L'Orientalist

The Thinking Man's Critique of Islam.

http://lorientalist.tumblr.com/

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"We frame to ourselves a deep azure sky, and a languid, alluring atmosphere; associate luxurious ease with the coffee-rooms and flower-gardens of the Seraglio at Constantinople; with their tapering minarets and gold-crescents of Cairo; with the fountains within and the kiosks without Damascus—setting of silver in circlets of gold. We see grave and revered turbans sitting cross-legged on Persian carpets in baths and harems... we then bespread over all a sort of Arabian night-spell..."

~ New-York Monthly Magazine, Vol. XLI. June 1853. No. 6.

Ahmet Rıza (Young Turk Revolutionary):

"Were I a woman, I would embrace atheism and never become a Muslim. Imagine a religion that imposes laws always beneficial to men but hazardous women such as permitting my husband to have three additional wives and as many concubines as he wishes, houris awaiting him in heaven, while I cover my head and face as a miller's horse. Beside these I would not be allowed to divorce a husband who prevented me from having any kind of fun, but would be required to submit to his beatings. Keep this religion far away from me."

Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power, 1898-1918 (Allen Lane, 2010), p.72

This Channel exists to explore and understand the religion Islam, and more importantly, to view said religion from the standpoint of a Skeptic, a Naturalist, a Realist, a Secularist and a Cynic.

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