Why I Am Not a Muslim

A counter-offer to demands to convert to Islam (by the likes of Zakir Naik and Maududi – mentors of modern terrorism)

Answer This First (Yaksha Prashna | यक्ष प्रश्न)

When your conscience says no but you are ordered to surrender your brain, which should you obey?

Hint – No Claim Stands Above Reason

Ask whether the belief withstands reason.

For both the Quran and the Hadiths, where is the conclusive proof that the founder himself recorded the words attributed to him? Why should we trust uneducated Maulvis and conversion-agents who struggle even with basic maths?

Blind submission, pushed on the gullible by low-IQ Maududis and Zakirs of the world, breeds global terrorism.

More Reasons Why I Am Not A Muslim

Explore the 16 reasons

• 1. Belief in God Is Not Enough
• 2. Perfect Knowledge, Revised Editions, Then Silence?
• 3. They Fought Each Other. Why Must We Trust Them Without Question?
• 4. Revelation or a Neurological Condition?
• 5. Reform Cannot Stop at Four Wives
• 6. Puberty Is Not Readiness for Marriage
• 7. Freeing Slaves Is Not Abolishing Slavery
• 8. Enslavement Gives No Right to a Woman’s Body
• 9. Eternal Punishment for Refusing Belief?
• 10. Paradise or a Catalogue of Pleasures?
• 11. Women’s Rights Cannot Stop Halfway
• 12. The Zaynab Episode and the Standard We Choose
• 13. Why Stop Short of Rejecting Close-Relative Marriage?
• 14. Must Respect Mean Accepting Every Story?
• 15. One Final Test, Unequal Starting Conditions
• 16. Satan’s Verses in a Divine Book?

1. Belief in God Is Not Enough

Because belief in Allah or God alone is not sufficient. We must also accept:

• the founder as the last Prophet
• a Judgment Day,
• Angels
• Satan
• Quran as God’s final message and the best book on earth
• stories that stones shout and trees give witness
• that just one man and a woman created from his rib gave birth to all humanity (Technically, their children would all be brothers and sisters. And science says inbreeding is most harmful for future offspring.)
• the existence of a Heaven full of virgins
• a Hell where people are burnt and tortured forever.
• etc., etc., etc.

A massive package of unverifiable and unscientific leaps of faith must be accepted blindly to escape Hell.

This package varies between different sects of Islam and hence there is often infighting of the most brutal nature. Even Al Qaeda and ISIS kill each other to prove their package to be the right one, and declare that all other packages guarantee Hell!

Why would a just God make His favour depend on such unjust demands? Why make irrationality a condition of winning His favour? If blind faith is part of the design, should we not question God Himself for the terrorism radicals breed through it?

Of course, first, prove that these words came from the founder himself.

2. Perfect Knowledge, Revised Editions, Then Silence?

We are told that Allah’s knowledge is perfect and the Quran is His final statement, even before proving that these words came from the founder himself. If His knowledge is perfect, why would His first statement need revision?

And if successive revelations are necessary, why must revision stop permanently with the Quran, however much the world changes?

Why does Allah demand such a giant leap of faith, especially when the world has changed the most since the birth of the Quran, and the Quran has no mention of these changes?

By contrast, the Vedas, the world’s oldest scriptures, deal solely with principles. They describe humanity’s immense potential to understand and master the inanimate world by discovering the fundamental principles that govern it.

They contain no stories or miracles – unlike the Bible or the Quran.

Why did Allah not make the Quran a book that contains only fundamental principles and no stories? Of course, then it would have been an appendix to the Vedas – like the Upanishads – and could not claim an independent identity as the only benchmark of truth.

3. They Fought Each Other. Why Must We Trust Them Without Question?

a. They fought each other

The accounts presented as authentic say that the Quran was compiled by followers roughly twenty years after the founder’s death. Those same accounts describe his followers, including his allegedly dearest wife and son-in-law, fighting one another.

The accepted history also includes violence against his family, including Husayn’s killing at Karbala.

By their own account, these people fought each other. Why must we trust them without question? If they, despite having spent time with the founder when he was alive, could not stick to peace and non-violence, how do we trust them?

b. Who decided what was authentic?

The founder did not leave the Quran as a compiled book. Instead, we are told it was compiled from scattered written materials – leaves, pieces of leather, etc. – that others claimed to have, roughly 20 years after his death. Some verses are said to have been eaten away by a goat!

The founder did not lay down a foolproof method to decide on the authentic verses. We have to rely on warring factions who decided what was authentic.

One account says that those who proposed non-authentic versions had their hands cut off. Or some other brutal punishment!

And the Caliph who got it compiled was himself murdered soon afterwards.

How do we trust these violent people?

c. Where is the evidence?

The much-publicised Birmingham Quran fragment is just two leaves. Dating the parchment does not identify its writer. Where is the proof that the founder recorded these words himself?

In fact, some sects believe that the original Quran was far larger than the version available today.

My question is – why should I trust all this and not instead trust my conscience and the Veda Samhitas – the oldest scriptures known to humanity and preserved as they are to this day without a change?

If God values honesty, He would reward my honesty. Why would He reward a dishonest leap of faith, taken for unverifiable pleasures after death or out of fear of irrational torture?

4. Revelation or a Neurological Condition?

The accounts we are asked to accept describe visions, fits and experiences interpreted as divine communication. They also describe extraordinary childhood experiences.

Why must the explanation be revelation? What rules out a neurological condition, a mistaken experience, or pretence?

The account describes an experience. Those defending it declare that God caused it. That leap requires evidence. Calling the account sacred does not supply it.

In the 21st century, if someone claims all that – we call it a medical condition. What evidence do we have that it was not so 1,400 years ago? Why should religion conflict with science?

I reject the demand to treat that interpretation as unquestionable knowledge.

5. Reform Cannot Stop at Four Wives

Maududi’s ideology presents the founder’s innumerable marriages, to women ranging from fifteen years older than himself to just six years old, as acceptable examples. Defenders also credit him with ending other marriage practices and reducing unrestricted polygamy to four wives.

Take their reform argument seriously: if reducing the number of wives is progress, why stop at four forever?

Even if we accept that the Quran came from the founder, a text that permits up to four wives until the end of the world and refuses further amendment is not acceptable.

The Vedas uphold monogamy as the ideal. Calling a teaching final does not excuse it from meeting that standard. It cannot stop us from asking the question.

6. Puberty Is Not Readiness for Marriage

The Maududi tradition asks us to accept that the founder had sex with one of his wives when she was just nine. Others say that she had reached puberty.

How does puberty establish readiness for marriage? Physical development is not the same as mature judgment, completed education or the ability to make an independent decision.

A girl should not marry before she has reached full physical maturity, developed mature judgment and completed her education. The Vedas clearly spell this out. Eighteen should be the minimum age, not an excuse to ignore these conditions.

Respect for a past example cannot make a child ready for adult responsibilities. Child sexual abuse does not become acceptable because someone calls it marriage. I reject any claimed divine command used to excuse it.

Why should a divine command conflict with sound medical practice when the Vedas uphold it? If the Quran were divine and perfect, it and the Hadiths that elaborate it should have aligned perfectly with science.

But first: are these Maududi-clan claims even true? Where is the evidence from a trustworthy source?

7. Freeing Slaves Is Not Abolishing Slavery

The defence is that the founder freed slaves and that the Quran, still not proved to be the founder’s own recorded words, makes freeing them a noble act. Yet the system being defended retains slavery.

Freedom is a human right. It cannot depend on a slaveholder’s permission. Praising an act of release does not justify the power to keep another person enslaved. No person has the right to own another.

In the Vedas, the daily prayer includes the wish that all of us may remain free forever:

अदीना स्याम शरदः शतम्

May we all remain free for 100 years and more.

The Vedas completely reject one human being enslaving another and recommend the harshest treatment for human trafficking and slavery. Their principle agrees with the modern affirmation that we are born free.

No social system that even remotely endorses slavery can be the final standard for today or the future.

If the Quran, as available and interpreted today, were perfect, it should have declared enslaving another human being a far greater sin than disbelief in Allah and His prophet.

8. Enslavement Gives No Right to a Woman’s Body

Maududi’s Islam permits sex with slaves and concubines as well as legally wedded wives. The defence is that this benefits both master and slave.

A woman is not property. Enslaving her gives no man a right to her body. Sex imposed on an enslaved woman is rape. Calling it a benefit to her is a defence of abuse.

Accounts of the founder’s concubines are offered as examples to follow. The attribution still needs proof. Even a proven precedent would not justify sexual enslavement. No revered name can excuse the abuse of a woman.

A doctrine that gives religious cover to kidnapping, enslavement and sexual exploitation cannot be accepted in any era: past, present or future. Declaring such a rule unchangeable demands that the abuse be protected forever.

A divine Quran would have declared: anyone who keeps sex-slaves is the worst creature of humanity.

9. Eternal Punishment for Refusing Belief?

According to the Quran and Hadiths as presented by dominant groups, those who refuse belief in Allah, the founder and the Quran face Hell forever. Some Hadiths are also invoked to permit killing and attacking non-believers and those who leave Islam.

How does threatening a person establish the truth of a belief? Punishment forever cannot supply missing proof. Violence can force a yes. It cannot create understanding.

Killing someone for refusing or leaving a faith is an atrocity. No claim of divine authority can excuse it. Anything that endorses it cannot be divine, just as ISIS and Al Qaeda cannot be divine.

The same teachings declare that no further revelation can amend this framework. Why should humanity’s growing knowledge be denied any power to correct it?

The Vedas inspire us to explore, learn and treat all humanity as our family, deserving of and capable of achieving bliss. They even embrace atheism as the right path if driven by a natural urge to seek truth. As one evolves, one changes views. What matters is that at any time, one sticks to Satya to the best of their understanding.

I reject a creed that instead makes hatred or violence a duty. The Maududis and Zakir Naiks cannot make it reasonable by calling it sacred.

10. Paradise or a Catalogue of Pleasures?

The Paradise presented here promises the following to those who accept the prescribed beliefs:

• seventy-two virgins
• young boys
• sweet water, wine and good food

How does an attractive reward establish that a belief is true? A marketing brochure of promised pleasures can tempt you. It cannot prove the belief true.

The problem deepens when even educated people take these descriptions literally and let the promised reward override reason and conscience.

Reject the bargain at its source. No divinity in such tales full of blatant logical loopholes.

11. Women’s Rights Cannot Stop Halfway

a. Divorce and the price of returning

The defence is that Islam improved women’s position. But improvement over a worse condition does not establish equality or make the resulting rules timeless.

In the rules defended here, a husband can give Talaq while a wife cannot. Why should equal human beings have unequal powers to end a marriage?

The ugly practice of Halala is then defended as the route back. The woman must:

1. marry another man;
2. have sex with him;
3. receive Talaq from him;
4. return to her former husband.

A woman’s body is not a penalty for her husband’s decision. Making sex with another man a condition of her return treats her body as a means to settle a marital dispute. I reject that exploitation outright. A religious label cannot justify it.

b. Testimony and equal capability

We are asked to accept that two women’s testimony equals one man’s. Hadiths are invoked to claim that women are less intelligent, though we must first have clear proof that those reports came from the founder himself.

How can being a man or a woman alone tell us whether a witness is capable or trustworthy? Repeating the claim in a sacred text does not prove it. It remains an insult to womanhood. Being a woman is no ground for discounting her intelligence or her word. Reject that discrimination.

The Vedas uphold equal rights and capabilities. Let that be our standard.

12. The Zaynab Episode and the Standard We Choose

The account promoted by the Maududis says that the founder had his adopted son divorce Zaynab and then married her himself. The defence is that this broke the custom of treating adopted sons as biological sons.

Some accounts, attributed to biographers such as Al-Tabari, also describe him seeing Zaynab undressed.

Why should such spurious accounts force us to accept this conduct as an ideal? Changing a rule about adoption does not, by itself, justify every action associated with that change.

I choose the Vedic standard: every woman other than one’s wife should receive the same respect we give our mother.

13. Why Stop Short of Rejecting Close-Relative Marriage?

The rules prohibit some close-relative marriages while permitting others. The defence cannot end with “our religion allows it”.

Close biological relatedness between parents increases the risk of recessive genetic disorders, including conditions affecting development. Religious permission cannot make a biological risk disappear.

The Vedas advise against marrying close relatives. A divine system claiming to guide humanity must remain answerable to medical evidence about harm.

14. Must Respect Mean Accepting Every Story?

a. A later compiler’s assurance is not enough

Maududi’s Islam demands belief in Hadiths and Tafseers containing unscientific claims and degrading accounts about:

• urine
• semen
• menstruation
• excrement
• saliva

Where is clear proof that the founder himself recorded these reports? A later compiler’s assurance is not enough.

Among the accounts defended are descriptions of the founder:

• refusing ritual washing before eating after a bowel movement
• spitting into others’ mouths
• giving saliva to children

Others concern:

• women suckling young men
• the killing of women and children in war

No revered account can make the deliberate killing of innocent women and children acceptable.

Why should respect require us to stop judging any of this for ourselves? “The text says so” cannot establish that the act occurred, or that it is rational, hygienic or just.

The resulting fatwa industry gives religious leaders power over innocent people’s lives. Why should their rulings be beyond reason?

Muslims should reject half the Hadiths out of respect for the great reformer, rather than confuse respect with unquestioning acceptance of every story told in his name.

b. The demand to destroy the tomb

A related demand concerns the founder’s tomb. The Times reported a cleric’s call for its destruction. The grave survives in Medina.

A July 2009 Brandeis study documents al-Wadi‘i’s demand to demolish the dome and move the mosque westward to exclude the grave. A 2008 IslamQA ruling endorses dome removal, with delay if it would provoke unrest.

The stated concern is religious innovation and shirk, associating partners with God. Ibn Baz argues that mosques over graves encourage such worship. But rejecting a form of worship does not require destroying property, unless its construction involved destroying a monument or encroaching on land.

(Follow Matribhoomi – the world’s biggest project freeing public land from communal encroachments)

Read Dual Islam by Islamic scholar Ghulam Jeelani Barq, adapted into English by Shabbir Ahmed.

15. One Final Test, Unequal Starting Conditions

We are told that this life is our first and last chance to secure Paradise rather than Hell. Life is a test.

Then why are the testing conditions so unequal?

• One person is born into a Momin’s home, another into a Kafir’s, another into a terrorist’s.
• One dies in the womb, another in childhood, another lives for a hundred years.

Some scholars say all children enter Paradise. Then why are some spared the risk of eternal failure while others must face it? Why would a just God give one person guaranteed bliss and another a lifetime’s ordeal?

I do not accept it as proved that the Quran’s words came from the founder himself. But a close reading still reveals a conception of rebirth in line with Vedic traditions. How does that fit the insistence that we get only one life?

Those who call this everyone’s only test must explain why we start under such unequal conditions.

16. Satan’s Verses in a Divine Book?

The interpretation we are asked to accept includes the claim that Satan inserted verses into divine revelation and that those verses are difficult to identify.

How can a text be an unquestionable guide if its defenders cannot reliably distinguish divine words from Satan’s? What dependable test resolves the uncertainty?

Knowledge Cannot Have a Full Stop. It Cannot Be Irrational

The list could continue. The central point is that knowledge is a never-ending process. Calling a belief final cannot place it beyond reason.

Further, any knowledge system that blatantly conflicts with reason, logic, science and principles of universal good needs to be rejected outright.

The Vedas offer principles and directions for continued inquiry. The rigid interpretations examined here demand acceptance and deny amendment.

I reject what they ask us to accept today.

There are two separate questions.

1. Where is the clear proof that the founder himself recorded these words?
2. Even if he did, why should we obey a rule that dismally fails the test of reason?

A rule that licenses enslavement, sexual abuse or killing for disbelief deserves outright rejection. Calling it sacred makes none of these acts acceptable.

Our task is to carry forward what is good. Embrace the Vedic message: accept Satya and reject Asatya. Use the Vedas and modern science to the fullest.

Until these demands withstand reason, I am not a Muslim. I am Sanatan: a follower of timeless scientific principles. I am Vedic!

In Essence

• Demand proof of who recorded the words. Then test the belief by its reasoning and consequences.
• Unquestioning belief becomes a weapon when it licenses hatred and violence. Reject every excuse for enslavement, sexual abuse and killing for disbelief.
• Carry forward only what serves knowledge, freedom, justice and universal human dignity.
• Embrace the timeless Veda Samhitas: rooted in science, reason, universal humanism and purposeful living. The first books of humanity, available to us as they always were, without change.

Another Question to Confront (यक्ष प्रश्न)

If a demand fails the test of reason, what changes when a preacher calls it God’s command?

Sources91 references

Explore the references used in this article. Open a source to inspect the reference.

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2. Pakistan Journal of History and Culture 39(1), 2018nihcr.edu.pk
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7. Quran 39:23quran.com
8. Sahih Muslim 2922sunnah.com
9. Raza-e-Khushtar: tree bears witness; cites Zarqaani, volume5raza-e-khushtar.org
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11. Sahih al-Bukhari 3331sunnah.com
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18. Quran 16:101quran.com
19. Sahih al-Bukhari 4987sunnah.com
20. Sahih al-Bukhari 7100sunnah.com
21. Sahih al-Bukhari 3748sunnah.com
22. Reference: pub/media/ebooks/9781399522076.pdfedinburghuniversitypress.com
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36. Zakir Naik: Women's Rights in Islam, polygamyzakirnaik.com
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38. Atharvaveda 7.38.4; original Sanskritvedicheritage.gov.in
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What You Must Do

1. Stop outsourcing your conscience. State the belief demanded of you and who is said to have taught it. Demand proof that those words came from that person, test the reasoning and reject what fails. Hold yourself to the truth you demand from others.
2. Gather people willing to question inherited claims. Teach them to distinguish a claim from its proof, expose the reasoning used to justify hatred or violence, and speak with confidence. Challenge fear wherever it is used to stop people from questioning.
3. Carry the Veda Samhitas’ commitment to truth into education, relationships and public discussion.
4. Practise Karma Yoga, the Vedic path to anand, and develop leaders who can continue this work without depending on you. Bring that commitment into Rashtra Jyoti’s public education: defend truth and human dignity, expose excuses for abuse and prepare others to lead.
5. Embrace Satya Sanatan Vedic Dharma rooted in Nyaya Darshan.

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If you want to establish Satya, destroy Asatya and make action that matters a way of life, join The Vedic Leader Yajna.

कृण्वन्तो विश्वमार्यम् (Let’s make the world noble)

Revised and updated in November 2026 from an original written in 2009.

ॐ इदं न मम (This is not mine).