A short course in propaganda (for Muslims), courtesy of Yasir Qadhi — Part 5

This five-lesson course on propaganda is based on Sheikh Dr Yasir Qadhi's "Five Questions" that render the State of Israel "illegitimate".

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

The aim of this course is to help lay Muslims see how their "scholars" and sheikhs manipulate them and keep them ignorant. To be a proud Muslim, it is necessary to be ignorant. This works, if the Muslim only ever interacts with Muslims. In the modern world, ignorance is a distinct handicap. But the lay Muslim's ignorance is the only way the "scholars" can maintain their social power over ordinary Muslims. So they keep Muslims ignorant despite Muslims now having access to alternative information to that which their sheikhs tell them to memorise. It is for the Muslims to recognise how they has been played, and to say, enough!

In the course so far:

Dear Muslim, thank you for sticking with this course to the end.

Your sheiks are not the first people to manipulate your mind with narratives. Propaganda is exactly what the hadith are, all of them. And what about the Qur'an, the perfect and unalterable word of Allah? If you were a Bedouin in the Middle East a thousand years ago, you might have wondered where the sun sets. You might ask your sheikh, who has knowledge that you do not have. Your sheikh will have told you that the sun sets in a muddy spring, because it says so in the Qur'an. You would have been satisfied and humbly thanked your sheik. Now you know where the sun sets, alhamdulillah.

A thousand years later, a Bedouin in the same place can ask his sheikh the same question, get the same answer and come away just as satisfied and knowledgeable, alhamdulillah. What is the difference? The difference is that the sheikh of a thousand years ago will have been sincere, for what he had said was actually the state of knowledge at the time. The sheikh today who says that the sun sets in a muddy spring is not only making a fool of himself, but is making an even bigger fool of you, because he knows that the sun does not set — yes, even a sheikh knows that — but he is trapped. He cannot say or imply that we, humans, have better knowledge than the Qur'an, because it would mean that we know more than Allah. He cannot question Allah's knowledge any more than you can question your sheikh's knowledge. In other words, Islam is a system for distributing and maintaining ignorance. When I talk about a Muslim's ignorance, I am not talking about a Muslim not knowing some fact; I am talking about a Muslim not being allowed to know that fact, even if he does know it.

It is not a matter of convincing you either that the sun does not set, or that the Qur'an is wrong in claiming that it does, because you already know both these things. It's a question of helping you see why you are struggling with something that is so simple for anyone who is not a Muslim. When my daughter was eight or nine, I explained the seasons to her using a torch and a globe in a darkened room. She understood it straightaway first time, and right there, she had more knowledge than Allah. You and I both know how a madrassa teacher would have responded to her question.

The way the sheikhs get around the sun obviously not setting in a muddy spring, is to say that the heliocentric solar system (a solar system with the sun, rather than the earth, at its centre) is "just a theory" and "Allah knows best". What your sheiks and "scholars" are doing to you now that we actually have real knowledge about the earth, the sun and the stars, they have been doing to Muslims for a very long time. Only today are Muslims beginning to wake up to that fact. This is why your sheikhs and "scholars" can no longer rely on just khutbas to keep you in line; they need websites and YouTube channels and social media accounts, and they need to give talks and keep pumping out stuff all the time, just to keep you ignorant, to keep plugging holes that won't stop appearing, all to keep you Muslim. You've been reading this course because you are struggling with exactly this problem. If the Qur'an is the word of Allah, then the kufaar know more than Allah, and have known more than Allah for a long time. That is a fact. The only people who remain stuck were Allah is stuck are Muslims. That is the tragedy of this whole situation.

Yasir Qadhi's fifth question:

What gives the Israeli government the right to treat Palestinians in a manner that no government on earth treats any other group of people?

Lies, half-truths and cynical interpretations (underlined): And here is where we need to arm ourselves with the knowledge of reality on the ground. What is life like for the people in Gaza. ...Those Muslims who are able to travel to Falistine, to Masjid al-Aqsa, they should go there, but with one condition—and that condition is non-negotiable: they must support the Palestinian economic infrastructure. They must go to Palestinian hotels, they must hire Palestinian buses, they must hire Palestinian guides, they must go to tourist agencies. That is the only condition that I'm an advocate of: that we visit Falistine to support our Palestinian brothers and sisters in their businesses, and then to see the reality first hand. ...When you see it, it's different, when you see that barbed wire, when you see that thirty-foot cement wall, when you see the reality of life within the settlements and outside the settlements. When you're within an Israeli settlement, it's as if you are living in California, it's as if you are living in Dallas, Texas: the greenery, the water, the electricity. As soon as you step outside, literally, there's a wall. As soon as you step outside: the trash, the junk, people are living on the street, and you see the disparity, and you see how people are treated, you have to see it to believe it. This is a reality that is not shown on western TV. When you go there, you take video footage, you can be ambassadors. See for yourself the reality of Gaza. Gaza has been called, by multiple people, multiple personalities, "the largest open-air prison in the world." Over two million people; the highest concentration of human beings on earth is in Gaza. Over two million people are trapped. They cannot exit or come in without Israeli permission. Their joblessness is in the 60%. The situation in terms of healthcare, in terms of education: what is going to happen when you have two million people locked up for over seventy years? People from South Africa who have lived under apartheid, have called Israel an "apartheid state." People who are not Muslims—they don't have loyalties to the ummah—they have called Israel an apartheid state. Memorise these names. First and foremost, the number one on the list for us in America, is Jimmy Carter. ...Jimmy Carter is an Evangelical. He's not a Muslim. He's not someone whose loyalties are to the religion. But he has observed and he has said, "This is apartheid." Desmond Tutu, the senior most Bishop of the Catholic faith in Africa, visited the occupied territories, and he was so emotionally overcome, ...and he said that what he has witnessed has reminded him of South African apartheid. Standing long in lines, people with submachine guns checking you out, complete privileges taken away. And then Nelson Mandela. Is anybody going to accuse Nelson Mandela of being unbiased (sic) and unfair? Nelson Mandela has called Palestine "under apartheid occupation." And he is somebody who knows what apartheid is. So anybody who sugarcoats this reality, you call them out. Say, "I'm not calling it an apartheid state, our own president did, and people who have lived under apartheid, [who] know exactly what it is, have pointed this out. ...One thing is for sure, the fact that is undeniable, is that the Zionism (sic) project has been a massive failure from its very inception. ...It is impossible for such blatant injustice to flourish.

The trap you're walking into
This course is not about Yasir Qadhi. If it were, I would go line by line and expose every lie, and there is one on almost every line. This post is about the Muslim whom Yasir Qadhi is instructing in what to know, what to think and what to feel. Just to illustrate to you what I'm getting at: Qadhi claims, quite emphatically, "The highest concentration of human beings on earth is in Gaza." Here is the reality:

Just to be clear, it is not just that Gaza is only the fifth highest concentration of people on earth, Gaza is also more than four times less concentrated than the highest concentration of human beings on earth. Nor is it even that high concentration equals bad, as Yasir Qadhi implies. Of the place with the second highest concentration of people on earth, Monaco, almost four times more densely packed than Gaza, we read:

Monaco has the world's highest GDP nominal per capita at US$185,742, GDP PPP per capita at $132,571 and GNI per capita at $183,150. It also has an unemployment rate of 2%, with over 48,000 workers who commute from France and Italy each day. According to the CIA World Factbook, Monaco has the world's lowest poverty rate and the highest number of millionaires and billionaires per capita in the world. — Figures compiled from The World Bank Group, "Business And Economy", "Central Intelligence Agency", The Daily Telegraph. London, "The Wealth Report 2012" (PDF), Citi Private Bank, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, and Forbes, quoted in Wikipedia.

Prince Albert, the Head of State of Monaco, is quoted to have said, "We want more for Monaco". Imagine the Palestinian leaders showing the slightest interest in securing more wealth for Palestine, as opposed to for themselves, and instead of the futile squandering of resources on fighting "the Zionist entity," they invested in the infrastructure of peace. If Monaco were run by Yahya Sinwar, there would be daily rocket fire into "the Gaullist entity," with the aim of destroying it, provoking France into imposing a blockade. Instead of Monaco's 2% unemployment, it would have Gaza's 25%. Instead of the lowest poverty rate in the world, it could well have had Gaza's 53%. Instead of a per capita GDP of US$185,742 (highest in the world), it would have Gaza's US$876 (within the three lowest in the world).

Yasir Qadhi says, "When you're within an Israeli settlement, it's as if you are living in California: ...the greenery, the water, the electricity." You may recall this table from Part 1:

It is not only that "outside the settlements" it is not like California; outside the settlements, conditions were well on their way to becoming "as if you are living in California." But who was it who massacred the Jews in 1920-21 and again in 1929, events that almost bookend the above table? These are the people Yasir Qadhi demands that you support unconditionally, before you've even asked the first question. Is that not why, "As soon as you step outside: the trash, the junk, people are living on the street, and you see the disparity, and you see how people are treated," and the Palestinian economy remains perverse: the people get poorer the more money is unconditionally pumped into it?

Certainly, I'm not making a scientific comparison here, but I think the message should be clear. Gaza's leaders have to keep syphoning off the vast sums of money the world pumps in "to develop Gaza," to protect the image of "the largest open-air prison in the world" that generates the vast donations in the first place. For this reason, Gazans must suffer in squalor and misery. It is their biggest money spinner, the goose that lays the golden egg. It is the mainstay of their perverse economy: the richer it gets, the poorer its people must necessarily become. And in 2021, they've diversified into civilian casualties. Subhanallah, Allah provides!

Perhaps you find the very idea of checking the claims of Yasir Qadhi (or any "scholar", for that matter) so disagreeable that you think me evil for even suggesting you do it. But the question remains: what does Yasir Qadhi want to do with you, that necessitates lying to you? The question that interests me, though, is whether you are happy to be lied to. If you cannot bring yourself to ask your sheikh to prove his claims, then at least ask him what you should do when the kufaar respond with facts, as I am telling you now, we will.

The kufaar can show practically every claim that Yasir Qadhi made during that talk to be a lie, a half-truth, or a cynical interpretation, an abuse of your trust designed to manipulate you into a programmable robot, an "ambassador for Palestine" even before you've "seen for yourself". And what will you see for yourself when you take his tour? You will see what he wants you to see, and while you look, he will interpret for you what you see, and he will tell you what you see. And perhaps you are even OK with being a mindless mouthpiece for your sheikh. You should see for yourself, says Yasir Qadhi, so that:

[We must] arm ourselves with the knowledge of reality on the ground. What is life like for the people in Gaza. ...See for yourself the reality of Gaza. ...Those Muslims who are able to travel to Falistine, to Masjid al-Aqsa, they should go there, but with one condition—and that condition is non-negotiable: they must support the Palestinian economic infrastructure.

If you were to follow Yasir Qadhi's advice in the hope of arming yourself with "the knowledge of reality on the ground," to find out "what is life like for the people in Gaza," you will be sorely disappointed. What the sheikh doesn't tell you, and www.againstthecompass.com does, is this:

How to get a visa for Gaza

Visiting Gaza is possible, but extremely difficult.

A foreigner needs to apply for a special visa or travel permit at the Israeli or the Egyptian embassy, depending on what border crossing you will use: Erez (Israel) or Rafah (Egypt).

The whole process, however, can be as tedious and lengthy as for a Gazan citizen wishing to leave the Strip.

To have the permit or visa granted, a foreigner needs to have a specific reason for traveling to Gaza. Reasons which are considered valid are normally limited to diplomatic or humanitarian missions, journalism or important business issues.

This means that tourists can’t ...travel to Gaza for tourism or private purposes.

So instead of delivering on "arm[ing] ourselves with the knowledge of reality on the ground... in Gaza," he does a quick sidestep: "Those Muslims who are able to travel to Falistine, to Masjid al-Aqsa, they should go there," where you will learn exactly nothing about the reality on the ground in Gaza. Of course it's tempting.

If you should take this sheikh's advice, not only will you have factually incorrect information about Gaza, to other lay Muslims, you will also have the authority of someone who has been to Masjid al-Aqsa. When it comes to anything Palestinian, you will have lost the standard Muslim escape clause, "I'll bring you a sheikh who can explain it to you," because now you are an authority on everything "Falistine," a kind of minor sheikh in your own right. You've been there and seen with your own eye, because in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and boy, will you rule. That's how you'll be introduced, and being Muslim, you'll be unable to resist enjoying the glory, the adulation, the deference. You will be the "sheikh" people will appeal to to deal with a kafir talking nonsense about Gaza. And of course, in time-honoured Muslim tradition, you won't turn up.

Some Muslims, when they can't escape, throw punches or stab with knives, in places where violence is not normal behaviour. In places where violence is commonplace, entire villages get put to death because someone suggested that something a Muslim had said might not be quite right. This might not be the world that you see, but it is the world that we see when Yasir Qadhi and the da'wa fifty-cent army "invite" us to Islam. The same Yasir Qadhi is baffled that the kufaar do not embrace Islam immediately.

In principle, there shouldn't be anything wrong with calling in someone who can better explain something. But why is it only ever Muslims who end up in this fix (if you ignore TV game shows in which you can call a friend)? And why does the Muslim always assume that the kafir does not understand, and hence needs to have it explained? If you are unable to explain it, then how can you be so sure that you understand it? If you do understand it, then what do you need a sheikh for? Explain it! These are the questions that we ask about you. If the sheikh's stock answers work for you and don't work for us, are we just stupid, or is it that you never get as far as thinking about it in the first place? And why is it that the sheikh who is going to explain it to the kafir never turns up? We both know the answer to that: he can get away with telling Muslims anything, but he fears the knowledge of the kufaar. That is the reality. Having al-Aqsa after your name is still not going to impress us. We will still take you to pieces.

The sheikh is quite happy to "explain" it to you because you hear and you obey, and would never dream of challenging a sheikh. For you, "understanding" means knowing what to memorise. Mohammed Hijab even boasted that he understands "utalitarianism" because he had memorised John Stuart Mill's book, Utilitarianism. That's the depth of foolishness you can look forward to, because "understanding" means something completely different to what a Muslim thinks it means. Understanding means apprehending, abstracting and forming a judgement. Whether you are right or wrong at that point doesn't even arise yet; just processing what you've apprehended, what takes place inside the brain once you have heard or seen, is already excluded from what Islam expects of you. Understanding comes only after what Islam forbids you to do.

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi boldly declares to an audience in which there are at least twenty-five (he counted) descendants of Palestinians, that Israel became independent in "August 1948". This was not a slip; he said it twice, the second time even challenging, "August 1948, right?" At the very least, the twenty-five Palestinian descendants know that Israel became independent in May 1948, and not August 1948, but they all kept silent. The speaker is a sheikh; you don't call out a sheikh. Besides, why spoil a good story? The sheikh was on a roll and it made Israel look bad. It's all good.

Now, what are you going to do? Sheikh Dr Yasir Qadhi has authority and he says that Israel became independent in August 1948. Are you going to memorise that? Are you going to memorise it so you know what to say when talking to Muslims, but also memorise May 1948, just in case you're talking to the kufaar? Do you care that we will catch you out and expose you as we did Tariq Ramadan?

Yasir Qadhi pulls everything that is wrong with Muslim thinking together very succinctly. He says, "Visit Falistine to support our Palestinian brothers and sisters, ...and then to see the reality first hand." I hope that by now you will at least have an uncomfortable feeling that there is something wrong with this. You do not support first, and then investigate whether support is warranted. You investigate first, then you decide whether or not to support. The answer comes after the question, not before.

But it is worse. Yasir Qadhi advises you that if anyone should challenge you for saying that Israel is an apartheid state, "Say, 'I'm not calling it an apartheid state, our own president did, and people who have lived under apartheid, [who] know exactly what it is, have pointed this out'." So, you have no idea whether Israel is an apartheid state, but you must be prepared to parrot somebody else who says it is, because that person has authority and your interlocutor will concede.

Muslims, this is why you're in such a pathetic condition. It doesn't matter to you whether Israel is or is not an apartheid state. Someone in authority said it is, so it is. Remember the mess the Qur'an and the hadith got you into, even punching and stabbing people and executing them and burning down their villages? Do you think your humiliation by the kufaar will end when Yasir Qadhi is setting you up for another huge humiliation by the kufaar? Propaganda works best when you are hardwired with the right answers beforehand. The sheiks and the "scholars" are two more cogs in the same great propaganda machine that the madrassas, the khutbahs, the Shari'a, iman, kalam, etc., are all part of. All totalitarian system have these devices.

Yasir Qadhi might be justified in his indignation at the multiple, seemingly irreconcilable secret deals the British entered into with various parties up to and during the Mandate. One thing that it would be more honest to have told you is that secret diplomacy was the order of the day; everyone did it. This point is quite separate to the right or wrong of such practice. The United Kingdom does not become a particularly bad actor on this account, but Qadhi wants to slander the British, so its secret deals become heinous exceptions. More damning for Yasir Qadhi, though, is that he sets great store by the authority of his sources. When a man represents and promotes a religion that elevated lying and deceit to a science howls indignation at another for making secret deals, he might be correct, but it becomes hard not to suspect an ulterior motive. Why is Yasir Qadhi, a master of Taqiyya, so upset at the United Kingdom for its Taqiyya? Do you also think that Muslims may do this, but others may not?

Yasir Qadhi tells you that, "the Israeli government ...treat Palestinians in a manner that no government on earth treats any other group of people." Trust me, if you repeat this, critics of Islam will ask you whether you've never heard of Uyghurs? Sheikh Qadhi knows about Uyghurs, and he knows his statement to be a lie, yet he has no problem setting you up for humiliation like this.

Finally, dear Muslim, let me take you back to Part 1 of this course. In laying out the basis for his first question, Yasir Qadhi opens with two connected assertions: firstly, the Jews who wished to establish Israel where secular European Zionists. He also describes them as "people of a Zionist persuasion," and "people of a Zionist background." He is quite emphatic that they were not religious Jews. By claiming that Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism, Yasir Qadhi wants to pretend that there has never been a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, or at least, not one in which religious Jews were particularly interested. In doing so, he delegitimises all Jewish religious claims to Jerusalem, thereby leaving Muslims the sole claimants to Jerusalem. The trick might work on Muslims, but it does not work on us.

Yasir Qadhi tries to cover himself by saying that the Jews have had no connection to the land that became Israel "in recent history." Have you wondered about the difference between "recent history" and "not-so-recent history"? The Muslim claim to Jerusalem is valid, according to sheikh Qadhi, and perhaps according to you, too, because 'Umr ibn al-Khattab ruled it. Let us accept that 'Umr ibn al-Khattab became caliph in 634 CE, which means the early to mid-7th century, 1400 years ago, according to Yasir Qadhi, is "recent history". The Jews, however, were expelled from Jerusalem and their temple destroyed in 70 CE, 564 years earlier. Sorry Jews, not "recent history". I hope that you are at least wondering why the boundary between recent history and what is not recent history just happens to fall in the relatively short period between the Jews being expelled from Jerusalem and the Muslims invading it.

Sheikh Qadhi's second assertion in laying out his first question is that the Jews living in Arab lands were not Jews at all, but Arabs who practised Judaism. His justification for this claim: they spoke Arabic. I hope you can see the problem with this. In any land, everyone speaks the language of the rulers, no matter what else they speak. That does not make them the same people as the rulers. By this logic, Yasir Qadhi is not South Asian, but an Islam-practising European, since he speaks English. By denying that Jews even existed in Arab lands, he is able to confine Jews to "European Zionists", whom he has already dismissed as "secular". Yasir Qadhi's final solution to the Jewish problem: define them out of existence. You wouldn't know from what your sheikh teaches, that 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries, Iran and other non-Arab Muslim countries in and after 1948, and again from Iran in 1979 - 1980. Most of those Jewish refugees fled to Israel. Have you ever heard of them? They have been in what became Muslim countries since Babylonian times, in most cases long before even the Arabs. Do they count amongst Qadhi refugees?

By playing such mind games with you, Yasir Qadhi is convincing you, without your even realising it, that Jews who can lay claim to Jerusalem do not exist. The difference between Yasir Qadhi and myself is that he will tell you that there were no Jews entitled to claim Jerusalem, while I will invite you to make a case that there were no such Jews. I hope you can see that the difference between us is not about which of us is right or wrong about the Jews, but about which of us is messing with your mind.

Things to think about, or to discuss with other Muslims:

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi several times stresses the importance of knowing history. What do you think Yasir Qadhi's reaction might be to the following:

'We will make a revolution,' the imam proclaims, 'that is a revolt not only against a tyrant, but against history, for there is an enemy beyond the empress and it is history herself.' History is the blood wine that must no longer be drunk. History, the intoxicant, the creation and possession of the Devil, of the Great Shaitan, the greatest of the lies: progress, science, rights, against which the imam has set his face. History is a deviation from the path, knowledge is a delusion, because the sum of knowledge was complete on the day Allah finished his revelation to Mahound. 'We will unmake the veil of history, and when it is unravelled, we will see Paradise standing there in all its glory and light.'
—Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses.

What to take away from this course

Dear Muslim,

You are probably reading this online. I have read Sheikh Yasir Qadhi's "Five Questions" online. If he should read this, it will probably be online, too. The nexus that all information now passes through is no longer the caravanserai, or the bathhouse, or the tavern, or the salon, or the shisha bar, or even the newspaper, radio, or television; it is the Internet. Whatever your sheikhs tell you goes onto the Internet, where we all see and hear it. Your sheikhs and "scholars" know that by the time you regurgitate it out to us, there will already be several videos online mocking your oh-so-serious sheikh, and we will be more than ready for you.

Despite everything appearing online and making instant fools both of your sheikhs for what they say and of you for blindly following them, they have no way of speaking to you except as a child or an ignoramus. They cannot adapt what they say to an audience that knows things, or looks things up, or thinks about things, or debates things. Since they have no regard for a kafir and even less for a murtadd, it seldom crosses their minds that the kufaar, and in particular the murtaddun, are going to listen to what they say and expose them to the Muslims. So they will keep on doing the same thing, and send you into humiliation after humiliation that will not end until you end it. Muslim, you would not feel humiliated if the human in you did not have a problem with the Muslim in you. In short, you are too human for Islam.

Yasir Qadhi knows that Muslims are losing to their own humanity. His abolition of the Jews, his rants against Zionism and Israel, his whitewashing of the Ottoman occupiers of Palestine, his ignoring of the Jordanian occupation of Judea and Samaria (and renaming it the "West Bank" while they occupied it), His ignoring the Egyptian occupation of the Gaza Strip, his idealising of the Palestinians, and so on, are little more than crude attempts to put your humanity back in the dungeon your madrassa had confined it to, and set himself up as the interface between you and Palestine. Yasir Qadhi is using you as a ladder to climb out of the hole in his career.

That last hole-in-the-narrative allusion is not just a silly pun. In Part 1 we discussed why Yasir Qadhi's Challenging the Zionist Narrative on Palestine: Facts vs myths, is propaganda in the narrow sense of political manipulation. But its nature as propaganda runs deeper. In the title of Qadhi's talk appears the word "narrative." At first glance, it might appear that the sheikh is trying to redeem himself from his "holes in the narrative" fiasco by replacing in your mind the well-established and stubborn association 'Qadhi - holes - narrative,' with the far more desirable association 'Qadhi - Palestine - narrative'. I would go along with such an assessment. But Dr Yasir Qadhi is no two-bit da'i. He is a Muslim with five degrees. This goes deeper.

Like the word propaganda, the word narrative has a broad and a narrow meaning. Broadly, 'narrative' means simply 'story', or 'the way a story is told'. In its narrower meaning, however, 'narrative' means telling a story in such a way as to make it conform to a pre-held agenda or provide support for a particular set of claims, especially if those claims are shaky. In other words, in its narrow sense, 'narrative' means 'lying', an expanded kind of propaganda. The infamous "holes" in standard Islamic narrative are nothing but the blunders in the lies about the Qur'an.

As we have seen in this course, the narrative that Sheikh Dr Yasser Qadhi is now promoting about Palestine already has enormous holes in it. Dr Qadhi needs to recover his relevance, and in your sensibilities for Palestine he sees an opportunity to do just that. By the time Yasir Qadhi tells you to look at history, he has already drawn your conclusions for you. When he tells you "read that book," he has already selected your point of view for you. There is no question that the holes in his Palestinian narrative will be widely exposed, as they are here, but you will not see them because he has already pre-filled them for you. Armed with this course, you don't have to be duped again, whether by Dr Qadhi, or by any other sheikh.

The "scholars" have knowledge that you do not have. It makes them special and you respect them for that. So ask yourself the question: why have you had to endure years of humiliation and embarrassment at the hands of the kufaar? If anyone has the knowledge to protect Islam and Muslims, it is them. When the kufaar demolished "Muhammad, the perfect man," and showed you that anyone of such character can only be a paedophile, a slave owner and a barbarian, you found the human in you offended to realise that you had blindly eulogised such a character. Where were the sheikhs and the "scholars" with their deep knowledge, to protect your beloved prophet against the obvious knowledge of the kufaar, or to save you from our mocking and our jibes? Instead, they told you that your faith was weak, and instructed you in what to memorise.

When the kufaar demolished the perfect preservation of the Qur'an, the Muslim in your took a kick in the gut. Where were the sheikhs and the "scholars" with their deep knowledge, to protect your glorious Qur'an against the obvious knowledge of the kufaar, or to save you from our mocking and our jibes? They descended into a most spectacular fight amongst themselves, curses flying back and forth all over the Internet, and you ended up called a "weakling" and an "imbecile" in the bargain.

As I write this, the kufaar are proving that the Muhammad you've been giving salawat to every time you speak or hear his name, never existed. The kufaar are proving that your holy prophet never existed! Where are the sheikhs and the "scholars" with their deep knowledge, to protect you beloved prophet against the kufaar wiping him out, or to save you from our mocking and our jibes that will surely come? They are silent!

Ask yourself this: what has their knowledge been for for the last 1400 years, when the kufaar had no knowledge of Islam, and were not yet saying that it is all lies? What were the sheikhs and the "scholars" doing with their knowledge? I hope to have shown you that for fourteen centuries, their knowledge has been for keeping you in line, for keeping you ignorant. For fourteen hundred years, this clique, this cabal, this gang, conned every Muslim who is not a "scholar" or a sheikh. As I hope to have also shown you, your sheikhs and "scholars" have no power over those who think for themselves.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for sticking with me to the end. I hope that it has given you some thoughts that you might not otherwise have had, and equipped you to better deal with your sheikhs. They care nothing for you. They need you ignorant, memorising what they tell you to, and regurgitating it out. We, the kufaar, will be waiting for you in a place where the mind is free, and it is not haram to be human.

I remain yours in hope that you will free yourself from Islam, and become the human being you deserve to be.

Anjuli

Finally, allow me to leave you with this:

A question: What is the opposite of faith?

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief.

Doubt.

The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allahgod and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God's will one day, they hid muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: antiquestions. Is it right that. Could it not be argued. Freedom, the old antiquest. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills à la god. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, the salvationdamnation of man, all the usual, etcetera. And hey presto, the end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Angels are easily pacified; turn them into instruments and they'll play your harpy tune. Human beings are tougher nuts, can doubt anything, even the evidence of their own eyes. Of behind-their-own-eyes. Of what, as they sink heavy-lidded, transpires behind closed peepers ... angels, they don't have much in the way of a will. To will is to disagree; not to submit; to dissent.
—Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4