It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
A German scholar contends that the Islamic text has been mistranscribed and promises raisins, not virgins Newsweek International, By Stefan Theil, NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL
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."
Originally posted by sharky
Good. Regardless of whether the raisins translation is accurate, it's about time someone applied textual scholarship to the Qur'an. Hopefully, in time people will learn that it's just a man-made book, no more holy than any other. Besides, when this sort of thing happened to the Bible a 150 years ago, not only did it make the fundamentalists look silly, it also opened the text up to all sorts of interesting and valid interpetations that a literal reading ignored.