Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Razi[edit]
Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī (865 – 925 AD) was a Persian physician, alchemist, chemist, philosopher, and scholar.
If the people of this religion [Islam] are asked about the proof for the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry and spill the blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculation, and strive to kill their adversaries. This is why truth became thoroughly silenced and concealed.
[3]
You claim that the evidentiary miracle is present and available, namely, the Koran. You say: "Whoever denies it, let him produce a similar one." Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly. They convey the meaning better and their rhymed prose is in better meter. ... By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: "Produce something like it"?!
[3]
Adolf Hitler[edit]
Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party.
You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion [Islam] too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?
[4]
I can imagine people being enthusiastic about the paradise of Mohammed, but as for the insipid paradise of the Christians! In your lifetime, you used to hear the music of Richard Wagner. After your death, it will be nothing but hallelujahs, the waving of palms, children of an age for the feeding bottle, and hoary old men. The man of the isles pays homage to the forces of nature. But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery. A n***** with his taboos is crushingly superior to the human being who seriously believes in transubstantiation.
[5]
Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers -already, you see, the world had already fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing Christianity! -then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism [Islam], that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so.
[6]
The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science... The instructions of a hygienic nature that most religions gave, contributed to the foundation of organized communities. The precepts ordering people to wash, to avoid certain drinks, to fast at appointed dates, to take exercise, to rise with the sun, to climb to the top of the minaret — all these were obligations invented by intelligent people. The exhortation to fight courageously is also self-explanatory. Observe, by the way, that, as a corollary, the Moslem was promised a paradise peopled with sensual girls, where wine flowed in streams — a real earthly paradise. The Christians, on the other hand, declare themselves satisfied if after their death they are allowed to sing hallelujahs! ...Christianity, of course, has reached the peak of absurdity in this respect. And that's why one day its structure will collapse. Science has already impregnated humanity. Consequently, the more Christianity clings to its dogmas, the quicker it will decline.!
[7]
Alexis de Tocqueville[edit]
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859) was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution.
I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.
[8]
Muhammad professed to derive from Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other - beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.
[9]
André Servier[edit]
André Servier was an historian who lived in French Algeria at the beginning of the 20th century.
Islam was not a torch, as has been claimed, but an extinguisher. Conceived in a barbarous brain for the use of a barbarous people, it was - and it remains - incapable of adapting itself to civilization. Wherever it has dominated, it has broken the impulse towards progress and checked the evolution of society.
[10]
Islam is Christianity adapted to Arab mentality, or, more exactly, it is all that the unimaginative brain of a Bedouin, obstinately faithful to ancestral practices, has been able to assimilate of the Christian doctrines. Lacking the gift of imagination, the Bedouin copies, and in copying he distorts the original. Thus Musulman law is only the Roman Code revised and corrected by Arabs; in the same way Musulman science is nothing but Greek science interpreted by the Arab brain; and again, Musulman architecture is merely a distorted imitation of the Byzantine style.
[10]
The deadening influence of Islam is well demonstrated by the way in which the Musulman comports himself at different stages of his life. In his early childhood, when the religion has not as yet impregnated his brain, he shows a very lively intelligence and remarkably open mind, accessible to ideas of every kind; but, in proportion as he grows up, and as, through the system of his education, Islam lays hold of him and envelops him, his brain seems to shut up, his judgment to become atrophied, and his intelligence to be stricken by paralysis and irremediable degeneration.
[10]
Islam is by no means a negligible element in the destiny of humanity. The mass of three hundred million believers is growing daily, because in most Musulman countries the birth-rate exceeds the death-rate, and also because the religious propaganda is constantly gaining new adherents among tribes still in a state of barbarism.
[10]
To sum up: the Arab has borrowed everything from other nations, literature, art, science, and even his religious ideas. He has passed it all through the sieve of his own narrow mind, and being incapable of rising to high philosophic conceptions, he has distorted, mutilated and desiccated everything. This destructive influence explains the decadence of Musulman nations and their powerlessness to break away from barbarism…
[10]
Islam is a doctrine of death, inasmuch as the spiritual not being separated from the temporal, and every manifestation of activity being subjected to dogmatic law, it formally forbids any change, any evolution, any progress. It condemns all believers to live, to think, and to act as lived, thought and acted the Musulmans of the second century of the Hegira [8th century A.D.], when the law of Islam and its interpretation were definitely fixed.
. . .
In the history of the nations, Islam, a secretion of the Arab brain, has never been an element of civilization, but on the contrary has acted as an extinguisher upon its flickering light. Individuals under Arab rule have only been able to contribute to the advance of civilization in so far as they did not conform to the Musulman dogma, but they relapsed into Arab barbarism as soon as they were obliged to make a complete submission to these dogmas.
. . .
Islamized nations, who have not succeeded in freeing themselves from Musulman tutelage, have been stricken with intellectual paralysis and decadence. They will only escape as they succeed in withdrawing themselves from the control of Musulman law.
[10]
Angela Carter[edit]
Angela Carter (1940 – 1992) was an English novelist and journalist. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2012, Nights at the Circus was selected as the best ever winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
The kind of power mothers have is enormous. Take the skyline of Istanbul—enormous breasts, pathetic little willies, a final revenge on Islam. I was so scared I had to crouch in the bottom of the boat when I saw it.
[11]
Anthony Flew[edit]
Antony Garrard Newton Flew (1923 – 2010) was a British philosopher. He was also known for the development of the
no true Scotsman fallacy.
I would never regard Islam with anything but horror and fear because it is fundamentally committed to conquering the world for Islam... it is, I think, best described in a Marxian way as the uniting and justifying ideology of Arab imperialism. Between the New Testament and the Qur'an there is (as it is customary to say when making such comparisons) no comparison. Whereas markets can be found for books on reading the Bible as literature, to read the Qur'an is a penance rather than a pleasure. There is no order or development in its subject matter.... The Prophet, though gifted in the arts of persuasion and clearly a considerable military leader, was both doubtfully literate and certainly ill-informed about the contents of the Old Testament and about several matters of which God, if not even the least informed of the Prophet’s contemporaries, must have been cognizant... one thing I’ll say in this comparison is that, for goodness sake, Jesus is an enormously attractive charismatic figure, which the Prophet of Islam most emphatically is not.
[12]
The Koran calls for belief and consequent obedience. It is, surely, calculated to inspire fear, indeed abject terror, rather than love.
[13]
Apostolos Euangelou Vacalopoulos[edit]
The Revolution of 1821 is no more than the last great phase of the resistance of the Greeks to Ottoman domination; it was a relentless, undeclared war, which had begun already in the first years of servitude. The brutality of an autocratic regime, which was characterized by economic spoliation, intellectual decay and cultural retrogression, was sure to provoke opposition. Restrictions of all kinds, unlawful taxation, forced labor, persecutions, violence, imprisonment, death, abductions of girls and boys and their confinement to Turkish harems, and various deeds of wantonness and lust, along with numerous less offensive excesses – all these were a constant challenge to the instinct of survival and they defied every sense of human decency. The Greeks bitterly resented all insults and humiliations, and their anguish and frustration pushed them into the arms of rebellion. There was no exaggeration in the statement made by one of the beys if Arta, when he sought to explain the ferocity of the struggle. He said: ‘We have wronged the rayas [dhimmis] (i.e. our Christian subjects) and destroyed both their wealth and honor; they became desperate and took up arms. This is just the beginning and will finally lead to the destruction of our empire.’ The sufferings of the Greeks under Ottoman rule were therefore the basic cause of the insurrection; a psychological incentive was provided by the very nature of the circumstances
[14]
At the beginning of the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks forced their way into Armenia and there crushed the armies of several petty Armenian states. No fewer than forty thousand souls fled before the organized pillage of the Seljuk host to the western part of Asia Minor. From the middle of the eleventh century, and especially after the battle of Malazgirt [Manzikurt] (1071), the Seljuks spread throughout the whole Asia Minor peninsula, leaving error, panic and destruction in their wake. Byzantine, Turkish and other contemporary sources are unanimous in their agreement on the extent of havoc wrought an the protracted anguish of the local population…[The Greek chronicler] Kydones described the fate of the Christian peoples of Asia Minor thus:
‘The entire region which sustained us, from the Hellespont eastwards to the mountains of Armenia, has been snatched away. They [the Turks] have razed cities, pillaged churches, opened graves, and filled everything with blood and corpses…Alas, too, they have even abused Christian bodies. And having taken away their entire wealth they have now taken away their freedom, reducing them to the merest shadows of slaves. And with such dregs of energy as remain in these unfortunate people, they are forced to be the servitors of the Turk’s personal comforts.’
“From the time the Ottoman Turks first set foot in Thrace under Suleiman, son of Orchan, the Empire rapidly disintegrated….From the very beginning of the Turkish onslaught under Suleiman, the Turks tried to consolidate their position by the forcible imposition of Islam. [The Ottoman historian] Sukrullah [maintained] those who refused to accept the Moslem faith were slaughtered and their families enslaved. ‘Where there were bells’, writes the same author, ‘Suleiman broke them up and cast them onto fires. Where there are churches he destroyed them or converted them into mosques. Thus, in place of bells there were now muezzins. Wherever Christian infidels were still found, vassalage was imposed upon their rulers. At least in public they could no longer say ‘kyrie eleison’ but rather “There is no God but Allah; and where once their prayers had been addressed to Christ, they were now to ‘Mohammed, the prophet of Allah.’
[15]
Arthur Jeffery[edit]
Arthur Jeffery (1892 – 1959) was an Australian professor of Semitic languages first at the School of Oriental Studies in Cairo, and from 1938 until his death jointly at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He is the author of extensive historical studies of Middle Eastern manuscripts.
The early Arabic sources quite plainly and frankly describe the expeditions as military expeditions, and it would never have occurred to anyone at that day to interpret them as anything else.... To the folk of his day there would thus be nothing strange in Muhammad, as the head of the community of those who served Allah, taking the sword to extend the kingdom of Allah, and taking measures to insure the subjection of all who lived within the borders of what he made the kingdom of Allah.
[16]
Arthur Schopenhauer[edit]
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) was an influencial German philosopher, known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity.
Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all countries and ages, in their splendor and spaciousness, testify to man's need for metaphysics, a need strong and ineradicable, which follows close on the physical. ... Sometimes it lets inself be satisfied with clumsy fables and fairy-tales. If only they are imprinted early enough, they are for man adequate explanations of his existence and supports for his morality. Consider the Koran, for example; this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.
[17]
Bhavishya Purana[edit]
The
Bhavishya Purana is one of the eighteen major Hindu Puranas. It is written in Sanskrit and attributed to Rishi Vyasa, the compiler of the Vedas.
Suta Goswami said: After hearing the king’s prayers, Lord Shiva said: ... There was a mystic demon named Tripura (Tripurasura), whom I have already burnt to ashes, he has come again by the order of Bali. He has no origin but he achieved a benediction from me. His name is Mahamada (Muhammad) and his deeds are like that of a ghost. Therefore, O king, you should not go to this land of the evil ghost. By my mercy your intelligence will be purified. Hearing this the king came back to his country and Mahamada (Muhammad) came with them to the bank of the river Sindhu. He was expert in expanding illusion, so he said to the king very pleasingly: O great king, your god has become my servant. Just see, as he eats my remnants, so I will show you. The king became surprised when he saw this just before them. Then in anger Kalidasa rebuked Mahamada (Muhammad) “O rascal, you have created an illusion to bewilder the king, I will kill you, you are the lowest..."
That city is known as their site of pilgrimage, a place which was Madina or free from intoxication. Having a form of a ghost (Bhuta), the expert illusionist Mahamada (Muhammad) appeared at night in front of king Bhojaraja and said: O king, your religion is of course known as the best religion among all. Still I am going to establish a terrible and demoniac religion by the order of the Lord . The symptoms of my followers will be that they first of all will cut their genitals, have no shikha, but having beard, be wicked, make noise loudly and eat everything. They should eat animals without performing any rituals. This is my opinion. They will perform purificatory act with the musala or a pestle as you purify your things with kusha. Therefore, they will be known as musalman, the corrupters of religion. Thus the demoniac religion will be founded by me. After having heard all this the king came back to his palace and that ghost (Muhammad) went back to his place.
[18]
Benedict XVI[edit]
Pope Benedict XVI (born Joseph Alois Ratzinger on April 16, 1927) is Pope Emeritus of the Catholic Church, having served as Pope from 2005 to 2013.
Islam has a total organization of life that is completely different from ours; it embraces simply everything,...There is a very marked subordination of woman to man; there is a very tightly knit criminal law, indeed, a law regulating all areas of life, that is opposed to our modern ideas about society. One has to have a clear understanding that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of a pluralistic society.
[19]
Bernard Lewis[edit]
Bernard Lewis, FBA (born May 31, 1916) is a British-American scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West, and is especially famous in academic circles for his works on the history of the Ottoman Empire.
The golden age of equal rights [in Spain] was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam. The myth was invented by Jews in nineteenth-century Europe as a reproach to Christians.
[20]
There was a time when scholars and other writers in communist eastern Europe relied on writers and publishers in the free West to speak the truth about their history, their culture, and their predicament. Today it is those who told the truth, no those who concealed or denied it, who are respected and welcomed in these countries. Historians in free countries have a moral and professional obligation no to shrink the difficult issues and subjects that some people would place under a sort of taboo; not to submit to voluntary censorship, but to deal with these matters fairly, honestly, without apologetics, without polemic, and, of course, competently. Those who enjoy freedom have a moral obligation to use that freedom for those who do not possess it. We live in a time when great efforts have been made, and continue to be made to falsify the record of the part and to make history a tool of propaganda; when governments, religious movements, political parties, and sectional groups of every kind are busy rewriting history as they would wish it to have been, as they would like their followers to believe that it was. All this is very dangerous indeed, to ourselves and to others, however we may define otherness - dangerous to our common humanity. Because, make no mistake, those who are unwilling to confront the past will be unable to understand the present and unfit to face the future.
[21]
During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.
[22]
...it is the duty of those who have accepted them [Allah's word and message] to strive unceasingly to convert or at least to subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state.
[23]
Bertrand Russell[edit]
Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872 – 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, socialist, pacifist, and social critic, who is considered to be one of the founders of analytic philosophy.
Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam… Those who accept Bolshevism become impervious to scientific evidence, and commit intellectual suicide. Even if all the doctrines of Bolshevism were true, this would still be the case, since no unbiased examination of them is tolerated…Among religions, Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of the world.
[24]
Rivalry is a much stronger motive. Over and over again in Mohammedan history, dynasties have come to grief because the sons of a sultan by different mothers could not agree, and in the resulting civil war universal ruin resulted... The world would be a happier place than it is if acquisitiveness were always stronger than rivalry. But in fact, a great many men will cheerfully face impoverishment if they can thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals.
[25]
Immediately after his death the conquests began, and they proceeded with rapidity... Westward expansion (except in Sicily and Southern Italy) was brought to a standstill by the defeat of the Mohammedans at the battle of Tours in 732, just one hundred years after the death of the Prophet... It was the duty of the faithful to conquer as much of the world as possible for Islam... The first conquests of the Arabs began as mere raids for plunder, and only turned into permanent occupation after experience has shown the weakness of the enemy... The Arabs, although they conquered a great part of the world in the name of a new religion were not a very religious race; the motive of their conquests was plunder and wealth rather than religion.
[26]
The beliefs appropriate to the impulse of aggression may be seen in Bernhardi, or in the early Mohammedan conquerors, or, in full perfection, in the Book of Joshua. There is first of all a conviction of the superior excellence of one's own group, a certainty that they are in some sense the chosen people. This justifies the feeling that only the good and evil of one's own group is of real importance, and that the rest of the world is to be regarded merely as material for the triumph or salvation of the higher race. In modern politics this attitude is embodied in imperialism.
[27]
Bill Maher[edit]
William "Bill" Maher, Jr. (born January 20, 1956) is an American stand-up comedian, television host, political commentator, author and actor. Maher currently ranks number 38 on Comedy Central's 100 greatest stand-ups of all time, and has a Hollywood Walk of Fame star.
There’s only one faith, for example, that kills you or wants to kill you if you draw a bad cartoon of the prophet. There’s only one faith that kills you or wants to kill you if you renounce the faith... obviously, most Muslim people are not terrorists. But ask most Muslim people in the world, if you insult the prophet, do you have what’s coming to you? It’s more than just a fringe element.
[28]
I do agree that there are other groups that pose a terroristic threat to this country [USA]... I would say that the threat from radicalized Muslims is a unique and greater threat. It is the greatest threat... It's been going on for a thousand years, this problem with Islam and the West. We're dealing with a culture that is in its medieval era. It [Islam] comes from a hate-filled holy book, the Quran, which is taken very literally by its people. They are trying to get nuclear weapons. I don’t think Tim McVeigh would ever have tried to get a nuclear weapon because I think right-wing nuts, they think they love this country and they are not trying to destroy this country, they want to get it away from the people they see as hijacking it. That’s different than Muslim extremists who want to destroy it. And also it is a culture of suicide bombing, which is hard to deter from people who want to kill themselves.
[29]
All this talk of people who burn the Koran and nothing about the people who reacted in such a stupid way. We are always blaming the victim and not holding them -- not most Muslims, but at least a large part of Muslim culture that doesn't condemn their people... There is one religion in the world that kills you when you disagree with them and they say 'look, we are a religion of peace and if you disagree we'll f**king cut your head off, and nobody calls them on it -- there are very few people that will call them on it. It's like if Dad is a violent drunk and beats his kids, you don't blame the kid because he set Dad off. You blame Dad because he's a violent drunk.
[30]
When South Park got threatened last week by Islamists ... it served or should serve, as a reminder to all of us that our culture isn't just different than one that makes death threats to cartoonists, it's better. Because when I make a joke about the Pope, he doesn't send one of the Swiss Guards in their striped pantaloons to stick a pike in my ass. When I make a Jewish joke, Rabbis may kvetch about it, but they don't pull out a scimitar and threaten an adult circumcision. ... it should in fairness be noted, that in speaking of Muslims, we realize that of course the vast majority are law abiding, loving people, who just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace. ... but the western world needs to make it clear, some things about our culture are not negotiable, and can't change, and one of them is freedom of speech. Separation of church and state is another, not negotiable. Women are allowed to work here and you can't beat them, not negotiable. This is how we roll. And this is why our system is better.
[31]
Blaise Pascal[edit]
Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher.
Mahomet established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives
Carey Cash[edit]
Rev. Carey Cash is a US Navy chaplain currently assigned to Camp David, the U.S. presidential retreat. He is often referred to as "President Obama's pastor".
[Islam] from its very birth has used the edge of the sword as a means to convert or conquer those with different religious convictions.
[32]
Sadly, grace is often absent in Islam, which is based upon binding religious law, requiring strenuous adherence to every tenet of the ‘Five Pillars of Allah’... A religion that emerges from the soil of strict adherence to law as a means of gaining God’s favour will always tend toward extreme selfsacrifice.
[32]
Carl Jung[edit]
Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961) was the Swiss founder of analytical psychology. He created some of the best known psychological concepts and his work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, literature, and related fields.
We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. He is already on the way; he is like Muhammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with a wild god.
[33]
Charles-Louis Montesquieu[edit]
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689 – 1755), was a French social commentator and political thinker.
It is a misfortune to human nature, when religion is given by a conqueror. The Mahometan religion, which speaks only by the sword, acts still upon men with that destructive spirit with which it was founded.
[34]
Christopher Hitchens[edit]
Christopher Eric Hitchens (1949 – 2011) was an English-American author and journalist. His books, essays, and journalistic career have spanned more than four decades, making him a public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media outlets.
Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or "surrender" as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.
[35]
If the Qur'an was the word of God, it had been dictated on a very bad day.
[36]
"Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s," Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University, told the New York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that published cartoons they did not like. What is needed from the supporters of this very confident faith is more self-criticism and less self-pity and self-righteousness.
[37]
Christopher Marlowe[edit]
Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 1593) was an English poet and translator of the Elizabethan era, who also rivalled Shakespeare as the most powerful dramatist of the Elizabethan period.
Tamburlaine: Now, Casane, where’s the Turkish Alcoran,
And all the heaps of superstitious books Found in the temples of that Mahomet Whom I have thought a god? they shall be burnt.
Usumcasane: Here they are, my lord.
Tamburlaine: Well said! let there be a fire presently.
[They light a fire.]
In vain, I see, men worship Mahomet: My sword hath sent millions of Turks to hell, Slew all his priests, his kinsmen, and his friends, And yet I live untouch’d by Mahomet. There is a God, full of revenging wrath, }From whom the thunder and the lightning breaks, Whose scourge I am, and him will I obey. So, Casane; fling them in the fire.—
[They burn the books.]
Now, Mahomet, if thou have any power, Come down thyself and work a miracle: Thou art not worthy to be worshipped That suffer’st flames of fire to burn the writ Wherein the sum of thy religion rests: Why send’st thou not a furious whirlwind down, To blow thy Alcoran up to thy throne, Where men report thou sitt’st by God himself? Or vengeance on the head of Tamburlaine That shakes his sword against thy majesty, And spurns the abstracts of thy foolish laws?— Well, soldiers, Mahomet remains in hell; He cannot hear the voice of Tamburlaine: Seek out another godhead to adore; The God that sits in heaven, if any god,
For he is God alone, and none but he.
Dante Alighieri[edit]
Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321), also known as "the Supreme Poet", was an Italian poet. His Divine Comedy is often considered the greatest literary work ever composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature. Below is Dante's description of Muhammad and Ali in Hell.
And one his limb transpierced, and one lopped off, should show, it would be nothing to compare with the disgusting mode of the ninth Bolgia. A cask by losing centre-piece or cant was never shattered so, as I saw one rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind. Between his legs were hanging down his entrails; his heart was visible, and the dismal sack that maketh excrement of what is eaten. While I was all absorbed in seeing him, he looked at me, and opened with his hands his bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me; How mutilated, see, is Mahomet; in front of me doth Ali weeping go, cleft in the face from forelock unto chin; and all the others whom thou here beholdest, disseminators of scandal and of schism while living were, and therefore are cleft thus.
[38]
David Cook[edit]
David B. Cook is a religious scholar and author from Rice University in Houston with a focus on Islamic history and Muslim apocalyptic literature.
There is no lack of evidence concerning the Muslim practice of jihad. The classical and modern works on the subject are voluminous, and they are documented by an examination of Muslim actions as recorded by historians. There can be no reasonable doubt that jihad is a major theme running through the entirety of Muslim civilization and is at least one of the major factors in the astounding success of the faith of Islam.
[39]
In reading Muslim literature -- both contemporary and classical -- one can see that the evidence for the primacy of spiritual jihad is negligible. Today it is certain that no Muslim, writing in a non-Western language (such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu), would ever make claims that jihad is primarily nonviolent or has been superseded by the spiritual jihad. Such claims are made solely by Western scholars, primarily those who study Sufism and/or work in interfaith dialogue, and by Muslim apologists who are trying to present Islam in the most innocuous manner possible.
[40]
...after surveying the evidence from classical until contemporary times, one must conclude that today's jihad movements are as legitimate as any that have ever existed in classical Islam... In short, although the actions of many of these groups may disgust many Muslims, as far as their conduct of jihad, they fall within the limits set by classical and contemporary Muslim law.
[41]
David Hume[edit]
David Hume (1711 – 1776) was a Scottish philosopher and historian, regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment.
The admirers and followers of the Alcoran insist on the excellent moral precepts interspersed through that wild and absurd performance. But it is to be supposed, that the Arabic words, which correspond to the English, equity, justice, temperance, meekness, charity were such as, from the constant use of that tongue, must always be taken in a good sense; and it would have argued the greatest ignorance, not of morals, but of language, to have mentioned them with any epithets, besides those of applause and approbation. But would we know, whether the pretended prophet had really attained a just sentiment of morals? Let us attend to his narration; and we shall soon find, that he bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far only as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers.
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