The most devastating book on Islam

Great Debates
41

The book discusses various central tenets of Islam (Qur’an, wine, sexuality, women, dhimmitude, Muhammad) in a manner that is true to history, which happens to be very different from what Islam teaches and what Muslims believe.

An example: the book discusses the issue of the authoriship of the Qur’an. The book discusses how Muhammad borrowed elements from Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. The assertion that Muhammad borrowed, and not received it intact from God, casts doubts on the Qur’an and Muhammad’s prophethood. It also makes one question what other claims of Islam may not be true.

Furthermore, whitewashing history is extremely common among the faithful. When I was growing up in Pakistan, in all the years of Islamiat (studies on Islam), I never was taught about the Battle of Camel between Ayesha and Ali, disputes on who would succeed Muhammad, the tragedy at Karbala. If I were Shia, of course, I would have had a very different view of Islamic history.

Islam has yet to open up to history. A person can be a Jew and believe in the Documentary Hypothesis. One cannot be a Muslim and believe Muhammad borrowed tales from the Tanakh, New Testament, and Rabbinic writings. For that matter, one cannot be a Muslim and believe Muhammad created the Qur’an. The orthodox view is that the Qur’an is uncreated.

Ibn Warraq also dwells on unpleasant aspects of Islamic history and the consequences of Islamic beliefs and practices - issues which Muslims are unaware of or, if aware, rationalize away.

Just as people say Russell helped Christian people think, Ibn Warraq opens Muslims’ minds to consider issues that seriously undermine the claims of Islam.

Ibn Warraq, by the way, is a freethinker. This wasn’t written to convert people to any religion or philosophy.

Consider the following subjects the book deals with (from the table of contents):
the Rushdie affair
Origins of Islam
Muhammad
Muhammad’s message
the Qur’an
Totalitarianism
Compatibility with democracy and human rights
Arab imperialism
Dhimmitude (state of non-Muslims under Muslims)
Intolerance
Greek influences on Islam
Islam in the West

I have only started the book, and my opportunities to read it are limited: I can only read it in my room, for I dare not let anyone know we have such a book.

WRS

42

Yikes! When you said “Welcome to Pakistan”, I thought you were being figurative. After all, we get blackout in 'merica, too. Given the fact that Mordor, Middle-earth, is your location, I figured you meant either you where a fan, or was in Europe. I didn’t think you meant it as a place of great desvistation. By the way, great summery. :slight_smile:

43

I can’t see how any of the things you mention are absolute barriers to anyone believing in Islam. Many of them are the same sort of things that any Christian would have to confront in their belief. There are resemblances between the stories in the Koran and stories in the Jewish and Christian Bibles. Yes, and the comparable challenge to Christians is about the resemblances between Christian doctrines and certain pagan beliefs. The standard Christian response is that some of the pagans anticipated Christian doctrines in their mythology. I believe that standard Moslem response is that Jews and Christians misunderstood the real events. Allah told the correct versions of the stories to Mohammed. In both cases, one can say that claiming that God inspired certain writings doesn’t mean that he caused them to be written by someone with absolutely no previous echoes of them. God can inspire writings in any convoluted method he desires.

Similarly, I don’t see how battles between Ayesha and Ali would be a major barrier for Moslems. The similar question to Catholics would be “What about all those medieval popes who were bad people?” The standard response is that there is no doctrine that says popes are perfect people. One can enact God’s mission without being perfect oneself. I presume that Moslems can say the same thing.

I can’t see how any of the things you mention couldn’t be gotten around by a Moslem willing to admit less than absolute literalism. I don’t know whether you are correct in saying that every Moslem is an absolute literalist. Given your situation, it’s possible that you haven’t done a good survey of the entire Islmic world.

44

Ah, but literalism is part of today’s orthodox Islam. Either God revealed the Qur’an and corrected Jews’ and Christians’ versions, or Muhammad composed the Qur’an and borrowed stories from Jews and Christians. If the first is correct, a central claim of Islam stands. If the latter is correct, then a central claim of Islam is false and Islam falls flat on its face.

There has yet to be formulated an acceptable theory of accepting both views: divine revelation and human composition. Islam teaches that there was no human composition: it went directly from Heaven into Muhammad’s mind/heart/etc.

The Ali-Ayesha war is significant because people are drilled in believing that Azyesha was Muhammad’s favorite wife and Ali was one of the most outstanding Muslims. How could two such exemplary Muslims oppose each other with such vehemence? Muslims dismiss it as overstating their animosity: but I think some sort of animosity or sense of being wronged is needed in order to fight a war one against the other.

Muslims who are open to alternate views, of course, can explain it away. But orthodox Muslims reject any such alternate views. The doors of ijtihad - independent reasoning or adding something to what has already been said or determined - have been declared to be closed.

WRS

45

Hmmm…so how are you defining orthodox? As the ‘traditionalists’ that insist on taqlid over ijtihad? That would include folks like the Deobandi Taliban, but you do realize that on the other side of the coin it would exclude both the arch-fundamentalist Wahabis and such Islamists as Maulana Maududi and Sayyid Qutb, as well as more democratically minded modernists? Or for that matter Khomeini, as the Shi’a never accepted any closing of ijtihad?

Also it can be a bit hard to claim that such a thing as literalism exists among either traditionalists or fundamentalists, as true literalism would presumably involve jettisoning both the hadith and the concept of Qur’anic abrogation.

I dunno. I haven’t read Warraq’s book, so I can’t argue with it really and frankly from a personal standpoint I agree that Islam ( as with all religions IMO ) falls apart on sceptical examination. But I have to agree with Wendell Wagner that there is nothing here that appears on first glance to be any more devastating than the similar sorts of charges leveled against other faiths - seems they can all be explained away by the sufficiently faithful.

  • Tamerlane
46

Well, I stand corrected, by the master himself.

:slight_smile:

At the very least, I guess all I can say is that this is most accessible and understandable book laying out the flaws of Islam from the standpoint of a freethinker (rather than Evangelist, which I suppose other books about Islam’s flaws might be from). Works like these are rare, which is why I guess I am amazed - people focus mostly on Christianity. Before this book, I never encountered any book laying out Islam’s faults or darker aspects.

Question: is there a way for a Muslim to integrate the perspective of Muhammad composing the Qur’an (instead of God revealing it) whilst borrowing stories/legends from Jews and Christians (rather then receiving those stories from God)?

(Nizari Ismaili Shia Muslims are able to view the Qur’an from a very different standpoint, so they don’t count.)

WRS

47

You know, WeRSauron, you remind me of those people here in the U.S. who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family. All through their childhood they had been carefully shielded by their family and the people at the fundamentalist church they attended from reading anything about Christianity except books that support absolute literalist readings of the Bible. Then one day they wander into a bookstore and buy a book criticizing fundamentalism. They read it and cry out, “Oh, no, there are problems with the literalist reading of the Bible. This must mean that all religious thought is wrong and hence God doesn’t exist.”

I’m not a Moslem, so I can’t tell you to what extent there are nonliteralist Moslems. In any case, it doesn’t appear that Moslems have any different sorts of problems with criticisms of their faith than the advocates of most religions. You need to read more books about Islam from different viewpoints.

48

Have to agree with the opinions voiced in this thread. I can’t follow why Muslims are particularly screwed-up if they believe in the divine revelation of the Quran? Just a few days back, the Holy Spirit is supposed to have guided a democratic vote (multiple times, interestingly enough!) and an image that looks like a vagina or a Virgin Mary (depending on your perspective!) is worshipped in Chicago. People of all faiths are always talking of how the Divine is playing amongst us… I just don’t see how this is (a) a serious fault of a religion (b) particular to Islam. Nowhere near as devastating as you/the book claims.

Now, on to your point about Islam talking about its problems on the world stage: if you are already part of the Third World like most Islamic countries are and struggling to find a way to grow, it is human nature to be manipulated more by the voices that blame others (imperialism, Cold War etc, which all have some truth attached to it) rather than introspect. Introspection is the hardest thing for individual humans to do leave alone whole cultures. I would wager there is a lot of introspection and heart-break amongst many Muslims and there are many books written about this “internally” but I can fully understand why it may not make the world stage. Something does need to be done and it can come only from within, from Muslims and the decentralized cultures spread across different countries.

I get frustrated when people here proclaim “Oh, but Islam never criticizes itself” or something to take effect, sitting in their suburban Indianapolis homes looking for a critique on Islam in Wal-Mart’s shelves… ain’t gonna happen.

49

Muslims are not particularly screwed-up.

Having grown up in a Muslim family, surrounded by Muslim people, even having lived many years in two Muslim countries, I have never encountered anything in written form that attempted to examine the probable truths about what Islam claims. Even the most liberal and modern Muslims I met - and there were lots in the circles my family socialized with - no one ever dared to express an opinion questioning such central tenets of Islam as Muhammad’s special mission or the divine composition of the Qur’an.

One consequence of the above is that whereas Jews and Christians are well aware of arguments made against their religions, Muslims are utterly unaware - at least the common Muslim - of arguments made against central tenets of Islam. Thus, for us sheltered Muslims, having access to these arguments are certainly something special. It is nothing special about Islam or anything particularly against Islam. The reason this is important to me is because this is rarely done in a setting specifically for Muslims. You all have the benefit of not only the Reformation and Enlightenment but also the free discussion of ideas. This free discussion is seriously hampered in the Muslim world. People get so emotional when religious issues are discussed.

When Muslims read books on Islam, they are very discriminating. Most Muslims I know will not trust any book written by a non-Muslim or that is not written in light of Islamic teachings. If they read a book written by a non-Muslim, they “edit” what they read - when they come across something that is incompatible with Islam, they assume the writer is wrong and continue in their assumptions. This is nothing specific to Muslims but is something people of all religions do. A difference between the Muslim world and non-Muslim world, as mentiuoned before, is that these ideas are not voiced.

Muslims I know relish books that point out the flaws of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and other religions. Almost every Muslim bookstore I have walked into, whether in Pakistan or the US or the UAE, has a section specifically debunking other religions. But such literature is virtually non-existent concerning Islam.

It is books like Ibn Warraq’s that help Muslims to open their minds, to escape the dictatorship of unquestioning acceptance of Islamic tenets. When Christian denominations demand the same from their people, they are seen as cultish and anti-intellectual. Islam demands the same, with stiffer penalties and with greater difficulty for people to see other views. If such books do exist in the Muslim world, I have yet to find one. Same with discussions about Islamic tenets in a critical light. Possessing any of these, depending on where one is, can be legally or physically perilous.

Anyway, I seriously doubt such books will change anything, sadly. Those who are ready to think will read it and have their minds open. Those who are not ready will avoid it like the plague. And the stiffling of open discussions amongst Muslims in Muslim lands will continue.

WRS

50

Well, that’s only fair. After all, skepticism falls apart upon religious examination.

51

I like that: it’s very true. :slight_smile:

Thanks, Liberal!

WRS