Bluecat

Great stuff, Salem. I've been to Biche... Nice town. I'm sure they are glad your Grandfather was there. Well, you could have started a thread yrself. Perhaps an oversight. There is more on the Off Topic thread, btw.

THANK YOU And a Happy Birthday to my fellow bulls.

Congratulations, Saint Koki of the Cooki, patron saint of red tape alleviation. Are you planning to sell the Blessed Cookie on ebay?

No, but treat them with a suitable caution... The article is interesting on a number of grounds. One is the (bleeping obvious point but it still needs to be said) fact that there are numerous interpretations of Sharia and ways of understanding the Koran and Hadith teaching on this, as on many other issues - no one interpretation is going to be acceptable to every single Muslim. Islam, no less than Christianity, is full of different schools of thought, and it's a foolish attitude that sees either as monolithic. Another is the point on translation - usury or interest or "eating" for riba? Arabic is a richly allusive and metaphorical language (I believe: I'm not in a position to appreciate how far this is true, but all Arabic scholars seem to agree it is). The other point (which the author does not make directly) is that Islam continues a prohibition on usury that the Christian world divested itself of many centuries ago.

Interesting (rather long) essay on Sharia law as it relates to banking and borrowing: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n08/hard01_.html

The "people of the book" are referred to in the Koran. The Arabic can be transliterated as Awhl al Kitab ("Kitab" means book), and they are stated in the Koran to be those who have had revealed to them a revelation of a montheistic god prior to Mohammed. This is mainly in the Sura called The Dinner Table. The peoples mentioned as "people of the book" are the Israelites, the Christians, and some people called the Sabians, whose identity is disputed. Many Shia consider them to be the Zorastrians, which the Sunni in general do not - (Saba is also the name of an ancient city state which was located in South Oman/Yemen at the height of the incense boom, which had faded away by Mohammed's time, and which is one candidate for Sheba where the Queen came from...I've visited its ruins). The books mentioned are called in the Koran "Tawrat" "Zabur" and "Injeel", which are generally understood within Islam to mean the Torah, the book of Psalms, and the 4 Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The revelation of these books are considered in Islam to have come from God, just as the Koran is, but that these early revelations are capped or completed by the revelations given to Mohammed, which are seen as the final and absolute message from God to the world. Thus Mohammed is referred to as "the seal of the prophets". So Islam reckons Abraham, Moses, Jacob and Jesus (to name a few) as divinely-inspired prophets prior to Mohammed. Basically, the "People of the Book", for Muslims, are believers in a monotheistic Creator God who reveals himself through prophets, and who believe in a Day of Judgement, Heaven and Hell, angels and Adam and Eve. It is usually only applied to the pre-Islamic revealed religions, because of this idea that Mohammed's was the final revelation. Early-ish Christianity took a similar view, and regarded Islam (bizarrrely) as a Christian heresy because it came after the final revelation (which, to them, was Christ's).

You can buy a translation of the Koran in most languages and in practically any country. And I'm sure the Saudis would send you a free one if you asked. There are various charitable organisations that distribute free translations, too. But they are not what Muslims consider the be 'The Koran' itself. Just think how certain debates in Christianity would be simplified (perhaps) if translating the Bible was frowned upon and every Christian was set to learn Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin! Here (the United Arab Emirates) translations of the Koran into the numerous languages spoken by the expats are subsidised by the Ministry for Religious Affairs, and are cheap. There are numerous charities that will give you a free copy if you like. I guess that also means that the translations are very carefully looked at by religious and lingusitic experts, so that they are at the least not terribly misleading renditions (but, not being the actual words of God, they are always going to be nothing like the real thing in Islamic teaching). Of course any secular publisher can publish their own translations, and they do. I used to have my father's old Everyman edition (published in the 1930s), which was in (not very good) English verse, as well as a Penguin Classics edition from the 1950s (which became controversial as apparently some of the renderings were quite misleading - plus the fact that the translator was Jewish annoyed some of the men with beards and beads). As you can imagine, Muslims having only just by a whisker agreed that it is permissible to translate the Koran at all, the debate around who should translate it, and how certain passages should be translated can be pretty fierce. What there isn't, is any debate within Islam about what the Koran actually says, because it says what it says, and it says it in Arabic. What it means is another matter, and has occupied scholars for the whole of Muslim history to date. Arabic is a hugely poetic, allusive, complex language, where all the words have multiple shades of meaning. (In Jonathan Raban's book Arabia, he describes looking up the root word for "child". It includes meanings that can be rendered "intruder", "nuisance" and many other deeply sceptical terms. The root word for "mother" includes "illiteracy" "ignorance"... Actually knowing what meaning is indicated is difficult enough even for modern Arabic speakers looking at an ordinary piece of modern Arabic... which for an English teacher means I am constantly asking my students of writing what they mean to say.) But there is no doubt about what the actual words of the Koran are - anyone can see them, whether or not they can read and interpret them. This is why the 'Satanic Verses' was such a hot topic... more on that in a later post, if anyone's interested.

Such a thing is impossible for Muslims to contemplate doing. [Please note that I'm not saying that it may not have been done, in fact. All sorts of things that are strictly forbidden have actually happened in history.] However, my aim in this thread is not to convince anyone that what Muslims believe is actually objectively true. Given that I don't myself subscribe to Muslim beliefs, it would be kind of bizarre for me to do that. I don't subscribe to Muslim beliefs, but it seems I do at least know what they are... and living where I do, I am surrounded by hundreds of knowledgeable informants. My aim is to clarify what Islam actually does teach, as I have noticed considerable ignorance, misinformation and false analogies being made on the subject. I suspect that the information you draw on above, Coolhand, confuses the Koran with the Hadith, and the interpretations of the Koran and Hadith which form the basis of Muslim jurisprudence around the world. What's the difference between Koran and Hadith? The Koran, according to Muslims, is the book written in Arabic by God and memorised word by word by Muhammed. As such, it cannot be considered to have variants, editorial changes, or different drafts. Memorising and copying out the book is still a major part of people's religious practice, and there is the highest possible premium placed on total accuracy, down to the punctuation marks and the precise details of the brush strokes. The Hadith is a collection of information about the Prophet, his life, his habits (fond of cats, apparently) and his sayings. It also includes stories about his Companions, the first people to hear about the new religion from him. The Hadith has enormous force within Islam, but is essentially stuff about human beings, reported by other human beings, and handed down and debated over the centuries. As all humans are conisidered fallible in Islam, there are and have been variant Hadiths, Hadiths accepted by one group and not by others, and so on. In this respect, it is a lot more like the various books of the Bible and the Apocrypha, where there have been debates about different texts and about different canons throughout Christian history, than it is like the Koran. The Hadith is (somewhat) debatable and debated within Islam. The Koran is not. The Hadith is said to have been standardised for the Sunni in (if memory serves) the 9th century - about 150 years after Muhammed's death - under one of the Caliphs... which would postdate the rift between Sunni and Shia. Er... no. For a start, that is not what those words mean. Translation: Manuscript In my initial post, I quoted another forum member whose comments sparked off this thread. It seems pretty clear to me that he is using the word "version" in its most common meaning of "variety" (he talks, precisely, about there being different versions containing differing precepts and rules) and "translation" as meaning "a rendering of a text from one language into another". I'm using those words in the same way. (I should add that in 30 years as an English teacher, editor, translator and teacher of translation it is the first time I've come across the word "version" used to mean "translation of the Bible" - so thank you for the new information. However, it is yet another example of drawing a mistaken analogy between Christian ideas about the Bible and Muslim ideas about the Koran.) Not exactly. If you ask for a Koran (and you are writing in English), they will give you a translation of the Koran into English. If you write to them in Italian, they'll send you an Italian version - and I do mean version in the sense of "variant". I know that sounds like a distinction without a difference, because for most of us, it is. But not for Muslims. Think for a moment from the point of view of someone who believes that there is a book literally written by the hand of God, an actual manuscript by God. Not inspired by God and written down by a prophet, but each and every word selected and actually written by God. This is what Islam teaches about the Koran. It follows that the meaning and the power of the Koran is not only in the meanings the words have, but also in the choice of the words, the word order, the associations those words have, and in the sounds of those words, and in the entire Arabic language itself. It's often said that "Poetry is what gets lost in translation." Muslims believe that the Koran is what gets lost in translation. Properly speaking, the Koran only exists in the original Classical Arabic (which is now no longer the language that anyone speaks at home, but which is believed by Muslims to be the language of God and the angels). The advantage of this belief, obviously, is that there is no debate about translation validity in Islam, as there is within Christianity about the Bible. The Koran is the Koran, in exactly those Arabic words, and in exactly that word order, and with exactly the classical pronounciation. Any variation from that is no longer the Koran. So, all translations are more or less invalid for Muslims. No translation can be the actual Koran, because the words and the language in a translation were chosen by a human translator, and the Koran's words were chosen and written by God. There was a massive debate within Islam about whether it was even permissable to make any kind of translation at all during the expansion of the Caliphate period, when Arab Muslims invaded and converted the Persians, the Turks (who did not then inhabit Turkey), much of Indonesia and the many Central Asian and North African peoples. As the new Muslims did not speak Classical Peninsula Arabic, some Muslims thought that a rendering of the Koran into their languages would be a useful teaching aid to get the basics across. This was considered a demonically heretical idea for centuries. There are still Muslims today who believe all translation creates a false Koran and is therefore to be shunned. (And there are still Koranic schools which teach a parrot-fashion recitation of the holy words which neither teacher nor pupils understand, but which they all believe they are benefitting from... cos they are God's words whether we understand them or not). However, the translators won the day, mainly because they wanted to help people convert to Islam. Which is why the Saudis would like you to collect your free copy. But if you did convert, you'd have to start learning and reciting the real words of the actual Koran toute suite. Sorry to hammer this out at such great length, but it is such a fundamental misconception of Islam to talk about there being more than one Koran (more than one translation, by all means, but no translation can be the Koran). The idea, in the post I quoted at the start, that one believing Muslim could approach another to enter an inner circle where a "different Koran" was revealed, is totally absurd if you know what Islam teaches about the Koran's uniqueness. People have been beheaded for less. Those of you who enter into textual debate about Bible translations and the vexed relationship between Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin and English Bibles, may appreciate the lack of hassles Islamic teaching about their Holy Book gives them. It certainly has the virtue of simplifying things.

According to all strands of Islam, there are no "versions" of the Koran. Just the thing itself. The reason is that the Koran was supposedly written by God. Not written by prophets under divine inspiration, as is claimed for the Bible, but actually inscribed by the hand of God in heaven. God, logically, does not do drafts! (Oh, and God writes in Classical Arabic, but then you'd expect that.) So, any idea that there could be more than one version of the Koran is immediately heretical in Islam. Any Muslim suggesting such a view would be drummed out of the Brownies.

In another thread, a member of the forum mentioned more than one version of the Koran. I queried it, and got this back: I have challenged the poster to supply sources for this extraordinary statement (and am breathlessly waiting for an answer), but it also raises issues, for me, about how a little ignorance can lay us open to a host of more or less pernicious falsehoods about religions we do not follow, beliefs we do not happen to share, and groups of people we may perhaps fear. The reason it does so is because there are expressions and assumptions made in the statement I've quoted which could not be made by anyone with even a very small acquaintaince with what the Koran is supposed to be - expressions that one can fairly use about the Bible, for example, but which do not happen to apply to the Koran. I should add that I am not a Muslim, or indeed a theist. On the other hand, I have known many Muslims of different denominations, live in a Muslim country, speak some Arabic, and have learnt over many years a great deal of facts about Islam. So, although I do not believe what Muslims believe, I do at least have some idea of what Islam is supposed by Muslims to be. (If there are any Muslims here who would like to correct me on any statement I make here, I'd welcome the input!) I'll take the misconceptions in the quote one by one as I have time. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to finding out where this bizarre "information" in the quote came from.

IF you believe the Bible to be literally true in only the face value meaning of each word (as in, a day of creation meaning the 24 and a bit hours of one single revolution of our earth on its axis, even before the earth, or indeed the solar system, came into existence) then you will not be able to accept evolution, or indeed almost any of the physical sciences, as accurate descriptions of the world in which we find ourselves. Some of the corollaries of that belief are very peculiar indeed, and were well enough rehearsed in the 19th and 20th centuries as to need no reprise here (such as the corollary that God created us as reasoning beings capable of learning and of making judgements, while secretly falsifying all the available evidence we had to work on in order to deliberately mislead us - not an impossible deity to imagine, but an awfully strange deity to worship, IMNSHO). However, there are many other ways of approaching the Bible, from the straighforwardly atheist one that this is merely a collection of tribal myths amongst others, all the way to the mainstream Christian point of view that it is the direct divine inspiration of God working through metaphor, poetry, parable and all the arts to which the human spirit, perhaps uniquely, responds. This strikes me as a rather more probable deity - plus, for those of us in the Christian tradition, it appears to be exactly the way in which that bloke Jesus taught his followers - through imagery, simile and parable. It also has the corollary that God can be trusted in his creation.

Thank you!

This has been making me giggle...

Ouch!! and cringe!!

Good he's diagnosed: there is a lot that can be done to help him. I had a schoolmate who was undiagnosed and died in much the same way - had a seizure in the school washrooms (probably her first seizure, she was only 12) and struck her head on the fixtures. A terrible thing.

I'm sorry to hear it. My sympathies with the family. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/0...volta-son-death

This is an ancient stone circle at Castlerigg in the North of England. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/interactive/2...rtin-wainwright

When I was a child my parents were pretty active in our RCC parish. A family moved into our street and wrote to the local paper complaining that no "so-called Catholics" were friendly. (I don't know how long after they moved in, but it can't have been very long). So naturally my parents and several other catholic families in the street went to welcome them, befriended the mother (a housewife like many in our street) and I played a lot with their 2 kids who were about the same age as me. This went on for about 5 or 6 months, until suddenly everything changed. The woman started attacking the RCC neighbours verbally, and later physically. She would cruise her car alongside RCC children walking home from school and threaten them, insult our parents (she told my 8 or 9 year old brother that my mother was an alcoholic and that our Dad was not his real father, for instance). She would sit outside the church during Mass with her finger on the car horn and was twice cautioned by the police for it. One evening my Mum and I were out walking and met her and her children: she got them throwing stones at us. Very very scary...and exceeding weird. At least I can say I've been stoned for my religion. The hassles ended when she sexually, racially and physically harrassed a lecturer at our local college (he was black, not RCC - apparently she didn't like black people either), got taken to court and lost... they moved house and were never heard from again.

Died on the last day of October, aged 96. A great man. http://www.studsterkel.org/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ci...erica-democracy

Thank you all for the help and references! Have just been reading Stephen King on the Horror Genre (in film and writing) and he recalled the 50s when horror films used to be announced with posters claiming that " a qualified nurse will be in attendance at each showing!" Great publicity. I suppose what I'd really like to find is a confirmed case of someone dropping dead in a horror film - preferably just at a particularly scary moment - even though there would be no guarantee of cause and effect. I once thought this was ABOUT to happen to the person I'd gone to the cinema with (to Jurassic Park) but that turned out to be, umm... how shal I put it? ... more to do with previously ingested substances than the Speilberg wizardry. That was my own personal scariest moment in a cinema, mind you...

Hi all, I was discussing Horror films with my students recently (they love them!) and several of them assured me that "they knew" that people had been frightened literally to death while watching horror. I wondered whether anyone could tell me of actual case where that has been proven?

Bless you and help you - to make a good choice - to accept it without bitterness if your choice is not successful and bless the candidates - may the winner win gracefully and without vindictiveness and may he do well - and may the loser lose graciously and without rancour or resentment. To quote Alasdair Gray "Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation."

Thank you all. Rabbi O, the Hebrew looks beautiful. Would you mind translating?

Good luck, Think positive.

Breast cancer. Got to have chemo. Terrified.