Fairy-tale Islam book launch!

My new book, Fairy-tale Islam: Deceptions Masking a Dark Reality, will launch on Amazon July 9^th. Its thesis is that the Islam popular in the mainstream media and among Western Islamic apologists is a fairy-tale version, while the true Islam of Muhammad is a dark and threatening challenge to the Judeo-Christian West. This thesis is undergirded by material from orthodox, authoritative Muslim sources, available for anyone willing to face the facts.

I’m still looking for readers willing to peruse the book and write an advance review to Amazon (before July 9^th). I will supply you a free copy of the .pdf together with a synopsis of the book, if you are willing to preview the book and help me out with a review (short or long, doesn’t matter, but honest is essential).

If this interests you, contact me at mateenelass@gmail.com and I will send you the material!

Thanks so much for your help in this project. Below I am attaching the book synopsis for those interested in knowing more before committing to reading the whole book.

Book Synopsis

Fairy-Tale Islam: Deceptions Masking a Dark Reality

If Westerners have any concept of Islam at all, it usually comes from uninformed media outlets, politicians, actors, academics or Muslim apologists who paint a rosy picture of the religion. Elass refers to this as “fairy-tale Islam”, in contrast to the real Islam contained in the teachings of the Qur’an and the Islamic traditions recognized as authoritative by the vast majority of the Muslim world. In this book, he presents twelve claims made by fairy-tale Islam and then contrasts them with what orthodox, historical Islam actually teaches from its own texts on each subject.

His introduction uses the example of the “fairy-tale marriage” of then Prince Charles and Lady Diana (which in reality behind the mask of harmony hid a very ugly and abusive relationship) to highlight the ugly reality hidden behind the pleasant façade of fairy-tale Islam. He forthrightly tackles the question of why he is qualified to write such a book and invites readers to consider the evidence they will discover from his research of Islamic source material.

Knowing that many will not want to hear challenges to the fairy-tale narrative and will label this work bigoted, hateful or Islamophobic, Elass in Chapter 2 deals with the meaning of the term Islamophobia concocted in the 1990s, and its usage as a means to smother any honest inquiry into the claims made for Islam. While all other religions and worldviews are fair game for criticism and attack, the Muslim world believes its professions must be accepted as proclaimed. Seekers after truth cannot be hamstrung in such a way, but must follow the evidence where it leads.

Chapter 3 asks the question, “How do we know what we know about Muhammad and Islam?” Elass points out that all the earliest sources on the life and teachings of the Arabian prophet come only from Muslim sources, the earliest of which are not recorded in written form until at least one hundred years after the death of Muhammad (the bulk of the traditions are two hundred or more years removed from his demise). The hagiographical nature of these writings indicate their lack of objectivity. In light of this, these sources must be taken with many grains of salt, as their authors wished to put their prophet in the best light possible. Given that, it is astonishing that one finds so much hair-raising and indecent material describing the attitudes and activities of Muhammad.

Chapters 3 and 4 deal with Muhammad the man and the messenger, whom Islam designates as the Perfect Human to be emulated in all ways possible. From Islam’s biographical source material on the prophet, we discover major flaws in his character as well as actions he engaged in or commanded (e.g., capture of slaves for sale, slaughter of opponents, orders for assassination of personal enemies, rape of female sex slaves, marriage to as many girls and women as he wished for himself, including wife ‘Aisha, who was nine years old when he bedded her). An objective observer would be hard-pressed to call Muhammad a “good” man, much less the Perfect human being. In Chapter 4, the prophet’s role as the messenger of Allah is weighed, and we discover that much of what he reveals is decidedly self-serving. Chief among difficulties is that Allah reveals his followers are to engage in jihad, being promised they will inherit paradise if they commit their all to “kill and be killed in the cause of Allah” (Qur’an 9.111). Early in his martial career, Muhammad captures a number of prisoners and decides to hold them for ransom rather than put them to death. As a result, he is soon reprimanded by Allah with these words recorded in the Qur’an: “It is not for a prophet to have captives [of war] until he inflicts a massacre [upon Allah ‘s enemies] in the land” (8.67). Beyond these violent teachings, the traditions record the prophet as promulgating many silly or dangerous practices (e.g., when a fly falls into your drink, push it all the way under, for while one wing contains the disease, the other contains the cure).

Chapter 6 addresses the claims of fairy-tale Islam that the Qur’an is God’s perfect and final revelation. Given the fact that it is written in an ancient form of Arabic much of whose critical vocabulary has been lost to the mists of history, one leading linguist has concluded that on average one out of every five sentences is indecipherable. Beyond this, it contains over a hundred grammatical or syntactical errors, numerous erroneous scientific claims (e.g, that shooting stars are the result of Allah grabbing real stars and flinging them at the jinn who are trying to listen in on heavenly conversations). Though the Qur’an contains many references to OT characters and events, it retells them in ways that significantly change the meaning in order to fit them to the message of Muhammad. Also, it includes chimerical stories from Jewish and Christian extra-biblical literature, presenting them as if they actually happened historically. When one adds the morally reprehensible teachings of polygamy, wife-beating by husbands who fear their spouse’s disobedience, the taking, buying and selling of slaves, including girls and women who become sex-slaves to their Muslim masters, and the slaughter of infidels who refuse to convert or bow in subjection to Muslim overlords, the Qur’an seems anything but God’s perfect and final word to the world.

Chapters 4-6 are the heart of this book, for the religion of Islam asserts that God sent Muhammad and the Qur’an because Jews and Christians had perverted the truth He originally sent into the world. Islam stands or falls on these twin pillars: Muhammad and the Qur’an. If Muhammad does not meet the bar of a model human being, and if what he brings to the world is not indeed unarguably the revelation of God, then Islam crumbles into irrelevance as a religion.

Chapters 7-13 deal with the remaining claims of fairy-tale Islam. We are told that the Jesus of the Qur’an, known as ‘Isa is the true Jesus, in contradistinction to the Jesus of the New Testament. In this way, Islam seeks to emasculate the central personage and teachings of Christianity.

Chapter 8 addresses the thorny question of whether Allah and the God of the Bible are one and the same Being. Elass concludes that they cannot be one, for they have different agendas, priorities and loves. In the end, Allah is a counterfeit of Yahweh, as ‘Isa is a counterfeit of Jesus.

Fairy-tale Islam claims to be the original “religion of Abraham.” While it presents itself to the West as belonging to the “family of Abrahamic religions” along with Judaism and Christianity, in the end it claims that both the latter two have been perverted, and only Islam correctly reflects what Abraham believed and practiced. Elass shows in Chapter 9 that despite these claims, Islam offers no historical, archaeological, or genealogical proof that it can trace its sources to the same Abraham as that reported in the Genesis accounts of the Bible.

Is Islam really a “religion of peace”? Chapter 10 investigates these claims, and concludes that Islam’s teachings on jihad and the supremacy of its revelations means that all other beliefs and practices must bow in subjugation to the rule of Allah. There will be peace only when the world submits willingly or by force to the Muslim nation. Even then, peace will be elusive because the Muslim world is at war with itself over which group practices “true Islam.”

Chapter 11 deals with the rather far-fetched claim that Muhammad was the world’s best champion of women’s rights. Elass lists teachings from the Qur’an and traditions which demonstrate that women must be subservient to men, and are deficient in intelligence and the practice of religion to men. Indeed, authoritative tradition records Muhammad as declaring that he had peered into hell and discovered that the majority of its inhabitants are women. They must be controlled so as not to tempt men into sexual sin. The contract of marriage is basically an agreement promising food, shelter and care to the woman in exchange for her surrender of her body sexually to her husband. Islam is anything but a fortress of feminism.

Islam must be true, we are told, for it is the fastest-growing religion in the world. In Chapter 12 we unmask this fallacious argument, and challenge as well the claim. Islam may be growing fast today, but the growth is almost entirely due to birthrate, not to conversion or even subjugation. In the end, truth is not found in numbers but in which of the may worldviews best makes sense of the real world. The Islam of Muhammad fails in this regard.

One of the big questions of the West is whether Islam and democracy can coexist, or partner hand in hand. Fairy-tale Islam assures us they can. But Islamic teaching and shari’a (Islamic divine law), declare otherwise, as we discover in Chapter 13. Likewise, the consistent practice of caliphates over the last thirteen hundred years, as well as the governments of the vast majority of the 56 Muslim nations today demonstrate that real democracy (the right of the citizens of a nation to determine the laws under which they will live, ensuring individual rights such as freedom of religion/thought, freedom of association, equality before the law) cannot exist under a government following shari’a and governed by a caliph (monarch/king/potentate) whose rule is unchecked. Islam and democracy mix like oil and water.

 Finally, in the Epilogue, Elass uses Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to drive home the deceptive relationship between fairy-tale Islam and the orthodox Islam of Muhammad. In the novella, the face of the youthful protagonist Dorian remains pure and serene, no matter how evil his heart becomes, but the portrait of him hidden away in his attic becomes increasingly grotesque, revealing the evil and malevolence which are hidden behind his façade of innocence and beauty. In much the same way, fairy-tale Islam provides the mask of goodness and acceptability to the West, all the while hiding the darkness inherent in the teachings and practices of Muhammad and his dedicated followers. This book was written to help remove the mask so that the West may no longer be fooled as to the true nature of this religion which seeks to gain greater foothold in our midst.