Break Time

I'm sick of the koran. It's stupid and evil. How about a cute cat picture instead?

From Tim. More here.

HMASQ

Chapter 42: more of the same tedious crap, for 53 lines. Here's how it starts:

(1) H. M.
(2) A. S. Q.

Both the first two lines are just random letters. Turns out there are nine chapters that have secret letters in front of their secret letters, so they all start with Ha Mim, then more letters.

You don't get actual words till the third line, and when you do get words, they suck. It's physically painful to keep reading the same things repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Verse 40 calls for an eye for an eye and says

41. “If one avenges himself after he has been wronged, there is no way of blaming him.”

so I guess we should all just quit bitching about the twin towers.

Right and Wrong

The next chapter in order of revelation is either 25 or 42, depending on who you ask. So, chapter 25 is...al furqan, which means a standard, or criterion for telling right from wrong. It's the straw man they always try to sic on atheists! Theists imagine that without god (or Mo's god) some world exists with just no way to tell what is right or wrong. People just eat their children and screw their dog because they just can't think of any reason why they shouldn't. It's a miracle people ever developed international trades routes and elaborate societies back before anyone knew it was a good idea to cooperate. We're so lucky that [favorite prophet] came along to tell us right from wrong, so we know to take care of our children and stuff.

But wait...back in Eden didn't they eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and learn what was right and wrong? That criterion's from way back before there was any Bible, let alone a Quran. What's different about this new criterion? Mo says to give alms, pray, and “walk with humility on the earth, and when they are addressed by the ignorant, say: 'Peace"(25:63). The moon worshippers were doing all that. The only real difference is that this new criterion says it's suddenly wrong to not believe Mohammed. In Mohammed's criterion. But according to the old criterion, they shouldn't believe him, they should put him to death. Would have saved everybody a lot of trouble...
To summarize the rest of the chapter,

Everybody else's gods are bogus; I'm god's messenger; nobody believes me; they'll all go to hell; they'll be sorry; god kills unbelievers; god can do anything; judgment day's a-comin'. (Repeat over and over.)

To keep from dying of boredom you can pick out weird things that don't match up. Like he doesn't say there aren't other gods, just that they don't have any power. They have to show up at the pearly gates too,

17. The day He will gather them together along with those they worshipped other than God, He will ask them: "Did you lure these creatures of Mine away, or did they themselves go astray?"
18. They will answer;"Glory to You. It was not worthy of us to seek any protector other than You. But You allowed them and their fathers a life of ease until they turned oblivious of the Reminder. They were a people impenitent.
19. (The idolaters will be told): "Your gods have refuted your assertion. You can neither avert your doom nor receive any help.

So much for the first pillar of Islam--“There is no god but Allah and all those other little gods in sura 25, etc...”

In some places Mo sounds just like a christian:

(63) Devotees of ar-Ramen are those who... ...do not fornicate (68).

LOL! I think old Mo did a little fornicating in his time! It's nice to know he'll go to hell for it, except, wait--

70. Except those who repent and come to believe and do the right, for whom God will turn evil into goodness, for God is forgiving and kind.
71. Whosoever repents and does the right, will have turned back to God by way of repentance;

You can get out of hell if you repent? I guess we aren't supposed to notice all the other verses that say just the opposite, like the last half of v19 up there. It's a buffet! You can find anything you want in the Quran, you just have to pick through a lot of old stale leftovers to find it.

Dinosaurs in the Koran

The picture in that last post really works for me. If you put a lot of livestock on a boat--a wooden boat--they're gonna break outta their stalls just as sure as water is wet, so Duh....this is how it would end: but it bothered me that the ark was on fire--it's not like animals throw bombs at each other. I just hadn't thought this through.

If cow farts cause global warming, it's a sure bet they'd cause ark-al warming. Methane comes from decomposing waste, and this article estimates the animals would have produced 25,000 tons of (sh)it, and the ark only had one itty-bitty window for ventilation, so this is how I picture it went down: one of the eight crew members, fumbling around in the pitch dark below decks, sticking his fingers into cow crap and dino snouts, gets fed up and lights a match. A giraffe lets one rip and blowtorches the match into a pocket of methane, sets everything on fire, blows the sides out of T-Rex's pen and seriously pisses him off. It ends as you see in the picture.
All perfectly logical; you don't see anymore dinosaurs around, now do ya?

Sura 36

Next in the Middle Meccan suras is 36, another one named for a typo, Ya Sin is just more ranting: nobody appreciates god for making everything; god will fuck you up. Here's samples.

7. paraphrasing, he says unbelievers deserve their sentence, then
8. “We will certainly put iron collars on their necks which will come up to their chins, so that they will not be able to raise their heads.
9. And We shall raise a barrier in front of them and a barrier behind them, and cover them over so that they will not be able to see.”

I'm betting that if a time traveler put a peter meter on Mohammed it'd go off the charts when he talks about Hell. He never goes into details about heaven though: Paradise, lessee... streams.... fruit... uhhh.... people being happy... BORinnnng. Some “”experts”” interpret this as saying what will happen in hell, others as as saying this is what god does to people so that they can't see the truth! Either way it makes god out a sadistic sumbitch. I don't need to interpret it, it paints a picture of an immature little brat who pulls wings off flies. Mo made his point in line 7, so the next two lines are just gratuitous violence, but he can't resist. People being tortured—WOOT!—here's how I'd do it.... (rapid breathing) ...

His abusive personality comes out again. God could have drowned people (43), blinded them (66), paralyzed them (67), but he didn't do any of those things, so that shows how merciful and kind he is. O thank you Master, for making the pain stop. Then it gets all emo, tells Mo “... be not grieved by what they say (76)”. Am I the only one this bothers? God supposedly has one shot at getting his message to all humankind, and this is it? Mo should keep his chin up? Why not send Mary Poppins? And don't look for pity right after you gloat about how you're gonna Ruin Our Shit.
Line 42 is funny though. Turns out god made extra arks besides the one Noah made. Maybe that's where they put all the dinosaurs?

41. That We bore their progeny in the laden ark is a sign for them;
42. And We made similar vessels for them to ride.

Mo Talks to the Trees ...

Really—Mo talks to the trees. Chapter 72 is a story of how some jinns heard about the koran and converted. A few commenters say these jinns were some group of people, although they can't agree on exactly who, but most of them just flat out believe there are actual real jinns running around, and they know they were really jinns because a tree said so! I thought this was just the wacko fringe element, but it turns out this is WHAT MOSLEMS ACTUALLY BELIEVE!! I'm just fucken speechless.


Y'know, when I started this project I thought Islam was just another religion, no more or less silly than any of the others. I thought the average non-radical muslim was getting a bad rap and I always stuck up for them. That position is getting harder and harder to maintain in the face of the fractal levels of ignorance and outright stupidity I keep seeing. The Koran may be turning me into an anti-moslem bigot; I hope not.

Anyhow, the chapter ends with this bit, which might be a clue as to why Mo wasn't getting any followers.

We're halfway through the Middle Meccan period. Mo was preaching in Mecca for about ten years, so by now he's been at it for about five. Hang in there, Mo, your ship camel will come in.

Mohammed Preaches the Bible

Here in the Middle Meccan suras we're infested with Bible stories. Mo maybe learned something from his little dustup over Uzza & Co. and now he's adopting the Christian model for his sermons. Between chapters 38 and 7 he's mentioned David, Solomon, Abraham Isaac & Jacob, Noah, Pharoah, and Lot; also 'Ad and Thamud, a couple of obscure desert kingdoms nobody cares about.

He's not very good at it yet. Both 50 and 38 told us to be like the Dwellers of the Wood, even though nobody knows who they were. In chapter 7, v124 has the Pharaoh crucifying people when there is no record they ever did any such thing, them not having trees and all. And v137 says all the structures raised by the Egyptians were destroyed. I could have sworn I've heard of pyramids and temples and stuff being over there. Especially Mt Sinai, even though v143 says it crumbled to dust.

(124) "I will have your hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, and have you all crucified."
(137)...whatsoever the Pharaoh and his people had fashioned, and the structures they had raised, were destroyed.
(143) ... when his Lord appeared on the mountain in His effulgence, it crumbled to a heap of dust,...

What's with all these inaccuracies? The pitch is that god has everything written down in a book up in heaven. This chapter refers to a book at least 14 times---v204 even calls it the Quran. (!!) Mo's all “Yer god sux, mine has a book!”
Well, our stupid old earthly Quran says the Thamud were destroyed by an earthquake(7:78), but then it turns around in 11:67 and says it was a 'blast from heaven'. So is god's book all fucked up or did Mo just copy it wrong? Seems like they could tell the difference; an earthquake I hear comes from underground; as in the underworld, aka hel, not heaven.

Aside from getting the details wrong, Mo leaves most of them out. His versions are usually only a few sentences, so this whole chapter just keeps using different names to repeat the same bare bones plot:

1. A prophet shows up,
2. people diss prophet,
3. God kills everybody.

It comes off as a lot of dick-waving, and then this line sums up nicely:

(94) There is not a region to which We sent a prophet and did not inflict upon its people adversity and hardship so that they may submit.

All-mutherfucking-merciful, that. And if that's not clear enough there's this charming tale by way of illustration,

(163) Enquire of them about the town situated by the sea where, when they did not keep the Sabbath, the fish came up to the surface of the water for them; but on days other than the Sabbath the fish did not come. We tried them in this way, for they were disobedient.

See, God gives people a choice: work on the sabbath or don't eat. They pass his trial if they starve to death while they sit watching all those big juicy Mackerel god taunts them with every Sunday. Then of course when they chose not to die of hunger, he

(165) ... inflicted on the wicked a dreadful punishment.

Well, why wouldn't he? It'll teach them sons-a-bitches to complain when allah feels like torturing innocent people to get his rocks off. You know what? Fuck you, Allah. And fuck you, Mohammed. Look—according to the Quran it's OK to say that:

7:180 "leave those alone who act profanely towards His names"

ROFL! Could this be any less consistent? And then it asks

7:184 "Have they not bethought themselves their companion is not mad?"

You'd have to becrazy to bethink he wasn't. Or bethink he wasn't a mean sonuvabitch besides.

(ps. Don't miss Kafirgirl's fisk of Ch7.)

Jinns Eat Shit.

The koran never even tells you who or what Jinns are exactly, but while I was researching it I found this bit, which is just too good to pass up. Silliest Thing Yet award, we have a winner!!

From Al-Bukhari, “the most respected and prestigious Hadith collection”.

Volume 5, Book 58, Number 200:

Narrated Abu Huraira:

... in the company of the Prophet ... I walked with him and asked, "What about the bone and the animal dung?" He said, "They are of the food of Jinns.”

ROFLMFAO! SO there you have it. Official Moslem doctrine teaches that the world is full of a lot of invisible shit-eating ghosts. Does that explain the grin on this little guy?

Iblis

Mo tells the story of Iblis in Chapter 38, and then repeats it in his next revelation, chapter 7. Then he tells it again in surah 2. And 15. And 17. And 18. And 20. When your book's too short, don't you usually write some new material, instead of just repeating chapters? But this is the koran so it's no use being reasonable.

I've corrected enough Freshman English papers to recognize the technique: you don't really have a clear idea of what you're trying to say so you keep repeating the same things over and over. Mo, maybe; but God isn't sure what he's trying to say? God needs Remedial Composition? Pfft.

I guess Mo just made up the Iblis story, because it's not in the Bible. The best translation is the one at Lolkoran. Of course, the real quran doesn't end with playing in the yard, it ends with burning in hell—Allah being all-merciful and shit. Here's the Cliff notes version:

(11) God tells the angels to bow down to Adam but Iblis won't do it,

(12)says he's better'n Adam cause he was made of fire, not clay like Adam.

(13-15)So God tells him to go to hell, but lets him hang around till judgment day.

(16-17)Iblis says “I'm gonna tell everybody what an asshole you've been”

(18)and God's like “Yeah? I'll send them to hell too.”

He comes right out and says this:

7:179 And indeed We have created many jinns and men for hell;

There you go; god created people just so he could torture them. All-Merciful, he is.

???

Just some questions:

If this book has a consistent message, it's to not make anything a compeer of god, by bowing down to it. So why does god tell the angels to do exactly that? Isn't Iblis obeying god's command here?

Being proud or insolent or whatever gets Iblis sent to hell, but then god is happy jolly with him causing people endless torture. Isn't god being a little bipolar? And what's the moral? Letting your kid be a serial killer is fine as long as they're not sassy? Is that where I've failed as a parent?

Who or what is Iblis? Everyone says he is Satan, but I don't see anywhere it says that. Plus, no one knows if he is an angel (7:17) or a djinn (18:50); the Koran says both. To weasel out of this we have—TA-DAH!!--the “rule in Arabic grammar called tagleeb”. At least Zakir Naik does, because every reference I find traces back to him: He's trying to claim grammatical gender determines the meaning of words. Now I don't know Arabic, but I know linguistics, and in nerd talk, he confuses generic masculine with quantifier scope. In ordinary people talk, his rule says “I am an ignorant jackass who doesn't understand grammar”: and somehow this proves that Iblis is not an angel. It's Islamic Logic!