The qur'an

[Autodidact]

This person has not understood the Quran. He is just spewing hate. As far as I know of him, his writings have a bias towards Christian fundamentalism. I class him along with other hate-mongers and not worthy of serious discussion.

I think the only so called scholarly people who have praised Warraq are other anti-Islamics, which indicates his lack of scholarly repute.

Regards

I'll wager he knows more about the qur'an and its scholarship than anyone on this site. One thing you cannot pin on Mr. Warraq is ignorance; the man is extremely erudite.

 

[croak]

I can only read the qur'an in English, because that is the only language I read. The majority of the world's Muslims do not speak even modern Arabic, and a tiny number can read Classical Arabic, which the qur'an is written in. Classical Arabic, like other semitic languages, is written with consonants only, and the form of a word, or sometimes which word, depends on implying the vowels. For this reason alone, the text is ambiguous. Most people who rely on it memorize verses in a language they do not themselves understand.

It contains words, phrases and entire passages that are ambiguous and obscure. Experts argue about the meaning of key words, such as jihad.

Further, it contradicts itself frequently. There is an entire subject of scholarship and doctrine to deal with this, which is called abrogation. The idea is that later passages cancel out earlier ones when they contradict them. Why God would give us contradictory passages to reconcile is unclear. The problem is, the book is not written in chronological order, so it takes a certain level of expertise to figure out which ones come later.

Most Arabs don't speak Modern Standard Arabic either; they speak dialects. Educated Arabs learn MSA, but it is more of a literary language. For more information on that: Diglossia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Moving onto the difference between MSA and Classical Arabic: there isn't much difference other than in vocabulary. MSA is a direct descendant of the latter. Therefore, people who know MSA should be able to read through the Qur'an with little difficulty. For more information on Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Classical Arabic and MSA are written in the same alphabet, which yes, is a consonantal alphabet. I don't disagree with anything else you have said.

That raises more issues. Remember, this is supposed to be the one way that God chose to communicate with us. So He choses a language that's so hard to translate that all the translations are really hard to understand?

Further, I would think the problem is even worse in Classical Arabic, because very few people understand it, so most people are struggling right there. But to make it worse, Classical Arabic is particularly difficult to understand in written form, because of the way that Semitic languages are recorded with consonants only. You basically have to take your best guess as to what the word is. What I mean is, you have the basic form of a word, say it's "writing". Depending on the vowels, which are not written, the word might be "writing" "write" or "writer."

I think you're confusing word roots and the use of vowels.

Let's take 'writing'. I'll use Wikipedia's provided transliterations and type some of the words in Arabic so you can see it for yourself.

For example:

• kataba, he wrote
• yaktubu, he writes
• maktūb, written (words)
• kitāb, book
• kutub, books (broken plural)
• kitābah, writing
• kitābāt, writings (feminine sound plural)
• maktab, desk
• maktabah, library
• kātib, writer
• kātibūn, writers (masculine sound plural)
• kuttāb, writers (broken plural)
• miktāb, writing machine

These words all have some relationship with writing, and all of them contain the three consonants KTB. This group of consonants k-t-b is called a "root." Grammarians assume that this root carries a basic meaning of writing, which encompasses all objects or actions involving writing, and so, therefore, all the above words are regarded as modified forms of this root, and are "obtained" or "derived" in some way from it.

Source: Classical Arabic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He wrote (kataba): كتب
He writes (yaktubu): يكتب
Writing (kitaabah): كتابة
Writer (kaatib): كاتب

The problem with vowels is that the short vowels were not written down (a, u, and e to use rough approximations), and usually aren't (exceptions nowadays are in Arabic books for children, situations where words might be confused). Long vowels (aa, oo, ee) were always written down, as far as I know, otherwise we would have a much harder time of figuring out things.

For a specific problem related to the use of vowels using the verb 'to write', let us take the word 'kataba'. The a's are all short vowels, so what is written is three letters: k-t-b. Most of the time, the odds are the word is referring to kataba. However, how do you say 'someone wrote'? Kuteba. (If I remember correctly.) Since those are all short vowels, all you see is k-t-b. So how can you tell the intended meaning? The use of diactrical markings (to show short vowels) or by context.

Most of the time, it's not an issue.

I hope this post was of some use.

 

[croak]

Really? So, why have muslim countries been the most notorious slavers since antiquity, even after others had stopped? Have you never heard of the Barbary states' slave raids throughout the Mediterranean and even so far away as Iceland? Have you not heard that muslims are still at it in some places?

The holy texts do not count. What their followers do counts.

It astonishes me that muslims dare to make such statements. Is it ignorance or astounding hypocrisy?

It astonishes me that people are unaware that slavery is still alive and well today. It might not be as open as it was a century ago, but rest assured that it is still a common practice. As for being the most notorious slavers, I don't know about that. I'm quite sure that a great many societies have been involved in slavery; maybe the Muslims were great at capturing people to sell them as slaves to Europeans, for instance?

Some organizations fighting to abolish slavery:
Not For Sale: End Human Trafficking and Slavery
HumanTrafficking.org: A Web Resource for Combating Human Trafficking in the East Asia Pacific Region
Abolish Slavery, Free Slaves, Stop Human Trafficking, Retrieve Children From Slavery | The Abolish Slavery Coalition
Polaris Project | Combating Human Trafficking and Modern-day Slavery

Just a little food for thought.

 

[Autodidact]

But that is mainly a matter of opinion. I might cite verses, some people would find them horrible, others might find them beautiful, i can't see it accomplishing much.

Do you share this same opinion with all the Muslims who tout it as the most perfect, noble, book, the word of God? Or is this only for critical views?

Also a book should or at least best to be read entirely in order to make a fair judgment.

When I find something not to my taste early on, I generally do not continue reading it. Also, it's not like the overall order or theme helps, since it doesn't really have one. It's pretty much in arbitrary order more or less of when Muhammad is supposed to have "received" them.

However, its not really a problem for me the fact that people might find the Quran generally not that good of a book, but rather what bothers me (as the case with the author you quoted) is not making a balanced assessment. As in stating the positive and the negative. Won't hurt anybody neither if it was in a respectful manner, there is no need to be insulting about it.

Again, when Muslims tout and praise it as proving Islam to be true due to its amazing, miraculous, wonderful nature, do you ask them to balance their view with criticism? In any case, the qur'an's adorers take care of the praise issue; what's missing is someone brave enough to criticize it.

 

[croak]

I'll wager he knows more about the qur'an and its scholarship than anyone on this site. One thing you cannot pin on Mr. Warraq is ignorance; the man is extremely erudite.

I skimmed some information on Ibn Warraq (a grand total of his Wikipedia page and links to summaries of his work on Wikipedia), and he doesn't particularly come across as a scholar to me. It seems most of his works consist of edited and translated works by other people.

The Quest for the Historical Muhammad (Ibn Warraq) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam
What the Koran Really Says - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not to mention the criticisms of those works seem rather scathing. Religious studies professors, a non-Muslim Islamic scholar... it doesn't look like knee-jerk criticism.

As for his educational background:

By 19 he had moved to Scotland to pursue his education at the University of Edinburgh, where he studied philosophy and Arabic with Islamic studies scholar W. Montgomery Watt.[9]

Source: Ibn Warraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He studied philosophy and Arabic... why not Islamic studies? It sounds like he is writing about matters outside his field of expertise.

To be honest, the more I read, the less I feel he deserves to be described as erudite.

Fun fact: you can't actually say Mr. Warraq. His pen name means 'son of a papermaker'. Basically, you are insinuating that 'Son of' is a valid first name. The correct form would be Mr. Ibn Warraq. Arabic names are rather interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_nameshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_names

 

[Autodidact]

Except Islam condemned slavery and paved a means to its abolition.

1. What the qur'an actually says on the subject:

33:50 O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those whom thy right hand possesses [slaves] out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee;

16:75 Allah presents an example: a slave [who is] owned and unable to do a thing and he to whom We have provided from Us good provision, so he spends from it secretly and publicly. Can they be equal? Praise to Allah! But most of them do not know.

2. Muhammad, after whom all Muslims should pattern themselves, owned slaves.

3. There are hundreds of hadith on the subject of slavery, describing how to treat slaves, what kind of sex you may and may not have with them, when you should and should not free them, and so forth. If you like I'll quote a few dozen.

4. For 1000 years, Muslims were the world's leading slave traders, capturing, enslaving and selling human beings from Kazakhstan to Angola, wherever unbelievers could be found and caught.

Paved a means to its abolition? What does that even mean? Had Allah wanted to prohibit it, He had merely to do so. According to the noble qur'an, He did not choose to do so.

You have not misunderstood the meaning of the passage, just the reasoning behind it.

I agree the qur'an is extremely difficult to understand, which is a real drawback for a book that's supposed to tell what God wants of us.

 

[Autodidact]

Would you have preferred that the Prophet divorce five men and leave them penniless? How brash.
[/color]

I would have preferred that He outlaw slavery, especially sexual slavery. This would have saved millions of people from lives of misery and degradation.

 

[Autodidact]

2) About slavery. This was a tradition or custom that was deeply rooted in that society and other societies too, an accepted thing of what was considered a good society world wide. So, eradicating it and fighting it, had to be something of a procedure done on more than one step (this was done with other things too).

Because Allah is powerless to make prohibitions?

First, by establishing rules or constrictions to make life easier and better for those slaves, and to change how they're viewed and considered. Eventually, the aim is indeed to eradicate this.

Where does it say that in the quran?

And Muslims did in the end play a role in this process, by freeing their own slaves and buying slaves from others and then freeing them, thousands of slaves were freed this way.

But mostly they captured and enslaved free people, and sold them to others. Millions of them. For centuries. In fact, they're still doing this in Sudan to this day.

Now, the fact that it didn't stop in general and was unfortunately practiced by Muslims centuries afterward, doesn't mean that its okay. Note that it has survived up until very recent times in other societies as well.

Can you produce a verse or hadith that prohibits slavery?

Seems to be the quran is extremely flawed, worse than flawed, actively bad. Not only does it fail to prohibit slavery, but it regulates it, tells us exactly how we are to practice it, when to free slaves, and so forth. If it were up to the quran and Islam, slavery would be still legal. It wasn't Muslims who lifted a finger to prohibit slavery around the world; it was secular, Enlightenment forces--the ones so many Muslims today condemn as immoral.

 

[croak]

When I find something not to my taste early on, I generally do not continue reading it. Also, it's not like the overall order or theme helps, since it doesn't really have one. It's pretty much in arbitrary order more or less of when Muhammad is supposed to have "received" them.

It would have made more sense if it was in the order of revelation. It isn't.

"The final process of collection and codification of the Qur’an text was guided by one over-arching principle: God's words must not in any way be distorted or sullied by human intervention. For this reason, no serious attempt, apparently, was made to edit the numerous revelations, organize them into thematic units, or present them in chronological order.... This has given rise in the past to a great deal of criticism by European and American scholars of Islam, who find the Qur’an disorganized, repetitive, and very difficult to read." Approaches to the Asian Classics, Irene Blomm, William Theodore De Bary, Columbia University Press,1990, p. 65

Source: Qur'an - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Again, when Muslims tout and praise it as proving Islam to be true due to its amazing, miraculous, wonderful nature, do you ask them to balance their view with criticism? In any case, the qur'an's adorers take care of the praise issue; what's missing is someone brave enough to criticize it.

Don't worry, there are plenty of people that have criticized it, throughout history. They might not be famous, but they've existed.

Criticism of the Qur'an - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia There's a list of modern critics on the right.

Besides, Ibn Warraq seems to have been able to find many essays criticizing the Qur'an, some recent, some not so much. Maybe you just need to look harder?

 

[Autodidact]

Interesting, how come I missed this thread, anyway

Autodidact, I know you like the theory of evolution and you keep talking about it and also you open threads just to challenge creationists for proving them wrong. Suppose that I came once to one of your threads and posted something like this,

' "...an obscure, incoherent , flawed, wrong...... this just how the theory of evolution is . "

How will you respond to this ?

I would first try to establish whether you know what ToE is, and if not, to explain it to you. After that I would demonstrate with evidence that you are mistaken.

Ok, let make a guess.

"SLAMH you are just a hater and ignorant !!!!, and you will remain an ignorant."

Your guess is incorrect.

But, why would you make such a respond ?

I wouldn't.

Apparently, because my statement is meaningless and thoughtless and has no reasoning.

Your statement is incorrect.
At the end I saw you brought some Qoranic verses attempting to support your point, so I will try my best to go over them one by one.

and You just said it Qura'n is hard to be understood in Arabic, so think and use your mind a bit to see how it will be even harder trying to understand it with translated copies !!.

Correct. It is very hard to translate correctly. This is one of its many flaws, especially for a book, that is supposed to provide divine guidance to everybody.

 

[Autodidact]

Most Arabs don't speak Modern Standard Arabic either; they speak dialects. Educated Arabs learn MSA, but it is more of a literary language. For more information on that: Diglossia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Moving onto the difference between MSA and Classical Arabic: there isn't much difference other than in vocabulary. MSA is a direct descendant of the latter. Therefore, people who know MSA should be able to read through the Qur'an with little difficulty. For more information on Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Classical Arabic and MSA are written in the same alphabet, which yes, is a consonantal alphabet. I don't disagree with anything else you have said.


I think you're confusing word roots and the use of vowels.

Let's take 'writing'. I'll use Wikipedia's provided transliterations and type some of the words in Arabic so you can see it for yourself.


Source: Classical Arabic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He wrote (kataba): كتب
He writes (yaktubu): يكتب
Writing (kitaabah): كتابة
Writer (kaatib): كاتب

The problem with vowels is that the short vowels were not written down (a, u, and e to use rough approximations), and usually aren't (exceptions nowadays are in Arabic books for children, situations where words might be confused). Long vowels (aa, oo, ee) were always written down, as far as I know, otherwise we would have a much harder time of figuring out things.

For a specific problem related to the use of vowels using the verb 'to write', let us take the word 'kataba'. The a's are all short vowels, so what is written is three letters: k-t-b. Most of the time, the odds are the word is referring to kataba. However, how do you say 'someone wrote'? Kuteba. (If I remember correctly.) Since those are all short vowels, all you see is k-t-b. So how can you tell the intended meaning? The use of diactrical markings (to show short vowels) or by context.

Most of the time, it's not an issue.

I hope this post was of some use.

Yes, thank you, very useful and informative.

 

[croak]

Because Allah is powerless to make prohibitions? Where does it say that in the quran? But mostly they captured and enslaved free people, and sold them to others. Millions of them. For centuries. In fact, they're still doing this in Sudan to this day. Can you produce a verse or hadith that prohibits slavery?

Seems to be the quran is extremely flawed, worse than flawed, actively bad. Not only does it fail to prohibit slavery, but it regulates it, tells us exactly how we are to practice it, when to free slaves, and so forth. If it were up to the quran and Islam, slavery would be still legal. It wasn't Muslims who lifted a finger to prohibit slavery around the world; it was secular, Enlightenment forces--the ones so many Muslims today condemn as immoral.

You may find this interesting: BBC - Religions - Islam: Slavery in Islam I haven't finished reading it, but it seems to back up what Badran said.

 

[Autodidact]

You may find this interesting: BBC - Religions - Islam: Slavery in Islam I haven't finished reading it, but it seems to back up what Badran said.

From that site:

Slaves were owned in all Islamic societies, both sedentary and nomadic, ranging from Arabia in the centre to North Africa in the west and to what is now Pakistan and Indonesia in the east. Some Islamic states, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate, and the Sokoto caliphate [Nigeria], must be termed slave societies because slaves there were very important numerically as well as a focus of the polities' energies.

So other than all Islamic societies practicing slavery, with important Caliphates being actual slave states, Islam has been a force for abolition.

Although Islam is much credited for moderating the age-old institution of slavery, which was also accepted and endorsed by the other monotheistic religions, Christianity and Judaism, and was a well-established custom of the pre-Islamic world, it has never preached the abolition of slavery as a doctrine.
Forough Jahanbaksh, Islam, Democracy and Religious Modernism in Iran, 1953-2000, 2001

But the essential nature of slavery remained the same under Islam, as elsewhere. It involved serious breaches of human rights and however well they were treated, the slaves still had restricted freedom; and, when the law was not obeyed, their lives could be very unpleasant.

A poignant paradox of Islamic slavery is that the humanity of the various rules and customs that led to the freeing of slaves created a demand for new slaves that could only be supplied by war, forcing people into slavery or trading slaves.

I highlight this one because it's so interesting. Because Muslims are told to free slaves in certain circumstances, while slavery itself remained in effect, it actually encouraged capture and enslavement of previously free human beings.

Perfect. Divine. Moral.
​

 

[croak]

Perfect. Divine. Moral.

Might I indulge in choice quotes of my own?

Slaves could be assimilated into Muslim society

Muhammad's teaching that slaves were to be regarded as human beings with dignity and rights and not just as property, and that freeing slaves was a virtuous thing to do, may have helped to create a culture in which slaves became much more assimilated into the community than they were in the West.

Muslim slaves could achieve status

Slaves in the Islamic world were not always at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Slaves in Muslim societies had a greater range of work, and took on a wider range of responsibilities, than those enslaved in the Atlantic trade.
Some slaves earned respectable incomes and achieved considerable power, although even such elite slaves still remained in the power of their owners.

While Islamic law does allow slavery under certain conditions, it's almost inconceivable that those conditions could ever occur in today's world, and so slavery is effectively illegal in modern Islam. Muslim countries also use secular law to prohibit slavery.

Prohibiting slavery in the context of seventh-century Arabia apparently would have been as useful as prohibiting poverty; it would have reflected a noble ideal but would have been unworkable on an immediate basis without establishing an entirely new socioeconomic system.

Jacob Neusner, Tamara Sonn, Comparing Religions through Law: Judaism and Islam, 1999

Who can be enslaved

Under Islamic law people can only be legally enslaved in two circumstances:

• as the result of being defeated in a war that was legal according to sharia
• if they are born as the child of two slave parents

Slave rights

Islamic law gives slaves certain rights:

• Slaves must not be mistreated or overworked, but should be treated well
• Slaves must be properly maintained
• Slaves may take legal action for a breach of these rules, and may be freed as a result
• Slaves may own property
• Slaves may own slaves
• Slaves can get married if their owner consents
• Slaves may undertake business on the owner's behalf
• Slaves guilty of crimes can only be given half the punishment that would be given to a non-slave (although some schools of Islamic law do allow the execution of a slave who commits murder)
• A female slave cannot be separated from her child while it is under 7 years old
• Female slaves cannot be forced into prostitution

Early opponents

The idea that slavery should be abandoned began to be seriously discussed in the 16th century. The Mughal Emperor Akbar (1556-1605) banned the slave trade in his Indian territory.

Source: BBC - Religions - Islam: Slavery in Islam


The section on 'elite slavery' is especially interesting.

Of course, as always, there will be people that break the law.

 

[Sahar]

A few weeks ago I found this video by a Jewish writer who read the Qur'an

A Jewish writer, Lesly Hazleton, gave herself three weeks to read The Qur'an before writing a book on Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him

She ended up reading it slowly through 4 translations, verse by verse, in three months

In this 10 minute video, she summarizes her experience, in front of a large audience:

[youtube]O7yaDlZfqrc[/youtube]
YouTube - TEDxRainier - Lesley Hazleton

Very interesting

Thanks for the video, very interesting...

 

[Badran]

Do you share this same opinion with all the Muslims who tout it as the most perfect, noble, book, the word of God? Or is this only for critical views?

Not sure what you mean. Are you saying that the fact that some people don't like the Quran means its not noble, perfect and the word of God etc...?

When I find something not to my taste early on, I generally do not continue reading it. Also, it's not like the overall order or theme helps, since it doesn't really have one. It's pretty much in arbitrary order more or less of when Muhammad is supposed to have "received" them.

In that case you're not in the position really to be making generalized judgments and claims about it. You're entitled to your opinion of it, that you personally didn't like it and couldn't read it.

Again, when Muslims tout and praise it as proving Islam to be true due to its amazing, miraculous, wonderful nature, do you ask them to balance their view with criticism?

The believe in it, you don't. Thats why i said that opinions of Muslims are not worthy much on this subject (when i said that would it mean much if we said "no its beautiful...."). Except however on the part of their knowledge about it and what it addresses and so on. when such knowledge is acquired by a non-Muslim, he is in the fairest place to provide a critical view on it.

In any case, the qur'an's adorers take care of the praise issue; what's missing is someone brave enough to criticize it.

Not really, plenty of people criticize the Quran.

 

[Autodidact]

Not sure what you mean. Are you saying that the fact that some people don't like the Quran means its not noble, perfect and the word of God etc...?

No, I mean do you call on them to give a balanced view and recognize the negative as well as the positive?

In that case you're not in the position really to be making generalized judgments and claims about it. You're entitled to your opinion of it, that you personally didn't like it and couldn't read it.

Is my opinion incorrect? Then show us, rather than attack me personally. Show us how I'm wrong.

Not really, plenty of people criticize the Quran.

Not publically, and not in a Muslim country. That's why Mr. Ibn Warraq [thanks croak for the education] uses a pseudonym. He is afraid of being murdered. You do admit that happens to critics of Islam?

 

[Badran]

Because Allah is powerless to make prohibitions? Where does it say that in the quran? But mostly they captured and enslaved free people, and sold them to others. Millions of them. For centuries. In fact, they're still doing this in Sudan to this day. Can you produce a verse or hadith that prohibits slavery?

Seems to be the quran is extremely flawed, worse than flawed, actively bad. Not only does it fail to prohibit slavery, but it regulates it, tells us exactly how we are to practice it, when to free slaves, and so forth. If it were up to the quran and Islam, slavery would be still legal. It wasn't Muslims who lifted a finger to prohibit slavery around the world; it was secular, Enlightenment forces--the ones so many Muslims today condemn as immoral.

I don't think you really understood what i was saying. Of course Allah can make prohibitions, the question is whether that was the best way to do it or not. Due to the condition of that custom, and its deep roots in society and it being a world wide accepted thing, it was best to take this root. Then later on based on the constraints put on the subject, and the gradual elevation of the status of slaves and their role in society, it would be solved through time.

 

[Badran]

No, I mean do you call on them to give a balanced view and recognize the negative as well as the positive?

I don't view any negatives in it neither, just like them. Because like i said, we believe in it to be the word of God.

Is my opinion incorrect? Then show us, rather than attack me personally. Show us how I'm wrong.

Attack you personally? You have made fun of verses of the Quran, verse by verse, making fun of it, then at the end saying "WTF is it driveling about?", and then said you never really got into reading it through because it turned you off.

Then when i say that since you didn't read it you're not in a position to be making such claims about it, i'm attacking you?

As for showing you wrong, showing you wrong about what? What have you offered to be falsified? Other than your opinion of the Quran (while you never really read it), and Ibn Warraq's opinion, who offers a statement that simply cannot be answered in any meaningful way. And who is also anti-Islamic.

Not publically, and not in a Muslim country. That's why Mr. Ibn Warraq [thanks croak for the education] uses a pseudonym. He is afraid of being murdered. You do admit that happens to critics of Islam?

Sometimes sure, that doesn't mean there aren't critiques of Islam or the Quran. Do remember that we're talking about the Quran, not Islam.

 

[TJ73]

That's why Mr. Ibn Warraq [thanks croak for the education] uses a pseudonym. He is afraid of being murdered. You do admit that happens to critics of Islam? __________________

Haven't heard a first hand story yet. It may happen. There are enough stories of crazy religious people killing for crazy "religious" reasons. But you aren't following the money. These people are making bank! It's no joke. This is a hot field to be in right now and they actively recruit "former" Muslims. Many have been proven fake ex-Muslims and their stories discredited. But those interested in listening to and paying for these types of stories aren't interested in something as trivial as the truth. Hate is always popular. Islam just happens to be Hate Du Jour.