Someone posted an article a few days ago entitled Is Allah God? (Not the Daniel Pipes one) My machine crashed and I lost it. Could you please re-post?
Thanks,CGW

Posted by: CGW at June 21, 2008 7:45 AM

Robert, thanks for putting out the word on the reissue of the book. Sure enough, Amazon treated it as out of print, but my copy arrived in about two weeks. Since Ali Dashti's 23 Years also claims to be a psychobiography, should be an interesting comparison point.

Posted by: longtime lurker at June 21, 2008 7:48 AM

Just got back to Oz today and found that book in the mail.

Check this out:

“Convicted rapist Bilal Skaf claims his name is so synonymous with a Sydney gang sex crime he will never be able to get a fair trial.”

http://sheikyermami.com/2008/06/21/bilal-skaf-muhammedan-gang-rapist-still-ties-up-australian-courts/

“There was no significant harm caused to the complainant. No significant physical injury.” sez shyster.

* What does it take to impress these lunatics?

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at June 21, 2008 7:51 AM

ali sina's book is the best thing i've read for a long time. i immediately ordered a few more copies to give to muslims i know. would encourage everyone to do the same. it's a book everyone needs to read.

Posted by: ed at June 21, 2008 8:09 AM

'Someone posted an article a few days ago entitled Is Allah God? (Not the Daniel Pipes one) My machine crashed and I lost it. Could you please re-post?'

Sounds like satanic interference.

Posted by: johndoe at June 21, 2008 8:11 AM

This book clearly is a must read. Ali Sina is going to the very heart of the matter...Mohammed's psychopathology. The problem now is not Mohammed's derangement but the mass psychosis of a billion or more Muslims that believe this demented nonsense.

It wasn't just Hitler who was insane...millions of Germans were mad and gripped by a collective psychosis and adoration of their leader.And the core sickness was an overwhelming need to surrender their will to a higher authority and obey.

In the same way, the umma is enslaved by their own compulsion to surrender and obey. One could just as easily knock out a whole book on the collective psychology of a people when it succumbs to mass brain death and explore what exactly is behind that fatal weakness and need to follow.

Posted by: johndoe at June 21, 2008 8:22 AM

Ali Sina is a wonderful person with a great message, but he has his work cut out for him. Islam has not become one of the world's great religions because it just peddles hatred and megalomania, but because it packages those evil tendencies in a wrapper of piety, charity and salvation. Think of how ingenious the dhimmi and jizya system is, with its quasi religious tolerance seeming to mitigate the underlying extortion. Islam has a lot of sublety and Mo was one clever psychopath.
But then, Ali is cleverer, and he's on our side.

Posted by: jewdog at June 21, 2008 8:35 AM

No, says Sina, "The only way to reform Islam is to throw away the Koran; 90 percent of it should be thrown away.

I would go for 95%. Islam could be a fine religion but needs 95% revision to do it. There is nothing wrong with the idea of one God (unless you are an atheist), or praying a lot, or helping the needy, or living to a purist religious standard. Various other religions live up to these standards already, and don't include violence and assault in their practices. But it is very difficult for the supreme to be anything other than supreme. The bottom line for supremes who's supremacy is challenged, is bodily punishment. All despots in charge, all governments, and some religions operate on that principal. 'Do what we (Allah) say...or else'. Islam operates on it in a big way.
Fight them until all worship Allah, means, 'the floggings will continue until moral improves'.
'We will keep punishing you, and killing you, until there is peace'.
Supremacy is the root problem. Everything Islamic is based on it. So how do you convince supreme people who realize, by means of supreme religion, the opportunity to express their own supremacy...to give it all up, or 95% of it?
Muslim ego power (yes indeed, muslims have ego's), not over Allah or his believers, certainly not over Mohammad, but over dar al-harb, and all it's inhabitants. As long as muslims maintain the idea of religious supremacy, and personal superiority by reflection, and the willingness to inflict bodily punishments, according to Quran/Sharia, or their personal opinions influenced by these, there can be no meaningful reformation.
To make a long story short...it ainta gunna happen...at least not voluntarily...

Posted by: duh_swami at June 21, 2008 9:12 AM

Ali Sina has it right. Islam itself must be destroyed--by relentlessly telling the hard truth about it. In other words, Mohammedanism must be confronted directly. Any other approach merely prolongs the agony of a long overdue death.

If you care about Muslims, as fellow human beings deserving of respect and compassion, then you have to wish to free them from the clutches of the self-serving, vicious pirate cult called Islam.

Posted by: Stendec at June 21, 2008 9:35 AM

When people like Ali Sina have to go into hiding when they reveal the truth about the koran and islam itself, you know Islam is an evil cult. There are many good people who are Muslim, but they chose to ignore partly or mostly the koran and their religion. When ever we can overthrow this PC culture the truth about the evil death culf of islam will be understood by most non muslims and maybe even waken those Muslims to realize they have been following a very wiked evil cult.

Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess at June 21, 2008 10:21 AM

Islam's prophet was "a narcissist, a misogynist, a rapist, a pedophile, a lecher, a torturer, a mass murderer, a cult leader, an assassin, a terrorist, a mad man and a looter."

Mohammad has nothing to give to a modern person trying to live a productive and respectful life. He is devoid of morality and societies based on him are retarded and unproductive. Islam can't be reformed and a people who live in hate will always be retarded.

Posted by: Ruebacca at June 21, 2008 10:31 AM

"The only way to reform Islam is to throw away the Koran; 90 percent of it should be thrown away."
-from the article

And what ten percent is okay to keep? Only one sentence comes to mind: there is no compulsion in religion. That one heck of a foundation for a RELIGION.

The only way to reform Muslims is to throw away Islam. What other supremacist ideology was allowed to live with no real opposition? For all the German people who welcomed Naziism, there were still Germans who opposed it and opposed Hitler. Communism was not allowed to exist without opposition. Even though it was ruthless with those under its rule, outside groups and countries were not afraid to spread the word. Why are we so diffident with Muslims and Islam?

Posted by: PMK at June 21, 2008 11:02 AM

Ali Sina is quite a brilliant man. His Faithfreedom website is a treasure.

For the sheer pleasure, read Sina's debates with various mohammed-worshippers. Putting aside the pedagogical value, they are simply very satisfying as intellectual entertainment (just like anything Hugh writes).

One thing Sina emphasizes, at least implicitly, is that Islam is in reality the worship of mohammed. I think this point cannot be made often enough.

I understand that Robert, Hugh, and all the other warriors have to maintain the pretense that Islam is a valid religion; there is simply no other option but to destroy the blister on its own terms.

But the rest of us can call it what it is: weak minds gulled into the worship of a sociopathic mind. And Sina beautifully uncovers the facets of that demented mind.

Posted by: Moonzoo at June 21, 2008 12:29 PM

Just finished reading this book - it's EXCELLENT!! I recommend it to anyone who wishes to explain why they don't hate Muslims per se, they hate Islam. Which is why I gave it to my oh-so-liberal (educated at the Univ. of Wisconsin) son to read and have insisted on a report from him. Good thing I sign his paycheck or I'd never get it!

Posted by: mepeteart at June 21, 2008 12:37 PM

Why are we so diffident with Muslims and Islam?

Posted by: PMK

Because it's a "religion", according to its members and our ignorant, PC leaders.
In "Mein Kampf" (which can be translated "My Jihad"), and his other writings and speeches -- which comprise the Nazi core documents, Hitler proclaimed: 1. the supremacy of the "Aryan race" and its right to rule the world; 2. the inferiority of other races, and the right of the Aryans to subjugate them; 3. hatred for the Jews, and the need to destroy them.
In the "Koran" and the other basic documents of Islam, Mohammed proclaimed: 1. the supremacy of the Moslems, and their right to rule the world; 2. the inferiority of other peoples, and the right of the Moslems to subjugate them; 3. hatred for the Jews, and the need to destroy them.
The difference? Mohammed did not claim to have created the Koran himself, but only to have repeated the words of Allah, dictated to him by one of Allah's angels.
The moral? If you want to establish a real "thousand-year Reich" (and then some), have your founding documents "written" by a god. If only Hitler had claimed to be "channeling" Mein Kampf from Wotan, Nazism might still be a fairly large and flourishing "religion" today, comoplete with a CAAR (Council on American-Aryan Relations) instead of being a marginalized gang of skinheads.

Posted by: ebonystone at June 21, 2008 1:07 PM

Although the Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the most fanatically Muslim of regimes, there is hope that Iranians, fed up with corruption and constraints that they rightly connect to the mullahs who represent a mental underclass, will begin to see, or are seeing, Islam in a new light.

And they have the possibility of doing so, one denied to the Arabs, whose entire civilizational being is wrapped up in Islam, so that Islam and 'Uruba, or 'Uruba and Islam, are regarded as inseparable, because Iran has a long pre-Islamic history, one that is given great attention, and because many of its physical remains still exist -- any Iranian can, if he wishes, ride in mental triumph through Persepolis, and consider how passing brave it is to be a Persian, not a Muslim but a Persian -- the great hope is that this other identity, one that predates Islam, one that sometimes has been in opposition to Islam (see how Firdowsi, by writing his epic of the Persian kings, the Shahnameh, managed to help Iranian culture withstand the linguistic and cultural imperialism of the Arabs that in so many places effaced, or reduced to almost nothing, the pre-Islamic or non-Islamic portions of this or that people's or region's history.

I long ago mentioned that perhaps there would be, fantastical as it may seem, a return to Zoroastrianism, a return not based on anything intrinsically attractive about that faith, but rather that it was Persian, Iranian, before Islam, the "gift of the Arabs," came along to dislodge it, to send into exile some Zoroastrians (who in India were known as the Parsis, or Persians), and to reduce the dwindling remaining population of Zoroastrians to a status of dhimmi, one written about, and then observed close up, by the British historian of Zoroastrianism Mary Boyd.

In exile, Iranians are often quite different from Arabs -- much more open, much less hysterically wedded to defending Islam. Alone among the Muslin countries of the Middle East, Iran has a long and separate existence; it is not merely one of those countries that we call "a tribe with a flag."

If anything is to be salvaged from the nonstop viciousness of the Khomeini regime, and that of Khomeini's epigones, it is that damage has been done, among thinking Iranians both in exile, and in Iran, to the status of Islam.

And that is a good thing -- for Iran, and for Infidels.

It is unlikely that those countries that are either Arab, or that have nothing but Islam -- I am thinking of Pakistan, which was founded, which exists, only because of Islam, to be a "land of the pure" -- will be able to create a sufficient number of people who can connect the economic and political and social and moral and intellectual failures of their own states and societies to Islam itself, but those Muslims who possess another identity, a non-Arab identity, can have hope.

And despite the current fanaticism in Iran, if that regime is humiliated and wounded, even if there is a brief period, possibly a few months, of rally-round-the-flag stuff even by Iranians who should know better but cannot help themselves, the Islamic Republic of Iran will be shaken, and permanently weakened. Such a humiliation could take the form of an attack on the nuclear project. After all, if the Islamic Republic of Iran ever does manage to produce such weapons, its prestige among the primitive masses will be sky-high, and the advanced Iranians will -- even if today some of them argue against such an attack -- find their cause set back, with the most fanatical Muslims safely in the saddle for a long time to come.

That's not the main reason for making sure that the Islamic Republic of Iran does not manage to produce such weapons. But it is an independent and very good reason: to hasten the day when the hold of Islam over Iran, over Iranians, is shaken sufficiently, so that other possibilities are discussed, are considered, are possibly even taken up.

Posted by: Hugh at June 21, 2008 1:59 PM

Christianity had a Reformation (the Protestant's) AND a Renaissance(Roman Catholic's). All this talk about Islam needing a reformation is nonsense because Islam has always been about the "basics" in the Koran. Islam needs a Renaissance as the Church in the West did in the 15th and 16th centuries. Islam needs to become human and wordly and look at the world before Islam and the of world today as positive things. It will never happen.

Posted by: penn's woods at June 21, 2008 2:27 PM

Hugh~

I've posted about this before. This is a yahoo.ca group's homepage. The moderators and many of the group's members are in Tehran.

http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/Persian_empire/

Posted by: skevin at June 21, 2008 2:46 PM

Gibbon's chapter on the Iranian religion (NOT mohammed-worship) covers both its appeal as a human institution, and its descent into dogmatism. There is something innate in the human being, both good and malignantly distorting of the good. None of us will ever be privy to why, ever ever.

But the Iranian people have a world historical opportunity, consistent with their historical brilliance and significance, to change the destiny of men for the better.

They can be the best of Zoroaster.

Sina is one such.

Posted by: Moonzoo at June 21, 2008 2:52 PM

True, that Sina has his work cut out for him, but remember, one man with cajones makes a difference. Mohammed was insane, but he was one man....who persuaded a handful who conquered millions, then billions. Jesus was one man who did likewise, and Moses was but one man. Elijah called down the Fire of God and swallowed up the false prophets of his day. Islam will collapse upon itself, we just need to have the patience to help it to do that...and maybe some Divine Intervention, too.

Posted by: Jewel Atkins at June 21, 2008 3:12 PM

Islam has already had its Reformation. It's called Wahabism.

Posted by: Silvester at June 21, 2008 3:17 PM

Islam will collapse upon itself, we just need to have the patience to help it to do that...and maybe some Divine Intervention, too.

-posted above

Do we have the time? How many non-Muslims must die first? Islam isn't the USSR. We don't have a cold peace, with both sides preferring survival to sacrifice. Aren't the Muslims who see their dreams collapsing as likely to go out with a bang as with a whimper? They're likely to want to take us with them. We're all worried about Iran. Pakistan already has nukes. There are four nuclear-armed countries in Asia, five if you count Russia. All of them, except India, are very likely helping the Iranian program along, in one way or another.

Posted by: PMK at June 21, 2008 3:40 PM

Unfortunately, PMK, we don't have much time, because we don't have the will to do what needs to be done. If we did, there wouldn't be a need for sites like this, but as long as we are contented to delude ourselves, our children's children will have to clean up our mess. So much for posterity.

Posted by: Jewel Atkins at June 21, 2008 3:55 PM

Islam means submission. For all practical purposes it means submission to Mohammed and his teachings.

Its adherents can sometimes be described and having zeal for God but without knowledge. But a more accurate description would be to say that they have a zeal for Mohammed without any personal relationship with God, and very little knowledge of His true character.

A belief in the oneness of God and that Mohammed is his prophet is the bedrock of Islam upon which everything is built.

Islam is all about the life, character and teachings of Mohammed. Period.

Islam has nothing to offer which adds any understanding of the truth of God already revealed in the Bible. (Having said that, it should be noted that there are ways to take the understanding an individual Muslim has about God and use that understanding to point the Muslim to the living Christ who is revealed to us in the Bible.)

Islam is spiritually bankrupt. It is a system designed for the benefit of Mohammed. He created an ideology with a religious veneer. And he is the one that every Muslim seeks to emulate if they are serious about Islam.

So, if you take away Mohammed, you have no Islam.

Truth For Muslims

Posted by: AfghanJohn at June 21, 2008 4:11 PM

"Islam is full of hatred, and the hatred is in Muhammad himself. I argue in my book that Muhammad was insane - and that Muslims, by emulating him and by emulating his ways, his insanity is bequeathed to them"

Oh dear God. Pray for Ali Sina. He's dead-on right but someone is going to try to kill him for this.

Posted by: Madame Vengier at June 21, 2008 5:04 PM

"Christianity had a Reformation (the Protestant's)"

Sorry to nitpick, but I don't care what the history books call it--that was NOT a reformation. Not by definition or by anything else. A reformation and a schism are not the same thing. It was a revolt.

Posted by: Madame Vengier at June 21, 2008 5:18 PM

It seems to me that one thing that must be done is simply to apply the same historical standards to the history of Islamic origins that we have to the origins of Judaism and Christianity. We should also apply the historical critical method to the Qur'an just as has been done for over 100 years to the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Some great scholars, such as Wansbrough, Crone, Jeffrey, have started that process. These scholars treat Islam and the Qur'an with no less respect than that afforded Judaism, Christianity or the Bible, but neither do they accept the Islamic traditions without question as traditionalist scholars have for generations.

In doing so, one quickly realizes that no historical or archaeological evidence substantiates the existence of either Muhammad or Mecca except the Islamic traditions written over 150 years after Muhammad's death. Western historians have accepted the Islamic narrative as valid because it describes Muhammad in such horrendous ways that they assumed Muslims would not have made the stories up. This attempts to apply the criterion of embarrassment often used to argue for the historicity of various biblical stories.

However, some scholars suggest that the Islamic traditions may have been created in what is now Iraq. They may have been written by Persian intellectuals to explain the defeat of the Persian Empire by what they considered to be a band of barbarian Arabs who had served as auxiliary troops for the Persians for generations.

In looking at the Qur'an, one realizes that it does not seem to arise out of a debate between a monotheistic faith and polytheists as one would expect from the Islamic traditions. Instead, it appears to be a debate within a monotheistic community over the efficacy of prayer to female angels (I would suggest women saints such as Mary) and the physical resurrection of the body at the End Time.

Rather than a revelation provided by God to Muhammad, the Qur'an appears to be a collection of sermons or sermon notes jumbled together quickly with no apparent editing or internal coherence. This leads to endless repetition, internal inconsistencies and bizarre errors as to biblical stories and doctrines.

When one reads the Qur'an strictly within its four corners, it does not support the traditional Islamic narrative. For example, the actual words of Chapter 97 do not describe the Angel Gabriel delivering the Qur'an to Muhammad. One can arrive at that only from imposing the Islamic narrative on the very ambiguous words of the Qur'an.

Just a few comments.

Cheers,

Abu el Banat

Posted by: Abu El Banat at June 21, 2008 5:49 PM

CGW,
You asked for an article about "whether Allah is God".

Probably you did not mean this one?
http://www.answering-islam.org/Authors/JR/Future/

Among other things, it compares

1. the Islamic Mahdi (Muslim messiah) to the anti-Christ described in the Bible,
2. the Muslim Jesus of the Islamic end times to the Bible's descriptions of the False Prophet of Christian end times
3. the Dajjal (Muslim anti-Christ) to Jesus Christ of the Christians.

It's actually a book, but you can read it online at the link above.

Posted by: traeh at June 21, 2008 7:12 PM

Sina is great.

Posted by: traeh at June 21, 2008 7:25 PM

Ali Sina's book is a quick and deeply satisfying read. I highly recommend.
*****

In doing so, one quickly realizes that no historical or archaeological evidence substantiates the existence of either Muhammad or Mecca except the Islamic traditions written over 150 years after Muhammad's death. -Posted by: Abu El Banat

As time passes Muslims the world over struggle to restrict, conceal or destroy all historical evidence of Islam's heritage. Witness the current acceleration of their battle against free speech,and preservation of historical artifacts.

Just a couple of examples:

The destruction of Mecca: Saudi hardliners are wiping out their own heritage

Demolition of Islam's Historical Sites

or restricted beyond all comprehension as with:

450 rolls of film - a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran a study of the evolution of the Quran

Posted by: heroyalwhyness at June 21, 2008 8:47 PM

What's weird is that at the same time the KSA demolishes Islamic monuments, it sponsors al-Jihiliyya archaeology.

http://arabnews.com/?page=9§ion=0&article=110876&d=14&m=6&y=2008&pix=community.jpg&category=Features%22

Posted by: skevin at June 21, 2008 11:16 PM

To sum it up:

Islam is in reality the worship of Muhammad. That's why its called Muhammedanism. It has no redeeming features, therefore nothing can be salvaged. It must be destroyed.

Sylvesters statement above is quite right:

' Islam has already had its Reformation. It's called Wahabism.'

Iran?

No, I don't buy Hugh's optimism re Iran either. Iran is now breeding the 3rd generation of Islamic 'revolutionaries', they are brainwashed zombies with few exceptions. They (the 'moderates we hope for) will not rise up and the radicals will not go down without a fight.

But we'll have Obamessiah to talk to them. He'll fix it!

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at June 22, 2008 6:13 AM

"What Jesus practiced was good..."

What else do you expect from God incarnate? I just hope Ali Sina finds that there is indeed a real prophet, priest, and king (Messiah) who is worthy of the trust and adoration of all rational creatures. Not all religions are Islam.

Posted by: Kepha at June 23, 2008 12:58 AM