Is It Possible To Question Islam?

What an interesting question?  Can one question the history of Islam?  Did Muhammad actually exist?  Was he really illiterate?  Creeping Sharia asks those and other questions.

The question really should be whether it is possible to question Islam and not be threatened, injured or killed, slandered, or arrested. Robert Spencer via PJ Media » Is It Still Possible to Question Islam?.

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Is it “Islamophobic” to question whether or not the standard picture of Muhammad as depicted in Muslim texts is historically accurate?

Certainly many people think so, notably the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC is a fifty-six nation body (plus the Palestinian Authority) that, since the demise of the Soviet Union, comprises the largest voting bloc at the United Nations. It has been working for years to compel the UN to criminalize “Islamophobia.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a closed-door meeting with the OIC in December 2011, apparently to facilitate just that and figure out ways to circumvent the First Amendment’s protection of the freedom of speech.

Journalist Claire Berlinski notes that “the neologism ‘Islamophobia’ did not simply emerge ex nihilo”:

It was invented, deliberately, by a Muslim Brotherhood front organization, the International Institute for Islamic Thought, which is based in Northern Virginia. … Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, a former member of the IIIT who has renounced the group in disgust, was an eyewitness to the creation of the word. “This loathsome term,” he writes, “is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.”

Yet the mainstream media has for the most part bought into this perspective, treating all investigation of how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism as “Islamophobic,” however useful it might be to understand the motives and goals of those who have vowed to destroy the U.S. and Western civilization. Into this atmosphere comes my book Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins, which doesn’t touch directly on terror issues at all, but does demonstrate that Islam was political, supremacist, and violent before it was religious — a fact with considerable implications for today’s political scene.

In broad outline, the accepted story of Islam’s origins is well known. It begins with an Arabian merchant of the Quraysh tribe of Mecca, known to the world as Muhammad, a name that means the “praised one.” He rejected the polytheism of his tribe and was given to frequent prayer in the hills and caves outside Mecca. In the year 610, when he was forty, he was praying in a cave on Mount Hira, about two miles from Mecca, when he was suddenly confronted by the angel Gabriel, who commanded him to recite.

For the next twenty-three years, until his death in 632, Muhammad did just that: He recited the messages he received from Gabriel, presenting them to his followers as the pure and unadulterated word of the supreme and only God. Many of his followers memorized portions. The Arabia in which Islam was born was an oral culture that respected poetic achievement, and thus the prodigious feats of memory required to memorize lengthy suras were not so unusual. After Muhammad’s death, the revelations he had received were collected together into the Qur’an, or “Recitation,” from the accounts of those who had memorized them or written them down.
Muslims around the globe are not the only ones who take this account for granted; even non-Muslims generally accept the broad contours of this narrative, which has been told and retold for centuries. However, virtually none of that standard account stands up to historical scrutiny, for several key reasons:

• No record of Muhammad’s reported death in 632 appears until more than a century after that date.
• The early accounts written by the people the Arabs conquered never mention Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur’an. They call the conquerors “Ishmaelites,” “Saracens,”“Muha- jirun,” and “Hagarians,” but never “Muslims.”
• The Arab conquerors, in their coins and inscriptions, don’t mention Islam or the Qur’an for the first six decades of their conquests. Mentions of “Muhammad” are non-specific and on at least two occasions are accompanied by a cross. The word can be used not only as a proper name but also as an honorific.
• The Qur’an, even by the canonical Muslim account, was not distributed in its present form until the 650s. Contradicting that standard account is the fact that neither the Arabians nor the Christians and Jews in the region mention the Qur’an until the early eighth century.
• During the reign of the caliph Muawiya (661–680), the Arabs constructed at least one public building whose inscription was headed by a cross – a symbol abhorrent to Islam.

The lack of confirming detail in the historical record, the late development of biographical material about the Islamic prophet, the atmosphere of political and religious factionalism in which that material developed, and much more suggest that the Muhammad of Islamic tradition did not exist, or if he did, he was substantially different from how that tradition portrays him.

Right of Free Speech

Cross posted by Findalis of Monkey in the Middle


Hat tip to Miss Beth of Miss Beth's Victory Dance

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This is the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution. Although it says Congress, the meaning has been made clear over the last 221 years that this august document was ratified and made into the basis of law for the United States of America.

There have been many challenges to this Amendment over the years, but the one point that the courts have all agreed on is that all people have the right to speak their mind, regardless of their race, religion, occupation or political associations. This is a right that many people in the world, even in the Western world, have.

Under the 1st Amendment, the government, whether it is Federal, State or Local, does not have the right to arrest you for your ideas. Even when these ideas are contrary to public belief. Even if they go against the majority opinion. Even if they are bigoted and hateful. You have a right to say and print these ideas.

Until now.

And the censorship has come from Attorneys at that. For in Arizona, the State bar has approved the right to censor private and public speech of the attorneys in that state.

Throwing our constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of association down the drain, the State Bar of Arizona is considering a revision to the attorneys' oath of office that would silence conservative viewpoints on gay issues. The oath would be revised to add the language in red as follows:

“I will not permit considerations of gender, race, religion, age, nationality, sexual orientation, disability, or social standing to influence my duty of care.”

The State Bar of Arizona is a mandatory association for attorneys wishing to practice law in Arizona. As such, they have the power to revoke the license to practice law in Arizona of any attorney they believe has violated this provision. A clause like this has no place in an oath of office, which should consist of nothing more but generally swearing allegiance to the laws of the land. Adding a controversial restriction on our First Amendment rights in order to promote a politically correct left wing agenda is inappropriate and a gross abuse of power by the Bar. If they go ahead with this curtailing of our rights, there will be plenty of lawsuits, and rightly so.

Please call or email the president of the State Bar of Arizona and express your objection to this outrageous infringement upon our rights, Ed.Novak@azbar.org or 602-340-7239.

Full Story

What sounds like a very innocent idea of not discriminating against a person based on certain criteria, can in fact become the basis of limited the rights of an person to speak their mind, in a public forum, as a private citizen. Thus an attorney with deep religious beliefs would be forced to argue a case in favor of abortion. Or in favor of gay marriage. The Bar Association while trying to be non-discriminatory has in fact forgotten the basic law itself. The right to free expression.

If one group of individuals can be forced to violate their beliefs, what is to stop other organizations from doing the same. How much longer will there actually be a Freedom of Speech in this nation?