The pattern is obvious with this spinmiester. It's always elevating some
irrelevant aspect of the debate as if it were that important to the
discussion. A classic debate strategy I am aware of and quite franky, being
employed by lomax with great skill.
In the matter of Obama qualifications. Lomax throws in irrelevant facts to
confuse the matter. But one thing is clear. If Obama has a valid Birth
Certificate, why doesn't he simply release it. Not a faked scanned copy on
the net. Lomax likes to argue that based on his "expertise" in computer
compression algorithm, (notice that lomax claims to be an expert in a lot of
things.) the scanned BC was not fake. If he is so confident about that,
why doesn't he call for the release of the vault record from Hawaii.
Clearly, if it exists since they proportedly made a scan of it and presented
it, they should present it since there is no other information in there
worth hiding if they did in fact scan it as they claim. The
messiah-in-chief can quickly end the birther movement with one stroke, yet
he persist on letting it linger. What kind of leader is that? Instead of
healing the nation, he continually pokes the wound to keep it raw and sore.
Some great leader eh?
In the matter of Allah being a moon god. Lomax expertly and deftly
attempted to deflect this true criticism by employing irrelevant name
meanings. The name of someone has very little to do with what that person
really is. But lomax expertly claims that because allah does not mean "moon
god" that he is not the mood god. Like I said, a simple study of islamic
history will show that allah was muhammed's tribe moon god that was promoted
to be the universal god. Lomax criticizes me for not providing references.
That is deliberate on my part. I do not provide references precisely for
the reason that I want people to do their own research. Any reference I
cite will be rejected as biased anyways, so why bother. But do your own
research and you will see that I speak the truth. Allah is the mood god of
muhammed's tribe.
In the matter of muhammed's "dozens of wives", lomax once again attempts to
divert the attention to what really is the crux of this argument. When a
man has intercourse with a woman, the marriage is completed and consumated
whether on not there was a cermony or not. Clearly this was illustrated
clearly in the marriage of Isaac with Rebekkah and the marriage of Adam with
Eve. None of these involved any ceremony. In fact, if you look at Jacob.
Jacob had 2 wives Leah and Rachel, but he also had 2 of what we would call
concubines - Bilhah and Zilphah. He had children with these 2 concubines
and were always considered part of his family. The Bible treated Bilhah and
Ziphah as proper wives though no ceremony was involved. Even our modern
laws recognize intercourse as the definition of marriage. In our laws, a
person is not officially marriage to another "until" such time as the
marriage is "consumated". Similary, If a man cohabitates with a woman, they
are recognized as married even without any ceremony. We call it "common law
wives". The record is clear. Muhammed's appetite for women as sex toys,
even girls as young as 9 years old, is both legendary and well documented
even by muslim scholars. This is a source of great embarassment to muslims
and people like lomax always try to spin it away with lengthy esasys to
confuse the issue.
Frankly, I don't see the appeal of worshipping a second rate moon god with a
pedophile prophet as the leader. But, that's just me. LOL ....
Jojo
BTW, the koran teaches that a man should only have 4 wives. This "great"
leader can't even follow his own propaganda. Some great leader eh?
And, anybody can confirm everything I've said here, if you don't consider
Wikipedia as your final authoritative source. LOL ...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Abd ul-Rahman Lomax" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2012 10:21 AM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:How bad is this news? Jed Rothwell -> about Jaro Jaro
trolling
At 03:49 PM 12/7/2012, Jojo Jaro wrote:
10 for effort there spinmiester, self-appointed physics expert who do not
have a physics degree or any degree for that matter; and now
self-appointed arabic etymology expert.
Well, in physics I state the obvious, and I do as well so with respect to
Arabic etymology. Generally, when I'm in the company of experts, literally
or on a mailing list, they correct me when I'm wrong, and they can tell me
exactly where I err. Now, Jojo Jaro might think he has a better physics
education than I, though I did sit with Richard P. Feymnan for two years
at Caltech. He is correct that I don't have a degree. However, it's
totally irrelevant. I don't assert authority from degrees or "superior
knowledge." I just say what I see and understand.
I do the same with everything, including the behavior of writers on
mailing lists. And I cite evidence, I don't just make accusations, when
it's important.
Last week I spoke frequently at a conference of cold fusion experts,
including physicists, and was able to make positive contributions; mostly
that was about "interpreting" what physicists and other researchers were
saying, for businesspeople who were there and who might have
misinterpreted some of it. I'm quite sure that if I'd erred, the
physicists would have corrected me, it was their work I was explaining,
and this was important, much of this is ultimately about funding for
research.
As to Arabic, I do read the Qur'an in that language, and, again, I've
often discussed matters with real experts. I'm not wrong very often,
though it happens. As to "al-ilah" as the source of the personal name
"Allah," that was obvious, but it also is supported in sources. I also
mentioned that there is argument against this, which amounts to "Allah is
a personal name and etymology is irrelevant," which is *also* reasonable.
I did review sources, including Lane's Lexicon -- which is one heavy
dictionary -- for Jaro's Al-Ilyah, which allegedly means "moon god." I
found no support for it. Again, maybe I missed something.
I can see that you've taken up Wikipedia as your authoritative research
material. When I said, "study" I did not mean wikipedia. LOL....
Wikipedia is a double-edged sword. But it's often good for finding
sources. In this case I cited Wikipedia because it, right out, attributes
this "moon god" theory to "Evangelical Christians." Wikipedia will not
normally do that unless there is a basis for it. Realize, and notice, that
Jojo Jaro does not cite actual sources for his claims. Instead he claims
that anyone saying anything different is lying. For that to be true, as a
reasonable accusation, the evidence would certainly need to be well-known,
but I haven't been able to find it in anything approaching a reliable
source. Except:
From the Wikipedia article:
In 2009 anthropologist Gregory Starrett wrote, "a recent survey by the
Council for American Islamic Relations reports that as many as 10% of
Americans believe Muslims are pagans who worship a moon god or goddess, a
belief energetically disseminated by some Christian activists."
I also looked back at history. This is a fairly recent article, the
orignal version was
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Allah_as_Moon-god&oldid=469092937
This version does not support "Al-Ilyah," but "Al-ilah." It ascribes the
shortening to "pre-Islamic times." The article, though, originally, seemed
fairly naive about the point that "ilah" does carry the meaning of "god,"
even though it mentions El.
I found a source which examines some of the "research" behind the moon-god
idea, it was cited in the original Wikipedia article, but this kind of
source is not generally allowed on Wikipedia, self-published.
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Sources/Allah/moongods.html It's
useful if one wants to look behind the claims. Note that I'm not
confirming the author's scholarship, but he's quoting original sources, if
this really mattered, it could be researched. But it doesn't. Muslims do
not "worship a moon-god," no matter what the etymology of "Allah" might be
as to the past. That is to confuse the names of things with things.
Jajo Jaro purports to believe many such tropes, such as the belief that
President Obama was not born in the United States, which then necessarily
becomes a story of conspiracy and forgery involving many allegedly corrupt
officials, and reliance on discredited image analysis that supposedly
"proves" this or that. I wasted days of research tracking down Jojo Jaro's
claims earlier this year. Waste of time, except I did learn about what
"birthers" believe and precisely how some of them have been led astray.
Like by assuming that repeated exact patterns of pixels in images proves
that parts of the image were copied to other parts, i.e., to alter
letters. Yes. The coincident pixels prove that parts were copied, all
right, but this is a normal artifact of image compression. That is exactly
what compression algorithms do to reduce image file size. They search for
close matches and then represent all these matches with a single pattern.
Of course, anyone with access to the original document, or the original
images, could immediately detect a forgery like that, which is why this
would require some extended conspiracy, i.e., the officials in Hawaii
somehow don't notice that the public images have been drastically altered,
in spite of all the public flap, or they are in on the fraud.
Let me put it this way: if sources show what Jojo claims about this "moon
god," it's remarkably difficult to find. I did search for "Al-Ilyah." The
number one hit was this mailing list. Jojo Jaro claims that a "simple
study" will come up with this name. It does not.
Now on to correcting your disinformation again. Tell me one thing
spinmiester, what is the name of the moon god of muhammed's bebuin tribe.
Well, gods often had many names, and, as pointed out, any one of them
might be called "al-ilah," "the god," by followers. Al-ilah literally
means that, "ilah" is the word used for a god, an object of worship --
closely related to the old Hebrew El --, then with with al- at the
beginning as the definite article, indicating specificity or uniqueness.
In any case, the name I know about is Hubal, though that Hubal was a
"moon-god" is speculative. Hubal was apparently worshipped or "consulted"
by Muhammad's grandfather. But these were polytheists.
Wadd is mentioned in Qur'an as an old god, and is supposedly a lunar
deity. A temple of Wadd was reported as destroyed on the order of
Muhammad.
I look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Allah_as_Moon-god, for one can
often find minority positions expressed on Talk pages. I don't find
support there for Jojo's position, and certainly the idea that "Al-Ilyah"
was the name of the "moon-god" supposedly worshipped by "Muhammad's
bedouin tribe" isn't there at all. If it is, I missed it.
Anybody can find that out from multiple non-Christian sources.
If it is so easy, point to a few.
If you believe this spinmeister's spin, you only have yourself to blame
for being ignorant. Al-Ilyah or al-ilah or allah never was and still is
not the same as the Universal Jewish God or Christian God.
ilah, without the definite article has a very clear and easily
recognizable meaning, and it's found in the Qur'an (with three pages of
entries for ilah in the Kassis Concordance). (That this word is not found
with the definite article in the Qur'an, but as Allah, is a clue that the
Al- in Allah is, in fact, the definite article.) The connection between
ilah and El is well-known, and El, in case you don't know, is one of the
common Hebrew names for God. The plural of El would be "Elohim," which is
a bit better known.
The Christian God is not "the god"? Actually, he's right. God does not
belong to any sect. As soon as we indicate a sectarian affiliation, this
is not "the God," it's referring to a human concept. There are Christians
who worship "the God," and those who worship their own ideas. And the same
is true for anyone. Including Muslims. To me, "God" is a synonym for
Reality (which is clear in Islamic usage), and the map is not the
territory, the names are not the thing named.
So when I say that I trust in Allah, I mean, "I trust in Reality." And if
Jojo wants to assert that his God is something else, he's free. It simply
means to me that he's worshipping something *other than Reality*. That's
where his line of attack takes him, he throws himself off the cliff, and
divorces himself from reality.
Allah has always been the second rate moon god of muhammed's tribe
aspiring to be like the Most High God. Study it up. (I mean study, not
wikipedia. LOL...)
Definitely second rate if it's as obscure as it seems to be.
But "Allah" and "Al-Ilyah" would not be pronounced alike in Arabic. This
is a trope that appeals to people completely clueless about the language.
"Al-ilah" could easily become "Allah," but "al-Ilyah" has that ya in the
middle, which is a letter that would not disappear like this, as I
mentioned before.
And the whole approach is *fundamentally insulting.* That is, take
something that people believe, redefine the words according to whatever
you like, or think that the words *now* mean what they meant over a
thousand years ago, and then assert that *this* is what people *actually
believe.*
Which is what Jojo's claims amount to. They are actually deep insults, and
are designed as such.
Now to your spinning of the definition of marriage.
I don't recall specifically defining it. Again, Jojo frequently does not
quote what others have actually said, but reinterprets and states his
reinterpretation as what the other said. The topic here was his claim that
Muhammad had "dozens" of wives. For this to be true, we'd have to think
that he had at least two dozen wives, so someone could get away with
*almost* 24 with merely a small amount of incaution. Jojo actually screwed
up massively there, but Jojo *always" "fights back." He just ignores his
error and keeps going, with attacks and innuendo, like "spinning."
(Here, what he is actually doing, it turns out, is to state stretched
speculation as if it were established and proven fact.)
Marriage is an institution started by the Jewish God.
Really? There were no marriages before ... what? Obviously not before
there were humans, though even that isn't totally clear, but before the
time of the Jews, was there a "Jewish God"? Perhaps the "Jewish God"
refers to the "God of the Torah," which would then reach back to the
creation (as a description). Really, though, all this statement would then
mean is that marriage existed when it began. It does not state when it
began. Were Adam and Eve married?
The Qur'an says "Praise be to the one who created you from a single soul,
and from her, her mate, and, from the two of them, so many men and women."
This is usually glossed as referring to Adam as the "single soul," but
nafs, translated here as "soul" -- it more directly means "self" -- is
feminine, so I translated it that way. The word "mate" is zawj, and the
plural of zawj is azwaaj, which is routinely translated as "wives." But
the root is (one of) a pair. Mate.
Hence, we need to study how God defines a marriage and a "wife". Not
some spin from the moon god bible. Gen 24 contains the definition of what
constitutes a wife. Look at verse 67.
There is no "moon god bible."
And a description of a specific usage is not a definition, and what Jojo
cites does not establish what he claims. "She became his wife" does not
specify *how* she became his wife. It seems to precede "he loved her." I'd
need to pull out my Hebrew Torah to look at the actual words used here,
I've found that I cannot trust naive Christian glosses, they are
frequently back-interpreting from what they already believe, and then
claim it's in the text.
I have always understood this difference between marriage and
non-marriage: marriage is declared, it's a social affair. That is how and
why it carries obligations and why marriage contracts are enforced
socially. If adultery is to be prohibited, it must be known who is
available and who is not. Thus, in Islam, "secret marriage" is generally
prohibited, and there are some interesting stories about Abrahan and
Sarah, did he conceal his marriage to her, thus leading to some kind of
"adultery"? If it did, who was responsible for it? All of which matters
little to us now. Some people love to argue about this stuff, because they
love to disagree.
Muhammad's marriages were certainly known. And that is the core of
marriage. It legitimates intimacy, it allows for known parentage. (Which
may be one reason why polyandry is so disapproved. Polyandry was a
pre-Islamic custom in Arabia, and also in some other places, all sharing a
certain characteristic: a need to limit population growth. That was true
of pre-Islamic Mecca, they had apparently hit resource limits. Going with
this custom was, apparently, female infanticide. Why females? Well, you
don't limit the size of the next generation by eliminating boys. Biology.)
That was swept away by Islam, both polyandry and infanticide.
"And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and
she became his wife; and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his
mother's death."
This tells me practically nothing about "marriage." It says that Rebekah
became his wife. Notice, "into his mother's tent" means that she lived
with his mother. I looked up alternate translations of the passage, and
what came before it. This was a marriage, it was clear, and it is a narrow
reading that implies that consummation came first, i.e. that "took" means
"had intercourse with."
Confusing all this, the word "to marry" can also mean "to have intercourse
with," certainly in Arabic and probably, then, in Hebrew. But, again, I
haven't checked the original language here. The translations show nothing
that clearly makes it mean "have intercourse," and one was explicitly
"took her to wife," and others "took her and made her his wife," or the
like, where "took" can simply mean "accept." After all, it was a servant
who brought Rebekah, so it was up to Isaac to accept or not.
You will notice that there was no ceremony or anything to make Rebekah
Isaac's wife. The mere act of taking her into his tent (his bed) and
"knowing" her (sex) automatically made Rebekah his wife.
It doesn't say "into his tent," it says, "into his mother's tent." But,
yes, in tribal society, intercourse and marriage were considered
practically identical. And so? In Islamic marriage, if a marriage is not
consummated, it remains nullifiable, at half the agreed dowry. Once
consummated, normal divorce is required. I.e., full payment of dowry to
the woman. And this was often a very considerable sum. Or with some
marriages, particularly of the poor, it was small.
And what does this have to do with how many wives Muhammad had? Remember,
Jojo wrote "dozens," and it was just that to which I objected, because it
is apparently false. Or at least unclear, an assertion without proof, but
he wants, as usual, to claim that any difference on this is "lying" or
"spin." And what he says, without proof, is "truth." And, of course, he is
going to be persecuted for saying "the truth."
What this means my friends, is that every woman you've ever had sex
with is considered in God's eyes to be your wife.
I wish. However, they seem to have something to say about that.
Indeed, that position can be taken. But the passage doesn't mean that.
This is an *interpretation* that is not found clearly in the original.
And, again, what does that have to do with Muhammad's "wives"?
And this includes all the sex toys concubines of muhammed whether there
was a ceremony or not; they were all "wives".
Jojo is making mincemeat out of language, he will make it mean whatever he
wants. He has no concern that he might be distorting God's Word, saying
about it what he does not know. He has no fear of God. He's angry, and
he's going to retaliate, and doesn't care.
Most of all, he wants to be Right.
"Sex toys of Muhammad"? He's making that up. Below, concubines will be
mentioned. A concubine is a slave. "Concubine" does not mean "sex
partner." In Islamic law, the position of slaves is a special case, and
slavery is generally disapproved, but also allowed under some conditions;
the majority intepretation of this requires a man to marry a woman to have
sex with her, to be righteous. But sex with a slave was not considered
*illegal,* the key would be the exclusivity presumed to exist in the
relationship. It was illegal to have sex, for example, with a wife's
slave, unless she gives the slave to her husband. As, of course, happened
with Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Uh, what does Jojo's "Christian God" have
to say about that?
And none of this is any kind of aspersion cast against Abraham, Sarah, or
Hagar, or their children. It's about "honi soit qui mal y pense," those
who readily cry "sin!" about what others have done, and who don't look at
themselves. Didn't Jesus say something about that?
Wikipedia has http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad%27s_wives It says
"eleven or thirteen." For the purposes of this discussion, I've been
accepting 13. I.e., 12 after Khadijah died. And I don't know how many he
had at one time, and it appears that some of the marriages may not have
been consummated.
I did a great deal more research on this, and this is the bottom line: to
come up with "two dozen" wives, it's necessary to collect together and
assume to be accurate *all* the reports that so-and-so was married to the
Prophet, and one of these is even about an unamed woman, who might or
might not be identical to another, and there were apparently divorces
involving unconsummated marriages, so it all gets really complicated.
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/List_of_Wives_and_Concubines_of_Muhammad seems
to rely largely on a single source:
http://www.muslimhope.com/WhyDidMohammedGetSoManyWives.htm which is a
Christian web site, the "Hope" is that Muslims will accept Jesus as
Messiah, which is a bit really weird, because we do. But the hope is also
that we will "leave Islam," which means, if we use the word literally,
that we will leave off "accepting" God. In my extended discussions with a
well-known Christian apologist (and critic of Islam), he told me privately
that, "Of course, with what the word "muslim" means, I am muslim."
We, of course, still had a difference of opinion on *theology,* but my
opinion is that we are not saved by theology, and, in fact, theology is a
bit of a nuisance. Faith is not about theology, it's a condition of the
heart.
The MuslimHope source gives this statement:
Mohammed married 15 women and consummated his marriages with 13.
(al-Tabari vol.9 p.126-127)
Bukhari vol.1 Book 5 ch.25 no.282 p.172-173 said that [at one time]
Mohammed had nine wives.
Yes, it goes over greater number of alleged wives, as well as alleged
concubines. The 13 figure would be Khadija, his only wife until she
died -- according to a common tribal marriage pattern -- after which he
took multiple wives, again common at the time, as many as a dozen more.
This does not conflict with Bukhari, because that would be a different
number: the peak number of wives at one time.
And I could write a great deal more on this, but won't. Because all this
is *completely irrelevant here*, and I looked into this again (after many
years not even thinking about the issue) because of Jojo's trolling.
