Daniel was somewhat correct, but Jojo misreads him. I am not "fluent
in Arabic," but I can read it -- sometimes well, sometimes painfully
-- and I can use dictionaries and grammars, and, in addition,
*generally understand the material.* It's like trying to read a
physics text in a foreign language without understanding physics.
You'll come up with weird ideas if you don't understand.
I have not read the "canon" in Arabic. That's what a Muslim scholar
does. It takes many, many years of study to do that. I have friends
who have done this, one was a beardless youth when I met him, and is
now probably the most widely-known American Muslim scholar, and he
paid his dues for that, many years of dedicated study. Yes, in
Arabic. The sources are in Arabic, not modern Arabic, but classical Arabic.
No, I'm just an American Muslim who is not afraid to make mistakes,
so I write what I think, and report what I find. And, in fact, the
scholars generally support me, and sometimes they correct me. It's
quite the same with cold fusion. I don't have a degree, but open my
mouth and make mistakes, and that's quite how I learn. The trick is
to *pay attention to correction.* That is, *seek to understand it.*
Jojo radically misrepresents what I've done. I sometimes cite
Wikipedia for well-known, uncontroversial material. Blogs are rarely
cited, and only to show opinion. Here, it was Jojo who cited an
anti-Muslim source, no better than a blog. That source cited Muslim
sources, of radically varying quality, and *interpreted them* in ways
entirely contrary to normal, maintream Muslim interpretion, often
directly contradicting, in conclusion from a source, what the source
explicitly said.
This is highly polarized polemic, not scholarship. And it's highly
offensive, because it is attempting to tell Muslims that their
religion tells them to do something horrific. What if they believe him?
Below, explaining who I actually am, that is, what my actual
"qualifications" are, I describe my relationship with Islam and what
it means to me. If one reads this carefully, it will be seen that it
is far from an attack on anyone's religion.
At 04:08 PM 1/1/2013, Jojo Jaro wrote:
Have you read the link? It provides muslim sources that
categorically say the things I am saying. How can one who claims to
be objective say that Lomax is right about this. You fancy yourself
as being objective right? If not, I have nothing else to discuss
with you. I will only discuss with people who want the truth, not
win with propaganda and lies.
What evidence has Lomax actually provided? And how good is that
evidence? My evidence is Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari. Two of
the most respected and venerated mulsim scholarly works. He's is
wikipedia and Internet opinion blogs and his evidence is better than
mine? Come on man. This is getting ridiculous.
Are you actually claiming that Lomax is fluent in Arabic? Please if
you are, point to me where he said that. I don't read his lengthy
tiresome essays completely so I may have missed that.
Jojo
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:danieldi...@gmail.com>Daniel Rocha
To: <mailto:vortex-l@eskimo.com>John Milstone
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 4:26 AM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:OT: The Truth about islam and little girls.
The problem it is not that he is informed. Not only vastly more than
you, since he can actually not only read the canon in Arabic but
also criticisms and counter criticisms, discussion, of the highest
authorities, all in Arabic. Although we should all question whatever
people tells us, he provided enough evidence that you be just either
a troll or fanatical to not accept as true, or much more probable as
true than what you can find, whatever Abd says.
Daniel was responding to:
http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg74947.html
He's not quite correct. I'm generally familiar with anti-Muslim
polemic, and the issues raised. Here, I simply followed the sources
cited by the Christian, and read them to the degree necessary to
understand the context and what was being said. It should not be
assumed that I already know the facts. I actually take testimony at
face value and then verify it. Or falsify it.
A point should be made clear. I'm a Muslim. That has a very specific
and technical meaning, it means simply that I have, in the presence
of witnesses, testified personally, in Arabic, as to what is called
the declaration of faith in Islam. In fact, when I did that, I was
young and did not really know what it meant! That is, I had an
*erroneous understanding.* I wasn't lying, I was just saying what I
thought was so. It means something quite distinct from that now. Here
is what it means to me:
"I testify that there is no god but God." That is, there is a single
reality. That is *all* that it means. Everything else is interpretation.
"I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God." "Messenger" is
literal. Sometimes, when I want to be a bit cheeky, I translate it as
"postman." The Arabic word is Rasuwl. A rasuwl is someone who bring a
risala, a letter. The postman does not have to understand the letter,
doesn't have to be literate, is simply one who delivers it. So this
article of faith is not actually about Muhammad except in a role of
his. It's really about the Qur'an.
And I found that I could trust the Qur'an, itself. Not my
interpretation of the Qur'an. Not what people tell me about the
Qur'an. It, itself. It is quite the same as understanding that God is
Reality. (And people who understand this point have often said that
the equivalent in Islam, of Jesus in
Christianity, is the Qur'an. It is the Word of God, in a way that has
little or nothing to do with *language.*)
The Qur'an describes itself as a collection of stories, as, indeed
the best story. It is explicit that some of it is metaphorical, so
Muslims, in general, don't run into the same difficult problems with
interpetation that afflict some Christians, stuck not only with a
much older text, but, for some of them, with a 17th century
translation that they consider authoritative, itself "inspired" and
protected from any error. Good luck!
As has been claimed here about the Bible, there is a lot of "science"
that can be read into the Qur'an. I noticed this quickly, when I
first started reading the Qur'an. It doesn't *contradict* science
much, and I found that when it appeared to, and I looked at the
Arabic, the contradictions disappeared. I'll put it this way:
Arabic is a fluid language, susceptible to widely varying
interpretations. Translators pick what they think makes sense in
context. We actually do this with all language, perhaps outside of
fields where language has become highly technical and highly
specified. What happened here, it is apparent, is that I selected
interpretations of the Arabic that corresponded to my experience.
Those interpetations would be different for someone with different
experience. There is no *real*, *true* translation. They are all made
up, stories that make sense to us. And possibly not to others.
And, as could be expected, and as reported in hadith, someone with a
corrupt heart would read corruption into the Qur'an.
There is a common human experience that we all can share, and when
people come together in that experience, it doesn't matter what they
call themselves, they meet in it. Those who interpret their own
sources in the way that I'm talking about, who are honest with
themselves and others, find this core source. And the Qur'an talks
about that! Finding this understanding, plain to me (and to others)
in a 1400-year-old text blew me away, forty years ago. I had the
imagination that this was relatively modern. (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy )
But that understanding is universal, for any who seek it. That's a promise.
