the Quran and US Foreign Policy

This news story was a surprise, since we've just been reading about Magog and Gog in Chapter 18, and in 21.

^18:93 Until when he reached a place between the two mountains, he found beside the mountains a people who scarcely understood anything.
^18:94 They said: 'O Dhu al-Qarnayn, Gog and Magog are spreading corruption in this land. So shall we pay you taxes on the understanding that you will set up a barrier between us and them?'
^18:95 He answered: 'Wherever my Lord has granted me is good enough. But help me with your labour and I will erect a rampart between you and them.

^21:95 it has been ordained against every town that We ever destroyed that they shall not return (to enjoy a new lease of life)
^21:96 until Gog and Magog are let loose, and begin swooping from every mound,

That's it. That's all it ever says about those two bogeymen. There's more in Ezekial, but bottom line, nobody knows who or what they are, or where they are or Jack, although the article gives us a clue. 'Magog' was Big Shrub's nickname in the Skull & Bones.

OH HO, Little George has the inside scoop! The news is he tried to convince the President of France to join him in starting a war, because y'see the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were loose in the Middle East and they must be defeated. "This confrontation is willed by God,” Junior tole him, “who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins".

So there you have it. All you lefties who think American foreign policy is based on Oil? Eat crow. It's based on ancient Sumerian fables.

Somebody save us from these idiots.

R.I.P. Beethoven

Announcing the successful birth of a bouncing baby ... well ... blob, measuring a proud 5 inches in diameter, removed by C-section, where C stands for “Carve a ginormous hole in my back.” In the tradition of the Egyptian Pharoahs, who were provided with food for their journey to the afterlife, Beethoven took a nice steak with him, consisting of my entire quadratus muscle. Who needs one of those anyway? He also had them chisel off three projections off my spine (lateral processes), and took a little hip bone. You can't begrudge a guy a souvenir, not after he's given up his life so that I may live. He's so noble.

Thank god for love handles. The doctors found enough blubber there to fill up the excavation, after sort of sqwooshing my remaining muscles around. That was their medical term, sqwooshing, and I'm glad to be sqooshed, because it means they didn't transplant my shoulder muscle into my back or rearrange any other body parts. I like them where they are.

My hospital stay was a comedy of errors with a cast that ranged from Nurse Ratched to Florence Nightingale. They released me five days early, and sent me home where I'm now cuperating, not yet made it to the stage of re-cuperating, which I hope will be better. Recovery sucks.

They tell me the operation was a success, those non-puking guys with no drain tubes sticking out of them, who aren't all numb, or drugged up. Morphine, woo, what can I say? You wouldn't believe the dreams I've been having. Read H. P. Lovecraft. On the good side, all my parts seem to work right, and if I do Tai Chi absolutely perfect it doesn't hurt. Having this done earlier could have saved me years years of practice.

Now I guess I'm a cancer survivor. Do I get 10% off or something?

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Leave Not a Single One on Earth!

Sura 71, Noah, tells the story of Noah. Besides that glimmer of logic, it stays on topic for its whole 28 verses. Wow. Logic ! Consistency ! Approximately six people, hidden deep in the jungles of the Amazon, don't know this story and anyway it's just another clone of Mohammed's favorite topic, GWFYU, so I got nuthin' to say about it. I marked a few things, though--it mentions those seven heavens Mo visited in his night journey.

¹⁵ "'See ye not how Allah has created the seven heavens one above another,

Uhhh, actually, no, I don't see. Not even if I look up in the sky, and squint real hard. No heavens. Sorry.

Koran bashers have a field day with these:

¹⁶ "'And made the moon a light in their midst, and made the sun as a (Glorious) Lamp?

¹⁹ "'And Allah has made the earth for you as a carpet (spread out),

I'm not gonna pile on. Sure, it implies the earth is flat, and the moon isn't actually a light, but how literal do we have to be? You'll have a short and unhappy life if every metaphor you hear puts your diapers in a knot. Chill.

²³ "And they have said (to each other), 'Abandon not your gods: Abandon neither Wadd nor Suwa', neither Yaguth nor Ya'uq, nor Nasr';-

Those drowned people had gods named Wadd, Suwa', Yaguth, Ya'uq, and Nasr'. Who knew? Actually, a few super Indiana Jones type archaeologists or historians do know: those were gods worshiped by people back in Mo's day in obscure corners of South Arabia. That's interesting: Noah didn't worship them, and their worshipers all drowned, but thousands of years later people were still worshiping them in Arabia? It's almost like some Arabian guy made all this shit up.

Here's the real insult: Where's Uzza? You motherfuckers, how do you get off talking up gods of south Arabia and not mention the magnificent Star Goddess of the Mornings and Evenings and my two awesome sisters? We demand equal time. At least. Or I won't believe in you any more. Fair's fair, after all.

As usual, it ends with something bad.

²⁶ And Noah, said: "O my Lord! Leave not of the Unbelievers, a single one on earth!

Now that's a great prayer. Let's try it out. “O my Lord! Leave not of the Muslims, a single one on earth!” Nice, I like it.

“O my Lord! Leave not of the Christians, a single one on earth! Leave not of the Gays, a single one on earth! Leave not of the Blacks, the Liberals, the Gays, a single one on earth!” Get the red-headed and left-handed people too. And smite the fuck outta all those intolerant people too, Lord. Amen”

Keep in mind that when Noah was egging god on to kill everybody, HIS OWN SON was one of the victims. Speaking as one whose own son is dead, let me just say this: Fuck Noah. I flush better things down the toilet.

No More Blogging

Tomorrow is Beethoven's coming out party. I'm going down to the big city to get laid on a table (not as good as it sounds) and get carved up like a jack-o-lantern. The greeting committee on hand for Beethoven's first public appearance will include a plastic surgeon as well as real live ones to represent oncology and neurology, and someone to provide drugs, in which I plan to shamelessly indulge. I expect I'll get stoned and I'll miss it.

Beethoven will be running the show, as no one knows exactly what will happen until the actual face-to-lump meeting, where everyone will take their cues from my little buddy. They tell me there's like a twenty percent chance I'll come out of this as good as I went in. My body will joint the beaters on the back lot with the banged up fenders and missing parts, but complaining seem petty considering Beethoven's selfless gesture of giving up his life to save mine. What a pal.

My vacation package includes ten days food and lodging at the beautiful downtown hospital, with a devoted crew of attendants catering to my every need, from injections to wound drainage. If all goes well, and by 'goes well' I mean not dying, most of me should be back home on the 25^th. What's left will post an update then to tell you of all my fun adventures and whether I can play the piano; I keep asking the doctors if I'll be able to, after the operation, and you'd be surprised how many fall for it.

If there are no more posts on this blog, that probably means I didn't survive. Probably pissed Allah off, and you know how he is. Now is the chance for all muslims who find this blog offensive to pray that I die on the operating table, and if I don't, obviously it is Allah's will that I keep writing these posts. If there is a next one it should be before the end of the month.

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Limericks!

In response to this post, one of our commenters, Holydude of Mind Droppings, left this awesome limerick.

There once was a dude called Zaid
Who wrote shit that Mo said
After Mo kicked the bucket
Uthman said "Well... Fuck it"
'Tis time for the 72 to get Laid.

Great minds think alike--I've been making them too

It seems just a little bit odd
that Mohammed said he saw God
it brought him good luck
all the girls he could fuck
so I guess that his plan wasn't flawed.

There was an old man named Mohammad
whatever you do makes him how mad
a cartoon you write
or a titty in sight
sets him off on the path of jihad.

Mohammed said he saw allah
and made himself into a mullah
He says he's the best
he'll kill all the rest
unless they all follow shariah.

This book is just making me bored
even though it's the word of the lord
it's so full of shit
it was wrote by a twit
and it's driving me out of my gourd.

In Mecca there was an old coot
whose preachings just wouldn't take root
they needed some urgin's
he promised them virgins
and soon he was rolling in loot.

The whole Middle East's in a fix
the Jews and the Muslims can't mix
each side thinks they're smart
with all of their heart
but they both cut the ends off their dicks.

Heaven on Earth

Just got back from the swamps, haven't seen a soul for five days. Absolutely still and quiet out there, even to make a noise with the paddle feels like some kind of sacrilege. You can't help feeling awe and reverence, and a natural urge to express some kind of ritual of appreciation.

It feels like heaven, and I keep thinking how ridiculous Mohammed would be out here, with his gold, and his rich silk brocade.

I had gardens, streams, fruit and all that. The only thing that could make it better would be a loved one to reflect it all back to you, so you both share two of everything.

There are no such sentiments in the koran, though, and it makes me wonder.

How does THIS

get perverted into THIS?

Allah + Betty

Chapter 16 starts out all naturey like the earliest suras.

Premise 1: There's trees and bees and honey, ...
Premise 2:
Conclusion: Mohammed is right.

It covers all the same old ground, covers every korancronym ...

⁶¹ If Allah were to punish men for their wrong-doing, He would not leave, on the (earth), a single living creature:

The bunnies! Why won't someone think of the bunnies?

¹⁰¹When We substitute one revelation for another, and Allah knows best what He reveals (in stages), they say, "Thou art but a forger": but most of them understand not.

They don't understand how to get a lot of weak-minded gullible saps to believe you talk to god so you can get all the pussy you want. Some understand, like L. Ron Hubbard, Sun Yung Moon, Shoko Asahara--but he fucked it up.

¹⁰⁶ Any one who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters Unbelief - except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in Faith - but such as open their breast to Unbelief, on them is Wrath from Allah, and theirs will be a dreadful Penalty.

Just like the Irish Republican Army: “Once in, never out”. God will kneecap you if you try to leave.

¹¹⁰ But verily thy Lord - to those who leave their homes after trials and persecutions - and who thereafter strive and fight for the faith and patiently persevere - Thy Lord, after all this is oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.

Get your tickets to Afghanistan! Cheap air fares here. War crimes no problem, prosecution is off the table.

¹¹⁸ To the Jews We prohibited such things as We have mentioned to thee before: We did them no wrong, but they were used to doing wrong to themselves.

It's the Joos, the cursed Joos. They're in your dryer, stealing your socks!

...very last part is more passive ...

¹²⁸ For Allah is with those who restrain themselves,

LOL

Koran vs Bible

Category, Individual Verses

Koran

(9:5:) slay the idolaters wherever you find them,

Bible

Thou must not allow a single living thing to survive. (Duet. 20:16)

The koran only kills off all the idolaters, so the non-idolators still have a chance, but the bible kills everybody, so the prize for Worst Individual Verse goes to....... (drumdrumdrum) ......

The BIBLE

YAAAAAYYY ... the crowd goes wild ....

There is No God But Zaid

The Bible wasn't written by god. It says the Ten commandments were “written by the finger of god” (Genesis 31:18), on stone, no less. Ouch. But then Moses took the tablets with god's writing (Genesis 32:15-16) and broke them all to shit (Genesis 32:19).

Later god says he'd write Moses a new set with the same words (Exodus 34:1), but he lied. He told Moses a completely different bunch of stuff, and then had Moses write it himself (Exodus 34:27-28). So nothing written by god, sorry.

OTOH Mohammedans, like Linda Kulman, say that

“Unlike the Bible, the Koran was not written by men; it was revealed by God through the angel Gabriel to Muhammad over little more than two decades. The Bible, for its part, was written by many men, in multiple languages, and compiled over several centuries. Says Jane Dam-men McAuliffe, dean of the College of Georgetown University and general editor of the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an: "There's a whole process of collection and redaction."

According to Islamic tradition, the prophet Mohammed received divine revelations, starting around the year 610, and recited them in the public square. But since he was illiterate, he wrote nothing down. (Koran itself means "recitation.") At the time of Muhammad's death in 632, therefore, the Koran existed not as a written book but only as a memorized document, alive in the hearts of those who had heard the Prophet speak and as random notes they had jotted on bones or parchment. Compiling the text became the job of Muhammad's secretary, Zaid ibn Thabit, who completed the task between 644 and 656. The reigning caliph at the time, Uthman, declared Zaid's work the official version of the Koran and ordered all other copies destroyed. Since then, Zaid's text has been off limits to additions or subtractions of any kind.”

1. God told Gabe, Gabe told Mo, Mo told Zaid, and Zaid wrote it down.

2. It was not written by man, but by God.

Therefore, Zaid is god.

Gosh, who knew?

My Last Request

A date, we has one. The sawbones-i called and told us they're ready to slice 'n dice. They want me to come down and spill my guts, so to speak, on Friday 5/15, and to steal Beethoven away from me.

As a kind of ridiculous obsession, aka a hobby, I tend to build things like outrigger sailing canoes. Also, I like to go hang out in the wilderness, primitive camping and backpacking, and commune with the little pagan Gods: Fodos-Intuhsus, Dzerminh A-Tshon, Trancpirei Tsin, Graeviti, Phrtilliti, Laiyph, and Groath.

There's a 5-day canoe trail here through an old-growth swamp. With doctors talking about how I might come out of this all weak and crooked, it'd be easy to go all maudlin and say “This might be my last chance to ever do this”—OH, what a GREAT EXCUSE! I'll so use that. At noon,

Imma take this boat

put it in this river,

and be content with the life of this world like there's no tomorrow.

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Seeking Goddess

I need a new gravatar. Mine is the suck. It's just a copy of some old engraving, in black and white, and I don't even know where it came from. I'd love to have a cool looking kick-ass Goddess, but I have the artistic talent of swiss cheese so drawing anything myself is out. Anybody got any ideas?

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.

the Torah Test

Ok, girls and boys, we've read chapter 18 of the koran, and god has left us totally baffled with his perfectly clear and complete word. So we've plunged ahead into blasphemy and like, OMG, looked stuff up. Here is what we've found.

There's four stories: the Seven Sleepers, Jerk 'n Prick, Zal Qarnayn the wall-builder, and al- Khidr the murderer.

The fish story is just a lead-in to the murderer story, and that one doesn't go with the others. Here's how it went down.

Mohammed was bothering the pagans in Mecca, hanging around their main temple saying they were all full of shit and would go to hell, like if a hellfire Southern Baptist set up a tent revival in the Vatican. Instead of kicking his ass, or just busting it and throwing it in the slammer, the pagans went to the Jews for advice. They were all “We need a way to test this freak, see if he's for real?”

and the Jews were like “Try taking some really obscure stories from the Torah and ask him about them. If he knows this shit he's gotta be a prophet.”

Pagans: “Lol, good one. Whattaya got?”

Jews: “Ok, listen up. Ask him about the Seven Sleepers, and Zal-Qarnain; and ask him what the soul is.”

Pagans. “Soul, sleepers, Zal-qarnayn. Got it. Kthxbai.”

They went and asked, and Miracle of Miracles! Mo had the answers didn't know shit, (hold the Miracles) but he came back two weeks later after he snuck off and asked his Jewish buddy God revealed a revelation to him, and then boy he showed them boy. He recited the hell out of this chapter, y'know the one we just read and couldn't figure out what the hell it meant? That one.

And then they didn't kick his ass. Those were some nice pagans I'll tell ya, I would've just for his crappy storytelling. Anyway this chapter is his answers to the Torah Test. Verses 9-26 tell about the seven sleepers—you remember, those zombies we had to look up. The parable of Jerk 'n Prick in v32-44 are his answer to “what's the soul?” No wonder I couldn't figure out the moral—it's not a parable. It's a description. Of the soul. That it never talks about. Like this Leprechaun. Right here.

Then he tells the fish/murderer story, because when you have three questions on a test, it helps to write some totally unrelated essays right in the middle, your professors will appreciate it. Those're verses 60-82, and after them comes Zal-Qarnayn, that killer of muddy springs and builder of metal walls. He's not the same guy as the murderer in the fish story, he's an old myth that floated around in Mo's day, probly about Alexander the Great, but maybe Cyrus the Great, or Darius II, or Bill, or Fred. It's controversial, and by controversial I mean nobody has a fricking clue. But remember what god said, lol,

We did not leave anything out of this book," Noble Quran, Chapter 6:38.

That explains why, and by explain I mean totally contradicts, why the only other thing it says about Gog & Magog, is this little scrap:

(21:96) Even when Gog and Magog are let loose and they shall break forth from every elevated place.

Apparently they're still back there behind that metal wall that doesn't exist, doomed to keep breaking their nails on it until judgment day. They're mentioned in the hadith, but those came later; Mo got it from Ezekial 38-9, unless he went clear back to the Norse Tales of Asgard, where Loki lies struggling against the chains that hold him fast to the foundation stones of Midgard until the day he breaks free at the beginning of Ragnarok, the Doom of the Gods.

Much better story-telling, that.