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ATWT Discussion Group
The post that hurt your feelings was mine, so I feel obliged to respond honestly to your query. There was no reason to feel hurt because I did not say anything negative about Muslims as people, only Shari'a law, which allows nine-year-old girls (Natalie's age) to undergo what amounts to marital rape. This is a fact, supported by the life of Prophet Muhammad as documented in several testimonials attributed to his favourite wife Aisha, who was six years old when he contracted marriage with her, nine years old when her mother called her from her swing to sit on his lap and let him consummate the marriage with her, still playing with toy horses when she moved in with him, too young to stay awake to prevent the goat from eating the dough when she was accused of infidelity, and eighteen years old when he died. Shari'a law, as interpreted by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late theocratic dictator of Iran, recommends that a girl be married so early that she experiences menarche in her husband's home - no age is too early, but molestation should be nonvaginal until she is nine! In addition, I have read the testimony of a girl from Pakistan, a country created for the sole purpose of having a 'clean' Islamic state under Shari'a law, who was sold into marriage to an old man before puberty, and then kicked out because she could not get pregnant, excessive sex before puberty having left her sterile for life. When the thought that I might upset some people by talking about young Natalie's sexual orientation reminds me of the religion that inflicts such monstrous depravity on girls her age, I can only follow the example of al-Jauniyya when Prophet Muhammad was about to strike her for refusing to marry him - I take refuge in a higher power. Subhanallah - praise God that some of us have better sense than his followers!
I have many Muslim friends who pray for me, and I appreciate their good intentions even when I abhor what they pray for (my conversion to Islam, without bothering to find out what I believe). They know that I know more about the roots of Islam and its history than they do, and that is why I detest the character of Prophet Muhammad as he appears in the Qur'an, the Ahadith, and his biographies. (Bear in mind that every damning detail we know about this man comes from records collected and expurgated by his devoted followers a couple of centuries after his time, and translated into English by his followers today: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/) I find Shari'a law barbarous and ridiculous, especially as articulated by the mutawwas of Saudi Arabia and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran. That said, I recognize that Sufis and others have achieved spiritual progress in spite of Islam. If you want to discipline yourself with prayer, fasting and pilgrimage, good for you. Just don't consider yourself superior because you commune with God by kissing a black stone while others feel inspired by God to carve his/her beauty in stone. And please stop circumcising your children without their informed consent! It's traumatic, medically unnecessary, and a violation of their right to bodily integrity.
