Until the advent of materialism and 19th c. dogma, Western Civilisation was superior to anything Islam had developed. Islam has not aided in the development of the modern world; in fact civilisation has only been created in spite of Islam. Proof of this resides in the 'modern' world and the unending political-economic and spiritual poverty of Muslim states and regions. Squatting on richer civilisations is not 'progress'. Islam is pagan, totalitarian, and irrational.
Sura 109 is held up in awe by the one-world wonders as an example of Islam's endless love and tolerance. It ranks up there with 2:256 in the pantheon of cultural Marxist worship, in which the reader is informed that Infidels will be fought, overcome and dominated by those who follow Allah [read the entire passage from 2:256 to 2:275]. Sura 109 is a short Sura, orally transcribed by Muhammad when his cult was weak, with few followers and harassed by Meccan authorities, who were tired of listening to Muhammad's gibberish that the Arab pagan pantheon was 'evil', and that the Hub'Allah demanded a stricter, totalitarian, and more ritualistic method of worship – with himself as the prime actor in the cult.
Here is Sura 109 translated by Hilali-Khan:
“Al-Kafirun In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.
Say (O Muhammad (Peace be upon him)to these Mushrikun and Kafirun): "O Al-Kafirun (disbelievers in Allah, in His Oneness, in His Angels, in His Books, in His Messengers, in the Day of Resurrection, and in Al-Qadar, etc.)!
"I worship not that which you worship,
"Nor will you worship that which I worship.
"And I shall not worship that which you are worshipping.
"Nor will you worship that which I worship.
“To you be your religion, and to me my religion (Islamic Monotheism)."
Cultural Marxists and self-loathing Western idiots can't get enough of this Sura. You worship your Gods, I will worship mine. Oh wow, that is so tolerant. It proves Islam's superiority! But not really. There are three aspects to this verse that the one-world wonders miss.
Before Muhammad started Jihad, war, extermination, overt racism, and brigandage his small band of family members and cult devotees never numbered more than a handful. So of course someone who is being persecuted by the authorities is going to whine, 'please leave me alone, worship your 'Gods', and I will worship mine.'
More importantly, and rarely mentioned, is the fact that Muhammad is talking about Allah or Hub'Allah, being the main 'god' amongst many. In other words the import of this Sura is that it references Arab polytheism. What Muhammad is saying is that the Arabs can worship their many Gods, but he will worship only one – Hubal or 'ilah – namely the 'one Lord'.
This Sura references a contract stemming from the above 2 points, forwarded by Muhammad to the Quraish elite.
Now some other translators have a different set of words for the 5th sentence, and all of them make it clear that Muhammad is denying polytheism and elevating his idea of that Allah is the main 'God' amongst all the Gods:
Nor will ye worship that which I worship. Pickthall and Ali
Nor will you be the worshipper of what I worship. Daryabadi and Dawood
Nor will ye serve what I serve;- Palmer
Nor will you ever worship what I worship. Khalifa
And neither will you [ever] worship that which I worship. Asad
etc.
Sura 109 is not a celebration of multi-cultural harmony. It is Muhammad stating the obvious. You pagan Arabs will continue to worship your Gods [as long as your state and society are strong]; and our small cult will worship our one 'God'. So let's agree to disagree is what he is asking.
But notice the contradiction in this Sura. The Koran demands that you believe that Allah or Hub'Allah is the 'one'. Only he can be worshipped. Yet Sura 109 is clear – other gods were being worshipped including Allah. Allah is not unique, not connected to Judaism, and has no reference in Judeo-Christian theology. Allah was being worshipped by the pagan Arabs [in the form of Hub'Al] along with 359 other deities. Muhammad is thus confirming the paganism of this Allah.
Lastly, the Sura is a proposed contract from Muhammad to the Quraish elite. We know this from Moslem sources. Maududi the early twentieth century Moslem fanatic and supporter of unfettered Jihad states that Sura 109 refers to a proposed peace initiative from Muhammad to the Quraish elite. When you take this into account the Sura does not declaim for tolerance, but simply rejects the Meccan belief system. This fact eventually drove Muhammad from Mecca – at the threat of being killed by the Quraish. Tolerance does not exist in Islam, nor in Muhammadan theology. As Maududi confirms:
“....[this Sura] was revealed in order to exonerate the Muslims from the disbelievers religion, their rites of worship, and their gods, and to express their total disgust and unconcern with them and to tell them that Islam and kufr (unbelief) had nothing in common and there was no possibility of their being combined and mixed into one entity. Although it was addressed in the beginning to the disbelieving Quraish in response to their proposals of compromise, yet it is not confined to them only, but having made it a part of the Quran, Allah gave the Muslims the eternal teaching that they should exonerate themselves by word and deed from the creed of kufr wherever and in whatever form it be, and should declare without any reservation that they cannot make any compromise with the disbelievers in the matter of Faith.”
So much for one-world, inter-faith tolerance. Sura 109 has nothing to do with love and hope. It is a clear statement of supremacism, and the innate Moslem belief of their own superiority.
Most of the short Suras from 93 to 103 are plagiarized from poems posted on the Kabaa shrine during Muhammad's early days as a 'Preacher', in which he converted about a dozen people to the Allah cult. This should be juxtaposed against the 'Medinan' phase of Islam, which was a period of war, brigandage, and use of military force, resulting in the mass conversions of hundreds of thousands of former 'pagans' and a few Jews and Christians who desired to keep their heads on their shoulders and decided to forsake a religious group for the cult of Muhammad.
These shorter Suras are emotive expressions and do contain some spirituality. But like most of the Koran they are plagiarized with Muhammad affixing Allah to the existing poetic compositions.
"W. St. Calir-Tisdall, the author of the famous essay The Origin of Islam by comparing two passages from the Sabaa Mu'allaqat, finds close similarity with the verses from the Qur'an. Some of these verses are:
054.001 The Hour (of Judgment) is nigh, and the moon is cleft asunder.
093.001 By the Glorious Morning Light,Commenting on verse 54.1 W. St. Clair-Tisdall writes
'It was the custom of the time for and orators to hang up their compositions upon the Ka'aba; and we know the seven Mu'allaqat were exposed. We are told that Fatima, the Prophet's daughter, was one day repeating as she went along the above verse. Just then she met the daughter of Imrul Qays, who cried out, "O that's what your father has taken from one of my father's poems, and calls it something that has come down to him out of heaven;" and the story is commonly told amongst the Arabs until now.'
Thus, the relationship between Imrul Qays' poems and some of the early verses of the Qur'an is pretty obvious. In this connection, W. St. Clair-Tisdall elaborates further:
"The connection between the poetry of Imra'ul Qays and the Koran is so obvious that the Muslims cannot but hold that they existed with the latter in the Heavenly table from all eternity! What then will he answer? That the words were taken from the Koran and entered in the poem? - an impossibility. Or that their writer was not really Imra'ul Qays, but some other who, after the appearance of the Koran, had the audacity to quote them there as they now appear? - rather a difficult thing to prove!"
Imra Qays is credited with many of the short Sura verses including these two:
Sura 99 (the Earthquake)
099.001 When the earth is shaken to her (utmost) convulsion,
099.002 And the earth throws up her burdens (from within),
099.003 And man cries (distressed): 'What is the matter with her?'-
099.004 On that Day will she declare her tidings:
099.005 For that thy Lord will have given her inspiration.
099.006 On that Day will men proceed in companies sorted out, to be shown the deeds that they (had done).
099.007 Then shall anyone who has done an atom's weight of good, see it!
099.008 And anyone who has done an atom's weight of evil, shall see it
103.001 By (the Token of) Time (through the ages),
103.002 Verily Man is in loss,
103.003 Except such as have Faith, and do righteous deeds, and (join together) in the mutual teaching of Truth, and of Patience and Constancy.
In other words the Allah thing did not 'create' the 'uncreated Koran'. Most of the gibberish found in the Koran is plagiarized material. As well the above verses are completely at odds with the longer Medinan Suras which are overtly supremacist, racist, misogynist, violent and intolerant. Historians know that Qays and other poets provided these verses which Muhammad took and plagiarised as inspirations from the moon deity El-Lah or iLah. Muhammad stole poetic material from the following poets to flesh out his shorter Suras and provide him with a road-map during his early ministry. The following are poets whose material is in the Koran:
Bahira - a Nestorian Christian monk of the Syrian church
Hasan b. Thabit - the official poet of Muhammad
Ibn Qumta - a Christian slave
Imrul Qays - an ancient poet of Arabia who died a few decades before Muhammad's birth
Jabr - a Christian neighbour of Muhammad
Khadijah - Muhammad's first wife
Labid - another poet
Salman, the Persian - Muhammad's confidante' and an advisor
Ubay b. Ka'b - Muhammad's secretary and a Qur'an scribe
Waraqa - Khadijah's cousin's brother
Zayd b. Amr b. Naufal - an 'apostate' of his time who preached and propagated 'Hanifism'
Muhammad famously hated poets, at least those who wrote against his totalitarian regime. He killed a few including an aged poetess who was strangled in her bed by one of Muhammad's ruffians. I don't recall Jesus having one of his disciples perform a similar act, but maybe that is just a bad translation of my New Testament. In any event, poets who acceded to the moon cult were considered 'good', and those who didn't fell into the Infidel category and its various sub-components of unclean, unjust, untrustworthy, evil and hypocritical.
Celestial rites and worship, sprinkled with a dash of supremacism, illogic and warnings to the cursed infidel. The Koran is a litany of gibberish and most Suras are not only repetitive but highly incongruous not to mention overtly supremacist and universalist. In Islamic theology the El-Lah deity was a pre-Muhammadan moon idol worshipped by the Arabs for millenia. It was the patron deity of Muhammad's clan and family. Al-Lah or El-Lah was a masculine male moon deity, which brought water, dew, the rainy season and cooler temperatures. It was 'married' or matched by the feminine Sun goddess which took life and dessicated existence. Al-Lah or Al-i-lah [the one], would reflect a primitive pastoral society, one prone to brigandage, illiteracy, and under-development in every sphere. Superstition, rituals, and clanship would be hallmarks of such a society.
In this Sura, there is little mention made of the Sun, except to erroneously [as far as real Arab theology is concerned], to turn it into a male deity or god mimicking perhaps the Sun gods of ancient Greece [Apollo], and Persia [Mithra], who were masculine entities and ones venerated by obscure rituals, sacrifices and offerings. The Koran makes mention of both the feminine Sun and the masculine Sun. In Sura 18 the feminine Sun is described as setting in a muddy marsh as it revolves around the earth. Obviously the various writers of the Koran were confused or did not read each others works:
By the Sun and his (glorious) splendour; 091:002
By the Moon as she follows him; 091:003
Celestial worship within the Koran only confirms the obvious – that the moon cult of Al-Lah or Ilah long predates Muhammad and informs Islamic theology. This should give all Moslems pause for consideration. How can a 3.000 year old celestial cult venerating the Sun and Moon be 'the same as' either Judaism or Christianity, in spite of the poor and oftentimes incorrect plagiarism of the Bible and Torah used by the uneducated writers of the Koran? I doubt that many Moslems even have the courage or mental acuity to pose the question.
This Sura states that the 'signs' of Allah including celestial movements 'prove' that Islam is uber-alles. It is tautological and quite insipid, but this irrational proposition is constantly made in the Koran over 400 times.
By the Day as it shows up (the Sun's) glory;
091:004
By the Night as it conceals it;
091:005
By the Firmament and its (wonderful) structure;
091:006
By the Earth and its (wide) expanse:
091:007
The implication is simple. If you reject the above 'signs' you are an Unbeliever and must be punished in both this life and the next. Over 500 verses make this claim in the Koran, or over 10% of the text. This Sura goes on to use [yet again] the examples of the pre-Muhammad state of Thamud as an example. For not believing in the signs the Thamudians [see here for more info] were wiped out by the ever-caring, all-loving, ominscient Allah-thing or moon idol.
The Thamud (people) rejected (their prophet) through their inordinate wrong-doing, 091:012
Behold, the most wicked man among them was deputed (for impiety). 091:013
But the Apostle of God said to them: "It is a She-camel of God! And (bar her not from) having her drink!" 091:014
Then they rejected him (as a false prophet), and they hamstrung her. So their Lord, on account of their crime, obliterated their traces and made them equal (in destruction, high and low)! 091:015
Verses 13 and 14 make no sense. But this is standard fare for the Koran. One can translate the verses in many ways and read a few different scenarios into the text. But they are in the main, unimportant. The end result is very clear. The Thamudians were destroyed for rejecting the El-Lah thing. Such is the fate of all Unbelievers. Even before Islam was invented the Allah idol was busy picking winners and losers from Arab tribes. This entirely Arab-centric focus of the Koran is another clue to its pre-Muhammadan and quite ancient Arab lineage.
[Note: This sura is taken from 'The Holy Quran', translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, reprinted in 1995, Goodword Books. Regarded as one of the best translations from Arabic to English of the Koran.]