Points of Conflict between Islam and other Belief Systems

The prohibition of alcohol and pork in Islam creates a major conflict with other civilizations in which these items are part of daily food and nourishment. The orthodox Muslims regard alcoholic drinks, pork and lard as absolute filth and if they come in contact with any of these, they must wash and cleanse themselves. The reason is simple. There is no reason given in the Qur’an for the prohibition of pork and wine. The mullahs not finding a plausible reason declared these as filthy. At the same time, people who are engaged in a business related to pork and wine such as pig-farming or breweries feel threatened by the growth of Islam as it would make them jobless. The pros and cons of alcoholic drinks are not a matter of personal preferences. A careful examination of the Biblical text indicates that on the night of the Last Supper, Jesus Christ was forced to renounce his opposition to drinking wine and eating bread made with lard (the consumption of which he likened to the consumption of his blood and flesh respectively), and then he was crucified.

Trinity and calling Jesus the son of God is totally unacceptable in Islam. The Qur’an is quite specific in verse 4.171:

O people of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: nor say of Allah aught but truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) an Apostle of Allah and His Word which He bestowed on Mary and a Spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His Apostles. Say not "Trinity": desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is One Allah: glory be to him: (for Exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on earth. And enough is Allah as a Disposer of affairs.

There is an interesting historical conflict between Muslims and Jews. Verses 37:101-107 of the Qur’an read as follows:

101. So We gave him (Abraham) the good news of a boy ready to suffer and forbear.

102. Then when (the son) reached (the age of) (serious) work with him he said: "O my son! I see in vision that I offer thee in sacrifice: now see what is thy view!" (The son) said: "O my father! do as thou art commanded: thou will find me if Allah so wills one practicing Patience and Constancy!"

103. So when they had both submitted their wills (to Allah) and He had laid Him prostrate on his forehead (for sacrifice)

104. We called out to him "O Abraham!

105. "Thou hast already fulfilled the vision!" thus indeed do We reward those who do right.

106. For this was obviously a trial

107. And We ransomed him with a momentous sacrifice:

The Muslims believe that the blessed son was Ismail, the elder of the two sons of Abraham and the event took place near Makkah. On the other hand Jewish and Christian traditions identify the son as Isaac who they believe was the elder and also believe that the event took place near Jerusalem.

The conflict between Islam and Hinduism is also two-fold. Muslims, like people of most other civilizations relish beef, but Hindus worship the cow as a sacred animal and killing or eating the cow is a sacrilege and cardinal sin for them. The fanatic Hindus would not hesitate to kill a man whom they find killing a cow. This happens very often in India and was perhaps one of the considerations of dividing the Subcontinent into two countries. Secondly, idolatry is the very basis of the Hindu religion. Hindu temples are full of deities of all descriptions. Islam strictly prohibits the worship of anything but the Idea of God; there can be no model of God. To a Muslim, a deity is an insult to God and according to the Qur’an and hadith all biblical prophets from Abraham to Muhammad have condemned it.

There are also other conceptual differences between Islamic and secular ideologies. The Muslim temperament regards the selling of rights a breach of honor. Unfortunately, it is a basic tool of western commerce as developed by Jews and Christians. In the Islamic civilization, any law or agreement or decision that leaves any party helpless or without recourse is anathema. Prophet Muhammad strongly resented debt and constant indebtedness is just not acceptable in Islam.

The cosmologists, the evolutionists and the geneticists also seem to be at loggerheads with Islam. Whereas Islam teaches that God alone conceived, designed, engineered and created everything that exists, these scientists insist otherwise. The big-bangers would have us believe that at the beginning of time all matter and energy that now forms the universe was confined into an extremely dense sphere only a few miles across, which exploded with such an intensity that all its mass turned into billions of gigantic balls of fiery gases flung billions of miles across in the limitless universe. They don’t give a damn about where that awesome sphere came from or how the electrons and protons were formed and got arranged into such fascinating orbits, or how the value of the Universal Gravitational Constant got established. On the other hand, there are others who insist that from the beginning there were a lot of clouds of chilly hydrogen gas floating around in the universe which condensed and collapsed by gravitational pull with such intensity that they exploded into very hot stars in which other elements were formed by nuclear fusion. Both groups believe that the energy being generated in stars comes from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen, but they forget that deuterium and not hydrogen participates in fusion reactions. If the stars are formed of deuterium then most of the water in the seas on earth should have been heavy water and hydrogen should have been rare. In reality, the opposite is true.

Darwin’s theory of evolution might have found great intellectual appeal a century ago, but in the computer age the earth seems to have slipped from underneath it. If random mutations can work to create such complex living organisms, there is no reason why they would not work on minerals such as quartz and produce elementary logic circuits in grains of sand that exist in literally infinite numbers on earth. Nobody has yet found a grain of sand with a logic circuit in it formed by random mutations.

Geneticists have tried to replace God with the Genome, which they claim contains the complete code for the development and growth of each living being, without being able to explain the mechanism and dynamics of gene replication.

A broad and open conflict between Islam and Christianity will definitely go in favor of Islam. The better-educated Christians would start studying Islam initially to know the enemy. But as they discover that Islam is actually reformed Christianity, the new Crusaders will find very few followers or supporters. As large numbers of Christians embrace Islam in the more affluent western countries, the leadership of the Muslim world will also shift from the oriental mullahs to the new leaders who would emerge there.

However, the worst enemies of Islam at present are Al-Qaida and Taliban. They are the biggest killers of Muslims and destroyres of their property. They have made every effort to defame and discredit Islam. They have tried to present Islam as a crude and dreadful religion. In fact, they appear ton be a reincarnation of the pre-Islamic Arab clans who tried to destroy it in its infancy.