Category Archives: Debate

“Islam is not an Abrahamic religion”

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A truly excellent and interesting post by Henrik of Europe News, lifted with permission from Jihad Watch:

What’s so bad about ‘Satanic,’ anyway?

It raised a couple of eyebrows when the Organization of the Islamic Conference quoted two pages from an article on EuropeNews, discussing if Muhammad was, in fact, a messenger for Satan rather than for God.
In the article based on a television broadcast, Father Zakaria Botros, based on relevant scripture, made a brief analysis of the qualities of Jewish/Christian prophets and compared those to the qualities of Muhammad. What the article did not go into, however, was an analysis of what ‘Satanic’ actually means. We are commonly assuming that ‘Satanic’ means ‘bad’, ‘evil’, ‘wrong’ – to such an extent that even discussing the actual nature of this badness is irrelevant. But if we do not understand what ‘bad’ or ‘Satanic’ means, how can we choose to reject it? Some knowledge of Right and Wrong behaviour is needed for this to be functional.

We first encounter Satan in the Book of Job, which is part of the Old Testament, and the Torah. In this intriguing tale, Satan gets permission (!) by God to tempt Job to disavowing God through a multitude of loss, disease and suffering. Job, staunchly true to God, refuses in spite of poverty and failing health, and is eventually rewarded by even more wealth than he had initially. The morale of this tale, of course, is that one should be true to God under all circumstances, and redemption will come eventually.

An interesting point is that Satan is working by permission from God, not as a separate, opposing entity. Being true to God also implies being true to his teachings, the Ten Commandments etc. Those were good guidelines then and have not lost their value as a moral compass even today. Being a good Jew or a good Christian implies being generally true to these guidelines. Muhammad, born and raised in pagan Arabia, never talked of these and personally broke most of them, as recorded in the Sirat (Ibn Ishaq & Al-Tabari). The Ten Commandments are not generally used in Islam, and as Muhammad violated most, if not all, of them, should be proof that Islam is not an Abrahamic religion, despite claims to the contrary.

The Satanic Verses

Satan earns a few mentions in the life of Muhammad. The first is at the incident known as “The Satanic Verses”. This takes place after Muhammad had been mocking the Meccans for eight years for their paganism and their false gods, calling them to worship the one god he worships. This is interesting, not least because the Meccans had been worshipping Allah for generations before Muhammad – see for instance the chapter on Muhammads’ 5th generation forefather Qusayy (al-Tabari VI pages 19-26).

The events are set in motion by the Quraysh:

Al-Tabari VI p. 106-107:

Quraysh promised the Messenger of Allah that they would give him so much wealth that he would become the richest man in Mecca, would give him as many wives as he wanted in marriage, and would submit to his commands.
One may consider this the ultimate in Satanic temptation for a holy man: Money, sex and power – the core objects of worldly desire.

Al-Tabari VI p. 107:

They said, “This is what we will give you, Muhammad, so desist from reviling our gods and do not speak evilly of them. If you will not do so, we offer you one means which will be to your advantage and to ours.” “What it is?” he asked. They said, “You will worship our gods, al-Lat and al-Uzza, for a year, and we shall worship your god for a year.” “Let me see what revelation comes to me from my Lord, he replied.
Remarkably, Muhammad chooses to consider their offer. And he refers to ‘my Lord’, not Allah, as the source of revelation. That is less mysterious than it would seem, however, for the Meccans were already worshipping Allah. The distinction is made clear in the revelation quoted in response:

Al-Tabari VI p. 107:

Say: O disbelievers! I worship not what you worship; nor do you worship what I worship. And I shall not worship that which you worship, nor will you worship that which I worship. To you your religion, and to me my religion.
It is not made quite clear who has which religion. We know with reasonable certainty (see the chapter on Qusayy mentioned previously) that the Meccans through generations were practising worship of Allah and the other idols of the Kaaba, were in charge of the rituals of pilgrimage (Hajj & Umra) that we know as part of Islam today, including details such as the standing (‘mawqif’) at Arafat, the dispersal from Mina, and stoning the ‘jimar’ (in Islam considered the Devil) at sunset. Muhammad, who swore that he never participated in pagan rituals, is not making the details of his religion clear.

The reconciliation proceeds in spite of these differences: Continue Reading →

Chinese science probes the genetic roots of IQ, also explores IQ and geography.

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Thank god that at least one culture with a healthy sense of scientific inquiry is not self-hobbled by political correctness, where truth takes a back seat to what political philosophy requires to be true. H/T to Fjordman for finding this excellent article from the Economist, I very much look forward to the highly predictible results of this investigation. For those who cannot wait, I would suggest preparing yourselves for it by reading the excellent book, ‘Human Accomplishment’ by Charles Murray which does a historical enquiry of all human achievement in order to know the same thing.

Below, an excerpt from the Economist:

But the organisation is involved in even more controversial projects. It is about to embark on a search for the genetic underpinning of intelligence. Two thousand Chinese schoolchildren will have 2,000 of their protein-coding genes sampled, and the results correlated with their test scores at school. Though it will cover less than a tenth of the total number of protein-coding genes, it will be the largest-scale examination to date of the idea that differences between individuals’ intelligence scores are partly due to differences in their DNA.

Dr Yang is also candid about the possibility of the 1,000-genome project revealing systematic geographical differences in human genetics—or, to put it politically incorrectly, racial differences. The differences that have come to light so far are not in sensitive areas such as intelligence. But if his study of schoolchildren does find genes that help control intelligence, a comparison with the results of the 1,000-genome project will be only a mouse-click away.

At the moment this frenetic activity is paid for mostly by regional development grants and loans from state-owned Chinese banks, but Dr Yang hopes to go properly commercial. The Hong Kong operation will work partly as a contractor, and Mr Wong hopes to persuade biologists around the world to send their samples in and have them sequenced there rather than relying on their own universities to do the sequencing. Whether the BGI’s researchers can turn their mass-produced DNA sequences into new scientific insights and bankable products remains to be seen, but the world is watching.

An open letter to Burak Obama on NASA’s new role

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Here is an excellent bit from Canada Free Press:

NASA Unveils New Plan for Muslims in Outer Space

By Daniel Greenfield  Tuesday, July 6, 2010

imageBarack H. Obama
666 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington, DC 20006

Dear Sir,

I cannot tell you how much we appreciate your budget cuts, your cancellation of the space shuttle and any replacement launch vehicle for it, forcing us to rely on Russian Soyuz ships and their space program, which can’t even seem to dock with the ISS Space Station.

Your wise decision in this regard, as well as your cancellation of any return trip to the moon, has caused us to reevaluate many of our programs, including the search for intelligent life on earth. We understand of course that space exploration must take a backseat to more important matters, such as bailing out the car companies and banks who contributed to your campaign. And of course the White House entertainment budget. Your historic actions since taking office have truly challenged us as an agency. We can only hope to one day be able to return the favor.

After carefully reviewing your new priority for NASA, to reach out to Muslims and make them feel good about “their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering”, which consisted mainly of ripping off Greek and Indian science, and passing it off as their own, we have developed a comprehensive plan for utilizing the talents and abilities of Muslims to further the goals of this nation’s goals space program, which you so articulately described as “That Outer Spacey Thing”.

Please click here for the rest:

Michael Coren: Bat Ye’or and Sam Solomon

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By the way, both these excellent speakers as well as David G. Littman will be speaking live in Ottawa Canada at the National Archives Theatre on Wellington St. 7:00 PM June 7th don’t miss it. This will be such an important evening.

Bill Warner: Some excellent insights on mockery and Islam

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28 May from Political Islam.

Mohammed’s Kartoon Kafirs

Mohammed’s Kartoon Kafirs

by Kenneth Roberts

May 28, 2010

In the TV sitcom ‘Green Acres’, Oliver Wendell Douglas, a New York attorney runs for public office against the popular incumbent. A rumor starts, suggesting that Douglas had been debarred as a lawyer. Though not true, the rural folk keep repeating the lie during the campaign, until everyone accepts it as an established fact… and besides, it’s highly amusing to repeat the slander. Candidate Douglas is frustrated beyond endurance. Even though he is an accomplished attorney, he doesn’t stand a chance against this entrenched prejudice.

In the Koran, Mohammed uses the same technique. All sorts of things in the Koran are no more than cartoonish misrepresentations of people and other religions, but Moslems have no problem accepting them as established facts, merely because Mohammed said so and repeated them over and over, giving them divine authority… and besides, Mohammed’s caricatures are highly amusing! Cartoons work. Hyperbole works. They entertain. They work viscerally by circumventing the intellect and appealing directly to the emotions through laughter and sneering mockery. A thing doesn’t have to be true to be fun!

Mocking outsiders is fun! It puts ‘them’ down, puts ‘us’ above them and thus dehumanizes ‘them’. ‘We’ get control of ‘them’.

According to Mohammed, not only do kafir-subhumans deserve to be mocked, but they basically lack a right to share the earth with Moslems. They are on earth by the kind permission and mercy of Moslems who magnanimously restrain themselves from removing the kafirs altogether. By mocking their legitimate overlords (the Moslems), kafirs lose their right to exist on earth. That is the Sunna, the example, of Mohammed.

In the TV episode, lawyer Douglas starts shouting, ‘I was not debarred!’ but no one hears him over the howls of bemused laughter. Mohammed discovered how effective laughing at one’s opponents could be. He mocked all who didn’t follow him, starting with the Jews, calling them sons of pigs and apes, and at other times calling them ‘donkeys carrying the Taurat’. Mohammed refused to pronounce it ‘Torah’. He distorted the names of people in the Bible as well, no doubt to make them sound funny. He told humiliating stories about Biblical heroes. Abraham had a humorous scrotal hernia. Talking rocks stole Abraham’s clothes and ran away with them. Solomon bends over and overhears the language of ants. Trees, clouds and other objects in nature come alive and speak. Such imagery could come out of Tom and Jerry, but it is there in Mohammed’s holy book revealed by his god, who only communicated with Mohammed. Mohammed also hired writers to lampoon his enemies in limericks. Mohammed could not take a joke at his own expense. No! Mohammed’s narcissism was sacred! And poking fun at it was an unforgivable act of high treason punishable by death! He had writers assassinated who lampooned him.

Of course, as with other matters, Mohammed gave himself a monopoly on cartoons. He wanted his opponents to be unarmed in the matter of satirizing him…as do pious Moslems today. Today, Moslems claim the right to satirize Jews, Americans, the British, the Pope and anyone else. But no one may satirize them. Moslems place themselves and their collective offended narcissism above comment. To criticize Moslems is an act of high treason against our divinely-appointed overlords!

We are never told why Mohammed’s narcissism needs defending more than another’s narcissism. We are merely told that Mohammed taught his followers to defend his narcissism by assassinating critics…and that this is confirmed in Islamic law. Continue Reading →

Playlist of Bernard Lewis

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Thanks to Grauthode here is an excellent set of lectures by Bernard Lewis, one of the worlds foremost experts on the middle east. Each one of these is quite refreshing in it’s candour, and is a pleasure to listen to. This is hours and hours of material. But if you can get through it all, you may have an answer handy to most common myths and misconceptions about the Middle east, and any Arab-Israeli conflict fictions flung your way. Well worth watching one a day.

Some articles about the trial in NYC

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It would appear that Obama has bowed to reality again and decided against having the trial of KSM in New York. I have to admire that. With a few more policy adjustments in the face of what is actually rational, Obama may look a lot like George W. at the end of the day. Meanwhile, here are a couple of rather interesting articles on why having this trial in New York is a bad idea, and what sort of people the detainees at Guantanamo really are.

First, from Michelle Malkin on the trial currently underway of an Al Queda suspect who is a microbiologist and was likely planning an attack on the US of a rather high magnitude, with the intention of doing as much harm and causing as much death as her skills as a graduate biologist could create.

Second, the personal story from the New York Post of a security guard at Guantanamo and how he was attacked and who resides there.

Wonderful video of Dutch people protesting for Geert.

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This is heart warming. Maybe the Dutch aren’t such Dodo’s after all. I mean Dodo not in the sense of stupid, but in fact the Dodo was a very friendly and curious, trusting bird who in fact which was slaughtered into extinction, ironically by Dutch sailors, because they couldn’t resist walking up to them to see what all the fuss was.
Maybe Islam is the revenge of the Dodo. But in any case, its wonderful to see these ordinary folk of all ages come out and support freedom as personified by Geert Wilders. They have my deepest and most sincere affection, dodo jokes notwithstanding.