Boreal Books

Let Me Rephrase That!

Your Layman's Guide to Abrogations

Paperback 204 pages

Let Me Rephrase That!

16:101 And if We replace a verse by another – and Allah knows best what He reveals – they say: “You [Muhammad] are only a forger.” Surely, most of them do not know.

Of all the incongruities that devotees of a religion steeped in incongruities have to accept, the concept of abrogation has to be the most outlandish. Abrogation is common in the real world as better information replaces old information. In a collection of immutable facts communicated to a mortal by a god, abrogation should not even be the exception.

For the rational mind it is inconceivable that a god, in an eternal book He claims to have written, in Arabic no less, in which He lays claim to infallibility, has to retract, annul or amend i.e. abrogate what He said earlier. Knowing what more than 200 revealed truths an omniscient deity abrogated, as mindboggling as that may seem, is essential to understanding the Koran.

If you found one or more more of the following excerpts useful please consider buying the book.

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Dedication

Introduction

A Harvest of Contradictions

The Before and After Solution

One Abrogating One

Charity Becomes Compulsory

No More Mr. Nice Guy I

A Change of Direction

Safa, Marwa and the Religion of Abraham

Charity Becomes a Tax

From Curser to Pardoner of Jews

Providing for a Widow

Dying a Muslim by Doing What a Muslim Does

No More Mr. Nice Guy II

Indoctrination and War

A Blood-Money Conundrum I

From Killing Ten to Killing Two

Entering a House Other Than Your Own

Marriage is Good, Adultery Bad

From Whipping to Pardoning Slanderers of Chaste Women

Generalities about a Woman's Finery

Slave-Girls and Children Close By and You're Naked

Wives for the Messenger

The Prophet as Savior

They Also Carry Allah's Throne

Wages for the Messenger

The Reward of Beneficence

For the Prophet Only

Forgive and Forget is Not Allah's Way

That Sound You Hear

It Was Not a Weighty Message After All

Wishing Won't Make It So

Mouthing the Koran Was Not Good Enough

Many Abrogating One

A Blood-Money Conundrum II

Wills and Testaments

Intoxicants

The Divorce Ransom and Marriage to an Impotent Man

He Said, She Said

The Manifest Victory

One Abrogating Many

Myth of the Month of Revelations

Something for the Tax Collector

Brides For Believers

First, Kill All the Unbelievers

Hell Is for Those Who Love Life

The Bedouins Learn Their Lesson

No More Mr. Nice Guy III

Mercy for Adulterers!

Not All Poets Are Perverts

Evidence of a Master Copy of the Koran in Paradise

Verse of the Sword

Abrogation and Genocide

A Declaration of War

Verse of the Tax

Afterword

Putting Words in God's Mouth

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Cover art is a rendition of a picture of George Burns from a poster for the 1977 Warner Bros. film "Oh, God!". Like the movie, I hope you will consider Let Me Rephrase That! a mildly irreverent but never gratuitous treatment of a reverential figure.

George Burns