In the name of God/s, part 3: Islam

(Obviously this is the one I know best)

• Founder/s: Abul-Qasim Muhammad Ibn Abd-Allah Ibn Abdul-Muttalib Ibn Hashim (aka. Muhammad or Prophet Muhammad)
• Approximate age: 1400 years
• Place of origin: Arabia
• Holy book/s: Qur’ān & aḥādiyth*
• Original language of holy book/s: Arabic
• Demonym of adherents: Muslims
• Approximate number of current global adherents: 1,570,000,000
• Place of worship name/s: mosque, masjid

* There’s also the aḥādiyth qudsiy, a group of 40 reports that supposedly came directly from Allah to Muhammad. Some count them separately, I don’t.  

Here we go again – again

Inspired by yet another conversation with a Muslim guy I met on the bus last week (4/8/2015). Not this one, a new guy. 

It all started when my phone suddenly played up. There was plenty of battery life but it didn’t let me make or receive calls, texts, emails, nothing! I still have no idea what happened. When I got on the bus and tried to use it, this guy claimed the CPU processor was damaged. He offered to have a quick look at it, but all he did was turn on & off mobile data, Wifi and Bluetooth. All the while claiming he’d been a computer programmer or something for 5 years. Then he admitted he didn’t know what to do and blamed it on not eating all day.

Whatever.

After that he claimed he knew me from a long time ago. I didn’t know him at all, but he said he’d seen me in various masajid around my area. I thought he could be right so I carried on talking to him. He told me he’d been training to become a hafiz (memoriser of the whole Qur’an by heart) at some special institution, I told him I’d been doing the same except without the institution. Which was true; in my late teens I’d memorised about 32 suwrahs.

All was well until we exchanged names. Mine is so unmistakably Islamic it’s ridiculous, so when I told him I’m not a Muslim he flipped!

God damn it.

The dopey bastard made lots of stupid assertions:

There’s no such thing as ex-Muslims. I told him about the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, and he flat out didn’t believe me.

My ethnic background (which I refused to tell him) may have made me misunderstand the religion. Cheeky little shit. As if he (being of Sasian background, who were historically Hindus) had the right to tell me I’d been following it wrongly. Especially after claiming to “know” me and seeing me in the masajid.

I must’ve had some bad experience with a shaykh or family member that made me apostatise, no-one stops being Muslim by choice. Mind simply too weak to handle the possibility of his beliefs being wrong.

I was pretending about my name, and about having ever been a Muslim. At that point the little asswipe pissed me off royally. I made sure to shut him up there and then. I jackhammered it into his head that my name is my name whether I’m a Muslim or not. My new spiritual status doesn’t change diddly-squat on my birth certificate. Fair enough you assumed I’m Muslim when you heard it, I told him, but don’t ever – and I mean bloodclaat EVER! – say I’m pretending about having been one. He then claimed he didn’t say that, which I corrected him on straight away.

At one point throughout the argument we discussed contradictions in the Qur’an. Needless to say he said there were none. I gave the example of the number of “days” Allah is said to have created the world in, Qur’an says 6 in one place and 2 in another. He asked for a specific chapter & verse number. I said “Why would I bother remembering that if it’s not part of my life anymore?” He then made out that without a reference I can’t back up my argument. I told him he could easily check the internet for the reference, at which point he got scared and said he doesn’t have a robotic or encyclopedic mind like that.

Remember he said he’d trained to become hafiz. There is no way you can be hafiz without having an encyclopedic/ robotic kind of mind. My mind was exactly like that when I was memorising Qur’an. What kind of hafiz was he?

Worse, throughout the discussion he was trying to drown out my voice by constantly talking over me. I told him he wasn’t listening, he said (and I quote) “Why should I listen to you?”

Y’what? 👹

I pointed out that he’s carrying on like a typical Muslim. He got offended and said, “Like a typical Muslim?” Bear in mind there were 2 Muslim women sitting right next to him listening to the whole thing, and a 3rd well within earshot, and I replied, “Yes like a typical Muslim, because most Muslims I’ve told about my irtidad carry on exactly like you. You’re all the same.”

Admittedly that’s not quite true. None had to date been as bad as him, though the difference is only in degree. The type of response was identical.

Provocative, yes. Offensive, arguably. Wrong, no.

Good Lord, what’s wrong with these religious people why they can’t even accept that apostates exist? I admit, when I was a Muslim I used to believe they only existed from other faiths not my precious Islam, but then I read enough ahadiyth to know that couldn’t be true.

And the dopey bastard still didn’t sort out my phone. It sorted itself out after dying and recharging.

SMH.

Oh, and:

I need to come to the masjid with him. Why? Am I supposed to drop my own plans, my own life, for a guy I don’t know? Besides, with a mouth as unreliable as his, he’d probably take me to a Saudi strip club instead. 😆

Poem: Whose Myth is True?

After hundreds

Of thousands

Of millions of years

We have evolved to Homo de spirituali dominus

– Man, master of spirituality!

We got more than one good book:

Qur’an, Vedas and Guru Granth Sahib,

Tripitaka and Torah

As well as the Bible

To spell out the will of God

In six different shades of black & white,

Save us from the scary black darkness,

Keep us in the pwetty white light.

Walk toward and into the light,

And death is guaranteed to be better

Than this Devil’s Domain called

Life.

But!

Backtrack to the days of BC – Before Clerics

Were afraid of their religions’ origins,

Before pagan was redefined from local & home-grown to

Spiritual Atavism To All Nations,

The world believed in different myths:

Before heaven & hell were spiritual destinations for the dead

One was the searing red ocean beneath the land,

The other the vast blue roof where birds flirted with clouds.

Blue was a foreign colour to most tongues, anthropologists believe

But I think people were smarter than that.

On the far East side we had guardian dragons

Raining good fortune and education on us from above,

While angels’ Assyrian ancestors hunted us like birds of prey.

The skies of Zambia, Angola & Congo are windows to prehistory

Because they still see pterodactyls!

Ala was an Igbo goddess as well as an Arab god,

At the tip of Africa’s horn the world was balanced on the horns of a bull

Tethered in front of the cow he loved –

Maybe the common ancestor of the Egyptian sky-cow,

As Somalis & Ethiopians were the common ancestors of Egyptians?

The Slavic sun is too lazy to inhabit the sky,

She lives on an island served by the 4 winds,

Long before Avraham preached fear of God

Inuktitut (Eskimos) preached fear of everything!

Kaluli women are the mothers of Mother Nature,

Men only have supremacy because

A male snake ate an Aboriginal goddess’s daughters,

But Chinese emperors were legally required

REQUIRED

To sexually satisfy 121 women in 15 nights!

Modern Indians caste their devotion toward fair skin

When they used to believe darker = holier.

Asian Indians meant their own skins,

American “Indians” meant that of Africans

But both stopped once pale-skins

Installed themselves in positions of superiority.

Complex, I know.

The disciples had never heard of Jesus,

Their messiah’s name was Ieshua,

Freedom fighter to them, to Roman powers terrorist.

Science and maths hadn’t yet tested the theory that

Virginity + pregnancy = impossibility,

But we had the Greek intelligence to know daemons could be

Good, evil or don’t give a shit

And the Judean intelligence to know Satan was just doing his God-given job

– But given by which God?

The New Testament one who so loved the world

He agreed with Caiaphas that

It’s better for one man to perish in place of the nation,

Sent his Judean heir to die for Gentiles’ royal screw-ups?

Or the Old Testament one who smote the world

Then remembered to keep Noah alive,

Knows idols can’t hurt him but admits

I am a jealous god?

Whose god is true?

Whose myth is true?

© One Tawny Stranger, July 2015

Poem: Too much diyn, too little dunya

Looking down on Earth as I wandered on the clouds

Yet forbidding myself the high of feeling proud

Not running the rat race of ordinary life

Never engaging too long with stresses and strife

Tredding the straight and narrow path of righteousness

Denying legitimacy to all the rest

Wealth? Unimportant! Fame? Just a fad

Friendship? Don’t need it! Back then I had

No interest in dunya, I was all about the diyn,

Probably the purest young Muslim you’ve ever seen

I loved the diyn and tolerated the dunya,

Sat on my ass memorising the “words of Allah”!

Didn’t fear disapproval from anyone else

But always felt guilty for just being myself

Just glancing a nice woman could make me a rapist!

Torn between guilt & shame – was I self-racist?

Our relationship with God is meant to be mixed

Between love, hope &… what, fear? Fuck that shit!

Scared of hell, scared of sin, always begging for pardon,

Viewing life as just a phase before I enter the Garden

No interest in dunya, I was all about the diyn,

Probably the purest young Muslim you’ve ever seen

I loved the diyn and tolerated the dunya,

Sat on my ass memorising the “words of Allah”!

Apparently loving the world and yourself is a sin

And don’t get me started on that bollocks about jinn

Quran says don’t worry, they’re no big deal

But Muslims are batshit terrified – for real!

These mullahs, shaykhs & ‘ālims don’t know fuck-all

Quran, ahādiyth, nothing else – I’m appalled

Prophet said this, prophet said that – change the recording

4 schools of thought? You mean 4 schools of boring!

No interest in dunya, I was all about the diyn,

Probably the purest young Muslim you’ve ever seen

I loved the diyn and tolerated the dunya,

Sat on my ass memorising the “words of Allah”!

Getting married – yes. Dating – blasphemy!

Keep your natural desires under lock and key!

Islām’s full of mixed signals. Check this:

Don’t like your life? Sabr, Allah willed this

Yet! Allah only wants to make things easy for you.

5 daily prayers and fasts are easy? Get a clue!

Why Muhammad and Ibrahim’s names in prayers? Dunno.

Isn’t Islām against blind following? Bloodclaat no!

No interest in dunya, I was all about the diyn,

Probably the purest young Muslim you’ve ever seen

I loved the diyn and tolerated the dunya,

Sat on my ass memorising the “words of Allah”!

At least once you must go to Saudi Arabia,

Not Ghana or Ethiopia, Egypt or Mauritania.

Only Muslim history matters, screw all the others

Despite the fact all humans are sisters and brothers!

The left hand’s unclean – yeah, when you wipe your ass with it

Bare handed. With paper & water where’s the harm in it?

That shows Islām isn’t against superstition

And most Muslims blindly follow blind tradition.

No interest in dunya, I was all about the diyn,

Probably the purest young Muslim you’ve ever seen

I loved the diyn and tolerated the dunya,

Sat on my ass memorising the “words of Allah”!

Ahādiyth were compiled by big-shot scholars,

More needless rules to wring our necks like collars.

Chronicling Muhammad’s life down to every detail,

The “perfect human” – good luck if you’re female!

The 4 schools explain all, we just need to obey.

Think for yourself? You’re not a scholar so NAY!

Come on Muslimiyn, give up that fuckery!

Grow the balls and the brains to forge your own destiny!

No interest in dunya, I was all about the diyn,

Probably the purest young Muslim you’ve ever seen

I loved the diyn and tolerated the dunya,

Sat on my ass memorising the “words of Allah”!

Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in miracles

But no supernatural shit, it’s all scientifical.

And no, that doesn’t kick the beauty or the wonder out.

In fact you might see it better when you stop being devout.

Souls only grow by making their own decisions.

Nothing wrong with cherry-picking & ad-libbing religions,

Chuck out old myths, stick with what’s tested and true.

What, only Allah has that right? Let him fucking sue!

No interest in dunya, I was all about the diyn,

Probably the purest young Muslim you’ve ever seen

I loved the diyn and tolerated the dunya,

Sat on my ass memorising the “words of Allah”!

But by embracing the dunya and abandoning the diyn,

I’m the spiritually healthiest I’ve ever been.

Making my own diyn that lets me get on in the dunya.

Praise be to us humans – Al-hamdu lina!

© One Tawny Stranger, June 2014

Discussion with a muslim

This post is inspired by an incident last night (7/4/2015).

My gf and I were in central London and we passed by a masjid (mosque), the London Central Mosque Trust Ltd. and the Islamic Cultural Centre to be exact. Coming from a Christian background, she had never been in a masjid before and it sparked her curiosity. If she wanted to see inside this was a perfect chance. So we went in and watched the prayer – from the time of day it would’ve been ‘ishā.

As we neared the prayer room, standing in the part where they keep their shoes, one of the guys – an elderly guy of what I presume is Nafrican background – started telling us to separate! In a “holy place” a couple holding hands is indecent. My gf pointed out there was a ‘white’ couple almost right beside us. I think the ‘white’ guy was muslim explaining the prayers to the woman. Though they weren’t touching (as far as I could see) they were well within touching distance of each other, and the Nafrican guy didn’t even look at them. So I asked why he was telling us to separate and not them, and he carried on with his “holy place” rant. Then he tried to make me step back because I had my shoes on, even though we weren’t standing in the prayer room itself.

A security guard came and intervened, telling the guy to calm down – but agreed that our behaviour was indecent. He explained that what we were doing was private and children’s minds are pure.

Shouldn’t this be impure/ indecent/ private too? Even if they’re not gay and this is just an Arab custom, why would man-man or woman-woman contact in public be OK but woman-man contact isn’t?

He (the security guard) then asked if I’d want my children to see people snogging in the streets, totally ignoring the fact we were just holding hands. As I got exasperated I said “Listen, I used to be a muslim so I know all these conditions.” That REALLY got the ball rolling; “You used to be a muslim?” That evolved into a new discussion:

• First he didn’t believe me, which is no surprise. It’s no exaggeration that most Muslims don’t know that ex-muslims exist!
• He assumed I’d been ignorant of the religion and proceeded to tell me what Islam is,
• I showed him that not only was I not ignorant but more knowledgeable than him (I told him a Qur’anic verse about abrogation that he didn’t know*) and challenged him to show me a single verse that gave believers permission to stand up to verbal abuse and bullying – which he couldn’t. Back when I was reading the whole Qur’an I never found it; the closest was just giving the oppressed the right to armed resistance against physical violence,
• He got scared and admitted he’s not a shaykh or scholar (do you have to be to know your own faith?), then referred me to the masjid’s shaykh.

* Suwrah 2 verse 106: “What we abrogate from a sign or cause to be forgotten, we give better or similar. Don’t you know that indeed Allah has power over everything?” Abrogate = cancel out, so Google’s translation of duplication/ reproduction makes no sense

And the shaykh had just gone home.

The best the security guard could do was tell me to come back during one of their talks on Saturdays & Sundays, and bring my gf if she wanted to come too. That way I could have my questions answered – which I never asked for since most of my questions about Islam have been answered, just by using my own brain and searching for myself. We refused the offer as we were just passing through the area for the day.

Oh well, at least she got to see the inside of a masjid – a rare chance since most masajid in London don’t let women in at all.