My answer to What are some proofs that Islam is not a religion of peace?

That is a strange question. When did Islam find peace since its inception?

Islam was born in fratricidal battles within the tribes that lived around Mecca. The fights were intended to prevent people from worshipping the Gods of their choice and to make them worship a God imported from Jewish-Christian belief of a montheistic God, renamed Allah from Jehovah and praised by Christians as Aleluya. Moses became Moosa, Abrahim Ibrahim, Joseph Yusuph, David- Dawood.. all names that was till then unknown among the navive Arabs. (You would never find a Moosa, Ibrahim or Dawood among the Caliphs or early Muslims in history). The locals were attacked, looted and the bounties divided among Allah the new God, Muhammad his Prophet and the looters themselves.

There are at least 190 verses in the Quran that call for violence against non-believers, most of them calling the believers to smite the non believers. The apologists, now called moderate Muslims, explain that one should read these Surahs in context. What is the context? That they were all meant for the soldiers who were fighting the Arabs of the time who resisted Islamization, and not for waging war against people now. If that be the case, why are those stanzas of Quran still being taught to litte children of impressionable minds?

Post Khadijah the first wife, Muhammad married some fourteen women to ‘make peace’ within the tribe. After his own death, fathers-in-law turned against the favourite son-in-law to whom Muhammad had gifted his sword (supposedly a gift from God) as a sign of inheritance. Umar, the man who fought Islam most of his life and suddenly got converted when he heard a Surah being recited in his house (all turncoats have some such reason, even for party-hoppers of today; a-la Paul of Christianity) stoutly opposed Ali donning his rightful inheritence, and caused the death of Muhammad’s most beloved daughter Fatima.

Of those who took Muhammad’s place as the leaders (Caliphs) of Islam, Abu Bakr, who gave his six-year old daughter to 52-year-old Muhammad in marriage (peacefully consummated when the child was nine!) became the first Caliph, and thankfully died of illness. Umar, the other Father-in-law of Muhammad who killed Muhammad’s daughter, was assassinated while leading a prayer. You will see through history that the mosque had been a killing field for Muslims till the tradition goes on every Friday in Pakistan. The next one, Uthman, who married  two daughters of Muhammad, too was assassinated after a seige on his house. So much for the respect for Caliphs whom Muhammad had assigned as the guides of Islam after him.

Then came the much awaited chance for the Cousin-cum-son-in-law Ali, husband of favourite daughter Fatima as well as Muhammad’s grandaughter (Zainab), was assassinated after a relatively long reign (four years) through tumultous times. Ali’s son Hussein was attacked and brutally killed with all his kin and kids within a few months of taking over a shaky throne, thereby eliminating the last of the bloodline of the Prophet of of Islam.

Since then, it has been a history of forceful attack and capture of peaceful nations, all the way from Spain in the West, capturing by surprise, nocturnal attacks, ruthless killing of unarmed Zoratrians in Iran, genocide of multi-faith and religiously tolerant ‘Hindus’ of India, the bloodletting and mayhem gradually spreading all the way to the archepelagoes of the Far East. The history of Isamic reign in the entire 0–50 degrees latitudinal belt in Europe has been a history of bloodshed, no doubt abetted by the ‘peaceful’ Christians of Europe and their idea of Jihad – which they called Crusade. Ghori, Ghazni , Timur and Babar boast of the thousands of Hindus they murdered by the sword, trampled under elephants, or skinned alive. Babarnama, a book of beautiful poetic prose, also has detailed account of the genocide committed on non-believers.

No Muslim ruler lived in peace while his sons plotted against him as well as against each other. Whether for Caliphs, Kings or Presidents, assassination has been a route to transfer of power through Islamic history. There were more battles between the masters and the slaves, Emperors and governers, fathers and sons, brothers and brothers in Islamic history. Aurangazeb, a saintly figure for Muslims and a dastardly villain for others, had his elder brother Dara Shukoh beheaded in cold blood after being captured. Then he had Dara’s head washed and brought before him, allegedly to shed tears! I am not forgetting the story of a fratricidal war that Hindus gloat over – Mahabharata,

There are at least 25 independent nations in the Arabian Peninsula and there are multiple organizations and associations among them to bring unity and common cause (mostly of oil – not welfare of citizens), but there is neither common cause nor peace. Qatar, one of the freer nations is thrown out of the GCC and Arab brotherhood; Saudi Arabia is fighting a bloody war in Yemen, killing civilians en masse , following the example of Americans who bombed Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and much of the Arabian peninsula from time to time.

For want of peace among themselves, the 370 milion Muslims of Arabia have not been able to stand up to an 8.5 million Israel who play cat-and-mouse with a helpless and unarmed Muslim Palestine population of 4.5 million! Saudi Arabia, which is the self-proclaimed protector of Islam while milking the pious who throng Mecca and Madina, have a peace treaty with Israel; so has the other powerful nation – Egypt.

They all oppose Hamaz, the Sunni faction that fight from the Gaza strip as well as Hizbollah, the Shia militants who are the few who try to liberate Palestine from outside. In South Sudan, light-skinned Muslims who consider themselves Arabs systematically kill black Sudanese and rape their women. The Islamic State, the newly established truthful followers of the Quran (and its call to kill the kafurs wherever you find them) have killed more Muslims than Yazidis, and more Yazidis than Christians.

Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims, but their Sunni-Mulsim neighbours – Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and half-Sunni Iraq – bomb and kill Kurds wherever they find them. While the Kurds fight Islamic State, others who are fighting Islamic state also fight them. In the meanwhile, Islamic principles have managed to wipe out the remnants of the hoary hisory of the Middle-Eastern land which was the cradle of civilization – Mosul, Palmyrah, Baghdad. not forgetting the Bamian Buddhas of Afghanistan – unparalleled for their inntrinsic beauty and a breathtaking work of rock sculpture revealing human skills developed 2000 years ago and  presumably one of the first man-made structures that gave the visitor an aerial view of the beautiful valley below from its top ‘viewing balcony’. Pakistan keeps the remnants of Mohan Jo Daro ad Harappa for their tourism value, but the fnatics will get their hammer on them sooner or later.

Half-Shia Iraq was at war with full-Shia Iran for eleven years, both using American weapons to kill millions of each other. American weapons were tried and tested by Muslims against Muslims of Afghanistan in the name of fighting communism. Islamic Iraq attacked Islamic Kuwait, super-Muslim Saudi Arabia invited Christian weaponry and deadly airplanes to defeat the Muslim Iraq. A decade later, same Saudis helped capture a previously disarmed Saddam Hussein who went to the gallows with a Quran in his hand. Seems Allah did not notice the Quran while the noose tightened around the arteries of the man who napalmed Kurds like  so many locusts.

In Islamic but Alawi Syria, it is difficult to gauge who is fighting whom – but it is largely a fight between Shia and Sunni Muslims where Russians and Americans (and their European lackeys) fish in troubled waters. Iran and Saudis fight their proxy wars in Syria and Yemen. Saudi Arabia has no qualms about Israel piling up nuclear arms, but fight tooth and nail along with Americans against Iranians enriching their Uranium even for peaceful purposes. Libyan Muslims had no hesitation to pull out and lynch a benign dictator from under a culvert – the man who gave them free education, free medical services and literally eradicated poverty – something no other Muslim ruler anywhere ever achieved.

Pakistan (meaning Pure land) came into existence as an ideal Muslim nation. To the West, it has no friend in Shia Iran, and are virtual enemies with Sunni-majority Afghanistan to the North. To the East it is on a thousand-year war with India, who have as many Muslims as there are in Pakistan. It tortured and killed thousands in East Pakistan in the sixties and early seventy till the latter broke off and formed an independent nation in 1971, no doubt with the active help of the allegedly Hindu India where the General who led the war was a Parsi, the one who accepted the surrender of over 90,000 soldiers and officers was a Jew and the Prime Minister who politically manoeuvred the the Nation to victory was a Hindu widow of another Parsi. If India were a Muslim-majority nation, it would have disintegrated even before Pakistan did. Its multiplicity strengthens its unity, which many Hindus under the new dispensation of a RSS sanchalak fail to comprehend

There is a mosque attack killing dozens in Egypt every other friday; there is an even more horrendous attack in mosques in Pakistan every Friday. The Taliban (‘Students’) who were trained by Pakistani intelligence with the help of CIA in the nineties to fight Russia and then to fight India over Kashmir, turned against its masters, doing suicide bombing across the length and width of the country, Shooting 128 children writing their exams – a figure slightly smaller than the number killed by ten men who sneaked in by Boat into Bombay.

There are regualr murders by mutual hatred among Sunnis, Shias, Wahabis, Deobandis , Hazaras and Sufis. You would expect Pakistanis to be proud of Abdus Salam, the great particle physics scientist who won a Nobel Prize (only one for science among Muslims), but they are not – because he was an Ahmediya Muslim. I am yet to meet a Pakistani, even an elite educated one, who has a good word for the young girl who fought for the education of girls, was shot by pious Muslims for the crime, saved by Christians and awarded the second Nobel prize for a person of Pakistani origin. You would expect Muslims of India to be proud of APJ Abdul Kalam, the most popular scientist-President of India, but they are not because Kalam occasionally quoted from the Gita! Neither are they proud of Azim Premji, whose charity foundation is one of the largest in the world and who set aside a large share of his fortune for education – because he is an Ismaili Muslim! Nobody in Pakistan (except the few Shias) likes to be reminded that their founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnahm was a Khoja Shia Muslim. So much for peace among the followers of Prophet Muhammad. When you look at the mutual hostility among sects, you’d find that Islam is a badly fractured religion.

Islam has a two-pronged strategy – Spread the religion even by killing the Kafurs if they don’t comply (a Quranic decree), and stone the faithful (particularly women) who is suspected to have strayed. So far, the second strategy has been winning.

Most individual Muslims I know are peaceful, progressive-minded ladies and gentlemen. They would rather migrate to Canada or the United States than even to UAE or Saudi Arabia. At Dubai airport I discovered that Muslims from Pakistan were detained for longer interrogation than I, with a Hindu name, was allowed to pass without ado. Refugees from Syria, Egypt and Sudan as well as opportunists from Pakistan and Afghanistan would rather throng to a hostile European nation, risking death by drowning, than to a Muslim nation in their own neighbourhood!

Christianity and Islam are violent in principle and practice. Buddhism is peaceful in principle, but has been violent in recent history. Christianity has mellowed in recent years, American South being an exception. Islam has been trying to take its place. Fortunately, Allah did not give Islam the aircraft-making skills, so their violence is still stuck on ground or dependend on borrowed airplanes. That, fortunately, makes them a little less violent on the ground than the Christian bullies of America.

HOME