d3157ab07547deaeab57…

I think that in a dispute it is much more productive to say “the Muslims say that the Koran says …” than to say “the Koran says …”.

Or be even more specific than “the Muslims say” if you can. For example, based on video I’ve seen on Memri tv, Ayatollah Ali Khammenei, the “spiritual leader of Iran”, says the 9/11 attacks were justified by the Qur’an. That’s what he was teaching the thousands he was speaking to. Is someone going to say he doesn’t understand Islam???

In today’s world, it doesn’t matter how anyone from me to Mr. Spencer would interpret the Qur’an. What matters is how the person with the suicide vest strapped on interprets it. What matters is the interpretation of those who taught that person what the Qur’an means. Its pointless to argue how they should interpret it, what’s important is to understand how they do interpret it.

I’m glad there are people (like Mr. Spencer) around to tell us how they do interpret the Qur’an.

it seems that someone is writing that Mohammad explained these things.

Mohammad was illiterate… he didn’t write a single word of any of Islam’s holy texts.

When the “angel Gabriel” started giving him his revelations the angle said “RECITE!” not “WRITE!”

Islam was strickly an oral tradition until things were written down as stated in the timeline above.

Islam is an incredibly irrational and illogical religion. So when you read things like Allah gave Mohemmed the Koran and the Koran was perfect and preserved.. they mean Allah gave him the Koran in little jumbles over a decade orally with no regard to coherency and context. It doesnt mean what a “normal” person would think it means.

SOmeone referenced Ibn Warraq above… He’d be a great author to read, I bet his book on the Koran is devastating.

I read his “Why I am not a Muslim” in 1998 (i really didn’t have an awareness of the scale of the depravity of Islam even after I read it, because of the life-long conditioning I had that it’s part of the Jewish/Chrisitan legacy.. that was hard to shake off) and it’s brutal on the religion.

For instance this year is 2007 CE

Thanks. That was informative.

“In these texts, Muhammad explained the Qur’an and established Islamic Sunnah and Sharia Law by clarifying his message regarding jihad, fighting, the slave trade, booty, taxation, the virgins in paradise, oppression, the intolerance of women, Christians, and Jews, as well as his open hostility to freedom of choice, and affinity for pagan ritual.:

I’ll look up what years CE corresponds to because it seems that someone is writing that Mohammad explained these things. This is going to take some effort because the more questions I have the more I have to research. Maybe I’ll just see how Robert does. I might be trying to bite off more than I can chew.

but since this guy is so obviouly biased against islam

What a stupid statement! how could any intelligent person not be biased against Islam once they come into knowldge of it?

The rest of the islam sunnah makes it clear.. the destination of jihadis killed in action is an orgy in heaven. the islamic sunnah was not based on semantical readings of the koran… it was based on the life of mohemmend and his rationalizations to get muslims to kill other people. so even if a koranic maniscript does say “raisen” its absurd to think that any muslims would ever believe that that was allahs meaning.

Language: English Type: Book
Publisher: Berlin : H. Schiler, 2007.
ISBN: 9783899300888 3899300882 | OCLC: 124038162

Rarely are these “Syro-Aramaic readings of the Koran” as spectacular as in the by now well-publicized case of the paradise huris that may be mistranslated grapes, but time and again they display the strong kinship between the Koranic text and Christian scripture of its time, not only in subject matter (which has always been obvious), but in semantics, roots, and maybe even intent

University of Notre Dame

Furman University

University of Georgia

the “lost” ancient (8-900ADish I think) korans found in Yemen

BadBrad,

The Yemen manuscript fragments are mentioned in Toby Lester, “What is the Koran?”, Atlantic Monthly, January 1999. That article is reprinted in Ibn Warraq, editor, What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text, and Commentary, Prometheus Books, 2002, pp. 107ff. That volume also contains a very interesting article Yehuda D. Nevo, “Towards a Prehistory of Islam” (pp. 131ff) that examines “Arabic rock inscriptions scattered all of the Syro-Jordanian deserts and the Peninsula, and specifically the Negev. . . .” The inscriptions are from the late 600s through the early 800s. The Ibn Warraq book is a collection of scholarly papers on various topics; Warraq is not the author but the editor. Another related Warraq book is in the works and may be published towards the end of 2007 — Which Koran?: Variants, Manuscripts, And the Influence of Pre-islamic Poetry. Again, he is the editor, so it’s not just Ibn Warraq talking.

I would be interested in hearing your opinions on:

1. overall accuracy of his facts/research

2. the “lost” ancient (8-900ADish I think) korans found in Yemen that were different than the ones today (wait… I thought it never changed?) that the Yemeni gov’t won’t let anyone look at after they were preserved and discrepencies discovered.

3. praying to mecca vs praying to jerusalem and the differences of the angles of earliest mosques from the ones built after the Koran was written and published as a book.

What I found interesting was his history/analysis of how a lot of islam/koran was formed not by muhammed, but by others after his death. Much like how the christians met to decide which gospels to put in the bible and which to exclude… but since this guy is so obviouly biased against islam, I’d like to hear your input.

Thanks.

From Prophet of Doom’s Islamic Terror Timeline:

http://www.prophetofdoom.net/Islamic_Terrorism_Timeline_1000-Year_Crusade.Islam

750 CE: The Battle of Zab was fought. With the fall of Damascus to Shia Muslims, Islam experienced the end of the aggressive Umayyad Dynasty and the rise of the Abbasids.

They took their name from Muhammad’s uncle, al-Abbas, because his descendants had revolted against Umayyad control. Under the Umayyads, non-Muslims in occupied territories had been relegated to slave status. The Abbasids were more content, so long as the conquered paid their taxes.

The capital of the Islamic world was moved from Damascus, Syria to Baghdad, Iraq. The flea- and lice-infested, sun-baked, mud-hut towns of Mecca and Medina were ostracized for more civil, less Islamic cultures. It was in Baghdad that the religion of Islam was born. The first written edition of the Qur’an was compiled in Kufu, on the outskirts of Baghdad, sometime around 725 CE. Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, known as the Sira, or Biography of Muhammad, was compiled in Baghdad in 750 CE (some say 768). Without this early biography chronicling Islam’s beginnings, the religion would not exist, as nothing would be known of its lone prophet and Allah’s singular voice. No Ishaq, no Prophet, no Prophet, no Islam.

Then in 850 CE, Bukhari and Muslim would compile the most authoritative Hadith collections depicting the words and deeds of Muhammad and his Companions. Their topical collection becomes the basis for Salaf, or fundamentalist, Islam. In these texts, Muhammad explained the Qur’an and established Islamic Sunnah and Sharia Law by clarifying his message regarding jihad, fighting, the slave trade, booty, taxation, the virgins in paradise, oppression, the intolerance of women, Christians, and Jews, as well as his open hostility to freedom of choice, and affinity for pagan ritual.

Next, the History of al-Tabari, depicting Muhammad’s rise to power, was compiled in Baghdad between 870 and 920 CE. Tabari’s Hadith-based depiction of Muhammad’s words and deeds as they were passed on by way of the Prophet’s Companions (the same folks who passed on the Qur’an), remains the oldest unedited, uncensored, and unabridged account of Islam’s beginnings. It is the story of a ruthless terrorist, money-grubbing pirate, and sexual pervert. While it is astonishing that anyone trusts Muhammad’s witness, this prophets words and deeds explain why Muslims were plundering the world.

What’s especially interesting here is that all five of Islam’s oldest scriptural sources are Shia, including the Qur’an. The Sunni Umayyads didn’t bother compiling or conveying any religious texts. The entire basis for the religion of Islam was compiled in Persian Baghdad, one hundred to three hundred years after it was allegedly conceived by Muhammad.

Is there a statistical analysis of who a muslim is i.e. education…wealth…?

aside from assigning each chapter to Mecca or Medina, there is not complete agreement among Muslim scholars as to the order of the chapters. Thus the (general) longest-to-shortest division was one relatively efficient way to organize the book. – posted by Robert Spencer

I’m curious about Robert Spencer’s thoughts on Craig Winn’s published version of the contents of the koran in chronological order via “Prophet of Doom”.

To write Prophet of Doom, I analyzed the Sira, the Ta’rikh, or History of al-Tabari, and the topical Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim. Using Islam’s most holy books I was able to reorder the Qur’an chronologically and set it into the context of Muhammad’s life.