Laughing at Islam

A wild ride through some of the most ridiculous rules for women in Islam.

You can listen to me read this essay here:

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I thought it would be fun to learn how absurd the rules are in Islam, especially for women.

Fortunately, you will not be killed for reading this and laughing about it. But for me, it can be dangerous. Every single person I know who speaks out against Islam has their life threatened, me included.

It’s bad enough to criticize Islam, but to laugh about it, then you really are in trouble. There is no sense of humor in Islam.

So, should we stop talking about it, laughing about it? Absolutely not. We must speak more and laugh louder. It’s not like I’m trying to make anyone laugh. It’s just when you get into the rules, you see how absurd they are, and you can’t help but laugh. This breaks the spell of deceit. Laughter is one of the best weapons against fear.

Like all cults, Islamic scholars and clerics brazenly lie to gain new converts. For me, as a woman who has seen the damage Islam causes to other women, I cannot be quiet about this. I want to prevent women from converting to Islam. I want to educate as many people as possible so they can speak knowledgably on the topic and perhaps prevent others from converting, too. Or you can just send them this essay!

The first word I learned in Egypt was haram. It is forbidden. You will hear that word a lot in this piece.

Let’s start by unpacking this fantastic video “Seven Absurd Beauty Rules”, by the “Friendly Ex-Muslim.”

3:34 Makeup 5:29 Eyebrow plucking 10:19 Perfume 19:09

Anything a Muslima (a female Muslim) does to beautify herself is haram.

For example, men can wear perfume, but women cannot. This means even scented soap or deodorant is haram, forbidden. Imagine a woman who smells nice, passing some men on the street and they might get aroused. Haram!

Makeup is forbidden. Haram!

But wait, we see Muslimas wearing make-up all the time. Well, shame on them, they are disobeying Allah and his prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him—not really).

As the Friendly Ex-Muslim explains, women ignore this rule because women naturally want to be beautiful. For some reason, that is shameful. This turns women into hypocrites. Not only in the West. I saw this haram behavior in Luxor, Egypt, where there are plenty of beauty salons, and stores with makeup and perfumes. I have to say, most women were not wearing makeup, but they wear it for wedding celebrations and for the pleasure of their husbands in the privacy of the bedroom.

Skin Whitening Creams

Skin whitening creams are haram, but they are very popular. The whiter a woman’s skin, the more desirable she is. We are told this is our fault, the evil Western colonists. But once again, this is a lie.

You can go on websites where Muslims ask all sorts of questions of the Mullahs. One of the most popular websites is Islamqa.org, where you will find a section on “Beauty in Paradise.

Here is a typical question concerning white skin (fyi, the “hoors” are the virgin sex slaves that men get in paradise, and every time the man has sex with them, their virginity is renewed for the next time):

Certain descriptions in terms of beauty say that the people of paradise will be white coloured/fair in complexion along with hairless, beardless, and thirty three years old. Also, the hoors are described as being white complexion as well, like pearls. First, I am not saying it is racist because that would be moronic as anyone can go to heaven, but with this, I just kind of wonder, why does a universal deity follow one beauty standard as I heard white complexion was the favoured complexion among the Arabs.

Here is the answer, given by the highly respected Mufti Ebrahim Salejee:

The fact that you ask why, shows that your understanding and knowledge is deficient. Hence, the wise thing is to assign these matters to the being that is perfect and not just perfect, but most perfect. Since your reasoning is deficient you cannot comprehend the wisdom and the reasoning in all matters.

And Allah Ta’ala (الله تعالى) knows best.

So, asking the question means you’re stupid. And since you’re so stupid, you should just shut up and accept what the Quran says, because you would be too stupid to understand the answer anyway.

This is how it goes in a cult. Around and around in mad circles leading nowhere.

Here’s how the rabbit hole of disobedience works.

Let’s say a woman disobeys the Quran and wears makeup. Wow, she is going to have some problems when it comes time to pray.

One of the most important Islamic rules is to pray five times a day.

Let’s first remember that Mohammed stole many of his rules and rituals from Judaism, including prayer. Jews pray three times a day, in the morning, in the afternoon and at nightfall. Not too bad, right? Mohammed wanted to prove Muslims were more devout, so he decreed they had to pray five times a day.

Here are the five prayer times for Muslims:

• Fajr: The pre-dawn prayer

• Dhuhr: The midday prayer

• Asr: The afternoon prayer

• Maghrib: The evening prayer, just after sunset

• Isha: The night prayer (before midnight)

Again, this fanaticism is cult-like behavior. Muslims are sleep deprived. They have to get up twice in the night to pray. Not only that, but they must prepare with ritual washing. In Judaism, you wash your hands, a good practice. But since Mohammed was in a competition with Judaism, to prove Muslims are more devout, here’s what Islam commands:

Oh you who believe! When you prepare for prayer, wash your faces, and your hands (and arms) to the elbows; rub your heads and wash your feet to the ankles. If you are in a state of ceremonial impurity, bathe your whole body. Qur’an (5:6)

So, for women, who wear makeup, they must wash it off twice a day and then reapply it. Either this becomes too much of a bother and the woman stops wearing, or she keeps wearing makeup and stops washing or even stops praying.

It’s ridiculous. The rules are meant to turn a person into a mindless zombie who obeys without understanding why, because there is no reason that makes sense.

The insanity of ritual washing after sex.

I belong to a number of Facebook groups of women married to Muslim men and a common complaint is a husband who wants sex all the time, sometimes multiple times a day. It is haram for a woman to refuse her husband, so she must always be available, no matter when, no matter how she feels about it.

But that’s not all. After sex, a woman must wash herself, which, yes, is reasonable, however, she must also wash her hair each time. Imagine, sex twice in a day or in the middle of the night when you are tired, and you must get up and wash your hair. Women have even complained that their hair is falling out because of this constant washing.

And don’t forget women also have to get up and wash and pray, twice in the night. How about all the women with young children, babies who wake up in the middle of the night, or a child who has a nightmare. So, a woman has sex once, maybe twice in the night, getting up each time to wash herself, including her hair which she then must dry before she goes back to bed, and then, just as she falls asleep, she has to get up and pray and wash again, after which her baby wakes up crying and she must feed it.

I cannot imagine living like this without losing my mind, yet millions of women around the world do.

Here is the Sunnah bathing ritual for after sex:

1. Wash both hands up to the wrists thrice.

2. Thereafter wash off any impurity that may be on the body thrice.

3. Now make Istinjaa of both the front and hind private parts whether there is a need or not.

4. Thereafter, perform Wudhu according to the Sunnah manner. If one is bathing in such a place where the water does not flow away but gathers at the feet, then wash the feet after moving away from that place. If the water does not gather but flows away, then wash the feet during the Wudhu.

5. Now pour water over the head, then the right shoulder and then the left shoulder. Use so much water that it flows down the body and reaches the feet. Rub the body with the hands. Repeat this entire procedure another two times. If one feels that a certain portion of the body has remained dry, pour water over that portion and rub it to ensure that it also has been washed.

Eyebrow plucking is haram! This is really crazy:

Plucking eyebrows is haram because it is considered changing Allah’s creation. But shaving the chest or legs isn’t haram. What’s the big deal with eyebrows—oh, if I ask a question, that means I’m stupid.

Women can’t pluck their eyebrows, but they must remove their pubic hair. One should remove pubic hair to the best of their ability (whether by shaving, trimming or plucking), but that isn’t changing God’s creation.

Whatever you do, don’t ask why.

Girls must submit to female genital mutilation, or FGM.

This one isn’t funny.

You will be told FGM isn’t a religious practice but a cultural one that has nothing to do with Islam. Another lie.

Here is an excellent short video on the topic by the Apostate Prophet. This guy is fantastic. His research is impeccable. I use his videos a lot for my research.

The example he gives here is important because it proves how Muslim scholars lie to Westerners with a watered-down version of Islam in order to draw them in to conversion:

I have transcribed some of the important points here, about how the translator deliberately lies when translating the word clitoris:

Unfortunately, this is pure deception because the translator Nuha Meem Keller, is not really translating the text he is tweaking it. The original Arabic text does not say removing the prepuce or the hood or the cover of the clitoris, it literally just says for women removing the clitoris. This word, which he for some reason translates as “prepuce of the clitoris” means “the clitoris”.

This can be confirmed by looking at multiple different dictionaries of Arabic…. but apparently Mr. Keller … deliberately changes this text and even on top of it lies about it.

I will not say that this scholar does not know, and he's just made a mistake. There is no way that you could possibly mistake the meaning of this. This is a lie and why does he do that?

Of course, he does that because this book should be made available to western audiences, to global audiences, and by today's standards we understand that circumcising a little girl and cutting off the clitoris is an extremely painful, dangerous, possibly deadly practice which takes away a future woman's ability to feel pleasure.

This is something that many women suffer from today and this guy here comes and does that one thing that a translator is not supposed to do, deliberately mistranslates the text and even adds his own commentary on top of this lie.

Many scholars in Islam agree that female genital mutilation is obligatory or that it is sunnah recommended, in accordance with Muhammad's tradition or that it is an honorable practice which is why according to the four schools of Sunni Islamic law in the Shaafi school, which this book belongs to, it is obligatory.

I had conversations about FGM with men in Luxor. They all agreed women were not suitable for marriage unless they were cut, and their daughters should be cut to make them presentable to future husbands who will not stray. If a woman isn’t cut, she is a whore who is sex crazed and cannot be controlled. All she will think about is sex and she will have sex with any man. This is why Muslim men think all western women are whores. Western women still have a clitoris. They are sex-crazed, dirty kufirs (disbelievers/infidels).

You will not hear this in the West. They will deny it, as we see in the translation about FGM. I know what they really think because I lived in a Muslim country and I had a Muslim husband and over a beer around the fire as he and his friends barbequed, they talked freely about it. These men were not extremists, they were ordinary Muslims.

But enough of the serious stuff. Take a look at this video and be prepared to laugh. The Apostate Prophet takes on the persona “Sheikh Yaboody” and answers the question “What is a Woman?” from a Muslim perspective. It’s five hilarious minutes.

Making fun of Islam is one of the best ways to fight against it. The Apostate Prophet explains that he does not make fun of Judaism or Christianity. He is an atheist, but he doesn’t have a problem with religion or belief in God. He admits he doesn’t know for sure and respects people’s right to believe what they want.

As one specific example, he doesn’t believe that Jesus is God, but he can follow the story, and it is consistent throughout the New Testament Gospels, and it is consistent with the Old Testament as a fulfillment of prophesies, and in that way, it makes sense.

There is not much in Islam that makes sense at all. I will talk more about the difference between Christianity and Islam in another essay.

I often hear from people, why do you keep criticizing Islam. Just stop. People get really angry, in fact. Well, if I hadn’t experienced it, if I hadn’t lived under Islam for a significant period of time, if I hadn’t married a Muslim man in a Muslim country, I wouldn’t talk and write about it with the conviction that I do. After all, it makes sense that I would warn others about something that I’ve experienced that is so dangerous, especially for women.

As an ex-Muslim the Apostate Prophet has a lot of knowledge on the topic, he put a lot of thought into it, and he wants to share it. This is reasonable.

Imagine how freeing it is for an ex-Muslim to finally, after twenty-some years of indoctrination, be able to say, you know what, this is not true. This is wrong and here is why.

Coming to the realization that the entire basis of your life is false is hard to bear. Leaving Islam isn’t a small matter. Those who leave lose everything, their entire world that they fit into, their families, their friends, their connections within the community, even business connections, are severed.

This religion—cult—indoctrinates people without ever asking our permission. It demands complete control over our lives, and we cannot even ask why. Daring to ask, daring to criticize leads to anger and hostility, death threats and justifies the apostate’s death.

There is something wrong with this cult and we have to talk about it, we have to change it. We cannot just give in to the bullies.

In a video Why I Criticize Islam, the Apostate Prophet says he would be very happy if Islam was a religion he could just leave, and he never had to talk about it, and no one cared, and his life could go on as it was before. But because this isn’t the case, he feels he must speak out, especially because there are so many ex-Muslims who suffered first as Muslims and now, they suffer as ex-Muslims because they cannot just live their lives freely. Often, they fear for their lives.

On the other side of those of us who criticize Islam is an army of Muslim apologists with hundreds of thousands of followers online who openly call for a Caliphate where apostates are punished by death. If we don’t speak out, then it’s just this one side being very aggressive and that’s going to end in a very bad way for us.

The fact is that Islam is fundamentally very offensive. It is filled with lies and rules that don’t make sense.

Why would anyone say that those of us who know and have experienced the dangers of Islam should just “stop talking about it.” Can’t people see how terrible the world would be if no one ever spoke up against injustice? Who will speak for the women being fooled by Islam. Who will warn them if women like me are silent?

When someone bullies you, and you give in, thinking they will stop, all you’ve done is encourage them to do worse next time. You’ve rewarded their violent behavior. You're saying in effect, if you want to control me, if you want to always get your way, just threaten me and I will submit.

We must stand up and speak out from the first little push they give us. Never concede one inch. Otherwise, they will push harder and harder and we might just end up dead anyway.

I hope you enjoyed this wild ride of Islamic rules and lies. Please share, comment, like and subscribe.

I will end with what the Apostate Prophet always says at the end of his talks:

Stay away from Islam.