I’m an atheist and really don’t care about religion one way or another, unless it impedes or tries to influence my way of thinking or living. I just as well could be talking about Christianity right now, but Islam and Michael Savage happen to be on my mind, so this is what I’m going to write about.

To set the stage, Michael Savage is an award-winning, Ph.D, syndicated talk radio host who has a daily radio show. He has been accused of being pretty much anti-everything at one time or another. And although I don’t agree with him on some things, I respect every one of his opinions and beliefs because he expresses himself and tells it the way it is. No sugar-coating, no back-peddling; just straight talk.

Speak Loud And Carry A HUGE Stick

Sure, this methodology is bound to get anyone in trouble at times, but he has the balls to realize this and still sticks with it. He realizes that if he compromises his opinions, his beliefs, he has no right telling his listeners to act, think or behave a certain way. He knows he would lose all credibility. Savage is going to tell you what he really thinks. You may or may not agree with it, but usually the truth is hard to swallow.

Ok, now that I have that out of the way, I’ll get to my main topic. Islam. Not to bore or get too breathy, the long and short of it is that Michael Savage has launched a lawsuit against CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), a group dedicated to promoting positive Islam and Muslim relations in the United States. Last month, CAIR didn’t like what Savage said in his radio broadcast, and began contacting advertisers and asking them to pull their sponsorship. Some did. In doing so, CAIR used audio from his broadcast on their site, effectively violating Savage’s copyright on his product. The lawsuit deals, as a “foot-in-the-door” runaround, with this copyright infringement, but also suggests a much wider conspiracy with CAIR, some forms of corruption and collusion with certain homeland political entities, and essentially accusing CAIR as being the legal arm of al Qaeda. What or how much is true is not known, but I’m sure more will be realized the further this suit goes.

To Judge A Book By Its Cover

So all this got me thinking of Muslims, Islam and the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book. I keep on reading how this preaches hate and intolerance. And I’m not saying that other holy books don’t, I’m sure you can find hate and intolerance in many, but I’m focusing on the Qur’an.

Having never read a single page, I decided to download a PDF version, translated to English. I checked a couple versions of the same passages to see if what I was reading was an accurate depiction and not some slanted, biased interpretation. They were pretty much the same wording. I started perusing the pages, looking for keywords and such, just to see what the tone of the book was. As many suggested, and what I have found for myself, the book is rife with anti-jew and anti-christian phrasing. Killing, threats, death, intolerance were abundant in this book. And I guess whatever slant you are coming from when reading this book, this may be good or bad, or one may not even realize the hatred I read.

If I Want Fiction, I’ll Read Moby Dick

Now, I’ve always been leery of holy books due to the fact that mere mortals have written them with some sort of agenda, and that lies, half-truths, fables, conjecture and pure fiction make up 99% of them. These books may be good reading in terms of learning a lesson, a moral, learning something in a neat little package or verse. But make no mistake, there is nothing holy or divine about any of these books. These books are the result of belief, free time, and a printing press. Nothing more.

I’ve always said if you follow the teachings and morals in the Christian Bible, you’ll go far. You may become a model citizen. It may serve you well in life. Doesn’t mean a word of it is truth, but whatever helps one become a better person is what that person needs. Nothing more. What you need, I may not, and vice versa. As long as religion stays in the heart and mind of the believer, it’s a good thing. Once it’s spread and forcefully disseminated to the non-believers, me, that in turn creates a very real concern.

Perception Is The Key To Salvation

Back to the Qur’an. I spent about 30 minutes reading through it, certainly not enough time to gauge the complete message, but enough time to make a decision on my feelings. In that short time, I found it to be very judgmental, extremely arrogant and even disturbing to some extent. Hatred for Jews and Christians really jumps out. If the book as a whole is much like what I’ve read, then I would say this book was written by paranoid, intolerant, hateful, arrogant losers who can’t stand anything else in the world but what they know. In effect, closed-minded fools who live in centuries passed with no connection to the real world.

Being an atheist, I don’t have a dog in this race, I don’t care one way or another how the Qur’an stacks up against the Christian bible, or Jewish book for that matter. I just care about what I see and read and my opinions are based upon my reactions and assumptions on what I just observed in the form of written word. What I observed is hate. Is intolerance. Is a glaring form of ignorance to the human existence while giving up all reality to faith, and in this case, disbelief.

Picture Pages, Picture Pages…

I have about ten examples from the Qur’an, but I’m not including that many here. I don’t want this to go on forever. I’m going to include three. In reading the rest of the book, albeit quickly, these passages reflect the tone of the rest of the passages I read.

AL-MA’IDAH – THE TABLE - Section 8
O believers! Take neither Jews nor Christians as your protecting friends: they are only protecting friends of one another. Whoever of you disobeys this commandment will be counted as one of them.

AN-NISA’ - WOMEN - Section 6
O people of the Book (Jews and Christians)! Believe in what We have now revealed (The Qur’an), confirming your own scriptures, before We obliterate your faces and turn them backward, or lay Our curse on you as We laid Our curse on the Sabbath-breakers: and remember that Allah’s command is always executed.

AT-TAUBA – REPENTANCE - Section 4
Fight those people of the Book (Jews and Christians) who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, do not refrain from what has been prohibited by Allah and His Messenger and do not embrace the religion of truth (Al-Islam), until they pay Jizya (protection tax) with their own hands and feel themselves subdued.

One last thought before I hit “publish”… would you want a people, whose sole foundation for living is based upon this book, to get their hands on a nuke? Think about that, and realize that the end of the world may be coming sooner than later, and that some people may actually get what they wanted.

I even donated a penny to his legal defense fund. Hey, I’m broke!

Related Stories:

• Basra women fear militants behind wave of killings (Yahoo! PDF)
• Pakistan’s Bhutto assassinated at rally (Yahoo! PDF)

This article was written by Bryan Los on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 10:17 AM and is filed under My Lizard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.