VinceP1974 on October 1, 2007 at 6:42 PM
It was you who helped me at the Chicago Tribune. I thank you, sir.

Connie on October 3, 2007 at 11:04 PM

Wow.. good catch!

It’s maddening arguing with leftist idiots , isn’t it?

VinceP1974 on October 1, 2007 at 6:42 PM

It was you who helped me at the Chicago Tribune. I thank you, sir.

Is it my imagination or are these verses more moderate in tone & temperament than the previous sura?

locomotivebreath1901 on September 30, 2007 at 10:40 PM

The Koran was not written in any particular order (other than length), therefore what comes before or after any portion of it really doesn’t provide a context.

This Sura is from the Meccan era, as Mr S. said at the beginning:

The Qur’an’s sixth sura, “Cattle,” dates from Muhammad’s last year in Mecca

The Meccan verses are “peaceful” , the later Medina verses are more militaristic (the Hijra was when Islam twisted from being somewhat tolerant to being militant)

There’s a doctoral dissertation waiting for someone in this observation.

And do I detect a little plagiarism against the Master shirkster Himself, Jesus?

You caught that too? This passage from the Quran seems unusually parasitic on the New Testament. I bet I could find a New Testament correllary to nearly every verse in this passage. Not all, but most.

Hmmm… that sounds like a challenge. Let me give it a go.

There is no doubt that the above crimes are indeed terrible, but their comparison with shirk shows that they do not hold much significance in relation to this travesty. When a man murders, rapes or steals, the injustice which is done is directed primarily at other humans. But when a man commits shirk, the injustice is directed towards the Creator of the heavens and the earth; Allah something totally intangible.

Sound insane? Now don’t forget, the supposed creator of all this stuff also created humans, so wouldn’t it stand to reason that committing crimes against another human (also a creation) would be just as terrible and awful?!
Good Lord, this stuff is impossible! It makes my head spin.

Robert Spencer,

Is it my imagination or are these verses more moderate in tone & temperament than the previous sura? Verses 1-83 sound more like a theological discourse with admonitions & warnings to non-believers of “god’s” punishment to come (in this life & the next), not a the usual lynch mob proclamations from old mohammed. And do I detect a little plagiarism against the Master shirkster Himself, Jesus?

Sura 6; v 9 ~> ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’

Sura 6; v 59 ~> “But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.”

Sura 6; v 70 ~> “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

I’ll refrain from any vulgar retorts about mohammed’s rosey sweat. Has O’l’ Mo’ switched gears for ‘cattle’?

Today’s excerpt from the Qur’an covers the period just before Muhammed fled Mecca, when he was preaching his stern new monotheism to increasingly cranky tribal relatives, the Quraysh:

Then verses 13-32 emphasize the oneness of Allah, and c…

I am very disconcerted in my RCIA class I am attending that the leader is insisting that Allah is another name for God Himself. And that Islam is a peaceful religion with just a few, fringe, jihadists. And that in the past Christianity was just as violent. I believe him to be wrong on all counts.

What tradition does verse 74 come from?

(Remember) when Abraham said unto his father Azar: Takest thou idols for gods? Lo! I see thee and thy folk in error manifest.

As astute Bible students know, Terah is the father of Abraham according to the Hebrew tradition in Genesis. This conversation does not exist in Genesis either. Does this come from some other tradition lost to antiquity, or does it originate here in the Quran? The verse seems to imply that this fact is already known to the readers.

There are stories in the rabbinic tradition of Abraham having conversations like this with his father Terah. The name Azar seems to be a garbled version of Eleazar, Abraham’s servant, whom Muhammad evidently confused with his father.

Would you not kill if you thought not doing so would result in eternal damnation? I don’t know, I cannot put myself in those shoes. It is so alien to my thinking that I cannot easily put myself in that situation. But this is the ultimate problem that faces the world gripped in Islamic terror, and I think the prime motivator is the threat of eternal Fire and unforgivable sins. If Allah was dangling me, my family, all I knew and understood over the Fires of Hell, what would I do – what would any of us do?

Now you coming to the point of why I am writing this series. If we don’t understand how those who oppose us think, we will never, ever be able to formulate some way to thwart their plans to conquer and subjugate us.

Robert, can you expand on V 77. What’s the significance? Why is the crescent moon a symbol of Islam? What’s the connection?

The crescent moon is an Ottoman imperial symbol that over time came to be associated with Islam as a whole. The crescent moon is waxing, you see — as Islam is expanding until it encompasses the whole world. The color green is the Islamic color for the same reason: it is the color of spring, of growth, of expansion.

Actually v. 77 is saying just the opposite: not “the moon is my Lord,” but “the moon is NOT my Lord.” This is a separate question from whether or not Allah is a pre-Islamic god, but there is no doubt that in the Islamic conception Allah is greater than the moon.

Those who glibly associate Allah with the moon-god – a pre-Islamic Arabian god of war – should note v. 77: “When he saw the moon rising in splendour, he said: ‘This is my Lord.’ But when the moon set, he said: ‘unless my Lord guide me, I shall surely be among those who go astray.’”

I am not sure what Mr Spencer is saying here. I glibly associate Allah as a pre-Islamic god, am I wrong? It seems that the Koran says, yes, the moon is my Lord, Allah.

I am sorry to be so dense, but I think I need more interpretation.

You weren’t suppose to tell.

MB4 on September 30, 2007 at 3:36 PM

MB4, you do realize that Roddenberry’s original quote was a little broader than just Allah, right?

http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/201

Questions and Answers

Q: “no god but Allah?” Isn’t “Allah” another word for “God?”

A: The transliterated phrase from Arabic reads, “La ilaha illAllah.” A word for word translation into English would read: La [no] ilaha [god] ill [except or but] Allah [Allah]. The important thing to note is that the word “Allah” is a name and is not the word for god. If “Allah” were the word for god, then the phrase would read, “there is no allah but allah. Clearly it does not. The Qur’an itself claims that Allah is the personal name of the Islamic god: (Qur’an 17:110) “Say, Call Him Allah or call Him Ar-Rahman; whatever the name you call Him, all His names are beautiful.” If “Allah” were the word for god, then Islam’s god is nameless. There is also no evidence that the word “Allah” is a contraction of the words “al ilah,” which means, “the god.” If it were, then again, the phrase would read, “there is no allah but allah.” As part of the first “Pillar of Islam,” this issue is critical as Islam claims that the God of the Bible (whose name is Yahweh) and Allah are one in the same and that we all, therefore, worship the same god.

Excerpts from Prophet of Doom

From chapter 6, “Heart of Darkness”

Then one day, sun boring down on the treeless town, Muttalib was struggling to clear the well of Zamzam when: Ishaq:66/Tabari VI:2 “It is alleged, and Allah only knows the truth, that Abdul Muttalib encountered opposition when he was digging Zamzam. He vowed that if given ten sons, to make his labor less arduous and to protect him, he would sacrifice one of them to Allah at the Ka’aba.” Bad move, because eventually he had ten sons. So, foolishly faithful to the rocks, he tossed divining arrows at Hubal’s feet to determine which son should die. Ishaq:67 “They used to conduct their affairs according to the decisions of the arrows.” His youngest lost. The boy’s name was Abd-Allah, or Slave-to-Allah.

Now why would someone name a kid “Slave-to-Allah” a generation before Islam’s prophet claimed Allah was the creator-god of the universe? The answer is as embarrassing as any in the annals of religious lore. For all Muhammad really did was promote one of the existing Meccan idols, the moon god Allah, above Hubal, Al-Lat, Manat, Al-Uzza, and hundreds of others. On this day Allah had to compete for adoration, as Muttalib’s tossing arrows at Hubal’s feet attests. A Bukhari Hadith confirms the godly congestion: Bukhari:V5B59N583 “When the Prophet entered Mecca on the day of the Conquest, there were 360 idols around the Ka’aba. The Prophet started striking them with a stick.”

Islamic scholar Montgomery Watt, one of the English translators of Tabari, adds an interesting footnote. He says, “The name [not word] Allah has throughout been [wrongly] translated as ‘God.’ It should be kept in mind, however, that in the pre-Islamic period it does not necessarily mean “God” in a monotheistic sense. It is known from the Qur’an (29:61 and 39:38) that many pre-Islamic Arabs believed in Allah as a god who was superior to the other gods whom they also recognized.”

Allah was a name, much like the Judeo-Christian “Yahweh.” But Muslims desperately needed the world to see it otherwise. For if Allah was a proper name – not a word – their religion was a fraud. The creator of the universe can’t be a pagan god, no matter how big a stick Muhammad swung. And Allah can’t be Yahweh any more than I can be George Washington.

Arabic, like Hebrew before it, is a Semitic language. In Hebrew, “el,” was the word for god – lower case “g” – as in idols. Elohiym was used with the article to convey “God” with a capital “G.” In Arabic, “el” became “il.” Then, over time, Arabs derived a secondary word for god, “ilah.” With “al” being the Arabic word for “the,” Muslims would have us believe that “Allah” is a contraction of “al” and “ilah.” But the first pillar of Islam contradicts this claim when it says: “There is no ilah but Allah.” If “Allah” were the Arabic word for god it would have been written: “There is no allah but Allah. Moreover, the Qur’an itself uses “Ilah” when Allah claims to be “the God of Abraham” (Qur’an 2:132). And that ends the debate because the only way Muslims can claim Allah, not Ilah, is the Arabic word for “God” is for the Qur’an to be errant or for its author to be either ignorant or deceitful. Further, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Islamic traditions like the one we just reviewed that confirm that Allah was the name of a well-known pagan deity (at least in Mecca). Their own scriptures profess that Allah had an ignominious rule as a Meccan rock idol centuries before he was transformed from god to God, from an ilah to Allah. All of which serves to destroy the most essential Islamic myth: “We all worship the same God.”

Why should they care what infidels do in infidel lands?

Well the problem is that the Danish cartoon insanity began in.. Denmark and spread throughout Europe from there. These are not traditional Islamic nations. But according to Mark Steyn’s America Alone – The End of the World as We Know It, Europe is fast becomming, indeed may be lost to, Islam. Infidel lands are becoming Islamic lands. They see ’shirk’ committed all around them. They are afraid of their own God. They panic, riot and kill.

That is how I see it anyway.

Why should they care what infidels do in infidel lands? Or is their rage actually an indication that some (or all) countries are being targeted for inclusion in the Ummah.

JiangxiDad on September 30, 2007 at 12:40 PM

DING DING DING

And the Pope is Catholic and Paul McCartney is not dead.

If Muslims really believe that Shirk, such as personifying Allah, is an unforgivable sin that will send even the most devout to everlasting Fire, can we blame them for going stark raving mad when their diety or prophet is depicted in cartoon form?

Why should they care what infidels do in infidel lands? Or is their rage actually an indication that some (or all) countries are being targeted for inclusion in the Ummah.

Heads-up Lehosh: ilah is non-specific, allah is specific.

Sorry, I just muddied the waters even more. All I meant to say is that allah refers to a specific instance of a god, and is thus more specific than “lowercase god” linguistically.

Exactly how specific it is with respect to various historical notions of God may depend on time & place – and as uppercase God knows, I’m no expert on that topic ;-).