70 jawans killed in biggest Maoists/Naxal attack ever in India

[Kriterion]

this is what you said in post#344

my mistake. apologies. however we have since established that the word "thumma" does exist in verse 41:11 only.

No I did not. You were the one that first mentioned the word "Thumma" in this thread and Iam certainly not starting a knife fight or crying ... just found your stance to be hilarious ... hence the smilie. No offence was meant. Will respond in detail later but the issues on Semen and Metal walls is on the back burner. Stay tuned.

i first mentioned "thumma" in post 344. however, you stated this is post 343:

I have already explained why Multi-tasking is not a logically viable answer. The language used in that verse doesnt suggest so and there is no precedent of Allah working in parallel mode anywhere else.To make matters worse( for you) the verse 41:11, 41:12 describe the time taken to create Heavens and they begin with "And then HE created heavens in ..... " which clearly tells you that the process of creation was sequential. Also the default mode is serial unless otherwise explicitly mentioned.

you actually mentioned it first, since i mistakenly stated the word wasn't there. as for my stance, i fail to see anything hilarious about it, unless of course hilarious is a synonym for "correct" or "true" or perhaps even "literal". the word "wa" indicates concurrency, and "thumma" indicates seriality. do you disagree?

[Kriterion]

as for that Infallible Tafsir of Ibn Kathir: http://www.tafsir.com/default.asp?sid=41&tid=46477 he contradicts the Quran in his tafsir, proving that the Tafsir cannot explain the Quran except only imperfectly. And He created the mountains, sands, inanimate things, rocks and hills and everything in between, in two more days. This is what Allah says: [Tafsir of Ibn Kathir] where the Quran itself states in surah 41 that the mountains took 4 days.

[Malcolm Merlyn]

bump

[Kriterion]

I know your clever positioning on this topic which is what apologists do. They pick out 2:256 and declare Islam guarantees freedom of religion and any events from the Hadith that explain how the Jews and Quraysh were converted are dismissed because 2:256 says something else :D. This is an old trick nothing new. The Hadiths that explain why offensive wars are needed are inline with Quranic verses and I have explained all this before in this thread.

firstly, there was never any "wholesale" conversion of either Jews or of the Quraysh (or anyone else during Muhammad's lifetime). there were individual cases of people such as Abdullah Ibn Salam, Safiya, Umar Ibn Khattab, but these were a) individual conversions and b) occurred on their own free will.

And the reason you are going to the Hadith is to figure out what in the world these verses mean (i.e if thery were self explanatory there wouldnt be a need fpr the Hadith) ... secondly you wont know anything about the Sunnah without refering to the Hadith so there is no question of contradiction.

not sure what you mean by this bolded part. please clarify.

If the Hadith are not trustworthy then so is the Quran because it was authored through a same process decades after the Prophet passed away.

I haven't stated that ALL the hadiths are unauthentic, only some of them. off the top of my head, i would estimate no more than 10-25% of the hadiths are of questionable authenticity.

The way Asad explains this whole descrepancy issue .. is by quite simply assign the meaning of "and" to the word "thumma" which is in verse 41:11 . This amounts to just blatantly changing the Quran. Below is his explanation for this which you can see is blatantly illogical. But then again you cant blame poor Asad because he is caught in a rock-and-a-hard-place. He knows the verse doesnt add up with others but he is also not allowed to change it so the obvious option is assign new meaning to words and introduce parallel procesing. How original !! :D

which is why we need to look at the literal arabic. i am re-posting what i posted above: and here is the arabic transliteration, noting the time-operative words: 9. Qul a-innakum latakfuroona biallathee khalaqa al-arda fee yawmayni watajAAaloona lahu andadan thalika rabbu alAAalameena 10. Wa jaAAala feeha rawasiya min fawqiha wabaraka feeha waqaddara feeha aqwataha fee arbaAAati ayyamin sawaan lilssa-ileena 11. Thumma istawa ila alssama-i wahiya dukhanun faqala laha walil-ardi i/tiya tawAAan aw karhan qalata atayna ta-iAAeena 12. Faqadahunna sabAAa samawatin fee yawmayni waawha fee kulli sama-in amraha wazayyanna alssamaa alddunya bimasabeeha wahifthan thalika taqdeeru alAAazeezi alAAaleemi [transliteration of surah 41, verses 9-12] so what does all this mean? what it means is that when read literall, noting the time-operators of "wa = and" and "thumma = then" we necessarily come up with a grand total of 6 days, not 8, or any other number. the proper translation then of the verses 9-12, following directly from the literal Arabic should be thus: 9) Would you deny him who created Earth in 2 days. 10) AND He created the "rawasiya" in 4 days. 11) THEN, he created the heavens... 12) ...in 2 days [Kriterion's "translation" of surah 41, verses 9-12 using the literal Arabic time-operators of "and and "then"] so what we have is that Earth and some entitiy called "Rawisya" (translated by some as mountains, although the Quranic term for mountain in all other places is Jabl, as in the Jabal Nur just outside Mecca) were created CONCURRENTLY. this is the meaning of "and", when used as oppossed to "then". And means at the same time, not serially, since the very next word mentions the serial-operator, "then". So if earth took 2 days, and rawasiya 4 and it was done concurrently, the total time is 4 days. THEN (arabic = thumma), God claims he created the Heavens in 2 days. the word "thumma" indicates, that HERE God's creation was "serial" in relation to the previous 2 verses. thus what we have is 2 and 4 days concurrently = 4 days and 2 days serially = 4 days concurrently + 2 days serially = a total of 6 days. the time-specific words "and" and "then" indicate this clearly in the literal arabic. the only thing you can do is dispute the meaning of the words "wa" and "thumma" but if you ask any Arabic speaker, he will tell you that they mean "and" and "then", respectively. If you look at the literal Arabic, then Asad's translation, including any verbal gymnastics, is totally irrelevant. Btw, Asad is not perfect, just better than all the other translators, which is why I generally tend to favor his rendition.

And yes the mountains were placed on the earth and there is also a reason given for that which is to stop the earth from shaking ( 16:15) ... no semantics here ... interpreting it exactly as it is.

again, the literal arabic uses the term "rawasiya" which does not equate to "mountain". this is a error by the translators. surah 78 also speaks of mountains using the *correct* term "jabl".

It is you who is resorting to selective interpretations and resorting Asad's translations which are constructed by blatantly change the meaning of words and assuming things that he isnt allowed to.

Perhaps I was guilty of this before, is so, my apologies, it wasn't intentional...I overlooked the importance of the words "and" and "then" until you pointed it out. My bad. but right now, I am using the literal arabic of the Quran, without Asad's translation. Since you agree to this method, we should be able to proceed.

If you insist that this book is as crystal clear as it gets(well it does that itself) and doesnt need any scholar to interpret it ... you get two different time periods for creation and you are also told absurd things like that Mountains have been placed on Earth to stop it from shaking, that the moon was split in two and so on and so forth.

if you blindly accept what imperfect and fallible scholars (and Muhammad Asad would be one of them) say, sure. you're absolutely correct. which is why we must go to the literal arabic. the literal arabic renders the words "and" and "then" leading to no other possible interpretation other than 6 days of creation. the literal arabic fails to render the word "jabl" for mountain, leading to the view that "rawasiya" must mean something else. the literal arabic, indicates that the Moon is split only in "the Hour" since that term was used repeatedly to refer to the Day of Judgement. further, Muhammad never used the term "Hour" to refer to any time in his life. even the majority of translators, if not all of them, have realized this fact.

There is absolutely no doubt about that. The moment anybody begins to use his brains and tries to make sense out of it ... it confuses the heck out of him and causes a shock. What then happens is since they have already been sold completely on Islam and the brainwashing so thorough and deep they will never are able to stand back and say hey this is wrong ( if they do it will cost them their lives but thats a different story :D ) . Instead what they do is try to wok out a way in which everything adds up and makes sense but to do this they will have to bend rules which is what Asad and most apologists end up doing. You do the same.

one could make the same argument about anyone and everyone.

So to sum it up if the Quran were to have been accurate , clear and error free book ( as a book sent from God should be ) it would have ONE single verse that said how much time it took for creation. Not 6 different verses at 3 different chapters with 2 different time periods and 2 formats ( one a breakdown and one without ). This is proven when we read interpretations of soo many eminent scholars and you get different versions.

complete non-sequitur. somewhat similar to saying that if 100 is really 100, then there would only be ONE way to achieve it instead of 100*1, 50*2, 25*4, etc.

[Kriterion]

You need to come to terms with the fact that the odds of sooo many scholars making mistakes is literally non existant. Either comeup with the name of ONE widely accepted scholar who has correctly interpreted EVERY single verse of Quran(there better be one such scholar) or accept the fact that given the ambiguous and vague nature of the text and a very poor choice of language used ( medievial Arabic) makes the Quran the most unclear and erroneous text that is out there. Otherwise I cant keep wasting my time dissecting every new scholars translations that you bring in only to be told "ohhh but he is fallible and is wrong but only you(Kriterion) are right".

sorry for the long delay...needed some time to recharge. the fact that people are infallible means that no one is likely to offer a correct interpretation of each and every single verse. that being said, when the literal arabic is read, we get the interpretation above. again, i may be mistaken, since i am a fallible human being. but if i am, you need to point out the flaw(s) in my interpretation of the verses above. i would appreciate your own interpretation... if indeed the quran is "ambiguous" and "vague", how then are you so certain it preaches hatred and violence? in other words, how can we be sure that the ambiguities are confined only to the "peaceful" or "meccan" verses of the quran? i am also assuming that you have figured out what the difference is between the word "mushrikeen" in surah 9, verse 4 and the word "mushrikeen" in surah 9:5 since muslims are commanded to be "peaceful" in verse 4, and "violent" in verse 5.

[Kriterion]

What you are saying here is since Muhammad and his companions departed there has been NO ONE in the Islamic world that has truly understood the meaning of the Entire quran for about 13 centuries. This is quite simply astounding and even you will find hard to substantiate.

or even with an understanding, they chose to ignore it for personal gain or whatever. bear in mind, that a 100% "true" understanding of anything is impossible. people do not even fully understand their own emotions, much less the words and concepts of others (be they a man or God). the substantiation lies simply in the fact that, as you are well aware, muslims after the death of Muhammad have killed untold innocent millions over the past 1400 years, and even to this day. all this despite the fact that not a single verse in the Quran which says something along the likes of "kill people who are at peace with you". one might be inclined to quote hadith and such, but if this was so paramount in Muhammad's mission, wouldn't he have, at least once mention such a verse of unprovoked war in the Quran? out of 6000+ verses he couldn't add just one more verse specifying this all-important concept? what you are alleging would only make sense if, for example, Marx and Engels had failed (for whatever reason) to mention anything about the working class in the Communist Manifesto. but then again, in a world where Muhammad could not count or was unaware of how many days there are in a week, i suppose most anything is plausible... the substantiation lies in the fact that there are many religious, or rather i should say believing muslims who drink alcohol and fornicate. this does not mean that the Quran has verses to such an effect, although, if you take the number of muslims who drink/fornicate it probably outnumbers the terrorists, 10 to one, if not more. so based on numbers alone, islam is a religion of alcoholism and fornication even more than it is a religion of "violence".

(BTW you even reject his companions as being un-Islamic based on their violent acts ) .

to the extent the did anything which was not done or approved of being done in Muhammad's time, yes. to the extent they did not, no.

So basically in short you are saying that only Muhammad knew what he said and no-one really understood what he preached.

understood and ignored, or understood and got over-zealous. it happens.

I obviously do not understand Arabic which is why the need for scholarly works. I can only point out mistakes in your argument if I have a 100% authentic Quran written in a language that we both understand - i.e English - to refer. But you are now saying that there isnt such a thing.

but earlier you were relying almost exclusively on outside works (tafsir, hadith, etc) to study the quran. do you now agree that a discussion about the quran can and should concern just the quran itself?

Thiis is what I have been telling you since a long time in this thread ... to repeat... we figure that out thru the actions of Muhammad in day-to-day situations otherwise known as Sunnah which are chronicled in the Islamic traditions otherwise known as Hadith. The Quran itself commands you to follow these without bothering to elaborate with details.

technically, no since the words "sunnah" and "hadith" do not exist in the Quran. the Quran merely states that Muhammad is the "guide" and that the Quran (not the hadith or the tafsir) is his scripture. that being said, i have no problems with a hadith that says "say a prayer before you go to bed" or the fact that the quran only mentions three specific times to pray, whereas muslims pray at least 5 times a day. but i do have problems with the stoning to death of adulterers, since the quran says to either confine them in their homes and/or give them 100 lashes.

The reason that the Hadith exist in the first place is because of this reason. And dont ridicule the Hadith authors. The amount of scrutiny that they subjected to each tradition before accepting them as "Sahih" (Authentic) is indeed praiseworthy.

sure, if rumor-mongering and centuries old hearsay is a "praiseworthy" method of information collection, i'll be willing to concur. but not before then.

You will find plenty of Islamic scholars that boast about this process which goes a long way in preserving the traditions and practices of Muhammad in very agonizing detail.

right and the process is as as unscientific as any, not to mention inconsistent. many hadiths are dismissed as being "daif" or weak, whereas those that openly contradict the quran (moon splitting) are often accepted as sahih.

Combine these with historical evidence such as the Ridda wars and the actions of the sahabas you invariably get a very violent picture. This violent nature surfaces time and time again and every single time Islam comes in contact with other ideologies that are vastly different to it especially the ones that practice Idol worship. If Islam was such a peacefull ideology like you claim it would have found a way to co-exist with Hinduism and Buddhism. There is hardly any evidence that suggests that this happened under Islamic rule. The reverse ( i.e Hinduism and Buddhism wiping out Islam when they are in command ) has never happened despite there being more than adequate excuses for such a thing to have happened. The latest and live example is Kashmir.

right but Muhammad was not there during any of that, and he is the "author" of islam, so to speak. i'll fully agree that muslims, or at least a significant minority of them, are the most intolerant and bigoted group of people to have walked the earth in the last several centuries. i'm not sure exactly what else i can say. but i also believe, parodoxically, perhaps that majority of muslims excluding the said minority are no different than most people of other pretty much every other religion, with the possible exceptions of the bahai (abrahamics) and the jains (dharmic).

All in due course.

i will hold you to your word, inshAllah.

[Kriterion]

now, as for your claim that the Quran is impossible to make head or tail off due to its supposed "ambiguities"...i am willing to go through the entire book - its a short one relative to any other religious text - even if that takes the next decade, and go one verse at a time to prove that with a clear mind, and without any external blinders, the quran can be understood "clearly" enough to ensure a smooth life. secondly, let us assume for arguments sake that the hadith are valid...even the hadiths, as violent as they are, never paint muhammad as an out-and-out aggressor, and answer to your earlier question of "why would anyone paint their own religious figures in a negative light?" well its happened before, from the old testament to the purasharam texts u mentioned. and in this regard, the hadiths are rather unique in that whoever wrote them at least tried to make muhammad look like the good guy.

[Kriterion]

We just did a trial run of this Remember ? The moon splitting verse was explained by quite simply reversing the past tense to future tense.

incorrect...the moon splitting was explained by relating the term "Hour" to eveyr other occurence of the term "Hour" in the quran. not by playing around with verb tenses.

The authentic Hadith that confirm this event were just conveniently ignored. Then next we tried dissecting the verses surrounding Creation time. Here "then" was changed to "And" and a brand new concept of Multi-tasking was introduced without realizing that it opened up some other hole elsewhere.

again incorrect. the word "then" was never changed to "and" as they are completely different words.

Obviously this is not the sort of debate I would be interested to carry on. There are no rules here and its just your word versus mine hence ... which is just meaningless.

fine.

And your claim or inference that you being the only muslim who has understood is just preposterous to put it very mildly. Iam sure I dont need to explain that. If I have to do it then its better we stop the discussion right here.

third un-truth of this post. i've never claimed i'm the only muslim with a proper undertanding of islam. there are hundreds of thousands of others...a tiny minority, yes. but just me? hardly.

Does it never occur to you guys that these are not normal behaviours and are just plain evil ? .

"normal" varies from culture to culture. what is "normal" in rural texas may not be "normal" in urban Brooklyn. laws vary from state to state, etc. in some US states, cousin-marriages are illegal, in other states its OK. Canada recognizes gay-marriage, but most states in the US do not. each group of people should govern themselves based on the laws of their community. for example, in an ideal shariah environment, non-muslims are supposed to have their own laws and their own courts, in so much as they differ from the shariah. absolute morality exists only when people agree to its validity. this why muslims believe that Allah judges people based on the concept of morality to which they are exposed. this does not excuse those who openly reject morality, but those who have never heard of Islamic morality are bound only by the morality to which they were exposed. as the quran says in surah 6, verse 132: 6:132 (Asad) for all shall be judged according to their [conscious] deeds [117] - and thy Sustainer is not unaware of what they do. people's deeds are based on their relative notions of justice. a good deed in one culture might not be a good deed in another.

Good guy? You call somebody that beheads people alive as a good guy ? You call someone who marries a 6yr old as a good guy? You call someone who takes the prettiest woman from the captured and makes them his concubines (whilst he has many wives at home BTW) as a good guy ?

in which verse of the quran does muhammad tell muslims to declare ware on peaceful, innocent people? in which verse of the quran does he declare such a war? according to your authentic hadith/seerah itself, Safiyyah wanted to marry Muhammad. so a) she was not a concubine and b) even the hadith - which btw contradicts surah 4, verse 24 - alleges that saffiya wished to marry Muhammad before the battle ever occurred. now according to your argument, that is the true account of events. i'm not going to say its not true, but there is no evidence to believe thats what happened either. all i can say is that had Muhammad forced himself on safiyyah it would have violated surah 4 verse 24. there were plenty of minors married to men far older than them. does this factor alone determine whether a person is a "good guy" or a "bad guy". even in India today, a girl of 15 could marry a 25 year old in some village. does this make the fellow a "bad guy"? my great-grandmother was 15 when she married my then 30-year old great grandfather. less than 100 years later, the same social class would frown upon such a union, if they allowed to take place in the first place. societal norms vary from place to place and time to time. Mohandas Gandhi himself slept with little girls instead of his wife. does this make him a "bad guy"?

But atleast you acknowledge that the acts of various Islamic rulers as being uncivilized. Thats commendable. The next vital step for you would be to find out why ruler after ruler never found absolutely any wrong in their violent actions. It is just simply impossible for EVERY one of them to have completely missed the utterly peacefull message of the Quran which according to you is crystal clear ( but yet there are no scholars who have gotten it right) . Do you see the problem ?

unless you can find a verse which calls for waging offensive, unprovoked war against innocent and peaceful people, that "impossibility" is actually what happened, and thus not impossible at all. the point is that it wouldnt matter if EVERY SINGLE muslim was a saint or a Hitler...it wouldn't change the words of Quran. and that is what Islam is. islam is a religion, cult, ideology, whatever u want to call it. muslims are people who follow and/or claim to follow it. do you see the difference? hinduism does not = hindu, and vice versa.

[Kriterion]

as far as well respected "scholars" who have "peaceful" interpretations of the islam...there is Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad, Sheikh Siraj Wahhaj, Malcolm X (though he was not a scholar) to name just the more famous. in the past there has been Imam Ghazzali, who according to wikipedia is one of the "most celebrated" scholars in Islam. wahhab, syed qutb, bin laden, whoever don't have anywhere near that clout or repute. as it turns out, Wahhaj might not be so "moderate". but the others are quite well known and respected.

[Kriterion]

Personal gain? What personal gain does Bin Laden , the Taliban , the various Paki rulers etc etc have ?

their personal gain lies in the subjugation of women, religious minorities, and even their "fellow" muslims. personal gain is not always measured in a dollar amount. i'm surprised a man of your intelligence has to reminded of that.

What Personal gains did the Prophets companions have ? Khalid the trusted general of Muhammad embarked on a bloody campaign of destruction and is famous for his regret that he wasnt killed in a battle field for Islam. There is just tons and tons of such evidence that simply buries your claim of personal claim.

umm...isn't the collective Islamophobic argument based upon the citation of jizya?

And why dont Hindu and Buddhist rulers not have these personal gains ambitions by using religion? Even after comming in contact with ruthless Islamic barbarians that had set the bar high ? Are you trying to say that Hindus were beyond "personal gains" ?

every heard of Asoka? what about the Sena dynasty of Bengal? ever heard of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale? the only "Dharmic" people, who to my knowledge, have zero blood on their hands are the Jains.

Again why does this "true understanding" only evade Muslims ? Why did it not evade Hinduism, Buddhism , Jainism ?

you cannot treat entire religions as a single entity, except perhaps Jainism in this very specific case, because there are no known instances of any Jain committing religiously inspired violence.

And I explained to you many times that this reference to the hour was in the past tense ... look at the operative words that set the Tense in that verse in 4 diff translations ... and those words are "was" , "has" The Hour has come near, and the moon has split [in two]. The Hour has drawn near, and the moon has been cleft asunder (the people of Makkah requested Prophet Muhammad SAW to show them a miracle, so he showed them the splitting of the moon). The hour drew nigh and the moon was rent in twain. The hour drew nigh and the moon did rend asunder. If that verse were to be talking about a future event it would have said : The Moon will be split into two when the Hour arrives.

so why is it that the Hour only refers to the moon splitting in this SINGULAR verse. and in all the other dozens of verses it refers to the Final Day of Judgment? the word السَّاعَةِ occurs in 53 verses of the Quran, and it always refers to the SAME event...the FUTURE day of judgment. there is no reason to believe, that in surah 54, it refers to a totally different event.

Again look up my posts on this . I have clearly shown how Asad quite simply makes convenient substitutions to arrive at a more logical meaning for something that is absurd.

as far as i know, you have never shown anything of this nature, whether clearly or unclearly. in case, i'm mistaken, please cite the post number since u would have a better idea of where u said what u claimed to have said.

What do you mean by "moderate" and "peacefull" interpretations ? What we need is a Exact and correct translation. We have already seen how Asad tried to make a "Peacefull/Moderate" interpretation untill he got caught out. I dont want to waste more time with these new set of scholars for the same reason. So decide and let me know preferably someone whose works are available online. IMO the only way you can have such a interpretation of this book is by blatant manipulation.

don't worry i had no intention of introducing these scholars into the debate. once again, you haven't cited any examples of what Asad is manipulating...just an assertion.

[Kriterion]

as far as surah 54 and the alleged moon-splitting is concerned, there are few things to consider in addition to the above. Now you do not believe that Muhammad was anything but a quack. Hence he could not have actually split the Moon. Nonetheless he claimed to do it? Can you imagine a situation in which a person would make an impossible claim...one which people could the world over could see with their own eyes that in fact DID NOT occur? I can't. no methodical, meticulous person would make such a claim. bear in mind that this is wholly different from claiming that one went to jerusalem and ascended teh heavens in a single night...this is something which is impossible for a person to Disprove. the splitting of the Moon is not so. in other words, who do you know who would claim to perform a miracle that in he in fact did NOT peform? this is the equivalent of Jim Laker announcing to the crowd that he will take all 20 wickets of a Test match in a single over...knowing full well that its impossible, and yet still making the claim anyhows.

[Kriterion]

Post#355 on the previous page. Here's the important and relevant part( i.e Asad arbitrarily changing "then" to "and" ) from that long post. But you must read that entire post to clearly understand everything. This below in blue is Asads own explanation in his remarks So here Asad is first assuming that the 2 events are parallel ( even here he is not consistent but lets ignore that ) but then realizes that the word "thumma" sticks out like a sore thumb contradicting his explanation .... so what does he do ? Quite simply treat "thumma" as "and". Brilliant ! No problem. Just dont try to tell me by saying Asad = fallible and you(Kriterion) knows better when Asads translations get caught out while blatantly modifying the Quran in an attempt to fit it into modern logic/common-sense.

which is why we must go back to the "actual arabic" i spoke about in post #355. if and when you agree to do that, you will find that sifting through Asad's or anyone elses "verbal gymnastics" is irrelevant and unnecessary. that is it saves you much time. Asad is a fallible human being, whether you have difficulty accepting that or not. and you shouldn't since you realize he's engaging in "verbal gymnastics". Discrediting Asad's translation is just that disrediting Asad's translation. in order to discredit the Quran, you must discredit the quran. there is a difference between the Quran and Asaad's translation OF the Quran. the literal arabic answers all the questions you've brought up, and the only problem is that I did not realize it at first. perfectly human mistake on my part, and for that i apologize. http://www.indiancricketfans.com/showpost.php?p=1108580&postcount=346 here is the relevant post, also indicating why "mountains stabilizing the earth" is also NOT supported from a literal interpretation of the Quran.

No rhetorical questioning please. Kindly answer my question ... let me simplify further ... below are two different versions of the verse 1. The Moon will be split into two when the Hour arrives. 2. The Hour has come near, and the moon has split [in two]. do they convey the same meaning to you ? (if you say yes they convey the same meaning to you then kindly stop posting because there is no point discussing any further for obvious reasons ). If not then ONLY one of those 2 is conveying future tense and I dont see it in any translation by any scholar AFAIK. Thats as simple as it gets and I cant simplify it any further.

no they don't have the same meaning. but i'm glad you stated it this way. now, let us assume you're preferred interpration (#2 above) is correct... 1) what is the arabic term for "the Hour"? 2) how many times does this term occur in the quran? 3) does it always refer to the time when the moon was allegedly split by Muhammad? 4) if the Moon was split by Muhammad, people all over the word must have seen it since the Moon is visible from all points on earth, and there is only 1 moon orbiting Earth. 5) if the moon was NOT split by Muhammad, then what kind of "miracle" is that? 6) if Muhammad did not perform any miracles, did his people witness any miracles? 7) if his people did not witness any miracles, how could Muhammad dare to claim that he performed them when his people witnessed with their own eyes that he did not? Do you still think Muhammad is claiming to do something which he knew that everyone else knew that he did NOT do since its physically impossible for a fake prophet to do? A person as tactically inept as that cannot possibly be as potent a threat as you make him out to be even if he wanted to be with all his might. Don't believe me? Why don't you waltz into any African village and start claiming that you will darken the sun at 12 noon the next day...and then walk around after you have NOT done it and still claim that. How many school children do you think will still believe you, let alone adults? The try to take over the next village, let alone half the known world. If you can pull it off, I'll concede any argument I've ever made with you. That being said, my butt is covered pretty well.

[Kriterion]

Again this is why I asked you to name ONE single Islamic scholar who has correctly translated the Quran in its entirety. If you keep on peddling the same excuse of Asad = fallible Every time his translation gets caught out what is the point of this debate ? Is there not a single scholar who has CORRECTLY translated the Quran to English?

when examining the literal arabic, the need for translations becomes irrelevant. you've gone to the source. And speaking of actual Arabic ... go thru these 2 links and you will see how it will open a can of brand new worms for you :D http://answering-islam.org/BehindVeil/btv8.html http://www.studytoanswer.net/islam/purearabic.html heres the most important part from those 2 links ... "The companions (Muhammad’s friends) did not vocalize or provide diacritical points for the letters of the Qur’anic copies which they wrote, but later during the last part of the companions’ era, when reading errors came into being, they began to provide diacritical points for the copies of the Qur’an and to vocalize them. This was admissible by the authority of the majority of the scholars, though some of them disliked it. The truth is, it should not be disliked because the situation necessitated it, and the diacritical points distinguish the letters from each other while vocalization explains the grammatical inflection." There is a candid acknowledgment from ibn Timiyya that diacritical points are required, but did not God and His angel Gabriel along with Muhammad and his successors know about this problem? The simplest principles of sound Arabic language demand that words should have diacritical points and their letters should be written in complete form. Didn’t they know that disagreements among Muslim scholars would take place and that they would fight among themselves and that even death would result from the differences in reading the Qur’anic text? Didn’t they know also that the differences in meaning of the Qur’anic vocabulary would be decisive in the interpretation and judgments of Islamic law?

We did this exercise earlier when I responded to post#346 of yours and if you follow the trail(before and after Post#346) it will lead you back to your fav excuse that all translators are wrong and that only you have a correct understanding of Quran. This is not acceptable and I have explained why on more than one occasion.

again, irrelevant since the arabic term for mountain "jabal" is not used...the term used is "rawasiya" which i used a DICTIONARY to translate and turns out rawsiya does NOT = mountain.

phew thanks for that.

np

Do not know as I dont understand Arabic. But you can figure it out from the transliteration.

the term is "as-sa'ati"....in arabic, السَّاعَةُ

Do not know the exact number. Occurs many times.

yes, many times...in fact it occurs in aprox. 42 verses. however, in at least 41 verses it always refers to the same thing: the future day of judgment. so why would this term, only once refer to a present or past event???

It obviously cannot.

thank you again.

Forget people all over the world ... those (Quraysh) who were present during that event itself never believed that the moon was split. It is confirmed by the Quran itself in the very next verse 54:2.

exactly. which means that Muhammad could NOT have split the moon.

There is no shortage of self proclaimed holy men with divine powers. Happens even in this day and age. Lookup Putparti Saibaba . There is also no shortage of people who believe in such people. Muhammad was no different.

so you are saying that you could pull this off...since there are no "shortage" of people who would disbelieve their own eyesight??? what are you confusing is people making up things after the fact... NO ONE disbelieves their own eye sight because if people did, you could, with words alone convince surgery patients that what they were feeling in the absence of anesthesia was NOT pain. its one thing for me, Kriterion, to say in 2010 that Muhammad split the moon back in 620 AD. its wholly another for me to see Muhammad NOT split the moon, yet remain convinced that he DID. this neccesitates lying to myself and to others...which means that much-vanuted Hadiths are completely unreliable. can you discern the difference??? Saibaba, as an illusionist wouldn't even be able to hold a candle to David Copperfield. Let me know when his followers witness him making the taj mahal disappear within his afro.

[Kriterion]

And speaking of actual Arabic ... go thru these 2 links and you will see how it will open a can of brand new worms for you http://answering-islam.org/BehindVeil/btv8.html http://www.studytoanswer.net/islam/purearabic.html heres the most important part from those 2 links ... "The companions (Muhammad’s friends) did not vocalize or provide diacritical points for the letters of the Qur’anic copies which they wrote, but later during the last part of the companions’ era, when reading errors came into being, they began to provide diacritical points for the copies of the Qur’an and to vocalize them. This was admissible by the authority of the majority of the scholars, though some of them disliked it. The truth is, it should not be disliked because the situation necessitated it, and the diacritical points distinguish the letters from each other while vocalization explains the grammatical inflection." There is a candid acknowledgment from ibn Timiyya that diacritical points are required, but did not God and His angel Gabriel along with Muhammad and his successors know about this problem? The simplest principles of sound Arabic language demand that words should have diacritical points and their letters should be written in complete form. Didn’t they know that disagreements among Muslim scholars would take place and that they would fight among themselves and that even death would result from the differences in reading the Qur’anic text? Didn’t they know also that the differences in meaning of the Qur’anic vocabulary would be decisive in the interpretation and judgments of Islamic law?

this is very easy to assert, but harder to prove...especially when one is unfamiliar with the precepts of tajweed and quranic recitation. you see the quran is not actually a "scripture" per se...the word itself in arabic means recitation...and in this way, islam is different than any other religion. recitation indicates that the essence of the quran is in the spoken word, not the written format. hence there is no ambiguity within the quran. now i cannot speak or understand arabic, but i can read and write it fluently... the arabic alphabet contains 28 letters, all of which are pronounced un-ambigously. this means that quran, which is in essence an oral "scripture" cannot have spoken/auditory ambiguities, because every word, and indeed every letter, has a unique pronunciation, which is not at all subtle. in other words, whether the diacratic, hamza, existed or not...the words which require it, are pronounced the same today, as they were back then. THE WRITTEN VERSION OF THE QURAN, is not the quran, per se. it is only the written version. the recitation is that which is uttered by the human tongue...something which is intangible and cannot be destroyed. the same cannot be said of a book with paper pages.

[Kriterion]

Are you trying to say that the spoken version of Arabic cannot be written down(in Arabic script itself) verbatim to convey the exact same meaning as the spoken version ?

nay, nay...i am saying actually the exact opposite. the nature of arabic, and this may exist in many other languages also but certainly not in english, is that spoken arabic is without any ambiguity - provided the pronunciation is correct and the hearer is familiar with the words.

Is it so hard to understand the difference between future tense and past tense and to write it down such that it doesnt cause any confusion ?

there shouldn't be any confusion since the word "Hour" always refers to the Final Day of Existence. confusion arises, because you are - just like Asad with "thumma" and "wa" being used interchangeably - changing the meaning of the word "Hour" in just this one verse to refer to the alleged Moon splitting. there should not be any confusion since there were no OVERT miracles performed by Muhammad, as claimed by the quran elsewhere. there should not be any confusion because clearly, Muhammad was - whether a genocidal dictator or a benevolent demagogue - a very capable leader who took scores of warring factions and united them under a single banner within his own lifetime. now while only the feeble-minded will take this as "proof" of Muhammad's authenticity, there is no doubt that such a feat is only possible with a person who has a rational control over his strategic actions. in other words, Muhammad was necessarily a man with great foresight in order to post the "come from behind" win in the manner that he did. either that or he really did have angels from heaven fighting his battles. now a man with great foresight WILL NOT claim to split the moon as a PUBLIC miracle, when he knows for a fact that no one, including himself will see the moon split. hence, he will lose many of the VERY FEW people who already believe in him (surah 54 was a Meccan surah)...i.e not a very wise tactical move in the grand scheme of things. this is especially true when you look at things like the Treaty of Hudaibiya, which i'm sure you are familiar with. this treaty was seemingly a tactical blunder...one which Umar detested vehemtly and made his opposition known to Muhammad. however, Muhammad accepted this treaty, which turned out to be a boon for the Muslims and a bane for the Quraish - who then asked Muhammad to annul the agreement after some months time. clearly Muhammad had a choice initially to accept or reject the treaty offer, so he wasn't forced to say yes. clearly (from your viewpoint) God wasn't miraculously helping Muhammad. luck is no factor. so the only choice is that Muhammad had enough forsight to realize the fatal flaw in the Quraish's treaty and take advantage of it to his own benefit.

Why does this verse use a clear future tense ? Couldnt the Moon splitting verse also use the same words ( untill, when etc ... ) to describe the tense ? The very fact that there are plenty of verses that clearly define the future tense by using words like "when" along with "Hour" proves that the tense in moon splitting verse is of past tense. If it was meant to be a future event then it would have been formulated as I wrote in post#369.

this is a valid question. this verse has confused those who haven't thought critically about things in the past. although the verb tense may be switch between past, present, and future - for example, Pickthall's translation uses the past tense for the alleged "moon splitting" but then goes onto use the present tense for the Day of Judgment referenced 7 verses later in 54:8 - both the arabic recitation and the english translations are clear enough when taken in context with the rest of the quran that it is referring to the future day of judgment. taking the quran into context is of utmost importance and something i've been trying to get you to do during the course of our entire discussion, both past and present. based on Pickthall's translation of verse 54:8 using hte present tense, one might be inclined to believe that the day of judgment is going on right now. however, such confusion is ridiculous and is no different than the confusion concerning verse 54:1 and the alleged "moon splitting" event. taking the quran out of context one can justify nearly anything and everything. there is no special hooplah over a supposed "moon splitting" event in Islam. if you don't believe me, just go to your local mosque during friday prayers for a month...you will hear countless references to the Day of Judgement, but you will not hear anything about a "moon splitting" event. however, if such an event was believed in by Muslims, it would be hyped up to no end, because after all what better way to prove one's religion true than to talk about Muhammad splitting the moon.

Its not what actually happened that is important but its what Muhammad and his followers believed what happened is whats important.

there is nearly nothing, besides the Oneness of God that all "muslims" worldwide believe in. central to islamophobic (and any other bigoted political stance) is a need to homogenize the enemy into a monothilic bloc. "all jews are money hungry cheats", "all muslims are terrorists", etc.

Well I already showed you people who have accomplished such things so you dont have to wait for what I can accomplish. Let me know if you need more examples of quacks. Blind belief is the cornerstone of any manmade faith/ideology. People aint going to be convinced that you are divine unless you prove to them that you have divine powers by performing miracles.

nope. you have shown me a few illusionists, as if i've never seen David Copperfield goin to work on TV or never heard of Penn and Teller. heck i've performed "magic" tricks myself...doesn't mean a damn thing and only the unwise would equate that to convincing people i've split the moon when everyone and their mother knows i haven't. its one thing to decieve people using illusion, quite enough to just convince them with words alone that they saw something they didn't see...which is what you allege Muhammad had to have done.

[Kriterion]

Dont really know what you are trying to say if spoken Arabic = written Arabic in all regards.

that there is no ambiguity in spoken arabic, which is what the "Quran" is.

The problem is you are fixated on the word "Hour". without the help of time operative words like "was", "then", "untill" "when" you cannot find out when this Hour occurs relative to the time when the verse was written.

but one needs to know the identity of the said "Hour" in order to figure what its talking about. was it talking about the hour of Muhammad's birth? or was it talking about the Hour of mankind's first moon landing? further, are we referring to Meccan time as standard or is this GMT? what is the "Hour" a reference to?

Further more there are plenty of verses that illustrate this. I gave you example of 6:31. Beyond this if you insist on sticking to your theory then there is not a whole lot I can do to stop you and as such there is simply no point in carrying this discusion any further for obvious reasons. This is as simple as it gets.

6:31 is yet another example of the "Hour" meaning the future day of judgment. this is a valid question. this verse has confused those who haven't thought critically about things in the past.

What is the confusion here ? Why are you connecting 54:1 and 54:8 ? The only connection there is that the unbelievers (Quraysh) did not acknolwedge the signs ( i.e moon splitting ) so Muhammad then warns them(from 54:6 onwards)of what will happen to those who dont accept Islam come judgement day after their death. So 54:8 is set in future tense unless you completely ignore the context (something you never tire of telling me but seem to have ignored it )

54:1, 54:6, and 54:8 are all references to the same day. the term "the Hour" is used to refer to the day of judgement in all places of the quran. further there cannot be more than one "the Hour" hence the article "the" instead of "a".

Now dont try to shift goalpost and ask if anyone has claimed to have split the moon.

but you see there is a fundemental difference between an illusionist who pulls a rabbit from a hat and a 6th century madman who claims to split the moon (but doesn't). the illusionist at least appears to have done what he's done...Muhammad did not. yet you believe that Muhammad claimed to have done it even though he knew that people saw him NOT split the moon. that makes no sense. the equivalent is Saibaba claiming to a crowd to slit his throat and sow it back together when everyone saw him NOT doing that.

And FWIW the moon splitting miracle did not go very well for Muhammad as it convinced no-one except those who had already been sold on Muhammad's ideology. So the event itself is of no significance as far as convincing anyone of Muhamad being Gods messenger.

obviously, since he wasn't able to split the moon. but he thought it would work, didn't he? if this is so, he was history's biggest mental retard. wouldn't you agree?

You wanted examples of people who perform miracles to claim/prove their divine powers. Exhibit A : Putparti Saibaba.

but Muhammad did NOT perform this miracle, as you and I both will agree to. and its impossible to make this illusion happen as well. thats the difference. Saibaba, Copperfield, et al while they aren't performing any miracles, are creating the illusion that they are and thereby fooling the uneducated and ignorant amongst us.

[Kriterion]

Not me. Iam simply going by translations of about half a dozen acknowledged Islamic scholars. I pocess no knowledge of Arabic to be able to mangle the meaning of any word from that book. If half a dozen is not good enough another half dozen can be arranged (and this goes back to the problem of circular discussion+blatant denial but here is another source this time from Maududi http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/maududi/mau54.html#S54 ). If that is not enough extracts from authentic hadith will tell you the same thing. Heck the context derived from 54:1 + 54:2 + 54:3 will tell you that it was NOT a future event(I have explained this earlier. cant be bothered to dig up those posts again). However what I cannot do is get you out of denial mode. That is entirely upto you. And the reason I say you are in denial is because so many sources cannot ALL be wrong in exactly the same manner.

the problem is that Maududi, was not present to see the alleged moon splitting. so maududi is not a "source". maududi is simply repeating what he has heard from people who also repeated what they heard before them. its a chain which ultimately begins with the "authentic" hadith. essentially the problem stems from the apparent "contradiction" of why the "Hour" is referenced with a past tense in 54:1, but never again referenced except in the future tense. i use the term "apparent contradiction" to distinguish from a real contradiction. a real contradiction occurs when a person is making up stories and can't keep his facts together. this is your claim vis a vis Muhammad and the Quran. in such a case, one would see a random and sporadic distribution of inconsistencies, and these would concern minor details, not major thematic elements such as either a moon-splitting "miracle" or the Final Day of Judgment. the fact that - out of several scores of mentions - there is only 1 which indicates a different verb tense means that Muhammad was hinting at a subtle point instead of accidentally forgetting when the day of judgement was/is or when he claimed to have split the moon. now it is entirely within the physical realm of possibility that Muhammad did accidentally forget about one of these MAJOR events in his life. but this would be akin to sachin tendulkar one day magically forgetting that he was a cricket player: theoretically possible, but practically impossible.

[Kriterion]

Nor was Asad. So how do you know his translation is the right one ? On what basis are you trying to discredit the Authentic Hadiths (remember you are not allowed to fall back on science in this case ... pls dont ask why .. as I dont have the patience to re-explain the whole thing again ). And I dont think I have to highlight how these Hadith were scrutinized before being allowed to get into the prophetic traditions. And keep in mind that there is no evidence of any sort of co-ercion on the various hadith authors to include preposterous stuff to make Muhammad appear good.

1) Asad's translation is not perfect...its simply better, IMO, than all the other ones that i have seen so far. 2) Asad's short-comings, cannot equate to extra points for Maududi. the fact that Asad was not present, doesn't magically mean that Maududi was, if thats what you are implying.

I mean what will you accept as proof ?

i will accept common sense in the absence of things like a videotape or DNA evidence - things which obviously didn't exist back in muhammad's day. so i will settle for common sense. how about that? if you can agree that Muhammad would claim to "split the moon" when he already knew that he could NOT...and that ALL of his followers who were present would be foolish enough to lie to themselves when they can see that he did not split the moon, then there is a problem with your perception of reality. bear in mind that his followers included people like Umar, who disputed with Muhammad on far lesser things than failing to perform a miracle. during the above-mentioned treaty of Hudaibiya, Umar reportedly said "that day I doubted the Prophethood of Muhammad".

Here take a look at this huge bunch of errors and descrepancies in the Quran as detailed here : http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/quran.htm#H and see if you can honestly explain all the glaring errors mentioned there (especially those under the "Abrogation" section of that page) . Throw in those 2 links about arabic that I gave earlier and your case has simply no leg to stand on and you simply cannot explain anything unless you resort to False = True sort of blatant rule bending . I obviously cannot partake in such a discussion that has no rules. Its pointless.

to my knowledge, there are no "abrogations" in the quran. the only thing that is mistakenly offered up is the direction of prayer. however, the entity of prayer (including the direction to face, the number of times per day, etc) are commands. they are orders. orders can be changed at any time. case in point, the Children of Israel were commanded by God not mix dairy products with meat products, amongst many other dietary rules and restrictions. most of these rules don't exist within Islam, and none of them exist within Christianity. commands are very transient things. your boss might ask you to fax a paper, that doesn't mean that he will never ask you to do something else, including not faxing something. but even all that is technically irrelevant because the Quran never actually mentions facing Jerusalem for prayer. so technically, there is no abrogation, even if the above explanation is found to unacceptable for whatever reason. apart from that, there are no other examples of "abrogations" a fact proven by the fact that Jalal ud Din - according to your link - is allegedly "unsure" of how many abrogations there are.

But if you insist to continue the first thing you need to do is to explicitly set some rules here .... you cant arbitrarily just say things like even if there is only one scholar who agrees with your view point(even after he is caught bending some rules) it means that your point is correct and that the dozen others are all wrong. We need to settle this issue before progressing any further. So it all comes down to what will you accept as proof ? (First of all are you even willing to accept anything that will refute your views ?) .

i've never alleged that any one scholar is infallibe or perfect. in fact, i have been the one throughout this discussion who has repeatedly stressed the folly of blindly following anything any scholar or combination of scholars has said. hence my status as a "quran only" (a misnomer, you've coined, btw) guy.

I mean is it soo hard to realize that a word ( "Hour" ) can point to different time points which cannot be determined unless you look at the grammer of the sentence ?

not when the word ("Hour") is a by-word for something else. something major (the day of judgement or the alleged moon splitting event). in either or both cases, the term Hour must mean only one specific thing, hence the article "the" prefixed to it both in the English translations as well as in the original Arabic.

And you seem to evade my question about why God did not know the amount of confusion this verse would cause due to faulty grammar ? Iam asking this in the context of your claim that Quran = Perfect and crystal clear and has no ambiguities , errors etc etc etc claims. But you also agreed that the best way to express a future event is to use words like "when" , "will" etc as explained by me earlier.. But since 54:1 doesnt use those words and you are adamant that it still is talking about a future event (despite a dozen other scholars who think otherwise)

actually every single scholar has interpreted verse 54:1 to refer to the Day of Judgement, so they aren't thinking "otherwise". The Quran claims to be a clear book, but only for those who possess the correct thinking. In other words, in order for verse 54:1 to be speaking of a moon splitting event the following 2 things have to be true, one of which is reasonably non-sensical, the other completely non-sensical: 1) the meaning of the term "Hour" must be different in verse 54:1 from all the other 41 verses or so in which it occurs (reasonably non-sensical). 2) Muhammad must have claimed to perform a miracle he knew he could not perform while people were watching him fail. Only a man with zero foresight or someone who was mentally ill would dare to risk everything on this ploy. However, since neither one of these was true, Muhammad must not have made such a claim, especially when taking the context of the word "Hour" into play.

How many times do I need to explain that if you look at 54:1 + 54:2 + 54:3 it is explicitly clear that Muhammad undertook the "show them the signs" approach ?

but how would he show them the "signs" when he already knew in advance that he didn't have them? its not like he went "watch this...oh oops, looks like i don't have this power, after all...sorry folks"...or was it? is that how you believe it went down? furthermore, why is the term "Hour" used in the very same verse. the Hour of what? surely the main noun of sentence cannot be irrelevant.

[Kriterion]

Here take a look at this huge bunch of errors and descrepancies in the Quran as detailed here : http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/quran.htm#H and see if you can honestly explain all the glaring errors mentioned there (especially those under the "Abrogation" section of that page) . Throw in those 2 links about arabic that I gave earlier and your case has simply no leg to stand on and you simply cannot explain anything unless you resort to False = True sort of blatant rule bending . I obviously cannot partake in such a discussion that has no rules. Its pointless.

OK, first of all, a number of these are supposedly contradictions with the Bible, some of which are still pretty baseless. the remainder would only be true contradictions if the Bible was a known standard on which to judge things. being a Hindu, i doubt you will vouch for the Bible's 100% authenticity, but if you do, let me know. 1) the first non-Biblical "contradiction raised by your link is actually incorrect, concerning the "Samaritan". your link falsely claims that "... Yusuf Ali attempts to change this word to 'Samiri' and Pickthall to 'As Samirii'". in fact the original arabic does indeed say just "Samiri" and there is no definitive proof to suggest that this means "Samaritan" or that the individual misleading the Jews was not named "Samiri". 2) the issue of the Dhul Qarnain and the sun setting in teh West has already been discussed before. 3) the issue with the name of Jesus being translated as "Isa" in the quran. if this is the case, then the Bible itself is wrong because Jesus' true name was supposedly "Yehoshua" or "Joshua". but then again, there is no real factual evidence for any of these various names as Jesus was not carrying any form of government ID at the time of this "death". a rose is a rose is a rose, regardless of what you call it. 4) the issue with mountains has already been discussed. but i will elaborate slighty. your link mentions 5 verses as evidence of the Quran being "wrong" about the purpose of "mountains". however, chapters 16, 21, and 31 which talk of the stability of the earth do not use the same term as the other 2 verses in chapters 78 and 88. the first 3 use the term "rawasiya" which my online dictionary tells me means simply "stablizer". the word used in chapters 78 and 88, "jabal" does mean mountains, and neither of these verses talks about any "stabilizing" effect of the said mountains. 5) the allegation that Alexander the Great is Dhul Qarnain is absolutely arbitrary and there is no evidence to support this. 6) the origin of semen (gushing fluid) has already been addressed by us. 7) i don't think there is any evidence to suggest for a fact that Egyptians did not crucify people. and this wouldn't be the first time your link either lied, or failed to perform adequate research. the rest are pretty ludicrous to begin with, such as attempting to figure out which is the preferred frame of reference (Einstein said there is none) while figuring out if it is the sun or the earth which is moving during the day.

[Roshanrocks]

the debate between kriterion and bossbhai must be taken to another thread... it's not related to maoist's killing 70 jawans :headshake: