Posted on 03/01/2002 6:30:11 PM PST by GeneD
"Between fear and political correctness, it's not possible to say anything other than sugary nonsense about Islam," said one scholar at an American university who asked not to be named, referring to the threatened violence. . . .
The Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed because one of his books was thought to be irreligious.
. . .when the Arab scholar Suliman Bashear argued that Islam developed as a religion gradually rather than emerging fully formed from the mouth of the Prophet, he was injured after being thrown from a second- story window by his students at the University of Nablus in the West Bank.
Ebrahim Moosa, a professor of religious studies at Duke University, as well as a Muslim cleric whose liberal theological leanings earned him the animosity of fundamentalists in South Africa, which he left after his house was firebombed.
Islamic scholarship is a very dangerous game. Wonder why it's fraught with so much fear and violence.
The New York Times is taking a big risk just printing this article.
All the Koranic scholarship in the world is not going to change a thing since the key interpreters of the Koran are the tens of thousands of mullahs at street level in Muslim countries across the globe. They run the mosques the way they see fit--and have little use for these pointy-headed academics.
The mullahs call the faithful to prayer five times a day--that's the kind of influence that counts.
In contrast, the Bible has been dragged through the streets for the past couple of hundred years and still holding up nicely. Too bad the JEDP critiques are still taught in the universities without the responses from Biblical scholars. Gives one the (unfounded) impression that the Bible is doody.
Try that with the Qur'an and you'll get a fatwa for your trouble.
Have a nice day.
The Arabs at the time of Muhammad had a sense of being "left out" of communication with God, a realization that a prophet had never come to them as did the other "people of the Book".
But by the time that the Koran had been put in writing by Muhammad's historians and followers, they had all come in full contact with Jewish and Christian cultures - Syrian, Abyssinian, and Egyptian Christians and Hebrews from the North and East.
What I never understood is that even with the ability to take from so many direct sources, the Koran still has the basic timelines of the Old Testament all screwed up. Although I have great respect for Muhammad's search for God, I could never accept the Koran as Divine because of it's many contradictions. The only way around them is to claim that it is the Bible, Jews and Christians who have it all wrong.
There once was a terrorist named Moho
Who blew himself up in a Fahtwo
He thought for his pain
Fair maidens he'd gain
But instead got White Raisins from Fresno
What the hell do a bunch of Satan-worshippers expect, anyway? The devil's full of cute pranks for those who sell him their souls (in this case, for vengeance against the Western infidels and some silly tribal glory--never to be received). What a bunch of loosers!
Your wish is my command...
There once was a cleric named mullah
who preached of jihad to abdullah
have many virgins he said
right after your dead
but just raisins for abdullah the fulah
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.