As has so poignantly been pointed out by many who have opened their eyes to the reality of what Islam really is, and have left its fold, such as a group of former Muslims which calls itself the "Apostates of Islam" has, the historical Mohammed was far from being such a man; in fact, quite the opposite. In their own words:

"Why Mohammed was not a prophet:

One who claims to be a messenger of God is expected to live a saintly life. He must not be given to lust, he must not be a sexual pervert, and he must not be a rapist, a highway robber, a war criminal, a mass murderer or an assassin. One who claims to be a messenger of God must have a superior character. He must stand above the vices of the people of his time. Yet Muhammad's life is that of a gangster godfather. He raided merchant caravans, looted innocent people, massacred entire male populations and enslaved the women and children. He raped the women captured in war after killing their husbands and told his followers that it is okay to have sex with their captives and their "right hand possessions" (Quran 33:50) He assassinated those who criticized him and executed them when he came to power and became de facto despot of Arabia. Muhammad was bereft of human compassion. He was an obsessed man with his dreams of grandiosity and could not forgive those who stood in his way. Muhammad was a narcissist like Hitler, Saddam or Stalin. He was astute and knew how to manipulate people, but his emotional intelligence was less evolved than that of a 6-year-old child. He simply could not feel the pain of others. He brutally massacred thousands of innocent people and pillaged their wealth. His ambitions were big and as a narcissist he honestly believed he is entitled to do as he pleased and commit all sorts of crimes and his evil deeds are justified."

I wonder if this is the "exemplary life" Mr. Linus was referring to in his proselytizing?

Then, we have the problem as to the "Divine" origin of the Qur'an itself to add to the mix. Again, the above former Muslims themselves, had this to say on the matter:

"Why Quran is not from God:

Muhammad produced no miracles and when pressed he claimed that his miracle is the Quran. Yet a cursory look at the Quran reveals that this book is full of errors. Quran is replete with scientific heresies, historic blunders, mathematical mistakes, logical absurdities, grammatical errors and ethical fallacies. It is badly compiled and it contradicts itself. There is nothing intelligent in this book let alone miraculous. Muhammad challenged people to produce a "Surah like it" or find an error therein, yet Muslims would kill anyone who dares to criticize it. In such a climate of hypocrisy and violence truth is the first casualty."

Actually, as our own Richard so eruditely pointed out in a recent comment about the subject:

"For the most part, from what I've read from neutral scholars on Islam, the Quran copies most of its content from the bible ... throws in tribal and bedouin social and political structures, throws in some violence to enforce the resultant theosociopolitical system, and calls it all called down from God via Muhammad [Modern Muslims assert that the current Koran is identical to that recited by Muhammad. But earlier Muslims were more flexible. 'Uthman, A'isha, and Ibn Ka'b (among others) all insisted that much of the Koran had been lost]. Literally all of the scriptual basis comes from the bible and Haggada [The Koran contains many Biblical characters, but the stories are mixed up. The variations came from either the Jewish Haggada or the New Testament apocrypha or they are simply mistakes made by a listener (e.g. Haman is believed to be the minister of Pharaoh, and Mary is believed to be the sister of Aaron)]."

In other words, that the Qur'an is nothing more than a hodgepodge, disorderly presentation, of Biblical narratives and hearsay, often adulterated, oral traditions!

But to top that off, there is the matter of the incident with the so called "Satanic Verses," recalled into prominence, after having been "hushed" in Islam for centuries, by Salman Rushdie's use of the term for his controversial book a few years back!

The "Satanic Verses" were verses in the Qur'an, which have now conveniently been "expurgated" from the text, where Mohammed, when first defeated by his enemies, capitulated in order to save his worthless hide, and told his followers to worship the two local deities of his captors along with Allah, in blatant idolatrous violation of the supposedly most important tenet of Islam: "Allah is One, there is no other God than Allah".

This incoherent slip by Mohammed, who obviously did it in order to save his skin, brought about much debate amongst later Muslim scholars and compilers of the Qur'an, who conveniently blamed it on Satan (who else?!?!), who supposedly duped Mohammed into believing he was the Angel Gabriel when he dictated the "Satanic Verses" to him.

This in itself opens up a whole new can of worms, since one has to ask: If Satan was able to dupe Mohammed once into believing the idolatrous false message he was giving him came from God, what makes anyone think that Satan did not dupe Mohammed on other occasions, and that many other Qur'anic verses are "Satanic Verses" as well; even as the infamous "War Verses" give every indication by their very tone and nature of being?!?! In other words, the whole of the Qur'an may well be nothing but a collection of "Satanic Verses" or, at best, completely unreliable as the "Word of God".

Like Job we may hear the inhuman (and I do mean it as non-human) voice of God in the whirlwind of the storm, or in the wonder of a drop of dew preciously sitting, gently, on the emerald green beauty of a leaf in the coolness of the morning, or as Professor Loren Eiseley so eloquently put it "in a flight of birds", a flight of "life," such as he witnessed as a younger man flying over the barren expanses of the Nebraska Badlands into the sunset over the exposed bones of animals long extinct, against a sunset sky of hues of incomparable shades of blues, purplish pinks, and golden yellows; we may hear the voice of God in the hauntingly sad gaze of a starving child. But you will never hear the word of God from the blast of a murderous, fanatical, Muslim suicide bomber! On the contrary, such "faithful" Muslims are taking the most precious and rarest of all of God's creations all throughout his universe, "life," and flinging it in arrogance and defiance back into God's face!!! How much more patently wrong can you possibly be than that by any standard.

"By their deeds you shall know them", how poignantly true! Yes, in the past there was the much touted infamous "Inquisition" of the Catholics - unfortunately, inexcusable atrocities have been committed in the name of God, religion, and of every other "ideology" since the inception of the world throughout human history! Yet, at present, show me how many Catholics and or other Christians have strapped themselves with explosives and blown themselves up for the sake of imposing Christendom on others! Show me how many Hindus, and Jains, and Buddhists, presently murder and massacre people on a daily diet of blood, gore, and horror, in the name of their religion as Muslims do! If anything, the deeds of Muslims rather starkly point out to the "Satanic" origins of Islam.

It would be infinitely far better for all these Muslims, in the eyes of the God for whom they claim they commit all this carnage and all these atrocities, that they would not believe in Him and be "atheists," and yet not pollute His name and the foot of His Altar with so much human sacrifice, gore, and bloodshed of the innocent.

Not looking at it religiously, but simply from a human perspective, were we to strip both Jesus and Mohammed both of any "Divinity" or relation to "Divinity," the man dying on the cross, asking the God he believed in and whom he called "Father", to forgive the very same people humiliating, tormenting, and killing him, is infinitely "morally superior," to the brigand caravan thief, who instructed his followers to convert people by the sword, and submit them to his "yoke"! Need anyone say more?

The true acceptance of the "Divine Will" can best be summed up in St. Francis' Prayer:

"God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change... the Courage to change the things I can... and the Wisdom to know the difference. Amen."

What a far cry from Mohammed's point of view! Or:

"Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen"

What a stark difference to the demoniac message of Islam, of repression, obscurantism, hate, violence and bloodshed, of suicidal murders and unspeakable carnage, of "subject to our yoke...or die".

Mr. Linus proposes in his diatribe that we use our "God-given faculty of thought and reason", yet when Pope Benedict XVI recently alluded to that same faculty or "Logos" and quoted a long dead Byzantine Emperor, who was a man of great learning, who stated centuries ago what ought to be so patently self-evident to anyone exercising those very same faculties today, namely that, quote: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached", Muslims got all upset, and as it is customary of their culture of intolerance, hatred, and death, "violently" protested (ironically) with burnings, riots, and mayhem all throughout the world, that Islam be called "violent"! How absurd is that?

Emperor Manuel II Paleologos was absolutely right! Of all the world religions and or belief systems, only Islam is inextricably intertwined with violence, suicidal bombings, and needless bloodshed and carnage! Only Islam openly promotes, advocates, and practices intolerance, repression, and violence; and anyone using the least common sense, as Mr. Linus ironically proposes in his compelling us to convert to Islam, should be able to discern how far removed this pernicious, faulty, and false "Islamic" religion / belief system is, from anything remotely "Divine"!

As Pope Benedict so very eloquently put it in his discourse at Regensburg:

"God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably ("syn logo") is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...."

As I cynically have remarked in past posts, many otherwise decent people, men and women of "good will" have had the misfortune of opening their eyes one day in their cribs, look up and see mom, dad, and the Mullah, without there having been much choice on their part; they were simply born into this accursed religion. However, as they have reached maturity, they have, again, the "awesome freedom to choose" and to know in their heart of hearts, that what their false religion demands of them is contrary to "reason" as well as to the true "Will of God"! As the Torah states: "The Law is written in the hearts of men."!

Therefore, so long as the so called "moderate Muslims" engage in their current half-hearted "Apologia" and "rationalizing" of the reprehensible, murderous, behavior of their brethren, and persist in refusing to face up to those within their ranks carrying out this abhorrent "blood-bath" upon humanity, they are no better than their fellow radical Islamists are, and perforce remain "indistinguishable" from them! One can only hope, that the most enlightened amongst them, would eventually walk away from this "Religion of Perpetual Outrage and Death"

Not even in the temples of the Hindu Goddess of Destruction and Death, "Kali," has so much innocent blood ever been shed, as Islam in its satanic perversion has shed for centuries all over God's earth! In that respect, it is truly the "Religion of Perpetual Outrage, Destruction, and Death".

I would advise Mr. Linus to open his eyes to the naked, stark, reality of what Islam really is to the millions of Muslims that want to kill anyone and everyone that disagrees with their sick ideology.