The mighty religion of peace strikes again

[Minimalist]

The text is as clear as mud...as usual.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/200...koran.html

Mosques_1_2_2 According to an Islam tradition, Muslim martyrs will go to paradise and marry 72 black-eyed virgins. But some Koran scholars point to a less sexy paradise. While beautifully written, Islamic texts are often obscure. The Arabic language was born as a written language with the Koran, and growing evidence suggests that many of the words were Syriac or Aramaic.

Specifically, the Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get “hur,” and the word was taken by early commentators to mean “virgins,” hence those 72 concubines. But in Aramaic, hur actually meant “white” and was commonly used to specifically mean “white grapes.”

The exact number of virgins (or raisins) is not specified in Koran, but the number 72 comes from a quotation of Muhammad recorded in one of the lesser-known Hadith. ("Hadith" is an Arabic word meaning traditions.) After Muhammad's death, several collections of his deeds and sayings were collected to form the Hadith, which is the second most authoritative document is Islam, after the Koran.

But I really like this comment.

If you told a Christian scholar that Jesus didn’t actually write the bible, but that it is a collection of eclectic texts from a wide variety of ancient writings spanning centuries that were somewhat randomly compiled into the Bible as we know it today, after much debate and bickering at the Council of Nicene, and they’ll probably nod their head in agreement. Most Christian scholars have finally come to grips with the fact that their Holy Book was written by a lot of different authors with differing religious opinions and interpretations, however inspired those men may have been. However, tell a devout Muslim that Mohammed may not have actually written every word of the Koran straight from the mouth of the angel Gabriel…and well, you’re asking for trouble.

Fuck 'em, I say!