An Atheist Explains Islam

Hi guys,

A few months ago I thought it would be a good idea to have a series, where I would read the Koran and people could then decide whether this is what they would expect what a god would write. It would also provide an excellent platform to discuss with Muslims why they believe this text has divine origins. Then I got lazy and left it, because it's a lot of work, then I picked it up again and left it. This time I'll go through with it.

Before I get stuck into my series "An Atheist reads the Koran", I want to first explain what I see as being Islam and make some general observations. Ie stuffing 6 hours into 15 minutes.

It is now 5 or 6 years ago that I came across Muslims making some claims regarding their belief. Even my boss, the CEO of one of the largest companies in the Middle East, one day told me after a meeting that the Koran contained scientific miracles. So, off I went and checked. It got me interested and so I started reading up on what they had claimed because I wanted to see this with my own eyes.

I didn't find what they had claimed, quite the opposite, but I did find that Islam is not just a religion, but a political ideology AND a worldview AND a religion. I found that the ultimate goal is to have a country, a nation, a caliphate, based on Islamic Law, the sharia, based on laws, rules and a lifestyle not based on what feeble humans want, but the wishes of their god - and of course Muhammad, their beloved idol. I also found that men are worth more than women or slaves and that the Koran prescribes some pretty barbaric punishments. Apologists claim these are merely deterrents, but if you know they are merely deterrents they no longer deter, do they?

Whenever I check up on claims made by Muslim apologists, regardless of what it's about, it always turns out to be either false or mere wishful thinking. Where, in most cases, it is not even their fault. They have been brainwashed and were indoctrinated as kids and Islam does not support critical thinking, but obedience. All it teaches is how to believe (using blind faith), obey, follow and submit. Where Islam tells them they have excellent reasons to do so and are taking rational decisions - without actually specifying what these are.

Muslims in general are extremely superstitious as every person who was assigned a special task thousands of years ago according to an old book still today has a "peace be upon him" or "on whom be peace" come as an additional surname or incantation attached. Everything they do is dependent on their god willing to allow this. Nothing is too absurd, whether it's the evil eye, magic water, genies or spells and curses. They believe that birds can carry heavy boulders and drop them on an army with elephants and all - and kill them. This is the ugly side of the texts, the constant wars, battles and atrocities.

And it's not like Islam does not offer anything positive. There's a lot of positive advice for a normal, everyday life. But then you don't really need a Koran to tell you that. Focusing on the spiritual side and leaving out the negative aspects in a reformed Koran v2.0 would be highly beneficial. As it stands, Islam is shrinking and will disappear with less and less acceptance amongst the human beings living in the 21st century. Most educated and intelligent Muslims have adopted a very relaxed attitude towards Islam and the rigorous rituals. Only fundamentalists or apologists still demand literal adherence to the Koran. They claim that anything else is a sell-out of Islamic values. Asked what exactly these values are you get a long list. But if you compare them to the real world and see what Muslims are practicing, you suddenly have a whole lot of non-Muslim Muslims out there because apologists declare anything they don't like un-Islamic, even if it is in accordance with the Islamic texts. That's how you know that Islam does not mean peace, but submission.

So what does Islam stand for? First and foremost it is the idea that there is a super-natural being, a god, which, in Arabic is allah. Because Muslims love to keep a bit of a mystery, a lot of expressions are kept in Arabic, to avoid an immediate understanding and comprehension. So you will find a lot of allah, Qur'an, sura, aya, hadith, fiqh, and many other expressions in Arabic. This Arabic is not the MSA, the Modern Standard Arabic we know today from Al Jazeera, but ancient Arabic. Like ancient Greek, ancient Arabic has not developed for over 1000 years and is thus a dead language.

The only reason anyone would want to study ancient Arabic today, is to read the Koran in its Arabic form. That's why only very few people actually know the language, even though many claim they do.

According to the Koran, the one and only god has always existed and was neither created nor born and simply exists. This deity has a number of amazing attributes, most of which are nonsensical or illogical. Like being almighty would enable this god to create an even more almighty god or something indestructible, both of which are not possible logically.

So to overcome the existing belief systems in the region, the authors of the Koran applied a "good cop" - "bad cop" approach. You can feel the inferiority complex and the pleading to please, pretty please believe me and don't be mean to Muhammad and it's a great message only to abruptly change to "and if you don't, you burn".

According to the dozens of times this is repeated in the Koran I either believe or burn. I need to follow the instructions or suffer the consequences. If I don't obey Muslims, I may be granted the right to live where I am, but need to pay for this. If not, I need to either adopt the Islamic rituals or die. Oh, no, I also have the option of leaving my country. The Koran calls this having no compulsion. Actually, adapt or die is quite a lot of this compulsion.

Whenever I question Muslim apologists about their beliefs and why they believe what they believe, the most stupid question they ask is whether I know who started the Universe or what the origin was. But it does seem that this very question has prompted the invention of gods in general as inventing a god or gods posed an explanation - even though it has never actually explained anything. Believers will never be able to explain the process or the materials used or where the material for the Universe came from, if nothing can come from nothing. But, as always, when in a pickle, apologists simply draw the get-out-of-jail-for-free-card: it's a miracle.

The Islamic god for some reason keeps Earth-time in his heavenly penthouse, which seems to indicate that they either have huge clocks synchronised with Earth-time or that the sun of our solar system sets on heaven and hell the same way as it does here on our planet even if heaven is 1,000 or 50,000 light-years away, depending on where you read.

Even though it is omni-present, ie everywhere, there is a throne, which floats above the waters, which were never created, and a house, which looks remarkably like a black cube. This abode is located directly above Mecca. On a flat Earth, this would not be a problem, but given that we live on a spinning sphere and Mecca is 70 degrees away from the North Pole, an object 1000 or 50,000 light years away would be travelling at multiple speeds of light if it remained over Mecca at all times.

According to the Koran, this creator/god created the Universe and then Earth, or the other way around in 6 or 8 days, depending on where you read and created a flat Earth, protected by a solid canopy, without cracks as this god is proud to announce, which is supported not by mountains as the old-fashioned creation myths say, but by invisible pillars.

Sun and Moon orbit along this canopy, which has little lights which serve as ornaments and can also be used as missiles to chase away the jinn, mythical beings made from fire, who are eavesdropping on what the gods have to discuss. People in those days did not know that fire is a process and not a material or that smoke and gas are very different materials.

Since god was lonely on his/her/its own, she created some angels - from light. Really? Sorry, I did not write this and people 1000 years ago where not yet equipped with our level of knowledge. But why do Muslims believe this today? Well, > 50% of all Muslims, we are talking 600 or 700 million people here, are illiterate. No education whatsoever. They take a stick and go along the writing of the Koran and mumble the same sentence to themselves they learnt at some stage - as though they were reading. They believe this is beneficial for them and gets them extra points.

They believe all of this. So, angels have up to 600 wings and can - even though they are made from light - appear and act as a human male and one even manages to impregnate Mary by blowing into her vagina.

This creator creates 70,000 new angels every single day, Earth-day that is, to come around and worship their creator for creating them. Why they do this when they already are in heaven is a bit beyond me.

Anyway, this god requires so much worship that there is a need for more worshippers. Apologists deny, of course, that their favourite god would require anything, but the Koran clearly says that now humans and jinn are created with only one purpose and that is to worship their creator, who will reward the worshipers with a seat in heaven and punish those who don't with eternal torture in a place he created, called hell.

This creator actually decrees that everything it creates, regardless of what it is or what it is made of should prostrate to the creator and worship her. Even the creatures in hell, even though they are in hell for not doing exactly that? So what happens if you refuse to worship when in hell? But it's ok, if god is everywhere, it must also be in hell, so they're in illustrious company.

The Koran says many times that humans are created by this creator, using varying materials, 13 in all. The process is not described, just that we start off our existence as mud or dust or whatever and then end up as some ugly liquid which is mixed with a blood clot which grows into a piece of flesh and then a skeleton is formed, around which muscles and tissue are draped, very much like the Greek medicine thought things went in those days.

The people at the time were heavily influenced by the Greeks in every aspect. Today's Muslims are somewhat jealous of this and came up with a propaganda scheme still active today, where they attribute all sorts of things from the camera to algebra to Muslims who lived 1000 years ago and who "discovered" or "invented" these things. If you check, like usual, the claims turn out to be lies.

A few decades ago they tried it again and found some corrupt non-Muslim doctors who pretended to be amazed by the sentences and words in the Koran. Instead of checking, Muslims all over the globe believed this - and became the laughing stock of non-Muslims for their incredible gullibility.

This propensity to simply obey, accept and believe is found everywhere in the followers of Islam. The creator in Islam is all-knowing. So the follower blindly accepts this and does not think, ponder or reflect over this. To a non-Muslim like me this is puzzling. The creator creates me to worship it, knowing in advance I will be an atheist and not a worshipper and creates me anyway, knowing full well I will be an atheist - and then punishes me for its own incompetence?

And it fails 4 out of 5 times? The all-knowing and almighty creator creates people with a purpose in mind and fails. Like it creates me, an atheist. It tries again a 2nd time and fails again. This will become a Hindu, horsewhipping a different god or gods. It then tries a 3rd time, failing and producing a Christian. The 4th time around a Sikh is the result. Only after 5 tries does the creator get it right and manages to create a worshiping Muslim. That is a remarkable failure rate of 80%.

But even though it tries again and again, even with being all-this and all-that, the failure rate remains spectacularly high at 80%. Only 20% of humans today are Muslims. And all this in spite of this creator knowing in advance the outcome of these pitiful attempts.

Apologists try and explain this away by claiming human free-will, but how can they do that, given that their god knows in advance what the actions and the outcome will be? Childish. Illogical. But even though the creator fails at producing Muslims, the non-Muslims get punished - for his failing.

So this creator/god creates more and more humans, then, after creating humans for 200,000 years, suddenly remembers, oh shit, I forgot the rules. Now, instead of waiting another 2000 years where it knows humans will have developed the internet and global communication capabilities, or, more efficiently and effectively hard-wiring the required information into the brain, it goes into an illiterate, barbaric area of the world, takes one guy, issues sentences to an angel who trots off and appears in a cave somewhere in a desert and can, using oral skills and physical manipulation - while being made from light - persuade this one guy to repeat the words, using an imprecise, undefined language.

This transmission, from a book their god wrote in heaven, who reads his book, line by line to an angel who tells it to a guy who tells it to his desert Bedouins who tell some scribes who write all this down as the Koran is said to be accurate, the literal word of a god. Do I really believe all this works 100%? Nope.

But again, apologists try and sway my doubts by telling me that their god and creator protects his Koran. Like he protected the previous attempts? The Torah and New Testament!? This god is all-knowing, issues commands and knows in advance they will be changed and then, when they do, gets angry with the people he created? Oh boy.

But Muslim apologists don't see this. They see only that this life, a relatively short period in comparison to eternity, is a test. They are like lab rats, mastering a maze to get a reward at the end. When they are dead.

But even here their god fails. What exactly is the test? The Koran says all humans and the jinn are created to worship their creator. Does it say how? No! Not in the Koran. How many times? No! What procedure? No! The Koran is and remains vague and ambiguous. Not a lot is detailed. Like "non-believers will burn in hell", this is repeated 105 times. But on other topics the Koran is incomplete, missing details on all the required rituals.  Now what? Well, Humans to the rescue. Over several decades they came up with a strict set of rituals and a behavioural codex which were made up as sunnah, the life, sayings and actions of a man they called Muhammad, the same guy who was the Koran recipient in the cave. But these sayings are contradictory as well, contradicting each other, the Koran and even refer to passages which don't exist in today's 1924 version of the Koran.

Even though Muhammad is said in Islamic texts to plunder, loot, kill, torture, rape and enslave 100s, his benevolence towards his in-crowd and his family is what determines his image with modern apologists. How can anyone ignore the brutal and barbaric behaviour of this man who acted on behalf of his god?

None of this deters apologists. They swear allegiance to their god, pray, pay, go on pilgrimage and fast for a couple of hours during the 9th month, as commanded by their Imams. A much bigger and more challenging problem are the numerous character restrictions, don't lie, don't talk nonsense, provide evidence, don't insult, don't judge, don't hate, don't be arrogant, and so on and on. Apologists rarely adhere to these commandments. They are easily flustered and get frustrated because they have not been allowed to think and develop critical thinking skills in their lives, so their texts read like a catalogue of logical fallacies. They can't conceptualise or think using abstract ideas or logics.

They believe that everything has its place and eg that there are 3 different types of humans, each group with their own rules and rights, men, women and slaves. Maybe that's why there are 3 different levels of heaven. They exist but are not explained. On Earth, men are the bestest of the best, Muslim men being superior to everything else. In their imagination there exists this vision of them walking down a street, in a land governed by sharia, where, even if they are illiterate, completely ignorant and uneducated, the non-Muslim scientist, who ensures healthy food and clean water, will pay them a tax and yield when they approach.

When the male Muslim comes home his slaves have prepared food for him and he can choose which of his wives he would like to have sex with and in which way, without the woman being able to protest. If she does and repeatedly feels cantankerous he can beat some sense into her. A bit later he goes to the square to help stone a woman to death who had extramarital sex. While she claims she was raped and 3 men witnessed it. Sorry, not enough men. Without a fourth witness she is merely an adulteress and unwilling sperm recipient. (Carlin)

The next day he will go and fight for his god, conquer another country, oppress, plunder and colonise it, rape a few captives and then sell them on the slave market. As long as he gives a fifth to his god he is ok, he is a good Muslim and will be adequately rewarded by going to heaven once he's dead.

Where he will have as many sex companions as he wishes. They will be virgins which have had sex with millions of other men, but are restored and fitted with a hymen, fake virgins. The good Muslim will sip on his wine, eat grapes and cheerfully watch how the non-Muslims are tortured in hell.

The message for Muslims is, all they have to do is follow some basic rules and this heaven will be for them to enjoy. Ignore the rules and you burn.

So in the eyes of the people 1000 years ago they had the divine incentive plus the rules and regulations on how to proceed, the Koran and the sunnah, a package deal. It's only today that more and more people realise the inconsistencies between the Koran and the other texts where we find contradictions between the rules and the Koran and the rules themselves. We see the nonsensical nature of these rules. A total mess. But still apologists today are trying to wriggle the sunnah in there as a semi divine text, enabling them to come up with just about any rule they want.

Ask any fundamentalist Muslim whether they agree that Islam is all about peace and all you get is confirmation. And then they will ship off to Syria to fight and kill. Other Muslims.

Ask any fundamentalist Muslim whether they condemn Muslims stoning a woman to death, you will be amazed at how many will try and rationalise this and find excuses for this barbaric practice. They defend this, claiming it to be a divine decree and the wish of their god. How rational or even sensible are those wishes? Do they even dare to ask these questions?

A quick example: we've just had Ramadan, a month declared holy, which was there to increase the bond between you and your god. Well, actually this was copied from the Jews, as was almost everything else. It was supposed to be a holy month, without fighting and warfare. But during Ramadan we saw the same killing and enslaving we see all the time. But - to continue on a more non-violent note - Ramadan was all about fasting during the day, between sunrise and sunset, starting with the sighting of the crescent moon, the beginning of the month. But what if you are 10,000 kms North-West of Riyadh or Mecca, in Canada? You will see the moon at a different time and the sun will not set for 3 months. Do you fast for 3 months solid?

This shows very clearly that humans came up with all these rules and rituals, based on ancient superstitions valid in a small area on this planet. Today, we have technology, based on science, not Islam, which can tell a Muslim how and when to fast in Canada, but 500 years ago? What if 1000 years into the future we colonise another planet? You can't see our moon from there and maybe the times, the hours and minutes, which are man-made, will be different from Earth. Then what?

What does fasting mean on the ISS? How do you pray 5 times between sunrise and sunset if you have one every 90 minutes?

This shows immediately that these can't be universal rules and regulations and are obviously man-made.

And there are so many of them that it is difficult to understand why not more people reject the notion of divine origins of these texts. It does not help that Muslims assign human attributes to an object, a book. Noble or glorious are human attributes, nonsensical in connection with a non-human. The same way as I can't insult the Koran or Muhammad as an insult always requires the insulted person to feel insulted. So saying I have insulted Jupiter or Hercules is not exactly useful.

Instead of going on and on here, I will structure the next part showing problem areas and general inconsistencies and then go through the Koran and show all the crazy parts, which alternate between repulsive and hilarious, between nonsensical and outright crazy.

So let me go and get out my notes, some of which are 4 years old and then organise them into separate examples which can easily be explained bit by bit.

Thanks for your time.