Our dear zzazz and history 101 and Alaha/Allaha and Allah and Elohim

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Mar 1, 2008 at 21:25

Listen you are debating a topic that is really beyond you, but you wrote this

In short, I think Daniel Pipes is right. Some of you can scream all you want, but these traditions share an awful lot more in common than many adherents of each of these faiths are willing to admit.

At last you are making a point that makes some sense, but I suspect that you had no clue as usual that you were making a good point

Well there is no doubt that in John Wansbrough's literary criticism of the Qur'an and the early Muslim literature including Ibn Hisham's redaction of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah and al-Maghazi by Waqidi he indeed places Islam in the Judeo-Christian tradition (Gasp!) He views Islam as the end product of the sectarian debates in a Judeo-Christian milieu, but in the process he also detaches Islam from Arabia and Muhammad from the Qur'an and he places the origin of Islam where it really belongs and that is in In the Middle East and outside of the Hijaz (Gasp again)!

The concept of jahiliya (read this as historical discontinuity) proposed by the islamic tradition cannot be supported from the historical evidence we have and yes indeed "old civilizations are never conjured away" and the alternative is what C. Becker had suggeted in his much celebreted saying: "It is bizarre but without the Greek civilization there would have been no Islamic civilization" and it is all about historical continuity.

What is really surprising about Islam is that when one reads the Qur'an alone without any commentaries, it does not make any sense. You cannot even reconstruct the life of Muhammad by reading the Qur'an only.

Then we have all these strange words that no one seem to know not back then and not now the likes of the word Ilaf in Surat Quraish or ababeel and sijeel in Surat al-Feel or the strange word Kalala and what do these strange letters at the begining of some Suras really mean? No one have a clue. And did Muhammad eat bad 3asl Nahl (see Ibn Kathir) or did a person by the name of Maria al-qibtiya indeed exist? and it cannot be both (see Q66) and is the rasm of the word MLK in Surat al-Fatiha Maaliki (see the Cairo 1923-1924 edition of the Qura'n) or is it Maliki (see the Tunisian 1969 edition of the Qur'an) Muhammad must have heard it as either as Maaliki or as maliki and it could not have been both and all of these anomalies point out to the following (see Michael Cook):

1. In the 3rd century of Islam when the 3Ulama sitting in distant Mesopotamia and Iran were trying to understand what the Qur'an is really saying they had no clue and to this day we can only guess what this opaque revelation is really saying. So much for the Qur'an being a kitab mubeen maktub bi 3Arabi fasseh

2. The Quranic logias and pericopes pre-date Muhammad because by the time of his death in 632CE no one seem any answersto any and of all of the above puzzeles and this indeed detaches Muhammad from the Qur'an

3. Or that the Qur'an indeed existed as circulating logias and pericopes and it was not canonized for another 200-300 years after the death of Muhammad (in distant Mesopotamia) as is suggested by Wansbrough and the clear evidence here is that masoritic exegesis of the Qur'an only appeared in the 3rd century of islam. And this detaches Islam from Arabia

So what is the rule of the Arabs in their own civilization? It was marginal at best and they did what they always did best and that is to fight and to loot and to destory great civilizations of the late antique period to to brutalize your Hindu ancestors and to give 1/5 of the loot to Allah and his rasul! .

Now our dear zzazz did you understand what I wrote or not?

So here is your bonus question for today: why do Christian Arabs call their god , Jesus that is, Allah in their Arabic translations of the Bible?

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".