My Islamic conversion - failed

A kind person calling himself @MAXTRACkX on Twitter sent me a message which included a link to a Youtube video.  The Twitter account was only set up today and by now it has probably been reported for spam.  Anyway, I wouldn't recommend you to bother watching the video as it is half an hour of bearded men** talking about how they were converted to Islam, in German, with mulitple sub-titles.  Strangely, the ability to Like or Dislike it is not available at this time.

I say 'he', not because there is any actual evidence from a Twitter account's name and profile, but because it seems obviously to be a man when you see the subject of the video.

I guess he thought it might aid my conversion to the religion of peace.  Instead, it has confirmed my prejudices against Islam.  Why?

• All the speakers were men.  Yes, I know that is hard to believe.
• They tell us that Islam is one nation, whatever the ethnicity (but not of course not gender) of the people.  That suggests discrimination against the rest of us.
  
• And they have a strong belief that 'all the world is their home'.  My bit of the world is not their home and I hope it stays that way!
• You get all the holy images that you would expect in such a movie - including the Hajj pilgrimage to the Kaba etc., and that only makes me laugh even more.  Ever-decreasing circles?

Well - my part of the world has managed very nicely without their input to the law and as far as I'm concerned the secular law trumps Sharia.

Incidentally - just in case you wanted to know when the Hajj will take place this year you might find the advice from this site useful.

Hajj is expected to fall between October 24-29, 2012.
Note: The exact dates of Islamic holidays cannot be determined in advance, due to the nature of the Islamic lunar calendar. Estimates are based on expected visibility of the hilal (waxing crescent moon following a new moon) and may vary according to location.

So - science can predict exactly how the celestial bodies move over periods of centuries.  We can land spacecraft with great precision on these bodies, years after they have been launched.  And yet in Islam they can't predict the movement of the moon for this year well enough to predict the time of the New Moon.  Medieval science is still in action!

Peace.

Small note:  I appreciate that the weather plays a part in sighting the new moon.  If that is the case, then at least they can predict the earliest possible date with certainty.  In the event of cloudy weather there is nothing to say that a gap in the clouds will appear as soon as 5 days later.

** And . . . I am not prejudiced against beards.  Indeed I am suspicious of men who pretend not to have them!