Enmity towards the Jews

W.G.Ewald

Defence Professionals/ DFI member of 2
Professional
Joined
Sep 28, 2011
Messages
14,139
Likes
8,594
Another Tack: Lessons from the fl... JPost - Opinion - Columnists
Exactly 70 years ago – on February 24, 1942 – 19-year-old David Stoliar terrifyingly clung to bobbing debris in the Black Sea. At first he heard screams in the frigid waters but the voices died down. It eventually emerged that Stoliar was the sole survivor of the Struma, an un-seaworthy vessel chuck-full of frantic Jewish refugees.
 

Godless-Kafir

DFI Buddha
Senior Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2010
Messages
5,842
Likes
1,837
Country flag
Why did the Soviet submarine torpedo the civilian ship, USSR was against the Axis.
 

W.G.Ewald

Defence Professionals/ DFI member of 2
Professional
Joined
Sep 28, 2011
Messages
14,139
Likes
8,594
Why did the Soviet submarine torpedo the civilian ship, USSR was against the Axis.
That is not clear. The Russians don't like Turks either, and the ship was towed out of Istanbul harbor.
 

pack leader

Professional
Joined
May 22, 2011
Messages
626
Likes
513
explaining hate towards Jews in other Abramic cultures is fairly easy
since Christianity is a bastardization of Jewish religion with Greek- roman culture
and Islam is a bastardization of Jewish religion with Arab nomadic culture

the mere existence of Jews dents thous religions claim off originality and ultimate truth
beaning rebellious an at times zealot did little to improve our standing in the roman empire
2000 years of persecution and death later we rebuilt our independent society we will remain so forever or die trying
 

Ray

The Chairman
Professional
Joined
Apr 17, 2009
Messages
43,132
Likes
23,834
Anyone who makes money is not liked by those who have no idea how to make money!

Note how Subramanium Swamy is after that Chettiar Chidambaram!
 
Last edited:

Yusuf

GUARDIAN
Super Mod
Joined
Mar 24, 2009
Messages
24,324
Likes
11,757
Country flag
Pack, Islam does not claim to be original. It is (you can say claimed) a culmination of faith started by Adam.
 

Ray

The Chairman
Professional
Joined
Apr 17, 2009
Messages
43,132
Likes
23,834
All Abrahanic religions are derivatives of the Old Testament.

That is possibly the reason why Christians and Jews are called the People of the Book!
 

Tronic

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2009
Messages
1,915
Likes
1,282
All Abrahanic religions are derivatives of the Old Testament.
Yup, all three claim to be sons of Abraham, and claim their prophets to be the newer versions of the previous.

Prophet Muhammad, or so the Muslims make it out to be, played it smart by claiming to be the final version. It is illogical though, since if the Muslims claim that the message of the previous prophets (Isaac, Adam, Noah, Saleh, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Solomon, Jesus, etc, etc) was corrupted by humans each and every time they were sent with the divine message; than how do the Muslims claim that Muhammad's message is incorruptible? Did humans somehow cease to be corrupt after Muhammad delivered his message? Add to that the fact that the Quran wasn't even compiled until 200 years after Prophet Muhammad had passed away. Hadiths, and the "sunnah", even longer.

Logically speaking, it makes no sense.
 

Tianshan

Regular Member
Joined
Jun 2, 2011
Messages
675
Likes
249
much of the anti-jewish sentiment in the world is born out of jealously, because jewish communities tend to be very successful wherever they go.

they are successful, and this success often stays within their communities, if you combine this with religious elements then you can see why so much anti-semitism existed (and still does exist) in the world.

simply put, these things make it is too easy to turn them into scapegoats for conspiracy theories.

if you said that australian aboriginals are controlling all the banks in the world, then no one would believe them. if you said that about jews, then it can and will make sense to a lot of people. scapegoating 101.
 
Last edited:

LurkerBaba

Super Mod
Joined
Jul 2, 2010
Messages
7,882
Likes
8,125
Country flag
Yup, all three claim to be sons of Abraham, and claim their prophets to be the newer versions of the previous.

Prophet Muhammad, or so the Muslims make it out to be, played it smart by claiming to be the final version.
There is a lot of friction in this "prophet" business. For Christians Jesus is the son of god, and not an average-joe prophet . A mere prophet would be (like all other humans) tainted with original sin , which is a fundamental belief of Christianity.

Muslims insist that Jesus was a prophet, and this 'original sin' stuff is a distortion.
 

Tronic

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2009
Messages
1,915
Likes
1,282
There is a lot of friction in this "prophet" business. For Christians Jesus is the son of god, and not an average-joe prophet . A mere prophet would be (like all other humans) tainted with original sin , which is a fundamental belief of Christianity.

Muslims insist that Jesus was a prophet, and this 'original sin' stuff is a distortion.
Yes, that's true; though I believe it differs with the Christian sects, i.e. Catholicism, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, etc, etc. I'm not too well versed with Christian beliefs I'll admit.
 

KS

Bye bye DFI
Senior Member
Joined
Aug 3, 2010
Messages
8,005
Likes
5,758
There is a theory that Jesus is nothing but Horus (falcon headed Egyptian God) re-loaded because of the amazing similarites in their life, including names. There might be some truth in that --g given that bible was written only after the death of jesus and his disciples may have decided it is time to take some artistic freedom in writing it, taking some inspiration from the Egyptian lore.


http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5b.htm

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5d.htm
 
Last edited:

Ray

The Chairman
Professional
Joined
Apr 17, 2009
Messages
43,132
Likes
23,834
Yes, that's true; though I believe it differs with the Christian sects, i.e. Catholicism, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, etc, etc. I'm not too well versed with Christian beliefs I'll admit.
Jesus is the Son of God and it is accepted in all denomination.

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons:[1] the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial.
 

Ray

The Chairman
Professional
Joined
Apr 17, 2009
Messages
43,132
Likes
23,834
In the Christian Bible, "sin is lawlessness" (1John 3:4), and so in Western Christianity, salvation tends to be understood in legal terms. Sin alienates the sinner from God. It has damaged, and completely severed, the relationship of humanity to God. That relationship can only be restored through repentance unto Christ and acceptance of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross as a sacrifice for mankind's sin. According to some interpreters, Jesus Christ states in Matthew 22:35-40 what "Christian Law" is:

"Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." -KJV

In Eastern Christianity, sin is viewed in terms of its effects on relationships, both among people and between people and God. Sin is seen as the refusal to follow God's plan, and the desire to be "like God" (Genesis 3:5) and thus in direct opposition to God's desires (see the account of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis). To sin is to want control of one's destiny in opposition to the will of God.

In the Russian variant of Eastern Christianity, sin sometimes is regarded as any mistake made by people in their life. From this point of view every person is sinful because every person makes mistakes during their life. When a person accuses others of sins they always must remember that they are also sinners and so they must have mercy for others remembering that God is also merciful to them and to all of humanity.
 

johnee

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2009
Messages
3,473
Likes
499
Yup, all three claim to be sons of Abraham, and claim their prophets to be the newer versions of the previous.

Prophet Muhammad, or so the Muslims make it out to be, played it smart by claiming to be the final version. It is illogical though, since if the Muslims claim that the message of the previous prophets (Isaac, Adam, Noah, Saleh, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Solomon, Jesus, etc, etc) was corrupted by humans each and every time they were sent with the divine message; than how do the Muslims claim that Muhammad's message is incorruptible? Did humans somehow cease to be corrupt after Muhammad delivered his message? Add to that the fact that the Quran wasn't even compiled until 200 years after Prophet Muhammad had passed away. Hadiths, and the "sunnah", even longer.

Logically speaking, it makes no sense.
It gets more interesting...
7 QURANS IN 23 YEARS, ALL IN ARABIC


It may not be shocking to Muslims, but to non-Muslims, it will be shocking to know that the Quran was revealed to Muhammad in seven different modes – over the incredibly long period of twenty three years – and all the seven Qurans were compiled in book forms only after the death of Muhammad. After nearly 20 years of their compilations, Uthm'an, the third caliph, canonized the Quran into a singular codex out of 7 versions, and ordered the other six versions of the Quran be "BURNED" throughout the Islamic empire. So hundreds of Qurans of the 6 other versions were cremated without ceremony.

Do all Muslims know this fact?

How do Muslims react when they come to know that Allah's books revealed to guide humankind – not one but six of them and each of them probably as important and "sacred" as the present Quran – were burned to ashes, leaving no trace of them?

EVIDENCE FOR 7 VERSIONS OF THE QURAN

The following ahadith are the evidence that the Quran was allegedly revealed to Muhammad in seven different versions and that it was not in a book form even after the death of Muhammad.

Sahih Al-bukhari Volume 3, Book 41, Number 601:

Narrated 'Umar bin Al-Khattab: '"¦"¦"¦"¦.When he recited it, Allah's Apostle said, "It was revealed in this way." He then asked me to recite it. When I recited it, he said, "It was revealed in this way. The Quran has been revealed in seven different ways, so recite it in the way that is easier for you."
QURAN WAS NOT IN BOOK FORM

The next hadith is a proof that the Muhammad did not bother to compile his Quran into a book form during his life and not a single one from 'the great Sahaba' knew the Quran by heart completely, as today's many ordinary Muslims do. By compiling the Quran in the book form, Muhammad's "Rightly guided Caliphs" abrogated Muhammad's principle.

Sahih Al-Bukhari Vol 6:509:

Narrated by Zaid bin Thaabit:
Umar bin Khattab asked Abu Bakr to collect the Quran from different sources and compile it to a BOOK FORM. Then Abu Bakr replied to him, "How can you do something which Allah's Messenger did not do?""¦"¦..
Link

Yep, it seems there were seven different versions of Quran in vogue which were believed to be 'revealed' to Muhammad by Allah. Out of these seven Qurans, one was canonised and others were burned down.

An excerpt from the book "Why I am not Muslim" by Ibn Warraq, pg 105, the author explains the importance of Quran to muslims:
The Koran is written in Arabic and divided into chapters (suras or surahs) and verses (ayah; plural, ayat). There are said to be approximately 80,000 words, and between 6,200 and 6,240 verses, and 114 suras in the Koran. Each sura, except the ninth and the Fatihah (the first sura), begins with the words "In the name of the Merciful, the Compassionate." Whoever was responsible for the compilation of the Koran put the longer suras first, regardless of their chronology, that is to say, regardless of the order in which they were putatively revealed to Muhammad. For the average, unphilosophical Muslim of today, the Koran remains the infallible word of God, the immediate word of God sent down, through the intermediary of a "spirit" or "holy spirit" or Gabriel, to Muhammad in perfect, pure Arabic; and every thing contained therein is eternal and uncreated. The original text is in heaven (the mother of the book, 43.3; a concealed book, 55.77; a well-guarded tablet, 85.22). The angel dictated the revelation to the Prophet,
who repeated it after him, and then revealed it to the world. Modern Muslims also claim that these revelations have been preserved exactly as revealed to Muhammad, without any change, addition, or loss whatsoever. The Koran is used as a charm on the occasions of birth, death, or marriage. In the words of Guillaume, "It is the holy of holies. It must never rest beneath other books, but always on top of them; one must never drink or smoke when it is being read aloud, and it must be listened to in silence. It is a talisman against disease and disaster." Shaykh Nefzawi, in his erotic classic The Perfumed Garden, even recommends the Koran as an aphrodisiac: "It is said that reading the Koran also predisposes for copulation."
pg 108, the author takes up the issue of presence of foreign words in Arabic Quran:
THE FOREIGN VOCABULARY OF THE K O R A N


Although many Muslim philologists recognized that there were numerous words of foreign origin in the Koran, orthodoxy silenced them for a while. One tradition tells us that "anyone who pretends that there is in the Koran anything other than the Arabic tongue has made a serious charge against God: 'Verily, we have made it an Arabic Koran' " (sura 12.1). Fortunately, philologists like al-Suyuti managed to come up with ingenious arguments to get around the orthodox objections. Al-Tha'alibi argued that there were foreign words in the Koran but "the Arabs made use of them and Arabicized them, so from this point of view they are Arabic." Although al-Suyuti enumerates 107 foreign words, Arthur Jeffery in his classic work finds about 275 words in the Koran that can be considered foreign: words from Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic, Persian, and Greek. The word "Koran" itself comes from the Syriac, and Muhammad evidently got it from Christian sources.

Now, about the various versions of Quran and problem of numerous interpretations aggravated by the crudeness of Arabic language of the time of compilation:


VARIANT VERSIONS, VARIANT READINGS

We need to retrace the history of the Koran text to understand the problem of variant versions and variant readings, whose very existence makes nonsense of Muslim dogma about the Koran. As we shall see, there is no such thing as the Koran; there never has been a definitive text of this holy book. When a Muslim dogmatically asserts that the Koran is the word of God, we need only ask "Which Koran?" to undermine his certainty. After Muhammad's death in A.D. 632, there was no collection of his revelations. Consequently, many of his followers tried to gather all the known revelations
and write them down in codex form. Soon we had the codices of several scholars such as Ibn Masud, Ubai b, Kab, Ali', Abu Bakr, al-Ash'ari, al-Aswad, and others. As Islam spread, we eventually had what became known as the Metropolitan Codices in the centers of Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Kufa, and Basra As we saw earlier, Uthman tried to bring order to this chaotic situation by canonizing the Medinan Codex, copies of which were sent to all the metropolitan centers, with orders to destroy all the other codices.

Uthman's codex was supposed to standardize the consonantal text; yet we find that many of the variant traditions of this consonantal text survived well into the fourth Islamic century. The problem was aggravated by the fact the consonantal text was unpointed, that is to say, the dots that distinguish, for example, a "b" from a "t," or a "th" were missing. Several other letters (f and q; j, h, and kh; s and d; r and z; s and sh; d and dh; t and z) were indistinguishable. As a result, a great many variant readings were possible according to the way the text was pointed (had dots added). The vowels presented an even worse problem. Originally, the Arabs had no signs for the short vowels—these were only introduced at a later date. The Arabic script is consonantal. Although the short vowels are sometimes omitted, they can be represented by orthographical signs placed above or below the letters—three signs in all, taking the form of a slightly slanting dash or a comma

After having settled the consonants, Muslims still had to decide what vowels to employ: using different vowels, of course, rendered different readings.

This difficulty inevitably led to the growth of different centers with their own variant traditions of how the texts should be pointed and vowelized. Despite Uthman's order to destroy all texts other than his own, it is evident that the older codices survived. As Charles Adams2 3 6 says, "It must be emphasized that far from there being a single text passed down inviolate from the time of Uthman's commission, literally thousands of variant readings of particular verses were known. . . . These variants affected even the Uthmanic codex, making it difficult to know what its true original form may have been." Some Muslims preferred codices other than the Uthmanic, for example, those of Ibn Masud, Ubayy ibn Kab, and Abu Musa. Eventually under the influence of the great Koranic scholar Ibn Mujahid (d. A.D. 935), there was a definite canonization of one system of consonants and a limit placed on the variations of vowels used in the text that resulted in acceptance of the systems of the seven:
1. Nafi of Medina (d. A.D. 785)
2. Ibn Kathir of Mecca (d. A.D. 737)
3. Ibn Amir of Damascus (d. A.D. 736)
4. Abu Amr of Basra (d. A.D. 770)
5. Asim of Kufa (d. A . D . 744)
6. Hamza of Kufa (d. A.D. 772)
7. Al-Kisai of Kufa (d. A.D. 804)

But other scholars accepted ten readings, and still others accepted fourteen readings. Even Ibn Mujahid's seven provided fourteen possibilities, since each of the seven was traced through two different transmitters, viz.,
1. Nafi of Medina according to Warsh and Qalun
2. Ibn Kathir of Mecca according to al-Bazzi and Qunbul
3. Ibn Amir of Damascus according to Hisham and Ibn Dhakwan
4. Abu Amr of Basra according to al-Duri and al-Susi
5. Asim of Kufa according to Hafs and Abu Bakr
6. Hamza of Kufa according to Khalaf and Khallad
7. Al-Kisai of Kufa according to al-Duri and Abul Harith

In the end three systems prevailed, for some reason—to quote Jeffery237— "which has not yet been fully elucidated," those of Warsh (d. 812) from Nafi of Medina, Hafs (d. 805) from Asim of Kufa, and al-Duri (d. 860) from Abu Amr of Basra. At present in modem Islam, two versions seem to be in use:
that of Asim of Kufa through Hafs, which was given a kind of official seal of approval by being adopted in the Egyptian edition of the Koran in 1924; and that of Nafi through Warsh, which is used in parts of Africa other than Egypt.

To quote Charles Adams:
II is of some importance to call attention to a possible source of misunderstanding with regard to the variant readings of the Quran. The seven [versions] refer to actual differences in the written and oral text, to distinct versions of Quranic verses, whose differences, though they may not be great, are nonetheless real and substantial. Since the very existence of variant readings and versions of the Quran goes against the doctrinal position toward the holy Book held by many modern Muslims, it is not uncommon in an apologetic context to hear the seven [versions] explained as modes of recitation; in fact the manner and technique of recitation are an entirely different matter.238
Guillaume also refers to the variants as "not always trifling in significance."239
Any variant version or reading poses serious problems for orthodox Muslims. Thus it is not surprising that they should conceal any codices that seem to differ from the Uthman text. Arthur Jeffery describes just such an attempt at concealment:
[The late Professor Bergstrasser] was engaged in taking photographs for the Archive and had photographed a number of the early Kufic Codices in the Egyptian Library when I drew his attention to one in the Azhar Library that possessed certain curious features. He sought permission to photograph that also, but permission was refused and the Codex withdrawn from access, as it was not consistent with orthodoxy to allow a Westen scholar to have knowledge of such a text. . . . With regard to such variants as did survive there were definite efforts at suppression in the interests of orthodoxy.240
Then, the author says that the Quran is weak literature wise except the rhetorical part. It seems there are even grammatical mistakes.

After that, he takes up another interesting point of additions and omission of verses in Quran:

VERSES MISSING, VERSES A D D E D


There is a tradition from Aisha, the Prophet's wife, that there once existed a "verse of stoning," where stoning was prescribed as punishment for fornication, a verse that formed a part of the Koran but that is now lost. The early caliphs carried out such a punishment for adulterers, despite the fact that the Koran, as we know it today, only prescribes a hundred lashes. It remains a puzzle— if the story is not true—why Islamic law to this day decrees stoning when the Koran only demands flogging. According to this tradition, over a hundred verses are missing. Shiites, of course, claim that Uthman left out a great many verses
favorable to Ah for political reasons.

The Prophet himself may have forgotten some verses, the companions' memory may have equally failed them, and the copyists may also have mislaid some verses. We also have the case of the Satanic Verses, which clearly show that Muhammad himself suppressed some verses.

The authenticity of many verses has also been called into question not only by modern Western scholars, but even by Muslims themselves. Many Kharijites, who were followers of Ali in the early history of Islam, found the sura recounting the story of Joseph offensive, an erotic tale that did not belong in the Koran.

On the other hand, most scholars do believe that there are interpolations in the Koran; these interpolations can be seen as interpretative glosses on certain rare words in need of explanation. More serious are the interpolations of a dogmatic
or political character, such as 42.36-38, which seems to have been added to justify the elevation of Uthman as caliph to the detriment of Ah. Then there are other verses that have been added in the interest of rhyme, or to join together two
short passages that on their own lack any connection. Bell and Watt2 4 3 carefully go through many of the alterations and revisions
and point to the unevenness of the Koranic style as evidence for great many alterations in the Koran:
There are indeed many roughnesses of this kind, and these, it is here claimed, are fundamental evidence for revision. Besides the points already noticed—hidden rhymes, and rhyme-phrases not woven into the texture of the passage—there are the following: abrupt changes of rhyme; repetition of the same rhyme word or rhyme phrase in adjoining verses; the intrusion of an extraneous subject into a passage otherwise homogeneous; a differing treatment of the same subject in neighbouring verses, often with repetition of words and phrases; breaks in grammatical construction which raise difficulties in exegesis; abrupt changes in
the length of verses; sudden changes of the dramatic situation, with changes of pronoun from singular to plural, from second to third person, and so on; the juxtaposition of apparently contrary statements; the juxtaposition of passages of different date, with the intrusion of late phrases into early verses.

In many cases a passage has alternative continuations which follow one another in the present text. The second of the alternatives is marked by a break in sense and by a break in grammatical construction, since the connection is not with what immediately precedes, but with what stands some distance back.
The Christian al-Kindi,2 4 4 writing around A . D . 830, criticized the Koran in similar terms:
"The result of all this [process by which the Quran came into being] is patent to you who have read the scriptures and see how, in your book, histories are all jumbled together and intermingled; an evidence that many different hands have been at work therein, and caused discrepancies, adding or cutting out whatever they liked or disliked. Are such, now, the conditions of a revelation sent down from heaven?"
Here, it might be appropriate to give some examples. Verse 15 of sura 20 is totally out of place; the rhyme is different from the rest of the sura. Verses 1-5 of sura 78 have obviously been added on artificially, because both the rhyme and the tone of the rest of the sura changes; in the same sura verses 33 and 34 have been inserted between verses 32 and 35, thus breaking the obvious
connection between 32 and 35. In sura 74, verse 31 is again an obvious insertion since it is in a totally different style and of a different length than the rest of the verses in the sura. In sura 50, verses 24-32 have again been artificially fitted into a context in which they do not belong.

To explain certain rare or unusual words or phrases, the formula "What has let you know what . . . is?" (or "What will teach you what . . . is?") is added on to a passage, after which a short explanatory description follows. It is clear that these explanatory glosses—twelve in all—have been added on at a later time, since in many instances the "definitions" do not correspond to the original meaning of the word or phrase. Bell and Watt2 4 5 give the example of sura 101.9-11, which should read: "his mother shall be 'hawiya.' And what shall teach you what it is? A blazing fire." "Hawiya" originally meant "childless" owing to the death or misfortune
of her son, but the explanatory note defines it as "Hell." Thus most translators now render the above sentence as, "shall plunge in the womb of the Pit. And what shall teach you what is the Pit? A blazing fire!" (See also 90.12-16.)

Of course any interpolation, however trivial, is fatal to the Muslim dogma that the Koran is literally the word of God as given to Muhammad at Mecca or Medina. As Regis Blachere in his classic Introduction to the Koran said, on this point, there is no possible way of reconciling the findings of Western philologists and historians with the official dogma of Islam.

We also have the story of Abd Allah b. Sa'd Abi Sarh2 4 6 :
The last named had for some time been one of the scribes employed at Medina to writedown the revelations. On a number of occasions he had, with the Prophet's consent, changed the closing words of verses. When the Prophet had said "And God is mighty and wise," Abd Allah suggested writing down "knowing and wise" and the Prophet answered that there was no objection. Having observed a succession of changes of this type, Abd Allah renounced Islam on the ground that the revelations, if from God, could not be changed at the prompting of a scribe such as himself. After his apostasy he went to Mecca and joined the Qorayshites.
Needless to say, the Prophet had no qualms about ordering his asssassination once
Mecca was captured, but Uthman obtained Muhammad's pardon with difficulty.
Quran seems to have another fundamental flaw: Self-contradictions. The author takes up this matter in pg 114:

ABROGATION OF PASSAGES IN T H E KORAN


William Henry Burr, the author of Self-Contradictions of the Bible, would have a field day with the Koran, for the Koran abounds in contradictions. But Burr's euphoria would be short-lived; for Muslim theologians have a rather convenient doctrine, which, as Hughes247, puts it, "fell in with that law of expediency which appears to be the salient feature in Muhammad's prophetical career," According to this doctrine, certain passages of the Koran are abrogated by verses with a different or contrary meaning revealed afterwards. This was taught by Muhammad at sura 2.105: "Whatever verses we [i.e., God] cancel or cause you to forget,
we bring a better or its like." According to al-Suyuti, the number of abrogated verses has been estimated at from five to five hundred.

As Margoliouth2 4 8 remarked,
To do this, withdraw a revelation and substitute another for it, was, [Muhammad] asserted, well within the power of God. Doubtless it was, but so obviously within the power of man that it is to us astonishing how so compromising a procedure can have been permitted to be introduced into the system by friends and foes.
Al-Suyuti gives the example of sura 2.240 as a verse abrogated (superseded) by verse 234, which is the abrogating verse. How can an earlier verse abrogate a later verse? The answer lies in the fact that the traditional Muslim order of the suras and verses is not chronological, the compilers simply having placed the longer chapters at the beginning. The commentators have to decide the
chronological order for doctrinal reasons; Western scholars have also worked out a chronological scheme. Though there are many differences of detail, there seems to be broad agreement about which suras belong to the Meccan (i.e., early) period of Muhammad's life and which belong to the Medinan (i.e., later) period. It is worth noting how time-bound the "eternal" word of God is.

Muslims have gotten themselves out of one jam only to find themselves in another. Is it fitting that an All-Powerful, Omniscient, and Omnipotent God should revise His commands so many times? Does He need to issue commands that need revising so often? Why can He not get it right the First time, after all He is all-wise? Why does He not reveal the better verse first? In the words of Dashti,2 4 9

It seems that there were hecklers in those days too, and that they were persistent. A reply was given lo them in verses 103 and 104 of sura 16: "When We have replaced a verse with another verse—and God knows well what He sends down— they say, 'You are a mere fabricator.' But most of them have no knowledge. Say (to them), 'The Holy Ghost brought it down from your Lord, truly so,
in order to confirm the believers." "

On the assumption that the Quran is God's word, there ought to be no trace of human intellectual imperfection in anything that God says. Yet in these two verses the incongruity is obvious. Of course God knows what He sends down. For that very reason the replacement of one verse by another made the protesters suspicious. Evidently even the simple, uneducated Hejazi Arabs could understand that Almighty God, being aware of what is best for His servants, would prescribe the best in the first place and would not have changes of mind in the same way as His imperfect creatures.

The doctrine of abrogation also makes a mockery of the Muslim dogma that the Koran is a faithful and unalterable reproduction of the original scriptures that are preserved in heaven. If God's words are eternal, uncreated, and of universal significance, then how can we talk of God's words being superseded or becoming obsolete? Are some words of God to be preferred to other words of God? Apparently yes. According to Muir, some 200 verses have been canceled by later ones. Thus we have the strange situation where the entire Koran is recited as the word of God, and yet there are passages that can be considered not "true"; in other words, 3 percent of the Koran is acknowledged as falsehood.

Let us take an example. Everyone knows that Muslims are not allowed to drink wine in virtue of the prohibition found in the Koran sura 2.219; yet many would no doubt be surprised to read in the Koran at sura 16.67, "And among fruits you have the palm and the vine, from which you get wine and healthful nutriment: in this, truly, are signs for those who reflect" (Rodwell). Dawood has "intoxicants" and Pickthall, "strong drink," and Sale, with eighteenth-century charm, has "inebriating liquor" in place of "wine." Yusuf A l i pretends that the Arabic word concerned, "sakar," means "wholesome drink," and in a footnote insists that nonalcoholic drinks are
being referred to; but then, at the last moment, he concedes that if "sakar must be taken in the sense of fermented wine, it refers to the time before intoxicants were prohibited: this is a Meccan sura and the prohibition came in Medina."

Now we can see how useful and convenient the doctrine of abrogation is in bailing scholars out of difficulties. Of course, it does pose problems for apologists of Islam, since all the passages preaching tolerance are found in Meccan, i.e., early suras, and all the passages recommending killing, decapitating, and maiming are Medinan, i.e., later: "tolerance" has been abrogated by "intolerance." For example, the famous verse at sura 9.5, "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them," is said to have canceled 124 verses that dictate toleration and patience.
 

civfanatic

Retired
Ambassador
Joined
Sep 8, 2009
Messages
4,562
Likes
2,570
I regret that the story of this tragic loss life of was turned into a theological debate.
You've been a member of DFI long enough for this to not be surprising.

Also, you could have used a better title if you wanted to avoid theological debate.
 

Latest Replies

Global Defence

New threads

Articles

Top