Wednesday, November 4, 2020

The prophet Solomon's sexual excesses?

The story that the prophet Solomon had vowed he would sleep with several of his wives in one night, is known for its internal incoherences. Various reports number his wives as much as 60, 90, 99 or even 100, with whom he all had sexual relations in one night. 

In hadith science, when multiple versions of a report having the same narrator chain give different numbers everytime, the understanding is that the number was remembered differently by the narrators because of it being insignificant to the purports of the prophetic saying. 

Abu Hurairah is the sole narrator of this hadith and there is no suggestion that he heard it from the Prophet on multiple occasions, meaning the latter cannot be the reason of the contradiction. What might have happenned is the prophet spoke on one occasion of Solomon's vow to sleep with an unspecified large number of his wives in one night, as well as the number of wives he had in total. The narrators might have mixed the 2 statements.

The prophet forgets to say "Inshallah"?

Reliance on Allah must be an established mindframe, in all endeavors 
18:23"And do not say of anything: Surely I will do it tomorrow, Unless Allah pleases". 
The phrase "In sha Allah" means that the action is predicated upon Allah's will. When an action is predicated upon Allah's will, it could either mean that Allah may or may not allow its fulfillement, or that the fulfillement of a certain action is willed by Allah but the WHEN is only known to Him 
48:27"Certainly Allah had shown to His Messenger the vision with truth: you shall most certainly enter the Sacred Mosque, if Allah pleases, in security.."

Relying on Allah in all one's endeavours as well as in times of distress and fear, is the true spiritual attitude of every righteous believer 2:177,23:97,67:29 as exemplified with such eminent personalities as Nuh, Ismail, Jacob, Moses, Shuayb or Mary 2:67,11:47,12:67-8,19:18,28:27,37:102 as well as Muhammad who was taught the prayers of sura al-falaq and sura al-nas, sought refuge with God and relied on Him alone despite all outward preparations and precautions, knowing the outcome of things is utterly dependant on God.

The hadith quoted in some books of tafsir saying that the revelation of the sura 18 came much later than the prophet promised his opponents, as a reproof because the prophet did not utter the phrase "if God wills", presents several internal incoherences. 
It firstly has  unreliable and unknown narrators in its chain. Then it says for instance that once revelation came 15 days later, it contained a rebuke to the prophet. No such reproach exists in sura kahf. Nor are there any traces in any tradition, authentic or else, of the supposed rumors due to the prophet's incapacity to answer the following day as he had promised. Furthermore no link exists between the verse upon which the tafsir and narration are based (18:23-4) and the question asked later on concerning Dhul Qarnayn 18:83. The verse teaching to never plan anything before relying on God 18:23-4 and upon which the narration is based, is a parenthetical statement inserted in the flow of the discourse about the youths of the cave. It is connected to the previous verse which is about refraining to research into things known only to God, so in the same way one should not make plans for the future without acknowledging that certainty in all matters only belongs to God.

The Apostle Paul in the Quran?

After Jesus' salvation from his enemies, the Quran outlined the punishment to his rejectors, in line with the sunna of Allah on the destruction of the rejectors of His messengers sent with clear signs. A similar hypothetical scenario is given in 43:41 where the prophet is told that should he be taken away or even eventually martyred as happenned to previous prophets 36:26-32 the divine law of retribution against a rejecting nation will still be applied. But Allah desired otherwise with the prophet Muhammad 

43:42"We will certainly show you that which We have promised them; for surely We are the possessors of full power over them".

Among the punishements the Israelites had to face in this very world 3:56, they were subdued to the followers of Jesus until the Day of Resurrection 

61:14,3:55"and make those who follow you above those who disbelieve to the day of resurrection". 

Allah is addressing Jesus and is speaking of the dominion of those who follow him over his enemies. It isnt speaking in terms of proselytising success, as is alluded to in Acts with Jesus posthumously telling his missionaries they will have the power to disseminate Christianity in all corners of the world. The early gentile converts from around the region had no enmity towards Jesus nor his followers. The verse is speaking in terms of dominion of one group above another, through subduing them, not assimilation

 "So a party of the children of Israel believed and another party disbelieved; then We aided those who believed against their enemy, and they became uppermost". 

This dominance is granted to all those who claim to be his followers, whether they are from those who call themselves Christians, or from those ascribing to the beliefs of the earlier sects that believed in Jesus. The common denominator between all of them being, believing in Jesus and in Allah. Besides prevailing in a wordly sense, the followers of Jesus have also been granted spiritual victory. His teachings, despite the very few original adherents to them, regardless of the amount of falsehood that later were grafted unto them, were successfully disseminated, against the will of Jesus' enemies, whether contemporaries to him or those that still hate him today. This favor of God is an obvious reality of our times. 

The Israelites are condemned to the humiliating reality of being entirely dependant on Christian whims for their survival, reluctantly accepting "bribe" money and deceitful "love" from the followers of the one they bitterly rejected. All this for the sake of maintaining a state that is the shadow of what was once God's conditional favor upon them. Today, the evangelical zionist movement that finds its inspiration in Paul deceptive missionary methods, masks its real intentions towards the Jewish people by corrupting their audience with money. Probably no nation needs this money more than Israel for its survival, exactly as God prophecised when He stated in the Quran that the Israelites, those who were Jesus' enemies, will be under the Christians' dominion until the Resurrection. This bribe money serves the purpose of gathering Jews from all over the world so that a massive slaughter begins. Christian eschatology reveals the anti semitism of its gentile Greek writers to the fullest. Towards the end of days, 2/3 of Israel will be destroyed and damned for rejecting the man/god of the trinity. Their Armageddon theology is detailed in the book of Revelation -a Book not even considered God inspired until very late in Church history-. 

Those damned Jews, the Jews of the "flesh", labelled as such because of lacking spirituality and rejecting Jesus Rom2:28-9, those sons of Satan Jn8:44, worshipping in their satanic synagogues Rev2:9 will be made to bow down at the feet of the true Jews, meaning the Christians Rev3:9. This way Jesus’ beloved church is vindicated. After that humiliation they will be sent for eternal damnation.
It is these kinds of satanic association that helped produce a portrait for faithful Christians throughout the centuries of the “evil” Jew representing satan on earth. By persecuting those satanic Jews, the church and its faithful followers were in a way hastening the day when Jesus would fulfill his promise to 
“make them [the synagogue of Satan] come and bow down at your feet”.
What is ironic is that the contrary is depicted in the HB, with the non-Jews, including Christians, coming at the Jews' feet. Although the messianic prophecies in the HB agree that there will be mass slaughter of those that do not believe in the Jewish God, this war shall occur prior to the messiah's arrival and universal recognition Isa59:19-20. None will be required to "believe" in the Jewish messiah because his universal rule will be an undeniable fact. An utopic era will be ushered, where only one truth reigns supreme, that of the Hebrew Bible. Every other belief system will be abolished and erased, its people destroyed, by natural calamity or others means like God's jealous and furious fire of destruction. God is often likened in the HB as a smith selecting through fire the trash from the precious metal, concretely resulting in "purifying" the people's hearts and lips. Once purified, all those surviving non-Jews will prostrate to the One true God 
Zeph3:8-9,Zech14:9-17"And the Lord shall become King over all the earth; on that day shall the Lord be one, and His name one".

Some modern apologists have attempted to negate that idea of universal forceful conversion using Micah4:5. It is ironic that this same verse is used in rabbinic comentaries to prove the opposite. The context itself speaks of the streaming of nations into Jerusalem to learn Judaism, God's judgement of nations afar, in a time where "all peoples shall go, each one in the name of his god, but we will go in the name of the Lord, our God, forever and ever". The non-Jews "going" to their false gods implies "going for destruction" in contrast to the Jews who will go on "forever". This will usher a time not only of religious monopoly but of forcible, physical subjugation of all non-Jewish peoples, made to crawl like abject creatures to the Jews' feet, in fear of Micah7:17"our God", transfering in addition all their riches to their new masters Isa66:12"like a flooding stream", or be destroyed 
Zech14,Isa45:22"Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other" 
Isa49:23"And kings shall be your nursing fathers and their princesses your wet nurses; they shall prostrate themselves to you with their face on the ground, and they shall lick the dust of your feet, and you shall know that I am the Lord, for those who wait for Me shall not be ashamed" 

Isa60:"..And foreigners shall build your walls, and their kings shall serve you..For the nation and the kingdom that shall not serve you shall perish, and the nations shall be destroyed...And the children of your oppressors shall go to you bent over, and those who despised you shall prostrate themselves at the soles of your feet..".

The end of the book of Isaiah is repleat with such references of "glad-tidings" to the Jews towards the end of times, the messianic era, a time where Isa66:23"all flesh shall come to prostrate themselves before Me" and where the remaining lucky survivors will see all around them 
"the corpses of the people who rebelled against Me, for their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring for all flesh". 
This represents, according to Zech13:8-9 roughly 2/3 of the world population, exterminated, with 1/3 remaining for having converted to Judaism. Following their subjugation and destruction, the wicked will be sentenced to gehinnom (see Rashi on Ps6:11).

The evangelical zionists often use 
Gen12:3"I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" 
to justify their deceitful "support" to Israel yet not only is both the HB and NT full of the most harsh words of condemnation towards the Israelites not only when they broke divine law but also when they misbehaved or mistreated other humans, from Moses down to Jesus down to even Jewish and Israeli religious as well as human rights groups, not to mention God himself who sent them deadly curses and destruction after another throughout their history and scattered them away from the land He had granted them conditionally to righteousness, but the verse is also clearly addressed to one person, Abraham and the "you" is the 2nd person singular. If one wants to argue the blessing and promises of curse extends to Abraham as well as his descendants, then this would have to include not only Isaac but Ishmael and his sons, the Arabs. And in fact throughout Genesis, God promises to make a great, fruitful nation from Ishmael's descendants as well as bless it Gen17:20,21:17-18. God in the Torah makes it clear that the covenant of protection made with Israel is conditional 
Ex23:22"If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you".
 It also is interesting to note the oft recurring statement whenever God decides to save the Israelite nation on the brink of total spiritual collapse and at the mercy of neighboring nations; it never was for "their" sake but rather to keep God's honor intact as the one true God, as well as for their righteous forefathers' sake, such as David 
2Kings20:6"and I will protect this city for My sake and for the sake of My servant David".

As God states in the Quran, the blessings promised to Abraham due to his devout obedience and faith, only extend to the righteous among his offspring, be it Israelites or Ishmaelites 
2:140-1"That is a nation that has passed away; theirs is that which they have earned and yours is what you earned; you shall not be questioned for what they had been doing". 
A nation should rely upon its own deeds, not on its past history.

But God's favoring of the current Christians above the disbelieving Jews does not mean they are absolved of their deviations in faith. It is for this reason that the very next verse addresses those same favored Christians, telling them 
3:57"And as to those who believe and do good deeds, He will pay them fully their rewards; and Allah does not love the unjust". 
It firstly clarifies that correct belief, joined with good deeds, are the only means for salvation in the hereafter. It seperates between "those who follow you" and "those who believe and do good deeds", emphasizing that among Jesus' followers from his contemporaries to present-day christians, Allah will pay fully their reward only to those of them who hold the correct belief and do good deeds. The unusual ending of this type of verse with "Allah does not love the unjust" is clearly directed at those followers of Jesus who strayed from the correct belief of their ancestors 
5:77"O followers of the Book, be not unduly immoderate in your religion, and do not follow the low desires of people who went astray before and led many astray and went astray from the right path". 
Verses with promises of mercy and paradise usually end with Divine Names of mercy and forgiveness, or on praises of those addressed in the verse but in this case it ends with a stern warning to the followers of Jesus who have deviated, they are being unjust to their own souls.