On Feb 8, 2005, at 10:09 AM, Travis Edmunds wrote:
From: Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Feb 2, 2005, at 3:37 PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
I read somewhere (maybe on this list) recently that satire is [reportedly] specifically forbidden by the Koran . . .
Hmm. That would surprise me.
Why? At its core satire is meant as a call for change. And what religious institution wants to change?
It would surprise me because the Koran is really more flexible than that. As an example, during the first few hundred years after Islam's coming to the world stage, Muslim science was vastly superior to the European variety. There was no sense that the finding of fact about the world in any way conflicted with how Allah wanted the faithful to behave; contrarily (IIRC) it was regarded as laudable to study Creation if for no other reason than to marvel at the complexity of work that Allah had wrought.
Similarly, humor, satire and other like pursuits are extensions of intelligence. I don't think there's ayah in surah that can be quoted as forbidding learning or forbidding expression of one's Allah-granted wit. I would be *very* surprised to learn that Allah had explicitly forbidden humor in *any* of its forms.
Googling for the exact phrases "koran forbids humor" or "koran forbids satire" yields no results. A search of the etext at <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/koran.html> for either humor or satire also comes up null. I don't recall coming across any such passage, and while not a Koranic scholar, I have read the text in three translations. (Well, two plus a good interpretation.)
However, there might be something in the Hadith (sayings of Muhammad) that says otherwise. There certainly are passages to be found in the Hadith that can be -- and have been -- quoted to support terrorism as jihad. But the Hadith are not part of the Koran.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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