Return to the Roots: Liberate yourselves from the Shackles of Arab Religious Imperialism, Part 2
Return to the Roots: Liberate yourselves from the Shackles of Arab Religious Imperialism, Part 2
By FFI Contributing Editor Dr Radhasyam Brahmachari
Why the Muslims so backward:
The Muslim supremacists are babbling day and night that Islam is the best as well true religion on earth. So, the question naturally arises: If Islam is so good then why are the Muslims so bad; or rather why Muslims as a community are so backward in every walk of life? Many honest Muslims try to find a plausible reply to this question [1], while according to the liar Zakir Naik, it is simply a propaganda by the media, particularly the Western media.[2] In reality, the Muslim countries are being run an unholy nexus of politicians and the religious clerics. In the first part of this article, it has been mentioned that this nexus does consider education a apriority. Most importantly, the Islamic god Allah is not ready see the community of His followers and educated and enlightened mass and His intention is to keep the Muslims immersed in the darkness of ignorance and stuck to a 7th century civilization.
As a matter of fact, it would be extremely dangerous to allow the Muslims to be enlightened by receiving modern education, particularly science and technology. In that case, they would start questioning the dogmas of the Koran and Sunnah, which would bring doom of the religious belief system called Islam. So, for the Muslims, there is no other alternative but to blindly believe in the dictates of mullahs, pray five times a day, fast in the month of Ramadan and wait for the day of last judgment (qiamah) and enter Allah,s paradise, which is a divine whorehouse.
A few examples would be sufficient to prove how education is neglected in the Islamic or Arab countries. There are 57 member-countries of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), and all of them put together have around 500 universities; one university for every three million Muslims [3]. The United States has 5,758 universities [4] and India has 8,407[5]. In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an ‘Academic Ranking of World Universities, and intriguingly, not one university from the Muslim-majority states was in the top-500. This clearly tells us that the Muslims lack in education; this being the result of their Islamic beliefs, as a consequence of which, over the past 105 years, only three Nobel Prizes have been won by about 1.4 billion Muslims (other than the Peace Prizes), while approximately 14 million Jews have won 180 Nobel Prizes during the same period.[6]
Sever dearth of creativity in the Muslim world:
To narrate how Islam ruins the creativity of man, I have to repeat what I have said in my earlier articles. In the first week of January, 2006, the American Federation of Muslims of Indian-origin (AFMI) and the Talent Promotion Trust, a Bangalore based NGO, have jointly held a panel discussion on “Emerging India and Development of Muslims” in Bangalore. Mr. Farooque Shaikh, a renowned film star, while addressing the gathering of Muslims intellectuals on 7th January, said, “Muslims need to introspect as to why their situation has hit the present nadir and should give up blaming others for their dismal educational standard”. He also said that after analyzing the Muslim community he has come to the conclusion that … …religious discrimination, gender bias and other issues are plaguing them. While commenting on the economic backwardness of the community, he said, “People in the South (India) are lucky that their social and economic conditions are somewhat better than Muslims in the North. Take a trip to the remote regions in the North and the living conditions of the Muslims there are appalling. …The ritualistic zakat doled out by the rich towards the poor is not enough to elevate the pathetic living standards of the Muslims”, Mr. Shaikh added[7].
While speaking to the occasion on the new role the Muslims of this country have to play in the new emerging India, Mr. Sadaqath Peeran, chairman of the Al-Ameen Education Society, said, “If Muslims had to be equal partners in emerging India, they had to break the shackle of poverty and illiteracy. English should be introduced in all Urdu schools, if we want to be equipped to face the challenges of this competitive world”. Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Maqbool Ahmed Siraj, secretary of the Talent Promotion Trust, said, “The Muslim situation is very bleak all over the world. There is no encouragement and incentive for innovation and creativity in the Muslim world”. Mr. Siraj lamented over the low level of economic activity of the Muslim world and said, “The entire gross domestic product of the Muslim world is just half of what France produces every year”. [7] In this context, it may be mentioned that the “total GDP of all the Muslim Arab countries, including their oil wealth, is less than the GDP of Spain. While Spain is not among the leading industrialized kuffar countries.”
Nearly 8 years ago, in January 1998, Mr. Wasim Sajjad, President of the Islamabad based Ministerial Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (CONSTECH), while addressing a press conference, said that the countries belonging to the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), considering their share of world population, should have 4 million scientists and engineers, but in reality they had only 200,000, merely 5 per cent of the expected figure. He also pointed out that Muslims account for 1.3 billion (now about 1.5 billion) or nearly 32 per cent of the world population, but scientific research papers they publish is negligible, below one per cent of world’s total. And at the same time, they have little contribution in the high tech-areas like computer software and information technology etc. Mr. Sajjad, while lamenting over the dearth of creativity and poor performance of the Muslims in modern science and technology, complained that, considering the share of world population, Islamic countries should spend $ 4.7 million a year for higher education and research, but in reality they were spending as low as $ 130,000 per Year.
The severe dearth of creativity in the Muslim world has been revealed in another study. In India and elsewhere in the world, Muslims are, as a community, most back-ward and top the list in adult illiteracy, infant mortality and poverty. Mr. Hisamul Islam Siddiqi, the president of the Indian Islamic Council, a Delhi based NGO. In February, 2000, while he was addressing a seminar on ‘Islamic Heritage: Indian Dimension’ in Delhi, said that nearly 36 per cent of Indian Muslims were urban and almost all of them were slum-dwellers, living below the poverty line. The Rahat Welfare Trust is a Mumbai based NGO and to describe the widespread darkness of ignorance and illiteracy among the Muslims, says,“This darkness makes a mockery of our freedom. … It is only the light of education that can banish this darkness created by ignorance”. Islamic Voice is a Bangalore-based monthly. Its editor Mr. Sadatulla Khan, while lamenting over the lack of creativity and intellectual stagnation in the Muslim community, in his editorial ‘Intellectual Stagnation and Its Remedy’, writes, “Both individually and collectively, Muslims are victims of intellectual stagnation for the past several centuries and are painfully lagging behind in the race of civilization.”
The picture is not different in the Arab world too, where people, though not so poor but backward in every walk of life. This Arab world literally means 22 Islamic countries those are members of the Arab League. Most of these countries are richly endowed with natural resources like natural oil and gas and hence people are faced neither with endemic poverty nor with ethnic conflicts. Moreover, they shook off their foreign bondage, colonial or neo-colonial legacy, quite a long ago. So the question naturally arises- What went wrong? What made them so stuck behind time?
To find plausible replies to these questions, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), in 2001, appointed an inquiry committee consisting of Arab intellectuals and scholars. The committee carried out investigations for a year and submitted its report, called the “Arab Human Development Report 2002” in the first week of July, 2002. Mr. Nader Fergani, the Egyptian scholar and chief author of the report, and his associates took much pain to analyze Arab world’s strength as well as its failings.
To estimate the performance of a country, the UN, for the past 10 or so years, is using an index called ‘Human Development Index’ (HDI), that includes life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, school enrolment as well as income per head. Another index called ‘Alternative Human Development Index’ (AHDI) is also used that drops income per head from HDI, but includes additional aspects like freedom of speech and similar fundamental rights enjoyed by the people, use of Internet, emissions of carbon dioxide and so on. The Arab countries are seen to score, on the basis of both the indices, lower than almost all other countries in the world.
Nader fergani
On the dark side, investigators have identified three major shortcomings. One in five Arabs lives on less than $2 a day, and in past 20 years, their per capita income increased at the poor rate of 0.5 per cent, which is lower than anywhere in the world except the sub-Saharan Islamic countries. At this rate, the report laments, it would take an average Arab 140 years to double his income, while many countries set such a target to be achieved within less than a decade.
Lack of freedom, says the report, is the root cause of many evils in the Arab world, such as extremely autocratic governments, holding of bogus elections, confusion between executive and judiciary and constraints on the media and civil society. “This lack of personal freedom leads to patriarchal, intolerant, and in many cases, suffocating social environments”, the report asserts. The great wave of democratization that has opened up so much of the world over past two decades, particularly after WW 2, seems to have left the Arab world untouched. Sometimes democracy is offered as a concession, not as a right. “Transfer of power through ballot box is not a common phenomenon in the Arab world”, says the report. Freedom of expression and freedom of association are extremely limited and no Arab country has a genuinely free media. “Civil societies in the Arab world are shackled and the NGOs are hobbled by legal and administrative obstacles”, the report continues.
Although Arabs spend only 5% of their GDP for education and the money does not seem to be well spent. Quality of education is pitiably low and there is a severe mismatch between the labor market and the curricula of the education system. Nearly 10 million children have no schooling at all and “for this poor education system, Arabs are falling further behind in scientific as well as in technological studies and research”, the report says. “Investment in research and development is less than one-seventh of the world average. Only 0.6 per cent Arabs uses the Internet and 1.2 per cent Arabs have personal computers. All these add to the severe dearth of creativity”, says the report.
Gender apartheid is a major reason for backwardness:
One thing that every outsider knows about the Arab world is that it does not treat its womenfolk as full citizens and this suppression of women is another vital reason that makes the Arab world backward. The report rightly considers it as a awful wastage. “How can a community prosper if it stifles half of its production potential”, the report asks. More than 50 per cent of Arab women still cannot read and write. Their participation in social, economic and political fields is negligible in comparison to women of other parts of the world.
Mr. Clovis Maksoud
Mr. Clovis Maksoud, an Egyptian scholar involved in preparing the report, blamed no historical event like Western imperialism, devastation caused by the Second World War or any other outside intervention for the present backwardness of the Arab world, and the Islamic world at large. He indirectly raised his finger to the creed of Islam itself for the said backwardness of the Arab world.“The most delicate issue of all, again carefully skirted by the authors of the report, is the part Islam plays in delaying and impeding the Arab world’s advancement towards every receding renaissance that its intellectuals crave”, says a British commentator. Most of the experts on Middle East and Arab world are convinced that “pervasive Islamisation of the society has played havoc and is entirely responsible for stifling constructive Arab thought and progress.”
“From the schooldays onwards, Arabs are instructed that they should not defy tradition (laid down by Allah through Koran and Hadith) that they should respect the authority (of Allah) and truth should be sought in the text (i.e. Koran and Hadith) and not in experience”, says the British commentator. “The role of thought (among Muslims) is to explain and transmit (what has been ordained by Allah in Koran and Hadith 1400 years ago) and not to search or question (those religious dogmas)”, says a Syrian intellectual.
There is no doubt that such tenets are holding sway and impeding creative thought, innovation and progress in the Muslim world. Even an educated Muslim has to believe in Prophet Muhammad’s journey to heaven (meraj) and his splitting of the moon into two halves. Each and every Muslim, whether educated or not, has to believe in the Koranic version of creation that says that Allah has created this world from nothingness within six days, the human race began its journey from a single pair of man and woman, namely Adam (derived from Sanskrit adim) and Hawa and Prophet Muhammad was the 90thdescendant of Adam, which leads to the conclusion that Allah created this world only 4,141 years ago ( considering 30 years to be the gap between two successive generations).
At the same time, they are not permitted to make a rational estimate of Prophet Muhammad, and his life and deeds. They are permitted to praise him for everything he did, without passing any critical remark. He should always be projected as an apostle of peace by concealing his terribly cruel deeds like massacring the Jews of Beni Koraiza and Beni Nadir clan and indiscriminate killings of Arab infidels organizing 82 raids and military campaigns during his ten years’ stay at Medina. Every Muslims has to discover divinity in his marrying 12 (22 according to Shi’as) wives in his declining years, including his marrying Ayesha at the age of 52, when Ayesha was child of 6, and his marrying Zainab, the wife of his adopted son Zeid. What a terrible insult to one’s intellect! What a colossal intellectual slavery!
All the above mentioned comments and opinions of the scholars who prepared the ‘Arab Human Report 2002’ leads one to conclude that, as a community, Muslims around the world are deprived of their right to free thinking and are intellectually enslaved by the creed of Islam. Or, more pointedly, they are a community of shackled people enslaved by the Koran. Can a community of slaves ever prosper? Only time can tell who liberates them from this slavery and how? So, to progress in civilization, the first and foremost task for the Muslims is to abandon Islam en-masse and thus to liberate them from the shackles of Arab religious imperialism. [8]
New ray of hope:
Previously I was fully convinced that the Muslims, including the younger generation, in Islamic countries are so thoroughly brain washed that it is impossible for them to launch a mass protest against Islam and in any eventuality, they will try to seek a solution within the framework of Islam. But a few incidents have made me optimistic. Firstly, when my article “Is Egypt going to be Another Iran?” was posted in FFI, a reader nicknamed Abdulla, an Egyptian ex-Muslim, commented, “It is Iran which is going to be another Egypt. Islam is being defeated in Iran and we’ll soon find Iran the Great Country it used to be before many thugs from Dictators to Mullas took power.” This comment led me to believe that the dream of poet Ferdowsi is going to materialize in Iran in near future.
He also said, “As for Egypt, it is now setting an example to be followed by many other countries in the region, perhaps in the world. Now that the people have said their word and succeeded to overthrow a ruthless dictator, they will never allow any Islamic (or for that matter non-Islamic) beast dictate his reign over 80 million Egyptians.” This comment raised a great hope in my heart while I, like many others, was more or less convinced that a fundamentalist Islamic organization, like Muslim Brother-hood is destined to rule Egypt, as in 1979, Muslim rogue Ayatullah Khomeini captured political power in Iran.
Regarding the future of Egypt, he commented, “Egyptian youth is more and more exposed to western values through the internet (I intend to promote FFI in Egypt’s cyber world as much as I will be able to). Such youth is becoming more enlightened than their older fellow Egyptians, and have come to see the truth about Islam and its evilness. They also are fed up from this cult which kidnapped the minds of the older generations, and brought their country backwards. .. Muslims Brothers are realizing how UNPOPULAR they have become, and therefore they are trying to disguise in the garb of a moderate and soft political party in order to regain some sympathy. Methinks they will fail big time, and Islam will be a shame on their forefronts. …Egypt’s Christian population is estimated between 12 to 13 Million. Those good and patriotic Egyptians, will NEVER forget their voting duties to ensure that no Islamist regime ever reaches power.” I salute this reader and his analysis would be true, if Muslim Brotherhood fails to gain political power in Egypt.
To cheer me up, he wrote, “To the author of this article, I say do not worry. And it is not an exaggeration to say, my dear Dr Radhasyam Brahmachari, that millions and millions of Egyptians (like yours truly) are quitting Islam today. It is also a fact that they are doing so in secret. I just hope that one day, there will be enough guts and boldness for all those Ex-Muslims to declare their apostasy in Public. We’re still not there, but sooner than we expect, this day is coming.” If the predictions of this learned reader comes true, no one will be happier that me in the world. [9]
The second inspiration I have received from a report that says that “Young Iraqis are losing their faith in religion (of Islam)” By Sabrina Tavernise, appeared in the New York Times on March 3, 2008. [10] The report says, “After almost five years of war, many young Iraqis, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith(of Islam) that they preach. In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.”
A discontent youth has been reported to have said, “I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us.” Sara Sami, a high school student in Basra said, “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.” A 19-year-old boy called Atheer, coming from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religious men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys of my age are not interested in religion anymore.”
In short, young Iraqis are becoming tired of constant violence, religious killings and bloodshed. Many believe that, these young souls are finding nationalism, not religion, as a unifying ideology. But religious extremists are being admired by a number of young people in other parts of the Arab world. “It is far from clear whether the shift means a wholesale turn away from religion. A tremendous piety still predominates in the private lives of young Iraqis, and religious leaders, despite the increased skepticism, still wield tremendous power. Measuring religiousness furthermore, is a tricky business in Iraq, where access to cities and towns that are far from Baghdad is limited”, the report says.
At the same time, “Attendance at weekly prayers appears to be down, even in areas where the violence has largely subsided”. According to worshipers and imams in Baghdad and Falluja, “The attendance is vastly smaller than that had in 2004 or 2005.” Such patterns, if lasting, “could lead to a weakening of the political power of religious leaders in Iraq”. … It’s painful to admit, but it’s changed. People have lost too much. “When they behead someone, they say ‘Allah Akbar,’ they read Koranic verse,” said a moderate Shiite sheik from Baghdad but, as a whole, “Islam is a failure, not only in the students’ minds, but also in the community.”
“After 2003, you couldn’t put your foot into the Husseiniya, it was so crowded with worshipers,” said Sayeed Sabah, a Shiite religious leader from Baghdad, referring to a Shiite place of prayer. A professor at Baghdad University’s School of Law, who would identify herself only as Bashra, said, “The students have changed their views about religion. They started to hate religious men. They make jokes about them because they feel disgusted by them.” As a result, thousands of young generation Muslims are leaving Islam in Iraq and Iran. [11][12]
Mosab Hassan Yousef
The testimony of Mosab Hassan Yousef:
The third inspiration I have received from the video interviews of Mosab Hassan. Mosab Hassan Yousef (33), now known as Joseph after embracing Christianity, is a Palestinian and son of a Hamas founder and leader sheikh Hassan Yousef, who spent many years in Israeli prisons. Yousef was born in Ramallah, a city 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem. He is the oldest of six brothers and two sisters. From 1997 to 2007, he worked undercover for Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet that considered him the most valuable source within the Hamas leadership. Mosab Hassan Yousef is the author of Son of Hamas
“The information Yousef supplied prevented dozens of suicide attacks and the assassination of Israelis, and exposed numerous terrorist groups. Yousef has since converted to Christianity and moved to California, in the United States. In March 2010, he published his autobiography, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices.”[13]
"Son of Hamas" book cover
According to Yousef, when he was growing up he wanted to be a fighter because that was expected of Arab children in the West Bank. Yousef was first arrested when he was ten, during the First Intifada, for throwing rocks at Israeli settlers. He was further arrested and jailed by the Israelis numerous times. As his father’s eldest son, he was seen as his heir apparent and became an important part of the Hamas organization.
“Yousef was held by Shin Bet agents in 1996. He claims that while in prison, he became appalled as he compared the Shin Bet’s interrogation methods to how imprisoned Hamas operatives tortured suspected collaborators.[8] He decided to accept a Shin Bet approach to become an informant. Since his release from prison in 1997, Yousef was considered the Shin Bet’s most reliable source in the Hamas leadership, earning himself the nickname the “Green Prince”. [13]
In several video interviews, Mosab Hassan said, “From outside, it seems that Islam is expanding. But in reality, Islam is collapsing from inside.” [14] Recently a Egyptian-German political scientist and historian, Hamas Abdel-Samad, in a television interview said that Islam is going to suffer an imminent collapse. [15]
Report by M A Khan:
The final inspiration I have received from the article “Progress in the Battle against Islam: ‘Islamic Jihad’ in Bangla”, by the learned author and the editor of the renowned website Islam-watch.org M A Khan. Khan has reported the publication of the Bengali version of his celebrated work “Islamic Jihad” and he described his highly inspiring experience about the affairs in Bangladesh in that article. [16] At first, he was apprehending that, the upsurge in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen and other countries would go in the Iranian way and wrote, “The surge of popular revolutions in the Middle East points to a gloomy, even frightening, prospect.”
But observing the reality, he gained confidence to write, “Yet our battle against Islam is quietly scoring points, one at a time. … It’s been a satisfying progress in our battle against Islam—given our limited resources and inputs. Our voices have started penetrating into the Islamic heartlands. And as I tour the internet, I can see a deluge of ex-Muslims from all over the world queuing up to join the Atheist/Skeptic club. A true revolution for the liberation of men and women in the Muslim world will start with Enlightenment about Islam amongst Muslims, and it’s looking a real and near-future possibility. What we need is patience and perseverance to keep our battle going.”
He further writes, ‘Amidst this gloomy prospect, I have some good news for you too:
A publisher in Bangladesh has translated and published my book, Islam Jihad, in Bangla.
The same publisher has also published a few more titles in Bangla with translated articles from islam-watch.org and faithfreedom.org (contain articles of our authors Ali Sina, M. A. Khan, Alamgir Hussain, Mohammad Asghar, Ayesha Ahmed, Mumin Salih, Tanvir Kami et al.). I’m including a few cover-images of books, sent by the publisher, which our Bengali readers may be interested in.”
The incident reflects that the Muslims of Bangladesh have also started to question Islam.
All these accounts narrated above point to the fact that, young enlightened Muslims have started to identify that Islam is the main culprit responsible for their backwardness and many of them have started to abandon Islam. If all the Muslims around the world leave the evil cult called Islam, then Islam will vanish naturally. It is better, sooner that day comes. On that day, 1.5 billion of Muslims would return to their ancestral culture and become free of the fetters of the Arab religious imperialism. That day will really be a great day for the history of man.
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[01] H Nisar: Why Muslims Are So Backward (Video) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNMP-1kmVNc
[02] Why are Muslims so Backward? (video) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa-CoYyWQ0c
[03] http://www.dur.ac.uk/daniel.newman/courseAR1.html
[04] http://www.utexas.edu/world/univ/alpha/
[05] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_India
[06] Why Are Muslims So Backward? -http://ibrahim-sheme.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-are-muslims-so-backward.html
[07] Islamic Voice: February, 2006
[08] R Brahmachari, World Community of Muslims: Shackled People Enslaved by the Koran.
[09] http://www.faithfreedom.org/articles/political-islam/is-egypt-going-to-be-another-iran/
[10] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/world/africa/03iht-youth.4.10662930.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
[11] Thousands Leaving Islam in Iraq http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXGlGcT6Gq4
[12] Thousands Leaving Islam in Iran http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfUFKvz4Yko
[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosab_Hassan_Yousef
[14] Hamas founders family: Islam is collapsing and will be gone in 10 years:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUQjk1YUq94
Son of Hamas leader says Islam is Collapsing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkzg0ePpRGc (part 1 to part 6)
[15] http://www.faithfreedom.org/videos-features/german-egyptian-predicts-the-demise-of-islam/
[16] http://www.islam-watch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=655:progress-in-the-battle-against-islam-islamic-jihad-in-bangla&catid=65:khan&Itemid=58
