Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clinical · 02-18-2009, 10:18 AM

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Originally Posted by fatpie42

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Originally Posted by Clinical

Those 70+ (I believe 77) words are descriptions of God. God is the Gracious in the Quran, but the word Gracious is not His name. It is a praise of His majesty. Same goes for the rest of His titles such as Light, Merciful etc...

Yes, but Islamic rosaries have 99 beads, not 77. I'm not doubting that 'attributes' is probably a better term than 'names'. What I am saying is that, whatever is being counted, it must add up to 99....

Those "rosaries" have man made attributes from outside the Quran. God's attributes are in His book the Quran, and they are 70+ not 99.

Clinical · 02-18-2009, 10:30 AM

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Originally Posted by avi

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Originally Posted by Clinical

Allah does not have "99 names".

Wrong.

Here are the 99 names of Allah, in honor of which the Islamic rosary has been constructed with 99 beads.

Wrong. If you check that list you will find that several attributes are not to be found in the Quran. Moreover it says that several names are to be found only in Hadith, which was invented 150-200 years after the death of Muhammad.

Clinical · 02-18-2009, 10:31 AM

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Originally Posted by avi

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Originally Posted by Clinical, referring to the improbability of Christian missionaries traversing the Arabian Peninsula, who wrote

There could not be some in between because it was all deserts and mountains.

I disagree fundamentally.
The Eastern halves of Syria and Iran are desert, that did not prevent Alexander of Macedonia, or Christian missionaries, from traversing them, en route to India, nor did these desert areas prevent Genghis Khan from waging war across their breadth and length. What about the Gobi desert traversing Silk route caravans traveling from XiaMen to Antioch, even before Alexander? The desert areas of the Arabian peninsula are certainly harsh, but no match for the Gobi, which exhibits a temperature range of 80 degrees centigrade, plus minus 40 degrees centigrade, length: 1000 miles, annual precipitation: 4 inches. The Arabian peninsula is hotter, up to 50 degrees centigrade in summer, but not nearly as cold in winter, (-10 Centigrade) and with twice as much precipitation as Gobi.

Still there was no any evidence for Christian communities in Hijaz.

Clivedurdle · 02-18-2009, 11:05 AM

Clinical, what are your views of Sufism?

Clinical · 02-18-2009, 11:06 AM

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Nonsense. Where is your source of information for this fairy tale?

It is not a fairy tale. If you read the thread from the beginning you would not have said this. Here is what I said earlier ""Read: In the name of thy Lord who createth," [96:1] So he was able to read and write.
"And they say: Fables of the men of old which he hath had written down so that they are dictated to him morn and evening." [25:5] Here we understand that the opponents of Muhammad knew that he was writing the Quran as it was dictated to him morning and evening."

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Muhammed was an illiterate drover of camels,

Again he was not illiterate. And was a trader, not a "drover of camels".

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who robbed caravans traveling along the great north south routes connecting Antioch and Damascus with Mecca.

Now that is a fairy tale. Not only because it contradicts the teachings of the Quran, but also because it is a later invention 120 years after his death.

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...an inscription and a Greek account leads Lawrence Conrad to fix Muhammad's birth in 552, not 570.

What inscription and Greek account are you talking about here? And how did they lead Conrad to change Muhammad's birth?

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Crone finds that Muhammad's career took place not in Mecca but hundreds of kilometers to the north.

She bases all that on this verse alone "AND, BEHOLD, Lot was indeed one of Our mes*sage-bearers; [and so,] when [We decreed the doom of his sinful town,] We saved him and his household, except an old woman who was among those that stayed behind; and then We utterly destroyed the others: and, verily, [to this day] you pass by the remnants of their dwellings at morning-time and by night. Will you not, then, use your reason?" [37:133-138] She thinks that since the Quran says that the Pagans were passing by the remnants of Lot's people dwellings at morning and by night, and since Lot's people supposedly existed in modern day Jordan, then Muhammad, according to her thinking, must have existed near Jordan hundreds of kilometers to the north of Mecca! However she is ignorant of two things; 1. The Quran says that Abraham and Lot lived in Mecca and the Hijaz and 2. There is no evidence whatsoever that what exists in southern Jordan belongs to the people of Lot.

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Yehuda Nevo and Judith Koren find that the classical Arabic language was developed not in today's Saudi Arabia but in the Levant, and that it reached Arabia only through the colonizing efforts of one of the early caliphs.

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/His...ions/nevo.html

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Startling conclusions follow from this. The Arab tribesmen who conquered great swathes of territory in the seventh century were not Moslems, perhaps they were pagans.

I agree with this and find totally in line with the teachings of the Quran. It also refutes the popular myth that Islam spread by "the sword".

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The Koran is a not "a product of Muhammad or even of Arabia," but a collection of earlier Judeo-Christian liturgical materials stitched together to meet the needs of a later age.

Read above. The Sanaa manuscripts which date to mid 7th century also refute this.

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Most broadly, "there was no Islam as we know it" until two or three hundred years after the traditional version has it (more like CE 830 than 630);

Again wrong. Hadiths were invented like CE 830, but they are not part of Islam or Muhammad's life. The early manuscripts of the Quran disprove this too.

Clinical · 02-18-2009, 11:08 AM

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Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Clinical, what are your views of Sufism?

Generally positive, only few reservations.

Clivedurdle · 02-18-2009, 11:16 AM

Good, as it is seen as heresy by many Moslems.

http://www.moorishacademy.org/articl..._of_islam.html

I must note I do not understand your denial of xians in Arabia, will you accept gnostic influences?

Clinical · 02-18-2009, 11:24 AM

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The thing that struck me about these three was the presence of obvious Syriac letters in them; far more like Serto or Estrangelo, than the modern Arabic script alongside.

We know that Syriac and Arabic are very closely related languages. Inscriptions, by their very nature, tend to be somewhat formulaic. So I wonder to what extent these claims about grammar really refute the claims.

Arabic alphabet evolved from Syriac, but grammar is a bit different.

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I don't understand it either but I don't think it's at all critical. The writer criticizes the diacritics connection to Syriac, in the context of the argument of Mingana and Luxenberg, which asserts that Islam and the Arabic alphabet were wholly derived. There is a simpler way of arguing the genealogies by pointing out that the first known versions of Quran were in the kufic script, which is free of dots. So it is quite possible that the vowel dots indeed originate with Syriac but were gradually imported into the arabic alphabet after the Islamic conquest of Syria (CE 636).

Jiri

Agree.

Clinical · 02-18-2009, 11:26 AM

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I must note I do not understand your denial of xians in Arabia,

I only deny their existence in Hijaz. They did exist in the north and the south.

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will you accept gnostic influences?

If evidence exists.

Net2004 · 02-18-2009, 11:45 AM

who borrowed from who?

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The signs used by Jacob of Raha bear some resemblance to the Qur'anic diacritical system. Now recall that the inventor of the Arabic system, Abu al-Aswad ad-duali, died in 69AH. (688 C.E), and that he dotted the entire Mushaf during Mu awiya's reign c. 50 A.H/670 C.E. Suddenly the issue of who borrowed from whom becomes crystal clear. For six hundred years the Syriacs wrote thier Bibles without any diacritical markings, though they boasted a university in Nisibis and several colleges and monasteries, all in operation since 450 C.E. Yet thier diacritical marks were not conceived until the late 7th/early 8th century, while ad-Duali's dotted Mushaf was finnished in the third quarter of the 7th century C.E. Logic clearly dictates that Jacob copied the system from the Muslims.

The History of The Qur'anic Text

more about vowel marks is covered in
the same article. section
3.2 VOWEL MARKS

As we have seen earlier, Mingana had claimed that the origin of Arabic vowels is unknown to history and said that the opinions of Arab authors are too "worthless" to be quoted. Instead he advanced his own "opinion" (worthless or otherwise) by saying that the foundation of the Arabic vowels is based on the vowels of the Syrians. The only proof offered by Mingana was the similarity in the names of vowels in Syriac and Arabic. The fatha of Arabic corresponds in appellation and in sound to the Aramaic phtâha.[33]

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Qur...Mss/vowel.html

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02-18-2009, 11:05 AM	#24
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	Clinical, what are your views of Sufism?

02-18-2009, 11:16 AM	#27
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	Good, as it is seen as heresy by many Moslems. http://www.moorishacademy.org/articl..._of_islam.html I must note I do not understand your denial of xians in Arabia, will you accept gnostic influences?

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