The Problem with Islam

 Back in University I studied logic. It was part of getting my basically useless Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy. Let me set up a logical argument for you:

Premise 1: If something is the Word of G-d, you should study it.
Premise 2: The Torah is the Word of G-d

Therefore: You should NOT study the Torah.

Does not compute, right? The conclusion here should that you SHOULD study it. However, Islam bases its claims on the teachings of Judaism and Christianity in the Bible, states that the Quran is the continuation of that, and then says not to read the Bible.

That only makes sense if you are trying to get some cred for being in the lineage of the Abrahimic religions but simultaneously want to discredit them and say that yours is the only reliable version of that teaching. Muhammad actually scolded one of his disciples for carrying a copy of the Torah. The moral of that story: I will tell you what to think. Only I will tell you what the religion of Abraham and Moses is.

So Islam paradoxically says the Torah is the word of G-d and NOT to read it.

Islam is a plagiarism of the Abrahimic religions. You can almost see Muhammad thinking: "this One G-d thing is great, but those stinking Jews seem to have cornered that market. We need a version for us Arabs."

And then: "but if they read the originals, my version has less credibility. So I will claim authority from the Bible, but not allow them to read it."

And oh, for the Christians: Jesus was a prophet, and you shouldn't read the New Testament. Whut?

As I mentioned in my post "History of Monotheism Up Until Now," there are all kinds of other absurdities and weirdness in Islam. The One G-d YHWH did not mention any such thing as jinn, probably because they do not exist and are silly. He did not mention that the shooting stars are His projectile weapons, probably because they are actually space rocks. And I think that if Moses had sex with a NINE YEAR OLD GIRL, he would probably keep it to himself. Or better yet, not do it. Muhammad, on the other hand, both had sex with a 9 year old and didn't avoid mentioning it.

I think that should be a general rule from now on: if you have sex with children, in other words if you are a PEDOPHILE, your religious advice should be ignored. Just a thought.

Arguably, Islam is not really an Abrahimic religion. Of course, only Judaism has an ironclad claim to that name. But at least Christians admit YHWH is G-d, even if they don't like to say the name.

Jews: YHWH alone is G-d

Christians: JESUS is G-d (and um, YHWH of course too. We like to say "God the Father")

Muslims: Allah is G-d (but we claim it is the same G-d as you Jews. But we never say YHWH.)

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I have been studying Islam of late, though I cannot claim to be any sort of expert on it. Reading the Quran kills me of boredom. I find many things about Islam admirable however. Their emphasis on the singularity and unity of G-d. Avoiding the whole Jesusolatry thing. Lā ilāha illā allāh, there is no god but G-d. All admirable. All present in the Torah, and you don't have to get the Made-in-Arabia substitute. You can get the real deal.

The level of commitment of a very large number of people to Islam is also commendable, though I wish that commitment was aimed at a religion that was not a plagiarism founded by a pedo. If you compare it to the severely lukewarm level of commitment to Christianity in the West, or even of most ethnic Jews towards Judaism, it is clear that the Muslims for all their faults are definitely putting it out there on their religious commitment. Their level of commitment is an indictment of lukewarm Western religion.

This also leads to people blowing themselves up in shopping malls, but I consider that a failure in reasoning ability more than anything. There is no way that people blowing themselves to giblets in shopping malls will somehow do a miraculous job at converting people to Islam or overthrowing corrupt Middle Eastern regimes. It does the inverse of that. It's bad salesmanship on the Islam side, and strengthens despotic regimes. It puts people on the side of the corrupt regimes out of fear of the Islamists. That's exactly what happened after the Luxor massacre in 1997. It strengthened the authority of Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian regime. The Egyptian people overwhelmingly denounced it. But I am not equating Islam with terrorism: as I said that is a failure of simple reason and conscience more than anything.

Whatever commendable there is about Islam, and there are a number of things commendable about it, those things do not overcome the one most important thing: it's a fake. The Quran was not dictated by G-d, or even an angel.

Moses didn't have an angel supposedly whispering secretly into his ear in a cave. G-d brought down fire on the mountain in front of thousands of people and spoke the Ten Commandments to them all.