Quoting jack:

I am Scottish and am not religious. I met a Turkish girl and we have fallen in love. To be one I must become Muslim so it is acceptable to her parents. There is nothing I want more than to be with my love but I realise that I have a hard journey ahead of me. Does anyone have any thoughts or advice to help me on my path
thanks
d


I was exactly in the same situation 15 years ago. I met a muslim girl,
she told me all the nice things about islam, I converted and we got
married. I studied arabic, I learned to pray and 15 years later we are
still happy together with the children and I hope it will stay like
that until one of us dies.

As islamic law is favourable for men, there is no problem to marry a
muslim girl after you have converted. The opposite is more tricky.

Nevertheless, I have a huge problem now. I went deeper into Islam and
what I found out was shocking, if that is a word strong enough.

I will tell you what I studied.

- the quran in various translations
- the Hadith of Bukhari and Muslim
- the biography of the prophet by Ibn Ishaq

These are the sources on which the whole islam is based. What is
written there and covered up by the islamic community is beyond
imagination. Some examples:

1- if you leave Islam, you should be killed; the Prophet told "the
blood of the muslim should not be spilled except in 3 cases: if you
kill another muslim, if you are married and commit adultery or if you
apostate." Though in the West this is only theory, in Afghanistan
there is a guy on the death row because he became christian. DO YOU
WANT TO SUPPORT THIS IDEOLOGY BY BEING PART OF IT? If you do, you
should agree that the guy should be killed. There is unanimous
agreement among scholars about this.

2- Islam is very simple: there is only one God and that is Allah and
Mohamed was his prophet. If you do not believe this you either go to
hell if you have a natural death or you will be killed if you speak up
like Theo van Gogh in Holland. It does not matter if you live like a
saint and make a paradise for the people around you.

I counted how many times the word unbeliever is mentioned in the quran
in its different forms, be it kafir, mushriq or other. It is over 250
times and each time it is accompanied by words like "hell, fire,
burning, misguided, worst of creatures and other nice things". If
somebody said that muslims are going to hell and repeats this 250
times you will be mad at him and I would agree with you. But why do
non-muslims still tolerate the quran to say the same about them?

3- During the last 10 years of his life during his period in Medina,
the prophet was in constant war with everybody who did not accept him
as a prophet. Muslim apologists say that it was in self-defense
against agression. In Islam, agression means that you do not become a
muslim. The word for it in arabic is fitnah. Ayah 2.217 says that
fitnah is worse than killing. If you read the biography of the prophet
by Ibn Ishaq you will see that the prophet fought because Allah
ordered him to fight and that the fighting was offensive.

4- Please, as soon as you have some time, read surah at-tauba (surah
9) which is one of the last surahs that was revealed after the
"conquest" of Makkah so no part of it has been abrogated by later
surahs. I warn you that it is especially violent. If you want to know
the background of this surah that calls for the killing of polytheïsts
in 9:5 and in 9:29 the fighting against jews and christians until they
pay a type of maffia tax and they are subdued (in arabic saghiruna =
plural of small), you need to read the earliest biography of the
prophet by Ibn Ishaq. There is a whole chapter explaining this Surah
9. You will see that there was no talking about self-defense anymore,
The prophet had already fought against those people and won and he was
fed up that they did not become muslim yet. If you want I can scan the
chapter and send it to you.

I challenge you to find ONE ayah in this Surah 9 in which there is
something positive for humanity. And please report it to me. As you
might know Taubah means "regret".
In the Quran, regret does not mean that you did a bad thing and you
feel sorry about it. No, regret means that you are not a muslim.

5- Because you are a man you do not have to worry about being beaten
by your wife, because women in general are not violent. If you have
daughters, they will be muslims and they can be beaten up by their
husband without the husband having any bad feeling about it and this
in accordance with the famous 4:34 "wife beating ayah". One of
translations that I have says "discipline them" as a translation of
"idrabuhunna" which means beat them in the female plural. You will
agree with me that "discipline them" sounds nicer than "beat them".
Complete articles have been written by apologists to say that beating
means something else than beating and that the whole idea of the quran
is indicating that it can not mean beating. If you ask any arabic
speaking person, he will say that it means beating. Maybe you will
find some explanation that the prophet did not approve of beating or I
do not understand the context.

Well let's look at the Sahih Muslim: book 4.2127 narrated by Aisha the
mother of the believers reports that the Prophet himself has beaten
her and it caused pain: "... He struck me on the chest which caused me
pain, and then said: Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would
deal unjustly with you? ..." I can indicate you other Hadith in which
the prophet approved of wife beating.

Maybe you will still say I do not fully understand the meaning and the
context of it. OK let's ask some islamic scholars. I have a book
"Reliance of the Traveller", (umdat as-salik) a classical manual of
Sacred Law with approval certificate of Al-Azhar and what do these
folks say? Beat your wife when she does not obey you! These guys spend
their whole life studying Islam, so I guess they know what they are
talking about.

Women get beaten up all over the world, only muslim men can do so
without hard feelings.

6- The Quran is a poorly written book. Though the order in which it
was revealed greatly matters, it was not composed in this order. How
can one take a book as a guidance if it needs a number of other books
of "tafseer" to explain it.

This does not make any sense. And forget about the theory of
abrogation (according to surah 2.106: None of Our revelations do We
abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better
or similar: Knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?)
that cancels part of the quran and in which some paragraphs of chapter
10 are cancelled by paragraphs of chapters 9.

Some people say that the quran "confuses".

I wonder however what Allah means when he says that the book is
supposed to guide like in surah 2:2: "This is the Book; in it is
guidance sure, without doubt, to those who fear Allah"

and that it is a clear book in surah 5:15

"O followers of the Book! indeed Our Messenger has come to you making
clear to you much of what you concealed of the Book and passing over
much; indeed, there has come to you light and a clear Book from
Allah."


7- Muslim apologists claim that Jihad means internal struggle and war
in self-defense. Forget about internal struggle and self-defense. I
still have to see the first ayah in which Jihad and internal struggle
are mentioned together. There are numerous ayahs that call for
fighting for the sake of Allah.

The same for the Hadith. There are complete chapters about Jihad in
Sahih Muslim and Bukhari. 99% of them deal with offensive war. In the
"Reliance of the traveller" Islamic sacred law, the big (internal
struggle) and the small jihad (offensive war) are mentioned. However
the whole chapter deals with fighting and the motivation is clearly
stated: "fighting against non-muslims" whose only mistake is that they
do not believe in Allah and his prophet Mohamed.

8- How do you explain that people go to Pakistan to do religious
studies and turn into killing machines. There is a West-European
convert who went to Pakistan to "study arabic" and his parents got him
arrested in Pakistan and repatriated because they were afraid that he
will come under "potentially bad influences". How is this possible
when the teachings are so clearly peaceful. I tell you : THEY ARE NOT
PEACEFUL. Did you hear of the 18 year old boy who went to Rome to
study religion and to become a priest later on. His parents got him
back because they were afraid that he will meet the wrong people and
end up as a guerilla fighter and go on a killing spree to defend the
oppressed copts in Egypt. Remember the crusades! Believe me, this
catholic boy does not exist.