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February 7, 2006
Do 'Raisins' Not Virgins - Await Suicide Bombers?
Topics: Understanding IslamAre Islamic terrorists blowing themselves up for "white raisins"?
There are going to be some very disappointed Islamofascists who have blown themselves to hell while murdering innocents, if what was reported by Newsweek in 2003 and subsequently banned in the Muslim world, is true (Newsweek has since submitted to Muslim pressure and has pulled the article of the Internet (Image of page below).
... to the probable horror of all Muslim males dreaming of sexual bliss in the Muslim hereafter, to conjure away the wide-eyed hours promised to the faithful in suras XLIV.54; LII.20, LV.72, and LVI.22. Luxenberg 's new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields "white raisins" of "crystal clarity" rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins - Ibn Warraq, "Virgins? What Virgins"
Roger Simon's piece today entitled, "Literacy as the enemy of religion," links to an article in Asia Times that addresses how gingerly we in the West treat Islam, as if freedom of speech weren't even part of our tradition, along with literacy in the Muslim world - which is extremely low. However, our focus here is the silence of the media on matters critical of Islam, and more specifically, about how disappointed Muslims are going to be when they get to the great beyond and get "white raisins" instead of virgins.
More revealing than the refusal of the mainstream American media to repost the Mohammed cartoons is the disappearance of more dangerous material previously available. Newsweek's "Challenging the Koran" story of July 28, 2003, has vanished from the magazine's website. The government of Pakistan had banned that issue, which among other things reported a German philologist's contention that the Koran was written in Syriac rather than classical Arabic, translating the "virgins" of Paradise as "raisins". As I observed before, the topic of Koranic criticism has disappeared from the mainstream media. Since the suppression of the Newsweek story the Western media have steered clear of the subject.According to Ibn Warraq, not only are there no virgins, there isn't even any mention anywhere in the Koran of the actual number of virgins available in paradise, and the dark-eyed damsels are available for all Muslims, not just martyrs. Furthermore, it's almost incredible as to how specifically the Koran addresses material and sexual matters. Again, from Ibn Warraq (Warning - sexually explicit language).
Two points need to be noted. First, there is no mention anywhere in the Koran of the actual number of virgins available in paradise, and second, the dark-eyed damsels are available for all Muslims, not just martyrs. It is in the Islamic Traditions that we find the 72 virgins in heaven specified: in a Hadith (Islamic Tradition) collected by Al-Tirmidhi (died 892 CE [common era*]) in the Book of Sunan (volume IV, chapters on The Features of Paradise as described by the Messenger of Allah [Prophet Muhammad], chapter 21, About the Smallest Reward for the People of Paradise, (Hadith 2687). The same hadith is also quoted by Ibn Kathir (died 1373 CE ) in his Koranic commentary (Tafsir) of Surah Al-Rahman (55), verse 72: "The Prophet Muhammad was heard saying: 'The smallest reward for the people of paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from Al-Jabiyyah [a Damascus suburb] to Sana'a [Yemen]'."Be sure to read all of Warraq's piece and also the rest of the article on literacy in the Muslim world(for a surprising perspective on Iran).Modern apologists of Islam try to downplay the evident materialism and sexual implications of such descriptions, but, as the Encyclopaedia of Islam says, even orthodox Muslim theologians such as al Ghazali (died 1111 CE) and Al-Ash'ari (died 935 CE) have "admitted sensual pleasures into paradise". The sensual pleasures are graphically elaborated by Al-Suyuti (died 1505 ), Koranic commentator and polymath. He wrote: "Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [ie Muslim] will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetising vaginas."
Posted by Richard at February 7, 2006 5:16 PM
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- Do 'Raisins' Not Virgins - Await Suicide Bombers? - Feb 07, 2006
