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Back to the Forum 2006
Archives In Mohammed Part 1, I briefly covered the life of Mohammed and the story of the origin of the Koran and Islam. Now I can look at the surprising (to us) overreaction of the Muslims concerning some silly cartoons. For sure, there were already enough reasons for Muslims to hate Jews and Christians. We might try to realize that Mohammed died in ad-632. That was a bit more than 500 years before the first crusade. This crusade was declared as a holy war against Islam by Pope Urbane II in ad-1095. When we read the bit of history concerning the crusades we find it truly was a totally unjustifiable holy war against Islam. Over a period of about 200 years several mobs of semi-civilized European fanatics rode out under the flag of the Church to butcher Arabs. The Muslims do not have a monopoly on the concept of Jihad. Now, about modern times and the insult. The fact is, the alleged insult is just an excuse for bad behavior. These people will behave that way, with or without an excuse. Of the three monotheistic religions that evolved out of the Semitic mythology, Islam has remained the most primitive and extremist. The modern Jews, to some extend, shook off the more primitive trappings of their monster God religion. Modern Christians also moved away from those vindictive concepts. This is not true for many Muslims. The defensive aggressive stance of these people is just a tacit acknowledgment of the fragility of their myth. This, however is only from the extremist standpoint. It is these extremists who have incited the Muslim rabble to their bad behavior. The problem is, they are much like the Christian fundamentalists. They make so much noise that most people perceive them to be far more formidable than they are. The point is, rabble do like to join a mob and their presence makes the cause look greater than it is. Sooner or later, we can expect the insanity to run its course. Then cooler heads will prevail. This could happen sooner if the local governments would act responsibly. As usual, however, they are reluctant to do so. As to the bad behavior, these fools are like all religious nuts. They will quote scripture completely out of context to justify whatever it is the wish to do. The fact is, the Koran contains no justification at all for this criminal behavior. In fact, there are copious admonitions about the evil ways of the Jews and the Christians in the Koran, but there are no incitements for murder and mayhem. The idea is that Allah will take care of the bad guys at the final judgement. Here is one quote about nonbelievers from "The Nightly Visitation" concerning unbelievers. This is Allah talking: "They scheme against you: but I, too, scheme against them. Therefore bear with the unbelievers, and let them be awhile." Here is another sample from "The Mantled One." concerning unbelievers. "Bear patiently with what they say and leave their company without recriminations. Leave to Me those that deny the truth, those that enjoy the comforts of this life; bear with them yet a little while. We have in store for them heavy fetters and a blazing fire, choking food and a harrowing torment. This shall be their lot on the day when the earth shakes with all its mountains, and the mountains crumble into heaps of shifting sand." Both of the above quotes are from the Koran as translated by N. J. Dawood in the Penguin Classics edition. The advice is clear. Leave those people to Allah. See to your own purity and faith. There is no place in the Koran where Allah says go burn down embassies or riot in the streets. There is none of that at all. Any punishment is to be done by the big honcho himself at the final judgement, just like in the Old Testament. Now, I must differentiate between Mohammed and the text of the Koran he set down. We must understand Mohammed was fighting a war for survival. Not only were his concepts of religion under attack, he was in mortal danger as well. So, he did things to survive and preserve his ideas. He killed Infidels of all types, but mostly Jews and Arab pagans. We can see that action as self defense rather than policy. As far as religious policy is concerned, there is nothing I could find in the Koran that justifies the murder of so-called infidels. Toasting infidels is something Allah will do at the final judgement. Even then, he won't kill them. He will do something infinitely meaner. He will keep them forever in a living hell. We must always remember that God, Allah, and Yahweh are different language names for the same mean Semite God. The point is, these modern Muslims who pretend to be justified through their religion for their butchery are liars. That is the truth. While I am dealing with the Koran, let us get some nonsense out of thee way. I have looked at the Koran, the Torah, and the Christian bible. All three are very similar in their language and style. There is some difference in the Christian New Testament that has to do with the mercy of God as opposed to the vindictive nature of God in the Old Testament. That redirection made this new religion more palatable to the Pagans of Europe and other areas. Okay, other than that, what about the message of these books. These bibles have all been lauded by many people as great poetry and prose. Some even call them prophetic literature. I myself was guilty of some of that before I actually looked at them. Then I undertook to read some of this crap. Crap is what I found. These books are not great poetry or prose unless something very important was completely lost in the translation. I doubt that. We can see them as poetry only if we see pulp fiction, dirty limericks, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and nursery rhymes as poetry. They are childish twaddle written to impress children and childlike people. Silliest of all is the Koran. The Koran is a set of simple minded mythological stories about the exploits and deeds of ancient heros liberally intersperses with endless ranting about the punishments of unbelievers and the rewards of believers. Some of the stories are simply rewrites of some of the old testament stories with a different slant. They positively drip with two of the isms modern Americans have come to abhor. Racism and sexism are key elements of these endless pages of ranting and raving. They are, after all, stories about the "chosen people." Poetry they are not. One thing is clear, however, this Koran was written for men, not women. Part of the reward for the faithful is to have bevies of high breasted untouched virgins available to them in the hereafter. They will also have soft couches to recline on with plenty of really good wine available and fruit hanging from the branches above them for the picking. Another great thing is they will be able to see the torture of the unbelievers and will be allowed to mock them. Isn't that swell? There are only three themes in the Koran which are repeated endlessly page after page. First is to worship and love Allah only with totally blind faith. Second is the list of wonderful rewards which await the true believers in the afterlife. Third is the litany of horrible punishments which will be visited on the unbelievers. The endless repetition of these themes makes reading the Koran a mind numbing boring chore. The rewards are such as an adolescent American boy, perhaps fourteen years old, would dream up. We have attractive, young, and willing virgins always available. These virgins, called houris, were created by Allah specifically for this purpose. I suppose we can visualize them as some kind of subhuman mindless fornication animals, more like sheep than human beings. We also have rich foods and sweet wines in abundance being served by young boys. We can suppose these boys to be some kind of Eunuchs. Finally, these true believers have nothing to do but lounge around day after day with no duties or responsibilities. What an interesting fun time that would be. The punishments are also from and adolescent mind set in their
extreme nature. We can picture an angry teenage boy visualizing
the torture of his tormentors. We are told that Mohammed had
this revelation when he was 40 years old. I can only conclude
he was somehow psychologically trapped in the passage from childhood
to adulthood. He never matured. This whole book is adolescent
in the extreme. How any adult could read it and believe it is
beyond comprehension. I suspect, the billion or so people who
believe it are like most Christians. They have never read their
holy book. My guess is a large number of them are illiterate
and cannot read anything.
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