Radical Islam: Islamization At Gunpoint
An acquaintance of mine on Facebook, namely Syed Adnan Hamdani bhai, recently reshared Imran Khan’s much-hyped — according to PTI supporters, a truly spectacular, remarkable — address to all members of the UN assembly. In his speech, he declared that he wanted to talk about four core issues, one of which was Islamophobia. In his speech, the “mighty” Khan proclaimed that the Islamic world as a large group has no radicalization problem in place, and all of the Islamic countries, especially Pakistan, implement a thoroughly moderate version of Islam completely compliant with the holy scripture, Hadith, and Sunnah. Most of these Islamic countries, barring countries like Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria, also claim that their officially implemented version of Islam aligns perfectly with the interpretations presented by all of the former and modern scholars deemed extremely well-read and of moderate disposition. I have long deemed Imran Khan a brazen liar, and his statement, made in front of all of the members of the Security Council, could not have been further from the truth.
The legal frameworks or constitutions of almost all of the Muslim countries, for example, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, most of the other countries in the Arabian peninsula, and Pakistan, as well, have explicitly declared apostasy a crime punishable by death. All of these countries have been forcing their non-consenting adults to sign the government documents — which are mandatory documents to establish a person’s status as a citizen, open bank accounts, and transact with any of the various government departments — by threatening them with dire consequences. Almost all of these governments have been busy getting these signatures from such individuals by threatening them with capital punishment. In short, the non-consenting citizens are given two options in Pakistan and almost all other Muslim countries, either you can declare yourself a Muslim to remain a citizen or you can get hanged. Even when the Holy Book, which the Muslims claim presents the word of Allah to mankind, all of the Hadith, and interpretations by moderate scholars like Dr. Israr and Zakir Naik explicitly state that there is no compulsion in Islam, then how can the implementation of Islam in Pakistan and all of the other countries be deemed compliant with true Islamic values and Hadith. Islam categorically, in unequivocal terms, states that there is no compulsion in Islam, and no adult individual will be forced to accept Islam nor shall one such individual be threatened with dire consequences to make such a person reconsider his stance on the matter. Despite the availability of all of these declarations and interpretations, all of these countries are running despotic, extremist governments that do not give non-consenting adults any choice at all. If a non-consenting person declines to sign the papers, these governments completely ruin the financial prospects of that individual, turn such an individual into an undocumented citizen, and make life a living hell for him or her.
I have been an avowed agnostic in Pakistan for over 20 years now, however, to get my government documents and open a bank account, I had to sign government papers mandating that I declare that I am a devout Muslim and I agree with all of the statements or surahs of their Holy Book and Hadith, as well. Since attaining maturity at the age of 25 or 26, I have never, not once, fully agreed with the way of life promoted by Islam and at least some of the Surahs of their Holy Book. However, under severe duress, I had to sign the papers as the department in charge of issuing the documents, NaDRA, plainly refused to offer me another option. I was forced to sign the documents almost at gunpoint. Now Imran Khan, the mighty revolutionary and intellectual with a degree in spectacularly poor subjects like history and philosophy, goes around telling the world that we have no radical or extremist Islam anywhere in the whole of the Islamic world. What could be more radical or extreme than a government-mandated threat of capital punishment to a group of non-consenting individuals who have been granted complete religious freedom in Islam’s Holy Book, Hadith, and experts’ interpretations as long as they do not incite hatred or bloodshed against Muslims? Pakistan, along with almost all of the other Muslim nations, is busy running a regime that brazenly and brutally violates the rights of non-consenting individuals as government agencies start to threaten these individuals with capital punishment.
To make matters worse for these faux intellectuals like Imran Khan and his cohorts, according to an anonymized poll conducted by Gallup Research Center, approximately 1% of the Pakistani citizens who had obtained their documents by stating they are Muslims declared in that poll that they were either agnostics or atheists. 1 percent of the stated 230 million population translates into approximately 2.3 million Pakistanis at the very least who had to lie on government-mandated papers merely to get their identity documents to remain Pakistani citizens and open bank accounts. To make matters even worse, an absolute majority of Pakistanis would qualify as either non-practicing Muslims or outrightly irreligious Pakistanis just pretending to be Muslims so as not to stand out in a society where certain people keep repeating verses from the Muslim’s Holy Book, the Quran. When it comes to brazen liars like Imran Khan, the situation is so dire that a lot of working adults do not even show up for Eid Prayers, simply forget about the daily prayers or even Jummah prayers. Despite this pronounced lack of interest shown by the masses, the governments in Muslim countries are busy getting these documents by threatening the non-consenting people with capital punishment and horrific consequences.
The government of Saudi Arabia has in the last 5–8 years passed a decree that declares that anybody renouncing Islam and declaring him or herself an apostate would be deemed a terrorist. According to all of the available dictionaries of English, the word terrorist has the following meanings:
“Someone who uses violent action, or threats of violent action, for political purposes.” — Oxford Languages Dictionary
“A terrorist is a person who uses violence, especially murder and bombing, to achieve political aims.” — Collins Dictionary of English Language.
Despite being an avowed agnostic for over 20 years now, I have never, not once, felt the desire to threaten or kill an innocent civilian. I have followed the accounts of some of the agnostics living in Saudi Arabia, and not a single one of them had any desire to kill or become a political figure. Just like me, most of these agnostics and atheists simply want their difference of opinion to be legalized; they want their governments to afford them their basic human right of choosing their religious philosophy without harboring any desire to cause damage at even a small scale, forget about large scale bombings or maimings of people. How can a person’s simple desire to express his utter lack of interest in religion be translated into a desire to threaten or kill people? Most of these agnostics whose accounts I have studied had zero desire to preach their beliefs, as well. How much more preposterous can the decrees issued by Muslim governments get?
Another aspect of this radical Islam is denying mature male members of society their dues and brazenly lying to them that they are not qualified candidates. When it comes to my computing abilities, my expertise in front-end development reached such a high that I was able to test the most sophisticated browsers available in the market using JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. The spectacular grasp of the aforementioned technologies allowed me to find bugs in the implementation of the Opera browser developed by Opera ASA, Norway. At that time, Opera had been busy developing for an insignificant minority of computer users called superusers, or expert users, who like to work with almost all of the features exposed by a system. Opera was at the time the most feature-rich browser in the market, and they had options available to inject JavaScript and custom CSS into pages. While testing the browser, I managed to find at least 8 different bugs in the browser implementation and sent them to Opera’s QA department and got positive responses on all 8 occasions that bugs, or flaws, forwarded by me were legitimate flaws in their implementation. A person with such stellar knowledge of CSS specifications and JavaScript injection could not get a job because the system has been denying me my due rights. That is another part of the radical Islam that exists in Pakistan. Finding bugs in the versions of Opera that were available in 2010, 2011, and 2012 was never deemed an easy task as they were trying their utmost to provide superusers with a truly satisfactory product, yet I managed to find 8 of them, and I still have some of the emails that I exchanged with them on my system.
To further corroborate my spectacular grasp of front-end technologies, I would like to disclose that I have been able to find shortcomings in the CSS and HTML specifications. These specifications that are eventually published by W3C.org are designed, tested, and approved by select engineers working for firms like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Opera. Despite the talent available to W3C, I was still able to find a couple of shortcomings or redundancies in their specifications. Despite such spectacular abilities and a couple of patent pending applications or algorithms to my name, I continue to remain a person who has been struggling to find a job in Pakistan. Another irrefutable proof of what makes the current interpretations of Islam only Radical Islam and nothing else.
In contrast to what Muslim nations are doing to their non-consenting parties, Muslims, across the globe, openly and vociferously keep demanding more religious freedoms and rights without any repercussions from those foreign governments. Despite being spectacularly vocal in all of these European countries, America, and Canada, these Muslims have never faced any dire consequences of any nature at all. The leaders and citizens of those countries let them not only live but earn freely, as well. They are allowed to express their displeasure, freely converse with their MPs, and continue to mingle with other people all the while expressing their displeasure at not having some of the freedoms available to them. Islamic countries, in contrast, start threatening such individuals with capital punishment and complete and utter financial ruin, which Pakistan has caused in my life.
Having proclaimed repeatedly on all international forums that there is no radical version of Islam, Islam does not force people to make any statements in which they do not believe, and there is no compulsion in Islam, when exactly are Muslim countries planning to grant agnostics and atheists the right to openly and explicitly declare on their government papers that they lack the conviction and are not a part of the larger group of believers? If these believers can openly claim that they believe in the veracity of the Holy Books and accept Prophet Mohammed as their religious leader, then when would nonbelievers in Muslim countries get the right to say that they disagree with the teachings of Islam and are essentially agnostics and non-Muslims? When are Muslim countries planning to grant non-believers the basic rights promised in the scripture and Hadith? When are these atrocious abuses of power and authority going to end against non-believers in countries like Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula? Forcing a person to sign a document under duress by making it impossible to open bank accounts and manage money in financial institutions is a gross, gross violation of that person’s basic human rights granted to him or her in the Holy book, the scripture, and various Hadith. Pakistan along with all of the other Muslim countries is a signatory of the UN Charter of Human Rights, and the UN’s charter also grants the citizens of the signatories the right to choose their faith openly. By not granting this right, Pakistan stands in contravention of the UN Charter of Human Rights, as well.
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