Abstract: Islam most vaunted asset, the purity of the transmission of the Koran, becomes its stumbling block and brings itself down.

9/16/06 7:00 PM

There is talk of revelations in this world, from the likes of Abraham, Paul and Mohammed. But there is a great distinction, we understand from Muslim acquaintances, in that while the former two report an inspiration of God, Mohammed receives a dictation of God. This means that it is perfect, and thus greater than any thing any human being can do. The greatest expected sign of a divine dictation, in distinction to all inspiration (tainted as it is by human participation), is perfect clarity with regard to what is required in order to be acceptable to God.

And yet when we look about and consider matters we spy great disagreements among imans and mullahs and specialists of this and that. And so that must make us wonder.

I would like to present a contrast in the case of the Christian Paul. Paul has a complex writing which is subject to interpretation. But the practical communication he brings is both simple and clear, i.e., the law of the love of neighbor. This is so clear that children of that time and children of this time understand it equally well, and express the conception early in their judgments of fairness and unfairness. It would be hard to find anything more clear, unless one could perhaps convey a rule or rules into the heads of infants and have them also understand.

In comparison Mohammed’s recitation (of a divine communication) is so very confused and in need of this and that expert and subject to this and that interpretation, that there is violent disagreement on the selection of a leader of the Islamic community as well as disagreement about whether one may enter into a latrine with one’s right foot, in order to be obedient to Mohammed’s Allah, among countless other things. And so this can only cause any rational thinker to wonder.

Is it possible, we want to ask, that God would intentionally want some people not to understand what was necessary in order to be pleasing to him in order, perhaps, that they might serve to populate some hell or lesser paradise he has devised? Is that possible? If that is deemed possible, then it is also possible for God to want to deceive people and send the believers to hell and the disbelievers to paradise, and laugh about it, or whatever it is that Gods do. Then the door opens to Hinduism/Mormonism and anything goes and all faith is lost.

Hence we must perforce examine how it would be possible that a dictation alleged to be of God might in fact not be of God, but only thought so.* We must examine the facts surrounding this dictation and determine which hypothesis they best fit, the divine or the demonic

[* There is another hypothesis which I will not consider there, that of the Mormon conception of God as merely an “exalted man” who was once an obedient servant of his own god and became in turn a god on his own. Such a one would not have to live up to the speculative standard of utter perfection, but would remain merely more perfect than the humans.**]

[** As an aside, the Mormon story of Joseph Smith is so similar to that of the Islam Mohammed and yet so much more plausible, one could almost wonder whether Mohammed made his up himself. Except that we have rejected this hypothesis due to the “scientific wonders” contained in it. The reputed beauty of the recitation could, of course, be due to sheer genius, as was obviously the case with Mozart and many others.]

The four hypotheses (God, deception, hallucination and Demon*) thus end up for us here as two: God and Demon.

[* I reject here the deception and the hallucination due to some alleged and miraculous predictions in the dictation, and the former also due to the reputation enjoyed by Mohammed by fairness and decency.]

We consider the appearance test and determine that Mohammed had no means in human sense to determine that his Gabriel-in-the-cave was divine, any more than Paul could tell about his Jesus-in-the-sky.

We consider the moral test and find that Mohammed’s dictation is morally unfounded and disruptive. All religious actions, whether ostensibly moral or not, are to be undertaken as a bribe of his Allah, a Mafia sort of deal that you cannot turn down.*

[* Kant called Islamic charity as “extortion.”]

When the Muslim bows down according to clock and compass he is conscious of the presence of Allah and that what he is doing he is doing purely because Allah told him to. As a result the Muslim has hope that he might get a better paradise than otherwise. He was told to bow, he is bowing, and he is bowing just as he was told, and he is doing this because Allah has told him to do it, and that he, the Muslim, is nothing before Allah.

When the Muslim gives to the poor (the poor tax) he is in the exact frame of mind, and the morality of it is no more legitimate than if he had been ordered to burn the money in a fire instead. Allah has said do this, and the Muslim wants what arises from doing as Allah says, so he does it.*