For Vijay; good points!
Reader comment on item: Paul Goodman, MP, Analyses Radical Islam
in response to reader comment: Dhimmi no more

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Nov 24, 2006 at 17:39

Hi Vijay:

You make very good points. There is a great saying by Schopenhauer and it is as follows:

"Truth goes through three stages: First it is ridiculed; then violently opposed; finally it's accepted as being self-evident."

I guess we must be at the stage where the truth is being "violently opposed."

So there is some hope here.

What is most interesting is that Muslims early on realized that the Qur'an in Arabic or any language for this matter is poor literature. I never feel inspired when reading the Qur'an in Arabic (compare this with reading the Gita, or the Dhammapada or the Sermon on the Mount) The Qur'an is as bad in Arabic as it is in English And how can the Qur'an be such great literature when it is such a violent book.

And yes there are some exceptions for what I would call good poetry but still same old same old and for this read Surat al-Nijm (chapter 53) and that chapter is nothing but very good Arabic poetry but that is it (by the way it is the locus of the infamous Satanic verses).

But Muslims came to realize very soon how poor the Qur'an is when compared with let us say the Bible as literature. But this was too late because by then Nestorians and Jews and other Christian groups in the Middle East were examining the Qur'an and making it clear to Muslims that it is poor literature. It is full of mistakes and it is very disjointed and did nor make sense most of the time. The Qur'an claimed to be a kitab mubeen (clear book) which was far from the truth, and the Qur'an also claims that it is written in 3Arabi Faseeh (excellent Arabic) when in actual fact the Qur'an is full of grammatical errors (For a great 9th century work by a Christisn on what is really the Qur'an see The Christian al-Kindi's work).

And guess what the response of Muslims? Christians were not allowed to read or to examine the then emerging Hadith literature. Poor Muslim logic? May be but I suspect that Muslims early on realized that the Hadith was silly and just as bad as the Qur'an. And still to this day Christians in the Middle East are not allowed to read the hadith! Go figure.

When I hear from Pakistani Muslims that the Qur'an is very eloquent if read in Arabic, I usually respond by saying: "How good is your Arabic? and do you read the Qur'an in Arabic? and do you understand what it really says in Arabic? Or do you depend on English or Urdu translation?" Usually it is the end of the conversation.

So back to Schopenhauer; we all have to expose the truth about Islam! I guess there is hope.

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