Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

A Xmas Wish and the Koranic Conception and Birth of Jesus 

December 22, 2024

When making modifications to my will after Lucette’s passing, and obviously entertaining a death wish, I ask my lawyer to include a clause which stated that, should I die during sex, the woman I was with at the time be entitled to $10,000 from my estate? Recreating the life I had with Lucette was unrealistic, but maybe I could relive a small part of it, the time when we were intimate and carefree and not let it go beyond that.

He said that such an unusual clause might delay probate, better he said, if I find myself in a situation where excessive kindness from an understanding partner possibly leading to the ultimate climax, that I simply make an addition to my will beforehand and leave it in plain view.

This Christmas, like every Christmas since she died, I will spend it by myself surrounded by her things. Robert Frost in The Death of the Hired Man wrote "Home is the place where they have to take you in", and nowhere is this more evident than at Christmas time. My Christmas wish right now is the same as when I ask my lawyer to include that clause.

Most Monday evenings in winter finds me at Harmon’s Steakhouse at a table for two occupied by one with a view of the apartment building—now converted into an apartment hotel— where she lived with her parents during the seven years we dated.

Having not been able to connect with that special person, I now imagine myself on Christmas Eve in one of the Business Inn’s converted apartment nursing a 12 year old Glenfiddich in the company of a kind-hearted sex worker who has nothing better to do that evening than entertain an old fool's fantasy.

But of course, at this time of year the conversion should not be about me, but about you-know-who.

Jesus Conceived

For the actual impregnation, Allah sent His do-it-all angel Gabriel, the “Spirit” in Revelation 19:17, in the form of an attractive man.

19:16 And remember [the account] of Mary in the Book when she withdrew from her people to an eastern place.

19:17 She screened herself away from them, and We sent to her Our Spirit and it appeared to her in the form of a well-shaped human being.

19:18 She said: “I seek refuge with Allah from you, if you do fear Allah.”

19:19 He said: “I am only the messenger of your Lord to grant you a boy most pure.”

19:20 She said: “Shall I have a boy, when no man has touched me and I have not been an unchaste woman?”

19:21 He (the angel) said: “Thus [it will be], your Lord has said: ‘This is an easy matter for Me; that We may make him (the boy Jesus) a sign unto mankind and a Mercy from Us.’” And thus it was decreed.

Birth of Jesus

23:50 And We made Mary’s son and his mother a sign, and We sheltered them on a lofty ground which had [settled] meadows and a spring.

In Allah's account of the birth of Jesus, the Christian Messiah comes into this world under a palm tree on a desert oasis. Like other major events the Bible describes as occurring in Palestine, and which the Koran centres in or around Mecca, Allah may have wanted to leave the impression that Jesus was born near the city.

19:22 So, she conceived him and she withdrew with him to a distant place.

19:23 Then labour pangs drove her towards the trunk of a palm tree. She said: “I wish I had died before this and had become completely forgotten.”

With no Joseph in sight, Jesus, perhaps with the assistance of Gabriel, helped in his own delivery.

19:24 Whereupon [the babe (Jesus) or (Gabriel)] called her from beneath her: “Do not grieve. Your Lord has created below you a stream.

19:25 “Shake the trunk of the palm tree towards you and it will drop upon you fresh ripe dates.”

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Dates ripen in the Middle East to the point of falling off the tree in late September or early October, which would indicate that this was the period of Jesus’ birth.

***

Is Mary, in the next revelation, being told to lie about eating?

19:26 “Eat, drink and rejoice. Then if you see any human say: ‘I have vowed to the Compassionate to fast, and so I shall not talk today to any human being.’”

Jesus’ First Words

The infant Jesus, only hours after his birth, as Allah said he would, at the request of his mother who is being accused of having been unchaste, loudly proclaimed that he was not the Son of God but a prophet sent by Allah, who praises Allah and does as He commands.

19:27 Then she brought him (the child) to her people, carrying him. They said: “O Mary, you have surely committed a strange thing.

19:28 “Sister of Aaron, your father was not an evil man and your mother was not unchaste.”

Was Mary, like Zacharia, expected to announce the birth of her son à la Marcel Marceau? Pointing to her son in response to accusations of having a child out-of-wedlock would indicate that she was.

19:29 Whereupon she pointed to him. They said: “How will we talk to one who is still an infant in the cradle?”

Jesus:

19:30 He [Jesus] said “Indeed, I am the servant of Allah, Who gave me the Book and made me a Prophet.

19:31 “And He made me blessed wherever I am and has commanded me to pray and to give the alms, so long as I live;

19:32 And be devoted to my mother; and He did not make me arrogant and mischievous.

19:33 “Peace be upon me the day I was born, the day I die and the day I rise from the dead.”

Allah echoed the baby Jesus’ claim:

19:34 Such was Jesus, son of Mary; it is the truth which they (the Christians) dispute.

19:35 It is not fitting for Allah to have a son. Glory be to Him; when He decrees a thing, He simply says: “Be”, and it comes to be.

How wrong the wrongdoers, i.e., Christians, were. They will be held to account.

19:36 Allah is truly your Lord and my Lord; so worship him. That is a straight path.

19:37 Yet, the sects among them differed. Woe to those who have disbelieved from the spectacle of a great Day!

19:38 How well they will hear and how well they will see, on the Day they will come onto Us; but the wrongdoers today are in manifest error.

19:39 And warn them of the Day of sorrow, when the issue is decided, while they are heedless and do not believe.

Jesus said the meek would inherit the Earth; not so, says Allah.

19:40 It is We Who shall inherit the earth and whomever is on it, and to Us they shall be returned.

Jesus, Muhammad informs us in the following hadith, was one of only three babies to speak almost from the moment of birth. That Jesus spoke from the cradle in the Koran may explain why he only gets a short introduction in the following account of three precocious babies.

Narrated Abu Huraira:

The Prophet said, "None spoke in cradle but three: (The first was) Jesus, (the second was) a man from Bani (Children of) Israel called Juraij. While he was offering his prayers, his mother came and called him.

He said (to himself), 'Shall I answer her or keep on praying?'

(He went on praying) and did not answer her, his mother said, 'O Allah! Do not let him die till he sees the faces of prostitutes.'

So while he was in his hermitage, a lady came and sought to seduce him, but he refused. So she went to a shepherd and presented herself to him to commit illegal sexual intercourse with her and then later she gave birth to a child and claimed that it belonged to Juraij.

The people, therefore, came to him and dismantled his hermitage and expelled him out of it and abused him.

Juraij performed the ablution and offered prayer, and then came to the child and said, 'O child! Who is your father?'

The child replied, 'The shepherd.'

(After hearing this) the people said, 'We shall rebuild your hermitage of gold,' but he said, 'No, of nothing but mud.'

(The third was the hero of the following story) A lady from Bani Israel was nursing her child at her breast when a handsome rider passed by her. She said, 'O Allah ! Make my child like him.'

On that the child left her breast, and facing the rider said, 'O Allah! Do not make me like him.' The child then started to suck her breast again.

(Abu Huraira further said, 'As if I were now looking at the Prophet sucking his finger (in way of demonstration.')

After a while the people passed by, with a lady slave and she (i.e. the child's mother) said, 'O Allah! Do not make my child like this (slave girl)!'

On that the child left her breast and said, 'O Allah! Make me like her.'

When she asked why, the child replied, 'The rider is one of the tyrants while this slave girl is falsely accused of theft and illegal sexual intercourse.'"

Bukhari 55.645