Submission

Let's speak English

First of all, we are speaking English, not Arabic, so there is no "shirk" but "association", there is no "kufr" but "rejection", there is no " 'ibada" but "servitude" and there are no "taghut" but "villain". Arabic is not a sacred language, it's just the language Muhammad and his audience spoke.

 I translated "taghut"  as "villian" because the triliteral root ṭa ghayn ya (ط غ ي) is associated with evil and wrongdoing. Villans are wrongdoers and many times they try to control, oppress or manipulate people. In the context of The Recitation, a villain is someone who demands other people to serve him.

By servitude ('ibada) I mean a state of total submission in which the person does whatever the villain says without measure. We should serve in this manner God alone.

A villain could be a dictator, a priest, a teacher or even a mother!

Ok, let's continue.

 

Submission is not a religion!

What is your religion? 

Islam.

This answer is absolute non-sense and I'll show you why.

"Islam" is the Arabic word for "submission". The Islamic Republic of Iran becomes "The Submissive Republic of Iran". It doesn't sound so cool, right?

What is your religion? 

Submission.

 

Now let's see where this mess comes from...

And whoever follows other than submission as a religion, it will not be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he is of the losers.

- Recitation 3:85

Using "Islam" as the name of a religion, combined with this verse, fits the religiously discriminatory agenda of the caliphs and scholars. However, we know that God said...

It is not piety that you turn your faces towards the east or the west, but pious is who accepts God, and the Last Day, and the controllers, and the Book, and the prophets and gives the wealth in spite of love to the relatives, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and the beggars, and in freeing the necks; and who establishes contact, and gives the purification, and fulfils their covenant when they make it; and those who are patient in suffering and hardship, and the time of stress. Those are the ones who are true and those are the pious.

- Recitation 2:177

This is NOT a contradiction because submission is not a religion but a trait of character that is beloved by God.

In 3:85 God demands that whatever religion or spiritual path you follow reflects your submission to Him and not your love for your partner or culture, for example.

 

The evil of killing the apostates

We all know that killing people is horrible but killing apostates is somehow even worse. To kill the apostates is to pressure people who were born into the religion to follow it out of submission to the State or the community (which represents association) instead of submission to God. Essencially, it is to prohibit the very same thing they claim to protect, submission (Islam), and it makes compulsory the very same thing they claim to forbid, association (shirk).