Islam Under Scrutiny by Ex-Muslims

When Man Helps God

The Muslims’ efforts to improve the Quran

 When rational people with open minds encounter a false statement, they normally rebuff it and take it as an evidence of deceit. If a person, let us say Mr. Smith, makes a legal statement that he lives in Rome, but it was found out that he actually lives in Paris, then people with sensible reasoning will conclude that Mr. Smith is a deceiver. Of course, there will be the odd ones who are foolish enough to justify the indefensible dishonesty on totally unacceptable grounds such as ‘Mr. Smith actually meant to say Paris not Rome’. 

Such a foolish argument is unacceptable to any person with sanity, yet this is exactly how Muslims justify the numerous errors in the Quran; they virtually step outside the world of reality and enter in to another world of fantasy that only exists in their imagination.

To illustrate the mindless irrationality in the Quran, this article will scrutinise the story of prophet Lot as depicted in it.   

Prophet Lot’s story is one of the least discussed in the Quran, yet it is packed with lies, deception and immorality of all those involved in the story - from Lot to Mohammed, his Quran as well as those Muslims involved in its interpretation and translation. The article will avoid discussing the ‘miracle’ component of the story and will focus on the morality side of it.     

The story of prophet Lot is told in the Quran in both sura Hud (Q.11) and sura Al hijir (Q.15), The story goes like this:

Prophet Lot lived in Sodom, a town believed to have existed in the Jordanian valley. As per the Quran, Its inhabitants practiced homosexuality on a wide scale, despite Lot’s advice to refrain from such practices. Eventually Allah decided to punish the entire town because of their refusal to give up their abominable practice. He sent some angels, appearing in the form of men, with orders to annihilate the town by turning it upside down. The two angels visited Lot in his house in Sodom and disclosed their plan to him, and asked him to leave early in the morning. When the news of the arrival of the guests, apparently handsome men, spread in town, the male population of the town rushed to Lot’s house demanding to have sex with them. 

To avoid the shame of allowing his guests to be sexually assaulted, Lot offered his daughters as an alternative! 

This how the story is told Sura Hud (Q.11):

Q.11: 78: And his people came to him, rushed on towards him, and already they did evil deeds. He said: O my people! These are my daughters-- they are purer for you, so guard against (the punishment of) Allah and do not disgrace me with regard to my guests; is there not among you one right-minded man?

The same story is told in sura Al Hijr (Q.15) in verses 61-71, 

61.Then, when the Messengers (the angels) came unto the family of Lout (Lot).

62. He said: "Verily! You are people unknown to me."

63. They said: "Nay, we have come to you with that (torment) which they have been doubting.

64. "And we have brought to you the truth (the news of the destruction of your nation) and certainly, we tell the truth.

65. "Then travel in a part of the night with your family, and you go behind them in the rear, and let no one amongst you look back, but go on to where you are ordered."

66. And We made known this decree to him, that the root of those (sinners) was to be cut off in the early morning.

67. And the inhabitants of the city came rejoicing (at the news of the young men's arrival).

68. [Lout (Lot)] said: "Verily! these are my guests, so shame me not.

69. "And fear Allâh and disgrace me not."

70. They (people of the city) said: "Did we not forbid you to entertain (or protect) any of the 'Alamîn (people, foreigners, strangers, etc. from us)?"

71. [Lout (Lot)] said: "These (the girls of the nation) are my daughters (to marry lawfully), if you must act (so)."

An unbiased Arabic speaking person reading the above verses, without referring to the tafseer (interpretation) books, would understand that Lot’s prime concern was the protection of his guests. In Lot’s judgement, offering his daughters would bring less shame than letting his guests down. This interpretation, which happened to be the interpretation I learned at school, is designed to paint a picture of total devotion by Lot to the protection of his guests, the angels of Allah. To most Muslims, that is all they need to know because they are not keen to become inquisitive or critical to the Quran. It is fair to assume that the early Arabs who read the Quran did so without opening the tafseer books, which came to existence centuries later. Therefore those Arabs must have understood the apparent meaning of the verses, which happened to agree with what they already knew through their contacts with the Jewish and Christian tribes. Mohammed must have known that the Arabs would understand the obvious meaning of the verses, and should have alerted them to the meaning hidden behind the words, had there been one, but he did not. There is no recorded hadith or correction made by Mohammed to alter the apparent meaning of the above verses.  

But the disgraceful image of a prophet offering his daughters as sex slaves to the crowd outside was too difficult to digest or defend by later generations Muslims. Such an appalling behaviour was both unbelievable and inexcusable to the later generations Muslims, although it was not a big concern to Mohammed’s companions who were actively involved in murders and rapes on a large scale. The Islamic history of hijra, (Mohammed and companions’ immigration to Medina), contains some very scandalous stories about the generosity of the Medina Arabs (Ansar) towards the immigrants (Muhajeroon). Islamic history tells us about some kind of brotherhood that was established between the two groups and a few ansars where too generous to their muhajeroon brothers that they offered to share with them their homes and wives! Even if those reports were not true, the fact they were mentioned tells a great deal on what was believable and acceptable during that early stage of Islam, and provides a hint to the level of morality that had prevailed among Mohammed’s companions.    

The above two narrations in the Quran do not agree on whether Lot’s guests identified themselves before or after the crowd arrived at his house, which is another blunder that is outside the topic of this article. But according to the narration in sura 15, by the time the crowd arrived, Lot already knew the guests were angels and was aware of their mission. This is another sign of Lot’s inanity. What had made a prophet think that the angels could not defend themselves when they just told him they were going to turn the town upside down?

The Muslim scholars, faced with such inane verses, could neither change nor defend their meaning. So, they came up with two alternative interpretations. In both interpretations they assume they can read the mind of Allah:

The first alternative interpretation suggests that Allah meant to say: ‘Lot offered his daughters in marriage’, 

In other words, the advocates of this interpretation say that Lot offered the crowd to have halal sex with his daughters. But this interpretation gives rise to more questions that need answers: 

How can any Muslim say that Allah ‘meant to say’? How can any Muslim claim to know what is in the mind of Allah? How do Muslim scholars allow themselves to put words in Allah’s mouth? Why Allah didn’t say marriage? Was it too difficult for Allah to use the word marriage without disturbing the rhyme? And how do we believe that two or three girls can get married to a crowd? And we are not going to make a fuss about why did not Lot bother to ask the girls if they really wanted this marriage? Could it be that Lot was too occupied to think of trivial matters!

The second alternative interpretation suggests that Allah meant to say: ‘Lot did not mean his own daughters but the women of the nation!’ This interpretation again gives rise to most of the above-unanswered questions.    

The advocates of this interpretation claim that the nation’s women are considered as daughters to their prophets, therefore Lot must had meant to ask the crowd to go and have lawful sex with their own wives. This interpretation may seem to cause less damage to Lot’s integrity, but proves the lack of any intelligence among the Muslim scholars. This can be gleaned fro the crowd’s answer to Lot in the next verse 11:79.

It is laughable to believe that Lot refers to those women as his daughters and at the same time he plans to burry them alive in the morning! If we were to believe these claims, then these scholars need to work out for us an explanation to why Mohammed, their top prophet, had married and raped dozens of his daughters, otherwise known as the women of the nation? Instead of treating them as sexual objects, why could not Mohammed take Arab women as his daughters? 

Let us read verse 11:79:

Q.11: 79. ‘They said: you know that we have no RIGHTS in your daughters and you know well what we want!’

Certainly, the crowd knew well what their rights were. Even the Quran agrees with them on this issue. Indeed, everyone in the crowd knew he had the right to have sex with his own wife, but had no right to have sex with Lot’s daughters. Allah must have meant what He said and the Muslim scholars are wrong!    

The word RIGHTS is very crucial in the above verse. Let us read how others have translated this verse: 

(Hilali/Khan and others) Q.11: 79 they said: Surely you know that we have neither any desire nor in need of your daughters, and indeed you know well what we want!

The Quran talks about the rights (Arabic=Haq) of the crowd but the translators talk about desire and need!

Just for some added fun let us read the verses 11:78 and 11:79 as translated by OXP:

Q.11: 78  … his people came rushing to Lot, Lot said: O my people! Your wives, who are like my daughters, are permitted for you…(Genesis 19:14 states that Lot offered them his own married daughters. Two daughters and the whole crowd! Nay, a prophet is the father of the nation)

‘Q.11: 79 You know we have little interest in our wives whom you call your daughters and you know well what we want’

There is nothing that stops OXP, and many other translators, from forcing there own understanding on to the readers, never mind that the translation now has little to do with the original verses!

But OXP still has the rudeness to criticise the bible for saying that Lot offered his daughters to the crowd. Didn’t the Quran say exactly the same? Can any body see any difference between what is written in Genesis and what is written in the Quran on this issue? The only difference is that the Muslims claim that ‘Allah did not mean to say that’! 

The morality of the story:

We wonder what is the morality to be learned from the story? Perhaps Mohammed wanted to justify to us mass murders! Because early in the morning, the inhabitants of the town were all buried alive! The town was turned upside down by the angels annihilating the entire population. Apparently there were no innocents in that town, not even babies or children! 

If that was the lesson to be learnt, then surely Mohammed learned it very well!

Conclusion, the Muslims view of the Quran

One cannot speak with certainty about what really had happened in the early stages of Islam, but the rejection of the Muslim scholars of the obvious meanings of the Quranic verses could be an indication that over the centuries Islam (or the Quran) has been tampered with by Muslims. There is no evidence to suggest that early Muslims had much trouble in understanding the Quran as it was written. They accepted it without having to go through the hassle of twisting its language to extract an acceptable meaning for its verses.   

I can go even further and say that on reading Mohammed’s sira and the early Islamic history, one gets a feeling that the Muslims at the time of Mohammed did not take the Quran as seriously as the later generations did. The early Meccan verses were not impressive to the people of Mecca anyway, including Mohammed’s own uncles. The Arabs of Mecca already knew about the subjects addressed by Mohammed’s verses, including all the mythologies and biblical stories. After Mohammed established his state in Medina, Muslims had no option but to show all reverence towards the Quran. But that reverence was similar to the way the esteem demonstrated by the Chinese towards the red book of Mao, or by the Libyans towards the green book of Gaddafi. The release of few verses every few weeks was viewed as a release of a new issue of the official newsletter that reflected Mohammed’s thoughts on the current issues, like his marriages, social relations, politics and wars. Muslims were interested in such issues only at the time, but as time moved on and new issues emerged, so did their interest. After all, nobody likes to read old newsletters. This explains the Muslims’ apathy towards the proper collection of the Quran during Mohammed’s life, considering they believed it to be the word of Allah. 

It is only after Mohammed’s death that Muslims started to show an increased interest in the Quran. It is a normal human behaviour that after the death of a leader or a celebrity people start to demonstrate an increased interest of those old speeches, writings or albums. But even at that stage, Muslims were not very fussy about the Quran. Caliph Uthman, who ordered the writing of four copies of the mushaf (the Quran book), had the courage to burn hundreds of verses to put an end to the disagreement between senior Muslims about which verses should be included in his mushaf. Even after the job had been declared complete, a few very senior Muslims like Ibn Masoud refused to recognize it. There were occasions when some Muslims complained to Uthman that some minor mistakes exist in the official mushafs, like replacing the word hakeem with aleem, his response was ‘they (the mistakes) do not make a halal haram or a haram halal’. In other words Uthman admitted the existence of those mistakes but they were too insignificant, in his opinion, to worth the hassle of writing the mushafs again.

Those early Muslims understood the Quran as Mohammed released it. We do not have a single instance where Muslims had a different understanding of the verses from the apparent meaning. This applies to Lot’s story as well as to the logical and scientific blunders that we see throughout the Quran. Mohammed’s companions did not see reasons to feel uncomfortable about the contents or the meanings of the Quran. Broadly speaking, it suited their culture and their time.   

Centuries later Muslims were exposed and influenced by other civilizations, some of them started to read the Quran from a different perspective. They became uneasy towards many of the verses that were acceptable in the past. Upon the discovery of the deceit, the great Muslims thinkers like Al Razi, Ibn Rushd and Ibn Rawandi did what any rational person would do- they turned their backs to Mohammed and the Quran. On the other hand, the embarrassed Muslim scholars defended the indefensible mistakes on the grounds that ‘Allah meant to say something different’, a skill they still master to our time.


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Mumin Salih is a Middle Eastern ex-Muslim. He can be contacted at rawandi@googlemail.com


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vbv
Sunday August 19, 2007
09:48:27 -0700

Lot not only offered his daughters to raped ,but also commited incest with them from whom the two tribes of 'Amoabites' and 'Maobites' , or whatever came into existence .So much for the morality of the chosen prophet of this so-called 'god' of the jews,christians and themuslims.What common great heritage they have bequeathed to humanity! It is a crying shame that one should venerate such creeps , rapists and lechers! Thank goodness we are living in an age where sanity and morality and rule of law governs our lives.These so-called prophets have no compunctions to lie with their daghters,daughters-in-law,young 6year old girls all in the name of their religion!Why don't you guys realise this and wake up to the realities , instead of blindly following these horrible creeds?


Manfred
Sunday August 19, 2007
12:58:59 -0700

Now, the story of Lot differs significantly in the Quran and the bible, and those differences are not co-incidental. First, let me tell you the original version: After the two messengers from God had arrived at Lot's house, apparently they caused quite a stir. But the commotion had nothing whatsoever to do with sex or homosexuality. The citizens of Sodom were fed up with Lot moaning at then about this and that, and generally they did not like Lot for thinking that he was somewhat better than them. (As a previous nomad, Lot had a quite a few moans about city dwellers, a bit like a Muslim, when arriving in the West, and moaning about Western hygiene, about pork sausages in supermarkets, about the dress sense of western women, and so on... So, when the people of Sodom saw he got two mysterious visitors, they thought something was up, and the number of people giving them a headache just got bigger... ("Nomadophobia", perhaps ?) So, a number of of the citizens gathered outside Lot's house in a sort of riot. The bible says they even brought their wives and kids along for this "demonstration". This is important, because it is strong evidence against any kind of sexual overtones in this gathering: Who in their right mind would plan a gay gang rape and bring their families along to watch??? Lot's reaction to this demonstration also makes no sense at all if this "gay gang rape" theory is true: He must be completely bonkers if he thinks sending out two girls would appease a mob bent on homosexual rape! Other, later prophets of the bible also discuss the story of Lot. Their interpretation makes a lot more sense: The citizens of Sodom were distrustful of these new comers. They wanted to question them, possibly beat them up and throw them out of town. This is why Lot sent out his two daughters, not for sex, but to talk to them: he thought the innocent smile and charm of two young girls would calm the waters, and avoid further trouble. Ihis does make some sense, at least. The bible essentially sees the sin of the people of Sodom as a violation of hospitality, something that was seen as extremely seriously at the time, and is still today both amongst Arabs and Jews. Now, the cock and bull story about the gay sex was first written down in the 6th century by a bunch of Eastern Christian monks in Egypt, who did not have all the bible text available to them and made a rather long-lived blunder in understanding the story of Lot. (It has even survived amongst some Christians, but very few.) Sorry, I wrote this all in a bit of a rush, but if you want the relevant refences, I am happy to look them up again and put them here. So, it seems reasonable to assume that Mohammed had heard this distorted version of the story of Lot, and, not knowing the fundamental flaw in it, committed it to the Quran. So, as a result of this misunderstanding, homosexuals are hanged in Iran today!


Sigvard von Brevern
Tuesday August 21, 2007
05:28:28 -0700

The story of Abraham and Lot is of course a far older one than the Islamic copy. The report is originally contained in the Torah, in the 1st book of Moses, as also admitted by the Koran. The entire account is in Genesis 18 and 19 of the Bible, if you`d care to check it up. You will notice, that the two men, actually three,talked about were actually supernatural beings(I appriciate this is hard to understand). As it becomes clear now, that there were actually three of those so called men involved in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorah. One of them is described as the LORD. Notice the capitalisation of the word Lord. When this occurs in the Bible it always means God. That those men were supernatural beings(Angels) is clearly shown by the deeds they accomplished.As you can now see and understand, the original account of it by Moses makes it clearer, than the garbeld, far later date copy in the Koran. I urge you therefor, to examine carefully Genesis 18 and 19.


Sigvard von Brevern
Tuesday August 21, 2007
07:00:57 -0700

I will take a moment to make a comment to the declaration in the article, signed-vbv. Why does this person not give a fuller name? Now, I would be interested to know, where it tells in the Torah, the first five books of Moses in the Bible, that Lot commited incest with his daughters? The account sais, that his daughters made him drunk with strong wine and lay with him, to preserve seed of their father. Lot himself was unaware what was going on. Although this was a wrong thing to do, we should not judge but leave that to God. Besides , worst things have happened and do happen in Islam, yes and in the Koran. We also must not distort the words, which were written in the Bible or by Moses, both beeing far,far,far older than Mohamed and the Koran, which may have distorted the entire fact given and which is only a garbled copy of the original writing.


Sigvard von Brevern
Tuesday August 21, 2007
07:32:07 -0700

To Manfred`s distortion I have to say the following - utter rubish. Where in the Bible does it say, as he has it, that people from Sodom, including men, women and children gathered together because of curiosity? It is evident that he does not know the Bible and has not read the account. It makes it quite clear, that indeed the story has sexual overtones, for it quite categoricly has it, as everyone knows, that the men of Sodom indulged in homosexuell practices. Hence our word SODOMY. It also deffinately tells us that men arrived to have their way with the mysterious visitors. It does not say a demonstration of men,women and children - no it says men. How anyone can read something into something that is not stated, beats me unless Manfred is a media-reporter, in that case one could understand it. Another possebility is, that he has a vivid imagination, to fantazise on a story presented and give it his own interpretation. He could make a career of this as a film writer or science-fiction weaver.


vbv
Saturday August 25, 2007
08:42:03 -0700

To Sigvard von Brevern:- Lot's incest with his daughters is found in chapter 19 of the book of "Genesis" on the Old Testament of the Bible.Please read it carefully,you wil see Lot impregnates his own daughters and there is no justification of this morally degrading and sinful act. It is just an excuse to say that he was intoxicated or drunk,which will not stand in any court of law.So much for the god and his chosen prophet/favourite man!


suherman
Sunday August 26, 2007
06:11:27 -0700

whats up all ! just for the record, quran never ever stated that loth have a baby with his own daughter. the logic that no more men around to marry with them, is just stupid and idiot. they can always go to another town ( Ibrahim town that is) to find a man right ??! because is ONLY Sodom that got destroyed. so why the hell they have to drunk their own father to get pregnant? but hey....i guess thats just Quran word versus Bible word. choose what you want to believe....


allat
Wednesday September 12, 2007
13:56:55 -0700

"Could it be that Lot was too occupied to think of trivial matters! " Well, it depends on who's viewpoint is the triviality, eh? It couldn't have been trivial to the young virgins who were to be raped by the crowd of men, right? RIght! ------------------ " because is ONLY Sodom that got destroyed. ---------It was also, Gomorrah.-------- "....i guess thats just Quran word versus Bible word. choose what you want to believe.... "------------- Actually, I DON"T believe either the bible or the koran!-------- Allat- a Polytheist


Fatima
Saturday October 04, 2008
21:36:53 -0700

Mu'min you have distorted so much of the story I do not even know where to start. (You are most likely not even Arab and do not properly understand the Quran and were forced to memorize words you do not understand as a child). What a shame you are also named Mu'min. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, much to the discredit of "Ex-Muslims" and Islamophobes like yourself. I am Muslim and have Gay friends and we respect each other enough to sit down to discuss (face to face) our viewpoints. Setting the religious argument aside, how would a homosexual society be able to reproduce offspring? Isn't that a primary objective of an animal...sustain life and reproduce? Do not tell me about adoption and impregnation methods....go back to the time of Lout's tribe.


 
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