SpelledSideways: islamism

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Fata viam invenient

"There may be a reason the Islamic prostration requires one to bow his head toward Hell while his posterior moons Heaven. Craig Winn, "Prophet of Doom"

"Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war." Koran 9:5

"Why do you only read the Quranic verses of mercy and do not read the verses of killing?" Khomeini, 1981

چرا هی آيات رحمت در قرآن را ميخوانيد و آيات قتال را نميخوانيد

"Mohammed came as a conquerer of armies and the carnal. The Son of God came as a conquerer of the mind and heart and soul." Anon. 1885

"None of us wishes harm to a skunk, but none of us wants one living in our attic either." Pete Fisher

The Holy Bible in Arabic

Our Muslim and Arabian friends can read God's Word here.

Mohamhead Stuff

Mo Cartoons

Cartoonists' reactions to islamists' fury.

A biography of Mohamhead aka Mo aka Halabi ben Abdallah aka Bobby Halabi

Free computer Bible software:

Read Chapter Six of Prophet of Doom

The sixth chapter of Craig Winn's Prophet of Doom is now available for reading.

Prophet of Doom is a book that reveals what muslims don't want you to know about mohammedism. It is a book that contains the dirty story about the so-called prophet Mohammad that the national and international media are afraid to publish

How Much Does The Quran Rely on Fear? And What’s Love Got to Do with It?

By Omar Malomaari

To help nail down the answer to the first question in the title, I searched the USC-MSA Quran database to see how many verses contain one or more of the following words:

hell, fire, boiling, punish, agony, pain, burn, perdition, doom, torment, suffer, woe, awful, terrible, horrible, scourge, warn, fear, retribution.

I found 1,027 unique verses each containing at least one of the above-italicized words. In total the Quran comprises 6,220 verses (give or take ten or twenty, depending on which of the various counting methods you use). I estimate that of the 1,027 verses I culled, 550 to 650 refer more or less directly and threateningly to divine punishment and hell. Another 150 to 250 do not specifically mention divine punishment, but advise fear of Allah, or warn of Allah. And the remaining 200 or so have little or nothing to do with divine punishment. (These estimates are extrapolations based on study of about one-eighth (129) of the 1,027 verses. The verses in the study sample were randomly selected from the 1,027.)

If the estimate of 600 verses with more or less direct references to hell/divine punishment is correct, that would mean the ratio of such verses to all other verses in the Quran is about one in ten. When we consider that this ratio goes to one in eight if we add the estimated 200 verses that do not mention punishment but warn of Allah or advise fear of Allah, and when we recall that the roughly 600 "hell threat" verses are not islands unto themselves, but involve preceding and following verses, it becomes apparent what a substantial portion of the Quran is concerned with threats of dire punishment and hell.

From the USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts website, here is an example of one of the more explicit (and sadistic) threats in the Quran:

Chapter 22, Verses 19, 20, 21, and 22:

These twain (the believers and the disbelievers) are two opponents who contend concerning their Lord. But as for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads,

Whereby that which is in their bellies, and their skins too, will be melted;

And for them are hooked rods of iron.

Whenever, in their anguish, they would go forth from thence they are driven back therein and (it is said unto them): Taste the doom of burning.

The Quran's threats of hell usually do not go into this much detail. Instead we read again and again brief phrases referring to a "grievous” or “enduring” punishment after death, or to burning in "hell-fire," or to a “painful doom” and, so on.

What kind of doctrine is it that once in every ten verses (on average) refers to severe divine punishment or to hell? Are we to be good mainly because we are terrified of what someone will do to us if we are not good? Isn't it oddly crude of ‘God’ to rely so strongly on this 'carrot and stick' (with a lot of stick) approach? Are we nothing more than lower level animals to be controlled with the threat of pain and the promise of pleasure? (As to the latter, the Quran speaks of beautiful couches, delicious food and drink, and gorgeous virgins for the Muslim male after death, if he was a believer while alive.) But what about the nobler possibilities within us? Our deepest desire, though we often lose touch with it, is to love and learn. Is it really God who would seek to drive us with whips on the one hand and physical pleasures on the other, as if we were but contemptible beasts entirely in thrall to external inducements? That leadership style seems more diabolical than divine.

But perhaps such a style matches the chief theme of “Islam,” a word frequently translated into English as “submission,” and meaning avowedly slavish obedience to “God” – or to whatever it was that Muhammed started channeling in that cave on Mt.Hira, north of Mecca.

Another search through the USC-MSA database, this time for the word ‘obey,’ showed that at least 25 times some variation of the phrase “Obey Allah and His messenger [Muhammed]” appears in the Quran. And additional verses portray Noah, Jesus and several others as if they all thought in the militaristic manner of Mohammed: the Quran reports that each of them summed things up by saying, “Fear Allah and obey me.”

“Well,” someone might ask, “is obedience necessarily a bad thing in religion?”

Not if uncompelled by violence, legal discrimination, government authoritarianism or brain-washing. “No problem then!” reply Muslim apologists. “In Quran Chapter 2, Verse 256, Allah said: ‘There is no compulsion in religion.’”

Well, yes, but in later verses Allah cast deep doubt on the “no compulsion” revelation. For example, in the following three verses, Allah commanded that lethal compulsion is to be used:

Chapter 9, Verse 5:

Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

Chapter 9, Verse 29:

Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.

Chapter 9, Verse 123:

O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty (unto Him).

These Chapter 9 verses came much later than Chapter 2, Muslim (and Western) scholars generally agree. There is also the following verse, which is interpreted by most Muslim clerics and scholars as indicating that Islam must seek gradually to suppress other religions and dominate the world:

Chapter 8, Verse 39:

YUSUFALI version: And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere; but if they cease, verily Allah doth see all that they do.

PICKTHAL version: And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah. But if they cease, then lo! Allah is Seer of what they do.

SHAKIR version: And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah; but if they desist, then surely Allah sees what they do. (My underlines.)

Of course Muslim scholars have various ways of reconciling the contradiction between compulsion and non-compulsion in the Quran. Often they say that the later verses of the sword cancel and defeat the earlier tolerant verses (such as the “no compulsion in religion” verse). Voila, contradiction resolved. This idea that a later verse may ‘abrogate’ an earlier one has divine authority for many Muslim scholars because it is expressed in the Quran itself (Chapter 2, Verse 106, and Chapter 16, Verse 101). But sometimes the Muslim scholar, cleric or student isn’t willing to jettison any verses. After all, abrogated or not, all the verses are thought by Muslims to be the verbatim words of God, not just spiritually inspired reports like the scriptures of Jews and Christians. So some Muslims try to resolve the contradiction by saying, for example, that there is no compulsion to become a Muslim, but once one does join Islam, then compulsion stops one leaving. Stops one dead, it would seem. All the main schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that apostasy merits capital punishment. But that supposed ‘reconciliation’ of compulsion and non-compulsion (‘you can check in any time you like, but you can never leave’) collapses on contact with a number of Quran verses, such as those from Chapter 9 cited above that advocate lethal compulsion against non-Muslims, and Chapter 8, Verse 39 above, which commands Islam to impose itself everywhere.

In any event the proof is in the pudding as far as compulsion is concerned: human rights organizations like Freedom House report that the group of Muslim-majority countries, though they have made some progress over the last decade, still constitute the most backward domain in the world in terms of civil liberties and political rights. ( Mali , Indonesia and Senegal are the exceptions that prove the current illiberal rule in the Islamic world.)

In the three different English translations of the Quran in the USC-MSA database, there are 76 verses in which at least two of the three translations use the word ‘love’.* Unfortunately, if one seeks an Islamic ‘Reformation,’ one will not find much help in these 76 ‘love’ verses. They do not constitute much of a challenge to the compulsion and violence in Islam. Lonely among more than 6,100 surrounding verses, the 76 that mention love are not really focused on love itself at all. In reading them, it becomes clear their focus is a dual one, not on love but (1) on the types of behavior Allah ‘loves’ and ‘does not love,’ and (2) on Allah as the one who ‘loves’ and ‘does not love’ certain types of behavior. In other words these verses are largely about how to avoid displeasing ‘Allah.’ They are not particularly warm and they evince little or no awareness of the touchstone spiritual experience of loving profoundly and being profoundly loved.

* In an additional 17 verses one of the three translations uses the word ‘love,’ while the other two use expressions such as ‘like,’ ‘befriend,’ ‘find pleasing.’

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Virgins? What Virgins?

In August 2001 the American television channel CBS aired an interview with a Hamas activist Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: "I described to him how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness." Wardeh was in fact shortchanging his recruits since the rewards in Paradise for martyrs was 72 virgins. But I am running ahead of things.

Since Sept. 11, news stories have repeated the story of suicide bombers and their heavenly rewards, and equally Muslim scholars and Western apologists of Islam have repeated that suicide is forbidden in Islam. Suicide (qatlu nafsi-hi) is not referred to in the Koran but is indeed forbidden in the Traditions (Hadith in Arabic), which are the collected sayings and doings attributed to the Prophet and traced back to him through a series of putatively trustworthy witnesses. They include what was done in his presence that he did not forbid, and even the authoritative sayings and doings of his companions.

But the Hamas spokesman correctly uses the word martyr (shahid) and not suicide bomber, since those who blow themselves up almost daily in Israel and those who died on Sept. 11 were dying in the noblest of all causes, Jihad, which is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Koran and in the Traditions as a divine institution, and enjoined for the purpose of advancing Islam. While suicide is forbidden, martyrdom is everywhere praised, welcomed, and urged: "By the Being in Whose Hand is my life, I love that I should be killed in the way of Allah; then I should be brought back to life and be killed again in His way..."; "The Prophet said, 'Nobody who enters Paradise will ever like to return to this world even if he were offered everything, except the martyr who will desire to return to this world and be killed 10 times for the sake of the great honour that has been bestowed upon him'." [Sahih Muslim, chapters 781, 782, The Merit of Jihad and the Merit of Martyrdom.]

What of the rewards in paradise? The Islamic paradise is described in great sensual detail in the Koran and the Traditions; for instance, Koran sura 56 verses 12 -40 ; sura 55 verses 54-56 ; sura 76 verses 12-22. I shall quote the celebrated Penguin translation by NJ Dawood of sura 56 verses 12- 39: "They shall recline on jewelled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine (that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason); with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds... We created the houris and made them virgins, loving companions for those on the right hand..."

One should note that most translations, even those by Muslims themselves such as A Yusuf Ali, and the British Muslim Marmaduke Pickthall, translate the Arabic (plural) word Abkarun as virgins, as do well-known lexicons such the one by John Penrice. I emphasise this fact since many pudic and embarrassed Muslims claim there has been a mistranslation, that "virgins" should be replaced by "angels". In sura 55 verses 72-74, Dawood translates the Arabic word " hur " as "virgins", and the context makes clear that virgin is the appropriate translation: "Dark-eyed virgins sheltered in their tents (which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?) whom neither man nor jinnee will have touched before." The word hur occurs four times in the Koran and is usually translated as a "maiden with dark eyes".

Two points need to be noted. First, there is no mention anywhere in the Koran of the actual number of virgins available in paradise, and second, the dark-eyed damsels are available for all Muslims, not just martyrs. It is in the Islamic Traditions that we find the 72 virgins in heaven specified: in a Hadith (Islamic Tradition) collected by Al-Tirmidhi (died 892 AD) in the Book of Sunan (volume IV, chapters on The Features of Paradise as described by the Messenger of Allah [Prophet Muhammad], chapter 21, About the Smallest Reward for the People of Paradise, (Hadith 2687). The same hadith is also quoted by Ibn Kathir (died 1373 AD ) in his Koranic commentary (Tafsir) of Surah Al-Rahman (55), verse 72: "The Prophet Muhammad was heard saying: 'The smallest reward for the people of paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from Al-Jabiyyah [a Damascus suburb] to Sana'a [Yemen]'."

Modern apologists of Islam try to downplay the evident materialism and sexual implications of such descriptions, but, as the Encyclopaedia of Islam says, even orthodox Muslim theologians such as al Ghazali (died 1111 AD) and Al-Ash'ari (died 935 AD) have "admitted sensual pleasures into paradise". The sensual pleasures are graphically elaborated by Al-Suyuti (died 1505 ), Koranic commentator and polymath. He wrote: "Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [ie Muslim] will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetising vaginas."

One of the reasons Nietzsche hated Christianity was that it "made something unclean out of sexuality", whereas Islam, many would argue, was sex-positive. One cannot imagine any of the Church fathers writing ecstatically of heavenly sex as al-Suyuti did, with the possible exception of St Augustine before his conversion. But surely to call Islam sex-positive is to insult all Muslim women, for sex is seen entirely from the male point of view; women's sexuality is admitted but seen as something to be feared, repressed, and a work of the devil.

Scholars have long pointed out that these images are clearly drawn pictures and must have been inspired by the art of painting. Muhammad, or whoever is responsible for the descriptions, may well have seen Christian miniatures or mosaics representing the gardens of paradise and has interpreted the figures of angels rather literally as those of young men and young women. A further textual influence on the imagery found in the Koran is the work of Ephrem the Syrian [306-373 AD], Hymns on Paradise, written in Syriac, an Aramaic dialect and the language of Eastern Christianity, and a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew and Arabic.

This naturally leads to the most fascinating book ever written on the language of the Koran, and if proved to be correct in its main thesis, probably the most important book ever written on the Koran. Christoph Luxenberg's book, Die Syro-Aramaische Lesart des Koran, available only in German, came out just over a year ago, but has already had an enthusiastic reception, particularly among those scholars with a knowledge of several Semitic languages at Princeton, Yale, Berlin, Potsdam, Erlangen, Aix-en-Provence, and the Oriental Institute in Beirut.

Luxenberg tries to show that many obscurities of the Koran disappear if we read certain words as being Syriac and not Arabic. We cannot go into the technical details of his methodology but it allows Luxenberg, to the probable horror of all Muslim males dreaming of sexual bliss in the Muslim hereafter, to conjure away the wide-eyed houris promised to the faithful in suras XLIV.54; LII.20, LV.72, and LVI.22. Luxenberg 's new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields "white raisins" of "crystal clarity" rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins - the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offerred, and not unsullied maidens or houris.

In Syriac, the word hur is a feminine plural adjective meaning white, with the word "raisin" understood implicitly. Similarly, the immortal, pearl-like ephebes or youths of suras such as LXXVI.19 are really a misreading of a Syriac expression meaning chilled raisins (or drinks) that the just will have the pleasure of tasting in contrast to the boiling drinks promised the unfaithful and damned.

As Luxenberg's work has only recently been published we must await its scholarly assessment before we can pass any judgements. But if his analysis is correct then suicide bombers, or rather prospective martyrs, would do well to abandon their culture of death, and instead concentrate on getting laid 72 times in this world, unless of course they would really prefer chilled or white raisins, according to their taste, in the next.