No divine revelations for sexual crimes - Reply to Scholar

Submitted by John Bastile (Malaysia), Nov 27, 2005 at 19:53

Scholar,

Referring to your weblog dated November 26, 2005 at 12:49. Yes, I'm glad that you are starting to enjoy this. I value your arguments. They are structured and not emotional.

1. Polygamy.
You mentioned that "god allowed great prophets like David and Solomon to have multiple wives".

I have to correct you. David and Solomon are kings – not prophets. A prophet is a messenger of god. For example, Adam is also not a prophet. He has no people to send a message to. Mohammed got a lot of things confused when he borrowed our scriptures. By the way, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is not the sister to Aaron. Of course, the Trinity is not between God, Jesus and Mary. Okay, okay, he was an illiterate so he plagiarized wrongly.

A bit of history. The people of Israel were surrounded with kingdoms so they wanted to have a king as well. After relenting, the prophet Samuel anointed one. Thus, the people now have kings. Nonetheless, kings or prophets – they are not above the divine law. When King David had arranged for one of his soldiers, Uriah ‘killed in action' so that he could possess his wife, god punished him. So please, we don't uphold polygamy just because some kings wanted to have more than one.

You may not understand this, that's because whenever your prophet, Mohammed committed a sexual crime, Allah will rescue him with divine revelations. Zayd, your prophet's very own adopted son, has to divorce is wife so that he can then marry her. Imagine a man has to say to his prophet these words- "Perhaps Zaynab has excited your admiration, so I will leave her.' (Source: Tabari VIII:2). There is a quranic verse to justify this.

You must understand that we subscribe to both divine laws and church laws. Church laws are man made. They change when the community of God's people progress forward. We progress because we are the stewards of Earth. Divine laws do not change. For example, the Ten Commandments are divine laws. Christians do not exist during the period of the Old Testament. We hold the Old Testament more as a history book than to hunt for divined laws in small paragraphs. It was there as a period where between Adam and Jesus (the last Adam) where God said that Adam had sinned and caused death. Jesus has to die to give Life. Therefore, we look at the New Testament. I'm sure you know the meaning of the word testament. Therefore, you should not be confused why "Christians distanced themselves from the Old Testament".

2. Science
You said that "I would always take god's word against science when there is a conflict."
For me, I see God in Science. When my wife was expecting a baby, I did some studies on pregnancy. I cannot stop marveling the way the human body works. Life is still a miracle to me. Scientists may explain the process and how it works. It does not challenge that God doesn't exists. I look at the complexities of the human body, with emotions and soul. No way this is all about pure evolution. We are the evidence that god exist.

Your statement however is not wrong. But when taken in a wholesale manner, you can understand why muslims countries do not progress scientifically and economically. You can understand why the only education that most muslims receive is the teachings of the Quran and little of anything else.

3. Mistakes in Bible and Quran
You pointed out mistakes in the Bible and I can point out mistakes in the Quran. One difference that I can see is that when the Bibical verses were quoted, mistakes were not visible. Mistakes that are not material to divine laws are okay since the bible is a collection of writings written by man. The book didn't fall from the sky. Anyway, we don't have a system where god's perfect messages were whispered to an illiterate man only to be announced to a group of caravan raiders which were recorded decades later.

When words of Mohammed were quoted, they were immediately challenged but were subdued either with a bullshit explanation (like in the case of Mary being the sister of Aaron), divine revelation (like the case of the prophet given the right to have sex with anyone he desires in Surah 033.051 "..you may take to you whomever you desire…It is no sin.") or by military conflict (in the case where the inheritance properties were challenged when the your prophet died)

By the way, our beliefs are different. For example, the stories in both religions differ:

Bukhari:V4B55N616 "Allah's Apostle said, ‘The Prophet Moses was a shy person and used to cover his body. An Israeli insulted him, saying, "He covers it because of some defect like leprosy or scrotal hernia." Allah wished to clear Moses of this allegation, so one day he took off his clothes, put them on a stone and started taking a bath. When he moved towards his clothes the stone took them and fled. Moses picked up his staff and ran after the stone saying, "O stone! Give me back my clothes!" He reached some Israelis who saw him naked, and found him to be the best of what Allah had created. The stone stopped there and Moses took his garments and started hitting the stone with his stick. By Allah, the stone still has some traces of the hitting, three, four or five marks. This was what Allah meant when he revealed the surah saying: "O you who believe! Be you not like those who annoyed Moses. Allah proved his innocence of that which they alleged."'"

You see, we don't have the story of a running stone that was later beaten.


4) The argument of the fruits of the tree.

The principles of Christianity are about Salvation and Love. We follow verses such as "For God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son", "Died on the Cross so that we may Live", "Love you neighbour", "Forgive others".

We, of course, have followers that deviate from these principles in pursuit of social, political of and other agendas. They became racists or fanatics. Yes, be wary of deviants of the religion.

The principles of Islam are about the 5 Pillars and Reward in Paradise. You follow verses such as "Covert or kill all infidels wherever you find them", "Follow the rituals of life – prostrate 5 times, fast, memorise verses", "Die as a martyr and you shall have perpetual virgins"

Of course, you have followers that deviate from these principles. They become peaceful people, they become hospitable and are morally strong. Twisted morality at times, but mostly okay.

We are only worried about the true followers of fundamentalist Islam.

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