the original post has been edited http//www.free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=5614.msg83646#msg83646

Myr writes

Salam Maasadi, all,

I think you are among those who consider the "government studies" to be the bible. That's the problem with these reports. they are completely disconnected from the reality. We see all kinds of "studies" done by bureaucrates who are most of the time unaware of what is done on the field. My experience is not the only experience, I have been working with doctors, nurses, and social workers on the field who had the same observation and went through a same experience, food is NOT the issue in this country. You wrote "Obesity is not related to caloric intake"? so if I follow your logic we should all be obese given the stress amount to which most of people are subject nowadays. Seriously, I'd like to see those "reports". Obesity is a life style before anything else and is directly linked to the calories people swallow everyday, I wonder therefore why most of them have to go through a surgery to reduce the size of their stomach if it is not related to the amount of food. Someone has to be really naive to believe in these "reports" if I can call them "reports". But anyway, I think I said what I have to say because I feel we have to be fair when we report an issue. It is not Quranic to point to a country for shortcomings while the reality is completely different. Peace. Myr.

Walikum salam

Deriving conclusions from your personal experience is restricted to the narrow non-randomly selected group you have had experience with. Generalizing from that is unscientific and quite erroneous. The studies that I quote have been replicated. You can also arrive at a similar conclusion using living wage analysis. Denying that is denying fact. The article does not conclude that there is worse poverty in the US compared to Nigeria, it does conclude however that as a factor of GNI the US poverty figures far outnumber that of Nigeria and show a system that has failed and is quite inhumane where wealth makes a circuit only among the rich. Unless you can challenge this assertion scientifically, giving personal experience stories is no proof just like the personal experience that Christians present as proof for their theology.

Food insecurity in the US is a reality. Many studies including governement studies have concluded the same. You cannot use your personal experience of being a volunteer and then generalize to the entire country. That is just absurdly unscientific. Obesity furthermore is not related to caloric intake but to stresses faced, according to many studies as well. The official poverty figures and how they are caluclated would lead to similar food insecurity conclusions.

Jihadists & the US Elite Anatomy of a farce

In order to create an enemy to justify their many politico-economic motives, the US elite have blown the reality of these ragtag "Jihadists" way out of proportion, given them worldwide media coverage and presented them as equal opponents. This has not only created an image among the poverty stricken masses in the ?third-world? of a Robin Hood like group, battling an empire, it has provided direct legitimacy when the US treats them as a foe it is on an official war with (on the mass media). The "Jihadists" and the American elite thus have a symbiotic relationship with each other, they mutually feed and grow in their perversions based on each other?s actions.

Islam is not described by what its alleged followers do or do not do; you can find them doing anything under the sun. Rather it is described by what is contained in its only authoritative text, the Quran. The agenda-driven corporate media picks on the acts that it can capitalize on while ignoring the vast majority of the rest of the acts of Muslims. That is like saying that America is defined by the acts of the rapists that rape, attempt to rape or sexually molest around 1 million women a year in this country . . We wouldn?t use that criteria for the latter case but use lower numbers and instances to describe the former. That is the nature of subjective agenda-driven reporting. Islam had as its source from the beginning the Quran. Other items, like the hadith whose volume and content grew with every succeeding generation, is not its source, and can never be its historical source. The political/economic elite in order to justify their perversions attributed them by hook or by crook to the prophet so they could justify them to the people because religion was the most influential institution in society.

Take the present-day case of how the US media presents Muslim women. As fact, women in Western societies are oppressed, as much or more (given social indicators of rape and domestic abuse) than Muslim women (who are oppressed more by their traditions than anything Islam or the Quran teaches). The West makes a big deal (for propaganda reasons) of the "Muslim veiling of women" (even though there is no such ruling concerning that veil in the Quran) yet it is busy veiling its own women by making everything about them invisible (about their personalities) both to themselves and to others, except their physical appearance judged by male standards of attractiveness. If all that is valuable about you is your physical appearance, everything else about you is effectively veiled from social consciousness, from others and from yourself. Social psychologists describe personality development similarly The ?looking glass self?; you see yourself as others see you.

In order to understand the US elite's methodology of the "war on terrorism", let us move back to the 'cold-war' era The Soviets lost 20 million in World War II, defeating Hitler, the US lost less than a fraction of that, after the war, an ally was transformed into a potential foe with which a continuous war, with no end was to be fought (note the similarity with the Jihadists in this transformation, regardless of divergent philosophies). This "Cold War" not only ensured US domination and hegemony over the globe, gearing its economy on similar war footing, the end was known in advance to these Neo-Colonials that the Soviets were in no position to outspend or outsmart them. They affectively altered the agenda of the Soviets to international militarism, rather than what they should have been concerned with at home, transforming them into a bureaucratic monstrosity of state capitalism. The Soviets thus lost the 'cold war' to capitalism at the very start. They became a tool to strengthen global capitalism with and little else.

After World War II, when the allies ganged up against the Soviets, having lost so many, their reactionary nature was to be expected. The structure that existed in most areas of the world gave a greater advantage to the former colonizers and the new hegemonic power, the US that consolidated these spoils. The US and the Soviets were unequal opponents but not as unequal as the rag tag ?Jihadists? are compared to the US. The "war on terrorism" is a bigger farce than the "cold war", playing out in the grand theatre of the 21st century world. Lives will be lost, personalities and 'realities of existence' distorted, and much human potential squandered, all caused by a numerically tiny power-elite following their narrow agendas backed by an ideology that considers the vast majority of humanity, disposable goods.

The 'Cold War' helped the US elite, the commanders of the capitalist world system to more effectively install a Neo-Colonial setup and combat and contain the desires of the majority world to free themselves from their domination, while benefiting immensely from the militarism that resulted, towards which the US economy was geared, and still is. World War 2 was pivotal in this form of a ?permanent war based economy?. Before that, these elite were forced to bring socialist principles into the working of their economy, which was very distasteful to them. There was no communist threat to the US; there was a threat of the US losing its hegemony (not to the Soviets but to individual countries) and its domineering economic standing if peace was allowed to prevail. Thus peace was not tolerated.

Just like the CIA played a crucial role designing propaganda to convince the Afghans of the countryside that fighting the Soviets was a sure ticket to heaven and in their interest, these elite are now using this "war on terror" farce to steal massively from their public by a paranoid atmosphere of fright. According to the 2006 US budget, the government?s discretionary spending on defense, almost $450 billion, is greater than its discretionary spending on all other programs combined. Add to this discretionary spending the non-discretionary part and you come up with a whopping $800 billion figure, according to some calculations of a line-by-line analysis of the budget.

9/11 has been highly publicized, used and abused by the US elite for their many motives, there is no threat from "political Islam" either or any external enemy. Factually 9/11 is a non-issue compared to even the murders committed in the US every year that exceed those killed in 9/11 by over 10,000. There is certainly no threat facing the US comparable to the scale of destruction it brings upon whole countries or the chokehold it has placed upon the majority world through its economic domination. Only fools would believe that a country (US) with the most massive military power in the world is "threatened" by a few people roaming around in caves brandishing ak-47s and (world war 2 vintage) RPGs, yet this farce has been sold not only to the US public but world wide as poor countries busy themselves to fight a "war on terror" on the behalf of the US while ignoring their overwhelming domestic problems. We must reject this lie, and reject it in totality.

How do we gauge social system failure? Sociologists understand that an ideal social system with its network of institutions, held together by a culture, functions to fulfill needs of a society. When it fails to meet those basic needs, we can conclude that it has failed or become dysfunctional. With this premise in mind, no "failure" of any system can be worse than the fact that in the USA, 1% of the population controls more wealth than the rest of the 99% combined which means that ?life chances? are inherently unequal.

No failure can be more complete than the fact that in the wealthiest country on earth over 82 million people at any point during two years; if they suffer catastrophic illness will die or seriously injure themselves because they do not have health insurance (http//www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/heal...).

No failure of a system can be as obvious as the contradiction in its operation regarding need fulfillment, when farmers are paid to destroy food products for the sake of price and where tens of millions of tons of food are wasted every year, and food products dumped overseas, putting foreign farmers out of business (http//www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/...), there exist over 38 million that suffer from chronic food insecurity (in the US), according to USDA reports (http//www.frac.org/Press_Release/1...).

No failure can be more obvious than the fact that in a nation where the rich own several million dollar homes, there are over 7 million (according to some estimates, in any given year) roaming the streets in the dead of winter as homeless persons (http//www.cohhio.org/resources/how...). No failure of any system can match the failure of a very wealthy country, parading as ?free-market? heaven, a paragon of care and sensibility, that ignores its masses in this manner while enriching the very few that dominate its economic and political institutions.

Fear and profit are perpetually related in the capitalist world, dominated by the US elite. If it is not fear of terrorism, it is bird flu they want you to be scared of. All along behind this fear are big contracts in the hundreds of billions, while the masses in the world are dying everyday by the tens of thousands due to poverty related causes, which are exacerbated by the real consequence that these fear tactics lead to. Destroying millions of chickens to combat bird flu, on whim of disease, will put tens of thousands of people whose livelihood depends on them on the brink of starvation. Forcing countries to alter their agendas from focus on domestic issues to fighting a ?war on terrorism? has similar consequences.

Fear and its implied protection are always focused towards the future in such a system, while people die and live miserable lives today. And how does the system control the fallout of all this fear mongering? It blames the victims, the poor, for their own misery and hooks them up on drugs and other addictions that generate wealth for the rich or show them fictitious visions of a heaven they will never attain, through the corporate media. Here is our world as it exists today, going fast to hell with the American elite as its guide. They are the ones who declare wars for economic and political reasons, justified by images of "ideals" that don?t exist even at home, yet never fight the wars themselves but send most from the lower socioeconomic classes (as is the bulk of the US military) to do their fighting for them. They reap the benefits of such wars while killing other people?s children. The people at the receiving end of these wars are ruthlessly butchered in barbarism that equals any practiced by Hitler. Nuking civilian cities in Japan, napalming civilian villages in Vietnam, using white phosphorous in Falluja, making sure that the Afghans of the countryside fought the U.S cold war with the Soviets to the last man (losing over one million) and then abandoning them, forcing the vast majority in the world, billions, to live in debilitating poverty while concentrating wealth among their tiny group, punishing countries with back breaking sanctions that kill the most powerless members of their society, how did Hitler overshoot this barbarism?

A big deal is made of the US media?s independence by citing its criticism of the Vietnam war. We have to look a little bit deeper (at the results) to uncover the media?s motivations at the time. Did the US elite and their media apologize and change their foreign policy after Vietnam and the well reported atrocities of the US in that country? Did they acknowledge that the war was an inhumane, barbaric endeavor? Not at all, in fact even today this media has not apologized on behalf of the elite look at what the media did in this past election. It picked up on Kerry?s opposition to such atrocities in that era and labeled him unpatriotic. It then went further by giving the "swift boat veterans" excessive coverage to prove the same point. Why the media opposed the Vietnam War towards the end was not because of any independent moralistic considerations but because elite agenda was turning against the war, and not because of any popular movements, reporting about which is always circumscribed by a wider political and economic agenda.

Let us look at Abu Ghraib that is often presented to us as showing the neutrality of the US media how has the media presented it? It was presented as isolated cases of individuals and not something that had institutional precedent that required institutional restructuring. The people at the top whose policies led to such atrocities, none of them took consequential responsibility. The reporting of these incidents also fulfilled another function for the US elite, it sent their "private" message, based upon their stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, that they consider all these Muslims hold sacred to be violable (and worthless) Part of their psychological warfare. The recent cartoons of the prophet and how the media covered reactions to them, can be seen in a similar light. The American media has two duties to fulfill on behalf of the corporate elite, unlike the media of most ?third-world? countries who might have direct coercive state control

1. Domestic agenda to pacify the masses
2. International agenda to justify empire.

Merely because control has shifted from explicit, coercive control to implicit bureaucratized (and cultural domination based) control, makes the emergence of so called "whistle blowers" an effective propaganda tool in how business is conducted by this media and the US elite and their system of manipulation. Whistle blowers and their coverage by the media, is nothing more than propaganda. If it was anything more then their ?whistle-blowing? would produce results that had institutional consequence. Has there been any debate in the mainstream media stating that the Iraq war is barbaric and illegal, after the reporting of Abu Ghraib, or Guantanamo? None whatsoever. So what purpose has that reporting or such ?whistle-blowing? fulfilled? Every night on this media, we still hear about "Mission Iraq", "Iraqi Freedom", democracy and all the other meaningless slogans that are pushed on propagandized audiences to evoke predetermined psychological responses. It has achieved zero change in the US foreign policy or in the structure of US institutions.

Poverty in the U.S Indicators of a failed system The USDA report, Household Food Security in the United States, 2004, says that 38.2 million Americans live in households that suffer directly from hunger and food insecurity, including nearly 14 million children. That figure is up from 31 million Americans in 1999. Out of this 38 million that are classified as ?poor? in the US, most households are below the poverty threshold for a four-person family unit with two children of $19,157 as revealed by ?living wage analysis?, which puts the living wage above $8 an hour based on this threshold, while the actual federal minimum wage is slightly over $5 given current dollars and a dollar less given constant dollars (http//www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774...). So, if poor households have two TVs in the US (as Heritage Foundation authors Robert E. Rector and Kirk A. Johnson allege to ?prove? that the ?US poor? are not actually poor), how many meals will those two TVs buy if need be? And if one person in that "household" has to work and needs a car that takes up a huge chunk of his income (as car payment, gas and insurance) leaving very little for all else, what can he or she do given a public transport system next to nothing in most US cities? Or if the "household" cancels their $40 a month cable subscription, how many meals will that buy to make them "non-poor". If over 38 million are facing food insecurity in the US, it matters little if they have access to durables (which by definition last a while) like TVs that cannot even be traded in for three days of food, for a family of four. Robert Rector and Kirk Johnson are using distraction indicators; these are not real social indicators of well-being. The fact is that the poor given all human development indicators, even access to life (since they die at three times the rate and suffer from diseases much more than those above the poverty line) suffer tremendously.

Given the amount of wealth and resources used by a small percent of this country (the top 1% commanding more wealth than the rest of the 99% combined), the 13% (officially) poor, which translates into tens of millions is a huge number. Above this huge number is another huge number that is extremely poor and living on the margins. It is an ongoing system of corruption and concentration and waste, where the rich get richer and the poor, poorer. There is everything wrong when the official poverty figures place over 38 million (and the unofficial almost double that) in a country of extreme wealth. (The official poverty figures are calculated as adequate food times three, the real figures would include things like rent, actual fuel costs, health care, proper education etc, which easily doubles the official figures; (http//www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/...)

I would argue the poor suffer even more in the US compared to other countries, due to greater relative deprivation, poverty amidst plenty and the breakdown of tradition and family to add to it. Empirically, as a factor of GNI per capita, adjusted for Purchasing Power, the official US poverty percent is much worse than any country of the world. For example, in Nigeria the official poverty rate is around 58%, which is around four and a half times more than the US official rate, but the GNI per capita of Nigeria is 45 times less than the US. We can repeat this exercise for any country of the world and conclude the same. These figures are an official disgrace and signify the failure of a system that advertises its fictitious successes 24/7 and enjoys near total cultural hegemony.

M. Asadi

A common argument used by supporters of U.S. global hegemony, runs as follows the U.S. as a human society has ?human? shortcomings, the faults that are all too "human", it might not be perfect (they say) but it is still ?better? than most other societies around the globe. There are several problems with this line of argumentation. First, it erroneously assumes that societies are mere sums of individuals that inhabit them. The total, society, is greater than the sum of its parts. Problems of societal structure might not be problems of individual members that inhabit those structures. Such reasoning confuses public issues, things that have to do with social structure and institutions that transcend individuals, with personal troubles of individual character. Take the example of marriage Inside a marital relationship, personal problems might exist between the couple which may lead to divorce, but when almost half of all marriages attempted end in divorce in a society, it has to do with the social institution of marriage and family, how it is changing and how other institutions are affecting or causing such change, in short it is a issue involving social structure.

Arguments that seek to excuse social issues as mere ?human shortcomings? assume, as a premise, that what is happening in the various countries of the world is happening in vacuum-like conditions, where all nations are separate and compete fairly based upon merit and goodwill. They also assume that history is being made in the U.S. by the will of the people. Both these assumptions are incorrect in a capitalist society, when wealth, power and administrative control of the major institutions of society becomes enlarged and concentrated, the decisions (that have enormous consequences) are made by a microscopic minority that controls the wealth and the machinery of the various institutions. Further, the decisions of this power elite have global ?life and death? consequences for hundreds of millions; they are not limited by geographic boundaries of countries. For example, distributional deprivation caused by the flow of enormous wealth from the poor countries towards the rich industrialized countries, in the form of massive military contracts together with debt dependency (and structural adjustments by the money lending institutions like the IMF and World Bank), result in over 40,000 preventable deaths every single day, according to UN statistics.

Further, the public in the U.S. is not making history; it has become the utensil of history makers the power elite. As part of the technique used by these elites for legitimating their rule, are the use of morally loaded master symbols in the form of slogans promoting democracy and freedom. These slogans are fed to an otherwise starving world through their domination of the public-relations apparatus. However, the reality of the situation in the U.S. is that there is no substantive democracy. A highly bureaucratized social system molds and guides peoples aspirations and choices, thereby totally restricting their freedom. As ?cheerful robots? (see http//robots.asadi.org) they work the best parts of their lives in the corporate world thinking, due to bureaucratic adaptation and media programming, that life spent in an office cubicle is heaven on earth. In their free time they mass consume based upon desires that have been insinuated into them by a massive advertising industry.

That this ?mass society? plays no part in the decisions that affect them is evident by major decisions being made by un-elected elites that populate the president?s cabinet, influential policy boards and think tanks. The fact that institutional mechanisms ensure that major decisions, policy parameters, campaign issues, campaigns and the people who will compete are predetermined before any voting takes place shows that the ?mass society? is a mere spectator or forced actor in this ?democracy? facade. The ability to mobilize resources for effective interest group formation as well as access to power networks for successful lobbying are dominated by the wealthiest. Supplementing this is the fact that the few that diligently vote among the U.S. public are given extremely restricted choices choices restricted by a two party monopoly, not much different than a one party dictatorship, and further restricted by being structured through mass-mediated information controlled by privately owned media.

How else can you explain the fact that a microscopic minority, 1% of the population of the U.S., controls greater wealth and resources than the rest of the 99% combined, with little or no objection? It does not require great intellectual skills to conclude from this that the resulting access to "life chances" and success in a society based upon ?purchasing power? is inherently unequal. In this context, consider the case of the highly advertised ?freedom of speech? Five large corporations dominate the media in the U.S. that reaches tens of millions. These corporations are ?for profit? businesses and as such have highly structured filters that manage the way in which news is selected and reported.

As Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman document in their book Manufacturing Consent, bias in favor of government and big business is structured into the news media by a few large bureaucracies subsidizing the content of what is used as ?certified? news by this media. It is also structured by the over whelming use of ?experts? by them for their commentaries, which are or were (a disproportionate majority) on the payroll of government or big business. In addition to this, their dependence on the ?market? for advertising, which is purchased by big corporations- and the fact that they themselves are ?big business? or their parent companies are corporate giants like General Electric etc., results in ?self management? and uniformity of output. The product that is produced by them as a result, is scientifically predictable within a ?propaganda model?, in that it seldom deviates from the official/corporate economic, social and political agenda. Thus, only the elite have access to millions by domination of the media airwaves, while the rest of us reach almost no one and have no part in the production of information. The First Amendment without information is not of much use. When the information that the public receives is being supplied by the mass media, controlled by a few, the First Amendment (to the U.S. constitution that guarantees freedom of expression), is by fact and practice rendered null and void.

How do we reclaim our freedom in the face of these overwhelming social forces of control and domination generated by the elite? The first act of emancipation from this condition is to recognize it for what it is, total enslavement. It is an act of understanding the fact that the vast majority of humankind in the world today have no say or control over major decisions, economic, political or military, they are mere spectators. They are acted upon but cannot act, or when they do act, their actions have no structural consequences for their societies or the world. At any point when we recognize the true nature of our oppression and develop ?human consciousness? (not merely class consciousness), we are forced to come to terms with the fact that as individuals we cannot change the social structures that exist in our societies and the world system. However, we can surely learn how these structures function and consciously reject them. In this act of rejection is the first step towards eventual global change.

How can one reject the rising tide of bureaucratic control and not be marginalized in the process? As individuals in a capitalist society, we are objectively among a crowd, the ?mass society? but still subjectively alone (as psychological fact). It is in the emotional void that exists in capitalist societies that the advertising industry finds its effectiveness as cultivator of interests, seeking to create mythic symbols of affinity between the consumer and material objects that are being offered for sale. An alienated individual, with weak family and group ties, makes the ideal consumer- the type sought by corporations for maximum profitability. Once a person?s ?inner world? awakes, reason replaces material desires insinuated into us from outside, consciousness develops and as a result, life is experienced more fully compared to the narrow existence offered by mere consumption. The corporate elite, whose mode of production is geared towards profit maximization and not human need fulfillment, are mortally afraid of the emergence of a conscious society. This act of rejection is by itself a magnificent victory over their domination.

The American power elite are killing the world, directly through wars and indirectly through perpetuating underdevelopment upon the world by implicit control of the state and military institutions of developing countries. It is no secret that the profits of the American corporations depend upon access to cheap resources, cheap labor and the inability of the poor countries to manufacture what they buy at ?monopoly price? from these industrialized countries. Their practice, as objective fact, of relocation and domination of global trade empirically reveals this relationship. If the poor countries developed and started manufacturing products that would compete with the products of these corporations, they would go out of business and the economies of the over-developed countries, as centers of power, would collapse. Operating with a specific worldview, driven by the profit motive, in control of the world?s wealth and the apparatus of public relations, these power elite ensure that their decisions will prevail over all others. As a result human misery perpetuates generation after generation. We must begin by rejecting their official myths and distractions. In this first act lies our declaration of independence as a global human community.

Muhammed Asadi

Salam aleykum.

following is an excerpt from my book The Unifying Theory of Everything (2002)

I remember sitting on the big recliner in the guestroom of my grandparent's house, with the Koran sitting on my lap. I had recently discovered several translations of the book in my father?s closet. Coming from a fairly religious family background, I had been taught about the basics of traditional Islam and about the Koran being a revered, Holy Book, which only a few people could grasp in knowledge and understanding. The contents of the Book were thus always a mystery to me. By discovering these translations, I had unlocked the cave of wonders, so to speak.

I had expected to find magical material in the Koran. What I knew of religion, in the society that I grew up in, was mostly magic and awesome miracles cloaked in a few sprinklings of logical arguments. In the weeks and the many years to follow, I was to discover otherwise.

One of the first things that strike any reader of the Koran is its simplicity of expression and consistency. The thoughts are laid out one by one; they overlap bearing no temporal limitations, due to the unique nature of the book, contrary to books produced by human minds. It is here that people get confused and give up on the Book. Once you get a grasp of the trend of the Koran, its consistency of words and thoughts, you see a unity not seen in any book produced by the human mind . This aspect of the Koran stunned me very early on as I progressed in my reading.

I was 13 when I first discovered the Koran in English. Part of my motivation to read it was to get some ?spiritual? benefits that I was told its reading would bring, rather than any lesson or meaning that might be useful. I remember reading it everyday, ten pages, fifteen, and twenty. It amazed me. I was in the eighth grade then and was very interested in biology, having aspirations of becoming a doctor someday. I was surprised at all the references to the creation of man, the animals, the flight of birds, aging and death and the predictions about people?s psychology and behavior, all linked to an understanding of God and his message for humanity. It made a lot of sense to me. It was as if the book was ?speaking? to me. The ideas were simple to understand, and as I discovered later on, very powerful and challenging, considering the time they were penned down. It was after those few initial verses (ayah) that amazed me, that I realized that to fully understand the wonders of this book; I needed to study what the experts were saying about natural processes discussed in the Koran. This book was not magic. It was simple, straightforward and to the point. Somehow it communicated with me unlike any book that I had read before.

I remember one day at school being puzzled by the remark my Biology teacher made when someone asked him to link the Koran with what we were learning about human reproduction in class. He remarked, ? Religion and science are two separate things which should never be brought together, they are meant to be apart. It is not right to try to mix them.? He then proceeded to quote something from Bertrand Russell?s book, Why I am Not a Christian , about how the Bible says something about the hare, chewing cud when in reality it does not.

I asked myself that day, just as I ask people today who make such a comment If you believe that God made us, then He should know His creation. If you believe that the Koran is God?s word then when it discusses human creation or reproduction or any other natural phenomena, it should not make errors. Simple straightforward logic demands that. Do not say that the Koran cannot contain scientific facts and then also say, in the same breath, that it came from the maker of all things. Of course, I also add today, that the Bible is not the same thing as the Koran, neither do the two have the same author.

In 1986, my father started getting seriously ill with Motor Neuron Disease. He was getting slowly paralyzed, so I had to sit long hours with him to make sure that he didn?t hurt himself or fall down. I remember doing a lot of reading in those long hours and with that reading I made a lot of connections in my mind. I read through multiple versions of the Bible, biographies of Jesus and Muhammed, translations of the Koran and studies on comparative religion. That period was really a blessing in disguise for me even though I did a lot of complaining. It was during those days that I discovered Maurice Bucaille?s book titled, The Bible, The Koran and Science (1982). This became the foundation work for me in my studies on linking of scientific facts with description of natural phenomena found in the Koran.

How a French surgeon, a complete stranger to the Koran, could on his first reading see that something amazing was going on in the book, similar to what I had discovered as a young teenager, seemed too much of a coincidence to me. I took Bucaille?s work and built upon it. I expanded it to include the social sciences and social issues based on empirical social research done by professionals. My previous writings, Koran A Scientific Analysis (1992) and The Message of Islam and the Qur?an (1995) reflect some of that work.

In 1990, I transcribed in booklet form, a video lecture titled, The Amazing Qur?an .

That lecture had a profound impact on me. For the first time to my knowledge, the Koran was presented as a theory that offered falsification, a truly scientific theory. My initial publication of five hundred copies at an obscure printing press, sold out in a couple of months. The booklet became well known all through the Islamic world and went through three separate publications in the first year. It made its way to a publishing company in Saudi Arabia and from there it reached Gary Miller in Canada. Now, it is well known all through the Islamic world and has inspired numerous web sites. The chapter in this book, Scientific Revelation, is modeled after that booklet.

As my reading of the Koran continued, I was discovering for myself the amazing nature of the Book. I was hearing opinions that people have and have had about God and society, and I was thinking and reasoning with myself. I was well aware of the skepticism that people have and that I had, consciously or unconsciously about God and religion. That idea of rejection is always there waiting for an opportunity to strike us in the face and demand an answer, at the worst possible moment, be it a moment of joy or sorrow. It is within all of us, the suggestions of Shaitan, the culturally inspired rebel ?inside? every person. Whatever you want to call it, be it the whispers of the Id, according to Freud, or the suggestions of Shaitan, according to the Koran, it is true that all of us have been confronted by thoughts of denying at one time or the other.

I know of people who would not read the Koran for the very reason that this idea of denying God would find grounds to stick in their minds, as they think the book will be primitive nonsense. They think that they will find some mythical religious ?mumbo jumbo? in the Koran, which will fuel their skeptical side, and so they will become irreligious. They want to protect their belief by covering up anything that might give an edge to their skeptical side. What they are unaware of though, is that if they take that route, they do not have any certain confirmation to start with, the type of confirmation demanded by the Koran, which can result only by verification through certain knowledge, given how our mind works. Mere drugging yourself with ?blind faith? based religion, according to Marx ?opium of the masses,? does little for personal or human welfare. History bears witness to the destruction caused in the name of ?faith? based religion. It is for this reason that the Koran shows us the ?outside?, it shows us the facts and then brings us home to a sound conclusion as to why confirmation is the only reasonable option. Belief, according to the Koran, should be based upon reason (482, 3195 etc); it is arrived at scientifically by facts provided by nature and the natural world. The Koran provides meaningful connections to that end

Believing in God, as a reality can never come through blind-faith unless you ?kill? your mind either through drugging yourself or such rigorous programming that all alternative thoughts are filtered by internalized ?faith? criteria before they enter your mind. Those internalized ?faith? criteria might be contradictory or belong to any system, but they get accepted without reason nonetheless. How is ?blind faith? in Christianity truer than ?blind faith? in Hinduism or Islam? This is a legitimate question that the proponents of "blind faith" have no answer for.

We need to think and reason to confirm, to be sure, even of our experiences. Are not dreams the most ?real? experience when we are having them, how ?real? are they in reality? I have "seen" the fulfillment of all possible "dreams" that anyone can have in my dreams, according to Freud, ?wish fulfillment.? Love, career, fame, all has been mine in my dreams; yet when I woke up, reality hit me in the face.

Considering all the efforts people put into useless things given the transitory nature of this existence, seems so irrational yet people are so programmed that they do not give it a second thought. What is termed ?important? in the popular culture, has been so internalized that it becomes ?natural? as a mode of thinking and behavior. Every thing else is seen as weird and people following different paths to the path in vogue, are termed ?losers?. Who are the real losers though, objectively speaking? -That question is what the Koran efficiently answers based on a logical framework, empirical evidence, falsification and an extremely parsimonious rendition.

I sit while typing this introduction in the university computer lab and I can see panicking students run all over the place, trying to complete their term papers. They are getting ready for ?judgment day?, the day when their grades will be announced. Soon, there will be new faces, new people running around in the same manner, trying to fulfill the obligations that the ?market? has laid out for them. For a few, their work will remain in this world as literary contributions, to be used by all regardless of market value. For others, their comfortable or not so comfortable life will end and if they could look back at it, they would surely say, just as we sometimes say about the parts of our lives that are over, ?It was short, I should have planned better.?

I remember learning more from a comment my first semester psychology professor made, in a fleeting moment, than I did in all the classes that semester. She said, ?We seek to ?kill? time, yet how limited is the time that we seek to ?kill?!

My sincere hope is that we all, of whatever race, gender, nationality or religion, learn from our experiences that have ?died? already and make the effort to reach the destiny that is decreed for us to which nature and the natural world bears witness. That is the only agenda in mind with which this book is written.

Muhammed A. Asadi

salam aleykum.

---

The "Islamic" Threat
Real or Imagined?

Reproduced under in summary debate format, after several hours of argumentation with those that consider this "threat" real are reproduced the arguments of both sides. We will call the person I am debating with "A.S", not to be confused with any A.S, real or imagined that you know. Other participants in the short debate are Darius,YZV and HM2, once again not to be confused with any Darius, YZV or HM2 that you might know, real or imagined. Masadi, represents my words

Debate Begins

A.S The Islam threat is real, the Islam threat is real! The world is in danger!

MAsadi what threat? Sounds like unwarranted alarmism to me

A.S Terrorism is not an ideology, it is a tool; but the terrorists kill for an ideology. They call that ideology Islam.

MAsadi Not all terrorism is garbed with Islamic rhetoric, in fact a very small percentage of what can be described as terrorism is done by those labeled Muslim, or done in the name of Islam.

Darius , you cannot call an ideology evil because of the tools used by people purporting to follow that ideology. People are the ones who are "evil" not ideas on their own. Ideas are benign.

A.S We are a group of ex-Muslims who have seen the face of the evil and have risen to warn the world.

MAsadi And what evil is it that you have seen? And what kind of random sampling have you done to decipher the effects of this "evil" on people.

A.S Islam, and the Muslim mind is the evil effect of Islamic ideology. I used to be a Muslim and I know.

MAsadi And how is that? Where is your random sample and scientific study about the Muslim mind? How many Muslims did you come in contact with when you were a Muslim out of the over one billion in the world? Can you form a non- stereotypical generalization based on such a non-random, non-representative sample and introspection alone?

A.S Terrorism In the front page of this site I have placed a dynamic link to thereligionofpeace.com As you can see every day there are more terrorist attacks somewhere in the world. Every day tens or hundreds of people are bombed, beheaded, killed and their bodies are torn into pieces by the followers of this "religion of peace".

MAsadi Those are not random samplings of either terrorism or what goes on in the "Muslim mind". What about the "threat" posed by those that embark on wars on fake pretenses and lay whole countries to waste in the name of "freedom and democracy"?
A.S those are really for freedom and democracy, it is no terrorism. The American leadership does it so it must be good.

MAsadi Using your rhetoric, instead of tens or hundreds, tens or hundreds of thousand innocents are killed for "freedom and democracy". Therefore whatever ideas are represented by "freedom and democracy" are evil.
A.S that's a cop out

MAsadi How come? I'm using your logic of assigning labels of "evil" and "threat". For example look at this scenario the FBI estimates that around 19,000 Americans are murdered every year, not by Middle Eastern terrorists but by fellow Americans, so let's talk about the "American as your neighbor threat" etc.

A.S you want us to ignore the killings done by Muslims.

MAsadi not at all, simply showing the world that you are deliberately confusing the causes of terrorism and thereby helping to perpetuate it. You are masking the true causes and hiding the mass killings by everyone that cannot fit under your hate label for Islam. You are therefore helping to keep the cycle of violence going and thereby benefit from a portion of it by supporting your hate agenda.

A.S I don't think this argument really needs any response. Basically what he is saying is "close your eyes to Islamic terrorism and forget about it so we can continue killing you, bombing you and massacring your children."

MAsadi Not so, and masking its causes, like you are, while treating the symptoms of a small percent of global criminals will prevent those? Are you dumb?

A.S I don't want to argue with thugs and name callers.

MAsadi Because you have been stumped?
A.S The Islam threat is real! I don't debate thugs.

MAsadi And those that possess the greatest weapons of destruction the world has ever seen and have used them on innocents, they are the voice of peace?

A.S cop out!

MAsadi The "lynch-mob" mentality of alarmism, of Islamic ideology as a global threat, that was (and is) commonly portrayed in such writings, (as the "Sword of Islam" or "Islamic Threat" etc), is not at all justified the number of terrorist acts committed by those who claim to be Muslims and in the "name of Islam" as a percentage of the total number of Muslims, even as a percentage of the total number of crimes committed in the world, are statistically insignificant as cause. The numbers of people harmed by such acts (of criminals) are also far less than the number that have been killed in the name of "democracy and freedom" and free markets a look at the military adventures of the U.S. elite in the post World War 2 era should suffice as empirical evidence. Rhetoric of freedom has been abused to kill and maim, so has rhetoric borrowed from Islam, both represent abuse of sets of ideas that have no bearing in the purpose for which they were being used.

HM2 Please don't forget the Black Widows, blowing themselves up and one being pregnant. Bloodthirsty and Evil is Islam

MAsadi Really and the mass murderers that are advertised on the US media at the rate of several a year, all non-Muslims like the Jeffrey Dahmers and (other) murderers whose crime is deeply intertwined with religious rhetoric, in frequency much greater than any suicide bombings done by "Muslims", what religion or ideology do they condemn? Would you place a blanket condemnation on all Americans or all Christians because they happened to belong to their group? All you all can do, is take a few cases, spin your own interpretation on the causes of the events (without any scientific research) and then over generalize to the entire world population of Muslims and Islam- there is no logical or scientific connection to your conclusions.

YZV read what this mullah said in Egypt of this one in Saudi Arabia or what this person did in the name of Allah

MAsadi how many news stories of crimes that non-Muslims do every single day, for their multiple reasons, garbed in all kinds of religious rhetoric, do you want me to copy paste for you?
YZV Here have a look at the timeline of Mr. Muhammad's crimes!

MAsadi Where are your witnesses about those alleged crimes? And what relation does the messenger's morality have to do with the message that he was commissioned to convey, a message that proclaims separation between author and messenger?

YZV Ghazali, Bukhari, Ibn ishaq....ibn Kathir...Mullah Nasruddin

MAsadi None of them were witnesses, their reports in the earliest are removed over 200 years and you have not answered my second question.

YZV Mr. Muhammad was .....

MAsadi Can it. I have not asked for your psychiatric evaluation of the prophet or your judgment based upon no witnesses. The Quran states, if the prophet did anything wrong God will judge him, and we shouldn't concern ourselves with what earlier generations that have passed away might have done or not done, their judgment is the domain of God alone.

YZV here have a look at this news article about a follower of Mr. Muhammad. Here is another copy paste of the timeline of what Mr. Muhammad did

MAsadi It is sad to note how disabled you have become in your ability to reason and decipher the truth. I pity your wasted lives, for all lives without the light of reason are, in my opinion, wasted. And you want to risk eternity based on such flimsy reasoning and absolutely zero credible proof?