Is it possible you have a profile somewhere , I am interested in your book , I don't want to buy a book about Islam written by a agnostic or a Baptist . Thanks

What are you afraid of? That your reason may be awakened and that you may be forced to confront the reality that emerges?

Have courage and hope.

Dont look for your intelectuals to merely blindly even if articulately re-affirm the blinkers that keep your reason in shackles to orthodoxy.

socratease

Islam is where Catholicism was 1000 years ago.
Kill the heretics.
Times have changed.
Countries can be wiped out in a second with atheist technology.
Don't provoke the West or its friends.

Islam's tragedy is that it closed the gates of ijtihad (independent critical thinking) hundreds of years ago. Its mainstream is fundamentalist and literalist.

Muslim Spain was imposing martial law and bludgeoning others’ freedoms well before the Reconquista.

In 1579, Istanbul got an observatory - demolished by clerics in 1580. Same with the Muslim universe’s first printing press - opened 1728, closed by mullahs in 1745.

Christianity has a a very rich tradition of scholarship. Rigidly literalist reading of the Bible is NOT mainstream in Christianity today. But it is in Islam. Christians regard the Bible as a divinely inspired human product - not the dictated and uninterpretable "Words of God".

The Koran itself is a highly derivative, boringly repetitive and inconsistent mishmash. Mohammed paraphrased the Torah and ignored the Injeel (gospels), introducing gross inaccuracies of fact and chronology (eg claiming that Abraham was called to sacrifice Ishmael rather than Isaac).

The Koran "protests too much" in a number of verses which reject the charge that Mohammed wrote the Koran, as opposed to "reciting" revelation.

The Koran contains a number of verses where God apparently changed his mind - the "abrogated" suras. "There shall be no compulsion in religion" is abrogated by many other suras full of bloodthirsty intent towards Christians, Jews and polytheists. Infallible? Hah.

Slabs of the Koran, cited by Islamists, are thoroughly offensive to non-Muslims.

Islam is not a "religion of peace". As Samuel Huntington says (The Clash of Civilizations), it has bloody borders and bloody innards. It fights everybody, including itself: Sunni against Shia, Hamas against Fatah, so on and on.

The god of Islam is a shrill, hateful dalek ("Exterminate! exterminate!") The Koran is full of prurient recitations of the torments of hellfire - not a skerrick of love. "FEAR Allah" indeed.

Islam is a boil on the bum of humanity, a perversion of man's search for the spiritual. In no way does it lead man toward the good, the beautiful and the holy.

Junk this accursed faith, Mr Khan!

Muslim Freethinkers?

This is where Mr. Khan starts to go wrong because it is a contradiction in terms. Firstly, he needs to accept that Islam “binds” all social, political, religious and even economic prospects. In the non Islamic countries we are free to choose and free to speak about our choices.

Secondly, he needs to acknowledge that with the possible exception of Indonesia and the newly democratic (?) Iraq and Afghanistan, all Islamic countries are dictatorships of one sort or another. For example Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait are “benign dictatorships”, run by royal families. Syria, Sudan and many other African Islamic nations are under military dictatorships. Iran, Malaysia and most of the “revolutionary” Islamic nations and separatist groups are mostly “clerical dictatorships”. There is little scope, if any, within Islam for freethinkers or moderates.

The main reason for this is that the dictatorships harness the “bound” attributes of Islam to establish their power base. This is why Islam is essentially schizophrenic and cannot exist within its own nations, under any form of democracy. Islam has become a great way for ruthless dictators to harness and focus the anger of their poor, ignorant subject’s at someone other than those who impose that poverty and pain, their own leaders.

I was told by an Arab friend when I was in Jeddah some years ago, that the Koran is a book of Prose, it is not in any sequence of events or time lines. He told me that full appreciation of its beauty can only be obtained by reading it in Arabic; it does not translate well in any other language. It’s a bit like reading Dante in anything other than Italian.

The translation issues (vulnerabilities) of the Koran identified by my Arab colleague have become a valuable tool for dictators to “control” their subjects. They simply “translate” the Koran to suit the needs of their control mechanisms.

It is sad that a book of prose, so loved by many Muslims, had been usurped by dictatorships and turned into the rationale for so many human atrocities.

The appearance of a few or even many "free"-thinkers will not make the slightest difference to the momentum of the Islamic meme as described in this reference.

http://howardbloom.net/islam.htm

Just as no amount of "free" or "enlightened" thinking will or can make any difference to th mometum of the Invisible Megamachine that Lewis Mumford described, and warned us about, over 30 years ago in the Pentagon of Power.

Meanwhile it was the "enlightened" West that gave us World Wars one and two,and which drives and largely supplies the world-wide armanents race. And, despite the seeming and in some sense real success's for a significant number of people on the planet, there has been a process of more and more cultural disintegration ever since.

Sharing the Blame

Sincerely hope this ultra-new concept of freedom between religions is all about sharing historical blames especially as regards us and the Islamics.

Us of course also meaning the Israelis who certainly do regard themselves as closer to us Anglo's et all than the Arabs.

Finally, could say from a philosophical viewpoint that while we might say it could be hate from the Islamists who do not agree with the concept, from our side as usual will be a mixture of Western arrogance and the usual chicken liverness.

Regards, BB WA.

"The Koran itself is a highly derivative, boringly repetitive and inconsistent mishmash"

Quite unlike the Bible.

It can't be pointed out often enough that Islam is 600 years younger than Christianity, and is identical in almost every respect to Christianity 600 years ago.

Sancho: Your ironic "Quite unlike the Bible" shows little knowledge of the Bible or history of Christianity.

There is some repetition in the Bible - a human product. Kings and Chronicles cover similar ground; the Ten Commandments appear in both Exodus and Deuteronomy. However: there is much beautiful poetry and imagery in the Bible. Its coherent style - and content - are incomparably superior to the Koran.

The Koran recognizes Jesus as a major prophet, yet there is not a trace of his teaching in the Koran. Jesus overturns the 'eye for eye, tooth for tooth' injunction in Leviticus, with his clear instructions about forgiveness and non-resistance. The Koran has no equivalent of the sublimity of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, or Beatitudes.

Christianity 600 years ago was benefiting from scholasticism (Abelard, Aquinas). Islam has stayed intellectually destitute. The Reformation (1500s) came from application of reason (detailed, interpretive study) to the Bible, and personal spirituality . Islam shot its brains out centuries ago, and comprehensively in the 20th century with the cesspit of Wahabiism and that idiot General Zia whose cosiness to mad mullahs flushed Pakistan down the toilet.

I'd like to believe that Mr. Kahn is both genuine in his viewpoint and sincerely believes that it is possible for Islam to re-invent itself. But I am immediately assailed by the Koranic exhortation that Muslims may lie to and deceive the ‘infidels’ (i.e. us Christians and Jews) in order to promote Islam.

There is also the problem that Muslims would have to - repeat HAVE TO - extensively re-write the Koran if they genuinely want their religion to evolve into a religion that can co-exist peacefully. As it currently stands, that book is clearly explicit in promoting violence against anyone who does not toe the Muslim line.

When Christianity underwent its reformations there was no change to the Biblical texts. But the Islamic faith cannot in any way change if it clings to a book that literally insists on violence, coercion and whatever ugly forms of intimidation may be necesary to assert itself.

The opposition by Islamic extremists to ANY changes to the Koran - let alone extensive changes - is such that any informed person understands that any change at all would be virtually impossible. It is certain that there would be much bloodshed amongst Muslims before any meaningful changes occurred. But even if drastic changes are somehow miraculously made and completely embraced by the entire Muslim community, what Muslims would end up with would simply be a version of Christianity (which, by the way, is in no way exemplified by, for example, young white women walking half-naked on our streets and young white men drinking themselves insensible in pubs on a Sunday morning. These types are NOT “Christians.” They are Godless/secular barbarians and I dare say that this is one reality that genuine Christians and Muslims can very comfortably agree on.) So why don’t those Muslims who are sincere in their desire for love of fellow humans and world peace simply give that faith away and embrace a more peaceable faith - one that, warts and all, history has shown, brought far more well-being to people around the world than any other for of belief system (religion)?