Scrutinity of the Koran

The basis of Islam is the Koran. It is the indisputable "Word of Allah". But scholars have scrutinized its origins, and have noted that there are certain discrepancies, and with different translations, and varying interpretations that cast doubts on its authenticity and its credibility as "The Word of Allah".

"For example, the famous passage about the virgins is based on the word hur, which is an adjective in the feminine plural meaning simply "white". Islamic tradition insists the nterm hur stands for "houri", which means virgin, but Mr. Ludemberg insists that this is a forced misreading of the text. In both ancient Aramaic and in at least one respected dictionary of early Arabic, "hur" means "white raisin".

Mr. Luxenberg has traced the passages dealing with paradise to a Christian text called Hymns of Paradise by a fourth-century author. Mr. Luxemberg said the word paradise was derived from the Aramaic word for garden and all the descriptions of paradise described it as a garden of flowing waters, abundant fruits and white raisins, a prized delicacy in the ancient Near East. In this context, white raisins, mentioned often as "hur", Mr. Luxenberg said, makes more sense than a reward of sexual favours."
(An extract: www.corkscrew-balloon.com/02/03/lbkk/o4b.html )

But if you tried to read the Koran, you will find that often it appears irrational in statement and arrangement and rather repetitative. There is a reason for that as explained by Pastor Jim Croft < www.islamreview.com/articles/islamicterrorism.shtml >

"About the Koran's verses - The Koran was written in two major stages. These have been integrated and arranged by chapter length as opposed to the chronological order in which they were initially written. The first part was penned in the early years of the Islamic movement while Mohammed was living in Mecca, Arabia. The experts boast the verses from these chapters as proof that Islam is a bastion of peace, love, and tolerance. They avoid references to verses from the second and largest portion of the Koran. It was written after the movement relocated its headquarters to Medina, Arabia, and increased in strength. These verses often reflect religious intolerance and encourage cruel hostility towards non-Muslims. Here are two examples that were aimed at Jews, Christians, and Arabs that clung to traditional tribal polytheistic beliefs. - So when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters, wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush…. (Koran 9:5) The only punishment of those that wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is that they should be murdered, or crucified, or their hands and their feet should be cut-off on opposite sides, or they should be imprisoned…. (Koran 5:33)
About the stage of weakness/the stage of strength strategy - The stark differences in the tone of the verses that were written in Mecca and those written in Medina exposes a tactic that has been characteristic of Islam throughout its history. Traditionally, Muslims determine the strength of the religion in various settings as being in one of two states; the stage of weakness and the stage of strength. When Muslims are in the minority and perceive that they are vulnerable, it is their custom to agree to most anything and to be conciliatory towards other religious groups. The moment that they sense superiority in numbers and influence, a form of ruthlessness sets in. They begin to oppress minority religious groups and to demonstrate a blatant disregard for the agreements that they made during the stage of weakness."

This would explain many of the contradicting statements throughout the Koran. But if you could differentiate those phrases made by Muhammad during the weak or defensive periods of Islam compared to the aggressive statements made by him during his strong and aggressive periods, it all makes sense and everything falls into place. So there are two phases of Islam, the submissive or weak phase, and the strong or aggressive phase.

Let me remind you of that part of history when Islam was on an aggressive phase in the 7th century:

< www.iranian.ws/cgi-bin/iran_news/exec/view.cgi/2/4793>
(if link does not work search Google, <>

Islam, "Spread by Sword"Dec 7, 2004
This is how Islam spread by sword. So much for religion of peace. Submit to arab way of life(Islam) or die.Muslims' movement speak for itself, even today after 1400 years of bloodshed.
570 - Birth of Muhammad in Mecca into the tribe of Quraish.
577 - Muhammads mother dies
580 - Death of Abdul Muttalib, Muhammads grandfather.
583 - First journey to Syria with a trading Caravan
595 - Muhammad marries Khadijah a rich widow several years older than him.
595 - Second journey to Syria
598 - His son, Qasim, is born
600 - His daughter, Zainab, is born
603 - His daughter, Um-e-Kalthum, is born
604 - His daughter, Ruqayya, is born
605 - Placement of Black Stone in Kaaba.
605 - His daughter, Fatima, is born
610 - Mohammed, in a cave on Mt. Hira, hears the angel Gabriel tell him that Allah is the only true God.
613 - Muhammads first public preaching of Islam at Mt. Hira. Gets few converts.
615 - Muslims persecuted by the Quraish.
619 - Marries Sauda and Aisha (9 years old)
620 - Institution of five daily prayers
622 - Muhammad immigrates from Mecca to Medina, which was then called Yathrib, gets more converts.Power of Sword
623 - Battle of Waddan 623 - Battle of Safwan
623 - Battle of Dul-Ashir
624 - Muhammad and converts begin raids on caravans to fund the movement.
624 - Zakat becomes mandatory
624 - Battle of Badr 624 - Battle of Bani Salim
624 - Battle of Eid-ul-Fitr and Zakat-ul-Fitr
624 - Battle of Bani Qainuqa
624 - Battle of Sawiq 624 - Battle of Ghatfan
624 - Battle of Bahran 625 - Battle of Uhud. 70 Muslims are killed.
625 - Battle of Humra-ul-Asad
625 - Battle of Banu Nudair
625 - Battle of Dhatur-Riqa
626 - Battle of Badru-Ukhra
626 - Battle of Dumatul-Jandal
626 - Battle of Banu Mustalaq Nikah
627 - Battle of the Trench
627 - Battle of Ahzab
627 - Battle of Bani Quraiza
627 - Battle of Bani Lahyan
627 - Battle of Ghaiba
627 - Battle of Khaibar
628 - Muhammad signs treaty with Quraish.
630 - Muhammad conquers Mecca.
630 - Battle of Hunsin.
630 - Battle of Tabuk
632 - Muhammad dies.
632 - Abu-Bakr, Muhammads father-in-law, along with Umar, begin a military move to enforce Islam in Arabia.
633 - Battle at Oman
633 - Battle at Hadramaut.
633 - Battle of Kazima
633 - Battle of Walaja
633 - Battle of Ulleis
633 - Battle of Anbar
634 - Battle of Basra,
634 - Battle of Damascus
634 - Battle of Ajnadin.
634 - Death of Hadrat Abu Bakr. Hadrat Umar Farooq becomes the Caliph.
634 - Battle of Namaraq
634 - Battle of Saqatia.
635 - Battle of Bridge.
635 - Battle of Buwaib.
635 - Conquest of Damascus.
635 - Battle of Fahl.
636 - Battle of Yermuk.
636 - Battle of Qadsiyia.
636 - Conquest of Madain.
637 - Battle of Jalula.
638 - Battle of Yarmouk.
638 - The Muslims defeat the Romans and enter Jerusalem.
638 - Conquest of Jazirah.
639 - Conquest of Khuizistan and movement into Egypt.
641 - Battle of Nihawand
642 - Battle of Ray in Persia
643 - Conquest of Azarbaijan
644 - Conquest of Fars
644 - Conquest of Kharan.
644 - Umar is murdered. Othman becomes the Caliph.
647 - Conquest of the island of Cypress
644 - Uman dies and is succeeded by Caliph Uthman.
648 - Campaign against the Byzantines.
651 - Naval battle against the Byzantines.
654 - Islam spreads into North Africa
656 - Uthman is murdered. Ali become Caliph.
658 - Battle of Nahrawan.
659 - Conquest of Egypt
661 - Ali is murdered.
662 - Egypt falls to Islam rule.
666 - Sicily is attacked by Muslims
677 - Siege of Constantinople
687 - Battle of Kufa
691 - Battle of Deir ul Jaliq
700 - Sufism takes root as a sect of Islam
700 - Military campaigns in North Africa
702 - Battle of Deir ul Jamira
711 - Muslims invade Gibraltar
711 - Conquest of Spain
713 - Conquest of Multan
716 - Invasion of Constantinople
732 - Battle of Tours in France.
740 - Battle of the Nobles.
741 - Battle of Bagdoura in North Africa
744 - Battle of Ain al Jurr.
746 - Battle of Rupar Thutha
748 - Battle of Rayy.
749 - Battle of lsfahan
749 - Battle of Nihawand
750 - Battle of Zab
772 - Battle of Janbi in North Africa
777 - Battle of Saragossa in SpainAnd they call it, " 'Islam', Religion of Peace ".
© Iranian.ws
That is the early history of the glory of the sword of Islam. It worked then, it will work now!

Beginnings of the Koran

THE KORAN
Next let us look at a few comments about the Koran.


Scholars Scrutinize the Koran's Origin
A Promise of Moist Virgins or Dried Fruit?
New York Times (and International Herald Tribune), March 4, 2002
Scholars Are Quietly Offering New Theories of the KoranBy ALEXANDER STILLE
To Muslims the Koran is the very word of God, who spoke through the Angel Gabriel to Muhammad: "This book is not to be doubted," the Koran declares unequivocally at its beginning. Scholars and writers in Islamic countries who have ignored that warning have sometimes found themselves the target of death threats and violence, sending a chill through universities around the world.
Yet despite the fear, a handful of experts have been quietly investigating the origins of the Koran, offering radically new theories about the text's meaning and the rise of Islam.
Christoph Luxenberg, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages in Germany, argues that the Koran has been misread and mistranslated for centuries. His work, based on the earliest copies of the Koran, maintains that parts of Islam's holy book are derived from pre-existing Christian Aramaic texts that were misinterpreted by later Islamic scholars who prepared the editions of the Koran commonly read today.
So, for example, the virgins who are supposedly awaiting good Islamic martyrs as their reward in paradise are in reality "white raisins" of crystal clarity rather than fair maidens.
Christoph Luxenberg, however, is a pseudonym, and his scholarly tome The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran had trouble finding a publisher, although it is considered a major new work by several leading scholars in the field. Verlag Das Arabische Buch in Berlin ultimately published the book.
The caution is not surprising. Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses received a fatwa because it appeared to mock Muhammad. The Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed because one of his books was thought to be irreligious. And when the Arab scholar Suliman Bashear argued that Islam developed as a religion gradually rather than emerging fully formed from the mouth of the Prophet, he was injured after being thrown from a second-story window by his students at the University of Nablus in the West Bank. Even many broad-minded liberal Muslims become upset when the historical veracity and authenticity of the Koran is questioned.
The reverberations have affected non-Muslim scholars in Western countries. "Between fear and political correctness, it's not possible to say anything other than sugary nonsense about Islam," said one scholar at an American university who asked not to be named, referring to the threatened violence as well as the widespread reluctance on United States college campuses to criticize other cultures.
While scriptural interpretation may seem like a remote and innocuous activity, close textual study of Jewish and Christian scripture played no small role in loosening the Church's domination on the intellectual and cultural life of Europe, and paving the way for unfettered secular thought. "The Muslims have the benefit of hindsight of the European experience, and they know very well that once you start questioning the holy scriptures, you don't know where it will stop," the scholar explained.
The touchiness about questioning the Koran predates the latest rise of Islamic militancy. As long ago as 1977, John Wansbrough of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London wrote that subjecting the Koran to "analysis by the instruments and techniques of biblical criticism is virtually unknown."
Mr. Wansbrough insisted that the text of the Koran appeared to be a composite of different voices or texts compiled over dozens if not hundreds of years. After all, scholars agree that there is no evidence of the Koran until 691 — 59 years after Muhammad's death — when the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem was built, carrying several Koranic inscriptions.
These inscriptions differ to some degree from the version of the Koran that has been handed down through the centuries, suggesting, scholars say, that the Koran may have still been evolving in the last decade of the seventh century. Moreover, much of what we know as Islam — the lives and sayings of the Prophet — is based on texts from between 130 and 300 years after Muhammad's death.
In 1977 two other scholars from the School for Oriental and African Studies at London University — Patricia Crone (a professor of history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton) and Michael Cook (a professor of Near Eastern history at Princeton University) — suggested a radically new approach in their book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World.
Since there are no Arabic chronicles from the first century of Islam, the two looked at several non-Muslim, seventh-century accounts that suggested Muhammad was perceived not as the founder of a new religion but as a preacher in the Old Testament tradition, hailing the coming of a Messiah. Many of the early documents refer to the followers of Muhammad as "hagarenes," and the "tribe of Ishmael," in other words as descendants of Hagar, the servant girl that the Jewish patriarch Abraham used to father his son Ishmael.
In its earliest form, Ms. Crone and Mr. Cook argued, the followers of Muhammad may have seen themselves as retaking their place in the Holy Land alongside their Jewish cousins. (And many Jews appear to have welcomed the Arabs as liberators when they entered Jerusalem in 638.)
The idea that Jewish messianism animated the early followers of the Prophet is not widely accepted in the field, but "Hagarism" is credited with opening up the field. "Crone and Cook came up with some very interesting revisionist ideas," says Fred M. Donner of the University of Chicago and author of the recent book Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing. "I think in trying to reconstruct what happened, they went off the deep end, but they were asking the right questions."
The revisionist school of early Islam has quietly picked up momentum in the last few years as historians began to apply rational standards of proof to this material.
Mr. Cook and Ms. Crone have revised some of their early hypotheses while sticking to others.
Mis-translated possibility:Seventy-two dark-eyed virgins await in Paradise "We were certainly wrong about quite a lot of things," Ms. Crone said. "But I stick to the basic point we made: that Islamic history did not arise as the classic tradition says it does."
Ms. Crone insists that the Koran and the Islamic tradition present a fundamental paradox. The Koran is a text soaked in monotheistic thinking, filled with stories and references to Abraham, Isaac, Joseph and Jesus, and yet the official history insists that Muhammad, an illiterate camel merchant, received the revelation in Mecca, a remote, sparsely populated part of Arabia, far from the centers of monotheistic thought, in an environment of idol-worshiping Arab Bedouins. Unless one accepts the idea of the angel Gabriel, Ms. Crone says, historians must somehow explain how all these monotheistic stories and ideas found their way into the Koran.
"There are only two possibilities," Ms. Crone said. "Either there had to be substantial numbers of Jews and Christians in Mecca or the Koran had to have been composed somewhere else."
Indeed, many scholars who are not revisionists agree that Islam must be placed back into the wider historical context of the religions of the Middle East rather than seeing it as the spontaneous product of the pristine Arabian desert. "I think there is increasing acceptance, even on the part of many Muslims, that Islam emerged out of the wider monotheistic soup of the Middle East," says Roy Mottahedeh, a professor of Islamic history at Harvard University.
Scholars like Mr. Luxenberg and Gerd- R. Puin, who teaches at Saarland University in Germany, have returned to the earliest known copies of the Koran in order to grasp what it says about the document's origins and composition. Mr. Luxenberg explains these copies are written without vowels and diacritical dots that modern Arabic uses to make it clear what letter is intended. In the eighth and ninth centuries, more than a century after the death of Muhammad, Islamic commentators added diacritical marks to clear up the ambiguities of the text, giving precise meanings to passages based on what they considered to be their proper context. Mr. Luxenberg's radical theory is that many of the text's difficulties can be clarified when it is seen as closely related to Aramaic, the language group of most Middle Eastern Jews and Christians at the time.
For example, the famous passage about the virgins is based on the word hur, which is an adjective in the feminine plural meaning simply "white." Islamic tradition insists the term hur stands for "houri," which means virgin, but Mr. Luxenberg insists that this is a forced misreading of the text. In both ancient Aramaic and in at least one respected dictionary of early Arabic, hur means "white raisin."
Mr. Luxenberg has traced the passages dealing with paradise to a Christian text called Hymns of Paradise by a fourth-century author. Mr. Luxenberg said the word paradise was derived from the Aramaic word for garden and all the descriptions of paradise described it as a garden of flowing waters, abundant fruits and white raisins, a prized delicacy in the ancient Near East. In this context, white raisins, mentioned often as hur, Mr. Luxenberg said, makes more sense than a reward of sexual favors.
In many cases, the differences can be quite significant. Mr. Puin points out that in the early archaic copies of the Koran, it is impossible to distinguish between the words "to fight" and "to kill." In many cases, he said, Islamic exegetes added diacritical marks that yielded the harsher meaning, perhaps reflecting a period in which the Islamic Empire was often at war.
A return to the earliest Koran, Mr. Puin and others suggest, might lead to a more tolerant brand of Islam, as well as one that is more conscious of its close ties to both Judaism and Christianity.
"It is serious and exciting work," Ms. Crone said of Mr. Luxenberg's work. Jane McAuliffe, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University, has asked Mr. Luxenberg to contribute an essay to the Encyclopedia of the Koran, which she is editing.
Mr. Puin would love to see a "critical edition" of the Koran produced, one based on recent philological work, but, he says, "the word critical is misunderstood in the Islamic world — it is seen as criticizing or attacking the text."
Some Muslim authors have begun to publish skeptical, revisionist work on the Koran as well. Several new volumes of revisionist scholarship, The Origins of the Koran, and The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, have been edited by a former Muslim who writes under the pen name Ibn Warraq. Mr. Warraq, who heads a group called the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society, makes no bones about having a political agenda.
The actual reward in paradise: White raisins "Biblical scholarship has made people less dogmatic, more open," he said, "and I hope that happens to Muslim society as well."
But many Muslims find the tone and claims of revisionism offensive. "I think the broader implications of some of the revisionist scholarship is to say that the Koran is not an authentic book, that it was fabricated 150 years later," says Ebrahim Moosa, a professor of religious studies at Duke University, as well as a Muslim cleric whose liberal theological leanings earned him the animosity of fundamentalists in South Africa, which he left after his house was firebombed.
Andrew Rippin, an Islamicist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, says that freedom of speech in the Islamic world is more likely to evolve from within the Islamic interpretative tradition than from outside attacks on it. Approaches to the Koran that are now branded as heretical — interpreting the text metaphorically rather than literally — were widely practiced in mainstream Islam a thousand years ago.
"When I teach the history of the interpretation it is eye-opening to students the amount of independent thought and diversity of interpretation that existed in the early centuries of Islam," Mr. Rippin says. "It was only in more recent centuries that there was a need for limiting interpretation."

http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/02/03/1bkk/04b.html

Biography of Prophet Muhammad

Prophet Muhammad
Let us begin by looking at the life of the Prophet Muhammad.
http://www.mtmcenter.org/resource_biog.htm

Biography of Prophet Muhammad

Muhammad (pbuh), an illiterate man of humble origin, promulgated Islam, one of the world's greatest religions, and became an effective political leader. Today fourteen centuries after his death, his influence is still powerful and pervasive.

Muhammad was born in the year 570 A.D. (approximately), in the city of Mecca, in what is presently southern Saudi Arabia, at that time a backward area of the world, far from civilization. His father died when he was an infant, and his mother died when he was six years of age. He was fostered in modest surroundings. He attended sheep herds and was illiterate. His economic position improved when, at age twenty-five, he married Khadijah, a wealthy widow. He was the utmost in honesty since his childhood.

Most Arabs at that time were pagans, worshipping many idols. During his trading expeditions, Muhammad learned of one, omnipotent God who ruled the universe. When he was forty years old he received the revelation and inspiration from God through the archangel Gabriel, ordering him to spread the true faith, the Muslim faith, the faith of his forefather, Abraham. For three years Muhammad preached only to close friends and associates. Later he started revealing the message to his tribe (Quraish). As he slowly gained converts, the Meccans began considering him as a danger to their customs, traditions, and positions among other tribes. Around 622 A.D., fearing for his safety, he was inspired by God to flee to Medina, where he gained many followers and supporters (Hijrah).
In Medina, Muhammad's following grew rapidly and Islam started spreading everywhere. A series of battles were fought between the people of Medina and Mecca (Badr, Uhad, Khandaq . . .), and this war ended in 630 with Muhammad's triumphant return to Mecca. During the next two-and-a-half years of his remaining life, the Arabian Peninsula witnessed a rapid conversion of Arab, Jewish, and Christian tribes to Islam.

The Arabs had a reputation as fierce fighters, but their numbers were small. Plagued by disunity and internal warfare, the Arabs were no match for the more advanced kingdoms around them. However, they became unified by Muhammad and inspired by their new faith of Islam and the belief in the One, Almighty, true God. With the help of God, the Muslim armies conquered the Neo-Persian Empire of the Sassanids and the Byzantine. By 711 A.D. the Muslim armies had overwhelmed the inhabitants of North Africa and crossed the Straight of Gibraltar and conquered the Visigoth kingdom of Spain. Losing the battle of Tour was the turning point of the Muslim army when the Franks defeated the advanced army in France. Nevertheless, in one century of fighting, the Muslim army, inspired by the teaching of Muhammad, the prophet and messenger of God, had carved out an empire stretching from the borders of India to the Atlantic Ocean, making it the largest empire yet seen. Everywhere that the Muslim army reached, the majority of the inhabitants converted to Islam, the true faith of God.
The Muslim army remained strong and in control of the new territories as long as they held to the pillars of Islam, and practiced the true religion. But when the Muslims began diverging from the orthodox teachings of Islam, and began turning away from the teachings of the prophet Muhammad, their strength weakened as did their will to spread the word of God and Islam. The people rose against the ruler and some Islamic territories were conquered by the Christian army. The Christians regained their control over Spain, and the Muslims there were told to denounce their belief, and all mosques were converted to churches.

Muhammad's teachings of the word of God (Islam) and submission and obedience to the one true God (Allah), has a tremendous amount of appeal for many seekers of knowledge. It is a solution for all the problems of the past, present, and future. Because Islam is the revealed and complete religion of God's people from all walks of life, upon exposure to the religion people change their beliefs and adopt Islam. Islam is on the rise and the Muslim population is increasing everyday and everywhere (Africa-300 million, Asia-650 million, Europe-50 million, America-6 million, and Australia-2 million).

Muhammad (pbuh) was the last prophet sent by God to reveal God's existence and to spread the teaching of the Qur'an:

"Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but he is the messenger of God and sealer of prophets. And God has full knowledge of all things (33.40)."