What's Wrong With Islam? Part 2

by Mahathir

Islam has been characterized with a) violence and intolerance towards critics of Islam, b) harsh penalties for apostasy, c) honor killings for people who have been perceived to have despoiled the name of their family and d) discrimination and domestic violence against women.

a) Despite repeated claims by so-called Muslim scholars, intellectuals and apologists who fervently claim that Islam is a religion of peace, Prophet Muhammad spear-headed the expansion of the religion through the use of the sword and provided the impetus for the spread of the religion through warfare. During the period in Medina that gave witness to the expansion of the religion,  Prophet Muhammad spear-headed the expansion of Islam in India by slaughtering 80 million ethnic Indians (See Koenraad Elst's book "Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam.") The government of India has taken great pains to conceal this horrendous fact for fear of reprisal and violence from the Muslim community.

The history of Islam is not confined to ethnic cleansing but also extends to the wholesale destruction of Buddhist and Hindu temples and art. Due to its negative attitude towards depictions of the human figure, Muslims spear-headed by Prophet Muhammad destroyed icons such as the Buddhas of Bamyan, and under the iconoclastic ardor of a fanatical ruler, defaced the Great Sphinx of Giza, using it for target practice for the guns of the Mamluks, while its face was further disfigured by Marmalukes [Mamluks], the eighteenth century A.D. ruler of Egypt.

As for violence and intolerance against critics of Islam, when the Muslim Brotherhood was disbanded by the Egyptian Prime Minister who was assassinated as a result, and the founder of the Brotherhood released a statement condemning the assassination, he was himself not spared of assassination the following year. 

The Muslim scholar Khaleel Mohammed comments that Muslim intellectuals throughout the world are punished for criticizing certain aspects of Islam; witness the likes of Muhammad Said al-Ashmawy who was held under house arrest in Egypt for his own protection, Abdel Karin Soroush an Iranian who was beaten up for raising the voice of inquiry, Mahmous Mohamed Taha who was killed in Sudan, and Muslim scholars such as Rifat Hassan, Fatima Mernissi, Abdallah an-Na'im, Mohammed Arkoun and Amina Wadud - all of whom were vilified by imams for asking Muslims not to blindly accept the teachings of the Quran but to exercise their intellectual prowess to evaluate the fundamental tenets of Islam.

Theo van Gogh was assassinated for making the film Submission, racial riots have been instigated after the publication of Salmon Rushdie's book Satanic Verses and Pastor Terry Jones burning of the Quran, while fatwas have to issued against, among others, Brigette Gabriel, Robert Spencer, Geert Wilders, Wahid Shoebat, Nonie Darwish and Wafa Sultan.

b) As for apostasy, Bernard Lewis said it best when he commented that: "The penalty for apostasy in Islamic law is death. Islam is conceived as a polity, not just as a religious community. It follows therefore that apostasy is treason. It is a withdrawal, a denial of allegiance as well as of religious belief and loyalty. Any sustained and principled opposition to the existing regime or order almost inevitably involves such a withdrawal."

According to the four Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence, as well as Shi'a scholars, a male apostate must be executed, while a female apostate may either be put to death or imprisoned until she repents, under the condition that they are of sound mind. 

The Muslim scholar Shafi'i cites Verse 2:217 of the Quran as adducing the evidence for the death penalty, something that William Montgomery Watt says may have been suitable for the age in which Prophet Muhammad lived but is no longer suitable given the advancement and progress that has been made by modern civilization.

If one were to subscribe to a purist interpretation of Sharia law, a person found guilty of apostasy should be beheaded.

c) With regard to honor killings, witness the likes of Turkish immigrant Gülsüm S. who was killed for a having an unsanctioned relationship, a 26-year-old Kurdish woman by the name of Fadime Sahindal who was killed by her father in 2002, Heshu Yones who was stabbed to death by her Kurdish father in London because  her family suspected she had a boyfriend after hearing a love song dedicated to her, the killing of Tulay Goren, a Kurdish Shia Muslim girl, who had immigrated with her family from Turkey, a woman who was killed by her father in Saudi Arabia for "chatting" with a man on  Facebook, a 2-day-old boy who was suffocated by his grandmother because he was born out of wedlock, a Turkish girl who was killed because her family thought she had a boyfriend after hearing a song, a 16-year-old girl was who was buried alive in Southeast Turkey by her relatives for befriending boys, Ahmet Yildiz, a Turkish physics student, who was shot after leaving a cafe in Istanbul due to the fact that he had represented his country at an international gay conference in the United States, and Taslim Khatoon Solangi, who hails from the village of Hajna Shah, who was tortured and killed on orders of her father-in-law, who accused her of carrying a child conceived out of wedlock.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that approximately 5,000 women and girls are victims of honor killing per year. However, many women's groups in the Middle East and Southwest Asia suspect that the figure is at least four times more.

d) And with regard to discrimination and domestic violence against women, Verse 4:34 of the Qur'an as translated by Ali Quli Qara'i reads:

Men are the managers of women, because of the advantage Allah has granted some of them over others, and by virtue of their spending out of their wealth. So righteous women are obedient, care-taking in the absence [of their husbands] of what Allah has enjoined [them] to guard. As for those [wives] whose misconduct you fear, [first] advise them, and [if ineffective] keep away from them in the bed, and [as the last resort] beat them. Then if they obey you, do not seek any course [of action] against them. Indeed Allah is all-exalted, all-great.

Theo van Gogh criticized this and similar verses in the Qur'an in his film Submission; co-written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an ex-Muslim who lost faith in Islam after she read texts from the Quran following Osama bin Ladin's infamous letters to America.

The Quran unconditionally states that a man's testimony is worth four times a woman's testimony, that women are born deficient and that a woman's duty is to satisfy her husband, and that if the wife is unwilling to have sex with her husband that her husband reserves the right to force her to do so. Worse still is the right of the husband to beat his wife if she refuses to satisfy him or if she is disobedient.