WHY DOES THE QUR’AN FORBID
MUSLIMS TO QUESTION ISLAM?
Let us dissect the text and get the meaning out of it. We have the benefit of two reputable translations from the Arabic into English. The terms “O believers” in one translation and “O ye who believe!” in the other should leave no doubt in your mind as to who is in view. In an Islamic piece of literature, you have to conclude that those “who believe” or those who are called “believers” are Muslims. Any non-Muslim would be called an unbeliever in a Muslim piece of literature. That Muslims or people who practice Islam are being addressed is clearly the context. Arberry has translated this as, “question not“. Ali has translated this as, “Ask not questions“. Muslims are being trained not to ask questions about the Islamic faith. Daring to question too deeply is forbidden. There seems to be room open for some questions. Maybe it is okay to ask some shallow questions, or questions for which Islam has developed a seemingly intelligent answer. But it clearly is not okay to ask questions that are too complex. The Muslim is not to ask “concerning things which, if they were revealed to you, would vex you;” is how Arberry has translated it. In other words there exist questions of such depth and magnitude that, if correctly answered, or if the answer were “revealed to you“, would seriously shake your faith in Islam. They “would vex you“. In other words, they would cause your ability to continue holding to Islam great problems. Ali has put it another way. He says there exist questions “which, if made plain to you, may cause you trouble“.
If I have learned all my life that grass is blue, there are questions I could ask which, when answered, would cause that view trouble. Why? Because the answer to those questions leads me by the nose down a trail of evidence to the truth that grass is not blue. The more I study, the more the view I have been learning is in trouble. Indeed, the only way for my teacher to keep me believing that the grass is blue is to discourage me from asking questions, doing independent research, or from digging through evidence. If I asked the right questions and received honest answers to them, I’d have no choice but to side with the evidence and abandon my view of grass being blue.
The author of this Qur’anic passage states that in the same way, asking too many questions may give a Muslim too much knowledge. And too much knowledge will make a Muslim have no other choice but to side with the evidence and renounce Islam. The author cites examples of people in previous generations who left Islam as a result of their inquiring minds.
Arberry puts it one way by translating the passage like this, “A people before you questioned concerning them, then disbelieved in them“. In other words there was a generation of Muslims before this verse was authored. And they asked too many questions, the answers to which caused them to leave Islam. Or as Ali has translated it, “Some people before you did ask such questions, and on that account lost their faith“.
So the act of asking questions concerning the religion of Islam has led to people losing their belief in the religion. And it has caused them to want to leave the faith. In order to prevent people from leaving Islam, the command is given to the Muslim not to ask questions at all. Keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Do not seek information or truth. This is not education, this is indoctrination.
Have you ever watched a cop show on TV? Or maybe a murder mystery on the big screen? Often times you will see a police officer and his or her partner investigating a crime. They go into the neighborhood in which the crime occurred and begin to ask questions. They poke around. They gather evidence. They interview witnesses. They are preparing the evidence so that the District Attorney or prosecutor can bring the suspect up on charges.The perpetrator usually sees the police involved in the investigation and gets upset. He usually tries to interfere in the investigation so as to prevent the facts from coming to light. This is because he has committed a crime that he does not want to become public knowledge. The criminal does not want the truth to come out. He does not want to be prosecuted in an open court and be made to explain himself before a jury of his peers and the other citizens who are observing the trial. The plot always thickens when the criminal begins to plot acts of violence in order to shut the mouths of the witnesses who could potentially bring forth the most damning testimony.
Islam operates just like the criminal in these detective shows and movies. As a religion, it holds together by the thinnest of strings. You have a pagan moon idol from a nomadic desert tribe. You have an immoral professing prophet who robbed, looted, murdered, and raped in the name of this moon idol and taught his followers to do likewise. You have primary source documents (The Qur’an and The Hadith) which are so full of contradictions, errors, and just plain stupid teachings that it boggles the mind that anyone could be in a psychological or intellectual condition to put two cents into them. If anyone begins a critical examination of these things, the thin string which holds this all together begins to unravel. If freedom to examine evidence and free independent thought exists, people will see the facts and leave Islam. The only way to prevent the mass exodus from this religion is to prevent them from asking any questions.
Sometimes the preventative method is by intimidation. In other words, by making it “taboo” to even inquire. You will be viewed by everyone around you as lacking their superior level of faith. You will be viewed as an inferior outcast. Other times force is used in order to silence questions. From the leadership threats of physical violence in order to keep a person’s mouth shut are often found in Islamic communities around the world. Often times the failure or the unwillingness to blindly accept Islam without question will result in death.
The answers to the questions of a factual examination will provide Muslims the motive to renounce the Islamic faith. But if the questions are squashed before even being asked, then the possibility of finding the answer goes away. Hence, the person stays blind and ignorant. And they stay trapped in Islam.
We ask the question: If Islam is really the truth, then why does it forbid Muslims from even asking questions about it? What is it afraid of?
If you are a salesperson selling a product, and the product has good quality, you encourage potential buyers to test it. You encourage them to examine it. You answer all of the questions and objections that are raised by the prospective customer. You are happy to have the product put under the microscope because when it passes with flying colors, it makes that much stronger of a case as to why the person needs to buy it. You so believe in the integrity of the product that you are confident that the outcome of any examination or question & answer session will result in a sale.
The only person who would prevent you from asking questions about what they are trying to get you to accept is a person who is embarrassed by the product they are selling. This is the mark of a person who is selling a product that has something to hide. This is a person who does not believe in what they are selling. They know it has problems.
Here is an illustration. Islam is like an old used car with an oil leak. It needs a tune-up. The brakes are bad. There are a host of problems which hinder the car’s ability to do its basic job. When the salesperson is seeking to sell it to you, he focuses on the fact that the body is in good shape. He focuses on the fact that the interior is leather. He focuses on the new CD player and sound system. But when you ask specific questions about the actual mechanical soundness of the vehicle, the salesperson will not address them. As a matter of fact, the salesperson points to a sign hanging on the wall which says that it is against the sales lot’s rules for you to even ask these things. Such questions are banned at the dealership.
As a potential buyer, would not certain alarms be going off in your mind at this point? You are not very likely to buy the vehicle because you can see that the seller himself is afraid to back up the reliability of the car.Islam is the used car. The Imams, Mullahs, and Muslim apologists / scholars are the salespeople attempting to get you to buy into it. They will not answer questions. As a matter of fact, you are forbidden to ask. You are to receive by blind faith. That a religion forbids questions and honest inquiry about what it teaches and why it teaches these things should be a red flag that all can clearly see.Truth is never afraid to be examined. But much the opposite, truth loves to be examined and questioned because the questions themselves provide the opportunity for the view to be presented.
A religion that forbids its followers to examine evidence and demands blind obedience and loyalty because the evidence would make someone leave it is not worth being involved in. Even the leaders in Islam know that the religion contradicts brute facts and tangible evidence.
It reminds me of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The slave owners would not allow the slaves to learn how to read. The fear was that if the slaves were educated and could read, they’d gain the ability to communicate with each other in writing and organize a revolt. Keep them uneducated so that you can keep them in bondage. Islam is the slave master, and the Muslim is the slave. The demon who revealed the religion to Muhammad wants to keep people uneducated so that they can stay in bondage to the false god, the false prophet, and the false book.
If Islam cannot survive critical examination, then it does not deserve to survive at all! If it were the truth, Muslims would gladly throw it into the marketplace of ideas available for consideration in the free world and let it be examined right alongside every other worldview that is out there. They would let it sink or swim based upon its own merits, not based on dogmatic declarations of it being wrong to even think of testing it, nor based upon intimidation or threats of physical violence against dissenting voices. But since it has no merits of its own, but rather is contradicted by the evidence at every point, they must keep it from being examined or tested at all cost. Otherwise the light of scholarship and of truth will shine into the darkness of Islam to reveal how empty it actually is.
That it won’t allow for reasoning and independent thought and critical examination is strong evidence that Islam is not true. And deep down inside, Muslims know it. They would like to keep you from knowing it as well.
July 9th, 2007
Brian James Shanley
