2.

FROM A LETTER TO MY RELIGIOUS COUSIN

As mentioned, here is a copy of part of the original letter I forwarded to him: ______________________________

Hi [his name]

As requested, please find my thoughts about Islam that have led me to my present conclusions. As you are aware, leaving Islam was not a simple process that just happened to me overnight. It involved a great deal of carefully considered thought and was more of a gradual development over time. I have tried to be concise, but this letter might not be as short as you might have hoped as it turned into quite a cathartic exercise in the end. I dont really want to get involved in a debate regarding the merits of Islam, as I personally feel I have gone full circle and have reached a comfortable and robust conclusion with my thoughts. However, given its contentious nature, should you wish to reply I promise to read it. I dont expect you to agree with me, but I hope at least it goes in part to demonstrate there are 2 sides to every story. All I ask of you is that you read this without any precursory prejudice. When I was in my teens, I had a lot of questions and there were things in the religion that sat uncomfortably with me. As you know I regularly fasted, used to pray 5 times a day, even kept a tally on the wall for the kaza prayers I had missed in case I forgot to do them later. All in all I tried my best to remain a good Muslim. However I could never rid myself of my doubts. I wanted to be convinced by Islam on its own virtues without any precursory prejudice. I felt bad and alone, as I had never come across a Muslim apostate before; there had to be something evil and wrong with me. I kept quiet and became insular and with great sadness, the more I looked into Islam, the greater my doubts grew. I thought about this for a long period, as I did not want to disappoint my parents, and more to the point, Allah, by accepting such a reality. But I also felt that just because my parents and previous generations before them may have felt an innate ancestral obligation to follow the religion this did not necessarily have to be the same way with me. After all, they were brought up in a different time, place and situation. I remember on your previous visit in one of our discussions, you told me that in order to be a Muslim we had to accept that everything in the Quran is perfect, and simply our understanding that was limited. I could not keep reinterpreting the scriptures to taste otherwise, as you correctly claimed, I had to face the fact that I was not a Muslim. Thus began my journey into objectively investigating Islam, and reading the translation of the

Quran cover to cover, along with the history and Hadith of Islam to explain parts that were difficult to understand. It was then that the penny dropped. I finally decided I could no longer continue this charade, so I accepted it not only to you, but more reluctantly to myself that I was no longer a Muslim. I thank you as from that day my mind was finally set free from my self-imposed exile. I will not spend much time discussing the more commonly cited arguments used on Islam, as you will have heard them before, such as: A sons right to twice a daughters inheritance; its acceptance of men having four wives (but not vice versa) yet the Prophet having a special dispensation from Allah to have more; divorce being easier for a man to do than for a woman; a female witnesss testimony being worth half that of a mans; its attitude towards gay people; hijab covering of a womens face (although clearly the issue lies here with man) or the Prophet marrying a six year old and being intimate with her when she was nine years of age. I believe it would be all too easy to find some argument that would attempt to invalidate one or all of these points, such as: i) Its a misquote; Anyway until you learn to speak Arabic, then how do you know its an accurate translation? ii) Its out of context, and was only meant to apply to that day and age iii) Its a test of our faith to see if we will still believe despite the contradicting evidence, and only those with true knowledge and faith will pass it iv) Allah has infinitely more knowledge than us, so who are you to question his wisdom? v) And if you disagree with any of the above, then dont come back to me, read the Tafsir or go and find a scholar or somebody more knowledgeable who can provide you with an answer that satisfies you vi) And if (v) doesnt work, you havent tried hard enough; keep trying until you are convinced I am right However, I could reply to each point in turn: i) An omniscient God would not have allowed His book to be misquoted, or expect the modern world to learn 7th century Arabic, and leave innocent people to unwittingly do the wrong thing. Why did he allow errors to occur or not correct them when they were made, or even just regularly update the book Himself in all the worlds languages without fallible humans having to do it for him? ii) Islam and the prophet set a code of life purporting to apply to all ages, not just for one generation. Given that it was supposedly sent to us by an infinitely superior & omniscient being, then it would have had the foresight to be able to apply to all future generations. But if it was written by a man, say, as a means to control the populace in a day when legal and policing structures were not prevalent, or by somebody wanting power for other reasons (e.g. another type of David Koresh, Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard or Jim Jones) then it would have a distinctly less universal and progressive message, and reflect a worldview more in keeping with the time in which its message was delivered. Surely cultural relativistic arguments such as he acted like any other 7th century man (e.g. practised slavery & child

marriage) takes away some of the credibility given to him as a prophet and role model for 21st century man? iii) Let's imagine for a second that its all a test. How can we be sure what the real test is? Perhaps its to realise all these religions represent false man-made Gods? iv) If every human refused to question their Gods & their inherited beliefs, then we would all be worshipping clay idols (and still be none the wiser). v) Whose Tafsirs should we read? When it comes to Idda all the regular trusted Tafsirs unanimously agree it allows Muslim men to marry & divource pre-menstrual girls? That is according to Quran 65:4 And those who have not menstruated yet and Tafsir of Ibn Kathir; Al-Jalalayn; Maududi; Sheikh Muhammad ibn Uthaymeen; Al-Tabari; Ibn Abbas and AlWahidi. Or should we read the Tafsir of Surah Qalam by Ibn Kathir, which states the Earth is on top of a whale. This is the same whale whose liver Muslims will eat as their first meal in heaven, after which the earth itself will become their 'bread'. The official English translation has conveniently removed the whale story but it can still be found in the Arabic version. So which of the 50,000 scholars since the birth of Islam should we turn to? With an ever diversifying 73+ sects of Islam, there are so many interpretations of Islam that Muslim scholars fail to arrive on a consensus on even some of the most basic tenets of Islam. Nevertheless they all refer back to the Quran & Hadith, and are limited to how far they can reasonably re-interpret the scriptures. Why not speak to learned Muslims who have read far more than we could ever hope to, and have subsequently left Islam? Perhaps we should talk to Hassan who taught at Cat Stevens Islamia School for many years and 6 years ago closed the door on Islam as a work of fiction. Or the Islamic Egyptian Scholar & Imam Abbas Abdul Noor who also studied Islam at the prestigious Al-Azhar University, who after many years of doubt and currently at 80 years of age recently come to the same conclusion. You see it does not necessarily follow that the more you read about Islam then the more you will be convinced by its virtues, nor its divinical nature. In fact so often its the opposite {the remainder of this letter has been expanded into later chapters in this critique}

Yours Respectfully

Saif

______________________________ And that in a nutshell was my merry-go-round. I could not find acceptable explanations for the issues that concerned me. They sowed the seeds of doubt and forced me to take a closer look at the Qurans contents and to read its translation without blinkered vision, but this time without wishing, trying, or even forcing myself to believe in it. Yet the more I looked, the more I struggled.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~