Nothing is written…..you are free to choose.
All the events surrounding Charlie Hebdo, the Danish cartoons and Salman Rushdie, Fitna and Theo Van Gogh, and many many more, relate to Islam, the Koran and Muhammed and many Muslims’ ferocious, frenzied and often barabaric refusal to accept any criticism or ridicule for their ideology.

‘Take the lesson of Theo Van Gogh…you will pay with your blood’ British Muslim
They demand respect and a virtual obeyance to their religion from all regardless of others religious or otherwise beliefs….in effect forcing them to become Muslims by default.
The question that should be asked, but isn’t by the BBC, is on what authority?
The Koran isn’t a revelation from God, but the BBC refuses to explore that, its contents do command its adherents to further the interests of the ideology with force but again the BBC will not countenance that narrative, and the BBC will not question the pedigree of Muhammed…in fact doing the opposite burnishing his reputation with a hagiography which only reinforces the attitudes and actions that bring so much trouble to the world….telling us Muhammed’s life is known in every detail…..when in fact almost nothing is really known about him….Islam was not, as claimed, ‘Born in the full light of history’.
In light of that here is a short look at Islam, some of its claims and the BBC’s refusal to rock the foundations with its irresolute and unconvincing explanations and its apologia for terror.
The BBC and the various apologists for Islam have a little mantra they like to hold tight to…‘There is no compulsion in religion’ ….they tell us this is an Islamic virtue.
Curious that we are now told, even as non-Muslims, that we have to respect this ideology, that we are not allowed to draw any images of the ideology’s prophet on pain of death, forbidden as it is by this religion of peace that compels no one to do, say or believe anything they don’t want to.
However I’d say someone, somewhere was trying to compel non-Believers to prostrate themselves before what is to them, a false God. Are they being compelled to be ‘Muslim’? It seems so. And there-in lies the whole problem with creeping Islamisation…it’s not just the direct threat of violence but the imposed ‘respect’ we have to pay to Islam making us virtual Muslims by default.
And let me remind you of the rank hypocrisy of the Muslim position, theologically speaking, and one that is central to the debate about Muhammed and ‘insulting’ his memory.
Muhammed smashed the idols, the religious icons that represented the Gods other people worshipped. He didn’t respect them one jot.
For all its talk of respecting the People of the Book Islam has a funny way of showing it….perhaps Muslims are making the mistake of taking the teachings of the Koran, which seems, to say the least, on the whole to not respect the People of the Book and their religion, calling them blasphemers and so on, too seriously.
Muslims say they live by the example of Muhammed, who seems to have attained the forbidden status of a God in Muslim eyes almost up alongside Allah. If Muhammed’s actions are to be held up as an example then iconoclasm, smashing other people’s idols, must be an accepted part of that.
In other words Charlie Hebdo was acting in accordance with Muslim, or rather Muhammed’s, own behaviour by ‘smashing’ Muhammed and his teachings.
Live by the sword you die by the sword….smash other people’s icons, they can smash yours.
Commentators who thoughtlessly parade the Muslim narrative are in effect setting a very dangerous precedent for the future.
Digging their own graves.
Those who support Muslims’ right to be somewhat more than offended about cartoons depicting Muhammed dig themselves a very big hole for how can they then, should they wish to, take Islam to task for its homophobia, its anti-Semitism, its Christianophobia, its misogyny? For all these are given divine sanction by the Koran, the Muslim holy book, the veritable, unchangeable word of God. They would be saying the Koran is wrong, that God is wrong.
Blasphemous stuff surely…much more so than merely drawing the prophet.
But just how ‘divine’ is Muhammed and how reliable his booky wooky? Couldn’t Russell Brand stake a claim to be the new Messiah, his new book the latest revelation? It is after all as comprehensible as the Koran with just as many conflicting, unresolved issues and unsavoury messages. Who knows in 600 years he could be a God. Why not?
The Forging of Islam.
Tom Holland in his book, ‘In The Shadow Of The Sword’, laid out a scholarly case that said Islam is man-made and much of it fabricated in order to provide divine sanction for those coming after Muhammed who would exploit other’s belief for their own ends.
‘The dry rot of fabrication, in short, was endemic throughout the Sunna.’
He tells us not much is really known about Muhammed, indeed hardly anything was set down on paper that mentioned him or ‘Muslims’ until many years after his death.
The idea that anything Muhammed said or did was guided by God and was therefore an example of a just life or the correct way to do things was a license to do anything you liked as long as you could ‘prove’ Muhammed had done it or approved of something similar himself….control the history and define what Muhammed ‘said’ and you’re away…..much as today the BBC et al try to define Islam as ‘The Religion of Peace’…thereby controlling everyone’s response when Muslims launch attacks on things they don’t like….much as the BBC reinterpreted the Koran for its own ends as shown later in this article.
Tom Holland states….
So it was that a novel and fateful message was coined….
‘In the name of God, Muhammed is the Messenger of God.’
The potency of this slogan was self evident.
Not only had Muhammed claimed to be a medium for divine revelation, but he was also safely dead. Ram home the point that he had authentically been a Messenger of God, and anything that could be attributed to him would perforce have to be accepted by the faithful as a truth descended from heaven. ‘Those who offend the prophet,’ so it had been revealed to Muhammed ‘ are cursed by God in this life and in the hereafter.’
Here for any warlord looking to damn his enemies, was a literal godsend.
And who controls what is written about the past controls the future…
The Ulama, by tightly controlling what went into the history books, were able to propagate an understanding of their own dazzlingly rich and complex civilisation that attributed almost every single thing of value within it to the prophet, and the prophet alone. There was no question of acknowledging the momentous roles played in the forging of Islam by countless others.
Submission to God was definitely cast as submission to Sunna.
Ironically the last words of Holland’s book are ‘The pen, it seems, is indeed mightier than the sword’.
However Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells us that it is the sword that provides the secure environment for those who write or continue to propagate the ‘lie’…propaganda and terror make fine bedfellows…
‘Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.’
Tom Holland tells us that the Koran was designed as blueprint for conquest and colonisation, it was a device that could be used to claim the authority of God to conquer and plunder the lands as a reward for their efforts on God’s behalf…
‘The Arab tribes had grown much impoverished….the message proclaimed by the prophet, that he had a licence from God to plunder unbelievers, [would have] met with an enthusiastic uptake.’
Some authority from God for that…
‘It was God who made you [Muslims] inherit their[ non-Muslims] lands, their homes and their wealth.’
[33:27]
or to put it bluntly…
‘Booty belongs to God and His Messenger.’
[ibid 8.1-2]‘Allah has promised you much booty that you will take [in the future] and has hastened for you this [victory] and withheld the hands of people from you – that it may be a sign for the believers and [that] He may guide you to a straight path.’
[48:20]
When people tell you that Islam is a religion of peace and then back that up with violence to defend that claim, ie cast doubt on its word or insult its Messenger and you will be killed, and then use the Koran to sanction the same violence you see the neat little paradox…defending the lie that Islam is not violent by using violence sanctioned by the same lie.
However, Muslims are offended, grievously insulted in fact, by the depiction of their prophet Muhammed in some cartoons.
Charlie Hebdo did not produce cartoons of Muhammed in order to insult or offend Muslims. They had a point to make, several points in fact, about the religion started so long ago by Muhammed.
They are not nihilists intent only on destroying, the opposite in fact , they intended to reform or to at least encourage the reform of Islam by questioning its less attractive tenets.
‘Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it‘
Charlie Hebdo could be looked upon as a less reverent Martin Luther who also posted ‘offensive’ writings and got himself excommunicated…
In 31 October 1517, Luther posted the ninety-five theses, which he had composed in Latin, on the door of the church in Wittenberg.
‘Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place. Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.’
Placing his theses on a door as Luther did was emblematic of the paradigmatic shift that took place throughout Europe, where matters of the church became less an internal matter, and more open to extramural debate on issues that had previously been taken as Papal-business only..
Note that last bit where Luther’s theses opened up the Church to debate not just by the Church itself but from without…and changed the world.
It is convenient for the BBC to dodge the whys and wherefores of the cartoon’s meaning and look solely at the alleged ‘offence’ caused just by their existence. The BBC similarly ducks the real aims of the terrorists who killed the cartoonists…they also are not anarcho nihilists looking to kill for the hell of it. They have a very determined plan that aims to impose Islam upon Europe and beyond…..the BBC isn’t keen to point that out as it is also the aim of many peaceful, ‘conservative’ Muslims, and non-Muslims may start asking difficult questions to which the answers might be even more difficult to swallow.
The Koran is Blasphemous
Next point is that the Koran is itself a ‘toxic arsenal’ of blasphemous utterings from a Jewish and Christian point of view. Throughout its pages it disparages and discredits the Christian faith and its beliefs…here telling us that Christians are ‘blasphemers’, despite having existed long before Islam…..
“They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity, for there is no god except One God.” (Qur’an 5:73)
The Koran also denies Christ is the Son of God reducing him to a mere prophet….for obvious reasons…can’t have a Christian ‘Son of God’ who would outrank the Muslim prophet and cast doubt on his ramblings.
And never mind all those exhortations in the Koran about Christians being unbelievers, unclean and unworthy…never mind the commands not to make friends with Jews and Christians, never mind the order to kill the unbelievers and to make Islam reign supreme.
And yet Muslims are apparently offended by a ‘blasphemous’ cartoon!
And why, you have probably asked, is it blasphemous to produce images of Muhammed?
You may well ask.
Supposedly there should be no images of any living thing in Islamic art hence there are no figurative artworks, just decorative patterns, on Mosques….of course there are many exceptions to the general rule which was intended to prevent idolatry.
For Muhammed in particular there should be no images thus reducing the temptation to worship him.
This is why the allegedly very unIslamic ISIS give you the Islamic finger….
One God, One Religion, One Mosque.
The one mosque refers to the fact that there can be no divisions in Islam, no sects, no different interpretations of Islam…it’s in the Koran……so when someone from the BBC tells you that you cannot group all Muslims into one group, you can, you should. The BBC are wrong. There can only be one interpretation of the Koran….hence Shia and Ahmadis are not considered Muslims having left the true religion…hence ISIS (and others) kills them as apostates.
The BBC and many, many others…love to tell us that there is no compulsion of religion in Islam…..certainly you don’t have to convert but there is a price to pay, literally…an ‘infidel’s’ tax to pay for protection from the Muslim ruler…..and then there are the numerous verses that suggest an element of compulsion…
‘Make war on them until idolatry shall cease and God’s religion shall reign supreme’ [8:39]
or this
“If anyone desires a religion other than Islam never will It be accepted of Him” [3:85]
Pretty conclusive huh? And then there is God’s wrath at being ignored…
We sent them [the prophets] to those who had denied our signs, and utterly destroyed them.
As for Noah’s people, We drowned them when they denied their apostles and made them an example to all mankind. [25:34]
So you can choose not to do God’s bidding…but he’ll destroy you, utterly…if he hasn’t drowned you first.
And of course if you wish to leave Islam….good luck with that….
Who has any right to contradict the Prophet of Allah, salla-llahu `alaihi wa-sallam, who says,
“He who reverts from his religion, then kill him”
[as-Silsilah as-Sahihah 487]
And if there is only one God you cannot then worship God and his prophet Muhammed….or the Holy Trinity or Jesus.
Which you might think is somewhat of a paradox. Muhammed shouldn’t be worshipped and yet he is… Muslims are prepared to kill to defend the Prophet and stop him being ‘insulted’ and Muhammed is the most popular boys name in the UK, undoubtedly a serious case of hero worship.
Here is the hypocritical MCB complaining about the cartoons…by extolling their own very unIslamic worship of Muhammed…
To Defend Our Beloved Prophet, Let Us Exemplify His True Ideals Say Imams
Following the shocking murders in Paris, condemned by Muslims all over the world, and subsequent moves to depict the Prophet Muhammad ? once again, Imams from the UK and abroad have come together to issue the following advice to those concerned about the depiction.
For Muslims, love of the Prophet ( peace be upon him) is a NECESSARY part of our FAITH. He is dearer to us than our parents and children. We prefer him to our own self.
But it isn’t just Muhammed that shouldn’t be drawn or sculpted…or worshipped….none of the prophets should be, including Jesus….something Media Hasan ignores in a blasphemous article in which he declares Jesus was a Muslim…..ironically here he relates a story about Muhammed smashing all the other idols but preserving a picture of Jesus…
The veneration of Jesus by Muslims began during the lifetime of the Prophet of Islam. Perhaps most telling is the story in the classical biographies of Muhammad, who, entering the city of Mecca in triumph in 630AD, proceeded at once to the Kaaba to cleanse the holy shrine of its idols. As he walked around, ordering the destruction of the pictures and statues of the 360 or so pagan deities, he came across a fresco on the wall depicting the Virgin and Child. He is said to have covered it reverently with his cloak and decreed that all other paintings be washed away except that one.
Note that ‘veneration of Jesus’….veneration is worship and that’s blasphemy….as contradictorily Hasan in a later paragraph proves…
‘The Quran castigates Christianity for the widespread practice among its sects of worshipping Jesus and Mary’
And yet he feels he can safely use a picture of Jesus to illustrate his piece….what Hasan doesn’t tell you is that he is a Shia, and Shias frequently portray Muhammed in artwork…as well as the other prophets….is Hasan also ‘offended’ by that? Clearly not. Dodgy little fellow.
The story about Muhammed and Jesus’ picture is almost certainly invented, or rather plagiarised from Biblical stories as you will see below.
Others object to the cartoons not just on grounds of blasphemy or ‘insulted feelings’ but because they claim they are racist…here Islamist Myriam Francois-Cerrah suggesting that the drawing is stereotypically ‘hook-nosed’…
Today’s front cover bothers me only in one regard and that is in the racial stereotypes employed in the depiction of the prophet Muhammad, a shorthand here for Arabs and Muslims more broadly. We (thankfully!) wouldn’t accept an image of a hooked-nose Jew, so it is unclear to me why images of hooked-nose Arabs – because forget who the prophet Muhammad is to Muslims, he is an Arab man being depicted in racially stereotypical terms – isn’t more disturbing to others.
Paradoxically Media Hasan complains of ‘ crude caricatures of bulbous-nosed Arabs’
However, many Arabs are in possession of large or ‘hooked’ noses…and are drawn that way by Arab cartoonists…
That one was drawn by Arab/Brazilian cartoonist Latuff whose work was used by ex-Guardianista Glenn Greenwald in his own tract denouncing Charlie Hebdo as racist for its ‘stereotypes’…an irony perhaps if a ‘hooked nose’ is racial stereotyping.
Myriam Francois-Cerrah then does a double take after denouncing Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons of Muhammed saying this…..
One of my favourite caricatures by Charlie Hebdo was one featuring the prophet Muhammad being beheaded by an extremist. That image perfectly captures the hijacking of the faith by radicals and the truth that Muslims are the primary victims of terrorism and the main target of retaliatory violence.
So, is she insulted or pleased to see the cartoons?…..by her description it shows that Charlie Hebdo were right to raise ‘offensive’ questions and as mentioned above were intent, not an insult, but on reform and genuine satire.
The BBC and Muhammed
Then we get to the BBC…..it reports that the Koran alludes to a ban on images of Allah……
There is no specific, or explicit ban in the Koran on images of Allah or the Prophet Muhammad – be they carved, painted or drawn.
However, chapter 42, verse 11 of the Koran does say: “[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth… [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him.”This is taken by Muslims to mean that Allah cannot be captured in an image by human hand, such is his beauty and grandeur. To attempt such a thing is seen as an insult to Allah.
The same is believed to apply to Muhammad.
First note that ‘is believed to apply to Muhammed‘…kinda sketchy that…still, worth killing people for…get a good lawyer, Phil Shiner?, and he might be able to swing that in court.
Then there is the rather less than honest cut and paste job of the Koranic verses, selecting parts that suit and missing out those that don’t.
Look at this quote again from the BBC to justify a ban…
Chapter 42, verse 11 of the Koran does say: “[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth… [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him.“
There is indeed one interpretation of that verse that says that….
The Originator of the heavens and the earth; He made mates for you from among yourselves, and mates of the cattle too, multiplying you thereby; nothing like a likeness of Him; and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
However ‘nothing like a likeness of him’ can more sensibly be interpreted as meaning there is no one who compares to God [not Muhammed]……and this is the way that every other interpretation has gone……and there are many of them…..for example…
[He is] Creator of the heavens and the earth. He has made for you from yourselves, mates, and among the cattle, mates; He multiplies you thereby. There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
And some other interpretations all saying the same:
There is no other like Him
There is nothing whatever like Him
Naught is as His likeness
Nothing is like Him
There is nothing whatever like unto Him
There is nothing whatever like Him
Naught is as His exegesis, (He is beyond all comparison)
The BBC seems to have cherry picked the one verse, out of so many that say different, that could marginally be used to support the Muslim case….however the verse is about Allah not Muhammed, so already a significant degree of separation, and then as I said the verse could more readily be interpreted in the same way other interpretations took it to mean…that there is no one comparable to God.
Why would the BBC do that?
The BBC also quotes this……
Chapter 21, verses 52-54 of the Koran read: “[Abraham] said to his father and his people: ‘What are these images to whose worship you cleave?’ They said: ‘We found our fathers worshipping them.’ He said: ‘Certainly you have been, you and your fathers, in manifest error.'”
What they miss out is the following verse…….
And then he broke those [idols] to pieces, [all] save their supreme god, so that they might [be able to] turn to it.
21:58
The BBC takes that ‘in manifest error’ to mean they were wrong to worship the ‘graven images’, thus supporting the idea that graven images are forbidden by the Koran …however that’s not what it means…it means they were wrong to worship those particular Gods…Abraham was saying worship the one true God, his God.
Ironic…arguing that Muhammed should not be shown in figurative form or insulted or abused but illustrate that with a story about other peoples’ gods being smashed because Abraham didn’t like them….it’s OK to smash other’s Gods but not to draw Muhammed.
If iconoclasm was good enough for the ‘Muslim’ Abraham then it must be good enough for other religions too….and atheist cartoonists.
At the end of the day Muslim’s anger at cartoons of Muhammed smacks of the rankest hypocrisy ever ready as they are to blaspheme about other religions and co-opt their prophets and gods for Islam in order to give Islam a back story, some history, some authority and credibility.
The acceptance of this narrative, the refusal to challenge it, the refusal to condemn the violence sanctioned by it, means nothing will change.
The BBC paddles around in the shallow waters of some dissident thought such as when David Goodhart was allowed to voice some very strong criticisms of the religion and the consequences of ignoring the realities of having large communities of people who cleave to the conservative, fundamentalist version of that religion. But when push comes to shove the BBC quickly backs off and sides with the bigots, the men of violence, the religious fanatics who impose their ideology upon all, Muslim and non-Muslim, at the point of a gun.
But hey, there’s no compulsion in religion…just a lack of backbone in those who should know better.
Others do raise the subject...and, as with the new Lutherans of Charlie Hebdo seek change, a revolution in Islam…a genuine one not the Islamist phoney version peddled by Tariq Ramadan….
At last, on New Year’s Day, the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, did what no other leader of the Muslim world has done to date: he named Islam’s real enemy.
In a gathering of religious clerics at Cairo’s ancient Al Azhar University, he called for the rescue of Islam from ‘ideology’. His speech was given little coverage in the western press, but it is worth repeating at some length.
‘We are in need of a religious revolution,’ he said. ‘You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move because the Islamic world is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost. And it is being lost by our own hands.’ It is inconceivable, he said, that ‘this thinking — and I am not saying religion — should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.’ The remedy, said al-Sisi, was for Islam to recognise and talk about its mutant strain. ‘Religious discourse is the greatest battle and challenge facing the Egyptian people,’ he said. ‘We need a modern, comprehensive understanding of the religion of Islam,’ rather than ‘relying on a discourse that has not changed for 800 years’.
Sisi’s speech is significant because the Islamic world has precious little record of leaders discussing Muslims’ collective responsibility for the toxic ideologies within our midst.