5
Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam
01 January 2011By Jacopo della Quercia
A conservative commentator recently made headlines by
claiming 10 percent of all of the world's Muslims are
terrorists. An amazing claim, considering that equals
150 million terrorists and if each were to pull off an
attack killing just 40 people, they could exterminate
all non-Muslim life on earth.
Either they're not all that dedicated to terrorism, or
the claim is utter insanity.
Well, if there's one thing everyone thinks of when
they hear "Cracked.com" it's "friend of Islam." Which
is why we feel compelled to clarify a few
misconceptions for our readers. Also, there is no way
this article will ever come back to haunt us in any
way.
#5. If You're a Muslim Woman, You
Have to Wear the Veil
For millions of people in the West, when you say
"Islam," the first mental image that pops into mind is
this:
A woman covered head to toe in a burqa. The truth is,
if you could suddenly gather all of the Muslim women
on the planet into one giant room and had to throw a
football to someone wearing a burqa, it'd be next to
impossible to complete that pass.
But the whole hide-them-under-a-veil thing must be
pretty big among Muslim communities, otherwise Europe
wouldn't be all in in a dither over the things,
pushing for bans and whatnot. Right?
After all, we all know that Islam hates women -- the
fact that Saudi Arabia is the only country in the
world that actually prohibits women from driving, or
that only predominantly Muslim countries still use
death by stoning as a punishment for adultery, proves
it, right?
But Actually...
Thinking that all Muslim women have to dress like
this...
...is like thinking that all Christian women have to
dress like this:
That photo is from one of several small Christian
sects that require women to dress like it's Little
House on the Prairie.
So for instance, in France they have about 3 million
Muslim women. French police decided to figure out how
many of them wore burqas and/or niqabs and found the
number to be ... 367.
Then again, these were French police.
Not 367,000, but 367, a number so small that from a
statistical point of view, it's barely enough to
register as a margin of error. As for the rest of
Europe, the numbers are even more disastrous for the
burqa business (for instance, Belgium has 500,000
Muslims, a couple dozen wear the burqa).
Yes, there are Middle Eastern countries where the
veils are required by law (namely Iran and Saudi
Arabia) and combined those countries have less than 5
percent of the world's Muslims. There are actually
more Muslim countries that outright ban the wearing of
the veils than there are that require them. They can
do that because wearing a veil is not required in
Islam but is more of a custom, depending on where you
live and who's in charge.
Much like hot pants.
Hey, speaking of which, try this number on for size:
Of the five most populous Muslim-majority nations,
four of them have elected female heads of state.
So there's a fantastic chance that in 2012, Sarah
Palin will be campaigning for an achievement that
Muslim ladies have already accomplished.
We bet Megawati Sukarnoputri knows the United States
doesn't have a Department of Law.
#4. - Our Founding Fathers Would
Never Have Tolerated This Muslim Nonsense!
It's easy to stand on a soapbox and publicly bluster
about what you think the Founding Fathers would think
about the godless, multicultural United States today.
After all, these were Christian, God-fearing men, damn
it. They certainly wouldn't put up with all this
tolerance for these terrorist religions.
Thomas Jefferson, moments before leaping into the air
on a giant eagle and drop-kicking Saladin.
It's a good thing some Americans are standing up for
good old-fashioned American values and passing laws to
prohibit Islamic law from taking over the U.S.,
because that's totally around the corner! Somewhere,
Thomas Jefferson is smiling in his grave!
But actually...
Even if they were staunch Christians (or deists,
whatever), plenty of the Founding Fathers had a
healthy admiration for the Muslim faith. Thomas
Jefferson, for example, taught himself Arabic using
his own copy of the Quran and hosted the first White
House Iftar during Ramadan.
Jefferson believed in celebrating the deliciousness of
all world religions.
John Adams hailed the Islamic prophet Muhammad as one
of the great "inquirers after truth." Benjamin Rush,
who was so Christian he wanted a Bible in every
school, also said he would rather see the opinions of
Confucius or Mohammad "inculcated upon our youth" than
see them grow deprived "of a system of religious
principles."
Benjamin Franklin once declared: "Even if the Mufti of
Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach
Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his
service." Even George fucking Washington personally
welcomed Muslims to come work for him at Mount Vernon.
So, why all this Founding Father/Muslim love? Probably
because Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah of Morocco was
the first world figure to recognize the independence
of the United States of America from Great Britain in
1777. Another reason was that the Founding Fathers
were smart enough to distinguish between terrorists
and everybody else on the whole damn planet, as
demonstrated in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797. It was
in this agreement that the U.S. declared: "The
government of the United States of America is not, in
any sense, founded on the Christian Religion, as it
has in itself no character of enmity against the laws,
religion or tranquility of Mussulmen [Moslems]."
#3. - "Muslim" Equals "Arab"
Remember that crazy lady with the Einstein hair who
asked John McCain if Barack Obama was an Arab? No?
Well, let us refresh your memory:
The instant John McCain realized that he would never,
ever be president.
We're willing to bet there's more than a 20 percent
chance this woman meant to say "Muslim" but
accidentally said "Arab" because same thing, right?
And even if you're not in the tea party camp, where
you're convinced "Arab" and "Muslim" are
interchangeable, you've probably operated under a
similar assumption: that non-Jewish Middle Eastern
people are Muslim and that most Muslims live in the
Middle East.
But actually...
Only about 20 percent of the entire world's Muslim
population is Arab or North African. For comparison,
about 22 percent of the global Christian population is
African, yet when somebody says "Christian," you don't
immediately picture a dude from Africa. Equating
"Muslim" with "Arab" makes just as much sense.
That'd be like associating "Kansas" with "hate-filled
douchebags".
While we in the West have been conditioned to
associate Islam with the Middle East, a whopping 61.9
percent of all Muslims -- aka a supermajority -- don't
live in the Middle East at all; most Muslims live in
the Asia-Pacific region. Indonesia alone is home to
more than 200 million Muslims, and the Indian
subcontinent has roughly a half-billion Muslims.
It works the other way, too. For example, if you think
being Arab guarantees you being Muslim these days,
well, we are sorry to disappoint. As much as 10
percent of the world's Arab population is Christian
(that's more than 14 million people). That means there
are 1 million more Arab Christians than, oh, we don't
know ... the world's entire Jewish population..
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