Inner workings of Islam

I'm going to pay some in-depth attention to Islam, and show why the ideology is incompatible with life in the West, and why, by inference, muslims are incompatible with life in the West. This is assuming that muslims pay anything more than lipservice to their religious leaders and Koran and Hadith.

What I will be doing is discuss different habits, rituals and fatwa's. I will use as subject only those that are in use by the majority of muslims. I will also use as subject rituals that may not be an official part of Islam, but that nevertheless have become the domain of Islam, in some cases even the sole domain.

Todays subject, selected (as all other ones will be) completely at random is:

Friendship between men and women.
Islam forbids close friendships between men and women. A close friendship in this case is defined as anything more than a relationship resulting purely from the workplace, school, the neighbourhood, etc.
The reason for this prohibition is the assumption that any relationship between persons who theoretically COULD engage in sex with each other (not counting homosexuals, these are completely inconceivable) WILL lead to such an encounter.

In Islam, there is a class of people who cannot have sex with each other (in theory). This is called Mahram. A brother and sister are to each other Mahram. So are a father and daughter.

A man and a woman who are colleagues at work are not Mahram to each other. If one or both of them is a muslim, according to Islam they cannot be close friends. There is a fatwa against this. You will find the fatwa and its complete motivation here, but I will deal with the main reason here:

"It is common knowledge that in Islam, fornication and adultery are grave sins and committing either bears serious consequences in this world and the Hereafter.

However, what is not so well known is that while declaring fornication and adultery as haram (forbidden), Islam does not merely forbid the actual acts, but it also declares as forbidden each and every circumstance or way that leads to fornication and adultery. Allah says, “Do not come near fornication, for it is indeed lewdness and an evil life-style.” (Al-Isra': 32)

Explaining this, the Prophet said, “The fornication of the eyes is staring, the fornication of the ears is listening, the fornication of the tongue is talking, the fornication of the hands is holding, the fornication of the feet is walking, the fornication of the heart/mind is craving and lusting, and finally, the private parts confirm or negate it.” He also said, “Staring is one of the arrows of Satan.” In another report, he said, “You are allowed to have the first accidental look (which is unintentional), but do not continue to stare.”

"[Islam] also declares as forbidden each and every circumstance or way that leads to fornication and adultery." Such as workplace friendships and neighbourly intercourse. Talking to, or looking at each other - according to Islam - leads to fornication.

There are two results to this fatwa:

• One is that every devout muslim will be forced to limit his deeper friendships to non-Mahram persons. This is sad for all muslims, but at least they will understand it amongst themselves. The limitation of course also applies to muslim-infidel relationships, which will cause inevitable distance between muslims and non-muslims.
• Second is that less devout muslims will disregard this fatwa, but only up to a point. They can never escape the law, and more importantly, they can never escape its motive. You may be able to ignore the fatwa and have a close friendship with a person who is non-Mahram (i.e. "eligible", "available") to you, but you can never escape your upbringing, the pressure from your peers and family, and the judgment of your religious leaders.

The conclusion is that there can never be true friendship, trust, understanding or empathy between muslims and non-muslims of opposite sex, because of this ruling. As long as non-muslims are ignorant of this fatwa, any serious relationship between muslims and infidels will be a one-sided affair.

Nb: Mohammed was obsessed by sex. I will go into that subject another time, but suffice it to say that this obsession has had a major influence on most, if not all aspects of Islam. It is clear that he has injected his own way of looking at women (which is well-documented) into his writings, which have subsequently become law for nearly a quarter of the world's population. Wether that will ever be righted remains to be seen.