The Muslim Calendar

Although this blog is named “The Jesus Myth,” I like to discuss other “religions” as well.

One thing I find interesting about Islam is its calendar.

One would think the year ‘1′ in the Islamic calendar would coincide with a particularly noteworthy event — perhaps the most important event. After all, Christians date their calendar from the birth of Christ (or at least very close to it). One would think Islam would have year ‘1′ start at Muhommed’s birth (or death). Yet that is not the case.

In 622, when  Muhommed was more than fifty years old, he and his followers made the Hijra from Mecca to the oasis of Yathrib — later renamed Medina — some 200 miles to the north. He had already angered the pagan leaders of Mecca, and there had already been an attempt on Muhammad’s life. Muhammad had sent emissaries to Medina to ensure his welcome. He was accepted by the Medinan tribes as the leader of the Muslims and as arbiter of inter-tribal disputes.

Shortly before Muhammad fled the hostility of Mecca, a new batch of Muslim converts pledged their loyalty to him on a hill outside Mecca called Aqaba. Sira p208 conveys the significance of this event:

Sira, p208: When God gave permission to his Apostle to fight, the second {oath of allegiance at} Aqaba contained conditions involving war which were not in the first act of fealty. Now they {Muhammad’s followers} bound themselves to war against all and sundry for God and his Apostle, while he promised them for faithful service thus the reward of paradise.

That Muhammad’s nascent religion underwent a significant change at this point is plain. The scholarly Ishaq clearly intends to impress on his (Muslim) readers that, while in its early years, Islam was a relatively tolerant creed that would “endure insult and forgive the ignorant,” Allah soon required Muslims “to war against all and sundry for God and his Apostle.” The Islamic calendar testifies to the paramouncy of the Hijra by setting year one from the date of its occurrence. The year of the Hijra, 622 AD, is considered more significant than the year of Muhammad’s birth or death or that of the first Quranic revelation because Islam is first and foremost a political-military enterprise. It was only when Muhammad left Mecca with his paramilitary band that Islam achieved its proper political-military articulation. The years of the Islamic calendar (which employs lunar months) are designated in English “AH” or “After Hijra.”

This only underscores the primacy of violence in Islam.

Of course, your Islam apologists would, yet again, complain that we’re reading a “translation” and that the only true Quoran (or Haddith, or whatever) is Arabic and that we must only talk about the Arabic version.

What’s absurd about that claim is that the vast, vast majority of Muslims don’t read Arabic at all. So I guess all those Muslims aren’t real Muslims.

I don’t think I need to speak fluent German in order to understand “Mein Kampf.” Any idiot could translate that book into English, and I’d have a pretty good idea how sad Hitler’s brain was.

It is time for the human race to move beyond this kind of superstitious nonsense, this root of intolerance, bigotry, racism and genocide.

Walid Shoebat and Kamal Saleem

Walid Shoebat and Kamal Saleem, self-described (former) Palestinian terrorists, spoke at the University of Colorado here in Boulder the other night. I had the opportunity to attend.

It was interesting timing. On Sunday, after a couple of days of web surfing, I had ordered Walid Shoebat’s book “Why I Left Jihad.” On Monday, I happened to open the local paper while waiting for an oil change on my car (no irony intended). The front page article was about Walid Shoebat. I discovered he would be speaking at the University that evening.

All (free) tickets were gone, but they did have about 200 tickets available at the door. I arrived early, anticipating quite a turn out.

Indeed, the hall was full, and security was tight. Read more

September 11

I don’t think bin Laden’s choice of September 11 is at all accidental.

From the British historian Hilaire Belloc’s “The Great Heresies” written in 1938:

“It has always seemed to me possible, and even probable, that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent.

The suggestion that Islam may re-arise sounds fantastic, but this is only because men are always powerfully affected by the immediate past. One might say that they are blinded by it.

But not so very long ago, less than a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, Vienna was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland, on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history: September 11, 1683.”

This is where our morality comes from?

From the book of Judges, chapter 19:

20 “You are welcome at my house,” the old man said. “Let me supply whatever you need. Only don’t spend the night in the square.”

21 So he took him into his house and fed his donkeys. After they had washed their feet, they had something to eat and drink.

22 While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him.”

23 The owner of the house went outside and said to them, “No, my friends, don’t be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don’t do this disgraceful thing.

24 Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But to this man, don’t do such a disgraceful thing.”

25 But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go.

26 At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.

27 When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold.

28 He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.

29 When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel.

30 Everyone who saw it said, “Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt.

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And this book is where our moral code comes from?

Sam Harris

It just doesn’t get much clearer than this.

Infidel

One November morning in 2004, Theo van Gogh got up to go to work at his film production company in Amsterdam. He took out his old black bicycle and headed down a main road. Waiting in a doorway was a Moroccan man with a handgun and two butcher knives.

As Theo cycled down the Linnaeusstraat, Muhammad Bouyeri approached. He pulled out his gun and shot Theo several times. Theo fell off his bike and lurched across the road, then collapsed. Bouyeri followed. Theo begged, “Can’t we talk about this?” but Bouyeris shot him four more times. Then he took out one of his butcher knives and sawed into Theo’s throat. With the other knife, he stabbed a five-page letter onto Theo’s chest.

The letter was addressed to me.

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Whether you a re a person of faith, an agnostic, or an atheist, I highly recommend Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Africa (born Somali), the product of a Muslim upbringing, ultimately bravely abandoning her roots and becoming a controversial member of the Dutch parliament. Her story is one of incredibly bravery and an amazing capacity to overcome all obstacles. At the same time, it is a painfully clear indictment of Islamic misogyny, absolutism, intolerance, and the price we all pay for religious beliefs that contribute to insane actions.

Some of her criticisms could just as easily be leveled at any other organized religion, but her critique is certainly most scathing of Islam. But she holds back no punches against the West for failing to address the fundamental conflict between Islam and the West. For example, she faults multiculturalism:

“We in the west would be wrong to prolong the pain [of the transition of Islam to the modern world] by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.

This is not just a critique, however. This is her personal story. It is filled with vivid detail, personal trials, the charming and beautiful moments of adolescence, the tragedy of war and her conflict between faith and reason. It is both tragic and uplifting

I found this book so compelling I am reading it all over again even though I just finished it. This is one of those books which, when you close the final chapter, you ask yourself “what exactly do I have to complain about? Wow …”

I also recommend looking her up on YouTube.

Why Hate Religious People?

Sometimes, as someone who is an “unbeliever,” I am asked why I hate believers; why am I so against their beliefs?

It’s a funny question. Maybe I come off arrogant and intolerant. That’s entirely possible (I’ve been known to be so), and if that is the case I must apologize both to people of faith, and atheists. I apologize to the people of faith because I really don’t mean to project hate. I apologize to the atheists because I don’t want to contribute to the stereotype “angry atheist” that is often portrayed.

Let me be perfectly clear: I don’t hate “believers.” I hate their beliefs.

What people of faith are probably picking up from me is impatience and my discomfort with an absolute certainty on their part, and a double standard.

Somehow, it is okay to question and debate someone’s beliefs about physics, astrology, medicine, politics, psychology, parapsychology and astrophysics. Yet it is (as far as I can tell) not acceptable to debate someone’s religious beliefs.

Here I am simply re-phrasing Sam Harris. None of this is new to atheists, though I am sure it is new to some people of faith. For them, I would suggest reading Mr. Harris, or at least spending twenty minutes watching him here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=J3YOIImOoYM

He’s not perfect, and I don’t agree with everything he says.

But I do think he makes quite a few good points.

Let me be clear: I don’t hate religious people. I just hate their religion. I’m not entirely sure how different this is from “love the sinner, hate the sin.”

I hate what religion does to people. I hate the evil that has been committed in this world in the name of God/Allah/Jehovah — whatever.

To be honest, that’s kind of a funny thing because I don’t believe in evil. Let me quote Robert Jay Lifton of Harvard (visiting professor of psychiatry):

“…one has to be aware of any claim to absolute virtue, because it’s absolute virtue that you call forth to kill large numbers of people. It may be impossible to do that without that claim.”

I’m hard-pressed to come up with a more apt description of the horrors of history.

Most of the evils of the world can probably be traced back to such sentiments. It is the adherence to absolute virtue, the belief one is serving God, that provides us with the means to commit unspeakable horrors. Some evils can be traced to selfishness, competition for resources, exploitation, racism, untreated mental illness and just plain stupidity. But I still believe the majority of the atrocities that have taken place on our planet were done in the name of “absolute virtue.”

I’m posting this on an atheist site, obviously. I suppose I am posting this to ask all of you atheists to recognize that we don’t hate people, we just hate what their beliefs have contributed to.

In a future post, I’ll address the popular belief that atheism has given us the dictators of the world. What makes that ludicrous is the belief that atheism is a philosophy that has adherents.

But for now, let’s agree that people of faith are not people to be hated, and we (atheists) don’t hate them. We just don’t like the bi-product.

I’m new here. But ….. Is that a fair start?