Why We Left Islam (10 page)

That did not bother me at all, but on the way home my two friends said they did not wish to continue their friendship with him. I was surprised and asked why. They said that being a Baha’i makes him
najis
and had they known he was a Baha’i, they
would not have befriended him. I was puzzled and inquired why they thought he was
najis
if we all were complementing him on his cleanliness. We all agreed he was a morally superior man to all of the Muslim young men we knew, so why this sudden change of attitude? Their response was very disturbing. They said the name itself had something in it that made them dislike this religion. They asked me if I knew why everyone disliked the Baha’is. I told them I didn’t know, and that I liked everyone. But since they disliked the Baha’is, perhaps they should explain their reasons. They did not know why! This man was the first Baha’i they knew this well, and he was an exemplary man. I wanted to know the reason for their dislike. There was no particular reason, they said. It’s just they knew that Baha’is are bad.

I am happy I did not continue my friendship with these two bigots. From them I learned how prejudice is formed and operates.

Later I realized the prejudices and hatred that Muslims harbor against almost all non-Muslims are not the result of any misinterpretation of the teachings of the Qur’an, but is because this book teaches hate and encourages prejudice. Those Muslims who go to the mosques and listen to the sermons of the
mullahs
are affected. There are many verses in the Qur’an that call believers to hate nonbelievers, fight them, call them
najis
, subdue and humiliate them, chop off their heads and limbs, crucify them, and kill them wherever they find them.

I left religion on the back burner for several years. Not that my views about religion had changed or I didn’t consider myself religious anymore. I just had so much to do that expending time on religion had become difficult. Meanwhile, I learned more about democracy, human rights, and other values, like equality of rights between men and women, and I liked what I learned. Did I pray? Whenever I could, but not fanatically. After all, I was living and working in a Western country and did not want to look too different.

One day, I decided that it was time to deepen my knowledge of Islam and read the Qur’an from cover to cover. I found an Arabic copy of the Qur’an with an English translation. Previously I read only bits and pieces of the Qur’an. This time I read all of it.
I would read a verse in Arabic, then its English translation, then refer back to the Arabic, and did not read the next verse until I was completely satisfied I understood the Arabic.

It didn’t take long before I came upon verses I found hard to accept. One of these verses was:

Allah forgiveth not that partners should be set up with Him; but He forgiveth anything else, to whom He pleaseth; to set up partners with Allah is to devise a sin Most heinous indeed.
Qur’an 4:48

I found it hard to accept that Gandhi would burn in hell forever because he was a polytheist with no hope of redemption, while a Muslim murderer could hope to receive Allah’s forgiveness. This raised a disturbing question:
Why is Allah so desperate to be known as the only God? If there is no other god but him, what is the fuss? Against whom is he competing? Why should he even care whether anyone knows him and praises him or not?

Now that I had lived in the West and had many Western friends who were kind to me, liked me, opened their hearts and homes to me, and accepted me as their friend, it was really hard to accept that Allah didn’t want me to befriend them.

Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah.
Qur’an 3:28

Isn’t Allah the Creator of the unbelievers, too? Isn’t he the God of everybody? Why should he be so unkind to the unbelievers? Wouldn’t it be better if Muslims befriended unbelievers and taught them Islam by a good example? By keeping ourselves aloof and distant from unbelievers, the gap of misunderstandings will never be bridged. How in the world will unbelievers learn about Islam if we do not associate with them?
These were the questions I kept asking myself. The answer to these questions came in a very disconcerting verse. Allah’s order was to, “slay them wherever ye catch them” (
Qur’an 2:191
).

I thought of my own friends, remembering their kindnesses and love for me, and wondered how in the world a true God would ask anyone to kill another human being just because he does not believe. That seemed absurd, yet this concept was repeated
so often in the Qur’an there was no doubt about it. In verse 8:65, Allah tells his Prophet:

O Prophet! Rouse the believers to the fight. If there are twenty amongst you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred: if a hundred, they will vanquish a thousand of the unbelievers.

I wondered why Allah would send a messenger to make war.
Shouldn’t God teach us to love each other and be tolerant toward each other’s beliefs? And if Allah is really so concerned about making people believe in him to the extent that he would kill them if they don’t believe, why would he not kill them himself? Why does he ask us to do his dirty work? Are we Allah’s hit men?

Although I knew of
jihad
and never questioned it before, I found it hard to accept that God would resort to imposing such violent measures on people. What was more shocking was the cruelty of Allah in dealing with unbelievers.

I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them.
Qur’an 8:12

It seemed Allah was not just satisfied with killing unbelievers; he enjoyed torturing them before killing them. Smiting people’s heads from above their necks and chopping their fingertips were very cruel acts. Would God really give such orders? And yet the worst is what he promised to do with unbelievers in the other world.

How could the Creator of this universe be so cruel? I was shocked to learn that the Qur’an tells Muslims to: kill unbelievers wherever they find them (
Qur’an 2:191
), murder them and treat them harshly (
Qur’an 9:123
), fight them (
Qur’an 8:65
) until no other religion than Islam is left (
Qur’an 2:193
), humiliate them and impose on them a penalty tax if they are Christians or Jews (
Qur’an 9:29
), slay them if they are pagans (
Qur’an 9:5
), crucify, or cut off their hands and feet, and expel them from the land in disgrace. And as if this were not enough, Muslims are told that unbelievers “shall have a great punishment in world hereafter” (
Qur’an 5:34
), not to befriend their own fathers or brothers if they are not believers (
Qur’an 3:28, 9:23
), to kill their own family in the battles of Badr
and Uhud, and to “strive against the unbelievers with great endeavor” (
Qur’an 25:52
) and be stern with them because they belong to hell (
Qur’an 66:9
).

How can any sensible person remain unmoved when he or she finds the Qur’an saying: “strike off the heads of the unbelievers” then after a “wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives” (
Qur’an 47:4
)?

I was also shocked to learn the Qur’an denies freedom of belief for all and clearly states Islam is the only acceptable religion (
Qur’an 3:85
). Allah relegates those who do not believe in the Qur’an to hell (
Qur’an 5:11
) and calls them
najis
(filthy, untouchable, impure) (
Qur’an 9:28
). He says unbelievers will go to hell and will drink boiling water (
Qur’an 14:17
). Further, “As for the unbelievers, for them garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowls and skin shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods” (
Qur’an 22:9
). How sadistic!

The book of Allah says women are inferior to men and their husbands have the right to beat them (
Qur’an 4:34
), and that women will go to hell if they are disobedient to their husbands (
Qur’an 66:10
). It says men have an advantage over women (
Qur’an 2:228
). It not only denies women equal rights to their inheritance (
Qur’an 4:11-12
), it also regards them as imbeciles and decrees that their testimony alone is not admissible in court (
Qur’an 2:282
). This means that a woman who is raped cannot accuse her rapist unless she can produce a male witness, which of course is a joke. Rapists don’t rape in the presence of witnesses. But the most shocking verse is where Allah allows Muslims to rape women captured in wars even if they are married before being captured (
Qur’an 4:3, 24
). The holy Prophet raped the prettiest women he captured in his raids on the same day he killed their husbands and loved ones. This is why anytime a Muslim army subdues another nation, they call them
kafir
and rape their women.

Pakistani soldiers raped up to 250,000 Bengali women in 1971 and massacred three million unarmed civilians when their religious leader decreed that Bangladeshis are un-Islamic. This is why the prison guards in the Islamic regime of Iran rape the
women and then kill them after calling them apostates and the enemies of Allah.

The Qur’an is full of verses that teach killing of unbelievers and how Allah will torture them after they die. There are no lessons on morality, justice, honesty, or love. The only message of the Qur’an is to believe in Allah and his messenger. The Qur’an coaxes people with celestial rewards of unlimited sex in paradise and threatens them with blazing fires of hell. When the Qur’an speaks of righteousness, it does not mean righteousness as we understand it, but it means belief in Allah and his messenger. A Muslim can be a killer and murder non-Muslims and yet be a righteous person. Good actions are secondary. Belief in Allah and his messenger are the ultimate purpose of a person’s life.

After reading the Qur’an I became greatly depressed. It was hard to accept it all. At first I denied and searched for esoteric meanings to these cruel verses of the Qur’an, all in vain. There was no misunderstanding! The Qur’an was overwhelmingly inhumane. Of course it contained a lot of scientific heresies and absurdities, but they were not what impacted me the most. It was the violence of this book that really jolted me and shook the foundation of my belief.

After my bitter experience with the Qur’an I found myself traveling on a torturous road riddled with torments. I was kicked out of the blissful garden of ignorance, where all my questions were answered. There I did not have to think. All I had to do was believe. Now, the gates to that garden were closed to me forever. I had committed the unthinkable sin of thinking. I had eaten from the forbidden tree of knowledge, and my eyes had been opened. I could see the fallacy of it all and my own nakedness. I knew I would not be let into that paradise of oblivion again. Once you start thinking, you don’t belong there anymore. I had only one way to go: forward.

This road to enlightenment proved to be more arduous than I was prepared for. It was slippery. There were mountains of obstacles to climb and precipices of errors to avert. I traveled uncharted territories alone, not knowing what I would find next. It would become my odyssey in the realm of understanding and
discovering truth, eventually leading me to the land of enlightenment and freedom.

I will chart these territories for all those who also commit the sin of thinking, find themselves kicked out of the paradise of ignorance, and are en route to an unknown destination.

If you doubt, if the mantle of ignorance in which you wrapped yourself is shredded to pieces and you find yourself naked, know that you cannot stay in the paradise of ignorance any longer. You have been cast out forever. Just as a child once out of the womb cannot go back, you will not be readmitted into that blissful garden of oblivion again. Listen to one who has been there and done that, and don’t cling despondently to the gates. That door is locked.

Instead look forward. You have a trip ahead of you. You can fly to your destination or you can crawl. I crawled! But because I crawled, I know this path quite well. I will chart the road, so hopefully you don’t have to crawl.

The passage from faith to enlightenment consists of seven valleys.

The first valley is shock. After reading the Qur’an my perspective was jolted. I found myself standing face-to-face with the truth and I was scared to look at it. It certainly was not what I was expecting to see. I had no one to blame, to curse and call a liar. I found the absurdity of Islam and inhumanity of its author by reading the Qur’an. And I was shocked. Only this shock made me come to my senses and face the truth. Unfortunately, this is a very difficult, painful process. The followers of Mohammad must see the naked truth and they must be shocked. We cannot keep sugarcoating the truth. The truth is bitter and it must be accepted. Facts are stubborn and refuse to go away. Only then does the process of enlightenment start.

But because each person’s sensitivity is different, what shocks one person may not shock the other. Even as a man I was shocked when I read that Mohammad instructed his followers to beat their wives and called women “deficient in intelligence.” Yet I have come to know many Muslim women who have no difficulty accepting these derogatory statements uttered by their
Prophet. It’s not that they agree they are deficient in intelligence or they believe the majority of the inhabitants of hell are women just because the Prophet said so, but they simply block out that information. They read it, but it doesn’t sink in. They are in denial. The denial acts as a shield that covers and protects them, that saves them from facing the pain of reality. Once that shield is up, nothing can bring it down. At this point their beliefs must be attacked from other directions. We have to bombard them with other shocking teachings of the Qur’an. They may have a weak spot for one of them. That is all they need: a good shock. Shocks are painful, but they can be lifesavers. Shocks are used by doctors to bring back to life a dead patient.