Drishtikone
Mayank in his column “I for Insanity . I for Illness . I for Islam” argues about the insanity and the trouble that is prevalent in Islam. He asks some tough questions and looks for answers:
Islam i.e. a No-Tolerance Zone
The non-Islamic world sees Islam as a group of followers with no tolerance.
They ask why the problem areas of the world chiefly consist of Muslim populated regions. They ask why Muslims could not live in harmony alongside people not following their faith.
Why Salman Rushdie had a death fatwa issued against him? Why couldn’t he freely roam the streets of Bombay – a city he loves and which has formed a backdrop of almost all his novels?
Why there was such intense fury against the Danish cartoons of Muhammad? Why Allah seems so angry and his followers so violent?
The Rigidity and Hypocrisy
Do the Islamic societies exploit the free democracies of the rest of the world?
The Muslims happily leave their undemocratic, oil-rich, or oil-poor lands, to pursue happiness and wealth in free liberal countries. They make money, get educated and are also free to recite Koran and perform five prayers a day. They have their own Friday mosques in their own neighborhoods in these foreign cities.
But their dictators and Imams do not allow the same benefits to non-Muslims in their own societies. There are no churches in Saudia. A non-Muslim can not visit and attempt to understand the pull and magic of Allah in the al-Haram mosque of Mecca.
Saudia can send missionaries to India, fund Islamic societies there, but Hindus or Sikhs or Christians or Buddhists or Jains or Jews or Parsees in India can not receive permission to propagate their respective faiths in Medina.
Islam appears to be a religion that has no qualm in using and exploiting other societies but remains reluctant to let it be equally open to outside influences.
I have a simple philosophy:
When you sow an Apple seed – the fruit on the tree is an Apple;
So, When you see an Apple on a tree – you can be sure that the seed sowed was an Apple seed!
Similarly, when you see that the only folks wearing Islam on the sleeves and quoting Quran or Muhammad’s example with gay abandon are the Extremists – it leads you to a point where you need to question the basic premises!!
That unfortunately is the problem – if you question you are automatically a non-believer by default and so fit for execution fatwa…. the only way you can remain “faithful” or a good Muslim is until you keep believing in centuries old folk lores set in a desert tribe where one guy through a rather twisted logic somehow asserted that his people were better than the rest.. and of them, his tribe was the best.. and of them his family the best.. and out of them.. he was the best…. and (the masterstroke) the LAST!! And the non-believers who STILL wanted to worship idols got to be fought with for they were against Allah – the superior of Yahwe!!
If this is not crooked way to gain control of the world.. then what is??
Read any Islamic sermon in any site – no, not the usual Al Qaeda ones even “moderate” ones will do – and you will see this central strand running through.. that Allah made Muslims special….
… How can Allah – who is defined as the All-knowing, All-powerful… and Omni-present – could be only thinking of a tiny minority of his creation .. beats me!! But then the act of asking a question – even on things with as circuitious a logic as the Juxtaposition of Definition of Allah and his Proposed Favorites – is enough to put you into that box called “non-believers”!
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