the Worst Thing in the Koran

Our fish story in chapter 18 is just a lousy translation. Look at other ones, they're all lousy too, but take a little from here, a little from there, you can piece together a coherent story line. Medieval detective stories! First of all, it's two rivers, not seas. At least in some versions. The fish was supposed to be their breakfast, they stopped for shelter under a rock, the servant forgot it and it swam away, straight for the ocean. The miraculous part was that it was dried fish. It's a lead-in to the story about the murderer. The fishy miracle seems to let them know they'd found the right guy.

He's al-khidr. We know because it doesn't say that in the koran, god thinks it doesn't have to tell us because everyone knows this story. Hello, god, some of your critters never got the memo. Eskimoes? Zulus? Tahitians? Me?

He's supposed to be the Green Man, an old pagan fertility god that's come down into islam as an immortal wise man with all kinds of stories attached. Mohammedans argue over whether he's a prophet or a saint, because you can't call him a god anymore, y'unnerstand, unless you wanna drink boiling pus ( #2 ) forever. He's

⁶⁵ ... one of Our servants, on whom We had bestowed Mercy from Ourselves and whom We had taught knowledge from Our own Presence.

He's a Favored Servant of God^®. Remember that—allah likes this guy.

⁷⁴ Then they proceeded: until, when they met a young man, he slew him.

He KILLED somebody? WTF? A Registered Servant of God always has a good reason, and here it is:

⁸⁰ "As for the youth, his parents were people of Faith, and we feared that he would grieve them by obstinate rebellion and ingratitude (to Allah and man).
⁸¹ "So we desired that their Lord would give them in exchange (a son) better in purity (of conduct) and closer in affection.

Instant Replay: He murdered a little kid. Kid was innocent, had done nothing wrong. Kid was a believer. The motive was SUSPICION that he MIGHT, at some time in the future, stop being one. This is how Allah's favored servant acts. This is how you, to be god's favored servant, should act. If you even suspect someone is guilty of something, you should kill them. Allah likes that. That's what it says, right here in the koran, god's blueprint, the foundation of islam.

This struck me as horribly, fuckedupedly, wrong. So I looked it up. Hadith says this:

The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) used not to kill the children, so thou shouldst not kill them unless you could know what khadir had known about the child he killed, OR you could distinguish between a child who would grow up to be a believer (and a child who would grow up to be a non-believer), so that you killed the (prospective) non-believer and left the (prospective) believer aside. (sahih muslim, book 019, number 4457)

IOW, kill any children who might grow up to be non-muslim. This just gets worse and worse. Up till now I thought the worst verses in this book were these:

2:191: And kill them wherever you find them,
9:5: slay the idolaters wherever you find them,

At least people can make lame flailing explanations that these are in the context of war, but this Al Kidder thing is way worse. It's god holding up cold-blooded murder as a role model. Even if you liked the death penalty for being a non-muslim, this kid wasn't even thinking of doing it, there was only a possibility. That applies to everyone in the world—there's a possibility I'll be the next pope.

I expected to google up a lot of explanations, but surprise! I hardly found anything. The official story =

“The fact is that if the curtain be removed from the "unseen", you would yourselves come to know that what is happening here is for the best. “

IOW the same bullshit, “It's god's will,” “God moves in mysterious ways.” Yeah, so did the Zodiac Killer.

Notice he says he didn't do it of his own will.

And I did not do it, namely, what has been mentioned of [his] slaying of the boy , of my own accord, that is, [out of] my own choosing; nay, it was because of a command in the form of an inspiration from ALLAH. (Tafsir al-Jalalayn :SURAH 18}-82)

Not having any basis for morality gods to pass the buck to, us poor atheists have to fall back on “I did it” and take personal responsibility for our actions. Sucks to be us, but Christians use that excuse, they say “the devil made me do it”; muslims say “God made me do it.”

Muslims win on fuckupitude. Your god sucks pretty bad when can't even admit you did what he told you.

Is this cause or effect? When somebody is completely full of shit, they don't just offer one explanation, they give you a whole shitload of them that all contradict each other. “It's not bad, but I didn't do it.” You whiny little crybaby—if it's not bad why do you need to deny doing it?

Sami Zaatari is convinced this means exactly the opposite of what it says because nobody can know what Al Kidder had known, him being so holy and all, and OR means “and” so it doesn't say ...thou shouldst not kill them unless ... you could distinguish...” even though that's what it says. And ... and ...and ... besides, it was (in whiny little third-grader voice) “one unique case, and it was a spiritual lesson to Moses.” He follows the Atrocity Method of Teaching. “Ok, class, Abdulla has two arms. Now I cut one off, see, how many arms does Abdul have now?”

Finally, somebody brings up an example of real parents who actually murdered their daughter for the reason Al-Kidder gave, and Sami sez: “Since he cant really bring anything bad from the Quran, or the hadiths or sira material, he has to jump to the actions of people.”

(AND SAMI WINS THE STOOPID PRIZE! IT'S UNANIMOUS! Hey Sami, this is not the Tommyknockers. If it wasn't supposed to be god's instruction manual for the actions of people, nobody'd care how stupid it is. So shut up!) Naturally, he doesn't. He's all “Oh yeah? You think that's bad? What about THIS?” and lovingly copypastes 700 words about anal sex, which lost me (?!). I've never been murdered but I've had anal sex and I'm pretty sure it's better.

This is too weird. It's the worst thing I've found yet in the koran, and nobody seems to talk about it. Excuses for those other verses are all over the internet like flies on shit, but it's hard to find anything about this. Maybe they hope we won't notice it, but this plays out in “the actions of people,” in the real world in horrible ways. I think we should get it out in the open with as much publicity as possible. A commenter on Robert Spencer's blog explains it better than I could. Read what he says and then see what you think.