Islam's Dark Past; Part II

Continuing from Part I

While I could share the source evaluations of another score of Islamic scholars with you, suffice it to say, nothing would change. The Qur'an is regarded as deficient due to its lack of context and chronological order. Ishaq's Sira is the oldest and most reliable source, but sadly it's composed only of oral reports a century removed from their authors. Moreover, the Sira has been edited for political consumption so we are reliant on Tabari's Ta'rikh. It thus provides the oldest uncensored narrative of Muhammad's words and deeds, his ambition, god, and religion. Bukhari and Muslim are additive but their lack of historical grounding, their late date, and their constant contradictions render them considerably less valuable. But as bad as these are, they are the best Islam has to offer.

Bemoaning the dearth of accurate and contemporaneous source material, Humphreys says: "Muslims, we would suppose, would have taken great care to record their spectacular achievements, and the highly literate and urbanized societies which they subjugated could hardly avoid coming to grips with what had happened to them. Yet all we find from this early period are sources which are either fragmentary or represent very specific or even eccentric perspectives, completely annulling any possibility of reconstructing Islam's first century." "We have no reliable proof that any Hadith Tradition actually speaks of the life of Muhammad, or even of the Qur'an," Joseph Schacht attests after putting the Hadith through the most rigorous scholastic investigation in history.

Schacht was ingenious. He used the court records from the early ninth century to show that neither defense nor prosecution used Hadiths that have since become the backbone of Islamic law. There is no chance men would have been convicted or exonerated in an Islamic court without referencing the most appropriate Hadith unless they simply didn't exist at the time. Schacht, therefore, dates the creation of a Hadith to the time they were first used at trial. Not only did he find late dates for most Hadiths, he discovered something very sinister. Hadith with the best isnads were the most suspect.

Humphreys said: "We are asked to believe that these documents written hundreds of years later are accurate, though we are not presented with any evidence for their veracity, outside of isnads, which are nothing more than lists purporting to give the names of those from whom the oral traditions were passed down. Yet even the isnads lack any supportive documentation with which to corroborate their authenticity." Simply stated, insights into Islam's formation, the Qur'an's creation, and Muhammad's life are as black as the message they proclaim.

"Muslims maintain that the late dates of the primary sources can be attributed to the fact that writing was simply not used in such an isolated area or at that time. This assumption is completely unfounded, however, as writing on paper began long before the seventh century. Paper was invented in the fourth century, and used extensively throughout the civilized world thereafter. The Umayyad dynasty of Islam's first one hundred years was headquartered in the former Byzantine area of Syria, not Arabia. Thus, unlike Arabia, it was a sophisticated society which used secretaries in the Caliphal courts, proving that manuscript writing was well developed. Yet nothing has been found to support the religion of Islam. Not a single Hadith or Qur'an fragment dates to this time or place. The Muslims who had managed to conquer and tax much of the world during Islam's first 100 years couldn't manage to write a single scroll, surah, Sira, or Sunnah during those same 100 years.

"So we must ask how we came by the Qur'an if there was no Muslim scribe, cleric, or scholar capable of putting pen to paper before the eighth century? Muslims claim the existence of a number of codices of the Qur'an shortly after the death of Muhammad. The Uthmanic text, for example, had to have been written, otherwise it wouldn't be a text, right? Writing was available, but for some reason, no record was written prior to 750 A.D." As I am sure you're aware, these are very serious accusations. And ultimately they will lead us to a singular, undeniable, and very dire conclusion.

"Muslim scholars maintain that the absence of early documentation can be blamed on old age. They believe that the material upon which the primary sources were written either disintegrated over time, leaving us with no examples, or wore out and so were destroyed. But this argument is dubious. In the British Library we have ample examples of documents written by individuals in communities near Arabia. And they predate Islam by centuries. On display are Renewed Covenant manuscripts such as the Codex Syniaticus and the Codex Alexandrinus, both of which were written in the fourth century, 400 years before the period in question! Why have they not disintegrated with age?

"Where this argument is especially weak, however, is when we apply it to the Qur'an itself. The 'Uthman text,' the final canon supposedly compiled by Zaid ibn Thabit under the direction of the third Caliph, is considered by all Muslims to be the most important piece of literature ever written. According to Qur'an 43:2, it is the "Mother of all Books." It is considered to be an exact replica of the "Eternal Tablets" which exist in heaven (Qur'an 85:22). Muslim Traditions claim that all other competing codices and manuscripts were destroyed after 650 A.D. Even Hafsah's copy, from which the final recension was taken was burned. If this Uthmanic text was so important, why then was it not written on paper, or other material which would have lasted? And if the earliest manuscripts wore out with usage, why were they not replaced with others written on skin, like so many other older documents which have managed to survive?

"'We have absolutely no evidence of the original Qur'an,' say Schimmel, Gilchrist, Ling, and Safadi. 'Nor do we have a surviving fragment from the four copies which were made of this recension and sent to Mecca, Medina, Basra and Damascus.' Even if these copies had somehow disintegrated with time, there would surely be some fragments we could refer to. By the end of the seventh century Islam had expanded right across North Africa and up into Spain, and east as far as India. The Qur'an (according to tradition) was the centerpiece of their faith. Within that enormous sphere of influence, there should be some Qur'anic documents or manuscripts which have survived. Yet, there isn't even a scrap from that period. There is literally nothing from the first three generations of Islam to suggest that the Qur'an existed.

"While Christianity can claim more than 5,500 known Greek fragments and manuscripts of the Renewed Covenant, 10,000 Latin Vulgates and at least 9,500 other early versions, adding up to 25,000 Renewed Covenant sources still in existence (McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict), most of which were written between 25 to 350 years after the death and resurrection of Yahshua (or between the 1st and 4th centuries), Islam cannot provide a single manuscript until well into the eighth century (Lings, Safadi, Schimmel). If Christians could retain so many thousands of ancient documents, all of which were written centuries earlier, at a time when paper had not yet been introduced, forcing the dependency on papyrus which disintegrated more rapidly, then one wonders why Muslims were unable to forward a single manuscript from this much later period? This renders the argument that all the earliest Qur'ans simply disintegrated with age, absurd to the extreme."

The evidence, or lack thereof, leads us to a solitary rational conclusion. The reason no one has found a single surviving Qur'an or Hadith fragment, manuscript, or scroll dating to within a hundred years of the time they were allegedly revealed is they never existed. The Qur'an and Hadith, and therefore Islam, were born in Baghdad, not Mecca or Medina in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, not at the cusp of the seventh.

If you waited to read this appendix until you were finished with much or all of Prophet of Doom, you may be horrified knowing that what you have read from the Qur'an and Sunnah was fabricated. While that's true, it has been my contention all along that it doesn't matter. First, something happened to turn good men bad. For the first 3,000 years of recorded history the Bedouins of Arabia were self-reliant, peace- and freedom-loving peoples. They conquered no one. Then at the dawn of the seventh century everything changed. These Arabs, now Muslims, became the planet's most ruthless militants. They conquered the civilized world, plundering and taxing it for booty. They left oceans of blood and dictatorial tyrannies in their wake. Someone and something changed them. If not this man and these words, who and what?

Second, it doesn't matter what actually happened in the searing sands of the Arabian Desert. What counts is what Muslims believe happened. It is why they terrorize us, shouting: "Allahu Akbar!" While neither the Qur'an nor Sunnah are accurate reflections of Muhammad, Allah, and Islam, they are the only reflections. The faith of a billion people is based upon them. If we want to understand why they kill, if we want to stop them, we must come to understand what they believe. And to their shame, the characters, deeds, and words presented in Islam's Hadith and Qur'an provide a believable and realistic portrayal of what turned good men bad.

I have, therefore, taken the Qur'an and Sunnah at face value, sharing the Hadith as if it were an accurate accounting of Muhammad's words and deeds. I have exposed the Qur'an as if Muhammad actually recited it. I did this for many reasons. First, it is the only means we have to understand the motivation for terror. Second, the words contained in these books are sufficient in and of themselves to demonstrate the deceitful, hateful, intolerant, immoral, and vicious nature of Muhammad, Allah, and Islam. So by reviewing them we have killed three birds with the same stone. I have proved that Islam is without merit, rotten to its core. The motivation for Islamic terror has been exposed. We know why good Muslims are 2,000% more violent than the rest of us. And by comparing the Islamic scriptures to Mein Kampf, we have been warned: we ignore Islam at our peril.

Returning to the Cambridge debate, Smith said: "In response, Muslims contend that they have a number of the Uthman Qur'ans, original copies from the seventh century, still in their possession. I have heard Muslims claim that there are originals in Mecca, in Cairo, and in almost every ancient Islamic settlement. I have often asked them to furnish me with the data which would substantiate their antiquity; a task which, to date, nobody has been able to do." Smith's experience is typical. Islam has bred a community of liars.

"There are two documents, however, which hold some credibility, and to which many Muslims refer. These are the Samarkand Manuscript, which is located in the State Library at Tashkent, Uzbekistan (in the southern part of the Russian Federation), and the Topkapi Manuscript, which can be found in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. These two documents are old, and there has been ample etymological and paleographical analysis on them by scriptologists, as well as experts in Arabic calligraphy to warrant discussion.

"The Samarkand Manuscript is not a complete document. Out of the 114 surahs found in today's Qur'ans, only parts of suras 2 to 43 are included. Of these much of the text is missing. The actual inscription of the text in the Samarkand codex presents a real problem, as it is very irregular. According to Gilchrist's research, 'Some pages are neatly and uniformly copied while others are quite untidy and imbalanced. On some pages the text is expansive, while on others it is severely cramped and condensed. At times the Arabic letter KAF has been excluded, while on other pages it is the dominant letter on the page. Because so many pages differ so extensively from one another, the assumption is that we have a composite text, compiled from portions of different manuscripts. Also within the text, one finds artistic illuminations between the surahs, usually made up of colored bands of red, green, blue and orange medallions.' 'These illuminations have compelled the scriptologists to give the codex a ninth century origin, as it is grossly unlikely that such embellishments would have accompanied a seventh century Uthmanic manuscript sent out to the various provinces,' say Lings, Safadi, and Gilchrist.

"The Topkapi Manuscript in Istanbul is also written on parchment. It is devoid of the diacritical points needed for vocalization and word discernment. Like the Samarkand text, it is supplemented with ornamental medallions indicating a later age. Some Muslims claim that it must be one of the original copies, if not the original one compiled by Zaid ibn Thabit. Yet one only needs to compare it with the Samarkand codex to realize that they most certainly cannot both be Uthmanic originals. For instance, the Istanbul's Topkapi codex has 18 lines to the page whereas the Samarkand codex in Tashkent has only half that many; the Istanbul codex is inscribed throughout in a very formal manner, while the text of the Samarkand codex is often haphazard and considerably distorted. One cannot believe that both were copied by the same scribes.

"Experts in manuscript analysis use three tests for ascertaining age. They test the age of the paper on which the manuscript is written, using such chemical processes as carbon-14 dating. Precise dating of between +/-20 years is possible. There has been a reticence to use it, however, even though a refined form of carbon-14, known as Accelerator Mass Spectometry, requires only 0:5 mg. of material for testing. Yet, to date, neither of these manuscripts have been tested by either method.

"Experts also study ink, analyzing its makeup, discerning where it originated, or if it had been erased and copied over. But the inaccessibility of these manuscripts for detailed research has precluded that. Those who guard them are afraid of what the tests will reveal. Thus specialists must go to the script itself to determine whether the manuscript is recent or old. This study is known as paleography. 'Styles of letter formation change over time. These changes tend to be uniform as manuscripts are written by professional scribes. Thus penmanship tends to follow easy to delineate conventions, with only gradual modifications,' says Vanderkam, an expert in the field. 'By examining handwriting in texts whose dates are known and noting their development over time, a paleographer can compare them with other undated texts and thereby ascertain the time period to which they belong.'

"When experts apply the paleographical test to the Samarkand and Topkapi manuscripts they arrive at some interesting conclusions. The evidence proves that neither could be from Uthman's time. What most Muslims do not realize is that both manuscripts were written in Kufic Script, a script which according to modern Qur'anic experts, such as Martin Lings and Yasin Hamid Safadi, did not appear until late into the eighth century (790s or later). It was not in use at all in Mecca or Medina in the seventh century.

"The reasons for this are quite simple. The Kufic script, properly known as al-Khatt al-Kufi, derives its name from the city of Kufa in Iraq. It would be rather odd for this to be the official script of an Arabic Qur'an as it takes its name from a city that had just been conquered by Muslims." Arabic was a foreign language to the Persians. Further, for most of Islam's first century, the new empire was ruled from Syria, the very place where written Arabic had recently evolved from Aramaic via Syriac. Baghdad and Damascus were vying for power, and at the time, the Syrians were in charge.

"We know in fact, that the Kufic script reached its perfection during the late eighth century, one hundred and fifty years after Muhammad's death. Thereafter it became widely used throughout the Muslim world. This makes sense, since after 750 A.D. the Abbasids controlled Islam, and due to their Persian background, they moved the Islamic capital to Kufa and then Baghdad. They would thus have wanted their script to dominate, having been themselves dominated by the Umayyads who were based in Damascus for 100 years. It would be quite understandable that an Arabic script which originated in their area of influence, such as the Kufic script, would evolve into that which we find in these two documents mentioned here. (Kufa, Najaf, and Karbala are the most important towns for Shia Muslims even today.)

"Another factor which points to the late dates for these manuscripts are the format in which they are written. Due to the elongated style of the Kufic script, they both use sheets which are wider than they are tall. This 'landscape' format was borrowed from Syriac and Iraqi Christian documents of the eighth and ninth centuries. 'Earlier Arabic manuscripts were all written in the upright format,' explained Dr. Hugh Goodacre of the Oriental and India Office of Collections. 'Because the Topkapi and Samarkand Manuscripts were written in the Kufic script, and because they use the landscape format, they could not have been written earlier than 150 years after Uthman's Recension was supposedly compiled,' Gilchrist confirmed.

"So what script would have been used in Central Arabia at that time? 'The first Arabic scripts in Mecca and Medina were al-Ma'il and Mashq,' say Lings and Safadi. The Ma'il Script came into use at the end of the seventh century and is easily identified, as it was written at a slight angle.' The word al-Ma'il means 'slanting.' The Mashq Script emerged at the same time. It is more horizontal and can be distinguished by its cursive and leisurely style. If a Qur'an had been compiled in Mecca or Medina in the seventh century, it would have had to have been written in the Ma'il or Mashq script.

"Interestingly, we have a Qur'an written in the Ma'il script, and many considered it to be the earliest Qur'an in our possession. Yet it is not found in either Istanbul or Tashkent, but, ironically, resides in the British Library in London. It has been dated towards the end of the eighth century by Martin Lings, the former curator for the manuscripts of the British Library, who is himself a practicing Muslim. Therefore, with the help of script analysis, scholars are certain that there is no known manuscript of the Qur'an which can be dated to within a century of the time it was allegedly revealed.

"Furthermore, none of the earliest Qur'an fragments can be dated earlier than 100 years after the time of Muhammad, either. In her book Calligraphy and Islamic Culture, Annemarie Schimmel underscores this point as she talks about the recently discovered Sana'a Qur'ans. 'The earliest datable fragments go back to the first quarter of the eighth century.'

"The Sana'a Qur'ans still remain a mystery, as the Yemen government has not permitted the Germans who were called to investigate them to publish their findings. There have been suggestions that the actual words in these early eighth century Qur'ans do not correspond to those which we have today. We still wait to know the whole truth." I will cover the Sana'a fragments and deal with the most recent findings surrounding them later in this appendix. Jay Smith's intuition was proved correct.

There is much discussion amongst secular historians and Islamic clerics as to the credibility of the Hadith compilations. "It now seems obvious that the early ninth century schools of law authenticated their own agenda by asserting that their doctrines came initially from the companions of the prophet and then from the prophet himself," Joseph Schacht reported.

Schacht maintains that the inspiration for his investigation was Islamic scholar al-Shafi'i, who died in 820 A.D. He stipulated that all Traditions of law must be traced back to Muhammad in order to retain their credibility. Schacht explains: "A great mass of legal traditions invoking the authority of the prophet originated during the time of Shafi'i and later. Consequently, they all express Iraqian doctrines, and not those from early Arabia or even Syria. The Iraqi legal and political agenda imposed by each school demonstrates that most Hadith were conceived in the ninth and tenth centuries, invalidating the authenticity of the Sunnah."

In his debate, Smith said something readers of Prophet of Doom already know. "Certain compilers wrote reports which contradict other reports which they had themselves collected. Tabari, for instance, often gives conflicting accounts of the same incidents. Ishaq informs us that Muhammad stepped into a political vacuum upon entering Yathrib, but then later tells us that he snatched away authority from an established ruler. He says the Jews in Medina were supportive of their Arab neighbors, and yet were molested by them. Which are we to believe? Crone points out, 'The stories are told with complete disregard for what the actual situation in Medina may have been.'

"Contradictory accounts are also given by different compilers. Many are variations on a common theme. For example, there are fifteen different versions of Muhammad being blessed by a representative of a non-Islamic religion who 'recognized' him as a future prophet. Some place this encounter during his infancy, others when he was nine; some say he was twenty-five at the time. One Tradition maintains he was recognized by Ethiopian Christians, several by a Syrian monk, many by Yathrib Jews, one by a local Hanif, while others maintain it was a sorcerer. Some even suggest it was the belly of a dead animal. Crone concludes: 'What we have here is nothing more than fifteen equally fictitious versions of an event that never took place.'

"To make matters worse, the later the Hadith, the more detail it contains. Take for instance of the death of Abdallah, Muhammad's father. Ishaq and Tabari were agreed that Abdallah died early enough to leave Muhammad an orphan; but as to the specific details of his death, 'Allah knows best.' Waqidi, who wrote a half-century later, tells us not only when Abdallah died, but how he died, where he died, what his age was, and the exact place of his burial. According to Michael Cook, 'This evolution in the course of fifty years from uncertainty to a profusion of precise detail suggests that a fair amount of what Waqidi knew was not knowledge. This is rather typical of Waqidi. He was always willing to give precise dates, locations, names where Ishaq had none. But given that this information was all unknown earlier to Ishaq its value is doubtful in the extreme. And if spurious information accumulated at this rate in the three generations between Ishaq and Waqidi, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that even more must have accumulated in the four generations between Muhammad and Ishaq.'

"The sheer number of Hadith which suddenly appear create a good deal of skepticism. Bukhari claims that by 850 A.D. there were 600,000 Hadith about the prophet. They were so numerous the ruling Caliph asked him to pick the 'true' sayings of the prophet out of the sea of false ones. Bukhari never spelled out the criteria which guided his choice, except for vague pronouncements of 'unreliability' or 'unsuitability.' In the end, he retained only 2,602 Hadith (9,082 with repetition) - a mere 0:5%! Of the 600,000 Hadith 597,398 were false, and had to be scrapped." Thus, by the time they were collected, 99:5% of the Oral Traditions upon which Islam was based were considered spurious.

Muslim scholars maintain that the primary means for choosing between authentic and spurious Hadith was a process of oral transmission called an isnad. This, Muslims contend, was the science which was used by Bukhari, Tabari and other ninth and tenth century compilers to authenticate their compilations. The compilers provided a list of names, which supposedly traced back the authorship through time to the prophet himself. For the early Muslim, an isnad was considered essential, because it was considered to be the signature of those from whom the document came. "Unfortunately, we have no evidence the isnads are legitimate. Rather it seems that isnads were simply applied to Hadith that approved or outlawed matters of interest to the Iraqi community in generations after Muhammad had died. These isnads, and the Hadith that they supposedly authenticate, merely testify to what the exegetes chose to enact rather than to what can be deemed historical fact. Isnads weaken that which they sought to confirm. We are left with the realization that without any continuous transmission between the seventh and eighth centuries, the Traditions can only be considered a snapshot of the later ninth and tenth centuries and nothing more.

"Humphreys asserts: 'The "science" of isnad set about to authenticate isnads in the tenth century, long after the isnads in question had already been compiled, and have little relevance. Consequently, the larger the list, which includes the best known historical names, the more suspect its authenticity.'"

Therefore, from a credibility standpoint, the Islamic Hadith is no better than the Qur'an. There isn't a single glimmer of light from Islam's first one hundred and fifty years. Archeologists haven't found a scrap of paper, a papyrus scroll, a parchment, even a rock carving to suggest a single Hadith was coined within a century of Muhammad's death. Then, all of a sudden, two hundred and fifty years later, there are 600,000 of them that emerge out of thin air. Once again there is a singular rational explanation. They didn't exist previously. The Islamic Sunnah upon which Islam is based, upon which the Five Pillars are composed, upon which suicide bombers blast their way into infamy is a farce. Like the Qur'an, the Sunnah was created in Baghdad.

But that does not mean that they are completely untrue. I believe much of what has come down to us in the Sunnah and Qur'an is a somewhat accurate depiction of what Muhammad said and did. First, it is inconceivable that Islamic clerics just made it all up. Somebody conquered them, and something made them Muslims. Second, somebody and something motivated Arabs to stream out of Arabia wielding swords. The portrayal of Muhammad presented in the Hadith provides a perfect explanation of what caused the first Muslims to behave so badly. While the glove was woven in Mecca and decorated in Baghdad, the hand that fits inside belongs to the real Muhammad.

Third, attributing rape, incest, pedophilia, deceit, thievery, kidnapping, ransom, the slave trade, torture, and terrorist raids to a religious prophet in a land subjected to his doctrine, is unimaginable if not true. If you were going to conceive a "prophet" out of thin air, you wouldn't include the Quraysh Bargain, the Satanic Verses, the Pledge of War at Aqaba, the Naklah raid, the real motivation for Badr, the Qurayza genocide, the Khaybar rape, or Bakr's pan-Arabian war over taxes. The Persians were way too smart for that.

What I believe happened is embellishment. The Qur'an was insufficient religiously, so eighth century scholars buffed it up. You'll soon discover where they got their material. The Hadith gained fables, miracles, exaggerations, laws, religious rituals and dogma - the kind of stuff the ruling elite in Baghdad needed to control and fleece those who were now under their spell.

Having demonstrated that there isn't a shred of credible evidence (outside of Islamic behavior) to support the validity of the Qur'an and Hadith historically, scientifically, archeologically, or rationally, Smith turned his attention to its content. He began by positioning the Islamic claims so that his rebuttal would be on target. He said: "Muslims claim that the superiority of the Qur'an over all other revelations is due to its sophisticated structure and eloquent literary style. They quote from suras 10:37-8, 2:23, or 17:88, which say: "Will they say Muhammad has forged it? Answer: Bring therefore a surah like it, and call whom you may to your assistance, besides Allah, if you speak truth." This boast is echoed in the Hadith: "The Qur'an is the greatest wonder among the wonders of the world. This book is second to none in the world according to the unanimous decision of the learned men in points of diction, style, rhetoric, thoughts and soundness of laws and regulations to shape the destinies of mankind."

"Muslims conclude that since there is no literary equivalent in existence, this proves that the Qur'an is a miracle sent down from God, and not simply written by any man. It is this inimitability, or uniqueness, termed i'jaz in Arabic, which Muslims believe proves its divine authorship and thus its status as a miracle. It confirms Muhammad's prophetic claims as well as the entire veracity of Islam."

Yet, the Qur'an is a horrid book by any criterion. It promotes terrorism. It condones rape, incest, thievery, kidnapping for ransom, the slave trade, mass murder, and worst of all, world conquest by way of the sword. It is nauseatingly repetitive, foolishly plagiarized, contradictory, and false scientifically and historically. And it's a literary disaster with grammatical errors, missing words, and meaningless words. One out of every five verses is senseless. The speaker ducks in and out of first, second and third person and doesn't know if he is one or many. He doesn't even know his name. There are no intelligent transitions. And it's jumbled together haphazardly, lacking any pretense of sensible organization by subject, context, or chronology. It's little more than a childish rant revealing the demented, decadent, and delusional nature of its author. It is unsound in every way.

Pfander reports, "It is by no means the universal opinion of unprejudiced Arabic scholars that the literary style of the Qur'an is superior to that of other books in the Arabic language. Many doubt whether in eloquence and poetry it surpasses the Mu'allaqat by Imraul Quais, or the Maqamat of Hariri, though in Muslim lands few people are courageous enough to express such an opinion." Pfander elaborates by comparing the Qur'an with the Bible. "When we read the Old Covenant in the original Hebrew, scholars hold that the eloquence of Isaiah and the Psalms, for instance, is far greater than that of any part of the Qur'an. Hardly anyone but a Muslim would deny this." Although, that isn't saying much; all coherent writing is superior to the Qur'an.

"A comparison with the Bible brings other problems to light. When anyone familiar with it begins to read the Qur'an, it becomes immediately apparent that the Qur'an is an entirely different kind of literature, whatever its poetic merits. Whereas the Bible provides a historical context for everything, the Qur'an contains almost none. Whereas the Bible goes out of its way to explain unfamiliar terminology or territory, the Qur'an remains silent. In fact, the very structure of the Bible, consisting of a library of 66 books, written over a period of 1,500 years reveals that it is ordered according to chronology, subject, and theme. The Qur'an, on the other hand, reads more like a jumbled and confused collection of statements and ideas, many of which bear little relationship to preceding chapters and verses. Scholars admit that the Qur'an is so haphazard in its make-up it requires the utmost sense of duty for anyone to plow through it."

The German secular scholar Salomon Reinach states: "From the literary point of view, the Qur'an has little merit. Declamation, repetition, puerility, a lack of logic and coherence strike the unprepared reader at every turn. It is humiliating to the human intellect to think that this mediocre literature has been the subject of innumerable commentaries, and that millions of men are still wasting time in absorbing it." I have also struggled with this thought. Muhammad and his scripture are so moronic and repulsive, I feel like I am wasting my time. Then I think of the billion people who are victimized by Islam. Without a voice willing to proclaim the truth, no matter how disgusting it is, they will never be freed from its clutches. Then I think of victims of Islamic terror and my soul cries out, hoping to limit future carnage. Finally, I read Isaiah's prophecies, and those by Ezekiel, Daniel, and John. If I am interpreting them correctly, within a quarter century one quarter of the earth's people are going to die as a result of Islam. That's motivation enough.

McClintock and Strong's Encyclopedia maintains: "The Qur'an is exceedingly incoherent and sententious, the book being without any logical order of thought either as a whole or in its parts. This agrees with the desultory and incidental manner in which it is said to have been delivered." Even the Muslim scholar Dashti laments the literary defects: "Unfortunately the Qur'an was badly edited and its contents are very obtusely arranged. All students of the Qur'an wonder why the editors did not use the natural and logical method of ordering by date of revelation."

Fortunately, you know the answer. By arranging the Qur'an in the order it was revealed and by infusing it with the context of the Sira, the message becomes very dark and sinister. A correctly ordered Qur'an proves that the whole of Muhammad's recital was composed to serve a covetous, immoral, criminal, and murderous agenda.

"Another problem is that the reader of the Qur'an must endure endless repetition of the same material." The stories of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Moses, Pharaoh, Jesus, and Mary are collectively retold one hundred times. "The frequency with which we find alternative versions of the same passage in different surahs is troublesome."

Continues on Part III

Sources:

http://prophetofdoom.net/Prophet_of_Doom_Appendix_Islams_Dark_Past.Islam
http://prophetofdoom.net/pdf/Prophet_of_Doom_Appendix_Islams_Dark_Past.pdf

IHS