10. Islam commands that drinkers and gamblers should be whipped.

So Sharia prohibits gambling and intoxicants of all sorts, and for that punishes the violators. Are they beneficial practices to ” all societies ” or almost overwhelmingly judged to be vices throughout history and almost in all societies as social ills? And since Humanity historically and in present agrees by default with Sharia, let’s go to the efficacy of the punishment. Sharia Law has been miraculously successful anytime, in any continent and with any people because it is the law of the Creator of people. It is not a law that is mutilated by the social prejudices, limited comprehensions, or geopolitical interests of the selected few. There are, generally, two reasons, for physical punishment for a limited number of crimes and violators in Islamic Law.

a) The other alternative of a long imprisonment in Islamic Law is a much harsher punishment for one’s freedom which is a much higher value and God-given right than temporary physical punishment.

b) Public physical punishments are in themselves a deterrent for future criminals to attempt to commit the crime. “And in punishment, there is life for you, O you who can comprehend” (Quran Chapter 2 Verse 179).

No doubt that this kind of punishment is different and seems strange to some who carry the social norms and prejudices of midtown Manhattan. But let’s be absolutely pragmatic and brutally practical. Because of alcoholic beverages alone, the fact that America licenses people to sell alcohol on January 1st, it is imminent that on December 31st, about 20,000 people would lose their lives in drunk driving car accidents, in addition to crippling injuries, and if that is not abhorrent enough, I can gain a PHD about the social destruction of lost talents, work hours, destroyed health, liver failures, depression, mental diseases, and violent rape crimes all induced by alcohol. The stark difference, however, when Sharia law is applied versus the abject failure of man-made laws, is the tremendous difference in the number of victims and criminals between both systems. A quick comparison between, let’s say, Saudi Arabia, which applies these capital punishments, you will discover that the total amount of punished criminals and crimes, for that matter, in all physical capital punishments, is about 20 annually. This is not even one thousandths the four hundred thousand armed robberies and their victims committed annually in America alone. So in a closed, black box comparison, you would see, clearly, the mercy of Sharia law, upon all humans, in any society. Out of fairness, I would have to add the benefits of tax revenues for, let’s say, allowing alcohol. So maybe that’s a factor that Sharia law did not take into consideration!

9. Islam allows husbands to hit their wives, even if the husbands merely fear high-handedness in their wives.

To the contrary of the lying by omission that islamophobes always do, the absolute rarity in a husband dealing with his wife in Islam is what they call “beating”, where that beating as specifically described by the prophet, in an extreme exceptional situation, as less than a slap on the wrist. Even the verse that they always bring up, which is verse 4:34, shows a sequence that each phase of could have ended with a demand for divorce, and with a pacifist-type remedy to each phase, till at the end of the rope comes that slap on the wrist. But the real deception or lying by omission in this specific case, is the specific quotation of the prophet, where he was talking to all Muslim men, where he said “I leave with you a trust to treat all women righteously” and then continues to say “unless they commit an apparent abomination, then beat them in an un-painful manner (a slap on the wrist)”. Mind you, that quotation, where Islamic law and its jurisprudence rules by default, factors in the time of the prophet, there were no cops or traditional courts. So the alternative of scandalizing an abomination or a crime-committing wife’s s, was a “slap on the wrist”. Is this how the islamophobes being objective or remotely honest when they say Sharia allows husbands to beat their wives? God forbid if anyone tells us that 25% of domestic partnerships are violent in nature. Which is a horrible ratio compared to the fact that the prophet himself said that “your best are your best to their women” (i.e. mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters).

8. Islam allows an injured plaintiff to exact legal revenge, physical eye for eye.

Exodus 21:24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Sharia law only mandates that a punishment should fit the crime and that justice mandates that the reward for an offense is one like it. However, that does not give the victim a blank check authority to exact a similar physical punishment always. As a matter of fact, Islamic law gives more alternatives to the victim’s family to gain monetary or material compensations if they choose so in a way to retaliate for the loss of their loved one and his support, which is only up to them to accept or not. Bringing the examples of pulling two teeth for other two teeth of the victim, and these kind of extreme laughable cases are just a reflection of the absurdity of the islamophobes, versus a clear, just initiative of Islam, exactly as ordained in the old testament in Judaism. I understand that an islamophobe can be an atheist who does not believe in the old testament, yet that is not a license to be blind to the fact that 1 equals 1.

7. Islam commands that a male and female thief must have their hands cut off

Matthew 5:30: And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
A major deception as in Islamic law, the definition of a thief who is deserving of cutting the hand off is totally different than the average “thief” in western societies. The thief that gets his hand cut off is the one who broke, entered, and stole materials that are worth more than one quarter of a golden dinar, where in most of the cases, we would be talking about armed robbery. All other kinds of thieveries are not punished by cutting the hand, even though they are called thieves in western societies. Examples like an embezzling accountant, a store clerk who steals merchandise, or someone who steals from an open display – these have various fines and punishments, but the hands of those thieves are not cut. Now compare the fact to how many times you heard that deceptive claim without this clear, basic explanation, the answer is in two parts, where each is worse than the other. Either the islamophobes are absolutely ignorant, or worse, they are ignorant but are out to deceive you and incite hate against Muslims, regardless of the fact. Oh, and don’t they believe in the bible either.

6. Islam commands that highway robbers should be crucified or mutilated

The absolutely civilized and wise protection of the utmost importance of needs of societies in sharia law are amazing. First, highway robbers punishments are a branch of the punishment of Haraba in Islamic law, which is indiscriminant terrorizing of innocent people, and indiscriminate killing of innocent people, which is basically terrorism. Any basic study of Islamic law would notice the amazing gradualist of the punishment of crimes, relative to the crime’s damage and hurt to individuals and societies, and specifically to their overall peace. Highway robbers, in addition to terrorizing innocent people, choke local trade and communications between towns and cities, regardless of which century we’re talking about. Their crime transcends the amount of money and materials they rob to choking the entire basics of peaceful trade in the local economy, and from that devastating effect stems the preventive punishment of punishing or executing them in public. Using the excuse of fighting “the war on terrorism”, not only that whatever limited number of so-called accused terrorists are punished by life-sentences, but some in our societies made the excuse that the crime is so huge and devastating in its effects that they already destroyed most of our civil liberties which our founding fathers risked their lives to grant us. I don’t know about the Islamophobes, but privacy of their bank accounts, their phone calls, and the right of the state to imprison them forever without charging them or giving them due process, are gone. And that was not Sharia law.

5. Islam commands that homosexuals should be executed.

Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

Our dear islamophobes can throw all the candy and flowers they want and may hail homosexuals to be the best in society. Yet, not only in Islam, but in Christianity and Judaism, and all other communities, even the most primitive of societies realized the devastating consequences of this immoral behavior. Before we talk about why it is that in all religions of God, let’s pragmatically and practically examine the simple result if all men are homosexuals and all women are homosexuals. The outcome would not be less than the eradication of life on earth within just one generation. So why start? The claim that some people are “born that way” is really absurd, because heterosexual men and women are born with their natural sexual desires. Yet, no society ever said “go and do whatever you want to do with it”, till we come to marriage, where it is naturally a fundamental of society and the reproduction of the human race. Let alone, that the punishment in the old testament for adulterers and homosexuals is exactly the same in Islam and the same also in Christianity, if the teachings of Jesus PBUH would matter, i.e. homosexuality is a forbidden crime of adultery outside the realm of a natural marriage.

4. Islam orders unmarried fornicators to be whipped and adulterers to be stoned to death.

Deuteronomy 22:21: she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.

Leviticus 20:10: “‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife–with the wife of his neighbor–both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.

I wish that islamophobes would just go out once for the sake of God and condemn the laws of the old testament, Judaism and Christianity, altogether, because it is basically the same with Islamic law. And if there is a difference, it is that Islamic law puts hard prosecution guidelines that are very difficult to be met. Maybe the islamophobes did not read Leviticus 20:10 or Deuteronomy 22:21 that judge exactly the same way. Even worse, in Leviticus 21:9: ‘If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire.

Where the punishment of a fornicating daughter of a priest is to be burned alive, hence similarly, millions of women were burned at the stake in the Dark Ages. On the other hand, burning anything, let alone a human being, is totally forbidden in Islam. And when it comes to stoning married adulterers, I want to ask the reader, did any of the islamophobes ever tell you that in the first 1,000 years of Islam, yes the first millennium of Islam, there were not one couple that got caught and prosecuted, then punished by stoning, ever? Islamic law mandates that four individuals with impeccable reputation had seen the incident simultaneously, and that all four of them reported it simultaneously, which is virtually impossible. To be absolutely accurate, there were five incidents of stoned adulterers in the first 1,000 years of Islam; the first two were a Jewish couple brought to prophet Muhammad by the Jewish leaders to execute them, as the prophet was the leader of the entire society. And the other three individuals were adamant confessors who totally refused to recant their voluntary confessions. So, do the islamophobes feel even remotely embarrassed when they say “in Islam”, while the most famous story in the Gospel, when Jesus PBUH said who he is without a sin should “cast the first stone”? I guess it’s only a Muslim thing.

3. Islam orders death for Muslim and possible death for non-Muslim critics of Muhammad and the Quran and even Sharia itself.

Deuteronomy 13:10: “So you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt

Before I answer this claim, I just want to bring the attention to the reader that most of these laughable accusations are based on extreme, out of context, bazaar incidents in Iran, which is a Muslim country but adheres to an unclear – in many incident – version of Sharia of a Sheia denomination and not to the rules of Sharia the 90% Muslims of the world, who are Sunnis.

What baffles us sometimes is that some of our fellow Westerners accept without discussion the fact that there’s a speed limit, private properties, limitations everywhere around them, where for example, today in America, you can be strip-searched just for speeding up, and if you don’t comply exactly to procedure, there is a warrant for your arrest, potential jail time, and hefty fines. Yet, when a free society puts an ultimate limitation, not for an imposed one-man thinking, or a limited comprehension of a certain class of people at one point, but a guideline about the ultimate belief and source of formation to that society, all of a sudden, it is unthinkable, unimaginable, that there are consequences when you go out of your way to try to destroy that concept and transgress against these limits. Critics of Muhammad and the principles of Quran are not critics of one-way thinking or even a matter of freedom of speech to begin with. The islamophobes like the Muslims know very well that the teachings of prophet Muhammad and the Quran are the laws of God. So if a society overwhelmingly agrees that this is truly a divine thing above and beyond human interference and, most importantly, without any one man claiming that it is his own laws, that only he can understand, decipher, or impose personally, then why can’t the islamophobes comprehend the concept of a speeding ticket or punitive damages yet not trespassing the utmost property in existence? Not to fail to mention that the islamophobes never tell anyone that Islamic law guarantee the law of privacy, where no one is allowed to question, investigate, or spy upon one’s beliefs i.e. tapping into your phone, library card, or your Google searches (sound familiar?). More importantly, anyone who is caught publicly, deriding the fundamentals of Islam, is allowed three chances to recant his claims, or just keep it private to himself, and his peers, if they accept so. Muslims do not claim to dictate to, let’s say, Americans, how much court judgments for slander or liable cases should be. So why do the extreme right-wing and islamophobes want to do the same for Muslims?

2. Islam orders apostates to be killed.

Deuteronomy 13:10 “So you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt.

If you are not tired of islamophobes accusing Islam of fundamentals in the old and new testament, let me tell you, by the grace of God, I developed a long-term immunity. Deuteronomy 13:10, clearly orders the death of whoever may seduce you out of the way of the lord. Yet, in Islam, which we mentioned earlier, is more comprehensive and detailed of the guidelines that protects the rights of all with precise prosecution rules. Apostasy in the language of the prophet, when he said in the correct quote “kill whoever changes his religion” was within the context of treason, because at his time that meant joining the pagan’s army. But even though when Ibn Saad and his brother were brought to the prophet after they were caught in Mecca after they have joined the pagan’s army, the prophet accepted their apologies and never executed them or anyone else. Do the islamophobes read the old testament, the new testament, or any testament for that matter? Or do they know only to deceive the American public to incite hatred against unassuming Americans.

1. Women and children are enslaved.

Deuteronomy 21: (10-11) When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife.

This is probably the one claim that crystallizes what islamophobes are all about, because if you read the title, you may imagine a supermarket in Muslim countries where you could purchace and put enslaved women and children in shopping carts and leave as a good cconsumer! Again, Deuteronomy 21:10-11, it says that if you win the battle and you like a woman captive, just grab her and she’s your wife. Yet, in Islamic law and usually islamophobes make these illogical, laughable comparisons, not only in themselves but with the fact that they make their claims as if Islamic law was made for Beverly Hills 2012 and that’s why it is to be so strange. The fact is, in the middle of the 7th century, after winning a battle, there are three alternatives for the remaining wives and children of the dead enemy soldiers.

1) To leave them in the harsh, open desert to starve, be raped, killed, or outright enslaved.

2) save them from all that and take them back with you to the Muslim city (Medina), yet they have no one to support them, then you would have caused a harm to your own society, by these refugees resorting to cheating, stealing, and prostitution just to survive.

3) the third alternative which Islam adapted was to find foster husbands to provide for them with the dignity of:
1. The women are treated exactly like wives, with the same living standard of the husband and the right that their children are named after the one husband that sponsors or fosters them.

2. If the husband passes away, they are free to do whatever they want to do, in addition to the given fact that their children are born free sons and daughters to their foster father.

3. Nothing is more telling than the correct quotation of prophet Muhammad in Sahih al-Bukhari about the doubled reward of a Muslim man, if he treated well, educated, set free, and married such a woman. Did I say that the prophet mandated the education of women captives in the middle of 7th century? i.e 500 years before the dark ages? Yes I did! And yes, they call it slavery, and even worse, some of the Islamophobes call it rape. I’m starting to believe that Islamophobia is a physical disease that is caused by a severe lack of any shame.

It’s not a surprise that, again and again, your articles are filled with lies and misinformation that drips with hate-inciting against Muslims and Islam.

1- The name of the scholar is Dr. Yasser Burhamy and not Al Burhami.

2- In Islam it is a mandate to do well by parents especially the mother every possible second of the day let alone the entire year. There is no more respected and cared for being after God and his prophets than a mother in Islam.

3- As per the well known quotation of the prophet (Pbuh) the best deed that a Muslim can do is to pray to God, the second best thing was not charity or helping the orphans and widows, even though they are greatly rewarded, but it was doing well by parents.

4- The purpose of banning celebrating mother’s day is the same reason for banning celebrating anything else’s day which is that Allah assigned for Muslims two national holidays for resting, celebration and connecting with one’s community. Any other day that is claimed for righteousness then you do that preferred action all the time throughout the year if you “really” care.

5- The hypocrisy of glorifying one ” shopping day” as mother’s day for example and not saying a word for some abandoning their mothers months at a time throughout the year is the ultimate sin of fake morals.

6- Your article basically stated what the great scholar had said; you can gift her any other time of the year before or after that one specific day as he is mandated to bring joy to his mother’s heart all the time. Vs the tears that we should shed, as per the article, for the mother not getting a gift just on that one day!

7- Finally we hear the insanity of Islamophobes crying for their liberty and freedom and ice cream if Muslims are catered their own Halal foods in the west, how about imposing your own ideas of shopping holidays upon Muslims in contradiction to their own beliefs and in their own countries? Would that affect their freedom, and liberty or they aren’t allowed? My advice this time is that you try to remember taking your Prozacs early with breakfast!

What amazed me is how Imam Zayed discreted Jay Smith and his likes about their claims of standing for Jesus, and how it proved, to me, that they are just using his good name as a banner or slogan to custom-make Christianity and the religion of people according to their conjectures and self-imposed lies. I don’t think Jay was ready for that. Imam Zayed showed Muslim’s universal belief that Jesus is a mighty prophet of Islam and God. So even though the debate was to choose between Jesus and Muhammad (PBU them), Imam Zayed eloquently brought it to what it should be about: a debate between Jesus and Muhammad as prophets of Islam vs. the man-made Pauline Christian theology.

I really liked it when Jay tried to criticize the cutting of an armed robber’s hand in Islam, only to have Imam Zayed bring on Matthew 5:30, which indicated exactly the same thing. At this point, Jay could do nothing but evade the truth and run away from it. I also liked how Jay’s repeated claim that Christianity seperates church and state was decimated by Imam Zayed when he told him that the church was separated from the state when the French Revolution’s cries filled Europe skiles with the fact that they will hang the last royal with the bowels of the last priest. So Europe kicked the Pauline Christian theology out of their life after the devestation of the Crusaders’ Dark Ages and inquisitions, not the other way around, where Jay tried to evade it by claiming that it was just an apperation, as if millions of victims – mostly women – were some kind of unintended accident over centuries of oppression.

But what I liked the most was how Imam Zayed’s approach to the whole thing was from a universal, humanitarian standpoint – that we should worship God, follow his prophets, and obey his commands – not the commands of people, who just chant the names of prophets while committing crimes of their own conjectures and lies to all people.

What an incredible debate.

Debate Topic: Who’s More Relevant for the 21st Century: Muhammad (PBUH) or Jesus (PBUH)
When: March 22nd, 2012, 8:00 pm EST
Where: Live on ABNSAT. Log onto www.abnsat.com and click “Watch Now” to view the debate live at 8:00 pm.

Time magazine just reported the following:

EGYPT:

‘We forced him, or more pushed him, to resign.’

NADER BAKAR, spokesman for al-Nour, a hard-line Islamist party, on its decision to expel party member and parliamentarian Anwar el-Balkimy after it emerged that he’d had plastic surgery on his nose—an act deemed sinful by some religious conservatives.

That was what time magazine reported, and here is the truth:  At the same time that a couple of incidents of high-profile, presidential election candidates and top members of the Egyptian parliament were violently attacked on highways, a parliamentary member that belonged to the Islamic Salafi movement (Al-Nour Party) reported that he was attacked, receiving blows and injuries to his face and robbed out of a hundred thousand pounds that was with him. That report made the headlines because it was the third consecutive seemingly politically motivated, violent attack. The doctors of the hospital that Mr. Balkimy was treated for his injuries had reported that he was their patient for a sinus surgery before his claimed attacks supposedly happened. When the matter was investigated, it was clear that Mr. Balkimy’s claims were a fabrication. Here is where Time Magazine made their fatal, unethical mistake:

The official statement of Al-Nour Party and Mr. Nader Bakar, it’s spokesman, clearly indicated that the grave sin their parliament member had committed was that he lied to the public, to his own party, and worse, to the Egyptian people with inflammatory claims that threw gasoline on the existing political fire. The sin and the violation that the party and its spokesman specifically said was enough ground to suspend Mr. Balkimy’s membership in the party and pursue his expulsion from the parliament. His lie is not acceptable by any stretch of the imagination Islamically, before it is ethically, before it is a violation for the party rules and those of the parliament itself. This is a new ethical code that represents the spirit and identity of the Egyptian revolution and that we also hope to be applied in our Congress as well, at the risk of having half of its members thrown out.  Not only that Time Magazine did not reflect the official statements of the party and its spokesmen, it claimed it was quoting, even the operation that Mr. Balkimy was doing, was a sinus operation, not as deceptively claimed “a nose job”, as if it was of cosmetic nature.

Didn’t our American media become tired and exhausted of constantly deceiving and conning the American people about anything Islamic? I ask that because we are exhausted and sick of the relentless, demonizing of anything-Muslim – so relentless, that a formidable media institution like Time Magazine, would report like the worst of tabloids do.

Moustafa Zayed

(CNN) — Ironically, the misogyny Rush Limbaugh spewed for three days over Sandra Fluke was not much worse than his regular broadcast of sexist, racist and homophobic hate speech:

– Female Cabinet members are “Sex-retaries.”

-- “The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.”

– The National Organization for Women is “a bunch of whores to liberalism.”

– [Said to an African-American female caller]: “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”

These are just a few samples from the arsenal of degrading language Limbaugh deploys on women, people of color, lesbians and gays, immigrants, the disabled, the elderly, Muslims, Jews, veterans, environmentalists and so forth.

Limbaugh doesn’t just call people names. He promotes language that deliberately dehumanizes his targets. Like the sophisticated propagandist Josef Goebbels, he creates rhetorical frames — and the bigger the lie, the more effective — inciting listeners to view people they disagree with as sub-humans. His longtime favorite term for women, “femi-Nazi,” doesn’t even raise eyebrows anymore, an example of how rhetoric spreads when unchallenged by coarsened cultural norms.

At least this most recent incident has turned a spotlight back on the vile, damaging statements Limbaugh has been promulgating for years. His sponsors are dropping him; his stations have begun to follow suit. VoteVets, a coalition of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, released a statement by female vets, including Katherine Scheirman, former chief of medical operations in the U.S. Air Forces, demanding that the American Forces Network drop Limbaugh from its programming.

They state, “Our entire military depends on troops respecting each other — women and men. There simply can be no place on military airwaves for sentiments that would undermine that respect.”

That makes this a fitting time to inquire of his syndicator, Clear Channel Communications, whether it intends to continue supporting someone who addicts his audience to regular doses of hate speech. Clear Channel’s Premiere Radio Networks Inc., which hosts Limbaugh’s program, has defended his recent comments.

If Clear Channel won’t clean up its airways, then surely it’s time for the public to ask the FCC a basic question: Are the stations carrying Limbaugh’s show in fact using their licenses “in the public interest?”

Spectrum is a scarce government resource. Radio broadcasters are obligated to act in the public interest and serve their respective communities of license. In keeping with this obligation, individual radio listeners may complain to the FCC that Limbaugh’s radio station (and those syndicating his show) are not acting in the public interest or serving their respective communities of license by permitting such dehumanizing speech.

The FCC takes such complaints into consideration when stations file for license renewal. For local listeners near a station that carries Limbaugh’s show, there is plenty of evidence to bring to the FCC that their station isn’t carrying out its public interest obligation. Complaints can be registered under the broadcast category of the FCC website: http://www.fcc.gov/complaints

This isn’t political. While we disagree with Limbaugh’s politics, what’s at stake is the fallout of a society tolerating toxic, hate-inciting speech. For 20 years, Limbaugh has hidden behind the First Amendment, or else claimed he’s really “doing humor” or “entertainment.” He is indeed constitutionally entitled to his opinions, but he is not constitutionally entitled to the people’s airways.

It’s time for the public to take back our broadcast resources. Limbaugh has had decades to fix his show. Now it’s up to us.