A candidate for Egypt’s presidency by the name of Hazim Abu Ismail, “with affiliations to both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis,” says how things are.
Host: You have already begun to try to impose a particular dress code for us.
Abu Ismail: I’ve begun to? It’s the Lord of the Worlds [Allah] who said so. I have nothing to do with it!
Host: Allah left it for me to decide as a personal freedom.
Abu Ismail: Who said that? Where’d you get that from. See, that’s the whole point: If you claim that Allah considers it your personal freedom, show me your reference? Nobody has ever said that – except for people have no understanding of Sharia.
Admirably blunt. Makes it very clear what is wrong with theocracy. It’s not the clerics or “scholars” who make these rules, it’s “the Lord of the Worlds” – who is not currently available, so the rules can’t be amended – nor, of course, can they be ignored. They can only be obeyed.
Host: So when He says “today I have perfected your religion for you” [Koran 5:3], He is only talking about the “creed.”
Abu Ismail: Yes; for example, when you say “no coercion to join the Military Academy,” it means that you are free to join or not—but if you do join, then you are obliged to wear their uniform, to attend their classes, to attend the training with them, and to obey their leader.
Host: There is a problem here—shall I say to the unveiled woman who wants to avoid hijab that she should change her creed?
Abu Ismail: Exactly, bravo. If she is a Muslim. You see, this is the difficulty; this is Islam. Does she want to be a Muslim and not obey Allah’s rules? Let them say so; that’s all I ask; let them be honorable and just speak up.
What does he mean “Does she want to be a Muslim and not obey Allah’s rules?” What does wanting have to do with it? Most Muslims are simply born as such, and they are never given the opportunity to say they don’t want to be a Muslim and are therefore going to stop being one. It’s an incredibly obnoxious, taunting question. It’s like kidnapping someone and then asking, “Does she want to be kidnapped and not obey the kidnapper’s orders?”
What a joke: in one breath saying that order are orders, and they come from the Lord of the Worlds so they are absolute and permanent, and that people “want” to belong to this authoritarian system.
Ummm… no such as a Muslim baby????
Don’t these islamists usually condemn anyone who tries to “speak up and say that they don’t want to be a Muslim,” to death? Some catch, that Catch-22.
Perhaps Karen Armstrong is able to make him see otherwise.
Of course according to Sharia law the punishment for a Muslim changing his or her creed, i.e. “apostasy”, is death
ISTR that even within the only message they think they have from their imaginary deity, there are no details regarding what people should wear. AFAIK it’s all either continued from the customs of pre-Islamic Arabia or made up later.
So the unavailability of the deity is not the reason. It’s because it’s humans all the way down.
It’s the Lord of the Worlds [Allah] who said so. I have nothing to do with it!
– Yes. Simply executing orders; no personal responsibility.
Where have I heard this before, I wonder.
Religion in politics allows evil to flourish, it’s as simple as that.
So you would need to enforce this with a worldly government why?
The usual term is Befehl ist Befehl.
I can’t imagine why anyone would feel pressured under an authoritarian legal system that ossified in the tenth century and hasn’t changed since…
Oh, wait, I can think of lots of reasons, like basic violations of human rights, such as freedom of religion.
Mohammad and Jim Jones were cuttings from the same plant, so to speak.
Islam is a cult with the usual cult rules that has grown like a blackberry bush. It now swamps the brains of 20-25% of the world’s population.
Christianity no longer punishes dissenters and apostates with death, so that is a point in its favour.
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume6/tapeyohnk.htm
http://carm.org/cults-outline-analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations
“I have nothing to do with it!”
What dismal, abject moral cowardice. What vile intellectual dishonesty. What a supine and pathetic rejection of the human capacity for reason. What a barbarous dismissal of civilised values. What a pithy demonstration of the mind-poison that is religion. What an absolute fucking disgrace.
For everyone who rooted for the “Arab Spring” in Egypt, a gentle reminder as repoted in the Guardian 33 years ago: http://tinyurl.com/8yvq3fo
Shaker:
Democracy can cope with Islam far better than Islam can cope with democracy.
‘So you would need to enforce this with a worldly government why?’ (F)
IIRC some ancient ruler refused to prosecute people for blasphemy on the grounds that the gods themselves were quite capable of punishing the blasphemers and if the gods chose not to do it, mortals just had to accept that the gods had forgiven the sinners. Few modern believers have this kind of faith in the reality of their gods.
Yeah, the guy is a complete idiot. However, we can still do something to put these jokers out of business, and it all revolves around withholding aid.
The Salafists and the MB can only make their “Islam-is-the-answer” line work if we infidels agree to finance them.
The current régime is now demanding America hand over billions in free money as compensation for having imposed a dictator on the country.
If America and The West refuse to give in to the blackmail, the wheels will just come flying off the islamist bandwagon.
Those western NGOs ( there are now about 24 of them) currently prevented from leaving the country ( they are, in fact, hostages ) are another plank in this platform of coercing The West to send cash.
If Obama won’t send the money the islamists so desperately need to stay in power, then we may see a replay of Carter/Iran/’79 scenario
Without western aid-money, western expertise and western manpower, and without the country’s lucrative tourism market, and with illiteracy rates ranging somewhere between 40 and 50%, Egypt becomes the true reflection of Islam’s brilliance.
It becomes a collection of hovels.
“Muslim” derives from “one who submits [to God]” (cf. Islam, “submission”). So his example of someone wanting to hold a contradictory opinion does make a sort of twisted sense.