Rational Thinking explores Islam, Quran, and Muhammad’s claim to prophethood?

Question

Muhammad lived a less than holy life. His lust for sex, his affairs with his maids and slave girls, his pedophilic relationship with Aisha a 9-year-old child at the age of 53, his killing sprees, his massacre and the genocide of the Jews, his slave making and trading, his assassination of his opponents, his raids and lootings of the merchant caravans, his burning of the palm plantations, his destroying the water wells, his cursing and invoking evil on his enemies and his revenge on his captured prisoners of war disqualify him as a decent human being let alone the messenger of God
An unbiased study of Quran shows that far from being a “miracle” that book is a hoax. Once Quran is scrutinized with rational thinking, almost every sentence proves to be false. Quran is replete with scientific heresies, historic blunders, mathematical mistakes, logical absurdities and grammatical errors. Could possibly the author of this Universe be as ignorant as it appears to be in Quran?

Quran tells Muslims to kill the disbelievers wherever they find them (Q. 2:191), to murder them and treat them harshly (Q. 9:123), slay them (Q. 9:5), fight with them, (Q. 8: 65 ) even if they are Christians and Jews, humiliate them and impose on them a penalty tax (Q. 9: 29). Quran takes away the freedom of belief from all humanity and tell clearly that no other religion except Islam is accepted (Q. 3: 85). It relegates those who disbelieve in Quran to hell (Q. 5:10), calls them najis (filthy, untouchable, impure) (Q. 9: 28). It orders its followers to fight the unbelievers until no other religion except Islam is left (Q. 2: 193). It says that the non-believers will go to hell and will drink boiling water (Q. 14: 17).

It asks the Muslims to slay or crucify or cut the hands and feet of the unbelievers, that they be expelled from the land with disgrace and that “they shall have a great punishment in world hereafter” (Q.5: 34). “

This means that a woman who is raped cannot accuse her rapist unless she can produce a male witness. Muhammad allowed the Muslims to marry up to four wives and gave them license to sleep with their slave maids and as many “captive” women as they may have (Q. 4:3). He himself did just that. This is why anytime a Muslim army subdues another nation, they call them kafir and allow themselves to rape their women. Pakistani soldiers raped up to 250,000 Bangali women in 1971 after they massacred 3,000,000 unarmed civilians when their religious leader decreed that Bangladeshis are unislamic. This is why the prison guards in Islamic regime of Iran rape the women and then kill them after calling them apostates and the enemies of Allah.

http://www.sullivan-county.com/x/sina.htm

Source: QURAN

Answer 1

"The use of false evidence to attack Islam was all but universal..." (Norman Daniel: Islam and the West)

"The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only."
(Thomas Carlyle in 'Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History,' 1840)

"History makes it clear, however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated."
(De Lacy O'Leary in 'Islam at the Crossroads,' London, 1923.)

"Head of the State as well as the Church, he was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without the Pope's pretensions, and Caesar without the legions of Caesar, without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a police force, without a fixed revenue. If ever a man ruled by a right divine, it was Muhammad, for he had all the powers without their supports. He cared not for the dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with his public life."
(Reverend Bosworth Smith in 'Muhammad and Muhammadanism,' London, 1874.)

"If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astonishing results are the three criteria of a human genius, who could dare compare any great man in history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws, and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples, dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and the souls.

"On the basis of a Book, every letter which has become law, he created a spiritual nationality which blend together peoples of every tongue and race. He has left the indelible characteristic of this Muslim nationality the hatred of false gods and the passion for the One and Immaterial God. This avenging patriotism against the profanation of Heaven formed the virtue of the followers of Muhammad; the conquest of one-third the earth to the dogma was his miracle; or rather it was not the miracle of man but that of reason..."Philosopher, Orator, Apostle, Legislator, Conqueror of Ideas, Restorer of Rational beliefs...The founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire that is Muhammad. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he?""
(Alphonse de LaMartaine in 'Historie de la Turquie,' Paris, 1854.)

"If any religion had the chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam...I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion for from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity...I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.”
(Sir George Bernard Shaw in 'The Genuine Islam,' Vol. 1, No. 8, 1936.)

"Four years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born in Mecca, in Arabia, the man who, of all men, has exercised the greatest influence upon the human race... To be the religious head of many empires, to guide the daily life of one-third of the human race, may perhaps justify the title of a Messenger of God."
(Dr. William Draper in 'History of Intellectual Development of Europe')

"The good sense of Muhammad despised the pomp of royalty. The Apostle of God submitted to the menial offices of the family; he kindled the fire; swept the floor; milked the ewes; and mended with his own hands his shoes and garments. Disdaining the penance and merit of a hermit, he observed without effort of vanity the abstemious diet of an Arab"
(Gibbon in 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' 1823)

Taken from/More at: http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/quote1.html (by Dr. A. Zahoor and Dr. Z. Haq)

On the West's ignorance of Islam, the Swiss journalist and author, Roger Du Pasquier writes:

The West, whether Christian or dechristianised, has never really known Islam. Ever since they watched it appear on the world stage, Christians never ceased to insult and slander it in order to find justification for waging war on it. It has been subjected to grotesque distortions the traces of which still endure in the European mind. One symptom of this ignorance is the fact that in the imagination of most Europeans, Allah refers to the divinity of the Muslims, not the God of the Christians and Jews; they are all surprised to hear, when one takes the trouble to explain things to them, that 'Allah' means 'God', and that even Arab Christians know him by no other name.

(Unveiling Islam by Roger Du Pasquier)

The feeling that there is a general ignorance of Islam in the West is shared by Maurice Bucaille, a French doctor, who writes:

When one mentions Islam to the materialist atheist, he smiles with a complacency that is only equal to his ignorance of the subject. In common with the majority of Western intellectuals, of whatever religious persuasion, he has an impressive collection of false notions about Islam. One must, on this point, allow him one or two excuses. Firstly, apart from the newly-adopted attitudes prevailing among the highest Catholic authorities, Islam has always been subject in the West to a so-called 'secular slander'. Anyone in the West who has acquired a deep knowledge of Islam knows just to what extent its history, dogma and aims have been distorted. One must also take into account that fact that documents published in European languages on this subject (leaving aside highly specialised studies) do not make the work of a person willing to learn any easier.

(From The Bible, the Qur'an and Science, by Maurice Bucaille, page 118)

Anyone who has studied the subject knows that Christian missionaries were willing participants in European imperialism, regardless of the pure motives or naïveté of some of the individual missionaries. Actually, quite a few Orientalist scholars were Christian missionaries. One example is that of Sir William Muir, who was an active missionary and author of several books on Islam. Today, these books are viewed as very biased studies, even though they continue to be used as references for those wishing to attack Islam to this very day. That Christians were the source of some of the worst lies and distortions about Islam should come as no surprise, since Islam was its main "competitor" on the stage of World Religions. Far from honouring the commandment not to bear false witness against one's neighbour, Christians distortions and outright lies about Islam were widespread, as the following shows:

The history of Orientalism is hardly one of unbiased examination of the sources of Islam especially when under the influence of the bigotry of Christianity. From the fanatical distortions of John of Damascus to the apologetic of later writers against Islam, that told their audiences that the Muslims worshipped three idols! Peter the Venerable (1084-1156) "translated" the Qur'an which was used throughout the Middle Ages and included nine additional chapters. Sale's infamously distorted translation followed that trend, and his, along with the likes of Rodwell, Muir and a multitude of others attacked the character and personality of Muhammad. Often they employed invented stories, or narration's which the Muslims themselves considered fabricated or weak, or else they distorted the facts by claiming Muslims held a position which they did not, or using the habits practised out of ignorance among the Muslims as the accurate portrayal of Islam. As Norman Daniel tell us in his work Islam and the West: "The use of false evidence to attack Islam was all but universal . . . " (p. 267). (From An Authoritative Exposition - Part 1, by cAbdur-Rahîm Green)

There is a great deal of proof that one could use to demonstrate that when it came to attacking Islam, even the Roman Catholic Church would readily embrace almost any untruth. Here's an example:

At a certain period in history, hostility to Islam, in whatever shape or form, even coming from declared enemies of the church, was received with the most heartfelt approbation by high dignitaries of the Catholic Church. Thus Pope Benedict XIV, who is reputed to have been the greatest Pontiff of the Eighteenth century, unhesitatingly sent his blessing to Voltaire. This was in thanks for the dedication to him of the tragedy Mohammed or Fanaticism (Mahomet ou le Fanatisme) 1741, a coarse satire that any clever scribbler of bad faith could have written on any subject. In spite of a bad start, the play gained sufficient prestige to be included in the repertoire of the Comédie-Française." (From The Bible, the Qur'an and Science, by Maurice Bucaille, page 118)

The invariable tendency to neglect what the Qur'an meant, or what Muslims thought it meant, or what Muslims thought or did in any given circumstances, necessarily implies that Qur'anic and other Islamic doctrine was presented in a form that would convince Christians; and more and more extravagant forms would stand a chance of acceptance as the distance of the writers and public from the Islamic border increased. It was with very great reluctance that what Muslims said Muslims believed was accepted as what they did believe. There was a Christian picture in which the details (even under the pressure of facts) were abandoned as little as possible, and in which the general outline was never abandoned. There were shades of difference, but only with a common framework. All the corrections that were made in the interests of an increasing accuracy were only a defence of hat what had newly realised to be vulnerable, a shoring up of a weakened structure. Christian opinion was an erection which could not be demolished, even to be rebuilt. (From Islam and the West: The Making of an Image, by Norman Daniel, page 33)

Edward Said, in his classic work Orientalism, referring to the above passage by Norman Daniel, says:

This rigorous Christian picture of Islam was intensified in innumerable ways, including during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance a large variety of poetry, learned controversy, and popular superstition. By this time the Near Orient had been all but incorporated in the common world-picture of Latin Christianity as in the Chanson de Roland the worship of Saracens is portrayed as embracing Mahomet and Apollo. By the middle of the fifteenth century, as R. W. Southern has brilliantly shown, it became apparent to serious European thinkers "that something would have to be done about Islam," which had turned the situation around somewhat by itself arriving militarily in Eastern Europe. (From Orientalism, by Edward W. Said, page 61)

Most conspicuous to us is the inability of any of these systems of though [European Christian] to provide a fully satisfying explanation of the phenomenon they had set out to explain [Islam] still less to influence the course of practical events in a decisive way. At a practical level, events never turned out either so well or so ill as the most intelligent observers predicted: and it is perhaps worth noticing that they never turned out better than when the best judges confidently expected a happy ending. Was there any progress [in Christian knowledge of Islam]? I must express my conviction that there was. Even if the solutions of the problem remained obstinately hidden from sight, the statement of the problem became more complex, more rational, and more related to experience. (From Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages, by R. W. Southern, pages 91-92)

Regardless of the flawed, biased and even devious approach of many Orientalists, they too can have their moments of candour, as Roger Du Pasquier points out:

In general one must unhappily concur with an Orientalist like Montgomery Watt when he writes that 'of all the great men of the world, no-one has had as many detractors as Muhammad.' Having engaged in a lengthy study of the life and work of the Prophet, the British Arabist add that 'it is hard to understand why this has been the case', finding the only plausible explanation in the fact that for centuries Christianity treated Islam as its worst enemy. And although Europeans today look at Islam and its founder in a somewhat more objective light, 'many ancient prejudices still remain.' (From Unveiling Islam, by Roger Du Pasquier, page 47 - quoting from W M Watt's Muhammad at Medina, Oxford University Press)

In conclusion, I would like to turn to a description of Orientalism by an American convert to Islam who is now a well known Muslim scholar. What he has this to say about the objectives and methods of Orientalism, especially how it is flawed from an Islamic perspective, is quite enlightening:

...(t)he book accurately reports the names and dates of the events it discusses, though its explanations of Muslim figures, their motives, and their place within the Islamic world are observed through the looking glass of [dis]belief, giving a reverse-image of many of the realities it reflects, and perhaps calling for a word here on the literature that has been termed Orientalism, or in the contemporary idiom, "area studies"...As a fundamental incomprehension of Islam, it naturally distorts what it seeks to explain, yet with an observable disparity in the degree of distortion in any given description that seems to correspond roughly to how close the object of explanation is to the core of Islam. In dealing with central issues like Allah, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), the Koran, or hadith, it is at its worst; while the further it proceeds to the periphery, such as historical details of trade concessions, treaties names of rulers, weights of coins, etc., the less distorted it becomes. In either case, it is plainly superior for Muslims to rely on fellow Muslims when Islamic sources are available on a subject...if only to avoid the subtle and not-so-subtle distortions of non-Islamic works about Islam. One cannot help but feel that nothing bad would happen to us if we were to abandon the trend of many contemporary Muslim writers of faithfully annotating our works with quotes from the founding fathers of Orientalism, if only because to sleep with the dogs is generally to rise with the fleas. (From The Reliance of the Traveller, Edited and Translated by Noah Ha Mim Keller, page 1042)

Taken from/More at: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/orientalism.html

-----------------------------------------------

In 628 C.E. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) granted a Charter of Privileges to the monks of St. Catherine Monastery in Mt. Sinai. It consisted of several clauses covering all aspects of human rights including such topics as the protection of Christians, freedom of worship and movement, freedom to appoint their own judges and to own and maintain their property, exemption from military service, and the right to protection in war.

An English translation of that document is presented below.


This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.
Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.
No compulsion is to be on them.
Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries.
No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims' houses.
Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God's covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.
No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight.
The Muslims are to fight for them.
If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray.
Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants.
No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).

This charter of privileges has been honored and faithfully applied by Muslims throughout the centuries in all lands they ruled.

Taken from/More at: http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/charter1.html (by Dr. A. Zahoor and Dr. Z. Haq)


You were saying?

Peace and Love

Answer 2

it is not obtainable to appreciate conclusively if he replaced into delusional or a liar this long after the form. He did stay in a cave, claimed he observed a flying ghost/angel and had his very own flying horse; that doesn't sound honest or rational to me. human beings have been conscious that there replaced into eclipses at set periods long till now Mohammed replaced into around, am not sure the type you think of it is correct.

Answer 3

Though I am not a muslim I have read the Koran and looking over some of the passages that this questioner lists it is easy to see that he is taking them out of context to make a case. In addition he is casting particularly vicious aspersions upon the character of the Prophet Muhammad that have little basis in fact. He has an agenda and is ruthlessly pushing it forward. I ask you sir, do you have a dog in this fight? What is your dogs name? You are a warmonger and trouble maker and probably a member of a vicious little group that causes trouble in the world to forward their own selfish agenda. If you are going to quote the Koran from now on quote it in context and be fair. YOu are caught by your own petard.

Check this and other passages out readers to see that Islam is not what this poor deluded creature says it is:

Q 2:193 And fight them on until there is no more Tumult or oppression and there prevail Justice and faith in God; But if they cease let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression.

See anything wrong with supporting justice for all and not just your own group? This is True Islam.

Answer 4

Was this a question or just an opportunity to soapbox and slam the faith of a people you seem to detest? Just what positive good does this rant do the rest of the world?

Answer 5

Muhammed was born almost 600 years after Christ.

Then he tried to re-write history and falsify the teachings of Christ:
Muslims (and Islam) say Jesus was a prophet but they reject all His teachings ...

They reject Christ's divinity;
they reject his claim to be the Son of God;
they reject his death on the cross...
they reject His ressurrection..
They reject Jesus is the Christ/ Messiah...
Need I say more...?

Don't be deceived. The Islamic god is totally different than the God of Jesus Christ .

The Bible calls Muhammed and those like him False prophets.....
"Who is a liar but he that denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is anti-Christ, that denies the Father and the Son. He that denies the Son, the same has not the Father." (I John 2:22)

Answer 6

What does religion, any religion have to do with rational thinking?

Answer 7

It was informative thanks for the info