The Teachings of Islam

The
Teachings of Islam



The teachings of Islam have been
distorted in the Western world ever since the time of Muhammad.
Christian attacks on Islam date from the Crusades during which
'Western culture' found its first real sense of identity. This
identity was defined as being fundamentally hostile to Islam. Not
Islam as it really is but a completely unapologetic pack of lies
about Islam. To mention such things may seem a bit strange
because it is so far in the past. However, the level of ignorance
about Islam continues to astonish, and part of this ignorance is
due to the persistence of this Christian reaction to Islam - to
lie about it. The type of lie has moved on of course because
truth eventually prevails. Although some Christians still use
them, the charges that Muslims worship Al-Lut (a pre-Islamic
pagan god for the moon), or that the use of the honorific title
"we" in the Qur'an implies a plurality or trinity of
God, or that Muslims are sexually promiscuous, or that Muhammad
was the chief idol they worshipped are no longer even remotely
tenable. The allegations made to try and discredit Islam these
days focus on a number of things none of which stand up to any
serious scrutiny. I do not wish to imply that everyone who makes
these allegations is a liar - this is certainly not the case.
Rather I suppose what typically happens is that someone is all
too keen to find something vaguely discrediting and jumps to
ignorant conclusions. Either that or they deliberately hide
something of what they know so as to present only half the
picture. These allegations then get repeated without enough
concern for investigating them properly at that stage.

The 'Christian' West criticised
Islam's moral teachings firstly on the basic grounds that it was
way to liberal - it allowed freedom of thought, polygamy, even
Divorce!!! These days the criticism is the other way round -
Islam is way too strict. It insists on no sex outside marriage:
it has no concept of gay rights, etc. This is fairly ironic but
shows just how things have gone in the West. Islam has not
changed its teachings.


]Today the main concept people in
the West have about Islam is from its media image. This is driven
by the relevant companies seeking to make an exciting story.
Unfortunately this means all too often little more than
demonising Islam. Many Muslims see the Zionists behind this and
indeed the Jews are the great storytellers in the media,
particularly in Hollywood. Recent movies such as "True
Lies" and "The Peacemaker" tell exciting nonsense
stories about mad Muslims about to blow up the US with nuclear
weapons. These stories serve to obscure the facts of the real
situation: It is Israel that has the nuclear weapons, has
continually shown aggressive expansionist aims since its
foundation, and disregard for the human rights of their
neighbouring Arab population - not to say hatred. These
considerations makes it more likely that any nuclear attack would
be from Israel than from any Muslim country. ]


[Anyway, the situation is not so
simple and it is probably much closer to the truth to attribute
these distorting attacks on Islam to a mixture of motives of
money, nationalism, racism (Zionism is just one form of this) and
ambition on the part of a number of "experts" who
quietly retire when they are shown to be rather unbalanced and
unqualified.


These images of Islam must be
forgotten since they are largely, if not entirely, fictional.
However the questions that arise out of them need to be tackled.
Each little lie created by these stories has to be responded to.
'Oppression of Women', 'Terrorism', 'intolerance', 'barbaric
punishments' and more are routinely wheeled out. This section
will try to answer most of these points and explain what Islam
really teaches.