Auntie Does Dawa: It’s Ramadan and ABC Journalist and Convert to Islam Erwin Renaldi Breathlessly Tells His Tale of Ramadan in Medina and Mecca

This nauseating exercise in dawa – very typical of the deluge of Islamopuffery that floods our mainstream media these days – was published at the ABC’s news website just the other day.  The author, so far as one can tell from a little judicious googling, is of Italo-Australian extraction, a graduate of Melbourne University, an ABC journalist, and a starry-eyed and gushingly-enthusiastic convert to Islam, though it is not possible to discover precisely when, where and why he embraced the Religion of Blood and War, the cult of Slavery, Rape, Armed Robbery, Extortion, Arab Supremacism, and Ritualised Mass Murder.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-17/ramadan-making-the-journey-to-the-holy-land/9767958

“Ramadan: My Experiences Making the Journey to Mecca and Medina During Islam’s Month of Fasting”.

Or, rather, during the month that, throughout much of the Muslim world, is observed by ostentatious daytime fasting and frenzied night-time feasting.  I wonder whether Mr Renaldi’s Muslim instructors informed him, as he was preparing to convert, or after, that Ramadan is also regarded as the Month of Jihad, the month during which pious Muslim attacks upon those deemed in breach of the sharia, upon those deemed heretical, and upon Infidels, tend to spike dramatically. – CM

“It was always a dream of mine, and one shared by millions of other Muslims, to observe the fasting (sic – the daytime fasting and night-time feasting – CM) month of Ramadan right in the capital city of early Islam: Medina.

The city, once known as Yathrib, whose original Christian, Jewish and Pagan inhabitants foolishly took pity on and offered refuge to Mohammed and his ‘companions’ when they had made Mecca too hot for themselves and been kicked out.  Mohammed and his cult followers rewarded the generosity of their Yathrib hosts by taking over the city and ultimately force-converting, driving out, or killing all of its non-Islamic inhabitants; all trace of its Christian, Jewish and pagan antecedents was erased along with its original name, and today no Infidel is permitted even to step foot in the centre of Medina, nor in any part of Mecca and its immediate environs. – CM

‘When I went from Australia last year, I felt a huge buzz when millions of people, wearing all-white outfits, walked into the huge, famed, white Al-Masjid an-Nabawi mosque in Saudi Arabia.

‘More than 1400 years ago it was just a tiny house made of clay and palm-leaves, owned by a man named Mohammed.

“More than 1400 years ago…”??  But… Mohammed, so it is supposed, came to Yathrib circa 622 AD.  That is not ‘more than 1400 years ago’.  It is, rather, just under 1400 years – 1395, to be precise (since Mr Renaldi did his wonderful trip to Arabia, the source and focus of the Arab national religion, in 2017). 

‘But Medina now has a busy international airport, hotels run by well-known international companies, and modern supermarkets.  It was definitely surprising to find “fast fashion” stores in the middle of a market next to the mosque – not to mention international chains, just metres away from the grave of the Prophet Muhammad’s relatives and companions.

What’s so amazing about an airport, hotels, and supermarkets?  Every city in the modern world has those.  And why so surprised by the crass commercialism that surrounds this – as it does any other – religious tourist-trap?  Mohammed was a merchant, after all, working for a seriously wealthy merchant lady, before he set himself up as ‘prophet’ , cult leader, and war-lord. For all its claimed or pretended otherworldliness, Islam has always been about the temporal seizure and control of this-worldly turf and the seizure and divvying-up of the booty, or spoils… as evidenced by the fact that a whole chapter of the Quran is entitled simply “Booty”. – CM

‘A white marble castle in the desert.

“The former house of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, which became his grave and later a massive prayer hall, is known as the Masjid Nabawi, or Nabawi Mosque.

‘It’s characterised by a huge green dome surrounded by a couple of high minarets with bright lights, which illuminate the whole city of Medina at night.

Electric lights.  I would remind Mr Renaldi that electricity was not invented by Muslims, but by infidels.  Note the superlatives – “massive prayer hall”, “huge green dome”, “high minarets” “bright lights”.  Mr Renaldi seems to be terribly impressed – or else he thinks that the average punter reading an ABC news story will be impressed – by how big everything is, in his cult’s imperial headquarters. – CM

“It really does look like a white marble castle in the middle of the desert.

One might reflect, reading that, that a palace (generally inhabited by a ruthless and mass-murderous despot), surrounded by slums, surrounded by an ever-widening desert… is the Dar al Islam, in a nutshell. – CM

“It was quite an emotion experience to enter the mosque, and to connect with the early history of Islam, which I had only read abut in books including the Koran.

The early history of Islam.  How early?  He is in Medina, not Mecca.  The verses supposedly ‘revealed’ at Medina are the later verses, and are the most openly aggressive and violent.  And – which books?  The Koran is bad enough, but… what of the Sira of Ibn Ishaq? The gruesomely bloody pages of Al-Tabari’s “History”?  The Hadiths – Muslim, Bukhari, Abu-Dawud?  How much does our Mr Erwin Renaldi, convert to Islam (for how long?  did he convert in high school? at university? after graduating?) know about the bloody career of Mohammed the warlord, caravan-robber and slave-raider?   Was it before or after Mr Renaldi’s conversion that he found out about the rapes of Rayhana and Safiyya… the bedding of nine-year-old Aisha that has sacralised child-marriage, within Islam, for all time…the caravan-raiding… the seizure and sale of people as slaves (again, sacralising slavery as a practice within Islam, for all time; since it is Sunnah, part of the normative practice of the ‘prophet’)…the assassinations of Asma bint Marwan, Abu Afak, Kab bin Ashraf… the tearing-apart of a little old lady by camels tied to her arms and legs… the attack on the peaceful and defenceless Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis?  If he knew about them – and their permanent significance for Islamic practice – before his conversion, and nevertheless, chose to convert, then one can only conclude he is someone who likes and admires that sort of thing: rape, armed robbery, torture, mass murder.  If he only found out about these actions of mohammed the warlord and slave-raider, rapist and mass-murderer – whose every deed and word – even these – comprise the “excellent pattern of conduct” for all Muslims for all time – after his rattling off of the shahadah but, now knowing the worst, he still chooses to remain within the cult, then again, he is not merely a fool, he is a willing slave of evil. – CM

‘The mosque was already filled with thousands of people when I arrived an hour before sunset in June 2017, the time for breaking the 16-hour fast (do you expect us to be impressed by that, Mr Renaldi? do you expect us to think, “Oh how pious he is!”?  Most of us can do without food for 16 hours, if, for example, we have dinner at 6 pm and then skip breakfast and eat at 10 am; it’s not that big a deal. – CM) – people were sitting side-by-side facing each other.

‘Volunteers rolled out plastic mats, and were busy distributing dates – fresh dates that were not yet ripe (what’s the significance of unripe dates? – CM) – along with packages of cold yoghurt, bread, and cups of water, for those who had made the journey.

Muslims elsewhere tend to have a rather more lavish evening meal – once the sun sets, and they are allowed to eat and drink again – than what Mr Renaldi received from the House of Saud.  All those squillions of petrodollars and they feed their hajjis on … green dates, yoghurt, bread and water!  But I assume we are meant to be impressed by this ostentatious simplicity.  All those nice Muslims in the Mosque in Medina eating their dates and cold yoghurt together… As if none of the rest of the world’s religions knew anything at all about abstinence, or simple fare shared in company. – CM

“I sat between an old man who seemed busy reading the Koran (which verses, I wonder, were his favourites? – CM) and a young man who I later found out was a Palestinian (sic: a “Palestinian” Arab – CM) but was forced to have an Israeli passport.

What this seems to indicate is that the young man was an Arab Muslim possessing Israeli citizenship, and therefore, an Israeli passport.  – CM

“For his journey, he had to go through Jordan to get to Saudi Arabia, as Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have diplomatic relations.

From which side arises that refusal to have diplomatic relations, Mr Renaldi?  The realilty is that it arises from the Muslim Arab side, animated by Quranically-orthodox hatred of, contempt for and aggression toward all Jews qua Jews. A hatred, contempt, and aggression – whether in intention or in act – that, one must assume, you, Mr Renaldi, now share?  What is your view of Jews, Mr Renaldi? Of Israel?  A further thought: what a fascinating coincidence, that Mr Renaldi, our Aussie journalist convert to Islam, should just happen to bump into a “Palestinian” fellow-Hajji, out of all the hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims, from all over the dar al Islam, converging on Medina and Mecca for Ramadan, so that he can include, in his “what I did on my Ramadan hajj” story, a plug for the ‘Palestinian’ cause (and if you click on the link, you will see among the numerous attendant images a selfie of Renaldi and this so-convenient “Palestinian”) – CM

‘The many generous locals, distinguishable by their Arabic accents and the clothes that they wore, made sure all of the million people who came to the mosque received food.

“Regardless of the city’s transformation, Medina still manages to offer tranquility to its visitors.

“It may be due to the historical significance of the city, which offered refuge to the prophet and early Muslims, after they faced persecution from the state in Mecca.

After they had made Mecca too hot for them, by obnoxious behaviour, and had been turfed out.  One may observe that Mr Renaldi does not inform us that Medina – then not called Medina, but rather, Yathrib – was inhabited by non-Muslims, Jews, Christians, Pagans.  But that today not one non-Muslim is permitted into the main part of the city.  And you will also observe that when he discusses Mecca, he does not mention that the ‘exclusion zone’ – the area forbidden to any and all non-Muslims – is even larger than at Medina.  Muslims were given refuge by non-Muslims; then took over – seized – that place of offered refuge and turned it into a place… for Muslims, only.  And then they went back and seized Mecca, too, and made it, also, a place for Muslims, only.  

Compare and contrast with, for example, the openness to all comers of good will, of the Kotel, or St Peter’s in Rome, or Varanasi in India, or the sites of Buddhist pilgrimage in Sri Lanka or in Tibet.  

And reflect, too on the atrocious behaviour of Muslims in places not ancestrally theirs, but which they have seized, and where they demand supremacy: notably the Temple Mount, where Muslims ‘pray’ but no Jew or Christian is allowed to visibly or audibly pray… and where visiting non-Muslims, especially Jews, are liable to be insulted, threatened, and even physically attacked – the throwing of stones – by Muslim thugs.  Or let us contemplate the Hagia Sophia, that most beautiful church of all Christendom, seized and occupied and defiled by Muslim imperialists in 1453, and turned into a mosque, and then a museum under Ataturk… no way would Muslims ever dream of giving it back to its original builders and owners, the Christians, for Christian use as the church it originally was… Rather, Erdogan is hell bent on denying it to Christians not merely by keeping it as a museum, but opening it for Muslim ‘worship’ once more. – CM

‘And that feeling of sanctuary for Muslims in a world where we often feel misunderstood.

Cue the world’s smallest violin. Oh, the poor persecuted Muslims, so few and so misunderstood and mistreated… all 1.3 billion strong (and counting), absolutely controlling 57 nations (most of which are very numerous, and some of which are rolling in petrodollars, and within which no non-Muslim is in any real sense either free or safe) and rapidly gaining control of quite a few more (Nigeria, Central African Republic, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia are all threatened by a Muslim takeover, not to mention a number of European nations currently being overwhelmed by the hijra, immigration-invasion)!  No, Mecca and Medina are not ‘sanctuary’, they are, rather, the command-and-control centre from which the Ummah or Mohammedan Mob makes and has ever made relentless and unending war, total war, upon the world’s non-Muslims, the dar al Harb, in obedience to the clear instructions in the founding texts of Islam.  So, in place of Mr Renaldi’s attempt to represent Muslims as victims “a world in which we often feel misunderstood” let’s write what he should have written if  – “a world upon which a great many of our fellow Muslims are, with our full approval and applause, violently making war, with the aim of ultimately achieving total world domination”. – CM

‘Mecca and the Kaaba, aka the ‘black cube’.

‘Ten days before the end of Ramadan last year in June, our group headed over to Mecca, which is roughly four hours away by caravan (how long does it take by modern transportation? I assume that Mr Renaldi travelled by bus, not by camel – CM)  and is where the famed Kaaba – the black cube that billions (sic: note the typical Muslim exaggeration; even if Muslims number 1.5 or 1.6 billion by now, that is still not “billions” – CM) face during prayer each day – is.

‘The Grand Mosque in Mecca is known as Masjid Al Haram, or the Holy Shrine.  It covers the old city of Mecca, and compared to Medina, is far more modern.

Thanks to the avalanche of petrodollars in the mid-late 20th century, and ongoing. – CM

‘A huge clock tower – one of the tallest buildings in the world, home to various five-star hotels and three-storey-plus shopping malls – shades the Grand Mosque, which holds the Kaaba in it.

Click on the link, to see a picture of that astoundingly ugly and ostentatious clock tower, a monument to bad taste, that so impresses our Muslim Mr Renaldi. It’s a fine illustration of the dictum, oft quoted by our own ‘Hugh Fitzgerald’ of New English Review, that all the money in the world cannot buy civilisation.  – CM

‘I remember a friend of mine asking what that “black cube thing” was, and whether Muslims actually worshipped it.

“Muslims believe that the Kaaba is the first monotheistic shrine built by Abraham (sic: rather, by “Ibrahim”, their rewritten caricature or hostile parody of the Biblical Abraham who in fact never went anywhere near the HIjaz; the Muslim claim that ‘Ibrahim’ built the Kaaba is original to Islam, invented out of whole cloth, with not a shred of pre-Islamic history, legend, or archaeology to support it – CM), before the Arabic tribes created their own Gods and put those idols around the Shrine.

Observe the complete reversal of reality, the very typical mohammedan attempt to claim that “Islam was there first!”  For the odds are good that the Kaaba was first of all a pagan Arab holy place – created as such, by pagan Arabs – and then was afterward seized by Mohammed, and claimed for Islam.  Everywhere that Muslims go they steal and appropriate – or else desecrate and destroy – the significant and/ or holy places belonging to and created by non-Muslims. The Muslim view of the Jewish and Christian scriptures and traditions – portions of which have been appropriated and then drastically rewritten by the founder/s of Islam, so much so as to strip them of all their original meaning and impose upon them a wholly different – alien and antithetical – Muslim meaning – is that the ‘real’ original Jewish and Christian scriptures were identical with the Muslim materials but were altered by the wicked Jews and Christians.  One is faced with the spectacle of a parodist and plagiarist claiming that his parody/ caricature/ hostile rewrite is the real/ original thing, and that the original is .. a corruption of his ‘pure’ creation. To get some sense of what Islam has in fact done vis a vis Biblical – both Jewish and Christian – persons and narratives, just imagine someone doing a hostile rewrite of the Harry Potter novels, and then having the hide to claim that theirs was the “real”, authentic, true and original form of the story… and that J K Rowling had altered and corrupted it… – CM

‘It is said the prophet brought back the idea that there was only one God, which later became Islam, and its followers Muslims – which means “those who submit to one God”.

No.  It means those who submit to ‘Allah’.  The character and modus operandi of ‘allah’, as described in the Islamic texts and their interpretations, are radically different from and indeed antithetical to the character and modus operandi of the God who appears in the TaNaKh, and then in the Gospels.  For more, see Mark Durie’s book ‘Which God?” – CM

‘The Kaaba is a symbol of unity: no matter who you are, your status, your race, everyone is commanded to face the same direction.

Toward a black rock in the middle of a desert in Arabia.  For Islam is, as ex-Muslim Anwar Shaikh once observed, the Arab national religion; a vehicle for Arab supremacism, Arab imperialism. – CM

‘Pilgrimage is “a trial of patience’.

‘But the final 10 days of Ramadan is also the most crowded time of the year at the Grand Mosque, and every night that I went to the Grand Mosque I could not escape the crowds.

‘The moment I entered the mosque, I discovered the first trial was finding a spot to pray.  It was crucial, because I’d be spending the whole night there.

Question: once you have found that ‘spot to pray’, can you leave it to make a quick trip to the loo for a leak?  Are there toilets, accessible from within the Grand Mosque?  Or do you just have to ‘hang on’ all night long…?  Inquiring minds would like to know. – CM

‘Back home in Australia, we can always break our fast in one place and then find a mosque later.

‘But in a crowded place like Mecca, once you are inside the mosque, that’s it: there’s no chance of leaving and coming back.

Because someone else will grab your spot on the carpet, if once you vacate it? Whereas my experience of cathedrals, say, even when they are crowded, is that if you have to leave temporarily for some reason, your space on the pew will be there, waiting for you, when you get back. – CM

‘This was another trial of patience for me: trying to avoid arguments or fights inside the mosque (ROFLMAO – does Mr Renaldi have any idea how much he has unintentionally revealed by this careless remark?  And can one imagine any article about any other world faith, that included a casual reference to the necessity of “trying to avoid arguments or fights inside the synagogue/ church/ temple”??? – CM) and forgiving others if they bump into you.

‘But when the sunset prayer was finally called, after almost 16 hours of fasting in 50 degree Celsius heat (you know what, Mr Renaldi?  my response to this is.. Bed. Made. Lie.  You converted to Islam: why, I cannot imagine, unless you like the idea of slavishly admiring and imitating a mass-murderous war-lord and adulating him as the ‘perfect man’. You took yourself off to Saudi Arabia in high summer. You knew it would be stinking hot.  Whatever you suffered in the Grand Mosque – and your sufferings, of which you are boasting in this article, are entirely negligible indeed laughable compared to the sufferings of the victims of Islamic aggression world wide, such as Aasia Bibi on death row in Pakistan because her Muslim co-workers screechingly accused her of ‘blasphemy!’, or the kidnapped Chibok girls, tormented and abused by Muslim jihadis, or those raped-terrorised-and-pimped girls all over the UK, preyed upon by Muslim sex gangs who view them as ‘easy meat’  – was wholly self-inflicted.  I am neither impressed by you, nor do I have an iota of sympathy. – CM) people broke the fast with a sip of water and it was such a massive relief that I’d never felt more grateful in my life.

‘Amazingly, within less than five minutes, everyone stood up and quietly formed rows of lines – it was time to pray.

What’s so amazing or special about a group of people on a ceremonial/ ritual occasion doing the same thing at the same time?  Lots of other – non-Muslim – gatherings, both religious and secular, also manage to do things together, such as marching in unison, or lining up in rows. The British are or were famous for queueing politely. – CM

‘There is no end-of-Ramadan celebration in Mecca’.

‘Eid al-Fitr eventually came, which is essentially the celebration that marks the end of the fasting holy month.  Interestingly, there’s no such celebration in Mecca.

Interestingly?  Can’t say that i find it of particular interest.  However: since you remark on it, why don’t you tell us some more about it?  You’re a journalist, Mr Renaldi, and this was a year ago.  If you found this variation in practice interesting, or puzzling, you should have been able to find out whatever the ritual, religious, political or other reason/s are, for not throwing a party at the end of Ramadan in Mecca, the centre and focus of Islam. And then you could have included that information in your article.  – CM

‘There were no new clothes or special food served.

Do I detect a certain note of disappointment from our starry-eyed convert to Islam, Mr Renaldi?  – CM

‘Some kids came and distributed chocolates and lollies.

‘People began to leave the mosque, many others catching airport buses to make their way home.

‘In a matter of minutes the mosque went quiet, as if nothing had ever happened.

‘It was strange to me, but beautiful (so? – what’s special about a place of worship after everyone has just left? you could get the same effect by staying behind at, say, St Paul’s, on one of the great feast days, after everybody has left the building. – CM) and experiencing Ramadan in the Holy Land (note that for our Italo-Australian convert to Islam, Mr Renaldi, the ‘Holy Land’ is the Hijaz in Arabia, NOT  – as it would have been, for his Italian Catholic forebears, all the way back to medieval times, the land of Israel – CM) taught me that fasting is not just about self-discipline and restraining our basic urges.

ROFLMAO.  Tell that one, Mr Renaldi, to all those poor little English girls who have been preyed upon by gangs of violent and cruel Muslim pimps and rapists; to the Yazidi and Christian girls raped and enslaved and sold on the open market by Islamic State jihadis; to the kidnapped-and-raped girls of Chibok, seized by pious Muslim Boko Haram jihadis, assiduously emulating the deplorable example of Mohammed, who raped female captives and/ or sold them as slaves.  Since when did Islam – the Islam that permits and encourages men to have multiple wives and sex slaves, that teaches wives they must ‘put out’ for their husband whenever he demands it or “the angels will curse her till morning”, that teaches Muslims that the land and property and very lives of non-Muslims the world over are theirs (that is, the Muslims’) for the taking, by main force, as and when they can manage it, the Islam that (as V S Naipaul astutely observed, in “Among the Believers” and Niccolai Sennels later noted the same thing) “sanctifies rage” – ever teach any such thing as self-discipline or restraint of basic urges??  John Quincy Adams stated succinctly that “the essence of his (Mohammed’s) teaching was violence and lust – to exalt the brutal over the spiritual side of man’s nature”. – CM

“I learned how Ramadan is truly an exercise in patience, preparing for the difficulties and challenges we all find in life, and that the broader point of it is about sharing with others (that is: with other Muslims, only</strong>; Mr Renaldi has read the Quran, he must surely therefore be aware of Surah 48.29, and what it says - that Muslims are "harsh" toward the unbelievers, and compassionate only towards one another - CM) even when we are in hardship, and most importantly, being grateful for what we have.

Gratitude for what one has is not something I see a whole lot of, in orthodox Islam, given that it teaches its followers that the whole world and everything in it is rightfully theirs, for the taking.  Rather, one sees greed, lust and resentment on rampant display. – CM

‘So with that said, I am thankful for having the opportunity to share my experiences with the world (correction: with those who happen to read this article on the ABC news website. And oh, I bet Mr Renaldi is so pleased to be given a free – publicly-funded – platform for the doing of Dawa, the Call to Islam – CM) as I get ready for another holy month: Ramadan Mubarak (Happy Ramadan).

Yeah.  Tell that to all the police forces and intelligence services of a slew of countries around the world who, if they are wise, have significantly increased their vigilance and multiplied their patrols, ahead of a dismally-predictable uptick in aggressive and violent bad behaviour on the part of the Muslim colonies within their gates, during that same month of Ramadan, which is the Month of Jihad.  I wonder just how many people – both fellow Muslims, and hapless and vulnerable non-Muslims – your coreligionists, Mr Renaldi, will either murder or seriously injure, in the course of the next 20-odd days? 

Final thought.  Advice to ASIO and the AFP.  If you do not yet have a dossier with Mr Erwin Renaldi’s name upon it; create one; and keep a close and beady eye upon him. I don’t trust him an inch. He knows – he must know – the murderous and violent and deceitful Mohammed of Medina, and yet he either converted to Islam, so knowing, or – if he didn’t know when he converted, and found out later on – he remains within Islam. Either way, he’s dangerous. – CM