Ali Sina - Understanding Muhammad

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http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/021475.php

June 21, 2008

"What bothered him...was not the penchant for jihad and intolerance that certain fanatical Muslims displayed, but the foundation for such ills in the Koran and core Islamic texts"

The courageous Ali Sina of Faith Freedom says here what I've also said many times: that the only possible reformation in Islam can only come from a rejection of Qur'anic literalism, and that possibility itself is extremely unlikely. Rather than wait for moderates who all too often turn out to be pseudo-moderates, the West needs to defend itself culturally as well as militarily.
"Muslim Mindset: 'The hatred is in Muhammad himself,'" by Sam Ser in the Jerusalem Post, June 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):
[...] Sina grew up a non-practicing Muslim. Raised in Iran, educated in Pakistan and Italy and now living in Canada, he began jousting with believers in the 1990s. What bothered him, he tells The Jerusalem Post, was not the penchant for jihad and intolerance that certain fanatical Muslims displayed, but the foundation for such ills in the Koran and core Islamic texts.
(Through the Faith Freedom Web site, Sina lists canonical references to Muhammad's actions and offers $50,000 to anyone who can disprove Sina's charge that Islam's prophet was "a narcissist, a misogynist, a rapist, a pedophile, a lecher, a torturer, a mass murderer, a cult leader, an assassin, a terrorist, a mad man and a looter." Respondents relentlessly attack Sina's motives, but none has won the prize.)
With violent conquest and contempt for non-believers central to the tenets of the faith, Sina argues, attempts to forge a moderate form of Islam are doomed.
"The idea that Islam can be reformed is a fallacy," he scoffs. "It's like saying we can reform Nazism and it will be a wonderful party."
No, says Sina, "The only way to reform Islam is to throw away the Koran; 90 percent of it should be thrown away. You also have to throw away the history of Islam, and you have to completely disregard the Sira" - the Arabic term used for the various traditional Muslim biographies of Muhammad, from which most historical information about his life and the early period of Islam is derived.
For this reason, Sina says, Western suggestions that extremism in Islam can be eradicated if certain imams are quieted, or if Muslims are encouraged to embrace the universalist elements of their faith - but without addressing the extremism inherent in the religion's texts - are based on a mistaken comparison of Islam to Christianity.

"In the West, people ask whether Islam can undergo a reformation like the one that Christianity underwent. That's a poor parallel," he says. "In Christianity, it wasn't the religion that needed to be reformed, but the church; what Jesus preached was good."
On the other hand, Sina continues, "In Islam, it's not the community that is bad, but the religion. Islam has nothing like 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.' Islam is full of hatred, and the hatred is in Muhammad himself. I argue in my book that Muhammad was insane - and that Muslims, by emulating him and by emulating his ways, his insanity is bequeathed to them."...
Read it all.