deborah sharavi

Alex, you dumb bunny, when did Moses and Muhammad ever
make it to Israel?

Deborah


--
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deborah sharavi

Alex, you dumb bunny, when did Moses and Muhammad ever
make it to Israel?

Deborah


--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

albert reingewirtz

No name! No address! No Brain! Plunk!

Superfluous News Groups deleted

albert reingewirtz

No name! No address! No Brain! Plunk!

Superfluous News Groups deleted

mike shultz

He traveled there on his flying horse if memory serves.

--
Michael C. Shultz
Landers, CA USA
ringworm@inbox.lv

tilly

The following comes courtesy of AnonMoos:

-- An elaborate tale of Muhammad's "night flight" to
Jerusalem and his "ascent" (mi`râj) from there has developed around
certain cryptic passages in the Qur'an (verse 17:1, and the first part
of sura or chapter 53), but there is nothing in the text of the Qur'an
which connects these two passages to each other, or indicates that
either one of them makes any reference to Jerusalem. Verse 17:1
speaks of the "most distant mosque", but there was certainly neither a
mosque nor a Jewish temple in Jerusalem during Muhammad's lifetime.
And as a matter of fact, no statement about any miraculous "night
flight" or "ascent" is found in the words of the Qur'an itself -- the
phrase _'asraa bi`abdihi laylan_ in Qur'an 17:1 only means "He caused
his servant to travel by night", and could mean nothing more than that
he told his servant to get on a horse or camel and ride somewhere by
ordinary prosaic means one night; also, there's nothing whatsoever
about anything going upwards in Qur'an verse 17:1 or in the first part
of Qur'an chap. 53.
So the whole "night flight" and "ascent" legend (and its connection to
Jerusalem) is completely non-Qur'anic. Further evidence for this fact
comes from the earliest Muslim inscriptions in Jerusalem. These
extensive early Islamic inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock (on the
temple mount site itself) are intentionally offensive to Christians
("For God is one god, who has not taken to Himself a son" etc. etc.),
but they make no mention whatsoever of Muhammad's "night flight" or
"ascent" -- proving that the story of Muhammad's journey to Jerusalem
was either completely unknown during the Umayyad Caliphate period
(ca. 700 A.D.), or was not accepted by Islamic authorities at that
time. The Dome of the Rock was very obviously built in order to poke
a finger into the eye of the Byzantine Emperor, and of Christians in
general (declaring the supremacy of Islam over the "superseded"
religion of Christianity), not to mark a site which was considered
intrinsically or inherently holy to Islam.

Tilly

climbaboard@hotmail.com

tilly

AnonMoos on the subject of Jerusalemin full)

the Jewish temple is securely historical and firmly
attested -- it's the so-called pseudo-"Al-Aqsa" [sic] which is merely
"alleged". An elaborate tale of Muhammad's "night flight" to
Jerusalem and his "ascent" (mi`râj) from there has developed around
certain cryptic passages in the Qur'an (verse 17:1, and the first part
of sura or chapter 53), but there is nothing in the text of the Qur'an
which connects these two passages to each other, or indicates that
either one of them makes any reference to Jerusalem. Verse 17:1
speaks of the "most distant mosque", but there was certainly neither a
mosque nor a Jewish temple in Jerusalem during Muhammad's lifetime.
And as a matter of fact, no statement about any miraculous "night
flight" or "ascent" is found in the words of the Qur'an itself -- the
phrase _'asraa bi`abdihi laylan_ in Qur'an 17:1 only means "He caused
his servant to travel by night", and could mean nothing more than that
he told his servant to get on a horse or camel and ride somewhere by
ordinary prosaic means one night; also, there's nothing whatsoever
about anything going upwards in Qur'an verse 17:1 or in the first part
of Qur'an chap. 53.

So the whole "night flight" and "ascent" legend (and its connection to
Jerusalem) is completely non-Qur'anic. Further evidence for this fact
comes from the earliest Muslim inscriptions in Jerusalem. These
extensive early Islamic inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock (on the
temple mount site itself) are intentionally offensive to Christians
("For God is one god, who has not taken to Himself a son" etc. etc.),
but they make no mention whatsoever of Muhammad's "night flight" or
"ascent" -- proving that the story of Muhammad's journey to Jerusalem
was either completely unknown during the Umayyad Caliphate period
(ca. 700 A.D.), or was not accepted by Islamic authorities at that
time. The Dome of the Rock was very obviously built in order to poke
a finger into the eye of the Byzantine Emperor, and of Christians in
general (declaring the supremacy of Islam over the "superseded"
religion of Christianity), not to mark a site which was considered
intrinsically or inherently holy to Islam.

The only real reference to Jerusalem in the Qur'an (though not by
name, of course) is as the rejected Qibla of verses 2:142-143 -- which
if anything, would actually seem to denigrate Jerusalem's status
within Islam!

So the inescapable conclusion is that Jerusalem was not any kind of
authentic "Islamic holy city" during the early years of Islam -- and
that Jerusalem has only become an Islamic holy city by a process of
spinning folktales and elaborating legends which certainly seems to be
an "innovation" (_bid`a_), since these folktales and legends were
unknown in the Umayyad period.

And by the way, the name al-Quds ("the holy") for Jerusalem is not
attested in any Arabic source before the mid 4th century of the
Islamic calendar (over 300 years after Jerusalem was first conquered
by the Arabs!). The actual name of the city of Jerusalem in early
Islam was 'Îliyâ' -- a borrowing into Arabic of the Latin name Ælia
Capitolina, which the Roman Emperor Hadrian gave to the city around
131 A.D. (after the Jewish temple had been destroyed by the Romans,
and the Jews expelled from Jerusalem) in order to commemorate the
building of a pagan heathen idolatrous temple to the god "Juppiter
Capitolinus" (i.e. Jupiter/Zeus) there.

IS JERUSALEM MENTIONED IN THE QUR'AN?

If you leave aside the not-necessarily-very-reliable Hadith
(second-hand hearsay reports of what Muhammad is reported to have
said and done), then there's no real evidence _from_ the Qur'an
that Jerusalem is directly and unambiguously mentioned anywhere in
the Qur'an as being any kind of Islamic holy site. Qur'an verse
17:1 refers vaguely to _al-Masjidi al-'Aqsa_ or the "farthest
mosque", while the beginning of Qur'an chapter 53 contains
Muhammad's claim to have undergone some kind of ascension or
flight -- but there's absolutely nothing in the Qur'an itself
which makes any connection between chapter 53 and the "farthest
mosque" of 17:1 (verse 53:16 only refers to a mysterious "Sidr"
tree, i.e. lote tree or nettle tree, but not "the farthest
mosque"). From these scattered verses Muslims have constructed an
elaborate folkloric fairy tale of Muhammad's mystical night flight
to Jerusalem, but there's no evidence whatsoever in the Qur'an
that these verses refer to the same event, or that the "farthest
mosque" even refers to Jerusalem (there was certainly neither a
mosque nor a Jewish temple at Jerusalem during Muhammad's
lifetime).

The fact that if you strictly examine the Qur'an only (leaving
aside the Hadith), then there doesn't seem to be any necessary
connection between chapter 53 and verse 17:1, and there's nothing
which ********ly indicates that 17:1 is referring to Jerusalem at
all, is something which makes many informed non-Muslims slightly
skeptical of the claim that Jerusalem is an "Islamic holy city"
(or at least skeptical of any claim that there's any unambiguous
direct reference to Jerusalem at all in the Qur'an -- except of
course for the rejected Qibla of verses 2:142 - 2:143, which if
anything would actually seem to denigrate Jerusalem's status
within Islam).

What even further reinforces this, is the indisputable fact that the
inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem were carefully
selected with the deliberate and intentional goal of being offensive
to Christians, but these inscriptions mention nothing whatsoever about
Muhammad's "night flight" or "ascent" (check them out for yourself at
for yourself at http://195.74.113.154/Index/D/dome_of_the_rock.html ).
The only possible explanation for this fact is that the fairy tale
that Muhammad's "night flight" had Jerusalem as its destination was
simply either completely unknown to, or not accepted by, the early
Umayyad Caliphs when they built the Dome of the Rock at the end of the
7th century A.D.

By the way, the Arabic name "al-Quds" didn't come into existence until
over 300 years after Jerusalem was conquered in the agressive wars of
imperialist Arab expansionism -- the _real_ name of Jerusalem in
Arabic is "'Iliya'" (spelled 'alif with hamzah below, ya, lam, ya,
'alif, hamzah), which comes from the name "Aelia Capitolina" which the
Romans had given to Jerusalem in the early 2nd. century A.D. after
they had destroyed the Jewish temple, and desecrated its site by
erecting a pagan heathen idolatrous temple to Zeus in its place!

--
Some Qur'an quotes: 5:20 qaala muusaa 5:21 "yaa qawmi ´dkhuluu ´l-'arDa
´l-muqaddasata ´llatii kataba ´llaahu lakum" 17:104 waqulnaa ... libanii
'israa'iila "´skunuu ´l-'arDa" || In English: Moses said, "My people,
go into the Holy Land which God has assigned to you!" And we said to the
Children of Israel, "Inhabit the land!" http://symbolictruth.fateback.com/

Tilly
--
climbaboard@hotmail.com

mike shultz

Interesting info Tilly. I wonder though, maybe the Muslims have an
equivalent of the oral Torah in their religion? Is the Koran their
only official source like the Christian Bible or do they have other
official religious sources?

--
Michael C. Shultz
Landers, CA USA
ringworm@inbox.lv

jgarbuz

Israel is a genuine western-style democracy which naturally has all
the foibles, fables and failings of a highly diverse democratic society,
including a Jewish Nazi party, AIDS, homo***ual civil unions, crime,
cancer, divorce, ****, as well as some of the better things that are
also to be found in genuine, western-style democracies. I just wish
there were a bit more of the latter than the former.