Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

He Who Will Find Me Dead & Women’s Behaviour

December 5, 2024

(Draft)

Abbas calls every day, often more than once. It’s an arrangement we have. Should I fail to answer on any given day, he is to check in on me to make sure I have not passed. He has a key to my condo.

I met Abbas, a Muslim refugee from Iran, in 2005 if memory serves, in a pub near where I lived at the time. He has been sober at this writing for more than 19 years and the best of friends for almost as long. For how he beat his alcoholism and how we came to depend on each other I invite you to read Chapter “Two Muslims and Miss B./Abbas,” Fade to Black -- Triumph of the Irrational, Boreal Books.

We talked about his home country a lot. Today, it was about Iran’s Parliament enacting a harsh new modesty law that will not only increase penalties for not wearing the hijab, a piece of cloth that was never about piety, but also for not wearing it correctly, i.e., not a strand of hair must be visible.

The Assyrians, more than 4,000 years ago, were one of the first, if not the first, to require women to veil themselves. It had nothing to do with piety or modesty but to distinguish themselves from respectable women who did not practice the world’s oldest profession.

Head coverings for early female believers, like for all desert dwellers including men, provided protection from a blazing sun and swirling sand when the wind blew. God, on His spokesman’s insistence, extended the use of the veil for women when they answered the call of nature with men in the vicinity doing the same. In populated areas that meant public latrines where a low wall usually separated the sexes.

In fact, until Muhammad made it official, his wives did not even bother to cover their hair, let alone their face, when using a public latrine near their home, including Sauda, whose complaint about his mischievous friend Umar got her husband thinking.

Narrated Aisha:

The wives of the Prophet used to go to Al-Manasi, a vast open place (near Baqia at Medina) to answer the call of nature at night.

Umar used to say to the Prophet "Let your wives be veiled," but Allah's Apostle did not do so.

One night Sauda bint Zam'a the wife of the Prophet went out at Isha time and she was a tall lady.

Umar addressed her and said, "I have recognized you, O Sauda."

He said so, as he desired eagerly that the verses of Al-Hijab may be revealed. So Allah revealed the verses of "Al-Hijab."

Bukhari 5.148

*****

The Verse of the Veil or Al-Hijab is often confused with the Verse of the Curtain. The Verse of the Curtain was revealed on the night of Muhammad’s wedding to his former daughter-in-law, Zaynab b. Jahsh, when uninvited guests kept showing up at his home after the wedding feast, overstaying their welcome.

Narrated Anas bin Malik:

When Allah's Apostle married Zainab bint Jahsh she was with him in the house and he prepared a meal and invited the people (to it). They sat down (after finishing their meal) and started chatting. So the Prophet went out and then returned several times while they were still sitting and talking. So Allah revealed the Verse: "O you who believe! Enter not the Prophet's houses until leave is given to you for a meal, (and then) not (so early as) to wait for its preparation ...ask them (his wives) from behind a screen." (33:53)

So the screen was set up and the people went away.

Bukhari 60.315

33:53 O believers, do not enter the houses of the Prophet, unless you are invited to a meal, without awaiting the hour; but if you are invited, then enter; but when you have eaten, disperse, without lingering for idle talk. That is vexing to the Prophet who might be wary of you, but Allah is not wary of the truth. If you ask them (the wives of the Prophet) for an object, ask them from behind a curtain. That is purer for your hearts and theirs. You should never hurt the Messenger of Allah, nor take his wives in marriage after him. That is truly abominable in the sight of Allah.

For many women who wear the niqab, it is analogous to a portable curtain.” Revelation 33:53 also makes Muhammad out to be a jealous and controlling husband who would seek to influence his young widows’ life from beyond the grave.

For Muslim women, having sex with a man other than their husband is flirting with a gruesome death and risking spending an eternity on fire in the depth of Allah’s Hell. The interdiction against taking “his wives in marriage after him” is equivalent to condemning Muhammad’s mostly young widows to never enjoying being intimate with a man again after his passing.

*****

Umar continued to tease Sauda. What was Muhammad to do, forbid his wives from leaving the house to relieve themselves?

Narrated Aisha:

Sauda (the wife of the Prophet) went out to answer the call of nature after it was made obligatory (for all the Muslims ladies) to observe the veil. She was a fat huge lady, and everybody who knew her before could recognize her. So Umar bin Al-Khattab saw her and said, "O Sauda! By Allah, you cannot hide yourself from us, so think of a way by which you should not be recognized on going out."

Sauda returned while Allah's Apostle was in my house taking his supper and a bone covered with meat was in his hand.

She entered and said, "O Allah's Apostle! I went out to answer the call of nature and Umar said to me so-and-so."

Then Allah inspired him (the Prophet) and when the state of inspiration was over and the bone was still in his hand as he had not put in down, he said (to Sauda), "You (women) have been allowed to go out for your needs."

Bukhari 60.318

Islamic scriptures are notoriously contradictory and confusing in some places, especially hadiths as can be expected in hearsay recollections passed on from one generation to the next of what Muhammad said two hundred years earlier. For example, the verse of Al-Hijab invites women to “guard their private parts” and to “drape their bosom with their veil,” not their face or hair.

24:31 And tell the believing women to cast down their eyes and guard their private parts and not show their finery, except the outward part of it. And let them drape their bosoms with their veils and not show their finery, except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ fathers, their sons, the sons of their husbands, their brothers, the sons of their brothers, the sons of their sisters, their women, their maid-servants, the men-followers who have no sexual desire, or infants who have no knowledge of women’s sexual parts yet. Let them, also, not stamp their feet, so that what they have concealed of their finery might be known. Repent to Allah, all of you, O believers, that perchance you may prosper."

Muhammad was fascinated with breasts. He would play with them when his wives were experiencing their menses and everything below the waist was haram.

Narrated Aisha:

The Prophet and I used to take a bath from a single pot while we were Junub. During the menses, he used to order me to put on an izar (dress worn below the waist) and used to fondle me.

Bukhari 6.298

For God’s spokesman it was the sight of jingling breasts, not a woman’s hair that caused men to experience spontaneous erections along with a desire to have illegal intercourse, should they not be wedded to the cause of their arousal.

The veil, and Allah’s interdiction against women stamping their feet “so that what they have concealed of their finery might be known” is meant to conceal a woman’s breasts and their tendency to jiggle when the owner is in motion and not their hair.

Nonetheless, it is likely that women and girls covered their face, and perhaps their hair, with one of more of their veils to maintain a modicum of privacy and decorum while squatting in the vicinity of men doing the same. But, it is not what the verse of al-hijab is all about; it is about covering their finery which is mostly everything below the neck, their breasts in particular.

In a vaunted revelation about the perfect wife there is no mentioned of a dress code. Revelation 66:5 appears towards the end of somewhat infantile story about the Prophet sampling some honey in secret and telling a spouse, who betrays his confidence, giving God the opportunity to express his views on the type of spouse He favours

The All-Knowing tells Muhammad what has transpired, but, for some reason, not all of it. The part He leaves out, and which remains a mystery to this day, seems to be the key to the story.

First, Allah informs His Messenger of part of the conversation He has overheard.

66:3 And when the Prophet confided to one of his wives a certain matter (his eating of honey); and she divulged it, and Allah disclosed it to him too, He made known part of it, but withheld the other part. Then, when he told her about it, she said: “Who told you this?” He said: “The All-Knowing, All-Informed told me.”

God suspects a conspiracy against His Messenger. To put an end to the gossip, He informs the two women of the formidable force allied against them: God himself, His most honourable believers, and all the angels, including the mighty Gabriel support the Prophet.

This has to be about more than divulgence among wives that their husband-in-common has eaten some honey, for Allah to put His own prestige on the line to silence the two women.

66:4 If you two (the two wives of the Prophet) repent onto Allah, then your hearts will have certainly inclined; but if you band together against him, then Allah is his Master. Gabriel, the righteous among the believers and the angels thereupon are his supporters, too.

Then back to the really big threat—especially in the Prophet’s time—divorce. God would grant His Messenger a divorce so that He may receive in exchange “the perfect wife,” which He describes:

66:5 Perhaps, his Lord will, if he divorces you, give him in exchange wives better than you, submissive, believing, obedient, penitent, devout, fasting, either previously married or virgins.

Do you measure up? Allah follows his instructions about how wives should behave, backed up with the usual threat about burning to a crisp those who don’t scrupulously follow His instructions.

66:6 O believers, guard yourselves and your families against a Fire whose fuel is people and stones; its overseers are harsh, terrible angels who do not disobey what Allah commands, but will do what they are commanded.

The two wives in question were Aisha and Hafsa.

Narrated Abdullah bin Abbas:

I had been eager to ask Umar about the two ladies from among the wives of the Prophet regarding whom Allah said (in the Qur'an saying): If you two (wives of the Prophet namely Aisha and Hafsa) turn in repentance to Allah your hearts are indeed so inclined (to oppose what the Prophet likes) (66:4), till I performed the Hajj along with Umar (and on our way back from Hajj) he went aside (to answer the call of nature) and I also went aside along with him carrying a tumbler of water.

When he had answered the call of nature and returned, I poured water on his hands from the tumbler and he performed ablution. I said, "O Chief of the believers! Who were the two ladies from among the wives of the Prophet to whom Allah said: 'If you two return in repentance (66:4)?'"

He said, "I am astonished at your question, O Ibn Abbas. They were Aisha and Hafsa."

Bukhari 43.648

Much of the oppressive dogma pertaining to female conduct and appearance was revealed as a result of a late middle-aged man’s difficulties in controlling two of his teenaged wives: Aisha and Hafsa. The most significant contributor was Aisha when she was accidentally stranded in the desert and rescued by a young man who returned her to her husband the next day (see Chapter “The Necklace”, 1,001 Sayings and Deed of the Prophet Muhammad, Boreal Books).

Needless to say, this started people talking. Talk, if revelations pertaining to the incident are to be believed, that really distressed Muhammad and Allah.

24:11 Those who spread the slander (against Aisha, wife of the Prophet, according to the commentators) are a band of you. Do not reckon it an evil for you; rather it is a good thing for you. Everyone of them will be credited with the sin he has earned, and he who bore the brunt of it shall have a terrible punishment.

24:12 Would that the believers, men and women, when you heard it (the slander) had though well of themselves saying: “This is manifest slander!”

24:13 And would that they had brought forth four witnesses [to vouch for it]! But since they did not bring any witnesses, those are, in Allah’s sight, the real liars.

24:14 And but for Allah’s Bounty to you and His Mercy, in this world and the next, you would have been visited, due to your chatter, by a terrible punishment.

None of this chatter would have ensued if the All-Seeing had promptly, as was the case with the divulging of the eating of the honey, to inform His spokesman that he had witnessed everything and Aisha had not had sex with the young man who rescued her instead of waiting a month to do so. In the meantime, Muhammad confined his child-bride to the home of her parents while he waited on the god for whom he spoke to get back to him.

Some did not believe that situation with Aisha was a big deal and thought nothing of discussing it openly.

24:15 Since you received it on your tongues and you uttered with your mouths what you had no knowledge of, deeming it a simple matter; whereas in Allah’s Sight it was very grave.

But they would be wrong; this was not a trivial matter.

24:16 And would that, upon hearing it, you were to say: “It is not for us to speak about this. Glory be to You; this is truly a great calumny.”

And let us never talk about this again.

24:17 Allah admonishes you never to return to the like of this, if you are real believers.

24:18 And Allah expounds clearly for you the Signs. Allah is all Knowing, Wise.

God may have assured His spokesman that nothing untoward had taken place but His inability to let it go—after telling everyone to shut up about it—suggest otherwise.

24:19 Indeed, those who love to see indecency spread among the believers will have in this world and the next a very painful punishment. Allah knows, but you do not know.

24:20 And but for Allah’s Bounty to you and His Mercy and that Allah is truly Clement and Merciful;

24:21 O believers, do not follow in the footsteps of Satan; for he who follows in the footsteps of Satan, simply bids to indecency and disrepute. But for Allah’s Bounty to you and His Mercy, no one of you would have ever been pure; but Allah purifies whomever He pleases. Allah is All-Hearing, All Knowing.

24:22 Let not the bounteous and wealthy among you swear off giving freely to kinsmen, the destitute and the Emigrants in the Path of Allah. Let them pardon and forgive. Do you not wish that Allah should forgive you? Allah is All-Forgiving, Merciful.

24:23 Surely those who slander married women, who are heedless and believing, are accursed in this world and the next, and they shall have a terrible punishment.

References to Judgment Day when your appendages and orifices will testify against you (see Chapter “Judgement Day,” The Islamic Hereafter, Boreal Books):

24:24 On the Day when their tongues, their hands and their feet shall bear witness against them, regarding what they used to do.

24:25 On that Day Allah will pay them their just dues and they will know that Allah is the Manifest Truth.

24:26 Foul women for foul men, and foul men for foul women; and good women for good men, and good men for good women. Those are acquitted of the burden of what they say; they will have forgiveness and a generous provision.

In this somewhat disjointed rant God has a few instructions about entering houses other than your own.

24:27 O believers, do not enter houses other than your own before you ask leave and greet their occupants. This is better for you, that perchance you may remember well.

24:28 If you find no one in them, do not enter until you are given permission; and if it is said to you: “Go back”, then go back. That is purer for you, and Allah knows well what you do.

24:29 It is no offence for you to enter uninhabited houses in which you have some means of enjoyment. Allah knows what you reveal and what you conceal.

Another revelation about lowering your gaze and guarding your private parts:

24:30 Tell the believers to cast down their eyes and guard their private parts. This is purer for them. Allah is conversant with what they do.

It was during this lengthy outburst that Verse 24:31, repeated here, was revealed. If Aisha and her rescuer had done nothing wrong, why the new rules about women draping their bosoms etc.?

And, if Aisha did nothing wrong, why did God admonished and warned Muhammad’s wives of a terrible punishment for committing “a flagrant foul act,” which has to be, if we are still on topic, about making the Prophet out to be a cuckold.

33:28 O Prophet, say to your wives: “If you desire the present life and its finery, so come along that I might provide for you and set you free kindly.

33:29 “But if you desire Allah, His Messenger and the life to come, surely Allah has prepared for the beneficent among you a great wage.”

33:30 O wives of the Prophet, whomever of you commits a flagrant foul act, her punishment will be doubled; and that for Allah is an easy matter.

If the fear of double the punishment for putting His spokesman in an embarrassing situation is not enough, God is not beneath offering a monetary incentive.

33:31 Whoever of you obeys Allah and His Messenger and does the righteous deed, We shall pay her wage twice over, and we have prepared for her a generous provision.

Being the wife of God’s spokesman may not have been all that fulfilling for God to admonish them to “not be abject in speech,” e.g., express hopelessness, when talking about their lives with the greatest of them all, thereby giving hope to young men of their generation—what God considered a “sickness”— that they might one day get a share of Muhammad’s bounty of beautiful women and girls.

33:32 O wives of the Prophet, you are not like any other women. If you are God-fearing, do not be abject in speech, so that he in whose heart is a sickness may covet you, but speak in an honourable way.

Some may have done what young women married to an older man sometimes do, and that is look for validation of their attractiveness in a young man’s eyes when out in public.

The confinement of the Prophets wives in the following revelation, along with Allah waiting an inordinate of time to vouch for Aisha’s truthfulness, may be the strongest evidence we have that her husband believed she cheated on him. All that what was left to do was to come up with a strategy—the reason for the delay—that would have God admonished those who though Muhammad a cuckold and ensure that none of his wives would ever have the opportunity to embarrass him again using the fig leaf of God wanting to purify them fully as reason for their confinement.

33:33 Stay in your homes and do not display your finery as the pagans of old did: perform the prayer, give the alms and obey Allah and His Messenger. Allah only wishes to turn away abomination from you and purify you fully. O People of the House.

Because a middle-aged man believed a teenaged wife of his had been unfaithful women everywhere in the conservative Muslim world, such as in Afghanistan, are forced into seclusion to this day.

Allah admonished Muhammad’s wives to stay at home, and conservative Muslim men have been enjoining their wives and daughters to do the same ever since.

MY LAST WORD ON WOMEN

January 12, 2025

Taliban 'do not see women as human', says Malala Yousafzai.

BBC Jan. 12, 2024

I will die not having understood why so many women do what they do in spite, in my first semester at Simon Fraser, taking a course on The Psychology of Women hoping to improve on a dismal record of forming relationships with girls while in high school.

Marina of Pestalozzi College, Margaret… and later Lucette were not unlike the archetype of the women in the book; not so for the women of Islam.

My getting close and personal with Islam and reading—and yes— watching video testimonials of women and girls who, apparently having lost their self-respect, became convert of a religion that considers them less than human. It effectively destroyed the illusion that women like Lucette were the rule rather than the exception.

In reading Islamic scriptures I began to understand why this is so.

Little Boys Learning To Hate Little Girls and Little Girls to Hate Themselves

I can understand the self-loathing that the Koran early on imbues in women born into the religion which makes it difficult for them to question their indoctrination later in life. But, what about the women and girls who, as non-Muslim children have not had the Koran drummed into them, who whole-heartedly embrace the Book and the man?

Why would the Taliban see women as humans when so many, converts in particular, don’t consider themselves deserving of the appellation.

Is Islam serving a need for women to be dominated and disciplined by the equivalent of Gwen Stephani’s “bad boys” or are they to be compared to Pink’s “stupid girls?”

Gwen Stephani's Bathwater

So why do we choose the boys that are nasty...

Why do the good girls always want the bad boys...

…

I still love to wash in your old bath water

Makes me feel like I couldn't love another

I can't help it, you're my kind of man

Whoo-oo, doo-oo

Whoo-doo, doo-oo

No I can't help myself, I can't help myself

Pink's Stupid Girls

What happened to the dreams of a girl president

She's dancing in the video next to 50 Cent

They travel in packs of two or three

With their itsy bitsy doggies and their teeny-weeny tees

Where, oh where, have the smart people gone?

Oh where, oh where could they be?

If women like Malala, Lucette and Marina are the exception, than the Renaissance, which marked the end of the Catholic Church’s dominance in Europe allowing for a flowering of the arts and sciences, and the Enlightenment which ushered in the Age of Reason—what Mark Lilla described as The Fragile Exception—is doomed.

After centuries of strife, the West has learned to separate religion and politics – to establish the legitimacy of its leaders without referring to divine command. There is little reason to expect the rest of the world – the Islamic world in particular – will follow.

We in the West find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still inflame the minds of men, stirring up messianic passions that can leave societies in ruin. We had assumed that this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that political theology died in 16th-century Europe. We were wrong. It's we who are the fragile exception.

Mark Lilla, professor of the humanities at Columbia University, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West (2007):

The women of Sumer gave birth to Western Civilization. The women of Islam may bring it to an end.

THE WOMEN OF SUMER

The Epic of Gilgamesh predates the Hebrew Bible by at least 2000 years, the Koran by an additional 1500 years, more or less. It was carved into clay tablets at the dawn of Western written history in ancient Sumeria (Sumer). In it you will find a story about the great flood and the Garden of Eden. How would Islam, which contains variations of the same stories as can be found in the Epic of Gilgamesh and later in the Bible, reconcile the two?

The Koran contains references to twenty-five prophets who came before the Prophet Muhammad and it is clear that there are many more. In one tradition of the Prophet, more than 124,000 prophets were sent by God before He got fed up with His Message being badly transmitted or misunderstood and decided to send His last and greatest Messenger, the Prophet Muhammad.

Believers would maintain that the author of Gilgamesh was probably a prophet who was misquoted or who misunderstood Allah’s Message. For instance, how could someone possibly write that it was a woman who gave birth to humanity, not a man; or that it is a woman, as described in the following excerpt (translation by Stephanie Dalley) from that heroic poem, to whom we are indebted for the wisdom with which she endowed man and which allowed civilization to blossom?

Shambat loosened her undergarments, opened her legs and

he took in her attractions.

She did not pull away. She took wind of him.

Spread open her garments and he lay upon her.

She did for him, the primitive man, as women do.

His love-making he lavished upon her.

For six days and seven nights Enkidu was aroused and

poured himself into Shambat.

When he was sated with her charms,

He set his face towards the open country of his cattle.

The gazelles saw Enkidu and scattered.

The cattle of open country kept away from his body.

For Enkidu had become smooth; his body was too clean.

His legs, which used to keep pace with his cattle, were at a

standstill.

Enkidu had been diminished, he could not run as before.

Yet he had acquired judgement, had become wiser.

For the Sumerians it was the goddess Aruru, the mother goddess, who created Enkidu from clay—the Bible and the Koran would give that role to a man. For the Sumerians, women were a civilizing influence; for the illiterate desert tribesmen who would usurp her role in the creation accounts, she became the seductress, the harlot who caused mankind to be expelled from Paradise.

For the people of Sumer, their cities were Paradise. For the confident men of Sumer it was women as partners, homemakers and lovers who made this sedentary, civilized lifestyle possible, desirable and enjoyable.

For the tribesmen of the desert, trapped and fighting for survival beneath a monotonous, unchanging blue sky and a blaring scorching sun on a sea of dust and sand, the cities of Sumer would also have been seen as Paradise. Allah’s description of Paradise, as an oasis with buildings and women as pleasure providers, almost fits the description of Sumerian cities and their female inhabitants, with the exception that in Sumer, women were not second-class citizens.

Why would desert tribesmen, who would adapt, if not pervert, many of the events described in the Epic of Gilgamesh—including the story of the meeting between Shambat and Enkidu—blame women for mankind’s exile from Paradise? The seduction of Enkidu by Shambat was seen as a good thing by the people of Sumer; a wild, roving man is civilized by being intimate with a woman.

For the people of Sumer, being “civilized” meant acquiring wisdom; becoming capable of exercising judgement, of assessing situations or circumstances shrewdly and logically and drawing your own reasonable conclusions. For the illiterate, fatalistic tribesmen of the deserts of the Middle East whose very existence was constantly being tested by elements over which they had no control, which they believed was God’s way of trying their faith, this had to seem like blasphemy. Paradise was to be denied mankind because a woman was foolish enough to endow a man with god-like qualities.

It was the Sumerians who, more than five millennia ago, first carved the written word on clay tablets. According to Thomas Cahill, the period before the invention of writing saw an “explosion of technological creativity on a scale that would not be matched until the nineteenth and twentieth century of our era.” Writing may have been a result of mankind’s need to record this leap of knowledge, upon which memory could no longer be counted to chronicle or manage. Civilization could not progress any further without the means of recording it’s accomplishments for future generations to build upon.

The society that invented writing worshipped many goddesses. The greatest goddess of all, Ishtar, goddess of love and war, was worshipped by the people of the city of Uruk, perhaps the earliest settlement to deserve the name of city. It was in this ancient Mesopotamian city, on the shore of the Euphrates River, that the first words written five thousand years ago on clay tablets were found. If it was not a woman who imagined those first words then it was her civilizing influence that allowed the written word to be imagined in the first place.

Muhammad had an illiterate’s fascination with the written word which he saw as God’s way of establishing immutable limits on mankind’s imagination and free will, not expanding it. This is reflected in the Koran’s meticulous, incontrovertible instructions as to what a believer may or may not do; what a believer may think or say. If you followed God’s written instruction to the letter He would let you back into Sumer, back into Paradise.

The Koran, with its meticulous instructions as to what a believer may or may not do, what a believer may think or say, was perhaps the primitive tribesman’s way of using the invention of writing to establish eternal, unchanging limits on mankind’s imagination and free will in the hope of convincing God to let man back into Sumer, back into Paradise.

Writing as Allah revealed in verses from Surah 96, The Clot made man arrogant, thinking himself self-sufficient. This was not why He taught man how to write. He taught man how to write not to make him more self-sufficient, but less, by having man write down His unchanging instructions as to how He expected man to behave and how He was to be worshipped. Instructions which He then expected to be followed to the literal letter or man would have to answer to Him Whom all of mankind must eventually return.

96:3 Read by your Most Generous Lord,

96:4 Who taught by the pen.

96:5 He thought man what he did not know.

96:6 Yet, man will, indeed wax arrogant;

96:7 For he thinks himself self-sufficient.

96:8 Surely, unto your Lord is the ultimate return.

The Koran is not so much a philosophy as a set of rules that could have been formulated by a child-like mind in the way they embody a child’s certainty in having absolute knowledge of the world around them and a child’s intolerance of others who won’t play the game by their rules. This child-like perception of an unchanging world has been competing with the grownup evolving world view of Sumer ever since Muhammad got his marching orders.

Narrated Abu Huraira:

Allah's Apostle said, "I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah', and whoever says, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,' his life and property will be saved by me except for Islamic law, and his accounts will be with Allah, (either to punish him or to forgive him.)"

Bukhari 52.196

This child-like unschooled understanding of what the written word is all about is the antithesis of the grown-up view of the people of Sumer who invented writing as a means to expand the capabilities of the human mind; who invented writing so as to allow future generations to build upon, to progress beyond, to question the limits of what their ancestors had ever imagined.

The Koran, taken literally, kills the imagination allowing insanity, irrationality’s bridesmaid, to settle in. We need the example of the women of Sumer today, more than ever.