Omar: the Encyclopedis is not a history book!!

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jan 22, 2006 at 18:00

Dear Omar:

Thank you very much for telling us readers how to get transliterations of Mulsim sources on-line, as if anyone cares.

But the careless reader that you are, did you ever ask yourself why did I comment on Nuray's transliterations? Hint: he cannot provide transliterations for a language that he has zero knowledge of. His Arabic is poor. And if he does provide transliterations (he peppers all his quotes from the Qur'an with his silly transliterations) he should provide us with the source or he is a plagiarist. So do you want him to be a plagiarist?

Then you babble something about the Hadith. What makes you believe (and read this with care which is not one of your virtues) that the hadith literature is indeed a true historical record for Muhammad's life and sayings? As in "what really happened?"

Hint: literary criticism of the hadith.

The same thing applies to the Qur'an. The Qur'an is a piece of literature (and it is a poor piece of literature) that we do not know very much about its context (in the words of Peters: the Qur'an is text without context) Did you ever hear of the words Tafseer and Ta'weel and do you know what they really mean?

The only way that you can approach the Qur'an is through literary criticism (Oh the two bad words again). And do you really know what this means? You told Nuray that you are from Egypt. I'm sure you know that this is what Prof. Abu Zeid was suggesting (all the poor guy said was that the only way we can approach the Qur'an is through the tools of literary criticism) until he was driven out of Egypt by Muslim fundies and was declared a Kafir. Now, do you understand why was I preaching Nuray about circular reasoning? The Trinity in the Qur'an was a case in point, but not all. But again Muslim theology is retarded.

So much for Islam!

Next: an Encyclopedia is a history book? You are kidding me. It might be good for high school projects but not in real life. So Are you still in high school Omar? So let me help you: an Encyclopedia is NEVER a history book (it is a book with a history behind it, not unlike the Qur'an) may be except for high school kids!!


Now let me give you the titles of some REAL historical work external (do you know what external here means?) to the Islamic Tradition about the history of early Islam, and they may help you in answering my questions:

1. Is that Allah thing really a pre-Islamic Arabian pagan deity?
2. What is an idol and what is idolatory, and kissing the stone thing?(my sources here would not help you in answering this question, as you need to do some reading in psycholinguistics).
3. Is Allah really the Moon God?
4. Is that Allah thing the same God of the Jews and Christians?

And here they are:

1. John Wansbrough's "Quranic Studies, Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretaion" This is a must reading for any student of the history of early Islam.

2. John Wansbrough's "Sectarian Milieu."In these two books Wansbrough uses all the tools of literay criticism as it applies to the history of early Islam, and the results are very surprising.

3. Hoyland survey "Seeing Islam as others saw it, a survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian writings on early Islam."

The most startling thing in this book is that the name of Muhammd does not appear anywhere in the literary sources of al-Muhajeroon (later to be know as Muslims) for 72 years after his death. How do you explain this?

4. Hoyland's "Arabia and the Arabs from bronze age to the coming of Islam"

5. Patricia Crone's "Meccan Trade and the rise of Islam" and in this book you will get to know more about Allah that pre-Islamic Arabian pagan deity, Hubal and all, and you will get to know that based on the historical eveidence Mecca was just a poor miserable place on the eve of the rise of Islam.

4. Patricia Crone's "Roman, provincial and Islamic Law" and after reading this gem of a book you would realize that nothing drops from the sky and this case it is the Shari'a.

5. For literay criticism of the hadith must reading would be:

a. Ignaz Goldziher's (and yes astaghfirullah he was Yahudi!!!) "Muslim Studies." This is a must read book for students of early Islam.

b. Joseph Schacht's "The origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence."

6. Patricia Crone's "God's Caliph" and "Slaves on Horses."

7. Micheal Cook's biography of Muhammad based on literary criticism of the sira literature. Real gem of a book.

8. You are from Egypt and must reading would be:

a. Herodotus' "Persian Wars." What does this have to do with the history of the Arabs? You will be surprised.

b. Must reading for Egyptians is John of Nikiu's diary (Yohanna of Pishati) circa 642 CE-690 CE. Pishati (Egyptian/Coptic the language of your ancestors), and no I'm not Egyptian I'm only a student of the history of Islam) Pishati was a very old town just north of today's Cairo. In his diary which is the only extant (do you know what this word means? Oh I forgot you can google it) literary source that we have available about the the Arab invasion of Egypt and the atrocities committed by the invading Arabs against your ancestors ( and do not even start: The muslim sources about the Arab invasion of Egypt, Muqawqas and all, are very late. Circa 9th century). And you can read about the atrocities of these Arabs against your ancestors the Egyptians. So much for Arabian imperialism/colonialism.

Now you come back and tell us what you find.

One final comment: The crimes of Islam against humanity are too many to count. The 9/11 atrocity was just another page in the annals of this sordid affair...

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