Credos and Credulity

Who decides what's heresy

And who's a heretic?

Whose Holy Book is verity

And who for Heav'n is fit?

Such fantastic speculation

Seems from a distant age.

So why is Holy Revelation

Still a power upon the stage?

Should I shout out my conviction

That God sent his angel down

And charged me with a mission

To assume a global crown,

Whereby universal harmony 

Will reign for evermore,

So long as all you folk comply

With the letter of my law?

Is there anyone who'd listen

If I preached of such delusion?

I'd hope a mental health physician

Might prescribe an institution. 

But scenarios as odd

Yet keep humankind in thrall,

And billions thus still fear the God

Of Moses, Mahmoud and St. Paul.

God spoke to them in days long past,

Which gave rise to institutions

Endowed with buildings beautiful and vast

That give strength to old illusions. 

Plant ideas in infant minds,

With ritual repetition,

And notions of the weirdest kind

Will be rewarded with fruition. 

And so Holy Revelation

Wields a power we might deride,

But drones are useless as persuasion

When glory's reached by suicide. 

Koranic Impressions

I have often heard and read of Muslims' accounts of the Koran.  To say they are full of praise and admiration would be a gross understatement.  The Koran is proclaimed as a work of supreme beauty, of scientific understanding yet to be surpassed even in the 21st century, as well as humanity's ultimate moral and legal guide.

Clearly, on account of its great influence as well as the billing it receives from its advocates, the Koran was a 'must read'.

And what , on reading it, did I find?

I felt I was back in the most dismal of childhood scenes; consigned to the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, being treated to repeated warnings about an imminent Armageddon, when all save those who accept the absolute Truth of the Jehovah's Witness doctrine and live by its edicts, will be slaughtered by God. Sure, Jehovah is called Allah and Armageddon labelled as Judgement Day and the Bible is called the Koran, but the message is the same horrific nonsense. Indeed, if anything, the Koranic message is even worse than that of the Watchtower.  Jehovah's Witnesses have, quite arbitrarily, binned the concept of eternal hellfire  for unbelievers, whereas the Koran goes to town on the unspeakable torture to be endured forever by all who doubt the Truth of Allah's word as recited to Mahomet via the Angel Gabriel.

Evidence for the absolute Truth of the Koran is not to be found within its pages. There is nothing more than bald assertion underpinned with threats and warnings. Bible stories are recycled ad nauseam. The grisly fate of those wicked folk of Noah's Day and of Pharaoh's army enjoy regular repeats; reminders of how the 'forgiving and merciful' Allah treats unbelievers.

The central and ruling obsession of the Jehovah's Witnesses is the imminence of Armageddon and the Paradise Earth due in its wake. This fantasy land of fruit trees, eternal sunshine and tame carnivores is the exclusive preserve of active and baptised Jehovah's Witnesses as well as resurrected JW thinkalikes from previous ages. The rest of humanity is dead meat.  The real world of the present is but a prelude, and a prelude bound with cruel and restrictive rules.

So it is with the Koran.  Sure, there are a few rules which, by 7th century standards could qualify as social progress. Women, who had previously enjoyed no legal rights, now had half the rights of men. The dumping of unwanted infants to die in the desert was outlawed, and an early social security system, known as zakat, is introduced. Many other rules and commands, later to be enshrined in Sharia, are, however, barbaric.  Cutting off the hands of thieves and the go ahead for slave owners to have sex with their slaves any time they fancy, hardly accord with the UN declaration on Human Rights.

But all this is but temporary. The World to Come is far more important. To that end it is every Muslim's duty to spread the Truth of Allah's word, by force if necessary, throughout the globe whereby to purify mankind so far as possible, before Judgement Day.

So I was faced with a puzzle. How do I reconcile this ridiculous and plainly horrible book with the fulsome praise showered on it by its advocates? Perhaps, for a non Arabic speaker like me, much, if not everything, was lost in translation.

Much of the answer came through a collection of writings by ex Muslims: 'Leaving Islam - Apostates Speak Out', compiled by Ibn Warraq.  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Leaving-Islam-Apostates-Speak-Out-ebook/dp/B002IC018Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439454937&sr=8-1&keywords=Ibn+Warraq-+Leaving+Islam

Most of the contributors grew up with the knowledge that the Koran was humanity's supreme guide to life. Their childhood education had consisted of regular Koranic recitation and of committing great chunks of it to memory.  The Koran repetition, however, whatever the reader's native language, had been conducted in Arabic. Its meaning had thus not been understood. When, however, they had read the Koran in their own Punjabi, Urdu, Malay, English or Turkish, the apostates had been as disgusted as I was with the content.

Leaving one's childhood sect in most of Christendom or Jewry is no big deal.  It is only in the fundamentalist fringes of the Ultra Orthodox in Judaism, or the Amish or Jehovah's Witnesses in Christendom, that apostates are loathe to come out for fear of being shunned.  In Islam, in those countries whose law code is based on Sharia, the penalty for apostacy is death. In those jurisdictions where Sharia does not prevail, apostacy, even amongst the moderate Muslim mainstream, often incurs shunning by friends and family.

Why am I, an outsider and a non Muslim, concerned with this topic? When I hear politicians and others, often in reaction to murder committed in the name of Islam, proclaim that Islam  is a religion of peace, I fear that they are dangerously misguided.  Many people in Muslim lands crave more support from the relatively free world outside the Umma.  They regard the notion that, as inhabitants of another land with another culture, they do not merit the freedoms taken for granted by most of us in 'the West' as demeaning, if not racist.

Please note that my issue is not with Muslims, but with Islam. I have fond memories of many kind and caring members of my childhood Kingdom Hall congregation. It is tragic that they had been ensnared by a mind control cult that cared nothing for them. So it is with Muslims. To be raised in fear of the wrath of Allah is a condition to be pitied, not condemned. 

Rowland the Blogger- An Introduction.

Too much to say for Facebook Posts. Hence a Blog.

I hope that this gets read, or at least a similar message gets passed, via whatsoever source, to our political leaders.

I have discovered that there is one advantage I have gained from my immersion, during childhood, in a destructive mind control cult. I have a greater understanding than many, of the Muslim mindset. And this 'many' includes too many politicians who have seen fit to pronounce on Islam.

In Christendom and Jewry it seems that it is only the extreme and fringe movements which detest society at large and feel themselves above it. Mainstream Islam, however, manifests  many of the ugly features of, amongst others, the Jehovah's Witnesses, that misery making institution that cast a black cloud of imminent doom over my early years.

To what ugly features do I refer?  Misogyny, homophobia and shunning of apostates spring immediately to mind. There is also the overarching assumption that humanity is irredeemably corrupt, that a divine judgemental purge is required and is indeed imminent. The Law of God, to which Muslims, like Jehovah's Witnesses, are ultimately subject, transcends any man made laws. These latter will only be obeyed in the spirit of a temporary compromise until such time as the divinely ordained absolute theocracy is established. 

Fortunately there is a growing number, both of ex Jehovah's Witnesses as well as ex Muslims, who are keen to enlighten the wider society of the cruelty and barbarity, and the underlying pre-scientific and primitive concepts which lay beneath the often innocent, or even charming and picturesque surface. 

This blog will focus on the writings of ex Muslims, the voices that are so often ignored in the misguided spirit of multiculturalism.