Muslims are not a homogeneous mass. Islam is what it says in the book(s), OTOH. I see Islam as fairly homogeneous, Muslims as far more diverse.

My thought is that in areas remote from Arabia, there are more moderate practitioners for the simple reason that they are illiterate in arabic. There are ~200 million speakers of all the arabic languages (many mutually incomprehensible) combined. That leaves 1 billion muslims who cannot actually read their holy book to know what it says. If their tradition has been moderate, they are moderate. When taught to read arabic, and they read, they become more fundamentalist. That's the point of so many islamic charities that build "schools." They build schools to create arabic literacy to read the only books that matter to them...

Religion should be thought its part of history.
I don't thing its a problem as long as it comes with other lessons.


No ....and good that so.

Ok tater, I see your point.

Regarding the illiteracy in Arabic of most Muslims: I think there is also a problem for someone who wants to read the quran. The whole interpretation and translation process is in the responsibility of the teacher. If this guy is a fundamentalist it is much easier to brainwash the scholars if they cannot read it by themselves. This is a major problem here in Germany, where no one really checks out the people who teach in a mosque with the result that there are some really disgusting "preachers" who are allowed to work and teach (Islam) here.
Luther's main historic deed was to translate the bible from Latin to (ancient) German so everyone who was literate could read it. He basically opened the interpretation of the bible to the masses, the result was less extremism.
The Quran is only valid in Arabic however, does anyone know the reason why? My guess is that the reason is to keep a monopoly in the interpretation.

Yeah, but then you read someone like Hirsi Ali. Her take (and others) is that it's not that illiterates are brainwashed, but the exact opposite. Illiterates (in arabic, not in general!) are more free to have variant practices because they cannot read in black and white where it is unambiguously forbidden to do X, Y, and Z that they in fact do. She mentioned her grandma doing things that she later found to be "wrong" due to learning arabic, and being taught by the Muslim Brotherhood.

When she heard bin Laden's rants quoting the qur'an after 9-11, she went and read the sections assuming he was using them out of context to "brainwash" people, and found OBL had quoted them very fairly. She was left with the internal choice to side with OBL (he properly quoted the exact words of god after all!), or dump Islam. She chose the latter and is now an atheist.

Hitchens asked a famous, moderate Swiss Muslim cleric about apostasy, and the punishment. The guy was forced to admit that the punishment was unambiguously "death," but offered that since it wasn't practical to kill all apostates, this wasn't a problem!

Translating may be already the same as interpreting
Religious books are written in very murky way most of the time.
Sects of Islam or any other religions are based on those different interpretations.

I think its possible to buy Quran in English.
http://www.amazon.com/Quran-Translat.../dp/0940368323

Translations of stuff like silly holy books makes real argument pretty difficult.

There are many cases (not just Islam) where translations from one language to another leave huge holes where the common understanding uses one modern word, where the likely intent in the original language (or contemporary use at the time) held an entirely different meaning.

It's like apologists who claim that "jihad" is some sort of internal mental argument ("struggle") when contextually, and historically, the relevant bits being discussed clearly mean "war."

I don't think that is true. We've had the choice in school to either attend to religious classes or do something called "Werte und Normen" (could be translated to values and standards [standards might be a poor translation, I'm not sure of that]). So there is a choice to avoid religion.

I'm also not aware of any blasphemy laws and have never heard of any being enforced here.:06:

The originality of the one and only Quran is a myth. also, the suras are not presented in historically correct timeline, but in order of length. If you would read the suras in sequence of their historic creation, the quran you know from today would appear to be wildly shuffled (if you search the intenret, you can find Quran versions that have rearranged the sequence of suras to reflect a linear timescale for the date of their assumed creation). it is common rule, accepted in all major traditions of islamic law, that contradicting passages in the quran get dealt with by a principle of that the latest entry overrules all earlier entries contradicting it.

this one needs to know, that the suras in the present form are not presented in historically correct time-sequence, and that the so-called abrogation principle decides in case of contradicting passages which one now overrules the others. If these two rules are being followed, you are left with almost zero room for "interpretation" in the Quran, and you have a very radical, fundamentalist, angry piece of writing.

From an earlier essay of mine:

As far as the content and verbal style is concerned, generally a split is perceived in the Quran, separating the scriptures of Muhammad’s time in Mekka (beeing more metaphysical in content and style, focussing on ethical and spiritual questions) from those suras that are basing on his preachings in Medina, that shows more pragmatical relation to situations and problems of practical life, and are of less prosaic language.

It is undisputed amongst Quran-researchers, that the better part of the book without doubt is basing on Muhammad at least actively helping to shape it’s content. The academic voices that defended an opinion that without doubt ALL it’s content is „Muhammad pure“ nevertheless are said to have become rare since a longer while now.

The Quran is regarded as Allah’s revelation to mankind and thus is the basis of Muslim belief. It’s creation must not be explained, because Allah always have been existent and so the Quaran as his word and will cannot have been created by man – as an idea it has always been there. The many doubts that are existent about the tradition that influenced and conserved it’s form and made it to what it is today, are therefor ignored and considered to be irrelevant. Pragmatical from a Muslim point of view, but hardly acceptable for a less metaphysical mindset.

During Muhammad’s lifetime his prophecies had been conserved by verbal delivery and fixing in writing, using palm-leafs, leather, and whatever material was used for that purpose. The effort to do so was non-systematic and unorganized, so that the tradition was scattered around somewhat. Parts of these preachings additionally got lost, when close followers of Muhammad, who had learned to memorize „their“ part of the always increasing collection of preachings, had been killed in one of the many battles they went through. The first Caliph after Muhammad’s death, Abu Bakr (who also was Muhammad’s father-in-law), therefore ordered Muhammad‘s last secretary to collect all written and verbal material that was circulating, to bring it into an order and to fix it in a final writing. The result was a first version of the Quran about which we know almost nothing today. After Abu Bakr’s death two years after that of Muhammad, his successor, the second Caliph, Umar, is said to have given this version to his daugther Hafsa, Muhammad’s fourth wife, because she should have had such a splendid memory that she seemed to be ideally fitted to become the guardian of a Quran that now was hoped to see no more changes added to it by circulating different fragments and contents, whose originality was uncertain. However, orientalists raise serious doubts that it could have been like this. It seems to be unreasonable to assume that the most important document of Islam‘s faith should have been given into the hands of a woman, that – although beeing Muhammad’s wife - was of relatively minor importance in history.

Not that this question is of much importance, because this version of the Quran found no general acceptance, and few years later again complaints were raised, that in the provinces still a growing diversity of different versions of the Quaran were circulating, most or all of them adding new things or reinterpreting it towards a higher level of political relevance, or reinterpreting it in other ways that did not seem to be acceptable, or did not have any authenticity. So the new, third Caliph, Uthman, again ordered Muhammad’s old secretary to collect and form a new version of the Quaran, which he did and compared it with the first version that still was in possession of Hafsa. He also reworked and translated all material into the dominant Arab dialect, that of Mekka, because the fragments that had been scattered around were written or memorized in various different languages. Of this new version he created, only five numbers were written down and were given to the five centers of Islamic knowledge and scholarship in Mekka, Medina, Damascus, Basra and Kufa.

Scientific research asks some very serious questions about this course of the whole story. It is assumed that there was no single authority, no agreed institution of competence for the Quran existent. That there were two main versions created may have been a sign that there may have been at least two rivalling traditions of interpretation. Criterias for what was accepted for both of these main versions, and what not, are unknown, also who raised these criterias, if this should mean there were no central figure of evaluating it all, then this may be interpreted as arbitrariness deciding the second form of the Quran, or choices were made that were born out of political opportunism. And why was the first version without influence, why was the number of different versions beside that first collection of writings constantly increasing? All this is in contradiction to Islam’s understanding, that the Quaran was from the very beginning of Islam’s history what it always had been in later times. It cannot have been like that. Islam ignores these questions, and says that all this is unimportant. Despite all the obvious changes it must have gone thorugh, it should have remained unchanged since the beginning. A miracle? But, as P. Raddatz points towards an important question that kept Quran reseach before second world war very busy, how was it possible that during 25 years an ever increasing number of many followers memorized all verbal inspirations and preachings of Muhammad (and that was quite an impressive lot of material!!) , spreading them around all over their living places, giving them to others, so that thousands of passages went through thousands of ears and mouths – and nevertheless all of it shouldn’t have changed the smallest bit, and should have seen no faults and no adulterations (Verfälschungen) of even a minor kind? It is difficult enough to learn the whole Quran from fixed writing only, to learn it without faults by hear-say only seems to be beyond ability of man.

As if this not already raised doubts in the complete originality of today’s Quaran, an even greater problem existed – the changes in written language during the two- or threehundred years after Muhammad’s death. Not before the 10th century the introduction of diacritic punctuation („diakritische Punktierung“) to Arab writing was completed, which changed vocalisation and meaning of words of Arab dialects significantly. Linguists say that the translation of the second Quran version into the new version of Arabic writing necessarily must have increased the level of misinterpretations or changes of understandings of given words, and very drastically so. The new punctuation caused the changes of "letters" into different ones, and due to the inner nature of Arab language this meant, that words and complete sentences could transform into complete new meanings and understandings. This is the main reason, probably, why the number of different versions of the Quaran, with sometimes very dramatic changes in meaning and content of complete passages, grew constantly in the two hundred years after Muhammad’s death. A caste of professional Quran-readers had been formed by this, and they had high political influence, since due to the unity of religion and politics in Islam, their individual interpretations of the Quran really made a difference in local policies. - Even today preachers at the traditional Friday prayers are having high political influence and a significant power to mobilize their community. - They also implemented up to seven differing major traditions of interpretation, that took quite some time to get reduced to a smaller number of traditions again, and finally to just one. Like especially radical preachers today, they also may have had personal ambitions, coming from the power that they had to influence the crowds. The impression Islam is giving, that it only were different styles of verbal recitation, has been proven wrong by science, it has not been that simple and harmless and this claim holds no ground. It was not only different styles in presentation, but different conclusions by different styles of interpretation of the Quran, and different versions of Quaran itself. Today’s two only dominant ways in possible Quran interpretation, that allows both fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists to justify their deeds by the Quran and find coverage from it, may have found it’s reason in this chapter of history. However, this difference in interpretation finds no room and justification in the one quran that there is today. [Edit: in principle, there can be only one understanding of today'S Quran, and that is a quite fundamentailst one.]

Caliph Uthman obviously made a wise decision to concentrate the interpretation of Quran at the five centers of knowledge that were delivered the only five existing issues of the second official collection of the Quaran scriptures. He made a cut and accepted that an uncertain ammount of falsified, wrong material, that was lacking any authenticity, found entrance into the official Quaran. Anything was better than to allow a further spreading of different traditions to interpret the Quaran that only could have led to an increasing diversity in faith – exactly what Islam ideology does NOT want. The Quran-readers that made their living by interpreting the Quaran, and twisted it to the liking of the political needs of those who ordered and payed for their services, or to their own ambitions, lost their jobs and political influence. The centralization of interpreting the Quaran ended the regional political agitation and strengthened centralized, superregional powerstructures.

Linguistically, the origin of the word qur’an links parts of the Mekkanesian (?) scriptures of the Quran to the tradition of Christian liturgy, and Christian tradition and languages. This is critical, because Muslims think of the Quran to have been send down to man in Arab language – the Arab language that is known today. But that form of language did not exist before twohundred years after Muhammad’s death. So how could his preachings have been conserved and delivered, if not by accepting that the first and original version of the Quran had not been send down to man and fixed in punctuated Arabic, but more likely in a mixture of the dialect of the Quraysh and Arameic language, or Syrian dialects? Some commentators say that the Quran originally may have been a liturgic reading for Christian services, and that up to one quarter of the Quran’s content until today raises verbal problems with Islamic interpretations of passages that seem to point more towards Christian tradition and the Old and New Testament than towards the usual Muslim interpretation of this stuff. They also argue that the Quran may not have been a document of it’s own value and religious right, but may have been something like a comment to the writings of the Christians, focussing on them as the main word. These authors argue that the Quran probably has no original identity of it’s own, but was more an added comment on the basis of a foreign religious scripture, which most probably may have been the Bible as it was existent at that time.

Islam’s claim that the original language of the Quaran has been Arabic is highly questionable from an academical point of view, and it’s belief of the Quran’s delivery in that language (despite the well-documented changes the Arab language went through between the 7th and 10th century) as a miracle does not add anything valuable to discussion. The Quaran’s claimed originality is highly speculative, seen that way.

---

In that essay, which I wrote in 2005 I think, I then told a story by experience, from my time in Iran:

When asking persons that were close to some clerics in Iran about how the Quaran’s content found it’s way into the world of man, they said it had always been there by idea, in form it had been brought to man by the prophet. When I asked about how this could be if it is known that initially there had been at least two different main version of the Quran, at least seven traditions to interpret it and a number of more different versions of the scriptures scattered around, and Arab language drastically changed between the 7th and 10th century, this knowledge was straigthly rejected and they insisted on that it could not have been so. There were no changes in Quaran, and there never were different versions, period. I also triggered anger by that question occasionally, or I acchieved a sudden drop of social temperature if asking this question one time too often :) In Muslim countries, at least orthodox people apparently do not like to be reminded of these (and other) inner contradictions.

---

Although Uthman had made sure that the Quran was no longer to be mixed and watered by contacts with foreign teachings, there was still the chance that it would be „misinterpreted“ by the simple fact, that the Arab conquerers, when they started to leave the Arab peninsula and spread Allah's word outside, would somewhat mix and water it when coming in contact with the traditions in Egypt and Syria, here factions were living that were hostile to the Byzantine empire and for that reason tended to sympathise with the Arabs - who could not avoid to be influenced by these foreign religions in return, because their leaders even demanded them to treat friendly those that were hostile towards the Byzantines – which now was the Muslim Arabs’ major enemy. Although it took until late into the 8th century until the Quaran as we know it today had strengthend in structure and content, one thing was undisputed and beyond doubt for every Muslim from the beginning: that it was the word of Allah, without fault, without doubt, without wrong, without any reason to ask, examine or critisize it, always existent, never changing. This „hard belief“, immune to changes, even more consolidating itself in the more than 1300 years to come, made it impossible for Muslim religion to establish a tradition of self-critical examination of it’s own basis of beliefs, as we have seen it in the developement of Christian tradition, that led to the splitting into different Christians churches and sects, but nevertheless helped to gain a more modern understanding of Christianity‘s own faith, that considered the many changes the mental evolution of western man during the different phases of Western cultural history went through. The raised levels of knowledge and insight changed Christian religion, growing education lowered the need for religously motivated regulation, the implementation of legal laws replaced the enforcment of religious commandments. But Muslim theology did stop to develope very early in Islam’s history in an understanding of critically examining itself (if the heretic’s writings are not counted as part of the official theology), and seen that way one could even say that it does not exist in a western understanding.

ok, this is maybe better now. In the 80s you had to attend religion class, if your parents didn't opt you out, untill the age of 14. In senior high school (Oberstufe to the Germans) we had in fact the choice between religion and philosophy.

Blasphemy: you may want to check out StgB 166 http://bundesrecht.juris.de/stgb/__166.html
One example when it was enforced was the most cost-intensive process which the satire magazine "Titanic" lost, against the catholic church. They had a poster with Jesus on the cross subtitled "Ich war eine Dose"("I was a tin can", commercial for recycling)

Crosses in school/court. Kindergarden/schools/youth clubs run by the church, but funded by the public. Church representatives in the control board (Aufsichtsrat) of the public media. All examples of no real seperation of state and religion.
In my opinion religion is a private matter, if you offend someone in a personal way, there are laws for this, religious beliefs need no special protection.

By law and constitution, Germany is meant to be a secular state. the special status givien to church, the powers and tax incomes it enjoys, the ways of inbfluencing edcuation and the health and social sector, is a scandal.

i take some pride in the fact that I asked relgious teachers at school so many logical questions that i finally was banned from relgious classes - with my parents refusing to protest to that.

I honestly think the power of the churches in Germany must be broken. I dislike them as much as i dislike islam.

In Berlin, btw, schools now offer ethics classes instead of religion classes. A referendum that was tried by pro-church initiatives and the churches themselves, was defeated by a clear majority of the population.

Ah, thanks. Wasn't aware of that. What a load of....

That's something I also strongly oppose. As you said, religion is a private matter and has nothing to do in public affairs!:down:

Very impressive.... you really seem to know your stuff:salute:

I defend any religion where the fruitcakes are being portrayed as the mainstream.
What is the koran Tater?

Once again you are showing the same problem, what is a hadith and how many dozens of types are there?

Here's a clue......
........
A dozen religious scholars can read the same passage, they can all say they believe in the words....but they can all say the words mean different things.

Well was Hitchen writing when drunk again or did he just make it up?
The punishment for apostacy is....to be meted out in the afterlife by the big fella.

Are you sure about that? She does have a habit of making stuff up.

Actually it was mixed, the schism brought around some very extreme movements .


You mean it wasn't because of blacks and muslims:yeah:

The fruitcakes in Islam ARE the mainstream.

PEW (extremely liberal) surveyed world muslims, and at best, a substantial minority support AQ, for example. That's places like the US, where the Muslim population is VERY progressive for Muslims. In the rest of the world, it's typically a MAJORITY that support people like bin laden.

Funny that the PEW headline was that US Muslims were "mostly middle class, and mostly mainstream."

How do you get "mainstream" when ~40% have either a favorable opinion of AQ, or claim "no opinion" (which is tantamount to support in a poll, they are refusing to answer, anyone who hated AQ who simply say so in the US). 40% in the US. In the "Muslim world" it's over 60%.

Sorry, nutjobs are the mainstream.

The base doctrine makes the current "fruitcakes" simply people who actually follow their fruitcake recipe book.

Oh, and the koran was a verbal narration, and is now written as well. The narration was from the archangel to the prophet, and is thought by these fruitcakes (all of them) to be the word of god as told to muhammad. The basic rule is that chronologically more recent bits supersede earlier bits in the same text (it's not usually presented in chronological order, though there are versions that do this). This helps them justify the many internally inconsistent bits, presumably.

The hadith are not the words of god, but a sort of collected stories about the life and words of that child-raper muhammad. Many are debated by muslim scholars, while there is a core group that is pretty much accepted by all muslims.

It is not mentioned in the koran, but in the sunna (the distilled bits from parts of the hadith, basically, what muhammad thought, etc). It is clear there, and not really argued by islamic scholars. Male apostates get death, the prophet said so.