Questions to Islam

Questions to the Centre of Islam in Tuebingen

Is Islam reformable? The centre of Islam is on the right track! However, I see many contradictions between the Quran and our constitution.

The Quran and the Hadiths, which form the core of Islam, answer the following questions with „No.” To make Islam in accordance with our constitution, they should have been answered with “Yes.”

Is the Quran allowed to be changed?

Do you believe Muslims and unbelieving humans of equal in rights?

Should humanists and atheists be tolerated by Islam?

Are believers of other religions allowed to worship their gods?

Are men and women of equal rights?

Does Islam prohibit polygamy, circumcision of girls and honour killings?

Are Muslims allowed to apostate from Islam?

Is Islam against capital punishment?

Is Islam against inhuman punishment such as whipping, cutting of hands and stoning?

Is Islam against slavery, racketeering and extortion, wars of robbing, looting and booting?

Is it allowed to criticise Islam, the Quran or Mohammed?

Will Islam renounce terror or contract killing, if it is insulted?

Does Islam allow other religions to erect houses of worship in Islamic countries?

My answer in a reader’s letter on 16.09.2014

Values of the Enlightenment

Dear Mrs K. I do not apply two standards, but in one single letter, I cannot deal with all the nonsense that is written in “Holy Books”. I have concentrated myself on the Quran now, because of its literal explanation, it causes the most trouble at the moment…as it is shown by the political situation.

As you had mentioned quite correctly, the literal explanation of the bible has had disastrous consequences too. In the meantime, Christians had become a bit more peaceful because they went through a time of enlightenment due to criticism. Only by criticism the fatal sentences of the bible, that had been taken literally for centuries too, had been overcome and with it: Wiping of children; hatred towards women; death penalty; stoning for gathering wood at the Sabbath, adultery and homosexuality; cruel penalty and torture; slavery; cruelties towards animals and destruction of the environment; kings by Gods grace; threatening with devil and hell; hereditary guilt and hereditary sin; penis mutilation; disdain of reason and science; superstition; illiteracy; poverty and ignorance; stone age sexual morality; overpopulation; degradation of illegitimate children; intolerance; persecution of people with different religion and unbelievers; fanaticism in the name of the faith; holy wars…etc.

In the meantime, we are living in a semi-secular state, in which the values of the Enlightenment are applied, not the values of the bible, otherwise freedom of thought would not be possible here as it is in Islamic states.