SearchIndia.com Blog

Statutory Warning: All Religions are Equally Stupid

One of the striking things about the Quran is the flexibility of God (Allah) in some minor respects and an unyielding inflexibility in other major aspects.

Take for instance pork.

Many of us are led to believe that God (Allah) imposes strict prohibitions in dietary matters, particularly in consuming pig’s meat and that under no circumstance must a Muslim eat pork.

Not so. Not so.

Unlike the semi-literate mullahs or the illiterate Muslims who tend to favor a blanket ban on pork, Allah is flexible when it comes to consuming pork.

No, we are not making this bit up about Allah’s flexibility on porcine edibles.

Schmucks, it’s right there in the Quran:

You are forbidden to eat carrion; blood; pig’s meat; any animal over which any name other than God’s has been invoked; any animal strangled, or victim of a violent blow or fall, or gored or savaged by a beast of prey….but if any of you is forced by hunger to eat forbidden food, with no intention of doing wrong, then God is most forgiving and merciful.  (emphasis added, Sura 5, Aya 3)

Lest there be lingering doubt in the devout, God (Allah) repeats this point in Sura 6:

So [believers] eat any [animal] over which God’s name has been pronounced, if you believe in His revelations. Why should you not eat such animals when God has already fully explained what He has forbidden you, except when forced by hunger? (Sura 6, Aya 118 and 119)

So My Name is Khan, next time you find yourself very hungry and in a place where Pork Fried Rice is the only dish on the menu, go right ahead and dig into your swine with gusto.

After all, Allah is forgiving and merciful when it comes to pork.

Creating Discord
Alas, when it comes to Christians or Jews, the well of Allah’s compassion dries up and his inflexible attitude rears up.

And as long as the Quran continues to be the vade mecum of Muslims everywhere, the enmity between Islam and those of other faiths will endure because of verses like the below one:

You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as allies; they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them — God does not guide such wrongdoers– yet you [Prophet] will see the perverse at heart rushing to them for protection, saying, ‘We are afraid fortune may turn against us.’ But God may well bring about a triumph or some other event of His own making: then they will rue the secrets they harboured in their hearts, (Sura 5 Aya 51& 52)

Again and again, the Quran strives to disparage Christians and Jews and exalt the status of Allah. Continue reading »

Statutory Warning: All Religions are Equally Stupid

Defenders of Islam and its holy book Quran often seek to rebut charges of severe treatment of Muslim women by pointing to the book’s liberal divorce provisions for women, sanction for widow remarriage, Allah’s denunciations of harsh treatment of the fair sex et al.

Well, that defense certainly has some truth but it’s not the full story when it comes to women and the Quran.

You see, when it comes to the distaff sex God (Allah) seems to have made a Faustian bargain. What he giveth women with one hand, he more than taketh away with the other.

Again, while there are several positive points vis-a-vis treatment of women in the Quran Allah’s Cadillac sometimes makes abrupt  U-turns on the Islamic highway leading us to the inescapable conclusion that God (Allah) is no bra-burning feminist.

Here’s some of the evidence from the pages of the Quran itself to support our conclusion that Allah ain’t no die-hard feminist:

God commands you that a son should have the equivalent share of two daughters. (Sura 4, Aya 11)

Sure, you may be tempted to argue that the Quran is a reflection of its times, and of hard, strife-ridden life in the arid Middle East desert of the 7th century AD.

If that is indeed your point, we’d like to counter that God is supposed to stand above such mundane constructs as time or geography.

Now if you think Aya 11 is an aberration, here read this verse:

If any of your women commit a lewd act, call four witnesses from among you, then, if they testify to their guilt, keep the women at home  until death comes to them or until God shows them another way. If two men commit a lewd act, punish them both; if they repent and mend their ways, leave them alone. (Sura 4, Aya 15 and 16)

Again and again and again, we encounter women getting shafted at the hands of God (Allah) while men tend to get a relatively easy pass.

Read this verse providing divine sanction to polygamy:

If you feel that you will not deal fairly with orphan girls, you may marry whichever [other] women seem good to you, two, three or four. (Sura 4, Aya 3)

To those of you still in two minds, the following verse in the Quran that explicitly allows physical violence against women should set to rest all doubts on where God (Allah) stands in respect to women:

If you fear high-handedness from your wives, remind them [of the teachings of God], then ignore them when you go to bed, then hit them. (Sura 4, Aya 34) Continue reading »