807God Damn Religion
Bibliography
The documented references in God Damn Religion were derived from English translations of ancient Islamic manuscripts. While hundreds of scholars and researchers have written about Muhammad, his god, Allah, and the religion Islam, only five sources can be considered original, authentic, and, to the extent possible, credible.
All other writings present a cleric’s or scholar’s opinion drawn from the original sources. So rather than study someone’s interpretation of Muhammad, Allah, and Islam, we can read what the oldest and most credible sources report that Islam’s lone messenger had to say about himself, god, and his religion. If Muhammad got Islam wrong, no one has it right. And without Muhammad, there would be no Quran and or a god named Allah.
Since translations of the Quran are wildly divergent due to the remedial nature of the text, I have used a thoughtful composite of the five most commonly cited representations to convey its message as accurately as possible. And while these include The Noble Quran, Pickthal, Shakir, and Yusuf Ali translations along with the Ahmed Ali sanitized paraphrase, throughout God Damn Religion I have favored the more literal, expansive, and expressive word-for-word reading found in The Noble Quran. It was translated by Muhammad Muhsin Khan for Maktaba Dr-us-Salem Publishers in coordination with the King Fahad National Library. Then for added elucidation and validation, I have published a parallel Quran presentation of these five renditions of Allah’s Book at both ProphetOfDoom.net and YadaYah.com.
The oldest Quran fragments date to 725 CE – a century after they were allegedly recited – and at a time when the 808contents were in a state of flux and still evolving. A comprehensive analysis of these findings and the book’s history is presented in the opening chapter of volume two of God Damn Religion, and again as a supplemental appendix at the conclusion of volume four. One of the more interesting assessments of the Quran’s formative years was written by the world’s foremost authority on Quranic paleography, Dr. Gerd R. Puin, for The Atlantic magazine in 1999.
“The Quran is a cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; which one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history.
The Quran claims for itself that it is mubeen, or ‘clear,’ but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Quranic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Quran is not comprehensible – if it can’t even be understood in Arabic – then it’s not translatable. People fear that. And since the Quran claims repeatedly to be clear but obviously is not – as even speakers of Arabic will tell you – there is a contradiction. Something else must be going on.”
Beyond its seriously deficient writing quality, the Quran also lacks the organizational structure of context and chronology. It, therefore, must be read in conjunction with the chronological Hadith Collections of Ishaq and Tabari to be understood. And to that end, God Damn Religion was composed using this approach.
The Sirat Rasul Allah was compiled by Ibn Ishaq in 750 CE. It was edited and abridged by Ibn Hisham in 830 CE and translated by Alfred Guillaume under the title, The Life of Muhammad in 1955 by Oxford Press. Referred to as the Sira, 809or Biography, Ishaq’s Hadith Collection is comprised of oral reports from Muhammad and his companions. It provides the only written account of Muhammad’s life and the formation of Islam that was composed within two centuries of the prophet’s death. There is no earlier or more accurate source.
The History of al-Tabari, called the Ta’rikh, was compiled by Abu Muhammad bin al-Tabari between 870 and 920 CE. His monumental work was translated and published in 1987 through 1997 by the State University of New York Press. I quote from volumes I, II, VI, VII, VIII, and IX. Tabari’s History is comprised entirely of Islamic Hadith. It is arranged chronologically. Tabari is Islam’s oldest uncensored source.
Al-Bukhari’s Hadith, titled: Sahih Al-Bukhari – The True Traditions was collected by Islamic scholar Imam Muhammad ibn Isma’il al-Bukhari between 840 and 860 CE. I have quoted from the nine-volume original English translation by Dr. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, the Director of the Islamic University, Al-Madina. It was published by Maktaba Dar-us-Salam in Saudi Arabia of the King Fahd National Library in July 1997. However, since the nomenclature cataloging Bukhari’s Hadith varies between the printed and digital presentations, I have used the more prevalent online nomenclature.
Imam Bukhari reviewed some 600,000 Hadith Traditions and distilled them down to 7,563 full-isnad (chain of hearsay reporters) narrations of which he was certain were Sahih | Authentic. Paired of duplications and contrasting accounts of the same episode, there are 2,600 Hadith in his collection, each shedding light on Muhammad, Allah, the Quran, and formation of Islam. Muhammad al-Bukhari began his research in the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca before moving to the Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina, establishing the final collection in 846 CE (232 AH), where it was thoroughly examined and verified by the most celebrated 810Islamic scholars of the day. The oldest surviving partial copy of his manuscript dates to 984 CE / 340 AH and complete copy to 1155 CE / 550 AH.
Sahih Muslim, a 9th-century topical Hadith arrangement of Sunnah, was collected by Persian scholar Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj al-Naysaburi. A stickler for an unbroken chain of reporters, or isnads, at least two of whom were contemporaries of Muhammad, he deduced 300,000 oral reports emerging from Allah’s Messenger and his companions down to 4,000. The subsequent Hadith Collection is compiled into 56 books and presents 3,033 independent narratives.
Sahih Muslim is among the most valued books in Sunni Islam alongside Sahih al-Bukhari. In fact, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, along with Muhammad ibn Isma’il al-Bukhari, comprise the two most important Kutub al-Sittah (six books containing Hadith) and are considered Sahihayn | the Two Who Are Authorized Sahihs. His collection was translated by Nasinuddin Al-Khattab for publication by Maktaba Dar-us-Salam in Saudi Arabia for the King Fahd National Library. An online version was retranslated and prepared by Abdul Hamid Siddiqui and converted to an electronic database by the DEED-IIU group as inspired by “the dedicated work done by the Muslim Students Association at the University of Southern California.”
As stated from the outset, I have presented a composite rendering of the five most popular and esteemed translations of the Quran throughout God Damn Religion. However, since it is readily apparent that no one seems to know what its dark lord was trying to convey, they differ appreciably. Therefore, the most responsible approach has been to present a consensus where possible and a more complete spectrum when interpretations are too varied to rely on a singular rendering.
811Two decades ago, this approach produced the most accurate presentation of the Quranic text possible. However, two things have occurred over the ensuing period which affect what you are reading. First, the presentation of Allah and Muhammad’s voices in the Quran and Hadith have been so shrill over the centuries, after posting Prophet of Doom online and conducting 5,000 talk-radio interviews to promote its findings, young Muslims were in a quandary. In the face of what I was sharing, the “Islam is peaceful” and “jihad is a spiritual struggle” arguments were discredited. So, to make their religion appear acceptable, Muslims sanitized the text. They inserted “Allah” when the Quran read “al-lahu,” “ilah,” “rabbi,” and “ar-Rahman” to dispense with the realization that Allah was a come-lately, then they replaced “terror” with “awe” in many translations to disassociate their un-god and non-prophet from Islamic terrorism.
While they were at it, the Muslim Student Association at my alma mater did two additional things, one annoying, the other helpful. Since there was no consensus guiding the nomenclature of the Hadith, they rearranged their sanitized renderings under a different numbering system, making it slightly more difficult to verify my citations apart from using an online search engine. Then to counter the accusation that students of the Quran were deprived of translation aids, in contrast to the vast wealth tools available to study the Hebrew text of the Towrah, they began offering Arabic / English interlinears. These not only provide for a literal rendering, conveying the words as they are now written, they convey the Arabic terms from which they were derived. But these tools, and there are now many of them, impugn “Allah’s” credibility because they reveal in no uncertain terms just how impoverished and delusional the text of the Quran appears, while at the same time, providing us with a portal to a more accurate rendering.
812Had I taken the easier path to God Damn Religion, I would have copied and pasted from one of a variety of translations and left it at that, giving the erroneous impression that this one version was correct. Knowing otherwise, I invested the time required to compile a rendering that was correct and complete. And now, with the benefit of interlinears, I can provide a literal rendering while still retaining the credibility provided by the foremost Arabic linguists and scholars. This approach became essential when I began to notice the inappropriate introduction of Allah’s name into surahs allegedly recited by either al-lahu | for him, ilah | god, rabbi | lord, or Ar-Rahman | the Merciful, during the first ten years of Islam.
