After receiving an email today from the about.com guide to Islam, I started to thresh out all the reasons for writing my website as I do. I should have explained my rationale last year, but my writing stamina evaporated as some may have witnessed.
In the course of explaining why as a Guide she had deleted my forum messages (because of the link to this website), she characterized my website as antagonistic and insulting to her "Lord." As I think it is impossible to insult an incomparably great being, I would translate that to her meaning a select group of human beings would find my website to be offensive.
As I see it, I have provided a warning to the pious both in my front page, and in my Ayatollah General introduction. Any one who wanders in any farther do so at the risk of losing their non-existent soul. As a former Muslim, who easily took offense, I also think that shock value while unpleasant, can aid some people in taking their thinking in new directions (although granted- there are those for who nothing will shake their belief that the Prophet Sulayman (Solomon) had jinn (genies) at the ready to do his bidding). I am quite thankful for some of the satires of the Onion weekly newspaper about Islam, which though searing at the time, made a rather convincing argument in one article that Islam takes life WAY TO SERIOUSLY.
My contention is that much of Islam is empty formulae, inculcated from the moment of birth, when it's a common practice for the parents to whisper the greatness of Allah into a newborn's ears. The sheer number and repetition of these empty and unverifiable statements cause me to wonder about their meaning, and the meaning of their negation.
When someone describes Allah with one of the 99 most beautiful names of Allah, he is implicitly claiming knowledge of the identity of God, and his attributes. How he gets his knowledge is the question mark. My thought is that it involves the repetition of these formulae- indoctrination. The devotee doesn't know that Allah is generous any more than he knows that Allah is sameen and qabeeH (appearance challenged ).
My inversion of pietisms is ultimately a gesture (likely futile) pointing to the questionable nature of the truth claims contained within an "Allahu Akbar!" or a "La ilaha ilallah wa Muhammadu rasulullah." Why does Allah need me to remind him of his identity as Sovereign Lord and Greatest of the Great? Why would he care about this any more than if I called him a son of gun for the misery he has caused over eons for the life forms on this planet?
I think of it as almost a Zen technique, where the Roshi seeks to remove the tyranny of words, even if it means ripping up Buddhist Sutras, or cursing the Buddha.
A koan for the koanless.