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EDITOR, The Tribune
FEED THE POOR
Feeding the poor and needy is an act that draws us closer to Allah. We earn His forgiveness, mercies and blessings through this act of charity.
“Anyone who looks after and works for a widow and a poor person is like a warrior fighting for Allah?s cause, or like a person who fasts during the day and prays all night. (Bukhari)
The Bahamas’ very own Muhammadan apologist, The Graduate, has fallen into the same egregious error as former US President George W Bush, when he mischaracterised Islam, the second largest religion in the world, as a religion of peace. I recall Bush bending over backwards to accommodate Muslims living in the US following the 9/11 attacks on America by Al-Qaeda terrorists. Assuming The Graduate is either Catholic or Anglican, he would undoubtedly have some knowledge about the Battle of Tours in 732, between the Frankish and Burgundian forces of Charles Martel and the Islamic forces of the Umayyad Caliphate. Had the latter prevailed, all Europe and Western civilisation would’ve been Islamised. There would’ve been no “Great Satan” for Bahamians to travel to. Worse still, there would’ve been no Bahamas.
According to a 2015 census, Islam claims a membership of 1.8 billion adherents, with approximately 1.5 billion or 85 percent belonging to the Sunni denomination. Between 240 – 340 million Muslims are Shiites. When an informed non-Muslim expresses grave misgivings about Islam, he isn’t necessarily seeking to tar every Muslim with the same brush as he would a terrorist. Indeed, I believe that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are peaceful people, in spite of Islamic theology. What informed non-Muslims are saying is that Islamic terrorists and terrorist organisations, such as Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Muammar Gaddafi, Yasser Arafat, Boko Haram, the Taliban, ISIS, Indonesian Mujahedeen Council, Hamas, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Muslim Brotherhood, to list a few, have simply carried out Islamic ideology and its attendant dar al-harb sectarianism to its logical conclusion. Consequently, the non-Muslim, while in some cases is relegated to dhimmi status in some Islamic countries, is considered an “infidel” by all Muslims, be they peaceful or otherwise. At the risk of offending the sensibilities of The Graduate and Bahamian Muslims, the Osama bin Ladens of the Islamic world are drawing their inspiration from the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad. No credible historian of Islam would deny that Muhammad was a man of war, especially during a time of peace.
Sura 9:5 reads, “When the sacred months have passed, kill the polytheists (non-Muslims) wherever you find them. And capture them, and besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayers, and pay the alms, then let them go their way. Allah is most forgiving, most merciful.” Sura 61:4 says that Allah loves those who fight in his cause. Of the 114 suras in the Qur’an, sura 9 is one of the the most violent. Of particular note to human rights organisations is sura 4:34, where Muslim men are given divine permission to beat their wives. Muslim apologists have attempted to explain this verse away by clumsily arguing that the word “beat” in the original Arabic simply means to tap lightly on the wrist, which is laughable. And not to be outdone by the Qur’an, the Hadith, the other authoritative source in Islam, says in volumes one and eight that Muhammad tortured people. The Graduate accused me of casting aspersions on the founder of Islam for alluding to his little-known racism which has incredulously escaped the notice of many students of comparative religion. While black people are assigned to hell on the basis of their skin colour in sura 3:106, white people are assigned to paradise because they’re white in sura 3:107. What’s more, while the Hadith goes to great lengths in declaring that Muhammad was white, black people are derogatorily labeled “raisin heads” in volumes one and nine and as “slaves” in volume nine. Additionally, Muhammad, according to the Hadith in volume six, owned black slaves — something most Nation of Islam adherents are not aware of. In fact, while close to 11 million Africans were enslaved by the Europeans during the Transatlantic slave trade era between the 16th and 19th century, Arab Muslims had enslaved a staggering 17 million East Africans during the same period. In light of the foregoing, if there’s anyone who should get their “facts straight lest he becomes a purveyor of the same kind of fake news and misinformation that passes for fact,” it is The Graduate.
KEVIN EVANS
Grand Bahama
January 29, 2020.
