-- Amil Imani

Nothing prompts the hundreds of ordinarily feuding and fighting sects of Islam to come together like the slightest disrespect shown to the founder of their religion or their religious sanctity. With the slightest hint from their vested-interest clergy and politicians, mobs of Muslims pour into the streets with frenzy, burning, destroying buildings and killing people they associate, however remotely, as complicit in defaming Islam.

Islam is a brutal, tribal warrior cult that glorifies jihad and martyrdom.  The Quran is replete with acts of murder, terrorism, and genocide.

Let us look at some explicit provisions of the Quran:

* Islam is misogynist.  Men are superior to women.  Women are to obey men and are to be beaten when they disobey or misbehave.
* Islam is racist.  The Quran stipulates that the Arabs are superior to all others, and it clearly condones slavery.  It explicitly stipulates discriminatory laws for slaves.
* Islam denounces other belief systems and marginally recognizes the validity of only two religions: Judaism and Christianity.
* Islam is violent.  It not only condones jihad; it recommends it and promises great reward for the jihadist.
* Islam is already splintered in a number of major sects and innumerable numbers of secondary sects that harbor huge disagreement with and animosity toward one another as well as toward all infidels.

Sounds absurd? Why? All kinds of well-meaning and not so well meaning people who are alarmed with Islam Mayhem and Murder, Inc have been proclaiming that their fight is with Islam and not with Muslims. Who knows what motivates these people and how their system of logic runs. Geert Wilder says that his battle is with Islam and he does not hate the Muslims. No one, please, should take my criticism of Muslims as hating them. I certainly am critical of their belief and feel that Muslims must wake up to the destructive nature of their creed. The Muslims not only need to leave or reform Islam, they owe to themselves and the rest of humanity to actively work at putting an end to one of humanity's most harmful dogma.{C}{C}

Salman Rushdie is perhaps the most celebrated person with an Islamic bounty on his head and has been for decades. The man was condemned to death by Ayatollah Khomeini, without the least due process, for supposedly insulting Islam’s sanctities in his book Satanic Verses. Rushdie has been living, mostly in hiding, a dreadful life for decades, hoping to elude the daggers or bullets of far too many zany Islamists who would eagerly carry out the edict of the certifiably crazed Islamic Ayatollah.

I was born in a Muslim family that did not push religion down the kids’ throats. Yet, religion always cast a big shadow on everything. I just had to deal with it and couldn’t simply set it aside. And Islam, the Shiite Islam was the most pervasive religion around. I went to all kinds of sources, people and books to settle the issue. Should I believe in religion? If so, should it be the religion of the overwhelming majority? If not, then what? I couldn’t let this question just hang in the air.

By: Amil Imani with James H. Hyde