Perspective

The Dichotomy of Islam

It is nobody’s argument that Muslims as a human kind are any different from the rest of the mankind. But what of the constraints their faith imposes upon them to approach the issue objectively, as, indeed, any faith would? The shrill hurt that their ‘religion of peace’ is being dubbed as the ‘doctrine of death’, and the muted pain at the death of the suicide squads and their victims across the world underscore the dilemma of the Muslims and the dichotomy of Islam.  
 
Going by Muhammad’s initial preaching to his handful of Meccan faithful that were enshrined in the Quran, Islam is a religion of peace nonpareil for the virtues of submission and tolerance were taken to a divine plane. But that was when the Meccans were inimical to the new religion of Islam that Muhammad sought to propagate and thus persecuted his followers, who any way were from the hapless poor. Then the prophet was neither in a position to oppose the oppressors nor protect his followers who numbered no more than seventy odd. Thus the virtue of submission he sought to inculcate in them was but the means to survive while keeping their faith in a hostile environment.

Then came Hijra - the flight of Muhammad to Medina - and it changed the color of the Quran. In Medina, Muhammad found himself in a position of strength and as he set his sights on the conquest of Mecca, his ambition got focused and his energies were directed to achieve that goal. Of what avail submission and tolerance for embarking upon a conquest? After all, one needs to name the enemy and inculcate hatred towards the foe in the minds of the followers so as to stir them to fight. Thus Quran identifies them – “All they who disbelieve and deny our revelations, such are rightful owners of hell” and labels them as well – Jews, Christians and idolaters. Then it exhorts them to take on them, “Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, and ye know not”

However, it is one thing to motivate the faithful to fight even with the divine diktat and another to remove the fear of death in their hearts. Once Napoleon famously observed that if only he had with him forty men who were not afraid of death, he would have conquered the world. While Bonaparte had only surmised, the prophet had realized that through Quran, first by deprecating life here on one hand and glorifying the life hereafter on the other. “Naught is the life of the world save a pastime and a sport. Better far is the abode of the Hereafter for those who keep their duty (to Allah). Have ye then no sense?” and “Think not of those, who are slain in the way of Allah, as dead. Nay they are living. With their Lord they have provision”, and so forth. What were those provisions for all who sacrifice their lives for the cause of the faith that Muhammad was set out to propagate was dealt with extensively in the Quran - “Enter the garden, ye and your wives, to be made glad.”, “Reclining on ranged couches. And we wed them unto fair ones with wide, lovely eyes.” And so on.
 
With this kind of indoctrination, and more, of his faithful, Muhammad eventually succeeded in posting the Standard of Islam on Kabah in Mecca. However, the text that served the cause of its Prophet in a given context remains in the statute of Islam. It is this doctrine of hate and glorification of death that serves the freaks amongst the faithful to indoctrinate the gullible to don the suicide suits to enter the Paradise of women and wine in the belief of living forever therein. But if only it occurs to the martyr-in-the-making that there is no way he could enjoy the carnal pleasures in paradise what with his frame having been buried right here!

It is for the Muslim community to collectively shut down the locks of this Islamic stream that supposedly leads the martyrs into the Paradise so that they and the others could make the best of life here itself.  If not, they cannot blame the others to believe that the religion of Muhammad that ordains the faithful to wage jihad in the name of Allah, and promises a voluptuous Paradise to its shaheed was destined to play a disruptive role in the affairs of nations. 
   

06-Nov-2011

More by :  BS Murthy


Top | Perspective

Views: 3485      Comments: 4



Comment Prof.Tiwari is either an apologist for Islam or an incoorrigible optimist As far as anyone with any sense can see, the so called silent majority of muslims, who are supposed to be 'peace loving', are day by day shrinking in numbers. J.M.Sali,a journalist from Tamilnadu, regular contributor to Anandavikatan,Dinamalar etc. has written about his 'Haj'recently. He waxes
eloquence writing that though he was born and brought up in Tamilnadu, only when he landed at Macca, he felt that he had reached his home and his
family! This,from a seasoned and 'balanced' journalist! Imagine the'mental
make up'of the brain washed,illiterate Umma. Those living by sword will die by sword. Islam has always lived by sword. But before it dies, it will destroy the innocents as much as it can. May Allah dry the oil wells as early as possible! Amen!

v.haribabu
09-Nov-2011 05:11 AM

Comment When Jesus Christ was posed the riddle of a woman having had seven consecutive husbands, therefore one at a time, none of whom she bore a child to, and then asked whose was her rightful husband in the afterlife, the Jews believing in monogamy, Christ replied that in heaven there was no institution of marriage, but that men were like the angels fulfilled in adoration of God. This fits in with our modern knowledge that sexual pleasure is a biological inducement to propagation of the species, and that in the afterlife this need is absent. Mohammed's promise of enjoying wives in the afterlife is therefore exposed as incapable, since there is not the biological basis of enjoyment of women. The whole Muslim paradise is actually a hell, since even if one saw women there no pleasure at all could be derived since it served no biological end. The only pleasure to be derived in the afterlife is spiritual i.e. in the adoration of God.

rdashby
09-Nov-2011 00:19 AM

Comment With the recent Wahabi ascendancy, even in the traditionally Sufi India, the day is not near any way, but as the Hindi saying goes, maybe, it's der hai lekin andher nahin. Moreover, ,there is no other way for the Umma in the long run.

BS Murthy
07-Nov-2011 12:08 PM

Comment The Holy Koran itself says that every age needs its own book. It's true that there's an urgent need to re-interpret Islam and stress its humane aspects. There's ample scope for a humane doctrine within the Islamic framework. Fortunately, the intelligent forces within Islam have started realizing the truth of this arguement. There's a perceptible movement towards liberalism. Let's hope that the trend gets more momentum.

Prof. Shubha Tiwari
06-Nov-2011 22:21 PM




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