Table of Contents for A Hindu Critiques Islam:

1. Chapters 1-3: Doctrinal Failings, Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta Critique, What “Islamophobia” Shields
2. Chapter 4: Social Status and Genocide Denial
3. Chapter 5:  Neoliberalism Empowers Islamism
4. Chapter 6: Did the British Partition of 1947 Gradually Decline the UK and Bolster India?
5. Chapter 7: Islamic Terrorism’s 1st-Generation was Al Qaeda, 2nd-Generation was ISIS, and a 3rd-Generation’s making a Digital Caliphate from “Islamophobia” Censorship
6. Chapter 8: The Partition of Free Speech
7. Chapters 9 and 10: Follies of Islam Repurposed and Islamism Always Creates Failed States

Extras: Islam’s 200-years of Mass Genocide of Iran, Islam’s 500-years of Mass Genocide of India, and judging from Wikipedia, Islamic Terrorism makes-up 58% of all Terror incidents in India between 1980 – 2024 and that’s lowballing it.

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Due to the possibility of the subreddits I’ve recently made being deleted whenever admins decide to change rules and then ban previous content for new rule “violations” from how utterly incompetent Reddit is generally run, I thought it best to share the key aspects of my critique of Islam as a separate and thorough write-up. Most of this is information already shared on the recent subreddit I’ve made. There are a few corrections that I want to specify, but I want to additionally make clear that they don’t harm the overall contentions. The write-up on the subreddit was part of a rough draft before I made corrections on the book I recently self-published; nevertheless, the minutiae of details aren’t major deviations from my arguments. For example, my recalling a hadith saying specifically “seven years” before Judgment Day and finding another hadith that makes the seven years vaguer is immaterial to my critique of Islam as a holistic system of values and the consequences of holding such values. Some Muslims might be keen to argue that this matters, but it really doesn’t because it doesn’t impact the overarching and thorough problems with Islamic theology itself that I critique. I’ve decided to add images of website content alongside links to the websites as a precaution due to my repeated experiences of websites either expiring or the people who hold the resources becoming aware of my critiques and removing the sourced material in order to protect their harmful beliefs. For example, for my book Faith in Doubt, I had cited and copied an image from a Shafi’i school website proving that the Shafi’i school of Islam supported female genital mutilation. A few years later, the website was deleted and no copies of the website existed for a time to recover it. If not for the image I copied and added to the book itself, I would have looked like a liar. Fortunately, I’ve since been able to find a copy of the website when doing research for this write-up but it took an extended period of time. When I first published my blog post criticizing the US Federal government’s concealed human rights abuses towards Native Americans, my citation for a Christian group confessing and analyzing the information that their own denomination has an ongoing problem with child raping priests was changed to be redirected to some small business, so I had to find a copy of the old website again to link the correct information. It can be exhausting to constantly expend effort to maintain this level of accessibility, so I’ve added the images overcome such limitations because this topic is critically important to fully understand the challenges of. For the purposes of this write-up, all claims will have a parentheses and numerical style in this manner “(1, 2, 3…) or (PDF)” so that readers can click on either a copy of the image or a pdf link from the original source from the time I cited it, in case the original source is tampered or removed. This is so that you can better verify the authenticity of what I’m explaining. For people completely unfamiliar with Islam, some of this material is going to sound absurd so that is why this method is necessary to do. It took me awhile to fully accept some of these social issues existing in modern times, even when Ex-Muslims themselves explained their arguments in a clear manner.

I’ve come to the painful realization that most people simply aren’t willing to do their own research on topics, so while this may seem like a very large “wall of text” this is the best I can do to summarize 1,400 years of religion to explain the theological components of why it is so violent. It’s honestly surprising to me that certain Conservative Christians throughout the world want to proclaim that Islam is the worst evil in the world, but they never bother to do any research on the topic, while protesting or rioting over the religion that they argue to be an existential threat to their civilization. If Islam is truly such a threat, why haven’t you bothered to do any research into it to learn how to counter it in the most effective ways possible? For any possible Conservative Christian who despises Islam and reads this; are you truly serious about the dangers of Islam or are you just trying to justify hate? Regardless of political beliefs and religious views, some of this is going to be deeply uncomfortable to read and it might be truly painful to fully understand that these aspects being critiqued are indeed beliefs that Muslims throughout the world believe are justified because they are validated in Islamic theology. I want to make something clear though; as I grew-up in the US, I never experienced bigotry or hate from Muslim neighbors, Muslim family members, nor witnessed any of these problems I mention below. Neither my Muslim Indian family members, or my Pakistani Muslim neighbors, or any Pakistani Muslim co-workers ever expressed any sort of contempt or hate towards me and they all knew that I’m a Hindu Indian. They have a dislike for Hinduism and then get confused by Hindu atheism, but they’re open to listening and learning when we agree to discuss religion. I’ve never experienced bigotry from any Muslim living in the US and this is more about the global issues pertaining to why Islam is violent. If it means anything, none of the female Pakistani Muslim neighbors or my female Muslim family members ever wore hijabs; I doubt any of them ever even thought about a hijab; apart from maybe when one of my cousin’s had one Muslim friend who wore a hijab invited over to watch movies or watch an anime. I would be surprised if the vast majority of Muslims living in the United States have any of these behaviors mentioned below. The only time I’ve ever experienced bigotry and disdain was from interacting with Western Ex-Muslim atheists who act like a really bizarre hive-mind that remind me of the open hostility that I received from Pakistani Muslims of Pakistan through internet forums like Discord. That’s honestly the truth; Western Ex-Muslim atheists hold more bigotry towards Hindus than US Muslims from my experience. I could talk about Indian materialist philosophy from 600 BCE to my Muslim co-workers and they’d be genuinely fascinated; I share it with Ex-Muslim atheists online and most of them somehow take it as a personal insult. The difference in behavior from Ex-Muslim atheists is very strange.

Please keep these Key Terms in mind, they are how Muslims themselves define it:

Definitions by the Brookings Institute to explain Islamic Extremism:

Islamism: “Islamism as a phenomenon incorporates a wide spectrum of behavior and belief. In the broadest sense, Islamist groups believe Islamic law or Islamic values should play a central role in public life. They feel Islam has things to say about how politics should be conducted, how the law should be applied, and how other people—not just themselves—should conduct themselves morally.”^[1]

Mainstream Islamism: “Mainstream Islamist groups primarily consist of Muslim Brotherhood and Brotherhood-inspired movements. Their distinguishing features are their gradualism (historically eschewing revolution), an embrace of parliamentary politics, and a willingness to work within existing state structures, even secular ones.”^[2]

Salafism: “Salafism is the idea that the most authentic and true Islam is found in the lived example of the early, righteous generations of Muslims, known as the Salaf, who were closest in both time and proximity to the Prophet Muhammad. Salafis—often described as “ultraconservatives”—believe not just in the “spirit” but in the “letter” of the law, which is what sets them apart from their mainstream counterparts. In the Arab world today, Salafis are known for trying to imitate the particular habits of the first Muslims, such as dressing like the Prophet (by cuffing their trousers at ankle-length) or brushing their teeth like the Prophet (with a natural teeth cleaning twig called a miswak).”^[3]

Jihadism: “Jihadism is driven by the idea that jihad (religiously-sanctioned warfare) is an individual obligation (fard ‘ayn) incumbent upon all Muslims, rather than a collective obligation carried out by legitimate representatives of the Muslim community (fard kifaya), as it was traditionally understood in the pre-modern era. They are able to do this by arguing that Muslim leaders today are illegitimate and do not command the authority to ordain justified violence. In the absence of such authority, they argue, every able-bodied Muslim should take up the mantle of jihad. Contrast this state of affairs with World War I, when the Kaiser himself had to sweet talk the Ottoman caliphate into declaring jihad against the Allied Powers.”

Salafi-Jihadism: “This is an approach to jihadism that is coupled with an adherence to Salafism. Salafi-jihadists tend to emphasize the military exploits of the Salaf (the early generations of Muslims) to give their violence an even more immediate divine imperative. Most jihadist groups today can be classified as Salafi-jihadists, including al-Qaida and ISIS. Given their exclusivist view that their approach to Islam is the only authentic one, Salafi-jihadists often justify violence against other Muslims, including non-combatants, by recourse to takfir, or the excommunication of fellow Muslims. For these groups, if Muslims have been deemed to be apostates, then violence against them is licit.”^[4]

[4] Hamid, Shadi, and Rashid Dar. “Islamism, Salafism, and Jihadism: A Primer.” Brookings, The Brookings Institution, 15 July 2016, http://www.brookings.edu/articles/islamism-salafism-and-jihadism-a-primer/.

When reading below you can click on the images to expand them into a new tab.

All of that notwithstanding, if you’re serious about learning about the problems of Islam but you don’t have enough time or wherewithal to do your own research, then please give at least this part a full read:

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The doctrinal problem within Islam that makes it so dangerous, that many in democratic countries either don’t know or don’t want to admit, is the theological underpinnings of its consistency. Human beings have cognitive dissonance, we can often be hypocrites, and we often ignore what is inconvenient to acknowledge; but I would argue that the reason for the prevalence of Islamic violence in an order of magnitude higher than other faith traditions in modern times is because as a system, it really does try to be the most consistent theology that humanity has so far ever created. Please understand, this is to its detriment and not something that we should honor or support. The lack of hypocrisy is why the violence is so prevalent, because it really does value the afterlife more than the material world and that is precisely why this religion can commit such wanton destruction upon “materialism” and non-Muslims who are “deceiving” Muslims away from spiritual commitments to their faith. Within the context of Islam’s theology under the Tafsir system (PDF), you have to accept the Quran as the unalterable word of the Abrahamic God. The Sharia, while analogous to a leading people to a watering hole in its literal meaning, actually means the “Divine Law” and refers to the Abrahamic God’s Divine Law. Regardless of if you name the Abrahamic God Yahweh or Allah or how uncomfortable Christians feel acknowledging this, it is the God of Abraham that Muslims worship. The Islamic jurisprudence system is based upon the notion of unquestionable fact that every follower, and often those subjugated by Muslims as a lesser social status, have to accept because it was given by the Abrahamic God and Muslims believe that following the teachings of Islam leads to heaven for eternity. The process within Islam is more systematic than other major religions. The Tafsir system has a holistic structure whereby the Quran must be accepted as unquestionable fact, and if the Quran doesn’t answer a question, then the Prophet Mohammad’s lived example (the Sunnah) serves as absolute fact that followers must adhere to, and if that’s not satisfactory then the companions of the Prophet Mohammad serve as an example of how to behave. If they also do not answer the questions that society has on how to deal with a new social issue, then the lived experiences of the first Muslims are used as an example to follow. If all of those fail to answer a question, then Muslim priests – who are viewed more as “Islamic Scholars” by Muslims due to the perception of learned scholarship in Islam – must find an appropriate Hadith that has a chain of narration verified by Islamic “scholars” to have been said by the Prophet Mohammad himself to give as a lived example that followers must adhere to. And if all that is exhausted, then an Islamic “scholar” (an Islamic “scholar” is generally called a “Faqih” which can arguably be any Imam) gives an “ijtihad” or “independent opinion” within the context of following Sharia (The Divine Law of the Abrahamic God). That is, they interpret all of what the Quran, Prophet Mohammad, the companions of the Prophet, and the first Muslims said or did to form a correct assessment of how they would view a specific modern question that couldn’t be answered. This is what is called a Fiqh and while an “opinion”, it can be seen as authoritative. Furthermore, no new ideas or concepts can be added because it is “bid’ah” and thus forbidden in Islamic jurisprudence. From what I could find, bid’ah is supported within the Quran itself in Chapter 2, verses 11-17 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, 10). It is important to note that this system includes the Naskh which means “abrogation” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) and refers to Islamic jurisprudence’s “Theory of Abrogation” for the Quran; in brief, latter verses within the Quran can abrogate prior verses of the Quran as a legal system that Muslims and those they conquer must follow. Imams, Sheiks, and Faqihs may even use allegory to interpret the Quranic text to best fit an answer to a question regarding a modern problem, but it has to be understood within the context of accepting the Quran as absolute fact that cannot be questioned. Finally, the four types of Jihad that Muslims must adhere to on a daily basis to stay consistent with Islamic teachings. For this part, it might be best to simply quote the concisely put teachings of the Islam Questions and Answers website made by Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid (PDF) which explains as follows:

Note, Islam literally translates to “the submission” and thus submission is considered a good act in service of the Abrahamic God. Moreover, many Muslims in the West will constantly say that any random Imam who is not their preferred Imam is not a “real Imam” and therefore not following the “real Islam” but this is just willful ignorance to the problems underscoring their theology, whereby they attempt to ignore the holistic issues that are intrinsic to their faith tradition. These are simply attempts, often successful attempts, to shut down logical arguments about the problems of their faith tradition failing to comport to modern times. They ignore the mass murder of civilians by focusing instead on how it makes them feel to hear such painful truths about their theology and to ignore the spread of violence that harms innocent people across the world. Their personal preference and subjective experience are immaterial to logical consequences of this theology and the facts regarding how many innocent non-Muslims and Muslims are repeatedly killed by it.

Finally, the issue of purity culture that is unique to the theology of Islam. Islam teaches people to believe that everyone is born pure as a Muslim (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) but deceived away from Islam due to satanism in the world. That is, they believe every child born is automatically a Muslim and when they follow faith traditions or belief structures outside of Islam, then they have been deceived by Satan away from Islam. In other words, a child born into a Jewish, Christian, or Hindu family is “deceived away” from Islam despite generations of families worshipping those other faith traditions. So, when someone commits the “heinous act” of Quran 4:89 (1, 2), of rejecting the faith of Islam, then they need to be murdered to keep the community “pure” and safe from “infidel” ideas that are viewed as being corrupted by devil worship and would cause people to burn in eternal hellfire in hell, if Muslims allow such beliefs to spread. The endgoal of all of this is to accept the Quran as the perfect book to live by to solve all human problems and to live by the standards of the 7th century AD to await the coming of Jesus Christ (1, 2 and 1, 2, 3) after the Mahdi brings the true believers to Jesus Christ. For those who are confused, Islam teaches that it is the true religion of the prophet Abraham and the Messiah of Islam is Jesus Christ (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 +1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 + Quranic verses: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 + PDF). The Mahdi, that is the Guided One, brings true Muslims together, while the Anti-Messiah (likely based upon the original Jewish concept of Anti-Messiah more than the latter Christian variant of the Anti-Christ) deceives people away from the real Islam. The Mahdi then apparently slaughters all the polytheists for deceiving Muslims and fights the Anti-Messiah until the Islamic Jesus Christ appears behind him and then helps him slay the Anti-Messiah and Satan. The Mahdi then “pauses time” for either “seven years”, “nine years”, or a vague amount of years (the hadiths are deliberately vague) and rules a “glorious” Islamic Caliphate and then passes away to allow Jesus Christ to rule the world eternally from then on (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). All of this is as foretold and instructed by the Prophet Mohammad. This is what Islamic Jihadists like the Salafists slaughter innocent people and fly planes into buildings for. I could go into details on the ridiculous nature of Islamic heaven, but I think you already get the general idea of why this theology has so many problems. Islamist political activists and Islamic terrorist groups really do want to destroy all forms of materialism and social concepts: modern medicine, the destruction of all history and culture of unconquered lands, the erasure of all other forms of philosophical thought outside Islam, and the erasure of all human advancements and scientific advancements beyond the 7th century. It is because the 7th century is considered the endpoint and perfect civilization due to being the time period of the Prophet Mohammad’s rule; the Quran is supposed to answer all of life’s problems for humanity within Islamic theology. That really is the worldview and outcome that they are forcing upon us. The systemic problem with Islam is never going to go away by seeking to reform the religion because there’ll always be a return to tradition movement like Wahhabism and Salafism, any deviation will be seen as “bid’ah” and seen as adding devil worship to the faith tradition, and terms like Islamophobia continue to prevent peaceful Free Speech discussions that could save lives by de-converting people away from Islam.

What this religion amounts to is Divine Command Theory on figurative steroids to the extent that the Tafsir system of Islamic jurisprudence tries to thoroughly remove all forms of outside logic and thought or otherwise attempts to squeeze it into the acceptability of the standards of the 7^th century during the Prophet Mohammad’s time. The Tafsir system really is a legal system founded on the ideas of revealed wisdom and divine command theory with Muslims having absolute faith in it because they believe it comes from the Abrahamic God. This is also why I doubt Christianity can come-up with any real argument against Islam, because most Christians still follow the system of divine command theory as the basis for their moral judgments. Many US Christian pastors and priests make false aspersions upon Muslims with claims like Allah is somehow the devil (the age-old narcissism of Christianity whereby any disagreeable viewpoint is labeled as a temptation of the devil), or that Jesus was only seen as a good teacher or just a prophet (which is not the full truth, Jesus is the Messiah of Islam), and essentially do everything in their power to dehumanize Muslims without actually giving a valid critique because they don’t even try to understand Islamic theology before denouncing it. It would be incredibly uncomfortable to acknowledge how much more literalist Islam is in accepting Divine Command theory compared to Christianity’s open interpretation system. It’s an argument that Christianity cannot win, because Christianity also predicates itself upon divine command theory. In a very real way, the failings of Christianity act as a shield to protect Islam’s most dangerous beliefs. Christian conservatives often confuse the theology that Muslims are advocating for as Marxist or Socialist as a result, because they’re unfamiliar with the very real and dangerous belief in Islam that the 7^th century needs to be the endpoint of civilization to prepare the way for the Mahdi and Jesus Christ to save the true Muslims from the Anti-Messiah and Satan. This is not some figurative or interpretative belief; the majority of Muslims believe this to be a literal event that will happen with absolute certainty. It’s not Socialist or Marxist, it’s a purely Abrahamic belief that Muslims are espousing and which Christians have no legitimate ability to criticize within the worldview of their own faith tradition.

As a Hindu and an Atheist, my perspective would be to look at Islam as a system and judge it that way. To the best of my knowledge, if the Quran references other material, then it is bizarre that the ideology claims the Quran can solve all of life’s questions. The Tafsir legal system seems to be a self-contradiction to the Quran’s claims of being the perfect book to answer all of life’s problems to me. My reasoning is thus: the Tafsir system, the Sunnah (especially in the Shafi’i school of Islam) and Hadiths essentially disprove the idea that the Quran is the perfect book for all people to live by; since they need the concept of the Tafsir system itself, the Hadiths as supplementary material, the Sunnah as an explanation of ritual and traditions, and cultural movements of return to faith traditions from Wahhabism and Salafism to stay consistent with it. Why, for example, do the Hadiths need a grading system of saheeh (Sound), Hasan (good), Daif (Weak), and Mawdu (fabricated)? The very existence of needing a gradation system for the chain of narration of the Hadiths prove that Islam’s claims to simplicity are false. If the Quran really could provide what it claims, then why can’t people just read it, follow it, and live in a perfect utopia without a jurisprudence system, the broader hadiths, or the Sunnah to explain as supplementary material? Is the Abrahamic God incapable of providing instruction without supplementary material that needs a grading system that leads to moral ambiguity? I don’t understand why some Muslims claim that Hinduism and Christianity don’t make sense, meanwhile their own religion doesn’t just have one holy book, but multiple companion pieces to that holy book because – regardless of if your holy book refers to those companion pieces or not – it clearly wasn’t enough on its own to solve all human problems which is why it needs those companion pieces. If anything, the entire jurisprudence system of Islam proves that the Quran isn’t the perfect book to solve all human problems as it claims. If it was truly able to answer all questions, then the differing interpretation of the hadiths by so-called “Islamic scholars” wouldn’t matter at all. The Quran would just be able to explain it without any ambiguity or interpretation. In other words, the supposed simplicity that Islam claims to have over Christianity’s trinity or Hinduism’s heterodox tradition, doesn’t actually seem to exist. It’s a demonstrably false claim and the mere existence of the hadiths prove it.

There are certain logical errors within Islam that simply baffle me as a Hindu: Why isn’t the existence of the Quran simply proof that the Abrahamic God is a failure? Its own premise of the original Torah and the Injeel being corrupted, lost, and then conveniently abrogated would mean that the Abrahamic God’s revealed wisdom demonstrably failed to work twice. Thus, the Quran’s very existence contradicts the claims to Islam’s simplicity, since the assumption of the Quran’s necessity is predicated upon humanity failing to understand the Abrahamic God’s will twice before; over a series of hundreds or thousands of years. If we apply Occam’s Razor, it would simply be the case that humans have made-up the Abrahamic God as an invention to feel comfortable about life’s ambiguity and not that humanity has failed to learn the Abrahamic God’s moral lessons twice before the Quran was introduced to humanity. This is all ignoring the most salient failing of Islam: Why does the Prophet Mohammad’s lived example matter? Why does any prophet’s lived experiences and actions matter? If an all-powerful God instructed any prophet to give a set of instructions on how to live life for the best outcomes so that people go to heaven, then why couldn’t they just recite the instructions, people could then follow it, and then the perfect outcome simply happens by following the holy book regardless of external circumstances? Why do you need competing traditions like the four Sunni schools to interpret your God’s word and why can’t your God’s word be received in all languages instead of solely being limited to Arabic? Why didn’t Allah allow for the Quran to be perfectly understood in all languages so that the maximum amount of people could follow it without being incumbered by learning one language to better understand the Quran? If the Prophet Mohammad really was a prophet of the Abrahamic God as he claims, why is insulting the Prophet Mohammad held as a greater taboo than insulting Allah? In other words, why is the Prophet Mohammad held in higher esteem than Allah in Islam? To deny this would simply be a rationalization; insulting comments towards Allah is allowed, but insults towards the Prophet Mohammad can lead to physical confrontation in the majority of Islamic countries. How exactly does this make sense? If the Prophet Mohammad was sincere in his claims, why didn’t he hold Allah to a higher regard than himself? Why do some Islamic schools of thought such as in Pakistan hold Quran burning as more permissible than making an insulting picture or making insulting comments of the Prophet Mohammad? How is this not simply proof that Islam is nothing more than the Prophet Mohammad’s personality cult and that he elevated himself into the status of a God without calling himself a God in what amounts to a difference in semantics?

For this next part, I want to give a purely Hindu perspective since fellow Hindus mention that they hardly ever feel their religious value systems are represented accurately even by fellow Hindus who are more outspoken like myself. I apparently did an abjectly terrible job in the past when discussing my views with Western Ex-Muslims, so I’ve tried to learn and improve after being criticized by fellow Hindus who pointed out how flawed and limited my views were at the time. I was also criticized by a close friend who said, even outside of that, I’d done a bad job. So, I want to present a critique from my own understanding as a regular Hindu and based upon my limited reading of Vedanta philosophy, specifically the Advaita Vedanta perspective, that I’ve read from commentary by Adi Shankara on the Bhagavad Gita. Allow me to explain the differences in theology first, before I go into the critique. This portion is mostly from a summarization I gave in my recent book to argue in favor of new International Relations concepts in Political Science to improve US Foreign Policy but edited and expanded on for the purposes of this write-up:

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A Vedantic and Samkhya Critique of Islam

The utilization of the Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism may require some explanation for people who have no concept of the difference in worldview between Hinduism’s dominant theology and other faith traditions. Unfortunately, two of the three Abrahamic faith traditions simply assume that anything that disagrees with them is idol worship and Satanism in a self-serving, narcissistic viewpoint of every other faith tradition in human history. As such, it’s necessary to give a brief explanation because otherwise people who are unfamiliar with Hinduism will simply be confused due to most people only knowing about reincarnation, the Caste system, and the idea of multiple deities. I must stress that I’m more a nominal Hindu and I’m not a learned theologian, and I’m mostly going to explain portions that should hopefully reduce confusion on the subject for the purposes of critique in this case.

Hinduism is a bit similar to Christianity in one major aspect, materialism is largely viewed as a net-negative in most viewpoints within Hinduism. Whereas Christianity views the material world as sinful; most of Hindu theology, especially Vedanta philosophy, views the material world as an illusion (referred to as maya). The key difference is that while the Abrahamic concept of sin views the physical world as sinful and a test of temptation to overcome; the Hindu concept of maya views the world as a form of bondage whereby everything we see, hear, touch, taste, smell, and perceive are also illusions of the physical world.[1][2] The human body is sometimes given the analogy of being a chariot that our conscious mind or our soul rides in. Within Vedanta philosophy, this concept of maya delves deeper to argue that distinguishing any particular object as a specific subject matter within our own personal terms is also an illusion. The modifications of how we identify various subject matters in our own thoughts are also considered illusions; that is, our personal perspective of the physical world around us, our strong feelings towards material objects or even our religious iconography, and our personal ability to categorize the world around us are all illusions.[3] Hindu religious texts translated to English often use the term “sense-objects” as a broad term for understanding that it isn’t merely the physical world being an illusion, but also our senses and our perception of the world itself. Why does Hinduism have so many supposed deities then? Within Advaita Vedanta philosophy specifically, because we must live in the bondage of the physical world, they are illusory means to become close to the unmanifested supreme reality (known as Brahman) beyond our perceptions by creating our own illusory Ishvara (God) to become closer to Brahman. Hindus who follow the dominant theologies of Hinduism like Advaita Vedanta can be given the choice to do this in two ways. We can do this by following behaviors that allow for good karma, following dharmic duties, and serving our communities around us selflessly to help the people around us grow and prosper.[4][5] Or, we can commit to self-renunciation, non-violence, yoga, and meditation and learn more about Brahman (the Unmanifest) through a personal religious journey to purify ourselves of sin, evil, and become closer to Brahman.[6][7] An example of getting closer to Brahman according to Hindu theological texts like the Upanishads would be understanding that since it is unmanifested supreme reality, then it exists within us as our supreme self (Atman) too. What is meant by following Dharmic duties? I would be remiss, if I didn’t specify what it means; traditionally this meant getting married and having children, following Caste duties, respecting the laws of any new countries that Hindus settle in, and respecting religious rites. In modern times, the caste duties that involve caste discrimination are rightly ridiculed as intra-Hindu abuse and unacceptable; likewise, it is unacceptable to bring such problems in other countries that provide better opportunities and means of living, as it is deeply disrespectful to your new community and to your new country to do that. We should be serving the community by participating and helping to the best of our abilities, not causing problems for others.[8]

How am I critiquing Islam based upon this particular Hindu perspective? The Prophet Mohammad died in the 7^th century and whatever feelings of love and commitment that Muslim majority countries have towards him is just their collective illusion – their maya – in both the physical and psychological sense. The image of the Prophet Mohammad controls their behavior; they allow the illusion of the Prophet Mohammad to control them due to their unquestioned faith. The image of the Prophet Mohammad is a sense-object that causes them to become senselessly violent when anyone is perceived to have mocked their Prophet. Likewise, the Quran is a sense-object when people are killed for the perceived wrongdoing of disrespecting the Quran. That is, deriving moral lessons or a guide from the Quran doesn’t give Muslims the right to kill people for the perception of desecration or disrespect; Muslims who commit murder over it have simply allowed an illusory concept of divinity to cause them to behave violently. The violence is proof that the Prophet Mohammad and the Quran are nothing more than delusions of their mind that have corrupted their thinking. The Quranic verse 4:89 and Muslims insisting that criticizing Islam is Islamophobia are both proof that Islam is the most doubting religion in the world; because why would anyone seek to eliminate others to protect their faith? Why do you constantly need external validation to feel comfortable in your faith? Why should the outside world need to change themselves so you feel comfortable in your faith? As long as they’re not being bigots by harassing you, threatening violence against you, or discriminating against you; criticizing your religion is just non-Muslims exercising their inalienable right of Free Speech. Muslim people’s need for external validation by forcing the world to change around them, so that they feel comfortable is proof of a weak faith. The reason is because they’re simply trying to validate their own comfort by seeing, hearing, feeling, and experiencing what is analogous to a giant mirror to see only themselves. That is merely proof of delusion, not a strong faith, because the external world should be immaterial to your own independent reasoning of why you believe something is true.

For Hindus, to distinguish truth claims and improve our perceptions, we largely use the Pramana system but it differs in which ones are used for each philosophical school within Hinduism itself. Unfortunately, I had to learn this aspect of Hinduism late in my life since my experiences were just the Hindu priest at the local mandir that my family went to every Sunday simply eulogizing anecdotal stories of Gods and then having collective singing near the end. I’ve since had those misconceptions corrected thanks to harsh criticism from fellow Hindus and close friends who follow different faith traditions after embarrassing myself in a Youtube talk with Ex-Muslim atheists. To the best of my current knowledge, this would be the most correct approximation of what the main six Pramana systems consist of and mean:

1. Pratyaksha —Eyewitness Account / Direct Perception
2. Anumāna — Inference
3. Upamāna — Analogy
4. Arthāprapti — Deduction
5. Anupalabdhi — Non-existence (the unlikelihood that something is possible)
6. Shabda Pramāṇa — Scriptural evidence, or Background knowledge

Eyewitness account / Direct Perception usually matters the most in Hindu philosophical systems above the other proofs. Below is an example of how Samkhya summarized their reasoning for why the concept of Ishvara (God) is not valid using the Pramana system. Western so-called “Indologists” liken this to the Ancient Greek “Problem of Evil” and seem to completely miss what this is actually critiquing. Samkhya critiques the belief in a singular omnipotent God and the problems that arise from believing in such a notion:

That last epigram can be applied to the Islamic god, Allah. I would go so far that it could be applied to any supernatural claim and it’s a brilliant counter to them for any empiricist and it comes solely from Hindu philosophy. Now, I want to be clear, I apply it to Brahman and Ishvara too; there is obviously no evidence to support that they exist from an empirical standpoint. Also, while eyewitness accounts can be valid, it’s still true that our perceptions can be skewed and our judgments can be biased, and that’s why I would apply scientific evidence before even the Pramana system because it is the best means of reaching a clear and honest approximation of how the world actually exists. It also shouldn’t be seen as a binary choice between the two, since they can be used simultaneously. For example, our own eyewitness account of cells using tools like microscopes is the basis for understanding complex scientific topics like Biology and Microbiology. Similarly, NASA’s use of advanced telescopes to detect what blackholes do and ultraviolet satellite camera imagery from both Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope for a more in-depth look into space beyond our limited human eyes (Note, a few of these James Webb Space Telescope images in the link are noted to be artistic reconstructions but most are real) so we have a better understanding of the universe in our own limited human capacity. I’d delve into how I apply this to modern neuroscientific and psychological findings which I’d argue validate my Hindu perspective, but going any further would be beyond the scope of this write-up.

It bears noting that my fellow Hindus in India and other fellow Dharmic followers have repeatedly expressed complaints of being ignored or they’ve been mocked as silly for arguments that do hold validity, even if it may bring discomfort to others because they challenge the notions of fairness to religious tolerance. I had initially thought these arguments as misguided on the basis that Democratic Republics shouldn’t compare their internal structures to those of Islamic monarchies. Yet, after the Biden administration’s foreign policy blunders in South Asia, obtaining a greater understanding on the limitations of Free Speech in Canada and Great Britain, and looking at the recent Pew Research surveys on global religious beliefs with how shockingly high the push for Muslim nationalism is; I realized I was wrong to view them as misguided and I had been mistaken in my prior beliefs. Allow me to do my best to paraphrase the arguments I’ve heard from Hindus of India: Why should we Hindus have to deal with proselytizers like Christian missionaries and Muslim dawahs when we don’t do proselytizing ourselves and don’t want it in our communities? Why should we Hindus, other Dharmic followers, and Christians permit Muslim dawahs to spread conversion in non-Muslim countries, when Muslim-majority countries would murder, torture, or jail people for de-converting people away from Islam? Why do we pretend this is a fair international system of each religion being treated equally in the world, when we know that Muslim-majority countries prohibit de-converting Muslims as illegal in their countries and make no qualms about killing Christian missionaries or religious missionaries of other faith traditions outside of Islam who try to de-convert them? Why do Christian missionaries act as if de-converting Hindus in India is some huge struggle, while ignoring the legitimate discrimination, violence, and murders of their fellow Christians and of other non-Muslim religious groups in Muslim-majority countries who suffer horrific abuses at the hands of the Muslim-majority populations? Are Christian missionaries just cowards who see Hindus as easy targets because Hindus believe in respecting Christians, while ignoring the violence and hate that Dharmic and Christian minority groups suffer in Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh? You claim Christianity is all about testing your faith for the purpose of converting others, so why aren’t you testing your faith in Muslim-majority countries that would kill you for being Christian? Aren’t you suppose to bear persecution for having faith in Jesus Christ, so why aren’t you proselytizing in Muslim-majority countries and helping your fellow Christians who are already persecuted there? Are you really sincere about your beliefs or are you just a pathetic coward who sees Hindus as easy targets because we’re genuinely more peaceful than both of your faiths; which is why you smash Hindu iconography to mock us and your Christian extremists burn Hindu temples to instigate inter-religious violence that you then falsely portray in the news media as Hindu mob violence?

For what it’s worth, I believe these subsets of fellow Hindus who live in India are being pessimistic at least within the context of the politics of India; the fact is, if you actually look at what Christian Indians and Muslim Indians say about India, they’re largely in agreement with Hindus that Indian culture is superior to other cultures and that India allows them to freely express their beliefs without fear or threats of harm. Christian missionaries from the US only make up two percent of the Christian population within the US in total which should amount to approximately 3.4 million people out of approximately 170 million people judging from what I extrapolated from Glenn T. Stanton’s book, Myth of the Dying Church. The vast majority of Muslims in India and the US seem to just want to go about their day without talking about religion at all and try to steer conversations away because of feelings of embarrassment or possibly the fear of being singled out for being Muslim; which they obviously shouldn’t have to fear as they are not the same as Islamists who are pushing for an Islamic political agenda into the public discourse and public policy. To be clear and to reiterate, Islamists are Muslim extremists who want to force Islamic values into broader societies. Islamists are not the same as nominal Muslims who just want to live their life without forcing religious agendas and go about their day within Democratic Republics. Sadly though, it’s simply a fact when assessing Pew Research statistics and the laws of Islamic monarchies that the Islamists are the norm throughout the world and the nominal Muslims within Western societies and India are the rarity.

To summarize my perspective as a Hindu Atheist towards Islam: I honestly see all supernatural claims as merely a delusion and that includes all of the Prophet Mohammad’s claims. Within the scope of Hindu philosophy and personally reading a few chapters of Adi Shankara’s commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, it better helped me to recognize and contextualize that all the claims of strong feelings of love that Muslims have for the Prophet Mohammad and Jesus Christ as their Messiah are merely illusory sense-perceptions. Insulting the Prophet Mohammad with the depiction of a picture and burning a Quran controls the behavior of most Muslims due to their strong feelings of adoration. Thus, their beliefs about the Prophet Mohammad and Jesus Christ are their sense-objects. That is, all their strong feelings of personally forming a relationship to know Allah, their desire of wanting to be more like the Prophet Mohammad because they believe him to be the perfect human being to follow the example of and their love for him, and their faith that Jesus Christ will appear on judgment day to save the true Muslim believers are all illusions created from their collective affectation over what is really mythology. Modern neuroscience has largely determined that our personal views are a statistical distribution; as such, the majority of Muslims confuse their subjective experiences and community relations for objective fact when the two are not the same. Faith in the Prophet Mohammad’s revealed wisdom is faith in the illusion of prophethood, faith in Jesus Christ as their Messiah is faith in the illusion of prophecy and a Messiah, and fear of eternal hellfire is merely fear of a 7^th century illusion and a fraudulent conversion tactic. The belief that anyone who disagrees with them will burn in eternal fire for those who disbelieve in Islam, the belief in angels, and their love for the Prophet Mohammad are all illusions from a 7^th century mythology passed down to them and enforced by threats of fear (Eternal Fire: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 ) and violence (Quran 4:89). While some of my fellow Hindus also harbor belief in a soul, I’d argue that the belief that humans have souls is also an illusion.

Within the context of Samkhya’s philosophical arguments, all of these supernatural beliefs; the supposed revealed wisdom of Prophet Mohammad, prophethood as a concept itself, the belief that Jesus Christ as the Messiah will come on Judgment day to save the true Muslims, the belief in the Occultation of the Mahdi and that the Mahdi will appear to guide true believing Muslims to Jesus Christ, the belief in angels, the soul, jinns, Shaytan / Satan, the eternal fires of hell, the belief in Jannah (Islamic Heaven), and the Abrahamic god Allah are all sensory illusions (maya). That is because, as Samkhya argued regarding any concept of Ishvara (God), these are all propositions that are not objects of perception, they are suppositions that have no evidentiary basis that can prove them, and the best way to obtain a method of proof to understand whether a claim can be true or not in modern times is the scientific method. The scientific method is obviously better than claims of revealed wisdom because it improves the ability of human eyewitness accounts using refined scientific tools like microscopes, medical techniques of brain imaging like fMRI, and telescopes for a more accurate approximation of reality itself. Feelings of love are not proof of truth and their feelings of love lead them into violence whenever someone mocks what they love. As a Hindu, I’d prefer a world of self-liberation (moksha) over illusion (maya). In other words, a world where people don’t allow sense-objects to control their behavior or influence how they value truth-seeking regarding reality and facts.

When we Hindus observe Muslims or Christian extremists breaking, smashing, or burning Hindu iconography or Hindu temples; it is not proof of a strong faith on their part, it is proof of cowards who live in maya (illusion) and demand the rest of the world conform to their delusions due to the mythological belief in Judgment Day. The best way to end such tactics is to capture videos and share it with the world; in the cases where they aren’t threatening immediate violence and just smashing Hindu iconography they bought; it might be useful to tell them pointblank that their actions are irrefutable proof that their religion teaches them to hate. Even if the person showing hate doesn’t listen, others who hold the same faith as the ones who commit such actions will begin to lose faith and that’s really all you need. Even if that doesn’t happen, capturing video evidence and sharing it with the world inspires people to write critical essays like this one, so that more people become aware and potentially listen about the hatred and violence that such faiths like Islam continue to commit. It may seem paradoxical, but it’s best to always keep in mind: most people of other faith traditions are unaware and not intentionally malicious, so when you share factual evidence, then even believers of the same faith tradition as those who commit hate will doubt their own faith because the vast majority find such hateful actions unconscionable. They’re free to express their hate just as we’re free to capture them committing such hateful acts and spreading their bad news to change minds in the opposite direction that they hoped for. In short, they try to force the illusion of their belief systems upon us and we show the truthful and harmful consequences of their belief systems upon their fellow faith members.

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What the term Islamophobia shields

            Islamophobia is a problematic term. It is a neologism for blasphemy to prevent any non-Muslim from exercising their human rights of free speech to criticize it. It is a term that is used to deliberately obfuscate and conflate criticism of the theology of Islam with bigotry against Muslims as people. Even worse, and I hate having to write this, but despite the fact that the global Muslim population is approximately 1.9 billion; despite the fact it comprises of ethnic backgrounds from Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Eastern Europe; and despite the fact that it is actually the most racially diverse religion in the United States itself even more than Christianity; people continue to racialize Islam as an ethnic minority group. This falsehood has become so successful that countries like Sweden, that claimed to have removed blasphemy laws, are now imposing legal charges on Iraqi refugees who criticize Islam even after one of them was murdered in their home for burning the Quran as a free speech protest. I literally have to repeat to my close White friends constantly that Islam is not a race or an ethnic background but it’s in one ear and out the other with them. By contrast, my close Black and Hispanic friends who value the First Amendment of the US Constitution seem to better understand what I mean. Yet, I swear, any heterosexual White person – close friend or no – I try to explain why the term prevents Free Speech discussion, they don’t listen at all and the more obnoxious people only attempt to shut down discussions completely. In fairness, I’ve had more success with some LGBT White Americans but even then, it’s half-and-half but I’ve experienced a greater degree of them willing to listen.

This problem is becoming so pervasive that my fellow Hindus are now unfortunately replicating such tactics. I despise to the highest degree that this is happening, but here we are. Any time I explain to my fellow Hindus how ridiculous the term is on social media or attempts at private discussions, I’m either ignored, blocked, or they correctly point to how effective the term Islamophobia is and argue that the use of the term Hinduphobia is just about wanting to gain the same measure of respect as other faiths. They disagree with my criticisms on the grounds that Hindus continue to be maligned whereas Muslims and Christians are afforded a shield of protection for their religious teachings that Hindus have never received. This idea of criticizing religion being a phobia really is becoming the new social norm in Western countries and people are not recognizing just how dangerous that is. Where do societies go from this point forward? Should we expect “Christianphobia” to be the next step, once Christianity becomes a minority religion in some Western countries? Are we going to be discussing Catholicphobia or Christianphobia anytime another decades-long child rape scandal makes headline news similar to Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs and the term Islamophobia, as what has happened in Great Britain? Is it Hinduphobic of me to discuss US ISKCON’s own deplorable child rape scandals in the 1960s and 1970s? Will it be anti-Semitic in the future to discuss child rape crimes committed by unsavory ultra-orthodox Jewish male preachers upon vulnerable Jewish children in Australia, the US, and Great Britain? This is becoming absurd because hurt feelings of religious people shouldn’t matter more than the human rights of children. I can’t speak for monarchic countries with limitations on Free Speech like Great Britain and Canada, but is this what we want in Democratic Republics like the US, Ireland, and France? Should people continue to be silenced in fellow Democratic Republics like India due to colonial British laws still in effect and the pernicious British cultural influence that caused limitations upon their Constitution’s Free Speech rights?

The basis for the term Islamophobia likely comes from Islamic theology’s view that “Islamic Scholars” – that is, the Muslim Imams – are the only ones who have the right to an opinion on Islam. That is, Muslims who aren’t Islamic preachers and all non-Muslims aren’t allowed to have an opinion on the faith of Islam. Due to the structure being based upon divine command theory and revealed wisdom, all non-Muslims and Muslims who aren’t considered “scholars” are essentially forbidden from using their own reasoning faculties to give an opinion on Islam. If, for example, you were an Ex-Muslim who left the faith and were threatened by your Muslim neighbors with being killed for apostasy because of the Quranic verse 4:89, then according to the Islamic tradition based upon Islamic theology itself, you have no right to an opinion about being murdered for your freedom of thought. The attempts to racialize Islam with terms like Islamophobia essentially gives a blanket protection for the murder of Ex-Muslims and free speech protesters. With the attack on Ex-Muslim Atheist Salman Rushdie in New York a few years ago and the murder of Salwan Momika, an Atheist from a Christian background, in Sweden on January 29, 2025 for a Quran burning protest back in 2023; it is obvious this racial distinction is merely sophistry in an effort to impose the Sharia (the Divine Law of the Abrahamic God) upon freer countries to advance Islamist political interests.

These next few subsections are going to be difficult to accept, but they are the unfortunate reality. This is what Islamists really do want to normalize and make socially acceptable in non-Muslim countries through Dawah tactics. Despite Western Ex-Muslim Atheists effectively utilizing normalizing dissent tours to explain in various US college panels on just what Islam teaches, it took me awhile for the information to fully register in my mind because of how absurd and even bigoted it sounded to me. In fact, years prior to watching Ex-Muslim of North America panel talks, when a close friend told me of an Ex-Muslim friend of theirs who explained the religious festival of Eid al-Adha (Festival of Slaughter), I absolutely didn’t believe a word of it and assumed my friend had been deceived or tricked by some Ex-Muslim atheist who was making some weird reddit atheist meme about their former religion and that they had tricked my friend into believing the meme to be real. The reason I fully believed that viewpoint was because I thought such a notion as annual animal slaughter for religious reasons in modern times was “obviously” just an attempt to portray the majority of Muslims as backwards in a bigoted way. Due to not knowing anything substantive about Islam at the time, I had assumed that this “Ex-Muslim atheist who spent too much time on reddit” was mocking Islam by confusing their own bizarre minor religious denomination in Islam for the majority of Muslims who couldn’t possibly be that backwards in the twenty-first century. I likened it to a Christian minority subset having odious beliefs that the majority of Christians no longer hold. At no point did I entertain the idea of Muslims slaughtering animals every year as a real and true religious ritual that occurs every year until after listening to Ex-Muslims, finding Pakistani Ex-Muslim atheist Sarah Haider mentioning it on Twitter with other Ex-Muslims chiming in about their own personal stories, and then reading about it more via finding news articles about it with descriptive and brutal imagery from a Google search after reading her tweet.

Please regard everything you watch and read for these subsections seriously. Unfortunately, these are not insensitive jokes or bad faith arguments; they are the social norms and values of Muslim-majority countries. I decided to add a video from Islam Unboxed, a show once made by Ex-Muslim Atheist Armin Navabi, giving fuller context showing a prominent “Muslim skeptic” Daniel Reza Haqiqatjou, an undergraduate of Physics from Harvard and a Graduate with a Masters Degree in Western Philosophy from Tufts University. Haqiqatjou formed his website Muslim Skeptic to criticize other people’s religious beliefs in support of Islamic theology (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Haqiqatjou is an American who was born in Houston, Texas and promotes Islamist political views in the US (1). These are not fringe ideas in Muslim-majority countries, they are the social norm of the vast majority of Muslim countries, they are the norm among Muslim communities throughout the world outside of the US, and Islamists really do want to make these ideas into the social norm of all non-Muslim countries.

These subsections will contain the normative values that Islam teaches and then I’ll share news stories of the real-life consequences, so that you understand this is not some attempt to dehumanize Muslims or a sick joke. For these first two, I’ll show teachings first and then the consequences:

Rape of girls as young as Nine Years-old

Source: Navabi, Armin. “Islam Unboxed ☪️ – Part 2 (With Imam Tawhidi, Daniel Haqiqatjou and Armin Navabi).” YouTube, Ideas Unboxed, 2 Jan. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi3Cnk224zI&t=3164s&ab_channel=IdeasUnboxed. I will never understand how Armin Navabi was able to handle himself with such restraint when he received that response so casually.

The unfortunate and disturbing reality of Islam’s teachings are that the vast majority of Muslims throughout the world support child marriages of little girls as young as 6-years old and the majority of Muslims in the world really do approve of sex between a male adult and a 9-year old girl to the extent that they reject the idea that it is an act of rape. Due to the Tafsir system of Islam teaching that Prophet Mohammad was the perfect human being to emulate (the Sunnah) to be a morally good person in accordance with what the Abrahamic God wants people to do; the majority of Muslims across the world believe that non-Muslims have no right to an opinion on disagreeing with this belief and practice. This is because only perceived “Islamic Scholars” which are the Muslim Imams have any right to debate this topic in accordance with their religious faith as part of the Sharia (Divine Law of the Abrahamic God). The majority of Muslims in the world believe this is justified because the hadiths considered saheeh or “authentic” pertaining to what Aisha said about herself and others close to the Prophet Mohammad confirm that the Prophet Mohammad married Aisha when she was six-years of age and that the Prophet Mohammad had sex with her when she was 9-years old (PDF):

Source: https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3896Source: https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3894Source: https://sunnah.com/abudawud:2121  Source: https://sunnah.com/nasai:3255

Source: https://sunnah.com/bukhari:5133

In other words, because the Prophet Mohammad married Aisha when she was six years old and had sexual intercourse with her when she was 9-years old; the majority of Muslims believe that this was morally justified on the basis of the Divine Command of the Abrahamic God as per the Sharia (Divine Law of the Abrahamic God). The basis for their desire to retain this pedophilic belief and practice really is due to a legal system based upon Divine Command theory in absolute faith to the Abrahamic God. Islamists wish to push for normalizing this legally and socially in all non-Muslim countries as part of conversion to Islam due to their unquestioned faith in the Abrahamic God.

Slave Girls

Quran 4:3:

Source: https://legacy.quran.com/4/3  

Quran 4:24 (1, 2, 3 and 1, 2, 3, 4)

Source: https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=4&verse=24

Quran 16:71

 

Source: https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=16&verse=71

Quran 23:5-6 

Source: https://legacy.quran.com/23/5-6

Quran 24:33

Source: https://legacy.quran.com/24/33

 

Quran 24:58

Source: https://legacy.quran.com/24/58

Quran 33:50 (1, 2, 3, 4 and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Source: https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=33&verse=50

The kidnapping and enslavement of women, especially of little girls, is both condoned and supported explicitly by the Quran’s teachings. The term “right-hand-possesses” is a metaphor in Islamic theology for “slave girl” and as you can see the term is translated interchangeably and even clarified to mean slave girls. Within the broader context of Islamic theology, it would mean that Muslim men have the right to kidnap nine year-old little girls, rape them to convert them to Islam, force nine-year old girls into prostitution for other Muslim men, and force them into child marriage with the expectation of being allowed to rape them and force them to become pregnant. While it might possibly be arguable that the age of a slave girl is slightly ambiguous in Islam due to being argued on the basis of Hadiths; the Quran unequivocally grants permission for Muslim men to have slave girls, to kidnap unmarried women (i.e. women who are “unclaimed” by other men within their unchanging 7^th century social perceptions), to rape unmarried women, to sell unmarried women into prostitution for other Muslim men, and to use slavery as a social means of forced marriages of non-Muslim women to Muslim men. Moreover, the moral justification for this practice is that the Abrahamic God will forgive the women for being forced into prostitution, enslavement, and being repeatedly raped. Therefore, while Muslim men are discouraged from committing these practices upon non-Muslim women including little girls, they are not forbidden from committing these practices upon non-Muslim women on the basis that the Abrahamic God will forgive these women regardless. The reason for this morbid distinction is that by the standards of the Arab Spring in the 7^th century, the woman’s chastity is the only thing that matters and her consent doesn’t matter; the bodies of adult women and little girls are contextualized as the property of men, which is the underpinnings for why the Islamic jurisprudence system treats women in this way.

I believe it is necessary to repeat: the Tafsir system (interpretation of the Quran) and the Sharia (Divine Law of the Abrahamic God) means that only Muslim Imams have any right to an opinion on these beliefs and practices; Muslims cannot question these beliefs and practices, while non-Muslims have no right to any opinion on these beliefs and practices. Terms like Islamophobia to shut down criticisms of Islam really are just modernized neologisms for blasphemy against Islam. The truth is, Islamists will use every iota of perceived weakness within societies in order to protect this belief that only Muslim Imams have any right to an opinion on Islam; they will portray critics as bigots, they will try to “racialize” Muslims despite the population of 1.9 billion and Islam being one of the most multi-ethnic religions in human history, and they will try to exploit other perceived weaknesses such as socioeconomic differences to keep pushing this specific and very real threat of normalizing odious 7^th century belief systems in non-Muslim majority countries as a means of making other civilizations more susceptible to Islamic conversion practices.

 

Common Sense versus the Consequences of the Reality of Islam:

Modern sensibilities of “common sense” may lead most people to believe that modern women’s rights are so normalized that there is little to fear; the unfortunate historical truth is that this ignores societies that Islam ruled over and successfully regressed. I looked through Will Durant’s Our Oriental Heritage to double-check this information, and then checked his own source where he cites Indian freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai’s book, Unhappy India, which was published in 1928. According to Lala Lajpat Rai, when India back in the medieval period had adult Indian women pushing for greater cultural independence around the beginning of the Muslim conquest of India, Muslim men would simply kidnap Indian women and force them into slavery, including sexual slavery. This led to a return to the much older cultural tradition of child marriage due to Islam forbidding the kidnapping and rape of married women, whereas unmarried women were permitted by the Abrahamic God to be kidnapped and raped. From pages 158-159 of Lala Lajpat Rai’s Unhappy India:

This practice still goes on in Muslim-majority South Asian countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh which continue to do this to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, and other religious minority groups. A brief example from a March 18, 2016 news clip from the news organization, Voice of America that is titled “Pakistani Hindus Complain of Forced Conversion of Teenage Girls” from their Youtube channel:

On August 13^th, 2015, Romanian journalist Rukmini Callimachi published an article for the New York Times titled “ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43) which explained how the Islamic State utilized Islam’s theology to justify the rape and sexual slavery of young girls, while portrayed as “radical” it is unfortunately the most consistent behavior with Islamic theology. I would recommend comparing what I’ve explained with the behavior of the Islamist perpetrators as described by interviews with the Yazidi rape survivors who were interviewed for the article. The article begins as follows:

 

And more details further in the article of the extent of how the sexual slavery system that they devised was consistent with their Islamic jurisprudence system:

The article closes with an anecdote from another Yazidi rape survivor who describes what an ISIS fighter did to a 12-year old girl and explains the mentality of the ISIS fighter which is unfortunately completely consistent with Islamic theology:

Within the broader Western culture, there is the dangerous cultural myth of Western exceptionalism. The perception within the Western cultural osmosis is still that the West is the endpoint of all human civilizations. Unfortunately, all cultures that held this hubris in the past fell into ruin; likely because it actively impaired them from accepting facts and evidence that disproved such misconceptions. When we stop believing cultures are exceptional and start gazing at cultural patterns and behaviors, we can learn a lot more and develop better methods on how to put an end to Islamism. The unfortunate and painful truth is that similar crimes by Muslim men against young girls have been happening in Great Britain and the similarities should be scrutinized more to check for patterns where Muslims rule as the majority or have large enclaves that embrace Islamism.

An early example was a news report by journalist Kevin Rawlinson on June 27^th, 2013 for The Independent on the horrifying activities of Oxford grooming gangs of Pakistani Muslim men which was titled “Oxford grooming gang jailed: Dogar and Karrar brothers get life for abuse and rape of young girls” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) with the early parts of the article reading as follows:

Sentencing remarks by Judge Peter Rook from the Judiciary of England and Wales (PDF); which Elon Musk rightly shared snippets (specifically number 53 of the counts listed below) of the horrifying information on Twitter so that people unfamiliar with these issues could better understand the problem of Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs and what they’re capable of. It had this extended passage of the sexual enslavement of a girl by the Muslim perpetrators:

50) You, Mohammed Karrar, were introduced to GH when she was only 11. It is a clear from the video clip we have seen, she was a small girl at the age of 12. You were in your thirties. [You knew that both her parents had profound disabilities, and at a very early age she shouldered a huge responsibility towards her parents. You would go to her home and smoke joints with her father who no doubt would have had no idea what you were doing to his daughter, including having sex with her at his home.] You anally raped her when she was 11. After a period of months when you groomed her, you were having regular oral, vaginal and anal sex with her. You duped her by telling her that you’d take her to Saudia Arabia and marry her when she was 15. She became pregnant. Your reaction was to become angry with her and slap her. You took her to Reading so that an illegal abortion could be performed upon her at an underground so-called clinic. Clearly this was highly dangerous to her health. As always you had no regard to her welfare and the damage you were causing her. She became obsessed with you, and you exploited her.

 

51) There came at time before she was 13 that both of you Mohammed and Bassam Karrar started to bring strangers to have sex with her. You Bassam would organise the sessions. Mohammed was closely involved and would be at most of these sessions. These 11 occasions happened many times. You would make her act as a hostess at sex parties no doubt charging for her services. If she did not want to have sex with the men, you both would get angry. She had to endure depraved sexual demands including the acting out of weird sex fantasies, and the insertion of objects in her vagina. If she kicked out, she would be restrained. If she said that she did not have sex. She said “Mo and Bassam would get mad at me.” You, Mohammed, made videos of GH performing sex acts no doubt with a view to selling her sexual services.

 

51) You, Mohammed Karrar, took her to various places to provide sex to others – a hotel in Bournemouth, a flat near a school in Oxford. She was taken to High Wycombe for sex on a regular basis. Both of you took her to High Wycombe for sex with others. Bassam took her two or three times without Mohammed. Sometimes there were three or four men at a session. Sometimes as many as nine or ten. GH thought that Bassam was taking lots of phone calls in relation to the Wycombe trips where there would be sex acts and sexual fantasies acted upon.

 

52) GH would hear both Mohammed and Bassam speaking to customers over the phone before going to the Nanford for sex. She was taken to Nanford House over 50 times. The charge would vary according to the sex act you’d make her perform. Mainly Mohammed would take her, but Bassam took her more than a couple of times. Sometimes she would be to taken to the Nanford twice or three times a week.

 

53) You, Mohammed Karrar, prepared her for gang anal rape by using a pump to expand her anal passage. You subjected her to a gang rape by five or six men (count 30). At one point she had four men inside her. A red ball was placed in her mouth to keep her quiet. Not only were you both involved in the commercial sexual exploitation of GH, you also used her for your own self-gratification. You both raped her when she was under 13. When she was very young, although it is not clear whether she was under 13, you both raped her at the same time (oral and vaginal/anal). It happened on more than one occasion (Count 28).

 

54) Mohammed Karrar, on one occasion when GH was 12, after raping her, she threatened you with your lock knife. Your reaction was to pick up a baseball bat with a silver metal handle, strike her on the head with it, and then insert the baseball bat inside her vagina. You treated her as if she was your commodity. You branded her (with your initial near her anal passage) using a hot hair pin. If GH did not comply with your wishes, if you were not with other people, you would lose your temper with her. As part of the grooming, you would provide her with crack cocaine and you injected GH with heroin on numerous occasions (Count 40).

 

55) When she was not prepared to participate any more, you would issue terrible threats. Your activities took a heavy toll upon her both physically and mentally. In late 2010/2011 she phoned you. You invited her to come and see you. You said “We’ll sort it and make it better.” Once there, you had an argument, and to exert your power and punish her, you pulled down her trousers and raped her.

 

On February 27^th, 2019, the BBC released a news article titled “Bradford grooming: Nine jailed for abusing girls” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) detailing another story of horrific abuses by nine men who were predominately Pakistani Muslims:

And further in the article:

The “common sense” Western viewpoint would be to see the horrible sexual violence committed upon Fiona Goddard and the other young girls as a form of “prostitution” in isolation of the theology of Islam. However, once we understand and apply the theological context of Islam and how it promotes such horrific and unjustifiable violence upon young girls, then it is credible to draw a comparison to Islam’s theological teachings of “right hand possesses” which is an Islamic religious metaphor for “slave girls” controlled by Muslim men in accordance with faith in the Abrahamic God. Even in the context of how ISIS justified their horrific slave trade of Yazidi women, there are parallels to what the Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs in Britain did to primarily working-class White British girls. In other words, it is more accurate to view this in terms of the Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs creating “slave girls” due to Islam’s theological underpinning of what “right hand possesses” means than to subtract religion from the equation. It makes more sense when you compare it to how Muslim men treat women in a globalized context; due to the teachings of Islam.

For those unfamiliar of the extent of these Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs throughout Great Britain, how serious the majority of Muslims are of continuing this practice in countries they settle in, and the historic failures of the British police to hold them to account to protect young British girls from grooming tactics, Lizzie Deardan of The Independent, published an article on February 23^rd, 2018 titled “Grooming gangs abused more than 700 women and girls around Newcastle after police appeared to punish victims” which explained the following within just one city in England:

After examining evidence on the abuse of hundreds of girls in the North-east, investigators concluded that local authorities claiming there is no grooming in their area “are not looking hard enough”.

Operation Sanctuary: “We do not believe that what we have uncovered is unique to Newcastle”

Pat Ritchie, chief executive of Newcastle City Council, said the council would enact all recommendations from the report.

“Sexual exploitation is happening in towns and cities across the country but what we have learned can be used to help others,” she added.

“We know it is still going on in our city, but we are doing everything in our power to prevent it, disrupt it and deal with it, and support the victims for years to come.”

Northumbria Police had identified more than 700 potential victims of grooming in the region by August through Operation Sanctuary, but expected the number to rise.

Temporary Deputy Chief Constable Darren Best said society had undergone a “sea change” in the knowledge and understanding of grooming in recent years.

“We are far from complacent and recognise we still have work to do to ensure we consistently identify victims and carry out comprehensive investigations on their behalf,” he added.

“What cannot be clearer is that safeguarding the vulnerable is everybody’s business.”

Before 2014, police were responding to incidents on an ad hoc basis, with efforts by authorities trying to persuade victims to keep away from the abusers and change their behaviours.

The review found the approach led to “consideration of deterrent punishments of victims for being drunk and disorderly or for making false allegations when accounts were changed”.

“This sent an unhelpful message to perpetrators – they were unlikely to be prosecuted or prevented from continuing to abuse – encouraging an arrogant persistence,” it added.

“It also had a significant impact on victims who learnt that nothing would be done against perpetrators.”

A total of 17 men and one woman have been convicted of offences including rape, sexual abuse, supplying drugs and trafficking for sexual exploitation in a series of trials over the Newcastle case.

Of eight victims covered in the trials, six were white and two were of African heritage, while the perpetrators came from a diverse range of backgrounds including Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Iranian, Iraqi, Kurdish, Turkish, Albanian and Eastern European.

The court heard how teenagers and young women were picked up off the streets, then groomed and given alcohol and drugs before being coerced or forced into sex at so-called “sessions” in Newcastle’s West End.

Victims described being raped while they were asleep, unconscious or incapacitated after being forced to drink and take drugs.

“I wanted to leave but I was given drink,” one said. “I kept saying no and fighting them off. I was very tired and fell asleep. When I woke, I had been raped.”

Another added: “When I was out of it they could do anything they wanted to me.”

A judge concluded that the defendants “selected their victims not because of their race, but because they were young, impressionable, naive, and vulnerable”, including young girls and women with learning difficulties and mental health issues.

The review said victims in the wider North-east included a 12-year-old girl who fell pregnant and other teenagers who underwent abortions, as well as others left with devastating long-term trauma causing substance abuse, mental illness and relationship breakdowns.

 

While working-class White girls have been the primary targets of Muslim grooming gangs in the UK, the National Family Health Survey of the United Kingdom revealed that Hindu and Sikh girls of primarily South Asian descent were being targeted for sexual grooming too. On November 9^th, 2017, the organization released a short write-up titled “Sexual grooming amongst Hindu girls” which warned of the patterns of behavior to watch out for:

Due to being part of the teachings of the Quran itself that Muslims cannot question; these are not one-off events, they have a horrifying historical context that has never been addressed and which still occur in Muslim-majority South Asian countries that the British government itself created via the partition of India in 1947, and the underpinnings of Islamic theology create moral justifications that the behavior is sanctioned by the Abrahamic God under Islam’s divine command theory.

Within the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia, this sort of behavior is socially condoned, even if not officially acceptable due to international pressure. An article initially published on The Daily Beast in October 11^th, 2015 and then updated in April 13^th, 2017 titled “Inside the World of Gulf State Slavery” by journalists Asra Q. Nomani and Hala Arafa explained as follows:

On Jurist.org, a website and non-profit organization where Law Students are encouraged to report of conditions where the rule of law is in crisis across the world; a guest article was published on May 9^th, 2017 by Mais Haddad. At the time she wrote the article, Mais Haddad was then a S.J.D candidate (Doctor of Juridical Science) at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, she holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from the then City, University London, and she received her LL.M (Masters of Law degree) from Damascus University, and practiced law in Damascus, Syria for eight years. In her article bluntly titled “Victims of Rape and Law: How the Laws of the Arab World Protect Rapists, Not Victims” she gives an overarching explanation of the horrifying consequences that Islamic Law causes upon Arab women in modern times within many Muslim-majority countries:

It should come as no surprise within the context of Islam’s vehement support for the rape of nine-year old children, child marriage, and sexual slavery of women and little girls that even when legal policies are changed, they inevitably regress at the expense of the human rights of Arab children in the Arab Spring. Unfortunately, it is still happening even just this year in 2025. Walk Free, an international human rights group focused on the eradication of modern slavery; co-founded by Australian philanthropist, Grace Forrest and her father, the wealthiest male billionaire in Australia, John Andrew Henry Forrest; released a short article titled “Iraq’s new law allowing children as young as 9 to marry undermines women and girls’ rights” on January 31^st, 2025 lamenting Iraq’s regression of child marriage laws:

For these last two sections, I decided to add the two subsection of Chapter 24 of my older book, Faith in Doubt as I don’t really have much else to add from what I’ve already critiqued years ago. I replaced the quotes with pictures so that you can click and read them yourselves; I know a lot of this sounds insane and unbelievable, so I want to show the authenticity as much as possible:

Islamic Theology and Female Genital Mutilation

            In Islam, most Islamic schools of thought consider the matter of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) to be an honor that women can choose to undertake. However, in the Shafi’i school of Islam, it is considered mandatory to impose FGM upon young girls and they often undergo this horrific procedure in their infancy. If you don’t believe that the Shafi’i school of Islam makes FGM mandatory, here is the evidence from a Shafi’i cleric who justifies the procedure in terms of a commitment to the purity of Islam and obedience to the Abrahamic God:

            For any potential Muslim readers from the Shafi’i school of Islam who believe FGM is morally obligatory or who are indifferent to the procedure, please be advised that FGM does have irreversible and life-threatening health impacts for your daughters and that no qualified medical experts should be endorsing such a procedure as it has severe health risks with no benefits at all. Below is a short compilation provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) that details FGM’s short-term and permanent long-term damage to the health and welfare of female children. In my honest opinion, if you pursue FGM for your children or any of your family members knowing the consequences then you obviously don’t love them:

Health risks of female genital mutilation (FGM)

Women and girls living with FGM have experienced a harmful practice. Experience of FGM increases the short and long term health risks to women and girls and is unacceptable from a human rights and health perspective. While in general there is an increased risk of adverse health outcomes with increased severity of FGM, WHO is opposed to all forms of FGM and is emphatically against the practice being carried out by health care providers (medicalization).

Short-term health risks of FGM

Severe pain: cutting the nerve ends and sensitive genital tissue causes extreme pain. Proper anaesthesia is rarely used and, when used, is not always effective. The healing period is also painful. Type III FGM is a more extensive procedure of longer duration, hence the intensity and duration of pain may be more severe. The healing period is also prolonged and intensified accordingly.

Excessive bleeding: (haemorrhage) can result if the clitoral artery or other blood vessel is cut during the procedure.

Shock: can be caused by pain, infection and/or haemorrhage.

Genital tissue swelling: due to inflammatory response or local infection.

Infections: may spread after the use of contaminated instruments (e.g. use of same instruments in multiple genital mutilation operations), and during the healing period.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV): the direct association between FGM and HIV remains unconfirmed, although the cutting of genital tissues with the same surgical instrument without sterilization could increase the risk for transmission of HIV between girls who undergo female genital mutilation together.

Urination problems: these may include urinary retention and pain passing urine. This may be due to tissue swelling, pain or injury to the urethra.

Impaired wound healing: can lead to pain, infections and abnormal scarring

Death: can be caused by infections, including tetanus and haemorrhage that can lead to shock.

Psychological consequences: the pain, shock and the use of physical force by those performing the procedure are mentioned as reasons why many women describe FGM as a traumatic event.

Long-term health risks from Types I, II and III (occurring at any time during life)

Pain: due to tissue damage and scarring that may result in trapped or unprotected nerve endings.

Infections:

• Chronic genital infections: with consequent chronic pain, and vaginal discharge and itching. Cysts, abscesses and genital ulcers may also appear.
• Chronic reproductive tract infections: May cause chronic back and pelvic pain.
• Urinary tract infections: If not treated, such infections can ascend to the kidneys, potentially resulting in renal failure, septicaemia and death. An increased risk for repeated urinary tract infections is well documented in both girls and adult women.

Painful urination: due to obstruction of the urethra and recurrent urinary tract infections.

Menstrual problems: result from the obstruction of the vaginal opening. This may lead to painful menstruation (dysmenorrhea), irregular menses and difficulty in passing menstrual blood, particularly among women with Type III FGM.

Keloids: there have been reports of excessive scar tissue formation at the site of the cutting.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV): given that the transmission of HIV is facilitated through trauma of the vaginal epithelium which allows the direct introduction of the virus, it is reasonable to presume that the risk of HIV transmission may be increased due to increased risk for bleeding during intercourse, as a result of FGM.

Female sexual health: removal of, or damage to highly sensitive genital tissue, especially the clitoris, may affect sexual sensitivity and lead to sexual problems, such as decreased sexual desire and pleasure, pain during sex, difficulty during penetration, decreased lubrication during intercourse, reduced frequency or absence of orgasm (anorgasmia). Scar formation, pain and traumatic memories associated with the procedure can also lead to such problems.

Obstetric complications: FGM is associated with an increased risk of Caesarean section, post-partum haemorrhage, recourse to episiotomy, difficult labour, obstetric tears/lacerations, instrumental delivery, prolonged labour, and extended maternal hospital stay. The risks increase with the severity of FGM.

Obstetric fistula: a direct association between FGM and obstetric fistula has not been established. However, given the causal relationship between prolonged and obstructed labour and fistula, and the fact that FGM is also associated with prolonged and obstructed labour it is reasonable to presume that both conditions could be linked in women living with FGM.

Perinatal risks: obstetric complications can result in a higher incidence of infant resuscitation at delivery and intrapartum stillbirth and neonatal death.

Psychological consequences: some studies have shown an increased likelihood of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders and depression. The cultural significance of FGM might not protect against psychological complications.^[2]

 

It should be clearly stated: any Islamic apologist, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, who continues to spread the lie that Islam has nothing to do with female genital mutilation is not morally different from people promoting anti-vaxxer campaigns that spread disinformation about vaccines. The only reason an apologist for FGM would believe that it is not morally equivalent, to lying about vaccines causing autism, is the idea of protecting sacred beliefs. The human rights – the health and welfare of young female children – should take top priority above any idiotic religious beliefs that permanently harm them. I would say the same if it were any other religion including my family background of Hinduism. People like myself who criticize these horrific practices aren’t doing so because we hate Muslims, we do it because we care about the welfare of Muslims. Our criticisms and Free Speech are an act of compassion. I say the same for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Christians, and Jews who follow any barbaric practices that hurt their own communities. I will criticize them all the same because I care about them. If you’re spreading disinformation and attempting to shield Muslims from criticism of these practices, then you don’t give a damn about the wellbeing of Muslims and you’re partly to blame for the continuation of harm imposed upon Muslim children.^[3] You are just being a bigot because a bigot is someone who holds two different sets of standards for different groups of people; it is an obvious lower standard towards Muslims as people.^[4]

[1] “Rulings from Your Site Regarding Female Circumcision Appear to Have Been Taken down. Is There Is a Change in Opinion Concerning Female Circumcision from a Shafii Point of View? What Do You Say about Issuing a Fatwa on This Issue Which Prohibits the Practice?” Translated by Yaqub Abdurrahman, Shafii Fiqh, shafiifiqh.com/question-details.aspx?qstID=173.

[2] “Health Risks of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 1 Feb. 2017, http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/fgm/health_consequences_fgm/en/.

[3] Saleem, Mya, et al. “Examining Honor Culture and Violence in Islam (AHA Conference 2016).” YouTube, American Humanist Association, 30 June 2016, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhwrOJvPfBw.

[4] Haider, Sarah. “Sarah Haider: Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique (AHA Conference 2015).” YouTube, American Humanist Association, 28 May 2015, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0plC24YuoJk.

 

Incest

Quran 4:23:

Quran 33:50:

 

Consanguine marriages pervade in disproportionately high rates within predominately Islamic countries and communities. Dr. S. Shamshad from the women’s college in Kurnool, India provides a review titled “Prevalence of Consanguinity in Muslim Community” which details the percentages of consanguine marriages within the Islamic faith tradition. It is important to note that this research is not meant to shame Muslims as people, Dr. S. Shamshad notes that consanguine marriages are prevalent within Mormon communities in the US too. Her main concern, and the concern of the academic research, is on the long-term health effects of children being born in these societies:

Abstract: Consanguinity (“blood relation”, from the Latin consanguinitas ) is the property of being from the same kinship as another person. In that aspect, consanguinity is the quality of being descended from the same ancestor as another person. Consanguineous marriage is frequent in many populations. In fact, it has been recently estimated that consanguineous couples and their progeny suppose about 10.4 % of the 6.7 billion global population of the world. First-cousin marriage and other types of consanguineous unions are frequent in a number of current populations from different parts of the world. Consanguinity is most common among muslim population. Consanguinity rates, coupled by the large family size in some communities, could induce the expression of autosomal recessive diseases, including very rare or new syndromes. The most thoroughly investigated are sickle cell disease, haemoglobinopathies, and enzymopathies (glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency). It is the duty of the public health professionals to ensure accessibility to counseling services and to periodically evaluate the knowledge and awareness of the health consequences of consanguineous marriages on offspring health so as to reduce this kind of marriages. And creating awareness among the people may lessen the chance of consanguinity.

 

1. Introduction

 

Consanguinity refers to the marriage of parents with a recent common ancestor. In humans, consanguineous marriage is frequent in many populations. In fact, it has been recently estimated that consanguineous couples and their progeny suppose about 10.4 % of the 6.7 billion global population of the world [1]. First-cousin marriage and other types of consanguineous unions are frequent in a number of current populations from different parts of the world. Consanguinity is common in several populations of the world though the consanguinity rates vary from one population to another. Furthermore, there is variability between different tribes, communities, and ethnic groups within the same country. Worldwide, wide variations in the consanguinity rates among various ethnic groups have been reported. In European populations the rates are generally less than 0 5%, while in North Africa and southern and western Asian populations 22 to 55% of all unions are consanguineous. In the majority of the US States cousin marriages are illegal under the statutes passed in the 19th and 20th centuries. The practice of consanguineous marriage, or marriage between close biological relatives, shows significant heterogeneity across the world [2], [3]. While such marriages are legal in the Middle East, Africa, the UK and Australia, they are prohibited by law in China, some parts of Europe, and the United States. Prohibitions also vary by religion. While consanguineous marriages are permitted within Islam, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, they are forbidden by Christian Orthodox churches and require special permission for members of the Roman Catholic Church. The variations in legislative and religious rules are also reflected in the prevalence of consanguineous marriage across regions. In the western world, consanguineous marriages currently constitute less than 1% of total marriages, but this practice remains widely prevalent in many other places. Estimates range from 30—50% in Middle Eastern countries, 20‐40% in North Africa, and 10— 20% in South Asia [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9].There is also significant variation within countries. The National Family Health Survey 1992‐ 93 [10] reveals that 16% of marriages are consanguineous in India, but this varies from 6% in the north to 36% in the south [11]. Some new research also suggests that the practice is growing in popularity in Western countries, particularly in migrant communities [8].

 

1. Prevalence of consanguinity:

 

Consanguineous marriage remains common in many parts of the world and has been reported in various communities such as the Mormons [12], [13]. It is especially common in most of the Middle-Eastern countries where the custom in considered socially acceptable [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25]. The same applies to other Muslim countries and regions such as India [26], Pakistan [27], [28], [29], [30], [31] and Uzbekistan [32]. This practice continued in some of the communities who settled the West such as the Pakistani community in the UK [14], [33], [34]. In the Arab countries, consanguinity has been reported with the highest frequency in Saudi Arabia [24], where it reaches 80% of marriages in certain parts of the Kingdom. From the available data, the consanguinity rate for other countries in the Middle East ranges between 59% among the Iraqis [18], 40% among the Palestinians [21], 44% among the Yemenis in Sanaa [17] 49-58% among the Jordanians [35], [15], [16] and 40-54% in the UAE [36]. In Kuwait [37] high rates of consanguineous marriages within the particular Arab communities but low frequency of intermarriage between them, and also the presence of genetic isolates and semiisolates in some extended families and Bedouin tribes have been described. Consanguinity is less common in North African Arab countries where it was reported to be 29% in Egypt; [23] however, in another study on the Nubian population in southern Egypt the figures ranged between 41.5-45.5% [19]. The highest rates of such marriages have been reported in rural areas, among individuals with low educational levels, and among the poorest. In Morocco [38], with its contact with the outside world, a marked decrease in consanguineous unions is reported; consanguinity is disappearing and does not present a preoccupying problem for public health. However, this cannot be used as a generalization as the trend has increased in younger generations in other Arab countries such as the UAE where the rate of consanguinity has risen from 39% in the parent generations to 50.5% in the current generation [36].^[1]

[1] Shamshad, S. “Prevalence of Consanguinity in Muslim Community – A Review.” Pdfs.semanticscholar.org, International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR) , pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f3db/08faf43477ce7c34146aa4b8db0769661efa.pdf.

A separate study in 2000 on India’s regional and State levels of Muslim populations found no significant changes in the rates of Consanguine marriages from the study’s beginning period of 1950 to its completion in 1990.[1] Such research shows the shocking level of cultural commitment to what scientific research and consensus has already thoroughly debunked.[2] The pervasive commitment to consanguine marriages has reared itself in the West by the migrating population of Muslims. In the United Kingdom, the brave Baroness Shreela Flather; a cross-bench peer that has highlighted the oft-forgotten contribution of 5 million volunteers from India, Africa, and the Caribbean to Great Britain’s campaigns in World Wars 1 and 2[3]; has highlighted the plight of children being born with horrifying birth defects in Pakistani immigrant communities.[4] Disabled children are being born within Pakistani communities because of the strong cultural and social commitment to Islam.[5] After all, Pakistanis were originally Indian and people among non-Muslim Indian communities don’t have a disproportionately high level of consanguine marriages. This is not a Western versus Arab Spring cultural argument, this is about scientific evidence and the growing number of problems from this commitment to the Islamic religious tradition. Others within the British parliamentary system seem more keen on not being labeled racist and instead looking politically correct while Baroness Flather has bravely spoken out due to heartfelt concern for the damage the social practice of consanguine marriages has on children.[6]

Physical disabilities and deformities aren’t the only problem with consanguine marriages. A pilot study in Southern Israel’s Arab Bedouin population has found overwhelming evidence that consanguine marriages within Islamic communities located in Negev.[7] The consanguine marriages are forming mild to severe cognitive impairment for children born in Islamic communities.[8] Intellectual and development disability (IDD) is rampant throughout consanguine marriages in Israel with over 60% of children suffering from some form of IDD coming from such marriages.[9] Another study noted that a horrifying 43% of all infant deaths of Bedouin children, from either physical deformities within their bodies or hereditary diseases, is attributed to the prevalence of consanguine marriages.[10]

1. [1] Bittles, A H, and R Hussain. “An Analysis of Consanguineous Marriage in the Muslim Population of India at Regional and State Levels.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10768421.

 

2. [2] Bittles, A H, and R Hussain. “An Analysis of Consanguineous Marriage in the Muslim Population of India at Regional and State Levels.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10768421.

 

3. [3] “Shreela Flather.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 July 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shreela_Flather.

 

4. [4] Swinford, Steven. “First Cousin Marriages in Pakistani Communities Leading to ‘Appalling’ Disabilities among Children.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 7 July 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11723308/First-cousin-marriages-in-Pakistani-communities-leading-to-appalling-disabilities-among-children.html.

 

5. [5] Swinford, Steven. “First Cousin Marriages in Pakistani Communities Leading to ‘Appalling’ Disabilities among Children.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 7 July 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11723308/First-cousin-marriages-in-Pakistani-communities-leading-to-appalling-disabilities-among-children.html.

 

6. [6] Swinford, Steven. “First Cousin Marriages in Pakistani Communities Leading to ‘Appalling’ Disabilities among Children.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 7 July 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11723308/First-cousin-marriages-in-Pakistani-communities-leading-to-appalling-disabilities-among-children.html.

 

7. [7] Saad, Hassan Abu, et al. “Consanguineous Marriage and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities among Arab Bedouins Children of the Negev Region in Southern Israel: A Pilot Study.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2014, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3904202/.

 

8. [8] Saad, Hassan Abu, et al. “Consanguineous Marriage and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities among Arab Bedouins Children of the Negev Region in Southern Israel: A Pilot Study.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2014, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3904202/.

 

9. [9] Saad, Hassan Abu, et al. “Consanguineous Marriage and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities among Arab Bedouins Children of the Negev Region in Southern Israel: A Pilot Study.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2014, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3904202/.
10. [10] Na’amnih, Wasef, et al. “Prevalence of Consanguineous Marriages and Associated Factors among Israeli Bedouins.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, Oct. 2014, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4159474/.

 

Continued in Part II . . . Chapter IV: Social Status and Genocide Denial

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Endnotes of A Vedantic and Samkhya Critique of Islam

[1] Eknath, Easwaran, translator. Chapter Five: Renounce and Rejoice (122 – 130). The Bhagavad Gita. Nilgiri Press, 2007.

[2] Eknath, Easwaran, translator. Brihadaranyaka: The Forest of Wisdom (92-117) and Prashna: The Breath of Life (218-237). The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press, 2007.

[3] Datta, Jatindranath. Chapter 2: The Path of Knowledge (783 – 2219). Bhagavad Gita: With the commentary of Shankaracharya. Advaita Ashrama, 1984.

[4] Eknath, Easwaran, translator. Chapter Three: Selfless Service (93-103). The Bhagavad Gita. Nilgiri Press, 2007.

[5] Datta, Jatindranath. Chapter 2: The Path of Knowledge (783 – 2219). Bhagavad Gita: With the commentary of Shankaracharya. Advaita Ashrama, 1984.

[6] Eknath, Easwaran, translator. Chapter Three: Selfless Service (93-103). The Bhagavad Gita. Nilgiri Press, 2007.

[7] Datta, Jatindranath. Chapter 2: The Path of Knowledge (783 – 2219). Bhagavad Gita: With the commentary of Shankaracharya. Advaita Ashrama, 1984.

[8] Eknath, Easwaran, translator. Chapter Three: Selfless Service (93-103). The Bhagavad Gita. Nilgiri Press, 2007.

 

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Images used to click for image links above: