Islam

I'm reading the Intro to Islam pamphlets that I got from the mosque in KL. It makes me think a lot about religion and the methods they use to prove them. I'm not making fun if Islam, just the pamphlets that one mosque chooses to give out. This blog entry also gives a brief sumary of my brief study of Islam. Its not all bad, there are many good and interesting things in these pamphlets, but the extreme things
are very extreme! It's a long blog entry so skip it if you're not really intersted...

The first pamphlet is called "Prayer in Islam" and the questions on the first page are very anti-catholic.
• "No pictures, no idols, no symbols, then what do Muslims pray to?
• "No priests, then who guides the Muslims in prayer?
• "No chairs in Mosques, then where do Muslims sit when they pray?
• "Wouldn't it be better for me to get into a relaxed position and really speak from my heart?

There's another pamphlet, "Jihad," which starts off talking about what a Jihad is not. Honestly, I didn't know what a Jihad is.
• A jihad is "conveying the message of the one true god."
• Armed jihad is permitted only in self-defense.
• When others commit murders, their religion is never mentioned. But when Muslims resort to violence, Islam is pit on trial

"Too late for tears" is a poem about an angel coming to take away man's soul, but the man begs for a year or two to repent, and the angel ends with "there is no time for you to repent, I'll take your soul for which I am sent."

This one kinda puts the fear of Allah in a person's soul, but it's pretty similar to that story in the Bible where people are being taken away to heaven and someone asks to go back to warn his brother or something and the angel replies with "of he hasn't repented until now, he won't even if you tell him.

I suppose if someone I knew told me that they saw an angel and that they would be taken away and that I should repent because God or Allah is real, if that person were to disappear, I'd take it seriously.

A friend of mine at Mt. SAC told me that Muslims recite the Qur'an in Arabic. The more you can recite, the more you are rewarded in heaven. I never really fully grasped this, but in the "Reciting the Qur'an" pamphlet, it says "Recite the Qur'an to listen to Allah's words." That makes sense.


Other pamphlets ...
•Be upfront with others when you perform your Islamic duties by saying for example, "Excuse me for a few minutes, I need to pray to my Creator."
• Do not delay your marriage by waiting for the perfect person for you as there is no such person and only Allah is Perfect!
• By accepting Muhammad as the final Messenger of Gid, Christians embracing Islam are also accepting Jesus as a Messenger, and not "Son" of God.
• The Qur'an states that Allah The Exalted "is far above the need of having a son." It commands, "stop saying three" for "Allah is only One God."
• The belief that there are multiple gods is a firm if ignorance. The facts of life and mature do not support
• "just about everything that feminists in the West strived for in th 70's was already available to Muslim women 1400 years ago. Things like sexual needs met by her husband, a marriage contract, divorce, refuse a marriage proposal, and maintain her name when entering a marriage." I hadn't realized that Westerners couldn't refuse marriage proposals 50 years ago. Thanks for enlightening me Dr. Marican!
• The Bible requires women to "cover their head." [1 Corinthians 11:3-13]. Last time I read the Bible, 11 verses were more than 4 words.
• Critics of women's rights in Islam expose their hypocrisy by their silence toward the multi-billion dollar porn industry ($57 billion in 2006 in USA) that treats women like filth.

These pamphlets have a sorta anti-western culture twist to it, but the polygamy pamphlets ends with, "Extramarital affairs, free sex, prostitution, and humiliating women by describing them as sex workers - these are forbidden in Islam but are either legalized or tolerated in the pseudo-monogamy of the West!" Doesn't get more blatant than that.

Recently, Southpark retouched on their Allah episode and how Allah's image can't be shown. It pissed off a lot of Muslim groups to see Allah in a bear mascot outfit ... I thought it was funny. The pamphlets say "Allah is beyond the grasp of human vision. He is unlike anything that the human mind can imagine.".

In "Where is Allah" it says that "Allah does not resemble His creations.". I thought they used the Old Testament where it says that God created man in his image.

The pamphlet, "Sex in Islam," is an interesting one ...
• Either spouse should not refuse the other's request for sex except for special reasons such as menstruation, sickness, or fasting
• One who does anal sex has disbelieved in Islam
• The Qur'an permits all positions of vaginal intercourse
• Both spouses have a responsibility to groom themselves to remain attractive to each other throughout their married lives
• Islam emphasizes foreplay and advises husbands to be sensitive to the feelings oftheir wives by saying, "Let none of you fall upon his wife like a donkey falls upon a she donkey."
• In Islam, sexual inability is a legitimate ground for divorce

So that's it ... I spent the last 3 hours reading about Islam to the sounds of waves breaking on the shore and in conclusion, I think Dr. Y Mansoor Marican, Ph.D doesn't like America