lpetrich

No, what did that special feature?

Yellum Notnef

It was an hour or so of stand up comedy.

There was a joke towards the end about Muslim terrorists expecting all those virgins,but when they get up to Heaven Allah says "Here are your raisins".

Rational BAC

And then again there is this old joke-----

Osama bin Ladin goes to the pearly gates and is immediately met by G. Washington who promptly kicks him in the balls. And then T. Jefferson comes out and punches him right in the face. And then 60 or more others come out and beat good old OBL to a pulp. Lying there in a crumpled mass of almost unrecognizable humanity, OBL looks skyward and says "This is not what I was promised!!!!!!"

And a little angel floats by and says to OBL------"We told you that you would be met by 72 Virginians ----What did you think we said?"
-----------------------------------------------

(There is always the sole redeeming value of a very old joke is that there is always the chance that someone has not heard it yet.)

GnosticPaul

Much of the Koran is older than Islam, having been used by various Jewish and Christian sects. The older parts, at least, are a collection of legal, liturgical, and anecdotal material that had been in Syriac a.k.a. Aramaic before being translated into Arabic.

The Qur'an did not originate from any Judeo-Christian source. Throughout Muhammad's era of prophecy he would recite to the Mu'min (believers) the word of God - which became known as the Qur'an (which is Arabic for recitation). Until Muhammad's death, the Qur'an was an oral tradition (in Arabic) that was completely memorized by a certain number of devout Muslims; it was then written down, and compiled in order - the longest verses to the shortest verses. Finally, one of the Rightly Guided caliphs destroyed several other versions of the Qur'an, and made official the Noble Recitation that remains today.

This is deduced from how the Arabic versions of names and such are closest to the Syriac versions and not (say) the Hebrew or the Greek versions. Thus, the houris, those lovely ladies a Muslim male will get in Paradise, had originally been white raisins (hur) to stuff oneself with.

I have no idea where you got the idea that the Qur'an existed pre-Islamically in several other languages. Do not get confused by the fact that many Middle Eastern languages are very similiar - i.e., the Islamic and Jewish greeting compared: Salaam (Arabic), Shalom (Hebrew).

It was gradually adopted as a religious text by the Arab conquerors of the 600's and 700's, as a result of their trying to create a distinct identity for themselves. And as part of that creating, they ended up creating a founder figure for their new religion -- Mohammed. One whose biography paralleled the biographies of other prophets like Abraham and Moses.

History has recorded that a man named Muhammad ibn Abd Allah lived and died on the Arab peninsula between 570 - 623 c.e.
You seem to deny that Muahmmad ever existed - understand that Islam is the world's youngest religion and its history isn't vague or mysterious like other religions.

The historical Mohammed may have been a prophet or a leader early in the Arab conquests; however, he was turned into the receiver of the Koran and an inhabitant of Mecca and Medina. And many of his biographical details were invented to explain bits of the Koran that had become obscure over the years and decades.

I'm not sure what your stance is - do you believe the man Muhammad lived and walked on this earth at one point? Your assertion that the local arabs somehow had the 'Recitation' in their cultural grasp and then adopted Muhammad as the "receiver" of this most sacred text goes against logic and what history has recored. The Recitation (Qur'an) originated from the mouth of Muhammad, in the Arabic language - the first ones who believed him began to memorize Muhammad's Holy recitation. This eventually became the unchanged scripture (since at least the 'golden years' of the Four Caliphs) of Muslims.

Such storytelling continued, resulting in the accumulation of an enormous body of lore, the Hadiths. Much of this was various accounts of the activities of Mohammed and his companions, which were often used as legal precedents and justifications of various customs. And much of this lore is rather plainly bogus. To take just one example, there are numerous pro-Sunni and pro-Shiite Hadiths. Which side of the Sunni-Shiite split had Mohammed been on?

The hadiths are known to Muslims as the Prophet's moral example - it also bears some legal structure when it comes to Clerics, Imams, and theologians. Some hadiths are considered more authentic than others. As for the Sunni-Shi'ite thing, during Muhammad's prophecy there was no such thing as Sunnis, Shi'ites, Sufis, etc. There were only Mu'mins (those who believed Muhammad was Allah's Apostle). After the Prophet's death, different sects broke from mainstream Islam which came to be known as Sunni Islam. Muhammad was on the side of the believers. I'm afraid you're more lost in literal apprehension of Holy Writ than most fundamentalists.

Seraphim

... Thus, the houris, those lovely ladies a Muslim male will get in Paradise, had originally been white raisins (hur) to stuff oneself with.

Hmmm .... Muslims get themselves killed just for a sack of Raisins? WHAHAHAHAHA .... Good one.

lpetrich

GnosticPaul:
The Qur'an did not originate from any Judeo-Christian source.

That's a giant load of camel dung. Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, and several Biblical stories are featured rather prominently in the Koran; there is a story of Abraham challenging some idolators that is straight out of rabbinical Judaism.

Throughout Muhammad's era of prophecy he would recite to the Mu'min (believers) the word of God - which became known as the Qur'an (which is Arabic for recitation). ...

More like later generations putting words into his mouth, the way that Plato did with Socrates in his Dialogues.

(the Koran: Aramaic to Arabic, white raisins -> houris...)

I have no idea where you got the idea that the Qur'an existed pre-Islamically in several other languages.

See the links I'd posted for more details. Or read Ibn Warraq's "What the Koran Really Says"

Do not get confused by the fact that many Middle Eastern languages are very similiar - i.e., the Islamic and Jewish greeting compared: Salaam (Arabic), Shalom (Hebrew).

Which is totally irrelevant. The aforementioned book shows that the Koran's versions of various people's names are derived most directly from the Aramaic versions and not from the Hebrew or Greek or whatever original versions.

History has recorded that a man named Muhammad ibn Abd Allah lived and died on the Arab peninsula between 570 - 623 c.e.

Except that that could be some after-the-fact concoction designed to explain why Mecca is such a holy city.

You seem to deny that Muahmmad ever existed - understand that Islam is the world's youngest religion and its history isn't vague or mysterious like other religions.

Except that that has never kept massive mythmaking from happening.

I'm not sure what your stance is - do you believe the man Muhammad lived and walked on this earth at one point?

I believe that there may have been a historical Mohammed, but that his recorded life and career are full of mythology.

Your assertion that the local arabs somehow had the 'Recitation' in their cultural grasp and then adopted Muhammad as the "receiver" of this most sacred text goes against logic and what history has recored.

Projection onto founder figures is, however, fairly common.

... I'm afraid you're more lost in literal apprehension of Holy Writ than most fundamentalists.

Me, more literal-minded than a fundamentalist?

I have to keep myself from laughing as I contemplate that.

sphinx wui

hi Ipetrich,

Islam in the eyes of western critiques in 19 century was the enemy and the main opposition fighting force against the colonialism and most of them came to the east with the colonial armies as missionaries and you can’t separate their criticism of Islam from this background and if you find somebody criticizing Mohamed about his marriage from Aiysha while forgetting about the social norms in this period and the age of Mary when she was engaged to Joseph and when the wholly spirit made her pregnant!!!! And call Mohamed a pedophile but to forget to call his own god also a pedophile you have to discredit such a person.

Another form of Islam critiques those days are trying to do cultural striptease in front of the west to appease them regardless of the truth and you can check the story of this woman that the judge called her terrorist in the court and how she told the press how she loves America and doesn’t practice Islam any more and she buys Christmas tree each Christmas and so on, simply she was a hostage speaking to her captors to appease them and I think many Muslims now in the west do the same thing to gain acceptance. when I was in America, I watched TV documentary in PBS about Islam made by a Lebanese woman. She started to speak about how Islam is peaceful and this kind of stuff and she stated that there is nothing in Islam called Jihad, which is a big lie, but I can understand the reasons behind it but still it is a lie.

From my point of view, Islam never been studied in a complete academic way free of external influences and prejudices either against it or with it.

Most of people here are of Christian background and they tend to draw parallels between Christianity and Islam which simplify things for them but it is not completely accurate, for example the bible – the Quran, Jesus- Mohamed , Yahweh- Allah….etc


Regarding the bible- Quran parallel I can say that if you ask any Christian what is the Quran he will think of it as the Muslim book equal to the bible in its nature i.e. it is the biography of Mohamed and his ministry or some thing similar to that but this is not the case actually.
To know the difference between the two you have first to recognize that the language of the Quran (Arabic) is the only life language between all the Abrahamic religions and as an Arabic speaking person when I read the Quran today I can understand exactly what it means. The language of Quran is not –as some western critiques like to think-old style Arabic that no body understand today but any Arabic speaking person can understand it easily and based on this fact Quran didn’t suffer from the problem of translation from dead language to a modern day one which creates a lot of problems in the Bible.

Second you have to understand the way that the Muslims transmit it from generation to generation and make sure that no alterations happened during this process. I put a link to an Islamic site explaining some thing called science of Hadeeth terminology and I think if you check it you will find it interesting to know how Muslims were very keen about the Hadeeth and created this unique method of documentation and you can imagine what they did to Quran. To give you a brief idea about this issue, if you check any Hadeeth book you will find before any Hadeeth names of persons which Muslims called ISNAD which is the chain of reporters who transmit this Hadeeth until it was written in one of the Suna books and they develop another science called science of reporters which is very similar to modern day FBI files about each person his name mentioned in any Hadeeth. For example you will find the name and other nick names,place and date of birth, report about schools this person attended, the name of his teachers, his travels, his close friends and associates, report about his mental capabilities especially the memory and his general behavior and so on and by the end of Hadeeth you will find a credibility degree to any Hadeeth ranging from correct, good, week to forged. I want here to give you an example about forged Hadeeth to understand this concept, there was an owner of a date store who is business was near a fish store and the business in the fish store was very good but his business was dying so he put a sign on the front of his shop went like this “Mohamed said if you eat fish you have to eat date after it” and people started to believe it and started to buy date from him but by using the above mentioned method Muslim scholars were able to differentiate between forged ones and correct ones and they have many books specified for forged and week Hadeeth. http://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/


Whatever the opinions about this method and its degree of credibility,if you compare it to nothing in Christianity you can appreciate their work. Christianity specially in its early days never developed any method to check the accuracy and credibility of its text or any sort of documentation to it and I think this is the reason Christianity is now document hungry ( if this expression is right in English!) and try to grasp to any document like the dead sea scroll and similar stuff but I think they missed this opportunity once and forever by their negligence in the early days of Christianity.

About the similarities between the stories in the Quran and the Bible (OT_NT) it is very tricky and you have to go deep beyond the names. You will find the same names like Moses, Jesus, Noah, etc…..but still there is a big difference between them and I have to mention it from the Muslim point of view.
First in the Quran you will never find any attention paid to names of ancestors like the case with Jesus and his family tree in two of the four bibles or as it was the case in many chapters in the OT ( I mean this son of …son of …son of …..etc…) it never exited in the Quran.

Second, from the Quran point of view, all those prophets were Muslims!i.e. Jesus was Muslim and also Moses,Noah, etc….it was one message for every body but the clergy corrupted it for their own gain and based on this there is only one religion for humanity which is Islam that Ibraham came with and ended by Mohamed which the Quran see him as their heir and the last prophet.

To give you an example about similarities I will take the story of Moses and Pharaoh of Egypt as an example and I think you are familiar with the OT side of the story but from the Quranic side of the story it was completely different, it wasn’t the good Israelites versus the evil Egyptians but rather it was Muslim Moses against the tyranny of the pharaoh and his inner circle and Moses came for both the Israelites and the Egyptians to guide them to the path of monotheism and fight the dictatorship of the Pharaoh and as the Israelites believed him some Egyptians also believed him including the Pharaoh’s wife and the Egyptian magicians he brought to defeat Moses, in brief it was not ethnic group against ethnic group or race against race but rather an idea against another idea and in the Quran you will not find all this stuff about god ordering the Israelites to robe the Egyptians and run or all this mass killing of the Cananites, madinites, etc……. but western critiques used to forget about those differences and concentrate on the superficial similarities. If you want to consider it copy paste thing, this is completely wrong but if you say that there is certain similarities in some areas – which by the way the Quran said it cause the source of revelation was one- but there is distinctive style and different point of view regarding the same story, I think this will be more accurate.



About the direction of praying in Islam it was actually Jerusalem and later on became the Kabba in Mecca but this was not a new discovery or some thing Muslims hide, it is written in the Quran.

Also the names of Arab pagan idols, Al lat, Al uza and Manat were mentioned in the Quran in the context that those idols were actually a righteous people in the past but with time people started to make statues for them and worship them instead of god as the same happened with Jesus and his mother and to this day you will not find a picture of Mohamed or a statue for him cause he ordered people not to do for the fear that the same thing might happen to him.

One of the links in the thread has some thing about how Muslims take the crescent as a symbol as the cross and star of David for Christians and Jews respectively which is a joke. Muslims never took the crescent as a symbol and the banner of Mohamed and his followers during those days were very similar to the flag of Saudia Arabia now, it was black with a text on it goes like this “there is no god but god and Mohamed is his messanger” Muslims use another calender which is the lunar one and they used to determine the beginning and end of months according to the different stages the moon takes and the most important occasion for them is Ramadan, the fasting month but they never considered the crescent as a religious symbol as the Christians and Jews do with their cross and star of David but Christians liked to identify Muslims with this symbol.

To give you a clue about this, if you check the origin of the word “corrosion” which is this thing you buy from bakery stores you will discover a funny story behind it. Muslims I think in the 17 century attacked Europe from the east and vowed to enter Rome to destroy the Vatican (they saw it as the source of troubles and the real culprit behind the crusades) and encircled Vienna for months on their way to Italy but they withdrew cause of the winter and Europe celebrated this occasion by making a pie in the form of Muslims symbol (the crescent) and ate it and the word crescent went into different modifications in different European languages and settled on this form “corrosion” but also Muslims eat it to this day and they don’t consider it offensive cause it has no religious meaning to them and now muslims consider the crescent as a symbol for identification like the red crescent and similar stuff but it never gain any holy meaning in their minds.

Also if you check the bible in its Arabic translation you will find the term “Allah” used instead of god in many occasions. I mention this to clarify the common misunderstanding in the west that Allah is a specific god like Yahweh in the bible but rather Allah= god.

Actually the subject is very interesting to me but unfortunately I can’t elaborate more cause I am preparing for some exams beside my job (which I think I will lose if I continue following this forum) but I think I have another idea, you can go to an Arabic forum called beetalarab.net and register there and put an invitation in the English corner to any body who is willing to discuss this subject here cause some of the members are highly informed about those issues and on the net 24/7 !! ( i don't know how) and you can have an interesting dialogue with them and I will put the link to this forum if you like the idea.


http://www.beetalarab.net/cgi-bin/ik...ikonboard.cgi?

GnosticPaul

That's a giant load of camel dung. Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, and several Biblical stories are featured rather prominently in the Koran; there is a story of Abraham challenging some idolators that is straight out of rabbinical Judaism.

Right, the traditional prophets. Muhammad's message was a follow-up to previous prophecies - it confirms Christianity and Judaism, and that is why there is some Biblical content in the Qur'an; because after all, both books are of the same transcendental reality. But that is a matter of faith. Your position on Islam and the Qur'an is exactly the same as fundamentalist Christians who come to their own conclusions on what Islam is, and where the Qur'an came from. I have heard anything from 'Islam is the Anti-Messiac religion' to 'I believe Muhammad adapted and adopted the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob et cet era,'. In your case, any belief in transcendance is a crock.

More like later generations putting words into his mouth, the way that Plato did with Socrates in his Dialogues.

A civilization does not put an entire writ into 'the mouth' of another man, especially a man who claimed to be just that. I think you have adopted a potentially ignorant stance on the origin of Islam - for example, I know many Atheists and Christians who believe the Qur'an originated from Muhammad as history dictates; however, they believe Muhammad made it up for his own purposes. In fact, this is the first time in years I've heard someone claim the entire Arab Muslim population of 6th century Arabia conjured the Holy Qur'an and nominated the man Muhammad as the 'receiver' of the Sacred Text - and on top of that, you are claiming the Qur'an 'pre-existed' in a language other than Arabic.

Which is totally irrelevant. The aforementioned book shows that the Koran's versions of various people's names are derived most directly from the Aramaic versions and not from the Hebrew or Greek or whatever original versions.

In particular, why would you adhere to an apostate who loathes Islam? You might as well be getting your information from Falwell Ministries. You feel Ibn Warraq 'cracked the case'? I'm sure he has it all figured out, like Salman Rushdie. Warraq made a presumptious assertion that because Biblical figures were hardly known to the Arabs, Muhammad must have have gotten their names from the original Aramaic Christian scriptures. However Muhammad, on the other hand only knew how to speak Arabic (let alone be able to read/write and speak another language). There's a reason the Qur'an was compiled after the Prophet's death, and that is because Muhammad was illiterate. Again, old Arabia is rich in recorded history (The Prophet Muhammad being the most recorded figure in history), and there were Arab Christians during the Prophet's time. Arabs, who were familiar with the stories of Ibrahim, Musa, Suleman, and Isa himself. Tomato, Tomata - Alaha, Allah.

lpetrich

First, I think that sphinx wui's comments are very interesting, though I'm at a loss for comments.

GnosticPaul:
Your position on Islam and the Qur'an is exactly the same as fundamentalist Christians who come to their own conclusions on what Islam is, and where the Qur'an came from.

How so? I don't think that Allah was some Moon God.

I have heard anything from 'Islam is the Anti-Messiac religion'

???

to 'I believe Muhammad adapted and adopted the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob et cet era,'.

A very reasonable hypothesis.

In your case, any belief in transcendance is a crock.

Whatever "transcendence" is supposed to mean.

More like later generations putting words into his mouth, the way that Plato did with Socrates in his Dialogues.

A civilization does not put an entire writ into 'the mouth' of another man, especially a man who claimed to be just that.

Except that that has often been done. The first five books in the Bible have traditionally been attributed to Moses, the Psalms to David, a certain wedding song to Solomon, the Gospels to some gentlemen named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, etc.

Even though there is a fair amount of counterevidence. Moses is always referred to in the third person, he's described as the humblest person there ever was, his funeral is described, and we are told that there has been no prophet like him ever since.

And King David lived well before the Babylonian Exile, referred to in Psalm 137.

I think you have adopted a potentially ignorant stance on the origin of Islam - for example, I know many Atheists and Christians who believe the Qur'an originated from Muhammad as history dictates; however, they believe Muhammad made it up for his own purposes.

What do you expect them to believe about the Koran? Seriously.

In fact, this is the first time in years I've heard someone claim the entire Arab Muslim population of 6th century Arabia conjured the Holy Qur'an and nominated the man Muhammad as the 'receiver' of the Sacred Text - and on top of that, you are claiming the Qur'an 'pre-existed' in a language other than Arabic.

Founder figures often get lots of stuff attributed to them, as I'd pointed out.

And what's wrong with the pre-existence hypothesis?

(mention of Ibn Warraq...)

In particular, why would you adhere to an apostate who loathes Islam? ...

And who would you consider an objective source? Some blatant hagiographer?

Warraq made a presumptious assertion that because Biblical figures were hardly known to the Arabs, Muhammad must have have gotten their names from the original Aramaic Christian scriptures.

No, Ibn Warraq thinks that it was some anonymous translators who did that; the Koran is very repetitious, which suggests a compilation of different "recognized" versions.

... (The Prophet Muhammad being the most recorded figure in history), ...

A claim which reminds me of the Xtian claim that Jesus Christ is the most-documented person in hsitory.