Statistics and the Meaning of Islam
What is the “real” Islam? Is it the Islam of the nice Muslim at work? Or is it the Islam of Osama bin Laden?
To get a logical answer, we must have a logical basis. What sources are available to answer the question? We can toss out the media and all of its answers since they generally quote apologist “experts”. But is there an expert we can trust? Yes, there is. Mohammed.
The most fundamental statement that can be made about Islam is: there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is His prophet. This is the bedrock of Islam and points us directly to the only sure source of Islam-Allah and Mohammed. But where are Allah and Mohammed found? The Trilogy of Koran, Sira and Hadith. Allah is found in the Koran and Mohammed is found in the Sira (his biography) and the Hadith (his traditions of small stories and sayings). There is a special name for the sum of the Sira and the Hadith, the Sunna.
The Koran and Sunna are the only sure and certain basis of Islam. All of Islam is based upon the Trilogy.
The foundational texts of Islam –the Trilogy–suffer from being deliberately difficult. It is clear to anyone who reads these texts that every effort has been made to make the material obscure and difficult. There are two reasons for this obscurity. First, difficult texts make for a secure job for the priestly caste, the imams and scholars. If the text is clear in meaning, then no help is needed to understand it. The second reason is that the texts contain horrible and contradictory messages for the world buried under the obscurity.
The usual response to this difficulty is to skip the editing and offer up some verses from the Koran. But “verse” is a biased word in that it invokes a religious overtone. In almost every case, a verse is nothing more than a sentence. There is no other field of study in which individual sentences are given so much weight.
“Verse picking”, to use a statistical term, is a very poor sampling method. What we want is the meaning, and it is impossible to learn the complete meaning from a sentence. What we need to concern ourselves with are ideas and concepts, not simply a sentence.
Let us be clear here that the very best way to obtain the complete meaning is to edit (edit does not mean change the meaning, but to order, rearrange and collect) the texts and then proceed from the edited text. The Koran is famously difficult. However, if the necessary editing is done, the Koran is a very straightforward document. The first editing steps are to put the Koran in order with respect to time. In this way when you turn the page, you advance in time, just as you would in a history book. This time line order has been known since the first days of Islam. The next step is to collect all of the variations of the same story. As an example, the story of Moses and the Pharaoh is told 39 times. If they are all collected under one category, then the Koran is easier to read and less boring.
The next step is to take the Sira and weave it into the Koran to give the Koran a context. For example, there is a verse that says that it was proper to burn the palm trees. For someone who reads this verse, a question arises: what palm trees are being talked about? The Koran gives no context. But in the day of its creation, everyone who heard the verse knew that the previous week, Mohammed had attacked some Jews who were date farmers and had destroyed their date palm trees in violation of Arabic war customs. When the story of Mohammed (from the Sira) is woven into the Koran, then the context of the attack on the Jews is clear.
A Koran that is in the proper time order, categorized, and includes Mohammed’s life is a straightforward book that is easily understood. CSPI has published two Korans that have been edited this way- A Simple Koran and an Abridged Koran.
But we still have a problem. We need to be able to discuss the Koran with those who do not have access to edited Korans or who would not read them anyway. We need to be able make meaningful summary statements. Picking your favorite verse is not the way to make a summary statement.
We need a method of macro-analysis, not micro-analysis. We need to be able to talk about the big picture, the complete meaning of Islam. But there is a problem in trying to summarize Islam as it is filled with contradictory statements. So how do we deal with the contradictions while looking at the big picture?
The answer to these questions is to use a statistical measure of the texts. Don’t let the word statistics scare you. The only statistics needed is counting how many items are in a category.
Take for example the idea of the importance of the Koran. The most commonly belief about Islam is that it is based upon the Koran and is a religion. Neither of these ideas is true.
How important is the Koran? It contains about 153,000 words. The Sira (by Ibn Ishaq) contains about 292,000 words, and the Hadith has 646,000 words (using the Bukhari text). So Allah is about 14% of the total of the Trilogy and the Sunna (Mohammed’s words and deeds) is 86% of the total. These are only a quantitative measure, but still, it points out how important Mohammed is compared to Allah, based upon the amount of text.
This is born out further by noticing that the Koran does not contain enough information to practice even one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Only the Sunna (primarily the Hadith for religious practice) tells the Muslim how to worship. So the statistical measure shows that Islam is also Mohammedism.
Once the Koran is rearranged in the right time order, categorized and Mohammed’s life is woven back into it, another fact leaps from the page. Very little of the Koran is devoted to how to be a Muslim, the religion of Islam. Instead, the majority of the Koran is about kafirs, non-Muslims. Kafirs are the worst of the creation. Allah hates kafirs and plots against them. Kafirs can be tortured, murdered, robbed, raped and enslaved. The Koran is fixated on kafirs, as was Mohammed.
To measure the Koranic fixation on kafirs, let us measure the fixation by counting the amount of text devoted to them. In Mecca an astounding 68% of the text is devoted to the kafir. In Medina 57% was about kafirs. The amount of text in the entire Koran devoted to kafirs is 51%.
As an aside, Islam excludes kafirs in every way from its religious practice. Since the kafir is outside of Islam, the term political Islam is used to describe the doctrine of Islam as it is applied to the “others”, the kafirs. So 51% of the Koran is about political Islam, not religious Islam. (KS Lal gives the figure of 63% in Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India, Aditya Prakashan, 1999, N. Delhi, pg. 4).
The Sira shows the importance of Islam’s political nature. Mohammed preached the religion of Islam for 13 years in Mecca and only gained 150 followers. He moved to Medina where he became a politician and warrior. After 10 years of violence he became ruler of all Arabia without a single enemy left standing. He was involved in an event of violence every 6 weeks for the last 9 years of his life. Statistical conclusion-Islam’s success came from war and politics, not religion.
Another statistical conclusion: Islam is primarily a political doctrine, not a religion.
Simple statistics also reveal the true nature of the political/religious idea of jihad. When the word jihad is used, Muslims say that there are two kinds of jihad. There is the religious jihad, the greater jihad–the inner struggle against personal problems. The war jihad is the lesser jihad.
The Hadith of Bukhari gives all of the tactical details of jihad. A simple counting method shows that 3% of the hadiths are about the inner struggle, whereas, 97% of the hadiths are about jihad as war. So is jihad the inner struggle? Yes, 3%. Is jihad the war against kafirs? Yes, 97%.
This leads to a very important concept. Islam is based upon contradictory statements. How do we sort them out to get the complete meaning? We measure the amount of text devoted to each side of the dichotomy. That is what we did with the question of which jihad is the real jihad. It gives a complete statistical answer.
There is nothing new here. Only single value state ideas can be measured by one number. Multi-state ideas must be evaluated by statistics that measure every state of the variable. If an idea has different manifestations, then instead of arguing which is the right manifestation, just measure all of the manifestations.
There is an exact analogy to the measurement of the state of the electron in an atom. Quantum physics does not give a single answer about the energy and position, but gives us the statistical probabilities of each possible state. The same is true about Islam. We need to know its total state, not something about one category.
In conclusion, statistics is a superior way to gain complete knowledge of the texts of Islam. Statistics allows us to explore Islam in its totality. Remember the old story of the blind men feeling the elephant? One said the elephant was like a rope, another a tree, a wall and so forth. Was each man right? Were any of them wrong? No. But none of them were completely right. Statistical analysis cannot tell us the qualitative story but it allows us to remove the blinders of only looking at one category and forces us to look at the total picture.
Notice that this approach also effectively tells us how to evaluate the “experts” that get trotted out to buttress a favorite position. This is the iron rule of Islam-only Mohammed defines the truth of Islam. If what an expert says agrees with Mohammed, then the he is right, but he is redundant. If what the expert says contradicts Mohammed, then the expert is wrong. So experts are either redundant or wrong. Only Mohammed tells us the truth about Islam and he is never wrong or redundant. Skip the experts and move straight to Mohammed. The statistical approach does just that.
Bill Warner
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29 Responses
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Allan
Hi Bill,
On your statistics,
“To measure the Koranic fixation on kafirs, let us measure the fixation by counting the amount of text devoted to them. In Mecca an astounding 68% of the text is devoted to the kafir. In Medina 57% was about kafirs. The amount of text in the entire Koran devoted to kafirs is 51%.”
the 51% seems erroneous, If the Quran comprises only the Meccan and Medinan texts and none else, and the Meccan text is 68% devoted to the kaffir, and the Medinan text 57%, then the entire Koran dedicated to the Kaffir must be between 57% and 68%. Could you please clarify?
Is Christianity As Violent as Islam? by Damon Whitsell |
[…] polytheist pagans and others – rather than what Muslims are to do to get to heaven. Likewise 61% of the Koran is about non-Muslims. If you read the Sira of Muhammad it is likely to change your life. It will for sure give you a new […]
Paul Wartena
The same “statistical analysis”, you can do on Judaïsm (the Old testament) and Christianity (Bible as a whole)
I am curious what results you then get, especially in comparison with Islam
Saudi Pork Rancher
All lies and Muslim fantasies, you really are indulging in muhammadan deluded, stupid, desert Mumbo Jumbo.
It’s simpler just to watch the daily slaughter committed by you Bronze age savages to confirm you really are inferior, you have nothing to offer the modern world but your jealousy, and hate fuelled envy.
You are repulsive.
@Jonathan
I love authentic stuff.
I thought Christianity was for turning the other cheek?
I guess the blacks in USA didn’t get to know about that, or those that were raped, brought to the country by force in a boat.
Fast forward to 2012, and the whole world is forced by all the Christian inhibiting world to make everyone pay for their mistakes. There was no world exploitation during the period of Islam, if anything the likes of Isaac newton, shake-a-spear, etal benefited from the Muslims.
You’ve never heard of Muslims wiping out an entire race for material benefit, then again it depends who’s been filling you with his-story these days, lost are the real thinkers of the western world. All that’s left are wannabes, wishing to make everyone hate by pretending they follow a religion of love.
So you say you aRe objective about studying the reality of Islam, but the challenge of Islam was to make people like you submit to the will of your creator. Even the Jewish faith preaches that. You’d never hear of a Jew saying that a man can be god, but you’ll hear a Christian say it. Why is that, oh yes, Paul..and his followers, the ones who knew more than Jesus himself and his disciples who seem to be around till today.
You changed your books and you are bitter. If you are so bitter about it, why don’t you follow a belief that has not changed since the time of Adam? Yes Adam peace be upon him, and Noah, and David, and Solomon, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Ishmael, and Jesus, peace be upon them all, follow the same belief of Mohammed peace be upon him, ONE CREATOR not FOUR. When you say three, you are the fourth because you are stating what cannot be linked back to the creator, what you think the your books are authentic?
Have you noticed how much research they like to do into AL-Quran but not on their books? If you spent that much time reading your books you’d soon realize how contradictory it is, but then again, the authentic version has been lost so I guess you cannot do that can you.
Haha
It feels good to know that ISLAM can never be destroyed regardless of how much the KUFFAR DETEST IT.
One last question, why has the bible changed so much and AL-Quran has been the same authentic, authenticated and well authentically word of Allah?
You wish to know what Islam is? It is the answer to the ultimate question about where you come from. It is the ultimate answer to the question of how you should live your life in peace and harmony. It is the challenge that you fear to your existence. It is the word of Allah against yours. And who are you? Can you prove who you are without being confused, cause you seem confused. But then again, anyone who believes emotionally is likely to be confused. We can prove we are who we are without you pointing out who we are. Have you ever met a Muslim who doubted the Quran? You know we know who we are. THe question is who are you?
Are you that crusading Christian? Are you that Pauline Christian? Are you that Lutheran Christian? Are you that Christian who followed Jesus may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and his Mother?
Choose because we are coming.
Chameleon
Jonathan,
8:55, 9:123 and 24:55. Are you serious? Is that the best that you can do?
Verse 8:55 says those who are worst “in the sight of God are those who deny the truth and will not believe” (a slightly better translation, per Ahmed Ali, than your three, but not materially different). In other words, being an unbeliever is bad, which is exactly what every theistic religion on planet Earth says. Contrary to your flagrant lie, it does not say “here muslims are encouraged to fight ‘unbelievers’.” It says nothing of the sort. Verse 24:55 is exactly along the same lines. Those who reject faith in God are considered transgressors by God. Wow, what a revelation! Jesus said the same thing.
Verse 9:123 is translated most accurately in the Yusuf Ali version that you quoted. It says fight those unbelievers “who gird you about”. It also references “firmness” rather than “harshness”, since the Arabic root word means “firm and unyielding”, implying resistance against an aggressive force rather than the active, outward force implied by the mistranslated “harshness”. This meaning becomes clearer in the context of the verses around this verse as well as the historical context itself, where the Muslims were surrounded by an overwhelming army of 10,000 who came to attack them at Medina and laid siege to the city (i.e., “girded them about”) before doing so. So are you one of those Christian love cult freaks who believes that it is better to turn the other cheek and perhaps even be slaughtered just to avoid fighting against your own persecution and oppression? Good for you — you are either a hypocrite or first in line for the Darwin Award.
As for ReligionOfPeace.com, it is funny that you should mention that site. I have already crushed every argument made by the owner of that site in a long series of private emails with him. His site is full of lies, as I have proven, and even he can’t come up with a single kill order in the entire Quran (defined as a command to kill non-Muslims by Muslims that is not in response to persecution or oppression, as commonly defined). He has failed to respond for over three weeks to my last emails debunking his hollow arguments.
If you think you can do better than the deranged, hate-filled owner of that site, then go for it. I will give you two more kicks at the can with a deadline of two weeks from today, since I am not going to continue monitoring this page forever. Next time, by the way, if you want me to reply to individual verses, you must make an actual argument and not just copy and paste translations or vomit a list of verses. If you want an intelligent reply, then make an intelligent argument. And please keep your homoerotic fantasies and phallic obsessions in your bedroom. I do find it amusing, however, when individuals who have nothing intelligent to say resort to regurgitated platitudes about sex and violence that only sound shocking to someone less than 13 years old. You really have no idea who you are talking to, do you?
Jonathan
@Chameleon
You’re right. It’s an extremely trivial task to bring evidence that Islam is evil and full of hate 😀
I will simply quote some un-ambivalent parts from Quran, the word of the allmighty and lovely ALLAH. (Several translations, respectively.)
Here it says Allah hates “unbelievers”:
008.055
YUSUFALI: For the worst of beasts in the sight of Allah are those who reject Him: They will not believe.
PICKTHAL: Lo! the worst of beasts in Allah’s sight are the ungrateful who will not believe.
SHAKIR: Surely the vilest of animals in Allah’s sight are those who disbelieve, then they would not believe.
And here muslims are encouraged to fight “unbelievers”.
009.123
YUSUFALI: O ye who believe! fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him.
PICKTHAL: O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty (unto Him).
SHAKIR: O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those who guard (against evil).
Here Allah declares Muslims supreme to non-Muslims and justifies criminal acts committed by Muslims against “Unbelievers”.
024.055
YUSUFALI: Allah has promised, to those among you who believe and work righteous deeds, that He will, of a surety, grant them in the land, inheritance (of power), as He granted it to those before them; that He will establish in authority their religion – the one which He has chosen for them; and that He will change (their state), after the fear in which they (lived), to one of security and peace: ‘They will worship Me (alone) and not associate aught with Me. ‘If any do reject Faith after this, they are rebellious and wicked.
PICKTHAL: Allah hath promised such of you as believe and do good work that He will surely make them to succeed (the present rulers) in the earth even as He caused those who were before them to succeed (others); and that He will surely establish for them their religion which He hath approved for them, and will give them in exchange safety after their fear. They serve Me. They ascribe no thing as partner unto Me. Those who disbelieve henceforth, they are the miscreants.
SHAKIR: Allah has promised to those of you who believe and do good that He will most certainly make them rulers in the earth as He made rulers those before them, and that He will most certainly establish for them their religion which He has chosen for them, and that He will most certainly, after their fear, give them security in exchange; they shall serve Me, not associating aught with Me; and whoever is ungrateful after this, these it is who are the. transgressors.
I don’t say Islam is full of hate. I say Islam IS hate. It’s for little Napoleons who are not satisfied with the size of their dick. It promotes nothing but a deplorable slave-mentality. Allah is great, peace be upon you, and peace be upon everyone who gives Mohammad a rim-job. 😀 I hope he enjoys your special ability to change your tongue’s colour.
Dear Chameleon, in case your local Immam allows you to use the internet for other reason than distorting reality, you might want to check out this great site:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
and regarding to your doubts about the hateful content of the Quran especially this site:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Quran-Hate.htm
Chameleon
The “Sira” by Ibn Ishaq is a load of hogwash that no serious Islamic scholar relies upon as the basis for Islam and the sunnah of Prophet Muhammad. There is no doubt quite a bit of it that is authentic, but the problem of course is that none of it whatsoever has been authenticated at all, let alone in the manner of the most reliable hadiths. Another problem is that the actual Sira of Ibn Ishaq doesn’t actually exist as far as we know. All that we have are only the excerpts of later “scholars” (including propagandists) who quoted from it. Ibn Ishaq just compiled everything that he came across indiscriminately about 150 years after the Prophet when it was already clear that so many fabricated stories were circulating to discredit Islam. Even he admitted in his compilation that some of his compilations were likely fabricated, but that “only Allah is more knowledgeable about the truth of that.”
As for the statistical “analysis”, or should I say “numerology”, this is also a load of hogwash in trying to make any relevant point about a religion. You can make numbers dance to any tune when you are applying them arbitrarily to an analysis of text, which is like comparing apples and oranges. Heh, maybe if we take the square root of the number of letters in the Quran, we will find that it is equal to 666, and then we can tout this as “evidence” of the evil of Islam. Give me a break. This is the type of third rate innumerate hocus pocus that you would see on some televangelist channel to provide the semblance of objectivity — i.e., it must be objective, because it’s math! Not only that, the author is not even able to support his analysis with actual data that can be validated. He has obviously done the counts, so it should be recorded somewhere. However, he doesn’t provide it because even that too is fabricated. I hereby challenge him to produce it and prove me wrong. For example, the Quran is overwhelming about the worship and oneness of God, over and over and over again, yet he claims somehow that 61% of all verses are about kafirs. This is ludicrous. Show me the data. Just show me the data.
You want an intelligent debate from a Muslim, Sophie. Well, here it is. In addition to my challenge above, I hereby challenge anyone – everyone – to demonstrate what part of the Quran advocates or permits hate in any way whatsoever. Based on how convinced the vast majority of the readers on this site are that Islam is evil and full of hate, this should be an extremely trivial task for you to accomplish. Now bring it.
D.I.D.
Bill’s argument would be an airtight one if it did not suffer from one fatal flaw: the assumption that all words are equal.
Statistics involves quality as well as quantity, and the first statistical point insinuiates that Mohammed is more important than God in the Islamic cannon due merely to the relative input from both alleged sources.
This is assuming that the words and actions of Mohammed by himself carry equal weight to the words of God via Mohammed. This is a false assumption – to any Muslim the words of God must rank higher than the actions of Mohammed or human interperitations of those words and actions. Thus the supposed words of God and those of humans are not of equal weight, they are qualitatively different and should not be treated as equal in any statistical analysis.
A secular equivalent would be constitutional law versus ad hoc statutory law. The words within a constitution comprise only a very miniscule part of the words within a country’s consolidated body of law, but the constitution by definition always ranks higher in legal force.
Furthermore, much of the emphasis on violence could possibly be attributed to the vagueness of the Qur’an itself: there could be so much said about it because the enabling verses for it are so vague that Muslim theologists have come to many different conclusions in many heated debates about what is authorised and what is not.
Ben Adam
Interesting how I managed to go from being able to speak and write English under a year. I wonder who reduced my words to the dribble that you see above.
So if you cannot defeat the argument you defame the persons character, huh?!
@ sophie ” If you think you are so clever why don’t you go ahead and produce the Quran. The challenge was for the Arabs of that time and I doubt you can match their level of Arabic let alone their own level of hatred for Islam.
By the way the shortes verse in the Quran is three lines, think you can beat that!
Go on then, make my day…
Sam
…so if I would like to make an objective study of any reality, those who claim to hate or dislike that reality are the best at providing the proof of the validity and soundness of the thing?
So what would you say to a person who isn’t a Muslim such as Michael H. Hart who has written that the most influential person ever was Mohammed in his book, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History?
Fine that might not sit well with some, let us look at the other spectrum, during the Crusades not only were Muslims killed, Jews were also taken out by the Spaniards.
OK that too is harsh, let us look at a different time.
You could find ample evidence of how non Muslims were treated by reading the books of the likes of Bernard Lewis in his book about The Arabs in History or the Jews in Islam. Incidentally, when Muslims followed the teaching of Islam, and its Prophet, the non Muslims were protected and they themselves fought alongside Muslims AGAINST the Christian Crusaders.
There are some samples of how even the Ottomans’ treated non Muslims (http://www.globaled.org/nyworld/materials/ottoman/turkish.html) at the link.
Bottom line, when you hate something, then study it to prove how much it is you hate it your judgment will be cloudy with more than meatballs!
When you want to engage in debate you start on a basis that both parties can agree on. For instance, Muslims recognize all the Prophets sent to mankind which includes, Moses, Abraham, Issiah, Ezikel, Noah, and Jesus may peace and blessings be upon them all. Now how we believe in them is through our book the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet sent to all mankind Mohammed peace and blessings be upon him, too.
On the other hand, you also believe in a prophet or two, or maybe even do not believe at all in your books, but it is not rational to discuss or have a “your book vs our book” discussion because the basis for discussion from both parties is not agreed upon in the first place.
But, to start at a point where neither party can dispute, is real dialogue.
That is why a lot of people are becoming Muslims because they actually did some thinking on their own. People say Muslims have not contributed anything of value, because they limit their study of the objective reality to the timespan of say three hours. When they bother to actually do some research they are then amazed at their own ignorance of how much Islam contributed to humanity.
The person who actually started this site did some research. The next step is to ask what should happen to Muslims who believe that there is a difference between a Muslim and a non Muslims? Are you suggesting that because Muslims adhere to the teaching of their belief they should be exterminated like you did with the Jews in Spain, Italy, Poland, Russia, and need we forget Germany?
You have your belief, and we have ours. Don’t forget, under the rules of Islam the world never contemplated a World War.
The war mongrels are trying to create the stage of another and you know deep in your heart that those craving for it are only thinking of their pockets.
sophie
I think that using the statistical method brings up some important points. It forces those who don’t know (or refuse to believe) that Islam is not just like any other religion, and its sacred texts do not overwhelmingly preach peace and tolerance, to face up to what’s in their sacred texts. It also reinforces the point that it is arguably all about Mohammed and little to do with god.
As useful as it is, though, it isn’t a totally fair method. To illustrate what I mean, here’s an example:
Christianity is overwhelmingly about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without the resurrection, there is no Christianity. The faith in its entirety is based on this one event. You can read this for yourself in the New Testament. Outside of the event of the resurrection, Christianity would make little or no theological sense. Yet if I were to statistically analyse the entire Bible as you have done the Koran, based entirely on volume of verses devoted to each topic, I may have to conclude that Christianity has little to do with the resurrection and that Christians only believe the resurrection is the foundation of their faith because they are misguided/in denial about the content of their holy book.
Despite this, the New Testament is brim-full of references to the resurrection while almost all of the Old Testament commands have been overruled by the principles and rules (‘really love God and really love your neighbour’) laid down by Jesus.
Perhaps this is comparable to the situation in Islam; perhaps many of the verses of kafir-hating and murder and Islamic supremacy have been overruled by the peaceful verses, according to the islamic principle of abrogation.
So there are limits to your method that need to be explored, and I guess the only way the enquiring infidel can do this is through further independent research.
@ben adam- you said Allah’s first word to Mohammed was ‘read’. Actually, wasn’t Allah’s first word to Mohammed ‘recite’? There’s a difference between reading someone else’s views with an open mind, and telling others what Allah has suppposedly told you to say, which is what Mohammed did. There is no evidence that he cared for the theological musings of anyone besides himself. Similarly, there is little evidence that most Muslims care about engaging with any other religious tradition/political philosophy than Mohammed’s. Your comment is an apt example of this, because you haven’t engaged with Bill Warner’s argument at all.
It’s frustrating that, time and again, when evidence like this is shown to Muslims they simply take one of two actions: 1) curse you out as an ‘Islamophobe’ and racist, or 2) Write at length about how they hope Allah will show you the truth and that Islam is the religion of all the Biblical prophets and is the best way of life. They fail to realise that most of us would need to be intellectually satisfied by Islam in order to want to convert to it… I wonder why…
Rarely do they engage with the debate or contribute anything of value.
tom
Yeah except Islam is an ideaology. It is made for the individual to interpret themselves. *Thats why there are extremists* But its the verses like Surah 8:12, 5:33, 9:5, 4:34. There are about 109 verses that call followers of Islam to kill non-believers. Peaceful ideaology? I think Not.
Tayyab talu
Dear Mr Bill warner,
thanks for my opening the eyes by your phantastic analysis about sira hadith and kuran, now my problem is i am born muslim and live in uk and whenenver i go back to pakistan i am confronted with all those muslims who never understood, because the read in arabic but they argue with me all the time, i dont know how to deal with the situation because i am also born muslim.
pl help me
Mads E
For that particular purpose, i would advise you to read (and then re-read a couple times more for the nuances, and good laughs too when the obvious double standards are exposed)
“The GOD Delusion” by Richard Dawkins
By the way, this book is not only about islam, it covers all religions
traeh
Ben Adam,
Your religion is for slaves. We are free.
NON-MUSLIMS: ALLAH SAYS ISLAM WILL DOMINATE WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT
Qur’an Chapter 9, #33
He it is Who hath sent His messenger [Muhammad] with the guidance and the Religion of Truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religion, however much the idolaters may be averse.
http://www.quranbrowser.com/cgi/bin/get.cgi? version=pickthall+yusufali+khan+shakir+sherali+khalifa+arberry+palmer+rodwell+sale+transliterated& layout=auto& searchstring=009:033
In Sahih Bukhari, the most canonical of hadith collections, Muhammad said,
“I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.’ And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah.”
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/008.sbt.html#001.008.387
In other words, Muhammad says that if you are non-Muslim, your right to life will not be sacred to Muslims, nor your right to property.
Bill Warner,
The statistical method is clearly the way to go, much better than only quoting sentences from the Qur’an. I hope to do a lot of counting in the future.
ben adam
assalam,you now what mean this world?this world wichs the musilmans said about a bilion years?it’s mean peace.
dont read the book,writing by the hand of ennemy of god,read curan.
you know my brother,nothing change about curan.but the others books changed a million time,for exempel babel have 1500 diffrent copie,what that mean?that mean that peaple changed this book year after year.
my brother there is one god ho give us evry thing,and he make us the best creachur in the world.there is one god no son no fother no mother.juste one god power,tell to the thing “be” and well be.read my brother curan,dont read just one book,you dont know ecry think for jujing,in your religion the juhing for some thing is forbiden,dosnt?read,read,read this is the furst word in islam,this is the furst word god told mohammed alayhi assalam.dont believe what peaple said ,read and believe you heart lake what i done.my brother.muslims believe about all the profet about all the massegers,about jesus,about abraham our fother about moossa,about josef,we believe in mary.read my brother and im sur that god well show you the writ roud,and all well be clear in your eys.assalam alayk,peace with you.and god protect you.
Democracyistheanswer
LN writes: “Khader’s #9-12 shows that he is a true believer in the Myth of the Moderate Muslim — worse yet, the myth that the moderate Muslim is the majority…”
Khader’s facts are conjecture. The fact is: about 60% of all Moslems worldwide want a caliph and Sharia law. That means Khader is totally wrong…perhaps he is committing taqiyya (sacred deception).
Islam and democracy are oil and water.
Islam is to be imposed ‘even if the infidels are averse.’ So much for democracy.
Democracyistheanswer
Jack,
Your opinion that Islam is ‘the best religion’ is probably due to the fact that you have not read the Sira.
The Sira is the only authorative biography on Mohammed. Everything else is conjecture. The unrelenting violence of the Sira should alert you to the supremacist world conquest utopianianism of this desert bandit. He used God to justify cruelty and greed.
chris
THE best religion????
YES it is.It is the best RELIGION nothing else.Is it good for human being? NO NO NO.visit http://www.faithfreedom.org.
jack
Islam is the best religion
Flashbuck
Very clear analysis. Easy to understand. I like it.
Cyril
Perfect site! You’ve put it together very well, and covers your life & passions jumbo shrimp recipe and ming So, good luck to your team! thai therme coffee bar century, pecans salty recipe, by by
Ismail Rasheed
Thank You for a insightful article. We have posted this on our blog to enlighten Maldivians to the truth about Islam.
Tim
Exceptional, outstanding and crystal clear. I now understand the enemy.
All Western politicians and schools should teach with regard to this article.
Keep up this good work. The world is in need of such clarity.
LN
For Your Information (not finding any eMail adress)
– – – – –
http://chromatism.net/current/images/ifwienposter.jpg
Trueman said…
This effort by the IFW is appreciable. Our Prophet, a blesser of mankind, could never have wished what these guys like Al-Qaeda followers, their suicide bombers or their mentors sitting in safe havens Gods knows where; but they are definitely doing such a disservice to Islam which perhaps arch enemies of Islam would never have thought to do.
These billboards by Islamic Federation of Vienna, Austria (IFW) are a right step in the right direction. The world needs to know about our faith, which is neither Mulla-ism, nor fundamentalism – it’s a message of peace, a message of warmth and sharing, between individuals, communities and nations. If some people are doing wrong things in Islam, that doesn’t means Islam asks them to do wrong things. Same is the case with the guys, the neocons sitting in Washington and Pentagon. What bad things they have done to this world, doesn’t mean all America is to be blamed. The American, the Western values of democracy, enlightenment and fair chance to every body are things which we Muslims need to understand. Good deeds are neither the monopoly of Muslims nor those of non Muslims; they are a common heritage of the whole human race.
In my own blog “Wonders of Pakistan” I posted an essay on Prophet’s views on conservation of nature, on rights of the earth, the birds and the animals. A person who is kind to such things of nature, how can he be aggressive or harsh to Allah’s noblest creation, the man. This is a message which needs to be understood by the al-Qaedists as well as the neocons in the west.
There is a dire need that our brothers in faith and those who do not believe in Islam, should know that Islam is nothing but a message of peace, peace for everybody, Muslims and non Muslims alike.
11/08/2008 2:46 AM
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/11
/he-is-admired-who-respects-his-family.html
========================================================
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/11/khader-bashes-bashy.html
Erich said…
For our purposes, Naser Khader is a more dangerous Muslim than Quraishy.
Khader said of Quraishy:
“He’s not even a practicing Muslim”
You see what Khader is telegraphing to us? He is reinforcing the PC MC paradigm, whose basic axiom about Islam is that Islam is never at fault, and that Muslims who follow Islam are never at fault, and that any time you see a bad Muslim, it is because he is NOT practicing “true” Islam.
It is this basic axiom that is the cornerstone of the single most important reason why the West cannot deal rationally with the danger of Islam. And Khader is subtly, slyly, cleverly serving to reinforce it.
“He’s not even a practicing Muslim”
Khader cannot be that stupid. He must know what Islam is, and what its “practice” entails. No. He is banking on our stupidity, our gullibility, to massage us with another reiteration of the PC MC axiom that the Muslims who practice real Islam are harmless, good, decent people who will “enrich” the multicultural “tapestry” of Europe, and the West at large.
The Quraishy type Muslims are easy to spot and to criticize. The Khader type Muslims are more subtle, sly and clever in their reinforcement of the PC MC idea that the Quriashy type of Muslim reflects only a “small minority of extremists”. The Khader type Muslims are more subtle, sly and clever in their underhanded promotion and insinuation of Islam into the warp and woof of the West.
In fact, one major indication of the cleverness of the Khader type Muslim is the fact that a significant portion of the anti-jihad movement apparently thinks he’s a useful ally against “extremist” Islam!
And unfortunately, the majority of Westerners — beyond our small minority of anti-jihadists who do not trust the Khaders — are stupid and gullible, because they have swallowed from birth through their formative educational years the PC MC paradigm and worldview.
11/06/2008 5:43 PM
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/11/khader-bashes-bashy.html
Erich said…
Henrik,
From this Danish blog, here are some apparent facts about Naser Khader.
http://agora.blogsome.com/2006/02/25/a-prize-immigrant/
— which I shall parcel out and enumerate in 12 points:
1. Naser, the oldest of five siblings, proved himself a gifted scholar. He did well in school and impressed people in the mosque.
2. The boy often went to the mosque with his grandfather, who was the second-most important man in the mosque outside Damascus, after the Imam.
3. It impressed the men at the mosque that Naser rapidly learned whole sections of the Quran by heart. He attended the Friday prayers, went to the Quran-school, prayed five times a day and fasted all through the month of Ramadan.
After his family emigrated to Denmark when he was age 11, the blogger quoted above notes:
4. The spiritual base for the family was still Friday prayers at the mosque of The Islamic Community.
Then he goes on to note:
5. …as Naser entered his teenage years, a change came over his way of perceiving at the world. He would sit for hours reading Danish litterature, learning how Danish society had evolved through the ages to finally reach the stage of modern democracy. …he was introduced to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who said: “God is Dead”, and the Danish Kierkegaard with his “Either, Or” of the the duty of each single man to choose his own way in life, [and so] Naser decided: He would no longer practice Islam.
Later, the blogger notes:
6. He was especially struck by the fact that most Danes’ knowledge of Islam was almost non-existant.
7. Therefore Khader published the book “Honour and Shame” in 1996. Here he tried to give an introduction to the central tenets of Mid-Eastern culture which were based partially on ancient culture and partially on Islam.
Then the blogger notes:
8. Now, having put aside Islam, Naser Khader began to call himself a “Cultural Moslem”. He acknowledged his cultural heritage, but only practiced it to the degree that he would participate in prayers at funerals.
The blogger then notes that, after the cartoon controversy:
9. [Khader] had to stand up to the Imams. In his view, the Imams don’t represent the Moslems of Denmark at all. They may speak for a few thousand, but there are 200000 Moslems in Denmark.
10. He decided to form the Democratic Moslems to show that the majority of Moslems in Denmark want democracy.
The blogger then quotes Khader from an interview he had with him:
11. “My modest hopes are to create the determining factors needed to create a reformation and enlightenment for Islam. That may sound ambitious. But the people who are needed to create the conditions needed for that are us – the Moslems of the West. My ambitions are – apart from making integration less painful – to show that Islam and democracy can be made to be compatable.”
12. “I think I am fighting my mother’s fight. She’s a Moslem, religious, who prays five times a day and wears a scarf. But she believes in Danish democracy. In that way she is a lot like many of my friends – Moslems with their hearts, but not Islamists or Extremists. I feel I am fighting a fight for the majority of Moslems. Islam was once a religion which was about the personal relationship of man to Allah. But some Imams have intervened, like the publicans of the Bible and have taken for themselves the power of Allah.”
Discussion:
Facts #1-4 (as well as #7) indicate that Khader is not “ignorant” about Islam and indicate that he has had years of study and contact with Islam through a) Muslim communities both in Syria and in Denmark, b) family, c) mosque sermons, d) personal study of the Koran and other related materials.
Khader also seems to have extensive familiarity, experience and knowledge of Danish Muslims (cf. #9, 10 and 12) — enough to pronounce that the “majority” of them are moderates like him. Either the majority of Danish Muslims are all ignorant of Islam like Khader, or Khader does not really know the Islam of the majority of Danish Muslims, or Khader is lying about this.
His apparently extensive familiarity, experience and knowledge of Danish Muslims (cf. #9, 10 and 12) also undermines the theory that he is “ignorant” of Islam.
As for Khader’s degree of “Islamicity”, we see from #8 that he has followed that path of incoherent twilight ambivalence — the “Cultural Muslim” — about which Hugh Fitzgerald has written aptly:
It is precisely those intelligent and charming and very-close-to-being-right-but-refusing-to-deal-with-Islam Muslims, the kind who if asked will tell you that “well, I’m a cultural Muslim” or “culturally, I come from a Muslim backround” or “there is much I find of great interest and which I am sympathetic to in Islam” (without more) and who, of course, are then part of the problem.
Why? Because Westerners, Americans in particular, are innoocent. They do not wish to investigate the tenets of Islam. They would prefer to believe that those tenets are ignored by most Muslims, and that they can go on ignoring them. They would prefer to believe that the history of Islam is not what it is.
When on television Kanan Makiya begins to express his affection for his pious Muslim grandmother, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, we are sympathetic. We understand. We are perfectly aware that there have always been pious Muslims intent only on the rituals of worship. Ibn Warraq never fails to remind people of his own family, and of his own gentle, pious brother. But when that leads people to shift their attention away from Islam, to substitute the unrepresentative from the representative, to substitute wish for reality, it is a menace to us.
http://jihadwatch.org/archives/008758.php
Meanwhile, Khader’s #9-12 shows that he is a true believer in the Myth of the Moderate Muslim — worse yet, the myth that the moderate Muslim is the majority, and that the extremists are the minority. Closely related to this is his constant implication that “true” Islam is good and harmless. But this brings up the screamingly obvious question, if “true” Islam is so good and harmless, why has he distanced himself from Islam over the years to the point where he is virtually (but not quite) an ex-Muslim? One cannot expect coherence from Muslims like Khader — either because their reason is deformed, or because they are lying while trying to articulate the impossible and the preposterous.
Most importantly, Muslims like Khader are purveying the notion that most Muslims are harmless, and thus he is reinforcing the PC MC mindset that sees nothing dangerous about admitting thousands, yea millions, of Muslims into the West. Among these thousands, even millions, there will be innumerable Muslims who will form underground terror cells and who will spend years planning horrific attacks on us.
And Khader is doing his small part to enable them.
11/08/2008 3:48 AM
Seek Truth
Measuring words in hadith and quraan doesn’t mean that GOD is less important than Prophet, Prophet said, bring me lot of empty papers just to explain for you one Soura (in Quraan) Fatiha 7 verses.
this is not true measurment, sorry to me it seams silly.
dd
Fantastic Analysis. I have placed a link to this page on my site, please don’t change the URL.
Do you plan to do further statistical analysis with respect to:
1) Islam and slavery
2) Status of women
etc.
Also do you have a page showing your research like listing all the jihad is internal struggle phrases in one column and jihad is war against kafirs in another column so we can ‘see’ your research by seeing which side is longer?