What we need now is an age of enlightenment in the Islamic world. Without critical examination of Islam, it will remain dogmatic, fanatical and intolerant and will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality, originality and truth.
Ibn Warraq
(Pakistani born Author and founder of the
Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society)
Although free speech and independent thought is an alien concept in Islam, where all opinions and actions are governed by scripture and their interpretations by Imams, those outside its remit have, through the ages braved the perils of divine fatwas of fatality to speak out unequivocally against Islam and its founder.
Preceding each section, relevant quotations from great thinkers, philosophers, statesmen or historians have been used as a precursor to the subject matter that followed. There are many more thoughtful comments from those who have studied, interacted with or have been directly affected by Islam which appropriately sum up this debilitating ideology. It would be amiss of me not to include other pertinent citations concerning Islam from prominent figures throughout history that succinctly reinforces some of the far reaching issues discussed on this site.
Humanity cannot ignore the storehouse of knowledge and experience the world has gained over the last fourteen hundred years, regarding the spread and goal of Islam, simply for the sake of political correctness, appeasement of Muslims or personal gain.
It is imperative we listen to the voices of reason that have understood our past and offers a light to guide our future.
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The law which their prophet Mohamed has given to Muslims is that any harm done to any one who does not accept their law and any appropriation of his goods, is no sin at all.
- Marco Polo (Explorer)
I am afraid that God has sent these men (Muslims) to lay waste the world.
- Cyrus of Alexandria, (Byzantine prefect of Egypt; died circa 641)
I studied the Kuran a great deal ... I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammed
- Alexis de Tocqville (French thinker/historian)
The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.
- Will Durant (U.S. Historian)
In the seventh century a wandering Arab combining the powers of transcendent genius with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic Law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind.
The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust: to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and goodwill towards men.
- John Quincy Adams (U.S. President)
Unlike Christianity, which preached a peace that it never achieved, Islam unashamedly came with a sword
- Sir Steven Runciman (British Historian)
Islam is a false and dangerous way of living.
- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (The Father of Indian Constitution)
A very important factor which is making it almost impossible for Hindu-Muslim unity to become an accomplished fact is that the Muslim cannot confine their patriotism to any one country. I had frankly asked the Muslims whether in the event of any Mohammedan power invading India, would they (Muslims) stand side by side with their Hindu neighbours to defend their common land or join the invaders. I was not satisfied with the reply I have obtained from them….. under no circumstances is it permissible for any Mohammedan, whatever be his country, to stand against any Mohammedan.
- Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Author, Painter, Nobel Laureate)
Over a billion people believe in Allah without truly knowing what Allah supposedly stands for or what he really demands of them. And the minority that do understand continue to be Moslems because they have redefined their morality and ethics to fit within the teachings of Islam, which are floridly lacking in morality. They therefore redefine what is good and evil in order to fit their lives into what is preached by Islam, instead of examining Islam to see if it fits within the good life. Backwards thinking, imposed by a backward religion.
- Bertrand Russell (British philosopher, historian, logician, mathematician, and pacifist)
Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels that fanaticism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain others in the practice of this religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him".
- Earnest Renan (French Thinker)
The Muslim religion is so unreformed since it was created that nowhere in the Muslim world has there been any real advance in science, or art or literature, or technology in the last 500 years.
- Lord Tebbit (British Member of Parliament)
Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace of an armed Mohammedan world, which will shake off the domination of Europeans - still nominally Christian - and reappear as the prime enemy of our civilization? The future always comes as a surprise, but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment of what that surprise may be. And for my part I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam.
- Hilaire Belloc (French-born British Writer)
The true Islamic concept of peace goes something like this: 'Peace comes through submission to Muhammad and his concept of Allah' (i.e. Islam). As such the Islamic concept of peace, meaning making the whole world Muslim, is actually a mandate for war. It was inevitable and unavoidable that the conflict would eventually reach our borders, and so it has.
- Vernon Richards (Anglo-Italian Anarchist, Editor and Author)
The militant Muslim is the person cutting the head of the infidel while the moderate Muslim holds the victims feet.
- Dr M. Sabieski (Professor of Philosophy)
Islam was not a torch, as has been claimed, but an extinguisher. Conceived in a barbarous brain for the use of a barbarous people, it was - and it remains - incapable of adapting itself to civilization. Wherever it has dominated, it has broken the impulse towards progress and checked the evolution of society.
- Andre Servier (French Writer)
But care is taken not to say how Islam expanded, how countries 'passed into [Muslim] hands.'...Regarding this expansion, little is said about jihad. And yet it all happened through war!...the jihad is an institution...that is to say it is a part of the normal functioning of the Muslim world. The conquered populations change status (they become dhimmis), and the sharia tends to be put into effect integrally, overthrowing the former law of the country. The conquered territories do not simply change 'owners.'
- Jacques Ellul (French Philosopher and Sociologist)
Of course, there are distinguished precedents even for the bleakest and coarsest of these judgements. To Montesquieu in 1748, Islam's 'destructive spirit' spoke 'only by the sword'; to Schopenhauer in 1819, the Koran was a 'wretched book' in which he had 'not been able to discover one single idea of value'; to De Tocqueville in 1843, Islam was 'deadly', 'to be feared’ and a 'form of decadence'".
- David Selbourne (British Historian and Playwright)
If the Qur'an was the word of God, it had been dictated on a very bad day.
- Christopher Hitchens (Author, Journalist and Critic)
The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line.
- William S. Burroughs (American Novelist, Essayist, Social Critic and Painter)
Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels in the Orient that fanaticism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain the others in the practice of religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service one can render him.
- Ernest Renan (French Philosopher and Writer)
There is in Islam a paradox which is perhaps a permanent menace. The great creed born in the desert creates a kind of ecstasy of the very emptiness of its own land, and even, one may say, out of the emptiness of its own theology. A void is made in the heart of Islam which has to be filled up again and again by a mere repetition of the revolution that founded it.
- G. K. Chesterton (British Writer)
The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law. In an Islamic state, there is in principle no law other than the shar'ia, the Holy Law of Islam...The idea that any group of persons, any kind of activities, or any part of human life is in any sense outside the scope of religious law and jurisdiction is alien to Muslim thought.
- Bernard Lewis (British-American Historian, Orientalist, and Political Commentator)
Our life here is truly hellish. Fortunately, my soldiers are very brave and tougher than the enemy. What is more, their private beliefs make it easier to carry out orders which send them to their death. They see only two supernatural outcomes: victory for the faith or martyrdom. Do you know what the second means? It is to go straight to heaven. There, the houris, God's most beautiful women, will meet them and will satisfy their desires for all eternity. What great happiness!
This is Islam, an absurd theology of an immoral Bedouin, a rotting corpse which poisons our lives.
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (Founder of Modern Turkey)
The Muslim conquests, down to the 16th century, were for the Hindus a pure struggle of life and death. Entire cities were burnt down and the populations massacred, with hundreds of thousands killed in every campaign, and similar numbers deported as slaves. Every new invader made (often literally) his hills of Hindus skulls. As a contribution to research on the quantity of the Islamic crimes against humanity, we may mention that the Indian population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanat).
- Konreraad Elst (Belgian Historian)
Who told me that the act of Jihad, the act of killing non-Muslims was good? Well, if you read the Koran, you will find that in a certain sura God says that he has bought the lives of the Muslims in return for the rewards of Paradise. They kill non-Muslims and get killed in this war-effort and the reward for these Muslims is paradise & paradise is a huge garden inhabited by the most beautiful virgins, who live in palaces and there are countless pretty pearl-like boys to serve them as well.
- Anwar Shaikh (Pakistani British Author)
Islamic societies are suffocated by shackles around the human spirit and brain. Islamic theology is driven by masochism, dominance, intolerance, submission and violence to all that disagrees with Islam's principles of law.
- Brigitte Gabriel (Lebanese American Journalist, Author and Activist)
A moderate Islam does not exist because there is no difference between Good Islam and Bad Islam. There is Islam and that it the end of it. Islam is the Koran, and nothing other than the Koran. And the Koran is the Mein Kampf of a religion that desires to eliminate others – non Muslims – who are called infidel dogs, and inferior creatures. Read the Koran, that Mein Kampf, yet again. In whatever version, you will see that the evil which the sons of Allah have perpetrated against us and themselves, comes from that book.
- Oriana Fallaci (Italian Journalist, Author, and Political Commentator)
Just like Nazism started with Hitler's vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate; a society ruled by Sharia law, in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism. It is not a fringe group of radical Muslims who've hijacked Islam and that the majority of Muslims are moderate. Violence is inherent in Islam; it's a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder.
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Ex Muslim Feminist, Writer, and Politician)
But for Muslims, everything that they don't have on earth is what they get in heaven. They can drink, they can have sex. All of the forbidden pleasures on earth, you can have in paradise.
- Barbara Walters (American journalist, writer, and media personality)
To speak the truth, Allah is not a god at all. Allah is a cruel tyrant, a barbaric killer and a violent despot. Islamic Umma is the biggest criminal gang on earth and Allah is leader and guide of that criminal gang and is trying to establish himself as the God of the world (not of the universe) with the help of the mujahadin through terror and bloodshed.
- Dr R Brahmachari (Professor, Applied Physics)
Islam marches on two feet. One foot is represented by the Islamic apologists: those who call themselves doctors and write in good English painting a lovey-dovey picture of Islam and claiming it to be a ‘religion of peace’. The tools of these so-called intellectuals of Islam are lies and deceit. The terrorists represent the other foot of Islam. This group executes the second phase of Islamic expansionism. Though an unwary person may think that these two groups are antagonists to each other, in reality they are executing the same plan and indeed are two faces of the same coin and very much interdependent.
Islam is founded on lies and therefore will crumble with a little blow of truth. To fight Islamic terrorism we have to fight Islam. Islam is terrorism. This is clear by just reading few pages from the Qur’an.
- Ali Sina (Muslim Apostate, Author)
The most successful lecherous man who used religion for his personal gain is Prophet Mohammed. Islam is a cult with its complete irrational belief in Allah created by Muhammed who was a liar, thief, murderer and rapist till his last breath.
- Dr. Khushwant Singh (Professor)
Churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.
- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794)
Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death.
As a matter of doctrine, the Muslim conception of tolerance is one in which non-Muslims have been politically and economically subdued, converted, or put to the sword.
The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific notions of martyrdom and jihad that fully explain the character of Muslim violence.
- Sam Harris (American Writer and Philosopher)
I saw (in Afghanistan) how polygamous, arranged marriages and child brides led to chronic female suffering and to rivalry between co-wives; how the subordination and banishment of women led to a profound estrangement between the sexes; one that led to wife-beating, and marital rape; how frustrated, neglected and uneducated women tormented their daughter-in-laws and female servants; how women were not allowed to pray in mosques or visit male doctors, husbands describing the symptoms in their absence.
- Phyllis Chesler (Psychologist, Professor Emerita of
Psychology and Women's Studies, City University of N Y)
The massacres perpetuated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.
- Francois Gautier (French Writer and Journalist)