Supremacism in Islam and Others: The Explicit Secret of the Cult
Experiences from the Middle East
Arabic is the language of the Quran. According to Arabs, God revealed Quran to Muhammed, a man from the Querishi Tribe of the Arabs. Prophet Muhammed, the centerpiece of Islam, was born and brought up in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He died in Medina, Saudi Arabia. The pilgrimage of Muslims from Mecca to Medina (Hijra) is the starting point of the Islamic calendar. Every Muslim in this world must undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) at least once in their lifetime. Every aspect of Islam is related to Arabs in one way or the other. The manipulation of Non-Arab Muslim minds in accepting Arab Supremacism through Islam is a reality.
Implicit Supremacy
For Muslims' five times prayer (Swalaat), it is imperative to learn Arabic and memorize Quran for the prayer to be accepted by God. Reading the Quran needs Arabic literacy, and reading it in Arabic rewards the believer the most. The Qureishi tribe in which Muhammed was born has a chapter in Quran to their name. Unlike the hatred of the Quran towards Jews, Christians, or others, the Arab followers of the Prophet are called the ideal society and have the authority over others to lead and rule. This idea explicitly references Arabs and cons the Non-Arab Muslims into believing they are also part of this 'ideal society.'
Often non-Arabs are conned into believing that Islam champions equality by the story of Bilal. However, the reverence of Arab identity and culture when no other ethnicity finds a place in the Quran or Hadith implies that Islam is a religion that is implicitly Arab supremacist. I will have accepted that Islam is revolutionary if it is a philosophy created for a particular period and people. The moment it becomes a religion whose scriptures are termed as divine and infallible by its followers, the revolutionary idea that Islam was for Arabs in 600 A.D loses its shine. It becomes an archaic supremacist concept established for Arabs to unite and champion their expansionary ambitions.
Islam is an anachronistic religion that has conned its believers into accepting its implicit Arab supremacy. It has meticulously oppressed women through its archaic Arab attire for desert life, destroying their right to choose their attire. Islamic conservatism and fundamentalism are notorious for imposing burqa, niqab, and even hijab on its women under the guise of Islamic morality.
Male chauvinism and twisted morality
It is not uncommon to hear women and girls blamed for their harassment, abuse, and even rape in Islamic societies that give no room for liberal thoughts. The Islamic orthodoxy would say that the act happened because the girl had not covered herself with a burqa, which prompted the men to rape her. The victim-blaming is so natural in Islamic communities, which cons women into accepting burqa as their individual choice. The indoctrinated minds of Muslim women often fail to comprehend that it's not their dressing or behavior that is the cause for men's advances; it is the fault of the men or boys and their society that supports toxic masculinity.
Instead of boys and men-the culprits-being taught how to behave toward girls and women-the victims, intense patriarchal societies such as Islamic ones lecture the victims about morality. The twisted idea of morality here implies that if Qabil killed Habil (Adam's sons), Habil was not cautious or innocent and not that Qabil was driven to bloodlust by his jealousy. But, this is not the case with Quran and Islam, which curses Qabil for murder. Imagine if Habil was a woman. Will Islam support her and stand by her right, or will she be blamed for her rape and murder?
The conservative and fundamentalist folks of Islam (Mullahs or Mollahs) who stood by Habil when he was a man would suddenly start asking about Habil's dress, behavior, attitude, relationship, family, and even voice modulation if Habil is or was a woman. The hypocrisy of Islamic orthodoxy gets exposed in such circumstances and proves that Islam is an Arab Supremacist religion inclusive for Arab men and exclusive for all women.
Islam ostracizes the LGBTQIA+ community explicitly and cons differently-abled persons into believing that God has made them destined for heaven. Muslims seem to be oblivious to the fact that they are living in the 21st century. Their religious dogma of 600 A. D. deserves serious scrutiny. Non-Arab Muslims should at least give up their scripture's infallibility claim and inculcate rationalism and humanism into their belief. If not, they are downgrading themselves by championing a religion that is an archaic Arab-supremacist cult.
Linguistic supremacism
I happened to visit Saudi Arabia when I was 17. I visited Mecca and Medina for Umra. My two-week visit was not pleasant. Two incidents shook me and showed me that a Muslim's reverence of Mecca, Medina, and the Middle East as heavenly is a delusion built by their religion.
I went with my family, and we stayed in Riyadh before going to Mecca and Medina. At Riyadh, I was confronted by an Arab once when returning from a local mosque after prayer (Swalaat). He asked me:
'Ma Shaoolais?'
I was clueless about what this guy was asking. I told him that I didn't know Arabic in English but no use. He asked me again and again. I panicked. In my confusion, I said to him that I don't know Arabic in Tamil, Hindi, and Malayalam. I even resorted to hand signs for conveying my message, and he couldn't even understand that.
Learning Arabic is enforced upon all the Muslims of the Globe. I know to read and write in Arabic, but I don't know to speak. Arabic that we learn is literary Arabic of the Quran different from the colloquial Arabic of the Arabs.
Finally, I reached my apartment, and with a smile of shame, I went inside with the Arab looking at me. The Arab's face conveyed utter disdain for me.
I narrated the event to my grandfather, who tried to decipher what the Arab was asking. He told me that the Arab might have asked how many years I have been working in Saudi Arabia, or he might be asking something about what I am doing there. To this day, I am not sure what the Arab was asking.
Years down the line, I wonder why I should be ashamed; it is the Arab who should be ashamed. I spoke to him in four different languages and even in sign language. He didn't even understand one of them because he knew only one language: his mother tongue. Arabs like him don't even care to know an international language such as English, and we Muslims of other parts of the world learn their language forcefully. The shame that I felt that day resulted from my social conditioning based on the Islamic religion. In Islam, Arabic is supreme over other languages. No matter how much the Non-Arab Muslims learn Arabic, we will be no match for the Arabic prowess of the native Arabs because it is their mother tongue. But, we know many other languages besides English that Arabs don't even know exist, yet Non-Arab Muslims learn Arabic because of Islam.
When I started writing and speaking against Islam, one of the criticisms I got was that my understanding of the Quran was flawed because I am not a native Arab or a native speaker of Arabic. Hence, my criticisms of Islam and the Quran are not valid. I have been learning Arabic since I was four, and even that is not enough.
I have read various English translations of the Quran and Hadith. I have also read their translations in my mother tongue. When I told them all these, they were still adamant that I lacked the finesse to understand Quran. They shooed me away by saying that I should go to Zakir Naik or someone with a Ph.D. from an Islamic University or a native Arab Islamic Scholar to understand the Quran. Only then will I have the right to speak about Islam.
These Islamic conservatives and fundamentalists don't realize that they implicitly prove my claim that Islam is an Arab-supremacist cult.
The same coin
The reverence of families who claim to be Muhammed's direct descendants by Muslims of India is another proof of Islam's Arab supremacism. These revered people are called Syeds in North India and Thangals in South India. Among Muslims, reverence of Muhammed's lineage is universal. Two major groups in Islam are in constant conflict with each other in the name of love towards the Prophet and his family. They are Sunnis and Shiites.
Globally, Shiites are the minority, and Sunnis are in the majority. Both are Muslims but at constant war with each other. Saudi Arabia's hostility towards Iran is because of this rivalry.
Saudi Arabia considers itself the leader of Muslims as Prophet Muhammed and his prominent followers (Sahabah) were born there. This egoism of Saudi prompted the erstwhile Persia (now Iran) to start a counter-movement against them. The rise of Shia Islam has its roots in this historic conflict. Today's Iran became a Shiite country after the Safavid dynasty's takeover in 1500 A.D. However, instead of taking a rational route, this movement became religiously fundamentalist, centered around the deep reverence towards the Prophet and his family. Shiites claimed that none other than Muhammed's family could stake claim to the Muslim world's throne and rejected the leadership of the Islamic world's first three rulers (Caliphs) after Muhammed.
As this conflict rages on, the fact remains that the two major sects of Islam are two ends of the same coin called Arab Supremacism.
Racial supremacism
The second incident that happened in Saudi Arabia was a traumatic experience. It happened in Mecca. The practice of walking around Kaaba is called Twawaaf. It is part of the Umra pilgrimage.
When I was in Mecca for pilgrimage with my family, I went to do Twawaaf alone after lunch. I planned to touch the legendary Hajarul Aswad (The Black Stone) that day. According to Islamic mythology, the stone is from heaven. So, touching it would make us feel heaven.
After doing Twawaaf for seven rounds, I tried to touch the stone through the heavy rush of believers around it. Too much crowd and chaos. Everyone wanted to touch the stone. Some under their religious frenzy were hugging and kissing it for feeling heaven. As I cautiously moved forward, not wanting to push or cause harm to anyone, others were not that cordial. They pushed me around, and I lost control.
An Arab was returning after kissing the stone, and the crowd pushed me in front of him. He moved to my right side to get past me, and the crowd pushed me there. The same happened when the Arab tried to get past me through my left side. He got angry at me and caught my private parts. He clenched it and punched me in the groin. I was more shocked than in pain and too afraid to react. The crowd pushed me somewhere again, and the Arab went away after releasing me.
The Arab's audacity to physically assault me from the Islamic holy place exposes the Arab-supremacism of the Arabs. Imagine that if I was an Arab man, I am sure that he wouldn't have assaulted me. He knew from my body color that I was not an Arab, and my teenage face made him realize that I would be no match for him. He took out his anger at me and went away. I got a taste of how Arabs are. Traumatized, I had not spoken about this experience to anyone until recently.
There is numerous literature on the racism that African-Americans face from the white supremacists, but literature on Arab atrocities towards people from other races is meager. The best-seller 'Goat Days' (Aadujeevitham), written by Benyamin, based on the experiences of a South Indian Muslim who went to Saudi Arabia in search of greener pastures, is an example of how racist Arabs can be. Often poverty-stricken Muslims of other parts of the world are conned by the lure of Islam and the affluence of the Middle East. Due to abject poverty and religious sentiments, Non-Arab Muslims go to the Arab world searching for jobs and become slaves. Books and literature in this regard are rare, but experiences of Arab supremacy are not.
I hail from a family of Middle East-based Non-Resident Indians (NRI). From an early age, I have heard stories of Arab atrocities towards South Indians and other NRIs working in Saudi Arabia and other countries of the Middle East. Finally, when I visited Saudi Arabia, two weeks was enough to live through NRI trauma. America and other democracies abolished slavery, but in Islamic monarchies of the Middle East, slavery is in full swing.
In other religions
Both Hinduism and Christianity are not free of a supremacist mindset. The caste system of India is an example of Brahmin-Aryan Supremacism that I have discussed in another article. The case of Christianity is a little complex.
Jesus was born to the Israel community, and this makes him a Jew by birth. Perhaps, Christianity was an effort by Jesus to make Israelites become the top-notch community and feed their expansionist tendencies. However, Jews rejected Jesus for his universal love and unity, which was unacceptable for race-conscious Jews. Jews still hold that only people born as Jews can be Jewish, and converts to Judaism will always have a much lower status. This aspect is similar to Hinduism's Caste/Varna system, based on one's birth.
However, Jesus managed to make a cult following after his death through his legacy and his disciples. At present, Christianity is the largest religion in the world and Bible the most read book. However, a different form of supremacism took hold of Christianity.
Protestants and others used Christianity to promote slavery in the Southern part of the modern USA. In India, Roman Catholics are considered higher than other Christians (including Christian converts). The vertical hierarchy among Christians points to supremacy with the deep-rooted influence of the religious priesthood, which can be called evangelical supremacy.
Curiously, all three religions have a consensus in one regard- the status of women, LGBTQIA+, and differently-abled.
In all three religions, women come at the lowest caste hierarchy even if they are born into Arab, Brahmin, or Roman Catholic/Protestant families. LGBTQIA+ individuals are looked down on as outcasts in Hinduism, ostracized, and shunned in Islam and Christianity. Differently-abled are said to be carrying the sins of previous birth in Hinduism, worthless in Christianity, and conned by the 'destined for heaven' myth of Islam.
These facts prove that organized religions are a historical ploy by patriarchal, cisgender, heterosexual, and non-disabled men. Islam is more decadent than others due to its archaic and bigoted scriptures, Arab Supremacism, and religiously conservative/fundamentalist followers.
An exception
A colleague of mine once joked, saying, 'Hindus have Kashi, Ayodhya, and others, Muslims have Mecca and Medina while Christians have the Vatican City, what do Buddhists have? They don't even have a holy land for their religion!'
Although she was joking, she was right.
In his book Buddha and his Dhamma, Ambedkar talks of Buddha's and Buddhism's aversion to divinity and infallibility. He says that belief in the infallibility of any idea is not part of Buddha's Dhamma. Buddha rejected the idea of his own Dhamma being infallible when he rejected other religious dogma of his times. Ambedkar thus rightfully puts forward Buddhism as flexible and adaptable to changing times, steering clear of religious doctrines associated with organized religions.
Buddha's place in his religion as Marga data (one who shows the way) and not Moksha data (one who gives salvation) takes the egoism of organized religions away from Buddhism. The essential rationality of Buddhism makes it immune to supremacism associated with other religions. The lack of supremacist notions in Buddhism negates the ideas of the holy land and pilgrimage centers associated with ideal people or societies, which is common in organized religions.
Objections to Buddhism can rise by citing the examples of Sri Lanka and Myanmar, where Buddhists are in the majority and persecution of religious minorities take place. In Sri Lanka, the persecuted are the Tamils, who are predominantly Hindus, and in Myanmar, it is the Rohingya Muslims. However, any effort to find supremacism in Buddhism from these two countries would fail.
Buddha was born in Lumbini and raised in Kapilavasthu, both in Nepal. Neither Sri Lanka nor Myanmar can claim themselves as Buddhist holy lands. The Sinhalese and Burmese have no relation to Buddha's family or people. The very idea that Buddhism is in vogue in countries other than Buddha's homeland reveals that Buddhism doesn't harbor any supremacist notions in it. The persecution of Tamils and Rohingyas is not religious in origin; it is ethnic and racial.
As a religion, Buddhism should have stopped Sinhalese or Burmese from persecuting their minorities, but it didn't. The root cause for this lies in the fact that Buddha's Buddhism got degraded over time. The most significant proof for this is the worship of Buddha and belief in the idea of the soul (Atman) by most Buddhists. Buddha was against the idea of God (Ishwara) and Atman, disproving both in his lifetime. This adulteration might be the reason behind Buddhist-dominated countries such as Sri Lanka and Myanmar becoming persecutors.
Conclusion
Ambedkar felt compelled to steer clear of the adulterated Buddhism and hence reframed it Navayana Buddhism after his tiring pursuit to revive Buddha's Buddhism. Buddha and his Dhamma is his contribution to the world in this regard.
Supremacism is a basic tenet of all organized religions. The reason for this is that their fundamental religious dogmas are associated with their origins. They sustain themselves by conning people through fear of an unseen entity that punishes everyone who doesn't accept the religion. People who don't accept the faith and criticize it challenge its inherent supremacism, which can destroy the dominant groups' religious, cultural, social, economic, and political power. This aspect explains God's anger in Islam and other religions towards those who don't believe in the particular religion. God's supremacy in organized religion is a ruse under which various forms of supremacism rules over believers.
