12/31/08

Break Time

I'm sick of the koran. It's stupid and evil. How about a cute cat picture instead?

From Tim. More here.

12/28/08

HMASQ

Chapter 42: more of the same tedious crap, for 53 lines. Here's how it starts:


(1) H. M.
(2) A. S. Q.



Both the first two lines are just random letters. Turns out there are nine chapters that have secret letters in front of their secret letters, so they all start with Ha Mim, then more letters.

You don't get actual words till the third line, and when you do get words, they suck. It's physically painful to keep reading the same things repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Verse 40 calls for an eye for an eye and says

41. “If one avenges himself after he has been wronged, there is no way of blaming him.”
so I guess we should all just quit bitching about the twin towers.

12/26/08

Right and Wrong


The next chapter in order of revelation is either 25 or 42, depending on who you ask. So, chapter 25 is...al furqan, which means a standard, or criterion for telling right from wrong. It's the straw man they always try to sic on atheists! Theists imagine that without god (or Mo's god) some world exists with just no way to tell what is right or wrong. People just eat their children and screw their dog because they just can't think of any reason why they shouldn't. It's a miracle people ever developed international trades routes and elaborate societies back before anyone knew it was a good idea to cooperate. We're so lucky that [favorite prophet] came along to tell us right from wrong, so we know to take care of our children and stuff.

But wait...back in Eden didn't they eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and learn what was right and wrong? That criterion's from way back before there was any Bible, let alone a Quran. What's different about this new criterion? Mo says to give alms, pray, and “walk with humility on the earth, and when they are addressed by the ignorant, say: 'Peace"(25:63). The moon worshippers were doing all that. The only real difference is that this new criterion says it's suddenly wrong to not believe Mohammed. In Mohammed's criterion. But according to the old criterion, they shouldn't believe him, they should put him to death. Would have saved everybody a lot of trouble...
To summarize the rest of the chapter,

Everybody else's gods are bogus; I'm god's messenger; nobody believes me; they'll all go to hell; they'll be sorry; god kills unbelievers; god can do anything; judgment day's a-comin'. (Repeat over and over.)


To keep from dying of boredom you can pick out weird things that don't match up. Like he doesn't say there aren't other gods, just that they don't have any power. They have to show up at the pearly gates too,

17. The day He will gather them together along with those they worshipped other than God, He will ask them: "Did you lure these creatures of Mine away, or did they themselves go astray?"
18. They will answer;"Glory to You. It was not worthy of us to seek any protector other than You. But You allowed them and their fathers a life of ease until they turned oblivious of the Reminder. They were a people impenitent.

19. (The idolaters will be told): "Your gods have refuted your assertion. You can neither avert your doom nor receive any help.

So much for the first pillar of Islam--“There is no god but Allah and all those other little gods in sura 25, etc...”

In some places Mo sounds just like a christian:

(63) Devotees of ar-Ramen are those who... ...do not fornicate (68).

LOL! I think old Mo did a little fornicating in his time! It's nice to know he'll go to hell for it, except, wait--
70. Except those who repent and come to believe and do the right, for whom God will turn evil into goodness, for God is forgiving and kind.
71. Whosoever repents and does the right, will have turned back to God by way of repentance;
You can get out of hell if you repent? I guess we aren't supposed to notice all the other verses that say just the opposite, like the last half of v19 up there. It's a buffet! You can find anything you want in the Quran, you just have to pick through a lot of old stale leftovers to find it.

12/19/08

Dinosaurs in the Koran

The picture in that last post really works for me. If you put a lot of livestock on a boat--a wooden boat--they're gonna break outta their stalls just as sure as water is wet, so Duh....this is how it would end: but it bothered me that the ark was on fire--it's not like animals throw bombs at each other. I just hadn't thought this through.

If cow farts cause global warming, it's a sure bet they'd cause ark-al warming. Methane comes from decomposing waste, and this article estimates the animals would have produced 25,000 tons of (sh)it, and the ark only had one itty-bitty window for ventilation, so this is how I picture it went down: one of the eight crew members, fumbling around in the pitch dark below decks, sticking his fingers into cow crap and dino snouts, gets fed up and lights a match. A giraffe lets one rip and blowtorches the match into a pocket of methane, sets everything on fire, blows the sides out of T-Rex's pen and seriously pisses him off. It ends as you see in the picture.
All perfectly logical; you don't see anymore dinosaurs around, now do ya?

12/12/08

Sura 36



Next in the Middle Meccan suras is 36, another one named for a typo, Ya Sin is just more ranting: nobody appreciates god for making everything; god will fuck you up. Here's samples.

7. paraphrasing, he says unbelievers deserve their sentence, then
8. “We will certainly put iron collars on their necks which will come up to their chins, so that they will not be able to raise their heads.
9. And We shall raise a barrier in front of them and a barrier behind them, and cover them over so that they will not be able to see.”
I'm betting that if a time traveler put a peter meter on Mohammed it'd go off the charts when he talks about Hell. He never goes into details about heaven though: Paradise, lessee... streams.... fruit... uhhh.... people being happy... BORinnnng. Some “”experts”” interpret this as saying what will happen in hell, others as as saying this is what god does to people so that they can't see the truth! Either way it makes god out a sadistic sumbitch. I don't need to interpret it, it paints a picture of an immature little brat who pulls wings off flies. Mo made his point in line 7, so the next two lines are just gratuitous violence, but he can't resist. People being tortured—WOOT!—here's how I'd do it.... (rapid breathing) ...

His abusive personality comes out again. God could have drowned people (43), blinded them (66), paralyzed them (67), but he didn't do any of those things, so that shows how merciful and kind he is. O thank you Master, for making the pain stop. Then it gets all emo, tells Mo “... be not grieved by what they say (76)”. Am I the only one this bothers? God supposedly has one shot at getting his message to all humankind, and this is it? Mo should keep his chin up? Why not send Mary Poppins? And don't look for pity right after you gloat about how you're gonna Ruin Our Shit.
Line 42 is funny though. Turns out god made extra arks besides the one Noah made. Maybe that's where they put all the dinosaurs?

41. That We bore their progeny in the laden ark is a sign for them;
42. And We made similar vessels for them to ride.

12/9/08

Mo Talks to the Trees ...


Really—Mo talks to the trees. Chapter 72 is a story of how some jinns heard about the koran and converted. A few commenters say these jinns were some group of people, although they can't agree on exactly who, but most of them just flat out believe there are actual real jinns running around, and they know they were really jinns because a tree said so! I thought this was just the wacko fringe element, but it turns out this is WHAT MOSLEMS ACTUALLY BELIEVE!! I'm just fucken speechless.


Y'know, when I started this project I thought Islam was just another religion, no more or less silly than any of the others. I thought the average non-radical muslim was getting a bad rap and I always stuck up for them. That position is getting harder and harder to maintain in the face of the fractal levels of ignorance and outright stupidity I keep seeing. The Koran may be turning me into an anti-moslem bigot; I hope not.

Anyhow, the chapter ends with this bit, which might be a clue as to why Mo wasn't getting any followers.

We're halfway through the Middle Meccan period. Mo was preaching in Mecca for about ten years, so by now he's been at it for about five. Hang in there, Mo, your ship camel will come in.

12/6/08

Mohammed Preaches the Bible


Here in the Middle Meccan suras we're infested with Bible stories. Mo maybe learned something from his little dustup over Uzza & Co. and now he's adopting the Christian model for his sermons. Between chapters 38 and 7 he's mentioned David, Solomon, Abraham Isaac & Jacob, Noah, Pharoah, and Lot; also 'Ad and Thamud, a couple of obscure desert kingdoms nobody cares about.

He's not very good at it yet. Both 50 and 38 told us to be like the Dwellers of the Wood, even though nobody knows who they were. In chapter 7, v124 has the Pharaoh crucifying people when there is no record they ever did any such thing, them not having trees and all. And v137 says all the structures raised by the Egyptians were destroyed. I could have sworn I've heard of pyramids and temples and stuff being over there. Especially Mt Sinai, even though v143 says it crumbled to dust.
(124) "I will have your hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, and have you all crucified."
(137)...whatsoever the Pharaoh and his people had fashioned, and the structures they had raised, were destroyed.
(143) ... when his Lord appeared on the mountain in His effulgence, it crumbled to a heap of dust,...
What's with all these inaccuracies? The pitch is that god has everything written down in a book up in heaven. This chapter refers to a book at least 14 times---v204 even calls it the Quran. (!!) Mo's all “Yer god sux, mine has a book!”
Well, our stupid old earthly Quran says the Thamud were destroyed by an earthquake(7:78), but then it turns around in 11:67 and says it was a 'blast from heaven'. So is god's book all fucked up or did Mo just copy it wrong? Seems like they could tell the difference; an earthquake I hear comes from underground; as in the underworld, aka hel, not heaven.

Aside from getting the details wrong, Mo leaves most of them out. His versions are usually only a few sentences, so this whole chapter just keeps using different names to repeat the same bare bones plot:
  1. A prophet shows up,
  2. people diss prophet,
  3. God kills everybody.
It comes off as a lot of dick-waving, and then this line sums up nicely:
(94) There is not a region to which We sent a prophet and did not inflict upon its people adversity and hardship so that they may submit.
All-mutherfucking-merciful, that. And if that's not clear enough there's this charming tale by way of illustration,
(163) Enquire of them about the town situated by the sea where, when they did not keep the Sabbath, the fish came up to the surface of the water for them; but on days other than the Sabbath the fish did not come. We tried them in this way, for they were disobedient.
See, God gives people a choice: work on the sabbath or don't eat. They pass his trial if they starve to death while they sit watching all those big juicy Mackerel god taunts them with every Sunday. Then of course when they chose not to die of hunger, he
(165) ... inflicted on the wicked a dreadful punishment.
Well, why wouldn't he? It'll teach them sons-a-bitches to complain when allah feels like torturing innocent people to get his rocks off. You know what? Fuck you, Allah. And fuck you, Mohammed. Look—according to the Quran it's OK to say that:
7:180 "leave those alone who act profanely towards His names"
ROFL! Could this be any less consistent? And then it asks
7:184 "Have they not bethought themselves their companion is not mad?"
You'd have to becrazy to bethink he wasn't. Or bethink he wasn't a mean sonuvabitch besides.

(ps. Don't miss Kafirgirl's fisk of Ch7.)

12/5/08

Jinns Eat Shit.


The koran never even tells you who or what Jinns are exactly, but while I was researching it I found this bit, which is just too good to pass up. Silliest Thing Yet award, we have a winner!!

From Al-Bukhari, “the most respected and prestigious Hadith collection”.

Volume 5, Book 58, Number 200:

Narrated Abu Huraira:
... in the company of the Prophet ... I walked with him and asked, "What about the bone and the animal dung?" He said, "They are of the food of Jinns.”

ROFLMFAO! SO there you have it. Official Moslem doctrine teaches that the world is full of a lot of invisible shit-eating ghosts. Does that explain the grin on this little guy?


12/3/08

Iblis

Mo tells the story of Iblis in Chapter 38, and then repeats it in his next revelation, chapter 7. Then he tells it again in surah 2. And 15. And 17. And 18. And 20. When your book's too short, don't you usually write some new material, instead of just repeating chapters? But this is the koran so it's no use being reasonable.
I've corrected enough Freshman English papers to recognize the technique: you don't really have a clear idea of what you're trying to say so you keep repeating the same things over and over. Mo, maybe; but God isn't sure what he's trying to say? God needs Remedial Composition? Pfft.
I guess Mo just made up the Iblis story, because it's not in the Bible. The best translation is the one at Lolkoran. Of course, the real quran doesn't end with playing in the yard, it ends with burning in hell—Allah being all-merciful and shit. Here's the Cliff notes version:

(11) God tells the angels to bow down to Adam but Iblis won't do it,
(12)says he's better'n Adam cause he was made of fire, not clay like Adam.

(13-15)So God tells him to go to hell, but lets him hang around till judgment day.
(16-17)Iblis says “I'm gonna tell everybody what an asshole you've been”

(18)and God's like “Yeah? I'll send them to hell too.”
He comes right out and says this:
7:179 And indeed We have created many jinns and men for hell;
There you go; god created people just so he could torture them. All-Merciful, he is.
???
If this book has a consistent message, it's to not make anything a compeer of god, by bowing down to it. So why does god tell the angels to do exactly that? Isn't Iblis obeying god's command here?
Being proud or insolent or whatever gets Iblis sent to hell, but then god is happy jolly with him causing people endless torture. Isn't god being a little bipolar? And what's the moral? Letting your kid be a serial killer is fine as long as they're not sassy? Is that where I've failed as a parent?

Who or what is Iblis? Everyone says he is Satan, but I don't see anywhere it says that. Plus, no one knows if he is an angel (7:17) or a djinn (18:50); the Koran says both. To weasel out of this we have—TA-DAH!!--the “rule in Arabic grammar called tagleeb”. At least Zakir Naik does, because every reference I find traces back to him: He's trying to claim grammatical gender determines the meaning of words. Now I don't know Arabic, but I know linguistics, and in nerd talk, he confuses generic masculine with quantifier scope. In ordinary people talk, his rule says “I am an ignorant jackass who doesn't understand grammar”: and somehow this proves that Iblis is not an angel. It's Islamic Logic!

11/29/08

Islamic Logic!

Since this project started we've been asking a lot of moslems to explain things to us, and by now I've got the pattern figured out. It's no different from talking to Christians: Just replace Koran with Bible, Islam with Christian, Harun Yahya with Warren Jeffs, and reason with... uhh... something.

11/26/08

Sex, Drugs, and fruit.

pic of drunk squirrel

Up till chapter 38, Mo's heaven has only been promising fruit and streams of running water. People weren't buying, and were persecuting poor old Mo. So now he adds booze and babes to pull in the marks.

(51) Where they will take their ease, calling for fruits in plenty, and for wine,
(52) With companions of modest look, the same in age, by their side.

Good marketing decision. It's still pulling 'em in.

11/24/08

Sad, Really Really Sad.

Chapter 38 is called “Sad,” which it is, but the name comes from another of those typos they were too dumb to take out. This time it's the Arabic letter Saad. Another Miracle!! WHOOO-HOO!


The first time I read chapter 38 I thought 'this is totally incoherent.' I thought it might be translation problems. Then I looked everything up, reread it and studied it, and now that I understand it I know it is totally incoherent. It's a lot of bible stories, all reduced down to bare bones, and all the same: a prophet turns up → people don't believe him → god kills everybody. The exception is Solomon. God let him live, and I was all “What? Why aren't you killing him? You don't let people live!” I guess I'm finding the author's mood. When the hero not committing senseless genocide puzzles you, there is something very basically wrong. Counting the verses in this chapter and the next, they devote 4% to heaven, and 50% to damnation. And the stories don't have any logic.

Take David: Two guys ask him to settle an argument and he says “You've got a million sheep and you're taking the only one he's got. It's not fair.” So far so good. The next sentence David is down on his knees begging forgiveness. You see the nice smooth flow of logical narrative there? Or are you like me screaming at the monitor “BEGGING FORGIVENESS FOR WHAT, for God's sakes?

I admit I forgot the bible story about David. OK, I suck. All I remembered was he killed some big dude with a sling. So I reread the bible and remembered that David had some guy killed so he could get his wife Bathsheeba, and god was pissed and sent an angel, who told the sheep story--and then I got it. Sheep = women, the one ewe = Bathsheeba, David = murdering scumbag, NOW it makes sense!! If I hadn't read the Torah's version I never would have got it. So the moral is that without the Torah the koran is useless, but according to moslems all these other scriptures are corrupted and unreliable.

Same thing with the first verses. It gloats vaguely about some unidentified prophet “turning many gods into one” → people don't believe him → god kills everybody. Turns out there are hadith about this that explain it as a garbleation of Mo's meeting with the leaders of his tribe. Once again if all you read is the koran, you have no idea what it's about. It's like telling a punch line without the joke. Or how about Ishmael, Al-Yasa and Dhul-kiffle? Especially that last guy dull kiffle? History has exactly jack and shit to say about him except for two passing mentions in the koran; he “observes patience” (21:85), and he's “among the best” (v48), whoever he is.

So, bottom line, the single book we need to know how to life our lives is completely worthless without a lot of supplementary materials that either don't exist or have been corrupted. Just shoot me.

It's sort of a puzzle why, but twice in this chapter, v65 and 86-7, Mo says he's only a 'warner' and he's not asking any compensation for doing the lord's work. He insists on this in other places too that I'm too lazy to look up. My guess is it's to divorce himself from the priests in the Meccan Megachurch, who would have been milking the people for all they were worth—whereas Mo was poor and selfless, y'unnerstand. Hmf.

11/22/08

Mohammad Pouts.


Moving right along to the next schizophrenic delusion revelation in this disorganized jumble of gossip clear guide to life, we come to Chapter 50, verse 1:

1. The hour has come and split is the moon.

Wait...What?! There's two moons? WTF?

As usual with god's “clear, perfect and fully detailed instructions, this means something different with everyone you ask. I found five different explanations.

(1) People actually believe this really happened!! Seriously. It was reported by a number of Mo's homies, But the accounts don't agree:

IMsd says that he saw the peak of Mount Hira’ interposing between the two parts.

I‘Ab says that one of the two parts remained, while the other disappeared (Kf).

But now it's “accepted as correct” because "The incident is narrated in mutawatir (successively repeated) hadith with sahih isnad (sound transmission)". In other words, what Goebbels said, and using foreign words makes it even truthier.

(2) Other people have one toe firmly grounded in reality, and don't believe this could happen, but they do believe it was a miracle performed by Mo. Even though the koran doesn't allow miracles, and it's supposed to be infallible. Right.

(3) For people with most of one whole foot in, it refers to the day of judgment. Supposedly there's something called the prophetic past tense, that indicates the future, so if you mean 'is going to', you say 'went'. And since this verse is written in the present tense......uhhhh....

(4) Then there are people with no feet in reality, who zoom wheelchairs around outer space wearing tinfoil hats and say “This important sign of the approaching end of the world came to pass in 1969 when humans landed on the moon and brought pieces of the moon to earth.” WOO-ee, a Prophecy Fulfilled! Apparently this idea is pretty widespread. Meanwhile, outside the twilight zone,

(5) it's an idiom meaning something like 'the light dawned'. Even the most gullible twit should get a clue from the next line

2. But if they see a sign they turn away,

Yeah, nobody's impressed. Medieval moon-worshippers, why would they be? You can just see it, Abu comes into the tent, “Damndest thing just happened: Our God just broke in half.” and Fatima says, “How about that. Did you feed the camels?”

It looks like Mo tried to pull Columbus' stunt of taking credit for an eclipse, but he fucked it up and didn't convince anyone. So for the rest of the chapter, Mo pouts. “So turn away from them” he says. (v6) “they'll be sorry”, he says, like Noah, and 'Aad and Lot and on and on revenge fantasies for the rest of the chapter. “They think they have scriptures? They think they have an army? I'll kick their ass.” Really grade school.


crazy guy

You have to laugh when he says “They're the ones who're insane” (v47). He's still not quite convinced it's them and not him. Lol! Hang in there, Mo, there're plenty of other crazy people out there in opposite world. Trust me, they'll find you.


11/20/08

Slavery & Stupidity

Ch 90: the City

This time Mo swears by 'this city'. Which city? Mecca, of course. Why Mecca? Because Mo was greedy and jealous and wanted to take the place over? Naw, because...uhh...something. Anyway,

...shorter ch 90 = I've told you the way to avoid Hell: free the slaves and feed the hungry. Interesting theme considering Mohammed had more slaves than he knew what to do with, and Muslims are still capturing slaves in Africa. But see, he didn't just say “free the slaves”, he said do it so “that he become of those who believe (v17)”, and if he doesn't, fuck him. You get to be moslem or a slave. Or a corpse. Pretty shitty chapter.

But then comes Chapter 86, the Night Star, with its backtracking on the number of angels, and then this gem:

Ahmed Ali translation:

5. Let man consider what he was made of:
6. He was created of spurting water
7. Issuing from (the pelvis) between the backbone and the ribs.

Spurting water? That comes from WHERE? Some other translations:

(6) He is created of seed poured forth,
(7) issuing from the loins, and the breast-bones.
(6) He is created from a jetting fluid,
(7) Which issues forth from between the loins and the breast-bones.

Seed, fluid, water, whatever--it's poetry, right? I can live with that, but at least on non-muslims it doesn't issue from where they say. There are a lot of explanations for this, and here is way more information than anyone could want, and also on the 'man was formed from a clot' business. If you don't want to wade through all that, the short take is it's an argument between (a) modern science, and (b) dumfuckery. Batting for “Islamic Scholarship” (cough) on the dumfuck side we have Munit Munshey, who proclaims,

"Semen DOES NOT COME from the testicles, period!"


Ooooo-kay! Do you want to see more of his stuff? Good, I thought not.

Once again, the Quran presents a clear choice. If God is not colossally stupid, it's a problem if he wrote stupid stuff: you can say it's not stupid, or invent stupid reasons why it is stupid, either of which makes you look stupid, because god acting stupid would be stupid. OTOH, if Mohammed wrote the book, it says exactly what you'd expect, and there's no problem. It's obvious to me that god didn't write the damn book—but maybe I'm just stupid.

The last line is another clincher;

86:17 So give a respite to the disbelievers. Deal thou gently with them for a while.

BULLSHIT ALERT! Mo & Co. always whine about how the disbelievers persecuted Mohammed and his followers, so why would he be asking his followers to give a respite to the disbelievers? Who was being persecuted again?

For an exact parallel Google the early history of Joseph Smith and his cult. Non-Mormon histories tell how Joe was a fortune-hunting con artist and a minor criminal who harassed everyone around him, was arrested several times, even tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. He packed up and took his followers to another town to repeat the whole process.

Mormon histories, OTOH describe a godly man who preached the truth to unbelievers who in return persecuted and even tortured him and his followers, driving them from the Kaaba and eventually from Mecca itself....no wait, I'm getting Joe and Mo mixed up. They're so fucking similar who can tell the difference? The only important thing is that in Joe's case we have a paper trail that tells both sides of the story, whereas Mo's cult succeeded in wiping out the opposition. Not that the Mormons didn't try. The mob that eventually lynched Joe was pissed off after the Mormons burned down a newspaper for saying bad things about his cult. Uthman, anyone?

Somehow I'm supposed to ignore the fact that their own goddamned historians tell how they're lying!!! How come every nickel these people had isn't in a bank account in Nigeria?

11/18/08

All Hail Her Noodly Goodness

All my life I've heard “There is no god but allah blah blah” and then in Chapter 50(v33) it says to worship Rahman! WTF?? It turns out there's a whole Chapter (55) named Ar-Rahman, that says “Ar-Rahman bestowed the Qur'an and created man (55:1-3)”. What the hell?—what happened to “no god but Allah”?

Rahman was one of the gods of the old Pre-moslem Arabs, popular down south in Yemen. He was a completely different god from Our Ramen. The Arabic word for god was 'lah', and al or ar is the definite article in Arabic, like English the, so if you wanted to say “the god” like there's only one, you stick that in front so it's Al-Lah. That's what Christians call god in their Arabic Bibles. The old time Meccans had a guy they called al-Lah, who was like the boss god who never really did much, and they aimed all their praying and stuff at the other 359 gods they had. So there was Rahman and Allah, two different gods. So what's Mo on about?

Every koran chapter I have to erase the first line, because it's not really part of it. It's the Bismillah. or Basmala, supposedly added by Mohammed. Everybody translates it different ways—here's two;

In the name of god, The Merciful, the Compassionate.
In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

In Arabic it's: 'Bismillah, Ar-Rahman, Al-Rahim'.

Now to me, that just means that Zeus or Lah or whatsisname is merciful and compassionate. (excuse me while I check to see if we're reading the same book). That never seemed to mean much. It like a guy who jacks off to Eva Longoria. On her would make sense, although you have to wonder what Eva had to say about it, but to her? I guess it means what you think about while you do whatever you do. In the bismala you don't do anything, because it's not even a sentence. Those are just two adjectives, to describe Dios, Dieu, Gott, etc., is what I thought.


FAIL! Turns out these are two of the 99 names of god. Here are some: Rahman is in the Qur’an 159 times; Rahim 220; Hakim 'Wise', 86; Qadir 'Powerful', 31; and Huva 'He', 26; as in the phrase “There is no god, but He”. Just a damn minute--“he” is a name?” Even that meaningless letter qaf in chapter 50 gets translated as 'god'. ROFL!

None of this is making any sense, but here's a reasonable explanation. When Mo came along, he decided Al-lah wasn't just the boss god, he was the only god. But he couldn't keep his story straight, and he slipped up and called god Rahman sometimes. His dudes weren't buying that shit. They caught him reciting the bismala, and called him out on worshipping the Yemeni gods, the fucking hypocrite. So guess what old Mo did? Apologize on Fox News and enter a treatment program? Nah, you guessed it; good old convenient God sent down a revafuckinglation, 7:180 'Call upon Allah or call upon Rahman: by whatever name ye call Him, it is well: for to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names.” What a pal. And his followers were too dumb to ask why he didn't say that in the first place. Typical cultists. So I guess we can use any word, as long as it's beautiful. I nominate “Cunt”. I think cunts are lovely and deserving of respect, and it would make a lot more sense to worship a Great Cunt of Heaven than that asshole in the koran.
Ramen!

11/16/08

The Story of Q

No, not O, Q. You're thinking of something else. The title of chapter 50 is just “Q”, anyway the Arabic letter qaf . What's up with that, I wondered:

1. Qâf. [These letters are one of the miracles of the Qur'ân, and none but Allâh knows their meanings].

O shit, more secret letters! They set the bar pretty low for miracles, Hey look-- X – I've performed a miracle! I'm God's Messenger; send me your money by Paypal! Then I kept finding this explanation all over the web, word for word, so it must be important;

The Surah derives its name from the initial letter Qaf, thereby implying that it is the Surah which opens with the alphabetic letter Qaf.

WTF? Even after I looked up “imply” in the dictionary this doesn't make any sense. When I say this is stupid, I'm not implying it's stupid, I'm saying it's stupid. It's pathetic how these people are so hard up for miracles and meaning in their lives. They'd find real meanings and real implications if they looked in a book on astronomy, or biology—of course then they'd have to think. Never mind.

Ya gotta admit qaf makes pretty kickass boat, though.


That was a float at the 2006 Asian Games. (Click the picture) Anyhow after the miracles are over, it starts.

v1. Qaf. I call to witness the glorious Koran.

If this is god saying "Look what I wrote", it's stoopid. If it's Mohammed trying to puff himself up, it makes sense, but you'd have to be a filthy infidel to say that. I'll say that. Next those crazy unbelievers, they say that coming back to life after you die is far-fetched. Word, homes! Mo's devastating counter-arguments are: the book says so; look at the earth and the sky and stuff; God made everything; I'll kick your ass like I did Noah and them other guys. Fuck, I'm convinced; OBVIOUSLY dead people come back to life. Having incinerated his opponent with the blazing clear light of logic, he goes on describing his resurrection day fantasy, repeats the same arguments some more, and in the last line says

50:45 ...it is not for you to compel them.

Mo? ... Jihadis? ....Hello? ... God's on the line here. ... Anyone? ... Ben Stein?


There are angels in this chapter too, for shits and giggles. You know the old cliché about an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other? He seriously says this.



(17)When the two (angels) who keep the account, one sitting on the right, one on the left, take it down,

(18) There is not a word he utters but an observer is ready

Rofl! It also says there is one in front and behind (13:11) and his very next revelation he's gonna say there is one over you (90:4). WTF? Is there two? One? Five? Whatever; just remember there is no confusion in the Quran. Good thing the angels are invisible or we'd be tripping over them all the time. I have trouble enough with my cats.

11/13/08

HELL (& heaven)


Chapter 77: The Emissaries.
1. “I call to witness those who are sent, who strike, who revive, ... and Bill, and George, and Bev, and Susan. Enough with the swearing already---Who are all these jerks? About half the translations say they're winds, and it means angels. Here's a clue: if you mean angels, say “angels”. Jeez.

Same old same old, a lot of it in identical wording to verses we've already heard. Every fifth verse on average, this chapter repeats “Woe to those who deny”. Woe, woe, woe. This is obviously the chorus of a poem, so undoubtedly it sounds better in Arabic, but all it really says is this

(chorus)
He’ll fuck you up (he’ll fuck you up)
Yes, god will fuck you up
If you dare to disobey his stern command.
He’ll fuck you up (he’ll fuck you up)
Don’t you know he’ll fuck you up
So you better do some prayin’ while you can.
Then it describes hell---no shade, fire, sparks the size of camels. From the pictures I've seen of Arabia Mo's descriptions of hell shouldn't have had much effect, because these guys were already living in it. Heaven gets a measly 4 lines—it has shade, springs, and fruit. Gosh, kind of a bargain- basement Tahiti. I bet Sam Kinison could imagine a better heaven. He would've known what to tell Mo:

(transcript)
YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT! NOTHING GROWS OUT HERE! NOTHING'S GONNA GROW OUT HERE! YOU SEE THIS? HUH? THIS IS SAND. KNOW WHAT IT'S GONNA BE A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW? IT'S GONNA BE SAND! YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT! GET YOUR STUFF, GET YOUR SHIT, WE'LL MAKE ONE TRIP, WE'LL TAKE YOU TO WHERE THE FOOD IS! WE HAVE DESERTS IN AMERICA -- WE JUST DON'T LIVE IN THEM, ASSHOLES!"

It's too bad Mo couldn't have joined the navy and seen the world. If he found out where God's UN-chosen people lived, he would have shit coconuts. The size of camels probly.

11/11/08

God Will Go To Hell

This first chapter (75) of the Middle Meccan period is all devoted to Judgment day. The pagans never had anything like that, so this whole idea of a last day, resurrection and afterlife is all stolen from the Christians, apparently. They should have copyrighted that shit.
So what happens on that last day? Well, the sun and moon will be joined together (v9). Whatever that means, it doesn't sound good. Some peeps will be happy—they get two lines, and some will not be—they get eleven lines. Predictably, Mo only spends 15 percent of his speechifying on good stuff, and 85% on punishments, working himself up. Are we seeing the trend here? He seems to get his rocks off with these last two lines.
34. Alas the woe for you, alas!
35. Alas, the woe for you!
A wierd thing about this chapter is that v16-19 only make sense if you look at them as an interruption, Of course there is absolutely nothing to indicate this, except that they don't make sense otherwise. Have you ever been talking to someone wearing a headset and saying things into the phone while they are talking to you? Does it seem rude and inconsiderate? Well, that's god for you: these lines are supposed to be an aside from god to Mo, telling him not to rush through this shit, to take his time and remember it. Supposedly because it was a new thing and he hadn't got the hang of it yet. Dude, this is the 29th one! Let's face it, they know fuck all about what order chapters these go in.
Chapter 104, The Slanderers, spends 6 of its 9 verses saying how awful hell is, which is where slanderers will go. Since god says Jews are apes and pigs, (7:166, 2:65, 5:60...), a clearly "false and defamatory statement" it looks like god will go to hell. There's no question these guys will, or these guys, or this guy.

That's the first two revelations of the Middle Mecca Period. We're heading into some serious preachin' ahead. Next up: Chapter 77, The Emissaries.

11/8/08

A Fig Takes the Witness Stand

As usual Mo starts chapter 95 by calling his witnesses: the fig, the olive, Mt Sinai, and 'this soil secure'. No one knows what the first three of those are, but they all agree that the 'soil' refers to Mecca. I'd love to see them get Mt. Sinai in the witness box, but the fig and company's testimony is supposed to establish the following: god made people, raised them high, and brought them low. The defense wraps up then by asking;
8. Is not God the most equitable of all judges?
Well, no, he's not. We've already seen how he obliterates anybody who questions him, and only raises up gullible saps. The prosecution rests.

Still in Bumfuck, Arabia, chapter 106 talks about Mohammad's own tribe the Quaraysh. It says they are prosperous due to the Lord of this House, and they should worship his ass. 'This house' is the Kaaba, centered around the Black Stone. The Lord of the Kaaba was Hubal, the moon god. Wait, ...what???? A pagan shrine to a pagan god. WTF?

It seems like, if you no longer believed in a religion, you'd stay away from their church, doesn't it? But Mo could see how that worked out, because he hung out with another heretic, a poet named Zaid bin Amr. He was Hanifist, sort of a Jew-Christian hybrid, and he wasn't too welcome in Mecca, so he moved out into the mountains where he faded into obscurity.

Obscurity is not how Mohammed rolls. Mo was a businessman: he knew you don't launch a new product with no brand recognition. He needed brand leveraging, and he got it by stealing market share from the Meccan Moonies. So most of the symbols of Islam are remnants of the old pagans. Crescent moon? That's Hubal. The star with it? Uzza. The color green? Hey, what color would you like if you lived in a huge sandbox where seeing any runty little bush was a big deal? I cannot pass up this opportunity to talk about The Black Stone. Have you seen this thing? Does it remind you of anything? Sure it's been rebuilt a few times, but why that particular shape? It originally honored the Goddess Uzza, with naked orgies in tribute to fertility. It just cracks me up that Mo prayed by kissing a giant vagina! And even though they now give their temples a completely opposite look, those woman-hating moslems still make pilgrimages to do it.

They should stay home and pay a little homage to real females. I'll have more to say about this whole matritheism bit, but in separate rant--you has been warned. Chapters 106 and 101 are a lot of poetic sounding stuff about judgment day, doesn't really say anything except good peeps go to heaven, bad ones go to hell. And that's the last of the Early Mecca period; it's supposed to be different from here on out. Think it'll get better? Wanna buy a bridge in Alaska?

11/5/08

Mansions of the Stars


Chapter 85 has a lot of different names: the constellations, the stars, the zodiac ... Ye Olde Arabic doesn't seem to have very clear words for whatever Mo is calling to the witness stand this time, but there's one translation I like. When you get away from the city lights and look up at the Milky Way and its companions, doesn't "Mansions of the Stars" just seem to ...work?

The rest of the chapter sucks, starts out by telling us that the men who sat around the trench full of fire, witnessing what they had done to the believers, are accursed. Well, OK, but ... who are these men? What'd they do? What trench? Answer—nobody knows. Depending on who you ask, they were some guys in the Bible, or some other ones, or maybe it means the Battle of the Ditch, which seems like a good bet since its a famous muslim battle. Zoom in on 7th Century Arabia again.



Trouble is, we're here in the early Mecca period, way before the big move in the year 622, and the Battle of the Ditch was a seige of Medinah in 627. Ahhh, here's an explanation: it's a prophetical reference to events in the future. And a pig just flew out of my butt and is rooting through all these garbled up verses, just like the clowns who did it in the first place. The ditch massacre comes up later, with gruesome details, so I'll deal with it then; if it means something else god should have said. So let's be like the CIA and redact this section.

85 Signs of the Zodiac

1. I call to witness the sky (bespangled) with the signs of the Zodiac,
2. And the promised day,
3. And the witness and the witnessed,
4 That accursed are the men of the trench
5. Full of fire fed by faggots,
6. As they sat around it
7. Witnessing what they had done to the believers!
8. They had no other reason for hating them except that they believed in God the mighty, worthy of praise,
9. Whose kingdom spreads over the heavens and the earth. God is witness over everything.
10. Surely for those who persecute believers, men and women, and do not repent afterwards, is the punishment of Hell, and the punishment of burning.

11. Surely for those who believe and do the right are gardens with rivers running by. That is the greatest success.
12. The grip of your Lord is severe indeed!
The next ten verses just keep alternating like those last two: god will kick you ass, he loves you, he'll kick your ass, he loves you...more boilerplate abusive personality-speak. Once all the petals are off that dandelion—it ends with a 'kick your ass' one, natch —it ends with an interesting note.
21. This is indeed the glorious Qur'an
22. Preserved on the guarded tablet.
Now this may seem a little unclear, since the quran hadn't been written yet, but they have a cute save. See, up in heaven god has a GREAT BIG BOOK, with everything in it that ever has happened or will happen. The Koran's in there, the Torah, Doonesbury, the Bible, Big Naturals IV, everything. That's why the koran is all perfect, y'unnerstand, it's a copy of god's own diary. No matter how bad we screw it up down here on earth, the original's still be up there in heaven on stone tablets, protected by Level Nine angels with Infinity-Plus-One AK47s and shit. And we know it's up there, because Mohammad said so.

11/4/08

The Koran in Arabic

Since we were talking about translations in the last post, what's up with god only giving directions in Classical Arabic? Lots of muslims insist you can't understand it unless you read it in the original language. Here's Quran.org barking up that tree;

Arabic is the most efficient language in the world,...
Arabic is unique
in its efficiency and accuracy.
If linguists have learned anything from studying language, it's that all languages are equal in efficiency and accuracy. That's Edward Sapir down there in the diagram, giving his smackdown of this old myth that some languages are more “primitive” than others.

We got our word barbarian from the Greeks, and it meant 'a person who doesn't speak Greek'. The history of language study has been a lot of trying to educate bigots like the people at Quran.org, who say

Any other language would have made it almost impossible to point out whose wishes are to be superseded, ...
in chapter 2 verse 228, which us primitive English speakers would grunt out as;

2:28 When a woman wants a divorce she has to wait three months, and if she's pregnant she's shit out of luck.
It's not impossible to tell, because saying who did what to whom is a defining characteristic of Human Language. But gee, maybe Arabic has some secret letters that explain how sending an abuse victim back to the guy who's going to beat her to death gives priority to the child's welfare. I doubt it, so change “bigots” to “misogynistic bigots,” and add “ignorant” too, for this;

Another possible reason for choosing Arabic is the fact that "He" and "She" do not necessarily imply natural gender.
That's actually true, but has exactly nothing to do with Arabic, or even with what the words mean. Sex exists in our bodies, gender exists in our brains, and Grammatical Gender exists in grammar books, to classify words by how they look or sound. It's from Latin genus, the same place we got genre, meaning 'kind', and there are a hell of a lot of different kinds of words. Having accidentally stumbled onto an actual fact, they immediately recover by showing just how fractally full of shit they are:

Thus, when God is referred to as "He," this does not imply gender at all. God be glorified; He is neither male, nor female. The usage of "He" to refer to God in the English language, for example, has contributed to a false image of God.
How the hell does it 'contibute to a false image' if it 'doesn't imply gender'? Either from dishonest or stupid, they switched the meaning of gender from the grammatical to the social construct. Feminists have pointed out for years that using 'he' to refer to god contributes to a false image of god as being male. In English, the obvious solution is to use the neuter form and call god “it.” But in Arabic you couldn't do that if you wanted to, because there is no neuter pronoun!

Arabic doesn't have a word for “it”. You have to call inanimate objects either 'he' or 'she', and you have to use 'she' even if there's a whole group of them. That doesn't stop them from being all 'neener neener neener our language has more words than your language':

For example, the word "they" in English does not tell you if "they" are males or females. In Arabic there is a "they" for the males, "hum," and a "they" for the females, "hunna."
A linguist would say Arabic has two 3rd person pronouns. Then they'd make a chart to show all of Arabic's 12 personal pronouns. English has 14. American Sign Language has 38! The stupid continues...

There is even a "they" for two males, "humaa," and a "they" for two females, "haataan.” This feature

does not exist in any other language in the world.


He's talking about a dual pronoun, like in Hawaiian, Lithuanian, Slovene, Old English ... in fact here is a list of languages with dual pronouns. ASL not only has singular, plural, and dual, it has a form for three people, and one for four, for five, and all the way up to nine. And if he means specifically gender-marked, Yimas has dual forms with at least nine genders, in Lardil the dual depends on what generation the person belongs to, and all those ASL pronouns are grammatically marked for the person's actual physical location, so there might be an infinite number of them. 'Any other language' my arse.

But wait! Not only is Arabic better cause it has more words, it's better because it uses less words!!!

The word "Qaalataa" of 28:23, for example, translates into four English words: "the two women said." Such is the efficiency of the Arabic language.
Do these people TRY to be illogical? Now the best language is one that uses the fewest words! That would be Polysynthetic languages, like Aleut. They can say “I am looking for something suitable to use as a fishing line” in one word: a!wlisautiss?arsiniarpunga.

You think that word's too long? Look at the first word in the Arabic version of 2:228; Waalmutallaqatuyatarabbasna. That's just as long, eleven syllables. Maybe we should count syllables? ASL is polysynthetic, and in one syllable it can say “The person hesitantly walked, in a bent-over posture, upwards toward the right rear flank of the small animal” ! How's that for efficient? Since I didn't see any Eskimoes around, I had someone translate 2:228 into ASL for comparison.




















wordssyllables
Arabic33140
English81105
ASL3339


It looks like if god wanted the most efficient language he would have Signed. Really, it looks like this whole issue is a crock of shit, there is nothing special about Classical Arabic, and you might as well read the koran in translation. If you have to read it at all.

10/31/08

Camelburgers!

Getting back to the chapters in the order they were revealed, 97 & 91 are more nature worship, kind of nice. As usual its confusing, when it talks about the title of 97, night of Determination, or Majesty in some translations. That seemed like a reference to judgement day, but I was surprised to find out it meant Mo's first hallucination. It just goes to show you cant rely on this " complete, perfect and fully detailed" book piece of crap. Then 91 goes on with praising the sun and moon, for ten whole lines before it gets bloodthirsty again, reminding us of the Thamud:

11. The Thamud denied (the truth) in their perverseness

12. When among them the great wretch arose,

13. And the apostle of God had to tell them: "This is God's she-camel, let her drink." Thamud? great wretch? So that your readers can follow your story, god, you need to identify any new characters at their first appearance---Ed.

Twenty-two chapters in the future, in surah 27, he does get around to explaining it, but Kafirgirl explains a lot better than God. One thing I don't get: this Saleh the prophet character gives the Thamuddians a camel,

14. But they called him a liar and hamstrung her. So God obliterated them...

Wait,... what? These people lived in a culture that depended on camels for its very existence, out in the desert with those caravans, so I imagine they had a pretty good idea of how valuable they were and how to take care of one: so they HAMSTRUNG one? Why the HELL would they do that?

Hamstring: verb , trans.
1 : to make ineffective or powerless
2 : to cripple by cutting the leg tendons


Killing and eating it I could see but this, this would be like you giving me a Rolls-Royce and me setting fire to it. Out of twenty translations I checked, ten say hamstrung; nine say killed, and one says 'wounded/slaughtered/made infertile,' apparently hedging their bets by including every possible meaning in the dictionary. How well did these translators know Arabic; and since 90% of muslims don't know it either, how well do they understand their own book?

?

This chapter ends with a funny line “He does not fear the consequences”. Depending on who you ask, that means either a) God ain't scared, which is like ....DUHH! ...or b) God doesn't give a fuck about killing people, which isn't exactly good PR. Oh, and one translation even says it's the victims (!) that don't fear... uhh, ... hey, look, over there!