocratic State. Bangladesh, liberated with Indian help, started as a secular country, assassinated the liberator Sheikh Mujib and declared itself an Islamic State. Malaysia with a slender majority of Muslims is an Islamic State with laws loaded against non-Muslims.

f. Many Islam States have, even in this age, religion specific taxation. Hindus suffered it for centuries of Muslim rule.

Let us all think with open hearts and minds and not keep repeating like a parrot ; "Islam is a religion of peace."

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