My Favorite Bit of the Koran

If someone, let’s call him Moo Ham Mud, informed me that, while they’d been out on the desert, the archangel Gabriel had appeared to them and given them God’s Full and Final Revelation, and then presented me with books translated into 100 different languages, I would be quite impressed.

If, on the other hand, they gave me a Koran in only one language, Arabic, and that was Mr. Moo Ham Mud’s dictation to a scribe, I can’t say I’d been impressed at all. Really folks, the United Nations gives simultaneous translations in six languages. Muslims, however, can’t learn a second one. I have read the Koran from cover to cover, all 114 Suras (in English translation), and I have no trouble at all saying that I like Jesus a whole lot more than Muhammad. For example, Muhammed never said anything like, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s.” Or, “my kingdom is not of this world.” The god that Muhammad claims to represent wants to rule in both this world and the next. It’s politically correct to attack the work of America’s Founding Fathers on the grounds that their thinking is outdated. However, the Constitution allows for Amendments. Indeed, we’ve amended it 17 times in the last 200 years. However, there is no amending the words of Muhammad. For example, Muhammad decreed that sons are entitled to twice the inheritance of daughters. The Koran allows a man to take four wives (provided he treats them equally), where Muhammad managed to have twelve.

Evil-minded cynic I am, it appears that the most important commandment of Allah is that nothing should interfere with Muhammad’s right to get laid whenever he wanted. I think it’s fair to ask when are Muslim men going to stop beating their wives. The answer is never, because the Koran explicitly gives them that right. Granted, there are rules for wife beating: a husband must first admonish the wife, make her sleep alone, then beatings must not result in broken bones, and no blows to the face.

My favorite trick question is, “When was slavery abolished?” Americans would say it was in 1863 because of the Emancipation Proclamation and 1865 with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. The British will proudly say that slavery was abolished through the Empire in 1831. The correct answer is that slavery exists today in Muslim countries. More people are held in slavery in 2009 than were ever held in slavery in America.

My favorite bit of the Koran is the one where Allah (the creator of the universe) proclaims that the calendar shall consist of twelve twenty-nine day months and a three hundred fifty-four day year, considerably less accurate than the calendar Julius Caesar promulgated in the fifth century before Muhammad’s birth.