tolerating intolerance

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Start Here

Posted by seek1nganswers on November 22, 2014
Posted in: Why I write. Leave a comment

The four posts below are probably the best place to start if you want to understand why I’ve created this blog and why learning about the teachings of Islam has become important to me.

They are all part of the Why I Write category and listed here below:

1) Why I Write
2) Looking For Answers
3) While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer – the book that made me start to wake up
4) The Son of Hamas and the Ladder of Islam

Islam’s unforgiveable sin: Christianity

Posted by seek1nganswers on October 9, 2015
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I believe that the vast majority of Christians in the world have been taught, as I was, that Islam is an Abrahamic religion and therefore quite similar to Christianity and Judaism. Taking comfort in that, few will ever bother to look into the Quran and Hadith to find out whether the assumption is true.

But I think in light of the recent “refugee” crisis, it is clear that those of us in the West who believe in things like democracy, freedom, equal rights for men and women, etc. must now start learning about what Islam really teaches.

For Christians I ask you to consider this: In contrast to Judaism, which obviously preceded Christianity, Mohammed lived approximately seven hundred years after Jesus Christ. Yet, he claimed that Jesus was not the son of God, that Jews and Christians had perverted the word of God and that Jesus was only a prophet. Moreover he didn’t die for our sins – he wasn’t even crucified! No, he was brought up into heaven and will return some day to kill the Jews and end Christianity (since he will say he is not the Son of God).

Furthermore, Islam teaches that there is only one sin that Allah cannot forgive. That would be “shirk.” What is the sin of shirk? It is the sin of associating partners with Allah.

Which, of course, is exactly what Muslims believe Christians do by believing that Jesus is God. Or in other words, the very belief that makes a Christian a Christian, is considered by Muslims to be the one sin unforgivable by Allah.

If Islam truly is an Abrahamic religion, and the Allah of Islam is the God of Judaism and Christianity, then why did Mohammed teach (seven hundred years after Christ) that the Gospel, really the entire New Testament, is a lie? Is this really a religion Christians should brush off as benign?

Ten things about Islam you probably don’t know (and might be surprised to find out)

Posted by seek1nganswers on November 16, 2014
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After beginning to learn about Islam for myself I realized that as Westerners, perhaps especially as Christians in the West, there are a shocking number of misconceptions that we hold about Islam. Here is a list of the top ten most basic things that I believe most Christians and Westerners do not know about Islam that would likely change how we view the religion. I invite and implore you not to just take my word for it but to look into these things for yourself.

1. The Qu’ran is not arranged in chronological order. The chapters (known as suras) are arranged roughly from longest to shortest.

2. Yet despite point number one, the chronology of the Qu’ran is intrinisically important because of the concept of abrogation. Abrogation refers to the Qu’ran’s explicit instruction that if any verse conflicts with an earlier verse, the later verse must replace the earlier one. Sura 2:106: “We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten except that We bring forth [one] better than it or similar to it. Do you not know that Allah is over all things competent?” Therefore it is critical that you understand the chronological order of the suras if you are to know which verses of the Qu’ran have been cancelled out and conversely which are accepted as “better.”

3. So the Qu’ran is not in chronological order (point 1) yet it must be understood in chronological order (point 2). In order to reconcile this conflict, the Qu’ran must be cross referenced with other Islamic texts known as the Sunnah in order to decipher the proper context for reading the Qu’ran. The Sunnah consists of the Sirat (the biography of Mohammed) and the Hadith (collections of Mohammed’s sayings and behaviors as recorded by his closest companions). These other texts provide the necessary context to the Qu’ran (which actually only makes up approximately 14% of Islamic textual doctrine (pg. 1 of link) and allow it to be arranged into chronological order by those who are intimately familiar with all three texts. According to Wikipedia there is some disagreement over exactly what order the chapters should be in, but here is a a link to a few of the more commonly accepted possible chronologies.

4. More broadly, Islamic scholars divide the Qu’ran into two time periods, the Meccan period and the Medinan period. The Meccan period comes first and contains the more peaceful, tolerant versus of the Qu’ran. During this time, Mohammed was relatively powerless and had only about 150 followers. The Medinan period begins once Mohammed and his followers fled Mecca for Medina, where he began to expand Islam by force, beginning with the violent raids of Meccan merchant caravans. The tone of the Medinan period is noticeably less tolerant and increasingly violent compared to the Meccan verses. It was also during this time that Mohammed started to amass a much larger following. The migration from Mecca to Medina is so significant to Muslims, that it marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar.

5. This might be a good time to note that Mohammed was not a Jesus-like figure, in the final ten years of his life he was a military commander who, through bloody warfare and diplomacy, managed to conquer the entire Arabian peninsula in that time. He had multiple wives and concubines, in addition to sex slaves. His youngest and favorite wife was Aisha, whom he married when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. Remember that Muslims believe Mohammed’s life is the perfect example of how all Muslims should live their life (this idea is brought up 91 separate times in the Qu’ran).

6. Mohammed said in Bukhari 52:269: War is deceit. Mohammed also approved of lying to and murdering those who spoke out against Islam or against him.

7. During the Medinan period, Mohammed ordered at least 100 armed raids or battles and took part in 27 of them himself. During one particularly bloody battle he was wounded so severely in the head that his followers thought he had died. Doing the math, this would mean Mohammed and his followers were involved in armed conflict, on average, once every 5 weeks for those nine years.

8. According to the earliest, and considered by the majority of Islamic scholars to be the most authentic biography of Mohammed’s life, following the Battle of the Trench, the Jewish tribe known as the Banu Qurayza surrendered to the Muslims, Mohammed then oversaw the beheading of anywhere from 600-900 men and boys (sparing only those who had not yet grown pubic hair to be raised as Muslims) and sold the women and children into slavery (source).

9. The Qu’ran teaches that only those who are slain or die fighting for Allah are guaranteed to go to Paradise. Everyone else will be judged on the “final day” using a scale to measure their good deeds vs their bad deeds and those with 51% good will also be taken to Paradise. But the martyrs (or even just attempted martyrs according to the Hadith) will get to go straight to Paradise.

10. Islam rejects the idea of the Holy Trinity. In fact, many Islamic scholars have declared that Christians who believe in the Trinity are akin to polytheists since they worship Jesus as God. The Qu’ran teaches that the only sin Allah cannot forgive is the sin of shirk, which literally means to associate partners with Allah. The Qu’ran teaches that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God and did not die on the cross, or even die at all. According to the Hadith, Jesus will return at the end of the world and declare that Christians and Jews corrupted the Bible. From Hadith number 656: Allah’s Apostle said, “The Hour will not be established until the son of Mary (i.e. Jesus) descends amongst you as a just ruler, he will break the cross, kill the pigs, and abolish the Jizya tax. Money will be in abundance so that nobody will accept it (as charitable gifts).” In other words, Jesus will come and destroy Christianity and kill the Jews. He will abolish the jizya tax previously paid by Christians and Jews since the only acceptable option will be to convert to Islam or die at that point. (source)

The Son of Hamas and the ladder of Islam

Posted by seek1nganswers on November 2, 2014
Posted in: Why I write. Leave a comment

At this point, I was still not quite ready to actually start reading the Qu’ran so instead I decided to read The Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef.

For some background, Mosab was the son of one of the founders of Hamas. As a young man he participated in the First Intifada, spent time in an Israeli prison, where he was recruited by the Shin Bet (Israeli version of CIA) and eventually became an invaluable asset for the Israelis in their fight against Hamas. It was also while he was spying for the Israelis that he converted to Christianity.

All around, an incredible book that will leave you with perspective coming out of your eyeballs. After I read it, my heart was actually filled with much more compassion for the “enemy.” The book made me realize that while Muslims are not our enemies, the same cannot be said of Islam.

At the beginning of his book, Mosab gives an analogy of Islam and why there are good people practicing a religion that is fundamentally violent. I can’t sum it up and do it justice so I will just excerpt it here for you. If you are only going to read one thing on this blog, I hope that this is it:

Pages 10-11:

Islamic life is like a ladder, with prayer and praising Allah as the bottom rung. The higher rungs represent helping the poor and needy, establishing schools, and supporting charities. The highest rung is jihad.

The ladder is tall. Few look up to see what is at the top. And progress is usually gradual, almost imperceptible—like a barn cat stalking a swallow. The swallow never takes its eyes off the cat. It just stands there, watching the cat pace back and forth, back and forth. But the swallow does not judge depth. It does not see that the cat is getting a little bit closer with every pass until, in the blink of an eye, the cat’s claws are stained with the swallow’s blood.

Traditional Muslims stand at the foot of the ladder, living in guilt for not really practicing Islam. At the top are fundamentalists, the ones you see in the news killing women and children for the glory of the god of the Qur’an. Moderates are somewhere in between.

A moderate Muslim is actually more dangerous than a fundamentalist, however, because he appears to be harmless, and you can never tell when he has taken that next step toward the top. Most suicide bombers began as moderates.

When I read this passage, it was like a light bulb going off in my head. Suddenly I understood how Aqsa Mahmood went from a normal western teenager to a willing member of ISIS.

She had moved up the ladder.

And this was when I could no longer put it off. I had to find out for myself what was at the top of the ladder of Islam.

“While Europe Slept” by Bruce Bawer – the book that made me start to wake up

Posted by seek1nganswers on November 2, 2014
Posted in: Why I write. Leave a comment

I mentioned in my previous post that it was the jihadis coming from western nations that really made me question the idea that “Islam is the religion of peace.”

While that is true to an extent, the odd thing (looking back), is that it’s also not exactly the whole story.

Let me try to explain…

At the time, my worldview was that Islam was unquestionably a “religion of peace.” I knew that to be true. So I spent many hours wondering how the hell people who grew up in free, democratic, western nations could possible be drawn to such a “perverted” version of Islam. Criminals, the dregs of society, I could accept they would simply latch onto the violent verses, but how in the world were these people who seemed so nice and normal being drawn to a group that was proudly selling women into sex slavery and decapitating children? I couldn’t make it make any sense.

Around this same time, a friend and I were having a discussion about Europe and she recommended a book to me called, While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer (we were having a conversation about Europe and it’s lack of integration of immigrant populations, we weren’t even discussing Muslims specifically).

I read the book in a weekend (after not having read a book cover to cover in years). And it started to answer my questions, not simply by trying to explain how “normal” Muslims could join ISIS, but by changing the entire premise on which my questions were based. It made me realize that the right question was not how this could happen, but rather, is Islam really a religion of peace?

The author of the book is a gay man who moved to Europe in the 1990’s thinking that it would be a liberal’s paradise, particularly for an out and proud gay man. What he found instead was a Europe that was attempting to be tolerant of people who were rabidly intolerant – that is, the Muslim immigrant community which is rapidly expanding in Europe. Page after page of examples of intolerance, often violent intolerance, and the establishment’s attempt to silence those who dare to speak out against the intolerance.

It was incredibly eye opening. It made me realize that I knew literally nothing about Islam and what it teaches and that it was both ridiculous and ignorant of me to claim to anyone (even myself) that I just *knew* Islam was a peaceful religion being perverted by the likes of AQ and ISIS.

It made me realize that I had to dig in and see for myself what Islam taught.

Up until about three months ago, here is what I believed about Islam:

1) It is an Abrahamic religion, not too different from Christianity in terms of its teachings.

2) The major difference was that they believed Jesus was only a prophet and not the Son of God.

3) They believed in a prophet named Mohammed. I knew NOTHING about Mohammed but had always assumed he was a Jesus-like figure (i.e. a peaceful and humble preacher).

I was raised as a Christian and personally believe that Jesus died for my sins, but I was also raised to believe that we should respect other people’s religions and their committment and belief to them. Although there were a few attempts to hand out pamphlets or otherwise actively evangelize, for the most part, our church leaders taught us that the best way to bring others to Christ was simply by being good people and loving others.

I knew that the Jews similarly do not think that Jesus is the Son of God, so I put Islam pretty much on par with Judaism, and I was comfortable with Judaism because I knew they believed in the Old Testament, which I was familiar with. It sounds strange now looking back, but I guess that’s why I never felt like I really needed to know what was actually in the Qu’ran?

I wonder now how many other Christians have managed to draw the same subconscious conclusions that I did. Probably a lot.

looking for answers

Posted by seek1nganswers on October 19, 2014
Posted in: Why I write. Leave a comment

I grew up a Christian.  My mom converted when I was five years old and that was when I began attending church every Sunday.  My mother was active in the church leadership and I pretty much grew up in and around our church.  I’ll be the first to admit that since starting college I really haven’t been very involved in church and have sort of become a special-occassion attender rather than a regular.  But I do feel fairly comfortable with Christian theology and I have read and studied the Bible.  

Until ISIS and it’s never-ending stream of Western converts started hitting the papers a few months ago, I hadn’t really thought much about the religion of Islam.  Sure, I felt a bit odd about our Western leaders continually trying to define for us who is and isn’t “Muslim” but I assumed that they were probably right and that these terrorists were merely perverting Islam, sort of like how I feel about (exceedingly rare) abortion clinic bombers.  

But seeing thousands of Muslims who were raised in the west, in free, democratic nations, head to Syria to fight on behalf of barbarians who were proudly cutting the heads off innocent children, it shook me.  It really, really disturbed me.  I remember reading about Aqsa Mahmood, the girl who grew up loving Coldplay and Harry Potter (which, hey girl, you’ve become a deatheater) and then ran off to marry an ISIS fighter and live in the Caliphate.  I could not stop thinking about it for hours.  How could something like that happen?  How could it be happening over and over and over again?  That seemingly nice, neighborly, moderate Muslims could radicalize in the west was anathema to me and just made no sense at all.  

I thought about the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon and how all their neighbors and friends had said the same thing about them.  Yet look what these boys, who had been taken in and cared for by America as refugees, could then turn around and do to us in the name of their religion.  I thought about Major Nidal Hassan who murdered thirteen of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more while yelling “Allahu Akbar!” (Allah is greater). 

The accumulation of stories like these brought me to a point where I began to feel like I needed to know about Islam and its teachings.  I needed to see for myself whether or not ISIS was truly merely a perversion of Islam or if there was more to it than that.  

And so it happened that in the summer of 2014, as ISIS rampaged it’s way through Iraq, through cities who’s freedom from Sadaam Hussein had been purchased with the blood of US troops only a decade earlier, I decided that it was time to begin learning about Islam.

why i write

Posted by seek1nganswers on October 8, 2014
Posted in: Why I write. Leave a comment

Like so many other Americans, September 11, 2001, completely altered the course of my life.

Up until then I had been a naive teenager, worrying about a boy who broke my heart, how I would spend my last few weeks of summer vacation, and what major I would choose as I entered my second year of college.

The attacks of September 11 woke me up to the larger world around me.  The one that existed outside my small protected bubble of upper-middle class suburbia and my college campus.  It woke me up to the fact that there are people in the world who would kill me and those I love out of hatred for our lifestyles and in the name of their god.

Of course, as we all know, not long after that horrible day, America went to war.

And I, the nineteen year old college sophomore, became fascinated by war; why they are fought, how they can be prevented, how they are fought, and of course their aftermath.  Accordingly, I decided to major in political science with a focus on international relations.  It became even more personal to me when my USMC infantry then-boyfriend was deployed to be part of the “tip of the spear” as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

I inhaled as much information as I could about the Middle East and specifically the wars that had been fought there throughout the 20th century.  I tried to educate myself about the history of terrorism and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the history of AQ.  These are topics that still interest me greatly and that I’ve tried to stay on top of, even though I ended up going down a very different career path.

You might be wondering what the point is of the proceeding paragraphs, why am I bringing all of that up?  To make the point that even I, someone who while not an expert, was certainly someone who spent a lot of time and study thinking about our terrorist enemies and where they come from and what their motivations are…and yet it wasn’t until VERY recently that I decided I needed to learn for myself whether or not Islam is truly a “religion of peace” as I have heard and accepted for the past 13 years.

The brutality of ISIS, the influx of Western jihadis to Syria, and what almost appeared to be an epidemic of beheadings by Muslim extremists all over the globe (UK, Algeria, Syria, and the most recent one in Oklahoma) – it finally hit me that for 13 years I had made a lot of assumptions about the religion of Islam without ever taking the time to find out if I had an accurate picture or not.

It is a bit scary to me that it has taken me 13 years to do this, but I have finally started to attempt to really learn about Islam, beyond the platitude of “it’s the religion of peace.”

What does that mean exactly?  And how does endlessly repeating that it is a peaceful religion, give us any sort of understanding about these terrorist monsters who are raping, torturing, beheading and committing genocide in the name if Islam?  How can we in the West continue to parrot that Islam is a religion of peace when the fact is we (or at least I was in this camp) are totally ignorant as to what Islam actually teaches?

I decided to start this blog as a place to:

a) write about what I’m learning about Islam.  I have started reading the Qu’ran along with the Sira (biography of Mohammed) and am reading as much as possible from critics of Islam as well as rebuttals of those criticisms by Muslim scholars.

b) discuss the questions raised through my studies, what kind of answers I have been able to find online, and my analysis of those answers (i.e. do they answer my questions?)

c) finally I hope that someday maybe this blog can be a platform for engaging moderate muslims and fully fleshing out their understanding of their religion and how it can be so different from what the terrorists claim the religion commands.

Something I’ve come to discover over the past few months of reading is that there are easy platitudes we can make (“Islam is the religion of peace”) but the truth is much, much more complex (by Mohammed’s design?).  Hopefully I can start to unpackage some of it here and figure out whether or not Islam really is the religion of peace.

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