Who the hell's talking?

Just hold it right there. Before we go any further, I gotta know-who's talking. We've looked at this before but I still can't get past 93:6

6. Did he not find you an orphan and take care of you?

No, actually, he didn't. I was never an orphan. It turns out Mo was, but that's nothing to do with me. If the whole book is Mohammed's private conversation, it'd be impolite to listen in, so WexactlyTF? Is it god talking to Mo, and irrelevant to me, or is the book talking to people in general? This isn't a translation issue, it's a big controversy even in the original Arabic. (A better explanation is here.)

In an earlier post we had a guy, call him Buck Harry, reported that he, or his grampa or his great great grampa, reported that he heard Mohammed say something. What we didn't mention is that nobody ever claimed God talked to Mohammed in the first place. What Mo claimed to have seen and spoke to was Kafirgirl's angel Gabriel.

I'll give you the exact explanation I was given in Islamic Sunday school: if someone calls you on the telephone, you do not say "the telephone is talking to me." You say, "Bob is talking to me." That's how they explained Gabriel to me. A mouthpiece. With God talking directly through him.

so we've got

Buck said [Mo said [Gabe said [god said [ "Did he not find you..."]]]]

On the off [off [off [off [off chance]]]] that it was repeated exactly at every stage, we have god saying "he" and "we" when it means god. The most natural thing in the world for polytheistic moon worshippers--the goddess Uzza, say, talking about her main squeeze. After 40 years of talking that way it'd be hard not to let shit like that slip out, but if Mo wanted his new cult to take off he'd have to rein it in.

Another possibility is that god refers to itself in the 2^nd person he when he actually means I, because god is a fucken schizoid loony. To avoid this conclusion, insert { traditional apologetics } that we've already seen are dumber than cat turds. This is all confusing as hell so I made a flow chart.

Picking up at the left side of the chart, if it's Gabe talking, the question is, is Gabe quoting god directly? Is it....

[Buck said [Mo said [the angel said [god said ["I found you"]]]].

Or is it....

[Buck said [Mo said [the angel said [god said he found me]]]].

The angel would use 2^nd person, and say "I seek refuge with the Lord" and "didn't He (that's god!) find you (& there's Mo!) bla bla..." to make it a normal conversation in God's Book of Gossip, 1400-years-ago edition. So it's all good. It can be interpreted as metaphor and parables because it's not the Literal Word of God^®, so lines like "kill them wherever you find them" can be interpreted allegorically to mean "nothing beats snuggling up with your gay lover for sausage pizza and wine."

Holy books like that I can live with, although they'd be way better to use Calvin & Hobbes.

A Prophecy Fulfilled!

Surah 81 is titled "The Folding Up". Its very first line prophesizes,

81:1 when the sun is folded up,

and BEHOLD!




LOL!
I better not give these people ideas.

Seriously, these are just weird. If you were going to select one single word to represent a chapter, wouldn't you pick one you knew what it meant? How does one fold up the sun? Nobody knows. The same phrase turns up in chapter 39, and I found this explanation, "The word kuwwirat is passive voice from takvir in the past tense, and means 'that which is folded up"': Any questions?

Pickthall translates it as "overthrown." Any fool knows you can't fold up the sun, but overthrow it, no problem. What the hell? Why not translate it as "General Motors recalls their Irish rum?" or "the fairies screw the elves?"

Chapter 87 is called 'The Most High', for no better reason than the first line is 'praise the Lord most high.' Oh, wait,

"There is here in fact a message of great importance, not only for the Prophet, that he would be raised to the highest place to which man can rise, but for every man that, through the glorification of God, he can rise to the highest place to which he is capable of rising."

How did I miss that? I thought it was talking about the Lord being high, seeing as how THAT'S WHAT IT SAYS. If these were Rastafarians instead of Moslems I could read more into it, the Lord Bogarting a fattie of Matanuska Thunderfuck and blowing smoke to his prophets so they can 'be raised to the highest place to which man can rise', mon--but I'm just not creative enough.

Chapter 92 is 'The Night', and 89 is 'The Dawn', and it's oh so obvious, they tell me, that these are the dawning light of wisdom brought by the Prophet, dispelling the darkness of ignorance in which the infidels look unicorns Friday colorless green ideas. All it really is is more of Mo's pagan nature worship, "by the dawn, by the night, by the boobs of the goddess Uzza, by the labia of Lat, etc."

It seems "There is a great variety of opinion as to what is meant by the title and the first four verses of Surah 89". No shit. The verses say,

"I call to witness the dawn and the ten nights, the multiple and the one, the night as it advances,"

and then it asks, "is there not an evidence in this for those who have sense?"

NO, there's not, because when you look it up you find out that even the experts don't have the faintest idea of what any of it means. They could just as well have said,

WOMP-BOMP-A-LOOM-OP-A-WOMP-BAM-BOOM!"

Now is there not an evidence in that for those who have sense?

Developing the Mission Statement

Mo's next efforts are chapters 81, 87, 92, and 89. On my graph they show as the second little bump before the chapters get really really tiny, like three or four lines. All these four run about twenty, and they have a lot of odd calling on the sun moon and stars, as in 91;

1. I call to witness the sun and his early morning splendor,
2. And the moon as she follows in his wake,
3. The day when it reveals his radiance,
4. The night when it covers him over,
5. The heavens and its architecture,
6. The earth and its spreading out,

When you remember that Mo was a moon-worshipping pagan for the first forty years of his life, it makes perfect sense he would say things like that. How much should I bet this environmentalism will dwindle away as Mo gets more powerful?

Chapter 81 begins with twelve signs to signal the coming of judgment day, but nobody has any idea what they mean. What is "the stars turn dim and scatter (2)" or "the curtain draws back from the skies (11)"? Who knows, but it sure sounds prophetty, don't it?

It spends 14 verses on judgment day and 15 on Mo saying he's not nuts and we should listen to him. He's still trying to convince people (and himself) that he's not crazy: "Your companion is not mad," he whines in 81:22, but he's getting away from that, growing more confident. Catch this in 92;

12 Surely Ours is it to show the way,
13 And surely Ours is the Hereafter and the former.

Meaning, it is my place to tell you what to do, not just in the hereafter but here on Earth too. Wow! Getting a little cocky now, aren't we? Notice how these verses make a lot more sense when you translate "ours" to mean "Me & God's" instead of doing a lot of semantic dancing around with the "majestic plural".

He's developing a strategic vision here, fleshing out the details of what exactly he'll be selling and his demographics. He's not just preaching to whoever will listen. From day one he focused on qualified prospects; those unreceptive to his message are lost causes and expendable. Cold-blooded, but a better marketing plan than that naive sap Jesus--Mo knew well how that turned out. His years of running caravans for his sugar mommy Khadijah was paying off.

Related to this, here he is worrying he'll forget the words;

87:6. We shall make you recite (the Qur'an) so that you will not forget
87:7. Unless God may please.

A successful businessman would know the importance of keeping accurate records, so why not just write down the revelations? Gosh, I can't think of a single reason.

Mo was on the horns of a dilemma. He wanted the authority of written scripture like the Jews had, but he knew people would nail him when he changed his story, misquoted himself, or reversed god's words to get some new nookie. So over these little short early chapters he's worried, but later on you don't hear that even for the Cow chapter that has 286 verses! Mo was sharp and he didn't need long to realize there is no limit to the bullshit people will swallow, and being consistent didn't matter. He could have his word be the only law, and by claiming an invisible Qur'an in the sky he could also claim to have the eternal unchanging Written Word Of God. Pretty clever branding!

He lays out his Mission Statement in chapter 92, and boy does it suck! Here's who goes to heaven

(5) ... he who gives (in charity) and fears (Allah),
(6) And (in all sincerity) accepts and follows ...

The fuck? This is a constant constant theme throughout the book. He doesn't identify his cultists as people who act morally, his priorities are: 1) give money, 2) be afraid 3) accept, aka 'submit'. Buddha had his Four Noble Truths that bring an end to suffering, Jesus had his greatest commandment, to love thy neighbor as thyself, and Mo has this.


What a sales pitch! Makes me just want to sign right the fuck up. How did he ever sell such a crappy product? Aside from being a pretty intimidating guy apparently (raving lunatics often are), Hadith say that even at this early stage it wasn't just metaphorical carrots he was offering:

• "Muhammad claims that if you follow him in his religion, you shall be the kings of the Arabs and the non-Arabs"


• "I summon them to utter a saying through which the Arabs will submit to them and they will rule over the non-Arabs."
  


• "the Arabs will submit to them and the non-Arabs will pay the jizyah to them."

So that's the USP (unique selling proposition) that launched what came to be Islam. He stuck with this secret recipe through the years, as in this letter

"Accept my call, and you shall be unharmed. I am God's Messenger to mankind, and the word shall be carried out upon the miscreants. If, therefore, you recognize Islam, I shall bestow power upon you."

Anyhow, chapter 89 ends this section with five verses calling on the moon and 19 describing hell or people going to hell: at the finish... it looks like... it's...Hell,19-5! ... the crowd goes jihad! YAAAAYY!!

Mo has finally found his voice: It's saying "You're all going to hell!"

Looking for logic in all the wrong places

Mo's spewing out some pretty short chapters here at the beginning, but he got to be a terrific windbag later on, so I wondered if maybe there was a trend; as he got more confident, and his cult got more brainwashed, it'd be natural for him to make longer rants. So I charted the chapters from first to last revealed, by how long they were, thinking this might show more of a pattern than the first one. But,


Logic, smlogic; this doesn't make any sense either. One thing, all the earliest chapters are short. It does make sense that he could last longer once he didn't have to worry about people dumping camel guts on him. This early period (I marked it in red) is called the Early Meccan, its chief characteristic being "short rhythmic and rhyming verses, vivid imagery based on nature and frequent introductory oaths" similar to the old pagan poets.

Otherwise, there's no pattern. I wondered if the really long ones would correspond to important events, like maybe he'd have a lot to say before or after a major battle, so I looked at that one longest one. It's the Cow, 286 verses and here's what I found out:



Crap! I'm like a drowning person desperately grasping for any rope of logic to cling to, and they just keep pulling them away.

How it all went down

Sequence-wise, there are two versions. Either;

v96-pouting in a cave; then 68-pout/parable/pout; 73-I'm moses!; 74-decides to preach...

OR, the minority opinion,

v96-pouting in a cave; 74-decides to preach; 68-pout/parable/pout; then 73-I'm moses!

This last would have him decide to go preach before he convinced himself he was Neo-Moses. My guess is it takes some time to freefall into raving lunacy convince yourself you are god's mouthpiece. So a first appearance, then six months gap to get used to the idea. A little more god-visiting, with doubts about his own sanity receding under the madness, until he finally thinks yeah, I'm fucken Moses. Look out beeyitches! Once 'god' had given him that he'd feel totally justified to go preach to others. Chapter 1 & 111 are what he preached: Mostly just believe his shtick, with side forays to turn his inductees against the local religions and sane people who tried to talk them out of joining the cult. Typical prophet shit.


We already looked at chapter 1. When it talks about being on the straight path, and

(7) Not of those who have earned Your anger, nor those who have gone astray,

it's not just a general exhortation to be good like naive old me thought before I got acquainted with Mo. Naw, it's more hate-mongering. The Jews have earned God's anger, and the Christians have gone astray. If he'd known about all the other religions waiting to be condemned outside his little corner of Arabia I bet this'd be the longest chapter in the book.

Chapter 111 is a footnote, like most of the later ones ones at the end of the book. Here's the whole thing:

111 the Noose

1. Destroyed will be the hands of Abu Lahab and he himself will perish.
2. Of no avail shall be his wealth, nor what he has acquired.
3. He will be roasted in the fire,
4. And his wife, the portress of fire wood,
5. Will have a strap of fibre rope around her neck.

Shades of the Old South, what did this this couple do? Nothing much, he was Mo's uncle, and he just didn't wanna put up with old Mo's bullshit. So what'd his wife do? Well, she was married to somebody who pissed Mo off, the fucking bitch!

Notice the Koran doesn't bother to tell you WHY these people who lived 1400 years ago need to burn in Hell, just so you know they're there. What important moral lesson does this teach?-don't name your kid Abu Lahab? Got it covered. Don't marry anyone named Abu Lahab? OK. And Pol Pot or Hitler don't even get a shoutout. Priorities, man.

I'm fucking Moses!

73 Moving right along, chronologically speaking, Chapter 73 is more whining, and Mo convinces himself he's just like Moses. Hell, he IS Moses! God has his back! Then in 74, he takes the plunge and decides god wants him to go inflict himself on other people. Like you weren't doing it already, Mr camel guts.

74 Mo goes back to the cave, resolves his doubts by having 'god' tell him yes, he should go start his own religion, then works himself up into a lather over some guy Walid that he can't convert, and all the hardships Mo'll inflict on him, till he splooges all over himself in verse 31 moaning about some weird secret hell number that only he'll know. Relaxing in post-orgasmic repose, he gloats for another 26 verses over Hell, until he even believes his own bullshit.

This last gloat-fest includes the sickest vision yet, a horrifying description of his homies sitting blissfully around in heaven's gardens casually conversing with--and taunting!--the people burning in hell. What kind of monster could watch his own family members being burned alive and contentedly pop another grape in his mouth and ask "My my, what did you do to deserve this? Gee, Mom,you must've been really bad. I bet that hurts, huh?" What a sick fuck. Pronounced lack of empathy? Check. Sociopathic personality? Check. The pieces are falling into place, and things don't look good for Arabia.

Red Flag!

An observation on 68:44-45. Immediately after three verses of ranting about how he'll kick ass, Mo immediately says he'll give respite. Red Flag! Although this seems not to make sense, anyone who studies domestic violence will recognize the pattern. Within the cycle of violence, the acting-out phase is always followed by the honeymoon phase where the abuser 'gives respite' and reestablishes his bona fides as being actually a good person, so that the cycle can continue. And sure enough, in the hadiths we read about Mohammed punching his teenaged bride Aisha.

The koran is full of contradictory sets like that: 9:5 kill them → 9:6 give them asylum; 8:60 strike terror in them → 8:61 make peace with them. That's just a random few. The red flag becomes a huge tapestry that covers most of the known world.

Six distinct stages make up the cycle of violence:

1. brooding over perceived wrongs and fantasizing over 'next time',

"what I should've done"...

2. setting up the victim,

3. the abuse

4. fear of reprisal expressed as feelings of "guilt", apologies...

5. rationalizing, excuses, blaming the victim, how he had no choice

but to be violent, she "made him do it"...

6. shift to tolerant and even loving behavior, the 'honeymoon phase'

Here we have Mo brooding in his cave, fantasizing how god will help him get even, then feeling guilty, rationalizing, immediate shift to 'giving respite'. All that's lacking is the actual abuse. How much should I bet that will appear as soon as Mo gains some actual power over others?

Typical Abuser	Mohammed
Abusers may spend minutes, hours or days fantasizing about what the victim has done "wrong" and how he is going to make her "pay".	Mo in his cave...uhhh...what more needs to be said?
setting up his victim,	Constant theme through the book is that Allah "sets a seal on the hearts of men" so that they cannot understand his message. Then he sends them to hell for not understanding it.
the abuse,	So far Mo's just a powerless little whiner who can only make threats. 96: drag by the forelock; 68:10-14 he calls all those names, -16 brand on the snout,... wait he gets some power, you'll see him cutting off heads and all of it.
the abuser's fear of reprisal expressed as feelings of "guilt",	See above pattern of Threaten-Offer Protection. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, there wasn't much reprisal for Mohamed.
his rationalization,	"They made me do it" (11:101) or "they wrong themselves" (10:44) is a constant refrain. For a textbook example check out 11:116-119: wow! Short version below.
his shift to tolerant and even loving behavior.	"give respite", above; "God is loving and kind" usually tacked onto the end of some boodthirsty rant.

Shorter 11:116-119   If only they were good; we wouldn't destroy good people; but we could make them behave; but they still wouldn't; unless we forgive them; but we're gonna kick ass.

Does this guy sound balanced? Does he have anger issues? Does a camel shit in the desert?

Sour Grapes

According to tradition the first revelation was chapter 96, then Mo waited 6 months and had chapter 68. The story goes on with Mo talking to himself in the cave, after he decided god likes him best (that was the last half of 96), but first it says Mo's not crazy, something that was actively under discussion around town.

Here's Mo: "They said I was nuts! Waahh, I'm not. I'm special!" and he calls on a book again for proof; in line 37, he's all "Who says? You got a book from god telling you shit?" Why would he ask that? He knew the Jews did have such a book, and the pagans in Mecca didn't. So he wanted to be like the Jews. So he needs a book. Not being able to read it poses a small problem, LOL! Book envy! And line 47 too,

(47)Do they have secret knowledge they write down? [hint hint like meee!! hint]. Fuck.

Then comes the most transparent middle school whining every JHS counselor is sick of, about how they won't let him do what he wants; they're every kind of bastard; and god will show them you just wait and see, fuck those guys, they're bitches, yada yada, I'll show them. Mo calls them: contemptible swearer, backbiter, calumniator, slanderer, the transgressor, the iniquitous, Crude, and above all, mean and infamous. Wow! He forgot to say they're poopy.

Especially that temple guard,

(12) Who hinders men me from doing good what I want. (14) Simply because he possesses wealth and children.

Ahh, it's the rich kid Mo's pissy at. And when he gets to the inevitable end part "I'll show him" he isn't just gonna kick his ass (lol, because if he could've he wouldn't be off sulking in a cave) no, God is gonna kick his ass!

"Me and whose army? God's army, that's who! Take that fucker!"

Looks like Mo was thinking big even in the early days.

With that off his chest, he tells a parable. These guys had a garden and they wouldn't share anything. When they went out to harvest, the poor people had snuck in the night before and took everything. So then they were like, "I guess it serves us right for being such selfish assholes". Wow, finally, a cool story with a moral and everything (even if it is just a thinly disguised rant on the Meccans). Go, Mo, now you're getting this prophet stuff!
It's verses 17-34, a whole third of the chapter, before it trails off into threats and whines again. This chapter is 30% moral guidance sandwiched between two thirds juvenile pissing and moaning. Is Mo a multiple? A Sybil of the Sands? What other personalities will come out? Stay tuned....

Secret Letters

OMFG, the first word of the chapter is NUN! Flashback to Catholic school, with Sister Cruella Dominatrix and her ruler. Once panic subsides, I see that this is not even a word, it's "one of the 'abbreviated letters' prefixed in some verses of the Qur'ân. Only Allâh knows its meaning". Oh, for Christ's sakes; "the inerrant and perfect Word of God [15:9] has random letters scattered through it and nobody knows what they mean! They're called Muqatta'at, and turn up in front of 29 of the chapters. Nobody has the faintest idea why. I tried to make a snarky comment on this, but my ridiculous-ometer just won't go that far.

Word is that none of these secret letters form a meaningful word, but NUN, that starts Surah 68 the Pen, is an exception. It is a real word, meaning either ‘fish' or ‘pen'. So you'll find people explaining it in the first line:

(1) NUN. By the pen and what the (angels) write. To mean:

(a) NuN is meaningless ,
(b) Nun, meaning ‘pen' gives the chapter its name
(c) Nun, meaning ‘fish' refers to verse 48 which mentions Jonah,...or...
(d) since it also can mean ‘inkstand', we get

(1) By the inkstand and the pen and that which they write!

"inerrant and perfect Word" Pffft! Here's another inerrant and perfect word that I like: Bullshit!

Abu's an Asshole

Still in chapter 96, once he's relieved Mo's Book Envy, the angel changes the subject to Mo's little problems, how some guys, not bringing up the camel guts incident, but just some guys y'know, keep people from praying the way they ought to. And how is that? Why just the way little Mo does it. What a coincidence. And then the angel says they'll kick that guy's ass, and Mo jumps up and makes a lot of kung fu moves, and acts out how him and god'll show that mean guard a thing or two. And the Angel says, "attaboy Mo!"
Then we come to this verse...

9. Have you seen him who restrains
10. A votary when he turns to his devotions?

If you didn't know better you might interpret this verse as a message to not interfere with other people and their freedom to pursue their praying without hindrance. LOL, Not in this book! The votary is Mo, and plenty of hadith gossip about that "him who". It was Abu Jahl, one of the Meccan Priests, who tried to keep Mohamed and his weird cult out of the temple. In fact, he was the guy who dumped camel guts on Mo while he was praying. Can't say I blame him much; there's been a few Bible-thumpers who made me wish for a bucket of guts.

And that's god's first great message to humankind, that Abu's a jerk. It's kind of a letdown. I'd expected more along the lines of "you peeps gotta to start lovin' on one another", but that's just me. Hey, who cares about world peace when there's Mo Mocking going on? Priorities, man.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Symptoms
1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance √
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited power, brilliance... √
3. believes he is "special" and unique √
4. requires excessive admiration √
5. unreasonable expectations of special treatment √
6. is interpersonally exploitative, √
7. lacks empathy: √
8. often envious of others or believes others are envious of him √
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes √
10. is named Mohamed, lives in the desert, starts a cult, has fourteen wives..

Start at 96

So anyway we start with chapter 96.

It's about Mohammed. No, it doesn't tell you this, you're just supposed to know it, you ignorant infidel shit. He lived in Arabia, and the Lord told him to read. Or an angel. Or it just told him, because there wasn't anything to read, and he was illiterate in the first place. Yes, the angel knew that, and if you keep asking questions you'll go to hell, we're at least clear on that point.

Let's back up and put these verses in context, as the moose-lims are so fond of saying when we notice their book tells them to kill us. So there's this guy Mohamed, ostensibly, who lived back in the camelfuck days of Arabia. His symptoms present as habitual interpersonal avoidance, going off to hide in a cave and pray, and dysfunctional social etiquette in the temple, for which he got picked on a lot. Seriously, you know you're not part of the clique when somebody dumps a tub-full of camel guts on you.

Central to our plotline, the ancient Meccans modeled their praying on Zoroaster, with a lot of bowing down and howling like in the Indiana Jones movies. Chanting, sensory deprivation, stress postures, emotional truama, these things induce-wait for it-hallucinations. Hold that thought.

Our story begins, in verse 96, with Mo in the cave, sulking over his latest humiliation in the temple. He's up there in the dark inducing altered states of consciousness, when-big surprise-an angel appears. With me it was more cute little pointy eared elf-looking things, but that was Psilocybin. Anyhow, this angel tells him to read.

Read what? Well, it doesn't say. You'd expect it to identify itself, say "I am the Ghost of Christmas Past'" but it doesn't do that either. Mo was no Charles Dickens. Supposedly it was the angel Gabriel telling him to read, also supposedly God has the koran written on stone tablets that he keeps in heaven.

85:21 ... is a glorious Qur'an. 85:22 On a guarded tablet.

See, proof! Tradition is that Mo was illiterate, so I tried to keep track when the Koran refers to a book, or writing, or God's word brought by the pen, but I ran out of toes and fingers in a hurry. For a guy who supposedly never bothered learning to read, he was obsessed with it. Everybody knows the Jews have a Book with God's word in it. And the Christians have another book with god's other word in it, but his moon-worshipping buddies didn't have any. And Mo can't forget it!

Any anthropologist can tell you how pre-literate societies revere writing as having special authority and even magical power, and how they elevate those who can read into a priestly status that sets them high above ignorant plebeian commoners like Mo. So Mo is jealous, he wants a book too, but he can't just write his own like L Ron Hubbard.

When Joseph smith pulled this same scam 1000 years later, he claimed the angel brought him tablets, of gold, mind you, not cheap stone ones like shabby old Moses, and took them back to heaven before anyone ever saw them. Mo's angle was, god has his own book up in heaven and he gave Mo a peep show. "But he couldn't read!" you say? Pffft, oh ye of little faith; that simply proves his story.

By mentioning the pen...attention is really called to the fact that the Prophet's prophecies about his own future and the fate of the opponents, which were already put down in writing, would prove that the Prophet was not mad, for the ravings of a madman could not bear fruit. It should be noted that the Holy Qur'an again and again challenges its opponents to write down their prophecies about the Holy Prophet, thus showing that its own were actually written down from the first; and thus this chapter, which is one of the earliest, conclusively establishes the truth that every revelation of the Holy Qur'an was put down in writing as soon as it was communicated to the Prophet. (A.A.I.I.L)

So neener neener neener. (Disclaimer: I didn't write that paragraph. Actual adult humans, living on their own outside of an assisted care facility, wrote that.) It just goes to show how people hold any written word in high esteem, and boy Mo needed some of that shit--- When you're scammin', don't say I hear voices, say I have seen the writing, on the wall, in the stall, the clouds, wherever. If people argue about what kind of writing, they're not saying "You are one crazy-ass mutherfucker."

They'll just go on thinking you read god's tablets even though you were illiterate. They won't even ask how come you never learned to read. Most people seem to accept that Mo never learned to read and was having people write things for him right up till the day he died. Wouldn't spending 23 years reading revelations off of God's Heavenly Tablets In The Sky be enough for anybody to figure it out? It seems to me that if God, Lord of the Worlds, The Beneficent, the Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgment, appears and the very first thing he does is insist that youyou'd put some effort into figuring out how. What happened to all that fear of God? Unless, ... unless...OMG!...what if,..if ...(Mo just made up the whole thi

Attack of the Clot

Everyone seems to agree that Mohamed's first vision was surah 96, The Clot. It's not a 1950's horror flick, it's the koran's genesis story; God created man from a clot? Well, in Arabic it sounds better, al-alaq, a clump of blood or some such, a 'biomass' which is better'n the Bible's crummy old lump of clay. But blood from what? There were no people yet, so it couldn't have been human blood, it could only be some sort of common ancestor. Ha! Take that creationists! I bet it was monkey blood. LOL!

Doesn't much matter really, since in other places he creates man from dust (3:59), fermented clay (15:26) semen (16:4) or a soul (4:1) and in (22:5) he goes wild and covers all the bases; "We first created you from dust, then from a sperm, then from a clot of blood, then from a half-formed lump of flesh," How did that work? Create, destroy, recreate? Infallible God just couldn't get it right the first time, Hmm?

You'd expect, with a catchy title like "The Clot: it's alive!" this chapter would have more to say about clots, or clottiness, or clotting. You'd be wrong. With a lack of logic that's already routine, this one single line,

2. Created man from an embryo;

is the only mention of any clottitude, and this is typical. If a word appears once in the whole chapter, that's enough to be a name for the whole thing. Wouldn't it be helpful if all books followed god's Mad Libs method?

Fundamentals of Psychology
Chapter 1. Of
Chapter 2. Were
Chapter 3. Single
Chapter 4. Are
Chapter 5. Association
Chapter 6. The

Chapter 7--batshit, Chapter 8--crazy. This guy god has a pretty fancy resume, but if personnel sends him up, keep him away from the copy desk at all costs. Have him sweep floors or something.

WTF is this Quran thing?

Unless you're willing to worship a complete fuckwad, it's pretty obvious that the Koran is not the revealed word of the Great Almighty God (GAG).

It's supposed to be god talking, but you'll never know that by reading the book because it never tells you. What kind of dipshit writes an entire book and never identifies the characters ? Scene Development = F!

So you find somebody to explain that it is god talking, and you read right at the beginning that god is worshipping himself. Then in the fourth line god says "You alone WE serve" If this means anything it means there is more than one god; saying such a thing is Shirk, the muslims tell us, the worst crime there can be. So god is committing the one sin that will doom him to hell. What a dope, god.

One functioning synapse is enough to tell you that someone else is talking TO god, so why didn't the translator write that? Maybe because the muslims want it this way. They even have a name for it, iltifat, and they're fucking proud of it.

...Muhammad had created an entirely new literary form ...

...The dynamic style of the Qur'an is an obvious stylistic feature and an accepted rhetorical practice. ...
...The Qur'an is the only form of Arabic prose to have used this rhetorical device ...

The fuck? In linguistics, we have a technical term for this 'accepted form' that's only in one book in the whole world: we call it "word salad". My cat box has things in it with more sense than that.

Then there's this thing called 'editing', where you get on the phone and scream at a publisher if they get the sections of your manuscript out of order. The early Arabs never figured out this 'editing' thing for their koran object; I don't call it a book because books have actual beginnings, and ends, with plots, narrative structure, at least chronology for chrissake. This is 6000 verses all stuck together at random, not in sequence, not arranged by topic, just pin-the-verse-on-the-donkey order. Supposedly they're arranged from longest to shortest chapter-as if that made any sense-but they couldn't even get that right:

Well, okay, ignoring that this is supposed to be god's perfect book, why is it like that? Tradition says that

When Prophet Muhammad used to receive a revelation, he dictated it to a Companion, who wrote it down on anything that was available: bark, stone, bones, leaves, etc.

wait...what? leaves? They wrote on bones and leaves? Papyrus had been around for 4000 years. It was invented in the Nile delta, and was a major export on the caravans going through their back yards, driving their economy; and they wrote on leaves? I think not. Tradition paints a picture of gathering everybodys' notes, like an unlabeled shoebox full of Gramma Flo's old photos, and dumping them in a pile. What tradition doesn't say is that they started grabbing whichever one they picked up off the top of the pile and made it the next verse. But tradition is all you've got, as there's no historical records, and everyone argues about the details, which is like nailing Jello to the ceiling. Usually, to back up their version of the koran they cite sources:

The Qur'an is the only divine book that God has sent

And how do we know this? Because it is written in Surah 5:

"To you We sent the Scripture (Book) in truth,(Surat 5:48)

Ha! I'll see your proof and raise you. Here's the proof that you're wrong.

Mohammed was a big fat fake.

And how can we prove this? Because it is written in Annotation 2.

The whole thing is really fucking stupid, because even a good account of how it was done doesn't explain why things were done that way, in the face of some pretty fucking obvious reasons why they shouldn't. Like good writing: Is it really necessary to tell us 40 times that God is forgiving and kind? Even once would be overdoing it: It's god, isn't that in it's job description? By the 33rd time he reminds us that he is all mighty and all wise, I'm not buying it.

It garbles up entire stories, too. I counted story of Moses and the Pharoahs in there 18 times, and the details don't match up. One time the Pharaoh drowns, another time he doesn't. Which is odd since the koranophiles constantly try to devastate us with this argument:

If it had not come from God, they would have found in it many contradictions (4:82).

No shit, Sherlock. Like this one:

2:253 Of all these apostles We have favored some over the others.

2:285 We make no distinction between the apostles.

Thanks to Kafirgirl for spotting that, but if I had a nickel for every contradiction in the koran I could afford fill up my gas tank. There is in fact a miracle in the holy koran, and it is that blatant contradictions obvious to an aphasic blind illiterate are invisible to moslems. Well, wait, they're not all invisible, there's whole schools devoted to the problem of "abrogation". Whoever's passing himself off as god said,

None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar (2:106).

Well, you all-mighty and all-wise and all-plural gods, why didn't you just say something better in the first place? The expert scholars' verdict on it is this: there are between 0 and 700 abrogated verses, although no one agrees on which ones, or what order they go in, and "This is the Scripture whereof there is no doubt(2:2). Oh, and if you don't interpret it correctly you'll be tortured in hell forever,--just BTW.

How about this for an explanation? While Mohamed was alive he rode serious herd on the cult, and if he wanted your opinion he'd fucking well tell you it. When you have absolute power you don't want anybody writing shit down or recording your emails. After he died and they had to start thinking for themselves, and couldn't, they were all like "What would our Master^® do? And they started arguing, and they still are, over little things like who got to be mo's successor, the shia or the sunni, which they fought over for 20 years and then had a civil war. Somewhere in that 20 years they set up a committee to standardize all the various versions of history that they they remembered, or claimed to remember in the interest of promoting their political faction. Memories got put down as Hadith (in some other book) or Surah (in the koran).

Hadith: somebody claimed to remember that Mo said something

Surah: somebody claimed to remember that Mo said god said something.



So why'd they end up with this weird ordering? Probably got sick of it and said "Fuck it! Just print the goddamned thing the way it is. I've got pussy waiting at home." It's hard to believe, but starting with Mo himself, moslems have been challenging anyone to produce verses better than the koran. It's the famous Surah Challenge:

If you are in doubt concerning that which We have sent down onto Our servant (Muhammad), then produce a chapter of the like thereof, and call your witnesses, supporters, who are apart from God, if you are truthful. (al-Baqara, 2.23)

Dude, I could eat alphabet soup and shit verses better than these.

What's this...

...book called "the Koran"?
Let's see...

Chapter 1. The Opening

(1) In the name of Allah, most benevolent, ever-merciful.
So, who is this? Traditionally supposed to be god speaking, so let's fix that:

(1) In the name of Me, most benevolent, ever-merciful.
(2) All praise be to Me, Lord of all the worlds,
(3) Most beneficent, ever-merciful,
(4) King of the Day of Judgement.
(5) Me alone I worship, and to Me alone turn for help.
(6) Guide me (O Me) to the path that is straight,
God, obviously, has issues.

(7) The path of those I have blessed, Not of those who have earned My anger, nor those who have gone astray.

Hmm; three paths. Which one am I on?

Chapter 2. The Cow

(1) ALIF LAM MIM.
WTF?? Schizophrenic babbling? God's prognosis is looking poor...
(2) This is The Book free of doubt and uncertainty,
Right after saying 'alif lam nim'? Seriously?
a guidance for those who preserve themselves from evil and follow the straight path,
Would that include me, I wonder? There's more...

(3) Who believe in the Unknown and fulfill their devotional obligations, and spend in charity of what I have given them;
(4) Who believe in what has been revealed to you and what was revealed to those before you, and are certain of the Hereafter.
Damn! It's a whole list. Let's see how I do....
(5) They have found the guidance of their Lord and will be successful.
Aww, shoot! I didn't make the grade.
(6) As for those who deny, it is all the same if you warn them or not, they will not believe.
Well, you could give us some evidence, duhh.
(7) God has sealed their hearts and ears, and veiled their eyes. God has fixed us so we can't get his message? What a prick.
For them is great deprivation.
(8) And there are some who, though they say: "We believe in God and the Last Day," (in reality) do not believe. (shorter verse 9-20, god hates them fuckers.) So...


... god divides people into (a) those whom he won't let believe him, (b) those who believe him without any evidence, and (c) those that only pretend to believe him. Only group B goes to heaven. I'm apparently in group A: doomed, and god won't unseal my heart and ears to change that. Sucks, but not much point reading the rest.