Thursday, June 19, 2008

Poetry in Motion

Muslims believe that one of the "miracles" of the Quran is its poetry. How could an illiterate man, they ask, write such exquisite poetry unless he was inspired by God?

The grammatical structure of Arabic lends itself to being a poetic language. Many nouns or adjectives, for example, end with the syllable "....eem". Muhammad could create a few lines each ending with one of these words that would be poetry to his listeners. As an example, Sura 66 is called "The Prohibition". The title as well as the final or penultimate words of the first few lines are "tahreem...raheem...aleem...hakeem." The English translation of these words, "prohibition...merciful...all-knowing...wise", of course do not rhyme at all.

The "story behind the story" is often more interesting than the story itself. Muhammad often created Quranic suras to get himself out of a tight spot. In the case of sura 66, he had literally been caught with his pants down. While visiting one of his wives, 20 year old Hafsah, he noticed her beautiful Egyptian Christian slave Mary. Muhammad had already legitimized sex with slaves for his followers, and told Hafsah that her father wanted to see her. As soon as Hafsah left the house, Muhammad had intercourse with Mary. When Hafsah realized her father had not called her and returned home to a locked door, she suspected the worst. Muhammad admitted what he had done, but promised Hafsah he would not sleep with Mary again. Hafsah was still upset, and told another of Muhammad's wives, Aisha, what had happened. Muhammad then claimed that Allah had revealed to him that Hafsah had complained to Aisha, and that Allah had also told him that he was free of his promise not to sleep with Mary again.

Now read the entire sura carefully. Notice who is at fault, who is to blame, who is threatened, and who is exonerated by Allah.

4 comments:

manish said...

Sir,
I had gone through your article regarding the "poetry in motion".I have to say,the article was anything but honest!!
I am astonished at the kind of false propaganda that you are spreading against Islam!!
There are a few points that I would like to ask you,here goes:
Firstly, Where did you get these stories from??

Secondly, Have you ever bothered to enquire if those narrations are authentic or not?? Or do you just accept those which you like ??

Thirdly ,You seem to be under the impression that you know all that there is to know about Islam ! Are you sure?? I don't know how many articles you have written ,but this is my first time reading your article and I already could find blatant errors in it.

I am no scholar in Islam but I do know a little bit more about my religion than a Westerner does(assuming that the Westerner is no scholar too :)) !


With a little bit of research one can easily find out that the Surah you are referring to is not about Muhammed(pbuh) having sex with Mary the Copt but it is about the prohibition of honey!!

I was hoping to find a good article against Islam that i could refute...but this made me disappointed . How did you even consider posting such gibberish on the net and risk making yourself a fool in front of others??

Peace

Anonymous said...

May Allah bless you Manish for this kind act.
It was like a refreshing air after reading that garbage written by a diverted guy.
May Allah bless you.

Anonymous said...

May Allah save us, for what the author has posted is pure fallacy. Subhanallah!

Anonymous said...

What a twisted piece of rubbish.