Thursday, July 22, 2010

3 Things You Should Know About Islam

This video probably won't be up long, but it has been saved and is being reposted elsewhere. It states the most vital facts about Islam at a fairly high level of abstraction, leaving the reader with the task of researching the details.

I want you to watch this video and tell your friends and family to watch it. I want it to go viral before it is pulled down by the intolerant, bigoted forces of obscurantism.

[Updated 01/18/'15 to repair broken links. ]


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHdMlT3E7cg&feature=player_embedded

For those who prefer the short course: refer to my blog post: What’s Wrong With Islam/Muslims?

The Qur'an is the foundational text of Islam. It is approximately one third as long as the Bible. It contains much redundancy, little context and no chronology.
Reading Surahs 2,3 &4 is essential to understanding Islamic jihad & misogyny. The second Surah deals mainly with defensive & retaliatory fighting. Surahs 8 & 9 contain the imperatives for global conquest. Surahs 47, 48 & 61 add some important reinforcing details.

The Qur'an is available free on line in many languages, translations and formats. The Muslim Student Association at USC hosts three parallel translations: Pickthall, Shakir & Abdullah Yusuf Ali without commentary.

The Skeptic's Annotated Quran presents Pickthall's translation with a graphic index in the right sidebar.

Abdullah Yusuf Ali's translation is available with his commentary at altafsir.

The King Fahd Complex hosted the Hilali & Khan translation with commentary. That translation includes parenthetical expressions from three tafsirs. it is reputed to be 95% accurate, excepting only the terms "fight" and "marry". In the former case, the true expression is fight and kill, in the latter case, it is a common obscenity.  You can download it in pdf format here:
https://archive.org/download/EnglishTranslationOfTheNobleQuranByTaqiUdDinAlHilaliAndMuhsinKhan/The_Holy_Quran_English.pdf   or view it as html, page by page here: http://aa.trinimuslims.com/ilm/noblequraan/page029.htm

Maududi's translation & commentary displays the Arabic text, English translation & explanation and offers Arabic recital for those who want to know what it sounds like.

Hadith are sayings, observations made by Muhammad's companions. They help to confirm and explain the Qur'an and form half of the basis of Shari'ah.
USC-MSA hosts abridgments of four of the six canonical hadith collections. Sahih Bukhari is considered the most authentic. Its books of Jihad, Khumus & Expedition contain most of what you need to know about jihad.

    Frequent changes to the USC site cause link breakage and it appears that there has been damage to the database, several books were missing recently. Hadith references in this post are linked to quranexplorer.com which, like most hadith sites, got their databases from USC. While they claim that those collections are complete, a few sayings have been left out. Aisha Bewley's translation  of Bukhari appears to be complete but uses a different numbering system and lacks named anchors so I can't link to individual sayings.

Tafsir are explanations of the Qur'an, verse by verse. Other verses and hadith form the basis of tafsir. Ibn Kathir's Tafsir is the most widely accepted. Qtafsir has an alpha-numeric search engine so that you can look up a verse by its Surah:Ayeh numbers. In several cases, the topic titles will tell everything you need to know. Here are a few samples. Click them to read the topics at Islam Universe.

Umdat as-Salik is the all purpose Shafi'ite handbook of Shari'ah: Islamic law. It was translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller as Reliance of the Traveller, a 1250 page book. That had to be a pure labor of love. It is divided into books, each named with a single letter. Book O treats of justice. Chapter 9 details the law of jihad. From my point of view, it is the most important part of the book. Book M treats of marriage. Open it to 3.13 for a real eye opener.

    You can purchase Reliance from Amazon to read off line and show to your friends.
Maktabah has a pdf version of Reliance that you can search. Here are some extremely relevant samples for readers with less intense curiosity.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Get a life man you must be brain dead to follow this crap, no wonder Islam has not advanced in thousands of years besides violence and human abuse which of course someone who follows Islam would think this is advancement.

Ben said...

Easier said than done, Anonymous. Apostasy carries the death penalty. If one lives in an area where Allh's writ runs, he condemns himself by trying to free himself.

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU!

No-seriosly thanx

That was a VERY informative video.

Here is another one also
Knowing Your Enemy The Islam
youtube.com/watch?v=oZifrRLKc4g
You wont find it on the standard Youtube search,its been removed

If the playback is jerky try downloading the http://youtube.com/Knowing Your Enemy The Islam - High Quality [File2HD.com].mp4
from
http://file2hd.com/Default.aspx?url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.youtube.com%2fwatch%3fv%3doZifrRLKc4g

(a jerky playback...a coincidence? yeah right)

Its beautifully made.Please spread it and mirror it if you can.

There is a lot of muslim propaganda on youtube.

Ben said...

Dear Anonymous,
Thee is some deception in that video. I know of no evidence for the claim that Catholicism started Islam.

The fellow in the yellow shirt also took one item egregiously out of context toward the end of his spiel.

Of course, what Walid Shoebat said is true.