Debating Islam

With respect, I have discovered through various other seeds and posts that Islamic Scholars has a tendency to argue his points from Koranic verses as opposed to secular fact and logic.

As a "believer", he willfully ignores fact in favor of unproven and unsupported religious doctrine. When shown the doctrine to be false, incorrect and unsupportable he references more Islamic text. As with most "beleivers" he incorrectly equates Faith with Reason.

Anyone that believes the Hadith to be a factual and indisputable text does not know the history of its compilation. The veracity and verisimilitude of the Hadith as a historical text is minimal.

This one hadith that you want to ignore, is the one, and only point that can be taken in consideration when talking about Aisha's age for the following two reasons.

1- This hadith was mentioned in Al Bukhary, and it was also confirmed, and accepted as a true one. You also know that this hadith was also mentioned on so many of the authentic hadith books, in addition to Bukhari.

2- Aisha herself is the one who said this hadith, and who else on earth would know better her age when she got married to Mohamed than herself?!!

Anyone that believes the Hadith to be a factual and indisputable text does not know the history of its compilation. The veracity and verisimilitude of the Hadith as a historical text is minimal.

Bluearcher said it best right there. While Hadith are useful, they are not a replacement for the Qur'an. Hadith can have mistakes because they are the recollection of man, not decrees from God.

Goes, to answer your question I'm going to take a different approach. Since we can keep going back and forth on ancient texts all day, and I say you aren't looking at what the real meaning is and you are saying you are picking the translation that is closest to the literal meaning, let's look at the difference between literal meanings and implied meanings by examining some contemporary writing and see how the same process of looking past the literal in these examples is what gives us their true meaning. I'm going to post some verses and then ask you questions. Please answer them...

#1

It's all the same
Only the names will change
Everyday
It seems we're wastin' away

Another place
Where the faces are so cold
I drive all night
Just to get back home

I'm a cowboy
On a steel horse I ride
I'm wanted
Dead or alive

What is the Steel Horse?
Does the writer actually heard cattle?

#2

"There must be some kinda way out of here"
Said the joker to the thief
"There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief"

"Businessmen, they, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None will level on the line
Nobody of it is worth", hey

"No reason to get excited"
The thief, he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke"

"But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late", hey

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants too

Outside in the cold distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl

What is about to happen?
What does the watchtower represent?
And how does the author use the watchtower to tie the double meaning together?

#3

Drop his name
Push it in and twist the knife again
Watch my face
As I pretend to feel no pain

Clouds of sulfur in the air
Bombs are falling everywhere
It's heartbreak warfare
Once you want it to begin,
No one really ever wins
In heartbreak warfare.

What is the knife made out of?
What are the Bombs Made out of?
Is this really warfare in the literal sense?

#4

There's a lady who's sure
All that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven

When she gets there she knows
If the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for

And she's buying a stairway to heaven

There's a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have
Two meanings

In a tree by the brook
There's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are
Misgiven

Ooh, it makes me wonder

There's a feeling I get
When I look to the west
And my spirit is crying
For leaving

In my thoughts I have seen
Rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those
Who stand looking

it makes me wonder, it really makes me wonder

And it's whispered that soon
If we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason

And a new day will dawn
For those who stand long
And the forests will
Echo with laughter

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow
Don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean
For the May queen

Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run
There's still time to change
The road you're on

And it makes me wonder

Your head is humming and it won't go
In case you don't know
The piper's calling you to join him

Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow?
And did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The truth will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll

And she's buying a stairway
To heaven...

What is the Stairway to Heaven?

#5

Now I get up around whenever
I used ta get up on time
But that old man he's a real mutha@!$%#er
Gonna kick him on down the line

We been dancin' with Mr. Brownstone
He's been knockin'
He won't leave me alone

I used ta do a little but a little wouldn't do
So the little got more and more
I just keep tryin' ta get a little better
Said the little better than before

Shoved it in the bindle and I shot it in the middle
And it, it drove outta my mind
I should've known better, said I wish I never met her Said I,
I leave it all behind

Who is Mr Brownstone?
Is the author really going to physically kick him?

Can you provide me with the gadiths that say she was 17?!

Yup.

In the footnotes of his Urdu translation and commentary of Sahih Bukhari, entitled Fadl-ul-Bari, Maulana Muhammad Ali had pointed out reports of two events which show that Aisha could not have been born later than the year of the Call. These are as follows.

1. The statement by Aisha in Bukhari, about her earliest memory of her parents being that they were followers of Islam, begins with the following words in its version in Bukhari’s Kitab-ul-Kafalat. We quote this from the English translation of Bukhari by M. Muhsin Khan:

“Since I reached the age when I could remember things, I have seen my parents worshipping according to the right faith of Islam. Not a single day passed but Allah’s Apostle visited us both in the morning and in the evening. When the Muslims were persecuted, Abu Bakr set out for Ethiopia as an emigrant.”

Commenting on this report, Maulana Muhammad Ali writes:

“This report sheds some light on the question of the age of Aisha. … The mention of the persecution of Muslims along with the emigration to Ethiopia clearly shows that this refers to the fifth or the sixth year of the Call. … At that time Aisha was of an age to discern things, and so her birth could not have been later than the first year of the Call.”

Again, this would make her more than (older than) fourteen at the time of the consummation of her marriage.

2. There is a report in Sahih Bukhari as follows:

“On the day (of the battle) of Uhud when (some) people retreated and left the Prophet, I saw Aisha daughter of Abu Bakr and Umm Sulaim, with their robes tucked up so that the bangles around their ankles were visible hurrying with their water skins (in another narration it is said, ‘carrying the water skins on their backs’). Then they would pour the water in the mouths of the people, and return to fill the water skins again and came back again to pour water in the mouths of the people.”

Maulana Muhammad Ali writes in a footnote under this report:

“It should also be noted that Aisha joined the Holy Prophet’s household only one year before the battle of Uhud. According to the common view she would be only ten years of age at this time, which is certainly not a suitable age for the work she did on this occasion. This also shows that she was not so young at this time.”

If, as shown in the previous section above, Aisha was nineteen at the time of the consummation of her marriage, then she would be twenty years old at the time of the battle of Uhud. It may be added that on the earlier occasion of the battle of Badr when some Muslim youths tried, out of eagerness, to go along with the Muslim army to the field of battle, the Holy Prophet Muhammad sent them back on account of their young age (allowing only one such youngster, Umair ibn Abi Waqqas, to accompany his older brother the famous Companion Sa‘d ibn Abi Waqqas). It seems, therefore, highly unlikely that if Aisha was ten years old the Holy Prophet would have allowed her to accompany the army to the field of battle.

The comparison to Latin as I told you before is not valid. I repeat once again, Arabic did not go through changes, as Latin did. If you know Latin, and read old Latin book, you will not be able to understand it, but this is not the case in Arabic. At schools they teach us prior Islam poetry, and it has the exact same rules that applies on our reading or writing Arabic today.

I'm really starting to think you are not arab at all and you don't really speak Arabic....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Arabic_alphabet

It should be noted that the Arabic script represented in the table below is that of post-Classical and Modern Arabic, not 6th century Arabic script which is of a notably different form.

http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/ling450ch/reports/arabic.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Arabic

http://innerbrat.org/Andyf/Articles/Diglossia/hist_arab.htm

Languages other than Arabic have been subject to some of the same influences. For instance there is Latin. Latin, like Arabic, was the language of conquering armies and, like Arabic, the size of the conquered peoples' population was much larger than the size of the conquering armies. Eventually the conquered peoples became incorporated into the empire as citizens and adopted the language and customs of the conquerors. The relationship between the developing Romance languages and High Latin in the Middle Ages fits Ferguson's definition of diglossia almost perfectly, i.e. it possessed a large body of literature spanning many centuries combined with a very low literacy rate. There was a high variety of the language and there were low varieties which were used for most ordinary conversation. To my knowledge this is usually attributed to the fact that High Latin was frozen in time by the body of Latin literature at first and then by the Catholic Church. Because of this Vulgar Latin evolved out from under it, eventually becoming many separate geographically dispersed languages.
The New Spoken Arabic dialects have evolved unchecked while at the same time great care has been taken to keep Al-cArabiyya the same. This situation when viewed completely separately from any other consideration would seem very analogous to what happened to Latin as the Romance languages evolved. There is no arguing with the fact that left to their own devices languages do evolve. The Romance languages have evolved away from the highly synthetic Latin language. None of the Romance languages have preserved the case ending system, nor the mostly free word order that existed in Latin. To my knowledge folks don't argue about whether or not there was diglossia in Latin during the time of Caesar, or do they?

Another language which it would seem on the face of it to be undergoing some of the same influences as Arabic did is English. Today as I write this paper more than half of the people who use English in their day to day business are not native speakers. Admittedly most of these people have learned English in a tutored way. We don't have a situation where a large segment or even majority of the next generation is learning English from a mother who doesn't really know English very well. However, I am also running on the assumption that English is not changing very rapidly. English is part of the modern tradition which allows the written form of a given language to evolve more or less at the same rate as its spoken form. Now, I can still read English texts from 200 years ago, but if I go back farther than that it starts to sound odd to me. I can understand it, but I would never talk that way. I'm not sure I can trust my perception that English is not changing quickly.

I think it would be instructive to compare and contrast the spread of Latin and the development of the Romance languages with the spread and development of Arabic, for similarities and for differences. I also think it would be instructive to compare and contrast the development of post World War II Modern English with the spread of Arabic in the first 100 years of the Islamic conquests.

As for the comparison you are trying to make to prove that the Qur'an should be interpreted literally,

whoa, whoa, whoa... I'm not the one saying it should be interpreted literally. You are. I'm saying you CANNOT interpret it literally. That's why I was trying to use contemporary songs as a parallel. You were the one saying it has to be interpreted literally, not me.

Once again, you are leaving the real points, and debating irrelevant things

Hey, I'm just responding to topics you've brought up. You were the one who brought up the grammar and arabic used in the Qur'an. do you not remember saying even a 5th grader can poke holes in it?

I am merely pointing out that while you might be (although it really seems like you aren't) from the middle east and speak arabic, that not all arabic is the same and arabic has changed over time. You then told me it hasn't. I showed you studies that showed it has. You said you can't compare latin and arabic, and I showed you studies that compared them and why. Now you say I'm debating irrelevant things!?!?! Then why did you bring it up in the first place?!!!?! And it isn't really irrelevant, if your whole understanding of the Qur'an is based on misinterpretations you've made because you don't understand the arabic used.

It's also interesting to note that I have a christian friend from Lebanon. She speaks arabic too. A couple years ago when I found out Arabic was her first language I asked her to give me arabic lessons so I could learn to read the Qur'an. She was the one that first told me that the Arabic used in the Qur'an is an old form of arabic and she can't properly read it. She told me I would have to take a Tajweed class. At the mosque I asked the Imam and a brother from Jordan about this, they both said the same thing. Yet you tell me "It is almost impossible for me to explain these problems to you, and be understood." But the Imam teaching Tajweed class has no problem explaining them to me. And also explaining how contemporary arabic is differs.

And so here you are telling me otherwise, and saying that you are basing your knowledge of Islam on your interpretations of the arabic in the qur'an, since you can read arabic (along with what you were taught in catholic primary and/or secondary school). And that I should trust YOUR interpretations of Islam because you can read and speak arabic and that all the books, and Imams and scholars that I've read and listened to as well as my own heart are wrong, and you (being christian, not Muslim) are correct.

Even though I've shown that even if you can read arabic, that doesn't mean you automatically can read the Qur'an. I've shown you that even though you consider hadith as important and on par with the Qur'an itself, that the science of Hadith qualifies hadiths and the one you kept referring to was considered "weak" because of political bias at the time it was reported. We've talked about how you couldn't possibly believe that Muhammad knew certain things that were mentioned in the Qur'an, and therefore the meaning of the verses should be different than what their meanings are currently. Yet, I reminded you that Allah wrote the Qur'an, not Muhammad and so the true meanings are there even if Muhammad (pbuh) didn't understand them himself. I showed you how your interpretation of a line in the qur'an was wrong using scientific data, since Adult women can have prolonged periods of time where they don't have menstruation.

I've glossed over a few issues that you've brought up throughout this discussion simply because I do not have time to dispell them all. But in the end, you can either choose to believe that maybe there is something good about Islam and just certain people around you are getting it wrong... or you can continue to believe that islam promotes hatred and violence. That's your call. But continuing to debate at this point is futile because you don't want to acknowledge the other side of the argument.

It's like Galileo and the Church. He writes a book that says the earth is round and it revolves around the sun. The church says, "uh no. We don't believe you. You are wrong." He shows them evidence, and they try to refute it. What we are doing here is the same thing. You come up with some notion about islam that is incorrect. I give you explainations of the correct notion. You then simply say that you don't believe me and I am wrong for various reasons (I'm not a native arabic speaker, Qur'an should be interpreted literally, Hadith from Bukhari and Muslim are automatically given highest authenticity because of the author, etc, etc, etc). So then I show you how your reasoning for being right is actually wrong, how being a native arabic speaker doesn't mean you can automatically read the Qur'an, how the Qur'an shouldn't be interpreted literally, and how all hadiths are subject to analysis and the ones you were referring to were considered "weak". And after doing that you come back and say I'm debating irrelevant things!?!?

if Mohamed, the Islam's prophet, did not understand some of the Qur'an, who will then?!!

This is a GREAT question!!! And the answer is we might never completely fully understand the Qur'an until Judgement day when Jesus returns to earth and explains it all for us. There still are certain things in the Qur'an people don't understand. For example, at the beginnings of some of the surahs, there are abbreviated letters. Nobody really knows what they mean. Some people speculate. But nobody knows for sure. We have to have faith that their meaning will be revealed to us at some point.

But in a way, it is also a reminder that we still don't fully understand everything in the Qur'an and that we should ALWAYS be searching for a better understanding of it. As new technologies come out, they change our understanding of passages in the Qur'an, even things that were said in passing all of a sudden take on a new and more profound meaning when science advances.

One minor point, that I figured I should point out. And this isn't really a big deal and you probably know this already, but God only spoke directly to Muhammad (pbuh) a few times. Most of the Qur'an was dictated from god, through the angel Gabriel, to Muhammad (pbuh). Really it's not that big of a deal, but if someone seeing the statement that God gave the Qur'an directly to Muhammad (pbuh) and then they read the Qur'an and there is a lot of "We" and "Us", they might get confused. In those Ayat it is Gabriel narrating the story to Muhammad (pbuh). Not that this changes the meaning at all.

as for post #6.5, I thought we pretty much covered all of it in #7 and #7.1.

In regards to Aaron and Mary. Mary is a decendant of Aaron. Don't you remember the conversation we had in the other thread?

This claim of contradiction is apparently mistaken because it disregards both the Arabic idiom and the context of the verse. In Arabic the word akhun or ukhtun (Underlined with Red colour in the images) carries two meanings.

1. Blood brother or sister and
2. Brotherhood/sisterhood in clan and faith.

then what am I trying to say?

OK... but to be a little more specific. They are men. ibn Abbas was a cousin of the Prophet, knew the prophet personally and followed the Prophet from the time he was a young boy. Mahalli and Suyuti lived in the mid to late 1400s and early 1500s and wrote the Tafsir Al Jalalayn.

But...They are all human, are they not? They can make mistakes just like anyone else, correct? They are not the word of god themselves, are they? And so their Tafsir is trying to explain to the best of their abilities what the Qur'an means.

I have no doubt they are pious men. But to state their Tafsir as fact, rather than opinion (as it should be) is saying that they received direct revelation from Allah (swt) as to the meaning, which is not true. So, in looking at their tafsir, THEY are the ones who make the connection to Hanna, not the Qur'an itself. Let me ask you, how many wives did Imran have? So don't you find it odd that it talks about family lineage and then IN THE NEXT ayat it mentions "A" woman of Imran", or "a woman (from the house) of Imran" and people automatically assume his wife?

Context tells a lot. Just like in the contemporary poetry I posted. This...

Push it in and twist the knife again
Watch my face
As I pretend to feel no pain

can hold significantly different meaning than this...

Drop his name
Push it in and twist the knife again
Watch my face
As I pretend to feel no pain

simply by including the line before. The "Drop his name" line changes the context and changes the allegory of the entire passage.

The same holds true for this..

Behold! a woman of ‘Imrān said: "O my Lord! I do dedicate unto Thee what is in my womb for Thy special service: So accept this of me: For Thou hearest and knowest all things."

When she was delivered, she said: "O my Lord! Behold! I am delivered of a female child!"- and God knew best what she brought forth - "And no wise is the male Like the female. I have named her Mary, and I commend her and her offspring to Thy protection from the Evil One, the Rejected."

Right graciously did her Lord accept her: He made her grow in purity and beauty: To the care of Zakariya was she assigned. Every time that he entered (Her) chamber to see her, He found her supplied with sustenance. He said: "O Mary! Whence (comes) this to you?" She said: "From God. for God Provides sustenance to whom He pleases without measure."

versus this...

God did choose Adam and Noah, the family of Abraham, and the family of ‘Imrān above all people,-Offspring, one of the other: And God heareth and knoweth all things.

Behold! a woman of ‘Imrān said: "O my Lord! I do dedicate unto Thee what is in my womb for Thy special service: So accept this of me: For Thou hearest and knowest all things."

When she was delivered, she said: "O my Lord! Behold! I am delivered of a female child!"- and God knew best what she brought forth - "And no wise is the male Like the female. I have named her Mary, and I commend her and her offspring to Thy protection from the Evil One, the Rejected."

Right graciously did her Lord accept her: He made her grow in purity and beauty: To the care of Zakariya was she assigned. Every time that he entered (Her) chamber to see her, He found her supplied with sustenance. He said: "O Mary! Whence (comes) this to you?" She said: "From God. for God Provides sustenance to whom He pleases without measure."

Adding the line that talks about family lineage changes the context and the allegory of the poetry. You yourself even realized it as soon as I asked you to post ayat 33 and 34.

So while some of the scholars might believe Imran is mary's father directly, while history proves otherwise...the qur'an itself is still correct, and only our interpretation of it was incorrect. That is absolutely why the Qur'an encourages all of us to "ponder" it and think about it and examine it.

And in terms of the story and the message being conveyed within the Qur'an, whether Mary was Imran's daughter or decendent doesn't change the story or its message, does it? So whether someone incorrectly believes that Imran was the direct father to mary or not, the message they get out of it is the same either way. Alhamdulilah!