SPENTA MAINYU'

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: "Ignorance is an affront."

YOU ARE IN DARKNESS.

Islam page 3

THE CODEBOOK OF ISLAM

THE RELIGIOUS TEXTS AND THE HAGARENE MESSENGER

Firstly, we have to ask two vital questions. Did the Messenger of the Hagarene teaching have a ‘codebook’ of his own? How many times should the name of the Messenger of any faith appear in the codebook of that faith?

Read the Torah. Read the collection of letters called the New Testament. If you like, read the codebooks of other faiths. The names of their messengers appear many times in those texts. Now read the codebook of Islam as the last text. You will see that Moses, Av’ram/Abraham, Yshua/Jesus, Ish’mael/Ismail, Lot/Lut, Noah/Nuh, Adam/Sdem, Hud, Saleh, Shuayb are there. But the name of the Midianite tradesman, who the Arabs called the ‘seal of the prophets’ is missing.

• The Sira and Hadith refer to ‘Muhammad’ only as the ‘messenger.’

• Therefore, if we clear away the myth, a person supposedly named ‘Muhammad’ is non-existent except his signature in the Constitution of Medina.

He may have had another name, but that name is nowhere to be found. Do not look for the proof of his historicity, because there is not any. The authors/editors refer to him as ‘Muhammad’ but that is not a name. It is an attribute meaning ‘most praised’, ‘praiseworthy’, and ‘glorious’  (similar to the label ‘messiah’ and ‘the anointed’). The non-Muslim sources refer to him as a ‘warlike’ tradesman who adopted a religious attitude and discourse when he wanted to impress people around him.

Like the Catholic Church, which formed special teams of priests to find and destroy the texts about Yshua surviving the cross, going to Kashmir, and living and dying there. Desert Arabs who transformed the Hagarene teaching in to Islam may have removed his name from the texts. As I have mentioned elsewhere, after the death of the Messenger an extensive effort was made to purge the ‘person’ from the Hagarene teaching. However, there may have been other factors in action:

• The pieces of the so-called religious texts of the Hagarene period were borrowed from other faiths and cultures. There have been no texts revealed, written, or dictated by the Messenger. That is the reason why all those previous messengers do appear in the texts and the Messenger is missing.

• The Messenger may not have considered himself very important and consequently had his name omitted.

• While the Hagarene teaching was being transformed into Islam, the nationalist desert Arabs may have set as their primary aim of liberating the text from ‘attachment to a specific person’ (In other words, being a Muhammadan text), and may have erased the actual name of the Messenger. Do not forget that the Islamic ideology considers the Messenger just a vehicle in imparting the divine(!) message, so his name is irrelevant.

• The nationalist Arab authors and editors who had done the creative rewriting may have preferred to refer to him not by a name, but by an appellation (A number of researchers including Caetani doubt that ‘Muhammad’ is the real name of the Messenger) like the messiah of Judaism and Christianity, because ‘Muhammad’ means ‘the praised’, ‘the anointed’ in Arabic.

• The Messenger may not have been such an important religious figure in his time, consequently he might have been embellished by the Islamic mythology in the later epochs into the ‘character’ we know.

• The Messenger as the personality that we read about may have been an invention, who was inserted later on when the codebook was being edited and put together, and an actual name for the Messenger might not have mattered that much at that stage where there was a struggle for supremacy within the nationalist Arabic movement. 

Some scholars maintain that the Messenger’s name does appear in the document called the Constitution of Medina. This, they claim, is the proof of his existence. I agree with that, but still hold on to my position: A Messenger like the one portrayed in the codebook and the Islamic literature may never have existed. It does not necessarily mean that the signature in the document is his name, because the usage of appellations by the leaders was a common practice in that region. ‘Muhammad’ most likely is an appellation. The Abrahamic-Semitic-Judaic tradition also tends to substitute words, titles, descriptions for the real names of the revered personalities (like David=‘Davidum’). Therefore, the Messenger may very well have used ‘Muhammad’= ‘the praised one’ (‘the anointed one’) as the label signifying himself. The researchers on Islam say that his name is Ab’ul Kasım Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Abdulmuttalip ibn Hashim, in short Muhammad.

According to Patricia Crone, a succession of storytellers has reshaped the Islamic traditions over a period of a century and a half. The storytellers who were called Kussas are believed to have compiled their stories using as models the Biblical legends that were quite popular in and around the Byzantine world at that time, and also the stories of Iranian origin. From the stories of Kussas a literature, which belonged to the historical novel rather than to history, has grown (Levi Della Vida). “It was the storytellers who created the (Muslim) tradition. The sound historical tradition to which they are supposed to have added their fables simply did not exist. It is because the storytellers played such a crucial role in the formation of the tradition that there is so little historicity to it. As storyteller followed upon storyteller, the recollection of the past was reduced to a common stock of stories, themes, and motifs that could be combined and recombined in a profusion of apparently factual accounts. Each combination and recombination would generate new details, and as spurious information accumulated, genuine information would be lost. In the absence of an alternative tradition, early scholars were forced to rely on the tales of storytellers, as did Ibn Ishak, Vakidi, and other historians. It is because they relied on the same repertoire of tales that they all said such similar things” (P. Crone).

When one goes through Kuran in detail, one becomes aware of the fact that the book is a collection of,

• The concepts of god;

• The messages revealed and directed at certain communities by the Messenger;

• The messages that look like being taught by the tutor/tutors, who were declaring their positions;

• The efforts of editors and authors since the time of the Messenger;

• The efforts by the Arabs of the desert to own the Messenger and his Hagarene teaching and to substitute the original ideas by the ideas with the Makka oriented ones.

Every now and then we come across statements to the effect that Kuran was original, straight from god, the ‘word of god in Arabic’ etc., all of which must be seen as efforts to counter the claims that the text was not original (Kuran 10:15, 10:37-38, 12:3, 13:36, 29:48).

Acccording to the researchers, experts and scholars the presentation in Kuran of verses by various poets as the words coming from the supreme entity is not uncommon. The ongoing remarks to this effect must have disturbed the writers of Kuran, as we read in 69:41: “It (Kuran) is not the word of a poet.” and in 69:42: “Neither it is the word of a seer.”

HAS THERE BEEN SOMEONE TEACHING AND/OR HELPING THE MESSENGER?

Stories about some of the characters of those days seem to have been included in Kuran, where the verse 9:61 states:

• “Some amongst them hurt the Messenger and said: ‘He is all ears (listens to everything).”

Kuran 9:61 gives the impression that the Messenger was either extremely curious or tried to learn something from everybody. Why was he doing that? Well, as suggested by the records of those, he was obviously trying to put together a teaching of his own or looking for something to borrow from others to add to his Hagarene teaching (Sabian faith). He was eavesdropping on the people narrating the legends and tales of the ancients. Kuran cites these accusations. Both Jews and Christians of those days were telling the Messenger that his god was actually theirs. They also accused Arabs of transforming their god into ‘Allah’ by assigning supplementary characteristics borrowed from other gods.

A person named Maslama or Müseylime who appears in the Islamic literature was reportedly ‘speaking’ on behalf of his god, whom he called Rahman (‘the merciful’). The inscriptions tell us that Rahman is the name the southern Arabs have taken from Aramaic and Hebrew. Later on, they changed it into rahmanan and began calling the god of the Jews and Christians by that name. Maslama was reportedly called by his god’s name - ‘Rahman’. We also know that the Messenger has always been accused of getting his wisdom from a ‘Rahman of Yamama’.

Kuran itself narrates the criticism levelled at the Messenger. Here is Kuran 44:14: “But they turned their faces away from him and said: He has been taught (someone has been teaching him), he is crazy.” Verse 16:103 continues with this main theme of gossip: “We know that they say, ‘a man is teaching him the Kuran.’ The tongue of the man they are hinting at is foreign, but (the language of) this Kuran is evidently Arabic.” The person referred to in this verse is said to be ‘a Greek Christian who the Messenger comes together from time to time’ and learns Kuranic doctrines from him. This person could well have been the Nestorian Christian Sergius (Sergis, Sarkis) Bhira (‘Bahira’).

• Was Sergius Bhira the only tutor?

Those sections in Kuran where god speaks are clear, like 3:195. But a great majority of the numerous forms like “Say to them’, ‘Tell them” are clearly the directions and instructions from ‘somebody.’ In these verses the ‘speaker’ is supposedly god but the necessary pronoun ‘I’ is missing. We do not know for sure if Sergius was the tutor of the Messenger or if there were others beside him. We are told the Arabs have the habit of substituting words of their invention for the names of foreigners, and they have adopted the Syriac word bhira/bahira for Sergius. Bhira/bahira means ‘honorable’ in Syriac, and is used by the Syrians for monks as a title.

Nestorian tradition definitely believes a Nestorian monk named Sergius was the teacher of the Messenger. Here is the story:

• Sergius was a monk who was evicted from his monastery. He travelled to Makka, where he found two groups of people: Idolaters and Jews. There he began preaching the Christian faith as Nestorius preached. He eventually succeeded in converting all the idolaters to his own faith. The Messenger was among these idolaters and Sergius helped the Messenger in his literary, political, and religious career. After the death of Sergius a Jewish rabbi called Ka’b is reported to have taken over as the mentor of the Messenger.

To explain the claim in the story that the Messenger was an idolater-pagan, I must point at that persons who are not either a Jew or a Christian in those days were considered idolaters, and Sabians were also branded as idolaters/pagans. The people called hunefa, hanifiyyun by the Arabs were actually Sabians. Messenger himself was a Sabian. Sabians were haemerobaptists. Hemerobaptism was considered a Christian ‘heresy’. Sergius was a Nestorian. Nestorians were a Christian sect. According to Joannes Damascenus (Saint John of Damascus), the Midianite Messenger had established a ‘Christological heresy’. They all seem to fit in nicely. But that is wrong. Because Haemerobaptists were not Christians, they were extreme Jewish sects. Of course, the early Christians were called the Jewish Christians. Their source was Torah and Judaism. Therefore, in that sense there might have been certain aspects of the Hemerobaptism that gave a ‘Christian’ feeling to the movement.

Some scholars go so far as to claim that the story of Sergius is necessary for the right understanding of Kuran. I would like to quote a passage from a letter that has information on Sergius Bhira. The letter, thought to be have been written after 717 A.D. is about the conversation between a Beth Hale monk and Arabian chief/‘emir’:

• “This Arab man then, O my lord, was one of the chief men before the emir Maslama and by reason of a malady that he had, he came to us and remained with us for ten days. He spoke freely with us and debated much about our scriptures and their Kuran. When he saw our rites performed at the appropriate seven times (...)  he called me to him. And because he had acted as steward in the government for a long time and because of his exaltedness and our lowliness, he would speak with us via an interpreter. He began by reproving us for our faith, saying, ‘you make prayers much, night and day you are not silent, and you outdo us in prayer and fasting and in your petitions to god. However, in my own opinion, your faith rules out that your prayers will be accepted’” (Monk of Beth Hale, Disputation).

This monk goes on with his account of the Messenger’s initiation of Arabs into monotheism and states the following:

• “He first brought you to know the one true God, a doctrine which he had received from Sargis Bahira (Sergius Bhira).”

There is no evidence showing the association of Sergius and Bhira (Bahira) before Thomas Artsruni and Masudi, who wrote in the early 10th century; Abd al-Masih al-Kindi speaks of a “Sergius surnamed Nestorius and John known as Bahira.” Kindi is possibly lost in confusion here, but his unconcerned reference suggests that the Bhira story was well known in those times and did not require any explanation or introduction.

EMERGENCE OF KURAN

Muslims insist that Kuran’s origins could be understood only if seen from the angle of the Muslim Tradition. If the predecessors and two of the sources of the codebook of Islam - the Mosaic and Paulinist/Christian scriptures - have been and still are studied with a critical approach and cross checked against their contemporaries why should we not check the Muslim scripture against the written documents contemporary with the developing Muslim doctrines. As I have mentioned elsewhere the later Islamic traditions do not exist before the 8th century A.D. The Muslim sources we have are compilations done about 200-300 years after the events they refer to, and are based on the oral traditions passed down by the storytellers. J. Wansbrough maintains that Kuran was compiled even later than the traditions, sunna and sira, and was used as an authoritative stamp to authenticate later beliefs and laws, by those who were responsible for canonizing the Muslim traditions. This seems to be true, because during the transformation of the Hagarene teaching into Islam, all of the Hagarene religious texts have been amended and edited into a final codebook. This means that even the Messenger would fail to recognise ‘his’ teaching.

At this stage, I would like to remind a confession by the Muslim scholars, who were aware of the sudden and extreme proliferation of written traditions. They felt the need to defend the situation. Their apology was as follows:

• “The Muslim religion was beginning to stabilize at this time. Thus, it was natural that the literary works would also begin to appear more numerous. Earlier written material was no longer relevant for the new Islam, and consequently was either discarded or lost” (R. Stephen Humphreys).

That is exactly what I am trying to explain. Following the death of the Messenger the Hagarene teaching was transformed into Islam and this process necessitated new traditions, amended scriptures, new texts etc. No one could have expected a better confession, and by no one but the Islamic scholars!

As I have mentioned earlier the emergence of Kuran must have been a sudden event (P. Crone and M. Cook). There was no Kuranic documentation in existence in the mid-late 7th century A.D. The earliest reference to a book called ‘Kuran’ from outside the Islamic literary traditions occurs in the mid-8th century A.D. in a letter between an Arab ‘emir’ and a monk of Beth Hale. It is almost certain that ‘Kuran’ in this letter was considerably different from the codebook we have today. Except for this small reference, there is no indication of the existence of Kuran before the end of the 7th century A.D. Here are the main points of interest for me:

• The Arab asked why the Christians do not “profess Abraham and his commandments,” the monk had to request clarification: “What faith of Abraham do you desire for us, and what are his commandments that you wish us to perform?” The Emir said: “Circumcision and sacrifice, because he received them from god.” (...) When the Arab enquired, why the Christians “adore the cross when he (Yshua/Jesus) did not give you such a commandment in his Gospel?” The monk responded with the observation: “I think that for you too, not all your laws and commandments are in the Kuran which Muhammad taught you; rather there are some which he taught you from the Kuran, and some are in sura albaqrah (Al Bakara - Sura of the Cow) and in gygy and in twrh. (Likewise) some commandments our Lord taught us, some the Holy Spirit uttered through the mouths of its servants the apostles, and some (were made known to us) by means of teachers who directed and showed us the Way of Life and the Path of Light.” (Arabs are known to have practiced the traditions of circumcision and offering/sacrifice since pre-Islamic times. These traditions are claimed to be the two pillars of the ‘faith of Abraham.’ According to a Syriac chronicle, the Messenger’s initiation of sacrifice marks the beginning of the new Muslim polity).

It is clear that the monk has some difficulty in the pronunciation of the Arabic names. Moreover, we should also remember that these names may have been corrupted in time. There are some crucial observations in this quote:

• Kuran, Al Bakara, Gospels and Torah are the main sources used by the Messenger while spreading his teaching.

• The monk has seen the sura of the Cow (Al Bakara) as a separate source of the religious law.

• Therefore, the sura of the Cow must have been a separate religious text in those early days.

• In the Sergis Bhira story Al Bakara is the name of a complete and separate book.

• It is evident from the Islamic tradition that Al Bakara has always had a different place. For instance, Abbas addresses his soldiers as the ‘believers of the sura of the Cow’ in the battle of Hunayn.

• There are records in some of the Christian texts that Al  Bakara was a separate book before the transformation of the Hagarene teaching into Islam. (Joannes Damascenus, De Haeresibus)

What should we make from all these observations?

• There was a separate and complete book called Al  Bakara.

• This book contained the basic religious laws. That is the reason why it had its own believers.

• Kuran was not the only codebook.

Further, I believe that the book called ‘Kuran’ in the conversation above was actually the book called ‘Kuryan’, which contained the doctrines of the Sabian faith. Its original was in Syriac. Sabian (Sabiun) is the word Arabs used to denote the Mandeans, which was a sect in the general group of Haemerobaptists. Mainline Christians labelled the Haemerobaptists as ‘Christian heretics’. This makes the following comment by Rev. Mingana extremely significant: “Kuran as a word is a technical Syriac word meaning scriptural lesson or reading. There is not much doubt in my mind that the word Kuran is imitated from the Syriac Kiryan. All the Biblical lessons to be read in the Churches are called by the Syrians, Kiryans. The Prophet (Mohamed) called his book by the word that was used to name the pericopes of the Revelation in the Christian Churches of his day. The reading of the word without hamzah as Kuran (instead of Kur’an) is reminiscent of an earlier pronunciation, Kuryan or Kiryan, and that the hamzah pronunciation (Kur’an) is a late reading adopted to make the word more Arabic and in harmony with the root of the verb kara’a.”

Interesting, is it not? I am of the opinion that ‘hamzah’ was put there definitely in the process of transforming the Ismaelite scriptures into Islam.

Let us carry on with our observations:

• Syriac is the form of eastern Aramaic spoken only in and around Edessa (Urfa) and Haran (Harran) in Turkey.

• According to Maimonides Av’ram of the Hebrews and Israelites set off from Kutha in Irak where he was living and went first to Syria (Haran?) and from there to Palestine (Av’ram is the Bahram of the Mandaeans/Sabians, and Ibrahim of the Hagarenes).

• The Sabians amongst the ancestors of the Ismaelite Messenger were called the ‘Sabians of Ibrahim’ (hanifs/hunefa/hanifiyun).

• The Messenger has declared that he was going back to the ‘faith of Ibrahim.’

• Faith of Ibrahim was Sabianism (Mandaeanism, Hemerobaptism).

• According to the conversation above the Messenger was giving religious messages using Al  Bakara, Kuran, the New Testament and Torah.

• The sura of Al Bakara, which the Sergius Bhira story described as a ‘complete book’ was most probably either a ready text that Bhira presented to the Messenger or a text collected and edited by Bhira himself.

• Al Bakara was connected to Bhira, Torah was the codebook of the Israelites, New Testament was the codebook of the Christians.

• There was no Islam in those days. There was no Kuran. Teaching was a Hagarene credo or Muhammadanism as labeled by some.

• Ismailite-Hagarenes had with them the Sabian scriptures they called Kuryan/Kiryan.

• The book called ‘Kuran’ by the monk in conversation with the Arab Emir, which was actually the Kuryan of the Hagarenes was a much shorter text than we had today. It was the fundamental religious text that hanifs (hunefa/hanifiyyun), who were the followers of the ‘faith of Ibrahim’/Sabianism preserved in Madian (Madyan/Medyen).

• The Messenger was a Sabian.

• It is highly probable that the Messenger has begun preaching from the texts they called Kuryan (the ‘lectures of faith’) in his village in Madian/El Hicr, before moving to Medina.

• As time passed, with the widening of their sphere and contacts with other cultures, and with the necessities dictated by their national interest, they felt the need to win over people from other faiths, so they borrowed material from other cultures and added them to Kuryan.

In short, the Hagarene texts of the day were poles apart from the codebook that exists today. The numerous editorial works done on the codebook, the later additions, and the intrusion by the desert Arabs support this judgement.

P. Crone and M. Cook wrote that barring the reference in the letter above there is no Kuran or a reference to it (because it was called Kuryan/Kiryan and it was made up of numerous texts borrowed from others) before the end of the 7th century A.D.

• “It was under the governor Haccac of Irak in 705 A.D. that we had a logical historical context in which a ‘book’ (an initial body of literature which would later become the Kuran) could have been compiled as the Messenger’s scripture.”

• In an account attributed to Leo by Levond, governor Haccac is shown to have collected all the old Hagarene writings and replaced them with others “according to his own taste, and disseminated them everywhere among (his) nation.” [He or the editors working for him must have forgotten to omit the references to the ‘first house of god’ of the Hagarenes in Bakka, and the original Hagarene-Muhammadan verses belonging to the very earliest doctrines of the movement].

This shows that as late as the 700s A.D. the old Ismaelite religious texts were still in use. It is highly probable that the believers had gone back to the Sabian book called ‘Kuryan’ or to the composite text created by the passages from the four sources that I have cited earlier. This composite text was the Hagarene teaching. The Arab ‘nationalism’ could not have put up with such a development. Everything had to be rewritten and re-edited.

• If we keep all these points in mind, a reasonable conclusion is that Haccac and his team has transformed the Ismaelite-Hagarene teaching into Islam in and around 715 A.D.

• It is also quite possible that the transformation process, which had begun earlier, following the death of the Messenger, was completed in this period (in the middle or until the end of the 8th  century A.D.), and the final text of the codebook of Islam was produced.

We must ask our crucial questions:

• Could anybody say beyond doubt that the text we know today had never changed and was in existence since the Messenger’s time? No!

• If ever there was that unaltered text in the beginning, does anybody know where it is now? No!

• After all the editorial work and the editing done on the original scriptures, could anybody have a guess (let alone tell) as to what that original scriptures were like? No!

• Taking into consideration the much much older written material reaching our time, does anybody know the reason why we do not have the original copies of the codebook of Islam, if ever there was an original religious text? No!

• Where is the copy claimed to have been written in Uthman’s reign, does anybody know? No!

• Does anybody know where is the final copy that was written in the time of Haccac? No!

Here are some more questions:

• Does anybody have anything to say on the original, unwritten forms of the stories and the texts that we have in the Old Testament of today? No!

• Is there anyone who would dare say something on the original ‘Yshua/Jesus character’ beyond what is told in the gospels, the letters of the apostle Paul, and the anonymous letters that make the New Testament? No!

• If what is told in the codebook of Islam is the completion of the series of Abrahamic-Semitic revelation, is it possible to go against the tradition governing these belief systems? No!

• Is it possible to check the present text of the codebook of Islam against the first, original content? It is not possible!

Authors of the Torah wrote an ‘official’ text, which was approved as the inimitable and unchangeable word of god by the rulers of the time. The codebook of Islam had gone through an identical process. There is nothing wrong with that.. Histories, fundamental rules of a system or an establishment are written always by Sovereigns and conquerors. This is the rule! The desert Arabs did likewise.

Moreover, Ibn Mücahid (Mücahid bin Abdullah) has reportedly established a standard text of the codebook in the 10th century A.D. However, even Ibn Mücahid is said to have confessed the existence of 14 different texts of the codebook. The difference was reportedly not only in the reading but there were dissimilarities in the actual texts. Now let us think about it. What was the reason behind the existence of different texts in the 10th century A.D., in other words  ~300 years after the Messenger?

• We were told that various texts were supposedly collected and written as a codebook during the reign of Abu Bakr.

• We were told again that a  codebook was written again when caliph Uthman was in power.

• These two stories were not inventions, were they?

• Where is the truth? There was a collected and written text, was there not?

• Could there have been a collected and written text, which was not in use?

• Could it be that Abu Bakr’s and Uthman’s texts were local renditions?

• How could it be possible that an absolute example of a monolithic religion had not had a popularly accepted standard text in the beginning?

Now, where is the copy, reportedly made in Uthman’s reign? The copy in the Cairo library is allegedly Uthman’s original. But some have argued that it could not be the original copy done in Uthman’s reign, because Dr. Subhi es-Salih has detected diacritical dots, which did not exist in Uthman’s time. Diacritical dots were borrowed from Hebrew and Aramaic and vowels were still not discovered until the end of the 8th century A.D.

I must also mention the discovery made at the Great Mosque in San’a in Yemen. There in a loft old parchment and paper documents, damaged books and individual pages of Arabic text were discovered. These documents turned out to be thousands of fragments from about thousand different parchment codices of Kuran. Devout Muslims believed that the worn out or damaged copies of Kuran must be removed from circulation, hence the find in the mosque. Some of the parchment pages in this treasure seemed to date back to the 7th and 8th centuries A.D., the first two centuries of Islam. These must have been the oldest Kurans or sections of the book in existence then. The importance of this discovery reportedly is the small but puzzling deviations from the standard text of the codebook. The research done on these texts is said to have shown the “antiquity of some of the parchment fragments which revealed unusual order of verses, small textual variations, rare styles of orthography and artistic decoration.”  There are sheets of scripture written in the rare and early Hicazî Arabic script. These were the pieces of the earliest Kurans known to exist.  In that loft, there were also pieces that have been erased and written over the earlier washed-off versions. Results of the studies on them are still a mystery, because the Yemeni authorities have not permitted the discoverers to publish their findings.

• Could this be an attempt to conceal what these earliest Kurans might reveal in connection to the historicity of the present day codebook?

• Could the motive be the fact that the script in these early 8th century Kurans are said to be different than what we have today?

If that is so, the Yemeni Kurans seem to suggest that there was an evolving text of the codebook in time.

• They might have feared that the tightly kept secret - the transformation from Ismaelite teaching into Islam done by the desert Arabs - might be exposed.

Positive replies to the questions above will lead us naturally to the fact that the codebook has a text that has developed in time. With that observation, we are ready to look into the editorial work done on the codebook.

ORDER OF THE VERSES AND SURAS: AN ALTERED REVELATION

The codebook of Islam is reported to have been completed over a period of 20-25 years (Fahr-ud-din Razi says 23 years), beginning sometime in the years 609-10-11 A.D., which means that the divine(!) messages in the form of verses must have been revealed in a specific order.

• An order, a natural sequence of verses, necessitates an internal coherent structure and development in each sura, does it not?

• In other words, if ever there ever was a continuous progress towards a complete ideology, the verses and suras should have reflected the intellectual medium, the environment, the conditions, requirements and the developments in their period, should they not?

• If that is so, this continuous progress towards the complete ideology from the first verse to the last, and from the first to the 114th sura should be evident, should it not?

• This progress should also reflect the things that have been seen, heard, learnt, and communicated by the Messenger or by the authors of the codebook. In short, this progress should reveal the life and times and the advancement of them, should it not?

• According to what we are told, either the Messenger himself should have dictated all these verses to someone or to the persons around him or that someone or the persons around him should have taken note of what they heard. That is why either that someone or the persons around the Messenger should have learnt and taken note of the verses in the order of revelation, and consequently should have collected them between two covers in that order, should they not?

• Now consider the codebook we have, is that the case?

•  If ever there was an order of revelation of the verses and suras, it is not reflected in the present codebook.

• Verses have been added to the suras, verses have been deleted from the suras, some suras have been edited together, and it is almost certain that some verses and suras were omitted.

THE ORDER OF SURAS: AN ALTERED REVELATION

Muslims consider Kuran as the last and unchangeable word of the supreme being. If that is so, who, on whose authority dared change the order of the verses - the word of god - supposedly revealed to the Messenger in a specific order? If these messages are the word of god, their order also should have been established in accordance with the divine plan of the supreme authority. That is why the alteration of the order should be considered an interference with the divine plan. In other words, changing the order of the messages is equal to changing the revelation. The Messenger supposedly has turned back to the unadulterated ‘faith of Ibrahim’ (Av’ram, Bahram) by accusing the Jews and Christians of changing the divine(!) word. Muslim authors of the codebook of Islam had committed an identical sin. Now we know who were the culprits that altered the word of god (If ever there was one, as claimed by the Muslims): Desert Arabs.

Barsalibî (Bar-salibî=‘Son of a Christian’) is a west Syrian writer, who died in 1171 A.D. He calls himself ‘Mar Dionysius the stranger’ but he actually is Ya’kub Barsalibî of Militini (city of Malatya in southeast Turkey). Barsalibî was the Metropolitan of Amed and he had controversial works against Jews, Nestorians, and Muhammadans. He also wrote commentaries on the Syriac translation of the codebook of Islam. Since Kuran, as we have it today, was finally standardized under the Umayyad Caliph Abd-al Malik bin Marvan. The source manuscript of the Barsalibî translation must have been an earlier text, because it has differences from the present codebook. Here is Rev. Alphonse Mingana:

• “The first long quotation that the author gives from the Kuran embraces in a single whole, without any break in the text, all the first sura and verses 1-10 of sura 2. Now the second sura is not introduced like the first by the ordinary formula: ‘In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful’ (The beginning of the formula should be ‘With the name of’ and not ‘In the name of’) and although exhibiting the mysterious letters A.L.M. it is not preceded by its usual title and definition. We do not believe that any Arabic manuscript of the Kuran lacked all these features after the tenth century, and if Barsalibi - who in his Syriac writings may always be ttaken as a faithful repertory of ancient records - was not playing havoc with all literary decency, it was hardly possible for him to have been the translator of the Kuranic pericopes under consideration…This formula is certainly very ancient and, if I mistake not, is found in all the old manuscripts of the Kuran that we possess - the oldest of which are by the way somewhat later than about the middle of the second century of the Hijrah, and correspond approximately with the first two decades that followed the Abbasid victory. Now unless we suppose that Barsalibi was playing havoc with all literary decency, are we not allowed to argue from their absence that our Syriac translation was made from a Kur’an in which the well-known formula was not, as at present, repeated before every surah (with the exception of the sixth), but was found once only at the beginning of the Fatihah? If the answer be in the affirmative, would it not be improbable to suppose that this formula was missing from the second sura in any copies of the Kuran written after the first century of the Hijrah (Hicra)? And if so, could not our Syriac translation also be ascribed to the end of the first Islamic century, or to the time of Hajjaj (Haccac)? In view of the character of the present document, and on condition that all the indications of the author are scrupulously correct, the most propitious time for the appearance of such a Syriac translation of the Kuran as that, which it appears to represent, would be the years of the reign of the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik bin Marwan, some time between A.D. 684 to 704, before the final effort of the Caliphs to fix a text bearing the authoritative stamp of the first Orthodox believers.”

Futhermore, Rev. Mingana goes on elaborating on this missing formula, and on the fact that Barsalibî’s copy had no break in between the first and the second suras, accept quoting those incomprehensible letters, A, L, M, which appear in the beginning of the second sura after the famous formula in the Kuran we have today, and suggests “that in the Kuran used by the author the first and second Suras were considered as one, is established by the fact that he calls the second Sura as the first under the name of the Cow.”

This Syriac Version of the codebook of Islam allegedly offers new verses not found in the Kurans of our day, and various readings not mentioned by any Muslim commentator or reader. The author Barsalibî is known to have lived in the 12th century A.D., and the codebook of Islam was finally fixed 300 years earlier, in the 9th century A.D. Therefore, these discrepancies also must have their origin in a text of Kuran that was in circulation and which must have been translated earlier than the standardization.

Another example of the omissions in the Syriac text of Kuran is reportedly the repetition after almost every verse of Sura 55: “Which of your Lord's bounties will you deny,” which is completely missing in Syriac. There are a few more textual phenomena of Kuranic phrases that are said to have been omitted in the translation.

Amongst the verses quoted by Barsalibî as Kuranic there are some which are reportedly not found in the traditional and official Kuran, “But which are attested in the tradition to have been actually uttered by the Messenger. They are treated by the author as genuine and authentic, and said by him to have been excerpted, like the rest of the verses, from the Kuran that he was using.” These missing parts are the following: “And Adam was fashioned and was lying on the earth forty years without soul, and the angels passed by him and saw him.” In our time this is only a traditional saying (deriving on the mythologies of the peoples of the region) and is reported by ancient and reliable authorities. “At first created the pen of the writer, and He said to the pen, ‘Walk and write’; and the pen answered, ‘What shall I write?’ and He said, ‘Write concerning what happens till the end.’” Tabari and others also report this as a saying of the Messenger.  A special section is devoted to it in the Vasiyah of the great imam Abu Hanifah. “And seven heavens and seven earths were created like coverings one upon another.” A saying of the Messenger to this effect is also found in Tabari and others. “My nation among Gentiles is like a white spot in a black ox.” This is another verse which the author has reportedly treated as Kuranic, but which has a pronounced traditional feeling. Rev. Mingana quotes the work entitled Taysir-al Vusul ila cami-al Usul of Vacih-ud-din as-Shaibani (edited by Cawnpore) which contains the following saying of the Messenger: “You are among men like a black hair in a white ox, or like a white hair in a black ox”, which according to Rev. Mingana is taken from Bukhari (edited by Krehl).

We gather from here is that politics and personal choices would override the doctrines of the belief system. Remind yourselves of the fact that the interpretation by mankind of the divine message have been, and still is, adjusted specifically to the preferences in times of war, peace, distribution of the plunder and takings etc. This practice is identical in all the belief systems. Remember the hadith where the wife of the Messenger, Aisha protests at the immediate revelation of a divine(!) ordinance whenever the prophet personally needs it, in contrast with the perpetual silence of the same supreme being on other matters related to ordinary people’s needs.

Let us repeat the question: If the codebook was the last and unalterable word of the supreme being, who, on whose authority dared change the order of the verses - the word of god? In order to be able to answer this question we must look at the previous religious texts. What we know from them makes clear that politics and personal choices would override the doctrines of the belief system. Please remember the fact that humankind’s interpretation of the divine message has been, and still is, attuned specifically to the preferences in times of war, peace, distribution of the plunder etc. This practice is identical in all the belief systems. I would like to bring to your attention the hadith where the wife of the Messenger Aisha complained about the immediate revelation of a divine(!) ordinance whenever the Messenger personally needed it, in contrast with the perpetual silence of the same supreme being on other matters related to the ordinary people’s needs.

In a nutshell, the codebook we have today could not be the intended book (or the book that someone had intended), because the order of the suras - the progressing revelation - has been changed by the editors of the codebook somewhere, sometime back in history. Therefore, preferences of man have interfered with it. Secondly, it is known to have been arranged and rewritten at least twice in its history. These editorial works, the rearrangement of the whole text was done firstly by the desert Arabs when they transformed the Hagarene teaching, and also by the later editors.

Here is the official story:

• The Messenger, the sole leader of his people died.

• The Messenger’s each and every word, his daily practice, his rulings were essentially satisfying every need of the society, and when he died Muslims fell into confusion. (Did they really?)

• The Messenger had not established a rule for succession in the codebook. [The Ismaelite Messenger might have had a succession plan after his death but we do not know. Because if ever there was a plan, the people who intervened following his death must have substituted that plan with another one which served their purpose, and wrote their codebook accordingly. The desert Arabs have never been in the scope of the Messenger. Consequently, the Messenger had no Arab caliphs in his plans, and had never thought of preparing someone to assume the leadership of the desert Arabs (with whom he had no affinity) following his death. The present codebook of Islam has nothing to do with the Ismaelite scriptures. On the contrary, it is the product of the factions struggling for a superior position in the society. That could be one of the reasons for the absence of Messenger’s preferences in the codebook. Following his death, his preferences did not count anymore. Moreover the Messenger had no connection with the ideology of Islam the desert Arabs had created, his original faith was Sabianism.]

• There was no codified, canonized, coherent, all-enveloping, and universally accepted religious text. There were texts, notions, concepts borrowed from other cultures. (In order to conceal the truth and give the impression that there was Kuran from the very beginning, the desert Arabs claimed that Kuran had existed right from the beginning but not as a book between ‘two covers’. Each verse was supposedly written down, here and there, on various materials like stones and bones, etc. Furthermore they declared and imposed the idea that the Messenger had never wanted these messages to be written down to prevent the human intervention in the divine(!) word.)

• According to his portrait in the literature, the belief system was personified by the Messenger. His absence could potentially harm the established system of government. [This was one of the excuses formulated for the beginning in earnest of the power struggle to throne a person as the caliph (successor). Consequently, the leaders of various factions have tried very hard to have the caliphate. They have also tried to do their best to ‘depersonalize’ (to purge the religion from the Messenger) Islam and turn it into a belief system of the supreme creator communicated via a nameless ‘unperson’ who was only a ‘vehicle.’]

No one knew the entire religious texts by heart. No one knew which was ‘Kuran,’ in other words, which was the ‘canonized’ text. Because several texts were left behind by the Hagarene believers. This situation has prompted the desert Arabs to take the matter in their hands and write down a complete text from the supposedly divine messages given by the Messenger.

The first gathering and writing down of the verses into a book was supposedly done in the reign of Abu Bakr (his original name was Abd-ul Ka’ba=Ka’ba’s servant) who was the caliph between 632-634 A.D., because ‘no one had the whole Kuran in memory.’ If the verses were not written down in a book they would be forgotten.  Abu Bakr was struggling with the widespread rebellion against him. He managed to crush the uprising by force. The most powerful challenge came from Maslama/Museylima who had declared himself a messenger, but Abu Bakr had him executed.

Abu Bakr (or Umar?) has asked Zayd ibn Thabit to collect the verses of Kuran and put them in order. The Messenger reportedly was against the intervention of human preferences and never ordered the Kuran to be written down. Zayd ibn Thabit refused in the first instance, arguing that he had no right to do so if the Messenger had not thought it necessary. Nevertheless, we are told that some verses were written down already despite the Messenger’s attitude. If that is so, which ones were written down? How were they preserved, and where? No one knows!

• There were verses, which were written down on all sorts of objects. 

• Some verses were written ‘in the hearts of the believers.’

• Where were these objects, who had them, how were they preserved and protected?

We do not know what happened to the bits and pieces that were supposedly collected from people. What irreverence it would have been to throw them away. There are many stories in circulation and the uncertainty remains. As it always is with all the illogical ‘celestial’ ideologies there are no definite answers. We have no choice but either to believe in these fairy tales or to speculate. The examples of written materials from epochs hundreds of  thousands of years earlier than the period we are interested are in Museums. But the objects on which the original Kuranic materials were written are missing. This fact tells a lot, does it not?

Let us return to the story:

In the end Zayd ibn Thabit did his work. The suras were supposedly arranged from the longest to the shortest.

• Why did Zayd (or others) arrange the suras in that order?

• Was there some other authority who had ordered Zayd to do so?

• Why wasn’t the sequence done according to the supposed order of progressing revelation?

• Changing the sequence of the verses and suras is tantamount to altering the word of god, is it not?

• If the Messenger was against the writing down of the verses, his followers should have observed his attitude, should they not?

• Is the present sequence the result of the editorial works done on the text?

• Is it possible to say that this effort had entailed gathering stories from the existing religious texts of other faiths with the aim of creating a teaching for the Hagarene movement; therefore, there never was a progressing revelation?

• Is it possible to say that, in short the present codebook is the result of the transformation of the Hagarene teaching into Islam?

• One should never forget supposedly the final editing that Haccac had initiated.

Allegedly, the original chronological order was not known even in those days (Because there was no revelation, in progression or not!). Traditions tell us that certain suras were revealed in Makka and others in Medina.

• Why is it that only Makka and Medina were chosen as the specific places of revelation(!)?

• Why is it that the messages were not revealed during military campaigns or on the road when the Messenger was on the move? Is it because the source persons/storytellers were not around?

There are scholars who claim that certain suras include verses of the early (Makka) and later (Medina) periods. How could this be possible? The existence of early and late period verses in the same sura indicates that some suras were cut and edited together with the others while the editorial works were in progress. The exegetes who played a role in the creation of the ideology of Islam in later epochs have realized these inconsistencies and felt the need to create explanations to get out of difficult situations, but they have not been able to change the existing reality.

Moreover, it is nonsensical to try to establish which sura or verse is early and which is late, because the final text is just an untidy clutter of borrowed material from various sources.

What was the reason behind the first gathering and writing?

Supposedly, Umar ibn al Khattab was extremely worried that bits and pieces of Kuran would be lost because a great number of Muslims who knew Kuran by heart were killed at the battle of Yamama. Could this the reason why he called Zayd ibn Thabit to do the collection of the texts and writing them down as Kuran?

• Was it Abu Bakr’s idea or maybe Ali’s initiative that led to this first collation?

• Was this editorial work completed in two years as we are told?

• The first collection of verses were written and supposedly given back to Hafsa. What was the reason behind this?

• Kuran could not be a private property so there must be a reason for handing it back to Hafsa. What was the reason? Was it safekeeping?

• Could this story be a wholesale invention?

In the end, the ‘suras and verses bound between the two covers’ were left to Umar. When he died his daughter Hafsa kept the ‘messages between two covers’, but other scholars have arranged their own codices from different basic texts. These codices became sources of contention because they differed from one another. The confusion and consequent arguments caused by these different codices show that human preferences were elemental. This diversity of texts led to the second collection/writing of a text.

As it has been with all the earlier religious ideologies, there was a period when the codebook of Islam was canonized - the final text was accepted as the inimitable and final word of god. This period was the reign of Uthman (644-656 A.D.) according to the official story. But there were also four rival editions of the codebook. Researchers and scholars agree that these and the other codices in circulation were different from each other and different from the final official version. Some of them had more and some less than the final version. Some other studies reported the existence of other versions as well. Where are these four books and the others? Have they been lost?

Because of the expansionist and imperialistic policy of Islam and the capturing of foreign lands ‘metropolitan codices’ have appeared. These metropolitan centres were Makka, Medina, Damascus, Kufa, and Basra. The confusion created by these ‘metropolitan codices’ and other personal copies has reportedly forced Uthman to intervene. What happened to these ‘metropolitan codices’ and other copies? No one knows!

Following the death of Abu Bakr, Uthman is believed to have had the text ‘between two covers’ taken from Hafsa, and had it rewritten. Another story has it that a commander requested from Uthman an official copy of Kuran saying that there was disagreement on the right text and right reading of the book. It has been 22 years since the death of the Messenger and there is no Kuran, therefore Uthman is trying to put together an official book! This is unbelievable.

Uthman reportedly took the copy kept by Hafsa and had it rewritten by Zayd with three others. Stories about this second editorial work have no reference at all to Zayd’s involvement in an earlier rescension. Futhermore there are variations in the list of people working with Zayd and one of the co-workers is said to have been dead already at that time. Therefore, there may not have been a first gathering/writing and this second writing could be an invention.

While this editorial work was in progress Uthman has reportedly issued the following directive to the writers:

• “Whenever there is a disagreement between you and Zayd of Medina on a certain section of Kuran, write the disputed section in Kureyshi tongue because Kuran was sent only in Kureyshi tongue” (Suyuti, Al Itkan).

In order to give the impression that the Messenger was from one of them and from their region the desert Arabs tried to connect the Messenger to the Kureysh tribe, which was a Medinan tribe that must have moved there from North. The Messenger was not a Kureyshi. However, since the Messenger and the Kureysh tribe have moved to Medina from the lands to the north, there must have been members of the tribe who spoke an identical or a very similar language to the one spoken by the Messenger. Uthman’s directive makes it clear that Zayd was from Medina and the desert Arabs of Makka did not understand his tongue. Could Zayd’s tongue have been Nabatean or a local dialect of it, spoken in Madian-Midian-al Hicr? Could Zayd have been a member of the group that moved from El Hicr to Medina with the Messenger?

Uthman’s directive also makes clear that he was aware of the linguistic difficulties. It is understandable that the non-Kureyshis could not comprehend the language of the divine messages when everything was in the initial stage 1400 years ago.  

The following call by Uthman as reported by Suyuti may be taken as a solid indication of what has happened to the original text (if ever there had been any!) or to the collection of texts from different sources:

• “O Muhammad’s companions! Come together and write a book which will be an Imam (the sole model) to people.”

This says it all! They are writing a book, not putting it together. Therefore, the impression we get from here is that there are bits and pieces of material both oral and written, left from the time of the Messenger. These ‘companions’ are asked to write a book, using the existing material, and adding to it whatever they (desert Arabs) needed. So almost certainly there was no offficial text, and the second gathering of Kuran was not a simple copying, but a major writing effort. Differences of dialect between the codices should not have been the reason behind this editorial work, because in those days Arabic was still without the vowels and diacritical dots. The language that the Messenger and his companians had brought with them was a tongue spoken in Madian. So, to read and understand the texts written in a different language, dots and vowels were introduced later. This second editorial work was, in effect, the canonization of the Medinan version, the copies of which were sent to all the metropolitan centres with the accompanying order to destroy all the other codices. This is the first burning. According to the story Uthman had the ‘suras and verses between two covers’ returned to Hafsa.

If the writers acted in accordance with Uthman’s call quoted above, one would not be far off of the truth if one said that an exact copy of the ‘book’ at Hafsa’s safekeeping wasn’t made. But instead the whole thing was written again. Since this final text was the official text, the copy ‘between the two covers’ must have been destroyed. Therefore, the version returned to Hafsa must have been the final copy. This is the reason why people are suspicious about the authenticity of the copy we have today. Alawites have their own version, Arabs have theirs, Persians have another copy of their own and there is another version in India. We know that there are differences between the lists of suras of the old and present versions of the codebook. Suyuti in Al Itkan reports, “Aisha could not understand how the two verses of the Al-i Imran have increased to 200.”

The copy that was given to Hafsa is missing, presumed lost. The four copies made in Uthman’s reign were reportedly sent to Makka, Medina, Basra and Damascus. These four copies are lost. Islam once ruled from Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Surely, a copy, a part, or even a page of Uthman’s rescension should have reached our age. Some reports seem to indicate that seven copies have been made in Uthman’s reign.  Actually, it is not clear how many copies of Kuran were produced and distributed while he was in power. It is stated in a number of books that Uthman had given permission for the copying of the copies and some individuals had created copies of their own. These individually made copies reportedly had certain sections, which were not in the official Kuran. Therefore, there was still no consensus regarding Kuran 30 years after Hicra (around 652 A.D.).

• Some say that due to usage, wear and tear, and the very long period in between, these early texts and books were disintegrated, lost etc. This argument is rather doubtful, because there are documents in the Museums of the world, originating from the region and  are hundreds of years older than these assumed Islamic texts (if ever they had existed). The Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Alexandrinus are the examples, both of which were written in the 4th century A.D.

• The period when the Islamic texts have supposedly appeared are three to four hundred years after the time of the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus! They are both extant. So, what has happened to the Islamic texts?

• Could we say that the Arabs have been deeply involved with their conquests and did not have time to treat their codebook with care(!), so the earliest copies were lost?

• The earliest manuscript segments of Kuran are not dated earlier then 690-750 A.D. (Annemarie Schimmel). Therefore, those persons who claim that the earliest copies were lost, should be willing to admit that these four copies were not lost actually, but have been got rid of or discarded following the transformation of the Hagarene teaching, because they were not in full compliance with the new nationalist ideology called Islam. 

• We are in a position to say that there was nothing written before the end of the 7th century A.D.

The Samarkand Manuscript is claimed to be one of the copies of the Uthmanic rescencion kept in the Tashkent Library in Uzbekistan. There is another one called the Topkapı Manuscript in the Topkapı Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Both of them are written in the Kufic script. This script was not in use in Makka and Medina in the 7th century A.D., and appeared in the city of Kufa in Irak in late 8th century A.D. Can you imagine the ‘culmination of revelation’, the ‘mother of all books’ written in the particular script of a city which was not even Islam then. One wonders why the writers of Kuran (supposedly Arabs of the desert) did not use their own script for their most precious possession. There is only one answer: Kufans have written the codebook in a later period than the texts of the desert Arabs.

Furthermore, the city of Kufa would have been under the Sassanid (a Persian dynasty) rule in the 7th century A.D., and no one would expect Arabic to be the language spoken there. It is a known fact that the Kufic script was perfected during the second half of the 8th century A.D., and we know that Abbasids have started controlling Islam after 750 A.D. They were of a Persian background and based their administration in Kufa and Baghdad. Abbasids own the Kufic script. They were under the domination of Umayyads for a century. An Arabic script could well have originated and evolved in that period into the Kufic script that we find in the later scriptures. Therefore, the Samarkand and Topkapı manuscripts could not be from that obscure first 150 years of Islam. They are certainly not from the Hagarene years.

We are told that “the Samarkand Manuscript is not a complete document and only parts of suras 2 to 43 are included. Of these suras, much of the text is missing. The actual inscription of the text of the Samarkand Manuscript presents a real problem, because it is very irregular. Some pages are neatly and uniformly copied out while others are quite untidy and imbalanced. On some pages, the text is fairly expansive, while on other pages it is severely cramped and condensed. At times, the Arabic letter ‘kaf’ has been excluded from the text, while at others it not only is extended but also is the dominant letter. Because of the fact that so many pages of the manuscript differ so extensively from one another, the assumption today is that the Samarkand Manuscript is a composite text, compiled from portions of different manuscripts. Also the artistic illuminations between the suras, usually made up of coloured bands of rows of squares, as well as 151 red, green, blue and orange medallions are a problem.” All of these characteristics indicate a 9th century origin, because it is thought extremely unlikely that such decorations would have been included in the 7th century Uthmanic manuscript sent out to various provinces.

The Topkapı Manuscript is also written on parchment. It has no vowels. It is also supplemented with ornamental medallions, which indicate a later age. According to Muslims, “it must be one of the original copies, if not the original one compiled by Zaid ibn Thabit,” but the differences between this one and the Samarkand copy show that both of them cannot be the Uthmanic originals.

We have another factor that indicates later dates for these two manuscripts: The format. We are told that the Kufic script necessitates ‘landscape format’ (width exceeding height). This is the format of the Syriac and Iraki Christian documents of the 8th and 9th centuries. The earlier Arabic manuscripts are in the ‘upright format’ (height exceeding width). In the light of all these indications, both the Topkapı and Samarkand Manuscripts could not have been written earlier than 150 years after the Uthmanic Recension, at the earliest the late 700s or early 800s A.D.

Now something more about the Arabic scripts in use in the 7th century A.D. We know that there were two scripts;

• The al-Ma’il (‘slanted’) script was developed in Hijaz, particularly in Makka and Medina, and came into use in the 7th century A.D. This script could be identified with the slight angle that it was written. It was reportedly used for 200 years and disappeared.

• The Mashq script was developed in Medina, it also began in the 7th century A.D. and continued for many centuries. Its form is more horizontal, with a cursive and leisurely style. Some researchers believe that the Mashq script was a precursor to the Kufic script.

Wouldn’t it be right to say that if Kuran had been compiled in the 7th century A.D. it should have been written in either the Ma’il or Mashq script? We do have a Kuran written in the Ma’il script. This copy (in the British Museum), dated to 790 A.D. is supposedly the earliest Kuran we have. This copy seems to be the boundary beyond which there is no ‘book’. The earliest Kuranic manuscript fragments we have cannot be dated earlier than 100 years after the time of the Messenger. Annemarie Schimmel in her book titled Calligraphy and Islamic Culture underlines this point when she states that apart from the recently discovered Kurans in Sana’a, “the earliest datable fragments go back to the first quarter of the eighth century.”

Some say that the Abu Bakr collection is just a fiction. Others claim that the Uthmanic rewriting was a political rather than a religious undertaking, because the Messenger had died before making any provisions for the succession and there was a political vacuum to be filled. These claims do not change the result:

• The texts were collected, edited and rewritten. Does it matter if for once or twice or three times? They were intent upon stealing the Hagarene teaching and transforming it into a dogma. Their aim was to create the nationalist ideology called Islam.

With the spread of Islam and the conquest of foreign lands, ‘metropolitan codices’ are reportedly appeared. These metropolitan centres were Makka, Medina, Damascus, Kufa, and Basra. What happened to the copies supposedly sent to the metropolitan centres? No one knows!

We should remember that the official copies of the Old and New Testaments are also the edited official versions of the ancient original texts. The editors were human beings. It shows that there was no change in the hundreds of years in between. Human beings have also edited Kuran to produce an acceptable version. Here is the evidence in the form of a statement by Umar ibn al Khattab:

• “None of you here could say that he has memorized the whole of Kuran, because no one knows how long was the original Kuran, a lot of it has been lost.”

No more words are needed.

***

Here is the summary at this stage: We had two supposed compilations of the Kuran. Zayd ibn Thabit has supposedly wrote the whole text of Kuran first under Abu Bakr, but 15 years later, due to the arguments amongst the believers about what Kuran was, Uthman again ordered Zayd to write another copy.  People were not sure about what was ‘Kuran’ because there was not a single book in those days. Hagarenes were using a mixture of the following books and the related material:

• ‘Kuryan’ (Book of the Sabians).

• The Samaritan Torah and the Jewish tales (from Mosaic faith).

• Al Bakara (Furkan), (A complete book in itself. Probably written by the Nestorian monk Sergius Bhira and given to the Messenger).

• The official New Testament texts (from the world of Paulinism/Christianity), texts which were not included in the official New Testament canon and Christian tales.

• ‘Seven commandments to the descendants of Noah’= (Mesanî=the Noahide Covenant=Seven of the Ten Commandments).

***

When the editorial work in Uthman’s reign was over, the first/‘original’ copy was allegedly given back to Hafsa, and Uthman had had all the other copies destroyed. One has no choice but to believe that Zayd had tried, to the best of his knowledge and ability, to write down faithfully, the exact words supposedly of the Messenger or the messages provided by others, but attributed to the Messenger. If that is the case then the style, grammar, historical inexactitudes, and typographical errors in Kuran are the result of Zayd’s faithful efforts or Zayd may have been perfect in his editorial work but intentional amendments and ignorant mistakes by the later editors and authors may have caused the ‘errors.’

This Uthmanic text is considered the most important piece of literature ever written. It is called the ‘mother of books’, which is considered to be the exact replica of the ‘eternal tablet’ (lavh-i mahfuz) that supposedly exists in heaven. The tradition has it that all the competing codices and manuscripts were destroyed after 646-650 A.D., following the Uthmanic editing. Even the copy (Hafsa’s copy), which was the basis for the final recension was burned. The whole matter is based on the narrated versions of an uncertain line of events, in an uncertain past epoch. These narrations are almost certainly biased. Even if they are not, we know very well that narrations are bound to develop into something quite different from the original as time goes by.

Ten people are reported to have collected the Kuranic texts in the time of the Messenger (But we are told that the Messenger himself was against writing down the verses). If the actual collection was done during the Messenger’s lifetime by a number of people then these people must have acted against his orders.

We all know that the passage of time leads to wear and tear and people have made new copies of the original texts periodically to preserve the important documents. In our case, this important document is the supposed revelations by a supreme being. This text is the central ‘teaching’ of a belief system, but there are no copies of the original. Muslims may counter this point by claiming that the first texts have originated from later periods because writing was not known in that region at that time. This is sheer nonsense!

Writing on paper began long before the time of the Messenger. Paper to write on was invented in the 4th century A.D., and was used extensively thoughout the civilized world.

The Umayyads were based in Syria and not in Arabia Deserta. They had scribes and secretaries. There were secretaries in the courts of the Caliphs. They were not employed for writing tales for the children, were they?

Moreover, the desert Arabs claim that in the 7th century A.D. the region called Hijaz was vibrating with traders and earlier with caravans racing on the routes North-South. Therefore, there must have been writing there, at least to make the calculations. Judging by their descendants living presently, those camel traders could not have been bright enough to memorize all their dealings and costs in figures. Therefore, Muslims should answer the following questions:

• If writing was unknown in those times, how were the messages recorded on various materials, in the form of pictures?

• What was the nature of the work done by Zayd? Was it not writing down?

• What were those codices by Ubayy bin Ka’b, Abdullah ibn Masud, and abu Musa (Pearson)? Were they not written documents? They had to be.

• That was why Uthman felt the need to have a copy of his own codebook, because other texts and copies of the ‘book’ were in circulation.

• They knew writing perfectly well! But still we have no record of those much talked about documents prior to 750 A.D. Does anyone have an answer? No!

Besides;

• If various texts were collected and written down in the beginning, this collection should have been copied and distributed.

• If this first official text was in circulation, how could we explain the later differing texts?

• If this first official text was not distributed, what was the purpose of the first gathering and editorial work? Was it just a pastime or safekeeping?

• Surely, they must have realized that various differing personal texts would appear if the first written text was kept under lock and not distributed to the public.

• On the other hand, this first editorial work might never have happened!

• There may never have been a universally accepted series of progressing divine(!) messages. 

• If there had been a universally accepted series of progressing divine(!) messages no one would dare write their own personal copies differing from the accepted text, would they?

• If a collection was done (as claimed) in the Messenger’s lifetime, what was the reason behind the Abu Bakr and Uthman collections?

• If a collection was done while the Messenger was around, how could the Abu Bakr and Uthman collections be accepted as the collections?

• Either the work carried out when the Messenger was alive is a fiction or the later ones are inventions on purpose.

• If all of them are true then we have no choice but to accept that Kuran has developed or changed - in every sense of the word - starting with an original text and growing into another.

• The process of development/growing of the codebook must have been dictated by the needs of the different groups. The prevalent atmosphere and the requirements of the times could have been the other factors that played a role in the progress of the codebook.

• No one should overlook the possibility that all these stories could be fabrications.

• But in the end all of us should pay utmost attention to Bakka in Kuran, which is the primary clue showing the stealing of the Messenger’s Hagarene teaching.

Though some reports seem to indicate that there have been seven copies made, it is not clear how many copies of the codebook were produced and distributed in Uthman’s reign. Uthman is said to have given permission for the copying of the copies, and some individuals have created copies of their own. These individually made copies reportedly had certain sections, which were not in the official Kuran. Consequently, the claim by some scholars that there was still no consensus regarding the Kuran 30 years after Hicra (around 652 A.D.) seems to be the truth.

• In that case, could we accept the confusion summarized above as an indication of a lack of agreement on what was the official text?

• If there had been an editorial work during Uthman’s reign and an official copy was written, we have no choice but to accept that there was an official copy. Then, how could one explain the lack of consensus despite the existence of an official copy?

• Islam is the absolute example of a monolithic system. Therefore, if there was an official ideological text and also there was disagreement as to what was Kuran even in those days when the ideology was at its height, there must have been other versions.

Some have said that the Abu Bakr collection is just a fiction. They claim that Uthman’s opponents have invented this story to minimize his role in creating the official copy. They have reportedly planned to paint Uthman as a person who only had the offficial text copied. The existing text in those days had the authority, the claimers asserted. This proposition, on the face of it, seems to have stolen the prestige from Uthman. After all these arguments, who could say that the supposed Uthman text is the foundation of the Islamic ideology? 

Let us say that Uthman’s text is the fundamental text of the Islamic ideology. Then we have no choice but to agree with the views shared by the majority of researchers and scholars, who are of the opinion that the Uthman recension was true and the Abu Bakr story was an invention. However, is this the truth? According to the supporters of this view;

• The Uthmanic rewriting was a political rather than a religious undertaking, because the Messenger had died before making any provisions for the succession. Without any guidance, kurra - reciters of Kuran - became very influential. Supposedly, they were the only ones who had the necessary knowledge. They widened their influence, started establishing schools and teaching the people and other kurra. Rival groups have developed, and many kurra initiated an opposition movement against the caliph (Uthman) and the military and political leaders (who they accused of knowing nothing about the Kuran). Kurra has reportedly encouraged a general revolt in 647 A.D. Uthman reacted quickly and ordered an officially sanctioned text to be put together. He has also branded all those who recited the Kuran differently as heretics. These measures broke the back of the kurra, and they lost the monopoly of knowledge on Kuran.

Islamic history has put on record cases of kurra who had different Kurans or knew different verses of the Kuran, which are not included in the official copies of the codebook. Amongst them the case of Shanbudh became famous in Baghdad because he is said to have read and taught the Kuran “with disgraceful readings and anomalies which were an addition to the mushaf of Uthman,” and who in 323 after Hicra was seized by the Sultan’s emissaries and subjected to flogging. Another instance is that of Ibn Kudaid (died 312 after Hicra) who had in his possession the Kuran of Ukbah bin Amir, which was reportedly different in composition from that of Uthman’s. Those who tried to register various readings, which meant copies at variance with the official text, had their books burned by the order of the authorities. The early Kurra, who got themselves accepted as the specialists in reciting the codebook, were not always a model of accuracy in the performance of their work. Here is what Iyas bin Muaviah told to the Umayyad caliph Umar Abd-ul Aziz (717-720 A.D.): “The Kurra are of two kinds: Some of them do their work for the sake of the world to come, these will not serve you; some others do their work for the sake of this world, and on these you could not count.”

If we are to summarize what we know, this is the situation:

• There had never been an Abu Bakr initiative to collect and write down the religious messages.

• Uthman story was created to minimize the role of Abu Bakr.

• Abu Bakr story was invented to slight Uthman’s initiative.

• Uthman’s initiative was not religious but political (The suggestion may be that Abu Bakr’s initiative was much more valuable because it was a religious work).

Since we are in the realm of unknowns, exactly the same arguments for dismissing the Abu Bakr story (like it being biased, unreliable, and based on later sources) could be applied to the Uthman story as well. This is seen by some as a futile effort aiming to credit the collector (Abu Bakr).

I want you to recall the fact that the official copies of the Old and New Testaments are also the edited official versions of the ancient original texts. Human beings have done this editing. It shows us that nothing has changed in the hundreds of years in between, because Kuran was also edited to produce a final and a much more acceptable version for those people who had the authority then.

Umar ibn al Khattab is reported to have said, “None of you here could say that he has memorized the whole of Kuran, because no one knows how long was the original Kuran, a lot of it has been lost.” There were only seven people who have memorized the whole of Kuran, according to Bukhari who quotes three hadiths.

To be more precise, following are the suppositions we have dealt with:

• Zayd ibn Thabit has supposedly wrote the whole text of the Kuran at least twice once under Abu Bakr and then secondly under Uthman.

• The first copy was allegedly given to Hafsa.

• However, 15 years later, due to the arguments amongst the believers about what the Kuran was, Uthman again ordered Zayd to write another copy.

• Uthman had all the other copies destroyed/burned when this editorial work was done

Let us suppose that Zayd had written down the exact words of the Messenger (or the messages supposedly attributed to him) faithfully. Therefore;

• Since the divine(!) word could not be imperfect, could we say that the errors in style and grammar, the historical inexactitudes, and typographical errors in Kuran are the result of Zayd’s faithful efforts?

• Zayd may have been an ‘ignorant’ and unsuitable for the task.

• Could these errors be due to the interference by the desert Arabs while they were transforming the Ismaelite teaching?

• Could the people writing these messages down on various materials have been in error?

• If that was the case then Zayd must be commended for having done his copying with utmost accuracy.

• Each and very recorder may have written the messages in line with his priorities, conceptions and requirements.

• In other words, could we say that everything had happened here on Earth and nothing had come down from somewhere up there?

I am sure that you know the answer especially to the very last question, but keep it to yourself for the time being.

We are told that Kuran of today is substantially the text that was the result of Uthman’s recension and we are also told that even this Kuran does not comply exactly with the words of the Messenger. Would it make much of a difference if it did?

The whole text is based on the narrated versions of an uncertain line of events in an uncertain past epoch. It is quite possible that these narrations are biased, and tailored according to the conditions, stories and events of 1400 years ago. Even if they were not, we know how the narrations of specific events change even in a comparably short period of 140 years, let alone 1400.

There is no agreement amongst the traditions on the collection of Kuran. Following are the summaries of the different narrations on the compilation of Kuran and the questions based on these assumptions:

• The supposition is that ten people have supposedly collected Kuran in the time of the Messenger (But we are told that the Messenger himself was against writing down the verses).

• If the actual collection was done during the Messenger’s lifetime by a number of people, they must have acted against the orders of the Messenger, have they not?

• From what we are told, the Messenger had absolute authority over his followers. If this was the truth why did some people act against this authority?

• Uthman’s collation is claimed to have been done under Umar’s caliphate. Therefore, Uthman was under Umar at that time. If this is true then did Umar give the order for the Uthman collation?

• Is it possible that Uthman had just supervised the undertaking?

• Couldn’t the collation have been done upon a personal initiative of Uthman’s?

• Could the whole work have been done upon orders from Umar and under his supervision with Uthman playing no role?

• According to some scholars who quote   relevant hadiths, Zayd ibn Thabit was alone during the Uthmanic rescension. But there are other hadiths, which tell us that the Uthmanic rewriting was done by Zayd and three others.

• The editorial work done supposedly during the reigns of Abu Bakr and Uthman are accepted as collections. What is the reason?

• What happened to the 'collection', which was allegedly done when the Messenger was still alive?

• If there was already a codex (done when the Messenger was alive) what was the reason behind the later editorial works?

• Either the work carried out when the Messenger was alive is a fiction or the later ones are.

• If all of them are true then we have no choice but to accept that Kuran has developed or changed - in every sense of the word - starting with an original text and growing into another one due to the prevailing atmosphere and the requirements of the times.

• On the other hand, all the stories may be fictitious.

This is the truth:

• Hagarenes did not have a single, codified religious text. There were pieces of a sort of ‘teaching’ borrowed from other cultures, which differed from person to person, passed on by the word of mouth and bits of it probably written on various materials. The codebook was created after the death of the Messenger and  finalized after a number of transformations done on the initial messages by the nationalist Arabs.

If you think this is all, you are wrong.

• Some Muslim historians claim that  Ali ibn Abu Talib and Uthman did the writing of the Kuran themselves, and when they were absent Ibn Ka’b and Zayd ibn Thabit did the work; and the people in those days accused Uthman of reducing the Kuran from many books (not from verses written on various bits and pieces, but books!) to one. Also they claimed that a Christian slave had taught the Messenger. According to these scholars a person named Ibn Abi Sarh used to claim that he could amend what was in Kuran as he wished just by writing to this Christian slave.

• Bar Hebraeus and Jalal-ud-Din as-Suyuti attribute the collection of  Kuran to caliph Abd-el Malik bin Marwan (684-705 A.D.).

• Ibn Dumak and Makrizi attribute the collection of the codebook to Abd-el Malik bin Marwan’s lieutenant Haccac bin Yusuf. They say that Haccac proscribed the reading of  Ibn Mas’ud’s version (Ibn Mas’ud’s version was most probably based on or containing the Hagarene texts, hence different from the codebook that was being imposed upon the people).

• These Muslim scholars also state that Haccac had tried to achieve an agreement amongst the writers on a single text, but to no avail

It is hard to comprehend the lack of an official text of the codebook even in Abd-el Malik’s time (684-704 A.D.), about 50 years after the death of the Messenger. Let us go back to those days. There was supposedly a text written and preserved here and there on various materials. That text was rewritten at least twice on later occasions. But despite the fact that the previous texts were destroyed there were still a number of variants. A lot of people and many personal views and thoughts had interfered with the messages. Their differing abilities to comprehend, memorize and compose a message changed the original words. Moreover, consider the fact that the desert Arabs had to add diacritical dots and vowels to the texts because they were unable to read and comprehend the original Hagarene writing. Take into account the ignorance of the desert Arabs who had extreme difficulty in understanding - or quite possibly never understanding - the concepts the Messenger and his followers were trying to convey. This was the picture Haccac had in front of him when he had a go at creating the final copy. There were many texts; there were variant readings and an ideological base that was completely open to comments.

• It is downright unbelievable that as late as Haccac’s period there had not been a complete, final, and incontrovertible text of what the Messenger had supposedly conveyed.

• The most likely explanation is that the Messenger had not said anything, which would constitute a body of religious rules, but the messages were borrowed from the existing texts of other cultures.

• It is quite possible that people had gone back to the Hagarene texts as we come closer to Haccac’s time.

• There might have been some stuff in the original Midianite texts, which were unacceptable from the angle of the prevailing atmosphere of the times.

• It was not clear which text was accepted and which one was rejected by the dominant official ideology.

When Haccac bin Yusuf became powerful under the reign of caliph Abd-el Malik (684-704 A.D.), he reportedly decided to have an official copy of Kuran. Can you imagine a situation where in spite of all those years after the death of the Messenger Muslims are still trying to get an official copy of the codebook? Haccac bin Yusuf gathered all the copies of the Kuran (mainly Uthman’s Kuran, which was most probably written on scrolls of parchment called ‘suhuf ’) and put them together in a book.  It is only natural to assume that an extensive editorial work was done, which involved deleting some parts and incorporating others, and allegedly adding the vowels. [According to Beatrice Gruendler (The Development of the Arabic Scripts) a papyrus dated Hicra 643-644 shows that some diacritical dots were already in use. Therefore, “The useage of diacritical dots may have been earlier than thought” and the opinion that these dots were added in the time of Haccac bin Yusuf (694-714 A.D.) is partly wrong. I believe that various communities in the region have already added their ‘dots’ to the text until it reached Haccac’s time]. Haccac had the official copy written, and anyone who followed the variants of the official text was severely punished. Haccac has reportedly had made six copies of the new version, and had the all the other copies burnt. This is the second burning.

But the variants of Kuran have never disappeared for good, and preserved by the exegetists and philologists, only to be used in their tafsir (exegesis) work while helping the orthodoxy. These people claimed that the variants they preserved were just exegetic notes on Uthman’s codex. To get an idea about these variant texts consult Abu Hayyan, and the Kitab al-Masahif (Masahif Books) written in the 4th Islamic century by Ibn al-Anbari, Ibn Ashta, and Ibn Abi Daud, each discussing the lost codices. You cannot find the former two, which are lost and could be known only through references. The third, Ibn Abi Daud’s book refers to fifteen primary codices and thirteen secondary ones, which were mostly based on Mas’ud’s primary codex.

Then there was the codex of Ubay bin Ka’b, who was one of the ansar (members of the Jewish Avs and Khazraj tribes in Medina who supported the Messenger). Ka’b was a secretary to the Messenger in Medina. He is said to have written the treaty with the Jews. He has been one of the four instructors commended by the Messenger. His personal codex is believed to have been the dominant book in Syria. Its dominant position is said to have continued even after the standardisation of the codex. There are stories that he was involved with the creation of Uthman’s text, but we do not know how. The order of suras in his codex is said to have been different.

Another codex that had reportedly existed was Ali’s. Ali was the Messenger’s son-in-law. He has supposedly begun compiling a codex of his own upon death of the Messenger. He is said to have had access to the hidden Kuranic material (The original texts of the Sabian faith?), hence his sura divisions were reportedly very different from Uthman’s. Ali has supposedly supported Uthman’s recension and burnt his own compilation. We do not know why Ali’s texts were varied. It could have been the original Hagarene codex or  Ali’s interpretation of Uthman’s collation.

What does this short summary show?  The book was supposedly collected and rewritten three times. The following are the questions that come to mind:

• If each and every editorial work was to be the identical copy of the original revelation what was the reason for  going into all that trouble not once, but three times?

• If the outcome of each and every editorial work was the identical copy of the original revelation what was the reason behind the burning of the previous copies? (Surely it could not have been to improve the calligraphy!)

All that editorial work and the human intervention brings  to mind a single explanation: During the 100 years following the Messenger’s death Kuran has evolved and underwent an editorial transformation.

The scholars studying Kuran refer to the lack of cohesion, to narration jumping from one subject to another, to changes in the narration and style, to obscurities and superficialities in language and content, to the grammatical errors etc. and suggest that the text was put together rather hurriedly. According to P. Crone and M. Cook it could be argued that the codebook is “the product of the belated and imperfect editing of materials from a plurality of traditions.” As pointed out earlier there is nothing strange here. All the previous books were also edited.

WHAT THE CODEBOOK TELLS US?

First of all the ‘negatives’ in Kuran catch the eye. The most frequent reminders are about the punishment, unheard-of-suffering in hell, torment in return for blasphemy etc. These admonitions are accompanied with a warning that the end of time, the judgment day, the pain and suffering are ‘very close’ and ‘imminent’ and ‘at hand’. So the sinners and wicked should heed the ordinances of the supreme creator(!).  In short, the Book of Islam blackmails, threatens and aims at scaring the credulous ignorant beings to make itself accepted.

The supposed imminence of the end of time, the judgment day is definitely borrowed from the collection of letters called the New Testament (New Testament got it from Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, and the Jewish fairy tales) in which Yshua repeatedly warns that the end of time and the ‘kingdom of god’ is imminent. That is why Jews have tried their best to reserve the closest grave to the city of Yerushalim in the gardens of Gethsemane, so that on the supposed judgment day when the Temple is reinstituted they could get out of their graves and run as fast as they could back to the sacred city.

The concept of the 'dead coming out of their graves’ on the judgment day is very interesting. This concept is a prerequisite for the consummation of the judgment day, because if there were no ‘risen dead’ there would be no judgment and ruling. But one is curious about the fate of the living? Would they be ‘struck dead’ and then caused to ‘rise’ to answer the questions? Would they be held to account while living? Kuran 39:68 gives the answer:

• “Sûr is blown; All the people who are in the skies and on land, except those wished by Allah, are struck and fallen. Then Sûr is blown again. Behold they are all on their feet watching.”

In the end the living will be killed and caused to rise and wait for the verdict.

This idea of ‘rising from the grave’ or ‘getting out of the grave’ is extremely interesting, because it is the prerequisite of the judgment day. This must have its origin in the past. The peoples of the region must have witnessed an event that caused untold-of-destruction and extensive casualties.  This event must have been seen as the wrath of the supreme entity that brought an end to the established order of the day.  This event must have caused a large scale displacement of the peoples of the region, and which even disturbed the graves and caused the interred bodies lay out in the open.

The papyrus containing the words of Ipuwer (found in Memphis-Egypt) describes the events that have allegedly taken place just before and during the Hyksos-Amu-Amalekite invasion of Egypt, between the Middle and New Kingdoms. The papyrus narrates the catastrophic events:

“The land turns round as a potter’s wheel...towns are destroyed. Upper Egypt has become dry...All is in ruin…The residence is overturned in a minute...Years of noise. There is no end to noise...Oh, that the earth would cease from noise, and tumult (uproar) be no more...Plague is throughout the land...The river is blood...human beings thirst after water…(Referring to the Nile) That is our water! That is our happiness! What shall we do in respect thereof? All is in ruin...Trees are destroyed. No fruit nor herbs are found…Forsooth, gates, columns and walls are consumed by fire...hunger...All animals, their hearts weep. Cattle moan...The land is not light (‘without light’, ‘dark’)...Forsooth, the children of princes are dashed against the walls...Forsooth, the children of princes are cast out in the streets...He who places his brother in the ground (inters) is everywhere...It is groaning that is throughout the land, mingled with lamentations. Forsooth, those who were in the place of embalmment are laid on the high ground.”

This is the story of a natural cataclysm or a series of catastrophes. The last observation about the dead bodies lying on the ground must have been transformed into the Old Testament story as the ‘dead who will rise out of their graves on the day of the Lord, the judgment day,’ which is also the fundamental doctrine of Islam. This story and the similar scenes after the frequent earthquakes in the region are the most probable origin of the visual aspect of the judgment day scenarios of the later belief systems. As to the date of these events, the references in the papyrus indicate a period immediately before the biblical Exodus, just before the departure of the Hebrews from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. If you wish to learn how the events of the ‘last night in Egypt before the Exodus’ is echoed in the Old Testament, I suggest Exodus 12:12:

• “I will pass through the land of Egypt this night and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord.”

Those who would like to know what actually has happened that night must read the Preparation for the Gospel by Eusebius (Book ix, chapter xxvii): “The statues of the gods fell and broke into pieces.”

The statues of the gods fell and broke into pieces because of the earthquakes and tremors. But in the process of writing these events into the Old Testament, a dimension of ‘divine intervention’ was supplemented. When the migrating Hebrews reached the land of the Midian, they chose themselves the god of the mount Horeb. This volcano god of the local Midianite population was called YHVH. The momentous day when this supreme entity was supposedly going to held humanity to account was tagged as the judgment day following the catastrophic events experienced by the migrating Hebrews.

You must be much more knowledgeable now as to the source of the story told in the codebooks. If there has ever been something beyond this world and beyond reason, it has always been only within the brains that are in the grip of ignorance. Reality is completely different. Never forget that the Jews and Christians have been waiting for the ‘imminent’ day of judgment for the last 2000 years. Since the Hagarene teaching and its transformed version Islam is the last one in the line of Abrahamic-Semitic belief systems, Muslims have also began to wait for their own ‘saviour’ - Mahdi. These three ideologies are still waiting despite the 2000 years since the inception of the idea.

According to the Zararthustran belief system (which is the source of the messiah story) the arrival of Saoshyans/Saoshyant (Saviour) was imminent, but when nothing had happened they extended the period. Jews also were expecting their messiah imminently, but when they realized that they have waited too long they did new calculations and extended their time limit. apostle Paul has also used this theme to scare the people and create a following. Now Christians have are waiting for their messiah. But, they also felt the need to extend the time limit and stay on general terms. The turn of the second millennium into the third was extremely important. That was the time when the Messiah will show himself. They were wrong again. The wait is still on! The Hagarene teaching too had its messiah watch. When this teaching was transformed into Islam messiah was renamed mahdi. Islam has adopted the ‘imminence’ option, but when nothing happened they thought ‘vagueness’ would be much more appropriate, and they chose the traditional defence of the Arabs: “Only Allah knows the time of mahdi’s coming!” This approach is traditional also in the sense that humans have always chosen to refer the unanswerable questions and problems to their deities. Muslims have been waiting for their saviour, mahdi. They still do!

Kuran presents afterlife as the real life. Life on this world and the pursuers of the worldly passions become the target of divine scorn. Compassion for those who follow the god’s edicts and a promise that their wrongdoings would be pardoned seem to be the familiar lures offered to humanity. This tempting promise for a place in paradise for those who follow the line of god is in the codebook, but still, verses relating to hell occupy a larger place than paradise. Islam has chosen threats, fear and horror as the method of ‘persuasion’.

Kuran is full of criticism, warnings, chastising, admonitions directed mainly at the Israelites (god of Islam is cross with His previous ‘chosen people’ the Israelites, because of their attitude towards Him and the Messenger of Islam), Makkans, and the others. The power of god, sinners, types of sin, skies, life, prayers are there.  Of course Ibrahim (Bahram, Av’ram, Abraham) has a special place in the codebook. Women, destiny, Isa (Yshua, Jesus), infidels, heart as the seat of intellect and feelings, belief in the judgment day, evil, angels, the Messenger, Moses, believers, Muslims, Noah, death, mysteries, Satan, submission to god, revelation, creation, repentance, prohibitions, Sun, Moon, stars, Ya’kub (Jacob), Yahya (John), Gog and Magog, Zachariah, Alexander the Great, and of course Kuran itself are all in the codebook.

As mentioned in the pages on the Bible in this site, each codebook is created by the borrowed material from various other sources. Each codebook is compiled with a new interpretation and approach. Kuran is not an exception in that sense because the stories told in the codebook, although edited and rewritten, have their origins in other scriptures and stories of the region. Here is a concrete example. The most important invented story in the Old Testament is the Lawgiving on Mount Sinai (Horeb). These Laws, the Ten Commandments, are known to be two or four words originally. But with the human intervention in the following ages the original set of ‘ten words’ has been built into ‘twenty commandments’ in two sets. Each Commandment has become a full sentence. Kuran refers to Lawgiving in 7:145 and Seven of the Ten Commandments (Mesanî =The Noahide Covenant) appear in Kuran 17:22-36. These seven commandments were amongst the rules observed by the Hagarenes in those early days in Medina.

• Kuran 17:22 has the first Commandment (You shall have no other gods before me).

• Kuran 17:23 has the fifth Commandment (Honour your father and your mother).

• Kuran 17:33 has the sixth Commandment (You shall not kill).

• Kuran 17:32 has the seventh Commandment (You shall not commit adultery).

• Kuran 17:35 has the eighth Commandment (You shall not steal).

• Kuran 17:36 has the ninth Commandment (You shall not bear false witness..).

• Kuran 17:34 has the tenth Commandment (You shall not covet your neighbour’s house.. wife.. manservant.. maidservant.. his ox.. his ass..).

Some scholars claim that the style of Kuran (especially some verses) is identical with some of the poems of its time. They quote the poems on death by the famous Christian poet Adiyy Ibn Zayd-al Ibadi. Some others claim that other persons have taught Kuran to the Messenger. The exegesis on Kuran and hadiths seem to show that two groups of persons have allegedly helped the Messenger in creating Kuran:

• A section of the Jews and Christians;

• Some Christian and Jewish individuals.

Whether they did or not, Kuran itself accepts the fact that it is a sequel to the Old Testament and the revelations(!) to Yshua-Jesus. When confession is there who needs speculation and hearsay?

There is a consensus on the differences between the suras supposed to have been revealed in Makka and Medina. The Messenger’s transformation from a warlike tradesman-cum-preacher of a small and slighted sect to a supposedly autocratic ruler of a passionate movement is proposed as the reason behind these differences. But as I have pointed out, the supposed order of revelation is changed, the suras appear in a different order, we do not have any kind of a clear indication as to what the original order might have been and no one is able to establish a chronology for the revelation. The former Muslim scholar Dashti points out that “All the students of the Kuran wonder why the editors did not use the natural and logical method of ordering by date of revelation, as in Ali ibn Taleb’s lost copy of the text.” Therefore, there was a copy of the codebook in which the suras were collected and written down in the right order of revelation. Who was the one who dared change this order of revelation? Desert Arabs did it. They have stolen the Hagarene teaching and edited and wrote the book again according to their needs.

The information we have on the Messenger’s life before Hicra is very little and extremely unreliable. No one could be sure of the date when his prophethood had started. Those who accept the mythology as the proper account does have a fixed year of course. But, that is not what we are looking for, because what is written in the former mythologies (Judaic and Christian) is just a collection of myths, legends and folklore. Since Kuran furthers the existing tradition, how could one be sure of the ‘facts’ in it? We could only say that the Messenger’s declaration of his prophethood may have been some time around 610 A.D., or better still the Midianite warlike tradesman, who is known as the Messenger of Islam, may have begun imparting his supposedly divine(!) messages about this time.

The oldest divine ordinances exhibit an anger against those who rely solely on their personal power, believing that they could do as they please because of their wealth (Kuran 55, 80, 90).

The Hagarene religious texts have never branded the earlier faiths and religious practices as wrong or deficient, because its basic doctrines were borrowed from those. But, with the aim of establishing a place for itself and its Messenger the Hagarene teaching stated that every new messenger accepted the earlier messages and developed them.

Contrary to the earlier codebooks the Hagarene texts did not have a specific list of messengers or a particular lineage, because texts were borrowed from the earlier books and the lineages and lists in those books were accepted. Kuran says that a messenger has been sent to every people on Earth. But, there is a problem here: The Hagarene texts mentioned only those messengers the names of which were known to them. Messengers that were sent to the peoples in Asia or elsewhere are not counted. Noah, Abraham, Moses, Yshua take their places in Kuran. The Israelites, Midianites, the people of Ad and Thamud and Christians do appear in Kuran together with their messengers. That is only natural, because that region was their world. The lands beyond were not in their scope.

Due to the widespread ignorance of the day, Kuran gives titles like prophet to some persons who were only the king, master or lord of their people. The scope of the authors of Kuran must have been not wide enough to be aware of the peoples living in the East, in India, because they had no knowledge of Buddha. They did not know the Shamans, and they were unaware of the other beliefs and faiths beyond the Central Asia in those early days.

While the Ismaelite teaching was in the process of conversion into Islam, the authors of the codebook preferred to call all the messengers ‘Muslims’. If this label is used to proclaim that all of these messengers and their people had submitted themselves to god (as necessitated by Islam), there was no need for Islam, was there? As always, the theoreticians of the Islamic ideology have their preset answer ready: The examples presented have shown that the earlier peoples have rejected the revelations by their messengers, Jews have altered the original revelation of god, and the Christians have accepted a human being as the son of god. That is why the Islamic ideology was needed - to put things back in order.

This word, ‘Muslim’, must have meant something else, because the Arabs had forgotten their claimed respect for the other peoples (They were all ‘Muslims’, who had surrendered to the will of god) and their faiths and started converting other peoples to Islam by the power of the sword, which meant converting the faithful of the other belief systems.

• If there were only one god, all the roads would lead to him. It would not make the slightest difference if there were various paths to the supreme being, would it?

• There must surely have been ‘Muslims’  (‘those who have surrendered to the god’) amongst these peoples. Wouldn’t it be nonsensical to try to convert them once again, since they have already surrendered to the will of god?

• So there must have been a hidden objective behind this conduct of the Arabs.

• Their hidden objective was to dominate, oppress, usurp wealth, get rich, and create a dominant identity which the Arabs didn’t have vis a vis the existing religions in the region (Sabianism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity).

Having a dominant identity may have been the most important one. Islam declared itself the culmination of god’s revelation. It was the last one in the line of Semitic-Abrahamic belief systems. According to the understanding imposed on the believers the god of Islam has acted on fundamental principles. For instance, his messages were;

• Only for the Arabs;

• For the Kureysh tribe of the Arabs;

• For the Hashemite family of the Kureysh tribe;

• For the Messenger within the Hashemite family (Kuran 2:151; 3:164);

• In Arabic so they could read and understood the word of god (Kuran 12:2, 13:37).

This extremely tight focusing is even better than the ‘obsession’ of the god of Jews. This focused revelation is then consciously transformed into a weapon of imperialism by the power of the sword.  The ideology of Islam was transformed into a universal doctrine, and all the necessary changes were made in the Islamic literature.

Now let us make a detour. I would like to remind you what I have written earlier for the Lihyan kingdom in the land of Midian. The Lihyan kingdom is extremely important. The people once lived there are called the ‘Lah’yan’, ‘Lah’yanîn’. Now let us add the suffix ‘-iyyûn’ (which shows relationship) to ‘Lah’. Please make a note of the similarity between the resultant word ‘Lah’iyyûn’ and the words ‘Lah’yan’ and ‘Lah’yanîn’. ‘Lah’iyyûn’ has meanings like ‘those who belong to Lah’, ‘followers of Lah’, ‘of the line of Lah’.

• Al Lah, El Lah (‘the god’) has been one of the major deities of the Arabs before the advent of Islam.

• Lihyan / Lahyan kingdom had existed in the region where the Arab language took shape.

•  Lihyanite was one of the tongues, which contributed to the Arabic of our day.

• People living there were called Lahyanîn.

• Lahiyyûn / Lahyanîn means the believers/followers of Lah. 

• El Lah is the supreme being, which hascome to be known with the name of Allah with the birth ofHagarenes and later with Islam.

• The Messenger had originated from El Hicr in the land of Midian.

• Allah is the name of the Messenger’s deity.                     

Everything seems to be in a natural progression.

After this detour let us ask: Has the Hagarene teaching envisaged universality for its god? No! When the Ismaelite Messenger moved from the Land of Midian to Medina he took with him the Lah of the Midianites. In Medina, the Messenger remodeled Lah based on the god of Jews, YHVH; called him Allah; and adopted this deity as his god. According to the Jewish myths and legends, YHVH is a tribal deity, who has chosen the Jews as his people. His aim was to build a nation for himself (or rather the Hebrews who were in need of building a nation had visualized YHVH in this manner). When the Ismaelite teaching was transformed into Islam and the new codebook of the Arab nationalism - Kuran - was written the god of Islam was also imagined as a focused supreme being like YHVH. The initial messages of the god of the Ismaelites were far away from the expansionist messages of the god of Islam. According to the stories, this deity who had chosen the Hebrews as his nation in the beginning has now opted for the tribe of Kureysh (or rather the Arabs thought this deity would be suitable for them). The mandate that the god of the Ismaelites gave to the Messenger has never had the expansionism in its scope. Here are the HereHere again are those verses of Kuran that I have quoted earlier, which are definitely the remnants of the Ismaelite scriptures:

• Kuran 3:20: “If they reject, your only responsibility is to impart (the message).”

• Kuran 5:92: “Our prophet can do nothing but to impart the message.”

• Kuran 13:40 (God addresses the Messenger): “Hence you will announce, and I will do the questioning.”

• Kuran 42:10: “When there is a disagreement between you on anything leave the judgment to Allah.”

• Kuran 50:45: “We know very well the remarks they make. You are not a tyrant over them. Then, advise only by Kuran those who fear my threat” (5:99 has an identical message).

When the Arabs felt the need to conquer new lands they transformed the Messenger into a nabî for the whole of humanity, and they presented the nationalist ideology called Islam as the last, concluding revelation by the supreme being.

At this point, I would like to remind you how the supreme being was imagined in the primal religions. The fundamental objective of the primal religions was to suppress the basic instincts fully and continuously. What were these basic instincts? They were to kill and have sexual intercourse. These two basic instincts were the subject matter of the first two taboos in totemism:

• “You shall not kill!” (Do not kill the totem animal);

• “You shall not have sexual intercourse with your next of kin!” (No sex with your kin=Exogamy).)

When the primal religions came into being another step was taken and the individual was asked to relinquish his/her instinctual satisfaction to the supreme being, because that supreme being is believed to have said:

• “I'll take your revenge.”

As the belief systems progressed, we observe a practice whereby many things, which were considered as sin were abandoned by the mankind and turned over to the supreme being, as a result of which they were sanctioned in his name. This gave humans the opportunity to save themselves from the domination of their negative and socially harmful instincts. It could be said that the verses I have quoted above are the echoes of the periods of totem and taboo, and the primal religions in the region.

Moreover, there is supposedly no hardship in Islam (Kuran 2:256), but this rule has never been applied.  There are no intermediaries between the supreme being and the believer (this doctrine has originated from the Zarathustran and Mosaic belief systems). But this rule also is redundant. On the one hand ‘knowledgeable’/‘learned’(!) persons who call themselves imams, sheiks and mullahs impose by force the rules of the ideology and on the other formulate their own rules that purportedly show the way to the supreme being.

• But we have been told that Kuran is accepted as the only guide, which embodies everything from creation until the ‘end of time’, have we not?

• If that is the truth and nothing but the truth, and the rules summarized above are in effect, expansionism and imperialism must be the motives behind using force and exploiting the divine(!) word for political objectives.

• While all this coercion is going on who would believe that the ideology of Islam strives for peace and harmony, especially when we all know that this peace would be possible only by bowing to the conditions dictated by the Arabs?

The ideology of Islam is almost in full contradiction with the original peaceful Hagarene rules of the earlier periods. Islam’s never-ending conflict with other faiths is skillfully cloaked with the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor, because of which this conflict is transformed into a global hostility against the West. Yerushalim/El Kuds, Palestine and the belligerence towards Israel have been placed at the heart of the Arab imperialism and the appearance of ‘seeking justice,’ which are carefully orchestrated. Thus, the ideology of Islam has become the weapon in the struggle for global supremacy.

Arabs and the followers of the Arab nationalistic ideology do not have the necessary  level of technology or weaponry to fight their arch enemy, West, so they resort to terrorism.  The literature of ‘cihad’ continues. The basic rules for this conduct are written in Kuran  2:191-193; 2:216; 8:15-16; 8:38-39; 9:5; 9:29-30; 9:123; and 48:16. Those who would like to remember these rules should go back to the the title EXPANSIONISM CONTRADICTING THE FOCUSED TEACHING. The above-mentioned violent verses that contradict the original Hagarene approach must have been written into the codebook according to the different needs of the nationalist Arabs who transformed the Ismaelite teaching.

• Nationalist Arabs felt the need  to get away from the Arabian Peninsula which had extremely limited resources and possibilities, and to create a ‘lebensraum’. They might have had other reasons as well, but these must have been the primary motives.

• Capturing new lands necessitated the overpowering of new peoples. Their weapon, the belief system, was the most suitable tool in subjugating those peoples.

The aggressive and violent messages must have been written into the codebook to facilitate the exploitation of the belief system as a tool for the Arab imperialism. Here is what I believe:

• The initially peaceful message was transformed into an aggressive call to help the nationalist, expansionist and imperialistic drive.

• With this expansionist drive the label used for the followers was transformed from mu’min to muslim (from ‘faithful’ to ‘surrendered’); the fundamental outlook of the belief system was transformed from local to universal; and  the title of the Messenger was transformed from nabî to rasul / resul.

RASUL, NABÎ, ‘RASUL-AL-LAH’ IN KURAN

The word prophet has its origin in the translation of the Hebrew word nabî to Greek as ‘prophetes’ rather than ‘mantikos’ (Greek ‘mantikos’ or French ‘mantis’ are akin to mainesthai = ‘to be mad’, ‘having a mania’, ‘maniac’). Prophets are thought to be mantics (diviners) as much as they are seers and speakers. However, the biblical ideology prefers to mask such unfavourable aspects by separating diviners from speakers, since these meanings would have had a negative effect on the stature of the prophets in their societies.

Belief systems try to defend themselves with means like covering up of the truth, introducing their  version of reality, resorting to falsifications, purging  the unwanted aspects, and reinterpreting the reality. Moreover, they suppress, subjugate, crush, and destroy. Just check the history to see the truth.

The codebook of Islam uses rasul / resul and nabî when referring to the Messenger. Nabî is not Arabic. It is borrowed from Aramaic and Syriac. Nabî was the only word used for the messengers before Islam. Rasul had no religious nuance in those days. It meant something like envoy, emissary. With the emergence of the codebook of Islam, rasul had acquired a religious dimension and referred to the prophets as well. ‘Rasulallah’ is one of the Islamic appellations used for the Messenger. When we deal with this composite appellation the parts of it become apparent: ‘Rasul-al-Lah.’ You must have noticed immediately that the word  ‘rasul’ in this designation refers to an emissary of Lah, not Allah, which does not appear in this label. Lah was the main supreme entity of the pre-Islamic Arabia.  Since this label appears in Kuran, Lah must have been the supreme being worshipped by the Ismaelite Messenger. Therefore, the Messenger must have been announcing himself as the ‘Emissary of Lah’=‘Messenger of Lah’=‘Rasul-al-Lah’. When the nationalist desert Arabs had intervened with the original teaching this description was transformed into ‘Rasulullah’, wrongly taken to mean ‘Rasul of Allah,’ because the desert Arabs had changed the deity’s name to Allah. If the label is based on ‘Allah’ (as opposed to al-Lah) the gramatically right expression should be Rasul al-Allah, meaning the ‘messenger of Allah’, but probably with the dropping of ‘al’ in the middle which causes difficulty in articulation, the final expression evidently have gone back to the original, Rasul-al-Lah - Rasul-ul-Lah - Rasul-il-Lah, depending upon different regional pronunciations. Although the expression is not different from the previous ones it was given a new meaning: ‘Messenger of Allah.’ A similar description was in use by the Syriacs.

I would like to draw your attention to the components of these decriptions: ‘il-Lah,’ ‘el-Lah,’ ‘al-Lah’ are the age old descriptions which have been in use in Canaan, Palestine, Midian, and Nabataea, meaning the ‘god Lah’, ‘Lah the god’, ‘the god’.

Therefore, this is the summary:

• The prefix ‘el’ or ‘al’, which are used to exalt the name of the deity in the pre-Islamic times and the name of the ancient deity - Lah – were merged into a single, personal name of the new deity, Allah. Despite the fact that the original description of the Messenger carried on reflecting the old situation, its contents, meaning, importance and the concept of the supreme being it denotes were altered. The original description ‘Rasulullah’ meant the ‘Emissary of Lah’, but an alteration of meaning had occurred and the original definition has come to mean the ‘Messenger of Allah’ (The actual construction also should have been changed into Rasul-ul-Allah).

KURAN

IS IT A DEVELOPED TEXT OR A COMPILATION WHICH HAS BEEN EDITED MANY TIMES OVER?

An extensive and detailed look into the codebook of Islam reveals almost the existence of two basic separate books bound between two covers. A certain group of texts appear like belonging to the Hagarene period, and the other to the desert Arabs (Makkans and the rest). This seemingly single codebook has two different groups of authors.

• One of these groups of authors was the Hagarenes who had been oriented towards Palestine and Bakka. The Makkans and Ka’ba oriented desert Arabs formed the other group of authors.

• The sections related to Madian/Medyen, to El Hicr, to the ruins where once the peoples supposedly punished by the supreme being had lived, toBeyt-u Elah- Beytullah and the ‘Sacred Precinct’, to Bakka and Palestine etc. are the sections that belonged to the Ismaelite period.

• The fundamental concepts, dealings related to the creed, notions pertaining to morality and to life in general, and the stories about history and traditions have their origins in the Sabian faith and Judaism.

• The supposed life and adventures of the Messenger around in and Makka (except the sections connected to Medina) must have been written into the codebook by the desert Arabs in a later period.

Bakka was the ‘sacred precinct’ and kıbla (focal point) of the Hagarene movement. The Messenger was interested in the region between Bakka in the North and Medina in the South. The Messenger had never had Makka in his scope. Makka had never been important for the Messenger.  After the death of the Messenger the desert Arabs managed to have the upper hand, they changed the kıbla, placed Makka at the focus of the new nationalist ideology called Islam and made Ka’ba the new kıbla.

The Kuranic material borrowed from the Mosaic scriptures, Christian texts and the references to the Christian fairy tales are full of inaccuracies. They are summarized, superficial or amended deliberately or they are narrated wrongly on purpose. Consequently, the following alternatives come to mind:

• ‘Tutor’ of the Messenger might have narrated the story as he knew it or with the content of his own fabrication;

• Storyteller/storytellers did not know the original so they made up the story;

• Storyteller/storytellers have altered the original story on purpose;

• The person (the Messenger?) who shaped the teaching according to the tales of the past, which were borrowed from the other cultures had his own versions written into the teaching;

• During the editorial works in later periods, which produced the present version of the codebook the authors and editors must have had no option but to work on the versions of the stories that reached their time. They may have been unaware of the original narratives and/or they must have had no objections to the circulating versions so they wrote down their texts without editing. They might have made amendments according to their needs or they might have accepted the circulating stories as the ‘word of god’ and left them intact.

• The authors and editors of later periods might have written down only the versions accepted by the official ideology of their period.

The tutor, storyteller, author, editor, Messenger have all referred to the ‘events of the past’ which they preferred to present as ‘divine intervention’ and based their doctrines on them. They had nothing to say on their period, their surroundings and the contemporaneous cultures in the neighbouring lands. Only past exists in Kuran, and there is no future. It is only natural to expect divine forewarnings, caveats, advice on the future events etc. But do not waste your time, the codebook has nothing to say on the future. All the ‘examples’ and the references relate to the ancient times.

• It is as if the original authors, tutors, editors etc. of the scriptures and the the persons behind the later editorial works had thought that the supreme being was interested only with the ‘past.’

This is only natural because, the original scriptures and the result of the later editorial works were written by human beings and they had no way of knowing the future, and the ‘acts’ of their supposed supreme being were all ‘bygone’ events.

The codebook of Islam, while referring to the period of the Messenger, mentions some incidents and the attitudes of the Messenger’s opponents, and Arabs’ internal disagreements and conflicts. But not a single concrete record exists on the actual events, on their history and actual settings. The exegetes try to fill these missing essentials in the verses by adding their interpretations and remarks in parentheses. There is no need to point out that these explanatory remarks usually reflect their subjective comprehension and needs.

I would like to point out once more that the verses about the ‘sacred precinct’ and Bakka, and the second and third suras and the like, elsewhere in the codebook, belonged to the Hagarene period. Whereas the rest of the codebook looks like being written first by the desert Arabs centred on Makka and later by the Arabs of Syria.

The suras in the codebook were supposedly arranged from the longest to the shortest. If that is so, we should ask the vital questions and make some observations:

• Why were they arranged in that order?

• Why was the supposed order of revelation altered?

• Who had decided on this alteration? Was it Zayd, who is reported to have played a crucial role in the first and second writings of the codebook, or was it the later authors and editors?

• What was done was not a simple writing down of the supposedly divine(!) verses in a specific order, but borrowing extensively from the texts, myths and tales of the neighbouring cultures and combining them to create an Ismaelite-Hagarene teaching.

• In other words, we can most certainly say that there has never been a progression of developing messages.

• The messages that were supposedly collected and written in the Messenger’s time were allegedly written on a few pages instead of stones, bones, papyri etc. Following the death of the Messenger, the desert Arabs could have ‘embellished’ and ‘decorated’ these few pages of Ismaelite teaching and given them a nationalist perspective in line with their imperialist and expansionist aims.

The last three points seem to be pointing to the actual events, because a text which has gone through phases like the ones mentioned above could not have a chronological progression. Therefore;

• Even in those days, when the Messenger was alive and the religion had the Hagarene character (in other words when it was basically the Sabian faith) there was not a chronological text, because there has never been a revelation (a sequence of messages) either in those days or later.

Tradition has it that some suras were revealed in Makka and some in Medina. If that is so, then we should ask:

• Why only these two places were chosen as the specific places of revelation?

• Why is that the messages were not revealed during the military campaigns or on the road as the Messenger was on the move? Is it because the source persons/storytellers were not around?

• Does anybody have an acceptable answer as to why certain suras contain both ‘early’ and ‘late’ revelations? This does make clear that some suras were cut and edited together with the others, does it not? Is this not a proof that the later editors felt free in cutting and merging different texts?

Because of the frequent editorial interventions, it is impossible to establish with certainty, which suras were earlier and which were later. Moreover, we are unable to establish when they were written down originally and in connection with what event. The only thing we could do is to establish the suras that were written down before or after the transformation of the Hagarene teaching into Islam. According to Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, because of the frequent editing and the burning of the first and later copies of the book the present text lacks a general and coherent structure; its language and contents are incomprehensible and incoherent; it is careless in connecting various materials, and full of repetitions of the slightly varied versions of lengthy narrations. That is why it would be plausible to claim that Kuran is the careless and imperfect combination of materials borrowed from other traditions

BORROWED MATERIAL IN KURAN AND THE ISLAMIC IDEOLOGY

Islam is the last of the Abrahamic-Semitic ideologies and it has not deviated from the firmly established traditions of its predecessors. This is only natural, because the Arabs had no example of written religious texts of their own. The examples they had belonged to the neighbouring cultures. That must have been the reason why the Islamic ideology has repeated the stages of evolution, growth and maturity of its predecessors. There are material in Kuran from the Sabian scripture basically, and Torah, Talmud (Mishnah, Midrashim), the New Testament. It has some Christian material from Aramaic. It has borrowed also from Zoroastrianism and from the myths and legends common to the literature of their time (introduced to the Semitic world mainly by the Jews), and from other myths, legends and stories of the region. Material originating from the Arab society is almost non-existent .

Kuran has many Biblical characters, but the stories about them (borrowed from the Bible) are muddled. The variations in these stories are believed to have originated either from the Jewish haggada or the New Testament apocrypha.

Kuran is a semi-poetical book. Rhyme is maintained throughout the text. The narration jumps from one subject to another; incessant repeats of concepts, statements and words are irritating; and grammar is said to be poor. So what? Kuran is the continuation of a tradition, is it not? Its predecessors also have lots of shortcomings and objectionable aspects.

Here is a list of the borrowed material in Kuran, established by various scholars and myself:

• Unity of god  (Zoroastrianism via Mosaic scriptures).

• Creation (Sumer and Akkad via Mosaic scriptures).

• The story about Adam being wiser than the angels and naming the animals (Midrash Rabba on Numbers; Midrash Rabba on Genesis; Sanhedrin 38).

• Kuran’s description of Hell (Resembles those in the Homilies of Ephraim, a Nestorian preacher of the 6th century A.D.; original idea is from Zoroastrianism).

• Seven heavens (‘Seven paths’ is used in the Talmud; originally from Sumer and Zoroastrianism via Mosaic scriptures).

• Seven hells, including seven gates and trees at the gates (From Zoroastrianism via Mosaic scriptures).

• The Messenger’s mode of receiving the revelation (Being face to face with a divinity resembles the stories of Zarathustra, and Moses on a mountain).

• Retribution (It is originally from Mithraism and Zoroastrianism via Christianity - the coming of the messiah-mahdi, establishment of the divine rule, the last judgment, the war between Gog and Magog, casting of the idols into hellfire etc.).

• Angels and demons/jinns (Originally from Zoroastrianism via Mosaic scriptures).

• Noah’s role as a teacher and seer, and the flood of hot water (Compare Sanhedrin 108, Midrash Tanchuma, Rosh Hashanan 162). Noah’s words (Indistinguishable from the words of Messenger or Gabriel/Allah).

• Idris (Enoch) taken to paradise after death and raised to life again (Genesis 5:24; Tract Dereen Erez - cited in Midrash Yalkut).

• Av’ram/Ibrahim is an archetypal messenger, friend of god, living in temple, writing books etc. Conflict over idols lead to danger of being burned alive, but god rescued him. [Compare Midrash Rabba on Genesis 15:7, where god and Av’ram are in conversation: “And he (god) said unto him, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.” There isa nothing here, which suggests that Av’ram was saved from the burning fire? But when rabbi Yonathan ben Uziel translated ‘ur’ (‘city’) in Babylonian as ‘or’ (‘fire’) in Midrash Rabba the meaning was transformed totally. Rabbi ben Uziel wrote in his commentary on this verse: “I am the Lord who brought you out of the fire of the Chaldeans.” This mistake gives the impression that Abraham had been delivered out of the ‘fire’ of the Chaldeans. When Islam took the story from the quoted Midrash this mistake became a part of the Islamic mythology. Do you remember the mythical personality called Nimrod? There is no such person in history, he is thought to be Ninurta (god of War), who supposedly has thrown Abraham into fire. The name Nimrod appears only in the Old Testament, but again the reference is to the name only, there is no story. Nimrod does not appear in Kuran, but only in Muslim tradition and in the story that is among the Kuranic commentaries. What do we find when we look up for Nimrod in the reference sources? Based on the references in legends encyclopaedias date this mythical Nimrod to 2450 B.C.  Another mythical person Av’ram/Abraham  must have been alive somewhere in between 1900-1750 B.C. There are two ‘ifs’ and two ‘unknowns’ already. That is not all! There is a difference of about 500 years between them, which makes further discussion pointless. The Messenger identifies himself (or the storyteller, or the ‘author’ of Kuran identify the Messenger) so much with Abraham that the words he puts into Abraham’s mouth become words with no meaning for those outside the Messenger’s frame of reference].

• The infant Moses refuses the breast of Egyptian women (Compare Sotah 12:2).

• Pharaoh claims divinity (Compare Midrash Rabba on Exodus).

• Pharaoh eventually repents (Compare Pirke Rabbi Eliezer).

• God threatens to overturn the mountain onto the Israelites (Compare Abodah Sarah).

• The story of Iblis (or Satan/Shaitan) not prostrating himself before Adam (This is a story which has a possible Jewish origin in Sanhedrin 596 and Midrash Rabba 8).

• Joseph is the subject of almost all of the 12th sura. The additions in Kuran to the original Biblical story are derived from the Jewish legends: Joseph is warned away from Potiphar’s wife in a dream (Compare Sotah 6:2); Egyptian women cut their hands because of Joseph’s beauty (Compare with references in Midrash Yalkut  to ‘The Great Chronicle’).

• Hebrew chronology is erroneous in Kuran, where the Messenger places Moses nearer to Yshua chronologically (Moses’ supposed sister Miryam is presented as Yshua’s mother).

• Rewards for the righteous after death (This is from Numbers 23:10).

• Cain and Abel story in Kuran 5:30-32 [This is from the Targum of Yonathan ben-Uzzia, the Targum of Yerushalim, Pirke Rabbi Eliezer and Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5. These three documents are Jewish writings from the Talmud, which comments on the Laws of the Bible. They contain nothing more than Hebrew myths and tales. There are specific parallels with Pirke Rabbi Eliezer (The story of the raven teaching people how to bury), and with Mishnah Sanhedrin (The commentary about the shedding of blood)].

• In Kuran Abraham’s father is called Azar/Azer, not Terah (But according to Eusebius Azar/Azer is similar to the name used in Syria).

• The story in Kuran 27:17-44 about the visit of the queen of Saba (Sebe, Sheba) to Solomon; Solomon’s talking to Hoopoe bird, and the queen of Sheba lifting her skirt when she mistook a mirrored floor for water (These stories are from the II Targum of the Book of Esther, written 500 years before the appearance of Kuran. The claim that Solomon and the queen of Sheba were coeval cannot be proven historically. According to the historians someone called Bilkis (Belkis bint Hadhad, Belkis bin Hedhad) has lived in Yemen during the time of Himyar in 330-345 B.C. The Yemenis who have become Christians attacked Yemen when she was around. There could not be any connection between this woman and Solomon, who has lived 13-14 centuries earlier. When one considers that the state of Saba (Sebe, Sheba) was founded at the earliest in the 8th century B.C. Bilkis (Belkis) could not be the queen of Sheba. Immanuel Velikovsky in his book Ages in Chaos has a different proposition. Starting from the supposition that there is a difference of hundreds of years between the Egyptian and the Israelite-Palestinian chronologies, Immanuel Velikovsky ends up with the conclusion that the queen who has visited Jerusalem was not from the land of Saba (Seba, Sheba) but from Egypt: She was allegedly the queen Hatshepsut. The form of the story that appears in Kuran does not exist in the Old Testament).

• The angel Malik (Kuran 43:77) rules over Cehennem/Cahannam (The name is taken from Molech, the ruler of fire in pagan Palestine).

• Harut and Marut story (This is similar to several accounts in the Talmud, especially Midrash Yalkut. The origin of these angels is Zoroastrianism where they are called Haurvatat and Amerodad).

• The concept that Kuran is kept on heavenly tablets (This story appears in the Sumerian cosmolgy. Original idea is Sumerian. The concept is similar to Decalogue/Ten Commandments on stone tablets).

• The history of Maryam or Miryam (Maryam is said to be the sister of Aaron, the daughter of Imran/Amran the father of Moses, and the mother of Yshua). The hadith tells us that Maryam’s mother was an aged, barren woman who promised to give her child to the temple if god gave it to her (This is from the Protevangelium of James the Less).

• Kuran refers to priests competing as to who would raise Mary. They throw their rods into the river, only Zacharias’ rod floats [From the History of our Holy Father the Aged, the Carpenter (Joseph), Arabic apocryphal book].

• Mary is denounced as an adulteress but pleads her innocence (From Protevangelium a Coptic book on the Virgin Mary);

• Mary gives birth under a palm tree which aids her (From the History of the Nativity of Mary and the Saviour’s Infancy);

• The Childhood of Yshua; in Kuran 3:49 Yshua speaks from the cradle and creates birds of clay which he then turns into living birds (From Thomas the Israelite’s Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus); the Palm tree which provides relief for the pain of Mary after Yshua’s birth in Kuran 19:22-26 (From the Lost Books of the Bible); the story of the baby Yshua talking in Kuran 19:29-33 (From the Arabic apocryphal fable from Egypt named the first Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ);

• Kuran 42:17 and 101:6-9 mentions the balance of good and bad deeds to teach that a scale or balance will be used on the judgment day to weigh good and bad deeds in order to determine whether one goes to heaven or to hell (From the Testament of Abraham and from the Egyptian Book of the Dead);

• Ascent (Mi’rac) of the Messenger [We have various interpretations of this story. Ibn Ishak quotes Aisha and the Messenger, saying this was an out of body journey. Muhyi-ud-Din ibn-ul Arabî is of an identical opinion. But Ibn Ishak also quotes the Messenger as saying that it was a literal journey. There are other sources, which picture the Messenger as saying that it was a literal journey into the seventh heaven. In a Zoroastrian story, the Magi send one of their members into heaven to get a message from god (Ormazd, Ahura Mazda, Hormuz). This is from a Pahlavi book Arta-i Viraf Namak, dated 400 years before Hicra. Another story could be found in the Secrets of Enoch (chapter 1:4-10 and 2:1), which predates the Kuran by four centuries. In addition to that, the fictitious book called the Testament of Abraham, written around 200 B.C. in Egypt, and translated into Greek and Arabic, narrates the story of Abraham taken up to heaven in a chariot; there is the story of Ya’kub dreaming about a ladder to heaven on the road to Haran from Beer-Sheba. The first lucky one in history to have ascended to heaven was Etana the Shepherd the thirteenth king of Kish. He ascended to heaven on the back of an eagle according to the story. He was searching for the ‘plant of life’ and the eagle took him ‘up’ to the throne of Ishtar].

• The Seven Sleepers story [This is of Greek origin found in a Latin work of Gregory of Tours (Story of Martyrs 1:95) and was recognised by the Christians as pious fiction. The legend is about seven Christian youths who flee Ephesus to the mountains, to escape the persecution of Decius (250 A.D.). Although a Christian tale, it seems to have come to the Ismaelite Messenger, to the storyteller, or to the ‘author’ via Jews. Do you know why?  A hadith tells us that the Jews in Makka were especially interested in this story. This remark in the form of a hadith may be taken as another indication of the efforts by the Makkan Arabs to introduce their dimension and steal the belief system. There is nothing uniquely Christian about this tale. The legend must have existed in different forms, because when the Messenger is reportedly challenged on what is the correct number of youths, the Kuran dodges the challenge by insisting that only god knows the right answer (which is the usual attitude of Kuran whenever cornered). Kuran 18 is unusual because the stories in it are not from the Bible or the rabbinic literature, and the authors make no mention of it elsewhere in the Kuran].

• Paradise full of Huris [The female angels like the ‘peri’, ‘pari’ in Zorastrianism. The words ‘huri’, ‘jinn’, and ‘bihist’ (paradise- pairidaeza - firdaws) are borrowed from Avesta or other Pahlavi sources].

• Ghıluman (gıluman, gılman) (‘Youths of pleasure’, ‘gılman-ı cannat’ are in Hindu tales).

• The name of the Angel of death Azrail (Sammael and Azrael in Hebrew; taken from the Mosaic scriptures). The concept of an angel killing those in hell (This is from Zoroastrianism).

• Azazil [This is the name of the angel before becoming Iblis (Satan, Shaitan)] coming from hell [This story is similar to the Zoroastrian tale about their devil Ahura Manah (Ahriman, Angra Mainyu) in the book titled Victory of God].

• In the hadith (Kısas al Anbiya=‘Stories of Prophets’) god sends angels to gather dust to create Adam, and Azrael (Azrail) brings it from every quarter [This is a story from Christian or heretical writers. Heretic Marcion argued that it was an angel (the ‘god of the law’ ) who had created people and not the true god. The origin of the story is the Sumerian mythology].

• The light of the Messenger was the first created ‘thing’ [(Kısas al Anbiya, Ravzat-al Ahbab). The light was divided into four, then each into four. The Messenger was the first of the first divisions of light. This light was then placed on Adam and descended to the best descendant. This is virtually identical with the Zoroastrian view, which described the four divisions of light (the Minukhirad, Desatir-i Asmani, Yasht); the light was placed on the first man (Jamshid) and passed to his greatest descendent].

• Each messenger predicting the next messenger (This is a concept from the books called Desatir-i Asmani where each Zoroastrian messenger predicts the next one. The opening sentence of these books is “In the name of god, the Giver of gifts, the Beneficent” which is similar to the opening formula of the suras in Kuran “With the name of god the Merciful and Gracious”).

• The Sırat Bridge (This is a concept from Dinkart/Denkart of the Zoroastrianism, where it is called Chinavad-Chinvat-Cinwat-Chinwad Bridge = ‘Bridge of the Requiter’).

• Yonah’s (Yunus/Younis) story (This is the abridged version of the Old Testament account, but the name Yunus is based on the Greek form, Younis, rather than the Hebrew one, Yonah. Therefore, the origin could be the Pentateuch).

• Saul and Goliath (Talut and Calut in Kuran is a mix up of the story of Gideon in Judges with that of David and Goliath).

• The story of Moses (This is a summary of the most of the Exodus story in the Old Testament. But there is no clear association between Moses and the Israelites).

• The marriage of Moses in Midian (This is loosely patterned after Ya’kub and Ra’chel).

• Positions for prayer (Standing, sitting, reclining are from the Mosaic belief system; the bending down and prostrating are most probably from Christianity. But the original practice is most probably Sabian, which was a Jewish ‘heretic’ sect, which also had Christian aspects).

• Shortening of prayer in war (This is from Judaism).

• Ban on prayers for the drunken/intoxicated persons (The ban most probably originates from drinking of intoxicating liquids of sorts. These intoxicating liquids include wine in pagan, idolatrous and polytheist cultic ceremonies. The Messenger was also not very happy about people around him getting drunk and voicing their objections, so he banned intoxicating drinks - especially wine).

• Silent recitation of prayers (From Judaism).

• Discernment of the daybreak by the ability to distinguish between a coloured and a white thread (Which is blue thread from white in Judaism and black thread from white Islam - from Mishnah Berakhoth).

• A waiting period of three months for the divorced woman before a remarriage (From Judaism).

• Two years of suckling time (From Judaism).

• Identical limitations for intermarriages (From Judaism).

• Angels living on earth, lusting after women and breaking marriages (Compare Midrash Abhkhir, quoted in Midrash Yalkut).

• Shuayb (He could be the Biblical Jethro).

• Uzayr/Ozair (The character is Ezra the priest of the Old Testament; Jews are accused of declaring him the son of god).

• Full understanding of ‘being’ at 40 years (Aboth 5:21).

• Interceding effectively leads to reward (Baba Kamma 92).

•  Only works follow a person at death, family and goods do not (Pirke Rabbi Eliezer 34).

• The concept of seven heavens and seven hells (Originally from Sumer, Zoroastrianism, via the Jewish books Hagigah and Zohar).

• God’s throne is above the waters (From Zoroastrianism, the Old Testament and Jewish Rashi).

• The message in Kuran 21:105 referring to ‘Zebur’ (This corresponds with the message of Psalm 37:11).

• Pharaoh builds a tower (like the tower of Babel) to reach Allah(!) (This narrative indicates how free the Messenger had felt himself in altering the Biblical tradition).

• The story of Moses searching for the fountain of life (This is identical with an episode from the legend of Alexander the Great. Only the name is different. Origin of this legend is the Gilgamesh epic).

• The narrative of the ‘two-horned’ hero (This is from Alexander the Great). Hero journeys, as an emissary of god, to the place of the setting Sun and to the place of its rising. He is protected against Gog and Magog (Ya’cuc and Ma’cuc in Kuran) and Alexander builds a great wall (These are fantasies, which are said to echo those found in the Haggada, which reinforces the possibility of a Jewish source for the entire story in Kuran).

• God lifting up the Mount Sinai and holding it over the heads of the Jews as a threat for rejecting the law in Kuran 7:171 (From the 2nd century Jewish apocryphal book, The Abodah Sarah).

In view of the borrowed material above, Kuran 25:4-8 is extremely revealing:

•  “Those who are in blasphemy say: ‘These are nothing but his fabrications. And another community helped him in this falsehood. These are the tales of the ancients. He has others writing for him. Someone is dictating it to him every morning and evening.. What kind of a prophet is this, he eats, walks in the street. Should not he have had an angel over him, should not he have had a particular admonisher with him? A treasure should have been sent to him, or he should have had a garden to eat the fruits of. You are following only a bewitched one.”

Kuran 25:4-8 warns that such people will be the losers. The quotation above, claimed to have been reflecting the actual statements by the people who shared the same environment with the Messenger. But I believe that the above statements have originated from the Arabs of the Desert, while they were transforming the Ismaelite-Hagarene teaching, the Sabian faith.  Jews who claimed to have the original of Kuran, and the claims by Christians and other peoples made the codebook of Islam a disputed book.

It is clear that the authors of the Hagarene teaching or those people who had dictated the original messages or those who’d had the messages written into the teaching or those who had created the texts during the editorial works that produced the text had inserted the tales of the ancient peoples into the codebook.  But they must have felt the need to be careful, because;

• If they borrowed the story exactly, in its entirety, they would be accused of literary theft.

• If amendments were made to the original story they would be accused of forgery.

• Invention of new stories was extremely difficult, because it needed a creative imagination of the authors of the Old Testament and the authors of the letters forming the New Testament, which they obviously did not have.

They seem to have been hard pressed for time to complete a viable text.

• The simplest and fastest solution for them would be referring to the past stories appearing mainly in the Judaic, Zarathustran-Persian, Christian scriptures, and the regional literature and folk tales.

• But they refrained from going into detail, which often had particulars unsuitable for their needs or they were not very familiar with.

• So their references were superficial, fragmentary, incoherent, revised and tailored.

• It is also possible to say that the amendments were made on purpose to provide the initial listeners of the statements with a Hagarene context (Do not forget their claim that allegedly the same messages were given previously to Noah, Moses, Hud, Saleh, Shuayb, bin Safvan etc.). 

But that’s not all!

• They were in desperate need of an ideology; therefore whenever they felt free they rewrote the essentials.

These initial messages have provided the basis for the later messages of a nationalist Arab content, and when the Arabs began their conquests, the consequent ideology was presented as the divine revelation to the whole of the humanity, in other words the main weapon of the Arab imperialism.

In the beginning the Messenger, his tutors, closest associates and the earliest author/authors of the scriptures masterminded a belief system, which eventually appealed to the Jews, Christians, pagans, idolaters, Zarathustrans etc. They were extremely clever. The Hagarene faith had a multi-faceted appearance. To the Christian, the Messenger looked like a Christian; to the Jew he sounded like a Jew. In later years when the Arabs of the desert succeeded in transforming the Ismaelite doctrines into the nationalist ideology of Islam, they presented the Messenger to the idol worshippers of Makka as a worshipper of Ka’ba.

APOCRYPHA IN THE CODEBOOK OF ISLAM 

THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE PRESERVED FOR THE ‘DEEP IN KNOWLEDGE’

The origin of the term apocrypha is still a matter of dispute but the most probable view derives it from the legend preserved in II Esdras (14:18-48) of the Vulgate which relates that when Ezra was commissioned to republish the divine(!) law in the days following the Babylonian exile, he was told that Moses on mount Sinai (mount Horeb) had been instructed to hide many of the words he had  received and that himself was to issue publicly only a portion of the books that were dictated to him, the others to be delivered ‘in secret to the wise’.

The supposedly divine law that was purportedly given to Moses on mount Sinai (mount Horeb) is known as the Ten Commandments. According to the belief this divine(!) law was written on two stone tablets. The story has it that these commandments were the ‘open’/public part of the divine(!) message imparted to Moses, and he was instructed to hide many of the words he has received, which were to be delivered ‘in secret to the wise’. Story is told in II Esdras (Ezra) 14:6 where YHVH speaks about the mount Sinai incident and the giving of the law to Moses where he ordered: “These words shall you declare, and these shalt thou hide.”  Then YHVH tells Ezra what to do in II Esdras 14:25-26: “I shall light a candle of understanding in thine heart, which shall not be put out, till the things be performed which thou shalt begin to write…(II Esdras 14:42) ...The Highest gave understanding unto five men...and they wrote...and they sat forty days...(II Esdras 14:44-48)...In forty days they wrote two hundred and four books…(‘The Highest’ speaks) The first that thou hast written publish openly, that the worthy and unworthy may read it: But keep the seventy last that thou mayest deliver them only to such as be wise among the people: For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the stream of knowledge. (Ezra adds) And I did so.”

It would not be wrong to say that the ‘secret knowledge’ (which is akin to the apocrypha, magic, sorcery and whichcraft) in the codebooks of the Semitic-Abrahamic belief systems has most certainly originated from this fantastic narration. Kuran’s reference to the ‘secret knowledge’, a knowledge, which could be understand only by the people who have ‘wisdom in their bosoms’ is in 3:7: “Some of its (Kuran) verses are incontrovertible (beyond doubt). Other verses are ambiguous (which are figurative, open to interpretation) (...) the meaning (by analogy) of these is known only by Allah and by those who are deepened in knowledge (who are wise).” 

Now Kuran 5:44: “Those who have dedicated themselves to Rabb, and the ones deepened in knowledge and wisdom have also ruled with what they were responsible to protect (conceal, safeguard) in the book of Allah… they passed judgments in accordance with (the rules) they are obliged to protect.”

Now you know where this concept has come from.

REMNANTS OF POLYTHEISM IN THE CODEBOOK OF ISLAM

It is extremely strange for a monotheist codebook to continue with the practice of the ‘personal deities’. The ideology of Islam has grouped these divine beings into protecting, guiding, and recording angels. One should read Kuran 3:18; 4:166; 6:61; 13:11; 34:40-41; 43:80; 50:17­-18; 70:4; 72:8; 82:10-12 and 86:4, of which 82:10 is especially revealing:

• “There is no doubt that there are guardians and sentries on you.” 

But the best and the most expressive verse is 86:4:

• “There does not exist a being upon whom there is not a guardian.”

There are two very curious remarks in two verses of Kuran, the first of which is 37:10: “Although someone might make off with a word (eavesdrop) from the Supreme Council (al me’le-ul-a’la) a piercing and fiery star will start pursuing (that someone) immediately”;

The second one is 38:67-70: (Supposedly the supreme being is advising the Messenger on what to say to the people that he is trying to win over to Kuran) “Say: ‘It is a great message. You are constantly turning away from it. I did not know that the Supreme Council was in meeting. I am being told that I am an open admonisher.”

The god of the codebook of Islam (who is also the god of the Old Testament) incessantly warns and reminds that there is only one god. There is none but him (This emphasis has begun with the Old Testament). That he has no equal. That he does not beget and not begotten. That he does not share his power with any other divine entity etc. If that is so then what are we supposed to make of this ‘Supreme Council’ that appears in the above verses. Do not try to find a logical meaning in these meaningless verses. As I have told elsewhere, when you are in the virtual environment of an invented concept, there are no answers. But there is one possible explanation as to the source of the Supreme Council of divinities in Islam: Check the pages on SUMERIAN MYTHS, where you will find an assembly of gods; read the Assyrian fairy tale Enuma Elish, where you will find the council of deities, the lesser divinities, the chief god Marduk, and the throne of god etc. The ‘elohim’ (Elohs) in the Old Testament, and Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas in Zoroastrianism are the different expressions of the same concept. The Old Testament has borrowed the concept from the Assyrian fairy tale and Zoroastrianism, and the authors of Kuran have borrowed the concept from the Old Testament. Instead of trying to find an answer to the incomprehensible concepts one should follow how they pass from one culture to the other, how they change in the process. This practice will lead you to the truth. Read Kuran 2:30-36: “When your Rabb said to angels ‘I wish to create a ‘caliph’ (assistant, successor) on earth!’   The angels responded: ‘Do you wish to create someone who would cause confusion and spill blood on earth? While we exalt and glorify you (always)!’ Your god said: ‘It is the truth that I know what you do not know!’ ” This is a clear indication that the authors of this verse have visualised the supreme being as an entity sharing his realm with other divine entities - angels - who are permitted to voice their objections to the omnipotent being's decision. The expression ‘we exalt and glorify you’ is important, because in the Assyrian creation epic, Enuma Elish, the secondary/lesser deities exalt Marduk also and accept him as the chief god. The similarity is interesting!

Who are these beings? According to Kuran and the relevant hadiths the members of the Council are called the ‘populace of the sky’, with the angels heading the list. In one of the hadiths the stars are called the ‘trustees of the skies’. Therefore, we have no choice but to reach conclude that the supreme creator has his associates in the skies. Stars and ‘populace of the sky’ are visualized as taking part in this Council.

We should ask at this stage the vital questions: What kind of monotheism is this? An omnipotent power is in discussion with the entities He has created. This is too much! Could these entities be uncreated, thus coeval with the creator? Kuran 21:27-29 contains a clue as to the hierarchy between these divine entities: “They (angels) cannot speak against His word; they act only upon His orders. He knows what is in front of them and behind (…) And they tremble with the fear of Him. If any one of them would say ‘I am also an ‘ilah’ (god) beside Him’ we would punish this one with hell.”  So, these angels are the subordinates of the god. But still they are with him up there,  they share his divinity, they are immortal,  they give him counsel,  in short,  they share the divine administration with him. This is nothing but  polytheism, originating from the Sumerian myths, Sabianism,  Zoroastrianism, and Judaism.

According to the Sumerian mythology, there is a king-god on top. He is the head of the council of gods. There are four ‘creator’ gods; seven most eminent gods who are the ‘determiners of destinies’; there are fifty ‘great gods’. The oldest comprehensible documents describe Enlil as the ‘father of gods’=‘king of sky and earth’=‘king of all countries’. Could this congregation be the origin of the concept of the ‘supreme council’ in Islam? Yes, I believe that the Supreme Council in the codebook of Islam, which is the last one of the Semitic-Abrahamic religious ideologies, is a congregation of divine entities mentioned in the Sumerian myths.

The whole of the Old Testament shows that YHVH (Under the name of Allah he is also the god of Islam) is in constant struggle with other deities around him. This god of the Jews (and also of Islam) had to wait to become the sole god until Ezra the priest took the matter in his own hands and rewrote Judaism following the Babylonian exile. The full concept of monotheism - making YHVH the only god, the supreme creator, the omnipotent power - came with the Isaiah chapter of the Old Testament.

Here is Isaiah 43:10-13:  

• “Before me there was no god formed, neither shall there be after me. I even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no saviour...I have declared, and have saved, and I have showed, when there was no strange god amongst you, therefore you are my witnesses…that I am God.”

This marks the end of a transformation where Jews have progressed from a multitude of gods (Polytheism), to accepting other gods but believing that they have a god particular to their nation (Henotheism), and from there to the belief that there is only one god with no other for all creation (Monotheism).

In the Old Testament, one comes across the description, ‘Lord of gods’. The god of The Old Testament and Kuran is not different. Therefore, this expression, the ‘Lord of gods’, could well be another source of the divine Supreme Council in Islam, with Allah as the chief deity. Sabians have the identical expression, Rabb-el Erbab (‘Teacher of teachers’, ‘God of gods’).

Ahura Mazda (Lord of the Light) of the Zarathustran belief system is believed to have created six Amesha Spentas (‘Beneficent’/‘Holy Immortal Ones’). Two of these appear in Kuran as Harut (Haurvatat) and Marut (Amerodad), the remaining four are the four archangels of Judaism and Islam, of course under different names. The seventh one that Ahura Mazda created is the sacred spirit, Spenta Mainyu (‘God incarnate in man’, ‘pinnacle of creation’ or the ‘Good Spirit’).

All of the predecessors of Kuran are verify that there has never been a sole god, but a group of gods or divine entities (or whatever you would like to call them).

• In Sumer, there was Enlil and the Council of gods.

• In Sabianism, there is Rabb (Rabb-el Erbab) and Erbab (plural of Rabb = stars, planets etc.).

• In Zoroastrianism, there is Ahura Mazda (Lord of Light) and the Seven Amesha Spentas (Beneficient Immortal Ones).

• In Judaism, there is YHVH (Lord of gods) and the Council of Supreme Entities (archangels, angels etc.)

• In the ideology of Islam, there is Allah and the Supreme Council (archangels, angels, stars, trustees of the skies etc.).

Angels in Kuran are seemed to be on par with god or share the same realm with him in a covert fashion. When we have god (Allah) speaking in Kuran about the things he has done, the authors have visualized him as using ‘we’ and not ‘I’. When god is visualized as speaking about himself He uses ‘I’. From here, we can deduce that the supreme entity has partners (archangels, angels, trustees of skies etc.) in his acts.

THE SUPPOSED PROHECY ABOUT THE MESSENGER IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS

The writers of the letters in the New Testament tried desperately to establish a link between Yshua and the Old Testament to give him legitimacy. The authors of Kuran did the same. Read Kuran 3:81:

• “Do not forget that Allah has received the pledges of the prophets and said: ‘I gave you a share of the Book and wisdom. Later when a prophet comes to you to confirm what you have in your hand, you must believe him and you must help him. Do you endorse that you have accepted this covenant?' They said ‘we do endorse’.”  

Now let us read Kuran 7:157-158:

• “Those who follow the ‘ümmî’ prophet…those who believe in him, who support him, who help him, who follow the light that was sent down through him are the ones who will reach salvation.”   

The word ‘ümmî’ is interpreted wrongly (or should I say with a specific purpose) by the Arabs to create the impression that the Arab prophet was illiterate, and what he has communicated was only from god. However, the right interpretation of the description ‘ümmî’ should be ‘one who does not have a book.’ The Hagarenes did not have a specific book but pages (suhuf) of the Sabian faith and a combination of the borrowed texts from the neighbouring cultures. That was the reason of the rumors that the Messenger was getting these ideas from the Jews, Christians, and slaves. Therefore, when the desert Arabs succeeded to transfom the Ismaelite teaching into the nationalist ideology called Islam they realized that they could not live with these rumors. The only thing they could do is to insert certain sentences and passages into the codebook to counter these rumors. Those who still choose to stick to their positions based on incognizance should read Kuran 3:20: “Also ask those who were given a book and those who are ‘ümmî ’.”  Here the juxtaposition is between those people who were given a book and the ‘ümmîs’ - those who do not have a book. The subject matter is not illiteracy, but literacy and the absence of a book.

By these references, the authors of Kuran thought that they have established a link between the Messenger and the previous codebooks, which they claim were sent by the same god. By writing these suras and having had the god utter the summarized words, no one could establish a connection between the Messenger and the previous codebooks, because the supposed connection would have meant something if it appeared in the previous books and not in Kuran.

Kuran 61:6 is the crucial verse for the Messenger, because it refers to a ‘supposed’ announcement allegedly in the New Testament: “Remember what Isa the son of Maryam has also said: ‘O children of Israel! I am the prophet of Allah to you. I have been sent to confirm the Taurat which came before me and to announce a messenger named Ahmad (Mohamed) who will come after me.”  The most likely place where this supposed reference to the Ismaelite Messenger could be found is John 16:12-14:

• “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come...he shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you…All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you.”

The writers of Kuran must have believed that this description, “Spirit of truth”, was describing the Messenger or the Messenger might have believed that it was him who was called upon to reinterpret the teaching of Yshua / Isa.  But Yshua did not have a separate book, his book was the Old Testament. On the other hand, the authors of Kuran might have decided they could exploit this reference for their aims. When the Muslim clerics could not find this reference to a prophet named Ahmad in the New Testament, they accused the Christians of altering the divine message. They were unaware of the fact that there was nothing ‘divine’ in the New Testament, and all the letters in it were written by human beings. 

THE YEMENI CONNECTION - SOURCE OF HOKHMA / HIKHMAT / WISDOM

In the formation of a belief system, we observe the following steps:

• First, there must be a group of credulous, incognizant people, each of whom feel incompetent and desperate.

• In the next phase an out-of-the-ordinary, eloquent, persuasive person appears, who is accepted by the society as a seer, teller of tales, poet, kahin/cohen, messenger, and a prophet, who actually is an interface, a modem between the ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ beings (human beings).

• A central Superior Being is conceptualized and presented (by the eloquent person, the messenger) as the ‘originator’ of the communicated messages.

• These messages (supposedly from the divine being, but actually conceived by a human being) are formulated with a special terminology, so that they would be difficult to comprehend by the ordinary people. This situation is extremely useful for the messenger because it gives him the chance to interpret the messages (that he has devised with a specific purpose) as he likes. It does not matter if the initial message is short, it will be enlarged eventually into a book either by the messenger himself, or through the contributions by the ‘initiated’ (i.e. progress of the concept from Ten Commandments to the Old Testament).

• This practice helps to create a group of ‘initiates’ who either work at the centre to look after the business and functioning of the movement or out in the field to win followers. These ‘initiates’ are the persons who have managed to become the chosen favourites and ‘indispensable’assistants of the messenger. They are considered as ‘deep in secret knowledge’.

• A ‘foot print’ of the ‘divine down-link’ (The supreme being is beaming down information like a communications satellite doesn’t he?), a ‘circle of influence’  (believers tune into his signal), and an area under the jurisprudence of this superior entity develops.

• A specific precinct is designated to or reserved for this superior entity to manifest itself. This place becomes also a place where worship and prayers are conducted.

• A literature develops, which is based on a ‘report of a report of a hearsay as reported by someone’ etc., in short folklore. As this folklore expands, a separation shows itself between the teachings of the ‘initiates’ and the tales of the credulous masses. Eventually folklore becomes a ‘narration of an hearsay’, and the teaching of the ‘initiates’ is recognized as the wisdom itself.

• This wisdom is presented to the masses of naïve incognizant people as a divine revelation  (this phase closes the circle).

• This supposedly divine revelation is collected in a codebook (constitution of the belief system) .

• In the end, the initial steps taken by a person grows to become a concern (organisation) the aim of which is to meet (fulfil) that person’s personal (subjective) requirements (aspirations). Then this concern, together with its constitution (codebook) leads to the  separatist, discriminatory, fatal, brutal, destructive enterprise which we call a belief system.

Like the other religious ideologies the ideology of Islam also is the amalgamation of the following: A text called the ‘codebook,’ hikhmat (sophia), Messenger, sunna, hadith, exegesis, hearsay, fiction, adaptation, imams, sects, guides etc.

Wisdom, which has its source up there is supposedly the divine knowledge. This wisdom, which has been the source of the disruptive belief systems since the Sumerians allegedly exists as a whole in the divine realm. Do you remember the ‘me’s of the Sumerian gods? Let us refresh our memories. Sumerians believed that gods have invented a ‘me’, which is a principle signed by the gods with the aim of ensuring the trouble free functioning of the universe. ‘Me’s are seen as very effective in the formation/creation of mankind and civilization The Islamic ideology claims that Kuran also has been up there always, written on what is called the ‘lavh-i mahfuz’ -  ‘the preserved plate’). Therefore, the source of this claim is in the myths of Sumer.

As we come closer to our time we come across the term ‘sophia’, which is the wisdom that was suggested as the ‘master plan’ that the supreme being had devised when he had created the world. In the Old Testament,  ‘wisdom’ (hokma in Hebrew, hikhmat in Arabic) is described as one of god’s first creatures. Wisdom (sophia) is not divine, but was created specifically by god. In about 50 B.C. in Alexandria, a Jew warned that the fear of YHVH constitutes true wisdom. He went further and claimed that wisdom cannot be separated from the Jewish god and said:

• “Sophia is the pure breath of the power of god, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty, hence nothing impure can find its way into it. Sophia is a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished reflection of god’s active power, image of His goodness.”

Those who have the ability to reason most probably did not understand a thing. There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing to reason in this declaration. It is extremely simple. This assertion is the perfect example of the Sumerian ‘me’ developing into ‘hikhmat’ of the Islamic ideology in thousands of years.

Since man is a microcosm of the universe and his duty is to become immortal (reside in paradise) and divine by purifying his intellect (through contemplation), wisdom has come to be considered as the highest of all human virtues. Therefore, when man contemplates he imitates something which the Unmoved Mover (the creator) does all the time. Thus the the practice of contemplation, to get closer to Sophia, wisdom, makes man divine(!).

This wisdom has supposedly come down(!) to us in words. Word has always had a special place in humankind’s relationship with the supreme being. The belief has been that the spoken word is an oracle and the repetition of the word sets free the creative and re-creative power, which it is full of: The power of the word! In Sumerian myths it was sufficient for the creator god to make a plan, and utter the appropriate word, his wishes were realized at that instant. A similar concept exists in Buddhism: ‘Dharma’ is the great cosmic law underlying our world, corresponding to the concept of the Word, Logos. Zoroaster preached positive thought, positive speech and positive deeds; praying and praising the supreme being with recitation of litanies; refraining from using negative words; the supposed power of a curse, etc., all of which have their origins in this concept called the ‘power of the word’. Please remember the beginning of the Gospel of John:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with god, and the Word was god”. Yshua (Jesus) was the incarnation of the Word. Do not forget that the codebooks of the Abrahamic religions - the Old Testament, the New Testament and Kuran - state that a word has started the creation. At this point I refer you to the command, ‘Let there be light!’ of the Memphite theology, which predates the Old Testament and the Judaic belief system by thousand, and the Islamic ideology by thousands of years!

I have mentioned earlier that six of the Ten Commandments are included in Kuran 17:22, 23, 32, 33, 35 and 36. It is written in Kuran 17:39 that the verses between 17:22-36 “are the ones god has revealed to you (the Messenger) from wisdom.” As it is stated in Torah, the Ten Commandments are meant for the public consumption, in other words they are the ‘open’ section of the divine knowledge. Therefore, Ten Commandments are a part of the Sophia, wisdom. This is a confession to the effect that Torah was one of the sources of Islamic ideology.

The Messenger is reported to have said that  “Faith is Yemenî, wisdom is Yemenî.” (The origin of faith is Yemen, the origin of wisdom is Yemen), which is significant. If he has really said that, we have no choice but to believe that faith and wisdom (no matter whatever meaning the Messenger has attached to those words) has come from Yemen. This statement is significant because Prof. Dr. Philip Hitti points out that Yemen might have played the role of an intermediary between the ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Punjab. It is almost certain that cults, and belief systems from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and ancient Iran and from other places have influenced Yemen and actually existed there. Sabianism was widespread in Yemen. The hoopoe bird (hüdhüd in Kuran 27:22-25) reportedly tells Solomon that  “it has returned from the land of Sheba/Sebe, and that it has found a woman there ruling the people of Sebe, that they were worshipping the Sun” etc. This could be taken as an indication that there was Sun cult there. There was Zoroastrianism in Yemen. Judaism was present of course. There must have been ideas and concepts from India, which maybe the source of the echoes of Indian beliefs in Kuran. In view of all these it doesn’t seem wrong to believe in the reported words of the Messenger: “Faith is Yemenî, wisdom is Yemenî.”

VOWELS AND THE DIACRITICAL DOTS MISSING IN THE ORIGINAL RELIGIOUS TEXTS

Nabataeans are not in the codebook of Islam. Neither the Messenger nor the authors of the codebook had mentioned them. What was the reason for this omission?

• Was it because the Messenger and his close companions were Nabataeans so they never thought of referring to their origin?

• Was it because the later authors of the nationalist desert Arabs took great care to exclude that connection? 

No one could be sure, but I believe that it is still possible to find the traces of the Nabataean connection in Kuran. The forerunner of the ideology known as Islam today  (Ismaelite teaching), was initiated by a person and his close followers living in the valley of Hicr in the land of Midian. Now we should ask ourselves:

• Who has communicated the original messages that came down to us in Kuran albeit in an amended form? They were the Messenger and the first authors of the religious texts.

• Who was the Messenger? He was an Ismaelite living in Midian. He was a Nabataean.

• The language of the first religious texts, which could not be read by the Arabs of the desert, should have been the language of either the Messenger and/or his storyteller and/or the tutor and/or the author, sholudn’t it? Yes that is correct.

• The description that I have given earlier for the ‘Arab-ı Baide’ (It should be Arab-ı Mustaribe) is a confession for each of these alternatives, is it not? Yes it is.

When Ismael and his tribe joined the Arab-ı Aribe, we ended up with the Arab-ı Mustaribe. His native tongue was Hebrew. There were many tribes in the Arab-ı Mustaribe. Beni Zuhre, tribe of­ the Messenger’s mother (Amina binti Wahb) was one of them. Tribe of Kureysh was reportedly the privileged tribe within the Arab-ı Aribe. Therefore, the origin of the tribe of Kureysh must also be the land of Midian. Kureysh must have been part of the Jewish population there.

According to the Islamic ideology the conglomeration of Arab tribes called Arab-ı Mustaribe was formed by the Ad people, Thamud people, Amelekites, Kahtanites and the descendants of Ish’mael/Ismail.

• If that is the truth than the tongue of the Arab-ı Mustaribe must be a mixture of the Midianite tongue and the language of the Amalekites. The source of the Midianite must be the languages spoken by the peoples of Dedan, Lihyan (Lahyan, Liyn) and Thamud. There must have been words from the western Aramaic (Hebrew), eastern Aramaic (Syriac) and the local tongues. Maybe we should call this language Nabataean. Moreover, we should never forget, the Nabataean tongue had spread from Midian towards south to the Arabia Deserta and fashioned the Arabic of present.

The languages spoken in Palestine and the Midian were Semitic in those days. The Midianite branch of the Arabic of our day had seen consequtive periods of Dedanite, Lihyanite, Thamudean, Nabataean and Muslim. This is the region of origin of the present day Arabic.. In spite of this known fact, the Arab ideology avoids the Midianite-Nabataean influence again and looks upon al Hicr in Midian as a condemned land. Why do you think is that?

Besides the laymen, even the religious leaders were not always positive as to what the correct text of the codebook was. When one thinks about the mistakes made by the scholars of our day in their quotes from the written Kuran, the mistakes made in those days seem only natural when there was no written complete text, the language was foreign, and the transmission was by the word of mouth only.

• Those who introduced this new language spoken in Midian (Nabataean) to the desert Arabs as the tongue of the Ismaelite ideology must have been the Messenger and/or his tutors and/or his storytellers and/or the earliest author of the Ismaelite scriptures. Otherwise, the desert Arabs would not have come across this ‘mixed language.’ That is why the desert Arabs had to introduce the diacritical dots and vowels to read the Book, but in most cases, this process has altered the original root words, their pronunciation and meaning. If this was not the case, the language of Kuran would have been the language of the desert Arabs, and they need not have had the text punctuated to read and understand it.

• If the Messenger were a Makkan he would have been reading and writing in the language of them. Therefore, the desert Arabs would not experience problems in reading and ‘understanding’ the Ismaelite texts, and there would be no need to consult Zayd.

In the end when the Hagarene teaching was in the process of transformation into Islam punctuation based on Aramaic was accepted. Introduction of the diacritical dots and vowels led to differences in reading and comprehension, and in time different punctuation systems were created leading to further variations in meaning. Therefore, Caliph Ma’mun’s (Abdullah bin Harun-ur-Rashid) ban on the dots and vowels may be taken as an indication of the worries generated by this development.

The northern Arabic letters were used by the Arabs centuries before Islam. Christians in that region were using Arabic in their liturgy, poetry and commerce. In Florilegium Meichior de Vogue David G. Littman, has this to say on the bilingual inscription at Umm-al-Jimal (dated to the end of the 3rd century A.D.): “The script is already a transitory stage towards Arab script.” While another inscription at Namara (dated 328 A.D.) is still proto-Arabic (‘A Catholic European Scholar’). These letters are believed to have evolved into the first northern Arabic letters that have been found on the doors of the churches in Zabad, southeast of Aleppo in Syria (dated 512 A.D.), and in an inscription in Harran (dated 568 A.D.). These are reported to be Christian inscriptions written in a variation of Aramaic, which was the lingua franca of the ancient east. The alphabet of the ‘classical Arabic’ is said to have been developed by the Christians. The oldest examples of which are reportedly in the homes of the Christian Arabs of Syria.

Kuran was written in the old Kufic script, developed by the Christian missionaries of Hira (which is a ruined city south of Kufa in Irak). This script lacked the indication of vowels, so the consonants of the verbs could be read as actives or passives. Furthermore, many of the consonants themselves could not be distinguished without the diacritical dots that were added later, and some letters were omitted in the final text. Therefore, the original script of Kuran was defective. The resultant plain text with full vowels and diacritical dots was perfected in the late 9th century A.D. Without reference to any other action, this practice alone shows that the editorial work must have continued for almost 200 years.

These diacritical dots are crucial in reading and understanding the word. Here are some examples: Take the Arabic letter ‘ba’ (letter ‘b’). By changing the position of the diacritical dots we get three different letters: ‘ta’ (t), ‘ba’ (b) and ‘tha’ (z). Three different letters means three different words with three different meanings. Without these diacritical dots it is impossible to differentiate between cim and ha (‘c’ and ‘h’), dal and zel (‘d’ and ‘z’) ha and hı, ra and za (‘r’ and ‘z’), sin and şin (‘s’ and ‘ş’), sad and dat (‘s’ and ‘z’), tı and zı (‘t’ and ‘z’), ayn and gayn. There is no need for further explanation, is there? Without the diacritical dots, it is very difficult to read the word as intended and get the true meaning. Muslims accept Kuran as the word of god. Jews accept the Old Testament likewise. Language of the texts forming the Old Testament also had no vowels and the massoretes supplied them, which resulted in the loss of the original Hebrew words together with their original meanings.

In short, humans have supplied the crucial elements in these texts. They did it to make the texts readable and understandable for themselves. These additions were made according to the established trends in the cultural environments of the later periods. Therefore, a great deal of guesswork must have been involved in assigning those diacritical dots. Guesswork and choosing between options could not be done without interpretation, which leads to an almost new text. Therefore, this humanly intervention also means tampering with the divine(!) message. Here we must ask our vital questions:

• Who were those wise(!) and learned(!) people who carried out this work?

• Did they have a sufficient understanding of the divine(!) power and the divine(!) message?

• Were they ‘deep in knowledge’ like the ones who had been given permission to learn the secrets of the divine(!) realm?

• If the original of the codebook the desert Arabs have in their hands is in the divine realm, as a text written on a tablet, and given to them in their language, why were they unable to read and comprehend the messages?

• Is it wrong to think that the need of human intervention in the divine(!) revelation would lay that heavenly message open to intrusion stemming from from the limited intellects of the ‘lowly ’ human beings?

•  If portions of this divine(!) message written on a tablet up there were sent to different peoples at different times, why didn’t the omnipotent supreme being choose to send these messages in the particular languages of those peoples?

• If the original of the ‘word of god’ was without the diacritical dots and vowels, then who, in his right mind, could say that the codebook has not been tampered with?

The Kuranic scholar Ibn Mucahid was instrumental in the final canonization of a single system of consonants, and in setting a limit on the variations of vowels used in the text. This resulted in the acceptance of seven systems, but the matter was not settled there. Some scholars accepted ten readings, and some fourteen. Later, readings have come down to three. Two versions seem to be in use presently.

Mythologies and the fairy tales of the belief systems try to make us believe that all the languages were given by the supreme beings (not by a single being). In those days of ignorance, humankind thought that the Moon, planets and stars were supreme entities and that skies were full of them. The story in Genesis 11:7 in the Old Testament tells us that the Tower of Babel was built by the mankind, but the supreme being had separated them into groups and gave each group a different language. But the supposedly sole supreme entity says, “Let us go down,” because he is calling on the ‘others’ to descend to Earth with him. Who do you think those ‘others’ are? Since the skies are reserved for the supreme entities, they are the other deities of course.

If we take this fairy tale as a starting point, should we not expect these supreme entities sending down ‘complete’ languages with punctuation marks etc., so that the recipients of those tongues had no difficulty in reading and understanding the divine(!) messages sent to them? But the actual situation is different. Therefore;

• Could we say that the divine verses did have the punctuation marks but the scribes both in the Messenger’s time and later periods forgot to put them in the text, consequently laying the divine(!) word open to speculation and purposeful interpretations by the mankind? No!

• Then is it possible to say that the diacritical dots were present in the text but the writers around the Messenger and the others in later periods did not know the purpose of these dots and left them out, consequently making the text defective? No!

Here is the truth behind this debate about the defective text:

• These diacritical dots were not present in the language spoken in the land of Midian. The desert Arabs might have been using some diacritical dots but the texts the Messenger brought with him from the land of Midian had none. When the Messenger was alive, his texts could be read only by the help the Midianite group that accompanied him to Medina (Zayd was the principal person to be consulted). To read and understand the Ismaelite tongue the desert Arabs in the region were adding the diacritical dots in their particular tongues to the texts, which caused differences in the reading and understanding of the said scriptures.

Here is the verdict at this stage:

• The diacritical dots were added to the Messenger’s religious texts because the Midianite tongue was foreign to the desert Arabs. Groups of desert Arabs were using their own particular dots. This practice had led to differences in reading. Therefore, when the desert Arabs stole the Hagarene teaching following the death of the Messenger and set about to transposing the original scriptures into a nationalist and expansionist tool for themselves they felt the need to standardize the texts. That was the only way to create a uniform reading and understanding necessary for supporting their drive for the global supremacy. Therefore, the dots and vowels must have been established by the central authority for the last time during this period of transformation. The tongue spoken by the Messenger and his Midianite companions, and the texts written in that tongue was ‘defective’ from the standpoint of the desert Arabs, and the writers, readers and ordinary people of the later periods until the uniformity established by Haccac.

This verdict leads us to another vital question:

• Did those editors and writers, who did the guess work to read the text as it was intended, and have punctuated it in the end, receive a revelation from the omnipotent supreme entity on where to put the vowels and diacritical dots? No!

One of the prominent Muslim scholars furnished the crucial reply:  “The companions did not use vowels or the diacritical dots in the copies they wrote. Then in the last period of the companions’ epoch, when reading errors have begun, they began to furnish the diacritical dots and vowels to the copies of the Kuran. This was admissible based on the authority of the majority of the scholars, though some of them disliked it, the situation necessitated it.”

• Who were these companions? They were the members of the immediate group around the Messenger. They were reading the texts because it was written in their mother tongue. They were the Midianite Nabataeans and they did not need the diacritical dots and/or the vowels.

• Therefore, there were no dots in the texts until the death of the Messenger.

According to the official ideology the codebook of Islam could not be tampered with, because it is the inimitable(!) word(!) of god. It could not be translated into another language because the translation process would necessitate the human intervention. Hence it should be read only in the language it was given(!), Arabic (which is absolute nonsense!). Since it could not be translated to another language, only the ‘general meaning’ could be given, but the editorial works summarized earlier have been done on this very book that could not be tampered with.

According to the rule, ‘only the general meaning could be given’ without being literal, but no one realizes the fact that in order to give the meaning, one has to understand, comprehend, and translate the idea into another language, which is impossible without interpretation. So we are back to square one, the divine(!), because the message would be tampered with again. If someone would find a way to give the meaning of the message without interpretation then the final text would be as incomprehensible as the original. As you can see, a solution is impossible. The messages sent to the Messenger were intended as an extremely focused teaching according to the official ideology, because the messages were sent via an ‘Arab’ Messenger belonging to the Hashemite family of the Kureysh tribe of the Arab community living in and around Makka. The Arabs claim that this narrow focusing excluded any need of translation to other languages, because it was a teaching only for the Arabs in Arabic (As explained earlier they needed an exclusive scripture for themselves). There was no need of translation to other languages. Since the codebook was sent in Arabic it should be read in Arabic (as if Arabic is the language of god!). Their concealed objective was imperialism, expansionism and domination. They had to arabicised all the subjugated foreign peoples to reach that aim, and Arabic recitation of Kuran was (and still is) the first and most important condition.

Islam that came into being after the Ismaelite teaching of the Messenger was transformed has always upheld and used Arabic. The expansionist and imperialistic Arab ideology called Islam has tried and still tries to present itself as the universal belief system for the whole of humankind. The events of the recent years have made clear that the desert Arabs have been extremely successful in creating slaves and soldiers of this ideology out of the peoples who were not related to the Arabs. Try to find a link between the Arabs and the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh. There is none, except the ideology itself. The Arab imperialism dictates the acceptance of the Arab values, Arab approach, Arab understanding and Arab way of life in order to be a real believer of Islam. In this perspective the Arab way of life is presented as the correct way of life as practiced by the Messenger.

Ideology of Islam is the product of Arab nationalism. The international acts of this Arab nationalism have transformed the Islamic faith into a weapon of international policy and imperialism, but in fact neither the Arab nationality nor the Arabic language can be equated with Islam. There are millions of believers of Islam who are not the Arabic speakers and do not lead an Arabic way of life. In fact, they hate both Arabs and anything that is Arabic. On the other hand being Arab cannot be equated with Islam and all the Arabs are not Muslims. We should not overlook the existence of the Christian Arabs. Therefore:

• Being an Arab does not necessitate the adherence to a specific belief system.

• There is not a single rule which dictates that a follower of Islam should become an Arab.

Nothing has changed today:

• The driving force behind the extremely confrontational and troublesome drive by the Arab imperialism is the Muslim Arabs and the arabicised peoples under their control, all of whom aim to meet a particular requirement of the Arabs living in the Arabian Peninsula.

This particular requirement is to create an exclusive ‘lebensraum’ (living room-living area) for the Arabs, which in fact could only be realized with the creation of an Arab Commonwealth. This Arab Commonwealth will be extremely useful when the oil beneath the central Arab lands is no more, and Arabs come face to face with the prospect of going back to their life of 1400 years ago - camel trading. I believe this is one of the most important of the Arabian objectives, which will definitely play a central role in saving them from impoverishment.

The codebook of Islam is accepted as the only source of reference in interpreting the Islamic law and passing judgement accordingly, because this codebook is believed to be the inimitable ‘word of god.’ Based on this recap we should ask the fundamental question:

• When there are so many ‘defective’ words, when there have been so many intrusions by the mankind, when we know that the text we have today have been rewritten many times before, who in his right mind could tell what the ‘truth’ is?

CULTURES AND LANGUAGES THAT HAVE INFLUENCED THE CODEBOOK OF ISLAM

Ismaelite-Hagarenes were of the Sabian faith in the beginning but with the borrowed concepts and stories from Judaism, Christianity and the local cultures they have built the Hagarene teaching. When that teaching was in the process of transformation into Islam Kuran’s authors had to overcome immense difficulties. They had to adapt new words and new expressions to fresh ideas, because their tongue had no fixed grammar or suitable terminology. They could not have felt free to invent new words because that would have made them completely incomprehensible in their society. The only solution seemed to be to import words from the language of the culture which has produced the greatest ‘god sent’(!) codebook of the region, Taurat (the Old Testament), because those words were in circulation amongst their hearers. Furthermore those words belonged to a language akin to theirs; that language has been the religious language for centuries; the communities conversing and praying in that language have been living right next door, sharing the same environment with the Arabs; that belief system had a highly organized structure. The style of the codebook of the Islamic belief system is the product of that environment. Kuran does not resemble any other classical Arabic book, because Kuran did not have a particular Arabic body of literature behind. That is the reason behind the peculiar style of the authors of Kuran, which makes it different from the other classical Arabic texts.

Therefore, the author/authors of the codebook of Islam were trying their hand in a new language that was under the influence of a predecessor with an older culture and established literature. This older language was a dialect of the eastern Aramaic - Syriac.

According to the scholars Syriac, Hebrew, and Ethiopic were the three main sources of influence on the style of Kuran. They point out that the Hebrew textual influence that bore on the biblical Hebraisms were already existing in the Syriac Psitto (Peschitta, Peshitto). The legendary Biblical elements that are emphasized in the Kuranic studies existed in those apocryphal books circulating amongst the populace of the Syrian Churches of south Syria and Arabia. Rev. Alphonse Mingana writes, “In this connection we may state with some confidence that taking the number 100 as a unit of the foreign influences on the style and terminology of the Kuran, Ethiopic would represent about 5 per cent of the total, Hebrew about 10 per cent, the Greco-Roman languages about 10 per cent, Persian about 5 per cent, and Syriac (including Aramaic and Palestinian Syriac) about 70 per cent.” 

According to Rev. Mingana, the Syriac influence on the phraseology of Kuran could be seen on the proper names, religious terms, common words, orthography, construction of sentences, and foreign historical references. The proper names of Biblical individuals found in Kuran are used in their Syriac form. Such names include those of Solomon [Şlemon, Suleyman - the ‘a’ (aleph) before the ‘n’ is said to be a later addition of the scribes]; Pharaoh (Fir’avn, Fir’avun), I’zak (Ishak), Ishmael (Isma’il), Israel (Isra’il), Jacob (Yakub), Noah (Nuh), Zachariah (Zakarya, Zekarya), and Mary (Maryam is Miryam in the Massoretic text, but Targum of Onkelos on Exodus 15:20 gives it as Maryam. Ethiopic is also Maryam).

I must remind you at this point that when Haccac ordered the writing of the final text of Kuran some diacritical dots and vowels from Syriac were added. This could be another indication that in the period when the final writing of Kuran was in progress, Syriac had the strongest influence on the Arabs living in Irak.

Another very remarkable fact emerging from all the above words is their pronunciation. The majority of the Christians around Hicaz and South Syria belonged to the Jacobite (Yakubî) community and not to that of the Nestorians (Nasturîs). The pronunciation used in the Arabic proper names mentioned above is that of the Nestorians (Remember the Nestorian monk Sergis Bhira who was one of the Messenger’s tutors) and not that of the Jacobites. The latter say Ishmo’il, Isro’il and Ishok etc., and not Isma’il, Isra’il, and Ishak, and also Furkon and not Furkan, Kurbon and not Kurban, Kashish and not Kashshish (with a shadda), as they appear in the Kuran.

There are also Greco-Roman names in Kuran. Yunus (Jonas) and Ilyas (Elijah) are the two of them. It is almost certain that these names were used by the Christians in Syria and consequently taken from them. Indeed many men of the Jacobite, Nestorian, Melchite, and Maronite Syrians (from the third Christian century) had names either completely Greek or with a pronounced Greek termination only. The number of such men literally amounts to thousands. As an illustration of the final letter ‘sin’ Rev. Alphonse Mingana remarks that many Syrian names like Yohannis (Yohanna, Yohanan, John), Mattaeus (Mattai, Matthew), Thomas (Thoma) could be cited as examples.

On the names like Yahya and Isa in Kuran Rev. Alphonse Mingana has this to say: “By applying the Syriac method of proper names we will be able to throw light on some strange forms of names used in the Qoran. To express ‘John’ the Qoran of our days has the strange form Yahya. This name is almost certainly the Syriac Yohannan. In the early and undotted Qorans the word was in a form which could be read as Yohanna, Yohannan, or Yahya, and the Muslim kurra (experienced reciters of Qoran) who knew no other language besides Arabic adopted the erroneous form, Yahya … So far as the word Isa is concerned, it was apparently in use before Muhammad, and it does not seem probable that it was coined by him. A monastery in South Syria, near the territory of the Christian Ghassanid Arabs, bore in A.D. 571 the name Isaniyah, that is to say, ‘of the followers of Yshua’.” (On Yahya, I must point out that the Mandaeans-Sabians called him Yahya. Therefore, kurra did not adopt this name erroneously, it was the name used by the followers of the Messenger from the land of Midian, where he adopted the Sabian faith. The quotes I gave from the Mandaeans make clear that Rev. Alphonse Mingana is wrong about his views on ‘Yahya’ in Kuran.)

According to Rev. Alphonse Mingana almost all of the religious terms and theological expressions found in Kuran are derived from Syriac, and the Kuranic religious terms that betray Hebraic influence are the two technical terms of taurat (Torah), and tabut, (‘ark’). The Jewish influence on the religious vocabulary of Kuran is not powerful. In spite of the close and intimate relations that existed between Hicaz and Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia) the Abyssinian religious influence on the style of the Kuran is reportedly not very strong. We have the words havariyyun (apostles); suhuf (leaves, sheets), masgeda, mesgad (mascid) etc.

Other non-Arabic words in Kuran originate from Hebrew, Aramaic, Abyssinian, Nabataean, Coptic, Greek, and Turkish. This is how the Islamic authorities defend the existence of non-Arabic words: “There was a community of Arabs called al-Baide (Arab-ı Baide) once upon a time. Following the disappearance of them a new Arabic community came into being. Many words from other peoples’ tongues have infiltrated this community’s language. Kuran was revealed in this community’s tongue, consequently all those foreign words appeared in the Book.” The Muslim Arabs consider the long lost Amalekites, Ad and Thamud peoples as the members of the early Arabs - the al-Baide. The Amalekites, Ad and Thamud are all associated with the land of Midian and the Valley of Hicr, where the Messenger began revealing his teaching. Closer to the time of the Messenger that region was under the rule of the Nabataeans. The desert Arabs-Makkans could not read the texts of the Messenger’s Hagarene teaching, and they added some of the diacritical dots. The root of the present day Arabic is Nabataean spoken in the land of Midian. Interesting, is it not?

The French monk, Bruno Bonnet-Evmard claims that an alphabetic system was fixed for the sole purpose of publishing Kuran and that the alphabet used in the Kuran is only a pure and straightforward transposition into Arabic from the Hebrew alphabet.

As a face saving measure, the Arabs remind us of the existence of al Arab-ul Mustaribe (peoples who are not Arabs originally, but who were arabicised), with the intimation that words from their particular tongues have infiltrated the Arabic. The fact that even the best Arab philologists cannot understand (or understand only with difficulty) these words shows that these foreign words are not arabicised.

Amongst the suras referring to the language, there is a very peculiar one in Kuran 42:7: “We have revealed to you a Kuran in Arabic so that you can caution the mother of settlements and civilisations, and the ones around it.” This ‘mother of settlements and civilisations’ must be Makka. Can you imagine Makka as the ‘mother of settlements and civilisations’? I cannot! Consider the conditions in the Arabian Peninsula today, go back 1400 years in time, there was only one settlement, which could be called a ‘city.’ It was Medinta (meaning city in Hebrew), which is Medina of our day. There was no other city around. In that case, how a settlement that has not become a city yet could be the mother of civilisations? How a population, which has failed to change a village into a city, could be called a civilisation? This is possible under only one condition, if these stories were written by the desert Arabs themselves. ‘The ones around it’ should be a reference to the Makkans and the common folk of various faiths living around the village (supposedly the ones who have rejected the Messenger).

SOME EXAMPLES OF THE ERRORS IN KURAN

In addition to the errors that were in the actual borrowed material, there are errors also in the original Hagarene and Arabic material that appear in the Kuran. So, what do you think is the reason behind these errors?

• Was it because of the limited comprehension of the person who had heard the original stories?

• Was it because of the errors that the teller of tales had made due to his ignorance or inadequate knowledge?

• Was it because of the deliberate changes that the narrator had made to the original tales?

Various reasons have been given for the errors in Kuran. You may find some of the obvious errors below:

Kuran says that Haman is the chief minister of the pharaoh, but he was not. He was a character who has supposedly lived in Babylon 1000 years later. To be precise, the name Haman could be found in the story of Esther in Babylon, 1100 years after the Pharaoh. To those who believe that the reference in Kuran is to another Haman, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the name Haman is not Egyptian, but particularly Babylonian.

The second example to these errors is the one about the mother of Yshua - Miryam/Maryam. In Kuran 19:28, the mother of Yshua is referred to as the ‘sister of Aaron’. Meanwhile according to Kuran 66:12 Miryam’s father is Imran/Amran, and in 3:35, Miryam’s mother is described as ‘the wife of Imran’. This leaves no doubt that there is confusion.  Let us look for the truth. Read the Old Testament, Numbers 12:1:

• “And Miryam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.”  

In Exodus 15:1-19 we are told the story of the “Miracle of the sea” (Song of Moses), followed by a short piece of text in Exodus 15:20-21:

• “And Miryam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the woman went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miryam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.”  

The most important thing in this is the reference to Miryam as a ‘prophetess’, which is the first reference in the Old Testament to a female messenger. This Miryam is said to be the stepsister of Moses. The writers of Kuran must have confused this Miryam with the mother of Yshua.

The New Testament, while giving the genealogy of Miryam, says that she is a descendant of David (or the tribe of Levi) thus from ‘royalty’. Therefore, with an extremely imaginative interpretation it might be said that Kuran is referring to this tribal relationship, which makes Miryam one of the ‘sisters’ in the tribe where Aaron was also a member. But this is extremely unlikely because of the reference to Miryam’s mother as ‘the wife of Imran/Amran’ in Kuran 3:35. There are several centuries between Moses and Yshua, between Imran/Amran and Miryam, and Miryam the prophetess and Miryam the mother of Yshua.

Kuran presents Alexander the Great as a righteous man and a teacher. This is wrong, because it is a well known fact that he was a licentious, belligerent, and idolatrous man who claimed to be the son of Amun/Amen (The Egyptian god) and not the servant of Allah!

Moses’ adoption by Pharaoh’s wife in Kuran 28:9 is wrong because the Old Testament states Moses was adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:10).

Kuran 19:7 claims that the name of Yahya (Yohanan, John, the Baptist) has not been given to anybody before (in other words, being particular to the 1st century A.D.), whereas this name is mentioned as ‘Yohanan the son of Karea’ much earlier in II Kings 25:23.

Kuran 5:116 includes in the definition of the Christian Trinity the person of Maryam/Miryam (Mary), which contradicts not only the biblical account but the belief in Trinity held by almost the entire Christian population for the last 2,000 years. We are told that “an insignificant and heretical sect called the Cholloridians held this view, who lived in the Middle East at the time of the Qoran’s compilation” (http://debate.org.uk). Some modern day Islamic scholars also confirm this information. This could well be the reason behind this gross error. Otherwise, we would have to doubt the all-knowing character of the supreme being. The supreme being of the Old Testament and the ‘father’ of the New Testament is also the supreme being of Kuran. Should not he have known the truth behind the doctrine of Trinity? After all, he is one of the characters in Trinity, is he not? So, who do you think is behind this error originating from a heretical Christian sect? Sergius Bhira of course, who had narrated this story.

According to Kuran the meteors and even stars are said to be the missiles fired at the eavesdropping satans and jinns who are said to be trying to eavesdrop on the reading of the Kuran in heaven and pass on what they have heard  to mankind (suras 15:16-18; 37:6-10; 55:33-35; 67:5; 72:6-9). How should we read these suras? Are we to believe that Allah throws meteors made up of carbon dioxide (a non material entity throwing physical matter around?) or an iron-nickel combination at non-material devils, who are eavesdropping at the heavenly council? The ignorance, imagination, creativity and daring of the credulous humankind have absolutely no limits!

How could a Samirî/Samerî (Shomer, Shomron, Samaritan) mould a golden calf for the Sons of Israel (Kuran 20:85-96)? Samaria was not in existence then. Samaritans came on to the stage after the Babylonian exile. How could a Samaritan be coeval with Moses?

Now, what you have to do is to ask yourself as to who could be the possible storytellers and the listeners. When you find the answer, the problem would be no more. Actually, the recognition that there was a storyteller and a listener, in itself, is adequate to solve the problem.

We should also be conscious of the fact that some of the errors in Kuran have their origins in the source material. For example, the story about Satan’s refusal to prostrate before or worship Adam (in Kuran 2:30-34, and other suras) is not in the Old Testament, but it is a Talmudic legend. This observation has very important consequences (which compels me to take up Talmud later on, and remind you what kind of a book it is).

The judgment day stories that appear in Kuran are not in the Old Testament. I shall try to establish the source material/materials later on (that would also give you an idea about the codebook/codebooks that is/are sanctioned by Kuran).

The story about Av’ram (Abraham, Ibrahim) thrown into fire by Nimrod is not in the Old Testament but Midrashim of Mishnah.

The son who Av’ram attempted  to offer to his god is given as I’zak in the Old Testament. The name given in Kuran, Ismail  (Ish’mael) is written in the Talmud and Mishnah.

The story in Kuran, which is about Ibrahim breaking the idols in the temple, looking for the divine being amongst the stars and Sun and Moon, then rejecting their ‘godhood’ has nothing to do with the story of Abraham in the book of Genesis.  When we read the story told by Ibn Sankila again [as quoted by Al Birunî (The Knowledge of Life, Şinasi Gündüz)] we discover the source of the story. The Messenger and the Hagarenes (they were of the Sabian faith) had this story in their original codebook (which is Kiryan), and which had its origins in the Mandaean legends (Here Abraham is the Bahram of the Mandaeans – Bahram the Mandaî):

• “Abraham left the community simply because leprosy appeared on his foreskin and that everybody who suffered from this disease was considered impure and excluded from all society.  Therefore, he cut off his foreskin i.e. circumcised himself.  In this state, he entered one of their idol-temples when he heard a voice speaking to him: ‘O Abraham, you went away from us with one sin and you return with two sins.  Go away and do not come to us again.’  Thereupon Abraham seized by wrath, broke the idols in pieces and left their community.” (This is the actual scene that the ideology of Islam describes, where Ibrahim destroys the idols and images.)

Talmud, which is the collective work of Israel’s religious authorities was the book in use by all the Jews living in and around Palestine and throughout the Arabian Peninsula, in the time of the Hagarene Messenger. In this book, which is second only to Torah it is written that the supreme being has created a ‘female’ together with Adam, but what about the story that the female (Eve, Havva) was created from the rib of the male (Adam)? In another section in the book it is written that the female was created from the rib of the male (Genesis 2:7-22), but in others narrates that both male and female were created together (Genesis 1:27, 5:2). Only one of those stories could be the true story, but which one. Talmud tells us that god did create a ‘female’ with Adam. The name of this female was Lil’ith. She claimed equality with Adam (a woman on the same level with a man for the Jews, never!), and was defiant. She became a female Jinn (demon). Then god created a woman ‘worth only a single rib of man’ (this must be Eve, Haven), as an inferior being than Adam and saved the happiness of the first family. This is most probably a futile attempt to remedy the dilemma introduced by the two creation stories in the Old Testament: Did He create them together, or in succession? If only a character is found for the first creation story the reliability of the biblical account would be saved. Invention of a character named Lil’ith (which does not appear in the Genesis story), and her negative-evil portrait served precisely that purpose. In the original of this story, Lilith is portrayed as a female demon of Jewish folklore (equivalent to the English vampire). The personality and name (‘night monster’) are derived from a Babylonian-Assyrian demon Lilit, Lilitu or Lilu. The superstition was extended to a cult surviving among some Jews even as late as the 7th century A.D. In the Rabbinical literature Lilith becomes the first wife of Adam, but flies away from him and becomes a demon which makes the two creation stories in the Old Testament agreeable (Are they?).

Now it is time to remember Talmud.

Talmud is the main text of the Rabbinical Judaism, second only to Torah. Talmud has two versions:

• The more detailed, complete, progressive and authoritative version is called the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Babli), which has come into being during the Babylonian exile in Sura, Babylonia (5th century A.D.).

• Second version is the Palestinian Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi) of the 4th century A.D., which is more conservative and traditionalist.

Talmud includes Mishnah, which is the compiled and written version of the Oral Law passed down by the word of mouth through the centuries, and Gemara, which is the collection of commentaries on Mishnah. Torah is also used for the oral scriptures, codified in Mishnah, edited by Yuda ha-Nasi (the Prince) in the 2nd century A.D. Mishnah is divided into six sections, dealing with the legal and ritual (halakhah) side of things: agricultural laws (zeraim), festivals (moed), the place of woman (nahsim), property and civil matters (nezikin), the temple duties (kadoshin), and ritual purity (taharoth).

Much of the later Judaism is based on the Mishnah. It was codified by rabbi Yuda and included the previous decrees on religious matters and the ones issued by the rabbis under him. Mishnah has left out many things. The explanations in the Gemara have further explanations called Midrashim, which are not considered a part of the Talmud.

Talmud is a collection of texts, which records almost all of the declared opinions and which includes endless arguments and points of view. When there is a need to reconcile the contradictory texts in Talmud (believe you me, it is an almost daily affair!), commentaries known as Midrashim is consulted, which is a tradition of the Rabbinical Biblical exposition and exegesis designed to reveal the inner meaning of Torah.  Talmud is the theological, moral and folkloric side of Judaism. It is not a divine book. It is not the word of god. Talmud is the proof of the intellectual frustration and agony that humankind has brought upon itself because of the most complicated concept that it has created.

In a sense, the codebook of Islam seems to be in harmony with Mishnah (and its extensions) and the Babylonian Talmud. In the early period of the Hagarenes, the basic books of the Mosaic belief system were among the texts that the collectors and writers of the scriptures have drawn on. Majority of this borrowed material was written into the new text of the codebook when the desert Arabs were transforming the original teaching into Islam.

Islamic belief system and the religious literature have an identical structure with the ‘proper’ example it had in its early days - the Old Testament (the codebook) and the Talmud (the exegetes' collected views) that is larger than the codebook itself. In Islam there is Kuran (the codebook) and Hadiths (the exegesis by the learned scholars of Islam) well exceeding the Kuran in volume.

Do not forget, a sacred codebook in itself is not sufficient for a belief system to achieve its final form. Unfortunately, contributions by its clerics are an essential part for a complete system.  Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are alike in this sense. In other words, we are back again with the humankind’s fruitless efforts to resolve the problems invented by himself. What I would like to bring to your attention here is that all this exegetical work was and is done by the humankind. The exegetes and the scholars were the people who have established these rules.

Most scholars conclude that the stories about the Messenger’s pre-prophethood period are fictitious. Some scholars maintain that even in the most stringently precise hadith collections there were straightforward fabrications originating from the 8th and 9th centuries. Thus, consequently, the isnads (chain of transmitters) that support those forgeries were completely suppositious. Therefore, if the hadith isnads are doubtful, “the isnads attached to historical reports must be doubtful” also. Majority of the hadiths are considered as “the result of the religious, historical and social development of Islam during the first two centuries.”  These forgeries are accepted as useless for any scientific historical research and can only serve as a tool for observation of the tendencies of the very early Muslim community.

It was Shafiî (died 820 A.D.) who stipulated in the 9th century A.D. that all traditions of law must be traced back to the Messenger in order to preserve their credibility. This must be the starting point for those schools of law to produce their traditions supposedly invoking the authority of the Messenger. These tremendously creative efforts in the 9th and 10th centuries by these groups to gain legitimacy extending as far back as Messenger himself is seen as the reason which undermines the authenticity of the hadiths. In the 70 years between Shafiî and Ibn Mâca the hadiths that were supposedly traced to the Messenger himself have multiplied unbelievably. Here are the most important observations about hadiths:

• The source of the first period hadiths becomes hazy as we move closer to the time of the Messenger, but reason tells that the opposite should be the case. The sources should become more clear as we move towards his period.

• What do you think was the situation when we moved away from the time of the Messenger? Plain reason tells us that when we move away from his time, in other words, when we come closer to the period of the invented hadiths the referrals (isnads) should become hazy. On the contrary, the sources of the narrations, in other words, referrals become much more clear and distinct eventually going back to the Messenger himself. Therefore, the possibility of an hadith being invented increases with the growth in the unequivocal referrals. More unequivocal referrals point to the higher certainty that the hadith is a fabrication.

We can safely say that almost all of the of the “hadiths are the product of the social and political struggles in the first two centuries of Islam.” The narrative of a narrative as reported by someone who based his account on another narrative of another account… it goes on and on, in other words, a hadith could not be used for historical purposes. Hadiths could only be used as tools in establishing the trends and predispositions in the early periods of the Muslim society.

THE PROBLEM OF THE ABROGATING VERSES IN THE CODEBOOK

Orthodox Islam does not demand uniformity of the Kuran, but permits variant readings differing usually (but not always) in fine points. The non-orthodox variations are believed to be the outcome of the Messenger’s habit of changing the revealed verses frequently, which is known as the practice of abrogation. Because of this practice majority of the Messenger’s followers were left in the dark as to what the abrogating version was. It is not difficult to imagine the degree of confusion on what is Kuran and what is not in those days.

• I believe that these ‘abrogating’ verses are not the making of the Messenger, but the outcome of either the editorial works performed on the religious texts by different authors who were not in agreement with each other or the changing viewpoints in between the editorial works.

Some Muslim scholars and scholars of other faiths blame the abrogating verses for some of the problems they have experienced. If we leave aside the fact that the codebook was written many times over and assume that the Messenger was behind the abrogating verses, the following points should be considered:

• The Messenger was the only authority in putting into effect the rules of the belief system. Was he not?

•  Communicating the verses was the privilege of the Midianite Messenger. Was it not?

• The Messenger was the only person who received these ‘extraterrestrial’ metaphysical messages. Was he not?

• (According to the official ideology) the Messenger was the only person who knew the contents of these messages. Was he not?

•  (According to the official ideology)  the Messenger was the only person who communicated these messages. Was he not?

• The Messenger was the only person who knew what was going on, how the message traffic was operating, and what was the purpose of the established ‘order. Was he not?

Since all the answers to these questions are affirmative, one should acknowledge,

• The Messenger by the nature of the ongoing ‘operation’ was the only authorized person to receive, communicate, amend and abrogate these messages.

We are told that some of the abrogating verses were revealed before the abrogated ones(!). Who could explain this discrepancy? Clearly there is something wrong here. The Muslim scholars were and still are unable to provide an explanation. Those who looked into this matter in the light of reason have immediately grasped the truth: These abrogating verses were the product of the later editorial works performed on the codebook and the transformation process carried out by the desert Arabs.

RULE OF INTENT IN ISLAM

Kuran 2:225 introduces a specific condition concerning oaths/vows: “Allah would not hold you responsible on your unintentional, slip-of-the-tongue vows.”   This guidance is seen as the basis of the rule of intent in Islam. Though not clearly specified in Kuran, the Messenger is said to have imposed this rule. For a declaration of intent to be valid, there are four imperatives according to the Islamic law:

• One has to be a Muslim;

• One has to have a sound mind;

• One has to be fully conscious of the deed to be done;

• One has to be enthusiastic about doing that specific deed.

In reality Talmud is the source of this principle. The rule of the declaration of intent, which was introduced by the distinguished Jewish sage Hillel pronounces that “an act without intention, although willed, is not considered a legal act; the intention should be declared openly.” Acts by minors and by those who have lost their mental health are invalid because they cannot exercise the rule of intent. This principle has had a far-reaching influence on all Jewish rituals and civil and criminal laws. This principle has become an integral part of the legal system of the Talmud.

The Hagarene movement fashioned by the Messenger, together with his tutors and advisors, has adopted this principle as a religious practice, because they have either thought or made to believe that Talmud was a holy book. Declaration of intent before all kinds of prayer is obligatory in Islam, because one has to know consciously and declare openly the purpose of one’s actions.

That is why Islam has introduced the following rule:

• Stay away from prayers until you have a sound mind and a clear head.

This state where a sound mind does not exist is called the state of ‘sekr’ in Islam (Kuran 4:43), which is interpreted as being under the influence of alcohol. But this state should be taken in a much broader sense, including the effects of intoxicating agents and the chemical substances like drugs and medicines that effect the central nervous system, because anything which interferes with the thought processes causes a state of ‘sekr’. The underlying concept is obvious:

• If one is unable to think and reason with a sound mind and consciously one would be unable to declare one’s intention, which would make the prayer or the act purposeless, null and void.

Therefore, it would be right to say that,

• In order to believe and have faith in something, in other words, to act at the spiritual level one has to know, understand, decide and act accordingly.

All of these are the processes related to one’s mind and spirituality, and they dissolve down to the ‘will’. ‘Will’ makes actions important, effective and valuable.

Intention also plays a role in magic.

• In order to perform magic one has to know, desire, contemplate and decide, concentrate on the required action and act.

This could also be expressed as ‘will’, which envelops all the spiritual processes. The elevated spiritual processes and ‘thought’ in this way lead us to the concept of mind-over-matter.

Since I have left behind hundreds of pages in this journey, I need to remind you once more that my intention is not to delve into the unknown wherever it may be, but to try to solve what the mankind has thought, visualized, invented, and made into an insoluble problem: A supreme being and his supposed acts.

I believe that no one should be offended by the reality, but every one must try to contemplate about the roots of one's faith with an open mind. Because;

• Without the declaration of intent no deed is legal or valid; no prayer is sanctioned; therefore one has to know what one is doing, since when, for whom, and why.

• In order to answer these questions one needs to know the background of the conventions of our day, where they come from, how and why etc.

•  One has every right to discover the basics of one’s faith.

You may go on believing without asking questions, that is your business, but;

• In order to become a virtuous individual as your faith necessitates you have to ask questions, use your brain and your reason. This is the only method, which would turn you into an upright human being.

• Do not ever be fooled by the claims that ‘logic and reason could not explain everything.’

PRAYERS (SALAT) IN ISLAM

The religious ceremonies and displays are fashioned with the aim of separating a specific community from the others and creating an individual identity. Only then, these ceremonies become actual acts of worship. Research shows that there were very little acts of worship mandated in the period of Ismaelite-Hagarene teaching and in the first years of Islam, which is a spin-off of the former. Researchers point out that because the first Muslim acts of worship were called (like the Christians) the salat, these acts must have been fashioned on those of the Eastern Christians. Salat was a series of acts like bending down, kneeling, prostrating and reciting the sacred texts. Muslims do exactly like that while praying.

Believers in those days are thought as turning to Yerushalim (Jerusalem, Al Kuds) while praying. In fact, both the Hagarene mu’minûn and Muslims after the transformation of the Hagarene teaching into Islam were turning towards Bakka (in the direction of Yerushalim both for the Ismaelites in and around Medina and for the desert Arabs praying deep in the peninsula). Kuran 3:96 says the ‘first house of god’ was established by Ibrahim (Abraham) in Bakka.

The prayers were twice daily in the beginning. That was all. Some scholars say the number was increased to thrice daily at a later period. It could be said that three prayers daily were ordered by Kuran 17:78-79, but 20:130 gives the impression of an increase in the number of prayers per day. The number of daily prayers could be given as four according to Kuran 30:17-18. The number is likely to have been raised to five later on. Kuran 2:238 especially wants the middle prayer (noon?) kept.  In short, the number of daily prayers is not clear. In addition to the ambiguity in the number of daily prayers, there is also no agreement in the placement of suras in Kuran and their assumed order of revelation.

There are five suras dealing with the number of prayers in Kuran. According to the accepted order of revelation, the first sura on the number of prayers is the 20th, where the number is five. The next sura in the order of revelation is the 17th, and the number of daily prayers is given as three. The 11th  sura gives the number as three. 30th sura gives the number of daily prayers as four. The fifth sura is the 2nd, and the number of prayers here is not clear. What could be the reason behind this variation in the number of daily prayers? Since the Hagarene mu’minûn in the period of the Messenger were praying twice daily, the variations must be the result of the editorial work on the codebook, done by the authors of different viewpoints, following the Messenger’s death. It is clear that the number of prayers was changed and finalized after the Messenger’s time as five times daily.

In the beginning believers were permitted to include personal prayers during their daily worship, because the religious texts were taken from many sources belonging to many cultures so there was no sense in pushing people into a unified, official list of prayers to be read during the daily worship. But, when the age of conquests began the authorities needed a central control, unified focus, unified approach, and only certain parts of Kuran were ordered to be read during daily worship. No other additional acts of worship were dictated in those days.

CREATION IN ISLAM

One of the most unbelievable, outlandish and irrational concepts in Kuran is about the supreme being just ‘willing’ and uttering the word ‘be’, which is sufficient for anything to happen or ‘become’(!) ex nihilo. This concept appears in Kuran 3:47, 59; 5:117; 6:73; 16:40; 19:35; 36:82 and 40:68.

Here is Kuran 6:73: “(He) says ‘be’, and it happens right away.”

Kuran 11:7 narrates what god has done: “He is the One who created the skies and the earth in six days. And his throne was on the water.”

Moreover in suras 6:1; 14:19; 15:85; 16:3; 18:7; 21:16,30; 23:17-22, 115; 25:59; 30:8; 31:10; 32:4; 38:27; 40:57; 51:56; 44:38-39; 45:22; 46:3; 50:38; 64:3; 65:12; 67:2-3; and 71:15  Kuran tells us repeatedly that god was the one who created the earth and the sky.

When enquired about the circumstances before Rabb had started Creation, the Messenger is reported to have said that that “Rabb was on a cloud, there was air beneath and above. There were no creatures, and his throne was on the water.”  Rabb is a Biblical name and has meanings like master and teacher. Islam uses the word as one of the names of the supreme being. The Sabians also used Rabb the name of their deity. Do not forget that Sabian faith was at the root of the Hagarene teaching and the Messenger was of the Sabian faith. In order to find what is the source of the Messenger’s statement above we have to look into one of the predecessors of Kuran, the Old Testament. In Genesis 1-2 we read: “In the beginning god created the heaven and the earth… And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of god moved upon the face of the waters.”  

The impression we get from this statement is that someone who was present at the progress of events is describing the scene immediately before Creation. This is absurd. According to the Judaic faith, Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) was written by Moses himself.  Since the Creation is narrated in one of the books of Torah, has Moses been present before and at the Creation? If that was not the case, then could we say that either the Elohim or YHVH, who was designated as the supreme being later on has told the story of Creation to Moses and he wrote the story in his books?  What the god of Islam, the omnipotent power, tells us in Kuran 18:51 stands like an answer to these questions:

• “I have not hold them witnesses either to the creation of the sky and earth or even to the creation of themselves” 

Then in Kuran 43:19 the god of Islam warns:

• “They said the servants of Rahman (god), the angels of god, were females. Have they witnessed their creation? Their testimonies will be noted and they will be questioned.”

Now we know that there was no one there to witness what was going on before and during the Creation. Both the stories in the Old Testament and Kuran are narrations. If god is not the narrator of this story, it must have been borrowed from somewhere else. It actually was borrowed from the Babylonian creation epic and the Zoroastrian belief system. These are the opening words of the Assyro-Babylonian creation epic ‘Enuma Elish (translation by N. K Sandars):

• “When (on high) there was no heaven, no earth, no height, no depth, no name, when Apsu was alone, the sweet water, the first begetter…”

In all the short references to Creation, the god of Islam (which is also the god of Jews) finishes his creation in six days and the authors of Kuran seem to have forgotten the seventh day, the Sabbath, the day of rest. On the seventh day, YHVH is supposed to have rested. Another god(!), a god in flesh(!) (Jesus) broke this day of rest, the day of YHVH, and it was one of the reasons why he was sentenced to die on the cross. Kuran seems to be silent on the seventh day, but it is not.  Kuran 50:15 is a reference to god of Judaism (which is also the god of the authors of Kuran) resting on the seventh day of the Creation story in the Old Testament:

• “Were we incapacitated and felt tired following the first creation? No! They are the ones who are suspicious of a new creation.” 

So, here is your answer, the god of Islam is presented as rejecting the allegations about the seventh day [or rather the authors of Kuran reject the idea of their god being an anthropomorphic (human-like) entity subject to exhaustion]. Kuran 50:38 also has a parallel statement:

• “We have created the skies, the earth and the things in between in six days and no fatigue touched us.”

Now we know that the god of Islam was not feeling tired at all after the first Creation, in other words he did not need a rest like YHVH, but we still do not know what happened on the seventh day. If the supreme being did not take a rest on the seventh day, plain reasoning tells that this god couldn’t be the god of the Old Testament. This was unacceptable to Islam, which claims that there is only one Creator. So the proponents of Islam had an answer up their sleeves: Jews had changed the original Taurat (Torah). The Messenger must have had the same pretext in his mind when he announced that he was turning back to the original, pristine belief system of Abraham: Jews and the Christians have altered the original revelation of god. The Messenger had also announced that there was one god and the god of Islam, which made him also the god of the Jews and Christians. There seems to be a discrepancy. Let us go back to Kuran and read Kuran 7:54 to understand what has happened on the seventh day of Creation: “Afterwards (god) has established His sovereignty on arş (the Universe).” Furthermore, in 25:59 it is written, “He was the One who has established sovereignty on the arş (the Universe).” If the word ‘afterwards’ stands for ‘the day after’ then we have our answer concerning the seventh day.

Before going any further, I would like to bring to your attention an interesting coincidence. The creation story told in the Assyro-Babylonian myth called Enuma Elish is on seven tablets. The creation is completed on the first six tablets, and on the seventh the names of the gods are given, and these gods at the end of the tablet declare Marduk supreme: “With the title ‘Fifty’ the great gods proclaimed him, whose names are fifty and made his way supreme.” The writers of the section in the Genesis story (2:2) must have preferred to leave out the names on the seventh tablet and just wrote down “...and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made,” which basically is a non-committal and evasive statement.

To recap, the Creation story in Kuran is taken over from the Jewish mythology. Therefore, we have six days of creation. On the seventh day god of the Jews rested. The Creation story in Kuran ends on the sixth day and the book is silent on the events of the seventh day, except the remark in 7:54 which was quoted above: “Your Rabb is that Allah, who has created the skies and earth in six days and afterwards established His sovereignty on the arş (the Universe).” Now compare this statement with the quotation from the seventh tablet of Enuma Elish. The Assyrian god Marduk and the god of Islam have achieved supremacy and sovereignty on the seventh day. The parallelism in both concepts stands out for itself. The Jews have decided on their particular seventh day concept and the theoreticians of Islam have preferred the concept of the Assyrian stories.

The creation of sky and earth is mentioned in Kuran 7:54, 10:3, 11:7, 25:59 32:4, 41:9-12, 50:38, and 57:4. Amongst these suras 41:9-12 is very interesting because the god of Islam is said to have created the earth in four days, and the whole of the sky (which is the Universe as seen from the earth) in two days. This should have been the other way round, should it not? Yes, of course! But the endless detail which the Arabs saw around them, in their immediate environment, must have given them the impression that creating the world would take much more time than the whole of the Universe! Such a degree of deep and comprehensive ignorance is fitting those days, but for the present, it is unbelievable.

Now let us take the concept in Kuran 6:73 and 36:82, where we read that god just wills and says ‘be’ “and it happens right away”. This concept is repeated in 19:35 in the context of god not having a child, thus Yshua is not the son of god. Where do you think this ‘be’ concept comes from? Read Genesis 1:3: “And god said, let there be light: and there was light.”  The Old Testament got this concept from the Memphite theology. This sentence was found written on a millstone that was washed ashore in Egypt in 1805. The text was about the ‘philosophy of a Memphite priest’ with the statement in Genesis 1:3 written on it: “God said let there be light, and there was light.” The text was written 2000 years earlier than the book of Genesis. This concept of the ‘power of word’ had begun in Egypt. Israelites got it from there, and the Hagarene teaching got it from the Jews, and while transforming the Hagarene teaching into Islam the desert Arabs have kept it as one of the basics of their ideology.

CREATION OF ADAM

Kuran 51:56 gives the reason why the god of Islam has created mankind:

• “I created jinns and mankind to serve me.”

This concept (serving the god) comes from the Sumerians who have invented the ‘superior beings and inferior mankind.’  In the Sumerian creation myth, Enki (Ea in Babylonia - the god of wisdom) calls on Enlil to do something for the cattle and grain. Enlil creates two minor deities, Lahar the Cattle god and Ashnan the Grain goddess. They create abundance on the earth, but they drink wine, get drunk, begin to quarrel and neglect their duties. Anunnakis, the sons of god An, needed food and clothes. They had to find a solution - for their own sake! They created man, as a ‘loyal servant to herd animals and grain.’ Then ‘life was blown into man’ to look after their (gods’) beautiful sheepfolds. This expression, ‘life is blown into man’ is crucial because it appears in both the Old Testament and Kuran. Here is Genesis 2:7:

• “And the Lord god formed the man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul.”  

In Kuran; 32:7 the story begins with this statement:

• “He has started the creation of man from mud.” 

Kuran 32:9 has the conclusion of the story:

• “Then gave it a form, and breathed his spirit into it.”  

This concept of “breathing spirit into” appears also in 15:29. Now you know where this expression comes from. According to Kuran 67:2, another reason for the creation of humankind was “to establish who would be better at work.”

According to this concept, the Sumerians (who are the originators of the concept), Hebrews, Israelites, Jews and Muslims are the servants, and as a whole humankind is created to serve the supreme beings up there!

There are two stories of Creation in the Old Testament. This must have been an unacceptable concept for the writers of Kuran, so they have left out the details of the Old Testament story and preferred a summary of the Sumerian original, including only the making of man from mud, and breathing life into this figure. The substance, which is used in the creation of man in the Old and New Testaments, and also in Kuran is identical: Mud. Notwithstanding the differences in the colourful details in these codebooks, we all know that the original story is Sumerian. The relevant Sumerian myth tells that the Sumerian gods have created man in their image. This is the proof that the Sumerians have visualized their gods as human-like figures (or they were anthropomorphic beings from an extraterrestrial civilisation, but that is beyond the scope of this present study).

The Sumerian creation myth tells that gods had ‘created man in their image.’ The basis of this concept might have been the fact that the Sumerians had only themselves to visualize how their gods would look like (The superior beings of the Sumerians were human-like extraterrestrials, who had managed to create the first humans by performing genetic experiments involving the then existing creatures, for example apes. But again, this matter is beyond the scope of this study). This concept appears in the Old Testament [Genesis 1:27; which is a leftover from the days of the anthropomorphic (human-like) god of the Hebrews] and also in the New Testament. Following the Babylonian exile the concept of god in the Old Testament has changed. According to this later concept god has no corpus, no shape; He cannot be seen, heard or understood. He is boundless etc. So now we must ask ourselves: How could this entity create man in his image? God has no form, no corpus! Therefore, the authors of Kuran got rid of the detail, which did not suit their doctrine, and wrote down their version.

Kuran refers to the creation of man in 3:59; 6:2; 7:11, 12; 15:26-29; 16:3; 17:61; 18:37; 21:30; 22:5; 23:12; 25:54; 32:7-9; 38:71-76; 39:6; 49:13; 50:16; 55:14; 67:2; 75:31; 76:2; 77:20; 80:19; 86:6-7; 90:4 and 96:2. Although the majority of the references are to mud as the substance used in creation, there are others as well. They are water, sperm, earth and semen, earth, semen, a fertilized mixture, a partly defined and partly undefined piece of flesh, a concentrate of earth, dried mud, a piece of flesh, a particle of discarded/excreted water/liquid, a sticky and clinging water/liquid.

The bottom line is that the origin of this story is in Sumer. Creation stories in the Old Testament and Kuran are identical in essence although there may be differences in detail: God picks earth, mixes it with water to obtain a muddy mixture, god gives this mixture the form of man, then breathes into it/into its nostrils, and this ‘mud-man’ becomes alive. This is Adam-Adamah (the ‘red earth’).

Although the Islamic ideology has probably borrowed the concept of man being the pinnacle of creation from Zoroastrianism, it nevertheless believes that this Adam is weak and feeble, its understanding is limited, it needs ‘course corrections’ all along its existence etc. This is the recurring concept of the ‘weakness of mankind’ that we see also in the predecessors of Kuran, dating back to the Sumerians. Read Kuran 2:286: “O our Rabb, do not burden us with things we are incapable of.”

The god of Islam has formulated the relationship between him and the pinnacle of his creation - man - with the expression in Kuran 50:16:

• “We are closer to man then his jugular vein.”

There is an interesting parallel between the Sumerian creation myth and the creation tale in the Islamic mythology. In the Sumerian creation myth, ‘four creator gods’ (goddess Nammu, the mother of all gods; Ki, the god of Earth; goddess of Birth Ninmah; and the god of Wisdom Enki) take part in the creation of man. In the mythology of Islam four archangels help the supreme being in the same process.

I prefer to stick to the written official material - the codebooks. But since these codebooks are the compilation of the borrowed materials from various cultures of the region in the distant past, and the adopted ideas from their predecessors, I had no choice but to start with them and explore the origins of the ideas in them, going back in time. But a short and limited diversion wouldn’t destroy the divine(!) plan, would it?

Let us have a closer look into what the Islamic mythology tell us about the creation of man.

Here is an example:

• Allah ordered the archangels Cibril (Gabriel), Mikail (Mikael), Azrail (Asriel in Judaism?) and Israfil to bring him seven handfuls of soil from the seven levels of the earth. Earth refused to give this soil. Azrail took it by force. Allah caused rain to fall on this soil for days, and softened it. The archangels mixed it and Allah gave it a form. It (Adam) remained like that for 80 years and without a soul for 120 years. When it acquired its shape and coloration, the angels were ordered to prostrate to Adam. Satan had objected, and was expelled from Paradise. Adam was forbidden to eat the fruit of the apple tree, which was the measure to differentiate between good and evil. But, Satan who was angry because he was expelled from Paradise, made a deal with the snake, and the snake tempted Adam and Havva (‘life’ - Eve, Negebbah) into eating the forbidden fruit and caused their expulsion from paradise. Realizing that he has done wrong, Adam repented and begged for a pardon. Gabriel intervened; Adam was reprieved and was sent to Arafat in Makka. There he met Havva. Adam was ordered to build Ka’ba. Gabriel taught the Hac (Hajj) ceremony and humankind proliferated.

What a story!

The apple tree in the paradise, as depicted in the Islamic ideology, is the tree related especially to the goddess of Love in the Sumerian myths. In a verse in Kuran, this tree is designated as the ‘tree of everlastingness’. The supreme beings in the Old Testament announce that Adam and Havva had become “like one of them.” The inference here is that Adam and Havva had become immortal and/or ‘knowledgeable/informed.’

The seducer in the Sumerian myth is Isimud, the messenger of Enki; in the Old Testament the seducer becomes a snake. According to Kuran, this seducer is the Satan. Islamic ideology doubles the seducers - Satan and the snake.

In the Islamic mythology, Adam was pardoned as a result of the intervention by the archangel Cibril (Gabriel). In the Sumerian myth, gods plead with the goddess to treat the god of Wisdom, Enki.

The god of Wisdom Enki is the one who brings messages to humankind. In Islam archangel Cibril (Gabri’el) carries out this function.

These parallels may be taken as evidence that the supreme entities under the chief god in the Sumerian mythology have been taken over as archangels and angels by the belief systems like Mithraism and Zoroastrianism. They were integrated into Judaism. Then Christianity, Manicheism, and Islam have adopted them.

CREATION OF HAVVAH, EVE

Islamic mythology does not have a detailed story on the creation of Havva. The origin of the story is in the Sumerian creation myth, which appears in the Old Testament based on a slightly different scenario. The story also appears in Kuran in a superficial fashion. Certain aspects might have been against the basic understanding of the writers of the codebook of Islam so the details were omitted. It is not possible to say that the exact version of the story was unknown to them, because there must have been copies of the Bible circulating in the Arabian Peninsula and it would not have been difficult for the Arabs there to read or at least listen to the narrations of the fairy tale in Genesis. Whatever was the reason, I prefer to accept the deliberate omission of the detail as the reason behind the superficial remark in Kuran 4:1, which is:

• “O! Mankind, abstain from confronting your Rabb who has created you from a single living thing/being, then brought into being from him his mate.”

The ideology and literature surrounding the codebook of Islam have adopted the version where Havva is created from the rib of Adam. For further information, you may read the section titled THE SUMERIAN MYTHS.

ADAM, EVE, AND THE PARADISE IN ISLAM

The idea of paradise as ‘a place of rest and refreshment where the righteous live in the presence of god’ appears in Judaism and naturally in both Christianity and Islam. The original concept of the Adam and Havva story is in Sumer. Originally, the Mosaic belief system did not have the concept of afterlife, paradise and hell. But following the Babylonian exile and the rewriting of the scriptures by Ezra (Ozair, Uzeyr) the priest in line with the relevant principles of the Zarathustran faith, Jews gave up  their own Sheol for much colourful and horror loaded concepts like resurrection, judgment day, paradise and hell. These ideas have originated from the dualism in the Zarathustran/Zoroastrian belief system of the ancient Iran. Zarathustrans in turn borrowed them from the Sumerian-Babylonian myths, and added their particulars.

Paradise is given the names of Adn, Aden, and Eden. According to some scholars all of these words derive from the Babylonian word Edinu, meaning ‘garden.’ Adn appears also in Kuran. There is a good indication that this paradise in the Bible (‘a garden planted eastwards of Eden from whose waters flow the four world rivers including the Tigris and Euphrates’) may have been originally identical with the Sumerian paradise, Dilmun.

The word itself - paradise - is said to derive either from the Old Persian word ‘pairidaeze’, ‘pairidaeza’ meaning an enclosed area, usually a royal park or a pleasure garden, or simply from the Persian ‘firdaws’ (a corrupted version of pairidaeze/pairidaeza), again a garden.

Where was this paradise, the pairidaeza, firdaws, the Garden of Eden, Edinu, Adn?

Paradise is the theme of the mythical poem of Enki and Ninhursag of the Sumerians, which is supposedly a place the gods have established for themselves on the soil of Dilmun. The Sumerian poet describes the place as follows: “This is a pure and clean land full of light, a land for the living where there is no sickness and death.”  Sumerians have visualized Dilmun as a land without water. The myth they invented tells us that the water god Enki orders the Sun god Utu to extract water from the ground and to irrigate the land with it. Because of which Dilmun becomes a garden where there is grass and fruit everywhere. Now you know the origin of the concept of a ‘paradise where rivers flow, where there is no sickness and death, and the immortals live with the gods.’

This Paradise supposedly had a geographical location. The land of Dilmun, where the Sumerians located their paradise was most probably to the southwest of Iran. The Babylonians who had toppled Sumer have also located their ‘land of living’ in the same region. The Old Testament mentions YHVH setting up a garden in the ‘corner of East,’ (Genesis 2:8). The Old Testament also tells that running water arose from the paradise, which was separated into four branches, and names of these branches are given as Fizon, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates. These characteristics lead us to the conclusion that the Sumerian and Yahvist paradises are from the same root. Watering the land with the water coming out of the ground is identical in the Sumerian and Hebrew texts.

The theme of Ninhursag cursing Enki with a terrible curse for eating the forbidden plants, and the curse (to suffer the pain of delivering a child) on Eve for eating the forbidden fruit are also there in the Old Testament.

Eve is Havva in Jewish (means ‘life’ in Hebrew) and Arabic, and the same name appears in Kuran naturally. In the original Sumerian myth, the name of the goddess that was created to cure the sickness in Enki’s rib is Nin-ti. ‘Nin’ in Sumerian is ‘lady’, and ‘ti’ is ‘rib.’ Another meaning of ‘ti’ is ‘life.’ Therefore, Nin-ti means ‘lady of the rib’ or ‘lady of life.’ While the Sumerian story was about curing a rib, the Old Testament story has become a creation from the rib, and the name ‘lady of life’/Nin-ti, which is Sumerian, was translated into Hebrew as Havva which means ‘life,’ and Islam kept this name. So ‘lady of life’ which was created(!) to cure the rib became ‘a woman that was created(!) from the rib and given life’.

Kuran mentions paradise in 2:28,35-38 (Forbidden tree), 214; 3:15 (The undefiled/virgin mates), 85, 133,142; 4:124; 5:65,72; 7:19-27 (Forbidden tree); 7:40, 42-43; 9; 111; 10:26; 11:23,108; 13:35; 19:60-63 (‘Paradises of adn’); 20:117-123; 23:1-11 (‘Paradise of firdaws’); 26:90; 29:58 (‘Rooms’); 30:15 (The ‘garden’); 32:19; 36:26; 39:73-47; 40:40; 42:22 (‘Gardens of paradise’); 43:70-73; 46:15-16; 47:15; 50:33; 53:15; 55:46 (‘Two paradises’, eternal ‘virgins’); 57:21; 66:11; 69:22 (‘Elevated garden’); 70:22-35; 74:40 (‘Garden); 76:5, 7-10; 79:41; 81:13; 88:10-16 (‘Elevated garden’).

If you are curious about the things in the paradise, which Islam has borrowed from Sumer, Zoroastrianism and Judaism, here they are: Fruits, shades, flowing water, streams, couches, goblets, pillows, select beds, virgins, young boys like pearls etc.

• In short, what is missing in the life of the average Arab male of the day and what he yearned for exists in this paradise (Kuran addresses only the male gender).

• This depiction of paradise is the perfect example, which shows the dexterity of the leaders of the day, who have created the belief system, put together the religious ideology, and who had to find and hold on to followers.

The central feature in Paradise is the ‘tree of knowledge and immortality.’ In the original Babylonian myth, there were two trees, one of ‘knowledge’ and the other of ‘immortality’. But Kuran tells us that as soon as Adam and Havva have eaten the ‘forbidden fruit’ their ‘ugly parts’ were opened to them.

I have pointed out that the codebook of Islam equates the eating of the forbidden fruit with the opening of Adam’s and Havva’s ‘ugly parts’. The meaning at the root of this statement is Adam and Eve becoming conscious of their own bodies and the differences between their physical features. If that is so, we should ask the Islamic scholars the following vital questions:

• Why should the ‘reproductive organs’ be ugly?

•  God has created them, has he not?

• How could a perfect entity create something ugly and defective?

This approach of ‘ugliness’ or the word ‘ugly’ does not appear in the original of the story, but looking deeper into the Jewish tradition and beliefs would give us a possible clue. The origin of this concept of eating the forbidden fruit is the Sumerian myths, and it passed into the Jewish tradition and beliefs. In the Old Testament, the verb to ‘know’ is used also for sexual intercourse. Based on this particular understanding an extreme interpretation in the Islamic ideology considers the (excessive?) sexual intercourse as an indulgence, which would lead to a deviation from the path to god and committing sin.

In the Genesis story (3:22-24) on eating the forbidden fruit and Adam and Havva’s consequent banishment from the Garden of Eden/paradise (which is the source of the story in Islam) we are told: “And the Lord god said, Behold the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil.” The word ‘us’ here shows clearly that this part of the Old Testament is a leftover from the polytheistic days of the Sons of Israel. There is no suggestion of shame and/or sin in this statement. The authors of this story have simply tried to put across the following message:

• Man and woman have acquired wisdom/knowledge;

• They have become aware of their bodily/physical existence and what this existence has meant. In other words they ‘knew’;

• Consequently, they have begun to explore the pleasures of the sexual union.

That is all! The fruit of this tree is visualized as something, which gives ‘god-like characteristics’ to humankind. A further dimension of this story is the ‘opening of the eyes’ of Adam and Havva, which means that they have become aware of their nakedness/nudity. The ‘opening of the eyes’ could be another way of describing the state of becoming conscious of bodily existence, becoming aware of one’s own body and of others’, and finding out the bodily functions. There is no sin in this awareness, is there? Equating the ‘opening of the eyes,’ becoming aware of one’s physical self, and getting to know one’s self and their surroundings with shame and sin is wrong, is it not? There is no shame in having god-like characteristics, being conscious of one’s body and being informed, but to know is to become wise, and wisdom is all about the meaning of existence (truth). According to the orthodox Islamic interpretation, the ‘inferior’/ ‘defective’ humankind should refrain from trying to discover the truth (the meaning of existence), because humankind lacks the necessary intellectual ability to do that. Truth (the meaning of existence) is reserved for the holy/sacred entities. That is why,

• Knowledge is taboo for the common believer;

• Asking questions is taboo;

• Debate and argument are taboo;

• The common Muslim should observe with a mixture of awe and bewilderment the omnipotent power of the supreme being by looking at the natural environment, and obey the ordinances. This is the sole duty of the humankind!

The ‘holy voice’ that the Messenger supposedly had heard called the believers to righteousness, to devotion to sole god, and to refrain from excessive sexual intercourse. The fact that the Messenger was visualized as communicating these messages is an indication that righteousness was something rare; there was a lack of faith in the sole god; and there was excessive sexual activity in the Arab society of the day. Otherwise, there would be no need to emphasize these points. The introduction of these rules was aiming at a clean break with the regional traditions until that day.

Here is the ancient Judaic and Christian formula as echoed by the Islamic ideology:

• Sexual intercourse (‘knowing’/knowledge) diverts one from the path of the god. Seeking the truth (meaning of existence) also diverts one from ‘sophia’ (the body of knowledge about the divine dealings). Therefore, sexual intercourse and seeking the truth have identical consequences. Efforts to acquire knowledge, to learn, and to get wise becomes something to be ashamed of and should be banned at all costs. In short, knowing your self, becoming aware of the most fundamental function arising from the difference of the sexes becomes a shame.

Where is the logic here?

A mixture of tales about the creation of Adam; angels’ opposition to him; Adam’s naming the animals; god ordering angels to prostrate before Adam; Satan’s opposition; Adam and Havva’s banishment from paradise; god’s pardoning Adam appear in Kuran 2:30-37 with the appropriate amendments fitting the ideological viewpoint of the desert Arabs who stole the original Hagarene teaching and turned it into Islam. A longer story exists in 7:11-25.

Again, the basic concept about the creation of Adam could be found in the Sumerian creation myth. The story based on this concept appears in the Old Testament. The story in the codebook of Islam, which is based on the tale in the Old Testament, exhibits the amendments that must have been deemed necessary by the codifiers of the Islamic belief system. Kuran 7:189-191 has a curious little story where we are told that  “When he (Adam) embraced his mate, she became laden, which she carried for a while, when she grew heavy both of them prayed to their Rabb: ‘If you give us a good mannered and good looking child, we swear that we will be thankful.’ But when Allah gave them a morally and physically good child (...) both of them resorted to polytheism.” What is the meaning of this? Who knows? The best solution would be to refrain from asking too many questions, because one is in the virtual realm of the inventions.

THE CELESTIAL REALM OR THE ABODE OF THE SUPERIOR  BEINGS

The god of Islam is believed to be ‘sitting’ on his throne beyond seven layers of skies. The Sumerian gods were doing the same, and their abode was called ‘duku’. Read the Enuma Elish, where you find also the assembly of gods and the Assyrian god Marduk sitting on his throne. All the gods of the region were visualized/imagined to be living/situated somewhere up there like the gods of Zoroastrianism, Sabianism, Mithraism, Judaism and Paulinism (Christianity).

The ancients thought of the movement towards skies as rising/ascending, because the visualized movement was ‘upwards’ from the terra firma beneath their feet. Our current knowledge makes it clear that there is no ‘up’ or ‘down’ in the universe. A journey from here to Mars, Alpha Centauri or the most distant celestial body is not a journey either ‘uphill’ or ‘downhill.’ In those ages of deepest ignorance in the deserts of Arabia, they had no chance of knowing this (The situation is not much different even today, because they have the chance to learn now but they reject ‘knowledge’).

There are those scholars who suggest that the belief systems of the book have derived a lot from the Shamanism hence they had a natural leaning towards North, which was also understood as ‘up’ in those days (and to a certain extent even today). North pole is the ‘roof of the earth’ is it not? This concept of the ‘layers of creation’ does exist also in Brahmanism, in the Upanishads (600-300 B.C.), where we are told, “There was only Atman (I, Brahman) existing before the creation. There was nothing else. Atman thought of creating worlds. He created the highest world, the sky, the earth which is the realm of death, and the underworld.”  Here you have the layers from the highest one to the lowest.

GOD OF ISLAM DECIDES ON WHO IS TO BE A BELIEVER OR A NON-BELIEVER

There are points in Kuran that need explanation. For instance, in 10:99 god is reminding his prophet:

• “All the people on earth would have been believers if your Rabb had wished so. How are you going to force people into believing, if that is the case?”

The god of Islam continues in 10:100:

• “No being would have faith without the permission of god.”

These two verses immediately bring to one’s mind the crucial questions:

• If god decides on who is to believe and who is not, then what makes him set the believers on the non-believers?

• If the supreme being wants everybody to belong to a single belief system why has he given different messages?

• What is the reason of the existence of different belief systems, is it the need to design the messages to the needs of different cultures?

•  If that was the case; if every community had received a specially designed belief system from the supreme being; then what is the reason behind one faith considering itself better, superior and more authoritative than the others?

• Non-believers are non-believers precisely because of god’s plan, are they not?

•  In the light of the belief systems, the supreme being is the only deciding authority on who is to be a believer, is he not?

• Therefore, if god is the deciding authority on who are to be believers and non-believers, who needs the belief systems and why?

• If the supreme being’s permission is necessary to become a believer, would passing judgment on non-believers be ethical?

• On which ethical rules would the non-believers be hold to account and penalized?

Does anyone have an answer?

GOD OF ISLAM SEPARATES EARTH AND SKY THEN HOLDS THE SKY IN PLACE

When writings on the Sumerian clay tablets were still un-deciphered, the Old Testament was considered as the ‘word of god’. Following the deciphering of the Sumerian texts, the stories in the Old Testament were acknowledged to be deriving from the Sumerian myths, and the Old Testament lost its aura.

The separation of Earth and sky is presented as an act of Elohim, YHVH in the Old Testament, but the origin of the story is the Sumerian creation myth. According to this myth, Earth and sky was a mountain in the beginning, Base of the mountain was the Earth and the summit was the sky. It was separated by the Sumerian god of air Enlil as sky and Earth. Then the gods An and Enlil adorned the face of the Earth with trees and rivers and created the animals. This creation story is told almost identically in the Old Testament.

In this context Kuran asks in 21:30:

• “Don’t they know that sky and earth was one and we separated them?”

Sumerian and Old Testament stories are very close. Kuran, as usual, is superficial and un-detailed on this subject, but the gist of the story is there. 

Kuran also has the concept of god holding the sky in place. Firstly, Kuran establishes the sky as the realm of god (‘men fi’s sema’) in various suras. In 21:32 god speaks:

• “We have made the sky a ceiling which is protected.” 

In 22:65 ‘someone’ speaks:

• “…He (Allah) is holding the sky, so that it won’t fall down without his permission.”  

When we trace the origin of the concept of god holding the sky we should again go back to the Sumerians, but if we seek the clear references we have to consult the Old Testament, where in Isaiah 40:22 we read:

•  “It is he (...) that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.”

The next source we have to check is Manicheism. Here the concept shows itself as one of the developments that would unfold at the end of time, the end of the world:

• “Yshua comes back, establishes the judgment seat, separates righteous from sinners, and then withdraws to the New Paradise. Thereafter the gods supporting the cosmos will abandon their tasks, and heavens and Earths will collapse in the Great Fire lasting 1468 years, in which the last particles of Light will escape from matter, ascending to Paradise as the Last Man”.

This is the summary of how the concept of god/gods holding the skies had travelled between the cultures ending up in Kuran.

GOD OF ISLAM COMES DOWN TO PUNISH THE SINNERS ON EARTH

The god of Islam is conceived of as a being who could come down, whenever necessary, together with his angels. Here is 2:210:

• “Are they waiting for Allah and angels to come down to them and finish the job?”

In numerous verses of Kuran, we read of a “punishment coming with dark clouds, claps of thunder, and thunderbolts,” and there are numerous other verses where we are told how those who did not believe in Moses were struck by thunderbolts. 

Here is Kuran 41:13 where the tutor of the Messenger wants him issue a warning referring to the past:

• “If they turn away (from you) say to them: ‘I am warning you against a thunderbolt resembling the one which struck the Ad and Thamud.’ ”

Here is Kuran 13:13:

• “Thunder exalts Him with gratitude (...) He sends thunderbolts and with them strikes the one He chooses.”  

I believe the Exodus story about Moses and the Israelites leaving Egypt towards the Promised Land is one of the sources of the statements in Kuran. As I have reported from the Papyrus Ipuwer earlier these tribes had experienced an upheaval, a catastrophic event as they were  crossing the Sea of Reeds and the Sinai peninsula. The cause of this natural catastrophe in the 15th century B.C. was the violent explosion of the volcano on the island of Santorini in the Mediterranean to the north of Crete, ‘blowing its top off’ and collapsing in on itself. The actual body of the volcano had disintegrated after this explosion and millions of tons of volcanic ash were blown into the atmosphere. The atmosphere vibrated with powerful shock waves. Violent earthquakes struck and giant tidal waves were created, which caused utter destruction in the coastline of the Eastern Mediterranean.

The fiery and thunderous explosions and the shaking of the land, the Israelites had witnessed for the first time at the foot of the active volcano, Horeb, in the land of Midian, must be one of the other sources of the descriptions in Kuran. The Israelites described the scene as ‘YHVH descending on the mountain.’ This particular story about Moses’ receiving the Ten Commandments is full of vivid descriptions of god descending on the mountain, showing himself amid thunder, wind, fire and shaking of the land etc. The story in Kuran is cleansed of the unwanted, unbefitting features and only the clouds, thunder and thunderbolts were preserved.

All these concepts of gods riding the clouds, sending down thunderbolts and throwing down various ‘things’ as punishment also appear in all the Canaanite cults and other belief systems of the region and the neighbouring cultures. God of the Old Testament should not be left out of this group of vicious gods (Psalm 68).

ISLAM: ‘EVERYTHING IS ON A PRESERVED PLATE OR A BOOK UP THERE!’

Kuran in 3:145; 6:59; 10:61; 13:39; 22:70; and 35:11 talks about a text or a book up there in the realm of the divine beings, in which everything related to the past, present and the future is written including the destinies of individuals. This concept has its origin in the Sumerian ‘me’s. Sumerians have believed that:

• Sumerian gods had invented ‘me’s;

• ‘Me’s were the principles devised and signed by gods with the aim of ensuring the trouble-free functioning of the Universe;

• ‘Me’s were seen as very effective in the formation of humanity, and civilisation.

Sumerian thinkers had a pessimist/negative view of the humankind and its destiny. They believed that the creature called man is created ‘to serve the gods by providing them with food, and shelter, so they can carry out their acts in peace.’ Sumerians have accepted that life was full of uncertainties which would never make humankind happy, because mankind would never be able to guess what the gods - whose aims could not be predicted - had prepared for them as destiny. One tends to believe that his could have been possible only in those ages of ignorance, but it goes on even today.

These ‘me’s must be the origin of the concept of fate/destiny.

There is no doubt this concept in Islam has its origins in the ancient myths of the region. Gudea, the king of Lagash (2250 B.C.) had two inscriptions of 1400 lines written about the construction of the temple of Eninnu. Gudea had a dream before the construction work started. In this dream Gudea saw his personal god Ningishzida (Ningiszida) rising like the Sun in the horizon. Goddess Nidaba, protector of writing and schools, holds in her hands a tablet on which is written everything in the skies [This concept is almost identical with Lavh-i Mahfuz (‘preserved tablet’) in Islam]. The god of architecture Nindub shows a tablet of blue stone on which is drawn the plan of the temple to be built.

Another source the authors of Kuran may have employed is an object mentioned in the Babylonian myths, called in Akkadian ‘the tablet of destinies’. Possessing such a tablet was one of the attributes of a deity. Myths tell us that these tablets were stolen or taken by force on several occasions, because the god who possessed them had the power to control the order of the Universe. Here Jews and Muslims may detect the origin of their belief in their god's (YHVH / Allah) attribute of determining their destinies.

In the chant known as Enuma Elish (The creation myth of Babylonia), the Babylonian god Marduk is the principal actor. Marduk kills Tiamat, secures the tablets of destiny, and performs various creative acts, as described in the poem. It seems that without these tablets he could not have initiated the creation.

In short, while acting in line with the concept of the superiority of the supreme beings and the inferiority of the earthlings, humankind thought that these beings inevitably would be in a position to control the destiny of them. They wrote that human beings would live in accordance with the grand plan, which was designed and formulated in the divine realm. 

So, this is the origin of the man’s visualisation of the system where higher beings controlled the order of the Universe and the lives of the lower beings (humans) in line with the divine plans devised and set by themselves. This is the origin of the concept of destiny and defeatism.

HA-STAN, SATAN, SHAITAN, DEVIL, DIABLO, IBLIS

The origin of the Satan (Shaitan) tales of the Semitic-Abrahamic belief systems is in the Zoroastrian dualism. The word Satan (‘ha-stan’) is not Hebrew, but borrowed from the Chaldean. The writers of the Old Testament have borrowed the idea from Zoroastrianism via the intervention by Ezra the priest.  Origin of Shaitan is the Avesta of the Persians.

Mosaic belief system did not have a Satan in the beginning. God had caused both the good and evil in the beginning. When Ezra the priest intervened and wrote his ideas in to the Jewish codebook, a new formula was adopted to remove this discrepancy: Devil has existed always. The source of this formula is in the creation story of the Zoroastrian belief system. This creation story was substituted eventually by the concept of god’s simple utterance (He just said ‘be’!, ‘Let there be light’!) starting the Creation, but this method makes Satan a created being again, which necessitates a crucial question: How a supreme being devoid of evil could create an evil being? Believers came up with yet another formula: Satan obeyed the orders of the supreme being in the beginning but became jealous and confronted god later on, resulting with his expulsion from god’s court.

The original idea is in the Avesta (the codebook of Zoroastrianism), and the writers of Kuran could have got the fundamental idea from the Jewish codebook and Avesta (because there was also a very strong Persian influence in the Arabian peninsula). A very important section of the Avesta is titled Vendidad, which is the corrupted version of ‘Vi daevo datem’ (‘the anti-demonic law)’. Whichever the source is, the desert Arabs have edited and adapted the final material in line with their needs and made it an indivisible part of the ideology

There are different versions of the Assyrian creation myth Enuma Elish. In one of these versions, the chief god Marduk has created humanity by mixing the blood of the Oafish (the consort of Tiamat - the first Satan) with earth. So, man was created from the godly, heavenly, divine substance. But still this divine substance was taken from a being  that was in close relationship with Tiamat. This is an indication that Enuma Elish is one of the sources of the belief that the ‘nature of mankind is bad.’

From the perspective of the basic concepts there are very important similarities between the Enuma Elish story and the Genesis in the Old Testament. From the angle of the ‘actual’ events differences are large, but let us consider the similarities:

• There are seven clay tablets, each of which are thought to be corresponding to a day of creation in Genesis.

• These seven tablets and the Genesis describe the creation of the ‘local universe’ of those days. They do not fit exactly but some fundamentals and especially the imagined beginning of the Creation have evidently been taken over by the Old Testament and by Kuran.

• Earth and sky is formed on tablet four in Enuma Elish, whereas the earth and sky is separated on day two of the Genesis account (The difference is due to the fact that tablets 2 and 3 are mainly about the conflict between the created beings, and there is no new creation work).

• Sun, Moon, and the stars in the sky are created to mark day and night, and the seasons are created on tablet five. The same activity takes place on day four of Genesis (Do not forget that tablets two and three are mainly about the divine conflict so could be considered as one tablet as far as the actual steps of creation are concerned).

• Humanity is created on the sixth tablet of the Enuma Elish, and man is created on the sixth day of Genesis.

• Marduk is declared supreme and the gods of Babylon rest on the seventh tablet, and the god of the Old Testament rests on the seventh day.

Underlying Sumerian elements can easily be detected here. These elements that are scattered over a number of myths were brought together and bonded as a coherent whole.

The reason for Adam’s expulsion from paradise is presented at first as the serpent, which tempted Eve. The first example of Satan in history is called Tiamat, which is a dragon. In the later periods this concept was transformed  into Devil appearing in the form of a serpent. Then Satan appeared for the first time with the book of Job (Job 1:6): “Now there was a day when the sons of god came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.”   During the Babylonian exile, Judaism was influenced by the Zarathustran demonology, angelology and eschatology. This influence and the consequent change of belief are most prominent about Satan. In the pre-exilic period (before the Babylonian exile), Satan is presented as a servant acting like a prosecutor upon orders of the god. In other words, Satan was subservient to god. In the post-exilic period (after the Babylonian exile), Satan is presented as the opponent of god. The Jewish apocalypses spoke at first (book of Jubilees, 2nd century B.C.) of a judgment of rebellious angels, of the sons and spirits of Belial and Mastema, as well as of those angels who had misused their power of punishment. Later in the assumption of Moses the final decision is conceived as a struggle between god and Demon. In the Sybilline Literature and the Ascension of Isaiah (probably 1st century A.D.) Belial appears as god’s adversary. The Jewish Ahriman previously was simply styled as ‘the enemy’ (‘ha-stan’). In Jewish mythology, Zechariah made the first reference to the enemy as a male in 520 B.C. (Zechariah 3:2).

The central theme of the repeated story of Satan in Kuran is related to the creation of Adam from earth/mud, and Satan from fire. God taught the names of ‘them’. We do not know what ‘them’ stands for. Then god wanted Adam to ask the angels to find out whether they knew the names of ‘them’. Angels responded, saying that they knew only what god had taught them. God asked angels to prostrate before Adam (because he was able to count the names) whereupon Satan (‘Iblis’) refused to bow down, claiming that he is created from fire and Adam is created from mud. So god sent him off, in return Iblis seduced Adam and Eve. God threw the first couple out of paradise (Kuran 2:30-36). The only common factor between the two stories are the names. In the Old Testament, these names are the names given by Adam to the cattle, birds and the beasts. In Kuran, the names belong to ‘them’, and god teaches the names of ‘them’ to Adam.

The culprit who seduced the first couple in the Old Testament is the Serpent (which symbolizes the Satan). The seducer in Kuran is Iblis (Diabolos, Diablo, Devil).  Iblis must be the corrupted version of Diabolos. Therefore, even the name of ‘evil’ in Kuran is taken from another culture. The other name of the devil is Shaitan (Şaytan). Shaitan is Persian, and Satan is Hebrew. Differences seem to be due to the smartness(!) of the writers of Kuran who played around with the original story in line with their needs.

The god of Israel, who led them out of Egypt, YHVH-YAHWEH Sabaoth was a god of armies. The gods of the other two Semitic belief systems, Christianity and Islam, also have armies. We read stories in these codebooks on the armies of god joining battle (on the side of the believers) either with the enemies and/or with the armies of Satan. The origin of this concept is in Zoroastrianism.

Some Orientalists point out that among the traditions of Hac, as accepted by Islam, there exist   traditions originating from the ceremonies of the Sun cult. They claim that the ‘stoning of the devil’ adopted by Islam has originated from the practice of driving away the ‘ifrit’ (jinn, Satan) which pesters the Sun.

Here are the characteristics of the Satan of Kuran:

• He is disgusting and abominable;

• He seduces people with flamboyant and attractive illusions;

• He disguises himself as a comrade [upon orders from Allah(!)] to lure believers away from the way of god;

• He never keeps a promise;

• He makes believers forget;

• He does not have the power to reveal Kuran;

• He goes back on his words and would abandon his followers;

• He would sow discord;

• He is afraid of Allah;

• He scares his associates;

• He interferes with the wishes of the prophets;

• He lures the believers away from the revelation;

• He is the worst enemy of mankind;

• He has no power on the believers;

• He has no real power;

• He has armies;

• He is oblivious to Allah.

These are the contradicting characteristics of shaitan (satan), who is a supposed member of the imaginary realm of the supreme entities.  You may choose the attribute you like or create a mixture of attributes as you please, because other human beings like you have invented the ‘being’ called satan and its attributes, thousands of years ago. The perpetrators of this crime against humanity were so oblivious of the reality that they began with the idea that every one including Satan have been created by the omnipotent god. Then when they realized that their omnipotent god should be devoid of evil, they had to change their position and claimed that Satan had always existed. But this new position was even worse than the previous one, because it raised the Satan to the level where he existed together with god, so they pushed him down to the rank where he was transformed into a ‘being’ who is trying to seduce people away from god, upon orders from god himself(!).

Kuran refers to Shaitan/Satan in verses 2:34,36,168,208; 3:36,155,175; 4:60,119,120; 5:90,91; 6:43,68,142; 7:11-22,27,200,201; 8:48; 12:5,100; 14:22; 15:27-42; 16:63,98,99,100; 17:27,53,64,65; 18:50,63; 19:44; 20:100,116,117; 22:52,53; 23:97,98; 24:21; 25:29; 26:95,210-212; 28:15;29:38; 31:21; 34:20,21; 35:6; 41:36; 36:60,62; 38:73-82; 43:36-39,62; 47:25; 58:10,19; 59:16; 81:25 and 114:4-6

SACRIFICIUM (OFFERING) IN ISLAM

In the beginning, offering life and/or blood (sacrificium - supreme sacred action) allegedly had the meaning of relinquishing, abandoning something to a supreme entity, which was actually an act of friendship, good-fellowship, with no religious connotations.

Animal offering or any kind of offering for that matter, is the continuation of the most primitive of all the practices passed down to the present day modern(!) societies. It is a known fact that in the region where Islam came into being, people and tribes of the pre-Islamic times believed that they established a blood connection with their gods by offering animals. They accepted these gods as a father and/or the overseer of the tribe.

The animal and/or blood offering in Islam is a primitive practice. It is a leftover from the days of heathenism, idolatry and paganism, designed to placate the rage of the supreme entities. Belief systems provide the cover of legitimacy needed for this practice.

• However, no one seems to be conscious of the fact that those belief systems are the culprits that have branded the practices of the ancient societies as idolatry, polytheism and animal worship, have they not.

• Those belief systems were the ones who have proscribed the pagan practices, were they not?

• Those belief systems were precisely the ones who have included these pagan practices in their rituals, were they not?

Among others, Islam is also a perfect example to those belief systems. What an irony!

Another source for this primitive practice is the Old Testament, where it is mentioned in the sections that are the remnants of the days of the Canaanite polytheism. The god of the Old Testament is another of those supreme beings that loved blood, and the ‘smell of the cooking meat and burning fat’(!). Those primitive societies offered even their first-born children by slaughtering or throwing them alive into fire. The belief systems branded these societies as godless non-believers at first, but they soon realized that these non-believers were the people they were aiming at winning over. So in order to win these peoples they had to accept some of their practices and included them in their rituals. These primitive rituals are still with us thousands of years later!

Sumerians were in the habit of offering something;

• To make their supreme overseers happy;

• To wish something from them;

• To be cured of ailments.

The animal to be offered had to be healthy with no physical defects and the person offering the animal should be clean bodily. Priests have accompanied the offering by special prayers. The right hip and the internal organs of the animal were offered to the supreme overseer and the rest was distributed to the people around. The rules governing the animal offering in Islam is almost identical, but killing of the animal by a hodja (a Muslim cleric) is not necessary.  Moreover, those pieces of the animal the Sumerians had offered to the supreme overseer are left to the person who makes the offering, and the rest of the animal is given out to the people around.

There was no human sacrifice in Sumer, but we know that it existed in Israel and ancient Greece. Hebrews considered human offering as a contract with the supreme overseer, to please a person dead or living, or to protect their health (II Samuel 21:6-9). Naturally, Arabs have adopted this pagan and Hebraic practice and spread it to the lands they have conquered.

• Thus a custom, originating from the Canaanite cultures, befitting Hebrews and Arabs have become a fundamental exercise of a belief system (Islam) which envelops peoples of completely different histories and cultures that has no connection with this uncivilized tradition.

Prophet Av’ram (Bahram the Mandaî, Abraham) has allegedly ended the human offering when he arrived in Palestine from Mesopotamia. The story is in the Old Testament. Here Abraham offers his son, but due to a last minute interruption by his god, he slaughters the sheep instead (As usual, the story also appears in Kuran in an amended form). This act reportedly had the special purpose of ending human offering, but this did not happen. The Old Testament is our witness. We know that Israel made human offering in the ancient times. It was not only human offering, but also animals, wine and pleasant perfumes were offered as well. The Old Testament shows us that the Sons of Israel have continued with this tradition for a very long time. Eventually only animals came to be offered at the temple in Yerushalim. When the temple was reduced to rubble by the invading forces this practice came to an end, because temple was the only place where offerings were made. The religion of the desert Arabs, Islam, continues with this primitive Canaanite-Palestinian-Jewish practice around Ka’ba in Makka and in those lands that had fallen into the grasp of the Arab imperialism.

Kuran mentions the subject of animal, blood offering in verses 2:67, 71, 173, 196; 5:3; 6:138; 22:33-37 and 37:102, 107.

ASCENSION - MI’RAC IN ISLAM

The first person that has allegedly ascended to heavens is Etana the Shepherd. The setting is Sumer, just after the Flood. Humanity is without the guidance of a king. Gods up there decide that Etana should be appointed king. Etana the Shepherd is listed as the 13th king in the legendary dynasty of Kish. The myth of Etana and the Eagle is about Etana ascending to heaven on the back of an eagle, which took him to the plant of birth up there, somewhere. You must have noticed the following:

• Whatever the humankind yearns for is visualized as existing up there, somewhere;

•  But no one knows if there is anything up there, and if there is something, we do not know what it is;

•  We have only narrations about the ‘realm of the unknowns’, which only exists in thoughts, and which is also visualized as the abode of the supreme beings.

The more I penetrated the debate about the Messenger’s ascension the more I came across the question searching the reason why the he had to travel to Al Kuds (Yerushalim, Jerusalem) to begin his journey to heavens. Every point on Earth is suitable to ascend to the realm of the supreme entities, and there is no need to go to Al Kuds for that. But in that age of ignorance, and because of the fact that all of these divine(!), extraordinary tales have emerged from the same region, Palestine and Yerushalim were accepted as the places to ascend(!) to heavens. It should not be forgotten that Al Kuds was the sacred city, the ‘city kadesh’. One of the predecessors of Islam, Judaism, has considered this city as the ‘city of their god, the centre of their worship’.  From that angle, the Messenger’s ascension to heavens from Yerushalim sounds appropriate. Furthermore the central character of Paulinism (Christianity), Yshua/Isa, also had allegedly ascended(!)  to his Father’s realm from there (from the mount of Olives to be precise), had he not? Palestine was presented as ‘god’s land’; Yerushalim was called ‘god’s kadosh’, the ‘city of god’. So, it is only natural for the followers of the Messenger to visualize him as ascending to heavens from that locality. Makka was not a sacred place in those days. The origin of the story seems to be the incident described in the Old Testament, Genesis 28:10-12, 16-17, where Ya’kub (Jacob) is on the road to Haran from Beer-Sheba; he sees in his dream a ladder going up to heavens, with angels ascending and descending. Mi'rac in Arabic also means a ladder. A similarity is suggested between these stories. The Islamic mi’rac story is claimed to have been taken from this Old Testament fairy tale. The choice is yours. The word mi’rac most probably has its origin in Abyssinian, where the Book of Anniversaries (27:21) refers to a special staircase up to heavens as ma’areg.

Therefore, the writers of the codebook of Islam (with either a limited intelligence or an ulterior motive) wrote their stories in their present form. The Hagarene teaching (Sabianism - the true faith of Abraham) had considered as sacred the Promised Land and Bakka (where Av’ram had established the ‘first house of god’. Islam (which is the transformed version of the Ismaelite-Hagarene teaching) has also considered this region as sacred and named Yerushalim as Al Kuds (‘the sacred’).

The extremely fast mythological animal the Messenger has supposedly mounted when he travelled to Al Kuds is called Burak. This name reminds us other words, berak in Hebrew, and berk (büruk in plural) in Arabic, both of which mean ‘lightning’. Berk in colloquial Arabic also describes the shortness of time when the flash of lightning is seen, thus has an implied meaning of speed which is related to the shortness of time that it has taken this animal to travel to Al Kuds from way down the Arabian peninsula.

In the mi’rac story, the Messenger ascends through levels of sky. Stories of ascending to the realm of gods have been invented for almost all of the prophets before the Messenger. For instance, we are told that (Zarathustra) had also travelled to the realm of gods, and there he met Ahura Mazda (Ohrmazd, Hormuz), received divine orders from him, and revealed his book called Nosks. Ascension to heavens is the art of immortality in Taoism. Therefore, we can safely say that ascension is not something particular to Islam, but a standard fantasy in various other belief systems and religious ideologies.

THE AFTERLIFE AND HELL IN ISLAM

Progress of human thought towards the concept of hell has started with the taboo relating to death. Life is precious. Life is the ground on which only the ‘living’ beings take pleasure. Strength is there, power is there, possessions are there, domination is there, money is there, and bodily pleasures are there. As Gospel of Matthew 22:32 tells us; “(Yshua speaking) ...god is not the god of the dead, but of the living.”  Even god has no business with the dead. Therefore, could we say that death is the end of the relationship between man and his god? Who in their right mind could give ‘no’ as an answer to this question?

• Death is the ‘absolute end’ to the experience called life;

• Death is the end to the mind and intellect;

• Death is the end to the frailty of the human constitution;

• Death is the end to the never ending ordeal to find a solution to the problem of the supreme entities and their servants on Earth.

• Death is the ultimate step that ends life and everything, which constitute the colours of life.

• Death is the ‘anti’ of everything, which is ‘life’.

Therefore, those who belong to the realm of death should be separated totally from the realm of the living as soon as possible. Touching the dead should be regulated by certain rules to prevent any contamination to the living. Spirits of the dead were also feared and numerous ceremonies were devised to send the spirits to the realm of the dead as soon as possible and keep them there for good.

The uttering of the name of a dead person was considered identical with awakening him/her, resulting with the sudden appearance of that person. Therefore;

• The living did not feel secure unless there is a body of water between themselves and the dead.

• The solution seemed to be to bury the dead on the islands or on the other bank of a river.

This is the origin of the expressions referring to the location of the dead like ‘on the other side’ or ‘the other side’. But with the arrival of the belief systems the meaning of this expression is transformed from the physical ‘other side’ (meaning the actual location where the dead are buried) into a metaphysical / mystical ‘other side’ (meaning the abstract realm beyond the ‘divide' - heaven, hell, the underworld, the other world etc.)

Sumerians thought their dead went to a dark underworld called kur from where there was no return, and the dead existed there as ‘shadows’. Ancient Greece called it hades. The Old Testament calls it Sheol. The New Testament calls it hell. Kuran calls it ahiret (the ‘world after’, ‘next world’, ‘world beyond grave’).

There was no resurrection for the Sumerians, but in special cases the ‘shadows’ were thought as coming up to the world of living. It was believed that if food and sacrifices are not offered, the spirits of the dead would come up to the world and bother the living. Too much grief and crying was believed to annoy the dead. The prayers and animal offering in Islam are believed to be the continuation of this practice; as the animal offering in the Old Testament was actually the continuation of the Canaanite beliefs and sacrificial rituals.

Judaism has borrowed the actual concepts of life after death (afterlife), resurrection, and the judgment day from Zoroastrianism after the exile in Babylon. Eschatology does not appear in the Old Testament; though we have an idea of ‘trial by fire of the world’ in Deuteronomy 32:22, Isaiah 33:14, and Malachi 4:3. There is no specific reference to hell in the Old Testament.

The Sumerian concept of an underworld is without a specific, physical location. So, what could be the origin of the concept of a specific place where the evil is treated and purified by fire?  We supposedly have a geographical location for paradise (Dilmun), but we do not have that for hell. No one knows where hell is. Since it is a place for the treatment of evil it could not exist in the divine(!) realm where god and the other divinities, the ‘supreme council’  of Islam exists. Therefore, it should be near to the source of evil, the mankind!  Since humanity exists on earth, do we have to look for this hell on earth? Yes. When we investigate the concept, we find that ‘hell’ was situated in Palestine.

There used to be a place on earth, just outside Yerushalim, right next door to the Arabs. The Old Testament gives the name of this geographical location as ‘the valley of the son of Hinnom’=‘Ge bne Hinnom’, which separates ancient Yerushalim (Zion) from the hills to the south and west. It is presently called the Wadi er Rababi, which joins the Wadi en Nar (the Kidron) at the southern extremity of the hill of Zion. The valley is a point on the boundary between Judah and Benjamin (Joshua 15:8, 18:16). It was called originally ‘Ge bne Hinnom’ (the valley of the son of Hinnom) which was shortened into ‘Gehenna’ later on. It was the name of the valley, where the Canaanites burnt their children as offering to their god Baal.  The Greek ‘geenna’ derives from the Aramaic ‘gehinnam’, which in turn represents Hebrew ‘ge-hinnom’, which is actually an abbreviation of the full name. This short explanation must have shown the present day Muslims the origin of their hell named cehennam, cahannam (cahîm).

The usage of this valley is reflected in Nehemiah 11:30. The valley has an unholy reputation in the later Old Testament books because it was the site of Tophet, a cultic shrine where human sacrifice was offered (II Kings 23:10; II Chronicles 28:3, 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31, 19:2ff, 32:35). We read in various sources that those Jews who have turned to foreign religions have performed horrible ceremonies, burning their children in honour of the pagan gods (Jeremiah 7:30, 31). It was called simply ‘the valley’ (Jeremiah 2:23). Jeremiah cursed the place because of this cult, and predicted that it would be a place of death, a valley of slaughter (Jeremiah 7:32, 19:6). I have explained how the sections written by Ezra the priest have changed the foundations of the Old Testament. The valley is referred to in Isaiah 66:24, not by name, but as a place where the ‘dead bodies of the rebels against YHVH shall lie’. “Their worm shall not die nor shall their fire be quenched..” Isaiah 66:24 could be considered in the same light, because the author of this statement has transformed this concept somewhat. The valley of Ge-hinnom has become a place where the bodies of the enemies of YHVH shall lie forever and the fire will never be quenched. Nevertheless it has no eschatological dimension, which was introduced later by the Zoroastrian ideas written by Ezra.

The judgment day and hell are described in the Book of Enoch and II Esdras, which are apocrypha and not included in the Old Testament. The Dead Sea Manual of Discipline of Qumran also speaks about hell.

This is one of the origins of the concept and the name of hell - cahannam, cehennam, cahîm - in Islam. The hell of Islam has seven levels corresponding to seven heavens. These levels are like the Buddhist idea of seven hot hells. Tibetan Buddhists speak of eight cold hells, which correspond to the cold sections of the hell of Islam. The actual setting of a deep, tormenting ‘unending darkness’; and ‘fire’ in the form of a lake of fire to which the wicked will be ultimately sent, comes from the Zoroastrian hell.

Kuran mentions hell and the related matters in verses 2:24, 39, 80, 81, 126, 167, 175, 206, 217, 221, 257, 275; 3:24, 116, 151, 181, 185, 197; 4:10, 14, 30, 55, 56, 93, 97, 115; 5:10, 29, 37, 72, 86; 6:128; 7:36, 41-50; 9:35, 49, 63, 68, 81, 95; 8:36; 10:4, 27; 11:106, 107, 119; 13:5, 14:16, 29; 15:44; 16:29; 17:8, 18, 39, 97; 18:106; 19:68, 71, 86; 20:74; 21:29, 100; 21:29, 98, 99; 22:9, 19, 22, 51, 72; 23:103; 25:34, 65; 29:54; 32:13; 33:65; 35:36, 37; 36:63; 37:23, 62-68; 38:55-64; 39:19,60, 72; 40:46, 47, 60, 72, 76; 41:28; 43:74, 77; 44:56; 45:10; 47:15; 48:6; 50:24, 30; 52:13; 55:43, 44; 56:41-56; 58:8; 59:17; 66:9; 67:6; 69:17; 72:15; 74:31; 76:4; 78:21; 79:36; 81:12; 85:10; 87:12, 13; 89:23; 96:18; 98:6 and 111:3.

When it comes to hell Kuran reminds as often as possible, the untold-of-suffering, the pain of burning in the fire, swallowing down boiling water with the rupturing of the stomach etc. These warnings are accompanied with a warning that the end of time, the judgment day, the pain and suffering are ‘very close’, ‘imminent’, and ‘at hand’. We are told that Yshua (Jesus) had also expected an imminent ‘end of time’ 2000 years ago. Zarathustra was also expecting an ‘imminent’ end to time. I am writing these lines thousands of years after them!

AL A’RAF, THE CHINVAT BRIDGE, THE SIRÂT BRIDGE

As it is customary and/or fashionable with all the prophets, Zarathustra has also preached that Earth would be destroyed shortly as a result of a huge conflagration, only those following the good would survive and take part in the recreation. Yshua mentioned repeatedly that the end of the world was imminent. Kuran also has the warnings about an imminent judgment day, of an untold pain and suffering for those who do not heed the ordinances of god etc.

Now let us deal with the concepts related to the life after death, end of time and the judgment day.

Free will is one of the basic tenets of the Zarathustran (Zoroastrian) teaching. Islam has borrowed the concept from Zoroastrianism. One chooses by one’s free will, in one’s lifetime. That is the reason why the soul of the dead would be held to account on the good and bad deeds done in this world at the end of time. 

After death until the time of the final judgment, spirits of the dead would cross the Chinvat-Cinwat-Chinwad Bridge (‘Bridge of the Requiter’, ‘Bridge of the Avenger’) according to the Zoroastrian teaching. This is the bridge in the shape of a sword, which the souls of all the dead should cross. If the dead person was good and righteous in this world the sword would stand on its side and a beautiful woman would let the soul pass to rise to paradise. If the dead person was evil, then an ugly old woman would try to help and the sword would turn sharp edge up and the soul would fall down to hell.

The Islamic mythology tells us that the sheep they slaughtered in the name of god in this world would assist the souls in their journey (Mankind will ride the sheep!). This is an extremely shrewd tactic or rather a blackmail to persuade the believers that their deeds in this world would make them cross safely that menacing bridge, is it not?

The formula in the early period of Zoroastrianism envisaged that on the day of the final judgment, which was imminent, the body and soul would reunite and the evil ones would stay forever in the hell. In the later days of Zoroastrianism, an amendment had to be introduced to this conviction due to the realisation that the ‘end’ would be delayed to a more distant future. Thus, there would be time for the purification by fire of the souls of evil-doers, making it possible for them to take part in the last renewal, regeneration of the world. When the evil is beaten for good whole world could look forward to the future, to the renewal of creation. 

According to another version of this fairy tale, the dead would rise (in Islam, when the ‘sûr’ is blown) and unite with their souls. These ‘risen’ entities would be thrown into a cauldron in which there would boiling molten lead (according to Islam they would be thrown into the hellfire). This molten lead would feel like warm milk to the good. All would be taken out after three days, given the drink of immortality, and become immortals. In Islam, the evil soul would be purified by fire - alternating with cold. This concept of the blowing of the ‘sûr’ in Islam has its origin in the I Corinthians 15:51-52: “Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed… In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” (The sick mind of apostle Paul is behind this outrageous concept.)

The concept of al A’raf is mentioned in Kuran 7:46-50. It is most probably a mixture of concepts borrowed from the ‘ephemeral or frontier hells’ for those guilty of lesser sins in Buddhism. A group of Christians believe that there is an intermediate state called purgatory. The hamestagan of Zoroastranism is a similar place. Al A’raf of Islam is an intermediate place between paradise and hell. It is a destination for those whose good thoughts, words and deeds evenly balance the evil.

The ‘Sırât Bridge’ in Islam is the bridge every Muslim has to cross to reach the paradise. Sırât al-câhim is the depiction that appears in Kuran 37:23. Câhim is thought to be the word for hell in Arabic and cahannam (cehennam) is the Arabic of ‘gehenna’ and ‘ge-hinnom’ (in Hebrew). The Greek ‘geenna’ derives from the Aramaic ‘gehinnam’ (corruption of the Hebrew word ge-hinnom), ‘ge-hinnom’ is the actual abbreviation of the full name, Ge bne Hinnom.

This is the origin of the concept and the name of hell in Islam - cehennam, cahîm. The sirât al-câhim in Islam is taken as meaning the ‘bridge of hell’, which according to a hadith attributed to the Messenger, would be built over the hell on the judgment day. Some others translated it as the ‘road to hell’. The al sirât of Islam is the bridge of the requiter / avenger of the Zoroastrian faith. 

A DISTANT ECHO OF ‘I AM WHAT I AM’ IN KURAN

Kuran 28:29-35 mentions (in a slightly amended form) the famous and fateful meeting between YHVH and Moses. It is written there that Moses has stayed with the Midianites for eight years as he has promised, then moved on with his family:  

• “…When he noticed a fire towards tûr, and said to his family: ‘Wait I noticed a fire. I may bring a word from it or I may bring an ember from it so you can warm yourselves. When he went up there… a voice came from a tree to the right of the valley: O Moses! It is me, I am Allah the Rabb of the realms.”(‘Tûr’ here is thought to be the tûr-u Sina, mount Sinai. But in reality, it should be mount Horeb in the land of Midian.)

The writers of Kuran must have been unaware of the fact that monotheism had existed before Moses. Should they had known that in the Papyrus of Prisse (pre-dating Moses about 1000 years) god had following to say of himself,   “I am the unseen One who created the heavens and all things. I am the Supreme God, made manifest by Myself, and without equal. I am yesterday, and I know the morrow. To every creature and being that exists I am the Law”, they would certainly have referred to this definition and would have tried to connect their belief system to this version of monotheism. This supreme being without equal was referred to in Egypt as ‘the nameless’, ‘the One whose name cannot be spoken’.  This Egyptian god called himself ‘Nuk pu Nuk’, which when translated into English means I am who I am’. So, although the writers of Kuran have missed this point in their quotation, the readers of the codebook must realize that Kuran 28:29-35 is, in actual fact, quoting a mythological concept of 4500 years ago. This concept is older than Moses and even older than Bahram of the Mandaeans, who is Abraham the Patriarch of the Old Testament, and messenger Ibrahim of Kuran.

ISLAM AND MARTYRDOM

Out of the other Hebrew prophets only Elijah and Enoch have ascended to heaven. But rising from the dead  was never seen or heard. “The Hebrew Bible is very reticent to talk about life after death” says Alan Segal (Professor of religion at Barnard College in New York - He is a Jew) and goes on to say,  “...there must have been beliefs in life after death, but the people who edited the Bible kept them out.” There was even the idea of ‘intact’/bodily resurrection amongst the Jews of the day. This idea has appeared during the Maccabean revolt around 167 B.C., when Jews have revolted against their Greek rulers. Many young Jews (all men) were dying ‘in defence of the laws of god’; at least that was what they thought. These Jews believed in their hearts that a just god would eventually restore them to life. The authors of the Talmud helped this concept take root, because they believed that god has created a finite number of Jewish souls. Therefore, the dead would come back bodily to an earthly existence  (What an imaginative invention!)

Moreover, early Christianity was born in a climate of apocalyptic expectation created by the Maccabees’ revolt. When Yshua was around there were Pharisees who thought that the just would be resurrected by the end of the secular time, when the kingdom of god would be established. The fairy tale (composed by Paul) about the bodily resurrection of Yshua years after he left Palestine has furthered this concept of ‘intact’ resurrection in the Jewish society.

As far as the stories are concerned Islam is the continuation of Judaism and Christianity, and it has inherited the martyrdom concept from those early scripts.

• One dies but resurrects bodily to an earthly existence in Judaism;

• One resurrects and comes back to an eternal existence on the judgment day in Christianity;

• One who dies for the cause of the supreme being (would not die! in reality but) carries on living in the divine realm in Islam.

There is one central point in all these ideas on martyrdom:

• You may give your life but you will come back to life either on earth or continue in another form of existence in the divine(!) realm.

The ‘bait’ Islam employs to deceive people and win them over to the ideology is as follows:

• Those who observe the rules of and sacrifice themselves for the supreme creator will be immortal.

This is the very old trap set by the faiths and belief systems to respond to the eternal yearning of the humanity: Immortality.

The martyrdom in Islam is slightly different and has another dimension. Death of the Arabic writer (a former Jew) Ka’b al-Ahbar in 654 A.D. was employed as an example and for educational purposes in furthering the idea of martyrdom in Islam. Ka’b has left no written material and we know him only through the narratives. The storyline that links Ka’b and martyrdom goes like this: Ka’b was enlisted in a summer expedition, but he became ill and he wanted to die as late as possible (as far as possible into the expedition). To make his point Ka’b said: “It is commendable to die when on a military expedition, and the further one advances in the expedition, the better.”

The ascetic Abdullah bin Muhayriz al-Cumahi al-Filistini who lived in Yerushalim became seriously ill during the Byzantine summer expedition and he asked his son to carry him to Byzantine soil so that he could expire there. He simply wished to establish that it did matter where one died and buried, and that with regard to afterlife, death and burial on enemy soil (in a military expedition) was more commendable than death on Muslim soil.

• The martyr’s grave is considered as a landmark delineating the furthest point reached by the armies of Islam. That grave was supposedly the border of the land reclaimed by the Muslims who considered themselves as the lawful owners of those lands in any case, because they were the followers of the last revelation of the sole god who  owns all the creation (Imagination gone wild!).  The land is considered as reclaimed from the infidels and added to the area that is under the jurisdiction of Islam. They preferred to overlook the fact that the vanquished were also the believers of another monotheistic(!) belief system like Judaism, Christianity, Manicheism, and Zoroastrianism etc., because in reality Muslims were (and are) after new lands and the riches they promised. The last revelation, Islam, is actually the weapon of the Arab nationalistic imperialism, like its forerunner Christianity, which was (and is) also employed as a weapon for global domination.

Kuran mentions martyrdom in 2:154; 3:140, 169,170, 195; 4:69, 72, 74; 22:58, 59; 33:23; 47:4 and 57:19. Out of these verses, 2:154 summarizes the concept:

•  “Do not call dead, those killed for the cause of Allah. On the contrary they are living but you will not be aware of it.”

This is martyrdom. They are dead, but they are not really. They are living but you are not aware of it. Kuran 3:169 tells us that these (‘dead but not dead’) persons are “being provided for in the realm of their Rabb.” Of course, humanity cannot comprehend this, because if you remember, humanity has a limited intellect and comprehension. This concept of ‘dull, slow-witted and inadequate mankind’ came into being as a sequel to the invention by the mankind of its greatest fabrication - divinity - and the consequent inception of the first belief system. In Kuran 3:195 god swears that He “would cover up the evil deeds of those who have emigrated, who have been expelled from their countries, who are tortured, who have fought and died for my cause (...) I would place them in the paradises where rivers flow beneath.” 

Therefore, even god has exceptions in his distribution of divine justice (or the believers have imagined him behaving in that fashion). It is only natural for the living to be unable to see those living in the divine(!) realm because man is inadequate. This is how man sees himself in relation to his greatest ‘invention’. Because this ‘invention’ is abstract.. It exists only in the intellectual processes. This supernatural ‘invention’ cannot be found in the physical world. Man cannot see this ‘invention’ in his physical environment. Therefore, man has no choice but to accept his inadequacy and inferiority based on his inability to ‘see’ and ‘comprehend’ this ‘reality’(!).

Now you know the origin of martyrdom in Kuran.

ISLAM AND WOMAN

As we have done earlier, we have to go back in time to find the origin of Islam’s position vis-à-vis women. Thousands of years ago Sumerians likened their women to ‘fields to be tilled/cultivated.’ An identical description appears in the Old Testament and in Kuran (2:223).

Beginning with the inclusion in the Old Testament of the distorted version of the Ninti story, woman came to be considered as inferior to man. According to the codebook woman was ‘created/produced’ from the rib of the male who was created(!) earlier. According to Genesis 2:7, 8, 20, 21, 22 which has the second creation story in the Old Testament, god created man, and planted a garden to the east of Eden (‘Adn’ in Islam). There he put the man (Adam) he has created. Then to provide him with help (to keep him company) god caused a deep sleep fall upon Adam, took one of his ribs and made it into a woman.

The writers of Kuran have preferred a superficial story. I believe the shallowness of the narrations in Kuran,  and the discrepancies between them and the original stories in  the Old Testament are most probably not due to the unawareness, but often have a  purpose. This creation story could be one of them. The writers of Kuran, most probably, were conscious of the two different creation stories in the Old Testament and wished to stay away from the possible contradictions, and consequently chose the second narrative (because it fitted their approach) and included it in the codebook in the form of a superficial remark.

The concept of female’s inferiority to male in the Abrahamic belief systems has begun with the stories of the creation of man and woman, paradise, and the eating of the forbidden fruit etc. in the Old Testament. There was no sin involved in this story of the Hebrew Bible, but eventually the sexual act became an evil act; woman came to be considered as ‘the one who tempted Adam into sin (sexual intercourse) and as the symbol of evil’. Read Job 25:4-6: “How then can a man be righteous before god? How can one born of woman be pure? If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his eyes, how much less man, who is but a maggot - a son of man, who is only a worm!”  What did you get from this passage, apart from it being the product of a sick mind?

• Firstly, woman is a ‘low' creature.

• That is the reason why the human beings are insignificant, miniscule creatures before the supreme entity.

• Therefore, human beings are evil, sinful etc.

This third supposition is one of the fundamental reasons for the supposed necessity of the belief systems that are invented by the human beings to show themselves the virtuous/righteous way to god.

Apostle Paul of Paulinism (Christianity) has also played a critical role in the basic approach to women. Would you like to know what he thought of women (in I Timothy 2: 9-15, and I Corinthians 14:34-35)? Here is the summary:

• “Women are not appreciated as public figures… They cannot teach and have authority over men…They should remain in silence…They should adorn themselves in modest clothing with shamefacedness and dignity…They should not have broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array, but with good works…Women should learn in silence with all subjection…Adam was first formed, then Eve…Adam was not deceived…The woman being deceived was in transgression…Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety…They should keep silence in the churches for they are not permitted to speak.. They are commanded to be under obedience as also says the law…If they will learn anything they should ask their husbands at home.. It is a shame for women to speak in the church.”

Theologian Tertullian, addressing women, wrote the following around 200 A.D.:

• “Do you not know that each of you is an Eve? The god’s sentence on your sex lives in this age. Necessarily the guilt must live too. You are the Devil’s gateway. You are the un-sealer of that forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law. You are the one who persuaded him (Adam) whom, the devil was not brave enough to attack. You so carelessly destroyed man, god’s image. On account of your desertion, even the son of god had to die.”

This is an example of how far a sick mind could take an invented concept! Tertullian believed that every woman whether married or unmarried should wear a veil. Therefore, the source of the humiliating and inhuman Muslim custom of covering the face with a veil is Christianity, Judaism, Canaanite cults, and Sumer as we go back in time. Veil is presently compulsory in the majority of the incognizant and backward Islamic communities. Here I would suffice by saying only that the architects and followers of this detestable practice should realize that they are acting against human dignity.

Saint Augustine (Augustinus) shared the sick views of Tertullian, and believed that god has condemned humanity to an eternal damnation because of Adam’s one sin (the original sin - the sexual union between Adam and Eve). He went further and added:

• “What is the difference whether it is a wife or a mother? It is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman.”

Augustine was puzzled about the creation of woman and really believed that Adam only needed ‘good company and conversation.’  This is his understanding:

• “Woman’s only function is the child-bearing which passed the contagion of Original Sin to the next generation.” 

Here is another of these sick statements, which in fact belongs to the original instigator of this line of thinking:

• "Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord…For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” 

This is a statement by Paul, as formulated in his letter to the Ephesians 5:22-24. If you still wish to know the origin of the concept of woman being inferior to man or the woman should cover her head etc. you should read the sick views by Paul in I Corinthians 11:1-15.

Pushing women into a secondary position is the fundamental approach of all the belief systems because;

• “Pleasures of the flesh will separate the man (who was created first and god’s first choice) form his creator.”

Man is the important ‘one.’

• The codebooks of the belief systems are designed for men and address only the male gender.

• As far as the women are concerned, the codebooks consider women as the ‘property of men’, and address the female gender in a circumstantial manner.

•  In order to prevent woman from separating man from his god through the pleasures of the flesh, sexual act should be slighted, woman should be scorned and the evaluation of the relations between the sexes will always be based on sin.

Before ending these crooked ideas based on gender I would like to go back to apostle Paul once again and read the relevant section of his First Letter to Corinthians (11:1-13):

• “...But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of woman is the man; and the head of Christ is god. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonours his head. But, every woman that prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonours her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. Fort a man indeed ought not to cover his head, for as much as he is the image and glory of god: but the woman is the glory of man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of god. Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman prays unto god uncovered? Do not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.”

Muslims the above quotes are the origins of the anti-female concepts in your belief system and hadiths (which unfortunately form an integral part of the whole system).

Kuran deals with the matters related to women and wives in verses 2:35, 178, 187, 221-223, 226, 227, 228-237, 240, 241, 282; 3:40, 42, 61; 4:4, 15, 19, 20, 22, 25, 32, 34, 75, 98, 127, 128; 5:5; 7:19, 83; 6:139; 9:67, 68, 71, 72; 11:71, 81; 12:1, 29, 30, 51; 13:38; 15:60; 19:5; 24:4, 6, 9, 12, 23, 26, 31, 32, 60; 27:57; 29:32, 33; 33:4, 28-34, 35, 36, 49-52, 55, 58, 59, 73; 37:135; 47:19; 48:5, 6, 25; 49:11; 57:12, 13, 18; 51:29; 58:2-3; 60:10, 11, 12; 65:1-7; 66:10; 71:28; 85:10; 76:21; 80:36 and 111:4;

As a follow-up to the remarks above, I would like to quote some examples that show Islam’s approach to matters related to women:

• When it comes to testifying, testimonies of two women equals the testimony of one man (Kuran 2:282). The reason is given as follows: “If one of the women fails to remember or confused the other would remind her.”

• “Men should protect and look after women…Because Allah made some humans superior to others (…) First chastise women, then leave them alone in their beds, and in the end throw them out of the house/send them to another place/beat them” (Kuran 4:34).

• When it comes to inheritance man gets two parts to woman’s one (Kuran 4:11,176). In other words, man is worth two women.

• “Men has a difference of rank over women” (Kuran 2:228).

Superiority of man is one of the basic teachings of the nationalist Islamic ideology. It is possible to see this approach in statements attributed to the Messenger. We should recognize the fact that hadiths may not be true, credible or trustworthy, but it is clear that they enjoy a general acceptance. Following are some statements attributed to the Messenger and the source persons:

• “Women are inadequate mentally and religion-wise” (Buharî and Müslim);

• “Women has no right to be elected as the head of state” (Buharî);

• “O women make donations; because the hell was shown to me and the majority (of the inhabitants) were of you” (Buharî);

• “(Allah) has ordained that ‘man has authority over woman’ and called man master. He who submits to woman becomes a subordinate of the devil. The one in the position to give orders is man and not woman. Man is seyyîd (the master) woman is the subject. Women should be consulted but it is obligatory to do the opposite of what they say. Underground is better than over ground for those who act according to the words of women.” (Gazalî);

• “Protect yourselves from the world and women, because woman was the cause of the first sedition amongst the sons of Israel” (Riyaz-üs Salihîn Translation);

• “I have not left behind a worse cause of discord for men than women” (Riyaz-üs Salihîn Translation; Buharî, Müslim, Tırmizî, Ibn Mâca, Ibn Hanbel also have similar statements);

•  “If ill-omen is to be supposed in things, it should be looked for in the horse, woman and home” (Buharî);

• “If a man is covered all over with purulence and even if his woman licks him clean she cannot repay his due” (Gazali reporting from Ibn Ishak);

•  “Majority of you women are the firewood for the hell” (Buharî).

• “Three things which invalidate a prayer are the black dog, donkey and woman.”

•  “Men have authority over women. That is why (Allah) made men superior to women.”

•  “(Women) have relinquished their freedom to men.”

• “Marriage for woman is a kind of slavery.”

•  “God created man superior and put woman under his command.”

Furthermore; 

• Kuran’s god addresses only men. According to the Messenger, the angels, messengers and everything worthy that god has created are male.

Well! Women of the world, what do you think of all these Islamic comments about you?

These are the perfect examples of a primitive outlook. As I have mentioned earlier, unfortunately codebooks never remain as the only basis of the belief systems. The ambiguities in those codebooks act as the ground for the personal comments and explanations from the self-appointed persons who consider themselves ‘authorities’. These personal exegeses create contradictions; contradictions lead to new conflicts of outlook; the resulting environment necessitates the exegetes to fabricate narrations and arguments reaching back to the mastermind of the teaching. This process goes on until the belief systems achieves a substance by these humanly contributions and becomes an ideology. This is the tradition for all the Semitic-Abrahamic belief systems. The exegetic literature in Islam is larger than the codebook. The exegesis is done on the text, which is presented as the ‘word of god’. In other words, members of the humanity interpret the ‘word of god’ in line with their personal understanding. This is inconsistent with the codebooks and the ideologies based on them. Because interpreting the ‘word of god’ is prohibited by all these belief systems because interpreting the ‘word of god’ means equating oneself with the supreme entity. Instigators of those teachings have set very heavy penalties for that action. Furthermore, almost all of the interpretations are far away from what the writers of the codebooks had in mind, but turn out to be efforts to express and authenticate subjective thoughts.

• If the prevailing environment was not favourable, and if there were not similar lines of thought in the fundamental background of Islam these narrations could not have existed and/or reported by the source persons.

• If thoughts and leanings like these had not existed in the social environment that produced the codebook, we could say that all those reports are lies, but source persons quoted here are all well-known, recognized and reliable persons. If that is the case, where is the truth? I can say that all of the narratives and reports are true. They are the products of the backward, ignorant and opportunist Arab society of those days, and they are still in effect even today.

Those of you, who would like more examples, could read the codebook of Islam and the hadiths. This is the point the ideology of Islam has reached 6000 years after the announcement by the Sumerians which states that “women is the field of men.”

OBLIGATION TO COVER THE HEAD (AND THE BODY)

Covering the head, which has become a very important weapon of the expansionist ideology of Islam, is an ancient practice originating from Sumer. In Sumer, there were the sacred ‘mistresses of the temple’ who were involved in sexual duties. Since they were the ‘mistresses belonging to the temple’ they had to cover themselves when they leave the temple grounds to show that they were not just ordinary women, but belonged to the temple, performing a divine duty there, and should not be harassed. In addition to the priestesses working as prostitutes, homosexual males were also present in the temples in Sumer.

Like in Sumer, the matriarchal Canaanite societies also had the all-important fertility cult. All the cults and faiths of the region were based on it. Prostitutes dedicated to the fertility goddess were working at the temples dedicated to her in Canaan. There were also male priests wearing woman’s clothes in these temples.

An Assyrian king in 1500 B.C. has enacted a law, article 40 of which necessitated the married and widowed women wear a head cover. But this type of covering was forbidden for the girls (virgins), female slaves and the prostitutes. Thus married women in legitimate sexual activity, and the widows were considered on the same level with the temple prostitutes, because they belonged to someone, either to the imaginary, supposedly superior entities somewhere ‘up there’ or they had ‘owners’ like their men here on Earth.

• In short, the covering of the head, which puts the married woman in the same group with the temple prostitutes is the sign of an ‘ownership.’ On earthly terms, the owner of a woman is her man (husband). Woman belonged to man. Woman is the ‘property’ of man. Therefore, as an ‘identifying mark’ a married woman should cover her head.

Another Assyrian king had allegedly added a new dimension: Women should cover their heads, because their hair brings to mind their ‘pubic hair,’ and the sexual intercourse. Khomeini’s Iran seems to be following an identical path, because ayatollahs there have decreed that every single thread of hair a woman showed is like a spear that pierced the heart of a man.

Jews had borrowed this tradition. The married Jewish women not only covered their heads but also shaved off their hair completely and started wearing wigs. It is known also that in the earlier periods there were Jewish whores some of whom were having sexual intercourse in the name of god (Deuteronomy 23:17,18). They used to cover their faces and their bodies with a veil (Genesis 38:14-18).

In Genesis 24 writers of the Old Testament tell us a story about Abraham asking his slave to go to his (Abraham’s) native country and find a bride for his son I’zak. Slave goes and comes back with Rebekah, who puts on her veil when she meets her future husband I’zak. This could be considered as a perplexing story, because according to the narration in Genesis 38:14-18 apparently only harlots covered their faces, but Rebekah was not a prostitute. She was brought as a would-be wife of a man so she must have felt the need to cover herself to show that she has an ‘owner’. Here is the story: Tamar is Judah’s daughter-in-law. When Tamar’s husband Er (son of Judah) is killed by the god, Judah wants his second son Onan to take Tamar as wife. Onan marries Tamar but “spills his seed on the ground” (he performs coitus interruptus), upon which god is displeased and he slays Onan. So, Tamar is left alone again. Judah tells her to go to her father’s house as a widow until his (Judah’s) son Shelah is grown. Tamar goes to her father’s house and starts living there. Time comes and Judah’s wife dies. Judah goes to Timnath. Tamar hears this, takes off her widow’s garments, covers/wraps herself with a veil. She sits in an open place on the way to Timnath (She realizes that she was not given to Shelah as wife, despite the fact that he has grown up now). Judah sees her, takes her to be a harlot “because she covered her face,” they reach a deal and make love. When Judah learns that the woman is pregnant, orders her to be killed by burning on the fire, but when he learns that the child is from him the matter is closed.

There is a crucial question: Why did Tamar wish to appear like a whore?

The key to the story is in Leviticus 20:21, which rules: “If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he has uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.” Therefore, what Judah wanted, and what his son Onan did (despite the coitus interruptus) was against the Mosaic Law. The origin of this tradition is formulated in the Article 193 of the Hittite Law: “If a man dies without a child, his wife should marry her husband’s brother; if he dies also, she should marry the father of her husband; if he dies also, she should marry her husband’s nephew. A child from any one of these would take his father’s name and inheritance.” If we have to go by this rule, we could say that Tamar has performed this trick on her father-in-law to acquire the inheritance. Judah’s (the father-in-law) wish, before learning the truth, that the woman should be burnt is an Indian tradition. In India, either the woman marries with someone from the family or she is burnt on the fire.

There is a curious passage in I Corinthians 11: “…For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.” This is an apparently meaningless passage. As a last resort and by the stretch of imagination we can take this passage to mean that married women should wear a veil as a sign that they are in the power of the man, but what about the ‘angels’? One of the Qumran rules may provide an explanation. The Essenes believed that at the sacral community meal ‘holy angels’ were amongst them, who could be offended by the presence of certain persons or groups of persons (women?). The early Christians have acted in the same way towards women, but they did not go so far as the Essenes, who excluded women completely from their sacral community meal. Christians merely imposed certain restrictions such as the wearing of a veil.

The Arab prostitutes have allegedly worn the veil, but we do not have a clear indication of it. The necessity for a certain section of the female population covering their faces only or the whole of their bodies are not particular to Islam, on the contrary, it predates the Messenger, who borrowed this ancient practice, and the desert Arabs gave it a special meaning: Women should be hidden from the eyes; women should be covered and isolated. Women should socialize only if  ‘properly’ covered.

Kuran has three verses on the covering of the head:

Kuran 24:31: “Say also to believing women: They should lower their gaze to the ground. They should guard their chastity. They should not open their ornaments except those parts, which could be seen. They should wear their head scarves to cover breasts.”  A part of the rest of this verse makes clear that the word ‘ornaments’ stands for the female features of their body: “They should not show their ornaments to others, but to those men servants of theirs, who do not need woman or to those children who are not yet old enough to discern the private parts of women.”

Kuran 24:60: “For those women, whose desire for marriage has ended, who passed the age of menopause and childbearing, there is no sin in leaving off their covers on the condition that they refrained from showing off their ornaments.”

Kuran 33:59 is much more focused in its approach, because this verse addresses amongst other women the wives/women of the Messenger: “O Prophet! Say to your wives, daughters and the women of the believers to wear their outer garments. This is much more befitting for them to be recognized and not bothered.”

Primitive concepts, thousands of years old, could still be discerned in this Islamic approach, because the male population in Islam consider their ‘women’ as their personal property and they are very much occupied with the matters related to sexual relations, because those relations are seen as causes for departure from god’s way. The covering of the head and the whole of the body have only one meaning: Males do not like the sensuality of the females that belong to them to be noticed by other males. In other words, the woman is their property ,which should be under their sole ‘ownership.’ You may have noticed immediately that all these considerations are the products of some of the most primitive and ignorant brains under the Sun. Practice had begun in Sumer. The ancient Assyrian practice (in today’s context) followed it; the Old Testament, Augustinus, Tertullian, apostle Paul and the Midianite Messenger have furthered this practice. Muslims should read the verses written by apostle Paul in I Corinthians 1-13 to find out the immediate predecessor of their humiliating practice of covering the head or the body.

THE ARMIES OF GOD IN KURAN

Kuran mentions the armies of god in 3:123-125; 8:9; 74:31, and in 26:95 we have the armies of ‘Iblis’ (Satan/Shaitan). Where do you think this concept comes from? You have to look at the Old Testament first. The god of Israel, YHVH Sabaoth was a god of armies, a god of war. This warring god and his armies were naturally borrowed by the other two Semitic-Abrahamic belief systems, Christianity and Islam. In the codebooks of these belief systems we read stories about the armies of god and the armies of Satan joining in battle. The source of this concept, a war between the good and bad, the righteous and the evil, is the Zarathustran/Zoroastrian teaching.

YHVH Sabaoth was imagined as the god of armies because Israel had to fight their way towards a new homeland. They needed a warring god. Later on, after the Babylonian exile, and because of the intervention by Ezra this warring, vicious, bloody god was transformed into a supreme creator who is transcendent and compassionate. In reality, Israel remembered YHVH whenever they needed his military protection. During peaceful periods, they went back to Baal, Anath, and Asherah.

We find the concept of the armies of Satan in ancient Egypt as well. When the Sun god Ra descended to his home in the glittering west every night, he is thought to have been attacked  by the armies of demons commanded by Satan Apophis, and Ra fought  with them all through the night.

The   Zoroastrian belief system also has this concept of divine, celestial armies fighting for the good and evil. This is the eternal fight between the god of light Ahura Mazda (Ohrmuzd, Ohrmazd, Hormuz) and the god of darkness Ahura Manah (Angra Mainyu). Here Ahura Manah completes his organisation of six Satans for the six Amesha Spentas (beneficent souls) and with a hierarchy of angels for himself. The evil forces like evil jinns, dervec and fairies formed his armies. This name jinn also appears in Kuran and used in an identical context.

The concept of a supreme entity in charge of wars has existed always. For instance, Baal’s wife is Anath. Both are Canaanite deities. Anath is the goddess of war. She is called Inanna in Sumer, Ishtar in Akkad, Anath or Astarte in Canaan, Athar/Athtar in southern Arabia, and Astar in Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia).

THE BAN ON INTEREST, GAMBLING, AND THE DRINKING OF WINE  

The believers of Islam are mad about ‘interest’.  Writers of the Old Testament have codified the ban on interest. The Midianite Messenger has adopted it when he turned to the unadulterated faith of Abraham, Sabianism, the Hagarene teaching. In the later years, when the Sabian faith was in the process of transformation into Islam, the writers of Kuran  made the ban a part of  their belief system.

Here we need to explain what is not allowed and what  should be acceptable. The interest or profit based on interest is called ‘ribã’ in Arabic. The practice called ‘ribã’ has incurred a disproportionate responsibility on the borrower when paying back the interest. Since the disproportionate part was not in return for something real, it is decreed haram / herem and the practice was banned. In the pre-Islamic Arab community a person who was unable to pay back in time had to pay a second ‘ribã’. This was the interest of the interest. In those days, the money lender set the interest and the time of the pay back. If no payment was made in that time, the money lender added the interest to the original debt, making this new amount the new debt and charged a new interest on this new amount. Thus, the borrower was made to pay more than he borrowed. This made the rich richer, and the poor poorer. This is this the banned practice. The interest paid by the banks today, in return for deposits is something totally different. Money has a cost. The person who uses this money for personal purposes has to pay the ‘cost.’  Today’s interest is the cost of money; it has nothing to do with the Arabic ‘ribã’. Like the covering of the head and body, the ban on interest is also turned into a weapon for the political objectives of the nationalist-expansionist Islam.

According to some scholars, the ban on interest has originated from the attitude of the people of Medina, who have declined to give interest-free money to Muslims there. They may have been the Jews of Medina who did not consider Muslims as their brethren. On the other hand the ban could as well have been the result of a decision to cut off the profit the Medinan money lenders were getting through interest of the money they lent. The claim that the drive to ban the customary trade practices of the Makkans have led to the ban on interest is not acceptable anymore.

Drinking of wine and gambling have been banned allegedly due to their connections to idolatry. Also there were reportedly some occasions when some believers have started taking part in prayers in a state of intoxication  (under the influence of alcohol). Moreover, the attitudes of some intoxicated members of the Messenger’s entourage might have created a potential challenge to the Midianite Messenger’s authority, and he must have decided to outlaw the ingestion of alcohol. In addition to these possibilities, one of the sources of the Islamic doctrines, the New Testament  has also introduced the ban on alcohol ingestion in a number of verses.

Islam has introduced the rule: Stay away from prayers until you have a sound mind / a clear head. This state where a sound mind does not exist is called the state of ‘sekr’ in Islam (Kuran 4:43), which is interpreted as being under the influence of alcohol only. But the state of ‘sekr’ should be understood in a much broader sense including intoxication due to alcohol intake and the effects of the chemical substances like drugs and medicines, which effect the central nervous system. Everything that interferes with the thought processes causes a state of ‘sekr’. The underlying concept is obvious: If one is unable to think and reason clearly one would be unable to declare one’s intention, which would make the prayer or the act purposeless, null and void.

FASTING

Fasting is not a novelty introduced by Islam. It has already been in practice for thousands of years in the past, starting with Sumerians, who practiced the Moon cult. They used to fast on the first day of the Moon-cycle and on the fifteenth day of the Moon. They also held ceremonies on certain days and did not consume certain foods, when the Moon is not seen.

This practice of fasting was taken over by the other cultures in the region, including the Sabian faith (the Hagarene teaching, the true religion of Ibrahim), the Mosaic belief system. Islam has borrowed the tradition and set the period of fasting and the religious festivals according to the lunar cycle.

There is fasting in the Sabian faith (the Hagarene teaching) Islam was born as a result of the transformation done on the original Sabian faith. Sabians were fasting for 30 days. This period was tied to the lunar cycle. The Sabian rule was ‘see the moon and start fasting, see the moon and start rejoicing.’ Islam has adopted exactly this period of fasting and the rule of  ‘fasting-rejoicing.’

Jews were fasting on the tenth day of the month of Tishri (Teshrin-Tishrin-Tisrin in Arabic). The Jewish year starts in September or October (Tisrin’ül sani in Arabic) with Rosh Hashanah (The day the world was caused into existence by YHVH). On this day, YHVH would cause all the creatures to stand in judgment. The following ten days are spent in repentance. At the end of these days, Yom Kippur arrives. This is the holiest of the Jewish year. People fast for twenty-five hours, no material or sexual comforts are allowed, and much of the time is spent in the synagogues, confessing. At the end of the day the sinner is thought  to have repented and forgiven by god. Yom Kippur was called asura or aşura (Asura in Arabic is the tenth day of the Arabic month Muharram, the first month of the year). The Messenger must have wanted Muslims to take part in the asura celebrations. Furthermore, he has set an hour of worship and prayer in midday, in parallel with the Jewish customs. He borrowed certain prohibitions about consuming pig flesh, blood, and the flesh of an animal died a normal death or killed by another animal. But problems when some problems arose between Muslims and Jews, the ‘voice’ from somewhere up there has ordered(!) the Messenger not to heed the Judaic doctrine that god had finished the creation in six days and rested on the seventh. This meant a clean deviation from one of the basic doctrines of Judaism. The Messenger has allegedly decided to break with the Jews before the Badr battle and resist them regardless of the outcome. Among other deviations, the Messenger has reportedly declared the month of the Badr ‘battle’ as the month of fasting. He has reportedly decreed that the Jewish custom of ‘asura fast’ was not compulsory for the Muslims.

Kuran says nothing definite about the period of fasting in 2:184-187. Islam maintains that the period of fasting, Ramadan, is the period when Kuran is thought to have been given(!) to the Messenger, but Kuran 97:1 says that it was revealed on the night of ‘Kadr’, which may be taken as the initiation of the revelation. The revealing of Kuran is said to have begun sometime in the years 609-10-11 A.D. Reportedly, the codebook has been completed over a period of 20-25 years (Fahr-al-din Razi says 23 years).  

LOT / LUT IN KURAN

In order not to be bogged down by the unacceptable detail or because of their ignorance of the facts or to be able to fend off difficult questions, the writers of Kuran have again preferred to remain superficial, with remarks here and there, about the story of Lot/Lut.

Here is the summary: God sent Lot to a corrupt people to show them the god’s way. Lot failed. People did not listen to him. Their sin was sodomy. They refused to give up their practice. These people desired sexually the beautiful male angels who came to town to announce the birth of Abraham’s son. Lot offered his daughters instead. He tried to draw their attention to the power of god but failed to persuade the crowd who said,  “Let Allah show his power.” The angels warned Lot to leave his wife behind, take his family out of town and do not look back. He did as he was told. God rained down stones and destroyed the country. In another verse god caused a torrential rain and destruction.

In Kuran 26:165-169 we have another superficial reference to the story, at the end of which Lot prays to god for protection from this people. Wherever the story is narrated, the main theme is sodomy.

KURAN’S ZABUR / ZEBUR IS NOT A CODEBOOK AND DAVID IS NOT A PROPHET

Kuran mentions the name of a codebook called Zabur (Zebur) in verses 3:84; 4:163; 17:55; 21:105.  According to Kuran, this elusive book was supposedly given to David. Who is this David? He is the greatest king in the history of Israel. He has never been a prophet. He has never revealed anything divine to anybody. He is the founder and the first ruler of the united Israel. His reign began around 1000 B.C. and lasted approximately 40 years. He was reportedly a shrewd politician and a brave warrior. David also created an empire extending far beyond the borders of Israel. He made the city of Yerushalim the centre of his kingdom and empire, and the city came to be called the ‘city of David’. But to make this city a real centre, he knew that it had to have a religious significance as well. So he’d had the Ark of the Covenant brought to Yerushalim from Shiloh where it was standing in the shrine. David was the leading spirit in the establishment of the Yerushalim cult. He believed that god had made a covenant with him; that is, in the person of David as a king, god acted to mediate his power and blessing to fulfil the destiny of Israel, and that this covenant included all David’s royal heirs to come until god’s promise to Israel was realized. So, could the writers of Kuran have misunderstood this personal conviction of David’s as an announcement of divine duty? It is quite possible.

David was not the personality presented in Kuran. He was a gifted musician. He was brought to Gibeah and began his career as an aide at king Saul’s court. His real name is still disputed, and not known. The excavations at Mari (Tell el-Hariri on the Euphrates) show that the term ‘davidum’ served as a title for a military marshal or a ‘chief of war’.  Like many names cited in the Old Testament ‘david’ is also thought to be a title. His name could have been something else, maybe Elhanan as mentioned in II Samuel 21:19. There are some scholars who say that this person could have been the chief minister Yehoshaphat who put the title of ‘david’/‘davidum’ on all the correspondence through him. His real name is forgotten in time. Yehoshaphat was the one who conquered the city of Yerushalim and made it his capital city. He called it the ‘city of David’ (‘the city of the commander’?) at first, but eventually the city came to be known as Yerushalim (Previously this city was known as Ur-u Salima = The ‘city of Salima). The person we know as David was not a righteous man. Read the story about his tricks to get Uriah’s wife.

If we have to go by the story in the Old Testament, David was anointed not as a prophet but as a king. He was the political ‘messiah’ (‘anointed one’), the vice-regent of god through whom god mediated his salvation and blessing to Israel. This was his belief and the belief of Israel. In other words, it was folklore. There was no messengership involved. Israel, in later periods, when they were in distress and subjugated by the neighbouring states, always looked for a messiah (a lineal ‘son of David’) to come, to establish the kingdom of god and peace. Israel’s prophets always used this great era of David as an illustration of the time of fulfilment for which they have waited and prayed.

In the New Testament Yshua is called the ‘son of David’ and ‘messiah’, which shows that Christians believed that in him the promises to Abraham and David had been fulfilled and that the rule of god had come (Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, 1989).

In the beginning ‘anointing’ was reserved for prophets but as time went by the idealized kings were also came to be considered as the ‘anointed ones’ of the god. These kings were sacrosanct, and let alone harming them, even irreverence towards them was a capital offence. A further development of this concept can be seen in the belief that god has given a special protection to his anointed king. The Psalms contain several references to the idea of divine intervention for ‘the anointed of the lord’, the idealized Davidic king. While David was king of Israel (10th century B.C.) the idea has developed further, and came to include the belief that his (David’s) House would also rule forever not only over Israel but also over all the nations (Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts).

• Fourteen of the Psalms have been called ‘royal’ Psalms because they feature the king (David) as both the representative of YHVH to the community, and the representative of community to YHVH.

• Furthermore, Luke believed in Psalms as a source of guidance.

• The early Church chanted or sang Psalms as part of the liturgy.

• Christians and Jews believed for hundreds of years that the Psalms as a whole belonged to David.

This portrayal could easily have been interpreted wrongly as belonging to a messenger and the Psalms as a book given to David by god.  Therefore, the tutors of the Messenger may have presented Psalms as the codebook given to David and/or the ideologues of the Hagarene teaching may have thought that if David was a prophet he must have had a codebook, hence the Psalms. When the Ismaelite-Hagarene teaching (Sabian faith) was in the process of transformation into Islam the writers of Kuran must have copied this wrong belief, because of which Zebur (Zabur), the book reportedly given to David, entered the stage. Zebur is not a divine book given to David but the Book of Psalms of the Old Testament.

What is this collection called the Book of Psalms? It is the basis of the Christian as well as Jewish liturgies. In Hebrew it is entitled Tehillim, ‘Songs of Praise’. These Psalms were written by multiple authors between 1300 B.C.- 450 B.C. They are not divine; they are not revelations, but poems. The superscriptions like ‘To David’, ‘To Solomon’ are not indicating the authorship but the dedication of the name of an early anthology.

The Hebrew psalmists have inherited skills from the art of their neighbours and predecessors, especially the Egyptians and Canaanites. The texts of many ancient Near Eastern psalms in Akkadian, Ugaritic and Egyptian have been discovered, published and translated. For example Psalm 29 is recognized to represent a radical adaptation of an Ugaritic (proto-Canaanite) hymn in honour of the storm god. Psalm 104 has been strongly influenced by the Egyptian hymn to the Sun deity by Akh-en-aten.

For centuries, Jews and Christians ascribed the whole of the Psalms to David. This was another reason why the Ismaelite ideologues and the writers of Kuran must have imagined the whole book as a revelation to David. The studies done in the 2oth century show that the Book of Psalms is a collection of poems reflecting all periods of Israel’s history. The most interesting thing in connection with Islam’s position vis a vis the Book of Psalms is written in Psalm 47:9:

• “The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the god of Abraham: For the shields of the earth belong unto god.”  

The psalmists saw all the kings of the Earth who would worship YHVH “as the people of the god of Abraham”, as a sacrament. Does it remind you of anything?

• The Ismaelite-Hagarene Messenger (he is known as Muhammad) has recognized all the books and the prophets, has he not?

• The Ismaelite-Hagarene Messenger and/or his ideologues have presented Psalms as a book given by god to David, have they not?

• Who is this god? Despite the fact that the nationalist ideology of the Arabs (Islam) has changed his name, this god is the god of the Israelites, YHVH. The ideology of Islam states that YHVH was also the god of Abraham.

• The Messenger declared that he was going back to the unadulterated faith of Ibrahim (Abraham).

• Therefore, he is one of the people of the god of Abraham.

Interesting connections, are they not?

These supposed prophecies, the genealogies in the Bible, deeds of David as narrated in the Old and New Testaments, the Psalms and the folklore may have given the Ismaelite-Hagarenes and the writers of Kuran the idea that David was a prophet. Here ends the story of the codebook that Muslims call the Zebur.  

• Nowhere could you find a reference to a divine book called Zebur but in Kuran.

• Zebur’s position is identical with the persons in the previous codebooks like Abraham, Ya’kub (Jacob), I’zak (Isaac), Ismail (Ish’mael), Moses (Mose), John (Yohanan), Yshua (Yeshu, Jesus) and Paul all of whom could be found in none of the independent texts but in the Bible and Kuran.

Therefore, the rule has not changed.

ANOTHER NON-PROPHET PROPHET IN KURAN: SOLOMON

David was not a prophet but a king, and Solomon (Shelomo, Shlomo), his son, was also a king and not a prophet. He is presented in the Bible and folklore as a wise man par excellence. His name reportedly meant ‘peace and prosperity’. Nathan the prophet called him ‘Yedidyah’ (‘beloved of the god’). ‘Yah’ is the short version of YHVH. David’s reign was a period of peace and prosperity, but II Chronicles 1-9 give a much more impressive picture of peace and prosperity for Solomon’s reign, which lasted 40 years. I Kings relates that Solomon himself was the wisest of wise and the richest of rich. His court was justly famed for its wealth and magnificence. So much so that when the queen of Sheba (Belkis, Bilkis of Islam) visited him she was astounded, and “there was no spirit in her”  (What she had seen had taken her breath away) (II Chronicles 9:4). This story about the queen of Sheba is almost identical with the second Targum on the Book of Esther.

Solomon’s father David was very clever in recognizing the need to make his city (Yerushalim) a religious centre as well, and he had had the Ark brought from the city of Shiloh. Solomon was also shrewd, and he had had a temple built as an appanage to his royal palace. The whole complex took him 13 years to complete. From the things he had done it is not difficult to realize that he was bright, astute, clever etc., but it was his wisdom which inspired numerous legends about himself, his acts, his relationship with the queen of Sheba and on other matters. Talmud has many stories of human invention about him. According to the Jewish tradition, he had a magic carpet 60 miles long and 60 miles wide, he used to set out at dawn with this carpet, have breakfast in Damascus, and supper in Media. The queen of the ants reproved him on one of his journeys for his pride etc.

Those of you who would like to get their hands on the origins of the edited stories in Kuran about Solomon could check the Jewish tradition, especially the Talmud.

The proverbs of Solomon and many psalms of Solomon are reportedly based on the ancient Egyptian literature. Robert Cooper points out that the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament could not belong to king Solomon (Shelomo, Shlomo); it is a collection of sayings of another nation, and the name of Solomon is inserted later, because we read in Proverbs 25: “These are also proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out.” Hezekiah lived 250 years later than Solomon, and Robert Cooper asks: “There have been no written material on this subject, so how did they know that these phrases belonged to Solomon?”

The words in I Kings 4:33 have created myths (including the fairy tales about Solomon in Islamic mythology) which claimed that Solomon was able to understand the ‘tongue’ of all kinds of animals. This is another example of a mistranslation of the sentence; instead of “He spoke about them” the sentence was translated as “He spoke to them.” In the end a series of fantastic stories were created.

Though, Solomon’s reign was a period of peace, prosperity and wealth, it was also an era of decadence. The belief system was practically shelved. Amongst other things, Solomon also allowed the ladies of his harem to adhere to their gods and cults. Despite the fact that contact with them was considered a grave mistake by the followers of YHVH. This incurred a wholehearted disapproval from the Biblical writers. Solomon allowed high places to be built on the Mount of Olives, and took part in cultic practices (I Kings 11, II Kings 23). Almost all of the Israelite and Jewish rulers after him have acted in the same way. Even a fanatic like the cruel Yehu of Israel (842/1-815/4 B.C.), who was responsible for the dreadful slaughter of the worshippers of Baal (II Kings 10), has reportedly taken part in unorthodox cults (II Kings 10). Among the children of Israel naked figures of Astarte (Ashtaroth, Ashtoreth) was quite common. An excavation in the Solomon’s temple in Yerushalim by the British archaeologist Kathleen M. Kenyon unearthed a room, which, with the pillars for the cult, was understood to be a heathen place of worship. The two pillars represented the fertility cult of Asherah, who was the Lady of the Sea, a goddess of the Baal cult and was considered the wife of YHVH. Until Hezekiah (Hiskia) destroyed them, YHVH’s ark in the temple stood among others, side by side with Moses’ brazen serpent Nehustan (II Kings 18:4). YHVH had to share his temple with Baal, Asherah and the heavenly bodies like the Sun (II Kings 23:4-7). Popular religion in those days, as practised by the children of Israel, was in reality different from what the Bible would have us believe.

There was confusion about the Songs of Solomon as well. How could these obscene poems come to be included in the Old Testament? They had no connection with the belief system or history. The Sumerian clay tablets in Istanbul Archaeological Museum provided the answer: These songs in the Old Testament were originally the hymns sung at the Sumerian New Year celebrations. Sumerians had an agricultural economy, and they believed that if goddess Inanna married the god Dumuzi there would be abundance. This led to the creation of a legend, at the end of which Inanna manages to arrange for the release of her husband Dumuzi to come up from the underworld for six months. Consequent to this solution, Dumuzi spends the winter in the underworld, then comes up and unites with his wife Inanna. This occasion is celebrated by the marriage of the king of the day and the chief priestess, thus the New Year begins. The Songs in the Old Testament were written to be sung during these celebrations, the king and the chief priestess sung these songs to each other. This Sumerian fertility cult practices have come down to the day of the writers of the Old Testament as ‘sacred marriage ceremonies’, which are understood to have continued until the time of Yshua and even later.  Many texts that are not related to the belief system were excluded from the Old Testament but these songs remained. The stories in the Song of Solomon 1:2-4, 3:11, and 4:9-11 are the indications that these ceremonies were in existence during the times of king Solomon. 

Both David and Solomon were ordinary persons, they were not seers, poets, nabis, messengers or prophets, but they did have persons with them who claimed to be prophets. Those who would like to know who they were should read the appropriate chapters of the Old Testament.

YSHUA, VIRGIN BIRTH, CRUCIFIXION AND KURAN

Kuran is the proof that the writers of the verses were extremely irritated by the Christian doctrine that makes Isa (Yshua, Jesus) the ‘son of god’. They show their protest as follows:

• “Begetting does not befit Allah”, “He does not beget”, “How could he beget (if) he hasn’t had a wife”, “Say (to them): ’If Rahman had had a child, I would have been the first to serve him.’ ”

So, the writers of Kuran make clear their opposition to the idea of god having a child, hence Isa could not be the ‘son of god’. That is absolutely out of question. The writers of Kuran are also very uncomfortable with the doctrine of Trinity:

• “Do not say (Allah is) threefold, he is alone”;  (Allah is asking Isa): “O son of Maryam! Was it you who told people ‘accept me and my mother as gods’?”

Another incomprehensible statement in Kuran is that the New Testament is the book given by god to Isa. As I have explained in the pages on Yshua in this site;

• Yshua did not have a separate book. He was a Jew. His Book was the Old Testament. He preached from that book. He only provided his interpretation as he preached.

• While Isa was preaching in Palestine there was no New Testament. The collection of writings in the form of letters, called the New Testament came into being years after Isa had left Palestine to go to India via Edessa (present day Urfa in Turkey) and Nisibis (presently Nusaybin in Turkey).

• Isa had nothing to do with the teaching formulated in the New Testament.

• Isa was a Jew and not a Christian. He had no idea of Christianity. He had never said that he was Christ. Apostle Paul had created the Christ myth.

The writers of Kuran has taken the Old Testament story of virgin birth and exhibited their uneasiness because of the story in Luke 1:26-33. They were unaware of the fact that a wrong translation (that I have mentioned in the section on Yshua) was to blame. As usual, an amended, tailored story appears in Kuran. According to this story, Maryam (Miryam, Mariamne) is presented as if she is a prophetess, who receives through the angels the word of the supreme entity. We know that Islam rejects the idea of woman prophets. This small point must have escaped the writers of Kuran.

We should try to find the source of this concept, which sees Maryam as a member of the Trinity.

An interesting connection could be established. There was a heretic sect in the 4th century Arabia, who adored Maryam: Kollyridians (Collyridians). The name was coined by The Bishop of Constantia (Salamis in Cyprus) Epiphanius (315-403 A.D.) has coined the name. Collyridian is derived from their custom of presenting Maryam with a special kind of bread called kolluris or collyris, hence Collyridians, the ‘cake-eater-sect’. This act of offering and eating of cakes was a custom dating to the pre-Christian times, probably derived from the worship of Artemis. Leontius of Byzance called this sect ‘Philomarianites’= ‘Mary-lovers’. Collyridians were also known to and mentioned by St. John of Damascus.

Epiphanius, the Bishop of Constantia wrote the following in the 4th century A.D. against the Collyridians:

• “After this heresy appeared, which we have already mentioned slightly by means of the letter written in Arabia about Mary. And this heresy was again made public in Arabia from Thrace and the upper parts of Scythia, and was brought to our ears, which to men of understanding will be found ridiculous and laughable. We will begin to trace it out…For the harm is equal in both these heresies, the one belittling the holy Virgin, the other again glorifying her over-much. For who should it be that teach thus but women? For the race of women is slippery, fallible, and humble-minded... For some women deck out a koutrkon that is to say, a square stool, spreading upon it a linen cloth, on some solemn day of the year, for some days they lay out bread, and offer it in the name of Mary.”

Collyridians, reportedly consisting mainly of women or at least led by woman priests, propagated a form of a goddess cult regarding Maryam. Epiphanius was uncomfortable with this concept and had this warning: “Although Mary is the most beautiful and holy and worthy of praise, we do not owe her adoration… Adoration must cease. For Mary is no goddess nor has she received her body from heaven.”

While creating their religious texts the Hagarene ideologues must have been influenced by this small sect. One should always remember the reports that one of the tutors of the Messenger was a Nestorian monk kicked out of his monastery because of his unacceptable ideas. Islam must have copied this concept about Maryam from the Hagarene teaching.

On the crucifixion and the supposed death of Isa Kuran has a very interesting statement: “They did not kill him, they did not hang him”, “Allah lifted him up to his presence.” The origin of this idea is the Manichaeism and a Docetism. Ismaelite-Hagarenes must have borrowed the idea from them. Kuran is the product of the nationalist desert Arabs, who have transformed the original Hagarene teaching. Therefore, Islam must have got the idea from them.

• According to Docetism Yshua (Jesus) had a body only in appearance. That is why his birth, suffering and death are only in the appearance (In other words Yshua was an illusion!)  Docetism accepts that Yshua survived crucifixion by a miracle and Judas Iscariot was crucified in his place together with Simon of Cyrene.

According to this belief god has substituted these two and saved Isa from crucifixion. A similar view exists in Kuran. Here is 4:157-158:

• “And (on account of) their saying: ‘We killed the messiah, Isa son of Maryam, Messenger of god.’ They did not kill him and they did not crucify him, but it was made to seem so to them. Those who argue about him are in doubt about it. They have no real knowledge of it, just conjecture. But, they certainly did not kill him. God raised him to Himself. God is Almighty, All-wise.”

It is almost certain that the Hagarene teaching had borrowed this idea from Docetism (Dosithean teaching). Kuran 23:50 goes further and brings certainty into the matter, which does not exist in the Docetic version. According to this Islamic version Isa was saved and made to settle somewhere else:

• “And We made the son of Maryam and his mother as a Sign: We gave them both shelter on high ground, affording rest and security and furnished with springs.”

Docetism of the first centuries of Christianity is considered as a heretic movement. If we try to find the source of this movement, we have to go back to the Sumerians. The existing ideas of the Sumerian society passed on, to the Ophites in Phrygia, to the Samaritans, to the Haemerobaptists and their cousins, the Essenes. Haemerobaptists have lived under the leadership of Dositheos, the Samaritan messiah, for a while. The true Johannites, Haemerobaptists, in their turn, have spawned sects like the Dositheans, Simonians, Nicolaitans, and Sethians. Dositheos was the prototype of Seth in the Seth Gnosticism. Dositheos is claimed to be the apostle of John the Baptist.

Docetism gave birth also to Elchesaites (Elxai, Helxai). Manichaeans and the Mandaeans, Mandaeans and the Dositheans are connected. Mandaeans and Dositheans are members of the umbrella group Haemerobaptists, like the Elchesaites. According to Theodore bar Khoni one of the names for the Mandaeans was Dostai. This was an early name for the Dositheans, going back to the Samaritan exchange period (8th to 7th centuries B.C.).

In Arabic literature, Mandaeans appear as Sabe’e or Al-sabiun (we know them as Sabians), and there is little doubt that they are also identical with the Mughtasilah amongst whom, according to the Fihrist, Mani, the founder of Manichaeism was born.

The Hagarene teaching has borrowed the adulation of Maryam from the Collyridians. Likewise, they borrowed the name ‘Yahya’ (Yohanan, John the Baptist), and the stories of Abraham’s (Bahram of the Mandaeans) circumcision and his migration to Harran from the Mandaeans (Sabians).

In Kuran 4:171 it is written, “The Son of Maryam Isa Masih (Yshua Christ) is the messenger of Allah, and His Word.” If this statement is not inspired by or the echo of the statement in the beginning of the Gospel of John (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with god, and the Word was god” [In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum], someone should suggest other possible sources.

Who would have thought that Kuran would reveal the truth about where Isa and the persons around him had gone after he survived the crucifixion. Here is Kuran 23:50:

• “And We made the son of Maryam and his mother as a Sign: We gave them both shelter on high ground, affording rest and security and furnished with springs.”

Another translation describes this place of ‘shelter’ as a “green valley”.  A ‘high ground’, and  “flat (land) and has a river.” A green valley.. Does that mean something? It reminds us of Kashmir. In the pages on Yshua in this site I brought to your attention the possible indications that Yshua, after surviving the crucifixion, could well have gone to Kashmir with the three Marys, his mother, sister and his companion(?), and lived and died there. In a statement originating from the Messenger and reported by Fatima, his daughter, Isa has lived to the advanced age of 120 years.

This is the Isa of Kuran.

Kuran mentions Isa (Jesus, Yeshu, Yshua) in verses 2:87, 116, 136, 253; 3:42-59, 84; 4:157, 158, 171, 172; 5:46, 72, 75, 78, 110-114, 116; 6:85, 101; 9:30, 31; 10:68; 19:18-36; 21:91; 23:50; 33:7; 42:13; 43:57, 61, 63, 81; 57:27 and 61:6, 14.

THIS IS JOHN (YOHANAN, YAHYA) OF KURAN

The John the Baptist of the New Testament is called Yahya in Kuran. The reason is that the Hagarene ideologues have borrowed the John/Yohanan character from the Mandaean/Sabian texts in Eastern Aramaic, where he is called Yahya. The writers of Kuran have copied the story and kept the name as it was: Yahya. The reason why Yahya is presented in Kuran as a much more important character than he is in the New Testament is that the character is borrowed from the Mandaean/Sabian literature where he is considered as a principal ‘saviour.’

The majority of Yahya’s (Yohanan, John) story in Kuran (verses 3:38,39; 6:85; 19:7, 12-15; 21:90) is the extremely shortened version of the Old Testament story on Zacharias and his wife, their old age, the son given to them at that age etc.

The sura 19:12-15 describes Yahya as follows:

• “ ‘O Yahya! Hold the Book tightly.’ We gave him wisdom when he was still a child. We gave him a tenderness of heart and purity. He was a protected person. He treated his parents kindly, he was not a tyrant or an oppressor.”  (‘We’: Does it mean Allah together with the members of the assembly of gods or Allah and the angels or is it just an earthly remark by a human being?)

We are told in the Bible that Zacharias belonged to the Abiathar priesthood and Elisabeth was a descendant of Aaron (a Levi). John lived in the desert until he went before Israel; he never drank fermented drinks, according to Mark. These characteristics must have appealed to the writers of Kuran. Mark tells that John could have become a priest-administrator, but did not make an attempt, instead he has started baptising by water; and he announced that Yshua will be the real baptist, baptising not with water but with the Holy Ghost. Reportedly, his father and mother taught John the religion. He appears to be a prophet warning of the coming of the last things, the end of time, and the judgment day. The writers of Kuran must have been impressed with this side of his character. John is thought to have modelled himself on Elijah; he imitated Elijah’s dress, Elijah’s preference for living in the wilderness, and Elijah’s fiery preaching style. Since Elijah was due to return to announce the ‘Day of the Lord’ John must have had a special purpose for presenting this image. He must have believed that some kind of a great deliverance was about to take place.

Jewish historian Josephus wrote the following about the doomsday prophets, who were supposedly preaching divine teaching:

• “Deceivers and impostors, under the pretence of divine inspiration fostering revolutionary changes, persuaded the multitude to act like mad men, and led them out into the desert under the belief that god would there give them tokens of deliverance.”

This statement is from the age of ignorance. But even today, thousands of years after, we still have the indifferent masses “led out into the ‘desert of gibberish’ under the influence of the belief that god would give them eternal life.’ Nothing has changed, deceivers and impostors in various disguises are still acting in a similar fashion, relentlessly. Do I have to say anything more? Please remember once more, the vital observations that you should never forget:

• It is not clear whether the characters in the Old and New Testaments were as they are presented or if they ever existed.

• It is extremely nonsensical to search for the truth within faith and the belief systems, because they are based on circumstances, which in turn are based on daydreaming, inventions, distortions and the like.

• What is told in the codebooks are very narrowly focused tales. They are devised with the supremacy, authority and profit in the minds of the authors, who aimed at exploiting the humanly feelings like fear, horror, desperation, desolation, discontent, covetousness, immortality and the bodily pleasures to reach their aim.

This is the Yahya of Kuran. There are more differences than similarities between the John the Baptist of the New Testament and Yahya of Kuran.

THE ‘ZÜ-L-KARNEYN’ (ALEXANDER THE GREAT)  OF KURAN

Scholars claim that Zü-l-karneyn (‘the One with two horns’) in Kuran 18:83-98 is actually Alexander the Great. Kuran presents him as a righteous man and a teacher. According to some researchers, this presentation is not correct, because he was a licentious, belligerent, and idolatrous man who claimed to be the son of Ammon, who is also Jupiter and/or Zeus. Ammon could also be considered as another version or possibly the origin of the Egyptian god Amun/Amen.

Let us remember how the authors of Kuran have come out against the claim that Yshua was the son of god. Here we have another person who has declared himself the son of god. Now you must ask yourself the vital question:

• How do the same authors refer to him with praise in Kuran?

There may be those Muslims who, in order to save the situation, prefer to say that the supreme being that Alexander the Great referred to was not the god of the Abrahamic belief systems, but a statue, an idol symbolizing a deity of that day. This explanation would be the acceptance of the claim that Alexander was an idolatrous person. Then you must ask yourself another question:

• How could an idolatrous person is given a place in a codebook of absolute monotheism?

The fanatic Muslims may change their tune and resort to another argument which is about Ammon being just another of the names of the sole god (that is the usual argument). But they believe that god “does not beget and not begotten.” Therefore, He could not have had a child. Now you must ask the third question:

• How the authors of Kuran wrote all that praise about Alexander the Great, whose claim of descent from a divine being is actually a blasphemy in Islam?

If those Muslims change their tune again and declare that everything that is said about Zü-l-karneyn and his divinity is just a legend, you must ask the fourth question:

• Why and how was that blasphemous legend included in Kuran?

The name of our character is Alexandros by birth. He has become one of the greatest personalities of history: Alexander the Great. The whole story of Alexander, being the son of god, is a legend like the legends of Heracles, Yshua and of a multitude of others. The story told in Kuran about him being a pious person, a man of god, and a teacher is also a modified tale based on the legend.

Let us begin this legend with the seduction of Olympias, the mother of Alexandros. The Egyptian Pharaoh Nectanebo (Neptanabus) is reportedly a skilled sorcerer-magician who used to defend his empire by resorting to black magic. When the Persian king Ochus began his advance on Egypt with a massive army Nectanebo received a warning from his gods that his magical skills were likely to fail that time. Nectanebo fled to Macedonia where he met with Olympias, the wife of king Philip, who happened to be away on a campaign. Nectanebo impressed Olympias with his knowledge on astrology, and made a prediction that Olympias will soon conceive a child of a god: Ammon of Lybia. Then Nectanebo changed himself into a dragon and had sexual intercourse with Olympias.

Later Nectanebo manifested himself in a dream of Philip. Philip dreamt a beautiful horned god with wild hair making love to his wife. When he narrated this dream to his soothsayers, they told him that his description matched Ammon the god of Lybia. When Philip returned home he told Olympias that he knew that she had conceived from a god.

There is a second fairy tale narrated by the Roman historian Curtius Rufus who is considered to be an unreliable source by the modern scholarship. Curtius Rufus relates a fictitious story, according to which Philip II of Macedon was allegedly aware of the fact that Zeus was the biological father of Alexander. The chief god of the Greek Pantheon, Zeus, frequently visited Olympias in the night in the form of a snake. Philip II allegedly found out about this by peeping through the keyhole while his wife was having an intercourse with Zeus. His behaviour was considered sacrilegious by the gods, and they punished him by causing him to eventually lose the eye with which he watched Zeus’s amorous adventures with the queen of Macedon (What an imagination!). Here you can see how the stories of the day were invented, and how by numerous quotations they came to be included in the stories that form the sources of the belief systems.

Now back to the story:

Alexandros was reportedly born during a thunderstorm. As rumour has it, the ground was trembling and two eagles stood guard on the roof of the palace. Alexandros had golden, curling hair like a lion and his face was cheerful, his eyes were bright and lively. His left eye was grey and the right brown. Legend has it that on the same day he was born (believed to be in the summer of 356 B.C.), the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was destroyed by fire.

At the age of twelve Alexandros was very fond of weapons. He spent a lot of time marching with the army, and invited Nectanebo to accompany him, so that the Pharaoh could teach him more about astrology. One day in his roguishness, Alexandros pushed Nectanebo into a ditch, and the Pharaoh broke his neck. Upon which Alexandros rudely commented: “If you were really good at astrology, you would have foreseen this.” Upon which Nectanebo answered: “No one can escape from fate. It seems that my fate was to be killed by my son.” Upon a question from Alexandros, the dying Pharaoh revealed the story of how he had seduced Olympias. Alexandros buried Nectanebo with full honours, and Olympias admitted in front of the public that she had been deceived.

After defeating Darius at Issus (in southeast Asia Minor) Alexander turned south towards Palestine, advanced south with all the cities on route falling to his army. Then he entered Egypt and put an end to the Persian domination of the country. There he was welcomed as the liberator of Egypt. The whole country fell into his hands with ease. After becoming the absolute ruler of Egypt, Alexander felt an impelling push to visit the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa. He set out in 331 B.C.

The Oracle of Ammon (the place was called Ammoneion, Ammonium or Hammon, and its inhabitants Hammonii) in Libya has enjoyed an international reputation, but no Egyptian pharaoh before Alexander had visited the place. What was the reason behind Alexander’s visit there? Firstly, the Greeks put Ammoneion in third place in importance after the sanctuaries of Zeus at Olympia and in Dodona. Secondly, Alexander apparently had questions in his mind.

According to Plutarch, who wrote Alexander’s biography, where he cites an unnamed source, Alexander had allegedly posed some questions to the priests of Ammon:

- He wished to know, if he would conquer thee entire world.

- He wished to know whether his father’s aassassins have been punished.

According to Diodorus’ account Alexander has acknowledged the shrine as belonging to his ‘father’, and then asked his first question, which the oracle confirmed. Then he asked the second question. The priests who have interpreted the answers of the god cried out loud that “his real father can not be harmed by anyone, but if by chance he was referring to the mortal called Philip he should rest assured that everybody involved already has paid his penalty.” After this, Alexander honoured Ammon with gifts and returned to Egypt.

According to Plutarch, the priests welcomed Alexander as a ‘son’ and when Alexander asked the oracle if all of his father’s assassins had been punished the high priest commanded him to “speak more carefully.”

Arrian gives a very brief summary of what actually has happened when Alexander finally reached Siwa, and continues, “Alexander visited the oracle and got the answers that his heart desired.”

There is also Justin’s account, which states that Alexander was delighted that the priests of Hammon had confirmed his divine origins. Furthermore, identical with Curtius’ account, the oracle tells Alexander’s friends that it is all right to revere Alexander as a god rather than as a mortal king.

Quintus Curtius Rufus writes that Alexander’s companions have also consulted the oracle, and the oracle has confirmed that god would have no objection if (and when) they bestowed divine honours upon Alexander.

Plutarch doubts the validity of his unnamed source, and agreeing with the reports that Arrian probably has also used the same source, writes that Alexander has kept his discussion with the priests a secret. But, he could not keep silent totally, and allegedly writing to his mother Olympias he promised to reveal his oracles to her alone when he returned home.

Plutarch also tells that historians before him were sceptical about the alleged proclamation of Alexander as son of Ammon by the priests. According to the unnamed sources that he quotes, the chief priest of Ammon was not fluent in Greek, and instead of addressing Alexander correctly as  “O paidion”, which means  “O, my child”, he said instead, “O paidios” a possible interpretation of which in Greek is  “O pai Dios”, which is “O, child of god”. The god being Zeus, the priest’s call could also be understood as “O, child of Zeus”. Please remember the two very important mistakes of wrong translations:

•  The word ‘virgin’ instead of ‘young woman’ in the case of Maryam the mother of Yshua;

•  The word ‘or’ which means ‘fire’ instead of the word ‘Ur’, which is a city in the case of prophet Abraham.

The story that deals with Alexander’s ‘divine’ origin is based on a mixture of hearsay, folk tales, inaccuracies and human aspirations.

Alexander the Great has reportedly proclaimed his divinity towards the end of his life and ordered his subjects to worship him as god. Curtius Rufus tells that Alexander has reacted with excessive anger when someone refused to worship him. Arrian mentions representatives from Greece visiting Alexander shortly before his death, wearing laurel wreaths, which are said to be the evidence of their acceptance of Alexander’s divinity. We know that the Macedonian kings who ruled before Alexander (kings of the Argead dynasty), have traced their descent to the Greek mythical hero Heracles (Hercules) who was the ‘son of Zeus’. In the light of this Alexander’s claim that Zeus is his forefather sounds right. On the other hand, we are told that him launching a campaign to promote a blood association between the king of Macedonia and Zeus (Ammon, Jupiter) is unlikely. Plutarch gives an indication to Alexander’s behaviour in relation to his supposed divinity: When pierced by an arrow (probably in India) he is reported to have said: “What you see here is blood, and not the ichor which flows in the veins of immortals.”   “In the end” writes Plutarch “Alexander did not allow himself to become foolishly overconfident because of his alleged divinity, but merely used it as a tool to impress others.” 

Judging by what is written in Kuran, the authors seem to have been impressed definitely by this fictitious literature about Alexander.

During the 1000 years between the time of Alexander and the time when the ideology of Islam was written this story has changed a lot as it passed down the generations. The story that reached the writers of Kuran might have recognized Alexander only as a pious person. One should remember that, the very writers were also mistaken about David and Solomon.

The crucial aspect of this story lies in the Greek mythology where generally there are three classes of beings: Gods, men and heroes. Heroes differentiate themselves from ordinary human beings because, though heroes are mortal, they have supernatural origins. They are in a way hybrid beings between humans and immortal entities. Do you want examples?  Researchers cite Achilles who was the son of the hero Peleus and the nymph Thetis; Hercules (Heracles) who was the son of Zeus and the princess Alcmene; and Perseus who was the son of Zeus and the princess Danaë. Therefore, they say the event at Siwa could not have elevated Alexander to the level of a deity, but most probably made him a hero.

Reportedly, Alexander's last wish was burial at the oasis of Siwa next to the temple of Ammon. When he died at the age of 33 Ptolemy took his body from Mesopotamia back to Egypt, where he put Alexander’s body in a golden coffin in Alexandria. We do not know what happened afterwards, but his last wish is believed to have been carried out also by Ptolemy, and his body was interred at Siwa.

• We know that Lysimachos of Thrace, one of Alexander’s successors, struck one of the first issues of posthumous silver tetradrachms in the name of Alexander, featuring the portrait of the Macedonian king on the obverse, bearing the horns of Ammon on his head. The ‘horns of Ammon’ reminds us of the bull apis that Egyptians have worshipped. It also reminds us of the ram which was worshipped in Thebes. These were idols with horns.

In addition to other descriptions the folklore must have had Alexander immortalized as ‘the one with two horns’  (zü-l-karneyn of Kuran). When they came into contact with the legend and the folkloric aspects of the story of Alexander the Great, the writers of Kuran must have visualized him as a pious person, not as ‘the son of god’ but as a ‘man of god’, an ‘emissary of god’ (he was none of them), and included the legend in Kuran.

So, ask yourself:

• How the horns of these idols and zü-l-karneyn who had them on his head managed to have a place in a book of absolute monotheism like Kuran?

SORCERY AND MAGIC SHOULD BE BANNED AT ALL COSTS

Religions on the one hand and magic/sorcery on the other are rivals.  They are in competition for the allegiance of the humanity. Therefore, it is only natural for the belief systems to try to outlaw, ban, and eliminate the magical practices and sorcery. There is more to it though. The Old Testament has also introduced a ban on images. Let us ask the vital question: What harm could an image do?

If we extend our search to the ancient Egypt, we would be closer to an answer. Do you remember the story about the Sun god Ra descending down to his home in the west every night, where the armies of demons commanded by Satan Apophis attack him? Ra fights with them all through the night; sometimes the forces of darkness send black clouds to the blue skies of Egypt to black out Ra’s light and diminish his power. In order to help the Sun god in his daily struggle a great ceremony was held at the Sun temple in Thebes. An image of Apophis was made, on which the name of him was written with green ink. The image bound by a single hair was spat on, then cut by a stone knife, and thrown on the ground. This act, accompanied by certain spells, is repeated. Wounds open  on the images of demons (spirits) of darkness-clouds-rainfall, they go away for a while, and the beneficial Sun god shines once again with his victory..

Here the image was used as an instrument of the black magic, and sorcery. This ban on images in Judaism has one of its roots - at least the early ones - in the practice of sorcery in ancient Egypt, and in other regional practices. The ban must have intended to rid sorcery of one of its instruments.

Images and pictures resembling the real thing were banned in Taxila, India as well. Taxila was the centre of the Buddhist and Greek culture. Buddha’s image was designed there for the first time, and until then the making of images or pictures, resembling the real thing, was banned. This prohibition may have been another source of the banning of images in the Old Testament.

Islam has an identical ban on images, statues, pictures and paintings. Since the IsmaeliteHagarene ideologues have taken the Old Testament as the one of the sources for their codebook, they must have borrowed the ban on images from Judaism. The pretext is to prevent idolizing and the worship of images. Images are the things, which stand for the real thing - the supreme being. There is always the possibility of magic or sorcery directed at the real thing via the image. Therefore, they must be banned. This shows us that the ban on images is not particular to Islam but has its roots mainly in the Mosaic faith, in Egypt, and in the cultures in far away places in a more distant past.

Fear of sorcery has brought about another ban. This is the ban on uttering god’s name -YHVH - freely. There was ‘One’ with an ‘unspeakable name’ in Egypt. Do you remember the ‘One’ who called himself ‘nuk pu nuk’?  Islam has a similar ban on the free usage of the name of the god. This prohibition is thought to have its origins in a taboo in prehistory. In addition, magic and sorcery are thought to be the other reasons behind it. Leaders and the ideologues of the belief systems in those days were convinced that knowing the name of a person gave one the ability to take that person under one’s influence. Here we have an Egyptian connection again. The myth concerned is a solar myth, which is about the magical potency of the name of a god. Isis wanted to learn the secret name of Re/Ra. She thought of using it in her magic spells. She created a snake, placed it in the path of Re. Re came out of his palace, and snake bit him. Re was seized by terrible pains. He called the gods to a meeting. Among them was Isis with her magic skills. Re told them what had happened to him, and begged Isis to relieve him. Isis told him that Re must give her his secret name for her spell to be effective. Re responded by telling her that he is Khepri in the morning, Re at midday and Atum in the evening. Isis objected and told him that none of these was his secret name of power. Finally Re revealed his secret name on condition that it would be revealed to no god but Horus. Using Re’s name of power, Isis uttered the spell that removed the effects of the snake’s poison. Here we see again the fear created by the use of magic and sorcery, which led to keeping a name secret to prevent its use for harmful purposes.

THE ‘MAGIC’ NUMBER ‘7’

Number ‘7’ was very important for the Sumerians, like the passage of seven days, crossing of seven mountains, seven lights, seven trees, seven doors. Sumerian underworld ‘kur’ had seven gates, according to the belief of the day (The same applies to Islam’s hell - Kuran 15:44). Number ‘7’ appears in many places in both the Old Testament and Kuran.

Zarathustra has reportedly received seven revelations or ‘visions’ from up there. Many of these visions were brought by angels and archangels (which later had similar functions(!) in Judaism and Islam). These seven visions formed the basis of his belief system. Ahura Mazda (the ‘father of gods’, the ‘lord of light’) of the Zoroastrianism has created seven divine entities (six Amesha Spentas and the ‘sacred spirit’, ‘good spirit’ Spenta Mainyu). Zoroastrians have many festivals, but only seven of these are obligatory. Six of them are called ‘gahambar’ and the seventh is ‘no ruz’ (New Year).

Date of the Flood is given as May 27th by Bar Hebraeus. In the Old Testament Noah’s Ark is said to have settled on dry land on the 17th day of the 7th month (‘7th month’ is still debated).

Baal myth was taken over by the Hebrew mythology and Baal was transformed into YHVH when they have settled in Canaan. In a different form of the myth, Baal’s victory over the forces of disorder and chaos is depicted as the killing of the seven-headed dragon Lotan. In one part of the myth, a building intended for Baal is completed and Baal celebrates the occasion with his kinsfolk and the seventy children of goddess Asherah. According to the myth, Baal’s absence from the Earth lasts for seven years of drought and famine.

The number ‘7’ in the Old Testament is allegedly based on a mystical understanding (probably coming from Sumer and Babylonia).

Siddharta Gautama has reportedly taken seven steps immediately after his birth. This is an essential component in the legend of the Buddha Child, because the number seven is of great symbolic importance in Buddhism. These seven steps are linked with Gautama’s capacity for levitation. Buddha’s ‘floating’ steps have a parallel in an apocryphal story about Yshua’s  childhood. In the Proto-Gospel of James 6:1, has the story about the child Yshua growing and suddenly taking precisely seven steps.

Both Buddhists and Theraputae held number ‘7’ in high regard. The seventh day (when the Theraputae sat together) is an adoption of the Buddhist Sabbath (uposatha) as a day of religious observance and ceremonies for lay followers and bhikshus, four times a month. The uposatha-Sabbath is one of the most important sacred days for Theravada Buddhism. Do not forget that the god of the Hebrews has created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day (Sabbath).

In the Sumerian pantheon, the king-god was on top. He was the head of the council of gods. In the forefront of this council, there were four Creator gods. Together with them, there were seven most eminent gods, who were the determiners of destinies.

The Flood in the Sumerian myth has swept over the land for seven days and seven nights.

The creation myth of Assyria (Enuma Elish) is in the form of seven clay tablets.

The number ‘7’ appears in the Gilgamesh story too. Since Gilgamesh has to try his strength against Enkidu, he sends him a temple prostitute, Enkidu desires her, after seven days of amorous delight Enkidu changes, Gilgamesh and Enkidu try each other’s strength, neither of them is able to defeat the other, they become friends, then Enkidu dies.

In the Assyro-Babylonian version of the Flood myth, the waters subside on the seventh day. The ship grounds on mount Nisir. Utnapishtim waits for another seven days then sends a dove etc.

According to the Assyro-Babylonian myth of Adapa, Ea (the god of Wisdom) creates Adapa as the model of man, gives him wisdom but not eternal life. One of his duties was to provide fish for the table of the gods. One day he was fishing when south wind blew and overturned his boat. In rage, he broke the wing of the south wind, and it did not blow for seven days.

The Egyptian god Re decides to destroy the humanity, but apparently does not desire a complete destruction so he devises a plan for the making of seven thousand jars of barley beer dyed with red ochre to resemble blood etc.

In Mithraism, there were seven degrees of initiation open to the adept, perhaps corresponding to the seven planetary spheres to be traversed by the soul in an upward progress.

The Sabians of Harran believed that the purity of the body and spirit was fundamental to reaching the godly spirit  via the humanly spirit. They believed that many spirits in addition to the exalted spirit govern the universe and that these spirits reside on seven celestial bodies. The Sabians were reported to have had seven temples all of which are described as very big. These temples were built for the worship of Sun, Moon and the five planets. According to the Sabians, prayers - seven times daily - were made compulsory to Adam, and this practice continued amongst the Mandaeans (a Gnostic sect, Sabians) until John the Baptist has changed it to three times daily.

In Kuran number seven is mentioned in verses 2:29, 196, 261; 12:43-48; 15:44, 87; 17:44; 18:22; 23:17, 86; 31:27; 41:12; 65:12; 67:3; 69:7; 71:15; 78:12. Hell’s seven gates are mentioned in 15:44, and there are many references to ‘seven skies’ (only seven celestial bodies were known then) in these verses.

Number ‘7’ seems to have been very fashionable throughout the history of the region.

WEEKDAYS - THE DAY OF REST

We learn from the Sumerian school tablets that schools were open for six days of the week and the seventh day was a day of rest. Babylonians made their week begin with Sunday, so Saturday became the seventh day of the week (Saturday, ‘saturn-day’). Saturn represented the evil forces. Therefore, ‘Saturnday’ reminded sorrow and the necessity of self-discipline. It is written on the Sumerian tablets that the king of Babylon, the seer, and the medicine man were expected to refrain from doing anything on these unfavourable days, because whatever they do would not bring good but evil. Babylonians celebrated also the seventh day - ‘shapatu’ - of every month (Does it ring a bell as to the origin of the Jewish Sabbath?). This ‘sacred’ number seven was important for almost all the nations of the region, including the Semites, but it played a much more important role for the Babylonians. This seventh day, the day of rest/the day of celebration, is believed to have been borrowed by the Mosaic belief system as the Sabbath day. In the formation days of the Mosaic belief system, Hebrews must have remembered this inauspicious day, and eventually transformed it into a day of veneration. The seventh day for Jews means a day of rest dedicated to god, because the Old Testament tells us that god has completed His creation in six days, and on the seventh day He rested (like the Egyptian god Ptah, who predates the god of Israel, YHVH, by centuries). The seventh day is the ration of god, as it were. It is exactly like offering a portion of time to god, which is identical with dedicating a portion of a sacrificed animal to the supreme being.

The writers of Kuran have also borrowed the Old Testament’s concept of creation in six days, but they have not referred to the seventh day. We have solved that problem earlier, and we know now what the god of Islam did on the seventh day:

Read the end of the seventh tablet of Enuma Elish:

• “…Who (Marduk) vanquished Tiamat and achieved the kingship.”

In other words, he became sovereign, the absolute ruler. Kuran 7:54 says what happened on the seventh day of Creation: “...Afterwards (god) has established His sovereignty on arş (the Universe).” Furthermore, in 25:59 it is written “He was the One who has established sovereignty on the arş (the Universe).” Marduk defeats Tiamat (Satan) and becomes sovereign. God of Islam establishes his sovereignty over the Universe.

The day of rest was moved to Friday in Islam, because the ideologues of Islam have decided to distance themselves from the world of Judaism and establish their particular personality, so they preferred Friday to Saturday. Furthermore, Friday was the last day before Sabbath. It was a day of the setting up of markets in the city squares, where the Palestinians, Jews, Greeks and Arabs met to exchange views. These markets and the gathering of the people gave the Hagarene Messenger the chance to mix with the crowds to learn from them and to express his viewpoint.  Do not forget, Saturday was the day of the Jews (Sabbath), and naturally not suitable for Muslims, and Sunday belonged to the Christians.

A LAST EFFORT TO RECONSTRUCT THE PAST

I have tried to cover various viewpoints, notions and opinions through the pages of the official codebooks, non-official and rejected scriptures and studies carried out by numerous scholars.

• The ‘truths’ related in the codebook of Islam and in the oral and written traditions are subjective ‘stuff’.

• We have seen that these ‘truths’ of Islam appear neither in the non-Islamic independent sources nor in the written documents of those days.

• Both the Old Testament and the New Testament have narrated their inner, subjective realities in line with their objectives.

• With the exception of most of the historical records in the Old Testament, it would be fitting to evaluate both books (Old and New Testaments) as anthologies of eccentric stories.

• The ideology of Islam is not different from these celestial religions. Islamic texts speak about its inner, subjective and slanted ‘realities’, which consist of events, order of events, stories of events, narratives, seemingly geographical references etc., almost all of which are at variance with the records in the independent sources. Judaism, Christianity and Islam have ‘realities’ that are important only for their believers, and meaningless for the followers of other faiths.

• The ‘things’ related by the belief systems are not based on knowledge, but on beliefs and faith. When seen in this light their stories do not mean a thing and absolutely irrelevant for the rational, level headed people.

In order to understand the ideology of Islam one should know the dominant belief systems in and around Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula. These faiths were Sabianism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity. Jewish tribes were living side by side with the Arabs. There were also pagans and non-believers within the Arab population.

Strangers and former idol worshippers who chose Judaism were living side by side in these cosmopolitan    populations. These non-Jewish groups were not expected to accept the Old Testament as a whole. Observance of the Noahide Covenant=‘Seven commandments to the descendants of Noah’ was satisfactory for these strangers. Rabbis have granted them equal rights with the Jews.

The Hagarene teaching was revealed in this environment. The supposed central character of the movement, the Messenger, was supposedly born in 570 A.D., but one independent source gives his birth year as 552 A.D. The Messenger had performed his reported acts not around Makka, but hundreds of kilometres north. A Messenger as depicted by the religious texts of Islam has never existed, according to one extreme source.

In those days when the Messenger began communicating his messages, he was not like a ‘messenger’, but a ‘leader’. He was a warlike horseman skilled with his sword. He was involved in camel trading as well. He needed people working for him. So to make an impact on the possible candidates he resorted to religious jargon. However, he was not well-informed in the religious matters, therefore he had tutors and advisors around him. These tutors and advisors were informing this camel trader about the established religions of the region, and the myths, legends and folk stories of the cultures in the Middle East. While doing their work, they were adding their personal views and subjective preferences.

The exact name of the person who initiated the Hagarene teaching in the land of Midian is not known for sure. ‘Muhammad’ is an appellation like ‘messiah’ in Judaism and Christianity. A non-Islamic source gives his name as ‘mamed’. The Semitic words have three root letters. To find the root letters one has to remove the vowels from ‘mamed’, which leaves us with the root letters ‘mmd’. You may build different names with these root letters by adding different vowels. In the Nativity Poem ­- Mevlûd - his name is given as Ahmed. We do not know if this is his real name.  That is why he was referred to as ‘the Messenger’ throughout this study.

I am of the opinion that the Messenger was from the El Hicr region of Midian. He was a camel trader. He must have been aware of the fact that only money and wealth would bring a good life. He had leadership qualities as well. To become an actual leader he needed a following. His role model was Moses, who persuaded the Israelite tribes to follow him by employing religious themes. Moses had employed the theme of sole god to realize his scheme. This sole god would bring out the Israelites from Egypt, and ‘lead’ them until the Promised Land. Therefore, the Messenger, as the central character of the Hagarene teaching, felt the necessity to resort to religious phraseology in finding supporters. The society he was living in was predominantly Jewish. His ancestors included Jews, Hanifs (Sabians=‘Sabians of Ibrahim’) and idol worshipping Nabataeans. The Messenger was preaching from Kuryan (‘lessons of faith’) of the Sabians. Ahmad ibn Abdullah ibn Salam has written the following on the Sabian book of faith: “I have translated this book into Arabic from the book of the hanifs who believe in Ibrahim.” Therefore, Kuryan was not Arabic. This book was written most probably Eastern Aramaic. The book that Messenger had brought with him to Medina was written almost certainly in Eastern Aramaic (Nabataean?). That was why the desert Arabs were unable to read it. In the environment of the Messenger the most influential codebook was the Torah. The first messages revealed by the Messenger were most probably a mixture of Sabianism + Mosaic faith.

In those days, Sabians were known as the “believers of the monotheist sect founded in Babylon.”

An ethnographic note in the Kitab al-Fihrist by Ibn Ebi Ya’kub al Nadim (ed. Flugel) refers to a religious community whose adherents inhabited the extensive swamps in the lower course of the Euphrates. Arabs locally knew these people as al-Mughtasilah (‘those who wash themselves’). These are, in fact, the ‘Sabians of the marshes.’ They must be identical with the Sabians (‘Baptists’=subba of the Arabs) mentioned in Kuran. The ‘Sabians of the Marshes‘ are the Elchasaites.

These people known as Mughtasilah in Islam were called Haemerobaptists in non-Islamic sources. Haemerobaptists have come to be known as Sampsaeans in 70 A.D. Epiphanius is reported to have heard of “a sect living in the country eastwards from the Jordan and the Dead Sea. They were called the Sampsaeans (Sampsenes, Sampsites), who believed in one god, and worshipped Him by ablutions…they vaunted Elkesai (Elxai) as their teacher.” This sect is also known as the Mughtasilah, Masbutha, Sampsean, Nazerini, and Galilei.

Mughtasilah / Haemerobaptists / Sampsaeans / Elchasaites / Mandaeans are Sabi’i or El Sabiun in the Arabic literature. Arabian writers have often confused the Mandaeans with the Magus / Magians, because the cult beliefs are similar. It was customary for the travellers in the East to describe the Mandaeans as the ‘Christians of John the Baptist’.

Elchasaites were most probably the predecessors of the Mandaeans. In the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics John Hastings wrote: “Elchasaites/Elkesai were known to Muhammad as monotheists and possessors of sacred writings; and some time afterwards an inquirer learned from them that their founder and lord was called Elkesai or some such name. Now, not every religion has a lord and founder. Islam, however, tolerated such forms of religious belief as were like itself in this respect”

In 1994, Professor Sinasi Gündüz published an extensive study in the Journal of Semitic Studies showing conclusively that the Mandaeans and Sabians are the same; the remnants of a very ancient monotheistic religion which originated in or about eastern Syria and northern Iraq sometime about 4000 B.C. The historical records describe them as a community living at the Ceziret-ül Mawsil (Land of Mosul - Irak). Kutha (in Irak) is one of the very important places where the Mandaeans live. According to Ebu el Zanad (died 747 A.D.) Mandaeans were a “tribe living in Kutha, Irak.”

Mandaeans were considered as the keepers of the ‘ancient secret knowledge’ dating back to the Sumerians and they believed in the sole ‘prime mover’. Kuran 4:162 is very informative:

• “Those of them who are deep in knowledge and the faithful (mu’minîn, mu’minûn) who believe both in what is revealed to you and what has been revealed before you. They have their daily prayers, they pay their alms, they believe in Allah and the judgment day. We will have a big reward for them soon.”

It would not be wrong to consider Sabianism as a unique faith/cult, which is a collection of doctrines from Sumerian myths, Manichaeism, animism, primal religions, idolatry etc. Especially Islam has adopted a great number of those doctrines. 

It is clear that Sampsaeans, Mughtasilah (Haemerobaptists), Nazerinî, El Hasih (Elchasaites) and Mandaeans (Sabians) are the names of the sects in a large Gnostic movement. Once, Essenes were under singularly Buddhist influences. It is very interesting, how they became a Jewish sect at first; then a Christian sect (that held the most primitive Church religion, which brought about the Anointed One’s mission in the first place) and thirdly an Islamic secret sect, basing itself on Isma’ilî doctrines (of the Sevener faction of Shia Islam). This Johannite / Yahyaist sect was neither Jew nor Christian nor Muslim, yet it is the sect which helped to inspire the creation of all the three celestial belief systems.

The Messenger was a Sabian. He has recognized Ibrahim (Bahram the Mandaî, Av’ram, Abraham) as his ancestor. Arabs called the Sabians also as ‘hanif’, ‘hanifiyye’, and hanifiyyun. Hanifs were one of the main branches of Sabianism. Circumcision was a religious and social obligation (Remember the story of Bahram the Mandaî) for the Sabians. These Sabians were called the ‘Sabians of Ibrahim’. Therefore, there is nothing strange in the Sabian Messenger’s acceptance of Ibrahim as his ancestor.

At this point, recalling the statement by Umar ibn-el Khattab will be helpful. One day Umar has decided to storm the house where the ‘Muslims’ were in meeting and when asked where he was going he gave the following answer: “I am going to kill Muhammad the Sabiîn (Sabian) who has sown discord in Kureysh (Kureysh were actually Jewish), who makes fun of our ideas, and who insults our religion and god.”

By ‘sabiîn’, Umar must have meant the faithful of the Sabian belief system, because in those days the term ‘sabian’ for the desert Arabs meant, “believers of a monotheistic sect established in Babylon”. Some people have proposed that this term sabiîn should be understood as ‘a monotheist’, but we know that there have been two other monotheistic belief systems, in the form of Judaism and Christianity, with clear labels. Umar could not have meant anything else but branding the Messenger as a faithful of the sabian creed.

As indicated by the story edited according to the requirements of the Arabs, once upon a time lived a community called the Arab-ı Baide, who were the ‘pre-Arab Arabs,’ or the ‘lost Arabs’. Ismaelites (Hagarenes) were not in this community. Arab-ı Baide included the people of Ad, Thamud, and the Amalekites. When the community called Arab-ı Baide merged with the Kahtanites of Yemen, a new community called Arab-ı Aribe came into being. The Ismaelites (Hagarenes) were not yet within this community. Ismaelites who accepted Ish’mael/Ismail (son of Abraham) as their ancestor were Midianites in a greater Nabataean state. The Messenger (‘Muhammad’) and his immediate followers were also from this community. When Ismail and his ‘family’ have joined the community (Arab-ı Aribe), a new community was born: Arab-ı Mustaribe (The troubled, agitated, disturbed Arabs).  They were troubled because they had to accept the Arab identity in desperation.

The official ideology has it that the mother tongue of Ish’mael (Ismael, Ismail) was Hebrew, but he began speaking Arabic in the tribe of Djorhom. There were many tribes within the community of Arab-ı Mustaribe. The tribe of Beni Zuhre, which is the tribe of the Messenger’s mother Amina (Aminu binti Vahb), was in that community. Beni Zuhre could be translated as the ‘believers in Zuhre’, ‘descendants of Zuhre’, and ‘sons of Zuhre’. Zuhre is planet Venus, which is an indication that this ‘Jewish’ tribe was idol worshippers previously. The tribe of Kureysh reportedly had a privileged position in the community of Arab-ı Mustaribe.

Therefore, the language of the Hagarene scriptures must have been the language of the Arab-ı Mustaribe. In other words, this language was not the language spoken by the desert Arabs. According to the official Islamic ideology, Ismail’s (Ish’mael) language was Hebrew, but it should be Aramaic, Eastern Aramaic to be precise. The language of the scriptures the Hagarenes had brought with them was Nabataean, a language that belonged to the eastern branch of Aramaic.

According to the official Islamic ideology, the Messenger has learnt the fundamentals of Sabianism (hanifiyye) from some members of his family. Before his call, the Messenger have learnt that some Arabs living in Syria have rediscovered the ‘unadulterated faith of Ibrahim’. Moreover, four prominent members of the Kureysh tribe have adopted the hanifiyye (faith of Ibrahim). These four tribesmen must have been the ones presented as ‘family members’. Ibrahim, who was accepted as an ancestor by the Messenger, was actually Bahram the Mandaî from Kutha. The Messenger must have calculated that by going back to the ‘unadulterated faith of Ibrahim’ he would be in a superior position than Jews and the Christians, who recognized Abraham (Bahram the Mandaî) as their founding Patriarch. His tutors and/or counsellors may have advised the Messenger to do so. By taking this step, the Messenger must have reckoned that he would be in a much more influential position by accepting the faith of Ibrahim (Sabian faith), which is the predecessor of both Judaism and Christianity.

In his hometown in the land of Midian, the Messenger began preaching the Sabian faith, one of the fundamental principles of which is extremely important for Islam. In line with that principle the Messenger ordered his followers to turn to Bakka (Bekke, Behe, Beha). Bakka is the place where Av’ram has erected a stone to his god. Bakka was a sacred place even before the time of Av’ram. It was the site where stood the ‘first house of god’; Beth El of Judaism; Beyt-u Elah of the Samaritans; Beytullah of the Hagarenes. Desert Arabs and Islam claim that Bakka was actually Makka. Bakka, where the first ‘house of god’ stood was situated in ancient Shechem (near modern Nablus). Shechem was the capital of the kingdom of Israel and the sacred city of the Samaritans.

The early messages of the Messenger was not terrifying or alarming. He was calling to the path of god, He was explaining god, and appealing to Him. There were no rituals yet. Language was general and soft. There was no single official codebook. The Messenger was using Kuryan (‘lessons of faith’) of the Sabian faith, and also parts of the Old Testament and New Testament, and a collection of the stories borrowed from Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and the heretic sects in the region as a source for his messages.

The Messenger was accentuating Ibrahim and his faith in his mixture of messages composed of Abrahamic-Semitic rules and borrowed material. The Messenger has accepted Ismail has his ancestor. That was the reason why his followers came to be called the ‘Ismaelites’ (Hagarenes, Muhammadans).

Messenger’s preaching must have transformed him into a threat for the established order and the other religions in his region. He must have gone too far to be tolerated. Consequently the Messenger might have been hard-pressed to leave his hometown or decided to leave on his own accord. This migration called as ‘hicra’ by the Islamic literature was from the land of Midian to Medina. The story of ‘hicra’ presented as a ‘move’ from Makka to Medina by the official Islamic literature is the result of the efforts by the desert Arabs to insert Makka into the story of the new nationalist Arab ideology. Therefore, the real ‘hicra’ from Midian to Medina was a migration earlier than 622 A.D. (which was presented as the date of the official ‘hicra’). The ‘movement’, presented as migration from Makka to Medina was actually the beginning of the conquest of Palestine (Bakka), and the lands far and wide.

The Messenger and his small group of followers were much advanced in monotheism than the other ‘strangers’ in the Medinan community. It would not be wrong to say that they have realized the dominance of the Jews in Medina. They must have accepted to observe the Noahide Covenant=’Seven commandments to the descendants of Noah’, because the most important book, accept their Kuryan, was already the ‘first five books of Moses’=Torah. The Samaritan version of the Torah was accepted and the Noahide Covenant was integrated into the Hagarene teaching under the name, Mesanî. Expecting a contrary attitude from the Hagarenes would be unreasonable, because to become an influential group, they needed cooperation of the Jews desperately.

An Armenian chronicler in 660 A.D. wrote the following (Sebeos 1904; Crone-Cook 1977; Cook 1983):

• Muhammad has established a community of Ishmaelites and Jews, and their common platform was their common descent from Abraham; the Arabs via Ish’mael, and the Jews via I’zak.

This chronicler has written also the (Crone-Cook 1977) following:

• Muhammad had endowed both communities with a birthright to the Holy Land, while simultaneously providing them with a monotheist genealogy.

Jews and the Ismaelites (Hagarenes) had good relations, because both sides needed each other. Acting in unison would be to their advantage. Cook tells us that a papyrus (dated 643 A.D.) has been discovered, which speaks of the ‘year twenty two’. This suggests that something has happened in the Arab world in 622 A.D.  This coincides with the year of the Hicra of the official Islamic ideology. However, unofficial history may have other things in store for us. The papyrus does not tell what has happened actually. This date could be the date that the Ismaelites (Hagarenes) had begun their conquests towards north, towards Palestine. If we bear in mind what happened following the ‘hicra’ from Midian to Medina we could safely say that Medina has been used as a ‘base of operations’ for the Jewish-Ismaelite alliance.

Following their migration to Medina;

• The Ismaelites came to be known as Hagarenes (created from the name of the mother of Ismail, Hacar, meaning ‘descendants of Hacar’) or as Muhacirîn (those ‘who have migrated’).

• They have integrated the Noahide Covenant into their Hagarene teaching.

The Hagarenes are believed to have accepted Yerushalim/El Kuds as their sacred place and turned there in their prayers. Ibrahim was declared the ancestor of the Hagarene movement. Palestine was given to Ibrahim and to his descendants. Ismail (the ancestor of Hagarenes) was Ibrahim’s son. Therefore, Palestine was the ‘ancestral land’ of the Ismaelites. The Hagarene movement still had no official and collected codebook like the believers of our day have ‘in their hands’. Their teaching was based on the Sabian faith (‘the unadulterated religion of Ibrahim’) supplemented with borrowed material from the Samaritan Torah and other regional stories. They have chosen the Samaritan Torah because of the Bakka and Shechem oriented Samaritan influence on the Mughtasilah, Haemerobaptist, and Mandaean/Sabian sects.

In Medina, the Midianite Messenger signed the Constitution of Medina with the Jewish tribes and created a community (‘umma’) under his leadership. ‘Umma’ is an assemblage under orders from a single leader or believing in a messenger. The piece of information in a Greek source dated 634-636 A.D. must come as a shock to the present believers of Islam. This earliest Greek document on the subject makes a sensational statement:

• “Prophet who appeared amongst the Saracens (Arabs) was proclaiming the coming of the messiah” (the Jewish messiah, not the Christian one!).

This claim is confirmed in a Jewish apocalypse (an 8th century A.D. document in which there is an earlier apocalypse that seems to be contemporary with the conquests).

The Jewish-Hagarene (Ismaelite, Hacerîn, Saracen) ‘alliance’ created by the Messenger have immediately started raids not limited to Medina and environs only, but also towards the lands far away. The main objective of these raids was to take back the ‘ancestral land’, Palestine. The ‘alliance’ had an anti-Christian perspective in those early days. The anti-Jewish Doctrina Jacobi quoted a converted Jew who declared, he would not deny Christ as the son of god even if the Jews and Saracens caught him and cut him to pieces. The date is 634-640 A.D. The Messenger is dead, but apparently, the author believed that the mu’minun (believers, Hagarenes) and Jews were in alliance with each other well into the conquests. According to Muhammad ibn Ishak, who collected writings on the life of the Messenger, has mentioned in his work this narration is reportedly confirmed by the Medina Constitution.

There is still no official codebook while all this was going on. Kuryan, Al Bakara (Furkan) and borrowed material from the Mosaic and Christian books were in use as religious texts. The Messenger and/or his tutor, advisor, storyteller have put together a collection of divine(!) ordinances.

The Messenger died in 632 A.D. (or in 634 A.D. according to Greek sources). Naturally, his messages ended. The religious texts were not arranged as a complete and coherent book ‘between covers’. The Messenger was dead and there was widespread hearsay about his messages. Mainly, the memorized messages of him act as an ideology of faith. After all the things written and said about him, the only things that we could believe are as follows:

• The person who is presented to us as the Messenger was alive around 620s 630s A.D.

• He was a brave warlike person who led his followers to victory on many occasions.

• Some of the names of persons and battles were committed to memory.

It is up to you to acknowledge or reject all the rest of the stories produced by the ideology of Islam.

The Messenger has never declared his successor. This lack of directive from the leader of the movement has created problems in the Arabian Peninsula resulting in incidents that affected the public order. However, conquests gathered speed, because the administrators and the leading class needed desperately the profits and bounty that new conquests would bring.

Abu Bakr reigned between 632-634 A.D. According to the official story of Islam the first collection and writing of the religious texts was done in this period, which means that even the theoreticians of the Islamic ideology have acknowledged the fact that there was no written text in the form of a codebook.

Umar reigned between 634-644 A.D. We can detect two routes of conquests: Palestine and Syria-Irak. Doctrina Jacobi warned of “the Jews who mix with the Saracens, and the danger to life and limb of falling into the hands of these Jews and Saracens” (N. Bonwetsch; M. Cook). This is another indication that the Jewish-Hagarene ‘alliance’ was still strong after the death of the Messenger. An early Armenian source mentions that the governor of Yerushalim, in the aftermath of the conquest, was a Jew (Patkanean 1879; Sebeos 1904). Therefore, it is possible to say that Jews and Hagarenes were still in alliance when they conquered Yerushalim/El Kuds.

Following the capture of Palestine as a whole, and particularly Yerushalim, caliph Umar reportedly entered the city and declared a part of the Temple grounds a mascid for the ‘Muslims’ 636 or 638 A.D. are the years given for the capture of Yerushalim. According to Tabari, this date should be 637 A.D. This mascid is believed to be one of the first kıblas of Islam. We should not forget that there was no such structure on the temple grounds when the Messenger declared the Hagarene teaching (Sabian faith).

Following the death of the Messenger, desert Arabs have initiated the transformation of the Hagarene teaching in accordance with their requirements. Their objective was to create a nationalistic ideology. In the end, the transformed Hagarene teaching was called Islam. This transformed ideology has become a weapon of the Arab nationalism. Jews have become adversaries or even ‘enemies’. Arab nationalist ideology has created its own rituals, but there is still no coherent, complete and final codebook written in line with the new religious ideology.

The very first record about a Hagarene teaching in the western sources is in the form of a letter about a conversation between Umayr Ibn Sa’d al-Ansari and the Monophysite Patriarch of Antioch, John I. Our copy is kept at the British Museum and dates from 874 A.D. The actual conversation given in the document has taken place on 9th day of the month of May, 639 A.D.  This conversation makes clear that the basic education of the Ismaelite community was on Torah; inheritance, and denial of the godliness and death of Jesus. Moreover, it also shows that some of the Arab conquerors were literate and there was no reference to any Arab holy book. The year is 639 A.D. and there is no reference to a codebook called Kuran. Either the Christians were ignorant of the codebook of Islam or such a book was non-existent. The fact that Torah was taught indicates that Arabs did not have a codebook of their own yet. Another possibility is that there was not a single codebook ‘between two covers’. There were various texts of faith. It may have been possible that the main source of the ideology was still the memorized words, supposedly, of the Messenger. Yerushalim was presumed as the kıbla.

Syria and Irak were conquered (Kufe / Kufah founded, 638 / 639 / 640 A.D.).

Uthman reigned between 644-656 A.D. According to the official story of Islam, the religious texts were collected and written again. Uthman’s directive to the people who are authorized to collect and write the final text of the book is extremely revealing:

• “O, the Messenger’s companions! Come together and write a book which will be an Imam (the sole model) to the people.”

This is a perfect confession of the fact that there has not been a codebook or a coherent text of faith until then, which will be a guidance to the believers.

Umayyads took over the caliphate. The fifth caliph of the Umayyads Abd al Malik was in power (646-705 A.D.). In a letter the Patriarch of Seleukeia, wrote about the beliefs held by the Arabs, but he has not referred to a book called Kuran. Believe it or not, the year of the letter is 647 A.D. The Messenger had died in 632 A.D., and 15 years after his death there is still no codebook.

Some researchers and scholars maintain that there has not been agreement on the text of the codebook even in 652 A.D. In addition to that, the lack of any reference to the Messenger in those Arab inscriptions closest to the time of the Messenger is also unbelievable. Here is a puzzle for you:

• “In all the Arab religious institutions during the Sufyani period [661-684 A.D.], there is a complete absence of any reference to the Messenger” (Yehuda Nevo).

What a revelation!

The year is 687 A.D., 55 years after the death of the Messenger. John bar Penkaye writing in 690 A.D. is totally unaware of the existence of Kuran.

Bar Hebraeus (Ab-ul Farac Ibn-ul Ibrî) and Calal-ud-Din as-Suyuti, attribute the collection of Kuran to caliph Abd al Malik bin Marwan (684-705 A.D.) and to his lieutenant Haccac bin Yusuf (Ibn Dumak and Makrizi).

Prof. M. Guidi quotes in his book (Storia e cultura degli Arabifino alla morte di Maometto) an anonymous historian writing in 680 A.D.  This historian reportedly was unaware of the existence of a written codebook of the Hagarene movement, under any name, and who perceived the Messenger not as a person involved in religious activity but as a “military commander professing the Abrahamic faith preserved in the town of Madian” (Midian).

Christian sources have no reference to a codebook called Kuran until the 8th century A.D., in other words, until 100 years after the death of the Messenger. The codebook of Islam has become a matter of controversy between the Christians and Muslims in the 8th century A.D. In the light of what Bar Hebraeus and Suyutî has written, statements to the effect that Christians has become aware of a book called Kuran only in the 8th century do not sound incorrect, because there was not a single codebook. Kuryan, Furkan (Al Bakara), parts Samaritan Torah, borrowed material from Gospels, and some stories of the heretic Christian and Jewish sects were used as religious texts.

According to Ya’kub of Edessa as late as 705 A.D., 80 years after the supposed date of change of the kıbla quoted in the official accounts, the direction of prayer towards Makka has not yet been canonized, mu’minun were turning to Yerushalim in their prayers (or they thought that the place they were asked to turn was Yerushalim). In his letter at the British Museum Ya’kub goes on, “So, from all this that has been said, it is clear that it is not to the south that the Jews and Muslims here in the regions of Syria pray, but towards Jerusalem or the Ka’ba, the patriarchal places of their races. (Ya’kub of Edessa, Letter to John the Stylite- translated by Crone and Cook, Hagarism)

The ‘Ka’ba in the patriarchal places’ that Ya’kub of Edessa has referred to is not in Makka in the south. The mosque built at the beginning of the 8th century A.D. by governor Haccac in Wasit is the proof of this statement. According to Creswell, this is ‘the oldest mosque in Islam of which remains have come down to us.’ Another mosque that is attributed roughly to the same period is near Baghdad. Both have kıblas that do not face Makka, but are oriented too far north. The Wasit mosque is said to be off by 33 degrees, and the Baghdad mosque is off by 30 degrees. Moreover, Baladhuri in Futuh states that the kıbla of the first mosque in Kufa (Irak) supposedly constructed in 670 A.D. (45 years after the death of the Messenger) was towards the west, when it should have pointed almost directly south. The original ground plan of the mosque of Amr bin al-As, located in Fustat (the garrison town outside Cairo), reportedly had its kıbla pointing too far north and had to be corrected later under the governorship of Kurra bin Sharik. Interestingly this agrees with the later Islamic tradition compiled by Ahmad bin al Makrizi that Amr prayed facing ‘slightly south of east’ and not towards south (Al Makrizi; Crone-Cook). In short, none of the mosques built in the 7th century A.D. have their kıblas pointing to Makka. Some have their kıblas not pointing even Yerushalim. Some mosques in Jordan have their kıblas pointing north and some African ones pointing south.

Hagarenes have borrowed from the Samaritan Torah. When the Hagarene teaching was in the process of transformation into the nationalist ideology of Islam the desert Arabs have distanced themselves from Jews. Samaritans were in disagreement with the Jews as well. They have established fundamental differences with the rabbinic Judaism. The Hagarene and Samaritan attitudes against the rabbinic Judaism may have played a crucial role in the later Arab-Islam attitude. Because they chose to separate themselves from the Jews and went on to establish a separate sacred city and a separate sacred shrine for themselves. So, they gave up Yerushalim, which has been thought as the sacred city and first kıbla, and accepted Makka as the sacred city and Ka’ba as the sacred shrine. The Hagarene teaching was no more! Bakka was erased from the religious texts and the new nationalist literature. Palestine has lost its importance. The Messenger was relocated to Makka. Makka and Ka’ba were placed at the centre of the new nationalist ideology. The warlike tradesmen of the Hagarenes, who resorted to religious themes when he wished to win followers was transformed into the last messenger of the sole god, in the new ideology of Islam. The Messenger who had an absolute, central role in the Hagarene teaching was fashioned as a ‘modem’ or an ‘interface’ between the supreme being and the mankind. Later on, Islam gave him a personality, which made him a ‘role model’ for every Muslim and for the mankind as a whole. The Hagarene tradesman has become a universal ‘beacon’.

There were no references to the name of the Messenger reportedly until caliph Abd al Malik had an inscription placed on the Dome of the Rock in 691 A.D. Moreover, the confession of faith, ‘Allah is the only god and Muhammad is his messenger’ was also nowhere to be seen before 691 A.D. This formula was missing not only in the inscriptions but also in the historical records. The inscriptions indicate that the ‘Muhammadan’ formula has been established in the time of Marwan the second, after 684 A.D. This formula is said to have become an official declaration overnight and was used in all the official documents and inscriptions. But even these formulae were not ‘Muslim’, though they are ‘Muhammadan’.

According to the learned opinion, despite the appearance of the Messenger’s name, these inscriptions and writings were not Islamic texts yet.

During the era of the Hagarene teaching the Messenger was not seen only as an ‘instrument’ that receives and transmits messages (Like he is presented in Islam). Like Moses, the Messenger was the central and powerful personality of the teaching. Moreover, again like Moses, his messengership and guidance was for his following only. He had no universal dimension. The Messenger was elevated to the position of a universal messenger of the supreme creator not in his lifetime, but during the later Marwanid period (after 684 A.D.). But even then the formula that had the Messenger’s name was not equivalent of the present formula” (Yehuda Nevo). The Islamic literature developed in much later periods has transformed the Messenger into a role model for everybody to follow.

Apart from the already known religious texts, there are no Islamic documents left from the 7th century A.D. One must remember at this point that the earliest manuscript we have is an inner Arabian biography of the Messenger on a papyrus of the late Umayyad period (dated to ~750 A.D.), which is 100 years after the death of the Messenger (Avraham Grohman).

The codebook of the imperialistic and expansionist tool of the Arabs was written for the third (according to the official ideology) and the last time during the reign of Abd al Malik by orders from Haccac (694-714 A.D). This last editorial work has reportedly produced the present text of the codebook. While this work was in progress the Samaritan principles that fit in with the new ideology was either kept or adapted to the new ideology of Islam, and written into the book. Moreover, the ideologues of Islam must have realized that those principles of the Sabian faith [The unadulterated faith of Ibrahim (Bahram)] would give them superiority over Judaism and Christianity (Abraham being their patriarch), so they reinterpreted these Sabian material, as much as they could, in harmony with the new ideology and written into the book. Furkan (given to the Messenger by Sergius Bhira) was transformed into a sura and included in the codebook under the title Al Bakara.

Despite the fact that a book ‘between two covers’ has been produced as ordered by Haccac, “A document called Fiqh Akbar I, which was drafted to show the orthodox Muslim views, reportedly have no reference to Kuran. This text was written by Abu Hanife (Numan ibn Thabit, born Kufa 699-died Baghdad 767 A.D.) who is considered the supreme Imam of all. He is not an Arab; he may have been either a Turk or a Persian. The text, which lists the orthodox Muslim views, has no reference to a codebook. The time it was written must have been nearly mid 700s, and it has no reference to Kuran!  We are in mid-8th century A.D., there were religious texts, but there was no Kuran.  Here is another very important indication for you.

Independent sources claim that Islamic religious text have begun to be seen in the beginning of the 9th century A.D. (about 822 A.D.). These texts and the first written examples of the Islamic traditions have appeared at the same time.

“Kuran is a not a product of the Messenger or even of Arabia” but “a collection of earlier Judeo-Christian liturgical materials stitched together to meet the needs of a later age” has written John Wansbrough. That earlier Judaeo-Christian material was the principles of Sabian faith.

According to Ibn-al Rawandi “there was no Islam as we know it” until two or three hundred years after the traditional version has it (more like 830 A.D. than 630 A.D.). Islam was developed not in the distant deserts of Arabia but through the interaction of Arab conquerors and their more civilized subject peoples (Ibn-al Rawandi).

The classical Arabic language was developed not in today’s Saudi Arabia but in the Levant, and that it reached Arabia only through the colonizing efforts of one of the early caliphs (Yehuda Nevo, Judith Koren)

The possibility of truth in all these findings have led to the following shocking verdict:

• The Arabs of the 7th century A.D. conquests were not the believers of the nationalist ideology called Islam.

The Hagarene teaching was reformulated and rewritten many times following the death of the Messenger, and its contents and internal order was changed. Efforts by the desert Arabs to steal and own the original teaching of the Messenger and the struggle between the northern Arabs and the Arabs of the desert were decisive factors on the alterations done to the Hagarene teaching .

• In the end the desert Arabs have got what they wanted.,

• They made the Messenger a Makkan.

• They have substituted Makka for Bakka.

• The sacred place Bakka (written in Kuran 3:96), the ‘first house of god’ was abandoned and replaced by Makka and Ka’ba.

• To recreate the place depicted in Kuran 3:96 the Arabs of Makka have erected a stone in the ‘enclosed’ inner court of the ‘Grand Mosque’ and called the place ‘Makam-ı Ibrahim (Ibrahim’s place)

• They have invented stories centred on Makka or relocated the Hagarene stories to Makka and Makkans and wrote them into the codebook.

• They have changed the Hagarene description ‘mu’min’ into ‘Muslim’ of Islam.

• They have transformed the initial Sabian (Hagarene) teaching centred on Bakka and Palestine into the weapon of the expansionist and nationalist Arab ideology of Islam centred on Makka and Ka’ba.

Grand Chronology