The misconception that has grown firmly in the Muslim mind that Islam is the only salvation and the best religion on earth. All other religions, including Judaism and Christianity, do not meet the paramount excellence of Islam. According to them, all other religions are either false or corrupted, and Allah has abolished them all to be replaced by the sublime Islam.
According to Muslims, Islam is the best religion because:
- Firstly, Muhammad is the last and the best Prophet
- Secondly, he regulated and mandated five daily prayers;
- Thirdly, once-in-a-lifetime visiting to the Kaaba as a pilgrim in Mecca is compulsory for all able Muslims;
- Fourthly, fasting for entire month of Ramadan;
- And last, but not the least, he mandated payment of zakat (tax) upon the rich for the poor.
It is important to clarify the concept of Zakat, and why it was mandated in Islam, because many ordinary Muslims have not been told the truth about Islam, and, of course, about the Zakat issue. For an ordinary Muslim, Zakat is a very attractive and charming element of Islam that elucidates for them that Islam cares for the poor. But the truth is otherwise. Firstly, 2.5% obligatory charity or Zakat was a tradition amongst Jews, which Muhammad copied after coming in contact with the Jews in Medina. And everyone knows that Muhammad was the all-in-all the king or leader of his clan, and eventually the ruler of the Arabian Peninsula. Muhammad looted trade-caravans, plundered non-Muslim communities, and collected taxes from subdued tribes, not for the poor, but for his own luxuries and of his companions, whom large harems of many wives and concubines (something like prostitutes). After enriching themselves by looting and plundering, Muhammad mandated a small part of this loot, maal-e-ghanimat (ghanimah) for charity tax or Zakat. And Zakat was mainly meant for religious usages, namely building mosques, and conducting jihad, and, or course, probably to help those hard-up Muslims with loaded harem.
So the Zakat was partly to mean for financing the expanding harems of Muslims, as well as for financing Jihad raids to capture inmates, namely concubines or sex-slaves, so as to comfort their sensual and voluptuous desires. This tradition is blessed by Allah in the Quran (Verses 23:5-6). Today's Muslims are in real trouble to reconcile this shameful fact, and they often get easily pissed off when the issue of concubines in Islam is reminded to them. They do their best effort to change the topic or try to change the translation of verses to distort what Quran actually says. They try, desperately, to make excuses to defend the inexcusable behavior of their prophet.
The core of this essay is, however, not about concubines in Islam, but how the Prophet of Islam condemned his own religion and degraded his self-exalted holy book, the Quran.
Psychology of Muslim Men and Women
Apart from above five pillars of Islam, Muslims tell us that Islam is the best religion, because previous religions before Islam were all corrupted. They altered their own Holy Scriptures; their religions came for only their nation, but Islam came for the whole world. Islam will last forever until end of the world, and everyone on this earth will convert to Islam one day. The Quran remains altered, as it had been revealed to Muhammad, and will never be altered until the Judgment Day arrives. Based on such claims and assertions, Muslims claim that Islam is the best religion.
But, if we examine Islam closely based historical facts, Muhammad had said otherwise. There are many recorded ahadiths (saying of Prophet Muhammad), in which he claimed that Islam will be divided into 73 sects, out of which, only one sect will enter heaven; the rest will all be thrown in hellfire. When his companions asked him: Who will be those cursed ones and which one would be blessed, he replied, the hell-dwellers will be among his Ummah, who will recite the Quran and the words of Quran will not go out from their collar-bones. He further proceeded to say that the Jews and Christians had 72 sects, out of which, 71 will go to hell fire and the remaining one will be the blessed one.
Sahih Bukhari
Volume 9, Book 93, Number 527:
Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri:
…"Out of the offspring of this man, there will be people who will recite the Quran but it will not go beyond their throats, and they will go out of Islam as an arrow goes out through the game, and they will kill the Muslims and leave the idolaters. Should I live till they appear, I would kill them as the Killing of the nation of 'Ad."
There are two main points in his sayings: 1) Muslims will be divided into 73; 2) readers of the Quran will be sent to hell-fire.
What do these ahadits (sayings of Prophet Muhammad) tell us? They clearly tell us that Islam will not necessarily save Muslims and that the Quran is not a divine book. Else, how could reciters of this book lead be thrown into hell-fire? Muhammad new what is there in his invented book, the Quran, and that there was no such thing as divine guidance in it. So this was an honest admission by him. Had the Quran been the book of guidance, Muhammad would never say that reciters of the Quran will go out of Islam, i.e. burn in Hellfire.
Another major point in this hadith is that why Islam had to be divided into 73 sects, if it is the best religion? Is it that Islam came for—to divide and make sects among people even more than any other religion? If this is so, how Islam can be the best religion? These are the points that I am putting before Muslims, who keeps bragging that Islam is the only true and the best religion. Had Islam been the best religion, the 73 sects in Islam would be out of context.
The problem with Muslims is that Muhammad's saying regarding the sects in Islam is widely accepted by Muslim Scholars, even by common Muslims. In Muslim countries, especially in Pakistan, every ordinary Muslim knows about these hadiths, and all of them trust it to be true.
Abu Dawud, Book 40, Number 4579:
Narrated AbuHurayrah:
The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: The Jews were split up into seventy-one or seventy-two sects; and the Christians were split up into seventy one or seventy-two sects; and my community will be split up into seventy-three sects.
The funny thing about Islam, the so-called best religion, is that it will have more divisions than Judaism and Christianity. After this, I don’t understand under what logic Muslims can claim that other religions false and Islam, the major sect creator religion, is the best one.
Conclusion
We are fortunate that Prophet Muhammad himself gave tidings to his Ummah that not to worry because Islam will have more sects than the Jews and Christians, and Muslims will go to Hell, because they will recite Quran. It is also very important to note that he didn’t mention Bible or Vedas (Hindu Holy Scriptures) that the readers of those books will be thrown-away into Hell-fire.
There is no doubt that the sayings of Prophet Muhammad confirm, by all accounts, that the Quran is a book of misguidance and Islam is a worse religion than Christianity and Judaism.
Now, I put my views before the readers of this article to let them decide if I am wrong.