Heads up

” Connie:

re: Mohamed MALLECK, Swift Current, Canada

“Moreover, both Tariq Ramadan and Ziauddin Sardar have launched websites for an exegesis of the Holy Quran verse by verse.

February 18, 2008 3:08 PM”

So has Robert Spencer, who is more truthful in his analysis.

Blogging the Qur’an

http://www.jihadwatch.org/articles/bloggingtheq.php

February 20, 2008 2:44 PM”

I am beginning to think that my way of thinking and the way a muslim thinks are incompatible. Things that I take as basic truth make no sense in Islam – almost as if duality is part of who they are. I remember reading about how for the western mind it is irrational that something can be both completely honest and completely dishonest – that you can’t be 200% would be one way of saying it. Muslims don’t seem to have an issue with that. Is duality built into the Quran , or into muslim life? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with and towards God, and God was the Word.’

God used Words to create…He spoke & IT WAS….then the WORD becameFlesh ‘& set up HIS tent in the middle of our campsite’. ‘Through HIM all things were made’…by the power of the spoken word…hence the spiritual reality of repeated prayer such as the the Rosary……& the anti-prayer of allah. WORDS have meaning & the power to create….& the power to remember.

Mr. Spencer, exposing the doctrine of the father of all lies by examining the words is an art form. I salute you & remain a committed fan.

as for allah not caring for pigs….
Allah fears!&hates pigs because Jesus cast out ‘a legion’ of demons into them & they promptly commit suicide by jumping off of the cliff. Outside of Mary & Joseph, the first to recognize the Messiah were the demons….even saying…’Son of God, what have You to do w/ us??!’

When most people think blogging the Bible they think reading from the NIV and looking at what James Dobson and Billy Graham say. (Okay, hopefully not that lame.)

Also, I would like to see a compilation/study of the Apocrypha and commentaries on them. I’ve seen some good commentaries but the books are usually quite thick (and my time limited.)

The reason for using the Greek is because in my study of it I’ve found some unusual subtleties in the meaning of the words. An instance of this is the beginning of the Gospel of St. John: (NIV)

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’

The Greek is more closely translated

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with and towards God, and God was the Word.’

I’ll have to look again at the Greek, but the word we translate as ‘with’ is NOT simply with. It is a word we do not have in English that is a directional with.

I’d like to do some blogging of it myself, but that will have to wait a few years.

However, I am not going to do it. I am going to finish this series, which will almost certainly take another year or so, unless I am voted off the island first.

Robert Spencer on February 17, 2008 at 8:32 AM

Great, we don’t need “blogging the bible”, everyone here has access to it…this, what you are doing, I cannot achieve without you.
Thanks

And if Allah had willed, He would have guided you all to His religion.

The Mahometans, as a lot of Christians, believe that God created man ex nihilo. What a sick joke! If you’re almighty and desire to create vessels of happiness, then you either create them so out of nothing into a state of perfection and felicity, or you create them from something preexistent to a state of happiness, even if through trials and pain. (I think this latter, by the way, is Shakespeare’s theology.) But to create something out of nothing into a vessel of eternal and immutable wrath? That wouldn’t be a good god, and God is good.

And free will doesn’t figure here, because to form a creation (as the Mahometans say) or to beget a child (as we Christians, in our Pater Noster say) that you know will choose the way of unhappiness, doesn’t make any sense if you’re talking about creatio ex nihilo. Only if you have a god who is, as it were, “baking a batch” of preexistent material, where at least some of the spirits will be eternally felicitate.

CrimsonFisted:

So he created everything, but hates pigs and dogs? Why then, were they created? For what purpose, according to muslims?

Why, to test you, of course.

Robert Spencer on February 17, 2008 at 5:11 PM

I have never had an reliable answer for that question. Thank you.

LibsREvilDoers:

Actually, this series was inspired by Slate’s “Blogging the Bible” series.

I don’t see why anyone would think “Blogging the Bible” would be “extreme,” or would think it shouldn’t be done.

However, I am not going to do it. I am going to finish this series, which will almost certainly take another year or so, unless I am voted off the island first.

Robert Spencer on February 17, 2008 at 8:32 AM

Yes, please keep on with this series. Blogging the Koran is a big enough project, and one where a lot of people can profit from your expertise.

I have read through the Koran in English twice, though I won’t claim to have truly studied it. At first, I thought that would give me some knowledge of Islam, and I suppose it’s a fair beginning. But to really understand Islam, you have to go beyond the Koran into all the hadith, and I greatly appreciate your doing that.

For instance, the first time I read the Koran, I noticed there were parts of it that condemned Christianity, and parts that praised Christianity. But the Muslim understanding of the Koran permits one part to “abrogate” or contradict the other part. Obviously, the parts praising the Jews and Christians as the “people of the Book” are abrogated by other parts of the Koran. I think people really need a guide to which parts of the Koran are abrogated, myself included.

I am aware that long stretches of the Qur’an are, to put it delicately, rather tedious

I just finished Sura 16. Wow. I can be captivated by some normally pretty dry stuff, but I have to confess, this one was rough to get through while paying attention.

Looking forward to 17. Thanks again, Mr Spencer.

I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to in regard to contemporary Protestant Christianity

Well, I have to be careful with qualifying which type of Christianity, but I can only speak of what I know about. It seems to me that many forms of popular Christianity today place more emphasis on relationship and friendship with God, and less on God’s sovereign nature. And in this way, I think the more consistant view is to not assign human attributes such as ‘good’ to a sovereign God. Not that I totally agree with that, not completely – but it just seems more… more consistant with who I view God to be.

Again, I have no intention of winning people over to my views. This is just my opinion and how I see things working in this world.

I don’t think the Christian and the Muslim views of God’s sovereignty, power, and goodness are remotely comparable.

on this, we agree.

Whoever works righteousness, man or woman, and has Faith, verily, to him will We give a new Life, a life that is good and pure and We will bestow on such their reward according to the best of their actions.

Mr Spencer, I guess I see your point. But can it not also be said, as protestants do trying to reconcile the Epistle to the Romans and the Epistle of James, that Allah wills whom he will save, and those whom he wills salvation show their Faith by their works of righteousness? Do any Islamic theolgians or thinkers solve these obvious paradoxes in their Scriptures in this way?

I am bringing this stuff, not to trick Christians or debate them on the finer points of their beliefs of salvation, but because as I read the Quran, I see many of the same problems, the same paradoxes and dilemnas in the Islamic faith as I do in the Christian faith. Christians have various ways of dealing with these paradoxes, depending on their brand of orthodoxy, and I can’t help thinking that Islamic theologians must be drawn to the same ultimate conclusions when trying to solve these same problems.

What can I say, I don’t believe a word of it, but it interests me nonetheless.

And if Allah had willed, He would have guided you all to His religion.” So once again, belief or unbelief is up to Allah, not to the individual.

they suggest that Muhammad wasn’t receiving the words of Allah from Gabriel and transmitting them to the people, but only relating old stories: “they say,” according to the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, [that] these [revelations] are, ‘fables, lies, of the ancients’, in order to lead people astray.”

Ibn Kathir tries to mitigate the harshness of the idea that if Allah had willed, all mankind would believe, by explaining that Allah doesn’t actually want anyone to disbelieve,

Even the excuses have excuses. Not believing isn’t our fault either, Allah ordering our destruction after determining we wouldn’t believe to begin with.

I’m guessing that understanding the arbitrary hypocrisy could be offensive to Islam also?

Fascinating. If I remember correctly, Augustine also recognized that, philosophically speaking, an all-knowing, all-powerful God simply cannot be reduced to being described in terms such as ‘good’ or even ‘loving’. Such a God must be self-sufficient, non-reactive, and never changing. Actually, in my lousy opinion, it seems to me that Islam is more consistant on this point than contemporary protestant Christianity.

I don’t know about Augustine, but Aquinas and others in the Western Christian tradition have affirmed that what we can say positively about God is very little, and that what we don’t know is far more than what we do know.

Is Islam more consistent on this point than contemporary Protestant Christianity? I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to in regard to contemporary Protestant Christianity, but I don’t think the Christian and the Muslim views of God’s sovereignty, power, and goodness are remotely comparable. Christianity squares the circle of God’s goodness with the existence of evil by means of the Cross of Christ; Islam by means of the all-powerful and unstoppable will of Allah.

Is there any difference between Allah arbitrarily selecting whom he wills to be saved to Paradise, and Allah saving by grace?

Well, yes, there does seem to be a difference, if I understand your question correctly (which I’m not sure I do), because in Islam one only enters Paradise if one’s good works must outweigh one’s evil ones. So presumably those whom Allah wills to guide are also those who do good deeds.

but the Islamic answer is that you need not square all three, because #2 [Allah is all good] is a blasphemous reduction of the sovereignty of Allah.

Fascinating. If I remember correctly, Augustine also recognized that, philosophically speaking, an all-knowing, all-powerful God simply cannot be reduced to being described in terms such as ‘good’ or even ‘loving’. Such a God must be self-sufficient, non-reactive, and never changing. Actually, in my lousy opinion, it seems to me that Islam is more consistant on this point than contemporary protestant Christianity.

To those who leave their homes in the cause of Allah, after suffering oppression,- We will assuredly give a goodly home in this world; but truly the reward of the Hereafter will be greater. If they only realised (this)! (They are) those who persevere in patience, and put their trust on their Lord.

Mr Spencer, based on passages like this, and the obvious hairsplitting that Ibn Kathir does trying to reconcile the Islamic version of freewill and predestination, can we fairly say that v41-42 is a crude example of salvation by grace? By speaking of grace of Allah, I am referring to Allah’s arbitrary nature of salvation. Is there any difference between Allah arbitrarily selecting whom he wills to be saved to Paradise, and Allah saving by grace?

So he created everything, but hates pigs and dogs? Why then, were they created? For what purpose, according to muslims?

Why, to test you, of course.

Is my assumption here correct? I know there are parts of the sunnah that would butress this verse vis a vis Shariah law re: Infidel witnesses, but is this the basis for that, or is it just another rant from the Qur’an?

Oh, absolutely.

1. Allah is all-powerful.
2. Allah is all good.
3. Evil exists in the world.

You can square any two of those statements, but not all three. (Paraphrasing something I read not long ago.)

This looks to me like a restatement of the problem of evil which is used as an argument against Christianity. The answer to it in Christianity is very different, but the Islamic answer is that you need not square all three, because #2 is a blasphemous reduction of the sovereignty of Allah. Allah does what he pleases, and is not to be questioned, or reduced to human categories. So #1 and #3 are certainly true, and #2 is commonly assumed, but absolutely not with the understanding that most Christian and post-Christian Westerners have of what that means.

1. Allah is all-powerful.
2. Allah is all good.
3. Evil exists in the world.

You can square any two of those statements, but not all three. (Paraphrasing something I read not long ago.)

flipflop on February 17, 2008 at 9:46 AM
Robert can explain this a lot better, but what you read probably came from a Christian basher who took a common criticism of the God of the Bible and just substituted the the word “Allah”.

Jaynie, trying to reconcile the problem of evil and suffering in the presence of an all-good and all-powerful God is hardly Christian bashing. It is a very serious, and very disturbing dilemna that many of the greatest Christian minds have wrestled with. As a Christian, I took the problem very seriously. Please don’t brush such paradoxes off as mere ‘Christian bashing’.

I can post on all other HA posts and your archived posts.

I got here by clicking time????

Anyone else having trouble or know what is happening?

Lets see if this posts this time.