BorealFAREWELL POSTINGSIon & Let Me Rephrase ThatDecember 20, 2024 If Ion or Robin reads some of what I have written here, and I am still alive on January 7 when we are scheduled to have dinner again, I may have to do an Allah and rephrase some of my remarks. Ion and Robin are the only two people from the good old days when Lucette was alive that have continued dining with me at a restaurant on a semi-regular basis. This may have something to do with their steadfast commitment to never reading anything I wrote, and my not insisting they do. I tested that commitment when I gave them a copy of Love, Sex and Islam and told Ion that he was mentioned in the first chapter. If he read it, he never let on. Ion came by his disregard for what I write honestly. Before venturing into Islam I wrote a book about my experience at Foreign Affairs (today Global Affairs). Lucette was very proud of what I accomplished (I published an extended edition following her death). She offered it to our two diplomat neighbours, John and Norm, who told her in no uncertain terms that they did not care to read it. Many a Christmas Lucette would invite Ion and Robin for dinner before they left to spend Christmas in the Laurentians. She couldn’t help herself, even after I warned her that Ion, the son of a diplomat, would have the same reaction as John and Norm, and he did, adding that he would never read a book that accused his father of being a crook. Unless his father, when rotated back to Ottawa, occupied the position of area comptroller as described in Tokyo Lets the Cat Out of the Bag, which is unlikely, he would not have been complicit in the theft of millions. Lucette was somewhat taken aback by the reaction of the usually self-possessed Ion. Ion was sitting across from her when he unleashed his diatribe. I was sitting next to her and surreptitiously put a calming hand on her thigh and she changed the subject, something a thoughtful hostess will do when something they said or did distressed a guest. Last Thursday Ion gave me an opening and I jumped in with both feet thinking this could be our last time together, so who cares. I don’t remember what he said that got me to expound at length about the difference between Meccan surahs, i.e., chapters of the Koran and Medinan surahs. The Koran is a mess, but scholars have managed to gleam from the mess what are referred to as chapters of revelations sent down when Muhammad lived in Mecca, his hometown, and later when he sought refuge in Medina after being run out of town for insisting that his brethren would burn in hell like their ancestors unless they embraced Islam. I explained to Ion, that if an imam is preaching to an audience he wants to lull into believing that Islam is about peace, he will usually quote verses from Meccan chapters where peace and understanding is preferred to war and mayhem. If he wants to whip up the believers into a murderous frenzy he will usually quote from Medinan chapters such as the ninth surah Repentance. Muhammad, secure in Medina, launched pitiless attacks on unbelievers. The sword became the order of the day, and those who refuse to convert are to be put to death on the spot. This change in strategy required Allah to repudiate much of what he said earlier about living together in peace as in the following example (remember that a verse number bears little or no relationship as to when it was received)*. Meccan: 109:6 “You have your religion and I have mine.” Medinan: 3:85 Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers. Scholars have identified more than 200 ephemeral eternal truths in keeping with a new belligerent Islam. Being able to identify revelations that have been modified or replaced is essential to understanding the Koran and being able to tell when you are being lied to. Introduction (Excerpt from Let Me Rephrase That!, Boreal Books) Of all the incongruities that devotees of a religion steeped in incongruities have to accept, the concept of abrogation has to be the most outlandish. Abrogation is common in the real world as better information replaces information that is out of date. In the world of revealed truths, retractions should not even be the exception. It defies logic, and therein lies the incongruity, the weirdness. Scholars and clerics from the Middle Ages (eight to eleventh century) initially put forth these more than two hundred abrogated revelations, apparently oblivious to the uncomfortable conclusion that can be derived from their endeavour. The inherent absurdity of an omniscient deity not getting it right the first or even the second time around may explain attempts by contemporary diviners of the Word of God to refute the very concept of abrogation. One such academic, Muhammad Asad (1900-92), argued that verse 10:64 was evidence of the immutability of Allah's Words. 10:64 Theirs is the good news in the present life and the Hereafter. And there will be no alteration of the Words of Allah. That is the great triumph. Not so, according to another contemporary expert, Ahmad von Denffer (1949-present). For this eminent scholar, understanding abrogation is central to the correct application of God's laws. Denffer quotes four revelations to Asad's one, where Allah admits to occasionally changing His mind. 2:106 Whichever verse We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring instead a better or similar one. Do you not know that Allah has the power over all things? 13:39 Allah blots out and confirms what He pleases; and with Him is the Mother of the Book. 16:101 And if We replace a verse by another – and Allah knows best what He reveals – they say: “You [Muhammad] are only a forger.” Surely, most of them do not know. 17:86 If We please, We certainly can blot out that which We have revealed to you (O Muhammad); then you would find no guardian to assist you against Us. The idiosyncrasies that saturate Islamic scriptures, including the concept of abrogation, raises doubts about the perfection of the Koran, and by extension, that of its Author.
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