Islam as Religion

by Rebecca Bynum (June 2009)

A speech given to the New English Review Symposium May 30th 2009.

“’If I had known what [my daughter] was planning I would have told the Jews. I would have stopped her.”

And of course the interviewer is thinking, of course. The man loves his daughter and any person would be appalled at indiscriminate mass murder. Of course, he would have tried to stop her. But then the father goes on to explain why he would have stopped her:

“In our religion it is forbidden for a girl’s body to be uncovered even at home. How could a girl allow her body to be smashed to pieces and then collected up by Jews? This is absolutely forbidden.”

Mass murder is not the issue. His daughter’s suicide is not the issue – the issue is the purely material matter of her body parts lying uncovered in the street for strange men to see and then being collected by Jews, which, since Jews are in the same unclean category as feces and urine, defiles them further and brings a double shame on the family. The dead and maimed are beside the point. This is an extreme example, but in the years I have spent studying Muslim culture and attitudes, I can tell you it is part of a pattern that is repeated all the time. Islam comes first, life comes second and matter is elevated over value.

2) Does Islam advance morality? No.

Islam retards morality not only by elevating a set of arbitrary rules above spiritual value as we have just seen, but also because Islam lacks a true guiding moral structure.

in itself) and 2) the word and deeds of Muhammad (whose words and deeds were often immoral). So, without a true moral structure to uphold it, Islamic culture collapses into barbarism and Muslims themselves exhibit an extreme emotionalism lacking all self-restraint.

Of course this very emotionalism is what causes the authorities in the West to treat Muslims like children who cannot be expected to exhibit self-control.

Culturally speaking, though Muhammad is claimed to be the final prophet in the Hebrew line, he certainly cannot be said to have advanced morality beyond the point where Jesus and the olden prophets left it six hundred and fifty years earlier. In Islam, morality is defined as obedience to Islam and therefore the higher moral nature of Muslims is suppressed and even denied, because again, in Islamic thought, there is nothing higher than Islam.

3) Does Islam nurture the individual? No.

The individual is sacrificed at every stage of his life for the sake of Islam. All of life is thought to be a test of the willingness to sacrifice happiness (which means, in effect, the pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty) for a promise of life in the hereafter. The exercise of individual freedom and the pursuit of value through either the questioning of Islam or leaving Islam are both viewed as treason and are punishable by death. That way, ideas dangerous to Islam are not spread among the collective – which is often described as one body. In Islam the collective is always elevated above the individual. The rough edges of individuality must be suppressed in order that Islamic society will run smoothly. We can see quite clearly that for women, at least in public, individuality is entirely erased by the veil.

4) Does Islam preserve wisdom? No.

Islam defines everything existing before the coming of Islam as the time of ignorance. The wisdom of old is therefore rejected and destroyed whenever possible. In addition to religious works, this includes cultural artifacts, art, literature and music.

Islam, as we know, claims to be an Abrahamic religion and yet has thrown out all the literature preserved by the other two genuine Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Christianity, which in itself should disqualify it as an Abrahamic religion. It would be like a church claiming to be Christian while throwing out the New Testament. Despite the fact that this makes no sense whatsoever, everyone from the Pope on down seems to accept the claim that Islam is an Abrahamic faith without question.

Muhammad made his claim to be the last of the Hebrew prophets, the seal of the prophets in fact, by advancing the idea that he was descended from Abraham through the bastard line of Ishmail and co-opted the legend that Hagar and Abraham journeyed 750 miles through the desert on foot with a baby to Mecca even though there is absolutely no independent historic substantiation of this at all. There is, however, a record of the descendents of Ishmail remaining in the area of Hebron in the Bible. It is recorded that Ishmail attended his father Abraham’s funeral there, which is another reason why the Bible is rejected by Islam.

According to the Bible, Muhammad absolutely could not be the final prophet in the Hebrew line. The Jews of Medina are on record as having pointed this out, which is why Arabia is Judenrein today and Islamic antisemitism persists.

5) Does Islam foster peace and social harmony? No.

Islam is a recipe for perpetual war. Not only does Islam divide the world into the believers vs. non-believers who known as the “enemies of God,” but there is also perpetual warfare within Islam as well. Samuel Huntington called this the bloody borders and bloody innards of Islam. In the newspapers everyday we witness the fact that on average, more Muslims are killed by their fellow Muslims than non-Muslims are killed by Muslims and this despite the fact that around two million south Sudanese Christians and animists have been killed by Muslims in the last two decades. As Bill Warner has estimated, in the last 1400 years, Islam has caused the death of 270 million people and counting. With the destructive potential of the weapons they are quickly acquiring, it would not surprise me if another 100 million are added to that total in this century.

6) Does Islam hold a transcendent purpose? No.

One of the most important points to make about Islam is this: the purpose of Islam is the perpetuation of Islam. Islam literally has no higher purpose. It sacrifices human beings on the alter to itself and for no higher purpose than to spread Islam. If you’re looking for a greater meaning or value than that, you won’t find it.

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Rebecca Bynum contributes regularly to The Iconoclast, our Community Blog. Click here to see all her contributions, on which comments are welcome.