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February 06, 2009
Allah Forbid That Your Ignorant, Brain-Washed Minions
...should actually be able to READ the religious ramblings.
...The book appeared among gifts left for the cleric at a major Kabul mosque after Friday prayers in September 2007. It was a translation of the Quran into one of Afghanistan's languages, with a note giving permission to reprint the text as long as it was distributed for free....But as some of the 1,000 copies made their way to conservative Muslim clerics in Kabul, whispers began, then an outcry.
Many clerics rejected the book because it did not include the original Arabic verses alongside the translation. It's a particularly sensitive detail for Muslims, who regard the Arabic Quran as words given directly by God. A translation is not considered a Quran itself, and a mistranslation could warp God's word.
...The country's powerful Islamic council issued an edict condemning the book.
"In all the mosques in Afghanistan, all the mullahs said, 'Zalmai is an infidel. He should be killed,'" Zalmai recounted as he sat outside the chief judge's chambers waiting for a recent hearing.
In the mullahs' defense*, translating the Bible into English got one old boy in a whale of a lot of trouble, even AFTER he died...
...With the help of his followers, called the Lollards, and his assistant Purvey, and many other faithful scribes, Wycliffe produced dozens of English language manuscript copies of the scriptures. They were translated out of the Latin Vulgate, which was the only source text available to Wycliffe. The Pope was so infuriated by his teachings and his translation of the Bible into English, that 44 years after Wycliffe had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river!
...the caveat being* that it wasn't last year ~ it was around 1380 A.D. .
You've got to love these Islamic know-it-all guys. It's like a constant loop of "Let's Do the Time Warp Again!"
I'd say "Groundhog Day", but that was funny and these a$$holes aren't. Ever.
Posted by tree hugging sister at February 6, 2009 01:09 PM
Comments
What an excellent means of keeping people ignorant -- don't let them read. Sounds perfect for despots and dictators everywhere.
Posted by: JeffS at February 6, 2009 02:44 PM
If they do finally accept translations, I wonder who will be the Islamic Luther, Hus and Cramners will be. Such a Reformation might be interesting to watch...from the safety of the sidelines.
Posted by: Tainted Bill at February 6, 2009 04:50 PM
That's why young muslims being educated in madrassas are taught the koran by rote memorization rather than actually reading the book since many of the students are illiterate (and kept that way).
Posted by: Gunslinger at February 6, 2009 05:50 PM
Criminently, people, get the Christian story right and quit giving ammo to Muslims. The Bible was frequently translated into English and other vernacular languages, long before Wycliffe put out his bad excuse for a translation. People just generally didn't go to the trouble of translating the whole Bible, because if you were really that interested you learned Latin, or got a Latin Bible with a huge amount of interlinear glossing in English. It was a lot faster, and very readily available.
If you've ever read the JW Bible and asked yourself what the translators were smoking, you've read the only translation worse and more biased towards its own theological ideas than Wycliffe's.
Posted by: Maureen at February 11, 2009 03:34 PM