I am so challenged I do not know if I, as a non-Muslim, can get a Fatwah. But what are friends for if they can't get a Fatwah? In the spirit of ecumenism I demand one.

I demand one because I am going to say something that should earn one and I will try very hard to get one. And if I do not get one then I have failed and will have to try again.

Much is made of Islam once having lead the world and then falling into decline 500 years ago and never again rising in any manner or in any form. There is a difference. In the west the sequence of events[1] included developing the courage and the ability to tell the religious authorities to bugger off. Galileo, despite bringing on most of his problems, did in fact invite the Pope to insert his opinions where the sun does not shine. And he lived to tell about it.

Islam has never had the balls to tell its religious authority where to get off. Islam is not alone in that. Countries under Christian Orthodox churches have the same rule as Islam, they follow the dictates of their civil rulers. They didn't accomplish much either save for some great church architecture.

As long as Islam lives under the threat of the power of religious types more powerful than the Pope was in Galileo's time the people aren't going any place.

Let me not overstate the problem. The Middle East has a small fraction of the people who profess Islam. I do not expect accomplishments out of proportion to their numbers. Nor do I intend to make the criteria a very limited set of possibilities such as science or literature or whatever. I do note there is no one who chooses to go to any university in the Middle East if their field of study is anything other than the Middle East.

If countries like Saudi or Kuwait wanted a first class university with some first class department it could certainly finance it. Even some innocuous branch of physics or chemistry it could produce research grants to attract the best minds in the field and produce local PhDs in those fields. It does not. Even Iraq at its secular peak did not lavish funding on a department of archeology. Why not? What better place outside of Egypt is there?

You folks do not give a damn is the answer. You folks have no pride of place or condition. You folks do not do a damn thing to gain international respect and that is because of your Imshallah. God wills it works after you succeed on your own two feet.

You folks have not taken your own destiny into your own hands in five centuries. We are declining? Imshallah. We are a primitive people? Imshallah. Our expressly prohibited religious authorities tell is it is the Will of Allah? Imshallah.

And that is where my demand for a Fatwah comes in. I have earned from those expressly prohibited from existing as civil authority over Islam. Yes, I can read the weasel words saying it is only a religious authority that just happens to, wink wink, nudge nudge, means it applies in the civil realm of life and death. I assure you, I am neither amused or deceived.

And why is it permitted? How can it exist? Because you are educated as children in the Quran first and foremost and often nothing else. And you are taught, contrary to the Quran, that you cannot decide for yourself what it means and says. Worse still, you are given no obligation to understand as best you can and act accordingly.

A long time ago the Pope had no problem keeping the Bible from the people as there was no printing press. As soon as there was a schism occurred in Northern Europe and progress of all kinds followed. Today when everyone can have a copy of the Quran you are told you must yield your private understanding of the words of the Prophet to people who likely never studied anything else and likely have problems with elementary arithmetic.

Of course saying that earns a Fatwah. So does saying the Emperor has no clothes, that he is naked as a jaybird. In the Roman Catholic Church there is a long running joke of asking help on marital problems from a celibate priest who at best knows how to seduce young boys. (I am not anti-Catholic, the same happens in Torah schools.)

Ladies and gentlemen of the Islamic persuasion, get a life outside of those self-appointed nerfbrains[2]. Are there now some more equal than others in Islam? Do the intricate and convoluted arguments of Judaism now rule when the words of the Prophet are simple and clear? Must you pay to support and obey people working to make them appear complicated and obscure?

And as you started doing that five centuries ago after centuries of leading the world and when you were leading the world and had all kinds of personal and diverse understandings of the Quran you were also of Islam, why did you change? Why do you let people stop you from being so again?

Why did you give up thinking for yourselves? Is it to hard to start thinking again? Is it too hard to tell those people who are no better than you in Islam to bugger off?

You folks have to answer that for yourselves as I am facing a similar problem in the US. The political rulers of the US are mostly followers of self-appointed Christian leaders who make some of your leaders look like free thinkers. These people are more primitive than all of Islam as they reject evolution and insist the world was created as it is some 10,000 years ago. And they want to destroy our civilization in the same manner which happened in yours five hundred years ago.

We are facing similar problems. No place in the Bible nor in the Quran is anyone given the power over intellectual inquiry and opinion yet it is assumed as a matter of personal power. And yes I know all the arguments which call my position heresy and -- just by accidental happenstance -- preserve the power and influence of the superior religious authorities. I do not think the arguments which do so are an accident. They are clearly contrived to support a position contrary to the simple fundamentals of Islam.

Politically and socially the answer is not to lynch the bad guys. The answer is to demand more than a Fatwah. That does not require them to think. Require them to explain their decision and to make that explanation so clear even a child can understand it.

In the US the self-appointed christian leaders cannot think further than the next multi-million dollar solicitation claiming God demands they send money. In the US we have forums demanding it but we have little public venue. And that is because the christian fundies have aligned themselves with the Zionists and those who object are condemned by the Zionist cabal. It is the same Zionist cabal, including "christian" zionists, who control the current Bush regime in the US.

So we do have something in common. Although ours is civil, our regime behaves as though they were appointed by God as interpreters of Christianity as it must be applied to the civil world. They were not appointed to apply their quirky religious views but it would not make much difference as our Congress has to approve them is also fundamentalist.

Will the US suffer the same consequences as Islam? Ask the Kahuna. But if it does it will take decades to see simply because of the inertia of the system. Islam did not turn around exactly 500 years ago. It found its own dark ages in different places over about a century. The Christian date is simply the retreat from southern Spain, Andalusia, which was quickly followed by Columbus and the rest is history.

But that is a good marker as Islam could have gotten to the New World first and even if not first could have overwhelmed Spain with its presence but nothing happened. You can see something similar in space exploration where Russia and the US went there first. Both have dropped out of anything very challenging in barely half a century while India and China have announced ambitious programs.

Is that a bad example? Several Islamic countries could specialize in at least one aspect of it such as such as ion drives or even something as lowly as a specific sensor and claim a place. None have.

No Islamic country is known for anything of interest to either the west or Russia meaning Asia to the North or any part of Asia to the East. They don't even have anything of interest in solar power or water purification or anything that might appear of interest to desert countries.

Where in the hell are you? Kuwait, the richest per capita, offers everyone any education they want any place in the world. Where are the results? I have not seen a single result worth mentioning.

What is your problem? What other central problem is there than religion? The west solved charging interest by regulating the interest to use of money and making excessive interest criminal. The west also added bankruptcy and other safeguards if the regulated interest rate went wrong. Why does not Islam do this?

People are the same all over. What are you doing to prevent normal human things from happening? I am not saying you should be good Americans. Americans are legally capitalists. I suggest free enterprise where anyone can do anything without laws benefiting those who can afford to comply with the rules created by those who can afford it. I suggest free enterprise where employers and employees are equal before the law.

I suggest this because that is how the West started. It is a luxury of a developed country to impose restrictions. Infrastructure is going to pollute until it is rich enough to pay to stop pollution. A capitalist country insists that new starts comply with laws they can afford to follow but a new start cannot. That is why free enterprise is preferred over capitalism.

Rather than follow the model of India which chose to be more British than the Brits Islam needs to create is own model. Look where imitating Britain got India. Nearly half a century and they are barely better off than if still ruled by Britain.

But there you are trying to follow the economic models of the West before you can afford it. You are playing "me too" westerners in a game where the ground rules are created in the West and you have no say in them. Because you have no say you cannot be other than followers and appear to be followers to all observers.

What happened to the free and open spirit of the Quran when Imshallah ruled and all else was negotiable? Why did you stop inspiring the West? Are you ever going to return to the heritage Allah gave you through the Prophet?

Did the Prophet say you would be hot shit and revive civilization in the world? Not that I know. Did the Prophet say you would be remembered forever for this. Not that I know.

Did the Prophet tell you all were equal and none superior even in his words in the Quran? Yes.

And your fall came when you decided you were not all equal and let those who claimed to be superior to you rule all if Islam.

Why were you so stupid and why do you let it continue? Why do you not take back your heritage from the Prophet? Why do you let them pronounce Fatwah on me when the Quran requires you to think for yourself? You are equal to all others in Islam. Where is this written?

The US would do equally well to dispose of the christian zionist regime ruling America today. They are violently against biological research as the Luddites they are. They are motivated by something not in the Bible, period. They are motivated by preachers like your religious leaders who have not the slightest understanding of anything outside their primitive theology.

When the Bible and the Quran are silent and people extend it, it is only the authority of people not the authority of God. If God had cared he would have said something. People who pretend to to know what God would have said today are guilty of speaking for God without approval. They will have to explain themselves in the afterlife. In this life we do not have to bother ourselves about them in the least.

If they want to claim to be prophets, fine. Until they do they are equals of all of us and nothing better or worse before God in his revelations through his prophets.

If we are not all equal then who is superior and why? This is the same thing that even the Roman Catholic church calls a well formed conscience. But in Islam there is a difference. No one can claim to be superior to the individual while Islam today has let people claim to be superior. Why did Islam do that?

Gentle reader, I leave you with these observations and questions. I can assure you if you use the internet to search on my name you will find the Jews hate me so bad they hate me from the last pogrom. My view of Islam is far from derogatory.

Consider these questions and issues and answer them. Come to think for yourselves without those people whom you consider superior to you. And learn to deal with your governments which give them authority just so they can control you.

Life fast. Love well. And have a glorious website.

[1] There were certainly other factors including the plagues which are most likely the primary cause as I see it.

[2] Nerfbrain as in nerfball or nerffootball, a harmless imitation of the real thing.

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