by Sujit Das
In shame-based cultures it is only self-image that matters. Hence, sometimes it becomes necessary to misrepresent the “reality” in order to protect the self-image. In Islamic society, a girl who does not want to enter into an arranged marriage, or wants divorce from an abusive husband, or merely talks to a person who is not her relative, etc, is sometimes killed in the name of removing the imputed stain on the family. These allegations do not need to have any legal basis; rather they are based on rumors and gossips. Similarly, a rape victim brings “shame” to the family. The only way to remove this shame is to kill her. Islamic logic is very simple; the honor is restored only when there is absence of shame. Hence it is the rape victim who is to be blamed and punished, not the rapist.
But these are the rules of the jungle. There is no law in the civilized society which prohibits a woman to enter into a marriage of her own choice, or to get a divorce from an abusive husband. It is not illegal for a woman if she communicates with a man who is not her relative. Most importantly, there is no law in a civilized society which criminalizes and gives death sentence to a rape victim. But all these obligations are imposed by the Muslim society and are being rigidly followed by them. What is moral according to the law of the civilization is made punishable in Islam by the name of Allah. The God of Islam does not recognize that every individual has an integral right to life, a life of worthy living which is something more than a life of mere animal existence. In these days of scientific enlightenment, the integrity and status of an individual cannot be diminished.
It would be wrong to think that all shame-based societies behave in this way. Japan and Thailand have shame-based culture, but their societies do not support honor-killing or women oppression. How do we explain this?
Muslims suffer from huge abnormal shame which is so intolerable that they have to bypass it at any cost. If necessary, they will twist the facts to preserve their narcissistic self-image. The Muslim society has developed a protective barrier of emotionless narcissistic denial. This sick society has convinced the members that it is the rape victim who is to be blamed rather than the rapist. From behind this narcissistic protective barrier, brothers can kill sisters, cousins can kill cousins, fathers can kill daughters, mother can kill sons, and even a son can kill his mother without any remorse. So, instead of saying honor-killing is a sick practice; we rather say the whole society is sick. This will address the problem better.
In Muslim countries women have to hide behind closed doors and black veils. The shame-based society leaves them no option. In Islam, women have no mind, only the “meat” of her body is “Halal” for man to enjoy. As Nasrin (2007, p. 62) lamented, “ My mother used ‘purdah’. She wore a ‘burqa’ [the black veil] with a net cover in front of the face. It reminded me of the meat-safes in my grandmother’s house. One had a net door made of cloth, the other of metal. But the objective was same – keeping the meat safe ”. Burqa system is completely a religious matter. In no other shame-based society black veils are used, and the guilt-based societies cannot even think of it. Darkness around covering the head means covering her brain. The idea of burqa originated from Muhammad’s sick mind. Qur’an (33.59) prescribes veils for women.
In Urdu, women are called “aurat”, which came from the Arabic word “awrah”, which refers to the genitals of a woman’s body. It means, the entire body of a Muslim woman is a huge sexual organ (Warraq, 1995, p. 316). “Nikah” (Muslim marriage) is an Arabic word whose literal meaning is penetration (Kaleeby, 2002). It can be pronounced as “Nokh”, which again means the “awrah” – the female genital, i.e., the entire body of a Muslim woman. When the word “Nikah” is used to mean marriage, the actual meaning is not marriage but literally sexual penetration. In sum; according to Islam women are “sex objects”. Muslim’s attitude towards sex is almost same as that of an animal. Marriage is never a sacrament with him; it is openly a commercial transaction. It never occurs to him to be ashamed that he treats women as prostitutes or animals; he would rather be ashamed of the opposite. Muhammad was guilty of every sex crime known to man, so are the Muslims.
In Islam, there is nothing called marital rape. The wife is a legal sex-slave (often next to three other equally helpless wives). In prostitution, a customer does not need to bother about the sexual gratification of the prostitute. Similarly, the sexual desires and preferences of the women are not recognized in Islam. Marital rape incidents are too high in Bangladesh, as Azad (1995, pp. 240, 248) lamented,
For a woman, the first night after marriage is the night of forcible sex. In Bangladesh, the number of marital rape incidents is several times higher than any other rapes .
Here [Bangladesh], there are single rapes and multiple rapes. Here; father rapes daughter, son-in-law rapes mother-in-law … top executive rapes sweeper of his office, teacher rapes girl student, Imam rapes the kindergarten girl, brother-in-law rapes the sister-in-law, father-in-law rapes daughter-in-law…
[Original in Bengali, translated by the present Author].
Muslims show a disturbing lack of conscience while treating women. The cruel activities against women allow the Muslim to express his narcissism through the “conquered” women and to transform them into instruments at the service of his narcissism. In Muslim society, there cannot be a meaningful family life. The whole society hates women virulently, passionately and uncompromisingly. It is original and inherent. Also, polygamy is widely practiced. Mirza Aziz (Eraly, 1997, p. 666) had a brilliant explanation as to why a man needed four wives, “ A man must marry one woman of Hindustan to rear up children, one wife from Khurasan to do the household work, one woman from Iran to keep company and talk”. And the fourth? “Why? One woman from Transoxiana to whip the other three and keep peace”.
The laxity in the number of wives and concubines, freedom of men to marry and remarry, marriage within close relatives, etc, often make Muslim families to proliferate confusingly. So, when little Munawwar Ali goes to Madrassah for Islamic education, his best identity is; he is one of the twenty children by one of the thirteen wives of Sheikh Abdullah Ali! Large family is one of the reasons for which bulk of the Muslims are poor.
In Islam, even the breast-milk of a woman does not belong to her and the husband has the lawful right on it. If the adult husband drinks the milk of his wife under Sharia law, the milk is treated as a food and not as foster milk. According to Malik’s Muwatta (30.1.11), “ Suckling … after the first two years, little or much, it does not make anything haram. It is like food”. Another Hadith (Malik’s Muwatta: 30.2.14) says that a Muslim man can drink his wife’s milk regularly and still can remain her sex-partner. Any sane person will die in shame, but for Muslims it makes no difference. A society which cannot value women is a sick society. Some progressive Muslims try to fool the civilized world saying that “In Islam, women are treated like queens”, but nothing could be further from the truth. Muslims will never recognize that a woman is also a human being; she has her right to life, right to make her own choice.
The whole Muslim society is overly handicapped by superstition which generates fear and subdues logical thinking. Fear is a great motivating force in Islam. Every Muslim lives in a constant fear of Allah’s wrath, something like a supernatural alien world and the Big Brother Allah is always watching them. In this supernatural world jinns and angels roam freely and devils constantly in look out for victims. In this situation, the clerics thrive in power. Muslims are anxious not to commit any sin in their journey to a promised paradise and the clerics grab these opportunities. After Rushdie incident, issuing fatwa became a very popular topic amongst these clerics. In the kangaroo court of Islam, many funny fatwas are issued. Some examples (Bhaumik, 2005, pp. 18-22) are as below,
Q. What is the punishment for a man who tells his wife that having sex with her is like having sex with his mother?
A. There is no punishment for what a man says in private to his wife.
Q. If while breaking wind it does not smell or sound, does it still break the wazu
(cleaning before prayers)?
A. If you are sure you broke wind and you are not under a false illusion and are not physically challenged, then you should do the wazu again.
Q. If a chicken defecates in my well, has it become impure? How do I purify my well?
A. Throw out 110 buckets of water from your well. Then it will be purified and the water can be used for wazu.
Q. Will Allah accept my prayers if I pass wind while doing my namaz? Should I do the namaz again?
A. Only if you have kept the wind within you and restrained from releasing it are your prayers valid. If not, you should say your prayers again.
This is how the Islamic clerics promote superstition for their own benefit. A Muslim can live his whole life without meeting an alternative view because, literally, Qur’an had been pounded in his brain from birth. In 1979, when Mullahs and ayatollahs drove out Shah and established Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini dusted down a number of Qur’anic verses, in particular the verses concerning sexual behavior of the Shiaa Muslims. On their basis, he compiled a set of rules and named it blue book. Parts of the blue book were published by an Italian magazine under the playful title The Ten Khomeindments. Some gems and jewels of this book (cited Fallaci, 2006, pp. 211-3) are described below.
1. Marriage with one’s own sister, one’s own mother or one’s own mother-in-law is a sin.
2. If a woman has carnal relations with her future husband, after marrying her the husband has right to demand the annulment of the marriage.
3. A man who has had sexual relations with his own aunt cannot marry her daughter, i.e., his cousin.
4. If a father has three daughters and wants to give one of them in marriage, at the wedding ceremony he must specify which daughter he is giving.
5. If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen he cannot enjoy her any longer.
6. If a widowed or repudiated wife has not reached the age of nine, she may remarry soon after the widowhood or the repudiation without waiting for prescribed four months and ten days.
7. If a wife does not obey her husband and is not always available for his pleasure, if under some pretext she does not give him joy, the husband must not give her food or clothing or lodging.
8. The mother and the daughter and the sister of a man who has had anal relations with another man may not marry the latter. But if the latter has had or is having anal relations with an acquired relative, the marriage remains valid.
What kind of sick society is this, where a man should be specifically told that he should not marry his own sister, or own mother, or own mother-in-law? Do these clerics have nothing better work to do? Is there no ethics in Muslim society as such restrictions are needed to be imposed by law? What type of filthy society Muslims live in, where a girl can be widowed or repudiated at the age of nine and before?
These are all descriptive of a very sick society. There is no such thing as democracy or civil liberties. Factors like justice, equal opportunity, rejuvenation, education and enlightenment, which determine the conditions of human societies are miserably lacking. At the same time religious fanaticism and terrorism are fast increasing. Cultural, racial, religious and other prejudices are rapidly creeping into the Muslim Ummah as factors and forces for its disintegration and deterioration. The whole society is stagnated and rotten, and completely apathetic to any kind of positive development. Fearful of change which might be the antidote to their illness, the Muslims march ever more rigidly into the past. Today the whole Muslim society is stinking like a gutter. This society is completely devoid of spirituality. The real God of Humankind is too great and the Almighty God has nothing to do with Allah, Qur’an, Muhammad and Islam altogether. Muslim Ummah can neither be reformed nor rescued from the doldrums of slumber, bondage and decadence. Its collapse is eminent and not far away. It is dying like a rabid dog. In its last days it can only inflict death to everyone and everything that comes within biting range.
8.5: The Causes of Decadence of Muslim “Ummah”
The mass narcissism of Muslim Ummah is solely responsible for its decadence. This society is very unproductive and uncreative; the more Islamic a nation is, the more is its backwardness. There is no democracy, no scientific development, no encouragement of free thinking, no technology – only great emphasis had been given upon memorizing the Qur’an, obeying Allah’s Sharia law and following the holy Prophet Muhammad. This is what makes Muslim society a past-oriented and conservative culture, whereas the non-Muslim world is future-oriented, developing, open and creative.
Creativity is the most important human resource of all because it removes stagnation. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and society would be forever repeating the same patterns. A creative mind discovers new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the existing ideas or concepts. From a social and scientific point of view, the products of creative thought (also called divergent thought) are usually considered to have both originality and appropriateness. It is creativity and talent which can transform every blade of grass into a wonder of life. A creative society focuses on; human’s ability to grow and learn, human resources and values, originality and learning ability. It looks at other societies as a valuable source of ideas and encourages its individuals to use technology to do totally new things, and to build a knowledge economy based on new ideas.
But in Islam everything is Insha’Allah – If it pleases Allah. The Arabs write on every letter Insha’Allah for only then the letter will arrive (Jung, 1993, p. 131). Except few, Muslims have no consciousness either individually or collectively. They remain passive in the face of the challenges, and deny the real mess they have made of their lives. They simply put the blame on the infidel world for their low state in every field of human endeavor and hopes that one day Allah will give them success and they will rule over the entire world.
A problem does not disappear just by ignoring it; Allah is not a magic rescuer who will come to solve it. Muslims have tremendous hate for the Western world, but oddly, they cannot avoid contact with them. Saudi children, generation after generation, have grown up being told at the school by Wahhabi-inspired teachers that the West is the source of all evil, but at the same time they also have been forced to accept, without question, that the very existence of the kingdom’s ruling elite and the development of its infrastructure is entirely dependent on the intimate cooperation with the West (Bradely, 2005, p. 90). Muslims are, in every respect, dependent on West for technology, modern education, industry, medicine, even for military equipment for jihadi terrorism. The rich Mullahs curse venomously the Western culture, and the way the Muslim world is being corrupted by the Western civilization and lifestyle; but send their children to study at Western universities. As example; Al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood encouraged martyrdom in the name of Allah, but his son lived in the comfort of Switzerland (Husain, 2007, p. 52). Kalim Saddiqui, the main Iranian fundamentalist and polemicist in the West, deemed Western civilization “not a civilization but a sickness”, and not just a small sickness but “a plague and a pestilence” but lived comfortably in London till his death in 1996 (Pipes, 2003, p. 43). Muslims can live very comfortably in deception. Ever since the birth of Islam, Muslims are living in deception. Today it had become a second nature to them.
Creativity is a skill that should be developed. Any creative endeavor; e.g., writing a book or play, or, any constructive project brings anxiety. This may lead to various symptoms such as sleeplessness, irritability, or inability to concentrate. Such symptoms are normal reactions to our fear of embarking to the unknown (Masterson, 1990, p. 229). The normal healthy person knows that these syndromes would vanish by the very act of completing the project and hence he persists through the anxieties. But for a person with a false self, these anxieties lead to defensive patterns. As Masterson (1990, p. 17) wrote, “A false self will neither test nor experiment. It is a defense against experimenting”.
/> The Narcissist’s fear from being successful makes him nervous. At any cost he should prove that he is flawless. He is totally rigid; he will never admit his ignorance in any field (Vaknin, 1999, p. 190). Reality is, naturally, quite different from his fantasies. How such a person can be creative? In any creative endeavor, there is always a chance of failure. We learn from our mistakes and progress further based on that learning because we know that we are not flawless. Anyone, who studies science, does not become a scientist like Einstein at the end. But it does not mean that we should not study science. This is what the false self of a Narcissist cannot understand. As Masterson (1990, pp. 229-30) wrote, “ It is in creative acts – from artistic masterpieces to everyday innovation and problem solving - that the real self is most active. It is the real self that enables us to experiment at work ”. So unless the Muslims activate their real selves, we will not see any progress.
Creativity is a natural potential energy in humans. It is incompatible with external and internal rewards or punishments because it is its own reward. It is not only an inherent characteristic of humans but also an essential need. Therefore when creativity is blocked, it has disastrous consequences. As Shapiro & Purpel (2008, p. 430) wrote, “ Whenever this creativity is impeded, the ultimate result is not simply the absence of creativity, but an actual positive presence of destructiveness ”.
Since creativity is impeded, its denial brings about a pervasive state of dissatisfaction and boredom. This leads to intense frustration that is conductive to a search for exciting “outlets”, which can readily involve a degree of force that is destructive. However, it would be wrong to think that Muslims’ destructive tendency is completely a result of subdued creativity. Another important factor is abnormal hate which we cannot see in any other culture. USA had nuked Japan in 1945 causing large numbers of deaths and occupied their land for a long time. British occupied India causing great suffering. During Nazi regime, the Germans had caused much destruction to other nations; but, today hatred towards USA is not found in Japan, Hindus no more cherish any malice against the British and Germans are not hated by those nations whom Nazis had attacked. Every culture had forgotten the past and now works together for a better future. Muslims are different because the deep hatred originated from Muhammad.