Leave Those Gays Alone

First of all I want to say that I’m neither gay nor lesbian. And I’m not saying this because I’m ashamed of homosexuality, but because this is a fact. I believe in personal freedom to sexual preference. And I believe that there should be no law to control gays or to put them under the microscope. Animals have their sexual preferences, should we also put laws to govern the animal kingdom?
Few months back, our genius Members of the Parliament decreed a law to punish gays. And no one raised a finger against them. Some highly posted officials in the government who are publicly known to be gays even approved of that decree!!! Gays are portrayed on TV programs and negotiated as if they are dangerous villains, or problems that need solutions. What possible dangers could gays inflict on the society? Reduce reproduction rate of humankind? There are many who stayed single and never got married, should we also treat them as dangers to the society? Are we terrified from the spread of venereal diseases? In this case then we should abolish all types of sexual activities. And who on earth would abide to that? Isn’t our theologically based system of education more dangerous to the society? Why no one protested to that?

Isn’t it time to raise a stop sign to hinder the speed of those hardliners?

Gays have their own needs, their own agonies, and above all they are human, why should we treat them as outcasts? Why should we encourage their seclusion in the society? If homosexuality was not natural, then it would have been demolished throughout history. No law or religion until today was able to demolish it. The more logical approach is to accept it, to give gays a chance to voice their opinion and shorten the bridge between them and others. We need to understand them more, know their needs and help them solve their problems. Shunning them out would only creating more psychologically ruined individuals. And don’t think that they are away from home, one of them might be just under your nose and you are oblivion about it.
I have many gay friends, and I have listened to their stories that were told in a hush-hush atmosphere. I also have gay friends that under family and religious pressures married and had sad lives; they brought miseries to themselves and caused miseries to others. When will we stop treating homosexuality as a problem? When will we stop perceiving gays as castaways?

Gays are the most sensitive and loving humans I’ve ever known, of which most are very educated and productive individuals.

Watch this program and see how they are cornered, and for once; think about it apart from religious predilection.

Lamenting God

They said
You were dead

How dare You not
Inform me
How dare You not
Answer my letters
My cries
My endless devotion
My humble humiliation

How dare You
Betray me

Those nights I spent washing Your feet with tears
Those nights I begged forgiveness at Your door

For the sins
I never committed
For the oath
I never broke
For the heart
I willingly slaughtered
And presented
To You

How many times You ignored
My slavery at Your service
How dare You be
So petty

They said
You were dead
Yet no one attended
Your funeral

Infidel/ Review

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Let me first introduce the book then tell you my own opinion about it. And the best introduction, I believe, is to quote some of of the author’s writings to avoid any misunderstanding. The book consists of 335 pages, hard cover, and was published in 2007. It is a personal memoir in which the author is introduced as:
“Ayyan Haris Ali was born in Somalia, was raised Muslim, and spent her childhood and young adulthood in Africa and Saudi Arabia. In 1992, Haris Ali came to Netherlands as a refugee, escaping a forced marriage to a distant cousin she had never met. She learned Dutch and worked as an interpreter in abortion clinics and shelters for battered women. After earning her college degree in political science, she worked for the Labor party. She denounced Islam after the September 11 terrorist attacks and now fights for the rights of Moslem women in Europe, the enlightenment of Islam, and security in the West”
The author declares that the main purpose of her book is to free Moslem women living in Western societies from the bonds that still enslaved them to their culture, of which most was stemmed from their Islamic upbringing. She also reminds them that they are living in a free world where a human has a value, unlike what they were used to in the countries they migrated from. She promotes full integration into the new society in which they sought refuge from their unjust countries.
This may sound like a feminist movement, yet, it’s not. Ayaan believes that if this integration was possible, tribalism can be diminished, prejudice can be eliminated, and slavery can be abolished for good.

This reminds me of years back when I first came to the United States. And precisely when I moved to Tennessee after I got married. It astonished me then that neither my husband, nor his Moslem friends had any American friends although they spent a considerable time in the States. When I asked why? They replied that Tennesseans are rednecks, they hate strangers. But after living there for a while I was able to make a lot of friends. And to my surprise I found that those rednecks were no different than the warm loving Arabs. They won’t approach strangers, but when you get to befriend them, they are more than family. I was barely a teenager when I got married, and I got pregnant while I was still studying in an Engineering school, which demanded a lot of hard work, and consumed most of my time. My husband also had a two acre house, which was very hard to maintain without the help of maids. And like a typical Kuwaiti, my husband never helped around the house. Not only that, but he constantly brought friends over and made a mess that I had to clean every night I came back from college. Yet, my redneck friends were always there for me, they babysat for me, helped me around the house, and were great company when I was alone, which was most of the time. They even planted my garden. This experience made me realize that it was us who did not like strangers, and not them. It was us who refused to integrate, not them. When my dad came for my graduation, he was surprised that wherever I went people greeted me, while that was not the case with my husband.

Ayaan realized this issue very wittingly, and her efforts to advocate integration is genuine, based on a personal experience. Moslems who migrated to the West demanded that they bring their cultures with them. They have their own schools (madrasas); the soil for instilling tribalism and terrorism in generations to come. They are caved in their own secluded communities, and demanding their own courts of Shareea, on the excuse of freedom. Freedom concept which they utterly handicapped, and from which they eluded their own unjust societies. Female Genital Mutilation is still practiced on kitchen tables without the knowledge of the authorities. Women are beaten by their husbands without the interference of the law, simply because women themselves do not dare to file cases for the fear of Allah. Honor killing is committed without being categorized in police stations as such. Western authorities know this but give it a blind eye for the fear of being labeled as racists. Muslims roar the streets with Islamophobia propaganda with the slightest interference of just law. Freedom of speech is threatened by barbaric murder. In Ayaan’s own words:
“When people say that the values of Islam are compassion, tolerance, and freedom, I look at reality, at real cultures and governments, and I see that it’s simply isn’t so. People in the West swallow this sort of thing because they have learned not to examine the religious or cultures of minorities too critically, for the fear of being called racist. It fascinates them that I am not afraid to do so.”
And pay attention that these are the words of a member of the parliament of Holland who worked hard to instill those beliefs.
Ayaan also had a hidden message to all Muslims of the world, she pinpointed that the reason for their backwardness in all life arenas is Islam itself and she backed up her claims with verses of Quran and Hadeath (traditions):
“My central, motivation concern is that women in Islam are oppressed. That oppression of women causes Muslim women and Muslim men, too, to lag behind the West. It creates a culture that generates more backwardness with every generation. It would be better for everyone-for Muslims above all-if this situation could change”
She also noticed that the main source of most Muslim’s deportation of terror in the current century is Saudi Arabia, not overlooking its role in Moslem Brotherhood spread in the world, of which she herself was a member before escaping to Holland:
“Saudi Arabia is the source of Islam and its quintessence. It is the place where the Muslim religion is practiced in its purest form, and it is the origin of much of the fundamentalist vision that has, in my lifetime, spread far beyond its borders. In Saudi Arabia, every breath, every step we took, was infused with concepts of purity or sinning, and with fear. Wishful thinking about the peaceful tolerance of Islam cannot interpret away this reality: hands are still cut off, women still stoned and enslaved, just as the Prophet Mohammad decided centuries ago…the kind of thinking I saw in Saudi Arabia, and among the Muslim Brotherhood in Kenya and Somalia, is incompatible with human rights and liberal values. It preserves a feudal mind-set based on tribal concepts of honor and shame. It rests on self-deception, hypocrisy, and double standards. It relies on the technological advances of the West while pretending to ignore their origin in Western thinking. This mind-set makes transition to modernity very painful for all who practice Islam.”
And about her denouncing Islam she says:
“I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason.”

Now after this long introduction, which I thought necessary, I would like to talk about the book itself. This book was one of few books that took only four days for me to finish. And this is a very short time considering all the other chores I had. I simply couldn’t part from it. It was like a thriller, a fiction with all of its twists and turns of action, yet, it was real. At times I felt angry, at other times I felt sad. While at some times I felt admiration for a woman who escaped an arranged marriage, a brutal society, and sought asylum in a country; penniless. And from scrubbing floors she raised to a member of the parliament. Her insistency to continue her education and get a masters degree in Political Science with all the hardship that she faced was really an inspiration. She was a woman, or rather a black woman in a white society, all alone, and she made it to the top. She did not forget her kin, nor forgot her roots; rather, she made it her case. This case that risked her security and privacy, as well as the loss of her friend, movie director Theo van Gogh, as a result of a joint work in a 10 min movie “Submission”.

This is the film, but please watch it after iftar if you are fasting.

And this is what she said about that film:
“ When I approached Theo to help me make “Submission”, I had three messages to get across. First, men, and even women, may look up and speak to Allah: it is possible for believers to have a dialogue with God and look closely at Him. Second, the rigid interpretation of Quran in Islam today causes intolerable misery for women. Through globalization, more and more people who hold these ideas have traveled to Europe with the women they own and brutalize, and it is no longer possible for Europeans and other Westerners to pretend that severe violations of human rights occur only far away. The third message is the film’s final phrase: ”I may no longer submit.” It is possible to free oneself- to adapt one’s faith, to examine it critically, and to think about the degree to which that faith is itself at the root of oppression.”

The book is also very educational for us Kuwaiti women who are new into politics. Now if you think that I said too much about this book, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

This book made me think, isn’t it time for us women within the boundaries of terror to speak up? Haven’t we had enough atrocities in Sharee3a courts that legalizes women slavery?
And you men, you too, haven’t you had enough of deprivation of your personal rights? Can’t you see that there is something wrong when your freedom of normal living and loving life is reduced to the boundaries of your rooms? Isn’t it time you speak up before your executioner lashed his last lethal stroke on your bodies? Can’t you see how many Moslems are migrating to the West for a fresh air of freedom? Is this the solution? How many of us can afford that? What about those who can’t afford it? And why should we leave in the first place?
What are we waiting for? What are we afraid of? Being labeled as outcasts in the society? What is this price compared to the highest, most noble goal of freedom?

Isn’t it time to move from the world of faith to the world of reason?

Thoughts

“Thoughts come when they want
Not when we want them” Nietzsche

I saw you atop of me
Wearing your long hair over your shoulders
Scattered, a jumble around your face
You were bigger, full of lust

I loved what I saw
I loved that twitch around the corner of your lips
Smiling
That face
Radiating
That sparkle in your eyes that
Wasn’t there
I loved you the way you
Never been

When did you let your hair grow
Wild, an aura around your face
Sublime
Devine

Was that you atop of me! Or
Was that me beneath! Or
Was I just another spectator of my wildest
Dreams

It wasn’t my fault you weren’t there
Nor yours
It Nietzsche’s
Let’s sue him

Evolution Verses Creationism

Many believe that Albert Einstein shook the world of science with his theory of relativity. Some even went as far as measuring his brain size and comparing it to the size of individuals with average intelligence. Leonardo Da Vinci was also noted for his ingenuity, many people know him as a brilliant artist of the famous “La Gioconda”, more known as “The Mona Lisa”. While in fact he was a prominent educator in all scientific fields, an innovator, an engineer, a musician as well as a writer. He practically was a genius in all fields of sciences, humanities and art.
And with all due respect to those scientists and others who contributed to human civilization, I believe that no scientist ever had reached the ingenuity of Charles Darwin.

But before going into the work that gave Darwin his infamous name, it is worthy to mention that evolution theory and natural selection were not Darwin’s only ingenious work, he had many other writings that contributed immensely to the world of science, especially in the field of biology. Here is a link.

With his book “On the Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection” , Darwin revolutionized the whole concept of human beliefs and shook the ground of humanity till today. No theory has ever lasted under criticism and constant research as much as his did since its publication in 1859. Most of the criticism were, and still are, more theological and political than Scientific, coming from church scientists and political institutions and not scientific communities.
Scientists, in all fields worked for decades, either to prove the theory or to disprove it, only to come out convinced more than ever before that, although Darwin did not have the capabilities of modern science of today, his theory stands as a fact beyond any doubt. A 1996 survey poll found that 99 percent of American scientists accept the theory of evolution. And this is a very high percentage considering the wave of religiosity in the United States in the past few decades.
This notion shed any other misconception especially after the discovery of the genome (DNA), that started ironically by Gregor Mendel, a monk of the Roman Catholic church in 1843. And the discovery of the nucleic acids that started in 1869 by a Swiss biochemist Johann Friedrich Miescher, and was given that name later by another scientist, Richard Altmann in 1889.
And although DNA had made an evolutionary advancement in the fields of medicine and technology, especially in the field of Forensics science, some theologians still do not accept its role in the history of the origin of the species and continue their fights in public courts against it. They call themselves creationists. Check this, and this, and this. Creationists of which many are academics continue their fight not because they have a strong belief in the scriptures, but more for the belief that humans need religion to organize the society, they believe that when people do understand that religion is a myth, they would lose internal control. They also believe that evolution is a cold science that strips man from spirituality, emphasizing that religion is the only source of spirituality. But this argument can be refuted since morality and spirituality are elements of the evolutionary process. Religion only identified moral sentiment, labeled them and codified rules about them. At ancient times people needed organization, morals needed power to keep it under control. And religion did its job at those times when man was less civilized. And religion had its good share in spreading morals among humans, but it also accompanied with it the “bad” that is not fit for this century. With proper education, when people realize that humans are not all good, but an accumulated combination of good and bad, and they develop to take the responsibility of having the bad, or the dark side, under control, then they are participating in the evolution process to a better human beings. No law or religion can deter the bad side if the process did not come from within.
“There is nothing divine about morality; it is a purely human affair.” (Albert Einstein, 1934)
As for spirituality, I will come beck to this point later on.

Evolution defies the old myths in the scriptures of the Judo-Christian-Islamic religion that God created Adam, and from his rib Eve was created. But some clerics tried to be more philosophical by not taking the scriptures literally but allegorically like Pope John Paul II, who announced in October 23, 1996 that it was acceptable for Catholics to believe and teach evolutionism. Others also declared that evolution did not contradict with creationism since, as Aristotle replied to the question of the existence of God” physics showed that ultimately there has to be a first cause, an unmoved mover, which is God”, but those same creationists failed to answer the question, if every cause has a causer, then who created that mover or what provoked Him to cause this move?

Not only that, but the new creationists depended on the theory of Intelligent Design, or more accurately merged with Intelligent Design theorists, assuming that the universe is fine-tuned to the utmost precision, and that simplicity can’t lead to complexity . The designer had made the design first and then created it completely out of nothing. This theory contradicts with the findings of the DNA history and fossil DNA that were found and tested in the species. The DNA provides facts that are accumulated over a span of time. And all the information is blue printed in a text-like strips that can’t go wrong. Any new information is added on top of the old, and any unused ones are deleted ( if you don’t use it, you lose it).

To make this argument simple lets assume the building of a perfect house for a single person (me). A well built house would require future provision, and the architect who would draw his design on a sketch, should bear in mind that I will get married and have three kids in the future (God is omniscient). And accordingly, the house would consist of five bedrooms, at least two bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and so on. And therefore a blue print is produced (DNA), then the house is built. But the DNA history does not show that, instead it shows that my house was first built by having a roof over my head, then came the walls to create a single room. And as my necessities in life advanced, more rooms were built, and others were demolished. In a similar analogy, the creationists’ house is like the cheap commercial houses that one buys in the market and then does the renovations as he sees fit, adding to it or removing from it as necessities arise. But evolution starts from scratch, and as evolution continues, by both mutation and natural selection the DNA is printed, and the blue print is accumulated over a span of a long time. It is also worthwhile here to mention that mutation is random; copies are transmitted from one generation to another. And like the product of a regular copy machine, some copies are good and some others are distorted. While natural selection is not, it depends on the changes that occur in the environment, and the capability of the body to adapt to those changes.
You might say that this does not create a perfect house, but who said that humans are perfect? One look at the handicaps and children with Down’s syndrome should give a hint.
Now where does the Intelligent Design fit into this argument? This is the reason why Intelligent Design is not accepted in science communities, science defines nature, while Intelligent Design connects nature to supernatural powers. There is a gap where evolutionists define as nature and creationist define as God.
There are others who connected between the two, like the pantheisms who believed that God is nature and not that of the personal God in religions, an example of those is Albert Einstein.

And these are some of his quotes:

“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” (Albert Einstein, 1954)

“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”

And I guess here is a perfect time to dwell into spirituality:
Few days back I took a trip with the kids to Las Vegas, the trip was more than nine hours drive. By the time I reached California border with Nevada I was so exhausted and the kids got all grumpy and got on each other’s nerves. But as soon as I crossed the boarders a serene feeling fell over us, the mountain planes of California changed to flat desert, a scent like that of an Indian inscent “Bukhoor” flew in the air. It was so strong to the point that I asked the children if they sprayed any perfume , but they said it was coming from the outside air. The surrounding atmosphere was pitch black except for the shiny enormous numbers of stars above, the reflectors on the street ahead and the occasional flash lights of cars passing by. The scent must have been from the shrubs or the bushes of the desert around; it brought a nostalgic feeling of home that fell over us like magic. For about twenty minutes the children stayed still and quite, watching the stars from the windows. And I fell in an awe-inspiring mood that I only get when practicing Yoga. No one even wanted to listen to the CD that was playing the whole trip. This is spirituality. Nature and its beauty is spirituality, no need for religion to enforce spirituality, spirituality is a propensity that was evolved with time.

The late astronomer Carl Sagan said in the opening scene of Cosmos:

“The universe is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. Our contemplations of the cosmos stir us. There’s a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory of falling a great height. We know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries…The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We’ve begun at last to wonder about our origins, star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps throughout the cosmos. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”

Science is a tedious business, ever changing and self-correcting. Too bad Darwin did not live to see the day when his much debated theory became a fact.

Recommended readings and DVDs
– The Making of the Fittest, DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of evolution
– God, the Failed Hypothesis
– Why Darwin Matters
– The Selfish-Gene
– The God Delusion
– Evolution
– Cosmos
An update

Islam as Percieved by an Arab Intellectual

I happened to pass across a very interesting Article written by Dr, Wafa Sultan (click here). I translated it here in reply to the commentators of my last two posts, especially the Moslems who accused me of not knowing Islam as it is. To those I have to say that I spent most of my life in that faith. And the worst thing that ever happened to me was to find out how foolish I was all those years. It would make me happy and give me security to know that I have a million dollar in my bank account. But it would be shocking to know that I’m in dept when I check my bank account. Fantasy is something and reality is something else.
Another reason why I went through the trouble of translation is to expose the real face of Islam to the new converts who have been deceived by apologists who tricked them into believing that Islam is the religion of peace as its name conveys, and who were led to believe that terrorism is the work of individuals who misinterpret the scripture, and that it has nothing to do with Islam. No Abrahamic religion could be dubbed as a religion of peace; Judaism had its peak of violence in antiquity, followed by Christianity of the mideaval ages and ended with Islam today. But if humanity could afford wars on those times, with the advancement of technology and the nuclear weapons, it cannot afford to do that today. If we do not destroy religion, then it will destroy us all soon, and there would be no one, not a living organism on earth to pick up the pieces. May be then the cockroaches would evolve into a different kind of being, and I hope that they would be smarter than our species.
Many advised me against writing posts about religion (especially Islamic issues) since it would only create hate against me personally, they say that the believer would not change his/her mind, and all what I’m doing is a waste of time. This reminds me of some years back when I first graduated and worked for KAC, my boss expected me to read newspapers all day, and all he cared about was my punctuality. Yet, I had ambitions, my work was to do research, and I insisted on doing my job. And when one of the companies that KAC had contracts with sent me a thank you letter for a research I submitted, my boss said: what are you trying to do, free Kuwaiti girls? I still don’t understand what is the connection between what I did and his line, but I realized that when you expose the truth, people hate you because truth always hurts; yet, any effort, no matter how small, has an echo that would resonate with time. It is not enough to watch TV and feel sorry for the innocent souls that are butchered by the dozen every day in Iraq, Algeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Palestine, we all have a duty to contribute in peace, we have a duty to stop the nonsense by pinpointing the problem so that the public won’t be blindly led by politicians. May be I have an ambition to make a difference, and may be someday when everyone else tries to do the same, humanity can be saved.
But why Islam you say?
Simple, I do not see Buddhists, Christians or Jews blowing themselves up at the orders of their God, and I don’t see any of their families celebrating their deaths, but I see Moslem families do that. Another thing is that I am a Moslem by birth and it is natural for me to know about my religion more than any other religion.
But if you think that I’m biased, you are very far from the truth. I’m against all organized religions that call for the annihilation of humanity. If I were to rewrite the article that Dr. Wafa wrote, I would replace the first line by “religion is a cyst”, and off course I mean here the judo-Christian-Islamic religions. For if it weren’t for the loads of myths involved in Hinduism and Buddhism, I would have sworn that their scripts were the words of God.
I have to note that the translation is not as good as the original article; Dr. Wafa has an amazing command of the Arabic language. I tried to stick to the original text as much as I could; at times it was not easy, therefore the translation is not word-by-word. And I have to warn you beforehand that the article is disturbing, but nevertheless, it exposes the truth of which many of us are in too much denial to admit.

Here is the translation:

When Will That Cyst Burst?
Islam is like a cyst; the world would not be cured unless it’s burst.
Jessica is a psychiatric patient who spent many years of her life in a mental hospital. Among other disorders, Jessica was suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The symptoms of this disorder could take many forms of obsessive persistence of ideas or behavioral patterns that the patient can’t get rid of. A patient might have an obsession to draw a knife and cut his/her hand, or to wash his/her hands whenever he/she touches anything, or he may show persistence to always leave the room with his/her back to the door. Or open the door of his/her car and close it successively in a systematic process, and so forth.
I will not elaborate more in such disorder, but I would like to point out that Jessica’s obsession was in gathering towels and constantly folding them in a certain order. Her action tired the laborers of that mental hospital; she used to steal all the towels from the ward and rearrange them is a special pattern in her room.
Her doctor tried all the conventional medical remedies, but to no avail. So he decided to “cure her with her own disease” as the Arabic proverb goes.
He started by sending her many towels everyday with each meal. In addition, he ordered that many other towels be left at her door once in a while. And when the number of the towels in her room exceeded 600, the nurse who took her breakfast one morning was in for a surprise. As soon as the nurse entered her room, Jessica pushed her outside screaming, “Get out of my face and take your towels with you.”
The American existence in Iraq did not spark the fire of terrorism; it merely blew the ashes off the already burning ember. Terrorism is not new in this region, but it was only delayed for centuries. In fact, the dictatorial leaders of the Islamic world had suppressed violence with the use of violence, but they did not find a solution for it. And the best who diagnosed this situation is the Arabic poet Nazar Alqabani in his poem “a Letter to an Arab Leader”:
I kill you so you won’t kill me
On a span of 14 centuries Moslems are obsessed with terrorism until it became engraved on their genes. And it became very hard, if not impossible to deter their tendencies to violence in healthy and righteous ways.
It might not sound very humanistic to say that explosion is the only answer, but unfortunately, this is the bitter reality. No other solution I could foresee except civil wars that would demolish land as well as a lot of souls including the innocent ones.
Moslems’ rooms are not yet filled with towels, and there is no cure but the disease itself.
Someday they would eventually end up screaming at each other: enough, enough, we are so sick of killings and wars; we want to live in peace. But when will they reach this limit? No doubt that the road would have to pass through seas of blood!
It was not a surprise for me to get supporting mail from Algeria and Iraq, the rooms in those two countries are filled with towels, people in the aforementioned countries do not want more blood to be spelt. News from Algeria announces that tens of thousands are leaving Islam from time to time. And that’s no surprise! Ten years of accumulating towels cramped the space for any decent living, people are shouting “ take your Islam and leave us, we are sick of torture and killing”.
The Islamic dictionary is full of violent words and the call for violence. Islamic rituals demand that the Moslems should repeat this language over and over in a monotonous fashion, demolishing the role of their minds and depriving their souls of spirituality.
In all the languages of the world and the religions of earth, praying is considered a sacred moment of liaison between man and his creator, man talks and God listens, and the chosen language of man gives those moments their aesthetic and spiritual bliss.
But in Islam the matter is different. Moslem’s prayer consists of repetitive rites, preprogrammed to prohibit him from using his own language. This programmed liaison becomes automatic over time to the point that humans lose their sense of spirituality.
How would a person feel his spirituality when he repeats in his prayer, sitting or standing a language (of Quran) like these:
-Those whose (potion) is not Wrath, And Who go not astray.
-From the mischief of the Whisperer, who withdraws, who whispers into the hearts of Mankind.
-Therefore to thy Lord turn in Prayer and Sacrifice. For he who hateth thee, He will be cut off.
-From the mischief of created things.
-His wife shall carry the wood as fuel. A twisted rope of palm leaf fiber round her neck.
-Verily Man is in loss.
-And what will explain to thee that which Breaks to Pieces? the Fire of God kindled.
-And He sent against them Flights of Birds, Striking them with stones of baked clay.
And so forth of the horrifying dry desert language that deprives the soul from any spirituality, and the mind from any creativity.
I was a new settler in the United States when I first received an invitation to the farewell party from my daughter’s kindergarten after her graduation. In that party, the governor of that city finished his speech by saying: allow me to start this occasion by a prayer.
A prayer?
I did not feel comfortable and thought that he was going to impose his own religion and rituals on the attendees. Prayer in my understanding is a set of programmed rituals that no one has the right to change, but I was surprised when he said:
We thank you Lord for those innocent faces that you sent to us. We thank you Lord for this beautiful place. We thank you Lord for facilitating for the families of our children to come despite of their busy schedules. We thank you Lord for that pizza that we’ll share together. God bless those children, and take their hands, for these are the makers of the future. Then he finished his prayer by thanking us all.
And from that day, my understanding of prayer changed from that which I inherited from my own father.
Spirituality and not religion is the essence of the Buddhist faith. This faith that strives to bring the soul beyond any religion and soar with it to spiritual heights until it unites with the absolute universe and becomes a part of it.
There are three traits that a person should possess to reach that height of spirituality:
Truthfulness
Compassion
Tolerance
Where are those traits when it comes to Islam and Moslems?
The main thing that deprived a Moslem from his spirituality is his perception of others. A man can’t unite with his creator as long as he carries a speckle of hate in his heart towards his fellow brother. When man lives through constant fights with others he loses his spirituality. Imagine a man in his most sacred moment, while he unites with his creator, begging him to: “give us victory over the infidels”?!!
What kind of victory is he seeking?!!
The most honorary battle a man can pursue is the evil in his own soul, and not in those of the others. If a man can better himself and seek the brotherhood of the other, humanity would be saved.
One of the sad events that were engraved in my memory since I was a little child was our neighbor Majid who had a wife and a bunch of children. Majid was an evil being and loved to cause pain to others. His presence in the neighborhood was a source of terror in the hearts of all the neighbors. My mom once planted a small tree in front of our house, her love to that tree increased with every leaf it bloomed. More than once I heard her talking to that tree and it’s blooming flowers: good morning love, God bless, he who flawlessly created you!
One morning I heard my mother exasperatingly screaming while she was checking her tree from the window. She then ran outside and embraced the remains of the tree and continued screaming: God may kill that who killed you. The branches bowed after loosing any chance to live. And the flowers withered after leaving behind the spring of life. My mother then swooped a handful of soil to her nostrils and continued screaming: he spilt gasoline on her to quench his hate. Women in the neighborhood gathered to give condolences and to assure her speculations. They have seen him killing that tree and no one dared to stop him. I have no doubts that Majid was a devout person who prayed in private and in public ”God assure us victory over the infidels”, and God granted his wish over a helpless tree. I wished he prayed to his God to grant him victory over his selfishness and tyranny, and I wished that God quenched the fire of hate in his soul.
When a man finds a wallet on the floor that contains some money and the identification card of its owner, his reaction varies according to his ability to conquer evil in his heart. He chooses to return it when his evil in under control, and he may chose to keep it when he is under his evil’s control. But he’d hesitate between the two when his evil remains undecided.
We wouldn’t have been cursed by the dictatorial leaders (who swallowed the chicken and the egg, as well as, the camel and its trace) if Moslems prayed to their God to grant them victory over their own evils and not over the infidels.
Louise L. Fay, the renowned American writer said” What I gave out in the form of words would return to me as experience”. Our language shapes our experiences, and the language that provoked us to “kill the infidels” for fourteen centuries had killed us through that span of time.
To evaluate any society we need to use a microscope. Otherwise, it is not possible to see its positive and negative elements through the naked eye. When Moslems live in societies other than theirs, you’d think that they are heaven-sent angels, and that they are the descendants of Plato and his immortal Republic, while their societies are cursed with cancer to the bone.
One of my readers from Dubai wrote me saying: it is very easy to hitch a prostitute in any of Dubai’s streets in the front of an audience, but they have blocked your site, and all my trials to get to your site had failed, do you have a solution?
This does not surprise me a bit, their holy book allowed them to f$%k whoever they like of women, but it forbade them to open their minds on issues such as “it would hurt you to see (Quranic verse)”. What could hurt more than the writings that expose their dirty laundry? What society believes in a verse as its constitution such as:
-But force not your maids to prostitution when they desire chastity, in order that ye may make a gain in goods of this life. But if anyone compels them, yet, after such compulsion, if God Oft Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Is this the way to forbid prostitution? “Force not”? What if they liked prostitution? And why God did not say “forbid” instead of “force not”? “When they desire chastity”, what if they didn’t? “If God Oft Forgiving”, who would God forgive? The man who enforced the woman into prostitution or the woman who was enforced to abide? Is this the language of prohibition? Where is the clearness in a book that claims to be infallible and “clear”?
Some accused me of not reading the Quran in its context and historical events, and that I only pick sentences and phrases, what historical events? Isn’t every phrase born in the moment it is said? Where is the fallacy in picking sentences and phrases? Studies have assured that semantics are not less important than phrases. Is there any difference in saying: I’m not sick today” and: I feel well today?
Off course not. But the difference is that each sentence leaves a different impact on its beholder. When you say: I’m not sick today, your subconscious mind hears those words and believes them, and the result is a weak immune system that leads to sickness (This relationship between the subconscious mind, the nervous system and the immune system is called “neuropsychoimmunology”), but when your subconscious mind hears: I feel well today, it also believes it and the result is a stronger immune system, and ergo, better health. Therefore, as much as we care to know the meaning of the phrase, we also care to know its impact on our subconscious mind.
At the entrance of JetBlue airlines in one of the United States airports I saw a big poster that bewitched me, the poster read: don’t say goodbye, say see you later. Both phrases meant separation, but the difference between the impacts of each on us is tremendous. When you say “goodbye” you feel melancholic, but saying, “see you later” brings happiness to your heart although the meaning of both phrases is almost the same.
Let’s see what a poet said in describing his beloved while she was crying:
She rained pearls of Narcissus and watered
The flowers, and bit on the jujube in the cold
She was crying, but the poet made you feel happy with his description of her action when she was crying.
Another poet describes his beloved’s eyes while she was crying:
Your eyes are a sea when I wander on their shores
Screaming oh lashes, save me from drowning
Screaming…save me…are expressions that make you feel sad despite the aesthetic presentation.
A sick barren language that created in them a sick mind and a barren thought victimized Moslems. The word “killing and its derivatives” are repeated more than twenty times in Sura Albaqara, one of the verses says:
-And say not of those who are slain in the way of God: they are dead nay, they are living, though ye perceive not.
Why shouldn’t man live in the way of God instead of being killed in the way of God? Wouldn’t it have been better if the verse blessed the right to live? Something like:
And say to those who live in the way of God, blessed be your life, you are of the immortals.
If the verse came in the latter form instead of the one given in the scripture, would there be any chance to see a Palestinian mother shrilling cries of joy when her son, the suicide bomber explodes the dynamite around his waist and shatters his body to pieces? Would there have been any chance to hear her say: I have two other sons and I wish the same fate for them? Would anyone explode himself in a village in northern Iraq killing more than five hundred Kurdish citizens without any respect for their right to live? Definitely not.
Moslem’s mind is programmed to kill; it’s not programmed to love life. A language that blesses killing in “the way of God” does not give birth to innovative minds equipped to produce novelty in life. Planting is creativity, construction is creativity, painting is creativity, singing is creativity, debating is creativity, writing is creativity and education is creativity. Every aspect in life is novelty and creativity. Rather life itself is creativity. And there is no creativity in a language that professionalizes killing.
That’s why we never skilled in planting, construction, painting, singing, debating, writing or education. Nor we skilled in any aspect of life because our subconscious mind was programmed to kill life.
Mind consists of two parts; the conscious and the subconscious part. The conscious is the reality through which we see what’s going on around us. But the subconscious is the steering wheel behind the stage that works in an impalpable or unseen fashion.
The conscious mind receives information from the environment through sensory cells; it then transmits it to the subconscious part where it goes through studies and analysis. And through this process the mind reaches important conclusions, on which a person builds his decisions in life.
When we experience a difficult situation, for example, the conscious mind feels this experience and sends it to the subconscious mind. Then the subconscious analyses the situation and reaches a conclusion. Then it sends the analyzed version back to the conscious mind, so it would make the decision toward that situation. In the process, the subconscious mind stores the pain and the conclusions in memory. When a person undergoes a similar situation in the future, analysis need not be repeated again, the subconscious always sends the old conclusions automatically to the conscious mind. And hence, the first years of human life remain to be the most important, for most programming is done through that stage, then the subconscious mind becomes a station that transmits all the previously analyzed information, that were stored, automatically without the need for much more analysis.
A child of four was asked by a Saudi TV broadcaster on an interview if she liked the Jews, her answer was; no. When the reported asked her the reason, she replied: because they are apes and pigs.
The subconscious mind of that child was programmed to connect between the Jews on one hand, and apes and pigs on the other. And this subconscious mind is equipped with a certain pain through this linkage. And through that pain the subconscious mind has reached to a certain conclusion. This kid won’t be able to take any decision in her subsequent years outside of the boundaries of this equation. And based on this argument, I see that connecting Palestinian case with Moslems’ position towards the Jews, especially those Moslems living in the Western countries is a lie that would not lead them anywhere. The crises with the Jews is a crises that was created with Quran, and was programmed in the minds of its readers on a span of fourteen centuries.
When the subconscious is programmed, an unseen barrier is formed to separate between the subconscious mind and the conscious mind. This barrier pushes any other thought that is not in harmony with the subconscious mind and deters it from entering the conscious mind. The person whose mind was programmed to link between Jews and apes/pigs would not accept any idea that contradicts this link, even if his personal experiences lead him to see the contrary. In the States a lot of Moslems tell me their stories and personal experiences with the Jews. And they always assure me that Jews are loyal in their jobs and honest. They don’t deceive nor steal. This is their personal experiences with the Jews. But the barrier that was formed between their conscious and subconscious minds controls their decisions and positions towards the Jews. And I do not think that the programming towards the Christens or other ethnic groups differs much, but the Palestinian case always brings the Jews to the surface of the conscious mind.
When the Pakistani terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured he said: I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl.

Did he behead him because of a dispute over the Palestinian case? Or did he do that because his conscious and subconscious minds were programmed around the link between the Jews and the apes/pigs tale? Didn’t his Quran say:
-And well ye know those amongst you shall transgressed in the matter of Sabbath: we said to them: be ye apes, despised and rejected.
This is what the book of Moslems says, while the Jewish Einstein says: God does not play dice. i.e. God precisely organized this universe according to equations and laws. Creates beauty because He loves beauty. It is impossible for Him to disfigure his creation in the form of an ape. The equation of creating a man is different than the equation of creating an ape.
This is what the Moslem Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said, and this is what the Jewish Einstein said. What kind of God disfigures Einstein and leaves Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to humanity?
I have noticed lately a new phenomenon. My mail has been full with Moslems’ letters that condemned my attack on Islam, but in a very civilized fashion that I have never experienced before. And the strange thing is that most of the letters denied Sunna and traditions, and claimed that Islam is only Quran.
Off course this phenomena brings a glimpse of hope. And the hope is not in fixing Islam, but in destroying it. It’s the first step along a thorny road. Or rather, it’s the easiest step. The respectful language that dominated those letters conveyed to me that they have started to wake up. Their denials of Sunna and tradition conveyed to me that they have started to understand. It’s a stage that a person has to go through before screaming that the piercing in his garment became larger than the laceration. So, till when will those Moslems stickle that Sunna and tradition is a bunch of lies, and how would they prove that Quran is a garment without tear.
Quran says:
-Nor does he say (the prophet) of Desire, it is no less than inspiration sent down to him.
Then why didn’t God not save his “the not saying of desire” prophet from forgery and fabrication?
An Australian intellectual historian once told me:
I read Mohammad’s life. Oh my God, it’s traumatizing
If he read the Quran, would he wake up from his trauma?
Islam is a very ragged garment, it’s demolition starts with deleting the sunna and tradition. But its end is when those Quranists discover that the laceration they have in their hands is not enough to med the piercing in their book

Does Quran Have All the Answers?

In my trip to Los Angeles two weeks ago I met a sweet educated Egyptian lady who lived most of her life in the States. And while we were having different conversations at the dinner table, religion subject popped up, in which I did not want to participate, but was forced to announce that I was a skeptic. When she asked why, I replied that I’m searching for the truth. And apparently my answer shocked her and she hastily replied that why should you look for the truth when Quran gives you all the answers. When we resumed our conversation about how that statement was not true, my best friend, who is a religious person and who was sitting at the table with us, cut in the conversation and she changed the subject. She did not want to hear my elaboration about the misconception of that statement.
It appears to me, from my conversation to many devout individuals, like the lady above, and many others on the Net (educated as well as others), that Moslems read their scriptures emotionally as a ritual. They never look deeply into the meaning of the words, nor ponder on its consequences on the society (I was a devout person once and I did the same). But if one is looking for the truth, one should take all emotions aside, and read the scriptures critically. And I believe that except for some vague parts, Quran is a very straightforward text and anyone with a moderate education in Arabic language would understand it. There’s also the hadiths (traditions) and the tafseer (interpretation) books that supports Quran in case there were any misunderstanding. And therefore relying on the contemporary clerics to give you the answers, as was advised by the lady above, would be foolish, especially when most of them are either illiterate or naturally biased. And mind you, I have done that before and my statement comes out of experience. A simple example of the misconceptions we have been taught in schools and through clerics is the issue of slavery. We have been educated that Islam had abolished it while in fact no religion ever did that.
But only very few people really care to question their beliefs, the majority take the directed education, mostly in government schools which are no different than Islamic schools in context and which is full of lies, for a fact. They never open any supporting books I mentioned above. Only when confronted with an opposing thought they seek the help of those clerics who provide them with ready-made answers for the purpose of refutation only. But if they do open those books and read for themselves, they would be in for a lot of surprises.
Those people are not looking for the truth, they are satisfied with what they have been taught, or more accurately molded since their infancy. If they read their scriptures carefully, they would understand that religion is a choice, and not a hereditary gene. And therefore a child born to Moslem parents should not be labeled at birth as a Moslem, same with Christian or Jew or Buddhist’s child. As Richard Dawkins mentioned in his book The Root of All Evil, “ Despite the massive costs religion has imposed on human society, it persists because children do not question their parents’ beliefs”.

Is Diversity Possible in the Islamic World?

I’ve been asking myself this question again and again, and I reached the conclusion that it is IMPOSSIBL.
Let me elaborate.
Moslems believe in the superiority of Islam over any other religion, as do other faiths believe in the superiority of theirs . Quran demands that Moslems should fight the nonbelievers wherever they find them. And in a country dominated by Moslems, Shareea law, specifically those concerning social services, become part of its constitution (Turkey here is an exception and not a norm). Other than the constitution, other areas of life like education and the media, etc. are all supportive of Islamic views and the insistence to idealize the Islamic identity, and diminish any other ideology or thought.
You may say, what is wrong with that? When you’re in Rome, do what Romans do.
But what if there are individuals within who don’t want to abide to laws that contradict with their own beliefs, especially if those laws are akin to his/her personal life?
A Moslem would tell you to go seek other places that respect your beliefs. And this is the height of selfishness and arrogance, why someone who belongs to this land go seek his/her convenience in other places? Criticizing the system in an effort to make it acceptable for all to live in harmony under one roof would be more civil in the onset of the twenty-first century. Can you tell your sister or brother to go live somewhere else because she/he can’t digest the fish that you enforce to be cooked everyday?
It is within the preaching of Quran to fight none-Moslems, so even with moderate-minded Moslems, you’d always fine arrogance and superiority to other ethnic groups. Let alone the nonbelievers, which their annihilation is mandatory according to Quran, the infallible text in their belief. Quran even makes this issue an individual duty. And to have contrary ideologies within its boundary is unforgivable and calls for demolition of its beholders.
Now in an environment like this, how can one expect diversity to survive? Diversity is to accept the other, when Islam does not accept others, nor it accepts criticism, If any criticism of Islam is considered a sin that begets punishment by law, how can free-minded individuals survive in a society that detests their beliefs?
But why is it that Moslems do not accept criticism when it comes to religion? Is it because they fear that the criticizer might turn the table against them, especially with fresh young minds, and start a whole mass of atheists? Possibly. But why should anyone fear anything if their religion is based on solid grounds? Or is it because their faith is so shallow that any criticism might rock the floor under their feet?
I believe that the latter is closer to the truth. Living in an Islam dominated society has taught me that at least eighty percent of Moslems do not take their faith seriously, when it comes to defending it they all draw their swords, and the Danish cartoon fiasco is a live evidence, but in applying the dogmas of their religion, hardly anyone complies. It is very common to see a Moslem drink alcohol, party with prostitutes of Thailand, lavishly tip Egyptian belly dancers, not even praying and at the same time wholeheartedly defending his religion whenever confronted with a nonbeliever. So the issue is not the faith that he’s so vigorously defending, it’s the identity crises that he’s suffering. And it’s also a matter of convenience, especially when it comes to males.

Life is Too Short to waste in Politics

A dedication to my friend Rosa:

No llorar mas