Slavery & Stupidity

Ch 90: the City

This time Mo swears by 'this city'. Which city? Mecca, of course. Why Mecca? Because Mo was greedy and jealous and wanted to take the place over? Naw, because...uhh...something. Anyway,

...shorter ch 90 = I've told you the way to avoid Hell: free the slaves and feed the hungry. Interesting theme considering Mohammed had more slaves than he knew what to do with, and Muslims are still capturing slaves in Africa. But see, he didn't just say “free the slaves”, he said do it so “that he become of those who believe (v17)”, and if he doesn't, fuck him. You get to be moslem or a slave. Or a corpse. Pretty shitty chapter.

But then comes Chapter 86, the Night Star, with its backtracking on the number of angels, and then this gem:

Ahmed Ali translation:

5. Let man consider what he was made of:
6. He was created of spurting water
7. Issuing from (the pelvis) between the backbone and the ribs.

Spurting water? That comes from WHERE? Some other translations:

(6) He is created of seed poured forth,
(7) issuing from the loins, and the breast-bones.
(6) He is created from a jetting fluid,
(7) Which issues forth from between the loins and the breast-bones.

Seed, fluid, water, whatever--it's poetry, right? I can live with that, but at least on non-muslims it doesn't issue from where they say. There are a lot of explanations for this, and here is way more information than anyone could want, and also on the 'man was formed from a clot' business. If you don't want to wade through all that, the short take is it's an argument between (a) modern science, and (b) dumfuckery. Batting for “Islamic Scholarship” (cough) on the dumfuck side we have Munit Munshey, who proclaims,

"Semen DOES NOT COME from the testicles, period!"

Ooooo-kay! Do you want to see more of his stuff? Good, I thought not.

Once again, the Quran presents a clear choice. If God is not colossally stupid, it's a problem if he wrote stupid stuff: you can say it's not stupid, or invent stupid reasons why it is stupid, either of which makes you look stupid, because god acting stupid would be stupid. OTOH, if Mohammed wrote the book, it says exactly what you'd expect, and there's no problem. It's obvious to me that god didn't write the damn book—but maybe I'm just stupid.

The last line is another clincher;

86:17 So give a respite to the disbelievers. Deal thou gently with them for a while.

BULLSHIT ALERT! Mo & Co. always whine about how the disbelievers persecuted Mohammed and his followers, so why would he be asking his followers to give a respite to the disbelievers? Who was being persecuted again?

For an exact parallel Google the early history of Joseph Smith and his cult. Non-Mormon histories tell how Joe was a fortune-hunting con artist and a minor criminal who harassed everyone around him, was arrested several times, even tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. He packed up and took his followers to another town to repeat the whole process.

Mormon histories, OTOH describe a godly man who preached the truth to unbelievers who in return persecuted and even tortured him and his followers, driving them from the Kaaba and eventually from Mecca itself....no wait, I'm getting Joe and Mo mixed up. They're so fucking similar who can tell the difference? The only important thing is that in Joe's case we have a paper trail that tells both sides of the story, whereas Mo's cult succeeded in wiping out the opposition. Not that the Mormons didn't try. The mob that eventually lynched Joe was pissed off after the Mormons burned down a newspaper for saying bad things about his cult. Uthman, anyone?

Somehow I'm supposed to ignore the fact that their own goddamned historians tell how they're lying!!! How come every nickel these people had isn't in a bank account in Nigeria?