Be Wary of Racism and Islamophobes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What was the analogous pledge for men? The shahada? With the shahada, you're definitely giving your allegiance to Mohamned as God's messenger. But women pledged to adhere to rules.

The oath was a pledge for proper conduct AND allegiance to Muhammad. You could not avoid infanticide, fornication, adultery, etc and yet betray the Prophet but still be within the permissible boundaries of the oath.

Then why weren't men asked to promise they won't do any of this?

Actually, I didn't see a pledge of allegiance to Muhammad in the quote above. I just saw a pledge that the woman will behave well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Sometimes women would lie and they were asked not to lie.

Then why weren't men asked not to lie? Didn't men lie too, sometimes?

I think theres a piece you are missing. Engaging men in the same discussion is futile because men have no way of saying which children they fathered. As much as you may think equality needed to be imposed here, you can not because its clear which woman is the mother but unclear as to which man is the father.

Think of the conversation:

Muhammad: did you father any illegitimate children?
Man: maybe, I might have. I have no idea which child though.


Then what?!

Actually, there's a piece YOU are missing. That piece is that the pledge was forward-looking. It did not ask women to prove they haven't done it in the past. It asked women to promise not to do it in the future. So yes, equality can be easily imposed here, and the conversation would have gone like this:

Man: Hello Muhammad, I'd like to join your tribe.
Muhammad: Sure. Do you promise not to lie, not to steal, not to fornicate and not to father children out of wedlock?
Man: Sure, sounds doable.
Muhammad: Come on in.

Yes it was forward thinking. BUT if a woman was lying about paternity, she was not admitted into the tribe. This is why questioning took place, to see if she was unfairly putting responsibility on her lawful husband AND if so, no admission.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I also need to address one more thing - not for you, but for the benefit of others reading this. The institution of scholars in contemporary Muslim world, to the degree it has developed, is a complete scam born out of nothing but the desire for job security. Islam was revealed to a largely illiterate population. It was meant to be a code of simple rules that can be understood by anyone, not exclusively King Abdulaziz University graduates. If a rule in the Quran sounds simple, then no matter how awful it sounds to a non-Muslim, guess what, it really says what it means to say, and no amount of scholarly commentary can change that. It can tell you why Muslims think it has to be that way, but if it doesn't make sense to you, then then reason is that it really doesn't make any sense. Scholars are unnecessary to understand most of the Quran, and it's a great credit to the skill and sophistication of the scholar marketing machine that some scholars out there have jobs and TV shows because women aren't capable of deciding whether they are allowed to change clothes in the room where they think a male jinn lives.

Different poster here. Yes, I had heard this myself. Islam prides itself on NOT needing a cadre of priests and theologians to interpret the religion, precisely because the Quran is supposed to be so simple and self-evident. The Shiites with their ayatollahs obviously take a different view, but the Sunni view is that the Quran is accessible to everybody, or at least to those who read Arabic.

So when one of the posters here keeps saying that you need to call up scholars and study up on history to understand the Quran, this doesn't gel with the idea of immediate accessibility.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Did you really think I was under the impression people were enamored with Islam? Yes, Muslims generally are, but nonMuslims. As much as Muslims would like to dispel myths and do whatever necessary to create a more harmonious environment for themselves, I am not interested in impressing others. I am very secure in my faith.

As for your knowledge, sorry, but its google knowledge. You can not read the Quran in the language it was revealed and this prevents you from fully understanding verses you are confused about. Yet you refuse to contact a scholar to seek help.

I can't read the Quran in the language it was revealed. You mean like 95% of Muslims out there? You know perfectly well Arabic speakers are a minority among Muslims, and Quranic Arabic readers are a minority among Arabic speakers. Why pick on me?

I don't need to contact a scholar because the verses are clear on their face. You insist that scholars are necessary because you think they can spin the verses to make them look better. I, on the other hand, accept that if a verse sounds bad, then it IS bad, and no amount of scholarly acrobatics will make it better. I too am secure with this understanding. I don't want to give out my age, but my knowledge of Islam was complete way before google appeared, and the existence of google, as much difference as it made to the universe, made absolutely no difference to my understanding of your religion.

Anonymous wrote:
For example, you insisted the oath administered to women was biased and discriminatory toward women because it was not administered to men. But I provided you with the sura/verse that showed men took the oath too. If you read the Quran, you would have known about that sura/verse already.

I didn't say it was discriminatory because it was not administered to men. I said it was discriminatory because there is no evidence men were asked to comply with any of the rules women were. And that IS discriminatory. The verse you cited didn't indicate men were asked to promise anything like the women were before they took that oath. But then again, I accept that Islam is discriminatory toward women in some regards. I don't need to hear a scholar pontificate about how it really isn't, and if it, then it's a good thing - which is the gist of 99% of scholarly commentary that exists.

Anonymous wrote:
Another example, you asked why women were asked about illegitimate children but not men. Because women were sometimes putting responsibility on their lawful husbands and this was unfair given that paternity could not be determined. Asking men would result in no information because there is no way to conclude their paternity. This knowledge comes with common sense.

That oath was forward-looking, and if women were asked not to have illegitimate children as a condition of joining Medinans, then men could have easily been asked the same thing. That verse looks in the future, not the past.

Anonymous wrote:
You also concluded Islam never established voting rights but Ash Shurra did. You did not know that either because you either never read that sura or did not understand it. You also did not know the language used in the verse was plural, referring to both male and female.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing when you act as if your knowledge is complete. You need to study the Quran in Arabic and study the tafsir and then you could have saved 45 pages.

Yusuf Quaradawi studied the Quran in Arabic, and so did Bin Baz, and so did Ibn Taymiyyah, and your understanding of Islam couldn't be further from theirs. We all know you pick and choose your tafsirs and your scholars. I note, again, that most Muslims never study Quran in the language it was revealed - why don't you go pick on them?

I also need to address one more thing - not for you, but for the benefit of others reading this. The institution of scholars in contemporary Muslim world, to the degree it has developed, is a complete scam born out of nothing but the desire for job security. Islam was revealed to a largely illiterate population. It was meant to be a code of simple rules that can be understood by anyone, not exclusively King Abdulaziz University graduates. If a rule in the Quran sounds simple, then no matter how awful it sounds to a non-Muslim, guess what, it really says what it means to say, and no amount of scholarly commentary can change that. It can tell you why Muslims think it has to be that way, but if it doesn't make sense to you, then then reason is that it really doesn't make any sense. Scholars are unnecessary to understand most of the Quran, and it's a great credit to the skill and sophistication of the scholar marketing machine that some scholars out there have jobs and TV shows because women aren't capable of deciding whether they are allowed to change clothes in the room where they think a male jinn lives.

I got to the first line of your post and I just had to reply because you honestly do not know Muslims or Islam. The majority of Muslims I know, and I have come in contact with thousands because of my faith and the jobs I have held, know how to read the Quran in Arabic. Where in the world did you get that 95% statistic from!!?!

So this is WHY this has turned into a nearly 50 page thread. I spent three posts explaining to you already that children ALWAYS learn to read the Quran in Arabic. Are you the same person I was communicating with? Did you forget what I said?

[Anonymous]

Wow! Been a couple of days since I checked into this thread an see pages and pages have been added, almost all about the oath some women made at the gate of Medina.

I think it's fair to say this may be the only general listserv that hosts such heated debate over such obscure historical events.

About Jahaliyya--I've never heard it referred to as the days of darkness, but rather as the days of ignorance, and specifically ignorance about the monotheistic God. In other words, the days of paganism.

I don't believe there is any evidence people of the jahiliyya were any more cruel or barbaric then those who followed them. Yes, there was infanticide, but most people on the Arabian peninsula lived hard scrabble lives that became even more difficult in a time of drought. Infanticide would have been an economic response as it was in China and many other places. Moreover, the practice of infanticide, which was not limited to female children, appears to have been the practice of one tribe in Arabia, and even then only in times of famine.

Women in the jahiliyya clearly could live pretty emancipated lives as Khadija did. However, women who were captured or sold into marriage did have a pretty miserable lot. Under Islamic rules, they would have been entitled to more rights.

As one PP has said there is a bit of marketing around the term; and it is pretty common to paint a very dark picture of the jahaliyya that was relieved by the Quranic revelations to Mohammed. History is written by the winners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Sometimes women would lie and they were asked not to lie.

Then why weren't men asked not to lie? Didn't men lie too, sometimes?

I think theres a piece you are missing. Engaging men in the same discussion is futile because men have no way of saying which children they fathered. As much as you may think equality needed to be imposed here, you can not because its clear which woman is the mother but unclear as to which man is the father.

Think of the conversation:

Muhammad: did you father any illegitimate children?
Man: maybe, I might have. I have no idea which child though.


Then what?!

Actually, there's a piece YOU are missing. That piece is that the pledge was forward-looking. It did not ask women to prove they haven't done it in the past. It asked women to promise not to do it in the future. So yes, equality can be easily imposed here, and the conversation would have gone like this:

Man: Hello Muhammad, I'd like to join your tribe.
Muhammad: Sure. Do you promise not to lie, not to steal, not to fornicate and not to father children out of wedlock?
Man: Sure, sounds doable.
Muhammad: Come on in.

Yes it was forward thinking. BUT if a woman was lying about paternity, she was not admitted into the tribe. This is why questioning took place, to see if she was unfairly putting responsibility on her lawful husband AND if so, no admission.

You keep saying "if a woman WAS lying", and women weren't asked if they WERE lying. They were asked to pledge they WILL not do it in future. There was no questioning about what she did in the past or was doing. She was asked to pledge she won't do it if she joins the Medinans, from that point on. And it would have been very easy to ask men to pledge the same thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Did you really think I was under the impression people were enamored with Islam? Yes, Muslims generally are, but nonMuslims. As much as Muslims would like to dispel myths and do whatever necessary to create a more harmonious environment for themselves, I am not interested in impressing others. I am very secure in my faith.

As for your knowledge, sorry, but its google knowledge. You can not read the Quran in the language it was revealed and this prevents you from fully understanding verses you are confused about. Yet you refuse to contact a scholar to seek help.

I can't read the Quran in the language it was revealed. You mean like 95% of Muslims out there? You know perfectly well Arabic speakers are a minority among Muslims, and Quranic Arabic readers are a minority among Arabic speakers. Why pick on me?

I don't need to contact a scholar because the verses are clear on their face. You insist that scholars are necessary because you think they can spin the verses to make them look better. I, on the other hand, accept that if a verse sounds bad, then it IS bad, and no amount of scholarly acrobatics will make it better. I too am secure with this understanding. I don't want to give out my age, but my knowledge of Islam was complete way before google appeared, and the existence of google, as much difference as it made to the universe, made absolutely no difference to my understanding of your religion.

Anonymous wrote:
For example, you insisted the oath administered to women was biased and discriminatory toward women because it was not administered to men. But I provided you with the sura/verse that showed men took the oath too. If you read the Quran, you would have known about that sura/verse already.

I didn't say it was discriminatory because it was not administered to men. I said it was discriminatory because there is no evidence men were asked to comply with any of the rules women were. And that IS discriminatory. The verse you cited didn't indicate men were asked to promise anything like the women were before they took that oath. But then again, I accept that Islam is discriminatory toward women in some regards. I don't need to hear a scholar pontificate about how it really isn't, and if it, then it's a good thing - which is the gist of 99% of scholarly commentary that exists.

Anonymous wrote:
Another example, you asked why women were asked about illegitimate children but not men. Because women were sometimes putting responsibility on their lawful husbands and this was unfair given that paternity could not be determined. Asking men would result in no information because there is no way to conclude their paternity. This knowledge comes with common sense.

That oath was forward-looking, and if women were asked not to have illegitimate children as a condition of joining Medinans, then men could have easily been asked the same thing. That verse looks in the future, not the past.

Anonymous wrote:
You also concluded Islam never established voting rights but Ash Shurra did. You did not know that either because you either never read that sura or did not understand it. You also did not know the language used in the verse was plural, referring to both male and female.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing when you act as if your knowledge is complete. You need to study the Quran in Arabic and study the tafsir and then you could have saved 45 pages.

Yusuf Quaradawi studied the Quran in Arabic, and so did Bin Baz, and so did Ibn Taymiyyah, and your understanding of Islam couldn't be further from theirs. We all know you pick and choose your tafsirs and your scholars. I note, again, that most Muslims never study Quran in the language it was revealed - why don't you go pick on them?

I also need to address one more thing - not for you, but for the benefit of others reading this. The institution of scholars in contemporary Muslim world, to the degree it has developed, is a complete scam born out of nothing but the desire for job security. Islam was revealed to a largely illiterate population. It was meant to be a code of simple rules that can be understood by anyone, not exclusively King Abdulaziz University graduates. If a rule in the Quran sounds simple, then no matter how awful it sounds to a non-Muslim, guess what, it really says what it means to say, and no amount of scholarly commentary can change that. It can tell you why Muslims think it has to be that way, but if it doesn't make sense to you, then then reason is that it really doesn't make any sense. Scholars are unnecessary to understand most of the Quran, and it's a great credit to the skill and sophistication of the scholar marketing machine that some scholars out there have jobs and TV shows because women aren't capable of deciding whether they are allowed to change clothes in the room where they think a male jinn lives.

I got to the first line of your post and I just had to reply because you honestly do not know Muslims or Islam. The majority of Muslims I know, and I have come in contact with thousands because of my faith and the jobs I have held, know how to read the Quran in Arabic. Where in the world did you get that 95% statistic from!!?!

So this is WHY this has turned into a nearly 50 page thread. I spent three posts explaining to you already that children ALWAYS learn to read the Quran in Arabic. Are you the same person I was communicating with? Did you forget what I said?

On it's face this is patently false. The literacy rate in Afghanistan, for example, is 28 percent. More than two-thirds of the population is this almost entirely Muslim country isn't reading anything in Farsi, let alone seventh century Arabic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Sometimes women would lie and they were asked not to lie.

Then why weren't men asked not to lie? Didn't men lie too, sometimes?

I think theres a piece you are missing. Engaging men in the same discussion is futile because men have no way of saying which children they fathered. As much as you may think equality needed to be imposed here, you can not because its clear which woman is the mother but unclear as to which man is the father.

Think of the conversation:

Muhammad: did you father any illegitimate children?
Man: maybe, I might have. I have no idea which child though.


Then what?!

Actually, there's a piece YOU are missing. That piece is that the pledge was forward-looking. It did not ask women to prove they haven't done it in the past. It asked women to promise not to do it in the future. So yes, equality can be easily imposed here, and the conversation would have gone like this:

Man: Hello Muhammad, I'd like to join your tribe.
Muhammad: Sure. Do you promise not to lie, not to steal, not to fornicate and not to father children out of wedlock?
Man: Sure, sounds doable.
Muhammad: Come on in.

Yes it was forward thinking. BUT if a woman was lying about paternity, she was not admitted into the tribe. This is why questioning took place, to see if she was unfairly putting responsibility on her lawful husband AND if so, no admission.

Oh do try to keep up. I didn't say it was "forward-thinking", as in "progressive." I said it was "forward looking", as in it concerned itself with what women will do in the future, not with what they did in the past. Stop trying to twist things to fit your picture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow! Been a couple of days since I checked into this thread an see pages and pages have been added, almost all about the oath some women made at the gate of Medina.

I think it's fair to say this may be the only general listserv that hosts such heated debate over such obscure historical events.

About Jahaliyya--I've never heard it referred to as the days of darkness, but rather as the days of ignorance, and specifically ignorance about the monotheistic God. In other words, the days of paganism.

I don't believe there is any evidence people of the jahiliyya were any more cruel or barbaric then those who followed them. Yes, there was infanticide, but most people on the Arabian peninsula lived hard scrabble lives that became even more difficult in a time of drought. Infanticide would have been an economic response as it was in China and many other places. Moreover, the practice of infanticide, which was not limited to female children, appears to have been the practice of one tribe in Arabia, and even then only in times of famine.

Women in the jahiliyya clearly could live pretty emancipated lives as Khadija did. However, women who were captured or sold into marriage did have a pretty miserable lot. Under Islamic rules, they would have been entitled to more rights.

As one PP has said there is a bit of marketing around the term; and it is pretty common to paint a very dark picture of the jahaliyya that was relieved by the Quranic revelations to Mohammed. History is written by the winners.

There is nothing wrong with paganism or polytheism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I got to the first line of your post and I just had to reply because you honestly do not know Muslims or Islam. The majority of Muslims I know, and I have come in contact with thousands because of my faith and the jobs I have held, know how to read the Quran in Arabic. Where in the world did you get that 95% statistic from!!?!

So this is WHY this has turned into a nearly 50 page thread. I spent three posts explaining to you already that children ALWAYS learn to read the Quran in Arabic. Are you the same person I was communicating with? Did you forget what I said?

Easy. The majority of Muslims do not speak Arabic because it is not their native language - I hope you agree with that, or do you think Indonesia has somehow shrunk to be smaller than Bahrain? Out of the minority of Muslims who do speak Arabic, the group that understands Quranic Arabic is a smaller minority yet. The fact that all Muslims can pray in Arabic doesn't mean they understand the meaning of every word. Russian opera singers perform in La Scala with some regularity, delivering the whole parts in flawless Italian. Do you think they understand every word? Nope. They are just trained to enunciate it correctly - just like that 6-year old "hafez" from, say, Kosovo or Indonesia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

On it's face this is patently false. The literacy rate in Afghanistan, for example, is 28 percent. More than two-thirds of the population is this almost entirely Muslim country isn't reading anything in Farsi, let alone seventh century Arabic.

Arabic speakers are a minority among Muslims. Arabic isn't a native language for the majority of Muslims. What percentage of Muslims do you think can read or understand Arabic, let alone 7th century Arabic? Don't be ridiculous. Why don't you get airdropped into the streets of Kosovo, Jakarta, Bishkek, Makhachkala, Kuala Lumpur, Astana, Peshawar, Izmir, Kabul or Tabriz and try to ask directions in 7th century Arabic? See how far you get.

[Anonymous]

Even in Arab countries, thee are sizable numbers who couldn't possibly the read the Quran or anything else. One third of Yemen's population is illiterate. Many of those with some degree of literacy would not be able to understand the Arabic of the Quran, just as many of us have a very hard time really understanding the Canterbury Tales in its original version (or even Shakespeare for that matter).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Even in Arab countries, thee are sizable numbers who couldn't possibly the read the Quran or anything else. One third of Yemen's population is illiterate. Many of those with some degree of literacy would not be able to understand the Arabic of the Quran, just as many of us have a very hard time really understanding the Canterbury Tales in its original version (or even Shakespeare for that matter).

And many Arabic speakers, to add insult to statistics, are not Muslim.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow! Been a couple of days since I checked into this thread an see pages and pages have been added, almost all about the oath some women made at the gate of Medina.

I think it's fair to say this may be the only general listserv that hosts such heated debate over such obscure historical events.

About Jahaliyya--I've never heard it referred to as the days of darkness, but rather as the days of ignorance, and specifically ignorance about the monotheistic God. In other words, the days of paganism.

I don't believe there is any evidence people of the jahiliyya were any more cruel or barbaric then those who followed them. Yes, there was infanticide, but most people on the Arabian peninsula lived hard scrabble lives that became even more difficult in a time of drought. Infanticide would have been an economic response as it was in China and many other places. Moreover, the practice of infanticide, which was not limited to female children, appears to have been the practice of one tribe in Arabia, and even then only in times of famine.

Women in the jahiliyya clearly could live pretty emancipated lives as Khadija did. However, women who were captured or sold into marriage did have a pretty miserable lot. Under Islamic rules, they would have been entitled to more rights.

As one PP has said there is a bit of marketing around the term; and it is pretty common to paint a very dark picture of the jahaliyya that was relieved by the Quranic revelations to Mohammed. History is written by the winners.

There is nothing wrong with paganism or polytheism.

PP here--didn't mean to imply anything wrong with polytheism. Just that jahaliyya is used to refer to the days in which most practiced polytheism. (Not all of course; there were communities of Jews and Nestorian Christians.) In its original usage it meant just that and did not connote that it was an age of cruel, barbaric, and licentious ways of living.

Pre-islamic Arabia had some interesting goddesses, about which we sadly know all too little. Allah was the creator God and had three daughters. One of these was Al Uzza, who, in typical Semitic tradition was the goddess of both fertility and war (see Babylonian Ishtar). The other two were Manat (goddes of fate) and Al-Lat, goddess of the underworld. Allah is thought to have had sons, but interestingly, there names are lost, presumably because they were very minor deities in comparison to their sisters.

The pre-Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca was pretty much a pagan fest, and is thought by some to have been been a seasonal festival for rain. It was held around the autumnal equinox--rain in Arabia falls strictly in the winter. Pre-Islamic Arabs followed the practice of having a lunar year, and every several months an additional month was inserted to keep the lunar year in sync with the solar year. Whether a new month would be intercalated (as insertion of a month is called) would be announced at each pilgrimage.

Intercalation kept the pilgrimage at around the same time every year, keeping it firmly rooted as a seasonal feast. Muhammed made a farewell pilgrimage, which helped him win over the people of Mekka, whose economy depended on the pilgrimage and the trading that went on around it. He changed many of the rituals, making them less pagan. In addition, verse were revealed to him strongly prohibiting the practice of intercalation. This is a very strong absolute prohibition and may seem very odd but it had the effect of divorcing the pilgrimage from its seasonal roots; with a strictly lunar calendar the time of hajj will move throughout the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Did you really think I was under the impression people were enamored with Islam? Yes, Muslims generally are, but nonMuslims. As much as Muslims would like to dispel myths and do whatever necessary to create a more harmonious environment for themselves, I am not interested in impressing others. I am very secure in my faith.

As for your knowledge, sorry, but its google knowledge. You can not read the Quran in the language it was revealed and this prevents you from fully understanding verses you are confused about. Yet you refuse to contact a scholar to seek help.

I can't read the Quran in the language it was revealed. You mean like 95% of Muslims out there? You know perfectly well Arabic speakers are a minority among Muslims, and Quranic Arabic readers are a minority among Arabic speakers. Why pick on me?

I don't need to contact a scholar because the verses are clear on their face. You insist that scholars are necessary because you think they can spin the verses to make them look better. I, on the other hand, accept that if a verse sounds bad, then it IS bad, and no amount of scholarly acrobatics will make it better. I too am secure with this understanding. I don't want to give out my age, but my knowledge of Islam was complete way before google appeared, and the existence of google, as much difference as it made to the universe, made absolutely no difference to my understanding of your religion.

Anonymous wrote:
For example, you insisted the oath administered to women was biased and discriminatory toward women because it was not administered to men. But I provided you with the sura/verse that showed men took the oath too. If you read the Quran, you would have known about that sura/verse already.

I didn't say it was discriminatory because it was not administered to men. I said it was discriminatory because there is no evidence men were asked to comply with any of the rules women were. And that IS discriminatory. The verse you cited didn't indicate men were asked to promise anything like the women were before they took that oath. But then again, I accept that Islam is discriminatory toward women in some regards. I don't need to hear a scholar pontificate about how it really isn't, and if it, then it's a good thing - which is the gist of 99% of scholarly commentary that exists.

Anonymous wrote:
Another example, you asked why women were asked about illegitimate children but not men. Because women were sometimes putting responsibility on their lawful husbands and this was unfair given that paternity could not be determined. Asking men would result in no information because there is no way to conclude their paternity. This knowledge comes with common sense.

That oath was forward-looking, and if women were asked not to have illegitimate children as a condition of joining Medinans, then men could have easily been asked the same thing. That verse looks in the future, not the past.

Anonymous wrote:
You also concluded Islam never established voting rights but Ash Shurra did. You did not know that either because you either never read that sura or did not understand it. You also did not know the language used in the verse was plural, referring to both male and female.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing when you act as if your knowledge is complete. You need to study the Quran in Arabic and study the tafsir and then you could have saved 45 pages.

Yusuf Quaradawi studied the Quran in Arabic, and so did Bin Baz, and so did Ibn Taymiyyah, and your understanding of Islam couldn't be further from theirs. We all know you pick and choose your tafsirs and your scholars. I note, again, that most Muslims never study Quran in the language it was revealed - why don't you go pick on them?

I also need to address one more thing - not for you, but for the benefit of others reading this. The institution of scholars in contemporary Muslim world, to the degree it has developed, is a complete scam born out of nothing but the desire for job security. Islam was revealed to a largely illiterate population. It was meant to be a code of simple rules that can be understood by anyone, not exclusively King Abdulaziz University graduates. If a rule in the Quran sounds simple, then no matter how awful it sounds to a non-Muslim, guess what, it really says what it means to say, and no amount of scholarly commentary can change that. It can tell you why Muslims think it has to be that way, but if it doesn't make sense to you, then then reason is that it really doesn't make any sense. Scholars are unnecessary to understand most of the Quran, and it's a great credit to the skill and sophistication of the scholar marketing machine that some scholars out there have jobs and TV shows because women aren't capable of deciding whether they are allowed to change clothes in the room where they think a male jinn lives.

I got to the first line of your post and I just had to reply because you honestly do not know Muslims or Islam. The majority of Muslims I know, and I have come in contact with thousands because of my faith and the jobs I have held, know how to read the Quran in Arabic. Where in the world did you get that 95% statistic from!!?!

So this is WHY this has turned into a nearly 50 page thread. I spent three posts explaining to you already that children ALWAYS learn to read the Quran in Arabic. Are you the same person I was communicating with? Did you forget what I said?

On it's face this is patently false. The literacy rate in Afghanistan, for example, is 28 percent. More than two-thirds of the population is this almost entirely Muslim country isn't reading anything in Farsi, let alone seventh century Arabic.

I worked with Afghan refugees and this may be true. But why did you choose to use the Muslim country with one of the worst literacy rates to illustrate what the rest of the 1.6 billion does?