In the Name of God: The Unveiling of the Truth Behind the Religions

By Youssef Hamouda

This book is a quest to look at the history of mankind to answer questions that humans wondered about for centuries. What does God want from us? Why are there so many religions? Who did the ancients worship if it wasn't God?

This book is a quest through history, religion, and science to answer these questions and more. It will prove beyond any doubt that there is a creator and he's one and the message he's been sending through the times using prophets and messengers is one and the same. Religions are used to teach people common values that will help them coexist in peace. Unfortunately, humans used it to launch wars against each other in the name of God. Each one wants to prove that their religion is the only one that God accepts and recognizes.

God created us equal but different.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889436188

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In the Name of God

The Unveiling of the Truth Behind the Religions

Youssef Hamouda

ISBN 979-8-88943-617-1 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88943-618-8 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Youssef Hamouda

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

The Introduction

The Image of Islam

Current Events and Brief History

Nasser and the Brotherhood

Sadat and the Brotherhood

History of the Brotherhood and the Radicalization

Introduction of the Word Jihad and Bin Laden

Ascending to Power

The Pretenders

The Challenge

Interests versus Principles

The Movement

Why the Failure?

The Wars and the Mistakes

The Case and the Escape

First Player

Second Player

The Shia in Egypt

The Arrogance

Qatar and the Money

The Financer

The Power of the Media

The Rebellion

The Stance

The Confrontation

Consequences and Condemnation

Al-Jazeera

The Third Player

The Egyptian Christians

The Fourth Player

The Lies and Misuse of Power

The Damages

Consequences

Leadership

Revelations

Constantine

The Aha Moment—The First Revelation

The Second Revelation

The Third Revelation

The Three Elements

God versus Madame Marois

The Implementation of the Three

Evidence

The Arrival: The Story of Us

Adam and Eve

The Real Adam and Eve

The Races

New Revelations

The Rituals

Abraham/Ibrahim

Isaac or Ismail?

Abraham and the Pharaoh

Sodom and Gomorra

Joseph/Youssef

The Seductress and Imprisonment

Who Was Youssef/Joseph?

Moses/Musa

Musa and the Wise Guy

The Communications today

Why the Exodus?

The Greeks

The Angels of Babylon

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba

The Genie and The Wise Guy

Eastern Religions

Jesus/Isa

The Revered One

Saint Isa

Why Mithraism?

Islam in Egypt

Arius and the Vandals

The Importance of Islam to Christianity

Omar and the Persians

The Siege of Constantinople

Charles The Hammer Martel

The Vikings and the Church

Early Muslims

Saladin and the Templars

The Claim

Why Protestantism?

Facts

Why England?

The Allocations

The Demon and the Girl

The Conquests and the Conquerors

The Mongols

The Brits

The Yankees

The French

The Miracle

The Family Connection

The Experiment

The Man in the Mirror

The Women

Arabian Nights

Arab Women Misunderstood?

Monogamy versus Polygamy

Mohammed: The Women's Advocate

Solving Spousal Disputes

Unholy versus Mercy

Misuse of Hadiths (The Prophet Mohammed's Sayings)

Terrorizing the Enemy

Responsibility

Language and Education

Social Justice and Laws

Voodoo

Violations

First: The Arresting Laws and the Power of the Prosecutor

Second: The Mix between the Judicial System and Prosecution

Third: The Accused Are Put in Cages in All Trials

The Israeli-Arab Conflict

Tests

Fate or Reality

Realizations

Answers

The Final Frontier

What Does God Want from Us?

My Two Cents

Saint Fatima

Communism

The Final War

The Gold Rush

Science and Sayings

Last Chance

God and Muslims

The Systems and the Proposal

Who's Better?

Depend on God?

The Musaylimah Factor

The Future

The Resurrection

One Thousand Years of Peace

The Impact

The Very Beginning: The Creation

The Muslim Chinese Emperor

The Dark Horse

The Answer to the Puzzle

In Memoriam: Nelson Mandela

About the Author

The Introduction

This book will take you on a journey into the history of mankind, where no man has gone before. It will answer questions humans have been asking for centuries—questions such as, What's God's role in our history? Who are Adam and Eve? Were they a result of a natural evolution or a revolution? Who was the woman Cain married, and who are her people? Who are the angels, and what world did they come from? Are they among us today? Why did the Exodus occur? Who was the Pharaoh? Why Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and the Eastern religions—in other words, why religion? Why the races? Where did they come from? Who's behind these religions? What does God want from us?

In this book, I will provide unconventional answers to all these questions and more. The reader is guaranteed new ideas and conclusions in the matter of our history, religion, and our raison d'être. All the evidence furnished in this book is based on scientific, historical, and religious books, besides logic. What is the truth behind our history? Can we handle the truth? Although a lot of people don't care, there are people who need to know the truth, and I have many interpretations, or as I like to say, truths. The explanations or truths may seem hard to comprehend, because we were groomed to believe, through our history and our lives that life on this earth is for oneself, for our family, for our kin, for our village, for our city, for our country, for our religion.

Through our history, those selfish beliefs entitled us to launch wars against our neighbors and others to rightly or wrongly justify our conquests. As it stands today, the stance between religions around the globe still impairs our ability to advance the human cause and future. Over the last several years, I have taken it upon myself to find the truth behind the myths and mystiques in our history, provided to us through tools such as history books, religious books, and finally science, in the form of archeology, geology, physics, and carbon dating.

I will use these tools to explain how I perceive our history and, hopefully, open your eyes to see alternative explanations and conclusions that will challenge the status quo. We will go through history together, trying to find out the real truth beyond any doubt, for those who believe in logic, science, and common sense.

We will walk together through history, with a lot of emphasis on the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Koran, along with some other religious books. Through this journey, I will present to you an alternative explanation of history, different than what we were led to believe from our history books. This will shed some light on what we are, who we are, and what's our purpose of existence. My goal is to show you there's a higher power that controls our lives, and our destinies, for an ultimate purpose. After examining all the evidence I will provide, I hope you will come to the same conclusions I did. There was a beginning, and there shall be an end.

I started searching for the truth when I was a teenager, I went to my dad, and I asked him a question (will be revealed later), my dad looked at me and said sternly that I shouldn't talk about this with anybody and slammed the door. I was stunned by his reaction, and that he didn't answer me.

My mind still wandered through the years about different ideas I struggled with, but I kept it to myself for years, until fifteen years ago, when I started mentioning these ideas. I have told my friends and family my thoughts and revelations, periodically through the years. For example, I challenged the theory of evolution, because I believe in a revolution—genetic engineering. Someone came down to earth and genetically engineered species, to improve upon them through trial and error, until the final product, us, in other words Adam and Eve.

Together we will examine historical facts, which will prove my theories. My ideas became more concentrated in the last six years, when I started getting heavily interested in history, and I was exposed to information in science and religion. People think science and the idea of a God doesn't match; on the contrary, if there is a God, He is the one invented science. Science must prove His existence or not. I found points that link the three together.

A new revelation came to me of what the real history is and the truth behind it. To my amazement, I found all the things I've talked about through the years were coming together, and everything became clearer to me. I saw through a lens of a camera, an upside-down picture of our history. Things were not as it seemed.

To my surprise, the upside-down picture is actually the picture we see today. I realized this is a deliberate illusion, which God has a huge purpose for. In our history, the purpose of this illusion was to keep humans on a certain track they should not veer from to arrive at the final destination. This illusion is behind the introduction of our understanding of all religions. There is a purpose behind everything that happened to us in our past, present, and future. This was done to separate us not to divide us and to protect us from each other and ourselves. I hope some will come to the ultimate conclusion that there is a Creator, who is in control, and nothing happens as a coincidence, and everything has a purpose.

I will try to find the reasons behind all these separations, which were introduced to us through different religions. It's all part of the human experience and learning process, which we had to go through, to arrive to today. I will share with you some of the conclusions I came to, after five years of searching through religious books, science, and history. I've concluded there is a Creator who is behind everything, and He is behind every single religion that has ever existed in our history. The reason for this diversity of deities through time is that He created us equal but different. Different strokes for different folks.

Since the beginning, He presented himself in different ways to different people. He observed us, and changed those religions when He deemed them obsolete. My other conclusion is that human intelligence needed time to mature and grow, therefore humans for the last few thousand years have had their intelligence grow slowly. Therefore, when you look at all the religious books closely, under a microscope, you will see these books are addressing humans with little intelligence, maybe like that of a two-year-old or a little older. We are definitely more intelligent than earlier humans.

Human intelligence needed time, experience, and knowledge to grow. Since our growth in intelligence through time is slow, the knowledge was delivered incrementally. If you have noticed, we are more intelligent than our grandparents, and probably our kids will be more intelligent than us. The ratio of the growth in our intelligence is going up, because of simple math. Two plus two is four, and two thousand plus two thousand equals four thousand, or to put it simply, the snowball effect.

There has been a rapid change in technology we have been experiencing in the last twenty years, as you can notice from the acceleration in scientific advancement. Technology is advancing exponentially, faster than we can keep up with it. Of course, younger generations have the mental capacity to learn easier than older generations. Have you noticed how the new generations have been able to absorb the new knowledge and technology, more than our parents and us? Today a ten-year-old can comprehend new technology faster than a generation before.

The importance of this conclusion, which today is a scientific fact, is we have to revolutionize our understanding and comprehension of all these religions and our history. Both are inseparable. I'll start my journey with you as I started five years ago, at the beginning.

I struggled with how I would write this book. This book has been in the making for years in my head, and through conversations with friends and family. I have to admit after several years of trying to convince some people I found the truth, only a few of them really believed in differing degrees. I can't help but to picture the image of Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in the movie A Few Good Men, when Tom shouted I want the truth! and Jack shouted back You can't handle the truth!¹ The irony is this exchange represents 99 percent of us. Only a few of us are willing to stick our heads out for the truth, no matter how controversial or painful it might be.

Throughout history, we can clearly see since the beginning of humanity until today, in every village, city, country, or for that matter, anywhere in the world, religion is the most influential aspect of people's lives. The common understanding of Christians today, about the history of religion, is it started with Moses and the Jews, the chosen people, as the first organized religion from God, until the arrival of Jesus. Apparently, after that God stopped contacting and guiding us.

The Jews are considered God's chosen people, and supposedly His favorite, and unfortunately that gave them, in the past, a sense of entitlement. This was also the case with their fellow Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam. I'll have more emphasis on these three religions, even though they represent less than 50 percent of the population, because almost all religious wars in our history came from them. These wars were attributed to their feelings of entitlement.

The Buddhists, Hindus, and the other Eastern religions, to their credit, felt content they were where they should be. They did not try to expand, and conquer the rest of the world as the others did. Of course, if you ask any member of any religion who is God's favorite, no matter how small the sect, they would say us.

The Image of Islam

As a Muslim I have to admit that Islam has represented a great challenge, not only to the Muslims, but the whole world in the last forty years. This is why I will talk a little bit more at length about Islam first, while trying to be a fair critic of what the world has witnessed, and the significance of its impact on the future of humanity. Furthermore, I will discuss the erroneous impression by non-Muslims of Islam, and some of the misguided and outdated interpretations by the Muslims, across the globe of their own religion.

I was born to a Muslim father and a Catholic mother. My father took custody of me and my brother at the age of three. He raised us in a very moderate understanding of Islam, which existed up to the beginning of the 1970s. We were only allowed to see our Catholic mother for one or two weeks in the year, until I reached the age of seventeen. Growing up I had the highest respect for Christians, especially since I loved my Christian mother very much. I shared the common belief with other Muslims that Christians were not that different than us. They have the same values, and worship God like us. Yet there is a difference between Muslims and Christians when it comes to Jesus (Isa in Arabic). Christians believe Jesus is the son of God or God himself, while Muslims believe, because of their scripture (The Koran) that Jesus is a messenger of God.

In Islam, Isa is one of the most revered humans that ever existed, and His mother, Mary (Maryam in Arabic), is one of the holiest women that ever existed. Muslims believe Maryam bore Isa without a father. Furthermore, followers of Islam believe God wasn't born, and he did not give birth to anyone. Therefore, the idea that Jesus is God or the son of God is considered by Muslims to be a falsehood, and therefore it would lead to the worship of multiple gods. This would contradict the idea of a one God. Having said that, The Koran teaches us we should not judge, and that Christians and Muslims should love each other regardless of the differences. God only will judge at the end what is right or wrong, and He only will clarify our differences.

The other major difference between the two religions is the details of the crucifixion. Muslims are taught in the Koran that God switched Jesus before he was crucified, and replaced him with someone else (resembling Jesus). Because of these two differences, they have been at each other's throats since the seventh century. The irony of the matter is, as you will see later on, if you remove these two major differences, Islam would be almost identical to the Judeo-Christian beliefs. The Koran's verses often repeat the history of humans, which are almost identical to the Old Testament, and the Jewish history and their Prophets. It is a must for Muslims to believe in the Bible and Torah, as God taught and told us to. The only exceptions being those verses that God, through the Koran, deemed false because of human interference. Muslims believe Christianity mirrors Islam in advocating love, giving, forgiving, family, honesty, integrity, and kindness, and staying away from evil such as deception, stealing, hating, cheating, killing, etc.

Current Events and Brief History

There are many fallacies today about Islam, and its controversial verses. It is so clear in the Koran, beyond any doubt, that the only time Muslims are allowed to carry weapons, and go to war would be in self-defense, and only in a case of self-defense. It's shocking to compare these clear instructions that were given to the Muslims in hundreds of verses in the Koran, to what the terrorists are doing today. I'm sure it would be surprising to most people that the person responsible for the emergence of terrorism, and releasing the genie from the bottle is the former president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat (1970–1981).

His actions resulted in unleashing a wave of terrorism around the world under a cover of religion. These terrorists inflicted most of the damage on the innocent civilians, with more Muslims as victims than anybody else. The number of Muslims who died since September 11, 2001, because of religious terrorism far exceeds the number of non-Muslims who have perished, including the 9/11 victims.

Some interpretations that appeared in the first century of Islam, a radical movement called Al Khawarij (translation the outsiders) was crushed at the time. This movement has always been rejected by 99 percent of the Scholars throughout Muslim history, until it reemerged in the 1970s.

Nasser and the Brotherhood

In the 1950s and 1960s in Egypt, President Nasser, who came into power in 1952 until 1970, led Egypt through modernization. The attitude of people toward religion during President Nasser's time can be better explained in this light joke. A group of human right activists met Nasser in the late 1960s to inquire about the status of the Christian community in Egypt and how well they were treated. They asked him about the power sharing in the hierarchy of the Egyptian government. Nasser replied, We have a lot of Christians in the Socialist party, which was the only party and ruling party at the time. Then he said, There are several Christian ministers that we have in the cabinet, along with two Christians out of twelve in the executive committee of the Socialist party. A member of the group asked innocently, Can a Christian become president of Egypt? Nasser replied without hesitation, Not even a Muslim. Religion and politics were never mixed. He repeatedly used to say, Religion is between man and God, but country is for all

Prior do Nasser, in the 1940s, brothels were legal in Egypt. The contrast between Egypt in 1970 and Egypt today is best exemplified by watching a concert from the 1970s by a famous singer, Oum Kalthoum. You would notice immediately from the hundreds of women attending that concert there might be a handful, or sometimes not even one, wearing a hijab (a traditional Muslim headwear). While today, the majority of women in Egypt are wearing the hijab, because of the societal pressure put on them. The influence of Islamic radicals in the last forty years put tremendous pressure on the Egyptian women and men, which sometimes resulted in verbal or physical attacks on woman who chose not to wear the hijab. These radicals transformed the social structure in Egypt. The weak governments that ruled Egypt since Sadat until now seemed afraid to confront these people, or maybe they needed them for their own selfish purposes. Now I'd like to go back to really what happened to have such an impact on a nation like Egypt in forty years.

Sadat and the Brotherhood

After the departure of Nasser, Sadat was left in a very weak position. Three years prior, he inherited a country that suffered a great loss. There was unrest in the streets, because of the lack of clarity on the peace and war situation. Egypt was suffering from economic disaster because of the closure of the Suez Canal, and its emphasis was on rebuilding its military apparatus that got devastated in the 1967 war. All Egyptians were demanding the return of their lost Sinai, and return of their wounded pride. In the midst of all that, Sadat was having problems with the Soviet Union, because of the constant delays in the arm shipments from Russia to Egypt, which were extremely important to launch a liberation war. The Soviet Union was the biggest arms supplier, if not the only one to Egypt.

In 1972 Sadat asked all the Russian experts to depart Egypt, even though he desperately needed them. This shocked the whole world, especially the Soviets. At the time, there was a relatively influential communist movement in Egypt aligning itself with the labor unions. They represented a huge danger to Sadat's presidency, because he was vulnerable and hardly had any allies. He committed the ultimate sin by releasing all the so-called Islamists, mainly Brotherhood members from prison. He struck a deal with them that they would be his new allies against the communists. He knew there is nothing stronger than the name of God to affect people, which he used to his advantage in recruiting these radicals. This two-edged sword came back to stab him, because people should never ever play with religion.

History of the Brotherhood and the Radicalization

To give you some background about the Brotherhood, it was established in 1928, by a young man by the name of Hassan El Bana at the age of twenty-two.² The movement started as a missionary movement with the selfless idea of helping the poor, but unfortunately and quickly it turned into a vicious lust for power movement. The idea was if you help the poor, which are the majority of people, you could reach power by becoming a political movement that has a base from those people. To gain support, they convinced the citizens they needed a military wing to fight the British occupiers, and then suddenly the assassinations started.

A prime minister in 1948 was assassinated because he dared to oppose them. In 1949, even their own leader and other opponents were assassinated. In 1948 the Brotherhood was finally outlawed after the assassination of the prime minister. Unfortunately, Nasser brought them back in 1952. Again, their insatiable lust for power drove them to attempt the assassination of President Nasser in 1954. This attempt was because Nasser refused a request from the supreme guide of the Brotherhood to force the veil on the Egyptian women. The assassins and the plotters were jailed, and the Brotherhood was banned again, and its assets were seized.

During this time, a charismatic scholar by the name of Sayyid Qutb published in 1964 a book by the name of Milestones. He published twenty-four books including novels, literary arts critiques, and work on education, and what he believed to be the social and political role of Islam.³ In his book, he laid out a plan and made a call to action to recreate the Muslim world on his understanding of the sharia laws.

By the way, sharia is a way of life, and the sharia in Pakistan is completely different in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, as well as other Islamic countries. Every country incorporated Islam in its customs and habits. For example, the clothing that covers all the women's face and body is a pre Islam culture that influenced them until today in Arabia. And also in his book, he opened the door wide open to murdering innocent people to achieve whatever goal the Muslims wanted.

For your information, Qutb's ideas are what Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri used as an inspiration when creating Al Qaeda. Also, all the top leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood from the supreme guide to their number four, Morsi, who became the president, are firm believers and followers of Sayyid Qutb. They're called Qutbists. In 1965, Nasser decided to pardon all these radicals again, and gave them positions they would have had, if they had not gone to jail. They all swore and promised to abandon their old ideas, because they regretted everything they did, and also what they did to Nasser in 1952. In 1966, they were rearrested because they were caught red-handed with hundreds of weapons and ammunition, ready to overthrow the government by decapitating the leadership.

Those are the same people that came out of prison in the 1970s. The same thing happened and they were reinstated in their previous positions, but now most of them are high-ranking deputy ministers and assistant ministers in all the government branches. The biggest and most fundamental change in the history of Islam in Egypt, in my opinion, happened during that time which changed and radicalized Islam across the globe, until the present time. Before I go into details about that change which led to the radicalization of present-day Islam, I'd like to go back in history one thousand years, before the turn of the millennium.

The rulers of Egypt at the time, who happened to be Shia (the second largest sect in Islam), built the grand Mosque Al Azhar as a mosque, and university to teach and graduate imams. These graduates have been preaching Islam not only in Egypt, but across the world. Al Azhar opened its doors to any foreign student who would come and learn in Egypt, then go back and preach in their own countries.

This solidified the role of Al Azhar as the beacon of Islamic moderation across the globe. It basically states that when it comes to religion, everyone has a right to believe, and interpret their religion as they want. There are so many different interpretations and opinions in the history of Islam. This led different scholars with contradictory opinions, to allow Muslims to pick and choose whatever interpretation they want. The understanding is that no opinion should be labeled better than any, or the only right one. This message of moderation has been given for centuries through mosques controlled by El Azaher. It provided the mosques, throughout Egypt and the Islamic world, with a simple and unified message through Friday speeches, which are delivered by their imams, and that ensured the moderation of Islam around the globe for one thousand years.

In the 1970s the so-called Islamists (fundamentalists) pushed a law that allowed any landlord of any building across Egypt, to allocate even a small space in their building