I finally have to admit I am having a hard time reading this, because so much of what is good in this faith is unacceptable in mine, to the point it is like reading a tract against my own faith.

I wonder if this sort of response happens a lot.

I can listen to the Dalai Lama, who is to me a pagan, and find a lot of agreement, but this stuff gets my dander up

This doesn’t read like the Old Testament which I find inspiring history of people good and bad, and a great saga of faith and prophecy. But then, the Old Testament gives my defintions of good and bad. God did not order me to attack Jericho but those fighting the battle of Jericho found strength in God. They were escaping slavery in Egypt and returning home. That is not the same as a requirement to subjugate the earth

I am going to send this essay to my friends. Something about this session drives home the great chasm between me and them

Thank you Mr. Spencer, an excellent presentation as always.

Symposium: A New Koran?

Perhaps a student or professor.

Watchman on April 20, 2008 at 8:51 AM

Would you be excusing the muslim war that is now going on in the world?

Watchman on April 20, 2008 at 8:51 AM

On the off chance that you did ask a legitimate question, and are not just a troll playing troll games, I’ll give you my perspective as an atheist.

It doesn’t matter what the Torah or Bible says. This series is not about the Christian or Jewish texts. It’s about Islam. (Excuse me, it’s about the Koran. Wouldn’t want to offend all those people who insist on claiming that Islamic terrorists “misunderstand” their own religion.)

To give you an analogy: whenever I post anything negative about John Kerry, some idiot always has to reply and bring up George W. Bush’s history. George W. Bush could be Ed Gein’s evil twin, and that still wouldn’t change the fact that John Kerry is a liar and an opportunist.

The same principle applies here. No matter how bad any other religion is, it doesn’t change the fact that Islam is the worst. And if you are an atheist as you claim to be, you would have no problem with concept.

Unless, of course, you’re a college educated liberal, in which case you’ve been taught that Christians and Jews are horrible, and Islam is The Religion Of Peace.

I was not comparing the two religons in their totallity – obviously there are vast differences between them. But to me they do seem similar in that one regard.

FWIW, I knew where you were going with the comparison. I think as a general rule, the smaller the differences between people, the larger they make them seem as a way of defining who is “in” and who is “out”.

As for the differences between Christianity and Islam, I remember someone saying, “Christians will tell you you’re going to Hell and Muslims will try to send you there.” Rings true to me.

Yeah, but how many Pentecostal churches have you heard of taking up machine guns and committing mass murder upon those they deem nonbelievers?

There is a difference.

Mommynator on April 20, 2008 at 11:52 AM

Mommynator, from today’s commentary from Mr Spencer, it seems to me that many devout Muslims consider many of their fellow Muslims to be “not true Muslims”. The same is also true of many of today’s devout Pentacostals. In that, both religions are very similar. That is the context in which I was comparing the two.

I was not comparing the two religons in their totallity – obviously there are vast differences between them. But to me they do seem similar in that one regard.

I hope it’s a strong hadith, with a well-attested transmission chain.

Yes, it is, in fact. It’s from Bukhari, the hadith collection that Muslims consider most reliable. Only a small minority of Bukhari ahadith (not including this one) are questioned as to their reliability.

Please note that “this 999 out of 1000 junk” is from the Hadith, not from the Qur’an itself, although it does come up in the context of commentary on this sura.

True, I corrected myself in a later comment. I hope it’s a strong hadith, with a well-attested transmission chain.

Did the, “Satanic versus” cause Muhammad any lost credibility at the time?

Clearly yes, by the record of the early Islamic sources on this.

I would think that incident could have completely undermined Islam at the time and even today cause major problems…

Today most Muslim scholars deny that the incident happened at all. Many of their predecessors, however (notably Zamarkhshari), were not so sure.

his motivations for writing them was clear. The inconsistency was clear. His excuse, “the devil made me do it”, seems hollow since he must have known they weren’t coming from Allah if for no other reason than it contradicted what he had already been told and surely Allah does not make mistakes. It just seems to me this must have been a serious gaff that he somehow managed to overcome.

Yes.

Also, are these versus the subject of Rushdie’s book by the same name?

Essentially, yes. Rushdie’s book is a novel, but it uses the actual incident as a jumping-off point.

For those Muslims that believe in this 999 out of 1000 junk (and they all should, since the Koran is the literal word of their god and all that),

Please note that “this 999 out of 1000 junk” is from the Hadith, not from the Qur’an itself, although it does come up in the context of commentary on this sura.

Recently I have heard two conflicting view points regarding the Qur’anic view of formerly Muslim lands that are now inhabited by non-Muslims.
All seem to be in agreement that, today, the pride of hard-core Islamists/fundamentalists/etc. is to suc…

venividivici says:

we must be pretty far from the day of judgement, since Muslims make up about 15% of the entire world population. There aren’t enough non-Muslims to make the ratio work and at the relative fertility rates, there will never be enough non-Muslims to make up 999 out of 1000 souls in hell.

I bet many devout Muslims believe, like many devout Christians, that many of their own who fill the mosques are not ‘true believers’. Ever heard a good Pentacostal preaching based on Matthew 7:21?

HeIsSailing

Yeah, but how many Pentecostal churches have you heard of taking up machine guns and committing mass murder upon those they deem nonbelievers?

There is a difference.

Did the, “Satanic versus” cause Muhammad any lost credibility at the time? I would think that incident could have completely undermined Islam at the time and even today cause major problems… his motivations for writing them was clear. The inconsistency was clear. His excuse, “the devil made me do it”, seems hollow since he must have known they weren’t coming from Allah if for no other reason than it contradicted what he had already been told and surely Allah does not make mistakes. It just seems to me this must have been a serious gaff that he somehow managed to overcome.

Also, are these versus the subject of Rushdie’s book by the same name?

Kidding.

Thank you for another good lesson.

I bet many devout Muslims believe, like many devout Christians, that many of their own who fill the mosques are not ‘true believers’. Ever heard a good Pentacostal preaching based on Matthew 7:21?

HeIsSailing on April 20, 2008 at 9:20 AM

I thought about that and to make the ratios work, there would have to be about 6 million “true” Muslims (or really only 5 million, since there are 5 billion infidels and we need to have that 1 to 999 ratio to make the hellfire story work), with a world population of about 6 billion. For those Muslims that believe in this 999 out of 1000 junk (and they all should, since the Koran is the literal word of their god and all that), the obvious solution is for them to start killing their fellow Muslims (since killing infidels only worsens the situation) until there are only about 5 million Muslims left in the world. It’s tragic, of course, but it’s in the hadith, so what can you do?

we must be pretty far from the day of judgement, since Muslims make up about 15% of the entire world population. There aren’t enough non-Muslims to make the ratio work and at the relative fertility rates, there will never be enough non-Muslims to make up 999 out of 1000 souls in hell.

I bet many devout Muslims believe, like many devout Christians, that many of their own who fill the mosques are not ‘true believers’. Ever heard a good Pentacostal preaching based on Matthew 7:21?

Have you ever read/blogged the Torah or Bible? I seem to remember the Jews receiving commands from their god to wage war, indeed to wipe out entire populations, sparing none. Not even the women and children, or cattle for that matter. According to their myths, wasn’t their first king Saul actually punished for not carrying out such commands to the letter, sparing the cattle for sacrifice? Where would be the difference?

The difference would be that the commands in the Old Testament were localized, and uniformly spiritualized by Jewish and Christian exegetes. No Jews or Christians have ever taken these passages as normative for their behavior or as marching orders in later ages.

In contrast, as the use of 22:39 as an epigraph by Osama bin Laden (which I noted above) indicates, the Qur’an does contain instructions to believers to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers — instructions which mainstream Muslim exegetes have interpreted as valid and binding upon believers for all time.

There are many passages involved in this, but see especially my discussions of Qur’an 9:29:

Part 1
Part 2

Are you sir a practicing Muslim, Christian or Jew, or perhaps like myself, (and from my understanding the illustious Allahpundit), an atheist?

Yes, I am one of those things, and actually it is no secret. But the Qur’an blog is not written from a sectarian standpoint. A primary concern is the Qur’an’s abundant teaching on unbelievers, since that teaching is of pressing moment in world politics today, but if you read a few of the segments you will see that I am concentrating on how Muslim interpreters have understood the Qur’an, not on how it has been understood by people of different faiths.

Those who doubt that Allah will help Muhammad in this world and the next should hang themselves (v. 15). “This,” says Ibn Kathir, “was also the view of Mujahid, ‘Ikrimah, ‘Ata, Abu Al-Jawza, Qatadah and others. The meaning is: whoever thinks that Allah will not support Muhammad and His Book and His Religion, let him go and kill himself if it annoys him so much.”

Thanks, but no thanks.

According to a hadith, Muhammad says that 999 out of every thousand people will be sent to hell. On that Day, Adam will ask Allah: “O Allah! How many are the people of the Fire?” Allah will answer: “From every one thousand, take out nine-hundred-and ninety-nine.” Muhammad explained that that one person saved would be a Muslim, telling his companions: “Rejoice with glad tidings; one person will be from you and one-thousand will be from Gog and Magog.”

Well, then, we must be pretty far from the day of judgement, since Muslims make up about 15% of the entire world population. There aren’t enough non-Muslims to make the ratio work and at the relative fertility rates, there will never be enough non-Muslims to make up 999 out of 1000 souls in hell. Either that, or, just maybe, this whole Islam thing is an ideological rationalization for a pedophile sociopath’s activities here on Earth, based on the psychological insight that Arabs are lazy but emotional people who can be whipped up into a frenzy at the thought of war and looting.

Watchman on April 20, 2008 at 8:51 AM

This question has been asked at almost every step of the way through this series, and the actual answer is a profound reflection on the nature of the deity as envisioned by the two religions, Judaism and Islam. Now, if you actually read Mr. Spencer’s reply and take it to heart, you will learn something about the difference and realize why Islam’s envisioning of the nature of the deity is so much more dangerous to non-Muslims TODAY than the Judaic idea of God’s nature is to non-Jews TODAY. If you just asked the question because you thought you were being clever and don’t take Mr. Spencer’s reply to heart, you will leave this exchange as ignorant as you came in. It’s your choice.

I confess to a complete ignorance of the Koran, having never read it. But a few questions to you sir:

Have you ever read/blogged the Torah or Bible? I seem to remember the Jews receiving commands from their god to wage war, indeed to wipe out entire populations, sparing none. Not even the women and children, or cattle for that matter. According to their myths, wasn’t their first king Saul actually punished for not carrying out such commands to the letter, sparing the cattle for sacrifice? Where would be the difference?

Are you sir a practicing Muslim, Christian or Jew, or perhaps like myself, (and from my understanding the illustious Allahpundit), an atheist?