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Criticism of Islam has existed since Islam's formative stages. Early written criticism came from Christians, prior to the ninth century, many of whom viewed Islam as a radical Christian heresy. Hindus and Zoroastrians made notable criticism as well. Later the Muslim world, itself, offered criticism.

Objects of criticism include the morality of the life of Muhammad, the last prophet according to Islam, both in his public and personal life. Issues relating to the authenticity and morality of the Quran, the Islamic holy book, are also discussed by critics. Other criticism focuses on the question of human rights in the Islamic world historically and in modern Islamic nations, including the treatment of women and religious and ethnic minorities in Islamic law and practice. In wake of the recent multiculturalism trend, Islam's influence on the ability of Muslim immigrants in the Western world, and other countries such as India, Russia, to assimilate has been criticized.

History

Early Islam

The earliest surviving written criticisms of Islam are to be found in the writings of Christians who came under the early dominion of the Islamic Caliphate. One such Christian was John of Damascus (c. 676–749 AD), who was familiar with Islam and Arabic. The second chapter of his book, The Fount of Wisdom, titled "Concerning Heresies", presents a series of discussions between Christians and Muslims. John claimed an Arian monk (whom he did not know was Bahira) influenced Muhammad and viewed the Islamic doctrines as nothing more than a hodgepodge culled from the Bible. Writing on Islam's claim of Abrahamic ancestry, John explained that the Arabs were called "Saracens" (Greek Σαρακενοί, Sarakenoi) because they were "empty" (κενός, kenos, in Greek) "of Sarah". They were called "Hagarenes" because they were "the descendants of the slave-girl Hagar". In the opinion of John Tolan, a Professor of Medieval History, John's biography of Muhammad is "based on deliberate distortions of Muslim traditions".

Other notable early critics of Islam included:

• Muhammad al Warraq, a 9th-century scholar and critic of Islam.
• Ibn al-Rawandi, a 9th-century atheist, who repudiated Islam and revealed religion in general.

Medieval world

Medieval Islamic world

In the early centuries of the Islamic Caliphate, the Islamic law allowed citizens to freely express their views, including criticism of Islam and religious authorities, without fear of persecution. As such, there have been several notable Muslim critics and skeptics of Islam that arose from within the Islamic world itself. In tenth and eleventh-century Syria there lived a blind poet called Al-Ma'arri. He became well known for a poetry that was affected by a "pervasive pessimism." He labeled religions in general as "noxious weeds" and said that Islam does not have a monopoly on truth. He had particular contempt for the ulema, writing that:

They recite their sacred books, although the fact informs me that these are fiction from first to last. O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth. Then perish the fools who forged the religious traditions or interpreted them!

Another early critic was the Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi in the 10th century. He criticized Islam and all prophetical religions in general in several treatises. Despite his views, he remained a celebrated physician across the Islamic world. In 1280, the Jewish philosopher, Ibn Kammuna, criticized Islam in his book Examination of the Three Faiths. He reasoned that the Sharia was incompatible with the principles of justice, and that this undercut the notion of Muhammad being the perfect man: "there is no proof that Muhammad attained perfection and the ability to perfect others as claimed." The philosopher thus claimed that people converted to Islam from ulterior motives:

That is why, to this day we never see anyone converting to Islam unless in terror, or in quest of power, or to avoid heavy taxation, or to escape humiliation, or if taken prisoner, or because of infatuation with a Muslim woman, or for some similar reason. Nor do we see a respected, wealthy, and pious non-Muslim well versed in both his faith and that of Islam, going over to the Islamic faith without some of the aforementioned or similar motives.

According to Bernard Lewis, just as it is natural for a Muslim to assume that the converts to his religion are attracted by its truth, it is equally natural for the convert's former coreligionists to look for baser motives and Ibn Kammuna's list seems to cover most of such nonreligious motives.

Maimonides, one of the foremost 12th century rabbinical arbiters and philosophers, sees the relation of Islam to Judaism as primarily theoretical. Maimonides has no quarrel with the strict monotheism of Islam, but finds fault with the practical politics of Muslim regimes. He also considered Islamic ethics and politics to be inferior to their Jewish counterparts. Maimonides criticised what he perceived as the lack of virtue in the way Muslims rule their societies and relate to one another. In his Epistle to Yemenite Jewry, he refers to Mohammad, as "hameshuga" – "that madman".

Medieval Christianity

• In Dante's Inferno, Muhammad is portrayed as split in half, with his guts hanging out, representing his status as a schismatic (one who broke from the Church).
• Some medieval ecclesiastical writers portrayed Muhammad as possessed by Satan, a "precursor of the Antichrist" or the Antichrist himself.
• Denis the Carthusian wrote two treatises to refute Islam at the request of Nicholas of Cusa, Contra perfidiam Mahometi, et contra multa dicta Sarracenorum libri quattuor and Dialogus disputationis inter Christianum et Sarracenum de lege Christi et contra perfidiam Mahometi.
• The Tultusceptrum de libro domni Metobii, an Andalusian manuscript with unknown dating, shows how Muhammad (called Ozim, from Hashim) was tricked by Satan into adulterating an originally pure divine revelation. The story argues God was concerned about the spiritual fate of the Arabs and wanted to correct their derivation from the faith. He then sends an angel to the monk Osius who orders him to preach to the Arabs. Osius however is in ill-health and orders a young monk, Ozim, to carry out the angel's orders instead. Ozim sets out to follow his orders, but gets stopped by an evil angel on the way. The ignorant Ozim believes him to be the same angel that spoke to Osius before. The evil angel modifies and corrupts the original message given to Ozim by Osius, and renames Ozim Muhammad. From this followed the erroneous teachings of Islam, according to the Tultusceptrum.
• According to many Christians, the coming of Muhammad was foretold in the Holy Bible. According to the monk Bede this is in Genesis 16:12, which describes Ishmael as "a wild man" whose "hand will be against every man". Bede says about Muhammad: "Now how great is his hand against all and all hands against him; as they impose his authority upon the whole length of Africa and hold both the greater part of Asia and some of Europe, hating and opposing all."
• In 1391 a dialogue was believed to have occurred between Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos and a Persian scholar in which the Emperor stated:

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached. God is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death.

Enlightenment Europe

In Of the Standard of Taste, an essay by David Hume, the Quran is described as an "absurd performance" of a "pretended prophet" who lacked "a just sentiment of morals." Attending to the narration, Hume says, "we shall soon find, that bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers."

Nineteenth and twentieth century

During the whole 19th and 20th Century, numerous personalities have criticized Muslims and Islam, either the criticism was based on the scriptural evidences, or the basic Muslim representation of their culture and religion. While some would suggest the better examples in terms of civilization, economy, awareness, etc., but possess critical view towards Muslims.

The Hindu philosopher Vivekananda commented on Islam:

Now, the Muslims are the crudest in this respect, and the most sectarian. Their watch-word is: there is one God (Allah), and Mohammed is His Prophet. Everything beyond that not only is bad, but must be destroyed forthwith, at a moment’s notice, every man or woman who does not exactly believe in that must be killed; everything that does not belong to this worship must be immediately broken; every book that teaches anything else must be burnt. From the Pacific to the Atlantic, for five hundred years blood ran all over the world. That is Mohammedanism.

Dayanand Saraswati calls the concept of Islam to be highly offensive, and doubted that there is any connection of Islam with God:

Had the God of the Quran been the Lord of all creatures, and been Merciful and kind to all, he would never have commanded the Mohammedans to slaughter men of other faiths, and animals, etc. If he is Merciful, will he show mercy even to the sinners? If the answer be given in the affirmative, it cannot be true, because further on it is said in the Quran "Put infidels to sword," in other words, he that does not believe in the Quran and the Prophet Mohammad is an infidel (he should, therefore, be put to death). (Since the Quran sanctions such cruelty to non-Mohammedans and innocent creatures such as cows) it can never be the Word of God.

Pandit Lekh Ram regarded that Islam was grown through the violence and desire for wealth. He further asserted that Muslims denies the entire Islamic prescribed violence and atrocities, and will continue doing so. He wrote:-

All educated people start looking down upon the forcible conversions and even started objecting to their very basis. Since then some naturalist Mohammadis are trying, rather opposing falsehood and accepting the truth, to prove unnecessarily and wrongly that Islam never indulged in Jihad and the people were never converted to Islam forcibly. Neither any temples were demolished nor were ever cows slaughtered in the temples. Women and children belonging to other religious sects were never forcibly converted to Islam nor did they ever commit any sexual acts with them as could have been done with the slave-males and females both.

The Victorian orientalist scholar Sir William Muir criticised Islam for what he perceived to be an inflexible nature, which he held responsible for stifling progress and impeding social advancement in Muslims countries. The following sentences are taken from the Rede Lecture he delivered at Cambridge in 1881:

Some, indeed, dream of an Islam in the future, rationalised and regenerate. All this has been tried already, and has miserably failed. The Koran has so encrusted the religion in a hard unyielding casement of ordinances and social laws, that if the shell be broken the life is gone. A rationalistic Islam would be Islam no longer. The contrast between our own faith and Islam is most remarkable. There are in our Scriptures living germs of truth, which accord with civil and religious liberty, and will expand with advancing civilisation. In Islam it is just the reverse. The Koran has no such teaching as with us has abolished polygamy, slavery, and arbitrary divorce, and has elevated woman to her proper place. As a Reformer, Mahomet did advance his people to a certain point, but as a Prophet he left them fixed immovably at that point for all time to come. The tree is of artificial planting. Instead of containing within itself the germ of growth and adaptation to the various requirements of time and clime and circumstance, expanding with the genial sunshine and rain from heaven, it remains the same forced and stunted thing as when first planted some twelve centuries ago."

Winston Churchill criticized what he alleged to be the effects Islam had on its believers, which he described as fanatical frenzy combined with fatalistic apathy, enslavement of women, and militant proselytizing. In his 1899 book The River War he says:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

Zoroastrian writer Sadegh Hedayat regarded Islam as the corrupter of Iran, he said:

Every aspect of life and thought, including women's condition, changed after Islam. Enslaved by men, women were confined to the home. Polygamy, injection of fatalistic attitude, mourning, sorrow and grief led people to seek solace in magic, witchcraft, prayer, and supernatural beings.

The church historian, Philip Schaff described Islam as spread by violence and fanaticism, and producing a variety of social ills in the regions it conquered.

Mohammedanism conquered the fairest portions of the earth by the sword and cursed them by polygamy, slavery, despotism and desolation. The moving power of Christian missions was love to God and man; the moving power of Islâm was fanaticism and brute force.

Schaff also described Islam as a derivative religion based on an amalgamation of "heathenism, Judaism and Christianity."

lslâm is not a new religion...t is a compound or mosaic of preëxisting elements, a rude attempt to combine heathenism, Judaism and Christianity, which Mohammed found in Arabia, but in a very imperfect form.

J. M. Neale criticized Islam in terms similar to those of Schaff, arguing that it was made up of a mixture of beliefs that provided something for everyone.

...he also infuses into his religion so much of each of those tenets to which the varying sects of his countrymen were addicted, as to enable each and all to please themselves by the belief that the new doctrine was only a reform of, and improvement on, that to which they had been accustomed. The Christians were conciliated by the acknowledgment of our LORD as the Greatest of Prophets; the Jews, by the respectful mention of Moses and their other Lawgivers; the idolaters, by the veneration which the Impostor professed for the Temple of Mecca, and the black stone which it contained; and the Chaldeans, by the pre-eminence which he gives to the ministrations of the Angel Gabriel, and his whole scheme of the Seven Heavens. To a people devoted to the gratification of their passions and addicted to Oriental luxury, he appealed, not unsuccessfully, by the promise of a Paradise whose sensual delights were unbounded, and the permission of a free exercise of pleasures in this world.

Mahatma Gandhi, the most acknowledged freedom fighter of India, he found the history of Muslims to be aggressive, while he pointed that Hindus have passed that stage of societal evolution:-

Though, in my opinion, non violence has a predominant place in the Quran, the thirteen hundred years of imperialistic expansion has made the Muslims fighters as a body. They are therefore aggressive. Bullying is the natural excrescence of an aggressive spirit. The Hindu has an ages old civilization. He is essentially non violent. His civilization has passed through the experiences that the two recent ones are still passing through. If Hinduism was ever imperialistic in the modern sense of the term, it has outlived its imperialism and has either deliberately or as a matter of course given it up. Predominance of the non violent spirit has restricted the use of arms to a small minority which must always be subordinate to a civil power highly spiritual, learned and selfless. The Hindus as a body are therefore not equipped for fighting. But not having retained their spiritual training, they have forgotten the use of an effective substitute for arms and not knowing their use nor having an aptitude for them, they have become docile to the point of timidity and cowardice. This vice is therefore a natural excrescence of gentleness.

Jawaharlal Nehru in his book "Discovery of India", describes Islam to have been faith for military conquests, he wrote "Islam had become a more rigid faith suited more to military conquests rather than the conquests of the mind," and that Muslims brought nothing new to his country.

The Muslims who came to India from outside brought no new technique or political or economic structure. Inspite of religious belief in the brotherhood of Islam, they were class bound and feudal in outlook.

Modern world

Modern Christianity

The early 20th-century missionary James L. Barton argued that Islam's view of the sovereignty of God is so extreme and unbalanced as to produce a fatalism that stifles human initiative:

Man is reduced to a cipher. Human agency and human freedom are nullified. Right is no longer right because it is right, but because Allah wills it to be right. It is for this reason that monotheism has in Islam stifled human effort and progress. It has become a deadening doctrine of fate. Man must believe and pray, but these do not insure salvation or any benefit except Allah wills it. Why should human effort strive by sanitary means to prevent disease, when death or life depends in no way on such measures but upon the will of Allah? One reason why Moslem countries are so stagnant and backward in all that goes to make up a high civilization is owing to the deadening effects of monotheism thus interpreted. ... even in the most extreme forms of the Augustinian and Calvinistic systems there were always present in Christianity other elements which prevented the conception of the divine sovereignty from paralyzing the healthy activities of life as the Mohammedan doctrine has done.

G. K. Chesterton criticized Islam as a derivative from Christianity. He described it as a heresy or parody of Christianity. In The Everlasting Man he says:

Islam was a product of Christianity; even if it was a by-product; even if it was a bad product. It was a heresy or parody emulating and therefore imitating the Church...Islam, historically speaking, is the greatest of the Eastern heresies. It owed something to the quite isolated and unique individuality of Israel; but it owed more to Byzantium and the theological enthusiasm of Christendom. It owed something even to the Crusades.

During a lecture given at the University of Regensburg in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI quoted an unfavorable remark about Islam made at the end of the 14th century by Manuel II Palaiologos, the Byzantine emperor. As the English translation of the Pope's lecture was disseminated across the world, many Islamic politicians and religious leaders protested against what they saw as an insulting mischaracterization of Islam. Mass street protests were mounted in many Islamic countries, the Majlis-e-Shoora (Pakistani parliament) unanimously called on the Pope to retract "this objectionable statement".

Modern Hinduism

Nobel prize winning novelist, V. S. Naipaul stated that Islam requires its adherents to destroy everything which is not related to it. He described it as having a:

Calamitous effect on converted peoples, to be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'.

Modern African Traditional

Nobel prize winning playwright Wole Soyinka stated that Islam had a role in denigrating African spiritual traditions. He criticized attempts to whitewash what he sees as the destructive and coercive history of Islam on the continent:

Let those who wish to retain or evaluate religion as a twenty-first project feel free to do so, but let it not be done as a continuation of the game of denigration against the African spiritual heritage as in a recent television series perpetrated by Islam's born again revisionist of history, Professor Ali Mazrui.

Soyinka also regarded Islam as "superstition." He said that it doesn't belong to Africa. He stated that it is mainly spread with violence and force.

Truthfulness of Islam and Islamic scriptures

Reliability of the Quran

According to traditional Islamic scholarship, all of the Quran was written down by Muhammad's companions while he was alive (during AD 610-632), but it was primarily an orally related document. The written compilation of the whole Qur'an in its definite form as we have it now was not completed until many years after the death of Muhammad. John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone and Yehuda D. Nevo argue that all the primary sources which exist are from 150–300 years after the events which they describe, and thus are chronologically far removed from those events.

Critics reject the idea that the Quran is miraculously perfect and impossible to imitate as asserted in the Quran itself. The Jewish Encyclopedia, for example, writes: "The language of the Koran is held by the Mohammedans to be a peerless model of perfection. Critics, however, argue that peculiarities can be found in the text. For example, critics note that a sentence in which something is said concerning Allah is sometimes followed immediately by another in which Allah is the speaker (examples of this are suras xvi. 81, xxvii. 61, xxxi. 9, and xliii. 10.) Many peculiarities in the positions of words are due to the necessities of rhyme (lxix. 31, lxxiv. 3), while the use of many rare words and new forms may be traced to the same cause (comp. especially xix. 8, 9, 11, 16)." According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, "The dependence of Mohammed upon his Jewish teachers or upon what he heard of the Jewish Haggadah and Jewish practices is now generally conceded." John Wansbrough believes that the Quran is a redaction in part of other sacred scriptures, in particular the Judaeo-Christian scriptures. Herbert Berg writes that "Despite John Wansbrough's very cautious and careful inclusion of qualifications such as "conjectural," and "tentative and emphatically provisional", his work is condemned by some. Some of negative reaction is undoubtedly due to its radicalness...Wansbrough's work has been embraced wholeheartedly by few and has been employed in a piecemeal fashion by many. Many praise his insights and methods, if not all of his conclusions."

Critics argue that:

• the Quran contains verses which are difficult to understand or contradictory.
• Some accounts of the history of Islam say there were two verses of the Quran that were allegedly added by Muhammad when he was tricked by Satan (in an incident known as the "Story of the Cranes", later referred to as the "Satanic Verses"). These verses were then retracted at angel Gabriel's behest.
• The author of the Apology of al-Kindy Abd al-Masih ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (not to be confused with the famed philosopher al-Kindi) claimed that the narratives in the Quran were "all jumbled together and intermingled" and that this was "an evidence that many different hands have been at work therein, and caused discrepancies, adding or cutting out whatever they liked or disliked".

Reliability of the Hadith

Hadith are Muslim traditions relating to the Sunnah (words and deeds) of Muhammad. They are drawn from the writings of scholars writing between 844 and 874 CE, more than 200 years after the death of Mohammed in 632 CE. Within Islam, different schools and sects have different opinions on the proper selection and use of Hadith. The four schools of Sunni Islam all consider Hadith second only to the Quran, although they differ on how much freedom of interpretation should be allowed to legal scholars. Shi'i scholars disagree with Sunni scholars as to which Hadith should be considered reliable. The Shi'as accept the Sunnah of Ali and the Imams as authoritative in addition to the Sunnah of Muhammad, and as a consequence they maintain their own, different, collections of Hadith.

It has been suggested that there exists around the Hadith three major sources of corruption: political conflicts, sectarian prejudice, and the desire to translate the underlying meaning, rather than the original words verbatim.

Muslim critics of the hadith, Quranists, reject the authority of hadith on theological grounds, pointing to verses in the Quran itself: "Nothing have We omitted from the Book", declaring that all necessary instruction can be found within the Quran, without reference to the Hadith. They claim that following the Hadith has led to people straying from the original purpose of God's revelation to Muhammad, adherence to the Quran alone. Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–1898) is often considered the founder of the modernist movement within Islam, noted for his application of "rational science" to the Quran and Hadith and his conclusion that the Hadith were not legally binding on Muslims. His student, Chiragh ‘Ali, went further, suggesting nearly all the Hadith were fabrications. Ghulam Ahmed Pervez (1903–1985) was a noted critic of the Hadith and believed that the Quran alone was all that was necessary to discern God's will and our obligations. A fatwa, ruling, signed by more than a thousand orthodox clerics, denounced him as a 'kafir', a non-believer. His seminal work, Maqam-e Hadith argued that the Hadith were composed of "the garbled words of previous centuries", but suggests that he is not against the idea of collected sayings of the Prophet, only that he would consider any hadith that goes against the teachings of Quran to have been falsely attributed to the Prophet. The 1986 Malaysian book "Hadith: A Re-evaluation" by Kassim Ahmad was met with controversy and some scholars declared him an apostate from Islam for suggesting that "“the hadith are sectarian, anti-science, anti-reason and anti-women."

John Esposito notes that "Modern Western scholarship has seriously questioned the historicity and authenticity of the hadith", maintaining that "the bulk of traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad were actually written much later." He mentions Joseph Schacht, considered the father of the revisionist movement, as one scholar who argues this, claiming that Schacht "found no evidence of legal traditions before 722," from which Schacht concluded that "the Sunna of the Prophet is not the words and deeds of the Prophet, but apocryphal material" dating from later. Other scholars, however, such as Wilferd Madelung, have argued that "wholesale rejection as late fiction is unjustified".

Orthodox Muslims do not deny the existence of false hadith, but believe that through the scholars' work, these false hadith have been largely eliminated.

Lack of secondary evidence

The traditional view of Islam has also been criticised for the lack of supporting evidence consistent with that view, such as the lack of archaeological evidence, and discrepancies with non-Muslim literary sources. In the 1970s, what has been described as a "wave of sceptical scholars" challenged a great deal of the received wisdom in Islamic studies. They argued that the Islamic historical tradition had been greatly corrupted in transmission. They tried to correct or reconstruct the early history of Islam from other, presumably more reliable, sources such as coins, inscriptions, and non-Islamic sources. The oldest of this group was John Wansbrough (1928–2002). Wansbrough's works were widely noted, but perhaps not widely read. In 1972 a cache of ancient Qur'ans in a mosque in Sana'a, Yemen was discovered – commonly known as the Sana'a manuscripts. The German scholar Gerd R. Puin has been investigating these Quran fragments for years. His research team made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts, which he dated to early part of the 8th century. Puin has not published the entirety of his work, but noted unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography. He also suggested that some of the parchments were palimpsests which had been reused. Puin believed that this implied an evolving text as opposed to a fixed one.

Morality

Muhammad

Muhammad is considered as one of the prophets in Islam a model for followers. Critics such as Sigismund Koelle and former Muslim Ibn Warraq see some of Mohammed's actions as immoral.

Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf wrote a poetic eulogy commemorating the slain Quraish notables; later, he had traveled to Mecca and provoked the Quraish to fight Muhammad. He also wrote erotic poetry about Muslim women, which offended the Muslims there. This poetry influenced so many that this too was considered directly against the Constitution of Medina which states, loyalty gives protection against treachery and this document will not (be employed to) protect one who is unjust or commits a crime. Other sources also state that he was plotting to assassinate Muhammad. Muhammad called upon his followers to kill Ka'b. Muhammad ibn Maslama offered his services, collecting four others. By pretending to have turned against Muhammad, Muhammad ibn Maslama and the others enticed Ka'b out of his fortress on a moonlit night, and killed him in spite of his vigorous resistance. The Jews were terrified at his assassination, and as the historian Ibn Ishaq put it "...there was not a Jew who did not fear for his life".

Morality of the Quran

According to some critics, the morality of the Quran appears to be a moral regression when judged by the standards of the moral traditions of Judaism and Christianity it says that it builds upon. The Catholic Encyclopedia, for example, states that "the ethics of Islam are far inferior to those of Judaism and even more inferior to those of the New Testament" and "that in the ethics of Islam there is a great deal to admire and to approve, is beyond dispute; but of originality or superiority, there is none."

• Critics stated that the Quran allows Muslim men to discipline their wives by striking them. (There is however confusion amongst translations of Quran with the original Arabic term "wadribuhunna" being translated as "to go away from them", "beat", "strike lightly" and "separate". The film Submission, which rose to fame after the murder of its director Theo van Gogh, critiqued this and similar verses of the Quran by displaying them painted on the bodies of abused Muslim women. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the film's writer, said "it is written in the Koran a woman may be slapped if she is disobedient. This is one of the evils I wish to point out in the film".

• Some critics argue that the Quran is incompatible with other religious scriptures as it attacks and advocates hate against people of other religions. For instance, Sam Harris interprets certain verses of the Quran as sanctioning military action against unbelievers as a whole both during the lifetime of Muhammad and after. The Quran said "fight in the name of your religion with those who fight against you." In The End of Faith Harris argues that Muslim extremism is simply a consequence of taking the Qur'an literally, and is skeptical that moderate Islam is possible. Various calls to arms were identified in the Quran by US citizen Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, all of which were cited as "most relevant to my actions on March 3, 2006" (9:44, 9:19, 57:10-11, 8:72-73, 9:120, 3:167-175, 4:66, 4:104, 9:81, 9:93-94, 9:100, 16:110, 61:11-12, 47:35).

• Max I. Dimont interprets that the Houris described in the Quran are specifically dedicated to "male pleasure". Henry Martyn claims that the concept of the Houris was chosen to satisfy Mohammed's followers.

Slavery

Bernard Lewis writes: "In one of the sad paradoxes of human history, it was the humanitarian reforms brought by Islam that resulted in a vast development of the slave trade inside, and still more outside, the Islamic empire." He notes that the Islamic injunctions against the enslavement of Muslims led to massive importation of slaves from the outside. According to Patrick Manning, Islam by recognizing and codifying the slavery seems to have done more to protect and expand slavery than the reverse.

Unlike Western societies which in their opposition to slavery spawned anti-slavery movements whose numbers and enthusiasm often grew out of church groups, no such grass-roots organizations ever developed in Muslim societies. In Muslim politics the state unquestioningly accepted the teachings of Islam and applied them as law. Islam, by sanctioning slavery – however mild a form it generally took – also extended legitimacy to the traffic in slaves.

It was only in the early 20th century (post World War I) that slavery gradually became outlawed and suppressed in Muslim lands, largely due to pressure exerted by Western nations such as Britain and France. Gordon describes the lack of homegrown Islamic abolition movements as owing much to the fact that it was deeply anchored in Islamic law. By legitimizing slavery and - by extension - traffic in slaves, Islam elevated those practices to an unassailable moral plain. As a result, in no part of the Muslim world was an ideological challenge ever mounted against slavery. The political and social system in Muslim society would have taken a dim view of such a challenge. Some Muslim leaders, like Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah did ban slavery, but it had little influence in the Islamic world.

The issue of slavery in the Islamic world in modern times is controversial. Critics argue there is hard evidence of its existence and destructive effects. Others maintain slavery in central Islamic lands has been virtually extinct since mid-twentieth century, and that reports from Sudan and Somalia showing practice of slavery is in border areas as a result of continuing war and not Islamic belief. In recent years, according to some scholars, there has been a "worrying trend" of "reopening" of the issue of slavery by some conservative Salafi Islamic scholars after its "closing" earlier in the 20th century when Muslim countries banned slavery and "most Muslim scholars" found the practice "inconsistent with Qur'anic morality."

Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri of Karbala expressed the view in 1993 that the enforcement of servitude can occur but is restricted to war captives and those born of slaves. Dr. Abdul-Latif Mushtahari, the general supervisor and director of homiletics and guidance at the Azhar University, has said on the subject of justifications for Islamic permission of slavery:

"Islam does not prohibit slavery but retains it for two reasons. The first reason is war (whether it is a civil war or a foreign war in which the captive is either killed or enslaved) provided that the war is not between Muslims against each other - it is not acceptable to enslave the violators, or the offenders, if they are Muslims. Only non-Muslim captives may be enslaved or killed. The second reason is the sexual propagation of slaves which would generate more slaves for their owner."

Apostasy

According to Islamic law apostasy is identified by a list of actions such as conversion to another religion, denying the existence of God, rejecting the prophets, mocking God or the prophets, idol worship, rejecting the sharia, or permitting behavior that is forbidden by the sharia, such as adultery or the eating of forbidden foods or drinking of alcoholic beverages. The majority of Muslim scholars hold to the traditional view that apostasy is punishable by death or imprisonment until repentance, at least for adult men of sound mind.

Laws prohibiting religious conversion run contrary to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "veryone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

The English historian C. E. Bosworth suggests the traditional view of apostasy hampered the development of Islamic learning, arguing that while the organizational form of the Christian university allowed them to develop and flourish into the modern university, "the Muslim ones remained constricted by the doctrine of waqf alone, with their physical plant often deteriorating hopelessly and their curricula narrowed by the exclusion of the non-traditional religious sciences like philosophy and natural science," out of fear that these could evolve into potential toe-holds for kufr, those people who reject God."

Islamic law

Bernard Lewis summarizes:

The penalty for apostasy in Islamic law is death. Islam is conceived as a polity, not just as a religious community. It follows therefore that apostasy is treason. It is a withdrawal, a denial of allegiance as well as of religious belief and loyalty. Any sustained and principled opposition to the existing regime or order almost inevitably involves such a withdrawal.

The four Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence, as well as Shi'a scholars, agree on the difference of punishment between male and female. A sane adult male apostate may be executed. A female apostate may be put to death, according to the majority view, or imprisoned until she repents, according to others.

The Quran threatens apostates with punishment in the next world only, the historian W. Heffening states, the traditions however contain the element of death penalty. Muslim scholar Shafi'i interprets verse Quran 2:217 as adducing the main evidence for the death penalty in Quran. The historian Wael Hallaq states the later addition of death penalty "reflects a later reality and does not stand in accord with the deeds of the Prophet." He further states that "nothing in the law governing apostate and apostasy derives from the letter of the holy text."

William Montgomery Watt, in response to a question about Western views of the Islamic Law as being cruel, states that "In Islamic teaching, such penalties may have been suitable for the age in which Muhammad lived. However, as societies have since progressed and become more peaceful and ordered, they are not suitable any longer."

Some contemporary Islamic jurists from both the Sunni and Shia denominations together with Quran only Muslims have argued or issued fatwas that state that either the changing of religion is not punishable or is only punishable under restricted circumstances. For example, Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri argues that no Quranic verse prescribes an earthly penalty for apostasy and adds that it is not improbable that the punishment was prescribed by Muhammad at early Islam due to political conspiracies against Islam and Muslims and not only because of changing the belief or expressing it. Montazeri defines different types of apostasy. He does not hold that a reversion of belief because of investigation and research is punishable by death but prescribes capital punishment for a desertion of Islam out of malice and enmity towards the Muslim.

According to Yohanan Friedmann, an Israeli Islamic Studies scholar, a Muslim may stress tolerant elements of Islam (by for instance adopting the broadest interpretation of Quran 2:256 ("No compulsion is there in religion...") or the humanist approach attributed to Ibrahim al-Nakha'i), without necessarily denying the existence of other ideas in the Medieval Islamic tradition but rather discussing them in their historical context (by for example arguing that "civilizations comparable with the Islamic one, such as the Sassanids and the Byzantines, also punished apostasy with death. Similarly neither Judaism nor Christianity treated apostasy and apostates with any particular kindness"). Friedmann continues:

The real predicament facing modern Muslims with liberal convictions is not the existence of stern laws against apostasy in medieval Muslim books of law, but rather the fact that accusations of apostasy and demands to punish it are heard time and again from radical elements in the contemporary Islamic world.

Human rights conventions

Some widely held interpretations of Islam are inconsistent with Human Rights conventions that recognize the right to change religion. In particular article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

To implement this, Article 18 (2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states:

No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion of his choice.

The right for Muslims to change their religion is not afforded by the Iranian Shari'ah law, which specifically forbids it. Muslim countries such as Sudan and Saudi Arabia, have the death penalty for apostasy from Islam. These countries have criticized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for its perceived failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-Western countries. In 1990, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation published a separate Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam compliant with Shari'ah. Although granting many of the rights in the UN declaration, it does not grant Muslims the right to convert to other religions, and restricts freedom of speech to those expressions of it that are not in contravention of the Islamic law.

Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, wrote a book called Human Rights in Islam, in which he argues that respect for human rights has always been enshrined in Sharia law (indeed that the roots of these rights are to be found in Islamic doctrine) and criticizes Western notions that there is an inherent contradiction between the two. Western scholars have, for the most part, rejected Maududi's analysis.

Homosexuals

Critics such as lesbian activist Irshad Manji, former Muslims Ehsan Jami and the former Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have criticized Islam's attitudes towards homosexuals. Most international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, condemn Islamic laws that make homosexual relations between consenting adults a crime. Since 1994 the United Nations Human Rights Committee has also ruled that such laws violated the right to privacy guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In May 2008, the sexual rights lobby group Lambda Istanbul (based in Istanbul, Turkey) was banned by court order for violating a constitutional provision on the protection of the family and an article banning bodies with objectives that violate law and morality. This decision was then taken to the Court of Cassation and the ban lifted.

The ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq has noted that the Quran's condemnation of homosexuality has frequently been ignored in practice, and that Islamic countries were much more tolerant of homosexuality than Christian ones until fairly recently.

Violence

The 9/11 attack on the US and other recent attacks have resulted in non-Muslims indicting Islam as a violent religion. The Qur'an's teachings on matters of war and peace have become topics of heated discussion in recent years. On the one hand, some critics claim that certain verses of the Qur'an sanction military action against unbelievers as a whole both during the lifetime of Muhammad and after. The Qur'an says, "Fight in the name of your religion with those who fight against you." On the other hand, other scholars argue that such verses of the Qur'an are interpreted out of context, and argue that when the verses are read in context it clearly appears that the Qur'an prohibits aggression, and allows fighting only in self-defense.

The orientalist David Margoliouth described the Battle of Khaybar as the "stage at which Islam became a menace to the whole world." According to Margoliouth, earlier attacks on the Meccans and the Jewish tribes of Medina (e.g., the invasion of Banu Qurayza and the invasion of Banu Qurayza) could be at least plausibly be ascribed to wrongs done to Muhammad or the Islamic community. Margoliouth argues that the Jews of Khaybar had done nothing to harm Muhammad or his followers, and ascribes the attack to a desire for plunder. He describes the reason given by Muhammad for the attack as "its inhabitants were not Moslems" (italics in the source). According the Margoliouth, this became an excuse for unfettered conquest.

Jihad, an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād translates as a noun meaning "struggle". Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving for the sake of God (al-jihad fi sabil Allah)". Jihad is an important religious duty for Muslims. A minority among the Sunni scholars sometimes refer to this duty as the sixth pillar of Islam, though it occupies no such official status. In Twelver Shi'a Islam, however, Jihad is one of the 10 Practices of the Religion. The Qur'an calls repeatedly for jihad, or holy war, against unbelievers, including, at times, Jews and Christians. Middle East historian Bernard Lewis argues that "the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists (specialists in the hadith) understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense." Furthermore, Lewis maintains that for most of the recorded history of Islam, from the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad onward, the word jihad was used in a primarily military sense. According to Andrew Bostom, a number of jihads have targeted Christians, Hindus, and Jews.

The Qur'an: (8:12): "...cast terror in their hearts and strike upon their necks." The phrase that they have been "commanded to terrorize the disbelievers" has been cited in motivation of Jihadi terror. One Jihadi cleric has said:

"Another aim and objective of jihad is to drive terror in the hearts of the . To terrorize them. Did you know that we were commanded in the Qur'an with terrorism? ...Allah said, and prepare for them to the best of your ability with power, and with horses of war. To drive terror in the hearts of my enemies, Allah's enemies, and your enemies. And other enemies which you don't know, only Allah knows them... So we were commanded to drive terror into the hearts of the , to prepare for them with the best of our abilities with power. Then the Prophet said, nay, the power is your ability to shoot. The power which you are commanded with here, is your ability to shoot. Another aim and objective of jihad is to kill the , to lessen the population of the ... it is not right for a Prophet to have captives until he makes the Earth warm with blood... so, you should always seek to lessen the population of the ."

David Cook, author of Understanding Jihad, said "In reading Muslim literature — both contemporary and classical — one can see that the evidence for the primacy of spiritual jihad is negligible. Today it is certain that no Muslim, writing in a non- Western language (such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu), would ever make claims that jihad is primarily nonviolent or has been superseded by the spiritual jihad. Such claims are made solely by Western scholars, primarily those who study Sufism and/or work in interfaith dialogue, and by Muslim apologists who are trying to present Islam in the most innocuous manner possible." Cook argued that "Presentations along these lines are ideological in tone and should be discounted for their bias and deliberate ignorance of the subject" and that "t is no longer acceptable for Western scholars or Muslim apologists writing in non-Muslim languages to make flat, unsupported statements concerning the prevalence — either from a historical point of view or within contemporary Islam—of the spiritual jihad." Magdi Allam, an outspoken Egyptian-born Italian journalist, has describes Islam as intrinsically violent and characterized by “hate and intolerance”.

Short-term and limited marriages

Short-term marriage

Nikāḥ al-Mutʿah (Template:Lang-ar literally pleasure marriage) is a fixed-term or short-term contractual marriage in Shia Islam. The duration of this type of marriage is fixed at its inception and is then automatically dissolved upon completion of its term. For this reason, nikah mut‘ah has been widely criticised as the religious cover and legalization of prostitution. The Christian missionary Thomas Patrick Hughes criticized Mut'ah as allowing the continuation of "one of the abominable practices of ancient Arabia." Shi'a and Sunnis agree that Mut'ah was legal in early times, but Sunnis consider that it was abrogated. Ibn Kathir writes that "here's no doubt that in the outset of Islam, Mut'ah was allowed under the Shari'ah". Currently, however, mut'ah is one of the distinctive features of Ja'fari jurisprudence. No other school of Islamic jurisprudence allows it. According to Imam Jafar as Sadiq, "One of the matters about which I shall never keep precautionary silence (taqiyya) is the matter of mu’tah." Allameh Tabatabaei defends the Shia view in Tafsir al-Mizan, arguing that there are mutawatir or nearly mutawatir traditions narrated from the Shia Imams that Mut'ah is permitted. For example, it has been narrated from Muhammad al-Baqir and Ja'far al-Sadiq that they said "regarding the verse, and there is no blame on you about what you mutually agree after what is appointed." It means that he increases her dowry or she increases his (fixed) period. Sunnis believe that Muhammad later abolished this type of marriage at several different large events, the most accepted being at Khaybar in 7 AH (629 CE) Bukhari 059.527 and at the Victory of Mecca in 8 AH (630 CE). Most Sunnis believe that Umar later was merely enforcing a prohibition that was established during Muhammad's time. Shia contest the criticism that nikah mut‘ah is a cover for prostitution, and argue that the unique legal nature of temporary marriage distinguishes Mut'ah ideologically from prostitution.

Contractually limited marriage

Nikah Misyar (Template:Lang-ar) is a Nikah (marriage) carried out through the normal contractual procedure, with the provision that the husband and wife give up several rights by their own free will, such as living together, equal division of nights between wives in cases of polygamy, the wife's rights to housing, and maintenance money ("nafaqa"), and the husband's right of homekeeping and access. Essentially the couple continue to live separately from each other, as before their contract, and see each other to fulfil their needs in a legally permissible (halaal) manner when they please. Misyar has been suggested by some western authors to be a comparable marriage with Nikah mut'ah and that they find it for the sole purpose of "sexual gratification in a licit manner" According to Florian Pohl, assistant professor of religion at Oxford College, Misyar marriage is controversial issue in the Muslim world, as many see it as practice that encourages marriages for purely sexual purposes, or that it is used as a cover for a form of prostitutuion.

Professor Yusuf Al-Qaradawi observes that he does not promote this type of marriage, although he has to recognise that it is legal, since it fulfils all the requirements of the usual marriage contract. He states his preference that the clause of renunciation be not included within the marriage contract, but be the subject of a simple verbal agreement between the parties. Islamic scholars like Ibn Uthaimeen or Al-Albani claim, for their part, that misyar marriage may be legal, but not moral. They agree that the wife can at any time, reclaim the rights which she gave up at the time of contract. But, they are opposed to this type of marriage on the grounds that it contradicts the spirit of the Islamic law of marriage and that it has perverse effects on the woman, the family and the community in general.

For Al-Albani, misyar marriage may even be considered as illicit, because it runs counter to the objectives and the spirit of marriage in Islam, as described in the Quran: "And among His Signs is this, that He created for you mates from among yourselves, that ye may dwell in tranquility with them, and He has put love and mercy between your (hearts)…" Al-Albani also underlines the social problems which result from the “misyar” marriage, particularly in the event that children are born from this union. The children raised by their mother in a home from which the father is always absent, without reason, may suffer difficulties. The situation becomes even worse if the wife is abandoned or repudiated by her husband "misyar", with no means of subsistence, as usually happens.

"Shaykh Ibn Baaz (may Allaah have mercy on him) was asked about Misyaar marriage; this kind of marriage is where the man marries a second, third or fourth wife, and the wife is in a situation that compels her to stay with her parents or one of them in her own house, and the husband goes to her at various times depending on the circumstances of both. What is the Islamic ruling on this type of marriage? He replied:"

There is nothing wrong with that if the marriage contract fulfills all the conditions set out by sharee’ah, which is the presence of the wali and the consent of both partners, and the presence of two witnesses of good character to the drawing up of the contract, and both partners being free of any impediments, because of the general meaning of the words of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him): “The conditions that are most deserving of being fulfilled are those by means of which intimacy becomes permissible for you” and “The Muslims are bound by their conditions.” If the partners agree that the woman will stay with her family or that her share of the husband’s time will be during the day and not during the night, or on certain days or certain nights, there is nothing wrong with that, so long as the marriage is announced and not hidden.

Shaykh al-Albaani was asked about Misyaar marriage and he disallowed it for two reasons:

1) That the purpose of marriage is repose as Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): “And among His Signs is this, that He created for you wives from among yourselves, that you may find repose in them, and He has put between you affection and mercy. Verily, in that are indeed signs for a people who reflect” . But this is not achieved in this kind of marriage. 2) It may be decreed that the husband has children with this woman, but because he is far away from her and rarely comes to her, that will be negatively reflected in his children’s upbringing and attitude.

Ibn Uthaymeen recognized the legality of “misyar” marriage under Shariah, but came to oppose it due to what he considered to be its harmful effects.

Criticism of Muslim immigrants and immigration

Western world

The immigration of Muslims to Europe has increased in recent decades. Friction has developed between their new neighbours. Conservative Muslim social attitudes on modern issues have caused controversy in Europe and elsewhere. Scholars argue about how much these attitudes are a result of Islamic beliefs. Some critics consider Islam to be incompatible with secular Western society. Their criticism has been partly influenced by a stance against multiculturalism advocated by recent philosophers, closely linked to the heritage of New Philosophers. Statements by proponents like Pascal Bruckner describe multiculturalism as an invention of an "enlightened" elite who deny the benefits of democratic rights to non-Westerners by chaining them to their roots. They believe this allows Islam free rein to propagate what they state are abuses, such as the mistreatment of women and homosexuals, and in some countries slavery. They also state that multiculturalism allows a degree of religious freedom that exceeds what is needed for personal religious freedom and is conducive to the creation of organizations aimed at undermining European secular or Christian values.

Emigrants from nearly every Muslim country in the world have immigrated to Canada. According to a recent poll, 54% of Canadians had an unfavourable view of Islam, which was higher than for any other religion.

In United States, after the Boston Marathon Bombings, the immigration processes are assumed to be harder. Bryan Fischer asked to ban all Muslim visas, and no more mosques, his opinion received support, most notably by Pat Buchanan.

Comparison with Communism and Fascist ideologies

In 2004, speaking to the Acton Institute on the problems of "secular democracy", Cardinal George Pell drew a parallel between Islam and Communism: "Islam may provide in the 21st century, the attraction that communism provided in the 20th, both for those that are alienated and embittered on the one hand and for those who seek order or justice on the other." Pell also agrees in another speech that its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited. An Australian Islamist spokesman, Keysar Trad, responded to the criticism: "Communism is a godless system, a system that in fact persecutes faith".

Writers such as Stephen Suleyman Schwartz and Christopher Hitchens, describe Islamist attributes similar to Fascism. Malise Ruthven, a Scottish writer and historian who focuses his work on religion and Islamic affairs, opposes redefining Islamism as `Islamofascism`, but also finds the resemblances between the two ideologies "compelling".

Responses to criticism

John Esposito has written a number of introductory texts on Islam and the Islamic world. He has addressed issues including the rise of militant Islam, the veiling of women, and democracy. Esposito emphatically argues against what he calls the "pan-Islamic myth". He thinks that "too often coverage of Islam and the Muslim world assumes the existence of a monolithic Islam in which all Muslims are the same." To him, such a view is naive and unjustifiably obscures important divisions and differences in the Muslim world.

William Montgomery Watt in his book Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman addresses Muhammad’s alleged moral failings. Watt argues on a basis of moral relativism that Muhammad should be judged by the standards of his own time and country rather than "by those of the most enlightened opinion in the West today."

Karen Armstrong, tracing what she believes to be the West's long history of hostility toward Islam, finds in Muhammad’s teachings a theology of peace and tolerance. Armstrong holds that the "holy war" urged by the Quran alludes to each Muslim's duty to fight for a just, decent society.

Edward Said, in his essay Islam Through Western Eyes, stated that the general basis of Orientalist thought forms a study structure in which Islam is placed in an inferior position as an object of study. He claims the existence of a very considerable bias in Orientalist writings as a consequence of the scholars' cultural make-up. He claims Islam has been looked at with a particular hostility and fear due to many obvious religious, psychological and political reasons, all deriving from a sense "that so far as the West is concerned, Islam represents not only a formidable competitor but also a late-coming challenge to Christianity."

Cathy Young of Reason Magazine claims that "criticism of the religion is enmeshed with cultural and ethnic hostility" often painting the Muslim world as monolithic. While stating that the terms "Islamophobia" and "anti-Muslim bigotry" are often used in response to legitimate criticism of fundamentalist Islam and problems within Muslim culture, she claimed "the real thing does exist, and it frequently takes the cover of anti-jihadism."

Deepa Kumar, the author of Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike, in her article titled 'Fighting Islamophobia: A Response to Critics' says "The history of Islam is no more violent than the history of any of the other major religions of the world. Perhaps my critics haven't heard of the Crusades -- the religious wars fought by European Christians from the 11th to the 13th centuries" referring to the brutality of the crusades and then contrasting them to forbidding of acts of vengeance and violence by the Sultan of Egypt Saladin, after he successfully retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders. Speaking on the Danish Muhammad cartoon controversy she says "The Danish cartoon of the prophet Mohammed with a bomb on his head is nothing if not the visual depiction of the racist diatribe that Islam is inherently violent. To those who can't understand why this argument is racist, let me be clear: when you take the actions of a few people and generalize it to an entire group -- all Muslims, all Arabs -- that's racism. When a whole group of people are discriminated against and demonized because of their religion or regional origin, that's racism." And "...Arabs and Muslims are being scapegoated and demonized to justify a war that is ruining the lives of millions."

Atheism in Islamic countries

Sharia law (which usually covers only Muslims) assumes people are born into their parents’ religion. When a Muslim becomes a non-believer, he or she becomes guilty of apostasy - a hudud crime against God, like adultery and drinking alcohol. Eight countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Sudan have the death penalty for such offences. Only a few Muslim countries, such as Turkey, do not persecute atheists. Nevertheless, freedom of religion is not protected by law in these countries. For example, in Indonesia, citizens must choose one of six religions, from which atheism and agnosticism are absent. Similarly, Egypt’s draft constitution includes only three faiths: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. A recent Pew poll noted that majorities in many Islamic countries approve of Sharia; of these, a large fraction also approve of the death penalty for apostasy, e.g. in Bangladesh (44%), Malaysia (62%), Palestine (66%), Pakistan (76%), Afghanistan (79%), Jordan (82%), and Egypt (86%). Given the pressure on non-believers, it is thus extremely difficult to determine how many people are actually non-believers or agnostics in the Islamic world.

See also

• Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry
• Fitna
• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of speech versus blasphemy
• Ibrahim Al-Buleihi
• Internet Infidels
• Islam and violence
• Islam and domestic violence
• Islamic feminism
• Innocence of Muslims
• Islam: What the West Needs to Know
• Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
• List of critics of Islam
• The Satanic Verses controversy
• Submission
• Sudanese teddy bear blasphemy case
• Trial of Geert Wilders

Notes

1. De Haeresibus by John of Damascus. See Migne. Patrologia Graeca, vol. 94, 1864, cols 763-73. An English translation by the Reverend John W Voorhis appeared in THE MOSLEM WORLD for October 1954, pp. 392-398.
2. ^ Warraq, Ibn (2003). Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out. Prometheus Books. p. 67. ISBN 1-59102-068-9.
3. ^ Ibn Kammuna, Examination of the Three Faiths, trans. Moshe Perlmann (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971), pp. 148–49
4. ^ Mohammed and Mohammedanism, by Gabriel Oussani, Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 16, 2006.
5. ^ Ibn Warraq, The Quest for Historical Muhammad (Amherst, Mass.:Prometheus, 2000), 103.
6. ^ Bible in Mohammedian Literature., by Kaufmann Kohler Duncan B. McDonald, Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 22, 2006.
7. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2005&country=6825. See also Timothy Garton Ash (2006-10-05). "Islam in Europe". The New York Review of Books.
8. Timothy Garton Ash (2006-10-05). "Islam in Europe". The New York Review of Books.
9. Tariq Modood (2006-04-06). Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship: A European Approach (1st ed.). Routledge. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-415-35515-5.
10. "'More illegal immigrants from Afghanistan than Pakistan'". Hindustan Times. 2011-11-14.
11. "India's 'Mexican' Problem: Illegal Immigration from Bangladesh". Ibtimes. 06-02-2012. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
12. "Illegal immigration from Bangladesh has turned Assam explosive". Niticentral. 2012-10-31.
13. http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/summer2013/tatarstan-battle-islam-russias-heartland
14. Critique of Islam St. John of Damascus
15. John McManners, The Oxford History of Christianity, Oxford University Press, p. 185
16. John Victor Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, Columbia University Press, p. 139: "Like earlier hostile biographies of Muhammad (John of Damascus, the Risâlat al-Kindî., Theophanes, or the Historia de Mahometh pseudopropheta) the four twelfth-century texts are based on deliberate distortions of Muslim traditions."
17. ^ Doubt: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson by Jennifer Michael Hecht, HarperOne, 2004 pg 224
18. Boisard, Marcel A. (July 1980). "On the Probable Influence of Islam on Western Public and International Law". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 11 (4): 429–50.
19. Nahjul Balaagha letter 53
20. Ronald Bontekoe, Mariėtta Tigranovna Stepaniants (1997). Justice and Democracy. University of Hawaii Press. p. 251. ISBN 0-8248-1926-8.
21. Moosa, Ebrahim (2005). Ghazālī and the Poetics of Imagination. UNC Press. p. 9. ISBN 0-8078-2952-8.
22. Jennifer Michael Hecht, "Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson", pg. 227-230
23. Richard Tapper & Keith Stanley McLachlan (2003). Technology, tradition and survival: aspects of material culture in the Middle East and Central Asia. Routledge. p. 38. ISBN 0-7146-4927-9.
24. Ibn Warraq. Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 3. Prometheus Books, 1995. ISBN 0-87975-984-4
25. Norman A. Stillman. The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book p. 261. Jewish Publication Society, 1979 ISBN 0-8276-0198-0
26. Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, p.95
27. The Mind of Maimonides, by David Novak. Retrieved April 29, 2006.
28. Hartman, David; Halkin, Abraham S. (1993). Epistles of Maimonides: crisis and leadership. Jewish Publication Society. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-8276-0430-8.
29. both in vol. 36 of the Tournai edition, pp. 231-442 and 443-500.
30. J. Tolan, Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam (1996) p. 100-101
31. J. Tolan, Saracens; Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (2002) p. 75
32. Dialogue 7 of Twenty-six Dialogues with a Persian (1399), for the Greek text see Trapp, E., ed. 1966. Manuel II. Palaiologos: Dialoge mit einem “Perser.” Wiener Byzantinische Studien 2. Vienna, for a Greek text with accompanying French translation see Th. Khoury “Manuel II Paléologue, Entretiens avec un Musulman. 7e Controverse”, Sources Chrétiennes n. 115, Paris 1966, for an English translation see Manuel Paleologus, Dialogues with a Learned Moslem. Dialogue 7 (2009), chapters 1-18 (of 37), translated by Roger Pearse available at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library here, at The Tertullian Project here, and also here. A somewhat more complete translation into French is found here
33. "Of the Standard of Taste by David Hume".
34. "Swami Vivekananda's Rousing Call to Hindu Nation", p. 130
35. Title = "Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Volume 19, Issue 1", publisher = ICPR, year = 2002, page = 73
36. "Américo Castro and the Meaning of Spanish Civilization", by José Rubia Barcia, Selma Margaretten, p. 150
37. Asia. 2d ed., rev. and corrected. Published 1909 by E. Stanford in London. Page 458
38. ^ Winston S. Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899)
39. "Words, Not Swords: Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of Movement", p. 64, by Farzaneh Milani
40. ^ Schaff, P., & Schaff, D. S. (1910). History of the Christian church. Third edition. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Volume 4, Chapter III, section 40 "Position of Mohammedanism in Church History"
41. ^ Schaff, P., & Schaff, D. S. (1910). History of the Christian church. Third edition. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Volume 4, Chapter III, section 45 "The Mohammedanism Religion"
42. ^ Neale, J. M. (1847). A History of the Holy Eastern Church: The Patriarchate of Alexandria. London: Joseph Masters. Volume II, Section I "Rise of Mahometanism" (p. 68)
43. The Gandhian Moment, p. 117, by Ramin Jahanbegloo
44. Gandhi's responses to Islam, p.110, by Sheila McDonough
45. "Narrative Construction of India: Forster, Nehru, and Rushdie", p. 160, by Mukesh Srivastava, 2004
46. ^ Barton, J. L. (1918). The Christian Approach to Islam (p. 139). Boston; Chicago: The Pilgrim Press.
47. G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 1925, Chapter V, The Escape from Paganism, Online text
48. ^ BBC Article. In quotes: Muslim reaction to Pope last accessed 17 September 17, 2006
49. ^ BBC News Article:Pope sorry for offending Muslims, last accessed 17 September 17, 2006
50. Telegraph
51. VS Naipaul launches attack on Islam, 4 Oct 2011
52. "Debating the African Condition: Race, gender, and culture conflict", by Alamin M. Mazrui, Willy Mutunga, p. 105
53. "Islam and the West African Novel: The Politics of Representation", p.25, by By Ahmed S. Bangura
54. William Montgomery Watt in The Cambridge History of Islam, p.32
55. Yehuda D. Nevo "Towards a Prehistory of Islam," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, vol.17, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1994 p. 108.
56. John Wansbrough The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1978 p,119
57. Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Princeton University Press, 1987 p. 204.
58. See the verses Quran 2:2, Quran 17:88–89, Quran 29:47, Quran 28:49
59. ^ "Koran". From the Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 21, 2008.
60. Wansbrough, John (1977). Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation
61. Wansbrough, John (1978). The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History.
62. Berg, Herbert (2000). The development of exegesis in early Islam: the authenticity of Muslim literature from the formative period. Routledge. p. 83. ISBN 0-7007-1224-0.
63. Lester, Toby (1999) "What is the Koran?" Atlantic Monthly
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65. "The Life of Muhammad", Ibn Ishaq, A. Guillaume (translator), 2002, p.166 ISBN 0-19-636033-1
66. Quoted in A. Rippin, Muslims: their religious beliefs and practices: Volume 1, London, 1991, p.26
67. An Atheist's Guide to Mohammedanism by Frank Zindler
68. Goddard, Hugh (2003). Religious Studies and Theology: An Introduction. New York University Press. p. 204. ISBN 0-8147-9914-0. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
69. Esposito, John (1998). Islam: The Straight Path. Oxford University Press. p. 85. ISBN 0-19-511234-2.
70. Brown, Daniel W. "Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought", 1999. p. 113 & 134
71. Quran, Chapter 6. The Cattle: 38
72. Donmez, Amber C. "The Difference Between Quran-Based Islam and Hadith-Based Islam"
73. ^ Latif, Abu Ruqayyah Farasat. The Quraniyun of the Twentieth Century, Masters Assertion, September 2006
74. Ahmad, Aziz. "Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857 -1964". London: Oxford University Press.
75. Pervez, Ghulam Ahmed. Maqam-e Hadith, Urdu version
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77. Esposito, John (1998). Islam: The Straight Path. Oxford University Press. p. 67. ISBN 0-19-511234-2.
78. Madelung, Wilferd (1997). The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate. Cambridge University Press. p. xi. ISBN 0-521-64696-0.
79. Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. "Shi'ism", 1988. p. 35.
80. What do we actually know about Mohammed? by Patricia Crone
81. ^ Donner, Fred Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing, Darwin Press, 1998
82. Atlantic Monthly Journal, Atlantic Monthly article: What is the Koran ,January 1999
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84. Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th edition (Macmillan Press, 1970), p. 90.
85. Uri Rubin, The Assassination of Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf, Oriens, Vol. 32. (1990), pp. 65-71.
86. Ibn Hisham (1955). Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya. Vol. vol. 2. Cairo. pp. 51–57. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) English translation from Stillman (1979), p. 125–126.
87. Ibn Hisham (1955). English translation from Stillman (1979), p. 127.
88. "Mohammed and Mohammedanism". From the Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 21, 2008.
89. Kathir, Ibn, "Tafsir of Ibn Kathir", Al-Firdous Ltd., London, 2000, 50–53 - Ibn Kathir states "dharbun ghayru nubrah" strike/admonish lightly
90. Laleh Bakhtiar, The Sublime Quran, 2007 translation
91. "The Holy Quran: Text, Translation and Commentary", Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Amana Corporation, Brentwood, MD, 1989. ISBN 0-915957-03-5, passage was quoted from commentary on 4:34 - Abdullah Yusuf Ali in his Quranic commentary also states that: "In case of family jars four steps are mentioned, to be taken in that order. (1) Perhaps verbal advice or admonition may be sufficient; (2) if not, sex relations may be suspended; (3) if this is not sufficient, some slight physical correction may be administered; but Imam Shafi'i considers this inadvisable, though permissible, and all authorities are unanimous in deprecating any sort of cruelty, even of the nagging kind, as mentioned in the next clause; (4) if all this fails, a family council is recommended in 4:35 below." Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Quran: Text, Translation and Commentary (commentary on 4:34), Amana Corporation, Brentwood, MD, 1989. ISBN 0-915957-03-5.
92. Ammar, Nawal H. (May 2007). "Wife Battery in Islam: A Comprehensive Understanding of Interpretations". Violence Against Women 13 (5): 519–523
93. Script for the movie, Submission
94. Hirsi Ali on Film over Position of Women in Koran
95. Gerber (1986), pp. 78–79
96. "Anti-Semitism". Encyclopedia Judaica
97. Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance (pdf), Freedom House, May 2006, pp.24-25.
98. ^ Sam Harris Who Are the Moderate Muslims?
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101. The Indestructible Jews, by Max I. Dimont, page 134
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103. Lewis, Bernard (1990). Race and Slavery in the Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505326-5, page 10.
104. Manning, Patrick (1990). Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-34867-6, page 28
105. Murray Gordon, “Slavery in the Arab World.” New Amsterdam Press, New York, 1989. Originally published in French by Editions Robert Laffont, S.A. Paris, 1987, page 21.
106. Brunschvig. 'Abd; Encyclopedia of Islam
107. Murray Gordon, “Slavery in the Arab World.” New Amsterdam Press, New York, 1989. Originally published in French by Editions Robert Laffont, S.A. Paris, 1987, pages 44-45.
108. http://www.druzestudies.org/Druzes.html
109. The Oxford Dictionary of Islam,slavery, p.298
110. Khaled Abou El Fadl and William Clarence-Smith
111. Abou el Fadl, Great Theft, HarperSanFrancisco, c2005.
112. "Islam and Slavery", William G. Clarence-Smith
113. In 'The Elements of Islam' (1993) cited in Clarence-Smith, p.131
114. "You Ask and Islam Answers", pp. 51-2
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116. Campo, Juan Eduardo (2009). Encyclopedia of Islam. Infobase Publishing. p. 48. ISBN 9781438126968.
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119. John L. Esposito, The Oxford dictionary of Islam, Oxford University Press, 2004 p. 22
120. United Nations. "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights." United Nations. Sep. 22 2012 <http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a18>.
121. C. E. Bosworth: Untitled review of "The Rise of Colleges. Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West by George Makdisi", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 2 (1983), pp. 304-305
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124. W. Heffening, in Encyclopedia of Islam
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126. Interview: William Montgomery Watt, by Bashir Maan & Alastair McIntosh
127. Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri: "Not Every Conversion is Apostasy", by Mahdi Jami, In Persian, BBC Persian, February 2, 2005. Retrieved April 25, 2006.
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128. Ayatollah Montazeri: "Not Every Conversion is Apostasy", by Mahdi Jami, In Persian, BBC Persian, February 2, 2005. Retrieved April 25, 2006.
129. ^ Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, Cambridge University Press, p.5
130. Eleanor Roosevelt: Address to the United Nations General Assembly 10 December 1948 in Paris, France
131. ^ In 1981, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by saying that the UDHR was "a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. Littman, David. "Universal Human Rights and 'Human Rights in Islam'". Midstream, February/March 1999
132. ^ "As a matter of law, on the basis of its obligations as a state party to the ICCPR, Iran is obliged to uphold the right of individuals to practice the religion of their choice and to change religions, including converting from Islam. The prosecution of converts from Islam on the basis of religious edicts that identify apostasy as an offense punishable by death is clearly at variance with this obligation.": Human Rights Watch report on Iran
133. UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
134. Sharia as traditionally understood runs counter to the ideas expressed in Article 18:Religious freedom under Islam: By Henrik Ertner Rasmussen, General Secretary, Danish European Mission
135. Apostacy, "Leaving Islam" – The Peace FAQ
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139. Maududi, Human Rights in Islam, p. 10. "Islam has laid down some universal fundamental rights for humanity as a whole ... ."
140. Maududi, Human Right in Islam, p. 13. "The people of the West have the habit of attributing every good thing to themselves and trying to prove that it is because of them that the world got this blessing ... ."
141. Bielefeldt, Heiner (February 2000). ""Western" versus "Islamic" Human Rights Conceptions?: A Critique of Cultural Essentialism in the Discussion on Human Rights". Political Theory. 28 (1): 90–121. doi:10.1177/0090591700028001005. JSTOR 192285.
142. Bielefeldt (2000), p. 104.
143. Carle, Robert (2005). "Revealing and Concealing: Islamist Discourse on Human Rights". Human Rights Review. 6 (3): 122–37. doi:10.1007/BF02862219. Both Tabandeh and Mawdudi proceed to develop a synthesis between human rights and traditional shari'a that conceals the conflicts and tensions between the two (p. 124).
144. Irshad Manji's call for an Islamic reformation
145. 'Turkish court slaps ban on homosexual group', Hürriyet daily newspaper, Turkey
146. 'The case has ended: Not to be closed!', KAOS GL, Turkey
147. Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not A Muslim, pages 340-344, Prometheus, New York, 1995
148. Puniyani, Ram (2005). Religion, power & violence: expression of politics in contemporary times. SAGE. pp. 97–98. ISBN 9780761933380.
149. Sohail H. Hashmi, David Miller, Boundaries and Justice: diverse ethical perspectives, Princeton University Press, p.197
150. Khaleel Muhammad, professor of religious studies at San Diego State University, states, regarding his discussion with the critic Robert Spencer, that "when I am told ... that Jihad only means war, or that I have to accept interpretations of the Qur'an that non-Muslims (with no good intentions or knowledge of Islam) seek to force upon me, I see a certain agendum developing: one that is based on hate, and I refuse to be part of such an intellectual crime."
151. Ali, Maulana Muhammad; The Religion of Islam (6th Edition), Ch V "Jihad" Page 414 "When shall war cease". Published by The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement
152. Sadr-u-Din, Maulvi. "Qur'an and War", page 8. Published by The Muslim Book Society, Lahore, Pakistan.
153. Article on Jihad by Dr. G. W. Leitner (founder of The Oriental Institute, UK) published in Asiatic Quarterly Review, 1886. ("Jihad, even when explained as a righteous effort of waging war in self-defense against the grossest outrage on one's religion, is strictly limited..")
154. The Qur'anic Commandments Regarding War/Jihad An English rendering of an Urdu article appearing in Basharat-e-Ahmadiyya Vol. I, p. 228-232, by Dr. Basharat Ahmad; published by the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam
155. Ali, Maulana Muhammad; The Religion of Islam (6th Edition), Ch V "Jihad" Pages 411-413. Published by The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement
156. ^ Margoliouth, D. S. (1905). Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (Third Edition., p. 362-363). New York; London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons; The Knickerbocker Press.
157. "That plea would cover attacks on the whole world outside Medinah and its neighbourhood: and on leaving Khaibar the Prophet seemed to see the world already in his grasp. This was a great advance from the early days of Medinah, when the Jews were to be tolerated as equals, and even idolators to be left unmolested, so long as they manifested no open hostility. Now the fact that a community was idolatrous, or Jewish, or anything but Mohammedan, warranted a murderous attack upon it: the passion for fresh conquests dominated the Prophet as it dominated an Alexander before him or a Napoleon after him." Margoliouth, D. S. (1905). Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (Third Edition., p. 363). New York; London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons; The Knickerbocker Press.
158. Morgan, Diane (2010). Essential Islam: a comprehensive guide to belief and practice. ABC-CLIO. p. 87. ISBN 0-313-36025-1. Retrieved 5 January 2011. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
159. Wendy Doniger, ed. (1999). Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of World Religions. Merriam-Webster. ISBN 0-87779-044-2. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help), Jihad, p.571
160. Josef W. Meri, ed. (2005). Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-96690-6. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help), Jihad, p.419
161. John Esposito(2005), Islam: The Straight Path, pp.93
162. Ember, Melvin; Carol R. Ember, Ian Skoggard (2005). Encyclopedia of diasporas: immigrant and refugee cultures around the world. Diaspora communities, Volume 2. Springer, 2005. p. http://books.google.com/books?id=7QEjPVyd9YMC&pg=PA183. ISBN 0-306-48321-1.
163. Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 72.
164. Lewis, Bernard, The Crisis of Islam, 2001 Chapter 2
165. Bostom, Andrew G.; Ibn Warraq (2008). The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims. p. 391. ISBN 978-1-59102-602-0.
166. Warrant for terror: fatwās of radical Islam and the duty of jihād, p. 68, Shmuel Bar, 2006
167. The Osama bin Laden I know: an oral history of al-Qaeda's leader, p. 303, Peter L. Bergen, 2006
     • Jihad and international security, p. 90, Jalīl Rawshandil, Sharon Chadha, 2006
     • CNN.com - Transcripts
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168. Counter terrorism site, May 2010
169. ^ Cook, David. Understanding Jihad. University of California Press, 2005. Retrieved from Google Books on November 27, 2011. ISBN 0-520-24203-3, ISBN 978-0-520-24203-6.
170. Owen, Richard (2008-03-24). "Pope converts outspoken Muslim who condemned religion of hate". The Times. London. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
171. Iran talks up temporary marriages, by Frances Harrison, BBC News, Last Updated: 2 June 2007.
     • Temporary 'Enjoyment Marriages' In Vogue Again With Some Iraqis, by Nancy Trejos, The Washington Post, 20 January 2007.
172. Law of desire: temporary marriage in Shi'i Iran, by Shahla Haeri, pg.6.
     • Islam For Dummies, by Malcolm Clark.
     • Islam: a very short introduction, by Malise Ruthven.
173. "In permitting these usufructuary marriages Muḥammad appears but to have given Divine (?) sanction to one of the abominable practices of ancient Arabia, for Burckhardt (vol. ii. p. 378) says, it was a custom of their forefathers to assign to a traveller who became their guest for the night, some female of the family, most commonly the host’s own wife!" Hughes, T. P. (1885). In A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. London: W. H. Allen & Co. p. 424. Hughes also says "hese temporary marriages are undoubtedly the greatest blot in Muḥammad’s moral legislation, and admit of no satisfactory apology." Hughes, T. P. (1885). In A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. London: W. H. Allen & Co. p. 314.
174. Tafsir al-Qur'an al-Azim, Volume 1 p. 74
175. Motahhari, Morteza. "The rights of woman in Islam, Fixed-Term marriage and the problem of the harem". al-islam.org. Retrieved 2011-01-10.
176. Tabatabaei, Sayyid Mohammad Hosayn. "Tafsir al-Mizan, Vol 4, Surah an-Nisa, Verses 23-28". almizan.org. Retrieved 2011-01-10.
177. http://www.zawaj.com/articles/mutah.html
178. Temporary marriage, Encyclopedia Iranica
179. Sachiko Murata, Temporary Marriage in Islamic Law
180. Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf : Misyar marriage
181. Islam and the West: The Clash Between Islamism and Secularism By Mushtaq K. Lod, pp. 58-59
182. The Islamic Shield: Arab Resistance to Democratic and Religious Reforms By Elie Elhadj, p. 51
183. Pohl, Florian (September 1, 2010). Muslim World: Modern Muslim Societies. Marshall Cavendish. pp. 52–53. Retrieved April 5, 2013.
184. Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf : Zawaj al misyar p.8
185. Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf : Zawaj al misyar , pp.13-14
186. Bin Menie, Abdullah bin Sulaïman : fatwa concerning the misyar marriage (and opinions by Ibn Uthaymeen, Al-albany) (in Arabic) Yet another marriage with no strings - fatwa committee of al azhar against misyar
187. Quran, 30 : 21
188. Wassel quoted in Hassouna addimashqi, Arfane : Nikah al misyar (2000), (in Arabic), p 16)
189. Fataawa ‘Ulama’ al-Balad al-Haraam (p. 450, 451) and Jareedah al-Jazeerah issue no. 8768,
190. Ahkaam al-Ta’addud fi Daw’ al-Kitaab wa’l-Sunnah
191. Misyaar marriage: definition and rulings Islam Q&A website (accessed 10/30/2012)
192. Tariq Modood (2006-04-06). Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship: A European Approach (1st ed.). Routledge. pp. 3, 29, 46. ISBN 978-0-415-35515-5.
193. Pascal Bruckner - Enlightenment fundamentalism or racism of the anti-racists? appeared originally in German in the online magazine Perlentaucher on January 24, 2007.
194. Pascal Bruckner - A reply to Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash: "At the heart of the issue is the fact that in certain countries Islam is becoming Europe's second religion. As such, its adherents are entitled to freedom of religion, to decent locations and to all of our respect. On the condition, that is, that they themselves respect the rules of our republican, secular culture, and that they do not demand a status of extraterritoriality that is denied other religions, or claim special rights and prerogatives"
195. Pascal Bruckner - A reply to Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash "It's so true that many English, Dutch and German politicians, shocked by the excesses that the wearing of the Islamic veil has given way to, now envisage similar legislation curbing religious symbols in public space. The separation of the spiritual and corporeal domains must be strictly maintained, and belief must confine itself to the private realm."
196. Nazir-Ali, Michael (6 January 2008). "Extremism flourished as UK lost Christianity". London: The Sunday Telegraph. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
197. 2001 Census of Canada: http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/home/index.cfm
198. Canadian Public Opinion Poll, 2nd October 2013
199. "The Boston Bombings Could Be Disastrous For Immigration Reform". 19 April 2013.
200. Bryan Fischer Beckel is right no more Muslim student visas, no more mosques
201. George Pell (2004-10-12). "Is there only secular democracy? Imagining other possibilities for the third millennium". Archived from the original on 2006-02-08. Retrieved 2006-05-08.
202. George Pell (2006-02-04). "Islam and Western Democracies". Archived from the original on June 5, 2006. Retrieved 2006-05-05.
203. Toni Hassan (2004-11-12). "Islam is the new communism: Pell". Retrieved 2006-05-08.
204. Schwartz, Stephen. "What Is 'Islamofascism'?". TCS Daily. Retrieved 2006-09-14.
205. Hitchens, Christopher: Defending Islamofascism: It's a valid term. Here's why, Slate, 2007-10-22
206. A Fury For God, Malise Ruthven, Granta, 2002, p.207-8
207. Esposito, John L. (2002). What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515713-3.
208. Esposito, John L. (2003). Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516886-0.
209. Esposito, John L. (1999). The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?. Oxford University Press. pp. 225–228. ISBN 0-19-513076-6.
210. Watt, W. Montgomery (1961). Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford University Press. p. 229. ISBN 0-19-881078-4. Retrieved 2010-05-27.
211. Armstrong, Karen (1993). Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. HarperSanFrancisco. p. 165. ISBN 0-06-250886-5.
212. The Nation - 'Islam Through Western Eyes'
213. The Jihad Against Muslims: When does criticism of Islam devolve into bigotry?
214. Fighting Islamophobia: A Response to Critics by Deepa Kumar, Monthly Review, April 2006
215. ^ No God, not even Allah. Economist, 24 Nov 2012
216. The World's Muslims
217. Pew Data Paint Grim Picture of Muslim World

References

• Cohen, Mark R. (1995). Under Crescent and Cross. Princeton University Press; Reissue edition. ISBN 978-0-691-01082-3.
• Lockman, Zachary (2004). Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62937-9.
• Rippin, Andrew (2001). Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (2nd ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-21781-1.
• Westerlund, David (2003). "Ahmed Deedat's Theology of Religion: Apologetics through Polemics". Journal of Religion in Africa. 33 (3): 263. doi:10.1163/157006603322663505.>

Further reading

• Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide by Bat Ye'or
• Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude by Bat Ye'or
• The Al Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime, And the Coming Apocalypse by Paul L. Williams
• The Amazing Quran by Gary Miller
• An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism by Victor Davis Hanson
• Arabs and Israel - Conflict or Conciliation? by Sheikh Ahmed Hoosen Deedat
• Slavery in Islam, BBC, September 7, 2009
• Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam by Gilles Kepel
• The War for Muslim Minds by Gilles Kepel
• J. Tolan, Saracens; Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (2002)
• Esposito, John L. (1995). The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 0-19-510298-3.
• Halliday, Fred (2003). Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics of the Middle East. I.B. Tauris, New York. ISBN 1-86064-868-1.
• Esposito, John L. (2003). Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 0-19-516886-0.
• Geisler, Norman L. (2002). Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross. Baker Books. ISBN 0-8010-6430-9.
• Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995)
• —, Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out
• The Institute for the Study of Civil Society report - The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism
• Zwemer Islam, a Challenge to Faith (New York, 1907)
• Shoja-e-din Shafa, Rebirth (1995) (Persian Title: تولدى ديگر)
• Shoja-e-din Shafa, After 1400 Years (2000) (Persian Title: پس از 1400 سال)

v t e Theology
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