Steven Rosen, Just What Are You Saying?
BY: BHAKTA ABDULA
Aug 26, USA (SUN) — Steven Rosen, as he apparently prefers to be called, with his recent posting “Violence and Religion", now joins the long list of quasi-intellectual liberals in the West who have made the foolish mistake of thinking that by saying nice things about Islam, then Islam will become ‘nice’. As the Islamic fundamentalist prepare their bombs and plan their atrocities in some dark cellar far hidden from light, they must smile wryly upon hearing Islam described as a “religion of peace”. Their studies of the Koran tell them quite the opposite:
The infidel unbelievers must submit to the teachings of Mohammed or be put to the sword. This is the clear exhortation throughout the Koran. Holy war against the infidel unbelievers is the central of the five pillars of Islam, and the Koran demands that all Muslims engage in this holy war against the devil infidels. In verse after verse of the Koran, violence against the unbelievers is prescribed. Martyrdom in this cause is the sure-fire entrance to paradise, wherein the glorious killer of infidels will lie upon comfortable divans, drink wine, and be rewarded with seventy virgins, male or female, according to his taste, for every infidel he has killed on earth in this holy war.
And where did these ideas come from? Why, from the words and life of Mohamed himself. Mohamed started preaching in Mecca at approximately forty years of age. However he was laughed out of Mecca by the priests of the temple there-being illiterate he did not know the stories of Old Testament and kept getting them all jumbled up. He retreated to Medina, proclaimed himself the messenger of god, gathered an army from the nomadic robber-tribes known as the Wahhabis, returned and laid waste to Mecca. Then campaigns were started throughout the Arabian peninsula. Villages were destroyed, the menfolk publicly slaughtered before their wives, the women shared out and raped the same night. Rich Jews were staked-out and fires lit across their stomachs to encourage them to reveal the whereabouts of their treasure to the messenger of god. All this is described in the Hadiths, the histories that explain the Koran. Without the Hadiths, the Koran is indecipherable, being a jumble of utterances without any apparent framework.
As this mayhem proceeded throughout the peninsula, Mohammed would always receive suitable messages from god encouraging and justifying such deeds. His followers could lay waste to the villages of the Christian and Jewish unbelievers, but they must give twenty per cent of the booty to the messenger of god. Mohammed in his late fifties with twenty-seven wives became attracted to a six-year old daughter of one of his followers. Eventually they were married and the messenger of god started sexual relations with her when she attained the age of nine. It is described in the Hadiths that Mohammed called her to his bed when she was playing with her dolls. (Khomeini, when he started his rule of Iran, reduced the age of marriage to nine, so following Mohammed.)
Originally Mohammed and his followers would perform their daily namaz towards Jerusalem, but later Mecca was converted to the holy place. We are told that the Koran is the literal word of God to his messenger, however it was written down approximately two-hundred years after Mohammed in a high literary form of Arabic that Mohammed could not possibly have known as he was illiterate. In Islam commentary or interpretation of the Koran is forbidden and punishable by death; the Koran is ordained to be learnt by rote and obeyed without question. We are often told that “Allah u Akbar” is translated as “God is great.” Actually, this is a politically correct translation.
Mohammed had many names for god before “Allah” was settled upon. “Allah” is reputed to have been a local name for the moon-god before it was finally adopted by Mohammed for his deity. In strict translation “Allah u Akbar” means “(My god,) Allah, is greatest, (i.e. greater than your gods-the gods of the Jews and the Christians).” In this way the proclamation “Allah u Akbar” was actually a proclamation of war against the Christians and Jews of the Arabian peninsula by the Muslims, and the spirit of this proclamation is dutifully carried on to this day by the Islamic fundamentalists. On his deathbed, the messenger of god ordered that his followers should not rest until every Jew and Christian was removed from the holy Arabian Peninsula-hence the regular modern-day bombings and shootings of foreigners in Saudi Arabia.
The world-view prescribed by Islam is that there is the “world of peace” where Allah, the Koran, and Mohammed are established with the strict exclusion of all other religions, and there is the “world of war” where infidel religions are operative. Even in predominately Muslim regions it is found that there still exists Jews, Christians and Buddhists, so in practical terms this defines the vast majority of the earth’s surface as the “world of war” to the Muslims, who are duty bound to engage in jihad, holy war, to bring this area to the “world of peace” by either killing or converting the unbelievers. Put simply the religion of Islam proclaims to the unbelievers “you will take either the Koran or the sword”. Muslims are iconoclasts, meaning they abjure any ‘material’ deity of God, however they bow in daily worship of the Kaba, which translates as the “cube”, which describes the shape of the rock that they circumambulate in an anti-clockwise manner. Strictly, Islam forbids music of any kind; even the artistic representation of any part of god’s creation, such as birds, animals and landscapes, is defined as idolatry.
At this stage of Kali-yuga, we are seeing the result of Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedism-the bloodshed of war. In all these offshoots of the same tree, the myth of the “Devil” is predominant. The devil is a gargantuan, monstrous evil entity that is independently at war with God. Between God and the Devil there is a cosmic power struggle for dominance, and so in each of these religions there is the concept of the holy war against the opposing followers of the “Devil’s religion”. The fundamental Jew considers the Christians and Muslims as the followers of the Devil’s religion. The fundamental Christian considers the Jews and Muslims as followers of the Devil’s religion. The fundamental Muslim considers the Jews and Christians as the followers of the Devil’s religion. However in Islam this concept has come into full bloom, and so murder of one’s fellow beings has been declared as an act of ultimate piety, a way to Paradise, and the “inner” struggle of “jihad” is actually the struggle to surrender to the order of god’s messenger to kill the avowed unbelievers, putting aside the restraining agents of the Devil in the form of sensibility and compassion.
So Mr. Rosen, before you smugly garland yourself with the wilting flowers you find in the moral high ground of political correctness, kindly learn and consider the truth of what you are presenting as a misunderstood religion of peace. Islam does not mean “peace”. From the very core of Mohammed’s words and life, Islam declares: “Submit or die”. If you can’t believe this, then just ask the oppressed people living in Muslim societies, ask those living on Islam’s bloody borders, learn Arabic and hear what is preached in the mosques by the mullahs of Islam, and read the very philosophy and history of Islam itself. Then you will come to know that Islam is not a religion that is being misused as a cover by mistaken and politically motivated personalities such Bin Laden and the like. No these fundamentalists are the true followers of Mohammed and Islam, and their acts are directly decreed and encouraged by the Koran. The general body of Muslims certainly do know this and thus terrorists are great folk heroes in Muslim society, finding all the support and cover they need despite the offer of multi-million dollar bounties. Mr. Rosen, you mentioned your shock at “9/11”, you should know that throughout the Islamic world people were openly dancing in the streets and holding feasts in celebration.
So, Mr Rosen, understand that Islam is a fundamentally aggressive world view, dedicated to the eradication of any other religion or world view. As iconoclasts and deliberately provocative cow-killers, they wreaked intense havoc in India for centuries, being directly opposed to sanatana-dharma. Do not be another ignorant unwitting apologist for Islam, quoting mundane personalities and building your essays in compliance with their stupidity, dreaming that Islam is something nice-just a little misunderstood.
[Prior to publication, Sun editors queried this author as to his thoughts on the fact that Srila Prabhupada stated that Mohammed was a sakhyavesa-avatara. His comments follow.]
The facts in the article (above) are not disputed in scholarly circles.
However how to reconcile them with Srila Prabhupada's statements that
Mohammed was a Sakhyavesa-avatara? Well, Srila Prabhupada never really praised
the content of the Koran to any extent. There is a morning walk
wherein Srila Prabhupada says nice things about Mohammed, however that was on a
morning walk in Tehran... Similarly during the emergency in India in
the 70's, Srila Prabhupada was very careful about what he said about Indira Ghandhi, who was locking up people willy nilly at the time. So I don't want to
speculate on the mind of Srila Prabhupada, but what little he said
about Mohammed I take with a pinch of contextual salt.
Also not all sakhyavesa avataras are teaching pure devotion. The Lord
has many saktis and some are to cover the demoniac. Some souls because
of great offence "are cast repeatedly into demoniac species of life".
That would mean under demoniac '"religions", would it not?
Also it should be noted that Srila Prabhupada always distanced us from
"religion" saying we were the "science of yoga and self-realsiation".
In the infancy of the movement he wouldn't have wanted to provoke
these so-called religions. And so a few kind words here and there
would be suitable....
However, I found Satyaraja's article just stumbling down the road of
misinformation, and so I thought it better to present the real content
of the Koran and the life of Mohammed for the betterment of devotee
knowledge. Moreover, do a search under Mohammed and the Bhavisya Purana and you
will find a very interesting translation of the mention of Mohammed
there.
Jai Srila Prabhupada!
Bhakta Abdula
