Will the Internet Slay Islam?

By Wolfgang Bruno

A remarkable testimony to the power of the modern mass media revolution was noted in the
complaints of an Egyptian cleric in 2005: "Leading Egypt Cleric Wants Fewer Frivolous Edicts".1

The chief Muslim cleric in Egypt wants tighter controls on who may issue religious edicts, or
fatwas. Egypt's Grand Mufti says more fatwas have been issued in the past 10 years than in the
previous 1400 years. Modern technology has made it easier than ever to issue or receive a fatwa,
one of the religious edicts that guide Muslims' interpretations of Islamic law. Someone with a
specific question about what Islam allows can get a personalized fatwa on the matter over the
Internet, through television or via cell phone. The number of religious edicts keeps growing, and
because Islam has no central authority there is no set system for governing who is allowed to issue
them.

This explosion of unorthodox religious activity can only be compared to that of Christian Europe in
the early 16th century. Just as Gutenberg’s invention marked the first mass media revolution in the
West, the Internet and satellite TV are now doing the same thing in the Islamic world. However, the
outcome may be very different, and the parallels between the Protestant Reformation and what is
happening in the Islamic world now shouldn’t be pushed too far. The introduction of the printing
press was delayed by several centuries in the Islamic world because of religious resistance and
never had the same effect there as it did in the Christian West, which should strongly indicate that
although technology is important, it isn’t everything. Culture matters. Islam does not have quite the
1

Leading Egypt Cleric Wants Fewer Frivolous Edicts, By Challiss McDonough (Cairo, 17 October 2005

The chief Muslim cleric in Egypt wants tighter controls on who may issue religious edicts, or fatwas. Egypt's Grand Mufti says
more fatwas have been issued in the past 10 years than in the previous 1400 years. Modern technology has made it easier than ever
to issue or receive a fatwa, one of the religious edicts that guide Muslims' interpretations of Islamic law.
Someone with a specific question about what Islam allows can get a personalized fatwa on the matter over the Internet, through
television or via cellphone. The Grand Mufti of Egypt and other religious leaders say far too many unqualified clerics are issuing
fatwas of dubious theological credibility. The number of religious edicts keeps growing, and because Islam has no central authority
there is no set system for governing who is allowed to issue them.
Egypt's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, is calling for more supervision or even a central authority to govern who may issue fatwas.
The secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Abdel Sabour Marzouk, agrees. The mufti is correct, he said.
A fatwa expresses a fact and the opinion about it, whether it is right or wrong, halal or haram. Not just anyone is eligible to give a
fatwa. A fatwa can only be issued by a suitable person, who is knowledgeable and pious.
Muslim leaders say some of those edicts deal with secular topics that have nothing to do with religious authorities. Abdel Sabour
Marzouk says many of the clerics issuing them are more interested in profits than piety. He says, a large number of people who
claim they are knowledgeable and present themselves as able to give fatwas benefit financially from such performances. These
extraneous fatwas range from the frivolous to the frightening, including those used to justify violence against non-Muslims and the
West.
Sometimes, the frivolous and the frightening overlap, such as a fatwa against soccer issued two years ago by a Saudi cleric. It
sounds like satire, but it is treated seriously by Saudi clerics and newspaper columnists who say it has convinced some players that
the game is un-Islamic and has been used to recruit them into the Iraqi insurgency. It urges Muslims to play the game with different
rules, so as not to imitate Christians and Jews, and, what it calls, evil America. The fatwa says soccer is to be played only in order to
strengthen the body for jihad, not for fun. A game of soccer played under the suggested rules would have no lines surrounding the
field, no crossbar on the goal, no referee, no uniforms, no post-scoring celebrations and no yellow or red cards. It would no longer
be played in two 45-minute halves, to completely differentiate from the heretics, polytheists, corrupted and disobedient. The fatwa
says, do not follow the rules regarding playing with 11 people. Instead, add to this number or decrease it.
According to the Washington-based Middle East Research Institute, senior Saudi clerics have rejected the fatwa. The institute says
newspaper columnists are calling it an example of an extremist ideology targeting Muslim youth. In Cairo, Abdel Sabour Marzouk
says soccer is an inappropriate topic for a fatwa. He says, football has absolutely nothing to do with a fatwa. It is not about halal
and haram. It is an athletic activity about which no revelation has been given by God, and the Koran has not referred to it.
Some scholars have issued fatwas about what athletes can wear on the soccer field, since Islam demands modest attire from both
men and women. But Abdel Sabour Marzouk says even those restrictions are unnecessary. He says, some silly people say that the
player's uniform does not hide the parts of his body that should be covered. People should not listen to such talk, because people in
the middle of a soccer game do not look at the leg of the player or his foot or anything else. They look at the ball and how well the
player shoots the ball. He says only those with sick minds and weak souls focus on the players' legs.

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same centralized hierarchy as the Catholic Church had in Europe, which means that the change
cannot be linked to a specific date as it did with Martin Luther’s 95 theses. Although it did
ultimately have consequences far beyond the borders of Europe, and although it did happen at a
time of Ottoman Muslim expansion in the Mediterranean, the Reformation was primarily an
internal, Christian and European affair. The turmoil in he Islamic world now affects more or less
the entire world, and many of the critics are based in rival civilizations. And last, but not least: The
religions are entirely different. Christianity was reformable, whereas Islam probably isn’t.

Does this mean that the current information revolution will destroy Islam? That is the view of
David Wood:

Islam Beheaded

The truth about Muhammad has been one of the world's best-kept secrets. For centuries, it
has been virtually impossible to raise objections about the character of Muhammad in
Muslim countries, for anyone who raised such objections would (following the example set
by Muhammad himself) immediately be killed. Outside the Muslim world, there has been
little interest in Islam. But things have changed. Now many people are interested in Islam,
and Muslims aren't able to silence everyone. Moreover, with the advent of the Internet, it is
now impossible to keep Muhammad's life a secret. The facts about the founder of Islam are
spreading very rapidly, and Muslims are frantically scurrying to defend their faith. But the
information superhighway is paving over the ignorance that has for centuries been the
stronghold of Islamic dogma. In the end, Islam will fall, for the entire structure is built upon
the belief that Muhammad was the greatest moral example in history, and this belief is
demonstrably false.

This optimistic view ignores several important facts. Many of the worst Islamists have above
average education, as did many supporters of Communism in the West. Which shows that,
unfortunately, increased knowledge does not always translate into increased wisdom. The second
catch is that Muslims do not view the world in the same way as Westerners of infidels do. In his
book The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam, renowned cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi explains how Islam
has restricted the authority to legislate the haram and the halal (forbidden and permitted), taking it
out of the hands of human beings and reserving it for the Allah alone through explicit verses of the
Qur'an and from clear Hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad. The jurists' task does not go beyond
explaining what Allah has decreed to be halal or haram. Prohibiting something which is halal is
similar to committing shirk (idolatry).

According to traditional Islamic law, and confirmed by leading scholars today, it is perfectly
allowed for a Muslim man to have forced sex with the infidel concubines he just captured by
massacring their relatives in front of their eyes. Muhammad himself did this several times. You just
shouldn’t wear a silk tie while doing it. Likewise, it is perfectly permissible, halal, to behead a
Buddhist schoolteacher in southern Thailand, but haraam to wear a gold ring at the same time. This
thinking is why slavery was eventually abandoned and forbidden by the Judeo-Christian West,
where the emphasis is on what’s moral or immoral, but only banned through external pressure by
the same West in the Islamic world, where the emphasis is on what’s permitted or forbidden. It also
explains why Qaradawi himself is reputed to be married to a girl in her pre-teens, 60 years his
junior. He is perfectly aware of the fact that Muhammad had sex with a 9-year-old child, and has
confirmed, in Arabic, but not in English, that this is allowed even today. To say that “Muhammad
was immoral” just won’t wash with a truly devout Muslim, who is trapped in a circular thinking
where the very concept of “morality” begins and ends with the example of Muhammad, his Sunna.

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The website Islam Q&A gives an explanation of why it is forbidden for Muslim men to wear silk in
this life, but permitted in Paradise, just as the case is with wine, which is also forbidden on Earth
but exists in abundance in the afterlife. Islam is adept at taking something away from its Believers,
but promising lots of it to them after death. Again, it doesn’t matter to a true Believer whether this
makes any sense. Islam means “submission,” so you should simply submit to the wisdom of Allah:

Why are men not allowed to wear silk?

It is not right to make following a command or prohibition dependent upon knowing the wisdom
behind it; rather we should hasten to carry out the commands of sharee’ah, regardless of whether
the wisdom behind it is clear to us or not. If it is clear, then praise be to Allah, and if it is not, then
the Muslim should not let the fact that he does not know it prevent him from acting in accordance
with the ruling of sharee’ah. Islam means submission to Allah, may He be exalted, and obeying
Him. If a person makes his actions dependent on understanding matters which may or may not
convince him, he is in effect following his own thoughts and desires, not his Lord and Master. (….)
(silk) was basically created for women, as is the case with gold jewellery, so it was forbidden for
men because it can corrupt them by making them resemble women. (…) when it touches the body,
it makes a man effeminate and goes against his masculinity and manliness, so if he wears it his
heart gains the characteristics of femininity and softness. There is no doubt that wearing silk will
diminish manly characteristics(…) Whoever is too dense to understand this should just submit to
the Wise Lawmaker.”

Yes, the Internet is important in this struggle, but it is at least as important for informing non-
Muslims about the true nature of Islam as enlightening Muslims, many of whom will be mentally
immune to criticism of Islam. Some of them, however, can be reached. There are approximately
one billion nominal Muslims in the world. How many of these are secret ex-Muslims? Ibn Warraq
has estimated that 10- 15% of the Muslims in the UK are actually apostates. If that percentage
reflects the Islamic world as a whole, we are talking about a number of people the equivalent of a
country the size of Japan. Even half of this is a country the size of Britain. Although only a (fast-
growing) minority of Muslims around the world have access to the Internet, simple mathematics
indicate that there are already hundreds of thousands, probably millions or maybe even tens of
millions of ex-Muslims in cyberspace. This, as well as additional tens of millions of Muslims who
already have at least some doubts, is the soft underbelly of Islam.

We’re now stuck in a race against time, and Muslims know it. That’s why they are working so hard
to shut down freedom of speech and any “mockery” or rational criticism targeting Islam in infidel
countries. Will Muslims bomb away freedom of speech in the West before we detonate this
unexploded bomb underneath Islam’s feet? Every time they hit us with a terrorist attack, we should
respond by increasing the volume of criticism of Islam in circulation on the Internet. Some would
claim that this isn’t our fight. It is now. Ernest Renan has said that if there ever was something like
a Reformation in the Islamic world, the West should gracefully stay out of it. However, he lived in
the 19th century and could not have imagined that we would be stupid enough to let millions of
Muslims settle in our major cities. We are implicated now, whether we want to or not. We are no
longer just fighting against Islam but for our own freedom of speech, and thus democracy itself.
Maybe we cannot slay this dragon, but we can certainly help the people who can.

Muhammad and his thugs went to great lengths already in the early days of Islam to shut up critics.
The punishment for leaving Islam is death, a fact which has largely kept organized groups of ex-
Muslims from forming. Until now. With a significant Muslim presence in the West, we see
elements of such groups forming for the first time in history. Secret ex-Muslims around the world
are quietly watching these developments. Some are stepping forward.

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Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles
until she blasted Islam on Aljazeera. TV is a powerful medium, and has a stronger immediate
impact than the Internet. However, many ex-Muslims will probably prefer to hide on the Internet
rather than showing their face in front of millions of Muslims, many of whom think they deserve to
die. It takes the extraordinary courage of someone like Wafa Sultan to do so, and it takes a TV
station to air these views in the first place. For these reasons, this movement may best be nurtured
and spearheaded through the Internet, the way Ali Sina2 and Ibn Warraq3 are doing now, and let the
ripples spread to other media.

I have earlier stated that Islam is a “dinosaur in the age of mammals.” I believe this is true.
However, it is still a big and bad beast, even more dangerous and angry now precisely because it is
wounded. We cannot allow such a creature to roam the streets where our children are growing up.
We need to cage it, and hope that rational criticism, which its immune system cannot in the long
run withstand, will slowly wear it down. This is a world war, and the best thing we can hope for is a
prolonged “cold” war, with many minor clashes but no huge, cataclysmic hot war. This will require
a global containment of the Islamic world, the expulsion of any Muslims in the West deemed to be
a security threat and strong support to the movement of ex-Muslims. All of these steps will have to
be implemented soon, or we will have no other options left but a full-scale war, with massive
casualties. We will probably win such a war if it comes to it, but the death toll will exceed that of
any other war in human history, and leave scars for generations to come. Time is growing short. Are
we up to the job?

Wolfgang Bruno is a European author. He is writing a book about the Internet movement of ex-
Muslims.

2
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Author/Sina.htm. “I promise that if we continue this campaign of discrediting Islam and
Muslim scholars, in no more than a quarter of century, Islam will be defeated. Islam will fall, like communism fell.
Mark my words today, even if you think I am nuts. If we all work together, especially the ex-Muslims, we can get rid of
Islam sooner than anyone can imagine. Iran is already anti Islamic. More than half of Iranians do not call themselves
Muslims anymore. We are demolishing Islam from its foundation. The edifice seems to be intact. But don't let
appearances deceive you. This high tower of lies will come down at once.” Quote from his article “Defeating Islam”.
3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Warraq

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