"drahcir" <justrichardsmusic@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:48951a03-1ce0-45a1-a40e-dd93726b4068@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jan 13, 1:24 am, Lisa <mando...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> The "virgins" promised
> by the Quran to Islamic martyrs, he asserts, are in fact only
> "grapes."
Ok, mo, we got "allah" <chuckle>, but how do we get these guys to go
into battle for us and face death?
Hmmm, good question, abu. Wait - I got it! Let's convince them of an
afterlife where, if they die in battle, they will get, hmmm, let's
see, ok! They will get lots of grapes! Our guys love grapes, right?
Ok,write that down. And don't call me "mo".
Grow up, stupid little boi.
And learn to be literate.
> Ms. Neuwirth, the Berlin professor now in charge of the Munich
> archive, rejects the theories of her more radical colleagues, who ride
> roughshod, she says, over Islamic scholarship. Her aim, she says,
> isn't to challenge Islam but to "give the Quran the same attention as
> the Bible." All the same, she adds: "This is a taboo zone."
>
> Ms. Neuwirth says it's too early to have any idea what her team's
> close study of the cache of early texts and other manuscripts will
> reveal. Their project, launched last year at the Berlin-Brandenburg
> Academy of Science and Humanities, has state funding for 18 years but
> could take much longer. The earliest manuscripts of the Quran date
> from around 700 and use a skeletal version of the Arabic script that
> is difficult to decipher and can be open to divergent readings.
>
> Mystery and misfortune bedeviled the Munich archive from the start.
> The scholar who launched it perished in an odd climbing accident in
> 1933. His successor died in a 1941 plane crash. Mr. Spitaler, who
> inherited the Quran collection and then hid it, fared better. He lived
> to age 93.
>
> The rolls of film, kept in cigar boxes, plastic trays and an old
> cookie tin, are now in a safe in Berlin. The photos of the old
> manuscripts will form the foundation of a computer data base that Ms.
> Neuwirth's team believes will help tease out the history of Islam's
> founding text. The result, says Michael Marx, the project's research
> director, could be the first "critical edition" of the Quran -- an
> attempt to divine what the original text looked like and to explore
> overlaps with the Bible and other Christian and Jewish literature.
>
> A group of Tunisians has embarked on a parallel mission, but they want
> to keep it quiet to avoid angering fellow Muslims, says Moncef Ben
> Abdeljelil, a scholar involved in the venture. "Silence is sometimes
> best," he says. Afghan authorities last year arrested an official
> involved in a vernacular translation of the Quran that was condemned
> as blasphemous. Its editor went into hiding.
>
> Many Christians, too, dislike secular scholars boring into sacred
> texts, and dismiss challenges to certain Biblical passages. But most
> accept that the Bible was written by different people at different
> times, and that it took centuries of winnowing before the Christian
> canon was fixed in its current form.
>
> Muslims, by contrast, view the Quran as the literal word of God.
> Questioning the Quran "is like telling a Christian that Jesus was
> gay," says Abdou Filali-Ansary, a Moroccan scholar.
>
> Modern approaches to textual analysis developed in the West are viewed
> in much of the Muslim world as irrelevant, at best. "Only the writings
> of a practicing Muslim are worthy of our attention," a university
> professor in Saudi Arabia wrote in a 2003 book. "Muslim views on the
> Holy Book must remain firm: It is the Word of Allah, constant,
> immaculate, unalterable and inimitable."
>
> Ms. Neuwirth, the Berlin Quran expert, and Mr. Marx, her research
> director, have tried to explain the project to the Muslim world in
> trips to Iran, Turkey, Syria and Morocco. When a German newspaper
> trumpeted their work last fall on its front page and predicted that it
> would "overthrow rulers and topple kingdoms," Mr. Marx called Arab
> television network al-Jazeera and other media to deny any assault on
> the tenets of Islam.
>
> Europeans started to study the Quran in the Middle Ages, largely in an
> effort to debunk it. In the 19th century, faith-driven polemical
> research gave way to more serious scientific study of old texts.
> Germans led the way.
>
> Their original focus was the Bible. Priests and rabbis pushed back,
> but scholars pressed on, challenging traditional views of the Old and
> New Testaments. Their work undermined faith in the literal truth of
> scripture and helped birth today's largely secular Europe. Over time,
> some turned their attention to the Quran, too.
>
> In 1857, a Paris academy offered a prize for the best "critical
> history" of the Quran. A German, Theodor Nöldeke, won. His entry
> became the cornerstone of future Western research. Mr. Nöldeke, says
> Ms. Neuwirth, is "the rock of our church."
>
> The Munich archive began with one of Mr. Nöldeke's protégés, Gotthelf
> Bergsträsser. As Germany slid towards fascism early last century, he
> hunted down old copies of the Quran in the Middle East, North Africa
> and Europe. He took photographs of them with a Leica camera.
>
> In 1933, a few months after Hitler became chancellor, Mr.
> Bergsträsser, an experienced climber, died in the Bavarian Alps. His
> body was never given an autopsy; rumors spread of suicide or foul
> play.
>
> His work was taken up by Otto Pretzl, another German Arabist. He too
> set off with a Leica. In a 1934 journey to Morocco, he wangled his way
> into a royal library containing an old copy of the Quran and won over
> initially suspicious clerics, he said in a handwritten report about
> his trip.
>
> The Nazis began to use Arabists early in the war when German forces
> began pushing into regions with large Muslim populations, first North
> Africa and then the Soviet Union. Scholars were used to broadcast
> propaganda and to help set up mullah schools for Muslims recruited
> into the German armed forces.
>
> Mr. Pretzl, the manuscript collector, appears to have worked largely
> in military intelligence. He interrogated Arabic-speaking soldiers
> captured in the invasion of France, then, according to some accounts,
> set off on a mission to stir up an Arab uprising against British
> troops in Iraq. His plane crashed.
>
> Axel Hölper
> Film from the Quran photo archive
> Responsibility for the Quran archive fell to Mr. Spitaler, who had
> helped collect some of the photos. During the war, Mr. Spitaler served
> in the command offices in Germany and later as an Arabic linguist in
> Austria, gaining ...
>
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