Islam: The Faith to End All Faith...

"Judaism has the ugly tendency of leading to Christianity and Islam". 

Islam is the second most popular religion in the world, after Christianity, there are 1.5 billion adherents to the faith. Most Muslim's are not Arabs, as the prophet Mohammad was. The countries with the most Muslims are Indonesia, Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent. Islam covers North Africa, through the Middle East and onto Pakistan and South-East Asia. Recently there have been jihadist style wars in Mali, Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, Pakistan and India - to name a few. Most of the Gulf states are under theocratic dictatorships, with Iran being an actual theocracy other places have Sharia or Islamic law.

Islam is based around the Qur'an and the prophet Mohammed. Many Muslims believe that the Hadith, which focuses on the teachings and sayings of the Prophet is essential to understanding the Qur'an. Both books were not written by Mohammed, as he was illiterate, so these works were compiled after his death from various manuscripts and rote memorization's of Mohammed's 7th century "recitations".

Islam claims to be the final revelation from God or Allah (Joseph Smith disagrees) and that the previous revelations and prophets of the Old and New Testaments have become imperfect over time and so have been superseded by the perfected Qur'an. The Bible is still important to Islamic theology and can be thought of as Part I and Part II of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic trilogy (similar to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but based partly on fact, as Mohammed was a real person).

Don't Forget to Recycle Your Garbage

Growing the Qur'an from the roots of the Judeo-Christian tradition means that if the latter traditions turn out to be false then the Qur'an also risks becoming less credible as a result. As in the Bible, the angel Gabriel is the medium between God and humanity in the Qur'an. Gabriel relayed Allah's commands to the merchant Mohammad in the 7th century AD in Arabia. After the initial recitation Mohammed experienced many more and it is these divinely revealed truths which were memorized and recited by Mohammad's followers. These messages, after much fighting and bloodshed would go on to become the Qur'an.

During Mohammed's conquests and for a significant time after his death, many of the people who had memorized the various Suras of the Qur'an continued to die in battles at an alarming rate - taking their knowledge of the Qur'an with them to heaven and jeopardizing Allah's whole en-devour to allegedly contact humanity, once more, via an illiterate superstitious prophet in the deserts of the middle-east (believe at your own discretion)... This led to an emergency council where the remaining texts and those who had memorized the various Suras had gathered to formalize a new Holy book. This is where the first Qur'an was cobbled together and we are expected to believe no mistakes were made during the human process of compiling a new book. The Hadith was written later and is a victim of the same problem that all oral traditions suffer from, namely the "Chinese whisper" effect.

Islam is just another branch of the Judeo-Christian God, another schismatic sect, another group of peasant illiterates claiming they are part of God's revealed plan. Maybe they are. It all seems so human in it's fallibility though. Furthermore there are schisms inside the faith itself. Most Muslims are Sunni and most of the rest are Shia. So all Muslims are now in the unfortunate position of being susceptible to the charge of being the 'wrong' kind of Muslim. The schism between Sunni and Shia Islam occurred after the death of the Prophet and has not been resolved since. In-fact Sunni's and Shia's have been destroying each other's mosques and killing their fellow Muslims ever since the division occurred - modern confrontations often employ martyrs and suicide attacks in fighting. Tragically this barbarism and sadism shows no signs of stopping, such is the power of faith.

Finally and most importantly, one should notice that Islam makes literally the most grandiose claims in the Qur'an about the nature of the entire universe and our role within it, but curiously has an inverse relationship with the evidence it can produce to support it's extreme assertions. This is a similar theme in all religions, but modern Islam in particular does not take kindly to having it's wild claims skeptically examined or scrutinized. Furthermore the threat of violence that often results from these innocent inquiries is believable. The faith to end all faith?

"I cannot disprove that the Qur'an is the perfect word of God, but I hope He was at-least having a bad day when it happened". C.H.

"Once a Year it is Happy Fathers Day to Yahweh and Mohammed- Not to Allah, he is still a Virgin. source: Holy Bible, Qur'an and Hadith. (Jesus was unavailable for comment, as usual)" 

Thanks, Brady Fair. 3fs.org