Dr. Omar Zia (former Muslim)
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Testimony of Leaving Islam
The past three and a half years for me have been most traumatic of my life. I have been ostracized, called deaf, dumb and blind, threatened and even begged, cursed and prayed at to come to my senses. The more I was subjected to the above the more I became determined to get to the bottom of my predicament. I call it my predicament because I was most bewildered as to why my own loved ones have gone against me.
My friends abandoned me, my relatives scorned me, even my wife of 15 years threatened to leave me. People who did not even know me sent me emails threatening dire consequences in this world and afterlife. They prayed for my early death and scorching in hell for an eternity. But all that is past me. Since writing the previous two articles I have been subjected to levels of hate previously unknown. If cyberspace was capable of shredding one into barbecued pieces of chewed up and spat out meat, I would resemble that. Receiving this huge smack in the cybercafe has prompted me to explain my understanding of Islam in simplified terms and ask all alleged Muslims to refute me in a logical manner, if they please.
Islam may be many things for many people from different sects but one thing on which every sect of Islam will agree and which is beyond dispute is the five pillars theory. Those five pillars are:
- Belief (Reciting Kulma)
- Prayers (5 mandatory prayers during the course of the day)
- Fasting (30 day mandatory period)
- Zakat (2.5% alms given from ‘income’)
- Hajj (Once a lifetime pilgrimage)
It is these five pillars on which Islam is supposed to be resting. The absurdity of a ‘belief’ resting on rituals is as diabolical as the idea of trans substantiation, but for now lets move on to the rituals of Islam and how they may be beneficial or not for humanity as a whole.
Belief
I implore the Muslim readers for a moment to just think, think for a moment about the vastness of our universe, the complexity of its function, the time of its existence, the wonder of life arising on a speck of dust called earth (as well as the probability of life arising on another billion planets in hundreds of billions of galaxies similar to ours) and then imagine a Being which runs all that.
How complex and how vast that imagined Being must be. Even the comparison in size between me and the ants living in my garden is beyond this scale by millions of times. Can you imagine that Being caring an iota about a microscopic and most inferior being ‘believing’ in him or not? This great Being existence would not require confirmation from humans or would he feel threats of eternal torture for non compliance necessary. If this Being existed it would be totally free of such needs. It’s like you creating an army of robots and started torturing them for an eternity for not believing in you. Allah the sadist is not that Being.
Prayers
Praying 5 times a day is a most mind numbing ritual for the simple reason that the small minority that actually practice it do not know what they are reciting even the ones who are familiar with Arabic. The first Surah recited in that is Surah Fatihah in which the reciter is praying to Allah to send him on a straight path. That Surah is a prayer and therefore does not belong in the Quran. One of the many smaller Surahs which are often recited by Muslims in these prayers is 111. It is full of curses. The other small Surahs are also meaningless and devoid of any piety and contain abstract verses. No Muslim knows what they are reciting and the repetitive and incomprehensible of this forces the mind to wonder to anything but Allah. Multiply this boredom and also just imagine reciting Surah 33 and Surah 66 detailing Muhammad’s sex affairs during travels in Ramadan.
There are many other unsolvable puzzles created by an ignorant Muhammad in the prayers. I list some of them below:
- Direction of Kaaba: How do you determine that in a world which is round! Even from only a thousand mile away from Mecca you are pointing towards the space and not Kaaba.
- Closer to Polar ends: How do you read five prayers at different intervals in a world which does not have equal days and nights and in some regions night and day run into months rather than a 24 hour period.
- 5 times a day Ablution: Does this make them any cleaner? Certainly not! In my travels around the Muslim world I have yet to come across a clean Muslim country barring the oil rich Emirates who can afford to hire an army of slaves from the subcontinent to keep their little Emirates clean. This is also such a waste of scarce water resource (mercifully most Muslims ignore call for prayers) and what a pain it could be for Muslim Eskimos to do that in their freezing surroundings.
- Determining the time of prayers: How do you determine the time of prayers under cloud cover. Did Muhammad foresee the invention of clocks? Muslims even resisted the use of loud speakers for Azan at the advent of that invention. Why do they use the clock to determine the time of prayers?
Finally to think that the alleged creator of this magnificent universe wants humans to forgo normal life and pray to him all their life and become his slaves is an insult to our evolved sensibilities.
Fasting
For those who are not familiar with this ritual of Islam, fasting is done for around 30 days every year. The month of fast falls 10 days behind preceding year, every year, due to Muhammad Lunacy of basing his year on the Lunar calendar. Hardly any Muslim uses that calendar. During fast you are not allowed food or water from sunrise till sunset. Once again the crazed deity called Allah wants his creation to suffered in immeasurable terms.
It never fails to amaze me how during normal times my wife gets upset if she fails to have the dinner table ready when the children come home from school. She wants them fed and watered immediately. But during fasting month she scorns us for refusing to fast and makes us feel guilty the whole month. To my gentle queries as to why the mover of the universe wants its puny beings to starve and suffer, she has no answer. The sadistic Allah has a very peculiar satanic effect on her. Fasting is proven to be bad for health. Our metabolic system requires food at intervals rather than gorging twice a day. I have personally seen most rich Arabs in Saudi Arabia and Emirates sleep all day after closing fast and gorge all night on ‘all night buffets’, while the poor Muslims from the subcontinent build their countries while suffering with hunger and thirst due to demonic Allah’s unjust edicts.
When I am in Pakistan, I often come across people who bemoan the fact that prices of edibles go up with the advent of Ramadan. When I tell them that prices only go up when demand is high against a constant supply and perhaps people eat more rather than less during Ramadan they just look at me as if I am mad.
Zakat
Would it not be great if governments can run all their affairs on a 2.5% collection of taxes to maintain all the essential services in the country? Can any Muslim show me a country which only collects this amount of tax? The truth is that this tax was levied by Muhammad and his cohorts without any thought or planning. It was basically an afterthought once income from ghazwas (robbing expeditions which provided 20%) began to decline. Most civilized countries which provide cradle to the grave services for its citizens levy almost 60% taxes. Even the Islamic Jamhooria of Pakistan which provides hardly any services to its citizens levies 15% basic income tax, almost 6 times more than the absurd amount of Islamic tax.
But let’s see what effect this lip service to Zakat has on normal people. Before the 1st of Ramadan people in Pakistan empty their bank accounts so the government cannot charge Zakat from their savings. They then take some of that money and stock up on alcoholic beverages as the wine shops are closed during Ramadan. They gather in droves at the banks to sign a form for Zakat exemption. The banks take advantage of this by charging Rs 100 for that form. The spectacle of poor queuing up on rich peoples palatial houses for bits of food and money handed out in Zakat is a sad and despicable sight and a most degrading experience for the poor. This shameful spectacle is on display in most Muslim countries.
Even more shameful is the fact that according to almost all Islamic Scholars Zakat cannot be used for the welfare of non-Muslims. How much more does Islam have to show its ugly head before Muslims realize that this religion or cult cannot be from an all encompassing, all loving being.
Hajj
This ritual, filled with satanic practices to me as I have personally experienced it, is the most absurd and self serving of all. According to Siratunnabi, the only authentic portrayal of the life of Muhammad, the confirmation of Kaaba being the abode of almighty mover and shaker of universe, Allah, came in shape of a note buried under the stones of Kaaba. The only problem was that the note was in Syriac and not Arabic. Perhaps Allah did not know Arabic when he buried the note. As the pagan Arabs were illiterate, a learned Jew had to translate the note.
On my visit to Mecca many years ago I was aghast at the spectacle of people cutting the throats of various animals and throwing them in a large dug out pit to be sanded over later on. I was blamed of cowardice when I opted to pay the money over a counter to a charity which promised to cut the animal on my behalf and ship the tinned meat to poor Muslim countries. He emphasized on Muslim countries. When I asked my group leader why more people did not opt for this saner option I was contemptuously told that Allah preferred to see the blood there and then by the hands of the Hujjaj. Bonkers! Absolutely bonkers!
Kissing the black stone was another hurdle which I refused to cross. Please don’t blame me for that. Even Umar the most psychopathic follower of Muhammad, according to an ahadith narration, kissed it but only after proclaiming that he is doing it because Muhammad did it otherwise he knew that this stone was lifeless. At the ritual of throwing pebbles at the Satan I was aghast at the zeal of some Muslims. They were building a purposeful but comical rage and throwing pebbles, stones, coins, shoes, anything. I was once again blamed of being a coward as I was throwing the pebbles half heatedly and gently to avoid hurting anybody else. Later on the pebbles are picked up by the bulldozers and replaced where they came from!
Look at the economic side. It costs 250,000Pak rupees per person to perform Hajj. The main beneficiaries of this money spent is Saudi Arabia and some Chinese companies which make the Tasbihs and prayer mats for the Hajis to bring back in their thousands for handing out to relatives. One does not have to be a mathematician to work out that this is another way of exploiting Muslims outside of Arabia. Once again that cunning Allah has duped the non Arab Muslims. Is it any wonder Muhammad claimed that his tribe is the most favored of all Muslims?
So there you have it. My definition of Islam. Feel free to hurl as many threats and insults at me as you can but just before you do that just think for a second. If you take away these nonsensical rituals away from Islam what else is left? Take a look. Underneath these pillars there is nothing but a rotten crumbly pile of stones with rules for subjugation of slaves, women, non Muslims and other civilizations. You may even find some piety among the rubble sneaked in for appearances sake but it is not worth bothering with. One can always be good just because it is good to be good rather than to please the demented duo of Muhammad and Allah.
Are these the reasons that Muslims are at the bottom rung of civilization? Are these the reasons that makes Muslim countries the most illiterate, filthiest, most corrupt and hypocritical? Just for a change, do some critical thinking and self inspection.
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