Criticism of Islam has existed since its formative stages. Early written disapproval came from Christians and Jews as well as by some former Muslims such as Ibn al-Rawandi. Later the Muslim world itself suffered criticism. Western criticism has grown in the 21st century especially after the September 11 attacks and other terrorist incidents. As of 2014, about a quarter of the world's countries and territories (26%) had anti-blasphemy and apostasy laws or policies, of which 13 nations, all Muslim majority, have death penalty for apostasy.
Objects of criticism include the morality of the life of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, both in his public and personal life. Issues relating to the authenticity and morality of the constitutional scriptures of Islam, both the Quran and the hadiths, are also discussed by critics. Islam has also been viewed as a form of Arab imperialism and has received criticism by figures from Africa and India for what they perceive as the destruction of indigenous cultures. Other criticism focuses on the question of human rights in the Islamic world historically and in modern Islamic nations, including the treatment of women, LGBT people, religious and ethnic minorities in Islamic law and practice. In the wake of the recent multiculturalism trend, Islam's influence on the ability or willingness of Muslim immigrants to assimilate in the Western world, and other countries such as India, and Russia, has been criticized.
Objects of criticism include the morality of the life of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, both in his public and personal life. Issues relating to the authenticity and morality of the constitutional scriptures of Islam, both the Quran and the hadiths, are also discussed by critics. Islam has also been viewed as a form of Arab imperialism and has received criticism by figures from Africa and India for what they perceive as the destruction of indigenous cultures. Other criticism focuses on the question of human rights in the Islamic world historically and in modern Islamic nations, including the treatment of women, LGBT people, religious and ethnic minorities in Islamic law and practice. In the wake of the recent multiculturalism trend, Islam's influence on the ability or willingness of Muslim immigrants to assimilate in the Western world, and other countries such as India, and Russia, has been criticized.
History
Early Islam
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John of Damascus a Syrian monk and presbyter, 19th-century Arabic icon
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".
Other notable early critics of Islam included:
- Abu Isa al-Warraq, a 9th-century scholar and critic of Islam.
- Ibn al-Rawandi, a 9th-century atheist, who repudiated Islam and criticised religion in general.
- al-Ma'arri, an 11th-century Arab poet and critic of Islam and all other religions. Also known for his veganism and Antinatalism.
Medieval world
Medieval Islamic world
In the early centuries of the Islamic Caliphate, 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 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!
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
criticized 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 deviation 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
David Hume was critical of traditional religion and scholars generally agree that Hume was both a naturalist and a skeptic, though he considered monotheistic religions to be more "comfortable to sound reason" than polytheism and found Islam to be more "rational" than Christianity. 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 [Muhammad] 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."
The commonly held view in Europe during the Enlightenment was that Islam, then synonymous with the Ottoman Empire,
was a bloody, ruthless and intolerant religion. In the European view,
Islam lacked divine authority and regarded the sword as the route to
heaven. Hume appears to represent this view in his reference to the
"bloody principles" of Islam, though he also makes similar critical
comments about the "bloody designs" characterizing the conflict between Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation. Many contemporary works about Islam were available to influence Hume's opinions by authors such as Isaac Barrow, Humphrey Prideaux, John Jackson, Charles Wolseley, Hugo Grotius, Paul Rycaut, Thomas Hyde, Pierre Bayle, and Blaise Pascal. The writers of this period were also influenced by George Sale who, in 1743, had translated the Quran into English.
Modern era
Numerous personalities criticized Muslims and Islam in the modern era.
Western authors
In the early 20th century, the prevailing view among Europeans was that Islam was the root cause of Arab and Berber "backwardness". They saw Islam as an obstacle to assimilation, a view that was expressed by a writer in colonial French Algeria named André Servier. In his book, titled Islam and the Psychology of the Musulman,
Servier wrote that "The only thing Arabs ever invented was their
religion. And this religion is, precisely, the main obstacle between
them and us". Servier describes Islam as a "religious nationalism in
which every Muslim brain is steeped". According to Servier, the only
reason this nationalism has not "been able to pose a threat to humanity"
was that the "rigid dogma" of Islam had rendered the Arabs "incapable
of fighting against the material forces placed at the disposal of
Western civilization by science and progress".
The Victorian orientalist scholar Sir William Muir
criticized 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, rationalized 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 civilization. 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."
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.
Anglican priest, scholar and hymn-writer John Mason Neale
Schaff also described Islam as a derivative religion based on an amalgamation of "heathenism, Judaism and Christianity".
Islâm is not a new religion...[i]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 [Muhammad] 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 preeminence 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.
James Fitzjames Stephen, describing what he understood to be the Islamic conception of the ideal society, wrote the following:
Not only are the varieties of morality innumerable, but some of them are conflicting with each other. If a Mahommedan, for instance, is fully to realize his ideal, to carry out into actual fact his experiment of living, he must be one of a ruling race which has trodden the enemies of Islam under their feet, and has forced them to choose between the tribute and the sword. He must be able to put in force the law of the Koran both as to the faithful and as to unbelievers. In short, he must conquer. Englishmen come into a country where Mahommedans had more or less realized their ideal, and proceed to govern it with the most unfeigned belief in the order of ideas of which liberty is the motto.
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.
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:
A young Winston Churchill on a lecture tour of the United States in 1900
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 civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
According to historian Warren Dockter,
Churchill wrote this during a time of a fundamentalist revolt in Sudan
and this statement does not reflect his full view of Islam, which were
"often paradoxical and complex." He could be critical but at times
"romanticized" the Islamic world; he exhibited great "respect,
understanding and magnanimity." Churchill had a fascination of Islam and Islamic civilization. Winston Churchill's
future sister-in-law expressed concerns about his fascination by
stating, "[p]lease don't become converted to Islam; I have noticed in
your disposition a tendency to orientalism." According to historian
Warren Dockter, however, he "never seriously considered converting".
He primarily admired its martial aspects, the "Ottoman Empire’s history
of territorial expansion and military acumen", to the extent that in
1897 he wished to fight for the Ottoman Empire. According to Dockter,
this was largely for his "lust for glory". Based on Churchill's letters, he seemed to regard Islam and Christianity as equals.
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:
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.
As the English translation of the Pope's lecture was disseminated across the world, many Muslim 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".
South Asian authors
Vivekananda in 1900, at San Francisco
The Hindu philosopher Vivekananda commented on Islam:
Now, some Mohammedans are the crudest in this respect, and the most sectarian. Their watch-word is: "There is one God, 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. Nevertheless, among these Mohammedans, wherever there has a philosophic man, he was sure to protest against these cruelties. In that he showed the touch of the Divine and realized a fragment of the truth; he was not playing with his religion; for it was not his father's religion he was talking, but spoke the truth direct like a man.
The more selfish a man, the more immoral he is. And so also with the race. That race which is bound down to itself has been the most cruel and the most wicked in the whole world. There has not been a religion that has clung to this dualism more than that founded by the Prophet of Arabia, and there has not been a religion, which has shed so much blood and been so cruel to other men. In the Koran there is the doctrine that a man who does not believe these teachings should be killed, it is a mercy to kill him! And the surest way to get to heaven, where there are beautiful houris and all sorts of sense enjoyments, is by killing these unbelievers. Think of the bloodshed there has been in consequence of such beliefs!
Why religions should claim that they are not bound to abide by the standpoint of reason, no one knows. If one does not take the standard of reason, there cannot be any true judgment, even in the case of religions. One religion may ordain something very hideous. For instance, the Mohammedan religion allows Mohammedans to kill all who are not of their religion. It is clearly stated in the Koran, Kill the infidels if they do not become Mohammedans. They must be put to fire and sword. Now if we tell a Mohammedan that this is wrong, he will naturally ask, "How do you know that? How do you know it is not good? My book says it is."
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 deny 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 [Muslims] 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.
Mahatma Gandhi,
the moral leader of the 20th-century Indian independence movement,
found the history of Muslims to be aggressive, while he pointed out 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, the first Prime Minister of India, in his book Discovery of India,
describes Islam to have been a 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. In spite of religious belief in the brotherhood of Islam, they were class bound and feudal in outlook.
Other authors
Iranian 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.
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'.
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", and said that it does
not belong to Africa. He stated that it is mainly spread with violence
and force.
Truthfulness of Islam and Islamic scriptures
Reliability of the Quran
12th-century Andalusian Qur'an
Originality of Quranic manuscripts. According to traditional Islamic scholarship, all of the Quran was written down by Muhammad's companions
while he was alive (during 610–632 CE), 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.
Imperfections in the Quran. Critics reject the idea that the Quran is miraculously perfect and impossible to imitate as asserted in the Quran itself. The 1901-1906 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)." More serious are factual inaccuracies. For instance, Sura 25.53 claims that fresh water and salt water do not mix. While there may be cases in which these two bodies of water mix only slowly, every (fresh water) river that reaches an ocean will mix with salt water. Such areas of mixing are called estuaries (e.g. at the mouth of the Río de la Plata).
Judaism and the Quran. 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 this
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."
Early jurists and theologians of Islam mentioned some Jewish influence
but they also say where it is seen and recognized as such, it is
perceived as a debasement or a dilution of the authentic message. Bernard Lewis describes this as "something like what in Christian history was called a Judaizing heresy." According to Moshe Sharon, the story of Muhammad having Jewish teachers is a legend developed in the 10th century CE. Philip Schaff
described the Quran as having "many passages of poetic beauty,
religious fervor, and wise counsel, but mixed with absurdities, bombast,
unmeaning images, low sensuality."
Mohammed and God as speakers. According to Ibn Warraq, the Iranian rationalist Ali Dashti criticized the Quran on the basis that for some passages, "the speaker cannot have been God." Warraq gives Surah Al-Fatiha as an example of a passage which is "clearly addressed to God, in the form of a prayer."
He says that by only adding the word "say" in front of the passage,
this difficulty could have been removed. Furthermore, it is also known
that one of the companions of Muhammad, Ibn Masud,
rejected Surah Fatihah as being part of the Quran; these kind of
disagreements are, in fact, common among the companions of Muhammad who
could not decide which surahs were part of the Quran and which not.
Other criticism:
- 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".
- The companions of Muhammad could not agree on which surahs were part of the Quran and which not. Two of the most famous companions being Ibn Masud and Ubay ibn Ka'b.
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. 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
Sana'a manuscripts of the Qur'an
The traditional view of Islam has also been criticized 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 skeptical 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
Dante Alighieri criticised Muhammad in his work Inferno, depicting him as being tortured in Hell.
Muhammad is considered as one of the prophets in Islam and as 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".
Age of Muhammad's wife Aisha
According to scriptural Sunni's Hadith sources, Aisha was six or seven years old when she was married to Muhammad and nine when the marriage was consummated.
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, born in Persia 200 years after Muhammmad's death, suggested that she was ten years old. Six hundred years after Muhammad, Ibn Khallikan recorded that she was nine years old at marriage, and twelve at consummation. Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi, born about 150 years after Muhammad's death, cited Hisham ibn Urwah as saying that she was nine years old at marriage, and twelve at consummation, but Hisham ibn Urwah's original source is otherwise unknown, and Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi's work does not have the high religious status of the Hadith.
In the twentieth century, Indian writer Muhammad Ali challenged the Hadith showing that Aisha was as young as the traditional sources claim; arguing that instead a new interpretation of the Hadith compiled by Mishkat al-Masabih,
Wali-ud-Din Muhammad ibn Abdullah Al-Khatib, could indicate that Aisha
would have been nineteen years old around the time of her marriage.
Colin Turner, a UK professor of Islamic studies, states that since such marriages between an older man and a young girl were customary among the Bedouins, Muhammad's marriage would not have been considered improper by his contemporaries. Karen Armstrong,
the British author on comparative religion, has affirmed that "There
was no impropriety in Muhammad's marriage to Aisha. Marriages conducted
in absentia to seal an alliance were often contracted at this time
between adults and minors who were even younger than Aisha."
Morality of the Quran
9th-century Quran in Reza Abbasi Museum
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 among 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 those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled."[Surah 9:29] 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".
- 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 Muhammad's followers.
Slavery
13th-century slave market in Yemen
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, 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 plane. 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.
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.
In a 2014 issue of their digital magazine Dabiq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant explicitly claimed religious justification for enslaving Yazidi women.
Apostasy
"Execution of a Moroccan Jewess (Sol Hachuel)" a painting by Alfred Dehodencq
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 "[e]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."
In 13 Muslim-majority countries atheism is punishable by death.
Islamic law
Decision of a Fatwa committee on the case of a convert to Christianity:
"Since he left Islam, he will be invited to revert. If he does not
revert, he will be killed pertaining to rights and obligations of the
Islamic law." The fatwa outlines the same procedure and penalty for the
male convert's children, on reaching the age of puberty.
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
"It is not a treaty...[In the future, it] may well become the international Magna Carta." Eleanor Roosevelt with the Spanish text of the Universal Declaration in 1949
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. 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. 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. 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 Organization 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.
Violence
The September 11 attacks led to debate on whether Islam promotes violence
The September 11 attacks on the United States, and various other acts of Islamic terrorism over the 21st century, have resulted in many non-Muslims' indictment of Islam as a violent religion.
In particular, 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, most Muslim scholars, including Ahmadiyya, 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.
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) 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). He wrote that 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 Muhammad onward, the word jihad was used in a primarily military sense. Andrew Bostom states that 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 [infidels]. 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 [infidels], 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 [infidels], to lessen the population of the [infidels]... 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 [infidels].
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 "[i]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 described Islam as
intrinsically violent and characterized by "hate and intolerance".
Dennis Prager,
columnist and author, in responding to a movement that contends that
Islam is "a religion of peace," wrote: "Now, Islam has never been a
religion of peace. It began as a warlike religion and throughout its
history, whenever possible, made war on non-Muslims – from the
polytheists of North Africa to the Hindus of India, about 60 to 80
million of whom Muslims killed during their thousand-year rule there." John R. Neuman, a scholar on religion, describes Islam as "a perfect anti-religion" and "the antithesis of Buddhism."
Beheadings
Beheading was a standard method of execution in pre-modern Islamic law. Though a formerly widespread execution
method, its use had been abandoned in most countries by the end of the
20th century. Currently, it is used only in Saudi Arabia. It also
remains a legal method of execution in Iran, Qatar and Yemen, where it
is no longer in use.
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.
In 10 Muslim-majority countries homosexual acts may be punishable
by death, though in some the punishment has never been carried out.
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.
Short-term and limited marriages
Short-term marriage
Nikāḥ al-Mutʿah (Arabic: نكاح المتعة 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 criticized 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 "[t]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 [above] 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 (Arabic: المسيار) is a type of Nikah
(marriage) in Sunni Islam only 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.
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.
Women in Islam
Domestic violence
Many scholars claim Shari'a law encourages domestic violence against women, when a husband suspects nushuz (disobedience, disloyalty, rebellion, ill conduct) in his wife. Other scholars claim wife beating, for nashizah, is not consistent with modern perspectives of the Quran.
One of the verses of the Quran relating to permissibility of domestic violence is Surah 4:34. In deference to Surah 4:34, many nations with Shari'a law have refused to consider or prosecute cases of domestic abuse. Shari'a has been criticized for ignoring women's rights in domestic abuse cases. Musawah, CEDAW,
KAFA and other organizations have proposed ways to modify
Shari'a-inspired laws to improve women's rights in Islamic nations,
including women's rights in domestic abuse cases.
Personal status laws and child marriage
Shari'a
is the basis for personal status laws in most Islamic majority nations.
These personal status laws determine rights of women in matters of
marriage, divorce and child custody. A 2011 UNICEF
report concludes that Shari'a law provisions are discriminatory against
women from a human rights perspective. In legal proceedings under
Shari'a law, a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's before a
court.
Except for Iran, Lebanon and Bahrain which allow child marriages,
the civil code in Islamic majority countries do not allow child
marriage of girls. However, with Shari'a personal status laws, Shari'a
courts in all these nations have the power to override the civil code.
The religious courts permit girls less than 18 years old to marry. As of
2011, child marriages are common in a few Middle Eastern countries,
accounting for 1 in 6 all marriages in Egypt and 1 in 3 marriages in
Yemen. However, the average age at marriage in most Middle Eastern
countries is steadily rising and is generally in the low to mid 20's for
women.
Rape is considered a crime in all countries, but Shari'a courts in
Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia in some cases
allow a rapist to escape punishment by marrying his victim, while in
other cases the victim who complains is often prosecuted with the crime
of Zina (adultery).
Women's right to property and consent
Sharia grants women the right to inherit property from other family members, and these rights are detailed in the Quran. A woman's inheritance is unequal and less than a man's, and dependent on many factors. For instance, a daughter's inheritance is usually half that of her brother's.
The status of women in classical Islamic law compared favorably
to their status under laws of other contemporaneous cultures such those
of pre-modern Europe, both in terms of financial independence and access
to divorce, but the situation is different if it is evaluated against
modern conceptions.
Furthermore, slave women were not granted the same legal rights. Sharia
recognizes the basic inequality between master and women slave, between
free women and slave women, between believers and non-believers, as
well as their unequal rights. Sharia authorized the institution of slavery, using the words abd (slave) and the phrase ma malakat aymanukum ("that which your right hand owns") to refer to women slaves, seized as captives of war. Under classical Islamic law, Muslim men could have sexual relations with female captives and slaves without her consent.
Slave women under sharia did not have a right to own property, right to free movement or right to consent.
Sharia, in Islam's history, provided religious foundation for enslaving
non-Muslim women (and men), as well as encouraged slave's manumission. However, manumission required that the non-Muslim slave first convert to Islam.
Non-Muslim slave women who bore children to their Muslim masters became
legally free upon her master's death, and her children were presumed to
be Muslims as their father, in Africa, and elsewhere.
Starting with the 20th century, Western legal systems evolved to
expand women's rights, but women's rights under Islamic law have
remained tied to Quran, hadiths and their faithful interpretation as
sharia by Islamic jurists.
Criticism of Muslim immigrants and immigration
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French philosopher Pascal Bruckner has criticized the effects of multiculturalism and Islam in the West
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, and
that, unlike other religions, Islam positively commands its adherents to
impose its religious law on all peoples, believers and unbelievers alike, whenever possible and by any means necessary. 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 predominantly Muslim country have immigrated to Canada. According to a 2001 poll, 54% of Canadians had an unfavourable view of Islam, which was higher than for any other religion.
In the United States, after the Boston Marathon bombings, the immigration processes in the country are assumed to be harder. Far-right commentator Bryan Fischer asked that no more visas be granted to Muslims, and no more mosques built, his opinion received support, most notably by the former presidential candidate 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". Geert Wilders, a controversial Dutch member of parliament and leader of the Party for Freedom, has also compared Islam to fascism and communism.
- Islamism
Writers such as Stephen Suleyman Schwartz and Christopher Hitchens, find some elements of Islamism fascistic. Malise Ruthven, a Scottish writer and historian who writes on religion and Islamic affairs, opposes redefining Islamism as "Islamofascism", but also finds the resemblances between the two ideologies "compelling".
French philosopher Alexandre del Valle compared Islamism with fascism and communism in his Red-green-brown alliance theory.
Raymond Leo Burke, a Cardinal-Deacon of the Catholic Church has stated that Islam is not a religion but a totalitarian political system with religious elements which is dedicated to the conquest of the whole world.
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, writes 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 argues the existence of a very
considerable bias in Orientalist writings as a consequence of the
scholars' cultural make-up. He states that 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 writes 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 argues that "the real thing
does exist, and it frequently takes the cover of anti-jihadism."
In contrast to the widespread Western belief that women in Muslim
societies are oppressed and denied opportunities to realize their full
potential, most Muslims experience their faith as liberating or fair to
women, and some find it offensive that Westerners criticize it without
fully understanding the historical and contemporary realities of Muslim
women's lives. Conservative Muslims in particular (in common with some
Christians and Jews) see women in the West as being economically
exploited for their labor, sexually abused, and commodified through the
media's fixation on the female body.
