HyperInflation In Gaza: Those 72 Virgins Are Now 2.5 Million!

MEMRI has a video of Hamas PLC Speaker Ahmad Bahr addressing a crowd that not 72 but 2.5 Million Virgins are awaiting martyrs in paradise.

Here is the transcript:

It is said that 'Omar [Ibn Al-Khattab] wished to become a martyr. It is said that one day, 'Omar addressed the people: "In the Garden of Eden, there is a palace – hear me well, brothers – with 500 gates. At every gate, there are 5,000 black-eyed virgins." Brothers, 500 multiplied by 5,000 is 2.5 million.

Apparently Omar never heard of the law of diminishing returns.

Nor did he ever hear of Cristoph Luxenberg:

Cristoph Luxenberg's book, Die Syro-Aramaische Lesart des Koran, available only in German, came out just over a year ago, but has already had an enthusiastic reception, 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.

Luxenberg tries to show that many obscurities of the Koran disappear if we read certain words as being Syriac and not Arabic. We cannot go into the technical details of his methodology but it allows Luxenberg, to the probable horror of all Muslim males dreaming of sexual bliss in the Muslim hereafter, to conjure away the wide-eyed houris promised to the faithful in suras XLIV.54; LII.20, LV.72, and LVI.22. Luxenberg 's new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields "white raisins" of "crystal clarity" rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins - the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offerred, and not unsullied maidens or houris.

In Syriac, the word hur is a feminine plural adjective meaning white, with the word "raisin" understood implicitly. Similarly, the immortal, pearl-like ephebes or youths of suras such as LXXVI.19 are really a misreading of a Syriac expression meaning chilled raisins (or drinks) that the just will have the pleasure of tasting in contrast to the boiling drinks promised the unfaithful and damned.

More on the issue from Ibn Warraq:

According to Ibn Warraq, not only are there no virgins, there isn't even any mention anywhere in the Koran of the actual number of virgins available in paradise, and the dark-eyed damsels are available for all Muslims, not just martyrs.

See, Islam is compatible with democracy!

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