Obama supports "Ground Zero Mosque" (of course he does)

[Konovalov]

Originally Posted by Konovalov

The Surahs (chapters) within the Quran are not sorted by length as you claim. I don’t know where this claim popped up from that the verses are sorted on length from longest to shortest chapters. For a start the very first surah within the Quran Surah Al-Fatiha (The Opening) contains only seven ayaat (verses). At the other end the last Surah of the Quran Al-Nas contains 6 verses. And finally for the record the shortest chapter within the Quran is Surah Al-Kawthar being at 3 verses long. So I'm afraid that this very simple statement of yours is quite simply false. Why do I know this. I've read it more times than I can count. Speaking of which must go now to read before catching a few hours of zzzzz's.

Perhaps when I have time I may get a chance to look at that site (links) mentioned by Skybird and provide some form of rebuttal. Not easy however as time is limited with 16 hours of fasting during the day while also trying to run a business from 8am to 6pm. But let's see. Goodnight.

Again going to your claim that the Quran is sorted by length of chapters (starting with longest to ending with shortest) as I earlier stated this is not true. Indeed I used a link from the rather questionable website that you mentioned ReligionofPeace to a online Quran at the University of Southern California (USC). Chapter 1 has 7 verses, chapter 2 has 286, chapter 3 has 200, chapter 8 has 75, chapter 13 have 43 verses, chapter 16 has 128, chapter 24 has 64, chapter 26 has 227 verses, chapter 60 has 13, chapter 68 has 52, chapter 103 has 3, and the final chapter 114 has 6 verses. It's pretty obvious that the Quran is not strictly structured from longest to shortest as you claim. Would you now accept that your statement is incorrect?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Konovalov

Again going to your claim that the Quran is sorted by length of chapters (starting with longest to ending with shortest) as I earlier stated this is not true. Indeed I used a link from the rather questionable website that you mentioned ReligionofPeace to a online Quran at the University of Southern California (USC). Chapter 1 has 7 verses, chapter 2 has 286, chapter 3 has 200, chapter 8 has 75, chapter 13 have 43 verses, chapter 16 has 128, chapter 24 has 64, chapter 26 has 227 verses, chapter 60 has 13, chapter 68 has 52, chapter 103 has 3, and the final chapter 114 has 6 verses. It's pretty obvious that the Quran is not strictly structured from longest to shortest as you claim. Would you now accept that your statement is incorrect?

Although I should have known better, I checked my copy and checked again with two academic books of secondary literature. I am right. where you count the number of Suras, I count the number of pages, this is what I mean with "length".

In the opened book, the copy I have has german left and arabic right on the pages. It does not matter if I focus on the one or the other when counting. I counted the first ten suras, then took a few samples in the middle, and looked at the end of it, where the Suras are just a third or a fourth of one page in length.

Still, I have not counted the pages of every sura now. My major basis thus remains to be founded in academic secondary literature where it also is claimed that the suras in the Quran are sorted by length (of text), with the exception of the introductory first sura, which is even not one full page.

It would have been a little sensation if the research tradition in the West on the Islam and the Orient, and what we call "Orientalistik" in german, would have gotten this detail wrong for over 150 years.

So, by "length", I - and obviously also at least a big majority of authors in the field - refer to length of text. Number of verses in one Sura is just that - number of verses. But the verses can be long or short, so that is no qualified criterion to judge the length of a Sura.

If you would have asked me about how many verses there are in the Suras, I would have agreed with you from the beginning on.

Anyhow. Small little escapades like this help nobody anything. The content of the ideology and the question if the general trend of history caused by them reflects this content or not - that is what it is about. Unfortunately, it does. And while there may be many Muslims not firing an active gun in jihad, and stay peacefully at home, right this peacefulness may be the great problem with them - becasue they do nothing to confront Islam with critical questions and do not help one bit to overcome it's old dogma, but with their passivity they create the window of opportunity for Islam to carry on like it has done since ever, and their devout and fataloistic attitude is both conseqeunce of past stagnation, and cause stagnation not to end.

what is needed indeed, like quite some critical Muslims and apostates say, i s a wide-ranging, big sexual revolution. For one reason, to end the slavery of women which islam propagates, and for another, to blow some fresh air through the crusty ignition plugs of this old rotten brain.