Believe the Unknown

Chapter 2:3

God likes people

(3) Who believe in the Unknown

Ah, but do we believe in the known unknowns or the unknown knowns or the unknown unknowns? The arabic word is ghaib, 'unseen'.

I found a detailed explanation of this here. In thousands of words, it says it's against the Quran to believe in the 'unseen'.(!!!!) I had to give up on it when synapses began exploding and axons ran screaming into dark corners to lie curled in the fetal position, sobbing. I am far stupider for having read that, but I did learn a new word in my research:

Bafflegab

 /ˈbæfəlˌgæb/ -noun.

confusing or generally unintelligible jargon; gobbledegook.

Send Hate Mail

Lately people are asking for my email address. I dunno what's so blamed important they can't say it in the comments, maybe it's Dick Cheney trying to get hold of me, all covert and all?

At any rate, my email address is now in the sidebar. Look for a little blue thingy. It's not a link so you'll have to type it in, but that's as good as you're gonna get. You wanna send me death threats you'll have to work a little. Thanks in advance.

Love n stuff

Doubt in the Quran

Chapter 2:1-2

This is as far as I got trying to read this in the usual way: pick up a Quran and start reading from page one. First is a silly little prayer that doesn't mean much, then you see this.
Line one: Three totally meaningless letters. You think "WTF?" and go on to
line two:

2) This is the Book; in it is guidance sure, without doubt,

You think, "WTF², then what did those three letters mean?" and you look it up. The experts say "One obvious meaning of this verse is that this Book, the Qur'an, is undoubtedly from God. Another possible meaning is that ....."

Wait just a damn minute. Another obvious meaning is that this is horseshit. If there's no doubt in it why have the Mo-men been killing each other over it for a thousand years? If it's the Word of God®, why is it telling flat out lies?

Ziauddin Sardar explains it, by saying compressed blue unicorns weightlessly cavort in traffic buns of hopscotch.

Can't argue with that.

Context, ai haz it

YEE-HAA! We've finished the Meccan chapters. Everyone says the Medina chapters are different, and by different I mean worse, and that they cancel out the earlier ones.

The last four posts have figured out what was going on at the time, so now we know why they're different. We're all about context, beeyitches. Woot! Now we're ready to scale K2--that big scary 286-line 2nd chapter that starts the Medina ones.

What we don't know is, why the hell did they put this at the beginning of the book? What psychopathic, drooling on yourself thinking made them arrange the chapters in this order? I've been asking that since I started, and .... we have an answer! Doctor Ahmed has it figured out for us. It's a secret code. Looky here.

See, it says “Allah”. Finally, we have an answer. Well, yeah, it's a stupid answer, but we have to work with what we've got.

Mohammed's Magical Mystery Move

So three quarters of the way through the Koran, Mo has been a total dud at preaching in Mecca, and it looks like he'll fade off into obscurity as just another two-bit self-styled prophet, like so many many many others.

But wait! Since all the locals had him pegged for a whack job, Mo focused on pitching to people from out of town. He sold a few guys from Medina who were there on a pilgrimage, and when they came back the next year there were twelve of them. Mohammed, in a great burst of un-originality, drew up a list of ten “thous shalt”s for them to sign—the 1^st Pledge of Aqaba. It's like the ten commandments: No other gods, no adultery, don't steal, don't bear false witness, no infanticide; and get this one:

“We shall always follow you and obey your decisions.” HUH? That's not god they're promising to, it's Mohammed. How the fuck did he get them to agree to a thing like that, especially when he couldn't convince anybody else? There had to be something seriously wrong with those people.

Whatever it was, it worked, cause they came back the next year. This is 622, when people were throwing rocks at Mo and they had to sneak around in the middle of the night for a meeting, and guess what? This time there's 75 of them! That's more than Mo had his own self. Man, Lady Luck didn't just smile at him; she stripped, laid down, spread her legs, licked her nipples and moaned. Mo didn't hold back, he drew up the 2^nd Pledge, aka the “Pledge of War.” Basically, Mohammed agreed to move to Medina with them if they would agree to fight for him. One guy even warned them that "In swearing allegiance to him, you are pledging yourselves to wage war against all mankind", but they were all “We are men of war” HOO-AH! Fuck Yeah!

This is just another one of the intertribal alliances the Arabs lived by. The first thing Mo asked the Medinans was that they protect him “as they do their wives and children.” From who? His enemies were his own tribesmen, from Mecca; he betrayed his own kinsmen to join forces with another tribe. That was the worst thing you could do in 7^th C. Arabia, but I guess he had nothing to lose since by then they all hated him anyway. He learned the lesson of the Jesus in the Garden; none of this give yourself up to be crucified shit for this prophet, no sirree!

Then while the devil was packing up his soul and writing a receipt, Mo appointed twelve disciples to ride herd on the others. Why? Because “you are a surity for them, as the disciples were for Jesus, son of Mary, and I am for my people." OMFG, could he get any more transparent? He got an army, the army got a Jesus wannabe. Who falls for this shit?

Mohammed Gets Stoned

(Trippin' to Ta'if)

I'm probably an asshole, but I think this is pretty funny. Mohammed was having a tough time getting any converts in Mecca, so in 620 he gave up on it. He went to Ta'if, whch is about 50 miles away, and tried preaching there. Not only did they not listen, they ran him out of town and threw rocks at him. Seriously, they “pelted him with stones”. LULZ!

Ok, I've got a twisted sense of humor, but this is one story you won't hear from the Mohammedans when they go on about how perfect and wonderful their old prophet was. Makes him look like just another nut case, hmmmm?

The story even has a sequel. On the way back, he was naturally depressed and shit. Who wouldn't be, I mean, ten years shot in the ass and nothing to show for it? So he holed up and did some rethinking. In his case that means he's spraying to the lard, and guess what happens? No angels this time, instead a whole audience of Jinns turn up. He sees them listen in rapt attention as he preaches; sees them embrace his message; hears them cheer, feels them lift him to surf the crowd; he is vindicated by their squealing adoration; he autographs their panties.

Projection much? There's nothing like imaginary friends when you're feeling down, but c'mon. We saw this jinn bit in ch 72, but that was supposed to be revealed back the Mid-Mecca period, years ago, so WTF? It tells the story again in ch46, and the details don't match, so some people claim it's two different events. Whatever; it's just mo rationalizing, but the whole thing strikes me as kind of hilarious.