To dhimmi no more: history is not my forte

Submitted by Plato (India), Mar 3, 2007 at 08:19

This was was what I wrote:

'Read the Banu Quraiza story. You can of course argue that the history is suspect as some people have argued. But they are from the scriptures and history that are accepted across the Muslim world.'

033.026 And those of the People of the Book who aided them - Allah did take them down from their strongholds and cast terror into their hearts. (So that) some ye slew, and some ye made prisoners.

This is what I was referring to when I said they are from the scripture. My idea in bringing up the Banu Quraiza story was not to examine its historical authenticity or analyse it but to show up the character of the Prophet and his companions. The Banu Quraiza story is hinted at in the Koran and explicity mentioned in Bukhari (translation by Dr. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, Page 770-771). Mulims swear by both. Whether the incident happened in history is not the issue here but the fact that Muslims accept the authority of the Koran and the authenticity of Bukhari.

If you can prove that such a man as Mohammed did not exist so much the better. The rock on which Muslim belief is anchored would turn to slush.

"Now do you see why you must approach a text of history not as a book that tells you much about what really happened but about what the author _believed_ had happened. If you do not get this you would be beyond help"

In the sense you mean I would be beyond help. In our case what is important is what the author believed happened because today's Muslims believe that is what happened. They are not concerned with what really happened. So what I am trying to do is show the prophet, whom they believe is a paragon to be emulated, behaving in an utterly merciless and unethical manner according to the books they believe are an authentic record of his life.

Dhimmi no more, you seem bent on showing up my lack of proper historical knowledge, which I have admitted time and again. My posts are not in any way meant to be erudite and scholarly rendering of historical facts. All that I am doing is use the stories and facts that Muslims accept as history and use that history, false though it maybe, to question the basis of their belief.

"And shame on you for even questioning the validity of the Armenian genocide."

I went back to my posts to Ianus and this is what I could find. Does any of it invalidate the Armenian genocide? Maybe I have missed out or forgotten some post of mine where I invalidate it. If I have I beg pardon. Reproduced below are what I believe are the relevant portions of my posts:

23/02/07

But your using the term Moslem Turks is of a piece with the use of Christian Nazis by Mulims to deflect accusations of atrocities committed by Muslims. You will be weakening your case about Muslim atrocities, which are practically numberless, if you let a secularist Ataturk's massacres take on the colour of a religious attack.

Now if the Ottoman Empire was still in existence and the Ottoman Caliphs being the religio-political head of Muslims, the charge that Muslims because of their religion were responsible for the massacres would hold water. Or if the Turks under Ataturk said they were exterminating the Greeks because of their religion.

25/02/07

You will be weakening your case about Muslim atrocities, which are practically numberless, if you let a secularist Ataturk's massacres take on the colour of a religious attack.

02/03/07

My problem has nothing to do with your description of the nature of the Turks under Ataturk. My contention is that by bracketing Ataturk's atrocities with Muslim atrocities will bring up the Nazi ones. He may have considered himself a good Muslim but in the larger Islamic world he is seem as someone who took Turkey out of the Islamic world....

By bringing up the Armenian genocide as an Islamic one when Turkey had by then, at least at the government level, jettisoned Islam as a state religion and tried to adopt Western values (probably unsuccessfuly at the mass level) the Nazi ones will and is brought up by Muslim apologists as a Christian one. There are enough and more Muslim atrocities admittedly committed in the name of Islam from day one for the Ataturk one to matter in the larger picture.

You wrote:

"But they are from the scripture

No, this is bogus reading of the Qur'an. ..."

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