what the Quran demonstrates

Submitted by Taj (United States), May 17, 2008 at 06:32

You have not said so explicitly, but Muslims resent any questioning generally and you have qualified that the questions cannot be presumptuous or prejudiced.

Plato that is too general to be remotely plausible, and I did not qualify that questions "cannot" be presumptuous or prejudiced - I stated that they "should not" be...

Or is it another of those stories concocted by the Jews themselves to defame Muhammad?

In part yes, in part it is bad reporting on the part of ibn Ishaq and others...historians examining the story have concluded that the estimates - which have varied from 600 to 900 executed - are hardly true...there's an interesting essay in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland from 1976 that explores this - of course this entails you making more of an investigation than what you might be accustomed to...

Regarding Aisha's age...if she were indeed 6 or 9, I personally would have no problem, however at issue here are facts...it is clear that Muslim jurists long ago made clear that the handful of hadith rendering Aisha's age as 6, which all come from one person, are considered unreliable, because this same person rendered hadith that were faulty at the same point where his memory was failing. Additionally, the same source of these hadith - At Tabari, also gives more reliable hadith that clearly show Aisha was older than 10 or 14 at the time of her marriage...There are additional hadith that render her as old as 19...so those who love to harp on the "evidence" of Aisha being 6 fail to either know or realize that there is much more and more reliable evidence citing her as older...go figure

Yes powerful persons remained unharmed like some of the hypocrites. But weak persons especially the old and women who could not defend themselves were assassinated NOT PUNISHED OR EXECUTED.

So, if that were true, how do you explain what Muhammad did to Zainab bint Al-Harith, who poisoned him? Or Hind, who commissioned the death of his uncle and cut out and bit his liver as an insult?

Regarding the story of bint Marwan, the classica scholar Ibn 'Adiyy long asserted the story untrue citing that narrators in the chain pointed to one of the chain as fabricating it...of course, the idea that a blind man crept into an enemy camp, felt his way into a crowded tent, assasinating someone and sneaking out unharmed is one that is easy to assume false...lol

The reality is that Allah is saying that He has created humans unequal by making men superior physically than women. He seems to have forgotten that He has created a good number of women physically stronger than men. Most African and Scandinavian women would be stronger physically than many south asians, Filipinos or men of the pygmy race. Is one supposed to run a test of physical strength to decide who will be given more responsibility??

lol...i guess we should throw in hermaphrodites and just conclude that men and women are simply equal - I'm sure women can't wait for men to start breast feeding - after all we do have nipples, no? How about comparing the strongest African woman to the strongest African man?

Have you forgotten how slaves are acquired? They are war booty, which means Allah has legitimized the acquisition of slaves, including women and children. The Koran is most certainly NOT establishing the virtue of abolition, it is doing exactly the opposite. The Koran legitimizes the use of slave women as concubines (remember the ‘right hand possession' thing?). How naïve do you think readers on this forum are?

Slaves were not just war booty - they were also bought and sold as commodity...Additionally perhaps you haven't read the Quran of you've forgotten such verses as in Suratul Balad: "And just what is the Narrow Path? It is the freeing of slaves" or 2:177, where "righteousness" is defined as spending for the ransom of slaves or 24:43 where the order to establish manumission is given...Perhaps the only naïvete here is yours in crafting arguments about what the Quran says when 1) you are a novice at knowing its content and 2) you argue with someone who excels you at it...

As for 18:57 it is clear to me, as held by the majority of commentators (ibn Kathir is just one of many) that the word "this" is reference to understanding how wrong one is who rejects God's signs

Sorry, still don't see how giving one's life for what they believe in is a "flaw"...

If Koranic verses have hidden meanings that only Allah understands then what is it doing in a book meant for humans? Unless the Koran also told us which the verses with hidden meaning were this would mean that Allah is trying to mislead us with those verses.

I answered that by stating that Allah does so to demonstrate to us our limits in comparison to His knowledge.

To show us His position of absolute knowledge does Allah have to put in verses in the Koran whose meaning is known only to Him? Can you name one verse whose meaning humans should not try to understand?

He doesn't "have" to do anything - He chooses to do whatever He wants...a clear verse in this vein is the first verse of the second surah ("Alif, Lam, Meem") or as another example, ayat an Nur 24:35

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