Morality in Islam: the Naked Truth (Revealed Slowly)

0. Introduction

Dear Muslim reader,

Perhaps you have been told, ever since you were a child, that your religion, Islam, is the “perfect religion”. And, when it comes to morality, Islam truly has no equal. Muslims are the most decent people on earth, with their women so decently covered, “guarding in the unseen that which Allah has ordered them to guard” (Qur’an 4:34), whereas women of the “kuffar” (infidels) can appear naked in public — in movies, in magazines, in art exhibitions, in beaches (see Fig. 0.1), and even in “naked bike rides” — what a shame! In Islam, homosexuality is absolutely forbidden and punished severely, depending on the Muslim nation (e.g., in Iran homosexuals are hanged, and in Saudi Arabia they are beheaded), whereas the infidel homosexuals may marry each other! In Islam, adultery^* and fornication^* are punished very severely — again, the punishment depends on the locality, with stoning to death considered appropriate in some places such as Afghanistan and Pakistan — whereas in the decadent world of the infidels adultery and fornication are commonplace, and are not even punished by law! These examples should suffice to prove that when it comes to morality, Islam reigns supreme among the religions and belief systems of the world.

How decadent!	How decent!
Figure 0.1: Left: perverted infidels shamelessly enjoying life. Right: Muslim women (?), showing how swimming should be done.

But... wait a second. All the above examples are about sexual activities: covering the woman’s body so that men are not sexually aroused, banning homosexuality, banning adultery and fornication — these all revolve around sex! Is that what morality is about? Could perhaps the concept of “morality” include some different things than the word you use in your language and you think corresponds to “morality”? For example, the Turkish word for morality, according to the dictionaries, is “ahlâk”, and in Arabic it is “أخلاقية”, pronounced `ah-la-kee-ya. (Actually the Turkish word is of Arabic origin.) Could it be that when the Turk says “ahlâk”, and when the Arab says “أخلاقية”, they mean some things, which revolve mostly around sex, whereas when the English speaker says “morality”, the German “Moral”, the Russian “мораль”, the Greek “ηθική”, and so on, they mean some other things, possibly but not necessarily related to sex? Could it be that what the Western world means by “morality” includes only some of the concepts that you Muslims include under “ahlâk” or “أخلاقية”? And could it be that, in the West, “morality” also includes some other concepts, not understood, or poorly understood by you?

It is my purpose in this text to show that there is something we call “Universal Morality” that comprises acts considered moral or immoral by most other cultures on Earth; and there is also the “Islamic Morality”, which comprises acts considered moral or immoral only by Muslims. I would like to explain this difference, so that the occasional non-muslim reader, too, gets a better understanding:

I would like to discuss now the complex relation between Islamic Morality and Universal Morality through a series of drawings, which will hopefully make this relation easy enough for everyone to understand. First, let’s depict the Islamic Morality in a drawing:

Figure 0.2: Islamic Morality and Immorality

In Fig. 0.2, above, acts that are considered moral by Muslims go into the green area (“Islamic Morality”), whereas acts that are immoral by Muslim standards go into the red area (“Islamic Immorality”). For example, let’s put the first — and, by Islamic standards, most important! — moral principle, which is Tawheed (monotheism) into the green area; and the first — and, again, most important — immoral principle, which is Shirk (polytheism, paganism), into the red area. This is shown in the next figure:

Figure 0.3: Tawheed (Monotheism) and Shirk (Polytheism, Paganism) added into the corresponding areas of Fig. 0.2

Note: the black dots are the actual members of the corresponding areas of morality and immorality, accompanied by their labels: Tawheed and Shirk. The above figure doesn’t tell us much that is interesting, except that moral acts are different from immoral acts, i.e., there is no act that is simultaneously both moral and immoral, since the oval at the top and the crescent-moon-like shape at the bottom don’t have any overlap. By the way, the crescent-moon-like shape has nothing to do with the crescent moon that often features as a symbol of Islam. I needed to give that shape to the bottom area for a reason that will become apparent soon.

But now, dear Muslim reader (if you’re still reading), observe please that non-muslims have different moral values. Tawheed and Shirk have nothing to do with their morality — they are not acts that they call moral or immoral, just as you don’t call moral or immoral the act of talking about other people’s heights or hair color. For them, Tawheed and Shirk are morally irrelevant. For instance, polytheism is a sin for Christianity, but is the norm in many small and inconspicuous religions on Earth. In addition, atheists and people without a religion, who form a significant percent of today’s world population (around 16% – source), do not really care if some other people are polytheists. So we cannot give a globally-applying moral value to polytheism (or monotheism). Thus, we need to draw a different figure to depict the non-muslim understanding of morality, i.e., what is called “Universal Morality / Immorality”:

Figure 0.4: Universal Morality and Immorality (for non-muslims)

What could be a moral notion that is universally accepted as such by infidels, but which is irrelevant to morality from the Islamic point of view? I can think of a few, one of which is Equality. By “Equality” I mean that every human being has the same human rights with every other human being, irrespective of gender, religion, or anything else. This is not true in the Islamic world. For example, Muslim women and Muslim men are not equal, both in theory and in practice. In theory, the Qur’an says (translation: Sahih International):

Qur’an 4:34: “Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand.”

الرِّجَالُ قَوَّامُونَ عَلَى النِّسَاءِ بِمَا فَضَّلَ اللَّهُ بَعْضَهُمْ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ وَبِمَا أَنفَقُوا مِنْ أَمْوَالِهِمْ ۚ فَالصَّالِحَاتُ قَانِتَاتٌ حَافِظَاتٌ لِّلْغَيْبِ بِمَا حَفِظَ اللَّهُ ۚ وَاللَّاتِي تَخَافُونَ نُشُوزَهُنَّ فَعِظُوهُنَّ وَاهْجُرُوهُنَّ فِي الْمَضَاجِعِ وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّ ۖ فَإِنْ أَطَعْنَكُمْ فَلَا تَبْغُوا عَلَيْهِنَّ سَبِيلًا ۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلِيًّا كَبِيرًا

And in practice, inequalities exist in many ways: women, but not men, must completely cover their hair and bodies; a man can marry more than one woman but a woman only one man; women must stay confined and pray in one area of the mosque specially designed for them, but only men can pray in the main hall of it; women cannot walk alone out of home, but must be accompanied by a male relative; and many more. As for inequalities in religion, in Islam a Muslim is considered superior to an infidel, who is assumed to be second-class citizen while living in an Islamic society. In any case, “Equality” is not a moral issue in Islam, but it is in the rest of the world.

And what would be a notion that is universally immoral, but morally fine from the Islamic point of view? Again, I will select one among several, as an example: Conquest. By “Conquest” I mean, of course, the act of going at war and conquering the land of another nation. Conquest is considered normal in the Islamic world, and even a virtue and a show of power, as Muhammad was a warlord who conquered the entire Arabian Peninsula. As a result of conquering nearby tribes, Muhammad’s men (the first Muslims) acquired wealth and slaves, and the Qur’an devotes a whole chapter on war booty and slaves (sura 8, Al-Anfal: “Spoils of War, Booty”). But in the rest of the world Conquest is an evil act, an immoral act of depravity, because it savagely violates precisely the principle of Equality among all human beings, discussed above. There can be war among two nations, but the conquest of one by the other is considered an immoral act of the conquering nation.

So we can now enrich Fig. 0.4 with one universally moral and one universally immoral notion, resulting in the following figure:

Figure 0.5: Equality and Conquest, added into the corresponding areas of Fig. 0.4

But, of course, nothing in the above discussion implies that there is no common ground between Islamic and Universal Morality (and Immorality). There definitely is. For example, caring for one’s own children is considered moral in both worlds, whereas killing one’s own parents is immoral (and very severely so), also in both worlds. The following drawing attempts to depict such “common ground”:

Figure 0.6: Overlapping between Universal and Islamic morality

In Fig. 0.6, the areas where there is some overlap are the “common ground”. (And now the reader can understand why I opted for the crescent-moon-like shape: so that the areas can overlap with each other.) We see that the situation is quite complex. Let’s single out each color-coded area, explain it, and give some examples (which will be discussed in the rest of this text):

To understand my assignment of acts into the various colored regions, above, the reader should be reminded of these rules:

Any other shade of color is a mixture (intersection) of the above.

If the above tables and Fig. 0.6 are correct, then there must be plenty of misunderstanding between Muslims and the infidels on morality issues. Some of the things that the infidels consider moral or morally-irrelevant are considered immoral by Muslims. Yes, I know you know that. But what you don’t know is that some of the things that are considered moral by Muslims, are considered immoral, or at best morally irrelevant, by the infidels!

You might think: “Why should we Muslims care? What we consider moral is the correct moral notion, since it was specified as ‘halal’ by Allah and was followed by our Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.). Why should we care about what the infidels consider moral or immoral?”

Well, for two good reasons:

First, because you are at “war” with the infidels! Yes — you don’t need to pretend that you disagree on this — you are at an all-out “war” against the infidels. You hate them because they live comfortably and achieved things that you couldn’t even dream about; and they hate you because some things that you do are immoral from their viewpoint. That’s right: from their viewpoint you Muslims often are perverts, morally corrupt, and this difference in perception causes a lot of friction, and some people die because of that. Aren’t you even a tiny bit curious to know how they see you and your morals, so that you prepare your defense against them? “War” means that you need to defend yourself. So, know how your enemy is thinking, so that you can make your defense more effective.

And second, because you are at (real) war even among yourselves! The Sunni are fighting the Shia, Sunni jihadists are fighting Sunni non-jihadists, Alevis against Sunnis, the Turks against the Kurds, the Iranians against the Saudis, the Saudis against the Yemenese, everybody seems to be fighting against everybody else in the Middle East in the second decade of the third millennium. There is a reason for that, and it has to do with the Muslims’ lack of understanding of Universal Morality. Aren’t you even a little bit curious to know the explanation for your all-out wars against each other? Why do you bomb your mosques and use explosives to tear pregnant women to pieces? There is an explanation. Why does every item of high technology come from the lands of the infidels and you cannot produce even a caricature of it by yourselves? Again, there is an explanation — the same one. Read, and I bet you’ll learn some new things in this article.

In what follows, you — my dear Muslims — will learn mostly about things that you consider morally fine or irrelevant, but the infidels consider from bothersome to downright immoral. I will also mention briefly a few things that you consider immoral, but are universally anywhere from irrelevant to downright moral. In other words, we’ll explore thoroughly Fig. 0.6, above.

1. Thou Shalt Not Consider Yourself Superior to Non-muslims

Dear Muslim reader, since your early childhood you have been brainwashed with the idea that you are superior to non-muslims. You have been told that it’s not just your religion, Islam, which is superior to other religions, but you yourself, as a person, are superior to non-muslims. This feeling of superiority has important consequences, which are examined below as subsections of the present section §1.

You should note that it is only you Muslims, in the entire world, who have this feeling of superiority. If any other person — a non-muslim — thinks that they are superior to you, please note that they make a personal error of judgment; no other mainstream belief system in the world (with the exception of some fascist and racist ideologies, but those are almost never mainstream) considers its adherents superior and Muslims inferior. The moral principle that is accepted universally says: “All human beings are born equal, and have equal rights no matter what their religion or belief system is.” It is only you, Muslims (as well as some fascists, Nazis, and other racists, as I said), who do not abide by this universal principle.

I am not saying you are racists in the formal sense, because Islam is not a race; it is a belief system. But you do discriminate against people of other belief systems; so you act in the same manner as racists act against other people who they consider inferior. The end result of your behavior is that you appear as if you are racists.

Whereas the rest of the world believes in Equality among all human beings, you believe in Brotherhood among all Muslims, and only Muslims. Brotherhood among Muslims (not to be equated to the political movement “Muslim Brotherhood”, which has a narrower scope) was proclaimed explicitly by Muhammad:

Sahi al-Bukhari, 13 (Book 2, Hadith 6) (V1B2N13):

Narrated Anas: “The Prophet (PBUH) said, ‘None of you will have faith till he wishes for his (Muslim) brother what he likes for himself.’ ”

But Universal Morality proposes Equality among all human beings, without restricting the scope of equality (or brotherhood) to this or that subset of people. So let’s put Equality and Islamic brotherhood in their corresponding areas on our drawing, together with those other Islamic virtues and vices that we briefly mentioned earlier:

Figure 1.1: The position of “Equality”, “Islamic brotherhood”, “Monotheism”, and “Polytheism” in their proper regions

Equality (among all human beings) was not explicitly discouraged by Muhammad, so it is not an immoral concept in Islam; rather, it is one of those “morally irrelevant” notions as far as Islam is concerned. Similarly: Islamic brotherhood, Monotheism, and Polytheism, do not morally concern the rest of the world, so they are “universally morally irrelevant”.

Thinking that you Muslims are “superior” when all other people say: “All human beings are born equal and have equal rights” brings you to a headlong collision with the morality of all the rest of the world — the Universal Morality. Thus, now we should examine the consequences of your belief of superiority.

1.1 Consequence: Thou Shalt Not Conquer Non-muslims

It may come as a surprise to Muslims, but the infidels think it is an immoral thing to attack and conquer other people’s lands.

And it may come as a surprise to non-muslims to learn that Muslims do not think there is anything immoral with conquering your land and turning you into a slave (see next section). On the contrary, seen from the Islamic point of view, conquering other people’s lands is a praiseworthy act on religious grounds, because there is a good chance that the conquered people will be turned into Muslims. Conquering is morally good in Islamic Morality because Muhammad was a conqueror: he conquered the entire Arabian Peninsula (see Fig. 1.1.1).

But the above two conflicting viewpoints are easily understood as a consequence of the Muslim feeling of superiority. If you feel superior to your neighbors who are not Muslims, who you call “infidels”, it’s only natural that a conquest of the land of the infidels seems fine to you, because you think you are doing “the right thing”, trying to bring those infidels to the correct path. And, vice-versa, if the infidels think that all human beings are born equal and have equal rights, they perceive your conquest as a very arrogant, barbaric, and immoral act. (I am talking about the feelings of common people, not governments — the latter may have completely different attitudes and objectives.)

And why did I choose to talk first about the act of conquering, which seems to be so remote from our modern times and perspectives? Because, as we shall see, conquering has some deeper consequences in the morality of Muslims, and in how they view the world. It causes them to do some other things that are viewed as immoral by non-muslims, but “fine” and “OK” by Muslims.

But let’s first establish it as an idea that conquering is not viewed as immoral by Muslims, by bringing up evidence that proves this.

Every year, on May 29, there is a celebration in the city of Istanbul, Turkey, which is quite unlike any other celebration in the non-muslim world. It is the commemoration of a conquest: the conquest of the Byzantine city of Constantinople (the Greek name of which was later eroded to “Istanbul” in Turkish) by the Ottoman army of Sultan Mehmed II in May 29, 1453. Let’s read what the Turkish journalist Burak Bekdil — who is actually strongly opposed to this celebration — has to say about it, in an article that was published in the Turkish daily “Hürriyet Daily News” on May 23, 2014, titled “The ‘conquest-over-occupation’ season opens”:

In about a week from today, millions of Turks will take to the streets, with colorful fanfare and fireworks, to celebrate the 561st anniversary of the conquest of Constantinople from Byzantium – the same Turks who are angry that Jerusalem is under occupation [by the Israelis, as Mr. Bekdil explained in the paragraphs prior to this one in the article]. When the same cheerful Turks celebrate the conquest, do they not know that conquest means taking another nation’s/tribe’s land by force? They certainly do. And they are proud of it. Celebrating “the Conquest” is acknowledgement of an undisputed historical fact, that Istanbul belonged to another nation before “the conquest.” Right? Right.

Then why do Mr. Davutoğlu [the then Prime Minister of Turkey] and the conquest-fetish Turks mourn over “the occupation of Jerusalem?” Let’s recall. In 2012, Turkey’s top Muslim cleric, Professor Mehmet Görmez said: “After [the powerful Muslim caliph] Omar conquered al-Quds [Jerusalem] he was invited to pray at a church [since there were no mosques in Jerusalem]. But he politely refused because he was worried that the [conquering] Muslims could turn the church into a mosque after he prayed there.”

Conquering Jerusalem? Did the top cleric not acknowledge the fact that Jerusalem was not a Muslim city before its “conquest?” He did. So, how can the occupation of a non-muslim city, Constantinople, be a “conquest”, but the occupation of a non-muslim city [of Jerusalem by the Israelis], which was once occupied by Muslims, be “occupation”?

The answer is very simple. In the Islamist’s dictionary, a “conquest” is something fabulous because “we take non-muslim lands by the force of the sword”; “occupation” is something we mourn because it means the “loss of land we once had occupied.”

Thus says Mr. Bekdil, who, being a Turk and a Muslim, happens to know quite well the psychology of the average Muslim Turk.

I myself once came face-to-face with the “otherworldly” attitude of Muslims toward conquest when a young Turk, a teenager, expressed sneer toward a conquered people, the Armenians, the land of whose was taken by the Ottomans at around the same time as the fall of Constantinople. The mentioned teenager said, more-or-less, that the Armenians deserved only scorn since they were the losers; since they were unable to defend their land against the powerful Ottoman army. The conquerors deserved praise, from the teen’s point of view, who was expressing a cultural vantage point, not just an isolated, personal, and quirky viewpoint, as the annual celebrations for the conquest of Constantinople show.

But in my previous examples I talked about Turks. How is the idea “conquest is praiseworthy” related to Islam and not specifically to Turks and Ottomans? It is directly related to Islam because Muhammad — the role model of every Muslim — was a conqueror par excellence! The following figure shows Muhammad’s conquests in dark green color, and then two further expansions of the Islamic Empire after Muhammad’s death, in lighter green colors.

Figure 1.1.1: Islamic expansion

When the role model goes and conquers the entire Arabian Peninsula, forcing its inhabitants to convert to Islam under the power of the sword (as he himself often boasted), how can the average Muslim not consider an act of conquest as praiseworthy?

But this all of course is well known to Muslims. This article attempts to talk not to non-muslims but to Muslims, and tell them that what they consider as normal and even commendable and praiseworthy, is considered immoral by all the rest of the civilized world.

You might object that lots of other peoples, non-muslims, have conquered foreign lands in the past. You “remember” specifically the Crusaders with abomination. Yes, but no one in their right mind in the West feels proud about the slaughtering of innocent people, or boasts about the power and might by which the Crusaders attacked and slaughtered Muslims. The whole affair is considered abominable by the majority of Westerners whose nations are related, one way or another, to the Crusades. So, Westerners agree with you that that conquest should never have happened. More important, the conquering of “infidels” and the expansion of religion through conquest is never prescribed in any non-muslim’s holy book, nor was the originator of another religion a conqueror, like Muhammad was.

Please store this historical fact permanently in your mind:

The fact that your prophet Muhammad was a conqueror means that he was a warlord. As a warlord, he killed people. You understand this, right? You understand, I hope, that he didn’t convert the tribes of Arabia to Islam by offering them bouquets of roses. He was met with resistance, which he subdued by the power of the scimitars of his men, who formed his army. Well, you see, this killing of people, no matter how “noble” the ultimate goal sounds to you, is considered highly immoral in the non-muslim world.

Figure 1.1.2: An army of Muslims prepares to attack and conquer a city. (Credit: AUTH.)
The drawing may have the Muslims in the foreground but, you know, all those
people in the background, in the city, are going to be killed or enslaved!
There is nothing to feel proud about killing or enslaving.

Yes, I know: the purpose of converting others to Islam might sound noble to you, but here I am trying to make you understand how others see you. Here is how:

Try to understand the idea in the frame above, please, because it has important consequences in our times. You see, Muhammad’s wars and conquests were admired and attempted to be copycatted in our times by the barbarian and murderous hordes of the Islamic State. In 2014, the Islamic State published the following map, depicting the lands that they were dreaming of conquering and subjugating under their horrendously barbaric and inhuman regime, within five years.

Figure 1.1.3: The dream of the Islamic State

As you can see, the Islamic-State dream was not too different from the actual extension of the 8th-century Umayyad Caliphate (see Fig. 1.1.1), only somewhat more ambitious. It is a different issue that, by 2018, the Islamic State disappeared from the face of the Earth, and its fighters were largely exterminated. Through the map of Fig. 1.1.1. they managed to depict their futile dreams.

So let’s put the dot of “Conquest” on our drawing where it belongs: an immoral act by non-muslims (therefore in the crescent shape that corresponds to “Universal Immorality”), but a morally allowed act by Islamic Morality, since it was done repeatedly by Muhammad.

Figure 1.1.4: The position of “Conquest”: Universally immoral, but moral by Islamic wisdom

Let not the greenish color of the horn-like area where “Conquest” lies confuse you; that color is the mixture of yellow (Universal Immorality) and green (Islamic Morality), and that “horn” is the intersection of those two morally-incompatible regions.

1.1.1 Consequence: Thou Shalt Not Enslave Non-muslims

In this subsection we’ll examine one important consequence of the act of conquest: the enslavement of people.

Once again, non-muslims might be surprised to learn that a sizeable majority of Muslims think that turning non-muslims into slaves is appropriate and normal. In the following video, a rather average Muslim woman expresses her opinion about why slavery should be officially admitted in her country, Kuwait. For those of you who don’t have the patience to go through her entire five minutes of immoral speech, or those who feel your stomachs turning and nauseating with what you hear, a summary of what the lady says is given on the right.

Video 1.1: A Muslim woman’s opinion about sexual slavery, and the Muslim opinion about slavery in general.

Now, my dear Muslim: I understand that the justification of slavery is found in the Qur’an, and also in the hadiths, considering that Muhammad had numerous slaves (and sex slaves). But you should consider for a moment the possibility that slavery is Universally Immoral. After all, your purpose in reading this article is to understand how the rest of the world thinks about you. So, don’t dismiss what I am saying out of hand please, and keep reading. The following analogy will help you understand why you Muslims are “Universally Immoral”:

Suppose that there is a religion in this world — not Islam, but another religion — that allows the whipping of children of other religions. It allows approaching secretly a neighboring tribe (or neighboring nation), kidnapping a child at random, bringing the child among the believers, stripping him or her naked, and whipping the child publicly, with the onlookers praying to their (only) god, and praising him for his sublime power that allowed them to do this ritual. Wouldn’t you Muslims think this is an evil, immoral religion? Yes, right? But why? Your holy book, the Qur’an, says nothing about whipping children of other religions. It talks about taking care of the orphans (of Muslims only), but it doesn’t tell you, explicitly, “You should never whip children!” Of course it doesn’t, I hear you saying, because it doesn’t need to! Everybody knows that whipping children (of any people, any race) is a despicably immoral act. Correct?

That’s right: “Everybody knows”! So there are some things that we all know are immoral. We all agree on them, and we don’t need to be told explicitly about them in holy books because they are part of “common (moral) sense”. Those are all issues that belong to Universal Morality. Don’t take a knife and scratch someone else’s car; that’s implied by Universal Morality. Don’t infect another person’s computer with a virus; again: Universal Morality. Your Qur’an has nothing to say about cars and computers, but you know such acts are bad, immoral, because you come to this world with universal morality built into your brains. (That’s why it is universal: because all of us humans possess a brain with the same abilities.)

Now, let’s go back to the example of the religion that allows the whipping of children. Suppose the believers of that religion tell you that their holy book, which — according to them — is the ultimate and inviolable Word of the one-and-only god they believe in, tells them explicitly to perform this ritual of whipping children; and that you, the Muslim who tells them that this is immoral, should mind your own business because your religion is false anyway (they say), and your Allah is a false god (again, according to their unshakable belief), and everything that their holy book says is final, correcting your corrupted Qur’an (they say).

What could you tell them now? Could you tell them that your Qur’an doesn’t allow the whipping of any child? No, because the Qur’an is mute about that particular evil act. So, the only thing you can tell them is something like this: “Look, I don’t know what gibberish your supposed ‘holy’ book is saying, but there is something called ‘Universal Morality’! And every sane human being knows that, according to Universal Morality, whipping little children is a horrible and despicable act! So, get outta here, you and your wretched ‘holy’ book, which prompts you to commit such a disgustingly immoral ritual!”

Right? Well, exactly that is what many non-muslims would want to tell you about your holy book, the Qur’an, which allows the enslavement of other human beings who don’t believe in your religion: “Every sane human being knows that, according to Universal Morality, turning people into slaves (no matter if they are “our” believers or not) is a horrible and despicable act! So, get outta here...” — I don’t need to repeat the previous phrase, but that’s what they think about you, your holy book, and your religion.

From their point of view, you are like the believers of that evil religion that kidnaps the children of others and whips them!

You might argue: “But other peoples have practiced slavery in the past! All the people of African origin in North, Central, and South America are there because of slavery!”

Yes, but Westerners agree that that practice was immoral! That’s why slavery was banned, and the Americans in the USA even had a civil war about it. You can’t justify a universally immoral act just because some culture or cultures practiced it in the past. If that was the case, then the sacrifice of children could be justified on the grounds that there has been at least one culture (actually many), namely the Incas of South America, who sacrificed children to their gods. If they did it, why aren’t we justified in doing it? No, Universal Morality doesn’t work like that. If some practice is immoral universally, it’s immoral — period. It makes no difference whether it has been practiced by some culture or not.

That slavery is universally considered immoral follows from one of the most fundamental articles on human rights, which your country most probably abides by, as a member of the United Nations. The article says that all human beings have equal rights.

But listen to what the Muslim lady says in the video: “A sex slave is legally inferior to a free woman.” And, alas, it’s the Mufti who said this, not the lady. The Mufti echoes the Islamic doctrine: “A slave [in general] is inferior to a free person [in general]” — which goes directly against the human rights principle stating that all human beings have equal rights. Your religion comes to a headlong collision with universal principles. Your Qur’an claims that human beings are not equal: there are masters and slaves, it assumes, and the masters are superior to the slaves; and if the slaves are women, they can be used to satisfy the sexual urges of their masters. Here it is:

Qur’an 4:24: “And (prohibited to you are) those of the women who are married, except those whom you possess rightfully.”
	وَالْمُحْصَنَاتُ مِنَ النِّسَاءِ إِلَّا مَا مَلَكَتْ أَيْمَانُكُمْ

The context of the above verse should be given, to understand it properly: in the previous verse, 4:23, Allah tells Muslims which women they can have sex with. So, in 4:23 Allah bans — of course — their mothers, sisters, daughters, and a few more cases. And in 4:24, Allah tells Muslims that the Muslim women who are married are also forbidden to them for sex, except those who are “rightfully possessed”. A person who is “rightfully possessed” in Islamic parlance, is a slave.

Of no less interest is the background of the situation in which the above was “revealed” to Muhammad. The Apostle of Allah had sent his army to Awtas. After defeating the tribes there and capturing men and women as slaves, some of his men were hesitating to have sex with the captive women in the presence of their husbands. But Muhammad found the solution: he told his men that Allah revealed to him the above verse, 4:24. Thus the message was: “Do as you please with your captive women, Allah allows it.”

The enslavement of conquered infidels was a common practice not only in Muhammad’s times, but also later, during the infamous “Arab Slave Trade”, which continued well into the 20th century. Muslims traded both captive Europeans (see Fig. 1.1.1.1, below) and Africans (and that is the reason for the existence of so many sub-Saharan Africans in the Arabian Peninsula).

Figure 1.1.1.1: “The Arab Slave Market”, a painting by Otto Pilny, ca. 1910

The Islamic slave trade was also practiced in our times in the lands of Syria and Iraq by the gangs of the Islamic State. What follows is an excerpt from an interview given to the Greek daily To Vima (“The Podium”) by Nadia Murad Basee Taha, a 21-year-old Yazidi girl, ex-captive and survivor of the horror of the Islamic State, who also described her nightmare before the United Nations Security Council. (While the present article was being written, Nadia was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.)

Figure 1.1.1.2: Nadia Murad Basee Taha, in Athens, Greece

Here is the excerpt from Nadia’s interview in To Vima (translated by the author):

“I remember that in the most terrible, horrifying moment of my life, my gaze was stuck on the floor for hours on end”, says Nadia with a trembling voice. “It was a few hours after the attack of the forces of Daesh [the Islamic State] against the village where I was living in Iraq, in August 2014. The warriors of the Islamic State killed all men, and also the women above 45 years of age. They abducted the children and the young girls. I was among the many girls who were abducted. They carried us to Mosul [Iraq] and to Syria, where they have their camps, their headquarters, but also to other places.

When we arrived in Mosul, together with more than 150 Yazidi families, they led us all into a building. I was lying on the floor, in a convoluted posture, looking always down. At some moment my gaze fell on the boots of a man who was standing in front of me. I dared raise my eyes and look at him in the face. I was shivering with fear. That particular fighter of the Islamic State was huge. It’s impossible to describe him. Something like a monster! I turned my head away again, toward the floor. I started sobbing. I understood he wanted to abuse me sexually. I begged him not do it. I told him I am too tiny and weak. Then he spitted on me. After that he kicked me. Then he beat me. Finally he left. A little later another man came close to me. I knew that, in any case, I would have sexual intercourse with one — or several — of them. The men of the Islamic State use girls as sex slaves. Throughout this horrible experience I was crying convulsively. I stayed there looking at the floor for several hours. I didn’t have enough strength to lift my head.”

Later, Nadia recounts the way she escaped: “It sounds like a thriller movie,” she says. “I tried to run away from the place where I was held captive by one of the chiefs, Hadi Shelmin. I recall I was running — running a lot. Finally one of Shelmin’s guards found me. They brought me back to the house. For punishment, they handed me in to six guards to do as they pleased with me. Later, one of them, al-Hadini, sold me to two other ones. Those two sold me again to a truck driver. At some point I managed to escape. I reached a little house. The people there helped me. They made a fake id card for me, and later helped me reach Kirkuk [in Iraq]. I traveled to lands between Iraq and Turkey. There I met with one of my brothers, who had survived. After many ordeals, I reached Europe.”

One cannot help but wonder what the Kuwaiti Muslim woman would say — the one who speaks earlier in Video 1.1, wishing the legalization of sexual slavery in Kuwait — if she had to go through a horrifying experience like the one of Nadia’s. Perhaps such people can never put themselves in the shoes of the “other” — even if that “other” is a woman — and feel empathy. This, most probably, is a result of the fact that you Muslims feel superior to other people. Thus, the feeling of superiority does not allow you to empathize with the plight of “inferiors”, in the same way a “noble” in Medieval Europe would never empathize with the plight of the “inferior” peasants. Except that your feeling of superiority is entirely groundless, bordering the ridiculous. By feeling “superior” you are making yourselves the laughingstock of the “infidels”. Just think of this: without the science and technology of the “inferior” infidels, you Muslims would still move at the speed of the camel, raise tents to dwell in the desert, of which you’d eat the dust on the occasion of every sandstorm, you’d have no use of petroleum nor would you know of its existence, and burn animal manure to warm up your cottages in the winter — as the poorest ones among you still do, in certain places of the world. If some of you have become rich, it is simply because the infidels discovered the use of some natural resources (oil, natural gas), which some of your countries happen to sit atop of. Whatever wealth you might have, you didn’t earn it by yourselves; you owe it to the infidels.

Let’s add the sexual slavery of women and children in our drawing, using simply the label “Slavery”, for brevity:

Figure 1.1.1.3: The position of (sexual) “Slavery”: in the “horn” that’s the intersection of Universal Immorality and Islamic Morality

Thinking you are “superior” has some further consequences, which are examined below.

1.2 Consequence: The Islamic Dress Code Is Not Morally Superior to Other Dress Codes

Figure 0.1 (the first figure in this article) shows some non-muslims on the left, running naked out of the sea and apparently having fun, juxtaposed to some Muslim women on the right, fully dressed with the burqa, splashing their feet where the sea meets the land. The contrast (in dress codes — I can’t say anything about the feelings) is obvious. But non-muslims, of course, do not usually walk around naked in everyday life. The word “usually” is important here, because there are some non-muslim cultures in which semi-nudity is the norm, as we shall see. But the point is that Muslims think that the Islamic dress code, especially the one for women, is morally superior (morally “more correct”) than the dress codes of most other cultures of the world. As a consequence, when they see a woman dressed not in the “proper” Islamic way, they consider that woman nearly as a prostitute, one that invites men to sexually assault her, and possibly even rape her!

Dear Muslim reader, my purpose in this subsection is to explain to you that in the rest of the world women (and men) dress in whichever way they are accustomed to, without attaching a moral value to their dress codes. It is only you, Muslims, who think that the dress code somehow is related to morality.

I understand that many of you come from a culture that considers itself the center of the world, specially privileged to have received the word of Allah in its own language, and that you have not traveled much around the world to see what else there is on this planet. (An astoundingly large percent of Muslims, for example, believe that the Earth is flat, because the Qur’an says so, and because they have not traveled aboard a trans-continental flight to witness the roundness of the Earth with their own eyes.) Well, I have news for you: the world is really-really big. And it is full of different cultures, dressed in all sorts of different ways. And just as you consider as “proper” the Islamic way, they consider “proper” their own way. You find some of their dresses “indecent”, but some of them find your dresses baggy, sloppy, antiquated, ridiculous, and even clownish. But you are both wrong! Your clothes are your clothes and theirs are theirs, with no “right/wrong” or “decent/indecent” or “appropriate/ridiculous” or “modern/antiquated” values attached to them. Please take a look at the following pictures (all available and part of the public domain):

Dress code of Jarawa tribe (Indian Andaman islands)	Dress code of a South Ethiopian culture	Dress code of the Naturist/Nudist culture in Spain

Figure 1.2.1: Three different cultures and ways of living with a dress code that is very light or nonexistent

Pious Muslims, please note: those women, depicted naked above, are not indecent! They are not “prostitutes”, as you arrogantly and ignorantly claim. That is the way they choose to appear in public. That’s their culture, either originating from their tribe (first two pictures from the left), or from an ideology / worldview they chose to have (third picture, on the right). Your Islamic culture is just one of many cultures on Earth, and it has no right to call itself a “superior” culture. If anything, others view it as a medieval, uncouth, antiquated culture, especially regarding your dress code.

Let’s add the concept of “Nudity” in our drawing:

Figure 1.2.2: The position of “Nudity”: Immoral by Islamic wisdom (pink area), but Universally morally irrelevant

Now, a “footnote” is required here: by positioning the dot of “Nudity” outside of the Universal Morality/Immorality regions, I don’t mean that the non-Islamic world is indifferent to nudity. Rather, I mean that there is no universally positive or negative attitude toward it. Some cultures embrace it as natural; other cultures are indifferent to it; and yet other non-muslim cultures, such as the puritan Christians, consider it immoral. No clear consensus exists in the non-muslim world about nudity, hence we cannot say that it is clearly immoral or moral.

But why is the Islamic dress code the way it is, especially regarding women? The Qur’an does not urge women to dress the way they do (only “to draw their head-covers over their bosoms”, 24:31), and Muhammad was not a woman, so he can’t be used as an example. Why then?

There are three factors that are part of the explanation for the way Muslim women cover themselves up:

• Islam originated in the Arabian Desert. This is the “desert dress code”. To cover up from head to toes is essential as protection against the scorching sun and the sandstorms. But this explanation, of course, is not particular to women. So:
   

• Islam was born in a typical patriarchal culture that stayed unchanged for tens of centuries. In patriarchal cultures, the woman is a property of the man. As such, she must be hidden from public view, to eliminate any possibility that another man, non-owner of the woman, feels attracted by her and starts causing trouble to the owner, depending on their relative power in the tribe / society. Ancient, pre-Islamic patriarchal cultures also had their women well-covered in public.
   

• Islam is a cult; a gigantic one, but cult nonetheless. Members of cults must “advertise” that they belong to the cult. Thus, Muslim men often appear with a particular way of shaving (letting their beards grow, but trimming the mustache a lot), and with an Islamic cap, usually white, cylindrical, and slightly convex at the top. And women appear with their “trademark” Islamic attire, covering the hair and sometimes even the face, as well as all the rest of the body, but often wearing sandals, thus letting their feet (and hands) uncovered. Notice that wearing sandals is another feature that comes from the “desert dress code”.

1.2.1 Consequence: Thou Shalt Not Sexually Assault Non-muslim Women

The title of this subsection could read: “Thou Shalt Not Sexually Assault Women” — period. But the context in which this subsection appears is the more general problem of assumed Muslim superiority over non-muslims according to Islamic wisdom, so here I’ll talk only about Muslims sexually assaulting non-muslim women.

An event that happened in 2011 in Egypt and shocked the world is particularly instructive, showing that the average Muslim man, especially when he feels part of a crowd, views the non-muslim woman as a sexual object. When she is unprotected or defenseless, she can be savagely attacked and fall prey to the Muslim man’s violent sexual urges, who then acts like a vicious animal. And, to those readers who would object that this can happen in any other culture of the world as well, the answer is yes, it can happen (in India, for example, among Hindus), but Islam nourishes and encourages this behavior through the Qur’an, as we shall see. In Islam it happens “officially”, and it is tolerated; whereas in India, for instance, it is perceived by the society as intolerable, so it causes protests and social unrest. Never-ever in the Islamic world will the Muslim protest because some woman was raped. But let’s see what happened back then.

Figure 1.2.1.1: Lara Logan

It was February 11, 2011, and the long-standing dictator of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, had just been toppled, in the culmination of a series of events that were prematurely called the “Arab Spring”.(*) An American crew of CBS reporters had just arrived to the capital city, Cairo, to report live the celebrations of more than 100,000 people who had filled Tahrir, the central square of Cairo, and were joyfully reveling what they thought was the end of a despotic form of government. Among the CBS crew members was Lara Logan, a native of South Africa and CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent, who would be the main reporter talking to the TV camera, describing the mood and the events as they were unrolling. There was also a producer, a cameraman, an experienced security person, a local Egyptian guide who was interpreting to them what he could hear spoken in Arabic, and two Egyptian drivers, also acting as security staff and bodyguards. After reporting for about an hour, their battery ran out, so they were forced to take a break. At that time, the Egyptian guide heard some disturbing things said by some of the people who were all around, and told Lara Logan: “We’ve gotta get out of here!” What he heard, in Arabic, was: “Let’s take her pants off!”

Events unrolled very quickly from that moment on. Logan stated, in an interview she gave to CBS, in May of the same year: “[I]t’s like suddenly, before I even know what’s happening, I feel hands grabbing my breasts, grabbing my crotch, grabbing me from behind. I mean — and it’s not one person and then it stops — it’s like one person and another person and another person. And I know Ray [the security guy] is right there, and he’s grabbing at me and screaming, ‘Lara hold onto me, hold onto me!’” Moments before she was dragged into the crowd, the camera (which was running again) recorded Logan shouting: “Stop!”

Then she started screaming, thinking this would make the mob stop, but it had the opposite effect: the mob turned wild. Someone shouted she is an Israeli, a Jew (she is neither), and this was enough to make them go amuck. Logan continues in her interview:

“I have one arm on Ray. I've lost the fixer [the Egyptian guide], I've lost the drivers. I've lost everybody except him. And I feel them tearing at my clothing. I think my shirt, my sweater was torn off completely. My shirt was around my neck. I felt the moment that my bra tore. They tore the metal clips of my bra. They tore those open. And I felt that because the air, I felt the air on my chest, on my skin. And I felt them tear out, they literally just tore my pants to shreds. And then I felt my underwear go. And I remember looking up, when my clothes gave way, I remember looking up and seeing them taking pictures with their cell phones, the flashes of their cell phone cameras.”

In other words, they almost completely removed her clothes, and were shamelessly taking pictures of her naked body with their cell phones! Such an absolutely disgusting and immoral behavior can only be nurtured in Islam, as we shall soon see. Logan continues:

“I felt at that moment that Ray was my only hope of survival. You know, he was looking at me and I could see his face and we had a sea of people between us, obviously tearing at both of us, beating us. I didn't even know that they were beating me with flagpoles and sticks and things, because I couldn't even feel that. Because I think of the sexual assault, was all I could feel, was their hands raping me over and over and over again.”

They raped her with their hands. “From the front, from the back”, as Logan stated. They were tearing her body in every direction, trying to tear off chunks of her scalp, pulling her hair off. At some point Logan thought of her children, and how she could allow herself to die like that, without fighting for her life and for her children’s sake. So she fought back, but her torture lasted for 25 minutes! She had no doubt in her mind that she was going to die, and even die a torturous death, lynched by the wild crowd.

She was dragged by the mob up to a point where there was a fence, which temporarily stopped them. There was a group of women at that place, and one of them, wearing a chador (a typical Islamic full-cover of the body that leaves open only a slit for the eyes), put her arms around Logan and covered her. The wild men-beasts still tried to seize her, but the other women encircled her and made a protective fence, which the men could not easily penetrate. Soon after that, a group of soldiers, who were persuaded to go there by Logan’s crew, arrived at the scene. The soldiers beat the crowd with their batons, and Logan grabbed the first soldier who came close to her, not letting him go, screaming hysterically. He took her on his back, beat his way out of the mob with the help of the other soldiers, and whisked her into a nearby armored vehicle, where there were more soldiers. Thus Logan’s life was spared.

That is the horrendous sexual assault that Lara Logan had to go through in Tahrir Square, Cairo. She escaped a hideous death by mere luck. But it’s time to see the connection between this event and Islam.

In the Qur’an, Allah^(*) speaks to Muslim men and tells them the following about women — about their wives in particular:

Qur’an 2:223: “Your wives are like a piece of cultivated land unto you; so approach your land when you wish; [...]”
	نِسَاؤُكُمْ حَرْثٌ لَّكُمْ فَأْتُوا حَرْثَكُمْ أَنَّىٰ شِئْتُم

The Muslim man learns indirectly, by being a member of the society of Muslims, that there are varying levels of sexual availability of women:

1. At the highest level, the most inaccessible women are the wives of other Muslim men. Establishing a relation with them is an act of adultery, which is punishable by death in Islam if the woman is married (theoretically; the actual punishment depends on the strictness of the Islamic society; in Saudi Arabia adultery is indeed punished by death; in Turkey, it is virtually ignored among the most Western-like Turks).

2. At the next level of sexual availability is the Muslim’s own wife. The Qur’an in 2:223 (see above) is clear: do what you want to her, when you want it. In another verse (4:34) the Qur’an allows the man to beat his wife, if she is not obedient to him and he feels she might abandon him. “Obedient” can be interpreted as sexually obedient.

3. At the next level down are non-muslim women, but here the Muslim man exercises caution: if there is a man to protect the woman, the Muslim is careful, not attempting anything openly, unless he is in a group of other Muslim men that gives physical superiority to him and his group, making him feel like a predator, a wolf in a pack of wolves. (This was the case in Lara Logan’s situation.) But if the non-muslim woman is not accompanied by a man, then she is “fair game” for the Muslim man’s uncontrollable sexual urges (an example follows soon).

4. Finally, at the lowest level are the conquered women, the slaves that Islam officially allows ever since Muhammad’s time. After all, Muhammad himself was a warlord who conquered tribes and enslaved women. As we saw in §1.1.1, the Qur’an in 4:24 considers it normal that a Muslim has slaves, and declares them sexually available to him. This was made abundantly clear to the non-muslim world during the mid-2010’s, when the barbarous hordes of the “Islamic State” conquered vast swaths of land of Eastern Syria and Western Iraq, and treated the women of the conquered tribes with a primitivism that would make real beasts blush.

There is a subtle point here: what distinguishes cases 1 & 2 on one hand from cases 3 & 4 on the other hand is whether the woman is “covered” by one of the Islamic attires (burqa, hijab, niqab, headscarf, etc.) that advertise that she is a Muslim. Wearing such an attire automatically “raises” the woman to levels 1 or 2 and makes her “not available” to the Muslim man.^(*) Not wearing the Islamic attire, however, makes the woman appear as “free and available” to him, even if he can rationalize that that’s the way non-muslim women dress themselves. In addition, if the non-muslim woman is of such stunning beauty as Lara Logan is (by Western standards of beauty, not just mine — after all, CBS News would not choose her for the camera requirements of the position of chief foreign affairs correspondent if she didn’t satisfy those standards) then she is the equivalent of a red flag to the bull.

I am assuming that Logan, during that fateful night of 2/11/2011, was dressed much more conservatively than she appears in the picture above, as she must be very experienced with foreign cultures. Still, she was savagely attacked due to the “pack of wolves” mentality that I mentioned in #3. But if the woman is dressed in a way that the Muslim man considers “revealing”, then the Muslim man thinks that the woman is “inviting” him for sex!

Myrto survived, but she will remain paralyzed for the rest of her life; a life that was just starting for her normally, with rather promising prospects, but which will have to continue in terrible terms: having her lying paralyzed in a wheelchair, all because of the uncontrollable sexual urges of a young Pakistani predator (arrested a few days later and sent to jail), whose Islamic culture taught him that unprotected females of the “kuffar” (unbelievers) are “fair game” for his sexual desires, especially if they are alone and dressed in an “inviting” way — inviting to Muslims, but completely normal to other cultures.

Myrto’s is of course not an isolated incident. (If it were, there would be no connection of it to Islam, and it wouldn’t be included here.) There have been literally thousands of such events, all over Europe, ever since a large number of illegal immigrants were allowed to enter European countries with the blessings of some European governments, which are suspected of cooperating with sponsors — certain billionaires who had vested interests in an influx of “cheap working hands”. For example, in Germany, during the 2015/2016 New Year’s Eve celebrations, there were mass sexual assaults by Muslim immigrants, 24 rapes, and numerous thefts.

Time to place a dot on our morality/immorality diagram. Since “sexual assault of non-muslim women” is too long for a label, I will use “sexual assault” instead, knowing that it stands for the longer thing. Now, sexual assault is clearly Universally Immoral, but where does it belong Islam-wise? In Islam, sexual assault (of non-muslim women who are not “slaves” of Muslims) was neither encouraged by Muhammad or the Qur’an, nor discouraged. So it is “morally irrelevant”, Islam-wise. It is one of those acts that, if you commit as a Muslim, the imam of your mosque will neither admonish you nor congratulate you. So it goes into the light-orange area of Universal Immorality and out of Islamic morals.

Figure 1.2.1.3: The position of “Sexual assault (of non-muslim women)”: Universally Immoral, but morally irrelevant in Islam

In the next sub-section we shall finally find something that’s supposed to be agreed upon as immoral by both Universal and Islamic morality. But supposed only. Even that has to be examined carefully, when Islam enters the discussion.

1.3 Consequence: Thou Shalt Not Force Your Religion Unto Others

In the Qur’an there is a verse that Muslims love to show to non-muslims when they want to absolve themselves of an accusation frequently directed against them: that they try to force Islam onto non-believers. The Qur’anic verse is the following:

Qur’an 2:256: “(There is) no compulsion in the religion; [...]”
	لَا إِكْرَاهَ فِي الدِّينِ

That’s it. That’s all that the Qur’an has to say on this very important topic. And there is no context for 2:256. The statement “(There is) no compulsion in religion” appears out of the blue, unrelated to everything said before it, and everything that comes after it. Before it, in 2:255, we learn some properties of Allah: that he is one-and-only, he sleeps not, he never falls into a slumber,^(*) and so on. And after it, in 2:257, we learn some more properties of Allah: that he is an ally of those who believe, he brings them out of darkness and into the light, and so on. Thus, the “no compulsion in religion” in 2:256 appears completely disconnected from all the rest, sounding incoherent. But let’s not complain about the logic and coherence of the Qur’an, because that belongs to a different topic. Let’s concentrate on compulsion in religion. So I am going to be lenient and, before I raise any objections, I’ll put the dot of “Forcing a religion” in the area that is shared between Universal and Islamic Immorality.

Figure 1.3.1: The position of “Forcing a religion”: Immoral both Universally and by Islamic wisdom

Fine. So that’s what 2:256 says, as Muslims want all non-muslims to know. What Muslims do not ever reveal to non-muslims are all those other verses of the Qur’an that make it abundantly clear that the Muslim should fight (do jihad, in Arabic) until all other religions disappear and “religion is all for Allah”; such as this one:

Qur’an 8:39: “So, fight them [the disbelievers] until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah.”
	وَقَاتِلُوهُمْ حَتَّىٰ لَا تَكُونَ فِتْنَةٌ وَيَكُونَ الدِّينُ كُلُّهُ لِلَّهِ

Or this one:

Qur’an 9:5: “And when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the pagans wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”
	فَإِذَا انسَلَخَ الْأَشْهُرُ الْحُرُمُ فَاقْتُلُوا الْمُشْرِكِينَ حَيْثُ وَجَدتُّمُوهُمْ وَخُذُوهُمْ وَاحْصُرُوهُمْ وَاقْعُدُوا لَهُمْ كُلَّ مَرْصَدٍ ۚ فَإِن تَابُوا وَأَقَامُوا الصَّلَاةَ وَآتَوُا الزَّكَاةَ فَخَلُّوا سَبِيلَهُمْ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ

In other words, slay the pagans until they change their religion. If they do, then stop slaughtering them because then, and only then, Allah remembers how merciful he is!

What about this one?

Qur’an 9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the tribute with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”
	قَاتِلُوا الَّذِينَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ بِاللَّهِ وَلَا بِالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ وَلَا يُحَرِّمُونَ مَا حَرَّمَ اللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُ وَلَا يَدِينُونَ دِينَ الْحَقِّ مِنَ الَّذِينَ أُوتُوا الْكِتَابَ حَتَّىٰ يُعْطُوا الْجِزْيَةَ عَن يَدٍ وَهُمْ صَاغِرُونَ

Translation: Fight against every non-muslim, even Christians and Jews (“the People of the Book”), until they surrender, become your slaves, and pay the special “subdued non-muslim tax” (“jizyah”) to you — those who are not dead already. Unless, of course, they change their religion and become Muslims. (Otherwise, “no compulsion in religion”!)

What about this excerpt from Sahi al-Bukhari?

Sahi al-Bukhari, V4B53N386:

“Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah alone or pay us the Jizyah (tribute tax); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says: ‘Whoever amongst us is killed as a martyr shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever survives shall become your master.’ ”

In other words, warring so that Islam prevails over other religions is the highest priority for Muslims, since whether they die fighting, or survive, Muhammad promised them “a deal they can’t refuse”.

Of course, there are more:

al-Tabari 9:69

“Arabs were the first to respond to the call of the Prophet. We are Allah’s helpers and the viziers of His Messenger. We fight people until they believe in Allah. He who believes in Allah and His Messenger has protected his life and possessions from us. As for one who disbelieves, we will fight him forever in the Cause of Allah. Killing him is a small matter to us.”

And there are many, many more! But let’s not tire the reader with this avalanche of evidence that the Qur’an contradicts its own “no compulsion in religion” multiple times, and that Muhammad himself ordered Muslims to fight non-muslims until they worship Allah or pay the jizyah (tax). And, if you neither become Muslim, nor pay the tax, you are “dead meat”. At least, in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and possibly elsewhere, that’s what you are; you are killed, executed. In more “progressive” places, such as the Ottoman Empire in the beginning of the 20th C., you would be sent to exile. That’s exactly what happened to my grandfather, who was a Greek born in Talash, Turkey (then Mutalashkee, Ottoman Empire), was living in Kayseri, and married my grandmother in Konya, both large cities of today’s Turkey. (Greeks were living in Asia Minor — today’s Turkey — for thousands of years; but they all left in a “population exchange” between Turkey and Greece in 1923.) My grandpa refused to pay the “jizya” to the Ottomans, and wanted to remain a Christian, so  he was exiled in the deserts of Cappadocia (central-east Turkey), sentenced to do compulsory work (breaking rocks for building a railroad). That was how the Qur’anic “no compulsion in religion” of 2:256 was understood by the Ottomans, and by Muslims in general. In this way, the Ottoman Muslims managed to convert some portion of the Balkan people to Islam (e.g., the Bosnians and the Albanians). The Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians, and others, opted to pay the jizyah, and remained Christians.

Today, Muslims force their religion without war. (After all, the sword is not so effective in our times, and all other weapons must either be purchased from the West, or the West has better ones.) Today the weapon of Islam is the Muslim woman’s womb, as well as the “open doors” policy that Muslims found in Europe — at least in some countries — in the first two decades of the 3rd millennium. The following picture is from a demonstration of Muslims in The Netherlands.

Figure 1.3.2: Some inner wishes can’t be hidden

The Islamist in the above picture knows what he is talking about: in Europe, initially, Islam starts little: in ghettoes, in small, tightly-knit societies that are not integrated in the cities in which they form, because Islam is a cult (follow the previous link to see why), and as such it holds its members tightly in its “corral”. While it is still small, the Islamic society does not (cannot) force its religion to its host society. However, as it grows (and it does grow much faster than the host, for reasons that have to do with the woman’s role^(*) in such societies), it gradually changes the societal rules of the host place. For example, people find it harder to buy pork meat, because the demand for it diminishes, as the percent of Muslims grows. Eventually, when Muslims become the majority and feel confident enough, then they do impose their religion by force, forgetting their Qur’an and its 2:256 (which they never took seriously).

2. Punishment Shall Not Be More Severe than the Crime

In §1 of this article we met the Universally moral notion of Equality among all human beings — a notion not shared by Muslims, who think they are superior to non-muslims and believe in the brotherhood among all Muslims instead. Universal Equality is actually a consequence of perhaps the most fundamental principle of Universal Morality, the so-called “Golden Rule of Morality”, which is trivially simple in its statement:

You might also see the so-called negative version of the Golden Rule: “You should not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated”. This has slightly different moral implications, but I will not insist on such differences.

The Golden Rule is Universal because every person who has some rudimentary sense of justice feels that the Golden Rule is “the right thing to do”. Elementary school teachers sometimes teach little children not to hurt animals as follows: “If you were that animal, would you like to be treated by a person the way you just treated this poor animal?” “No!” answers the kid. The fact that the kid understands this principle means that the principle is universal; we don’t need to be taught explicitly about it, we understand it, we already know it from birth, because it is hardwired in our brains.

But it is possible that the society in which the child grows up violates the Golden Rule all the time. In that case, the child receives all the opposite examples. Learning to imitate the adult members of the society, if the adults kill someone who abandoned their religion, the child learns that “this is the proper thing to do”. If thieves have their hands cut off, once again, the child learns that this (a violation of the Golden Rule) is “the proper punishment” for a theft. Even if the hands of thieves are not actually cut off, but the Holy Book of the religion says that they should be, the child learns that this “should be” the proper punishment.

All major philosophies and religions (except Islam) have encompassed some version of the Golden Rule, in either its positive or negative form. Ancient societies, such as the Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Greek, and Roman, and major religions or belief systems, such as Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity, all include it as part of their moral rules. (See the Wikipedia reference for some details.)

Islam, however, is on rather bad terms with the Golden Rule. Some Islamic scholars think that in verses 83:1–3 the Qur’an states something that’s reminiscent of the Golden Rule:

Qur’an 83:1–3: “Woe to those who give less [than due], who, when they take a measure from people, take in full. But if they give by measure or by weight to them, they cause loss.”
	وَيْلٌ لِّلْمُطَفِّفِينَ الَّذِينَ إِذَا اكْتَالُوا عَلَى النَّاسِ يَسْتَوْفُونَ وَإِذَا كَالُوهُمْ أَو وَّزَنُوهُمْ يُخْسِرُونَ

But that the above is a good representation of the Golden Rule is mere wishful thinking. Verses 83:1–3 are about greed: they tell you not to take more than you give. It is a good advice against covetousness, for example, but it is too specialized to be called a “version of the Golden Rule”.

Some not very trustworthy and not well-known Islamic narrations (ahadith) have Muhammad expressing the Golden Rule as an advice to someone. But the average Muslim never hears such narrations. And the problem is that Islam violates the Golden Rule all the time! For example:

• In the Qur’an (2:191), Allah asks Muslims to kill those that persecuted Muhammad, because, Allah says, “persecution is worse than slaughter”! Allah (or is it Muhammad?), obviously, has it backwards. Something must be severely malfunctioning in your brain if you think that to kill someone is less serious an offense than the offense of that someone having persecuted you. In 2:191, clearly, Muhammad is trying to offer to himself a rather clumsy excuse for his killings of those that earlier had persecuted him (but not without reason: because he wanted them to abandon their religion and believe in his own one!).

• Again in the Qur’an, the punishment for a theft is cutting a hand and a foot from opposite sides of the body. This barbarous punishment, which is seldom executed even in the most barbaric of Islamic countries, severely violates the Golden Rule. To cut off a limb of a person causes permanent damage, whereas stolen goods can be found and returned to their owner. A non-permanent damage of the owner should be punished by a correspondingly non-permanent damage of the thief. Yet, Islam thinks otherwise.

• In the Qur’an again, the punishment for adultery is “100 lashes”, which “should be administered without pity”. Once again, the barbarism of the author of the Qur’an rears its ugly head. To physically beat and inflict horrible bodily injuries to someone for having a relationship with a person other than the legal spouse not only violates the Golden Rule but shows that whoever created the Qur’an had a terribly incomplete and inferior than the present-day understanding of what is civilized and proper.

• Islam penalizes apostasy (abandoning Islam), and the penalty that was asked by none other than Muhammad was death. (Sahi al-Bukhari: V4 B52 N260 “The Prophet said, ‘If a Muslim discards his religion, kill him.’ ”) Killing for a change in one’s religious affiliation, especially when such an affiliation most probably was assigned without the person’s consent but because the person’s parents are Muslims, is a gross violation of the Golden Rule.

In general, whenever Muslims apply one of the above rules, or conquer other nations (see §1.1), or make people their slaves, or allow their men to rape non-muslim women and do not protest about it, as well as in many other occasions, they violate the Golden Rule. The latter, clearly, is not part of Islamic Morality. Islam, with its sharp distinction “We the good Muslims” vs. “Them, the bad infidels” is indifferent to the Golden Rule, and the latter is irrelevant to the former. So we must place the Golden Rule outside of Islamic Morality and Immorality, but inside Universal Morality.

Figure 2.1: The position of “Golden Rule”: Universally Moral, but irrelevant by Islamic wisdom

Let us see now some consequences of either adhering to or disregarding the Golden Rule.

2.1 Consequence: Thou Shalt Not Kill Whoever Criticized or Insulted You

On 2 October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi (Fig. 2.1.1), a Saudi Arabian journalist and critic of the policies of Saudi Arabia, went to the consulate of his country in Istanbul, Turkey, to obtain a document showing he was divorced, so that he could marry his Turkish fiancée, who was waiting for him outside the Saudi consulate.

But she was waiting in vain. Khashoggi never went out of the consulate, at least not alive. Later, over the course of a week, ugly details surfaced in the Turkish and then the world media: Khashoggi, they said, had been brutally murdered during an “interrogation” that lasted only seven minutes. In that time, first his fingers were cut off, and finally he was beheaded. Afterwards, his body was dismembered by a Saudi forensic expert, who was part of a team of 15 Saudis, and the pieces of his body were dissolved in hydrofluoric acid, which was found in a well at the Saudi consul’s home. The team of 15 had arrived a few hours earlier with a special flight from Saudi Arabia, went directly to the consulate where Khashoggi had an appointment, and flew back a few hours after the murder. The existence of audio recordings of the murder was pointed out by Turkish media, perhaps obtained by the Turkish secret service by having tapped the Saudi consulate — a standard practice of secret services in the world, although formally forbidden.

Figure 2.1.1: Jamal Khashoggi (left), and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (right)

Immediately, everybody in the world assumed that this was the work of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia (Fig. 2.1.1), a 33-year-old boisterous and arrogant man, who had full control of every policy in the Arabian Kingdom, and had already shown several signs of his violent character: having abducted the Prime Minister of Lebanon Saad al-Hariri in November 2017, having him beaten up by his men, and having him forced to announce his resignation — which was later rescinded by al-Hariri when he was allowed to return to Lebanon alive thanks to the intervention of the President of France; having incarcerated many activists in Saudi Arabia, including women; having put under house arrest a large number of princes of the kingdom, politicians, and businessmen, confiscating their assets, with the pretext of fighting corruption, while it appears that some of the detainees were tortured; having initiated a land-and-sea blockade of the neighboring country of Qatar, a rival of Saudi Arabia; and having started a diplomatic dispute with Canada, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of which “dared” to ask for the release of a Saudi woman activist who was arrested and imprisoned. No direct proof linking Khashoggi’s murder with the Crown Prince was produced. Due to indirect evidence, however, on 13 December 2018 the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution that held the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally responsible for the death of Khashoggi.

Saudi Arabia made an absolutely amateurish attempt to cover up the murder, initially claiming that Khashoggi walked out of the consulate but without footage showing him doing so. Two weeks later the official story changed, with the Saudi government admitting Khashoggi was dead, but as a result of a “fistfight” that went on in the premises of the consulate. The story was changed once again less than a month after the murder, when the Saudis admitted that Khashoggi was dead after a premeditated murder. This was all the result of Turkish officials putting pressure on the Saudis, because Turkey was a rival of Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, aiming at the leadership in the Sunni Muslim world.

What concerns us here is that the rest of the world, applying Universal Morality, was utterly shocked by the news of Khashoggi’s brutal torture and subsequent dismemberment. But the Islamic world — or at least the allies of Saudi Arabia — had a different reaction: Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Yemen, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League, all declared their support for Saudi Arabia in the “Khashoggi Affair”. Even more tellingly, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman expressed his puzzlement to the White House adviser, Jared Kushner, not understanding why Khashoggi’s murder caused such a world-wide outrage!

This last piece of news makes every sane person who uses Universal Morality have their jaw dropped in astonishment: “Whaaat? He doesn’t understand why the journalist’s brutal murder, committed by a State authority, caused such a world-wide outrage???”

No, he doesn’t. And he does not because he applies Islamic Morality. Not only the Crown Prince, but the entire Islamic world applies Islamic Morality, which explains why all those Middle-Eastern countries sided with Saudi Arabia. Islamic Morality differs from the Universal one on this point. Let’s put this in a frame for non-muslims to understand and swallow:

But the Universally-moral person might wonder: “Okay, maybe it is allowed to kill their critics in that world, but torture them before killing them? Is that normal, too??”

Yes! Absolutely! Because Muhammad did that, too. He tortured one of his victims before beheading him. And, remember please Mr./Ms. Universally-moral fellow, whatever Muhammad did is moral in Islamic Morality! That’s the rule. It might sound preposterous to you, but the Qur’an urges Muslims to follow Muhammad’s example. They call him the “most perfect human being who ever walked on the face of the Earth”; and if that “perfect human being” tortured and beheaded his critics, that’s what perfection is, by definition! But let’s learn about some of Muhammad’s moral achievements, so that you “Universals” get a lesson on what morality, of the Islamic flavor, smells like.

The following is an excerpt from one of the most trustworthy books of Islamic narrations:

Sahi al-Bukhari, 3032 & 3031 (Book 56, Hadith 239 & 238) (V4B52N271&270):

“The Prophet (PBUH) said, ‘Who is ready to kill Kaab bin Ashraf? [That was a Jewish poet who wrote poems making fun of Muhammad.] He has said injurious things about Allah and His Apostle.’ Muhammad bin Maslama got up saying, ‘O Allah’s Apostle! Would you like me to kill him?’ The Prophet (PBUH) replied, ‘Yes.’ Muhammad bin Maslama said, ‘Then allow me to say what I like [i.e., a lie].’ The Prophet (PBUH) replied, ‘I do (i.e. allow you).’ ”

In the above narration, Muhammad first asked: “Who is ready to kill” another person (Kaab bin Ashraf). According to Universal Morality, he asked his companions to commit a murder. And then — according to the authentic Islamic texts — he allowed Muhammad bin Maslama, who volunteered to be the murderer, to actually go and kill that person. A murder for an insult. In Universal Morality, this is how a mafia godfather acts. But in Islamic Morality, whatever Muhammad did was moral — period.

Figure 2.1.2: The murder of Kaab bin Ashraf, © Zenga Books.

Some Muslims claim, in defense of Muhammad, that Kaab bin Ashraf was not just writing poems making fun of Muhammad, but was instigating the other members of his tribe to go and kill Muhammad, so Muhammad was in self-defense. Although this information is in no trustworthy narration, still, even if Kaab bin Ashraf did such a thing, he didn’t commit a murder, which is what Muhammad did. In our modern world, if someone talks to others, trying to persuade them to commit a murder, we don’t kill that person for a murder that he wished but not committed. We put him in jail, once his guilt is proven. To kill someone because he wished to kill is a violation of the Golden Rule (§2).

By the way, Kaab bin Ashraf, the critic of Muhammad, was not just killed; he was beheaded after the murder. (We can draw the parallel with the modern case of Jamal Khashoggi here.) We learn the continuation of the story in narrations by other Muslim authors:

Tabari 7:94 “Ashraf suspected no evil when Maslama cried, ‘Smite the enemy of Allah!’ So they smote him, and their swords clashed over him. Maslama said, ‘I remembered my dagger and I seized it. I thrust it into the lower part of his body. I bore down upon it until I reached his genitals. Allah’s enemy fell to the ground.’ ”

ibn Ishaq:368 “We carried his head back to Muhammad during the night, saluted the Prophet as he stood praying, and cast Ashraf’s head before his feet. The Prophet praised Allah that the poet had been slain, and complimented us on the good work we had done in Allah’s Cause. Our attack upon Allah’s enemy cast terror among the Jews, and there was no Jew in Medina who did not fear for his life.’ ”

Kaab bin Ashraf’s was just one of several murders committed by Muhammad against his critics. Here is another one:

ibn Ishaq: 308 “Halfway to Medina, Ocba [one of the captives] was called out to be executed.” [Context note: since the other prisoners were being held for ransom, Ocba asked Muhammad why he was being treated more harshly than the other captives.] “The Prophet said, ‘Because of your enmity to Allah and to his Prophet.’ ‘And my little girl,’ cried Ocba in bitterness, ‘who will take care of her?’ ‘Hell Fire,’ Muhammad responded. At that moment he was decapitated. ‘Wretch that you were, [Muhammad said] you scoffed at me and claimed that your stories were better than mine. I give thanks that Allah has slain you and comforted me.’ ”

The captive Ocba had earlier dared to scoff at Muhammad and claim that his stories were better than Muhammad’s. This was reason enough for his head to be chopped off. That’s Islamic Morality. Every non-muslim, however, who is mentally sane, finds that cutting the head of any person is an atrocious act of the utmost degree, a barbarism of stone-age mentality. (And yet, beheading is the normal capital punishment in the country of Saudi Arabia, which, culturally, is stuck indeed in stone age.)

There are further Islamic stories narrating how Muhammad silenced his critics by murdering them. There is the story of Asma bint Marwan, the veracity of which is disputed by Islamic scholars, but what concerns us here is that the story exists, and reveals the morals that were considered normal in Muhammad’s times. If early Muslims had perceived any immorality in Asma bint Marwan’s story, it would have been omitted from the early Islamic narrations as painting an inappropriate moral picture of Muhammad. Here is the story:

Asma bint Marwan was a writer and poetess living within her Arabic tribe. After Muhammad killed Abu Afak, an elder member of her tribe, she was disgusted by some of her tribesmen who had converted to Islam. So she wrote a poem that was chastising such men along these lines:

ibn Ishaq and ibn Sa'ad: “Do you expect good from him [Muhammad] after the killing of your chiefs? Is there no man of pride [among you] who would attack him by surprise, and cut off the hopes of those who expect aught from him?”

Upon hearing this, Muhammad asked: “Who will rid me of Marwan’s daughter?” (I.e., Asma, the daughter of [=bint] Marwan.) One of Muhammad’s men, Umayr bin Adiy al-Khatmi, a blind man of the same tribe as Asma’s husband, answered that he would satisfy Muhammad’s wish to kill her. That very night, he crept into Asma’s home, entered her room in the dark, and found her sleeping among her five sons. One of her sons was suckling on her breast. Umayr removed the baby from her breast, and plunged his sword into her body.

Figure 2.1.3: The murder of Asma bint Marwan, © Zenga Books.

The next day, Umayr asked Muhammad: “She had five sons. Should I feel guilty?” But it looks like Umayr’s consciousness was more sensitive than Muhammad’s, because Muhammad answered: “No. Killing her wasn’t more significant than two goats butting heads.”

Now, it sounds highly unlikely that a blind man would be able to to such a feat as killing a woman in her home among her five sons. This story is most probably made up, but its recounting and inclusion in early Islamic narrations (“ahadith”) shows what morals were thought to be normal in Muhammad’s time, i.e., what Muslims thought Muhammad rightfully did.

Example after example, we see Muhammad killing his critics. But what about him torturing anyone? Let us recall that the October 2018 murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi (described earlier) involved torture. Well, Muhammad tortured some people, too, and in more than one occasion. First, we learn about the torture of some thieves and killers:

Sahi al-Bukhari:V4B52N261 “A group of eight men [...] killed the shepherd and drove away the camels, and they became unbelievers, when they were Muslims before. When the Prophet was informed by a shouter for help, he sent some men in their pursuit, and before the sun rose high, they were brought, and he had their hands and feet cut off. Then he ordered for nails which were heated and passed over their eyes, and they were left in the Harra (i.e. rocky land in Medina). They asked for water, and nobody provided them with water till they died.”

Such methods of punishment sound totally depraved and brutish to non-muslims. But Muslims learn that this is what their Prophet did (notice the trustworthiness of this narration: from Sahi al-Bukhari), so such punishment is “morally fine”. Note the dismemberment of the thieves, which was also committed in Khashoggi’s murder, first having his fingers cut off while he was still alive, and then his body parts, when dead.

Many Muslims react to the above narration saying that since the eight men robbed and killed the shepherd, they deserved to be killed by Muhammad with this horrible punishment, for setting an example. But their reaction is such precisely because they follow the brutish Islamic Morality, and have no knowledge of the Golden Rule, a consequence of which is the title of this section: “The punishment should not be more severe than the committed crime.” Granted, the eight men killed, they became murderers. Muhammad, however didn’t simply execute them, but tortured them before killing them! Muhammad became a torturer.

But there is another narration of torture committed by Muhammad, which is even more abhorrent to non-muslims than the previous one, because in this story Muhammad does not even have the “moral excuse” of retaliating against someone who wronged him. This story elevates the idea of torture-then-murder to whole new levels of depravity (always from the point of view of non-muslims).

First, some context: during the last one or two years of his life, Muhammad took his army and went to re-conquer Mecca, because he needed to pay his men with war booty — that was the normal way his army was maintained: conquering, and then dividing the spoils of war: valuables and slaves. However, after moving south toward Mecca, he was met with an army of Meccans who had learned about his plan and came to meet him. Not wanting to risk a defeat, Muhammad went back north. But he needed to pay his men, who were anxious for money and sex with enslaved women. So he decided to attack a peaceful Jewish-Arabic tribe, the Banu Nadir, the people of which were living in the valley of Khaibar. They moved to Khaibar after they were ousted from their city, Medina, by Muhammad.

Indeed, Muhammad attacked the Banu Nadir and subdued them. He killed all men of the tribe and captured the treasurer, whose name was Kinana ibn al-Rabi. Muhammad learned that Kinana had hidden the valuables of the tribe somewhere, and needed to steal them so as to pay his men. So he tortured Kinana, to make him reveal the hideaway of the valuables. Muhammad had Kinana tied to the ground, and his men lit up a fire on Kinana’s chest. Here is what we read in al-Tabari:

Al-Tabari, Vol. 8, p. 122. “The Prophet gave orders to Zubayr concerning Kinana, saying: ‘Torture him until you root out and extract what he has.’ So Zubayr kindled a fire on Kinana’s chest, twirling it with his firestick until Kinana was near death. Then [since Kinana didn’t reveal the location of the hidden valuables] the Messenger gave him to Maslamah, who beheaded him.”

Figure 2.1.4: The torture and murder of Kinana ibn al-Rabi, © Zenga Books.

The same story is recounted by ibn Ishaq in Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya (The Life of The Prophet), where in its English translation (Guillame 1955) it appears on pp. 145–146. The trustworthiness of this story by ibn Ishaq is considered “good” by Islamic scholars.

But killing the critics of Islam and of Islamic authorities continues to our days. In 2015, on January 7, two Muslim brothers stormed into the building where the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo had its offices, in Paris. They found several members of the staff of the newspaper gathered in a room for their weekly editorial meeting, and opened fire, killing 12 people and injuring 11 others. Among the dead were the director of the publication, cartoonists, columnists, and several others, including a building maintenance worker. The two Muslims left the room where the carnage took place shouting the Islamic war-cry: “Allahu akbar!” (“Allah is great!”), exited the building, and killed a nearby police officer (who, unbeknownst to them, was a Muslim). According to witnesses, they left the scene shouting: “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We have killed Charlie Hebdo!” (source). They escaped by hijacking cars. In the ensuing manhunt that lasted for two days, they were finally found having holed themselves up in the offices of a company in a town 35 km northeast of Paris. After 8-9 hours, during which the two Muslim killers took at least one person hostage, they stormed out of the building opening fire to the police, and were killed on the spot.

This all happened because Charlie Hebdo has traditionally published cartoons and articles that mock religions, including — of course — Islam. For example, the November 3, 2011 cover of Charlie Hebdo was the following:

Figure 2.1.5: November 3, 2011 front page of Charlie Hebdo

The figure is supposed to depict Muhammad, who says: “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter!”, whereas the newspaper has been renamed “Sharia Hebdo”. By the way, this front page, which has been copied in thousands of locations in the web and thus immortalized after the attack, would have remained rather obscure and forgotten without the carnage.

In the aftermath of the attack, millions of people from around the world (but the non-muslim world) participated in protests against the barbaric way in which Islam attempts to stifle criticism and the freedom of speech: 3.7 million people demonstrated in France, in what French officials called “the largest public rally in France since World War II”, and hundreds of thousands more did so in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, the U.K., the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, Argentina, and more. At the Trafalgar Square, London, 2,000 demonstrators sang the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, and so did the Americans at Union Square, Manhattan, New York. Many cartoonists from around the world responded by posting cartoons related to the shooting. As for Charlie Hebdo, it continued uninterrupted. The next edition of Charlie Hebdo had nearly 8 million copies printed in six languages, whereas its usual print run was 60,000.

In the Muslim world, the reaction ranged from cautious criticism of the attack, to open support for the killers, with the latter being the rule, rather than the exception. For example, The Shia Islamic journal Ya lasarat Al-Hussein, praised the shooting, saying: “[the cartoonists] met their legitimate justice, and congratulations to all Muslims”, and: “according to fiqh of Islam [the human understanding of Sharia, the divine Islamic law], the punishment of insulting Muhammad is death penalty” (source). Yahoo Canada reported a rally in support of the shootings in southern Afghanistan, where the demonstrators called the gunmen “heroes” who meted out punishment for the disrespectful cartoons. Around 40 to 60 people gathered in Peshawar, Pakistan, to praise the killers, with a local cleric holding a funeral for the killers, lionizing them as “heroes of Islam” (source). After the publication of the post-attack issue of Charlie Hebdo, there was unrest in Niger, resulting in 10 deaths, dozens injured, and at least 45 churches were burned down (source). In Algiers and Jordan, protesters clashed with police, and there were peaceful demonstrations in Sudan, Russia, Mali, Senegal, and Mauritania, in support of the killers (source).

But there were also anti-Muslim attacks. In the week after the shooting, 54 anti-Muslim incidents were reported in France. These included 21 reports of shootings and grenade-throwing at mosques and other Islamic centers and 33 cases of threats and insults (source).

Once again, we’ll have to populate the “horn” that represents the sharp disagreement between Universal and Islamic Morality in order to place the notion of “Killing critics [of Islam]” in our diagram.

Figure 2.1.5: The position of “Killing critics” (of Islam, Muhammad, Allah, the Qur’an, etc.): in Universal Immorality, but also in Islamic Morality

2.2 Consequence: Thou Shalt Not Punish Whoever Abandoned Your Religion

Of the several other Islamic violations of the Golden Rule we shall examine only one more, which appears troublesome even to Muslims, at least those who stop and think for themselves, and do not sheepishly follow what their religion dictates. This is the issue of religious apostasy, i.e., the abandonment of one’s religious faith. There are other kinds of apostasy, such as the political one (abandonment of one’s political party), but since here we are concerned only about religion, we’ll use simply the word “apostasy” to mean the religious one.

In June 2014, reports appeared in the press about an Afghan, known only by his first name Josef, whose life was threatened because he abandoned his religion, Islam, and converted to Christianity. That is, he became an apostate of Islam.

In practically every other religion of the world the notion of apostasy does not exist. Whether someone decides to stop believing in something they believed before or not, is a personal matter. In Christianity, for example, if someone abandons Christianity and embraces another faith, it is assumed that “God will take care of him/her”, meaning that he/she will be punished in the afterlife by God, so people in this life don’t need to substitute God and deliver a punishment instead of God, implying somehow that God is incapable of delivering a proper punishment.

But the Afghan Josef’s society apparently thinks that punishment must be delivered by people — we must conclude God is somehow impotent. Initially, Josef had traveled as an illegal immigrant abroad, passing from Turkey to Greece, to Italy, and to Germany. There he converted to Christianity, because, in his words, “I inherited my faith, but I saw so many things that made me discard my religious beliefs”. From there he was deported back to Italy, because that’s where he was first recorder as an illegal immigrant in Europe. He found that life was too difficult in his host country, and decided to return to his own country. But there, his family found out about his apostasy, and they decided to kill him right there, on the spot. His own father was among the family members that wanted to kill him. They bound him and locked him in a room, to kill him after some intra-family council, but Josef managed to escape from the window and hid in a friend’s house. (The friend proved more reliable than his family!) From there on, Josef’s fate was unknown. Importantly, one of his family members, namely his brother-in-law Ibrahim, stated the following:

“If I find him, once we are done with him, I will kill his son as well, because his son is a bastard,” Ibrahim said, referring to Josef’s 3-year-old child. “He [the child] is not from a Muslim father.”

Ibrahim intended to kill a 3-year-old baby, because the baby’s father became an apostate!

This kind of utter savagery is not completely unrelated to Islam. It has to do with the Islamic disregard for human life; but this is the subject of another moral principle. Let’s return to the subject of apostasy, and think about what Josef’s “fault” was.

A man, Josef, is born in a Muslim society (with a different name of course, but we only know him with the Christian name he chose for himself later). As an infant, he is automatically assigned the religion of Islam, without being asked — of course; no one asks questions to infants — and without having any idea what it is that people of his society are assigning to him. Specifically, Josef doesn’t know (and can’t know — he is an infant!) that no one is able to exit this religion without the harshest of punishments (death). But he is expected to live under the condition of being killed for abandoning a religion he didn’t choose by himself! Later in his life, after marrying and having a baby, he realizes that Islam, the religion forced upon him, is all a big sham, so he can’t be a believer anymore. Let’s pause and think:

Where is Josef’s fault, so far? That he was born in a Muslim society? Obviously that wasn’t his choice. Could his fault be his view that Islam is a huge collection of lies? Well, billions upon billions of non-muslims in the world agree with him, so we can’t blame him for agreeing with the majority of people on Earth. Let’s continue: he switches to Christianity. Any fault here? Well, once he abandoned Islam, he would have to believe in something. At least he didn’t become an atheist. He believed in one of the two religions of “the People of the Book”, in Islamic parlance. Once again: where is his fault? Nowhere to be seen. And yet, for his non-fault, his Muslim family, including his closest relatives, wants to kill him!

Why is apostasy immoral in Islam? Simple: Muhammad himself said it as clearly as possible:

Sahi al-Bukhari: V4 B52 N260

“The Prophet said: ‘If a Muslim discards his religion, kill him.’ ”

In practice, an actual death penalty for apostasy in Islam is carried out only in the most backward and underdeveloped Islamic societies. Elsewhere, the apostate is either imprisoned or shunned from the society.

The fact that Islam does not allow its members to exit from it is one of the fundamental reasons that make Islam a cult.

So now we can populate the pink region in our diagram with apostasy: immoral by Islam, but “don’t care” by all the rest of the world.

Figure 2.2.1: The position of “Apostasy”: Immoral by Islamic wisdom, but Universally morally irrelevant

3. Thou Shalt Adopt Children in Need

It is time to examine an act of morality that belongs to the “other horn” in our diagrams: the intersection between Universal Morality and Islamic Immorality. That example is given to us by the concept of adoption.

First, let’s make our terminology clear. You might read in some sites (e.g., this one): “Adoption is allowed in Islam.” This is false. Because “adoption” is a word of the English language,  when we use this word we must use it the way English speakers do. When Muslims say “adoption” in English, they mean another thing; they mean the Islamic concept, which, as we shall soon see, is best described in English by “child sponsoring”. That’s not the adoption in the English-language sense, not the notion of adoption that all the rest of the world (the non-muslim world) knows. Initially, however, before an event that happened in Muhammad’s life, Islam had the same concept of adoption as rest of the world knows it. Then, what I’ll describe below happened to Muhammad, and Islam changed. Here is the story, as we learn it from authoritative Islamic narrations.

Muhammad’s first wife, Khadijah, had a slave boy, called Zayd ibn Haritha (“Zayd the son of Haritha”), whom she then passed to Muhammad’s possession, and Muhammad accepted this “gift”. (In §1.1.1 we already saw how disgustingly immoral the practice of owning slaves is from the point of view of Universal Morality — let alone children slaves.) Some time later, Haritha, the father of the child Zayd, came to Muhammad and asked to get his child back. But little Zayd had learned to live with his foster family, and didn’t want to go with his biological father. So, Haritha became angry and disowned his child, saying: “You are not my son anymore!” and left. After this incident, Muhammad freed Zayd from slavery, and adopted him. At that time, adoption worked as it is known in the non-muslim world today: the father of the adopted child was considered the real father, for all legal purposes, and the child would have his foster father’s name attached to his/her own. So, after having been adopted, Zayd was called “Zayd ibn [the son of] Muhammad” instead of “Zayd ibn Haritha”.

Fast forward a few years into the future. Muhammad has become a “prophet” now, and Zayd has been married to a woman called Zaynab bint Jahsh, a cousin of Muhammad’s. Zaynab was a girl from a rich family, so she wasn’t very satisfied with her wedding, feeling she deserved someone better than Muhammad’s freed ex-slave. One day, Muhammad went to Zayd’s home when Zayd was absent, and saw Zaynab uncovered, and perhaps a bit “lightly dressed”, as we are left to understand from the Islamic narrations.

Figure 3.1: Muhammad meets Zaynab, lightly dressed, at her home, © Zenga Books.

Muhammad was struck by her beauty, and left Zaynab’s home mumbling some words that no one could understand. He started feeling what the average man feels when he meets an attractive woman. It was a common ethical rule in their society that foster fathers (such as Muhammad was to Zayd) cannot marry the wives (Zaynab) of their adopted sons (Zayd). But Muhammad wanted that girl! Now, when Zayd learned that Muhammad desired his wife, since he wasn’t in very good terms with Zaynab, he proposed to Muhammad to divorce Zaynab and offer her to him — otherwise Muhammad’s relation with Zaynab would be adulterous. Muhammad initially refused, saying to Zayd: “Keep your wife and fear Allah”. Muhammad feared what other people would say about him: “He forced his adopted son to divorce his wife so that he marries her!”. But Muhammad’s sexual urges were uncontrollable. He wanted Zaynab, and wanted her badly! So indeed Zayd divorced Zaynab, and Muhammad married her. But there was this social rumor to confront, regarding his moral conduct. Fortunately — lo and behold! — Allah rushes to his rescue. Muhammad has a “revelation” of a new sura of the Qur’an, in which Allah says this (emphasis added):

Qur’an 33:37: “And [remember, O Muhammad], when you said to the one [Zayd] on whom Allah bestowed favor and you bestowed favor, ‘Keep your wife and fear Allah’, while you concealed within yourself that which Allah is to disclose. And you feared the people, while Allah has more right that you fear Him. So when Zayd had no longer any need for her, We married her to you in order that there not be upon the believers any discomfort concerning the wives of their adopted sons when they no longer have need of them. And ever is the command of Allah accomplished.”

وَإِذْ تَقُولُ لِلَّذِي أَنْعَمَ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَأَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِ أَمْسِكْ عَلَيْكَ زَوْجَكَ وَاتَّقِ اللَّهَ وَتُخْفِي فِي نَفْسِكَ مَا اللَّهُ مُبْدِيهِ وَتَخْشَى النَّاسَ وَاللَّهُ أَحَقُّ أَن تَخْشَاهُ ۖ فَلَمَّا قَضَىٰ زَيْدٌ مِّنْهَا وَطَرًا زَوَّجْنَاكَهَا لِكَيْ لَا يَكُونَ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ حَرَجٌ فِي أَزْوَاجِ أَدْعِيَائِهِمْ إِذَا قَضَوْا مِنْهُنَّ وَطَرًا ۚ وَكَانَ أَمْرُ اللَّهِ مَفْعُولً

In other words, Allah is saying that he allowed the marriage of Muhammad to Zaynab so that the future generations learn the new rule: a foster father can marry the wife of his adopted son. (One wonders, how common could such a case be, so that Allah needed to have it written in a verse of the Qur’an, the immutable and eternal holy book, for all future generations to learn this rule, forever? But let’s not be nitpicking.)

But, in spite of this “revelation”, people kept talking about Muhammad having married the wife of his adopted son. There had to be put an end to this. Muhammad remembered he was the absolute ruler. So if there were any social rules, he could rewrite them. Therefore, soon he receives another “revelation”, by which Allah says that adoption is not true, it doesn’t ever happen, it’s just that people call it “adoption”:

Qur’an 33:4–5: “[4] Allah has not made for a man two hearts in his interior. And He has not made your wives whom you declare unlawful your mothers. And he has not made your adopted sons your [true] sons. That is [merely] your saying by your mouths, but Allah says the truth, and He guides to the [right] way. [5] Call them by [the names of] their fathers; it is more just in the sight of Allah. But if you do not know their fathers - then they are [still] your brothers in religion and those entrusted to you. And there is no blame upon you for that in which you have erred but [only for] what your hearts intended. And ever is Allah Forgiving and Merciful.”

مَّا جَعَلَ اللَّهُ لِرَجُلٍ مِّن قَلْبَيْنِ فِي جَوْفِهِ ۚ وَمَا جَعَلَ أَزْوَاجَكُمُ اللَّائِي تُظَاهِرُونَ مِنْهُنَّ أُمَّهَاتِكُمْ ۚ وَمَا جَعَلَ أَدْعِيَاءَكُمْ أَبْنَاءَكُمْ ۚ ذَ‌ٰلِكُمْ قَوْلُكُم بِأَفْوَاهِكُمْ ۖ وَاللَّهُ يَقُولُ الْحَقَّ وَهُوَ يَهْدِي السَّبِيلَ ادْعُوهُمْ لِآبَائِهِمْ هُوَ أَقْسَطُ عِندَ اللَّهِ ۚ فَإِن لَّمْ تَعْلَمُوا آبَاءَهُمْ فَإِخْوَانُكُمْ فِي الدِّينِ وَمَوَالِيكُمْ ۚ وَلَيْسَ عَلَيْكُمْ جُنَاحٌ فِيمَا أَخْطَأْتُم بِهِ وَلَـٰكِن مَّا تَعَمَّدَتْ قُلُوبُكُمْ ۚ وَكَانَ اللَّهُ غَفُورًا رَّحِيمًا

Note 1: the numbers of verses do not correspond to the chronological order by which these verses were “revealed” to Muhammad. Thus, verses  33:4–5 came after verse 33:37. The Qur’an appears always like this, chronologically jumbled, and the reason is the way its suras were collected and written down, randomly and in haste, some 10 years after Muhammad’s death.

Note 2: At this point, one wonders: if Allah was to abolish adoption altogether in 33:4–5, why did he need to give the earlier verse 33:37 (chronologically earlier) saying that Muslims should nor worry if they married the wives of their adopted sons? Does not Allah know the future? Did Allah not know, when he revealed 33:37, that this verse soon would be rendered meaningless, since adoption would be abolished by 33:4–5?

After this very convenient “revelation”, Zayd was not considered an adopted son of Muhammad’s anymore. He became “Zayd ibn Haritha”, and Muhammad was considered very normally married to his cousin Zaynab, because adoption was no more. Thus, we have this conclusion:

But, of course, the need to take care of parentless children, or children whose parents are alive but too poor to maintain them, is always present, even in the Islamic world. So, what do Muslims do? They become not true foster parents, but “sponsors” of the child. The sponsored child keeps the name of his or her biological family, if that is known, and cannot inherit more than one third of the property of the sponsor-parent.

Muslim scholars say that there is no problem with the inheritance rule, because the child can inherit all the property of the biological parents (source)! But this is purely hypocritical. Muslim scholars know very well that the reason a child is adopted is that either the child is an orphan — so, no parents to inherit from — or the biological parents are so poor that they can’t afford to raise the child, that’s why they give the child for adoption in the first place! For example, parents from poor African countries give their children for adoption to families in the West (USA, Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan) who are financially well-established; what property can such children inherit from their African parents? A straw-made hut, when they live in Manhattan?

In addition, the non-biological mother of a sponsored boy must appear covered with the hijab (if that is what the women of the Muslim society use) in front of the sponsored boy, when the boy grows to puberty. Also, a sponsored girl must be covered with the hijab in front of her non-biological father after she grows to puberty (source). From a Universal point of view, it is a really appalling idea that the foster mother of a boy should hide herself in shame from her boy, as if the boy is expected to develop a sexual desire for his mother! Or that the foster father is expected to desire sexually his girl, so she should hide herself from him. Non-muslims think that Muslims should be ashamed for assuming such behaviors as default and normal.

In the non-muslim world, “adoption” means that foster parents behave exactly like biological parents toward their adopted children; and that the adopted children inherit the property of their foster parents in exactly the same way as the biological children; the latter do not have any “more rights” than the adopted children. That’s what is Universally considered morally right.

So we see that this child-sponsoring concept of Islam is very different from the notion of adoption in the non-muslim world, and does not deserve to be called “adoption”. True adoption is not allowed in Islam, hence it is Immoral by Islamic wisdom. A truly Universally Moral concept is Immoral in Islam. Hence, our diagram now looks as follows.

Figure 3.2: The position of “Adoption”: Universally Moral, but in Islam it is Immoral

4. Thou Shalt Not Force Your Power upon the Powerless

A consequence of the Universal Golden Rule of Morality (§2) is that the person who has more power than another one should not use that power to force the powerless person to do as the powerful pleases. “Do not treat others in ways you would not like to be treated”, says the negative version of the Golden Rule, and this has as a direct consequence what I wrote as title of this section.

This Universal principle has two important moral consequences that concern the Islamic and Universal Morality. Let’s examine them.

4.1 Consequence: Thou Shalt Not Engage in Sexual Acts with Minors

A “minor” is a person who is not intellectually developed well enough, and as a result, the law does not trust that person to undertake the responsibilities of an “adult”. An adult is the opposite of a minor: one who is intellectually well-developed to be trusted by the law.

Thus, the time at which human beings stop being minors and become adults depends on their intellectual development. It does not depend on the time at which they mature sexually.

All humans come to this world with the same kind of brain, having the same intellectual properties and abilities. There is no “race”, tribe, or other subgroup of people, the members of which mature intellectually faster than other people. Of course, there are differences among individuals; but the average person of a sufficiently large group of people matures intellectually at the same time with the average person of any other group of people.

Sexual maturity might appear somewhat earlier in some groups of people, tribes, or ethnicities, but sexual maturity has nothing to do with whether a person is a “minor”. The notion of “minor” depends on intellectual maturity.

Given all the above, we come to the crux of the problem:

In most places of the world where societies have had the time to reflect upon intellectual maturity (having solved their other, more pressing problems), conventionally the law recognizes a person as an adult, i.e., not a minor, after completing the 17th year of age and starting the 18th. That is the time when the average person is assumed to have developed an ability to think logically and critically, taking decisions that concern that person’s life rationally.

And one such very important decision is who the person (previously minor, and now an adult) will have sex with. The law assumes that minors don’t have the intellectual maturity to decide who to have sex with. That’s why the law — the Universal law, so to speak, i.e., the law of those developed societies that have confronted this problem, thought about it, and spent time to solve it — does not allow adults to have sex with minors. This is because, once again, since minors cannot think critically, when the adult has sex with a minor, the adult is taking advantage of the inability of the minor to think critically, and such a thing is universally morally unacceptable. Obviously, it is morally unacceptable because it follows as a consequence of the more general moral principle stated in this section (§4): the stronger should not force the weaker to do as the stronger one pleases.

In Islam, however, what Muhammad did is moral by definition. And Muhammad engaged in sexual acts with at least one minor: his “wife” Aisha, with whom he had a sexual relationship (“consummated his marriage” is the euphemism used in Islamic narrations) when Aisha was at the tender age of nine (9)!

Sahi al-Bukhari: V7 B62 N64

“The Prophet married her [Aisha] when she was six, and consummated his marriage when she was nine years old.”

I put the word “wife” in quotes because, from a Universal point of view, a child, a girl who has only nine years of age, can never be considered a “wife” in the proper sense. She can be thought of as “Muhammad’s sexual toy”, or as “Perverted Old Man’s satisfaction for his shameless sexual urges”, but a wife she was not. A wife cannot be a minor, from a Universal perspective — period. And, in those societies that are well developed, if an adult (such as Muhammad) engages in sexual activities with a minor (such as Aisha, a child), the adult is judged in the court of law, and if found guilty, he is sent to jail. If Muhammad had committed this crime in our times and in a society in which Universal Morality applies, he would be sent to spend several years behind bars.

That Muhammad was not tried and sent to jail does not make his act a non-crime, from a Universal perspective. That it was a custom in his society of Bedouins for men to take children as “wives” does not make this act morally acceptable, any more than we can say that the old custom of the Incas (American Indians) to sacrifice children to their gods is morally acceptable because... that is their custom! No! Those children have human rights. They have the right to a life, above all. So, to sacrifice them violates the most important human right to live. Likewise, to give a child for the sexual satisfaction of an adult is an act that violates the Universal principle that the powerful should not force the powerless to do as the powerful pleases. The Islamic principle, a result of a tribal society of Bedouins of the desert, directly conflicts with this important Universal principle. This is depicted in our diagram, below.

Figure 4.1.1: The position of “Sex with Minors”: Universally Immoral, but Moral by Islamic wisdom

The notion of “Sex with Minors” might appear as “Child Marriage” in the Islamic world. But it is the same idea. “Child Marriage” makes the problem of sex with minors appear as “allowed”, legal from the Islamic perspective. But “marrying” a child (minor) to an adult only “legitimizes” the act of an adult having sex with a minor, in the same way that the custom of the Incas would “legitimize” the sacrifice of children to their gods: just because the Incas thought that “this is the proper thing to do”.

Figure 4.1.2: We might not have pictures of Muhammad with Aisha, but this one is from the present times and might gives us
a pretty good idea of what it looks like for a 50-year-old man (Muhammad was 53) to marry a 13-year old girl (Aisha was 9).
The above picture appears in a news site reporting on child marriages in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, criticizing the practice.
Note: no property rights violation: this is not a picture that belongs to me, but one linked to in the referenced article.

In English, the adult who is sexually attracted to children is called a pedophile. “Pedophile” comes from the Greek “paedo-” (παιδο-), which means “of child”, and the suffix “-phile” (-φιλος), meaning “one who loves / is attracted to”; i.e., “one who is attracted to children”. That’s what Muhammad was, by the dictionary definition: a pedophile. Let’s put this in a frame:

so as not to forget that, religious-leader-or-not, Muhammad committed pedophilia, a serious crime in the world of Universal Morality.

4.2 Consequence: Men Shall Not Treat Women as the Men Please

Ah! Women! Those living beings who are “a degree below men” (Qur’an 2:228), who are “spending from your property” (Qur’an 4:34), and so you have to be “their maintainers” (same verse)! Women, that living property of yours (see Fig. 4.2.1), about who you constantly have to persuade non-muslims that, no, there is pure equality among men and women in Islam, that you Muslim men do not consider Muslim women as second- or third-class objects, and that pictures like the one in Fig. 4.2.1 are probably staged, made in Hollywood, or photoshopped! (That’s what you tell those pesky non-muslims; deep inside you know such pictures come from the punishing reality, which you must deny.)

Figure 4.2.1: “No! This picture can’t be real!” (you tell the infidels)

In the rest of the world (the non-Islamic world), women have equal rights to men. Nobody claims that women are physically as strong as men. Of course they aren’t, and their achievements in the Olympic Games, their world records in sports, and all physical competitions in general, show that men are physically more capable than women. But when Westerners talk about “equality among men and women” they don’t mean their physical abilities, but their rights as human beings. Nobody asks a woman to run 100 m in under 9.5 seconds, just as nobody asks a man to give birth and suckle a child. These are physical achievements. In the Western world, “equality among men and women” means equality in opportunities, in benefits from the society, and in human rights.

But let’s see what Allah’s orders about women are, and how Allah makes it part of Islamic Morality to treat women as inferior to men. Says the author of the Qur’an:

Qur’an 4:34: “Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally] strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand.”

الرِّجَالُ قَوَّامُونَ عَلَى النِّسَاءِ بِمَا فَضَّلَ اللَّهُ بَعْضَهُمْ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ وَبِمَا أَنفَقُوا مِنْ أَمْوَالِهِمْ ۚ فَالصَّالِحَاتُ قَانِتَاتٌ حَافِظَاتٌ لِّلْغَيْبِ بِمَا حَفِظَ اللَّهُ ۚ وَاللَّاتِي تَخَافُونَ نُشُوزَهُنَّ فَعِظُوهُنَّ وَاهْجُرُوهُنَّ فِي الْمَضَاجِعِ وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّ ۖ فَإِنْ أَطَعْنَكُمْ فَلَا تَبْغُوا عَلَيْهِنَّ سَبِيلًا ۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلِيًّا كَبِيرًا

Some translators of the Qur’an in English (and I suspect in many other languages) have inserted the qualifier “(lightly)” after “strike them”, often even without the parentheses that show that this is an addition by the translator. For example, the translation of the Qur’an in English by Yusuf Ali says: “beat them (lightly);” whereas Shakir’s and Pickthal’s are more honest, saying “beat them” and “scourge them”, respectively. (“Scourge them”! How many lashes does the translator Pickthal think are enough?) The official translation in Greek (which is another language I know), shamelessly says: “then strike them lightly”, as if suggesting a patting on the shoulder, just short of caressing them! But the original Arabic text doesn’t include “lightly” at all! It says “strike them”! The Arabic word is اضْر. To see what this word means in classic Arabic, consider another Qur’anic verse where the same word is used (indeed, twice):

Qur’an 8:12: “[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, ‘I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip.’ ”
	إِذْ يُوحِي رَبُّكَ إِلَى الْمَلَائِكَةِ أَنِّي مَعَكُمْ فَثَبِّتُوا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا ۚ سَأُلْقِي فِي قُلُوبِ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا الرُّعْبَ فَاضْرِبُوا فَوْقَ الْأَعْنَاقِ وَاضْرِبُوا مِنْهُمْ كُلَّ بَنَانٍ

Now, I don‘t know how morally fine Allah feels when he “cast[s] terror in the hearts of unbelievers” and asks you to kill human beings, but that’s a different moral issue. Here, Allah asks you to kill his enemies, the unbelievers. I don’t know if you can kill your enemies by striking them lightly. Next time you are at the war front, please do this experiment: اضْر your enemy, and interpret this as: “strike your enemy lightly” — just as you’d admonish your wife — to see if you survive.

So the man can strike the woman, says Allah (the All-Knowing). But verse 4:34 starts by saying that men are in charge of women, and they give from their money for the women’s maintenance. This implies that women must not have work and a career, they can’t earn money, but must be maintained by what men earn. This was the norm in the 7th century Bedouin culture of Arabia; but today women want to be able to work, and to have equal rights with men at work. Even if several of your Muslim women are fine with being maintained by their husbands, some of them do want to work, and those who want it should be given the opportunity to do it (equal opportunities!). But Allah bans all women from work, as if he didn’t know that the idea “women don’t work and stay at home” would become very outdated by the 20th century, especially in the Western culture. Today, if you tell American (North & South), European, or Australian women that they should not work or have a career, but stay at home, do housework, and raise children, they will ask you from which cave did you escape with your Stone-Age tools, the club, and the sheepskin for a cover? Go back to your cave please, where you belong. Why does Allah sound like “Conan the Barbarian”?

Also according to Allah, the man can have sex with his wife whenever he wishes! Such a thing is “halal” (allowed)! Here it is:

Qur’an 2:223: “Your wives are a place of sowing of seed for you, so come to your place of cultivation when you wish and put forth [righteousness] for yourselves. And be conscious of Allah and know that you will meet Him. And give good tidings to the believers.”
	نِسَاؤُكُمْ حَرْثٌ لَّكُمْ فَأْتُوا حَرْثَكُمْ أَنَّىٰ شِئْتُمْ ۖ وَقَدِّمُوا لِأَنفُسِكُمْ ۚ وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَّكُم مُّلَاقُوهُ ۗ وَبَشِّرِ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ

See? Allah is with you, the man! Allah takes your side! Allah is partial! He chooses men over women! What more evidence do you need to conclude that Allah doesn’t consider men equal to women?

Why does not Allah give the same right to the woman, telling her that her man is a field of plants with seeds for her, so “Go to your plant and harvest its seeds whenever you wish”? Doesn’t Allah want men and women to have equal rights? And, oh, by the way: why does Allah seem to ignore that seeds are provided not just by the man but also by the woman? Doesn’t Allah know that the woman has one very important seed, the ovum, without which the male seeds are utterly useless? Again, why does Allah speak like a Bedouin?

But, wait! There is a Qur’anic verse in which the author of the Qur’an (is it really Allah?) seems to suggest, very timidly and vaguely, that women have equal rights with men. Unfortunately, in the same verse the Qur’anic author immediately forgets what he just said and cancels it saying exactly the opposite, as if being under the influence of stupor-inducing drugs. Here is the verse:

Qur’an 2:228: “Divorced women remain in waiting for three periods, and it is not lawful for them to conceal what Allah has created in their wombs if they believe in Allah and the Last Day. And their husbands have more right to take them back in this [period] if they want reconciliation. And due to the wives is similar to what is expected of them, according to what is reasonable. But the men have a degree over them [in responsibility and authority]. And Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise.”

وَالْمُطَلَّقَاتُ يَتَرَبَّصْنَ بِأَنفُسِهِنَّ ثَلَاثَةَ قُرُوءٍ ۚ وَلَا يَحِلُّ لَهُنَّ أَن يَكْتُمْنَ مَا خَلَقَ اللَّهُ فِي أَرْحَامِهِنَّ إِن كُنَّ يُؤْمِنَّ بِاللَّهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ ۚ وَبُعُولَتُهُنَّ أَحَقُّ بِرَدِّهِنَّ فِي ذَ‌ٰلِكَ إِنْ أَرَادُوا إِصْلَاحًا ۚ وَلَهُنَّ مِثْلُ الَّذِي عَلَيْهِنَّ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ ۚ وَلِلرِّجَالِ عَلَيْهِنَّ دَرَجَةٌ ۗ وَاللَّهُ عَزِيزٌ حَكِيمٌ

What?? Those sound surely like conflicting messages. First, the author says “their husbands have more right” (وَبُعُولَتُهُنَّ أَحَقُّ) if they (the husbands) want to cancel the divorce. Then comes the cryptic phrase: وَلَهُنَّ مِثْلُ الَّذِي عَلَيْهِنَّ which is translated as “And due to the wives is similar to what is expected of them” in the Authentic International - English translation, shown above. But look how three translators, approved by Islamic scholars, translate this:

• Yusuf Ali: “And women shall have rights similar to the rights against them”

• Pickthal: “And they (women) have rights similar to those (of men) over them”

• Shakir: “and they have rights similar to those against them”

They all insert the word (and notion of) “rights”. But the original text says, word for word, the following (read from right to left):

Both “them” are in the feminine gender, so the pronoun refers to women. I leave the conclusion to you.

And after this timid and vague allocation of “equal rights” to women, comes the strike with the sledgehammer: “But the men have a degree over them” (وَلِلرِّجَالِ عَلَيْهِنَّ دَرَجَةٌ). Just so you women don’t go overboard with your happiness about “equal rights”! Ha!

In matters of inheritance and testimony at court, Allah defines the inequality of men and women with a formula: two women = one man. Or, dividing both sides of the equation by 2:

Here are the verses that justify the above equation:

Qur’an 4:11: “Allah instructs you concerning your children: for the male, what is equal to the share of two females. But if there are [only] daughters, two or more, for them is two thirds of what he left. And if there is [only] one, for her is half. And for one's parents, to each one of them is a sixth of his estate if he left children. But if he had no children and the parents [alone] inherit from him, then for his mother is one third. [Hence, for his father is two thirds.] And if he had brothers [or sisters], for his mother is a sixth, after any bequest he [may have] made or debt. Your parents or your children - you know not which of them are nearest to you in benefit. [These shares are] an obligation [imposed] by Allah. Indeed, Allah is ever Knowing and Wise.”

يُوصِيكُمُ اللَّهُ فِي أَوْلَادِكُمْ ۖ لِلذَّكَرِ مِثْلُ حَظِّ الْأُنثَيَيْنِ ۚ فَإِن كُنَّ نِسَاءً فَوْقَ اثْنَتَيْنِ فَلَهُنَّ ثُلُثَا مَا تَرَكَ ۖ وَإِن كَانَتْ وَاحِدَةً فَلَهَا النِّصْفُ ۚ وَلِأَبَوَيْهِ لِكُلِّ وَاحِدٍ مِّنْهُمَا السُّدُسُ مِمَّا تَرَكَ إِن كَانَ لَهُ وَلَدٌ ۚ فَإِن لَّمْ يَكُن لَّهُ وَلَدٌ وَوَرِثَهُ أَبَوَاهُ فَلِأُمِّهِ الثُّلُثُ ۚ فَإِن كَانَ لَهُ إِخْوَةٌ فَلِأُمِّهِ السُّدُسُ ۚ مِن بَعْدِ وَصِيَّةٍ يُوصِي بِهَا أَوْ دَيْنٍ ۗ آبَاؤُكُمْ وَأَبْنَاؤُكُمْ لَا تَدْرُونَ أَيُّهُمْ أَقْرَبُ لَكُمْ نَفْعًا ۚ فَرِيضَةً مِّنَ اللَّهِ ۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلِيمًا حَكِيمًا

Let’s do a calculation. According to the above verse 4:11, if there are, say, six daughters in a family and no sons, and the father dies and leaves, say, 9000 dollars (substitute your own currency unit here), then the 6 daughters will inherit 2/3rds of 9000, which equals 6000. This means each daughter will get 1000. What happens to the leftover and larger amount of 3000 is left unspecified by Allah. Even if there is one only-daughter, she will not inherit all of her father’s 9000, but only 4500 (“for her is half”: فَلَهَا النِّصْفُ).

I will skip the rest, but the interested reader may also want to check the next verse, 4:12. In every case, females (wives or daughters) get half of what males get.

And here is a verse that concerns testimony at court:

Qur’an 2:282: “[...] And bring to witness two witnesses from among your men. And if there are not two men [available], then a man and two women from those whom you accept as witnesses - so that if one of the women errs, then the other can remind her. [...]”
	وَاسْتَشْهِدُوا شَهِيدَيْنِ مِن رِّجَالِكُمْ ۖ فَإِن لَّمْ يَكُونَا رَجُلَيْنِ فَرَجُلٌ وَامْرَأَتَانِ مِمَّن تَرْضَوْنَ مِنَ الشُّهَدَاءِ أَن تَضِلَّ إِحْدَاهُمَا فَتُذَكِّرَ إِحْدَاهُمَا الْأُخْرَىٰ ۚ ٌ

Women are dumber than men, according to Allah, because it is only for women that he feels he needs to supply the explanation: “so that if one of the women errs, then the other can remind her.” A man does not have such a need for support by another man (let alone a woman!). But they are also “deficient in intelligence” according to Muhammad (who, surprise–surprise, always happens to agree with the — or rather his — Qur’an). Here it is, from the most authentic collection of Islamic narrations:

Sahi al-Bukhari: V1 B6 N301

“[Muhammad] said, ‘O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women).’ They asked, ‘Why is it so, O Allah’s Apostle ?’ He replied, ‘You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you.’ The women asked, ‘O Allah’s Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?’ He said, ‘Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?’  They replied in the affirmative.  He said, ‘This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn’t it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?’ The women replied in the affirmative. He said, ‘This is the deficiency in her religion.’ ”

Non-muslims who read the above think as follows: “Muhammad, first sets up the rule that the evidence of two women equals that of one man in court, since it is more than obvious to us that the Qur’an is an artifact of his own imagination. Then he uses this rule of his own making to ‘conclude’ that women are less intelligent than men!” That (says the author of this article) is like someone telling you that in his religion they believe that the vision of the left eye of every human being is twice as deficient as the vision of the right eye. “How is that so?”, you ask him. He replies: “Didn’t our Creator say, in our Holy Book, that the lens of the left eye in every pair of glasses must be twice as strong as the lens of the right eye?” “Well, in your Holy Book, you claim that your Creator said so, that much is true”, you answer. “You see?” he replies; “This is the evidence of the deficiency of the left eye!” Excellent logic, right? Just make sure you don’t hire this person as your attorney at court.

Last but not least, Allah permits men to have more than one wife, as long as the man has enough wealth to maintain his wives.

Qur’an 4:3: “And if you fear that you will not deal justly with the orphans, then marry those that seem suitable to you from the women, two or three or four. But if you fear that you will not be just, then [marry only] one or those your right hand possesses. That is more suitable that you may not oppress.”
	وَإِنْ خِفْتُمْ أَلَّا تُقْسِطُوا فِي الْيَتَامَىٰ فَانكِحُوا مَا طَابَ لَكُم مِّنَ النِّسَاءِ مَثْنَىٰ وَثُلَاثَ وَرُبَاعَ ۖ فَإِنْ خِفْتُمْ أَلَّا تَعْدِلُوا فَوَاحِدَةً أَوْ مَا مَلَكَتْ أَيْمَانُكُمْ ۚ ذَ‌ٰلِكَ أَدْنَىٰ أَلَّا تَعُولُوا

Needless to say, nowhere in the Qur’an is a woman allowed to have — God forbid! — more than one husband. Just saying... so that those Muslims who try to persuade non-muslims that men and women have equal rights in Islam would think twice.

Muhammad, of course, had many women, both wives and slaves. For example, the last of his “wives” must have been Safiya, the wife of Kinana, who was tortured by Muhammad (Fig. 2.1.4) in order to reveal where he had hidden the valuables of his tribe. After burning Kinana alive and finally decapitating him, Muhammad “married” Kinana’s widow, Safiya, by having sex with her a few days after the murder, as narrations by Sahi al-Bukhari (V5B59N522–524) tell us.

Figure 4.2.2: Muhammad meets Safiya, after having murdered her husband Kinana, © Zenga Books.

Safiya was probably the last of Muhammad’s wives because soon after that marriage he was poisoned by another woman of Kinana’s tribe. Muhammad suffered the results of the poisoning maybe for several months, before finally kicking the bucket.

Marrying more than one woman is called “polygamy”, and is a crime in most non-muslim societies. But it is normal in some Muslim countries with a strict interpretation of Islam, such as Saudi Arabia. After all, Muhammad was polygamous.

Figure 4.2.3: Some of the Muslim women in this hilarious picture might be wives of the picture-taking Muslim man

However, even some Muslim societies, such as the Turkish one (which formally is secular, not a theocracy), recognize that polygamy is a problem, and do not allow it — despite Allah’s view. Of course, polygamy is not banned in 100% of the non-muslim world (some African kings, for example, are known for maintaining a large number of wives), and even polyandry (one woman having more than one husband) can be found, e.g., in some isolated tribes of the Pacific Ocean. But the overwhelming majority of the non-muslim world bans polygamy, hence considers it “immoral”. So, polygamy is Universally Immoral by our definition.

Thus we shall add two dots in our diagram: one for “women have equal rights to men”, which, to make it fit in our diagram, will be denoted by the label “Women = Men”; and another one for “Polygamy”, which, although a special case of “Women = Men”, deserves a special mention due to the peculiarity of it in the Islamic world. (After all, “Women = Men” is a special case of “Equality” but deserves a special mention due to its importance in human relations.)

Figure 4.2.4: The positions of “Women = Men” and “Polygamy”.

As we see, “Women = Men” is Universally Moral, but strongly frowned upon by both the Qur’an and Muhammad. As for “Polygamy”, being a crime in most of the non-muslim world, it is Universally Immoral; but it is encouraged by Allah and enjoyed by Muhammad, so it is Moral by Islamic wisdom.

5. Thou Shalt Take Care of Your Parents and Children (Finally an Agreement!)

It is about time we populate a bit that “boring” area of our diagram, the teal-colored region where Islamic and Universal Morality agree with each other. And, just as there is hardly any discussion when two people agree, so in our case, there isn’t much to say for the cases where the two kinds of morality agree. I’ll choose two easily agreed-upon moral issues: taking care of one’s own parents and children.

Figure 5.1: The position of “Caring for one’s parents” and “Caring for one’s own children”

I don’t know of any culture that doesn’t accept “Caring for one’s own parents” as a correct moral value; and frankly, I doubt any such culture exists. As for “Caring for one’s own children”, this comes directly as a biological urge of humans to propagate their genes; so in this case I could bet a large sum of money that no culture exists that doesn’t see the idea of caring for one’s own children as correct; for, if there ever was any such culture, its descendants would suffer a hard life, so in the long run it would leave not enough descendants and eventually cease to exist. I preferred to write “one’s own” in the label, because “Caring for children” is another, more general principle, which can be confused with the different “caring for orphans” (especially by Muslims), and I didn’t want to cause such a confusion. “Caring for orphans”, as well as the more general “caring for children”, is understood by the average Muslim as “caring for orphans of Muslims”, and “caring for children of Muslims”, respectively. That’s because the Qur’an, by saying “you”, means “you the Muslim believer”, not “you the human being”; whereas, in Universal Morality, caring for children means all children, of all people on Earth, without qualifications or exceptions. So, not wanting to cause such misunderstandings, I wrote “one’s own children” in the diagram.

5.1 Charity and Zakat

One might claim that “Charity” belongs to the same region of mutual agreement in our diagram. But, again, there can be significant misunderstanding. Muslims have a special word for charity: “Zakat”, which doesn’t correspond exactly to what the rest of the world understands as “Charity”. According to this article of Wikipedia on zakat (the emphasis is mine):

“Muslim scholars disagree whether zakat recipients can include non-Muslims. Islamic scholarship, historically, has taught that only Muslims can be recipients of zakat. In recent times, some state that zakat may be paid to non-Muslims after the needs of Muslims have been met, finding nothing in the Quran or sunna to indicate that zakat should be paid to Muslims only.”

So, traditionally, zakat has been understood by Muslims to mean “charity to other Muslims”, and there are two very good reasons for that:

1. Allah in the Qur’an speaks to the Muslim believer only, not to the general person on Earth. That’s why Muslim scholars find “nothing in the Quran or sunna to indicate that zakat should be paid to Muslims only.” Their failure to find such a qualification is because the qualification “you, the Muslim” is the default, it is assumed throughout their holy book. The Qur’an is narrow-minded by its conception. It shows a stunning narrow-mindedness in its scope, which is totally unfitting to a “Creator of all human beings”.

2. Islam separates the world into two sharp classes: the “believers” (Muslims) and the “infidels”. The purpose of Allah is to eliminate the infidels, either by having them all convert to Islam, or by being killed by the sword of the Muslim. (There is also the third “option”: to be conquered and pay “jizya”, the Islamic tax.) If Muslims were to give charity to infidels, they would help them live comfortable lives, and that doesn’t make sense to a pious Muslim — it is like helping the enemy, and the infidels are called “the enemies of Islam” many times in the Qur’an.

Therefore, zakat traditionally means “charity to fellow Muslims”. If “In recent times”, as mentioned in the Wikipedia article, Muslim scholars suggest extending the scope of zakat to all human beings, it is because such scholars have traveled and met the rest of the world, learned that the non-Islamic world does not make any distinctions based on religion when it says “charity”, felt (even subconsciously) shame for the discrimination their own religion makes to humanity, and thought they should “upgrade” the concept of zakat to a more civilized one, i.e., that of “charity”. But note that Muslim scholars think that zakat should be given to non-Muslims “after the needs of Muslims have been met”!  Thus, even the most educated and cosmopolitan of Muslim scholars cannot get rid of the “discrimination spectacles” that Islam imposed on their thinking since early childhood. I believe that, as long as Islam separates the world into “us” and “the others”, zakat will remain the parochial concept of “charity among us Muslims, only”.

For the above reasons I will omit placing both “Charity” and “Zakat” on our diagram, so as to avoid disagreeing on what is understood by each, and where the dot of each concept should be placed.

6. Each Non-combatant Individual’s Right to Live Shall Be Inviolable

There are some verses in the Qur’an the morality of which drops below that of an average person with solid moral principles. I assume, of course, that the person with the solid moral principles also has the critical ability to judge the content of those verses, without sheepishly bowing the head and accepting blindly whatever the Qur’an says as “ideas coming from a Higher Authority”. If the author of the Qur’an was indeed a Higher Authority, he should also have — among other things — a Higher Morality, especially regarding the value of human life. However, on several occasions, the author of the Qur’an shows that his morality regarding human life is inferior to that of a morally good person. Let’s examine some such morally problematic cases.

6.1 Observation: Allah Says He Killed a Child, but Did it Without Good Reason

The qualification “without good reason” could be missing from the title of this subsection, because a child should not be killed ever, period! — according to Universal Morality. You can’t use a reason (good or bad) to kill a child. You should simply never do it, because a child does not have the mental capacity to be held morally responsible for anything; so, taking the child’s life for a fault of the child is one of the morally worst things an adult (or group of adults, or society) can do. Now, it is known that many religious people are willing to justify any deed of their God by the thought: “He must have some Higher Reason, not understood by us.” However, in verse 18:74–81 of the Qur’an Allah does give us the reason for having a boy killed (using an angel of his to commit the murder), but the reason does not stand to serious scrutiny by any intelligent person who has a modicum of ability for critical thought. Here is a description of verses 18:74–81:

In 18:65, just prior to the verses that interest us, Moses meets “a servant of Allah”, or — to have a shorter way of calling him — an angel, who was given a lot of knowledge by Allah. Moses asks the wise angel to allow him to follow the angel, but the angel tells him that Moses would not have the patience to understand everything he would witness without asking questions. Moses assures the angel that, no, he will have the patience, and they start their trek. In 18:74 they find a boy, and the angel kills the boy. Moses asks: “Have you killed a pure soul for some reason other than killing a soul? Certainly you have done an evil thing!” The angel answers: “Didn’t I tell you that you will never be able to have patience with me?” Moses swallows this (which is the second inexplicable thing that the angel did out of three overall in their trek), and they continue. Then, in 18:80–81 we learn the reason for which the angel killed the boy. Here it is (hold on to your chair):

Qur’an 18:80–81: “[80] And as for the boy, his parents were believers, and we feared that he would overburden them by transgression and disbelief. [81] So we intended that their Lord should substitute for them one better than him in purity and nearer to mercy.”
	وَأَمَّا الْغُلَامُ فَكَانَ أَبَوَاهُ مُؤْمِنَيْنِ فَخَشِينَا أَن يُرْهِقَهُمَا طُغْيَانًا وَكُفْرًا فَأَرَدْنَا أَن يُبْدِلَهُمَا رَبُّهُمَا خَيْرًا مِّنْهُ زَكَاةً وَأَقْرَبَ رُحْمًا

Pardon me, but this is pure trash — among the worst justifications for a murder that one can think of. Assuming the angel was carrying out Allah’s will (he implies so in 18:81), and hence the thought described in 18:80 belongs to Allah, such a thought can only be called a “mental fart”; which tells us that the author of the Qur’an is not Allah, but Muhammad. Muhammad was very capable of producing “mental farts”, and this is only one among many. Here is why:

First off, Allah (through the angel’s mouth) says: “We feared that [the boy would be a sinner later in his life]”. Why “feared”? Isn’t Allah sure? Does he not know the future? If I say: “I fear your tomorrow’s performance will be a failure”, it means I am not sure about it. But Allah knows everything. He knows how the boy would proceed in his life, so he should say: “If I allow the boy to live, he will become a sinner and a disbeliever later in his life, and will overburden his believing parents. So I kill him now, before the boy has the chance to commit such transgressions.”

But even so, even if Allah, knowing the future, is sure that the boy will indeed become a disbeliever and will “overburden” his parents with shame, is that a reason for killing the boy?

First, why is the honor of the parents worth more than the life of the boy? Isn’t a life (even a would-be-unbeliever’s life) worth more than the parents’ honor? But we shouldn’t forget that this story comes from the depths of the moral cesspool which is the Middle East, where honor is indeed more valuable than life; hence the “honor killings” that Middle Eastern barbarians commit, killing their girls who have “premarital relations” with boys, even if those relations mean simply meeting with a boy and talking to him.^(*) This life-for-honor concept of the Middle Eastern primitive ghouls is something those who want to call themselves “civilized” should revolt against and try to eliminate from the face of the Earth, just as child sacrifice has been eliminated. But that Allah enforces the uncivilized concept “life for honor” is utterly deplorable, and a sign that either (1) Allah’s morality is defective, on par with the Middle Eastern primitive morality, or (2) it is not Allah who came up with this story in 18:74–81, but a true Middle Easterner: Muhammad the Bedouin warlord, whose terrible qualities have been described throughout this article.

Second, even if honor is so important, why killing the boy? Did not Allah have some more sophisticated way of solving the problem? When you have a toothache and go to the dentist, does the dentist chop off your head to get rid of the problem? Doesn’t the dentist, being knowledgeable and having the necessary skills and equipment, usually do some fine job on your tooth? Now imagine a “dentist” like Allah, infinitely knowledgeable and infinitely able. Can’t this infinitely powerful Allah do something finer than grabbing a Neanderthal’s club and clubbing the poor boy on the head? What would you do if you were infinitely powerful? How would you solve the problem of the boy becoming an unbeliever? If you ask me, I would perform a simple miracle at some appropriate time in the boy’s life, so that he would become a believer. Such a miracle would only need to be witnessed by the boy, so that no other part of my Creation would be affected. For example, while the boy would walk one day alone in a deserted region, I could make ants come out of their underground nest and form the following phrase on the ground: “There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” (the “shahada”: لَا إِلٰهَ إِلَّا ٱلله مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ ٱلله). I would write the message in the boy’s language, and after the boy would read it, I would let the ants disperse and go back to their nest. This would surely be enough for the boy to become a believer. Why did Allah not do such a simple remedy, but killed the boy instead?

By the way, the previous example of the simple miracle with the ants raises a question for other religions, too, not just Islam: if God is interested in us believing in him and not burning in hell, why does he not perform such simple “personal miracles” to each one of us? Why expecting us to just believe in him, without good evidence, when actually there is plenty of evidence against the hypothesis that he exists — provided one has enough patience to acquire the knowledge that points to this evidence? But I leave this question to the theologians, knowing they have already confronted it and answered it — just not to my satisfaction.

Third, there is even a problem with the justification in 18:81: “So we intended that their Lord should substitute for them one better than him in purity and nearer to mercy.” If the Lord is capable of substituting a boy with another one of “better purity”, why didn’t he do so with the boy in the first place? Why didn’t the Lord apply his soul-creation skills, which he boasts that he has (18:81), directly to that boy, so that he wouldn’t have to commit a murder and substitute the boy with a “better” one? This is not a moral, but a logical error.

And fourth, if the solution to children burdening their pious parents with their sinning and disbelief is to kill those children, then Allah should have exterminated a large part of humanity by clubbing them with his Neanderthal-technology tool. Why only that boy? That’s so unfair to that boy, and constitutes both a moral and a logical error.

So many moral and logical errors in just two short verses of the Qur’an! Can Allah, the “All-Wise”, ever be the author of such an error-ridden text?

From the above it follows that we, people of the 21st century, stand at a higher moral ground than whoever came up with the story in verses 18:74–81 of the Qur’an. If you insist in believing that the story-teller was Allah, then you must swallow the idea that Allah is morally inferior to you.

6.2 Observation: Allah Keeps Killing Children Today

If we claim that (1) Allah exists and that (2) nothing happens in the world without Allah knowing about it, then we must conclude that Allah keeps killing children all the time, even in our times. Here is an example.

On September 24, 2013 an earthquake hit Balochistan, a region in southwestern Pakistan. The earthquake was very strong, of magnitude 7.7, and “[a]t least 825 people were killed and hundreds more were injured”, according to the previous link. A second earthquake, of magnitude 6.8 (part of a series of aftershocks), hit the same area on September 28, killing at least 22 more people.

Figure 6.2.1: A woman walks among the ruins after the September 24, 2013 earthquake in Balochistan, Pakistan.

Usually, stories of survivors who were found under the ruins a few days after the disaster circulate in world media and are reported with joy for the rescued, and admiration for the rescuers. But the following story that emerged after the Balochistan 2013 earthquakes is a sad one.

Digging under the ruins of a house in a village of the Balochistan district of Awaran, rescuing teams found a 3-year-old girl together with her grandmother, both dead of asphyxiation. The mother of the girl, however, and daughter of the grandmother, survived. But why? Because just a few moments before the earthquake hit, she went out of the house to visit a neighbor, and left her daughter with the grandmother at home. The earthquake hit while she was walking on the street. Had she taken her daughter with her, the 3-year-old would be counted among the survivors.

Now, please stop and think for a moment about it: if the mother had merely entertained the thought “Let’s take my little one with me”, the little girl would have survived!

Why did Allah let this death to happen? It would be so simple for an “All Powerful” being like Allah to put that thought into the mother’s brain. It would only take some neurons to fire this way, instead of that way, somewhere deep inside the mother’s brain, and the thought would be made. It wouldn’t even be a miracle, because nobody would have noticed. And yet, with this tiny modification in the mother’s thoughts, the life of the 3-year-old would be spared. If you had the power to do such a modification, dear reader, would you do it or not?

If you did it, you would feel that you saved the little girl’s life. But if you did not, then you’d feel terrible qualms of conscience: you could have saved the life of the little one, and yet, you chose not to. Therefore you killed her! There is no way to avoid the conclusion that you killed her, because you knew what was going to happen, you had the power to make it not happen, and yet you chose not to. As another example of a situation in which you don’t have to assume you have divine powers, suppose you see a truck having entered the reverse gear and having started moving backwards very slowly, while at a short distance behind its rear tire there is a toddler playing on the ground. The truck driver has no clue that there is a baby behind his vehicle. But you see everything. If you do not act, the rear tire will soon run over and crush the baby. What would you do? Every normal human being would rush and scream to the driver to freeze immediately. No sane person would remain unresponsive, watching the truck crushing the baby, opting for inaction. But Allah, in the case of the Balochistan earthquake, opted for inaction! — an inaction that resulted in the death of the 3-year-old girl. By his inaction, Allah became the killer of that baby.

But because the Balochistan 2013 earthquake was only one of thousands upon thousands of such events that have happened in human history, and because victims like the 3-year-old girl must have existed by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, it follows that Allah is a murderer of such large numbers of innocent human souls, simply because he could change the course of events, at least for some of those children, and yet he didn’t.

This argument, of course, is not specific to Allah. Everyone who believes in an All-Powerful (“Omnipotent”) God who is interested in what goes on here on planet Earth, must draw the same conclusion: God is a murderer with guilt of a gigantic magnitude. The worst human serial killers pale in comparison to God’s evil stature, which he has achieved simply thanks to his inaction. Here is the catch:

You can’t boast you are “All-Powerful” in your Holy Book all the time and simultaneously whistle nonchalantly when a little helpless soul is being buried alive and dies of asphyxiation. Are you Omnipotent, as you claim? Prove it! Otherwise, you are Infinitely Evil.

The above is one more reason for which we, human beings, stand on a higher moral ground than God (Allah), provided God has the attributes that religious people ascribe to him: omnipotence and omniscience.

6.3 Observation: Muhammad Killed a Large Number of Children While Committing a Genocide

It happened in the aftermath of the so-called “Battle of the Trench”. But first, let us learn the context in which Muhammad committed a genocide, killing children together with a lot of innocent souls.

Muhammad had increased the number of his followers in Medina. Having learned his lesson in Mecca, where he tried to impose his new religion but the Meccans rejected it, he then tried to do the same thing in Medina. But this time he knew that he first had to increase his followers — essentially, his army — and his wealth. He did this by using his army to attack merchants who were crossing the desert with their caravans, killing them, stealing their wealth, and enslaving their women and children. In other words, Muhammad was a bandit, one of those for whom several centuries later, in the West, there would be a big “WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE” sign. But in 7th C. Arabia, the law was “might makes right”. So Muhammad, the bandit and leader of an army of killers who believed they acted on the orders of “Allah”, became rich and powerful in Medina. Then he started the same mantra as in Mecca: trying to force everyone to convert to his religion, Islam. And after the locals of Medina (many of whom were Jews) refused, he suddenly started to attack them. It was in this context that he asked and caused the murder of Ashraf, described in §2.1. Actually, after Ashraf’s murder, Muhammad started a killing spree, as we learn from a narration in al-Tabari:

Al-Tabari 7:97

“The morning after the murder of Ashraf, the Prophet declared: ‘Kill any Jew who falls under your power!’ ”

Some Jewish tribes of Medina, such as the Banu Qurayza (“banu” = “tribe”), decided to remain within their quarters of the city and avoid Muhammad’s terrorist squads. But another Jewish tribe, the Banu Nadhir, was expelled from Medina. By the end of 626 AD, the Banu Nadhir made a confederation with the Arabs of Mecca, and the Confederate army of 10,000 men reached the outskirts of Medina, intending to attack and sack the city — the Banu Nadhir intending to return to their homes, from which they had been expelled by Muhammad for refusing to abandon their religion and convert to Islam (see “no compulsion in religion”, §1.3.) The Muslim warriors defending the city were around 3,000. This number of course did not include the Banu Qurayza, who were neither Muslim nor warriors, and who were waiting to see what the outcome of the siege would be.

The Muslims dug a trench along the northern side of the city only, because the other sides were protected by rocky hills and a dense forest, where the enemy could not come from. No actual battle took place, because the Confederates stopped at the trench and were hindered from advancing by it — their cavalry rendered useless. They kept besieging the Muslims for 27 days, in January and February of 627 AD, losing only three people, whereas the Muslims lost only five. (Those were all the casualties of the “battle”.) Inside the fortified region of Medina, the Banu Qurayza Jews made a pact of “no attack” with Muhammad. However, during those 27 days, men from the Confederates approached the Banu Qurayza (probably walking through the forest), and tried to persuade them to break their treaty with Muhammad. Indeed, the Banu Qurayza were eventually persuaded to break the treaty. But before they could do anything at all, the Confederates finally lost their morale, having been worn out by the lack of food, the bad weather, and the strong cold, and withdrew their army. Back in Medina, the “victorious” Muslims now besieged the quarters of the Banu Qurayza, and soon captured them all.

Thus, let us recapitulate: the Banu Qurayza did not do any physical harm to the Muslims of Muhammad. They only changed their minds, having decided to break the treaty with Muhammad. For this “crime”, Muhammad exterminated them. And he did it as follows: he asked a Jewish leader of another tribe (one that was allied with the Qurayza), what the punishment for losing a battle is, according to the Jewish law (as if Muhammad didn’t already know, and as if the Qurayza had fought any battle against him). The Jewish leader answered: “Death for men, enslavement for women and children.” So, Muhammad said, let the Banu Qurayza be punished according to their law. We understand, of course, that he hypocritically and purposefully applied the wrong law: “losing a battle”, when it should be “deciding to break a treaty, but not acting on that decision yet”. (Those Muslims of today who talk about Muhammad’s “sense of justice” might want to stop and think a little bit.)

Thus, Muhammad had another trench dug in the central square of Medina, where the market place was, and brought the men and boys above 14 or 15 years of age of the Banu Qurayza in batches at that place, decapitating them, their heads dropping into the trench. Batch after batch, anywhere between 600 and 900 men and boys had their heads chopped off, with Muhammad watching the spectacle together with the most favorite among his many wives, Aysha. As we learn from ibn Ishaq’s biography of Muhammad, a woman of the Banu Qurayza had a great time there with Aysha, the two of them chatting and laughing while watching the gruesome event. Perhaps the Jewish woman thought that in this way her life would be spared — maybe Aysha could ask that she be exempted. But a little later the woman’s name was called and her head was chopped off, too. Such were the morals of the people around Muhammad.

Figure 6.3.1: The genocide of the Banu Qurayza, © Zenga Books.

In addition to applying an unjust (hence, immoral) justification for committing the genocide, Muhammad used the following horrendous rule in order to separate the “men”, who would be decapitated, from the “boys”, who would be sold as slaves (and possibly sexually abused). He ordered that every male teenager’s genitals be examined, and those that had some hair growing in the pubic region were deemed “men” and were sent for decapitation. In other words, since boys usually start developing pubic hair by the age of 13 to 15, a large number of boys — children! — of the Banu Qurayza had their heads chopped off.

6.3.1 Conclusion: Children Shall Not Be Punished for Transgressions of Their Parents

There is a cultural principle that comes from the darkest depths of the Middle East, and it is particularly morally disturbing. Ancient Hebrews abode by it, and applied it ruthlessly. Islam, the creation of a warlord of Arabia with a Bedouin’s mentality, couldn’t be an exception. This morally abhorrent principle goes as follows:

Those who abide by this principle should feel ashamed of themselves. The principle is repulsive from a moral point of view because it becomes  the justification of genocides. It places the group (the tribe, the nation) above the individual (and this is a very ancient Middle Eastern tradition). For example:

Why did Muhammad behead some boys among the Banu Qurayza? (See above, §6.3.) What was their fault?

Nothing, they had done nothing wrong, as individuals.

Then why did Muhammad decapitate those boys?

Because, in his morality, their parents, or — same idea — some leaders of their tribe, had betrayed him.

In other words, according to this horribly conceived Middle Eastern rule, if your parents did something wrong, both they and you must be punished. If your tribal leaders did something wrong, your whole tribe — including you — must be punished. This is the repugnant moral principle that Muhammad applied when he annihilated the Banu Qurayza. And this is exactly the principle that Hitler applied when he committed the genocide of the Jews and Gypsies in WWII. When Jewish and Gypsy children were sent to gas chambers in Nazi Germany, this was the operating principle: their kind should be exterminated. Had those children done anything wrong? No. They were killed because their whole “genus” should be exterminated, hence, a genocide.

Those who justify the Middle Eastern principle “punish the children for their parents’ sins”, must realize that they justify the notion of genocide. But genocides, although following naturally from Islamic Morality, have absolutely no place in Universal Morality and are among the worst crimes that can be committed, categorized under “crimes against humanity”.

In summary, that’s what Muhammad committed: crimes against humanity.

6.4 How Muslims Perceive a Child’s Life

In our times, Muslims show with their actions that they haven’t assimilated the concept “a child’s life is valuable”. The following picture is the least disturbing among a collection of pictures of this author, pictures that were taken and circulated in the Internet during the horror of the reign of the so-called “Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq, in the years 2015–2017.

Figure 6.4.1: A Muslim cleric demonstrates how to treat “infidel babies”, while children are watching and learning the lesson

Other pictures from the same “reign of Islamic horror” show children slaughtered and decapitated, and are too graphic and disturbing to upload in this article. The following picture shows how a Muslim can perceive his own child: as an object brandished against someone, in the same way a piece of rock would be brandished to scare the enemy.

Figure 6.4.2: This is how a Muslim father perceives his own child: as an object brandished to scare the enemy

The incident shown in Fig. 6.4.2 happened on April 6, 2016, at the port of Piraeus, Greece. A large number of illegal immigrants had gathered at the port demanding to be sent to other countries, of northern and central Europe. In the ensuing altercation between the immigrants and the Greek security people, one man, an Afghan, grabbed his child and threatened to throw the infant to the security person, as if the child was a “thing”, a soulless object. Some media in Greece made a feeble attempt to excuse the Afghan Muslim “father” for his action, saying: “Look what extreme actions desperation can drive people to!” But they missed a deeper thought: in practically every other culture of the world, such an action is inconceivable. It is only Islam that doesn’t place any particular value to the concept “life of a child”. Also Islam, with its Middle Eastern origin, causes men to believe that their children are their “possessions”. The result is incidents like the one shown in Fig. 6.4.2.

In another incident, which happened in Britain in July 2018, a father attacked his 3-year-old son with acid, to “punish” his divorced wife! Unsurprisingly, the man was originally from Afghanistan. Note that what is criticized here is not the race of this “father” (an Afghani), but his culture (Islamic, from Afghanistan). People cannot be held responsible for their race, anymore than they can be held responsible for their height or age; but people are responsible for their culture. The “race” (a false concept among humans anyway — the country of origin, in more realistic terms) is assigned by birth and cannot be changed. But a culture that regards children as soulless objects and properties of their parents — as does the Islamic one — which conflicts with basic human rights, can be and must be changed, for the betterment of the moral standards of humanity. Note also that the report from CNN given in the link above hardly mentions that the man was an Afghani Muslim; as if this is irrelevant, or unimportant; as if it is a common and expected incident among the compatriots of a William Shakespeare, a David Hume, an Isaac Newton, and a Charles Darwin (to mention but a few among the British luminaries of old) to have fathers attacking their children with acid!

So we have two dots with which to populate our diagram: “Valuing a child’s life”, and “Genocide”. The first is Universally Moral; the second, Universally Immoral. But in Islam, both issues are Morally Irrelevant. On one hand, Allah and Muhammad have shown by example (see §6.1 and §6.3) that they did not value the lives of children, and Muhammad committed a genocide, which was obviously allowed by Allah, otherwise Muhammad would be punished. On the other hand, everybody knows that mistreating children is morally very wrong; as for committing a genocide... well, even the staunchest Islamists don’t want to admit such a thing. For example, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, famously once claimed: “...it’s not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide” (in November 2009, wanting to deny the genocide committed in the region of Darfur, Sudan, by his fellow Muslim Sudanese President Bashir). Erdogan was obviously ignorant of Muhammad’s ancient genocides, of which the one committed against the Banu Qurayza is only one. Thus, Muslims have “mixed feelings” about both issues: they mistreat children when they are given the chance, and do commit genocides when the situation allows such an atrocity. Hence, both issues are Morally Irrelevant from the Islamic point of view.

Figure 6.4.3: The positions of “Valuing a Child’s Life” and “Genocide”

7. Thou Shalt Not Be Scheming Against Others

Scheming, deceiving others, is one of those features that characterize bad people. Universally, it is a morally bad thing to do if you deceive others. Yet Allah, in verse 3:54, boasts of being a deceiver! Unbelievable as it sounds (unless you are a Muslim, programmed to believe as “right” every piece of trash included in your Qur’an), yet true. Here is the verse:

Qur’an 3:54: “And they [the disbelievers] schemed, and Allah schemed [,too]. And Allah [is the] best of schemers.”
	وَمَكَرُوا وَمَكَرَ اللَّهُ ۖ وَاللَّهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ

How would you feel if the god of another religion boasted like this:

“And they stole, and I stole, too. And I an the best of thieves!” Or:

“And they raped, and I raped, too. And I am the best of rapists!” Or:

“And they murdered, and I murdered, too. And I am the best of murderers!”

Wouldn’t you feel contempt for that religion and its god, boasting of having a bad feature in his character, and of being the best among those who have that bad feature? That is, being the worst in absolute terms, the most evil one?

Exactly that is what Allah is doing in 3:54, when he says:

“And they deceived, and I deceived, too. And I am the best of deceivers!”

Do you understand that non-muslims feel contempt for your religion and its god, Allah, because he boasts of having a bad feature in his character, and of being the most capable among the ones with that bad feature?

In general, deception is something that many Muslims attempt, especially when dealing with non-muslims. There is the related notion of taqiyya, meaning “dissimulation”, denial of religious belief and practice in the face of persecution or compulsion. The Shia Muslims emphasize the importance of taqiyya, but it is also permitted in Sunni Islam under certain circumstances. However, when asked whether deception is a good thing to do, out of context, most of you Muslims will disagree and say that deceiving others is bad. This is because, out of context, and if you have not paid attention to your Qur’an, you follow Universal Morality, which is ingrained in humans and comes naturally to us. But when you examine your Qur’an, you find that Allah is a schemer, a deceiver, and the best of all! Thus, according to our definition of what is Moral or Immoral in Islam (see the beginning of this article), since Allah boasts about it, “Deception” must belong to the region of Islamic Morality. So our usual diagram will look like this:

Figure 7.1: The position of “Deception”: Universally Immoral, but Moral by Allah’s wisdom

7.1 Consequence: Thou Shalt Be Trustworthy

The opposite of a “deceiver” is a person who is “trustworthy”. People who are trustworthy will not deceive you, so you can trust them. Most Muslims believe that Muhammad was trustworthy, assigning unreal properties to the founder of their religion. But, Muhammad himself, proved them wrong. Here is what he himself stated, from the most reliable source of Islamic narrations:

Sahi al-Bukhari, V7 B67 N427 “[Muhammad said,] ‘By Allah and Allah willing, if I take an oath and later find something else better than that, then I do what is better and expiate my oath.’ ”

An oath is the most formal way (at least it was, in 7th C. Arabia) to promise to other people that they can trust you. If you break your oaths, as Muhammad did, you are not trustworthy but a deceiver. It is little wonder then that Muhammad assigned the highest deception ability to Allah, the god that he constructed.

I will not add a dot in our diagram for this case, because “Trustworthiness” is simply the opposite of “Deception”, so it doesn’t add any new moral notion. In this subsection, my purpose was simply to bring forth the evidence that Muhammad stated he was a deceiver.

8. Thou Shalt Not Abstain from Common Foods and Drinks

We come finally to two food items that Allah (i.e., Muhammad) prohibited Muslims from consuming: pork and alcohol. Since they are prohibited in the Qur’an, they constitute “moral issues”, no matter how morally irrelevant they appear to most of the rest of the world.

In antiquity, one of the major roles of religion was to regulate the life of people; to tell them what to do, and what not to. Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) took religious regulations very seriously, administering terrible, even barbaric punishments, for faults that today are considered misdemeanors (e.g., theft and blasphemy in Islam, punished by amputation and death, respectively), or even no faults at all (e.g., children speaking badly against their parents, punished by death of the children in ancient Judaism — perhaps the most barbaric of laws ever stipulated by a well-known religion). As societies progressed, they relegated their regulations from religions to their legal systems. Thus, for theft, in most of the developed, non-Islamic world, one is put on trial, and if found guilty, is sentenced to serve some time in jail, the duration of which depends on the seriousness of the offense.

Such is the case of alcohol and pork consumption in Islam. Regarding alcohol, it is easy to understand why Muhammad felt the need to turn its consumption into a religious prohibition: the person who gets drunk often behaves in ways that are socially unacceptable, and even damaging. Yet the more reasonable thing to do is to warn the person of the consequences. If the person commits a crime after being aware of the consequences, then that person will be punished. But it is unreasonable to punish everybody with the “alcohol is prohibited” rule, because some others (a few) might commit crimes. Given that alcohol is something people generally enjoy, to prohibit it for everybody because a few might act irresponsibly is a form of collective punishment, a Universally Immoral concept, although common practice in the Middle East, sanctioned by religions that sprouted from that region of the world. Alcohol consumption, let it be noted, does not have to be damaging. Ancient Greeks, for example, were mixing their wine with water, so getting drunk was a foreign concept in their culture. Nor is it necessary that one gets drunk after consuming a drink with high concentration in alcohol; it is rather rare, given the quantity of alcohol that is being consumed in the civilized world. In addition, red wine has been found to have beneficiary effects in the circulatory system.

Banning the consumption of pork meat is a different case altogether, and shows the parochialism, narrow mindedness, and lack of knowledge of the author of the Qur’an. In the hot climate of 7th C. Arabia, consuming pork meat could indeed be dangerous, especially with the lack of knowledge that characterized the people of the Middle East. (This includes the Hebrews, who also exclude pork meat from their diet.) The tapeworm Taenia solium, a parasite, can develop in the meat of the swine, and if its meat is not boiled well, the parasite is transferred to the digestive system of the person who eats the meat, causing intestinal and even neurological problems. If the meat is boiled (or cooked) well, the parasite and its eggs die, so no infection is possible; but this was not understood by the tribes of the Middle East. Also, pigs would eat just about anything in those times and places, so, besides the parasites, they would get very fat (if well fed), and fatty meat is another bad health factor. But in our times, thanks to the industrial feeding and growing of pigs, their meat is both lean, and healthy, free of parasites — it passes control tests that guarantee its suitability for consumption. Pork meat is even healthier than beef or lamb/goat meat, in the developed world. Allah (read: Muhammad), however, didn’t seem to know that. Allah should have found a more flexible way for passing information about food down to generations than writing his rules in a “holy book”, unchangeable and for “all times”, because times change.

A word of caution here: Muslims who haven’t been accustomed to pork meat since early childhood might find that it has a strange taste if they try it later in life. But this is true of practically all foods. This author had the experience of Muslim friends who tried pork meat and complained to him that its taste is not good; but also the experience of children of families of Gypsies, who had never tried fish in their lives (seafood was excluded from the diet of their families, simply for financial reasons), and were finding that cooked fish smells horribly and tastes awful. Imagine a person who has never eaten chicken (or other fowl) meat in their life; it is almost certain that that person will find that the chicken meat tastes strangely, and probably even badly.

We can now populate our diagram with the two strange food-prohibitions of Islam, which are morally irrelevant in most of the rest of the world.

Figure 8.1: The position of “Alcohol” and “Pork” (consumption of): Universally Irrelevant, but banned in Islam

9. Thou Shalt Be Monogamous

“Monogamy” means “having a sexual relationship with a single person” (see, e.g., here for the definition). Although the suffix “-gamy” (from Greek “gamos” = marriage), means “marriage to” (as in “bigamy”: marrying two people; “polygamy”: marrying many people), the word “monogamy” is used in the wider context of sexual relations, not requiring the contract of marriage. For example, in biology we speak of animals, such as the orangutans, being monogamous: once they find their sexual partner, they never seek another one.

Universally, monogamy is considered “the right thing to do” among humans; not necessarily because men are naturally monogamous — they are not! — but because having more than one sexual partner means that at least one of those partners, who knows about the existence of the other(s), feels awful, having lost the sexual exclusivity on the non-monogamous partner. (Notice that here we consider stable relationships, not ephemeral ones.) From the principle of Equality (§0) it follows that non-monogamy hurts psychologically one of the two people in a relationship, and this is bad. Thus, monogamy is a Universally Moral notion.

In Islam, things are (surprise-surprise) different. Monogamy is an absolute requirement for women, but men are allowed to have up to four wives — at least theoretically — provided they can afford them financially. Still, a sexual relationship of a married man or woman, with a woman or man, respectively, who is not a spouse, constitutes the very serious criminal (by sharia) offense of adultery, and is punished either by stoning to death, or decapitation, or whipping, depending on the kind of Islamic place. Thus, concerning adultery, the difference between Universal and Islamic Morality is one of degree: universally, adultery is considered morally bad, but in most developed societies the law has nothing to do with it. Couples may file for divorce due to adultery by one of the two partners, but it is the civil law that’s involved so as to proceed with the divorce, not the criminal law to punish anyone. In such societies, it is considered an outdated, obsolete idea to have the criminal law involved in cases of adultery. Islam has not overcome this stage, and still punishes adulterers with the same ferocity they were punished 1400 years ago, in Arabia.

In our diagram, we don’t record the “degree of seriousness”, so we’ll place “Adultery” in the orange region where both Universal and Islamic morality agree that it is “immoral”.

But there is the further idea of “fornication”, which differs between Islam and the rest of the world. An act of fornication is when two people who are both unmarried get together and have a sexual relationship. In the rest of the world, this is considered a very natural thing to do: before marrying, you have to “get together” with your partner, to know if the two of you match; if the matching is good (at least according to the — often biased — judgment of the two people), it might lead to marriage; if not, people stop their relationship and seek another partner. Whether this process leads to successful marriages is a moot subject, but that doesn’t concern us here. What concerns us is that, from a moral perspective, “getting together” is considered completely natural, the expected thing to do, and so the formal term “fornication” is not even used, except to refer to ancient societies, or when the context is “Islam”. For, in Islam, fornication is immoral. The Qur’an prescribes public whipping, “100 lashes without pity”, to the fornicators:

Qur’an 24:2: “The fornicatress and the fornicator — flog each one of them with a hundred lashes. And do not be taken by pity for them in the religion of Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day. And let a group of the believers witness their punishment.”
	الزَّانِيَةُ وَالزَّانِي فَاجْلِدُوا كُلَّ وَاحِدٍ مِّنْهُمَا مِائَةَ جَلْدَةٍ ۖ وَلَا تَأْخُذْكُم بِهِمَا رَأْفَةٌ فِي دِينِ اللَّهِ إِن كُنتُمْ تُؤْمِنُونَ بِاللَّهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ ۖ وَلْيَشْهَدْ عَذَابَهُمَا طَائِفَةٌ مِّنَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ

Since every act of adultery is, by definition, also an act of fornication, it follows that adulterers, too, must be punished with the above (Universally barbaric) punishment.

How do young Muslims find their partners? Well, they don’t! Their fathers find who their children will marry, and if the mother has any opinion, it is because the father chooses not to impose his “veto power”. Strictly speaking, this is not “Islam”, but patriarchal practices of the Middle East. But, from a moral perspective, fornication is important because Islam punishes it, and in a barbaric manner, to boot; whereas Universally it is considered the norm, and the term “fornication” is usually known only by scholars who are concerned with Islam.

Given the above background, we can now place the dots for “Adultery” and “Fornication” in our diagram.

Figure 9.1: The position of “Adultery” and “Fornication”

10. Thou Shalt Be More Moral Than Allah

Reading the Qur’an, we find many examples in which Allah’s morality is inferior to the morality of an educated person who has a sense of what is right and what is wrong. Specific examples were given earlier (e.g., §6.1). Here we prefer to focus on the big picture.

Allah appears to be so boastful! Boasting is not a feature of a good character. In every other verse of the Qur’an, or even more often, we see Allah boasting about himself. Here are a few verses from the beginning of the third Quranic surah: 3:2: “Allah! [...] the Living, the Self-Subsisting, the Eternal.” 3:4: “...And Allah is Mighty, the Lord of retribution.” 3:5: “...nothing is hidden ... from Allah.” 3:6: “There is no god but Allah, the Almighty, the Wise.” ...and so on, ad nauseam. A mind that is truly wise does not need to advertise its wisdom; it lets others understand its wisdom by themselves. Advertising one’s own abilities is a sign of insecurity. Is Allah insecure? Rather, it is more rational to assume that the insecurity belonged to the real author of the Qur’an, who wanted badly to convince his audience that his Allah was all-powerful, all-wise, all-good, all-everything — but he didn’t know of any other way to do it except by letting his Allah boast all the time, like a gorilla beating his chest. Boasting about one’s own abilities is wrong by Universal wisdom; but Muslims, who observe Allah’s behavior, receive the opposite advice.

Allah is so self important! He wants all people to believe in him. Why? Why is this so important to him? If it is really so important, and Allah is “all powerful” as he so often boasts, and if he would rather see his creatures be in paradise after death, rather than tortured in hell (he is “All-Merciful”, remember?) then it would be trivially easy for him to make a grand miracle and show to us all that he is there, real, and as powerful as he claims to be. One can think of many ways in which he could demonstrate simultaneously his presence and his power: from making a few stars “dance”, contrary to the laws of physics, at the 1000th anniversary of the Hegira (an event that would be easily detectable by the astronomers of the 16th C. in Europe), to “writing” on the surface of the Moon “I Am Allah”, preferably in Arabic, with letters so large that could be seen even by binoculars from Earth, and doing it before 1969 (before humans landed on the lunar surface for the first time); or even doing it now (end of 2nd decade of the 3rd millennium), when astronauts have not yet revisited the Moon after the 1969–1973 American missions, so we can rule out any human interference, i.e., trickery due to technology. The choices for Allah making his existence evident are endless, especially for an “All-Wise” (hence most creative) Being. But he doesn’t do it. Therefore, either he can’t (he is not “All-Powerful” as he boasts); or doesn’t care if his creatures are eternally tortured in hell (not “All-Merciful”); or he simply doesn’t exist. Still, in spite of not proving his existence, he insists that all people believe in him “or else!” This is the ultimate arrogance, a morally despicable feature.

Related to the previous: Allah has the mentality of a slave-owning lord! He requires human beings to be in full submission to him. (“Submission” is the meaning of “Islam”.) Do you find it fitting that an “All-Powerful” Being is so focused on the idea that everybody obeys him and bows to him in the slavish way that Muslims employ when they pray? But if a religion is man-made by cultures that arose in the Middle East, then this is perfectly understandable: in such cultures, slavery was normal, so it was natural for believers of those cultures to think that their all-powerful Supreme Leader was treating them as slaves, just as they treated the people whom they conquered as slaves. Muhammad himself had many slaves. If Allah is the creation of Muhammad’s mind, it is little wonder that something as morally reprehensible as slavery, which appeared normal to Muhammad, would also be projected as normal to the figment of his imagination: Allah. But slavery is Universally morally wrong (§1.1.1). Just as we humans think badly of masters who have slaves, so Allah should know that by treating humans as his slaves he sets up a bad example, becoming a morally wrong role model.

Allah takes sides, he is partial, favoring some people and disliking others. Why is he so furious against polytheism, going as far as to give a carte blanche to Muslims to kill polytheists and idolaters? The standard answer by Islamic “scholars” is that Allah had already given the chance to polytheists to believe in him, by sending his prophets to them, but they ignored the prophets and turned to polytheism. This answer shows merely the ignorance of such “scholars”. To be a true scholar means to have deep knowledge of the subject of your expertise, to have studied what has happened in reality, and not to rely merely on a book that you believe contains all the knowledge. If Islamic “scholars” had studied reality, i.e., real anthropology, they would have learned that there have been human beings in Australia, the Australian Aboriginals, who have lived there in isolation for at least 50,000 years (source) before the European explorers and settlers discovered them in the 17th century. There has been no report of a “prophet” ever having been sent to them. Why did Allah forget them? Why do the Aboriginals of Australia deserve to be killed by Muslims, as the Qur’an so viciously declares? And note that Australian Aboriginals are only one of a large number of such examples. Why did Allah forget thousands of American Indian tribes, who lived for over 10,000 in the Americas (North, Central, and South), without ever mentioning any “prophet” who came to them? What about the Sub-Saharan Africans? Again, thousands of tribes have lived there, in total ignorance of Islam and Allah. What about thousands of islander tribes in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans? Or, take a not-so-remote example: put yourself in the position of a baby born in today’s rural India. You grow up in a society closed to information from Islam, therefore you have absolutely zero chance to become a Muslim. Why do you deserve to be killed by Muslim warriors? ^(*)

Related to the previous: Allah urges Muslims to attack and kill other people, the polytheists. In other words, Allah incites Muslims to become murderers. Isn’t this astonishing? Doesn’t this speak volumes about who the real author of the Qur’an is? Who conquered the better part of the Arabian peninsula in the 7th century by attacking the polytheist Arabic tribes who lived peacefully there, and then accused them of attacking him first, when it was him who was trying to force them to convert into the religion of his own making? A person like him, naturally, would project his own unstoppable desire to conquer, kill, and enslave, onto Allah, the figment of his imagination. A vicious warlord, which is what Muhammad was, would only imagine of Allah as a vicious, conquering, killing, and enslaving Lord, supervising from high up on the sky the deeds of his “prophet”.

So let us now post the final version of our diagram, without any items blinking in it:

Figure 10: Our final diagram of the relation between Universal and Islamic Morality

Conclusion

If, my dear Muslim, after reading all the above, you disagree that what I described as “Islamic Morality” is indeed the Islamic Morality, this is because, deep down, you admit that the Universal Morality is the right one, and you really follow it without even realizing that the Islamic Morality asks you to act otherwise. For example, perhaps you understand that slavery is a “bad idea”. But your Qur’an considers slavery a normal fact of life (sura 8; see also §1.1.1), and Muhammad had lots of slaves: men, women, and even children (§3)! If you think that slavery is a “bad idea” (disagreeing with the Muslim woman in the video of §1.1.1), it is not because you follow the Islamic Morality, but because you have come closer to the civilized world and to our modern times, gradually abandoning the barbarism of the moral rules of your religion. The woman in the video of §1.1.1 speaks with the true voice of Islam. Islam asks you to act in the ways I described in this article. If you disagree, you disagree not with me, but with Allah and Muhammad.

Given all the above, if you find there is something wrong with Islamic Morality, there is still some hope that your moral integrity has not been irreparably damaged by the Islamic brainwashing. Perhaps there are still in you traces of Universal Morality — which is what we all come equipped with by birth — so you can judge and understand that Islam is a morally unacceptable ideology, one that urges humans to engage in acts that are Universally morally corrupt, such as those described in this text.

If, however, after reading the above text (but the whole text, and carefully, not just skipping directly to this conclusion because what you read bothers you), you catch yourself trying to find excuses that would remove all guilt from your “prophet” and from yourself for trying to follow his example, then you are a lost cause. If you think that chopping off the hand of a thief is a correct punishment, morally you are still at the stage of the Neanderthal. You may be able to drive a car, but you’re just a car-driving Neanderthal. Your moral foundation has been irreparably damaged by the viciousness of Islamic Morality. Your thinking, from a moral perspective, is not just trash, but really dangerous for the future of humanity. What you need is a “cold reboot” in your thought processes. But how can you do such a thing, if you are incapable of understanding the content of this text? Being so morally corrupt, if you still believe that you deserve the Paradise after death, I can only wish you: “Good luck”.

God, however, knows better than you what you deserve and where you should go.

(^) Adultery is the voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a partner other than the lawful spouse. Fornication is sexual intercourse between partners who are not married to each other. Consequently, every adulterous act is an act of fornication.

(^) The events of later years showed that a “Spring” is not a simple matter in the Muslim/Arabic world, and it hasn’t arrived there yet, at least until the end of the second decade of the third millennium, when this article was written.

(^) Supposedly Allah, but in reality Muhammad, who very obviously is the creator of the Qur’an. And this is all too evident to the non-muslim observer, due to the numerous scientific errors in the Qur’an and its laughably Bedouin’s-eye view of the world.

(^) Unless the Muslim society is a relatively liberal one, as in Western Turkey, where many Muslim women are uncovered. But Western Turkey is an exception and a rarity in the greater Muslim word.

(^) Imagine if he did! One wonders, why does Allah — since it is supposed to be him speaking in the Qur’an — need to make a statement as dumb as “I never fall into a slumber!”? How stupid must a person be who can consider it possible that Allah may at times become drowsy, like a drunkard? And, since Allah is speaking, doesn’t his statement imply that he assumes his audience is a bunch of idiots? Wouldn’t you expect Allah not to underestimate your intelligence?

(^) Patriarchal societies like the Muslim ones grow very fast not due to poverty, as was once thought, but due to the woman’s role in them. The woman, having no career and no job other than the household, feels that she becomes important in the family due to the raising of her children, for which she is exclusively responsible. The more children she has, the more important she feels she is, and the harder she thinks it is for her husband to abandon her and go with another woman. This of course works only subconsciously, not as a conscious plan.

(^) In February 2010, in southeastern Turkey, a Turk of Kurdish origin, with the help of his father, buried his 16-year-old daughter alive because he learned that the poor girl was “talking to boys” in the village. I repeat: the father buried his daughter alive! (This second link is to another report of the same event.) He did it with the help of his own father (the girl’s grandfather) and possibly other relatives, after a “family council” that decided murder was the solution. I suspect that even our evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals, were morally more sophisticated than such Middle Eastern animals that unjustifiably bear the label “Homo sapiens”. Note: this was not an isolated event. More than 200 “honor killings” take place annually in Turkey alone (hopefully not by burying their daughters alive).

(^) I chose an Indian child on purpose. There is good evidence to believe that the largest genocide, or series of genocides, that have ever been committed on Earth is the genocide of Indians by Muslim warriors, in which over 20,000,000 — that’s twenty million — Hindus perished under the slaughtering swords of Muslims in the 16th century. Read this source, which I think exaggerates the numbers but reports the facts, and then this information from Wikipedia.