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If the Prophet Watched Jeopardy

Proof of the Existence of Smart Women

The Prophet Muhammad, like everyone who has died since Allah created Adam and Eve, with the prominent exceptions being Jesus and those who have murdered his real and imaginary enemies and died in the process, is in a cavity somewhere in what has to be a massively honeycombed earth.

Believers who die literally in Allah’s good books are provided with a spacious space below ground complete with curtains and a bed. Unbelievers, on the other hand, are confined to a cramped space with walls constantly closing in on them, making every breath a laboured one.

God's Messenger said that: “we would faint in terror if we could hear the screams of those being tormented” in their grave.

If this claustrophobic agonizing existence below ground, which combines both physical and psychological terrors to achieve an unprecedented level of horror and pain were not God-inspired, then the Prophet Muhammad would probably be remembered today as one of the greatest sadistic minds the world has ever known.

The living dead get a visit, twice daily until Judgement Day, from an angel who has not come to chat, but to open the curtains and show them their final destination come Judgement Day.

When any of you dies, he is shown his position (in the Hereafter) morning and evening. If he is one of the people of Paradise, he is shown the place of the people of Paradise. If he is one of the people of Hell, he is shown the place of the people of Hell. He is told, ‘this is your position, until God resurrects you on the Day of Resurrection.

Bukhari, Sahih Muslim

The Prophet is slightly luckier than most of the living dead for he gets more than the twice daily visits from angels. Whenever a believer wishes the peace and blessings of Allah on His Messenger an angel flies to the Prophet's bedroom cave (with perhaps the assistance of transporter-like device like on Star Trek to get through the earth's crust) with the good news.

What if Allah, to alleviate the boredom of waiting thousands of years for Judgement Day in a cavern deep in the ground, had provided His last and greatest spokesperson with a television set, a nice big flat screen model?

The television set could have the equivalent of the V-Chip so that God's Messenger would not be exposed to sexually explicit or suggestive programming so as not to arouse the senses in an environment where there is no opportunity of release except self-abuse, which is a sin in Islam.

The normal V-Chip would have allowed the Prophet to watch Jeopardy which is stimulation for the mind, which Islam allows, as long it does not lead to heresy i.e. to questioning Allah’s revelations or the sayings of His Messenger.

With in-the-ground cable or satellite television the Prophet might even have stumbled on last year’s (2010) Jeopardy’s college championship where a Boston University sophomore, a female no less, beat out two male competitors in the final round to claim the top prize of $100,000. Talk about a good memory. This might have caused him to reflect on what His Mentor said about a woman’s ability to remember things:

2:282 … O believers, when you contract a debt for a fixed period, write it down. Let a scribe write it for you with fairness. No scribe should decline to write as Allah has taught him. So let him then write and let the debtor dictate. He should fear his Lord and not diminish the debt in the least. If the debtor is feeble-minded or week or ignorant, then let his guardian dictate with fairness. And call to witness two witnesses of your men; if not two men, then one man and two women from such witnesses you approve of, so that if one of them (the two women) fails to remember, the other will remind her.

It might also have caused him to reflect on his own observations about a woman’s mind, including the following:

The Prophet said, "Isn’t the witness of a woman equal half that of a man?" The women said, "Yes." He said: "This is because of the deficiency of the woman’s mind."

Bukhari 48.286

It might even have gotten him to thinking about whether men are actually superior to women.

2:228 Divorced women should keep away from men for three menstrual periods. And it is not lawful for them to conceal that which Allah has created in their wombs, if they truly believe in Allah and the Last Day. Their husbands have the right in the meantime to take them back, should they seek reconciliation; and women have rights equal to what is incumbent upon them according to what is just, although men are one degree above them (what is meant here is that the men have a superior authority). Allah is Mighty, Wise.

And if men are not superior to women, do they have the right to beat them to make them understand what Allah expects of them.

4:34 Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made some of them excel the others, and because they spend some of their wealth. Hence righteous women are obedient, guarding the unseen which Allah has guarded. And those of them that you fear might rebel, admonish them and abandon them in their beds and beat them. Should they obey you, do not seek a way of harming them; for Allah is Sublime and Great!

What if, after watching a woman demonstrate that she is not only as good as but better at remembering things than men, the Prophet had asked even a few of the perhaps millions of angels who visit him every day to let him know that so-an-so sends his blessings, to tell Allah what he had seen and heard on Jeopardy when they returned to Paradise.

Or better still, invite a few of them, if it's not too crowded, to watch the college championship with him, assuming he recorded it, and see and hear for themselves and provide Allah with an eyewitness account.

Upon hearing that a women had bested men in a test of memory, knowledge and mathematical skills (she answered all the mathematics questions except for one) just maybe this would have caused Allah to consider abrogating a few verses i.e. replacing one verse with another, such as the verse about women not being as good at remembering things as men. He has the power.

2:106 Whichever verse We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring instead a better or similar one. Do you not know that Allah has the power over all things?

With no legal or theological arguments against Allah making a few modifications to the status of women in His Koran and making Islam both a man and a woman’s religion i.e. a religion of equals, how could He avoid doing so. Sharia law would never be the same, and what god would not want that.

How to make His change of heart regarding women known to mankind could be a problem, Allah having decided, after showing Moses a reflection of Himself, that it would be the last time He would reveal Himself to a real person, even as a shadow. He would not even make an exception for His greatest Messenger when reluctant converts said they would believe if Allah delivered the Koran the way He delivered the Torah.

28:48 But, when the Truth came to them from Us, they said: “If only he (Muhammad) had been given the like of what Moses had received?”…

Another problem is Allah's declaration in the verse known as the Seal of the Prophet that Muhammad is the last of the Messengers.

33:40 Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but is the Messenger of Allah and the seal of the Prophets. Allah is Cognizant of everything.

No promises need to be broken by simply having His last and greatest spokesperson emerge from his grave beneath Medina, if only for a moment, to attest to the existence of smart women.

Bernard Payeur