How much do Muslims really understand about Islam?

When I was young I went to church at a time when the Catholic Mass was entirely recited in Latin. I didn’t understand a word of it but learned to follow the exchanges between the priest and the altar boys by memory. The priest would say: “Dominus vobiscum” and we would reply, “Et cum spiritu tuo”. It was years later that I learned the meaning of these words: “The Lord be with you” “And with thy spirit”. The Mass was celebrated the same way throughout the world with the same Latin exchanges until the liberals in the church decided to change it into the local languages. The old Latin Mass had a very mystical appeal that made it a very special event and the change to local languages caused a great division among faithful Catholics. But that is another story.

I am mentioning this as a way of comparing it to how Muslims worship in a mosque by reciting verses from the Qur’an. They too recite everything in Arabic because that is the way it is written in their holy book. Even though many Muslims are not able to read the words, to enable accuracy the verses are recited in a melodic fashion similar to the way an English language song is sung in a foreign country. And like many Catholics years ago, very few Muslims understand the meaning of the words they have been taught to recite from memory because Arabic is a very difficult language to read, write and speak by people who are not Arabs.

To give you an understanding of just how difficult Arabic is, here is a detailed explanation of the Arabic alphabet taken from Wikipedia:

The Arabic alphabet has 28 basic letters. Adaptations of the Arabic script for other languages, such as Persian, Ottoman, Urdu, Malay or Pashto, have additional letters, on which see below. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms.

Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots (ijam) above or below their central part, called rasm. These dots are an integral part of a letter, since they distinguish between letters that represent different sounds. For example, the Arabic letters transliterated as b and t have the same basic shape, but b has one dot below, ب‎, and t has two dots above, ت‎.

Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most of the letters within a word directly connected to the adjacent letters. Unlike cursive writing based on the Latin alphabet, the standard Arabic style is to have a substantially different shape depending on whether it will be connecting with a preceding and/or a succeeding letter, thus all primary letters have conditional forms for their glyphs, depending on whether they are at the beginning, middle or end of a word, so they may exhibit four distinct forms (initial, medial, final or isolated). However, six letters have only isolated or final form, and so force the following letter (if any) to take an initial or isolated form, as if there were a word break.

Some letters look almost the same in all four forms, while others show considerable variation. Generally, the initial and middle forms look similar except that in some letters the middle form starts with a short horizontal line on the right to ensure that it will connect with its preceding letter. The final and isolated forms, are also similar in appearance but the final form will also have a horizontal stroke on the right and, for some letters, a loop or longer line on the left with which to finish the word with a subtle ornamental flourish. In addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures (special shapes), including lām-alif.

For compatibility with previous standards, all these forms can be encoded separately in Unicode; however, they can also be inferred from their joining context, using the same encoding. The following table shows this common encoding, in addition to the compatibility encodings for their normally contextual forms (Arabic texts should be encoded today using only the common encoding, but the rendering must then infer the joining types to determine the correct glyph forms, with or without ligation).

The transliteration given is the widespread DIN 31635 standard, with some common alternatives. See the article Romanization of Arabic for details and various other transliteration schemes.

Regarding pronunciation, the phonetic values given are those of the pronunciation of literary Arabic, the standard which is taught in universities. In practice, pronunciation may vary considerably between the different varieties of Arabic. For more details concerning the pronunciation of Arabic, consult the article Arabic phonology.

The names of the Arabic letters can be thought of as abstractions of an older version where they were meaningful words in the Proto-Semitic language.

Six letters (أ,د,ذ,ر,ز,و) are not connected to the letter following them, therefore their initial form matches the isolated and their medial form matches the final.

This lengthy preamble is meant to illustrate a single point that will be taken with great contention by many Muslims. That point is that in reciting the numerous verses in the Qur’an calling for hatred and killing of unbelievers, which the Qur’an defines as everyone who is not a Muslim, many of the worshipers have no understanding of what they are saying. Whereas the Mass is filled with messages of love, the Qur’an is filled with messages of hate.

To perfectly illustrate this fact read the following article written by a Muslim who became disillusioned by the contradictions. Pay close attention to the second paragraph as it confirms everything I have said.

Should Almighty God Order Human Being to Kill Fellow Human?
by Syed Kamran Mirza, 24 January, 2005

In the theological dogmas of Islam there are plenty of unanswered questions to which most apologists play same old game of sidetracking and putting lame excuse to the “out of context”, or faulty Quranic translations. Among them, I like to discuss one question about which I have been asking/searching the truth for long time, but till today nobody could give me satisfactory answer.   This is the question of “killing/slaying” human being by another human being. Several years back when I read Holy Quran from beginning to end, I was totally dismayed when I found Allah telling/advocating to “kill” another human being by numerous Ayats.  I could not conceive this idea of insisting by Allah to kill somebody.  How come?  Question which bothered me most is why an omnipotent/almighty God will ask for killing human being—His own creation?  Who knows, may be this advice by Allah to “kill Kaffirs” is working as the main fuel/ingredients behind the very spirit of Islamic Jihad—helping create more and more Osama bin-Laden and other potential killer terrorists?

My father used to read Quran twice a day (after Fazr and before magreb) with so much devotion until his death.  One day I asked him if he (my father) understand what he was reciting with such a melody and devotions.  My father’s answer was negative. My father did not understand a single word of what he was reciting daily.  Now I can count how many thousands of times he uttered the word “killing”, of course, with sweet melody.   We can even count how many trillion trillion times this word of “killing” is being uttered by devout Muslims throughout the whole world.

Here is another Muslim view of Islam that very few Americans understand. Islam is all about conquest and the spread of mosques across America today is virtually identical to our own government building forts across the country as they expanded their territory.

By Ali Sina
“Islam is a religion of peace”. This is what our politically correct politicians keep telling us. But what is politically correct is not necessarily correct. The truth is that Islam is not a religion of peace. It is a religion of hate, of terror and of war. A thorough study of the Quran and Hadith reveal an Islam that is not being presented honestly by the Muslim propagandists and is not known to the majority of the people of the world including Muslim themselves. Islam, as it is taught in the Quran (Koran) and lived by Muhammad, as is reported in the Hadith (Biography and sayings of the Prophet) is a religion of Injustice, Intolerance, Cruelty, Absurdities, discrimination, Contradictions, and blind faith. Islam advocates killing the non-Muslims and abuses the human rights of minorities and women. Islam expanded mostly by Jihad (holy war) and forced its way by killing the non-believers. In Islam apostasy is the biggest crime punishable by death. Muhammad was a terrorist himself therefore terrorism cannot be separated from the true Islam. Islam means submission and it demands from its followers to submit their wills and thoughts to Muhammad and his imaginary Allah. Allah is a deity that despises reason, democracy, freedom of thought and freedom of expression.

Islam is also intolerant to every other religion in spite of what our politically correct liberal politicians and dimwitted clergy proclaim. Countries like Saudi Arabia, which happens to be financing 80% of the mosques in America, do not allow by law any churches or synagogues to be built there and even prosecute anyone for possessing a Bible or Torah or other religious object.

There is an organization called Former Muslims United that has brought together many notable former Muslims speaking out about the truth behind Islam. Among them are two very courageous women named Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish. Read their complete backgrounds here on the Former Muslims United web site.

Nonie Darwish is an American human rights activist, writer, public speaker and founder of Arabs For Israel. She is the author of the book Now they Call Me Infidel; Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror. Her second book is Cruel And Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law. Her speech topics cover human rights, with emphasis on women’s rights and minority rights in the Middle East. Born in Egypt, Darwish is the daughter of an Egyptian Army lieutenant general, who, when assassinated by the Israeli army in 1956, was called a “shahid” by the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, although Darwish blames “the Middle Eastern Islamic culture and the propaganda of hatred taught to children from birth” for the assassination. In 1978, she moved with her husband to the United States, and converted to Christianity there. After September 11, 2001 she has written on Islam-related topics.

Wafa Sultan is an author and well known critic of Islam. Sultan trained as a psychiatrist in Syria and is a US naturalized citizen.Sultan was born to an Alawi family in Baniyas, Syria. She emigrated to the United States in 1989, and is now a naturalized citizen. Sultan has become notable since the September 11, 2001 attacks for her participation in Middle East political debates, with Arabic essays that circulated widely and some television appearances on Al Jazeera and CNN. Wafa Sultan is the author of a new book, A God Who Hates. She invited scorn and received death threats from Muslims around the world when she appeared on Al-Jazeera as the first Arab Muslim woman who dared to challenge Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, the Qur’an, and Allah. At great risk to her life and her family, Sultan travels around the country trying to explain to Americans that Islam is Not a Religion.

Here is a very clear description of what America is up against written by noted columnist David Aikman in Perspectives on the One News Now web site.

Dr. David Aikman was a journalist with TIME Magazine for 23 years, and is now a professor of history at Patrick Henry College in Virginia. He has authored more than a dozen books, including "Jesus in Beijing" (Regnery, 2003), "Billy Graham: His Life and Influence" (Thomas Nelson, 2006) and "The Delusion of Disbelief" (Tyndale, 2008). His latest book, "The Mirage of Peace" (Regal), was released in September. Aikman is also the founder of Gegrapha, an international fellowship for Christians in the mainstream media.

Knowing your enemy
David Aikman - OneNewsNow Columnist - 7/30/2010 9:55:00

Virtually every major thinker who has written on the subject of war -- from Germany's Clausewitz to ancient China's Sun Tzu -- has agreed on one main dictum: "Know your enemy."  Understood in that thought is the concept of correctly naming your enemy.  Yet a strange thing has happened as the Obama administration has taken up the challenge of standing up to global terrorism that first fell upon President George W. Bush after the calamitous events of 9/11 in 2001.

Every American with a morsel of common sense has figured out that al-Qaeda and its global franchise of like-minded terrorists have been inspired by an Islam-based ideology that seeks -- in the name of a global Islamic caliphate -- to overthrow the U.S. and the West, democracy, and all the individual rights upon which America was founded.

Every new, turgid, and tedious propaganda blast by Osama bin Laden's number two, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri...every boastful threat by foreign terrorist groups or by recently apprehended Islamic terrorists in the U.S., makes it clear that terrorist acts plotted against Americans have been inspired by the Muslim call for jihad (which actually means "struggle" but is often translated as "holy war").  The Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, who had received training with the Taliban in Pakistan, described himself simply as a "Muslim soldier."  The prime suspect in last year's Fort Hood massacre of 13 Americans, Major Hasan, had ordered a business card that described him as SoA ("Soldier of Allah").  Hasan had been in email contact with American-born terrorist organizer Anwar al-Awlaki.

Now what were these fellows thinking of when they planned their dastardly deeds?  Was it Zen Buddhism, or Hindu mysticism?  I don't think so.  Like Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers, they were carefully acting out Islamic ideas found in the Koran and in recent Islamic writings with the hope of spending eternity in the Muslim paradise surrounded by dark-eyed virgins.

There seem to be only about three Americans who doubt this:  President Obama, White House aide for counter-terrorism John Brennan, and Attorney General Eric Holder.  When Holder was asked in May at a congressional hearing by Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) whether Hasan, Shahzad, and Nigerian failed Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab might have been inspired by radical Islam, Holder repeatedly said that there had been "a variety" of factors.  He flatly refused to say "radical Islam" or any form of Islam had possibly been the ideological inspiration behind the actions of these individuals.

Brennan recently made remarks during a Washington speech in which he said flatly that the White House would not use the phrase "Islamic terrorism" or even refer to "jihadis."  He used the utterly specious argument that jihad can mean a spiritual struggle to combat one's sinful nature.  Yes, it can.  But the overwhelming consensus of students of Islamic history is that this interpretation of jihad refers to what Mohammed called "the greater jihad." (See related commentary) The Koran itself quite specifically calls on Muslims to fight "the lesser jihad," which is real fighting.  It says, in Surah 9:29: "Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection." 

There are, of course, Surahs (chapters) in the Koran which advocate peaceful relations with followers of Judaism and Christianity.  But these verses, "revealed" to Mohammed during the early period of his life, are "abrogated" (nullified) by the bloodthirsty verses from the later period.

It needs to be said that there are millions of Muslims who are not terrorists and who do not engage in any violent form of jihad.  But the vast majority of the world's terrorists since the 1990s have been Muslims, and all of them have been inspired by Muslim writers and thinkers who unquestionably justify violence on Islamic textual grounds against non-Muslims.  To be unwilling to name the terrorist acolytes of such thinkers as "Islamic terrorists" or "radical Muslims" is akin to refusing to describe Hitler's thugs during World War II as Nazis.  If they weren't Nazis, what were they -- misunderstood Berlin suburbanites who had been rejected by Harvard?  The frightening thing about Brennan's approach is that either he is lying about Islam, or he is classically ignorant of Islam and the history of its thought.

What about President Obama?  In Turkey in April 2009 he roundly declared that the U.S. did not consider itself a Christian nation even though many of its citizens were Christian.  He implied that Turkey also shared a sort of multicultural view of the Muslim faith -- similar to his view of American Christianity -- that is followed by the majority of its citizens.  That is almost certainly a grave misjudgment because Turkey's ruling political party, the AKP (the Justice and Development Party), is trying to move the country in a decidedly more Islamic direction.  Obama's understanding of Islam seems sentimental and emotional, based on his own early experiences of attending mosque with his step-father in Indonesia.  But to move from that position to one requiring American officials to avoid mentioning the very ideology that seeks to destroy American freedom is dangerously reckless.

If you don't recognize your enemy and refuse to name him, whom on earth are you pretending to fight?

Dr. Aikman is absolutely correct. If you don't recognize your enemy and refuse to name him, whom on earth are you pretending to fight?