Yes it's true that the Koran contains a lot of stuff about a spook in the sky, invented by the ambitious desert bandit Mohammed and presented as "revelation". But the guts of the Koran consists of instructions that the bandit-turned-warlord, and the even worse ones who followed, pretended were "revealed". These instructions call(ed) on followers to continue to murder and enslave their moral betters until all decency has been extinguished.

Just read it as extracted and set out clearly (with detailed and comprehensive reference to chapter and verse) at http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/quran/023-violence.htm. The truth leaves no wriggle room for appeasers.

The spook in the sky, Allah, is merely something the Moslems (the real ones) rattle to inspire and scare the faithful into the unbridled evil they call "jihad".

Dream On,

Interesting: you write that

"The assumption that the Koran is about imaginary spooks in the sky. FALSE. It is written as a set of worldly instructions for the faithful because it IS a set of worldly instructions for the faithful.[1] ... "

Well, the Al-Quoran details Mohammed's self proclaimed experience with an entity he believed to be the "Arch Angel Gabrielle," if I do not misrecall. So, depending on how you define "imaginary spooks in the sky" I would say that it is very much about that.

What you are perhaps referring to are the separate writings which accompany the Al-Quoran. I don't recall what they are called but perhaps the "Hadeeth" and something else.

It is in these other texts that you find some of the day to day instructions as you put it."

You protest that "I don't recall what they are called but perhaps the "Hadeeth" and something else." Yeah, hadiths. And then, even if you "don't recall what they are called but perhaps the "Hadeeth" and something else", you seem to know a lot about what is in them.

Dream On, your taqqiya is showing :)

Joe

Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 23 December 2015 12:05:04 PM
" ... Dream On, your taqqiya is showing :)Joe ... "

Well, as said, I did do a short course entitled "Islam at a Glance" (a U.W.A. extension course) prior to departing upon my adventure to the highly conservative and traditionally Islamic location of East Java but as of when I was writing yesterday I couldn't quite recall all of the details. It was 10+ years ago.

I took the course with me and used it as a talking point with the locals. And as any "Lonely Planet" backpacker will tell you the locals the world round don't tend to mind at all when foreigners/tourists take an interest in their culture, language etc etc. It certainly tends to go down better than nationalistic pride displays and the like ;-)

I also did a scan of a digital copy of the Al-Quoran for all those instances where JC appears and asked 'em what they reckoned about that too.

Loudmouth

‘I guess you now feel really truly superior for writing all that …’

Oh, c’mon. Do we really need the ad hominems … so close to Christmas?

Like many people these days, I don’t accept the standard indoctrination that the countries the West interferes with are savage, brutal societies that can’t cope unless we of the benevolent West intervene to show them what they really need, despite the fact that they are ancient societies that have endured all kinds of ups and downs and invasions and civil strife. They are the ones who are best equipped to deal with their own internal problems.

Radical, I know. But if the West were to butt out and let them get on with the business of living, we might just see that terrorism is of no practical benefit to them or to anyone else

mac

‘Actually, closer to 200 years, however, any attempt to blame the wicked Western imperialists for the oppressive, chaotic and backward nature of majority Muslim societies is misguided to say the least, sectarian violence is nearly as old as Islam itself. Muslim societies were 500 years behind the West and their internal rivalries made the task of the European invaders so much easier.’

Gulp!! Gasp!!

Would have ‘made the task of the European invaders so much easier’?

Sorry … but no one has a right to be an ‘invader’. As the Nuremberg trials established, any war of aggression is ‘not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole’.

Whether the ‘task’ is easy or difficult, the morality of invasion – or its partners in crime, destabilisation, sanctioning, regime overthrow, taking sides in a civil war or deliberately fomenting unrest – contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

We in the West are so propagandised to believe that we have a moral right to destroy countries in order to save them, we have been rendered incapable of seeing the horror of what our political, military and intelligence masters are doing to the populations of nations with whom we have no real quarrel.

Hi Killarney,

Why do you have to over-do it ? Anything the West has done in the general region of the Middle East can easily be matched with what the Ottomans etc. have done, and now of course, ISIS.

We forget that barely a hundred years ago, the Ottoman Empire ruled over most of the Balkans, North Africa, the Middle East proper and into the Caucasus. An Empire, Killarney, not a regime of 'peace'. An Empire which butchered up to a million Armenians and others barely a hundred years ago.

As for your comment about ' nations with whom we have no real quarrel', apart from its ring of Chamberlain (you could have added 'and lands far, far away with which we have little to do'),

and since ISIS proclaims that it is indeed a nation, the beginnings of a world-wide 'nation' or caliphate, to which - it proclaims - we all will have to submit if it had its way, to either convert (I expect most of the 'left' will take that option), or be exterminated,

and since ISIS does indeed control a 'nation-sized' [400,000 sq. km, and ten million people] area and population, and has major influence over as much again in Libya, Somalia, Niger/Nigeria and now Afghanistan,

are you referring to ISIS ?

Merry Christmas, Killarney.

Joe