24 February 2014

Is there a Mistake in the Koran?

Anyone who has ever talked to a Muslim will have heard several or even all of these claims:

The Koran is the literal word of god
The Koran is not corrupted
The Koran is uncreated
There are no variants
It is inerrant

Then you will be told that there is a built-in safety and reality check because if anyone can imitate it, this serves as proof it was human made – but since nobody can imitate it, it remains the word of a god.

By definition.

In the past I have deconstructed all these claims and have shown how ridiculously childish the inimitability claim actually is.

There are 1000s of Muslim apologists spreading the claim that there is not a single mistake in the Koran. They repeat this mantra-like, over and over, which does not make it true, of course. In 4:82 the Koran itself boasts that “had it been from any other than god, they surely would have found therein much discrepancy.”

If one reads the Koran, there are several things which become apparent very quickly: the monotonous sentences, the repetitions, the jumping of topics, the mentioning of a god in some way in almost every single sentence, the vague wording, nonsensical parts, irrelevant sentences, contradictions, omissions, vague references, factual errors and plain nonsense.

In the past, I think I have delivered examples for each of these to demonstrate what I mean and why I think the sentences in the Koran fit this description of mine. But I never spent a huge amount of time on them because they were so obvious. But maybe I need to be a bit more thorough with this, as I see more and more people coming up with these claims again that the Koran is peerless, miraculous and incredibly eloquent.

Anyone looking for the eloquence so often asserted to exist, will have to look hard for it, but it is there. Rare, but it does exist. The opposite, however, the clumsy, even primitive wording is abundant.

Things like

113:5 "and from the evil of an envier when he envies."

53:54 “they were covered over by what they were covered over”

don’t really make the text look sophisticated at all.

It doesn’t mean it wasn’t written by a god – but it also does not mean it is so great that it must have been written by a god. It is a fallacy to believe that inimitability or eloquence automatically lead to divine origins. It also does not mean that if a god decided to write a book that it can only be one, and only one, god. Wishful thinking, not more.

In this video I will demonstrate a single mistake in the Koran, because one, single, tiny mistake is all it takes to show it is not the perfect product of a perfect god and thus destroy the claim of divine origins the way it is worded by Muslim apologists.

I think it’s time to clarify this and – hopefully – kill this myth of inerrancy forever, just as the myth of the Koran accurately describing embryology has been killed decisively and forever. Out of the dozens of possibilities, I have chosen a textual mistake, one which renders the text incomprehensible.

So, let me now provide an example of what I consider to be a mistake, an embarrassing mistake, in fact, in the primary Islamic text, the Koran.

In chapter 6 there is a whole list of things, which this god would like to see in his slaves.

Taking 6:150-153 as a block and the context, we have a god providing the followers with things, only a few things, he would like to have them do, like the #1 priority, not having other gods because this is a jealous and capricious god.

So what are we told what we humans and followers should do, or what we are charged with? Well, things like

1.       not having more than one god
2.       being good to your parents
3.       not killing your children out of poverty
4.       don’t do indecent things
5.       don’t kill except as allowed
6.       stay away from the property of under-age orphans
7.       be just or whatever that means
8.       be just when speaking, and finally
9.       fulfil what god wants
10.   don’t divert from this straight path

Quite a list, but nothing unusual for religious texts. Vague references and ambiguous wording, but nothing that contemporary, human interpretation can’t fix. It is split into 3 sentences, all saying that this is what the god of Islam wants.

And this is where the mistake is. The repetition of what followers are supposed to do was accidentally turned into the opposite. So the “you must do this”, “you must do that” suddenly says “you are prohibited from” and this of course, renders the following part undecipherable and beyond repair.

It says in 6:151 in Arabic

} Arabic

According to the renowned Islam scholar and translator, Arthur John Arberry, this means
“Come, I will recite what your Lord has forbidden you: that you associate not anything with Him, and to be good to your parents, and not to slay your children because of poverty”

So what exactly is the mistake? Well, this says that there are things which are forbidden for believers and then we get a list of those forbidden things.

Then it carries on in a 2nd part, saying “We will provide you and them and that you approach not any indecency outward or inward, and that you slay not the soul God has forbidden, except by right”
It continues in the following sentence, where some more examples are added and it concludes that “this is commanded to you, so that you may accept advice” or says that this is what you were “charged with” and then finally the last of these sentences, where it repeats “this is commanded to you, so that you may attain piety”

OK, so what have we got here? We have a list of what is forbidden, a couple of further instructions and then the conclusion that this is what was commanded.

Muslim apologists now say that everything we read here is covered by the term used in the 2nd and 3rd sentence, which says this is what was commanded or what you were charged with. Or they try the usual gimmick of saying I don’t speak ancient Arabic and this is a faulty translation. They also try and weasel out of this by bringing several examples of where the Koran commands the followers to NOT have other gods and to BE good to parents and that this wording in 6:151 would not make sense.

And they are right, it does, indeed, not make sense. So, my question is, what is the word prohibited doing there?

It says NOT having another god is prohibited.
It says NOT killing your children out of poverty is prohibited.
It says GOOD treatment of your parents is prohibited.

Only then do we get something I would accept as a break, talking about killing souls. Then adding some things and saying this is what is commanded.

The first part, however, clearly says: this is prohibited.

Can this be a translation error?
If we look at other possibilities of translating this, we find that most of the translators agree with this. Some of them notice the mistake and do their best to repair the mistake, but can’t.

(6:151:5) ḥarrama has prohibited قُلْ تَعَالَوْا أَتْلُ مَا حَرَّمَ رَبُّكُمْ عَلَيْكُمْ

Looking at several translations we see the same words being used again and again as the translators don’t care about the mistake.

Some, like Pickthall, see the mistake and change the word to what was “made a sacred duty for you”.
Say: Come, I will recite unto you that which your Lord hath made a sacred duty for you: that ye ascribe no thing as partner unto Him and that ye do good to parents

Other translators use different work-arounds, but let’s ignore the translations and look at the ancient Arabic text itself.

If we go to the different word-for-word translations we can easily see that the word used here, harrama, means only one thing: forbidden, prohibited.

(6:119:14) ḥarramaHe (has) forbiddenوَقَدْ فَصَّلَ لَكُمْ مَا حَرَّمَ عَلَيْكُمْ إِلَّا مَا اضْطُرِرْتُمْ إِلَيْهِ
(6:138:13) ḥurrimatforbiddenوَأَنْعَامٌ حُرِّمَتْ ظُهُورُهَا وَأَنْعَامٌ لَا يَذْكُرُونَ اسْمَ اللَّهِ عَلَيْهَا
(6:140:9) waḥarramūand forbidوَحَرَّمُوا مَا رَزَقَهُمُ اللَّهُ افْتِرَاءً عَلَى اللَّهِ
(6:143:11) ḥarramaHe has forbiddenقُلْ آلذَّكَرَيْنِ حَرَّمَ أَمِ الْأُنْثَيَيْنِ
(6:144:9) ḥarramaHe (has) forbiddenقُلْ آلذَّكَرَيْنِ حَرَّمَ أَمِ الْأُنْثَيَيْنِ
(6:146:4) ḥarramnāWe forbadeوَعَلَى الَّذِينَ هَادُوا حَرَّمْنَا كُلَّ ذِي ظُفُرٍ
(6:146:11) ḥarramnāWe forbadeوَمِنَ الْبَقَرِ وَالْغَنَمِ حَرَّمْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ شُحُومَهُمَا
(6:148:12) ḥarramnāwe (would) have forbiddenلَوْ شَاءَ اللَّهُ مَا أَشْرَكْنَا وَلَا آبَاؤُنَا وَلَا حَرَّمْنَا مِنْ شَيْءٍ
(6:150:8) ḥarramaprohibitedقُلْ هَلُمَّ شُهَدَاءَكُمُ الَّذِينَ يَشْهَدُونَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ حَرَّمَ هَٰذَا
(6:151:5) ḥarramahas prohibitedقُلْ تَعَالَوْا أَتْلُ مَا حَرَّمَ رَبُّكُمْ عَلَيْكُمْ
(6:151:34) ḥarramahas (been) forbiddenوَلَا تَقْتُلُوا النَّفْسَ الَّتِي حَرَّمَ اللَّهُ إِلَّا بِالْحَقِّ
(7:32:3) ḥarramahas forbiddenقُلْ مَنْ حَرَّمَ زِينَةَ اللَّهِ الَّتِي أَخْرَجَ لِعِبَادِهِ وَالطَّيِّبَاتِ مِنَ الرِّزْقِ
(7:33:3) ḥarrama(had) forbiddenقُلْ إِنَّمَا حَرَّمَ رَبِّيَ الْفَوَاحِشَ مَا ظَهَرَ مِنْهَا وَمَا بَطَنَ

It should say you are commanded to NOT have another god, treat your parents well and NOT kill your children out of poverty.
Instead, it says you are forbidden from NOT having another god, treating your parents well and NOT killing your children out of poverty.

Can it really mean: you are prohibited or forbidden from treating your parents well?

There is no way to turn this or twist this, it means to not do something, which, in this case, can’t be the true meaning. The word should not be “forbidden” but “commanded” or “charged with”, the opposite and thus represents a mistake in the Koran.

The commentaries don’t help because they simply ignore the word forbidden.

So can we now put this myth of an inerrant Koran to rest and have Muslims stop embarrassing themselves over such a stupid and actually quite trivial claim?

The Koran is full of mistakes and this is just one of them. Does this in any way prove this text was not written by a god? Well, if you believe in the existence of a god, you can still believe the text was written by this god. Because the belief in a god and everything associated with this god is based on faith not facts.

And what is more important than flawless spelling is the contents, the meaning of the words. Yes, I agree, I would also expect a god to be better than a human at spelling and eloquent wording, but who knows, maybe this god excels at other things.

08 February 2014

Project Management and Google

When I was with Tandem Computers we had a picture of a plane, serving as discouragement and a boost to be better at the same time.

It showed me the state of affairs at most customer's IT infrastructure and helped me establish a bottom-up design process which ensured a solid platform allowing the flexible addition of features as a market developed without having to re-design everything and having to create interfaces as patches.

It's become a fundamental part of me, helping to keep me focused on what I want to achieve and what I want to avoid.




01 February 2014

Morality and Islam



Over the years, there have been several attempts at explaining morality and how it relates to religion, using text, audio and video, but they didn’t do it my way and it is not beaten enough yet – as can be seen from the repeated usage of the word “morality” by religious apologists.

Christians as well as Muslims on GooTube claim in a never ending number of videos that atheists have no basis for morality, which, after all, is pre-supposed to originate with their favourite god and thus by-passes these ignorant atheists.

Since the search function in GooTube is hopeless, let me demonstrate using Startpage or Ixquick how many videos there are mentioning atheists and morality or using their favourite term, which makes it sound more important: absolute or objective morality .

Now, atheists don’t believe there is evidence for the existence of gods. That’s it. So there’s no mention of morality here, but if you pre-suppose everything is based on your favourite god, then you may have a point. Not attributing anything to atheists, but to humans in general.

Out of the 30,000 odd results you have 100s all showing how objective morality does not even exist, is disgusting or justified, all bringing their individual perspective and their own good or bad arguments for or against.

Well then, what is there left for me to do? All this watching, reading, searching has left me with a feeling that one holistic perspective is missing, one which superficially analyses the claims, digs down occasionally and provides only one thing, the impetus for further investigation and thinking. If only a handful of people feel the urge to consult Sheikh Google and ask for information, this video is justified.

If you look at the topic of morality, you will find a mountain of materials. Each aspect has a huge amount of sub-topics associated with it and each in turn has been covered by several books, so I acknowledge that a comprehensive video addressing all aspects is impossible, which is why I will cover the basics: the definitions, the claims, the results and the consequences.

One thing is clear: no pork.

What we are confronted with, is a whole series of claims made by Christians and Muslims alike:
There are laws, both physical and spiritual, which points to and requires a law-giver. You know, the tired, primitive painting needs painter, building needs builder.
Because a god created humans and is super-clever, only this creator/god can know what is good and right for us god worshippers.
Humans are fallible and tend to screw things up, so this creator/god has decreed that there be a set of rules or divine commands, which are not to be touched and represent the right way, the objective way.

There are more, but this sets the scene quite nicely.

The obvious question is, are these claims somehow justified? If I concentrate on Islam, you have several sentences on behaviour in the Koran or the secondary texts, the Sunnah, but there are very few specific commands or explanations. You can find that telling the truth, keeping a promise, showing respect to others, obeying god and Muhammad, not stealing, not killing, paying your debts, being humble, etc and finally, displaying righteousness and piety are mentioned and are considered Islamic values. Plus, what you also get is an incredible amount of do’s and don’ts when you are naked. What you don’t get is one of the prerequisites of morality, the consequences. All I see is “do this” or “do that” – and you’re on your way to get a reward. If not, beware of the punishment. But what I don’t see is any reasoning, justification or the appropriate, adequate and fair punishment. Just obey.

Because Muslims are not allowed to think and act independently, they require guidance.

This is likened to a person with perfect vision in a dark room, who can’t see in spite of his perfect eyes and thus requires a beacon to direct this person in the right direction. Muslims are unaware that there’s a light switch by the door because humans have since discovered electricity.

So what are all these words telling a human being? Is being pious better for a human than eating a baby? According to Islamic texts, yes. They don’t mention a whole lot of things and leave it up to the individual to establish the well-being of himself, the tribe and mankind as a whole. So what exactly is this well-being translated into? We know that in general life-forms tend to avoid pain and strive towards well-being. Do we know and can we define well-being?

One thing is clear: no pork.

For a sadist, inflicting pain increases well-being. For a paedophile, fondling a child increases well-being. So, are inflicting pain and fondling a child moral or maybe even objectively moral actions? If I donate money to a charity, is this ethical or altruistic? If I tell another person the truth about their bad medical condition, am I the cause for their emotional distress; should I have lied? Is lying of a higher moral value than telling the truth?

The words we see here in connection with this are objective, ethics, morality, altruism and values.
What are these? How can we evaluate them?

Let’s start with the easy one: objective

Merriam-Webster
ob·jec·tive, adjective \əb-ˈjek-tiv, äb-\
: based on facts rather than feelings or opinions : not influenced by feelings
philosophy : existing outside of the mind : existing in the real world

Dictionary.com
not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased
intent upon or dealing with things external to the mind rather than with thoughts or feelings, as a person or a book.


Strange, there’s nothing here on divine commands.

What we do see, however, is that because all normal life-forms try and avoid pain, the person inflicting pain, whether emotional or physical pain, is objectively wrong.

So what about ethics and morals? Well, ethics are rules laid down by consensus and morals are more about what we feel when we do something. So, for a peace officer performing a same-sex wedding might be ethically right and morally wrong at the same time.

If we look into this a bit deeper we can find dilemmas and inconsistencies when it comes to the religion based objective morality.

A German 80 years ago lies to a GeStaPo officer that he’s not hiding any Jews. Is he morally wrong for lying or morally right for saving lives?

At this moment a child sneezes, causing the GeStaPo officer to search the room and he finds 3 Jewish kids hiding behind the sofa. Following his oath to follow the Fuhrer and his patriotism, his ethics command him to turn them over, his morals command him to let them go and his altruism commands him to hand some of his own food stamps to them so they can get food. What does he do?

So, there are different levels to this and an unimaginable degree of complexity.


One thing is clear: no pork.

What about altruism and does it belong here?

NOUN:
Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.
Instinctive cooperative behavior that is detrimental to the individual but contributes to the survival of the species.

No, it is only about selfless concern and already presumes a positive attitude.

If there were a set of laws which would be representative of objective morality, shouldn’t there be a direct and precise answer in Islamic texts, indicating exactly what this god wants his subjects to do?

It seems, however, that all we get are some general guide-lines we could find in “Moby Dick”, “The Lord of the Rings” or any other thicker, well-written book. What this demonstrates is that moral values are dependent on situation and context. Independent and not requiring any gods.

We humans don’t judge a lion eating babies. It’s natural. We don’t expect birds to prostrate before us if we put up a bird pool in summer or a bird house with some food in winter. But we do honour people with little badges if they perform well in battle – while honouring those who avoid those very battles with peace prizes. We are not quite there yet, it seems.

A minute ago I stated that a person inflicting pain – a sadist – is objectively wrong when doing so to another human being. So why do Muslims think that if their god does it, it is 100% right?

How can something be morally wrong, while being right if performed by someone else? What is this “morality”?

Well, first off, we have causes and effects. Over the years humans have developed a set of values which allow us to recognise the effect a specific cause has and we have learned that sticking a needle into another person can be beneficial if done in a medical context, a prank if done gently and totally horrific if used in torture. This means we have realised that causes are contextual and depend on who is doing what and why. This has no absolute definition.

That means that objective morality is flawed right from the start. But are there values or commands which are universal?

Not eating babies would be, I guess. But that does not figure in Islamic texts. Condemning  torture, genocide, rape and slavery, just to mention a few. I guess. But those don’t figure either.

One thing is clear: no pork.

So now we already have 2 huge problems.

We have a god commanding his people to be good and then does exactly the opposite. This “divine command theory” proposes that a cause is considered as morally good when and because it is commanded by a god, described in Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma . I can see the consequence of this when Muslims frantically scramble to find reasons to reject pork. Hilarious.

We have the second problem that the divine command theory also proposes that a cause is considered as morally good when it is commanded by a god, even though the execution is the opposite of what was previously commanded.

What we learn when investigating Islam, is that it says in the holy book, the noble and glorious Koran, that all humans are equal in the eyes of this god and then this very god decides that
a.)    the male half is just a bit more equal than the female half and
b.)   some humans can be owned by others like objects.

Do believing Muslims consider their god worth worshipping and morally sound, if the Koran mentions slavery 29 times in the Koran alone and 13 times telling Muslims what to do with slaves and that a slave is freed as punishment for the owner or reward for a “good” slave, where female slaves can be used for sex without consent, more commonly known as rape. Legally. Does the Koran prohibit slavery per se or across the board? No! It even spells out the lawful usage of female sex-slaves, where it says ...

Slaves
Prosperous are the believers who abstain from sex,

23:6
Ahmad Khan
except with their spouses and slave-girls. The practice of carnal relations is lawful with them.

Yusuf Ali
except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess, for (in their case) they are free from blame.

The way this topic is described in Wikipedia for example demonstrates sheer intellectual bankruptcy in my eyes because Muslims try to tone down slavery and make it look as though Islam was and is a positive experience for slaves. Is it a virtue in Islam to deceive others to make your belief system look better than it is? They don’t treat the topic honestly and acknowledge the moral failings of the past.

Instead, the Koran tells Muslims they are the best of the nations and the righteous - and to fight for their god. This has led to the attitude of supremacy which in the past has wiped out entire tribes, political and cultural groups and today has them establish Muslim controlled zones in cities. Does the Koran prohibit or even condemn genocide? No!

Wife-beating is condoned in the Koran and if we go through secondary texts we find explicit instructions on how to rape female captives. In Scandinavia, the Muslim population is below 5% yet most rapists are Muslims. Jails across Europe are being filled by Muslims.

Are Muslims not getting the message or is there no such thing as objective morality?

Does it help to look at the definition of morality?

Morality:
code of conduct put forward by a society or
code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons. (Stanford  Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

So we see the same again what we have deduced by merely observing human interaction.

What about “objective morality”, which has been discussed through the centuries by philosophers? Actually, philosophers themselves are not sure whether objective morality actually exists.

In philosophy I think by now everyone on this planet has heard of moral dilemmas.
Like where letting the train run, will result in 5 deaths, pushing a button will kill only a single person. What will you do?

There are those who choose the “don’t get involved” option, but they are rare.
Most people will select the “kill less people” option.

It seems right. But what if I replace the single person with Hitler? Will that change the outcome?
What will happen if I replace the single person with Muhammad? Will that change the outcome?

What will a Muslim now choose? Does Islam and his god give him an objectively moral guide?

No? Why not? Well, it’s easy. Because there is no objective morality in the sense that a god will provide an answer to every situation in our brain. Because we are not created and programmed by a god. Thank god.

So how can we come to terms with this difficult and complex topic?

One thing is clear: no pork.


Let’s try a different approach. Maybe only indirectly, but we all know of Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”. This concept was translated in “Logical Structure of Objectivism” into 4 basic categories:

-     Material/survival needs: health, food, sleep
-     Spiritual needs: knowledge, self-esteem, education, art
-     Social needs: communication, friendship, love
-     Political needs: freedom, clear laws

This shows how the moral effects and values are built around our basic needs. So is there a need for “objective” morals? No, not really, because this is the foundation on which morality is built. We don’t call a house a house on a foundation, because we know that a house has a foundation. The same is true for the foundation of the morals we use in our lives.

Based on this foundation, we have biologically and instinctively developed behavioural patterns and values within these categories which we consider as the norm, the moral norm, within our cultural groups. We can actually check our behaviour and see its origin in the basic needs table above and check if the consequences represent to desired outcome.

Due to the modifications of these needs over time, some people reject all meat while others reject pork and others reject meat which comes from an animal which was not pointing the right way or was not given a speech before killing it. Now we are able to evaluate such behaviour and link it to a basic need – or not.

Some people reject education which is not contained in a specific book. This can be linked back to the 2nd basic need and shows that it is not a sound moral decision to do so.

Some groups reject friends within other groups. Same procedure as above will lead to a result.

Some groups can’t handle personal freedom and prefer a life on their knees.

Some groups will throw homosexuals off a cliff.

Some groups will throw stones at people until they die if they attempt to leave their group.

Some groups will kill anyone caricaturing their idols and gods.

Which of these actions represent any form of sound, objective, beneficial morality? Eating food is objectively right – but eating pork or shrimps is not? Come on…..

So taking the logical structure above, we have here a very rational explanation of what morality represents and how humans form their decisions and what the consequences are. This way, we are establishing an explanation which takes us away from the childish prohibitions of what a person should be allowed to eat or how long, with whom and in what position we are allowed to have sexual encounters.

This explains why Muslims and atheists, as well as members of every other group, all behave in a similar manner. They will not eat babies but take care of them. This means that Muslims are better than their god. We will help and support each other in difficult times and even display altruism occasionally. Because we have a clash between parts of our brain we are inherently irrational and can even become violent. But in general, we all exhibit very similar behavioural patterns in our social lives. It’s a pity religions need to come along and spoil this, introducing their divisive dogma.

Let me reiterate the old Sam Harris challenge which was made so popular by Christopher Hitchens: name a morally beneficial action or a morally beneficial statement that a Muslim can do or make that I, as an atheist, can’t. Good luck. In the last 30 years, the best any theist could come up with is “prayer”, a monologue without any consequences. This demonstrates 2 things:
1.       that Muslims are better than their god and their texts
2.       atheists live with similar if not identical built in morals as everybody else
What we disagree over is the origin of these rules, where I have shown that we derive these through biology, nature, evolution and Muslims believe they are custom programs for each individual by a programmer/creator.

As an atheist, secular humanist, agnosticist, rationalist, sceptic, freethinker, etc  I am free to differentiate between rational and emotional, where a male human being and a female human being are free to engage in sexual activity of any kind - as long as it’s consensual. Even if they are siblings or other relatives. I find it emotionally disgusting and biologically wrong, but rationally, why should I condemn this? Muslims criticise me for this – yet condone the very same thing when it is written down in their Koran or when it is a 54-year-old man and 9-year-old girl – but only when it involves their idol, Muhammad.

Now THAT I find reprehensible, dishonest, hypocritical and applying double standards. Is it also immoral? You judge for yourself.

Thanks for your time.




 
Sources

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Chart by Tim van de Vall, copyright 2013 Dutch Renaissance Press LLC. These charts may be used for personal and educational purposes only. Commercial use of these printable worksheets is prohibited.


William Thomas and David Kelley, The Logical Structure of Objectivism


Muslim rape

Ikea


iERA Reloaded and their Dawah Outlets



It looks as though iERA, the Islamic European Research Academy, has been severely hit by the constant confrontation with reality and their head-on clashes with truth.

It seems to me that iERA has suffered severely as more Muslims are turning to reason and rational thinking, limiting their propensity to spending money on iERA’s simplistic and superficial argumentation.  

iERA must have taken a hard look at its operations and has had to decide on whether to declare bankruptcy or soldier on. Well, it seems they’ve decided to give it one last shot and have apparently identified a need in the market and subsequently adapted their business model.

What they are doing is creating franchises. They take their core sales messages from Christian apologists, based on the old and tired William Lane Craig rhetoric, which seems to appeal to primitive, uneducated and gullible ignorants. This is further dumbed down, adapted to Muslim vocabulary, and mixed with the nonsensical contents of rich, well-funded Islamic indoctrination factories like Zakir Naik with his Peace TV. Because Naik himself is banned in the UK for his extremist views like “every Muslim should be a terrorist”, which I have on video here, they are taking only his claims - based on Bucailleism. After the script is done, they then send their guys out on a “train-the-trainer” program.

They distribute these so-called dawah training packages to smaller dawah organisations, helping them to grow and have them fishing for more and more victims. These fishermen are turned into sales people, essentially working like a Scientology pyramid scheme. So giving dawah is nothing else but baiting victims.

So we have groups like the “London Dawah Movement” who are given training by iERA and are provided with this sales pitch. Now, you have hundreds of ignorants trawling the streets, all equipped with the same idiotic iERA “sales kit”. You suddenly see the same rhetoric in Hyde Park, Glasgow and Birmingham, all with the same, stupid question and answer game.

iERA is doing the marketing, distributing a video which shows how beneficial your actions are and how it is your brotherly and Islamic duty to pay back to allah and Muhammad. How? By selling the product Islam. Suddenly, you see this video in several places and then several more videos, all telling Muslims to – what they call – give dawah or, more commonly known as “sell ignorance and stupidity”, proselytising.

School dropout and  iERA chairman Anthony Waclaw Galvin-Green who goes by the stage name Abdur Raheem, a controversial preacher, ex-Christian, ex-Buddhist, has 2 wives and loves rubbing shoulders with violent and aggressive dawah, gets onto the sales motivation wagon, wearing his 7th century costume, complete with long beard and long dress. He makes appearances, giving pep-talks, praising the benefits of a life on your knees and shrouded in ignorance.

Just like a bad sales manager he tries to motivate his troops by using emotional pleas and making them feel closer to and more like a Muhammad of the 7th century. He first talks about prophets and messengers and then depicts Muhammad as the best person to have ever lived on this planet and then describes the hardships and  sacrifices he went through – with only one goal, to bring the message to people. Muhammad, according to Green, was the most wonderful person, trustworthy, who never lied, never cheated and who described his hardest day as being when he was rejected by the people of Taif.  Poor Muhammad.

Green leaves out the stories where Muhammad tortures people, steals and lies, has people killed, releases limits on others which don’t apply to himself. He has sex with his slave and a child, marries his own daughter-in-law and has people stoned. In other words, known issues are suppressed.  

Then Green makes sure his guys know the alternative, the hell-fire, just as an untalented and incompetent sales manager would.

But Green seems to be proud of - even admits to - getting on the nerves of everyone around him, being the dick who starts talking about religion on the bus, the train or the plane, where it is difficult to avoid or scream at him. What I found interesting is that even his fellow Muslims warn others about Green, saying “May Allaah save us from the ignorant ones who love to speak without knowledge.”

But he does not care and sends his guys out and the people in the UK will soon see more dawah clubs come out of the woodwork all asking people whether their mother could give birth to herself. Pathetic.

I just don’t think that people in the UK are that stupid. I don’t think they will immediately start transferring money to their dawah team, which will flow back to iERA eventually.

In all fairness, the idea sounds good superficially, but as any experienced company or management consultant will know, it’s not the sales, it’s the customer retention which counts at the end of the day. And here, the track record is abysmal. Converts only last a few days or weeks, until the brain kicks in and the slick sales pitch and all the talking them to death wears off.

Then reality returns and as soon as they start checking something they were told on the street by the dawah preachers, the entire construct of lies comes crashing down. Not only will they be angry with the guy dishing out the nonsense, but also disappointed by the ideology as a whole, which means the brand will be shunned for life. Just like I will never in my life buy anything by Sony again due to the clash of marketing propaganda and their poor handling of several product failures in reality. And to think that I was one of their big supporters when they came on the scene.

So we have Islam, a dying ideology, trying to sound all modern and rational and failing across the board. If they don’t reform, we’ll eventually have a couple of backward fundamentalists sitting in caves somewhere, while the rest of the world develops and progresses, in peace.

And this is the easiest and most efficient counter to all the stupid claims worked out by iERA. Progress. Knowledge.

While the only answer we have today to the question: “how did the Universe start off?” is “I don’t know”, how long before we do know? And what will these guys then base their belief on, if this is their strongest argument?

And why, if we don’t know something, should the only alternative be one of the gods anyway? So even if we will never know what the status of the Universe was, why should anyone simply believe it was a god with some fabricated attributes?

Watching these mindless moppets, their excursion into the Koran which says in 52:35-36 “Or were they created out of nothing? Or are they the creators? Or did they create the heavens and earth?” simply results in a rehash of the Cosmological argument. They will cite Alexander Vilenkin, without understanding a single word he said or wrote. Too funny and so cute, hearing them use intelligent words without understanding anything they mean. All it represents is substituting the word mystery with the word allah. Yet an apologist will call this an “inference”, which would mean a logical conclusion based on valid premisses, while all it is, is just a heap of claims based on arguments from ignorance.

Brain challenged Muslims will ask questions like “can something come from nothing” without defining either term and ignoring that when talking quantum physics not everything is intuitive and straightforward. We simply don’t know yet. They frequently mix up the possibility with the cause and are easily caught up in self-contradictory statements. They are taught to call a sceptic closer and theatrically place an empty hand onto the hand of the sceptic, exclaiming: “what have I just given you? Nothing!” ignoring that they have just transferred not only a couple of billion molecules of our atmosphere but also a few droplets, filled with germs and/or bacteria or viruses. But they think they have just made a profound demonstration.

“Can my mother give birth to herself” is also a popular question, supposed to stun the participants in their little game.
The answer is yes, sure, why not?

There are different alternatives on different levels, such as the one described by archangel Gabriel:  Sanat Kumara Channelling, when the New Dimensional frequencies of Gaia will peak.

You can’t make this up. But the mother gives birth to herself.

Then you have less spiritual cloning, where the mother can have her own clone in her womb and thus give birth to herself. Muslims are generally not so clued up when it comes to concepts, logics or science, especially medical and biological science.

A mother can relive the moments she was born, essentially giving birth to herself spiritually.

If a mother travels back in time and has sex with her younger father, she is giving birth to herself.

If that is not 100% accurate you can always take your father’s sperm and your mother’s ovum and have an artificial insemination, almost giving birth to yourself.

ELCA's first female Presiding Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, believes that Jesus has helped his mother give birth to herself into eternity.

The Quan Yin say their mother Earth must be reborn [give birth to herself in the higher dimensions], and she invites you to participate in this "rebirthing" process

Diana Arosio physically demonstrates in her artwork how the woman finally decides to give birth to herself.

There are more examples, but I will stop here. So we have plenty of alternatives and just because Muslims are unable to conceive of these possibilities does not make them non-existent.

Muslims are taught to obey and believe without evidence. They are not trained or even encouraged to question or apply critical thinking.

So hearing their god-attributes like uncaused, uncreated, eternal, omnipotent, personal, self-existent is actually a logical fallacy called “Begging the Question” which does not occur to Muslims, because they will call this rational, not able to comprehend intellectually that this assumes that the origin of these attributes, a god, has already been proven and demonstrated. But it has not. They will continue claiming that the Koran is a profound book and contains profound statements and logical arguments.

The introduction of questions such as “what is your purpose in life” is as asinine and inane as it is naive. Again, no definitions are deemed necessary, yet a simple question such as: “what is life?” will cause some concern for our Muslim intellectuals. We humans have generally defined life as a being capable of reproduction, energy conversion and evolution. The activities of life-forms will tend to avoid pain and strive for pleasure or well-being. I could well write an entire book on this last sentence and indeed, people have, so we have quite a good understanding of it. But as simple as I have tried to convey the contents of these principles, Muslims still see the need to squeeze their super-natural being in here somewhere. They don’t know where, so they just go and declare the entire story impossible and pre-suppose their god, without whom none of this would make sense. Asking what exactly does not make sense will get you a whole lot of embarrassed silence.

I actually sometimes feel sorry for these poor sods. They try so hard and all they get is derision and ridicule. But how can you take this seriously? It’s like seeing a cat carefully moving and falling down. You have to laugh. The cat will quickly lick its paw, pretending nothing happened, but you can see the embarrassment. Do Muslims feel embarrassed?

The guy on the ladder thinks he is making an impression on the people listening to him. But he is incredibly naïve and completely untrained in rational or critical thinking. He just rattles off what he was told. He does not realise his little games and rehearsed rhetoric is illogical and completely inconsequential.

It’s like listening to 100s of Hamzas now spreading all over the country, but even less trained. It’s uncanny. They go on to this strange sequence, where a creator is created by a creator who is created by, you guessed it, a creator. This serves 2 purposes, 1. The rejection of an infinite regress which in the real world is a known quantity and result and 2. The assumption  that we would never get a Universe.

What this dimwit doesn’t seem to comprehend is that 1. Is a viable option and that 2. Is only true if the Universe indeed was created and by his favoured creator on top of that, making his point a moot point as a Universe without a creator would cancel his creator out automatically.

You can’t make it up.

It’s unbelievable.
These are human beings. Like me.
Living in the 21st century. Like me.
With brains. Like me.
But completely incapable of rational and logical thinking. And I am nowhere near a deep thinker or philosopher.

So, what is their target audience? Who are the humans who are actually impressed with this? Who are the ones who contribute this frenetic and hysterical applause when a primitive human like Hamza asks these primitive and nonsensical questions?

Who are the new customers iERA is trying to attract via their dawah kits in the dawah unit sales channels? Is it cannon-fodder they can recruit and send to Syria to die a fool’s death? Or to Sochi to terrorise the people competing in the way of sportsmanship?

Is it simply gullible cash machines?

Are they scraping the barrel to get fundamentalists who have no spine and no standing in society and crave attention and false recognition from a gang? Well, maybe we need to remember that more than half of the Muslims are illiterate, so being able to read is already a distinct advantage.

Are they looking for reliable, long-term supporters?

Whatever they are doing, I doubt the public in the UK is that easily impressed. Sure, you can jump a teenager and squeeze a shahada, the admission ticket into Islam out of them, but will they be long-term supporters? We know today that most converts leave as quickly as they join. In fact, Islam is shrinking and Muslims are the last to accept this. They are still passing out the fairy tale of the “fastest growing religion”. Maybe on Mars, but then, many religions and spiritual cults make that claim to seem more important than they are. As people are more educated, they start seeing through these emotional comforters and anecdotes.

iERA is trying to keep their followers dumbed down and in the doctrines of fundamentalist Islam. This means a very restrictive life within narrow boundaries. There’s nothing here of a reformed and more modern Islam. iERA still reject the reality of evolution and the findings of science in general, if they are not in alignment with the Koran, the book which is wrong on almost everything.

Modern Muslims such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University, a Sufi, have long left this behind. They see humans as animals and the link between worldly Earth and spiritual heaven, allowing for evolution and Islam simultaneously.

That would be the future of Islam – but iERA will not take part in it, I fear.
 





Dr Naik:
That means if any man or woman who is not married, if they have unlawful sexual
intercoolers, the punishment is 100 lashes, flogging them with 100 lashes... So the
punishment for adultery, unlawful sexual intercourse done by married man is Islam, it is
stoning to death

Yusuf Chambers:
Well, Dr. Zakir, I feel that those 2 punishments were enough to frighten
the most of the individuals from Zina [adultery]. May Allah protect us from that.

Dr. Naik:
That’s in Islamic country but the punishment is not there in a non-Muslim country.
So If it’s put throughout the world, InshaAllah, Zina would be removed from the face of the
earth.


Sources

The Challenge of Dawah by Abdur Raheem Green



Gaia’s frequencies

Mother giving birth to herself

Jesus and mother


Quan Yin

Diana Arosio

Muslims on Green

Logical Fallacies

iERA Speakers

Seyyed Hossein Nasr