“Allahu akbar” means “Allah is greater,” i.e., greater than your god. This is shirk at the very heart of Islam. It directly contradicts, “There is no god, but Allah.” If there is no god, but Allah, then who is the god that Allah is greater than? For Allah to be greater than another god, there has to be another god besides Allah. This is what Islam itself says, when it claims, “Allahu akbar.”
Claiming both “Allahu akbar” and “La illaha illallah,” makes Islam shirk, i.e., hudud, sin against god. Islam itself commits its own worst possible sin. I invite Muslims to take this point to their sheikh, ‘alim, mullah, imam, mufti, etc. Best not mention that you’ve heard it from a murtadd, because that would give them the perfect excuse to avoid answering the question, and instead turn on you for reading a murtadd in the first place.
If a Muslim is serious about being Muslim, and can think for themselves, the shirk at the heart of Islam would be a more important reason for leaving this religion immediately, than any other reason on the ever-growing list. Let’s consider where the list of reasons for leaving Islam is up to today:
- Islam’s insistence that the worst Muslim is better than the best non-Muslim
- The unspeakable cruelty that Islam engenders in Muslims, even towards their own loved ones
- Violence being everywhere in Islam
- Islam’s insistence that obvious falsehoods are true
- Islam’s insistence that Muslims accept without question obvious falsehoods as truth
- Islam’s denying the personhood of women
- Islam’s imperative to violently subjugate the entire world to itself
- The impossibility of a Muslim ever taking a non-Muslim as equal while remaining true to Islam
- Islam’s expectation on Muslims that they do as Muslims do, even if it is incredibly unwise, unethical or dangerous, and to hold in contempt that which non-Muslims do instead (Muslim response to the current CoVID-19 pandemic being both a bizarre and a tragic example of this)
- Islam’s intellectual stunting of Muslims, even those who are very clever by Muslim standards
- Islam’s permanently restricting the ethics of Muslims to that of the Arabian desert barbarians of late antiquity
- The Islamic right to murder one’s children and grandchildren
- Islam’s insistence that the basest behaviours are virtues
- Islam’s insistence that Muslims follow the example of a man who, were he alive today, would be permanently confined to the secure ward of a mental hospital
- Islam’s obliteration of all cultures it encounters and supplanting them with seventh-century Arabian desert culture
- Islam’s propensity for turning decent, civilised people into sociopathic monsters
- Islam’s supremacism (far, far worse than white supremacism)
- Islam’s encouragement of paedophilia
- Islam’s condoning of slavery
- Islam’s making women lesser than men
- Islam’s historic track record that it can only regress civilisation
- Islam’s historic track record that it can only regress ethics
- The pitiful ignorance of Muslims around the world
- The tragedy that is Muslim cognition
- Islam’s non-recognition of rape
- Islam’s assertion that the Qur’an and the life of Muhammad are all that Muslims will ever need
- Islam’s reducing the emotional complexity of humans to nothing more than love, hate and lust (by men only)
- Islam’s command to Muslims to love only Allah and his messenger (all other love can only be through the love of Allah)
- Islam’s command to Muslims to hate all things non-Muslim
- Islam’s reducing all non-Muslims to Untermenschen
- Islam’s advocating genocide of the Jews
- The non-negotiability of Islam’s doctrines and tenets
- Islam’s command that anyone who leaves Islam must be killed
- Islam’s commandments fundamentally contradicting that which makes us human, leaving every Muslim with only two choices: be a hypocrite or be a monster
Of course, this list is far from exhaustive…
O Muslim, if “your iman is strong,” (meaning you insist on ignoring the mountain of evidence that surrounds you and have turned your heart to stone) and none of this fazes you, how do you reconcile yourself to Islam’s built-in shirk? Do you believe La illaha illallah to be untrue? Allahu akbar says it is. Or is Allahu akbar untrue? La illaha illallah says it is. Is your iman more important than avoiding shirk? How much more of this are you going to make yourself take?
CogitoErgoSum says
They surely must mean false gods — which do exist in the minds of men. So when Muslims say, “La illaha illallah,” they mean “There is no other false god besides Allah.” Likewise, “Allahu Akbar” means “Our false god, Allah, is greater than your false god.”
Iambob says
No one ever said worshiping the devil (who identifies himself as such in the Koran) makes any sense. Insightful article without any surprises.
Ferd III says
Al Lah references Baal (Hu’Baal) the Moon deity of Mecca and (just coincidentally), the family and tribal god of Adolf Muhammad. His family took care of the Baal Shrine.
It is indeed Shirk ie worshipping the moon deity. The Satanic verses reference the worship not just of the moon, but of Venus and the Sun as well (probably Mars was also venerated).
Muhammadism is at its core a celestial cult.
WithPurpleAbandon says
I suppose what they really mean has to be read this way : “There is no other god besides Allah. All other gods are by default false / invalid entities worshipped by non-muslims and they only exist in the kuffar mindset”
Same with “Allah is greater”, which means “Allah is by default greater than any invalid god-like entity conceived in the minds of non-muslims.”
In my opinion, this makes more sense than claiming there seems to be an innate type of shirk going on within Islam itself. And that’s probably the real meaning of the shahada : muslims simply withstand the whole idea that non-muslims can believe in anything else but Allah.
So they need to emphasize this superiority continuously by making some comparison. The classical Us vs. Them rhetoric.
Kerry Wade says
Excellent. I’ll use all of this! Whenever I’ve asked a Muslim to ask his iman a question, he always cones back as says “I’ve been told I’m not a good Muslim.”
James Lincoln says
Kerry Wade says,
“Whenever I’ve asked a Muslim to ask his iman a question, he always cones back as says “I’ve been told I’m not a good Muslim.”
The “bad” muslim should take that as a supreme compliment.
In this case “bad” is good for humanity…
DavidW says
For me, there are good people who happen to be ‘muslims’. However, no ‘good’ muslim is a good person (given the list above)
elee says
This is self-evident to you from your experience and to me from a minimal reading of information in the public domain for centuries. I wouldn’t expect any Muslims to own up to this stuff in public. So what ails the rest of the world?
Naildriver says
The Muslim devotee will say that there is no contradiction because it’s merely a question of semantics, interpretation, or abrogation.
It’ll take a lead pipe to the side of a devotees head to even persuade him Allah would not protect him. Islam is poison and Muslims cannot be cleansed of it for a variety of reasons — Churchill observed this, and foresaw how Islam tends to grow even in today’s world. And this isn’t because he saw any virtue in it. Islam appeals to the worst in men, and there is plenty enough of that.
Radical preventitives to Islam need to be enacted from our governments three branches bi partisan efforts or the US will become a religious cesspool of fanatics and idiots running things.
Boromir's Horn says
#35 I love my daughter so much I want her to marry a man that she loves
#36 I love my son so much I don’t want him to fall for the “die as a martyr” scam
#37 I love my wife so much I want her to do things that please her
#38 I love my family so much I decided to be honest with them about Islam
OTTER says
If we are to ever succeed in this life or death struggle against Islam, we in the JW readership and others who see Islam for what it is, must take up the challenge of understanding why it has been so successful in gathering adherents. This should be a dispassionate and cold blooded look at an enemy for defeating it. If it has spread, despite the truth of what Ms. Pandavar says, then we ought to put our best minds together. Merely preaching to the choir will not do, and we are the choir.
I urge Ms. Pandavar to take up this challenge.
Michael Copeland says
“The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust:
to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature…”
John Quincy Adams,
6th president of the United States
Islam attracts violent people: it authorises criminal behaviour.
Peter Clemerson says
To Otter,
Thank you for your comment. I think it can be broken down into two parts
1. Why has Islam been so successful over the centuries in capturing the minds of its adherents?
2. What can we, Islam’s opponents, do to combat this success?
There must be many books, some by Robert, that answer the first question and I will leave it to Anjuli to provide a digest of their reasoning.
As to the second, your comment raises one of the most difficult problems facing opponents of Islam: how to get Muslims to pay attention to us. Most assuredly, they will not be reading JW in significant numbers.
The Qur’an’s author(s?) were well aware of its opponents and prepared the Believers on how to combat their influence; the Believers are to separate themselves. The Q explicitly instructs Muslims not to take non-Muslims as friends at least seven times: 3.28, 3.118, 4.49, 5.51, 5.81, 60.1 and 60.13. (BTW, this technique is practiced by the more extreme faithful of all religions, e.g. ultra-orthodox Jews and Scientologists.)
So how does one overcome this separation? When the occasion presents itself, I attend “Ask a Muslim anything” and “Islamic Open Day” meetings and come prepared with tricky questions, most of which the speaker has faced many times before so I get well rehearsed answers in reply.
The virtue of such questioning is not in the attempt to convert the speakers, an impossible task, but to demonstrate to other people in the audience the weaknesses in the replies, often by follow-up questions or denials of the claims to truth that the first response is dependent upon. In my opinion, to attempt conversion from Islam to anything else at a single meeting is foolishness. I therefore go for three purposes:
1. to plant skepticism in the minds of those non-Muslims who have come to the meeting out of curiosity,
2 to enable some Muslims present to hear arguments undermining Islam that may be new to them with a view to placing doubt in their minds for the first time,
3. to reinforce doubt in the minds of those Muslims who are already entertaining it.
Of course, you can not know whether and to what degree any of these objectives are achieved but it’s better to do something like this than just wring your hands.
The questioning I mention above should probably best be done by a small coterie of confederates who can follow up each others’ questions when the replies from the speaker are dubious or dishonest.
Preparation is important. Who asks which question? What reply do you anticipate and what is the follow-up statement or question that will undermine it? I can not claim to have done all this, as up to now I have gone to these meetings on my own but next time, I will go as one of a dispersed group.
Regards and thanks,
Peter Clemerson
gravenimage says
Some people love violence and domination. This is why Islam has been so successful in prisons among violent felons.
Niemoller says
Very good point, and clearly more evidence that the Islam is a man-made ideology littered with errors in logic and many other ways. It’s not even a carefully constructed ideology at that, but one typical of backward warlords whose scribes had to polish it up in a hurry when it hit the big time. They did a slipshod job and much of the world has been suffering from their haste ever since.
Reziac says
Praise be to those backward warlords — had they created a carefully-crafted ideology, Islam would be a coherent force and would long since rule the world.
Jay says
I hate that death cult myself, but this argument is complete nonsense. The shahada is in the Quran & one of the 5 pillars, the takbir is neither. So the former will always trump the latter, and there can (by theological definition) be no contradiction. And even if both were quranic, there would still be no contradiction. People have always believed in different gods than the Mohammedan god, back in the times when the Quran was written (i.e. transposed from Christian sources), through the ages until today. So if a kafir says e.g. “I believe in Christ”, a Muslim could answer “good for you, but Allah is greater”, which is the more diplomatic response, or he could as well say “good for you, but there is no god but Allah”. The latter is more explicit: it means that, while there may be belief in other gods, they’re just fake gods in the eyes of the Muslim. The former is more vague, but equally true for fake other gods & true other gods: if the other gods are true (or possibly true) like Allah, then Allah is greater (by proclamation & faith), and if the other gods are fake, are no real gods, then Allah is also greater (by nature). The shahada specifies the takbir. Of course, historically it was the other way around, i.e. the takbir generalized the shahada.
Anjuli Pandavar says
Thank you for your thoughtful response.
There is another way of arguing that “Allahu-akbar” and “La-illaha-illallah” are not in contradiction, and that would be to say that they occupy different positions in a process, i.e., are sequential. Allah is greater than your god; kill, kill, kill, subjugate, subjugate, subjugate; other god is dead; there is no god but Allah. In other words, these are the opening and closing proclamations of jihad. I think this might be a stronger argument against mine than the one you put forward.
Jihad is, in fact, my starting point. Although jihad is not one of the five pillars, it is, for all intents and purposes, the sixth pillar of Islam (although Charlie Hebdo would disagree, assigning that honour to Tariq Ramadan’s phallus). Its war-cry, “Allahu-akbar,” I would argue, is on a par with the shahada, “La-illaha-illallah.” Allahu-akbar is not about interfaith dialogue, as you construct in your scenario, because Islam does not engage in dialogue; it subjugates, it dominates. It is also not a diplomatic version of, “There is no god but Allah,” as you’re suggesting. Muslims engage in all manner of lying and deceit, but diplomacy is beyond the rhetorical abilities of most of them. The closest they get is to evade the point altogether.
You point out that the takbir is not part of the five pillars, thereby to relegate Allahu-akbar to a lesser role in Islam than the shahada. Allahu-akbar is, at the very least, equal to La-illaha-illallah. The five-times-a-day adhan recites first the takbir (anything from two to eight times, depending on the sect, but mostly four times), followed by the shahada (twice). The adhan ends with two takbirs followed by one shahada (shia, two). The takbir appears twenty-two times on the Iranian flag, with no shahada. It appears once on the Iraqi flag, with no shahada. The flag of Afghanistan has both the shahada and the takbir (in that order), The Saudi and ISIS flags have only the shahada (loosely speaking, but you know what I mean).
To return to jihad, I would say that the takbir is more important than the shahada. Islam propagates itself through “Allahu-akbar!” not through “La-illaha-illallah.” It intimidates through the takbir, instilling fear in the hearts of unbelievers. Through bitter experience, non-Muslims have come to recognise “Allahu-akbar!” as a prelude to mass murder, very possibly of themselves. And when not announcing a killing spree, the takbir dominates by waking everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, at some ridiculous hour in the pre-dawn, so the adhan can tell everyone that salah is better than sleep! Allahu-akbar declares which gang controls this turf; la-illaha-illallah is purely the thumbprint confirming a Muslim’s membership of that gang.
Please indulge me for a necessary digression. My motivation for writing “The Muslim’s Inner Struggles” here on JW is my argument that jihad, in the historic sequence of Allahu-akbar; kill, kill, kill, subjugate, subjugate, subjugate; other god is dead; la-illaha-illallah, is no longer possible. Historically, the lightning massacre was critical to jihad. Before the survivors knew what had hit them, they were on the ground looking up the blade of a bloody sword at a bearded freak offering them some choices. That critical step is no longer possible. The world now consists of nation-states, each with defensible borders, and the infidel armies defending those borders are too strong for today’s Muslim armies. I argue there that subjugation can no longer proceed at the point of a sword, forcing Muslims to resort to tactics that are completely out of character and for which Islam does not equip them: undermine infidel societies from within. This problem for jihad is compounded by infidel societies today comprising free, autonomous individuals. So not only can Muslims on jihad no longer murder their way to overlordship, they also have the problem of persuading freethinking, critically-minded, rational people generally more informed, educated and civilised than them to submit to their obviously barbaric creed. In this scenario, they can only prevail by infidels undermining themselves, which is why PC, multiculturalism, the European Union and the United Nations are so critical to jihad. But the price of this arrangement is that Muslims have to live amongst infidels for decades, exposing themselves to critical examination, challenge and ridicule such as has never been possible before.
The point of this long digression is to highlight that the sequence of “Allah is greater than your god; kill, kill, kill, subjugate, subjugate, subjugate; other god is dead; there is no god but Allah,” large Muslim populations living amongst infidels in infidel lands at the same time as the entire Dar al-Islam is exposed to the eyes and ears of the world, has been truncated the jihad process to “Allah is greater than your god; there is no god but Allah.” “Allahu-akbar” and “La-illaha-illallah” are forced into a relation that is historically anachronistic. Whereas they may not previously have been in contradiction, they are now. My aim in writing the piece was to place one more implement into the hands of those Muslims inching their way towards apostasy.
Boromir's Horn says
Anjuli Pandavar says “Please indulge me for a necessary digression”
It is our pleasure
Kerry Wade says
Mine too.
gravenimage says
+1
Michael Copeland says
When Islamic State desecrated and destroyed the tomb of Saint Ilian at the monastery of St. Ilian, the reason given was “It is dedicated to a God other than Allah”.
ELI says
“Muslim response to the current CoVID-19 pandemic being both a bizarre and a tragic example of this)”
Muslim countries have been on lockdown for weeks, what response are you talking about? Idiot clerics on memri don’t make policy you know.
gravenimage says
They set policy if there are enough of them, and they are threatening enough:
“Pakistan: Muslim clerics say ‘it isn’t possible to close mosques under any circumstances in an Islamic country’”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/04/pakistan-muslim-clerics-say-it-isnt-possible-to-close-mosques-under-any-circumstances-in-an-islamic-country
“Pakistan: Muslims crowd into mosques, ‘We don’t believe in coronavirus, we believe in Allah’”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/03/pakistan-muslims-crowd-into-mosques-we-dont-believe-in-coronavirus-we-believe-in-allah
And this isn’t just happening in Pakistan.
wpm says
Who makes policy ??Leaders in Iran are screaming it is a Jewish and American made illness(while every scientist in the world agrees it came out of China) while still holding services in Mosques,Mosques in Indian ,other south east Asian Nations are still holding services in Mosques.No one in Moslem majority countries will shut down the Mosques or confront the” idiot clerics” or their loyal followers .What “lock down” are you talking about in most Islamic run countries?
ELI says
There are lockdowns in effect for weeks in North Africa Morocco, Tunisia , Algeria. Even jihadwatch had an article on the lockdown in Morocco that was being protested by 20 salafists.
https://www.reuters.com/article/tunisia-coronavirus/tunisia-suspends-prayers-in-mosque-bans-gatherings-due-to-coronavirus-idUSL8N2B673Q
https://www.panapress.com/Morocco-Public-places-and-mosque-a_630632602-lang2.html
https://salaamgateway.com/story/algeria-shutters-mosques-temporarily-closes-land-border-with-tunisia-amid-covid-19-fears
Iraq: “Like other mosques across the country, the doors of Mousawi Grand Mosque in Iraq’s southern city of Basra have been shut to worshippers and visitors.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/praying-time-covid-19-world-largest-mosques-adapted-200406112601868.html
Kuwait: “Kuwait has also taken steps to prevent the spread of Corona, including banning prayer in mosques nationwide. Instead of coming to the mosque in Kuwait, people are being encouraged to pray at their homes.”
https://www.theconsul.com.pk/2020/03/21/mosques-are-not-closed-in-pakistan/
Everyone knows about the Saudi lockdown, if you don;t you might want to take 4 seconds and use google
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8180781/Saudi-Arabia-imposes-lockdown-holy-cities-Mecca-Medina-combat-coronavirus.html
I mean all you need to do is take a few seconds instead of relying on your jihadwatch fed assumptions. All other countries have taken the same measures.
gravenimage says
Why is ELI pretending that those on Jihad Watch are uninformed? Because, really, he has nothing else.
None of this, of course, changes the fact that so many pious Muslims–including Islamic clerics–are flouting these safeguards, and even calling for the deliberate spreading of the contagion among Infidels.
ELI says
I am answering this question”What “lock down” are you talking about in most Islamic run countries?”
Are you pretending to be a moron? am I allowed to answer someone’s question without your stupid interruptions and accusations?
fuck off
Anjuli Pandavar says
GI, we all know that ELI isn’t interested in anything but defending Islam and Muslims, no matter what (oh, and vilifying JW). It wouldn’t interest him, for example, to know that the lock-downs in Arab and Muslim countries, such as they are, have to be militarily-imposed, in any case an option only open to those Muslim governments not already vulnerable, which most of them are. Military imposition is necessary because the population itself — never mind the clergy — believes that Allah will protect them, failing which, Allah will have predetermined otherwise anyway. So opposed is the population to lock-downs and such movement restrictions, that they will defy them, especially for attending mosque (now more than ever), that it is necessary to bring in the army to impose it. Where the clergy is strong enough, imposing lock-downs risks civil war. So the lock-downs, even where militarily-imposed, are invariably for too short a time.
Apart from that, though, a far more serious problem is the honour-shame construct of these societies. There is no Muslim or Arab government that can know the true extent of the problem. Even in the case of those that have the best technology and expert support available to them, such as the PA gets from Israel, shame will still ensure serious underreporting. And this shame is not easily overcome. There is personal shame (avoid reporting symptoms), never causing those above you to lose face (avoid pointing out dangerous practices to your boss), never acknowledging anything negative about Islam (insist that all is in Allah’s hands) and there is nothing wrong with the country (release completely made-up figures). So yes, ELI is right, there are lock-downs, but you’d have to be extremely uncritical not to see just how compromised those “lock-downs” are.
Too little, too late, too half-hearted, too piecemeal and too short. That is what ELI can never acknowledge.
Islamaphone says
How do you say ‘there is no god but if there were, Allah would be greater’ in Arabic?
Wellington says
Yes, it is a contradiction per ordinary logic, but never mind because with Islamthink all kinds of contradictions are reconciled in the deficient, pathetic Muslim mind. As another example, Muslims admire Hitler and buy copies of Mein Kampf in huge numbers but then turn around and often times call those who oppose what Islam intends for us all as Nazis. Here’s another: Islam demands religious tolerance for itself in Western lands but denies it to non-Muslims in Muslim lands. And yet one more: the ridiculous abrogation rot associated with the Koran, to wit, this Sura says something and another Sura says the opposite something and thus one of the two Sura is negated all the while the Koran is held forward as the perfect text of the Islamic deity—in short, abrogation makes no sense except in the world of Islamithink.
Expecting reason, logic, common sense—never mind true decency for all—from a Muslim is like expecting love for Jews from a Nazi or admiration for capitalism from a Marxist. Not even worth the time. Put another way, with Islam all things awful, stupid AND contradictory are possible.
I’m so fed up with Islam. The wonder of it all is that most everyone by now is not.
gravenimage says
I’m sick to death of this crap, as well–with the emphasis on death.
Charlie says
Not sure I really care, either way. I will guarantee any individual, if you come at me with a weapon, yelling either phrase, YOU will be shot. God can sort it out!:-)
gravenimage says
The contradiction between “Allahu akbar” and “La illaha illallah” (There is no god but Allah)
………………..
This is true. But since when have Muslims ever had to be logical or consistent? Still doesn’t mean they won’t kill you for questioning their bs, though.
Reziac says
Problem is the average Muslim is far more afraid of going to hell, or of being killed by his fellows, than he is concerned about Islam’s inherent contradictions.
Patrick B. Ludwig says
While I detest and despise islam I must still point out a flaw in your logical and linguistic reasoning.
While “allahu akbar” is a comparative and accurately translates as “allah is greater”, the phrase does not imply – or acknowledge – the existence of other gods.
It merely implies that “allah” is a priori greater than anything, real and/or imaginable.
The phrase alone does not even imply that this entity named “allah” is a god. This is reserved for the second part which states that there exists no god except this particular named entity.
It also reinforces that “allah” ist a proper name and not a category/generic term: “god”. Here the arabic term “ilah”.
This is a step further from the Bible where the actual existence of other gods is not actually denied in several places – “thou shalt not suffer other gods next to Me”, “I am a jealous god”.
In the Old Testament in particular, He states that He is the God of Israel – not necessarily of all nations.
The latter – that He IS the legitimate god of all nations – is subhect of the New Testamebt with the arrival of Jesus.
Anjuli Pandavar says
Thanks, Patrick. I see what you’re saying re “Allah is greater than anything,” and have seen it translated this way. In formal logic, yes, I would go along with what you say, but I doubt that “Allahu-akbar” is a statement in formal logic. Outside of formal logic, “Allahu-akbar” would have no meaning if all it claims is that Allah is greater than everything. Every god is “great than everything.” That’s what makes a god a god. The claim only has meaning in the struggles between competing monotheisms (including pretentious monotheisms, like Islam), each vying to elevate their god above all others, hence the “true god/false god” false dichotomy. The claim can only have contextual relevance if it means the god of Islam, whose name is ‘Allah’, is greater than any other god one might care to put up against it.
I am neither in a position to argue the finer points of Arabic grammar, nor of Christian exegesis. For both, I have to defer to the authority of people such as yourself, and make up my mind on the basis of what I know and what makes sense to me. Without a doubt, this approach will sometimes trip me up, but there are sufficient resources available at our fingertips these days for me to quickly confirm my error and adapt. I do not expect my understanding, as laid out above, to be the last word on the subject and am grateful to be enlightened by anyone generous enough to do so.
Suchindranath Aiyer says
For Jehovah said unto Abraham, “Put no other Gods before me, for I am jealous God”
Giacomo Latta says
Absolutely great article. Now if you could just encapsulate it all in a little jingle that begins with ”Hey hey, ho ho” so that all our friends on the Left could understand and promote it.
janwog says
Since when logical thinking is a strength of Islam. The Quran is master of contradiction.