If I started my 'Tree God' cult I would certainly imitate Islam. Trees have power, they are rooted, they represent the great earth mother; they arch skyward towards hope and change; they move, they dance, they talk, they seem permanent. Personally I like trees. If I had to start a cult it would be the Tree God cult, in which a glorious Ash tree would be revered as divine. If the Arabian moon idol is now a 'god', why not a tree?

My 'book' would be declared the work of the Tree God. It would be 'holy' and impossible to amend. The Tree guy would be the supreme divine thing and force. All of his wishes would be expressed in the Tree book. Since the Tree idol is a busy dialectical force shaping, reshaping, allowing, preventing, instigating and witnessing all events, actions, thoughts, deeds and processes in the world; he would elect me as his only mouthpiece. I would be the Tree God's human representative. If anyone does not follow my or the Tree guy's diktats, we the cult can beat you, kill you, take your women and possessions, subjugate and humiliate you, and write lurid tracts about your time in hell-fire. We will then declare ourselves peaceful and tolerant. The Tree guy approves. Even further we [the Tree guy and I], would coerce the disciples to pray at a local pagan shrine now appropriated to be only used by the Tree cult; and if they lived far afield to journey to my home town which venerates the Tree guy, and spend their time and money in a procession of prostration to the greatness of his Tree idol. Super duper.

Witness the inanity of the following as recounted by Ruthven:

“The 'ifada front 'Arafat to Muzdalifa, which in pre-Islamic times began before nightfall, may have represented the 'persecution' of the dying sun. The stone-throwing at Mina, according to the earliest Muslim sources, only occurred after the sun had passed the meridian, suggesting a ritual pursuit of the sun-demon, whose harsh rule ends with the summer.”

Modern day Moslems are tossing rocks at sun demons? Do they even know this?

The Kabaa shrine and the Hajj are permanent aspects of Moslem irrationality. I doubt that any Moslem has given serious thought as to why they must go to Mecca and perform truly idiotic rituals which date back over 2000 years. But rationality is not usually a hallmark of cults. As Ruthven in the opus Islam in the World states, some of the rituals are beyond ignorant:

“At Muzdalifa - 'the place where one makes oneself agreeable' - the pilgrims collect the small pebbles, 49 in all, to be used in the most complicated and arcane of the Hajj ceremonies, the ritual stoning of the three pillars, or Jamarat, at Mina. The pebbles, each of which is supposed to be the size of a chick-pea, are thrown in sequences of seven at each of the three pillars situated about 300 metres apart along the road between Mina and Mecca, where a huge two-tier walkway has been constructed enabling the people to stone the pillars from either level. The ritual is purely pagan, and there is no reference to it in the Quran. The pilgrims perform it only because, according to the hadifh traditions, the Prophet himself did so during his Farewell Pilgrimage.”

The great man or Prophet Muhammad. Anything the great man did must have been fine. Sex slaving, killing, leading war bands, pilfering, racism, hating Jews....all okay. Even animal sacrifice is still performed at the Kabaa and as a part of the Hajj since the great man himself approved and partook of the same. Slaughtering animals for the Allah moon idol – where is PETA when you need them?

“At Mina the wastage of meat has up till now been appalling, since most of it has had to be destroyed in lime-pits soon after the killing. Today the Saudi authorities are investing in freezer-plants and other ways of preserving the animal products. The animals are counted in 'sheep-units', rating from one for a sheep or goat up to seven for a fully grown cow or camel. In 1981 about one million 'sheep-units' were sacrificed, seventy per cent of them during the first day of sacrifice, and of these, about half between morning and midday.” [Ruthven 1984]

The paganism is hard to swallow in a modern world. So when will Moslems reform their cult? When will they inquire into its pagan origins and premise? When will they open up Muhammad to analysis and illustration?

“The pagan background of all these rites, from the standing a t'Arafat to the Feast of Sacrifice, is still obscure. Muslim authorities are understandably reticent on the subject, while, for obvious reasons, archaeologists are unlikely to be admitted to the area in the foreseeable future.”

Moslems reticent about their cult? Archaeology not being performed which would only further prove the paganism of Islam? Big surprises. The debate about Islam is this: why is Islam a religion and why isn't it a cult? The evidence clearly supports the latter, not the former.