The above picture from Tom Gross Media shows "Salman Rushdie’s coffin being prepared at the 'International Exhibition of the Koran' at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque in Tehran" in September 2008. Note also the coffin for the state of Israel in the background -- as well as the caricature of Bill Clinton.
Old grudges die hard in Tehran, apparently, but the article below notes that there are historical investigations being carried out that Islamic authorities may ultimately find even more threatening than Rushdie's novel. Is Muslim tradition a "myth, a 'pious fraud' created after the Islamic conquests to provide an ideological foundation for the expanding empire"?
The implications of this are very large. Since the literal, mainstream and authoritative version of Islam mandates warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers, only a movement that rejected literalism in regard to the Qur'an, Hadith, and sira could possibly make for the creation of an Islam that taught the necessity of peaceful coexistence with unbelievers as equals on an indefinite basis. Of course, the possibility that such a thing will ever appear is remote, but if it ever were to do so, it would be based on historical investigations such as those outlined in this article.
I'm thinking that this would be a good subject for a book -- one that I hope to write in the next year or so.
"The gospel truth?," by Sean Gannon in the Jerusalem Post, December 5 (thanks to all who sent this in):
September 26 marked the 20th anniversary of Viking Penguin's publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. While generally well-received by the critics, its treatment of Islamic themes in a series of narrative subplots was quickly deemed blasphemous and Viking Penguin's refusal to heed demands for its withdrawal led to an international furor, culminating in an Iranian fatwa sentencing Rushdie to death. His crime? Responsibility for a book which was "compiled, printed and published in opposition to Islam, the prophet and the Koran" and "dared to insult the Islamic sanctities."That Rushdie was forced to spend 10 years in hiding (and still lives under threat of execution) on the grounds that The Satanic Verses, a work of fiction, represented a "total distortion of the historical facts" about Islam is deeply ironic, given that a genuine critico-historical assault on "Islamic sanctities" had been under way for more than a decade with no repercussions.
Well, not quite. When one Islamic scholar, Suliman Bashear, taught his students at An-Najah National University in Nablus that the Qur’an and Islam were the products of historical development rather than being delivered in perfect form to Muhammad, his students threw him out of the window of his classroom. Christoph Luxenberg, who has done groundbreaking work in this area, publishes under a pseudonym for a very good reason.
Spearheaded by scholars at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), it focused largely on the Koran, which these so-called new historians of Islam subjected to modern historical and philological analysis. Their findings flatly contradict the Islamic account of its origins.According to this account, the Koran represents the uncorrupted word of God, "constant, immaculate, unalterable and inimitable." It was transmitted to man through Muhammad, a prosperous Meccan merchant who received it via the angel Gabriel as a series of verse revelations between 610 and his death in 632. Uneducated and illiterate, Muhammad committed these revelations to memory before reciting them to his followers, who memorized them verbatim in turn. The killing of hundreds of these "memorizers" in the battle of Yamama in 633 alerted his successor as Muslim leader, the first caliph, Abu Bakr, to the danger that the revelations could be lost. He therefore gathered all available sources into a loose compilation called the suhuf which was then used by the third caliph, Uthman, to produce in the mid-650s a standardized text of the Koran. Copies were sent to Islamic communities with orders that all other versions be destroyed. Muslims believe this Uthmanic recension is the Koran as we have it today.
BUT ACCORDING to the New Historians, there is no evidence that the Koran was compiled by Muhammad or canonized under Uthman; in fact, there is no proof it existed in any form before the end of the seventh century, and the first signs of a standardized codex date from the early 800s, 150 years after Uthman's death. In his 1977 survey Qur'anic Studies, the late professor of Semitic studies at SOAS, John Wansbrough, applied to the Koran "the instruments and techniques of biblical criticism" developed in the 19th century by German biblical scholars such as Friedrich Schleiermacher and Julius Wellhausen - i.e., treating it as a literary construct and comparing it to contemporary devotional works.
The fact that it is "strikingly lacking in overall structure, frequently obscure and inconsequential in both language and content... and given to the repetition of whole passages in variant versions" is evidence, he argued, that it "is not the carefully executed project of one or many men, but rather the product of an organic development from originally independent traditions during a long period of transmission."
The existence in Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock of Koranic inscriptions which differ from Uthman's text, and the discovery in 1972 of a Yemeni "paper grave" containing thousands of Koranic fragments exhibiting other textual variations, further indicate that, far from being divinely revealed in its unchanging entirety, the Koran evolved as a literary artifact.
IN A follow-up study, The Sectarian Milieu, Wansbrough postulated that the Koran emerged out of a two-centuries-long dialogue between Muslims and the Christians and Jews they encountered during the Islamic conquests. Its precepts slowly developed in opposition to the older religions, resulting in a tradition distinctively Arabian but based on Judaeo-Christian foundations. Wansbrough saw rabbinical Judaism as the Koran's overriding influence, citing its biblical and talmudic borrowings.
Other scholars, however, have highlighted its Christian substrates. The German scholar Christoph Luxenburg contends that it is based on the qeryana - lectionaries used in seventh-century Syrian Christian churches. He even proposes that the Koran is not exclusively in Arabic (for Muslims, a sacrilegious suggestion) but incorporates sections of Syro-Aramaic, a language similar in structure and script, and that many of its more impenetrable passages become coherent only when read as Aramaic. Most controversially, Luxenburg claims the word houri, commonly translated as "wide-eyed virgins" in the verse describing the jihadist martyr's heavenly reward, is actually an Aramaic word meaning "white grapes of crystal clarity."
And that is the one finding out of all these investigations that has so far entered the popular consciousness.
THE IDEA of an evolving Koran has been developed by Wansbrough's former SOAS students Patricia Crone and Michael Cook. In Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, they eschew Muslim sources for Islam's early history in favor of contemporary Armenian, Greek and Syrian accounts. These, they maintain, demonstrate that Muslim tradition is a myth, a "pious fraud" created after the Islamic conquests to provide an ideological foundation for the expanding empire. The Koran was compiled as part of this process, to provide a coherent scriptural basis for the growing body of law that its governance required. It was then attributed back to Muhammad to give it unassailable authority....
Read it all.
Well, now we know. All those martyrs are blowing themselves up for a bunch of grapes. I just wonder...Are they seedless?
Robert: Sorry about that! Somehow this comment ended up with your "Blogging the Koran" post -- so, I'll try (again) to get it here.
Robert: Re. your comment, "I'm thinking that this would be a good subject for a book -- one that I hope to write in the next year or so" (and I hope you do!), please consider including in that book the following idea, which I'll quote from my most recent post ("Clerical Enslavement of Cultures") at my blog at http://zenofzero.blogspot.com . What follows are the final three paragraphs, in which "Ezra & C-C" is an abbreviation for "Ezra and Co-Conspirators", i.e., those who put the Pentateuch in its current form.
Today, the most complete case of clerical enslavement of their cultures occurs for the poor Muslim people. For more than a thousand years, Islamic clerics have controlled the stories heard by Muslims. In their principal story book, the Koran (or Quran or Qur’an), according to the book by Sohaib Sultan "The Qur’an and Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad" (available on Google Books), Moses is referenced more than any other character, specifically: “136 time across thirty-six different chapters [of the 114 chapters in the Koran].” Thereby, the stories about Moses (enslaving the Jewish people in his fanciful religion, his murdering “unbelievers”, his brutal conquest, subjugation, and slaughter of people living peacefully on their own land, and his fanatical desire to have everyone believe in his fictitious god) undoubtedly provided Muhammad (or those who concocted the Koran) with a model for how the Islamic clerics could enslave their culture – as well as other people’s cultures – permitting a new group of clerical parasites to leech off still more producers.
Expect, therefore, that all Islamic clerics will “scream bloody murder”, issuing “fatwas”, demanding the death of anyone who claims that Moses was a fictional character, concocted by Ezra & C-C. They’ll demand that such ideas be suppressed, because if Muslims learn that Moses was a literary construct, it would mean that their “holy book”, the Koran [claimed to be “perfect” and communicated to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel from “the God” (Allah)], is as fictitious as the Bible (and the Book of Mormon): it would mean that Muhammad didn’t get his stories from Allah (as claimed) but, instead, from the OT, which is a litany of priestly lies.
Meanwhile, the rest of us can hope that, when a sufficient number of people see that the stories about Moses are just myths, then the Koran as well as the Bible will come crashing down in a pile of rubble, like the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11. On 9/11, Muslim terrorists and their supporters rejoiced at the death of thousands of innocent people. When the Bible and the Koran come crashing down, liberating cultures from their Abrahamic clerics, we’ll be able to rejoice at the death of the God idea – and then (if we can also get the enslaved Hindu people to look behind their clerics’ curtains) the end of clerical enslavement of cultures.
"I'm thinking that this would be a good subject for a book -- one that I hope to write in the next year or so."
Write it, Robert.
Thanks, in advance.
Nick, you are a very mislead, very ignorant individual. First, one has to recognize that Islam is not a religion and that therefore any argument comparing it to legitimate religions is logically false, like comparing apples to elephants. Secondly, you have completely misunderstood the story of Moses, most likely having derived it from Muslim sources, which twist biblical history into something unrecognizable, to the extent that it even invariably calls Jesus and Mary by the wrong names. Moses freed the slaves and gave the Jewish people a homeland. For you to twist that into something horrible is very, very sick.
This article was interesting. I read it yesterday after Jewdog linked to it on another thread. One thing that bothered me about it was that fact that it neglected to take into account all of Ibn Warraq's incredible work on this very topic in 'Which Koran?' and 'Origins of the Koran.' They are very accessible books and, like everything he writes, very well-researched and convincing, if open-ended.
Another thing that bothered me about the article was that it puts forth a couple of ridiculous notions without qualifying them, like Manzoor's statement that questioning the authority of the Koran is "an unholy conspiracy to dislodge the Muslim scripture from its firmly entrenched position as the epitome of historic authenticity and moral unassailability" and "rid the West forever of the problem of Islam." Well, no. Any non-retarded five-year-old, upon hearing the story of Koranic compilation, would question its authority, since it arose among illiterate people who did not possess paper, and since it existed in the form of a game of telephone for decades prior to having been written down, never mind that 1/5 of it is incomprehensible.
Another thing that bothers me about this article is the way it lets Muslims off the hook for their pervasive retardation, in that they are somehow not held accountable for their non-inquiry into their own belief system. That unequivocally constitutes retardation. The period in an individual's life between the ages of 10 and 18 is referred to, in people who possess any base modicum of normal human mental faculties, as one's "formative period." This is because that is the time in one's life when all reasonably intelligent individuals question everything and come to their own conclusions about it all, not that one's intellectual development should stop there. The article places the blame for the Muslim world's retardation (and that is what it is) on the mullahs and the imams. I don't know what to call this double standard whereby Muslims are to be held to no standard whatsoever, be it moral, ethical, legal, academic, or intellectual, but it makes me understand how some people are quick to label criticism of Islam as 'racism,' because my gut instinct is to call those who hold Muslims to no standard 'racists.' It's not racism. Maybe that's true Islamophobia, the holding of Muslims to no standard whatsoever, be it moral, ethical, legal, academic, or intellectual. I'm not so quick to let them off the hook for collectively having never risen to the intellectual level of five-year-olds, because they haven't, and being an ethical human being, I hold all people to the same standard. Anyone who takes the Koran at face value and never questions it does lack the mental faculties of a five-year-old, and that would apply to any and all Muslims. The article should have taken that into account. Maybe that's why I love Ibn Warraq: because he's an ethical and brilliant writer who holds everyone to the same standard.
From the second page of the JPost Article:
'Unsurprisingly, such theories have been denounced by Muslim academics who consider the Koran's historicization as blasphemy. Seizing on SOAS's reputation as an old colonial institution, they have dismissed the new historians as "Orientalists" and have imputed sinister motives to their work. For example, S. Parvez Manzoor, mindful of the manner in which biblical criticism helped break Christianity's stranglehold on European civilization, interprets it as "an unholy conspiracy to dislodge the Muslim scripture from its firmly entrenched position as the epitome of historic authenticity and moral unassailability" (Yeah, right) and "rid the West forever of the problem of Islam."'
Scientific scrutiny is to Islam what kryptonite is to Superman.
This is a much desired topic and I am eagerly anticipating this publication.
Whatever it takes to access and carefully examine the contents of any and all lost/rediscovered archives is to be encouraged.
Nick is just yer average atheist. Atheists should just be content with 'There is no God', and not try to figure out, or try to explain what that means.
But take heart Nick...'All false religions eventually die of the same disease, that of being 'found out'. Islam is in the process of being 'found out', and will eventually die off from disinterest.
In the meantime there are those who would keep Islam alive, by violent and non violent means, so its death may take a while...
Really, one doesn't need to be a scholar of Mid-East languages and history to see that the Islamic "holy books" are a rehashed mixture of previously-existing elements. The largest single element is the Jewish one, but there are also large doses of various Christian traditions, some orthodox and some heretical; various Zoroastrian teachings; and pagan Arab cults -- such as the goddess-daughters of Allah, and the hundreds of idols at Mecca. The contribution of "Mohammed" (whether historically real, or created after the fact) was to make it all into a mandate for conquest and empire.
It's worth noting that the initial Christian view of Islam -- the prevailing view for several centuries -- was that Islam was a heresy, the re-appearance of one of those of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, that denied the divinity of Christ.
This just in: all religion is man-made.
"What if Muhammad never existed?"
Wouldn't change a thing and nobody could care less. People do what they do because the want to do it. People believe what they believe because they want to believe it. Not because they do actually believe it, but because it sanctifies what they do, and consequently enables them to live with their own actions.
Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral - Bertolt Brecht.
That's the way the world rolls.
"Is Muslim tradition a "myth, a 'pious fraud' created after the Islamic conquests to provide an ideological foundation for the expanding empire"?
Of course it is. More likely 'during' than 'after', though.
"The implications of this are very large."
No, they're not. If Mohammed and his gang are dismissed by historians, no believer would care. And if they did, they would make sure that something else will take his place. Actions don't change, justifications might.
So forget about the book, it's a waste of time.
Kim: I agree that you have described one of the many reasons for scientific humanists to be discouraged by the prospects of ridding the world of organized religions. As Julius Caesar said (if my memory serves me correctly): "People believe what they want." It's consistent with the word 'belief' itself: 'lief' is Latin for 'wish', so 'belief' means "wish to be."
There are, however, many reason for belief in supernatural silliness. Here's a list, details of which I looked at elsewhere ( http://zenofzero.net/docs/X02_EXcavating_Reasons.pdf ):
Addiction, Animal-training, (seeking) Answers, (out of) Arrogance, (wanting) Assurance, (feeling) Awe, (feeling) Betrayed, (desiring to) Belittle (others), (seeking) Career-advancement, (seeking) Certainty, Childhood Conditioning, (seeking) Comfort, (seeking) Company, (seeking) Control, Cowardice, Credulity, (seeking) Customers, (fearing) Death, (lost in) Dreams, Egomania, Epilepsy, (seeking) Eternal Life, (out of) Fear, Following (leaders), Foolishness, (seeking) Friends, (out of) Frustration, (desiring) Goals, (out of) Greed, (seeking) Guidance, (out of) Guilt, (to get out of the) Gutter, (seeking) Happiness, Herd instinct, Hero worship, (seeking) Hope, Hypnosis, (unconstrained) Imagination, Ignorance, Indoctrination, (out of) Inquisitiveness, (lacking) Judgment, (seeking) Kinship, (desiring) Kindness, (seeking) Knowledge, (intellectual) Laziness, (out of) Loneliness, (searching for) Love, Megalomania, (seeking a) Mate, (searching for) Meaning, (out of) Misery, Narcissism, (fear of) Ostracism, (an) Opiate, Pack instinct, Parental pressure, (seeking) Peace, Political (purposes), (some other) Psychosis, (seeking) Purpose, (unanswered) Questions, (sheer) Rationalization, Revelation, Savagery, Schizophrenia, (seeking) Security, Selfishness, Selflessness, Socialization, (seeking) Support, (following) Tradition, (simply) Training, Tribalism, (unease caused by) Uncertainty, (to relieve) Unhappiness, (because of) Visions, (marriage or other) Vows, (out of) Weakness, (seeking) Wisdom, (living on) Wishes, Xenophobia, Yearnings (for assurance, brotherhood, comfort, development, empathy, friends, guidance, heaven, insight, justice, kindness, love,…), Zonked out (on drugs).
In my view, it would be good if each of us does what seems possible to help rid humanity of the scourge of supernaturalism, and whereas Robert is a diligent, intelligent, and competent writer, I continue to encourage him to write his proposed book. I don't expect that he'll expose the Moses fraud, but he might. Progress in purging religion unfortunately proceeds, usually, one small step at a time, one person at a time -- save for quantum jumps caused by geniuses such as Voltaire.
The Bible actually continues to be proven more and more true. Everything Moses did has been supproted by archaeological evidence, although I do imagine that he was probably high when he received the Ten Commandments. It used to be believed that the Hittites, for example, were a fabricated literary tool, but then, after excavation in Jordan, they uncovered their whole civilization. One can get a BA in Hittitology at UPenn now. Hittite actually provides a huge chuck of data linking Sanskrit to modern Indo-European langauges, as well as a big part of the story if how it spread.
Also,- and it just has to be said - Salman Rushdie has some of the coolest eyebrows around. I love 'em.
nick222 and Kim Hartveld: I am an agnostic but I would respectfully suggest to you both to be careful what you wish for because you might get it. As Benjamin Franklin, not a conventional religious believer by any means and certainly not someone who thought Jesus divine, observed, "If man is bad with religion, imagine what he'd be without it." The history of man's last hundred years helps bitterly prove his point. Voltaire, whom you invoked, nick222, wisely counseled that if God doesn't exist, we'll have to invent Him.
Most folks need religion to give them hope and to provide them with an ethical order. A minority of folks can do without a faith and faith and can arrive at principles of correct conduct philosophically. But I would caution against too much criticism by this latter group against the former. It's not productive. It's not wise. Of course, mankind eventually got a religion which is intrinsically evil. It's called Islam and as such presents a unique problem to all of the human race. And as I've posted before here at JW, Christianity and Judaism are particularly to be relished because they put such an emphasis on the worth and dignity of the individual, thus beautifully complementing the grand experiment in goverment called democracy, one of many gifts from the ancinet Greeks to all of mankind. Oh, by the way, the word "belief" does not come from Latin but rather is of Germanic origin and comes directly from Old English.
jdam: Rather than continuing to make such an ass of yourself by writing, why don't you try to learn something, e.g., by reading. For starters, try:
"The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts" by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (Free Press, New York, 2001, 385 pages, ISBN 0684869128, cloth, $26.00; Touchstone Books, New York, 2002, ISBN 0684869136, paperback, $14.00)
If it's asking too much of you to read a whole book, then how about just a paragraph from it:
…"the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause. And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan -- they emerged from within it. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people -- the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were -- irony of ironies -- themselves originally Canaanites!" -- p. 118
Ah, yes, that was the time the Angel Clarence visited Muhammad.
And, just as a reminder, this is a non-sectarian site, but not an anti-religious site. If you're looking for support from Robert for "purging" the world of Abrahamic religions, you're barking up quite the wrong tree.
This here is Jihad-Watching country: Bold. Smooth. On-topic.
Is the Koran a badly cobbled together fiction used as a vehicle of conquest?
It would appear modern scholarship would indicate this is the case. Taking bits and pieces of fragmented legend allegedly memorized by Mohammet's followers to give literate interpretations of Koranic, and Hadith, scripture has no more relevance than a sinister myth to propagate Islamic ambitions of world domination and an Arab supremacist agenda; all this done in the name of a Pagan moon-god Al-Illah raised to the 'power of One' god. There is no proof any of it is valid literally as "the word of God", and certainly invalid as it is now interpreted for world Jihad to subdue the 'infidels', except as a vehicle to justify violence against any who dare to question basic tenet's of Mohammet's 'religion'. Raised to the level of a vehicle for world conquest, and punishing even unto death those who dare to question or oppose, means Islam in its current form is nothing other than a fiction based Cult of Allah.
There is no Allah, and there was no 'immutable indelible word of God' in Mohammet's so-called 'religion' of Islam. Historians should take note, that this is but a vehicle of Arab conquest, and it should be discredited as such. Islam is a fine fiction, and were it not also a murderous fiction, it would today be generally ignored, or outlawed. Any Islamics who kill or blow themselves up to kill others are fools. There are no "72 wide eyed virgins" awaiting them in paradise. Jihad is a primitive ideology based upon an evil fiction to sew mischief and mayhem in the natural world, and a crime against humanity.
As G. K. Chesterton is credited with saying: "When people lose their faith in Christ, the danger is not that they believe in nothing, but that they believe in anything." The tale of the last many decades proves the correctness of his observation: all the cults, ashrams, swamis, and "perfect masters", the channelers and crystal-gazers, the scientologists and wiccans, the ancient astronauts and lost Atlantis (and/or Mu), the mother-goddess, and Gaia. On a more serious and sinister level, there have been Bolshevism, Nazism, and Maoism.
Altogether, Western mankind would have done a lot better sticking with Christianity.
Nick: "In my view, it would be good if each of us does what seems possible to help rid humanity of the scourge of supernaturalism..."
I agree with that except that supernaturalism exists, and you can't get rid of it.
Jung said, 'Why argue the existence of the gods, when there are forces in the universe that act just like the gods are supposed to act'.
There are two basic kinds of people seeking to find just what those forces are, and any utilitarian qualities they may possess. Scientists and religious/spiritually oriented people.
Mind scientists exist in many forms, religious, spiritual, magical, occult, psychology, psychiatry, yes, even many atheists are mind scientists.
The nice thing about being a mind scientist, is that you don't need anyones permission, no degree's or formal education are necessary. You can start from scratch and build yourself into a first class mind scientist.
I also agree with this by Wellington:
"Most folks need religion to give them hope and to provide them with an ethical order".
Atheism 'may' be correct, but it wont save humanity.
"What if Mo(the child)Lester never existed?"
Interesting question. Kinda like, "What if Satan never exited?"
Hmmmmm...
The above picture from Tom Gross Media shows "Salman Rushdie’s coffin being prepared at the 'International Exhibition of the Koran' at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque in Tehran" in September 2008. Note also the coffin for the state of Israel in the background -- as well as the caricature of Bill Clinton.
.........................
What a charming exhibition! In addition to the edifying examples noted above, there seems to a coffin for that "Great Satan", the United States of America, with the fifty stars on the flag replaced with little skulls.
In addition, the walls in this section of the show seem to be running with blood (red paint, no doubt, in this case). What a nice touch.
i have a lot of symphaty for atheists, their utopianism is touching
This here is Jihad-Watching country: Bold. Smooth. On-topic.
Posted by: MarisolJW
Sorry, I posted the above before reading your comment...On topic it shall be...
I read where Fatima, Mohammads daughter actually gathered the first collection of of Mohammad material, and it was this, and added material that Abu Bakr passed on to Uthman.
"...jihadist martyr's heavenly reward, is actually an Aramaic word meaning "white grapes of crystal clarity."
From the article.
Sort of gives "The Grapes of Wrath" a whole new meaning, doesn't it?
This is actually one of the better threads I have seen develop in JW. Marisol, I know your job is to keep the exchanges from wandering too far off topic, but I rather enjoyed these exchanges. I had actually prepared a rather lengthy contribution of my own to the discussion about atheism, but will pare it to just the observation that "supernaturalism" only means we haven't yet figured it out. OK, now back on topic.
[Robert, I hope your IT guys are busy trying to correct the TypePad problem. This is maddening!]
The fact that it is "strikingly lacking in overall structure, frequently obscure and inconsequential in both language and content... and given to the repetition of whole passages in variant versions" is evidence, he argued, that it "is not the carefully executed project of one or many men, but rather the product of an organic development from originally independent traditions during a long period of transmission." - JW
"These demonstrate that Muslim tradition is a myth, a "pious fraud" created after the Islamic conquests to provide an ideological foundation for the expanding empire." - JW
There is absolutely no surprise. That is how most people on JW been saying it all along.
Are they going to burn the London University's School of Oriental and African Studies and any research report that points to these analysis? UK will have to face up to all this once and for all.
"Ah, yes, that was the time the Angel Clarence visited Muhammad."
Posted by: MarisolJW
LOL. Thanks for reminding me to include a certain Jimmy Stewart movie among the DVDs I rent for viewing over Christmas.
Personally, I believe in the historical Muhammad. His pronounced moral failings seem too vivid to have been contrived....or as they say, "truth is stranger than fiction."
Nick, before insulting me, you should know that I spend all day reading, to the extent that people tll me that I "talk like a book." That's how grad school works. My comments were linguistically-oriented, and that is a subject about which I am quite well-informed, and close to receiving an MA in. Furthermore, it is you who are uiniformed. You know nothing about religion. You don't even know how to construct a basic argument, which is why your argument style can only be described as "Islamic," since it is completely lacking in logic. You compared Islam to Christianity and Judaism. Christianity and Judaism are religions. Islam is a fabricated death-cult which is completely lacking both theology and morality, and therefore not a religion. For it to have occurred to you to make that comparison necessitates that you lack a basic education and are not the most literate sort, certainly not regarding the subjects about which you chose to argue. I, on the other hand, am quite well-read on the subject of religion, as well as Islam. You clearly understand nothing of Judaism or Christianity, since you made insane, fabricated, Islamic claims about Moses, whose entire life story has been proven by archaeologists. You have to really search for an Islamic archaeologist (an oxymoron, since Muslims can never be real scientists) who is hell-bent on fabricating a new history in order to cite anyone who would claim otherwise.
Judeophobia originated in Egypt, as the Egyptians felt slighted, in patently Islamic fashion, by having been called-out in immutable texts regarding their enslavement of the Jews and their subsequent rejection by God, not because they Hagar's Arabs are the sons of a concubine, but because their progenitor was incapable of behaving himself like a decent human being. The only time Egyptians ever were decent human beings was when they were Roman and then Christian, and to this day the only decent Egyptians are Christians. The story, as told in the Bible, has been proven over and over again. But that's okay. Being Jewish, I get used to idiots who try to deny my people our history, our homeland,a nd our right to exist. We live with it because we know that idiots and their idiotic ideologies come and go, like that of the Ancient Egyptian, the Roman, and the douchehat named Nick, but we survive it all, we prosper, and we come out ahead of all the rest. Why? Because history is on our side, which is why yahoos try to deny us our history. It's all they can do, since they can't compete.
I studied religion for four years in Catholic school and read a lot about it since then. I used to read a large-print Torah with my grandfather during summertime as a child. I have been studying Islam for a year. Atheism is fine, Nick, but moral equivalence statements, venomous attacks on people who you don't know and who are far more educated than yourself, and general hatefulness toward the very people who have, over the centuries, made this world great are just inappropriate, and again, patently Islamic. To attack Christianity and Judaism is to attack Western civilization, i.e., everything worthwhile in this world. Furthermore, this is Robert Spencer's blog. He's a religious scholar. This is simply not the forum on which to take cheap jabs at religion in general. I would suggest that you read a couple of his books, like "Inside Islam: a Guide for Catholics" or "Religion of Peace?" You could learn a lot. The JW VP, Hugh Fitzgerald, is an atheist, as is my idol, Oriana Fallaci, and Pat Condell, Britain's last hope and a hilarious individual who combines anger and humor in a way that nobody else can. Atheism is fantastic, but the only atheists I ever liked or respected are, like all good people in this world, the ones who subscribed to the Golden Rule and the Judeo-Christian work ethic. I have no ill will towards atheists, but general intolerance towards benign and ultimately beneficial belief systems is just inappropriate. I also resent the veiled anti-Semitism in your posts. One thing I love about JW is that, as a Jew, I don't have to hide who I am, nor do I have to fight to convince people that I deserve do exist, as does Israel. You just picked the wrong blog to post on, buddy. The Kos Kids eat that stuff up witha spoon. They thrive on Judeophobia and outright heatred toward Christianity. Go over there and post that nonsense, Nick.
One thing all of us have to remember is that islam and the rest of us are two mutually exclusive things.
It's obvious that Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Confucians, Animists, Zoroastrians, Atheists, Agnostics, Wiccans and many others can coexist peacefully on this planet while disagreeing on many things. And even if all of us non-muslims do disagree with each other, we should still be able to discuss our differences respectfully, and be free to change our beliefs and conduct our own inquiries about whatever creed of lack thereof might suit us best. But according to islam, such rights shouldn't exist and should be done away with for good.
Even though I'm an agnostic myself, I do support everyone's right to believe or not in whatever they deem worth believing in (except islam, though I don't think it should be banned; exposing it to ridicule, scientific inquiry and cutting off the West's ties to the Middle East in the several ways Hugh Fitzgerald has repeatedly suggested in many of his postings can do the trick.) And one thing that all of us non-muslims should always bear in mind is that islam is our mutual enemy; it's the one creed which is the most violently and virulently opposed to the rest of us.
If pro- or anti-religion pointless squabbles end up weakening all of us who happen to be non-muslims, but nevertheless value our freedoms in general and our freedom of belief, that would hand our mutual islamic enemies a victory which they would greatly enjoy. And I don't think any of us can possibly want that to happen.
Also, Nick, that 'belief' derived from 'wish' means nothing in terms of historical linguistics, not that it came from 'lief' anyway. 'Nice' used to mean 'small,' then it meant 'shiny,' then it meant 'clean.' Ancient root words count for naught. 'Belief' comes from Latin 'fides.' It was 'feith'/'fei' in Old French. That's what the Oxford English Dictionary says, anyway, unless you have some anti-Semitic/Islamic text which says otherwise.
1. The mental action, condition, or habit, of trusting to or confiding in a person or thing; trust, dependence, reliance, confidence, faith. Const. in (to, of obs.) a person. (Belief was the earlier word for what is now commonly called faith. The latter originally meant in Eng. (as in OFrench) ‘loyalty to a person to whom one is bound by promise or duty, or to one's promise or duty itself,’ as in ‘to keep faith, to break faith,’ and the derivatives faithful, faithless, in which there is no reference to ‘belief’; i.e. ‘faith’ was = fidelity, fealty. But the word faith being, through OF. fei, feith, the etymological representative of the L. fides, it began in the 14th c. to be used to translate the latter, and in course of time almost superseded ‘belief,’ esp. in theological language, leaving ‘belief’ in great measure to the merely intellectual process or state in sense 2. Thus ‘belief in God’ no longer means as much as ‘faith in God’ (cf. quot. 1814 in 2). See BELIEVE 1, and 1b.)
jdamn-I love your posts! They are, as always, well thought out and introspective. But I do have to say your words are wasted on this particular atheist. Atheists, for the most part, believe in nothing but themselves, and thusly, are very narcissistic. Nick is probably enjoying this very much. Just ignore his diatribe.
But I also have to add something, a sort of um, I want to say caveat. All the religious books, all of them from antiquity through the Koran, were written by men. And men, humankind, is subject to error. I do consider myself a Christian, but I am aware, that at times the Bible and the Tanakh, the Torah, oftentimes contradict themselves. So, in a way, we mere mortals must pick and choose what is our ultimate form of truth; and that is always subjective, no matter the way one might try to prove it.
I just wish that people would choose truths that aren't destructive!
Thank you, lorfalcon. I think that people are basically good and that they do, for the most part, choose non-destructive ideologies, and when they don't their hearts are in the right place, if not their minds. Even Muslims, who are necessarily quite evil and narcissistic in their worldview, strive for a sort of Pleasantvillean utopia. How anyone could think that utopia exists under Sharia is beyond me, but that's what they think. They are victims. That does not make them acceptable, but it does make them human. Rabid dogs are victims of whatever bit them, but that does not mean that I want them anywhere near me, as they necessarily threaten my well-being and lust after my blood. It's Islam that's the problem. If we just isolated Islam and didn't let it parasitize us they would die off or reform like communism. I believe this because sense and goodness do ultimately prevail, although it will probably be pretty ugly when it does in Islam's case.
Atheists are not all bad by any means. I have no problem with people who don't believe the same things I do, and I have lots of respect for many belief systems. I question my own faith at times, but my faith stands up to scrutiny, so I keep it. It's part of me. There are many fantastic atheists who are a credit to the human race, like those I listed above. I could list more, but there's no point. What I ultimately take issue with is nihilism. That's the common thread in every evil ideology. Nick is a nihilist. Hugh is not. Hugh loves people and life and values everything that is valuable in this world. Nick does not. That's the difference. Nihilism is not an acceptable belief system. Reading his posts, I'm reminded of 'Fascism and Paganism.' That's why his atheism came across as so Islamic to me. It was the nihilism, not to mention the Judeophobia, in his words. People like him hate life, hate the world, hate people generally, and want to do away with it all and start over. That is sick.
Have you ever checked out the Gospel of Mary? It's missing big pieces, but it's still quite inspiring. I never felt marginalized or demeaned growing up Jewish, so it never bothered me that our texts were written by men. Women didn't write much of anything very interesting until about 200 years ago. My Jewish grandma ran a business and my Jewish father pushed my mother to go to law school. She was the only woman in her class. So Judaism, as I have always practiced it, has the utmost respect for women. My father's women - myself, my sister, my mother, my stepmother, and his mother who just died last September - are and always have been his world. He would be nothing without us and we would be nothing without him. We rock the cradle, we control the purse strings, we get the same opportunities as everyone else, we're held to the same standards, and here's the best part: we get the last word, probably because, as Dave Attel says, we have all the vaginas. I'm a feminist who loves men. Men have always been very good to me. I wouldn't write off any belief system or invention or anything else just because it was created by a man. America was created by men, and America is what makes me free and gives me equality, so I ultimately owe that to men.
Two random thoughts on this:
1.) Who is buried in Muhammad's tomb? Not that anyone will ever be allowed to examine the issue beyond speculation, of course... The DNA issue (with respect to "Syeds" and various claims about Muhammad's lineage in the West) would be fascinating. Alas.
2.) I got to thinking about the stories of Muhammad as a merchant and warlord, and it reminded me of epics from other cultures that present a character who attains tremendous stature but is nonetheless fatally flawed (e.g., Achilles). Maybe there was a Muhammad, and maybe there wasn't, but in this context, it seems more plausible that the Islamic backstory could have been developed later and grafted onto existing tales of Muhammad. That might -- might -- have interesting implications for the hadith and, for that matter, the talk of poets, poetry, and "tales of the ancients" in the Qur'an.
I'm just thinking out loud; we'll probably never know. And any texts to this effect from the time period are likely to have been diligently purged.
Muslims must renounce three things:
1) Mohammad's (Allah's) call to kill anyone who leaves Islam.
2) Islam's duty and divine right to violently convert the world.
3) The sanctity of the Koran as a "received" document, when all historical evidence (even in the Hadiths) tells of it being cobbled-together long after the "prophet" was dead, and could not be reached for editorial comment.
This last would allow intellectual liberty into Islam.
Barring these Three Great Renunciations, Islam is doomed.
Marisol: Thinking outloud indeed. You know, of course, what Islam makes of that? I'm with Cornelius here, though, in that fiction is not nearly as creative as history. Mo was an historical figure to be sure. I'd bet my vintage car on that. But embellishment? Oh yeah. Big time.
I've often wondered how much mankind's conceptions of matters religious would be altered if we had a time machine and could go back and view Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Moses et al. I think in each case we'd be underwhelmed, even repulsed, (thinking most especially here of that seventh-century Arab merchant). Too bad cameras, cam-corders and other electronic equipment didn't exist through all time. Would have made a huge difference, I would argue. Put another way, we'll never have another long-lasting founder of a religion, adhered to by untold numbers of millions through the centuries, since modern technology has appeared. Makes one wonder about the accuracy of things before the modern age, no?
And why did the truth of things have to be dispensed, seemingly entirely, before more recent times? Or am I being too sceptical? Have to contemplate, though, why a deity expecting obeisance didn't take all this into account, or at least allow his creation to doubt more than it is allowed to without condemnation. As ever, I remain a sceptic to the core-----and a life-long opponent of the most nefarious ideology of all time------Islam.
What about the bit of the Qur'an that the goat ate?
Did Allah factor that in? Is the a Sura explaining that?
Correction: "Is there a Sura explaining that?"
Allah is all-knowing. He knew that the right thing to do was to leave a little girl of questionable intelligence and such tact and civility as to let goats wander around in her bedroom to guard his holy word for all people for all time. I can't decide whether Allah is seriously evil, or just incredibly negligent, like an asshat, a harmless idiot who evil people evoke as an alibi.
I can so see you in a vintage car, Wellington. I'll bet it's black and shiny.
Jdamn, your 5:13 PM post brought a lump to my throat. I've become a big fan of your posts. One of the things I appreciate is your passionate defense of women, while at the same time acknowledging that men may have a few positive qualities, too. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. (How is it that you get to spend all day reading? I'm envious!)
European civilization would have extended to the borders of Persia, the New World (Americas) may never have been discovered by Europeans, Zoroastrianism would have survived and thrived in Persia and Turan, Ditto for Hinduism and Buddhism in both the Indian subcontinent and the East Indies, Jews would still have been living comfortably in places like Carthage and Spain, and the Phoenicians would also be prospering.
The world would have been such a better place!
jdamn: It's blue and shiny.
'Belief' comes from Latin 'fides.' It was 'feith'/'fei' in Old French.
Posted by: jdamn
Funny, my dictionary agrees with Wellington: "belief"
Strange, not all of my post came thru.
It should be: "belief" is from the ME "bileafe", which is from the OE "geleafa".
And "faith" is from the OF "feit", which is from the L "fides".
jdamn,
I agree with lorfalcon in that I do enjoy your posts and you are wasted with this atheist. God could paint himself purple and hover above him and he would still deny he/she/it/them existed.
I too am like Wellington in that I am an agnostic, but I believe very much in the spiritual message of Christ as they are the closest to the Natural Laws of life.
I also believe that there certainly is a Great Omnipotent Deity that created life but can't say I really believe what the bible states about it.
I do however feel more closer though to Christianity than I do to Atheism or Islam and I suppose I do categorise myself as a Christian, even though I've said I'm an agnostic. Christ very much lived and certainly taught peace, love and tolerance and do believe in emulating those words.
Again, our Western Society would continue to advance under Judeo/Christian Culture and certainly not an Islamic one. You are very correct that Islam is nothing more than a Death Cult, that has far too many followers. Then again, they never had a choice as many were indoctrinated before they could even think otherwise.
Ebonystone, again, from the OED, the definitive collection of English etymology:
The latter [faith] originally meant in Eng. (as in OFrench) ‘loyalty to a person to whom one is bound by promise or duty, or to one's promise or duty itself,’ as in ‘to keep faith, to break faith,’ and the derivatives faithful, faithless, in which there is no reference to ‘belief’; i.e. ‘faith’ was = fidelity, fealty. But the word faith being, through OF. fei, feith, the etymological representative of the L. fides, it began in the 14th c. to be used to translate the latter, and in course of time almost superseded ‘belief,’ esp. in theological language, leaving ‘belief’ in great measure to the merely intellectual process or state in sense 2. Thus ‘belief in God’ no longer means as much as ‘faith in God’ (cf. quot. 1814 in 2). See BELIEVE 1, and 1b.)
Latin 'fides' predates both Germanic and Old French.
It has nothing to do with 'wish,' which is what my earlier post was refuting.
Richard the Lionheart, you sound like Oriana Fallaci, a 'Christian atheist' (thank god!). She belived in the message of Christ and considered herself ethnically Christian, but didn't believe in a higher power. That's a fantastic belief system/way of identifying oneself.
jdamn: There are many things I don't know but one thing I do know is Old English. I translated heaps of Anglo-Saxon into modern English and wrote papers on such when I was a graduate student. This included all 3,182 lines of "Beowulf" (I was quite proud of myself after doing so I might add), easily one of the most powerful epic poems ever written in any language.
The word "belief" is of purely Germanic origin. In Old English it was, as ebonystone already noted above, "geleafa." It is irrelevant in this instance that Latin predates Germanic (and even this isn't a certainty if one would take into account a Primitive Germanic which may go as far back as the earliest Latin). Some words, many in fact, are unique to a subfamily of languages, in this case it would be the Indo-European language family. Yes, it would theoretically be possible to go back even further to the origninal Indo-European mother tongue (Proto-Indo-European {PIE}), existent long before any written language occurred, to try and reconstruct the word "belief," in which case it seems to have come from "leubh", meaning apparently care, desire or love. From this theoretically constructed PIE word it could be the case that the Latin word, "libido," meaning lust or desire, comes from "leubh" also, but this would not indicate a trasmission from Latin to Primitive Germanic but rather separate linear development for the words "libido' and "belief."
The word "belief," then, has no more, in effect, to do with Latin, then does the best known of all four letter words in modern English which comes via Middle English from Middle Dutch, "fokken," which meant to strike or to penetrate. Sometimes a Germanic word is just and only a Germanic word. And I may I close by mentioning that this is the farthest off topic I have yet gone here at JW and, truth be told, I kinda' enjoyed it. Yes, I believe I did and no faith whatsoever was required. Time for a beer.
jdamn,
When you said Oriana was ethnically Christian did you not mean ethically. I do not mean to patronise, but that would sound more correct.
I wouldn't go so far as a Christian atheist as it's not that I believe in a higher power but more that I don't not believe in a higher power as such. Something is out there that's for sure as the galaxy is big place, a very big place. I have many ideas on who we are and where we came from, however I would say that one of my biggest beliefs is that we actually created ourselves. Mankind will certainly progress to such a level that everything will be possible. I say so for the main reason that our thoughts are not make believe but very real. The great works of science fiction are merely future fantasy waiting to happen and all the fantastical beliefs that people have had are merely reliving of memories that have already happened in some obscure parallel universe or prophetic thought of what is about to happen. I certainly do believe in many more species out there as well. In fact millions upon millions.
The bible is book of symbols and I don't believe it's to be taken literally. It certainly does teach morality, there's no doubt but then, I tend not to like hitting people for the simple reason that I know what it's like to be hit back. It hurts and I don't need anyone else to tell me that. I found that out long before I picked up the Bible.
But, I would certainly say that Christ was a good man. He certainly was a revolutionary and a great leader of men, or should I say, would have become one had they not nailed him to a tree. To live your life as Christ did is certainly an honourable way to be, however, I've a warrior's heart and know that freedom comes at a price. It's just a pity others don't realise that as the battle between Islam will not end peacefully, not because of Christian beliefs, far from it, but from Islamic ones, as there is nothing peaceful about it, there never has and there never will be. The battle against Islam will not be the last battle Good will face but one of many more to come. However, good always prevails and evil will always be there to thwart its every step. Equilibrium is what it is nothing more, nothing less.
Given that Muslims have been left out of this collection, the inclusion of Christians is arguable. Christianity shares with Islam the compulsion to proselytize: to convert others. This notion, that others must somehow, or even never mind how, be brought into one's own inherently and essentially "superior" religion, has not conduced peaceful coexistence, to put it mildly. And cannot, as Missionaries have begun to find out the hard way.
The good news is that Christianity has been defanged to some extent, certainly enough to make Islam the single greatest threat to human civilization. But it won't be over with the defeat of Islam.
pravasi
have you ever actually read the four gospels?
If you haven't you have no right to pronounce on what Christianity is or isn't.
But I assure you I know the New Testament from cover to cover and nowhere did Yeshua of Nazareth tell his followers to convert people by 1. force 2. fear 3. tricks 4. bribes.
He told his followers, on one occasion, to 'heal the sick, raise the dead (!!), cast out demons, preach the good news' (i.e...bear witness). In a story about Judgement, he commends those who 'feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, visit the sick and those in prison'.
No strings attached. He told his disciples to 'teach' - NOT 'conquer'.
Nothing there about conquest or empires or anything of the sort. All 'christian' empires engaged in violent conquest in direct disobedience to Jesus' commandments and example. Many Christians - Spanish, English, French, you name it - condemned the violence and greed of their own societies. They felt that it brought shame and dishonor upon the holy Name of Christ.
I would like to ask you something. Do you think it even remotely possible that a person of a non-Christian faith might just possibly freely choose - after examining the Christian scriptures, translated into his own mother tongue, and after observing how sincere Christians live out their lives - to become a follower of Yeshua of Nazareth, attempting to live out Yeshua's teachings and follow his example? Do you think it is possible for ANYBODY to do that WITHOUT being tricked, or threatened, or bribed, and without living in a society governed by Christian rulers... to do it simply and solely because they have, well, decided that they LIKE what Yeshua is recorded as saying, and are attracted to his personal example?
And if someone did so choose, under those circumstances...would you try to stop him or her? To punish him or her? To kill him or her?
Or do you think that every person who leaves another religion, or for that matter, atheism, and becomes a Christian, should be punished for it, perhaps even beaten, or killed, as a 'traitor'? Would you prefer to prevent people from having any contact with Christians, anywhere? Would you like to ban the publication and translation of Christian scriptures, worldwide? How far are you prepared to go, to 'protect' people from even the bare possibility of choosing Christianity?
And if so, are you any different from the Muslims, who kill all apostates, and who try to prevent people from access to any ideas other than those inside the Islamic books?
parvasi,
And the point of your post was? You quote firstly that all religions/ways of life can live in harmony side by side with one another bar Islam which of course is correct but then you go into a diatribe of stating that Christianity and Islam are one of the same as they convert others. Although correct, you miss one vital point - Christianity is a choice Islam isn't. Maybe it would be wise to read up on Islam's history and you will find that all religions that came under attack from Islam were given a choice of conversion to Islam or having their head lopped off. Christianity never followed in these ways. In fact, today in certain parts of Indonesia and Africa, the same thing continues. Christians do not kill the Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Confucians, Animists, Zoroastrians, Atheists, Agnostics and Wiccans. In fact they live in harmony with them, respecting their beliefs and liberty. Islam, of course, has the death penalty for apostasy and makes life unbearable for many Non Muslims in Islamic Lands.
You make the grave error of comparing the bad things done in Christ's name with his name. Had Christ been alive he'd have looked on in horror at what people have done in the name of Christianity. The big difference is that Muhammad, were he alive would be happy with Hamas, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Hizb ut Tahrir, Al Mujarahoun et all and angry with all others NOT waging violent Jihad.
Reformation of Christianity led to many of the bad things done in Christ's name to be scrutinized and stopped. For you to think it is good that Christianity has been defanged shows your ignorance on what Christ was and what he preached. If you read my reply to jdamn above you will know how I feel about the whole situation but for a religion like Christianity to lose its way in the west has left the door open to Islam to take over.
Ironically it is the people like you who have completely missed the message of Christ, not seeing the wood for the trees, who have managed to turn western society into the moral-less cesspit it is with your views and wanton destruction of society. You will of course strongly disagree but then I expect you too. It is the people of your ilk, in life today who think you know it all, know how our life should be and are quite prepared to wipe out hundreds of years of evolution in order to implement your ideas on 'how we all should live'. Yet you do not realise just how ignorant, arrogant and wrong you are.
Believe it or not parvasi, it is people of your ilk who are a danger to western society on a par with Islam. The sad thing is, that you are unable to see this. Many, however, can.
DDA,
If you're saying that Christianity is not a proselytizing doctrine, then a whole lot of missionaries out there must be be utterly confused and desperately need to hear about this, don't they? Never mind the dupes who don't care, and the 10,000+ hits on Google pointing to those who do.
But I said nothing about conquest or trickery. I'll take this opportunity to restate my brief, which was not about methods -- real or supposed -- but about the motivation, the urge to convert.
Proselytizing is Evil, period.
pravasi: As a complete skeptic and someone who is not religious in the least, I must disagree with you when you assert that "Proselytizing is Evil, period." If two Mormon missionaries knock on my door and want to talk to me politely about their faith and ideally get me to convert to it (i.e., they're proselytizing) in no way would I describe that as evil. Come on, get a grip.
And please keep in mind that when Christians killed in past centuries in the name of their religion, they were violating the tenets of their creed. When Muslims kill in the name of their religion, they are invariably fulfilling a major component of their faith. The difference could not be larger. Christianity in theory (and now virtually exclusively in practice) isn't a threat to anyone. Islam both in theory and in practice has lethality written all over it. Look to the two religions' respective founders for the origins of the vast distinctions that exist to the present day between these two major faiths.