Muslim Heretics Conference

TEL AVIV, Israel —  For Muslims who just can’t fit the five-times-a-day Salah prayer routine into their busy schedules, an Israeli mobile phone provider has a new solution: Mobile Koran.

Pelephone has begun offering a Koran text service that enables users to tap into verses of choice from the Muslim Holy Book at will. For the modest sum of $1.50 per month, subscribers can download what appears onscreen as an actual book of Koran, and scroll through chapter and verse.

“We are providing something to subscribers who want to be connected to these texts any time and any place,” said Pelephone Product Content Director Moti Cohen. “So naturally we are targeting a population that would use this type of service. Our Arab sector customers are very enthusiastic.”

News of an Israel-backed Koran-on-demand launch targeting the Arab sector seems rife with irony — particularly as Jews and Arabs clash in the West Bank city of Hebron and rumors float freely of an Israeli re-entry into the Gaza strip, which is controlled by the terrorist group Hamas.

But business is business, and Cohen said Pelephone is happy to take advantage of an uptapped market, as neither of the two Palestinian mobile operators, Jawwal and Wataniya, provides the service.

“This was a natural move for us,” he said. “We offer services to Israel’s entire population — Arab and Jew — and the Arab sector makes up about 15 percent of our client base. In this market almost every person has a mobile phone. Why wouldn’t we offer something like this when the Bible service has been so popular?”

The “Bible Service” is Pelephone’s Old Testament text-on-demand feature, launched last year to target religious Jewish mobile phone users. As with the Koran application, the service enables clients to download and page through an almost real — yet still virtual — copy of the Old Testament whenever the spirit moves them.

Ironically, the country’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community is barred by religious law from surfing the Web or using data services in general, so that specific sector isn’t privy to the advantages a mobile Biblical offering might provide.

Among Muslims, however, those rules don’t apply.

“The Arab sector is pretty adherent and many work outside the house and pray five times a day,” Cohen explains. “So we expect a high percentage of our Arab customers to opt for this feature.”

Nasser Nawasi, a 19-year-old computer sales rep from Faradis Village, signed on to mobile Koran last week, and he’s thrilled.

“It’s with me at the beach, at work — wherever I go. Whenever I want to be closer to Islam I pull out my mobile phone and turn on the Koran. I don’t necessarily pray from it — it’s not the same as the genuine book — but if I feel like I need a shot of enlightenment or direction in my day, it’s great. It means a lot to me.”

Does it bother Nawasi that an Israeli carrier is serving up his daily verse?

“Not at all. We both have our cultures and different messages in each. They get their Bible and we get our Koran. Plus, why shouldn’t they do it? It’s a very marketable idea,” Nawasi said.

The marketability aspect also speaks to Israeli Islam researcher Dr. Mordechai Kedar, who looks forward to tapping into the new service.

“I can see myself going into the Koran via a 3G phone and urgently retrieving a specific verse for a lecture. It’s certainly accessible…. And the integration of Muslim ideas born in the 7th century with 21st-century gadgets is a welcome phenomenon.”

Cohen said that mobile religion is not a viral phenomenon, even though Pelephone is the sole carrier of chapter and verse in Israel.

In the U.S., AT&T offers a similar MyFaith application for customers to get daily Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish and and Sikh updates, prayers and verses and offers a social networking FaithBase site for connecting Christians 18 and up.

FOXNews.com - Israeli Company Provides Islamic Text on the Go - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

By Alan Caruba Thursday, November 27, 2008

The attacks in Mumbai, India are the latest in the 1,400 year history of Islam and yet people continue to express surprise that the alleged religion of peace could harbor so many cold-blooded killers of innocent people.

Since 9/11, Muslims have carried out more than 11,000 attacks all in the name of Islam and Muhammad. Americans got a taste of it when 3,000 of their own were mercilessly killed without warning and, I might add, without any better reason than Muhammad’s call to “wage war against such of the infidels as are your neighbors.”
With more than 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, about 21 percent of the world’s population, that’s a lot of neighbors and wherever Muslims are gathered in great numbers or wherever they have immigrated, the demand for unbelievers is always the same, convert or die.
The death toll in Mumbai as of this writing is nearing 130 and the target area, just as with 9/11’s attack on the World Trade Center, is the financial center of India. Islam takes a dim view of capitalism wherever it is practiced, but then Islam takes a dim view of everything that is not Islamic.
To understand Islam is to understand two central factors, its sense of superiority and its certitude. While other religions exercise tolerance for those who do not share their faith, Islam requires that “unbelievers” either convert or be killed.
While not all Muslims seek their neighbor’s blood and many are good and decent people, the single truth about Islam is that its holy book is a call to war. This thought is so frightening that most in the West end up denying the threat it poses to their lives. Terror, however, was a means to secure new adherents from its beginning.
In a new book, “The 9/11 Verses: Terrorist Teachings in the Koran”, author Karl J. Trautwein has painstakingly studied the book that Muslims are taught is the word of Allah and the Haddith a collection of stories about Muhammad’s life that are intended to guide the lives of Muslims. Islam lays down rules for every single aspect of a Muslim’s life and it requires prayer five times a day, always facing Mecca. One can purchase the book from http://www.The911Verses.com.
Muslims often point to the Koran’s verses on tolerance, but Trautwein notes that, “Passages teaching peace and tolerance are believed to come from the early days when Muhammad lived in Mecca. Verses calling for hate and violence are believed to have been revealed in Medina, which was later in his life.” In Medina, after Jewish tribes that lived there refused to accept him as a prophet and convert, Muhammad had between 600 and 900 men killed. Their wives and children were taken as slaves.
Trautwein calls Islam “bi-polar” because it contains two totally opposite beliefs and sets of behavior. The violence that the Koran demands cannot be “misinterpreted” any more than its more peaceful, earlier statements. Even so, the Koran promises great rewards for hunting, harming or killing non-believers. A statistical study of the Koran found that 52.7 percent of the verses are hatred aimed at infidels.
The lesson of 9/11, the attacks in Spain, the United Kingdom, Mumbai, and elsewhere around the world is that neither the West, nor anywhere else can “peace” be achieved with Islam. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, animists and all others are the legitimate targets for Muslims because they are not Muslims or refuse to submit to Islam.
The 21st century is now challenged by the 7th century and, everywhere, it finds itself bewildered by what appears to be appalling and senseless killing.
It makes perfect sense, however, to those who believe they are practicing Islam as commanded by Muhammad and the Koran. The Koran heaps scorn on both Judaism and Christianity despite incorporating aspects of both faiths that preceded Islam, claiming that Muhammad received the Koran from the archangel Gabriel and is the last of the prophets. This is a thin veneer to suggest the legitimacy of Islam.
Western and other nations put themselves at peril when they seek accommodation with Islam and it is an irony that 9/11 marked a moment in time when many Muslims began to question their faith, often leaving it either openly or secretly.
An “insult” to Muhammad carries with it a death sentence. Perceived insults can result in riots and attacks as occurred when a Danish cartoonist drew an unflattering picture of Muhammad. Apostasy, the act of converting to another religion is a death sentence for Muslims. Adultery, homosexuality, alcohol, and a long list of other “offenses” can get you killed.
It is an irony, too, that Muslim nations such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and others find themselves the victims of Islamofascism because Islam does not separate the state from the religion.
The final irony is that the United States of America has elected as its next President, Barack Hussein Obama, born to a Muslim father, adopted by a Muslim step-father while living in Indonesia, and emersed in Islam in his formative years.
Mumbai now becomes another page in the history of Islam’s war on the world when its two major sects, Sunni and Shia, are not making war on one another.
For the West and all around the world, there can be only one response to Islam…

The Religion of Peace Strikes Again