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Originally Posted by daswig
most people in the US military don't sign up intending to die. They aren't promised 72 virgins if they die.
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Complete bunkum, as usual.
The Qur'an does
not promise anyone 72 virgins if they martyr themselves. The
Haddith, which is just a collection of proverbs and is not considered a holy book, has the following:
"The least [reward] for the people of Heaven is 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome of pearls, aquamarine and ruby."
This comes from a collection known as the
Sunan al-Tirmidh.
Oh, and for interest's sake, a recent book by Christoph Luxenberg (
Die Syro-Aramaische Lesart des Koran), available only in German, argues that the translations of the original phrases used in the Qur'an and the Haddith were actually incorrect. Instead of "wives" (or "virgins"), the Arabic word
houris actually refers to food; chilled raisins actually.
Luxenberg's book has been enthusiasticly received, particularly among those scholars with a knowledge of several Semitic languages at Princeton, Yale, Berlin, Potsdam, Erlangen, Aix-en-Provence, and the Oriental Institute in Beirut. It's also been roundly criticised by many Qur'anic scholars, so I'm not siding with it one way or another.
So, please, enough of this "72 virgins" nonesense. It's not in the Qur'an. It's a fundamentalist intepretation. And it could be a mistranslation in any case.
EDIT: I also forgot to mention that, even if we accept the statement as a true tenet in Islamic religious dogma, it is
not limited to those who martyr themselves. It's actually applicable to
ALL MUSLIMS.
How many people here believe the world was really created in six days and that women sprang from Adam's rib?
Mr Mephisto