What is Evil II

4/23/2011

LINK to part I

H S

Dear Editor,

I believe you’re very correct in that we are both learning and understanding certain aspects of humanity and morality but I still don’t get how you draw out these conclusions because obviously I have an Islamic background, and I was raised as a Muslim and am probably ignorant to some other points of views, naturally… as I feel the urge to protect my religion/ego/whatever and I’ll try to best explain my point of view. And I really do appreciate you talking out with me and being thorough even though I might sound vague most of the time because of lack of knowledge. I’m simply concerned about the flow of it all.

Editor: Brother, you just told me you do not believe in a concept called “Evil”, but at the same time you feel you need to protect your religion. Why? This does not make sense to me. If you reject the existence of evil, then there is no need for any religion. Or is there? I am just trying to follow your train of thought here.

H S

I guess what I’m trying to do is indirectly hint you that this world cannot be possible without a supposed being considered God. You’re claiming (and I say you, don’t take offense but I just don’t know who else said this… from my limited knowledge, so I say You but please don’t consider it as being personal or anything) that we are moral beings. Well, if we compare ourselves to the rest of the world it really doesn’t make sense as to why we are moral and nothing else has morals. Why do animals not oblige with morality? It is us that have together, socially, constructed the concept of evil/suffering but we, humans, seem like the only thing on earth that is striving for anything. No animal gives a shit besides survival, humans however do. I always thought that as a weak point of atheism, but you’re using this to prove it further, which weirded me out.

Editor: Now, and this is my own conjecture and I have no proof to my claim, some animals have a simpler notion of good and evil. Some animals try to help each other sometimes. This is beyond the needs of our discussion here.

H S

What we take as evil is limited to our perception, and others see evil as something else…  – it may be considered ‘evil’ since it’s selfish. Here’s an example I can think of right now:

Editor: No, I believe there exists Evil in the world. It is an objective reality. At least at the moral level, there is such a thing as evil.

H S

Problem: I am in a dorm with my roommate, but he is asleep so he doesn’t count. But there is a light that’s on outside in the hallway, and since this is a third-world country situation, the light is seeping through the cracks and from under/sides of the dorm door. It will help me sleep better if I turn the light off (selfish?), but if I keep it on, it’s probably helpful for the people passing in the hallway at night (unselfish?). Should I turn it off or let it stay on?

A: If I turn it off with the intention that everyone can now sleep better since the light won’t seep into the rooms adjacent to ours… is it considered selfish or at least minutely evil still?

B: I can turn the light off with the intention that we will now sleep better… and if it bothers anyone and they ask me I’ll simply turn it back on.

Which of these two situations seems MORE evil to you? I personally believe we humans can find evil in anything based on our state of mind… hence the misunderstandings… Now, since there is no set rules for evil or not, I have to stay ignorant on my belief of evil does not exist. Please elaborate more.

Editor: The above example is not about evil. It is about a situation and how best to remedy is. A simple solution would have been to leave the light on, then get some rags to cover those annoying light “leaks”.

H S
I’ve tried taking 3 philosophy classes so far at college and I just recently learned about axiom, assumptions, premises and conclusions. I took arabic philosophy and ended up proving aristotle not that smart, as he just wanted to perfect himself and applied his point of view to everyone else and said “everyone wants to perfect itself”. I took Philosophy of Religions and the 3 rules I put in my previous e-mails about “God, God omnipotent, Evil exists” was so odd to me that I explained to the teacher that I didn’t get it and she told me “that’s a good way to look at it” when I described it to her from my point of view that I tried explaining to you as well. She however didn’t say that evil does exist, she simply agreed, I dropped the class and she stopped being the head department of philosophy here at UMSL (University of Missouri- St. Louis, MO), and went back to Turkey afterward, and came back and I’ve heard she turned Muslim from being atheist. And currently i’m taking logic and reasoning and even the reasoning in there isn’t completely ‘valid’, it’s just most agreed up. I can find flaws in most granted statements… but sadly it is the logic the world recognizes. I will try to better my understanding of it but I think we can still reason to a certain point with my current skills and your expertise.

Editor: If this lady became a Muslim, a true Muslim, then she is a fool. She has access to all resources of knowledge. Yest, she ignores all that evil lying within Islam.

H S

And if you are going to keep saying Mohammad killed him, her, this, that just to prove how violent Islam is and that’s your reasoning for being against it… then my friend why are you still going against that old (Mohammad and Islam) historical violence? Why don’t you do something to act on America, something more current and something that can be acted upon? Which is the biggest ‘terrorist’ threat to the world? lol. And I’ve overlooked this before but you keep saying Islam is dangerous and isn’t practical and causes discrimination and uncomfortable and violence… all I have to ask is do you really judge a set of morals by how well people follow them? Or do you actually go up to the teller to see what they’re talking about instead of judging from the line you’re waiting in? It doesn’t seem logical to me, explain to me if you could please. Because no human is ‘perfect’ by anyone’s definition, not even their own… so how does it seem fair to judge it by peoples’ actions, generations’ actions, cultures’ decisions, how women are treated, or how some Imam preaches about bombing something in a mosque. I simply am unable to connect those ideas together. Sounds more like to bandwagon the news than to reason.

Editor: Sir, Muhammad needs to be discredited because millions follow his rules. He was a charlatan, a liar, and a deceiver. The guy died 1400 years ago. So, I have no serious ill well against him. However, I do care about my Muslim brothers and sisters of today. They need to learn the truth. In our days, this is easy to do as the Koran, Hadith, and Sirat. Those three sources contain the basic Islamic knowledge. It is through those 3 sources that we can see how ugly the face of Islam if. At the end of my email to you, I will supply you with some links to see part of the early evils that Islam and Muslims brought to the world.
H S

I personally believe that humans are the only species on the planet that are unable to fully communicate. That is to say that we can never deliver a message, whether written verbal or gesture, without attaching emotions/state of mind to it. So, that is to say we are severed in our communication because it automatically excites the part of the brain that we didn’t want to excite. Human babies can’t do anything for themselves besides cry, all other animal babies can… at least a lot sooner if not instantly. Human babies need at least two years and then the “weaning” which Quran mentions and if the mother still feeds her baby her breast milk, their teeth decay… which supports the “2 year weaning” concept from Quran. On the scale, cows are the ones being milked. Not badgers, not hampsters, not goats, cows. Just like all the scriptures say… COWS. I don’t know about scientific correlation but my own logic conceives it as being valid.

And you are doing me a huge favor by letting me talk and clear up my own views.

Thanks again for the wonderful replies!

Editor: let me provide with links in a separate email

Kind regards

links

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Muhammad/myths-mu-elderly.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YIu-fSnqrM

http://www.archive2012.faithfreedom.org/challenge/assassin.htm

such readings will help you get started in understanding the mentality and behaviors of Muhammad and the early Muslims.

There are a lot of readings I can recommend to you, but this is only a starting point.

Kind regards

H S

I tried to read some of the ignorant text on your links, very funny stuff and the tone is very comical as well. Good touch to it by those authors. However, I found it a little too hard to agree with the conclusions authors posit even though I agreed with most of the evidences they put up.

http://www.archive2012.faithfreedom.org/the-challenge/muhammad-the-rapist/ It starts

Editor: Actually you can call those texts ignorant or whatever you want. They still rely on authentic sources that are accepted by almost all Muslims (Koran, Hadith, and Sirat)

H S

Read the first part, and basically I get out of it is that Mohammad preached/told that no, you don’t have to worry about coitus interruptus, if a baby is willed by Allah (God), it will come forth regardless of you doing coitus interruptus. I don’t see how “allowed his men to rape” came into the context of his answer…. it was strictly slave/booty/loot that those women were considered. If you want to discuss WHY they were considered such objects and not actual people… well, that requires some different evidences. But lets not assume that to begin with, eh?

Editor: You are talking about a “supposedly” prophet of the almighty. He attacks other people for no reaon except his greed. Many of the adult men get killed from those people. Many of the adult men escape to save their lives. Muhammad and his bandits get their belongings by force. He enslaves the women and children. His men start having sex with those women whose husbands are still alive. They come to Muhammad asking him about “pulling out” their male parts right before ejaculation. He tells them not to do it. The idea that those men were raping the women does not come to his mind. I am really surprised that you do not see this as a rape. I bit if you were one of those poor women, you would have seen it as a rape. Many had their husbands still alive for crying out loud.

H S
“Juwairiya” … Mohammad supposedly raped her after marrying her? lol to that. I always found it that women need men to protect them, and him marrying her will save her from humiliation as was mentioned in the context, as then she would be having intercourse with her husband.

Editor

Here is a young beautiful woman. Her husband has just been killed by Muslims. Their leader was Muhammad. I am sure any woman whose husband has just been killed by Muhammad and his band of criminals would love to sleep with Muhammad right away and on the same day he killed her husband. If this is not rape, I do not know what is. Muhammad even made a mockery of the concept of marriage in this story.

H S

“Safiyah” … Mohammed and his so ‘evil’ army… went and beheaded all the people they were at war with or whatever went down (sorry I didn’t have links like http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/muslim/008.smt.html#008.3381 or http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/034.sbt.html#003.034.432 to work with) and when females were left without a husband, it was ever-so-cruel-and-evil to make them walk past their dead husbands and Mohammad liked one of them, he put his cloak over her, and then married her and raped her… everytime it’s rape coming after the marriage. Just as you pointed out in my example earlier, it was a simple problem… and she had nowhere to go. Simple solution… marry her and keep her there with him.

Editor

Sir, no woman would want to marry or sleep with the killers of her husbands and most of her male relatives. Muhammad, again and again, made a mockery of the institution of marriage. This is simply Rape. By the way, did you know that Muhammad made a mockery of the institution of adoption too. True Islam does not allow adoption. Muhammad lusted for his daughter in law, Zaynab Bint Jahsh., ended up having his adopted son Zayd divorcing her. After that Muhammad “married” her. Arabs got mad at him for what he did, so he came up with “revelations” that canceled adoption altogether. Talk about a sick old man!!

H. S

http://www.usc.edu/cgi-bin/msasearch Database Search Results

The query ["Rayhanah" or "Qirfa"] generated the following matches:
Complete Sahih Bukhari
None.
Complete Sahih Muslim
None.
Partial Sunan Abu Dawud
None.
Complete Malik’s Muwatta
None.

Rayhāna bint Zayd ibn ʿAmr (Arabic: ريحانة بنت زيد بن عمرو‎) was a Jewish woman from the Banu Qurayza tribe. Her relationship with Muhammad is disputed.
Rayhana was originally a member of the Banu Nadir tribe who married a man from the Banu Qurayza. After the Banu Qurayza were defeated by the armies of Muhammad in the Siege of the Banu Qurayza neighborhood, Rayhana was among those enslaved, while others were killed.
According to Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad took her as a maiden slave and offered her the status of becoming his wife if she accepted Islam, but she refused. According to his account, even though Rayhana is said to have later converted to Islam, she died as a slave.[1] According to Marco Schöller, Rayhana either became the Prophet’s concubine or, was married to him and later divorced.[2]
Ibn Sa’d writes and quotes Waqidi that she was manumitted but later married by Muhammad.[3] According to Al-Halabi, Muhammad married and appointed dowry for her. It is further narrated that, upon marriage, she refused to wear the hijab, causing a rift between her and Muhammad. The couple later reconciled. She died young, shortly after Muhammad’s hajj and was buried in Jannat al-Baqi cemetery.[4] Ibn Hajar quotes a description of the house that Muhammad gave to Rayhana after their marriage from Muhammad Ibn al-Hassam’s History of Medina.[5]
In another version, Hafiz Ibn Minda writes that Muhammad set Rayhana free, and she went back to live with her own people. This version is also supported as the most likely by 19th-century Muslim scholar, Shibli Nomani.[6]
Not much is known about Rayhana; she died a year before Muhammad.

Editor

Please be careful about the USC site to search Hadith and Qur’an. I use that site too. I found out in some instances that many hadiths that should be available on their site are not. Hadiths that are controversial and put Islam or Muhammad in bad light are sometimes omitted.

Your quote above about Rayhana may be from Wikipedia (written by some Muslim Scholar) or from some “Muslim Scholar” site..etc. I would not put much weight on what is being said here and would research the original sources myself.

H S

The darker blue is off of Wikipedia, since I don’t know what other source I could trust. And I really don’t see her being raped as that website put it… I don’t even know those Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Sa’d or Ibn Minda or anyone along those lines, nor do I get how conflicting their stories could have been. Makes no sense to me. And this was the last suggestive end, added on to really get the readers going in the author’s direction.

Editor

Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa’d are used by Muslim scholars. I cannot say much about Ibn Minda as I am not familiar with it or when it was written. Please note that we need to read those original sources with some reflective thinking. Rayhana, and this is my wording “refused” Muhammad and remained a sex slave. This is telling of her feelings toward the Muslims. She was justified in her feeling. After all, Muhammad was the monster that destroyed her whole life. He killed her husband, her male relatives, destroyed her tribe, and other tribes she was close to. The claim that she later became a Muslim is most probably a lie offered by the later Muslims to make them feel better about Muhammad and the evil he did to her and her family and tribe.

H S

And all the citations are really about whether women can be had sex with after they got them in “loot” or “booty” (which I addressed earlier – challenge their right to be called slaves and how later Islam addresses the concept of slaves, because that’s all relative), and that big bad word of “coitus interruptus.” I googled coitus interruptus, and it seemed only anti-Islamic or anti-theism websites carry that quote, and Muslims might even be scared of coming forth with it. I however, don’t see anything wrong with it.

The Umm Qirfa stuff I couldn’t confirm resources on, so I don’t know how to address it, just like the Rayhanah topic.

Editor

Actually Umm Qirfa story is genuine. We have enough evidence from reliable historical sources that are written by pious Muslims. It is mentioned in Al- Tabri as well as Ibn Hajar ( vol. 4, page 231). In Tabari, the executioner appointed by Zayd (Muhammad adopted son) “tied each of her legs with a rope and tied the ropes to camels, and they split her in two.”

H S

The Muhammad: an assassination…. Ok, well… there is the point of view of one always has to be the prey and one the predator, or one has to be the injurer and one has to be the victim, or in this case… side A killing some of side B’s… the manner in which it’s done is very un-civil-like according to modern day rules I guess? But you see my man, I’ve been taught that Allah shows ups and downs in every situation to give examples of how to act in certain situations. I can argue this infintely regressively it seems but that’s besides the point. There was an assassination done, I agree and it was modernly-cruel. Pity his death and hate Islam? Not so much.

Editor

It is always good to be intellectually honest and to call a spade a spade. Muhammad was an evil person. His fruits bear witness to him.

H S

Anything off of http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/ sounds legit to me so far. or Quran.com

Give me more links, but I can’t just go start challenging the huge accusations against Mohammad on the FFI website all at once since most are so vague.

Editor

Things are not so Vague in our Challenge:

http://www.archive2012.faithfreedom.org/the-challenge/the-challenge/

However, Ali Sina’s book “Understanding Muhammad” gives more details and more authentic support to the “Challenge” you find on our site. Ali is usually generous and willing to send a copy of the old version of the book as a pdf file. You may ask for a pdf copy via Ali’s email address ( faithfreedom2@gmail.com )

H S

And to be honest, I don’t want to do this.. I don’t want to discuss interpretations of text. I want you to help me out in understanding LOGIC of the theism/atheism… And you brought up  that if I don’t believe in evil why am i defending my religion? I told you what ignorance I come with inherently, just like every human being has according to their raising style/ cultural diversity and such. But I was actually saying that we, humans, can never ever know what “evil” is unless it is taught to us directly by something divine… and which is the religious scriptures, and for people to say evil exists and therefore religion doesn’t… is still funny to me.

Thanks again

Editor

Thanks H M. I am not sure how I can help here. This is me talking now: I told you before that I believe evil exists in the world. I can see that in Qaddafi killing people just trying to hold onto power. Qaddafi’s acts are evil in this regard. I believe Evil is genuine in this world. I can’t prove that to anyone. Everyone thinks different on this matter. I am just sharing my opinion here, no more. Hitler was an evil entity in the world, and so was Muhammad. There are many examples from our days as well as throughout history showing evil works by evil people. This is my own view. You can take it for what its worth. That is all brother.

Kind regards

H S

Dear Editor,

I think we’ve found the limit here… you have to just stand your ground on you point of view and I have to do so on mine. I guess it really is different worlds we live in.

Thanks for your time though, I learned much.

Editor

Thank you brother

Please do keep in touch at least by visiting our site between now and then. We do have many researchers who are honest to the historical truth in Islam. It is painful for our psyche. But truth is truth. Allow me to recommend a couple of names whose work is worthy reads: Mumin Salih and Syed Kamran Mirza. There are many other though.

I believe you are like me, a person trying to reach the truth about things. For that I commend you as a brother and colleague in humanity. It is not productive to hate others because they differ in their beliefs. Discussing issues with many people in an intellectually open environment is beneficial activity to everyone involved.

I wish you the best, and hope you achieve your goals in life

Kind regards

Short URL: http://www.archive2012.faithfreedom.org/?p=26087

Posted by Faith Freedom Editors on Apr 22 2011. Filed under Letters, Op-Ed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.