One of the important lessons our distant forefathers had learned was to respect Power. They saw power in the animals in whose midst they lived, and in the people among them who were big and stronger than themselves. This realization helped them avoid unnecessary deaths as well as troubles with those people whom they could not face physically, even when they offended or harmed them in many ways.

As our distant forefathers gained more experience in their lives, they also realized that telling lies was not only harmful for the liars; it was also harmful for the community they lived in. This realization came from the fact that a liar has to invent many lies to cover his or her first lie and this leads him or her on a course that turns him or her into a permanent liar. Known as a pathological liar, people develop distrust of such a person and even when such a person tells a truth, he or she is not believed by those who knew him or her as a liar.

With the development of human faculty also came the realization that liars must be contained, if human societies were to be saved from their mischievous lies. As a result of this realization, many societies enacted laws under which lying is a punishable offence. Those societies, which did not enact any law against lying, shunned the liars. In those societies, liars are looked down upon and relationships with them are assiduously avoided.

Many religious societies have developed systems which require people to prove the truthfulness of their positions by swearing on their religious scriptures. Since all the legal systems of the world are supposed to dispense justice, many Western societies require that all litigants swear on the Bible in order to make their depositions in the court believable. In the Indian legal system, Hindu litigants swear on their Geeta. Under the Islamic legal system, Muslims are required to swear on their Quran.

In their social exchanges, too, Muslims often swear on the Quran to convince those with whom they are having their exchanges that what they are telling them is nothing but the truth. In this way, they succeed in making deals that they could not have made in a normal and straight manner.

If not all, but most religious people are found swearing, whenever it is necessary and convenient for them, on their religious scriptures, as they believe that whatever is written in them is true. They believe that the writers of the scriptures were truthful and as such, they must swear on their writings with a promise to uphold the truth, even if their action is likely to bring them harm.

But, in a situation where it is found that what is written in the religious scriptures is not worth swearing on, and that their writers were liars, how such a discovery is likely to be received by their followers?

This is a question that I have labored on for a few days, and finding no answer to it, I am penning this article with the hope that reaction(s) and feedback(s) from the readers will, perhaps, provide me with the answer I am seeking.

First on the question of Power: As had been the case with our distant forefathers, all the religious people of our time worship and submit to their respective deities, with the belief that they are the most powerful and omniscient beings and that they are their creators. Some among such religious people find the power of their deities displayed to them by statues, rocks, trees and animals etcetera, while others see their power manifested to them by the sun and fire. Others worship their deity, because, in a distant past, he had performed some miracles. His followers still believe that he is going to prove his worth again sometime in future, if they continued, ad infinitum, to worship him.

Yet again, there are a vast number of people who worship a person who, they believe, was the Son of God who let the Hebrews kill him brutally because, by having his blood spilled, He wanted to provide salvation to his followers.

Human worship of power took a new turn when Islam came into being some fourteen hundred years ago. The founder of this religion was none other than Allah Himself, the deity the followers of Islam are required to worship with an indescribable frenzy.

This deity, Allah, disbanded the worship of statues, rocks, animals, and sun and fire etcetera. Declaring that Islam was the only perfect religion of the world, He ordained that all humans, including those who hastened to His following, must bow before, and worship, Him, as He is Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient. To let all humans know that He has awfully powers, He sent to them, through Muhammad -- His best and most trusted friend -- a Book that is called The Holy Quran. In it, He has elaborately described how He controls the Universe and how He can create anything whenever He desires to do so.

Since Muhammad was the most beloved Prophet of Allah, He always monitored his activities. He stood over him when he squatted to relieve himself; he watched what he ate. He even positioned Himself in his bedroom to find out what His friend was doing to his wives, concubines and slave-girls.

One day or night, Allah heard Muhammad having a heated argument with two of his wives. Allah did not take his wives??? tenacity kindly, and without having any consideration for their points of view, He ordered them to seek His forgiveness, despite the fact that they were allegedly guilty of arguing with their husband.

Naturally, the wives refused to oblige Allah. Infuriated by the fact that they were united in their refusal to seek His forgiveness, Allah told them:

If ye two turn in repentance to Him [i.e. Allah], your hearts are so inclined; but if ye back up each other against him [i.e. Muhammad], truly Allah is his Protector, and Gabriel, and (every) righteous one among those who believe, - and furthermore, the angels ??? will back (him i.e. Muhammad) up. (The Quran; 66:4).

The question is: If Allah could not control two women and He needed the help of Gabriel, all righteous Muslims and all the angels, whose number, being astronomical, is unknown, to do the job of one man, what power does He have, and why Muslims should bow down before a deity as impotent as their Allah is?

The second question relates to the Omniscience of Allah: He stated the following in the Quran in connection with its origin:

Nay, this is a Glorious Quran, (inscribed) in a Tablet Preserved. (85:21 & 22).

Most Muslim theologians and scholars take the above verse to mean???and this they have convinced their students and readers with???that before creating the Universe and all that that it contains, Allah wrote down the contents of the Quran on a Tablet and locked it away in a safe place called Baitul Izzat or Baitul Mamoor, which is located in the nearest sky above the Ka???aba. This is the place where the angels congregate to say their prayers. (See Bangla translation of the Quran by Hakimul Ummat Hazrat Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, (R/A), p. 1. One is bound to conclude from the narration of the translator that he must have visited the place and seen, with his own eyes, the existence of the celestial Quran there!)

Allah never parted with its key, as a result of which, no human or jinn, was ever able to touch His most precious possession, thereby helping Him to preserve its original contents. It was this painstaking effort of Allah that allows the Muslim to claim that the Quran is the words of Allah and that despite it remaining on earth for almost fourteen hundred years, not a single word of it has suffered a change on account of the good or evil influence of a human being or of a jinn.

The questions are: When Allah is omniscient and He knows what happened in the past; what is happening in the present and what is going to happen in future, why did He need to record His plans, wishes and orders for mankind on a Tablet?

Did He record His words because He was fearful of forgetting them? If He was, or if He was/is susceptible to forgetfulness, how can such a deity be omniscient, or All-Knowing?

The third question relates to the lies of Allah: Through the Quran, Allah has claimed:

It is not fitting for a man that Allah should speak to him except by inspiration, or from behind a veil, or by the sending of a Messenger to reveal, with Allah???s permission, what Allah wills: for He is Most High, Most Wise. (42:51).

I invite readers to pay a little attention to what has been stated in the above verse so that they can realize that the Allah Muslims worship has an Allah of His own, hence the necessity for Him to obtain the permission of His Allah before He (the Muslims??? Allah) is able to send a Messenger to the humans. While they are pondering over what I have stated in this paragraph, I want to tell them that Allah???s claim that He does not speak to humans directly, personally and without covering Himself is a lie. Here is the proof:

A man was passing by a fully destroyed hamlet. He said [to himself]: "Oh! How shall Allah bring it (ever) to life, after (this) its death?" But Allah caused him to die for a hundred years, then raised him up (again). He (i.e. Allah) said: "How long didst thou tarry (thus)?] He (i.e. the traveler) said: (Perhaps) a day or part of a day." He (i.e. Allah) said: "Nay, thou hast tarried thus a hundred years; but look at thy food and thy drink; they show no signs of age; and look at thy donkey: and that We (i.e. Allah) may make of thee a Sign unto the people, look further at the bones, how We bring them together and clothe them with flesh!" When this was shown clearly to him, he said: "I know that Allah hath power over all things." (2:259).

It is clear from the above verse that Allah used to talk to humans, when doing so advanced His agenda. And He talked to them openly, without hiding Himself behind a veil, for doing so would have created a big problem for men: It would have been impossible for them to know if the person talking to them from behind the veil was Allah or the Satan!

So, when He was in the habit of speaking to the ordinary people on the street, a fact that He later denied through verse 42:51, will I be wrong if I said that Allah is a big time liar?

If Allah lied on one occasion, can I not say that He might have lied on other occasions as well? And if He is a liar, should Muslims take Him as their Protector, and lay down their lives in defense of Him?

And finally: Should Muslims seek help of a Deity who is not only a liar, but also a powerless and, therefore, a worthless Being?