Indoctrination 101

[Fabregas]

Gabbal, with all the respect to Yusuf Ali, we are talking about the greats such as Ibn Abbas, the prophets relative, companaion and scholar of the Quran, and others such as Ibnu Katheer. I have listened to tafsir from Sheikh Umal and he gives the same explanation( ie. kawa'iba refers to breasts).

[Gabbal]

By blowing yourself up in the middle of crowded marketplaces you are then working for maidens with full breasts? Are the young men working for God or the maidens is my question and if the latter is their intention, what has Islam said about intention and receiving what you intended for? Inamal acmaalu bi niyaati. If the concept and intention is for God, dar Alle, why the need for sexual gratification to entice the young men to subscribe to Al Shabaab's ideology? Enough so they are carrying these pamphlets in their pockets!

 

Can you also tell me what the Qur'an says about suicide for any reason?

[Fabregas]

^^ that wasn't the subject of the original discussion. Our contention was based on Yusuf ali's more recent translation versus the classical interpretation and exegesis of the early Muslims. As for Suicide, it is forbidden in Islam; but operations against a combatant enemy is a matter of difference amongst some Scholars.

[Gabbal]

Originally posted by Fabregas:

^^ that wasn't the subject of the original discussion.

The subject of the title is about and has always been about pamphlets found in young deceased Al Shabaab recruits' pockets. Out of everything the Muslim man is to fight for including upholding xaq, against aggression, for God's path, why are these boys fighting for a sexual reason? I am judging this based on the pamphlets found in their bodies which is a summary of verses of a sexual nature and nothing but sexual nature. It is then fair to see the recruits have been enticed with sexual gratification. Nothing even about fighting for xaq!

[RedSea]

MMA,

 

Enemy= warlords in Sh. hotel ranks, himself, Amisom forces and those who are standing in the way of lasting peace in Somalia.

[Poker]

Red See

 

Perhaps you should go ahead and claim your 72 virgins by killing inoccent people.

 

Every one down there have blood in their hands including the TFG admistration members but those who hide behind fake and illusion religion beleifs are the worst of all because they're misgaurding poor individuals and abusing the word of ALLAH SWT.

 

Islam is simple religion to follow with clear guade lines. Don't MURDER inocent people for your personal gain. You don't give life and you don't take life, poor and simple!

[Libaax-Sankataabte]

This "xuuralcayn letters in their pockets" story from the TFG has the hallmark of a silly comedy straight out of a dumb republican talking head. Cheesy stuff.

[Naxar Nugaaleed]

Originally posted by Red Sea:

MMA,

 

Enemy= warlords in Sh. hotel ranks, himself, Amisom forces and those who are standing in the way of lasting peace in Somalia.

How is it that you have convinced yourself that "lasting peace" could be achieved through stonings, beheadings, amputations, public flogging, isqarxis and so on?

[Naxar Nugaaleed]

here is another take on the virgins in heaven for martyrs

August 4, 2004

Martyrs, Virgins and Grapes

 

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

''The virgins are calling you,'' Mohamed Atta wrote reassuringly to his fellow hijackers just before 9/11.

 

It has long been a staple of Islam that Muslim martyrs will go to paradise and marry 72 black-eyed virgins. But a growing body of rigorous scholarship on the Koran points to a less sensual paradise -- and, more important, may offer a step away from fundamentalism and toward a reawakening of the Islamic world.

 

Some Islamic theologians protest that the point was companionship, never heavenly sex. Others have interpreted the pleasures quite explicitly; one, al-Suyuti, wrote that sex in paradise is pretty much continual and so glorious that ''were you to experience it in this world you would faint.''

 

But now the same tools that historians, linguists and archaeologists have applied to the Bible for about 150 years are beginning to be applied to the Koran. The results are explosive.

 

The Koran is beautifully written, but often obscure. One reason is that the Arabic language was born as a written language with the Koran, and there's growing evidence that many of the words were Syriac or Aramaic.

 

For example, the Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get ''hur,'' and the word was taken by early commentators to mean ''virgins,'' hence those 72 consorts. But in Aramaic, hur meant ''white'' and was commonly used to mean ''white grapes.''

 

Some martyrs arriving in paradise may regard a bunch of grapes as a letdown. But the scholar who pioneered this pathbreaking research, using the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg for security reasons, noted in an e-mail interview that grapes made more sense in context because the Koran compares them to crystal and pearls, and because contemporary accounts have paradise abounding with fruit, especially white grapes.

 

Dr. Luxenberg's analysis, which has drawn raves from many scholars, also transforms the meaning of the verse that is sometimes cited to require women to wear veils. Instead of instructing pious women ''to draw their veils over their bosoms,'' he says, it advises them to ''buckle their belts around their hips.''

 

Likewise, a reference to Muhammad as ''ummi'' has been interpreted to mean he was illiterate, making his Koranic revelations all the more astonishing. But some scholars argue that this simply means he was not ''of the book,'' in the sense that he was neither Christian nor Jewish.

 

Islam has a tradition of vigorous interpretation and adjustment, called ijtihad, but Koranic interpretation remains frozen in the model of classical commentaries written nearly two centuries after the prophet's death. The history of the rise and fall of great powers over the last 3,000 years underscores that only when people are able to debate issues freely -- when religious taboos fade -- can intellectual inquiry lead to scientific discovery, economic revolution and powerful new civilizations. ''The taboos are still great'' on such Koranic scholarship, notes Gabriel Said Reynolds, an Islam expert at the University of Notre Dame. He called the new scholarship on early Islam ''a first step'' to an intellectual awakening.

 

But Muslim fundamentalists regard the Koran -- every word of it -- as God's own language, and they have violently attacked freethinking scholars as heretics. So Muslim intellectuals have been intimidated, and Islam has often been transmitted by narrow-minded extremists.

 

(This problem is not confined to Islam. On my blog,

www.nytimes.com/kris tofresponds,

I've been battling with fans of the Christian fundamentalist ''Left Behind'' series. Some are eager to see me left behind.)

 

Still, there are encouraging signs. Islamic feminists are emerging to argue for religious interpretations leading to greater gender equality. An Iranian theologian has called for more study of the Koran's Syriac roots. Tunisian and German scholars are collaborating on a new critical edition of the Koran based on the earliest manuscripts. And just last week, Iran freed Hashem Aghajari, who had been sentenced to death for questioning harsh interpretations of Islam.

 

''The breaking of the sometimes erroneous bonds in the religious tradition will be the condition for a positive evolution in other scientific and intellectual domains,'' Dr. Luxenberg says.

 

The world has a huge stake in seeing the Islamic world get on its feet again. The obstacle is not the Koran or Islam, but fundamentalism, and I hope that this scholarship is a sign of an incipient Islamic Reformation -- and that future terrorist recruits will be promised not 72 black-eyed virgins, but just a plateful of grapes.

 

William Safire is on vacation.

 

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[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Originally posted by Red Sea:

MMA,

 

Enemy= warlords in Sh. hotel ranks, himself, Amisom forces and those who are standing in the way of lasting peace in Somalia.

Kamoon, Baddacas, you can come up, I am sure, something more rational than this.