Any truth to this 'article'?

I recieved this from a unreliable source via email:

Challenging the Qur’an

A German scholar contends that the Islamic text has been mistranscribed and promises raisins, not virgins

By Stefan Theil
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL

July 28 issue — In a note of encouragement to his fellow hijackers, September 11 ringleader Muhammad Atta cheered their impending "marriage in Paradise" to the 72 wide-eyed virgins the Qur’an promises to the departed faithful. Palestinian newspapers have been known to describe the death of a suicide bomber as a "wedding to the black-eyed in eternal Paradise." But if a German expert on Middle Eastern languages is correct, these hopes of sexual reward in the afterlife are based on a terrible misunderstanding.

ARGUING THAT TODAY’S version of the Qur’an has been
mistranscribed from the original text, scholar Christoph Luxenberg says that what are described as “houris” with “swelling breasts” refer to nothing more than "white raisins" and "juicy fruits."

Luxenberg — a pseudonym — is one of a small but growing group of scholars, most of them working in non-Muslim countries, studying the language and history of the Qur’an. When his new book is published this fall, it's likely to be the most far-reaching scholarly commentary on the Qur’an’s early genesis, taking this infant discipline far into uncharted — and highly controversial — territory.

That's because Islamic orthodoxy considers the holy book to be the verbatim revelation of Allah, speaking to his prophet, Muhammad, through the Angel Gabriel, in Arabic. Therefore, critical study of God’s undiluted word has been off-limits in much of the Islamic world. (For the same reason, translations of the Qur’an are never considered authentic.) Islamic scholars who have dared ignore this taboo have often found themselves labeled heretics and targeted with death threats and violence.

Luxenberg, a professor of Semitic languages at one of Germany's leading universities, has chosen to remain anonymous because he fears a fatwa by enraged Islamic extremists.

Luxenberg’s chief hypothesis is that the original language of the Qur’an was not Arabic but something closer to Aramaic. He says the
copy of the Qur’an used today is a mistranscription of the original text from Muhammad’s time, which according to Islamic tradition was destroyed by the third caliph, Osman, in the seventh century. But Arabic did not turn up as a written language until 150 years after Muhammad’s death, and most learned Arabs at that time spoke a version of Aramaic.

Rereading the Paradise passage in Aramaic, the mysterious houris turn
into raisins and fruit — much more common components of the Paradise
myth.

The forthcoming book contains plenty of other bombshells. It claims that the Qur’an’s commandment for women to cover themselves is based on a similar misreading; in Sura 24, the verse that calls for women to “snap their scarves over their bags” becomes in Aramaic “snap
their belts around their waists.” Even more explosive are readings that strengthen scholars’ views that the Qur’an had Christian origins. Sura 33 calls Muhammad the “seal of the prophets,” taken to mean the final and ultimate prophet of God. But an Aramaic reading, says Luxenberg, turns Muhammad into a “witness of the prophets” — i.e., someone who bears witness to the established Judeo-Christian texts. The Qur’an, in Arabic, talks about the “revelation” of Allah, but in Aramaic that term turns into “teaching” of the ancient Scriptures. The original Qur’an, Luxenberg contends, was in fact a Christian liturgical document — before an expanding Arab empire turned Muhammad’s teachings into the basis for its new religion long after the Prophet's death.

Such interpretations will undoubtedly draw the ire of many Muslims — and not just extremists. After all, revisionist scholars have been persecuted for much less; in 2001, Egypt's Constitutional Court
confirmed the “apostasy” of former University of Cairo scholar Nasr
Hamid Abu-Zayd, for considering the Qur’an a document written by humans.

Still, Luxenberg may be ushering in a whole new era of Qur’anic
study. “Luxenberg’s findings are very relevant and convincing,” says
Mondher Sfar, a Tunisian specialist on the historic origins of the
Qur’an in exile in Paris. “They make possible a new interpretation of
the Qur’an.” In the West, questioning the literal veracity of the Bible was a crucial step in breaking the church's grip on power — and in developing a modern, secular society. That experience, as much as the questioning itself, is no doubt what concerns conservative Muslims as they struggle over the meaning and influence of Islam in the 21st century. But if Luxenberg’s work is any indication, the questioning is just getting underway.

Everybody's a comedian anymore

72 of them, all for me!

favorite..or maybe I am being a bit xenophobic? So now the Xian non Arabic world needs to translate the Quran? :shrug:

stopped for Jujyfruits while her boyfriend was in the hospital being treated for an accident. I guess they are just irresistible.

POST Raisin Bran. They advertise 2 scoops.

So instead of flying airplanes into buildings, these guys could have just bought a box of cereal.

Cheers
Drifter

on a CBC roundtable discussion show during the invasion. It was a bunch of Islamic scholars discussing Islam and the Middle East. Two of the scholars were discussing this raisins vs virgins issue.

bit before, and I think recently. Meaning, there's plenty of food in heaven. In a land of scarcity, that would make sense.

Don't know where I got it though. I'll see if I can find something.

The idea of reading the Qu'ran by way of Aramaic is interesting. News to me. And it is true that Islam has never had a "Reformation" movement of it's own. If I'm reading rightly here, there's no Islamic Martin Luther, for instance.

When I hear promises of what comes after death whether it be seven virgins or fleecy clouds, Logans Run comes to mind. Blind faith 'is a good thing' ?

"Arabic language originated in Saudi Arabia in pre-Islamic times, and spread rapidly across the Middle East. The classical written arabic has changed little over the centuries." The important part here is that Arabic was already around and written before Islam started.

I am very, very interested in following this up.

Especially his claim that the Koran is based on messianic Judiasm or eastern, Jewish Christianity. Early Christianity in places like Syria, Armenia, and modern Iraq was based on Jesus' family who remained Jews and were repudiated by Paul. They no longer survive, but I am very interested in the possibility they may have formed the backdrop to Islam.

The Koran does acknowledge Jesus as a prophet. Here's a quote from another article:

Since there are no Arabic chronicles from the first century of Islam, the two looked at several non-Muslim, seventh-century accounts that suggested Muhammad was perceived not as the founder of a new religion but as a preacher in the Old Testament tradition, hailing the coming of a Messiah. Many of the early documents refer to the followers of Muhammad as "hagarenes," and the "tribe of Ishmael," in other words as descendants of Hagar, the servant girl that the Jewish patriarch Abraham used to father his son Ishmael.

In its earliest form, Ms. Crone and Mr. Cook argued, the followers of Muhammad may have seen themselves as retaking their place in the Holy Land alongside their Jewish cousins. (And many Jews appear to have welcomed the Arabs as liberators when they entered Jerusalem in 638.)

The idea that Jewish messianism animated the early followers of the Prophet is not widely accepted in the field, but "Hagarism" is credited with opening up the field. "Crone and Cook came up with some very interesting revisionist ideas," says Fred M. Donner of the University of Chicago and author of the recent book "Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing." "I think in trying to reconstruct what happened, they went off the deep end, but they were asking the right questions."

http://www.mpac.org/news_article_display.aspx?ITEM=173

I still prefer "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thee". Omar had it right.