2010-09-08

Don't burn the Koran, read it. Then burn it.

Tonight in Twitter, Def Jam founder Russell "Uncle Rush" Simmons tweeted:

He loves All the children of abraham. The koran states that as well, as does all scripture from all great religions
As one might expect from a writer for the Huffington Post, only 140 characters from this tweet are untrue.

To confirm, look no further than Islamicity's Koran search engine. Lets start by searching for the string "abraham children" (boolean AND is automatically implied by the search engine). First passage?
2:132 (Asad) And this very thing did abraham bequeath unto his children, and [so did] Jacob: "O my children! Behold, God has granted you the purest faith; so do not allow death to overtake you ere you have surrendered yourselves unto Him."
Second passage:
2:133 (Asad) Nay, but you [yourselves, O children of Israel ,] bear witness that when death was approaching Jacob, he said unto his sons: "Whom will you worship after I am gone?" They answered: "We will worship thy God, the God of thy forefathers abraham and Ishmael [108] and Isaac, the One God; and unto Him w;1l we surrender ourselves."
And the third and final passage:
14:35 (Asad) AND [remember the time] when abraham spoke [thus]: "O my Sustainer! Make this land secure, [49] and preserve me and my children from ever worshipping idols


The word love, you may observe, appears nowhere in these passages. Okay, how about "love abraham"? When you do that search you find a whopping two passages.
4:125 (Asad) And who could be of better faith than he who surrenders his whole being unto God and is a doer of good withal, and follows the creed of abraham, who turned away from all that is false - seeing that God exalted abraham with His love?
29:25 (Asad) And [abraham] said: “You have chosen to worship idols instead of God for no other reason than to have a bond of love in the life of this world, between yourselves [and your forebears]: but then, on Resurrection Day, you shall disown one another and curse one another - for the goal of you all will be the fire, and you will have none to succour you.


Again, neither passage contains any word starting with "chil", which discounts child and children. One more combo to go...take it away "love children". Not meaning to give away the ending, but the Koran is about to not say what Simmons is claiming it does.
5:18 (Asad) And [both] the Jews and the Christians say, "We are God's children, and His beloved ones." Say: "Why, then, does He cause you to suffer for your sins? Nay, you are but human beings of His creating. He forgives whom He wills, and He causes to suffer whom He wills: for God's is the dominion over the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, and with Him is all journeys' end."
7:31 (Asad) O children of Adam! Beautify yourselves for every act of worship, and eat and drink [freely], but do not waste: verily, He does not love the wasteful!
74:13 (Asad) and children as [love's] witnesses,


Hey, hold on, that first passage in the above block looks sort of close. Let's examine it closely and see what it says. Hey Jews and Christians! You aren't God's chosen people. You suffer because God wants you to suffer! Compare that again to what Simmons claims the Koran says: God loves all the children of Abraham, even the Jews and the Christians. One comes from the book itself: the other comes from a political effort.

What political effort? Simmons started with this gem:
Each prophet came,@ difft times,they wr difft colors,spoke difft languages but told the same truths.


Even a rough precursory glance can tell you that this is a load of bumpkiss.

Moses, Leviticus 24:19-20: If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured.

Jesus, Matthew 5:38-39: You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Jesus, John 14:6: I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me

Muhammed, Qur'an 8:39: Fight them until all opposition ends and all submit to Allah.

So there you (briefly) have it. Not all prophets are cut from the same cloth, and regardless of what their times or skin colours had to do with anything, they had substantially different messages.