Is Islam Religion or Cult?

By Ali Sina
Brought to you by Speedy

Islam is known as the second largest religion. The very fact that 1.2 billion people call themselves Muslims vests Islam with the mantel of legitimacy and confirms the claim that it is a religion. But is it?

Can 1.2 billion people be wrong?
Well, in logic we have something called "argumentum ad numerum". It states that something is true if a lot of people believe in it. But argumentum ad numerum is a logical fallacy. Truth cannot be established by the consensus of the majority. In fact many arguments have been proven to be false, even though everyone in the world once accepted them as true. For example, not until a few centuries ago everyone believed that the Earth is flat and is at the centre of the universe. Despite that common belief both geocentricity and the idea of the flat Earth were false. A false belief does not become true even if everyone thinks they are true.

Therefore, not only 1.2 billion people, but the entire mankind can be wrong. As Bertrand Russell said: “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

After shattering the myth of argumentum ad numerum, let us put Islam under scrutiny and see whether it is a religion or a cult.

The following is a description of what cult is:

1. A cult is a religious group with extreme beliefs and practices - beliefs that are often contrary to science and logic but they are believed as "obvious" truth by the cult members.
2. The members of cults often isolate themselves from friends, family and society and use deceptive and unethical recruiting techniques
3. Use manipulative methods to control the minds of followers
4. Venerate a human leader or leaders
5. Recruiting work is performed by all of the members
6. People are not allowed to criticize the leader, the doctrine, or the organization, or read information that is critical of the cult.
7. Members are trained to reject and disbelieve criticism of the cult as lies from Satan.
8. Members spy on one another and report improper activities or comments to leaders.
9. Members are taught to suppress anything which might reflect negatively to outsiders about the cult.
10. The doctrine is absolutist and the ideology is internalized as "the Truth."
11. Members are told to avoid contact with ex-members or critics, even their relatives.
12. Members are instilled with a deep fear about ever leaving the organization, and anyone who does depart is of the devil and sometimes severely punished.
13. Members are emotional controlled and warned of being caught and punished.
14. Disciplinary action is administered by group leaders, which may involve excommunication for such things as questioning organization policy or doctrine.
15. People are encouraged to sacrifice education, career and family interests to server the interests of the cult.
16. Advocate socializing only with other members in the organization and avoiding outsiders.
17. The belief in apocalypse and Dooms Day.

All these traits are present in Islam:

1. Islam claims to be a religion with strong devotion to Muhammad and a set of unsubstantiated doctrines presented by him. Monotheism is used as a pretext to exert absolute control over the believers, leaving them no chance to question or investigate alternative paths.

2. Muhammad forced his followers to leave their families (8:72) and gathered them in Yathrib. He said: “And those who believed but did not leave their homes, ye have no duty to protect them till they leave their homes”. He warned those who did not follow him, leaving behind their families, will be cursed by Allah and “their habitation will be hell”(4:97). Muhammad went as far as to order his followers to murder those Muslims who defected his barricade.(4:89) In Yathrib he banished and killed the Jews who did not believe in him, thus eliminating the chance of his followers coming in contact with outsiders and being influenced by anyone. In this way he exerted absolute control over the lives and the minds of his followers. Jim Jones did the same. He called his town "Jonestown". Muhammad changed the name of Yathirb to Madinatul Nabi (Prophet’s Town)

3. He used manipulative methods to control the minds of his followers. These methods ranged from threat of hellfire, and promises of paradise, to exhaustive rituals of prayers and fasts, devised to numb the thought, and threat of physical punishment including execution and constant warfare, keeping his followers in perpetual state of agitation.

4. He established himself as the sole authority among his followers and the only source of guidance to the extent that they looked up to him for every detail of their lives, including how to dress, how to shave, how to pray and even how to urinate and how to clean after bowl movement. Ostensibly the worship was to God but effectively he was the only object of veneration of his followers and the only authority. Nominally God was to be obeyed but he was God's proxy, thus assuming the authority of God.

5. All believers were asked to promote his cause through Jihad, propaganda or by giving generously from their wealth. 4:95, 9:20, 49:15, 61:11

6. The criticism of Muhammad and Islam was totally prohibited and if anyone dared to question him or his decisions, Omar swiftly unshielded his sword and threatened to slash the throat of the intrepid questioner forcing him to apologize. The message was sent in a very clear tone that no one must question Muhammad and his authority. 1400 years later, the message remains the same. If you question Islam you will be killed.

7. Muslims are told to dismiss any criticism of Islam as coming from Satan and they often avoid reading critical views about their Faith. I have received testimonies of apostates who confessed that at first when they came across this site they stopped reading it and dismissed it as the work of Satan. See this I myself never read any book critical of Islam and once frowned at a friend who expressed her curiosity about Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.

8. Muslims are encouraged to spy on each other and report any sign of dissent. Amr bil Maroof wa Nahi anil Munkir (Commanding to follow the religion and preventing from doing what is prohibited) is a tenet of Islam. Every Muslim is required to poke his nose in the private lives of others, spy on them and tell them what they should do and what they should not do. Every Muslim is an enforcer of religion and the moral police for others.

9. Muslims suppress anything that might present Islam in negative light. Preserving the image of Islam is of utmost importance and Muslims lie with clarity of conscience to misrepresent their religion and make it look good. For example women in Islam are treated like animals and are considered as deficient in intelligence. Every Muslim knows that including the women, who blame the men for it but not the Islam. But they lie through their teeth bragging about the "elevated" status of women in Islam. Jihad means aggressive war to expand Islam. Every Muslim knows that. Yet all of them lie and say Jihad means "self defense". A couple of years ago I received a very angry email from a Muslim who cursed me for revealing the fact that Muhammad had slept with a 9-year old child and at the end he said “the damage is already done” and I will be certainly punished for what I had done. The fact that Muhammad slept with a child did not bother this Muslim but what bothered him was revealing this fact.

10. Islam is extremely absolutist and Muslims believe that it is the only true religion. This “truth” however is not self evident. It is "true" because Muhammad said so.

11. Muslims are told to shun the apostates and the critics of Islam. New converts are often circled and are isolated from their non-Muslim family and friends. They are showered with love and receive a lot of emotional support until the brainwashing is complete.

12. Muslims are instilled with the fear of leaving Islam. This fear comes in two forms. One is the fear of Hell and of eternal punishment and the other is the fear of being caught and put to death by fellow Muslims, including their best friends and family.

13. Those who leave Islam must live in constant threat of being discovered and killed. In Muslims’ Comments section of this site you can see that Muslims often talk about this fear and say they pity me for having to look over my shoulders all the time and live in fear of being assassinated. The values are so distorted that they do not pity themselves for being the assassins but pity me for having to live in their fear.

14. In Islam disciplinary action includes beating, maiming, stoning, beheading or jail. Excommunication is for minor offenses. The poet Ka’b and two others were excommunicated for fifty days and during that time no one spoke to them. Ka’b’s wife was told to leave him and wherever he went people ignored him as if he was invisible. All this, because he did not accompany Muhammad in the war of Tabutk.

15. Muslims are told to sacrifice their comfort, their wealth and including their lives to promote Islam. Young men are encouraged to leave their studies and work, wage Jihad, and commit suicide bombing to make Islam dominant. Family and even children are regarded as "tests" of the believers. To prove their loyalty to Allah, they must be able to forgo all these "worldly attachments" and get ready to sacrifice their lives in the cause of Islam.

16. Muslims are discouraged to take friends from amongst the unbelievers even if these unbelievers are their kin. 3:28 They are told the unbelievers are najis (filthy) 9:28 and that the believers should not associate with them.

17. The belief in the Day of Judgment and the Dooms Day is one of the pillars of the Islamic Faith.

Based on the above, Islam is a cult. It is the biggest and the most successful cult. It practically reunites every feature of cult. Other cults may not be cultic in some of the above points. But Islam is cultic in every way and it would be a gross mistake to number it among religions just because 1.2 billion benighted people call themselves Muslims.

Part 1:


Part 2:

Ex-Muslims

Here is my partial translation of the AL-Jazeerah intervew between Maher Abdallah and Shiekh Ahmed Katani talking about the issue of 6 million muslims leaving Islam every year in Africa alone. This was a television interview that was transcribed and I translated it into English.

Ahmed Katani


Maher Abdallah


Maher Abdallah:
Dear viewers, peace of Allah be upon you, greetings and welcome to a new episode of the program Islamic Law and Life.

Our topic this evening will be Christianization in the Dark Continent ... Africa. For after Islam was the religion of the majority, the great majority of that continent, the number of Muslims now is no greater than a third of the population. This is taking into consideration, of course, that a large portion of this group are Arab Muslims. No doubt that the missions of evangelization and Christianization played a great role in this demographic shift of Muslims in the continent.

To discuss this topic, it is my pleasure to introduce today a man who is an expert on the issue of evangelization and Christianization in Africa, even though he will concentrate on the issue of Christianization first and foremost?. Sheikh Ahmad Al Katani; the president of The Companions Lighthouse for the Science of Islamic Law in Libya, which is an institution specializing in graduating imams and Islamic preachers.

Sheikh Ahmad, welcome to you on the program.

Ahmad Al Katani:
Greeting to you.

Maher Abdallah:
If we start by inquiring about your strict stance against the Christian missions in Africa, don?t the followers of every religion have the right to seek new converts, exactly as you train and graduate young Muslims to propagate Islam?

Ahmad Al Katani:
I seek refuge in Allah the Seer, the Knower, from the stoned devil. In the name of Allah the Merciful the Beneficent. Thanks to Allah the One, the Only, the Permanent One, who did not give birth nor was born, to whom no one was equal. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah who has no partners, and I bear witness that our master Muhammed ? Allah?s prayers and peace be upon him - is his messenger and seal of prophets; Allah prayers be upon him and his brothers the prophets and messengers and their families.

The question that you pose is a result of not comprehending the difference between the concept of Christianization and the concept of evangelism.

The concept of evangelism: is inviting the non-Christians to the Christian or Nazarene religion, and this is the right of every Christian and the right of every believer to call others to his faith. However, we are talking about a different matter; which is Christianization. Christianization means the following: preparing plans, and executing these plans and evolving these plans to change Muslims into Christians by taking advantage of the ignorance and poverty (of the people) and whatever necessitates from similar circumstances.

So, we are faced with the issue of taking advantage of circumstances, taking advantage of humanitarian needs, taking advantage of the lack of education for example, that these people (missionaries) use to take Muslims out of their religion.

Maher Abdallah:
Fine. This is a big and dangerous phrase. Taking advantage of poverty, of ignorance, of lack of education, of some need is something that a Muslim can also be accused of. So if you don?t back up what you say with examples, with references, your words remain in the air without much weight to them.

Ahmad Al Katani:
The reality is that these words say a lot less than they should. As we said in the beginning, everyone has the right to invite others to his religion; this is what is known as evangelism (or proselytizing). As for Christianization, no one has the right to take Muslims out of their religion, and you asked for references and the references are too numerous.

Islam used to represent, as you previously mentioned, Africa?s main religion and there were 30 African languages that used to be written in Arabic script. The number of Muslims in Africa has diminished to 316 million, half of whom are Arabs in North Africa. So in the section of Africa that we are talking about, the non Arab section, the number of Muslims does not exceed 150 million people. When we realize that the entire population of Africa is one billion people, we see that the number of Muslims has diminished greatly from what it was in the beginning of the last century. On the other hand, the number of Catholics has increased from one million in 1902 to 329 million 882 thousand (329,882,000). Let us round off that number to 330 million in the year 2000.

As to how that happened, well there are now 1.5 million churches whose congregations account for 46 million people. In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Ever year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity. These numbers are very large indeed ?..

Maher Abdallah (interrupting):
Hold on! Let me clarify. Do we have 6 million converting from Islam to Christianity or converting from Islam and other religions?

Ahmad Al Katani:
Great (question)! The other religions are not placed on the list of Christianization; rather they are placed on the list of evangelization. The other religion in Africa is paganism; so it?s Islam, Christianity or paganism. There isn?t something similar to Asia for example where you have Buddhism or Zoroastrianism. In Africa it is just these three, so if you talk about Christianization then it targets the only other heavenly religion which is Islam. As for paganism, those people worship animals and planets and the like.

Maher Abdallah:
So 6 million Muslims a year convert?

Ahmad Al Katani:
Every year ?.. In the African nations this century a tragedy happened. Take for example what happened in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is an Arab nation and I am not saying a muslim nation. If any student looks up the word Habasha (Ethiopia) in the book Ocean Dictionary written by Al-Fairuz Abady, he will find that the word Habashat means ?people of different tribes? and this is what happened. Ethiopia was a place where Arabs from different tribes would go to live for a while. We all know that Islam entered Ethiopia before Islam entered the city of Medina. We all know that AL-Najashy (the ruler of Ethiopia) was a Muslim. It is mentioned by Al-Darkatny in his biography of the prophet ? Allah?s prayer and peace be upon him ? that during the month of Rajab in the 9th year of the Hijra (Muslim calendar) that the prophet said to his companions: ?Rise up and pray on your brother Al-Najashy.? From that year on the practice of praying on the absent was established. Therefore from the time of the prophet ? Allah?s prayer and peace be upon him ? Islam entered Ethiopia. So what has happened to Ethiopia?

What happened is that in the days of Emperor Hela Silasi who used to force Muslims to bow to the Christian, and if he refused then he was whipped 45 lashes and jailed between 2 and 5 years. In the year 1948, a massacre occurred at the hands of the Amharic tribes; the Amharic being Christians and collaborators, who continued to slaughter Muslims for 7 months and perform the most horrific acts imaginable. For example they deprived them from the most basic human rights, to the point that they mutilated the male Muslim?s reproductive organs so that no more Muslim children would be born. Ethiopia was rewarded after all these horrific acts; rewarded by being made the head quarters of the African Unity League.

Let us move to another location in Africa, let it be Nigeria. Nigeria is known by Muslims by the name of the Land of Takror. Nigeria was founded at the beginning of the last century by the British, and many Islamic sources mention it?s name as the Land of Tekror. There is even a letter by the reciter Suyuti, who died in the year 911 Hijri, where the title is: Opening the blessed request and relating the hidden openly to the questions of the people of Takror. So there was an established relationship, and they used to send questions to the scholars of Islam, so this letter (of questions) was sent from one of the sheikh scholars of Nigeria that was called Takror to the Muslim scholar AL Suyuti in Egypt and he in turn responded and the contents of this letter are published and printed and is found in the book ?The collection Islamic decrees?.

Nigeria?s population is 120 million people, 70% of whom are Muslim. In the 1960?s a British missionary came and declared that he will Christianize North Nigeria, the majority of whom are Muslim. As a result, Ahmad Banulo (from the leaders of the Msulims) was forced at the time to move him to Lagos the capital. As a result the butcher Arorese, that was present at the time, eliminated all the Muslim rulers and killed Ahmad Banulo, why? Because he merely dared to move this missionary who declared that he wishes to Christianize North Nigeria.

In another country, Zanzibar, is an Arabic African nation and I am not saying Muslim. Zanzibar was always connected to the Sultanate of Oman (in the Persian Gulf). Concerning Zanzibar, there was a priest by the name Julius Niriry, president of Tanzania, who annihilated 20,000 Muslims (male and female) with a military force lead by a chicken thief. This thief was imprisoned for being accused of stealing chickens; he was released and asked to command the military brigade that annihilated 20,000 Muslims.

Maher Abdallah:
My dear viewers welcome back to this episode where we are speaking about the topic of Christianization in the African continent and we are speaking with the Sheikh who is observing and following this issue, as each hour Islam loses just under 700 Muslims who join the Christian religion which leads us to the number of 6 million Muslims every year.

Our sir, you mentioned that there are advantages being taken of necessities: poverty, ignorance; what you mentioned then are waves of elimination, waves of religious eradication, and there is no need to call is racial eradication?.. However, let us go back to the topic necessity and exploitation. This may have all been in the past; the military expeditions that you spoke of were all in the beginning or middle of the last century, but what is happening today in regards to exploiting necessities?

Ahmad Al Katani:
What I wanted to say is that these military expeditions and wars paved the way for what we are seeing today; converting 6 million Muslims every year did not happen from nothing, but was a result of what I mentioned earlier.

As for the topic of necessity exploitation, then a nation like Somalia, whose population is 9.5 million people, are all Muslim without exception. There are no Christians or pagans. And if you did find any then they are an insignificant number that are not even on official statistics. A Belgian missionary by the name of Sabeh came to Somalia and purchased 30,000 Muslim youth, he took advantage of their parents poverty, and we all know the terrible situation that Somalia is going through now and what it went through a few years ago. This is taking advantage of a humanitarian need that any human can go through.

Maher Abdallah: (interrupting)
Excuse me, what do you mean purchased?

Ahmad Al Katani:
You know that the current laws forbid trading in slaves, but I can?t find another expression to use. The man asked (from the country of Belgium) approximately forty million dollars or slightly less and it (Belgium) hurried in sending the money to him out of fear that this opportunity will be lost. Belgium sent the money in a very short time, and he (the missionary) paid this money to the parents of the youth and I can only call it buying and selling, there is no other name for it. The result was that 30,000 children were made Christian and baptized in the churches. I say this with all regret, but these children are now adults. This event occurred a number of years ago and these youth are now adults and what is more dangerous is that these people will return to their families; some of them have already returned indeed and others will return. This tragedy happened in Somalia, people?s poverty was taken advantage of and this humiliation happened in front of the eyes of on lookers.

Maher Abdallah:
Fine! Another picture of taking advantage, this was in consideration of Somalia?s state during war; in the case of a tragedy such as poverty where people were forced to do so due to the circumstances in the area. But what about other regions, how are they doing?

Ahmad Al Katani:
Yes. In Zaire there are now half a million muslim refugees, only Muslims are subjugated to severe missions of Christianization. I am sorry to say something and I am not the first to make this point; it has been said before: the bounty of humanitarian aid that is delivered goes to the Christians, and now because of this opportunity the muslims are Christianized in Zaire. There are half a million Muslims targeted for christianiztion on a daily basis. There is a horrific absence of muslim effort in the field. There is no Arabic or muslim (missionary) presence in Africa, except on a token level, nothing productive.

Maher Abdallah: (interrupting)
These words are contradictory to what we hear in summits that are held, without mentioning the names of organizations that hold these summits at times specifically to discuss the situation of muslim in Africa, south of the desert.

Ahmad Al Katani:
My dear sir, among the plans to Christianize is to leak periodic numbers weekly, monthly and yearly and these statistics works as sedatives in the body of the community. Every now and then we hear in the media, whether television, radio or print that an African family has converted to islam, or members of a family have become Muslim or that a university professor has converted to Islam. These are all tranquilizer shots. For every muslim that converts to Islam, there are thousands that become Christian. We have previously mentioned the number of people that become Christian every year, every day and every hour, all these numbers make people think that matters are fine, that Islam is well, and the truth is the exact opposite.

Maher Abdallah:
If you permit, I do know a group of organizations, whose names I don?t want to mention, which reside in Africa and have headquarters in Tanzania.



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