November

Statistics and the Meaning of Islam

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November 5, 2008

Of Interest:

What is the Sunnah?
What is the Hadith?

Statistics and the Meaning of Islam

What is the "real" Islam? Is it the Islam of the nice Muslim at work? Or is it the Islam of Osama bin Laden?

To get a logical answer, we must have a logical basis. What sources are available to answer the question? We can toss out the media and all of its answers since they generally quote apologist "experts". But is there an expert we can trust? Yes, there is. Mohammed.

The most fundamental statement that can be made about Islam is: there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is His prophet. This is the bedrock of Islam and points us directly to the only sure source of Islam-Allah and Mohammed. But where are Allah and Mohammed found? The Trilogy of Koran, Sira and Hadith. Allah is found in the Koran and Mohammed is found in the Sira (his biography) and the Hadith (his traditions of small stories and sayings). There is a special name for the sum of the Sira and the Hadith, the Sunna.

The Koran and Sunna are the only sure and certain basis of Islam. All of Islam is based upon the Trilogy.

The foundational texts of Islam --the Trilogy--suffer from being deliberately difficult. It is clear to anyone who reads these texts that every effort has been made to make the material obscure and difficult. There are two reasons for this obscurity. First, difficult texts make for a secure job for the priestly caste, the imams and scholars. If the text is clear in meaning, then no help is needed to understand it. The second reason is that the texts contain horrible and contradictory messages for the world buried under the obscurity.

The usual response to this difficulty is to skip the editing and offer up some verses from the Koran. But "verse" is a biased word in that it invokes a religious overtone. In almost every case, a verse is nothing more than a sentence. There is no other field of study in which individual sentences are given so much weight.

"Verse picking", to use a statistical term, is a very poor sampling method. What we want is the meaning, and it is impossible to learn the complete meaning from a sentence. What we need to concern ourselves with are ideas and concepts, not simply a sentence.

Let us be clear here that the very best way to obtain the complete meaning is to edit (edit does not mean change the meaning, but to order, rearrange and collect) the texts and then proceed from the edited text. The Koran is famously difficult. However, if the necessary editing is done, the Koran is a very straightforward document. The first editing steps are to put the Koran in order with respect to time. In this way when you turn the page, you advance in time, just as you would in a history book. This time line order has been known since the first days of Islam. The next step is to collect all of the variations of the same story. As an example, the story of Moses and the Pharaoh is told 39 times. If they are all collected under one category, then the Koran is easier to read and less boring.

The next step is to take the Sira and weave it into the Koran to give the Koran a context. For example, there is a verse that says that it was proper to burn the palm trees. For someone who reads this verse, a question arises: what palm trees are being talked about? The Koran gives no context. But in the day of its creation, everyone who heard the verse knew that the previous week, Mohammed had attacked some Jews who were date farmers and had destroyed their date palm trees in violation of Arabic war customs. When the story of Mohammed (from the Sira) is woven into the Koran, then the context of the attack on the Jews is clear.

A Koran that is in the proper time order, categorized, and includes Mohammed's life is a straightforward book that is easily understood. CSPI has published two Korans that have been edited this way-A Simple Koran and an Abridged Koran.

But we still have a problem. We need to be able to discuss the Koran with those who do not have access to edited Korans or who would not read them anyway. We need to be able make meaningful summary statements. Picking your favorite verse is not the way to make a summary statement.

We need a method of macro-analysis, not micro-analysis. We need to be able to talk about the big picture, the complete meaning of Islam. But there is a problem in trying to summarize Islam as it is filled with contradictory statements. So how do we deal with the contradictions while looking at the big picture?

The answer to these questions is to use a statistical measure of the texts. Don't let the word statistics scare you. The only statistics needed is counting how many items are in a category.

Take for example the idea of the importance of the Koran. The most commonly belief about Islam is that it is based upon the Koran and is a religion. Neither of these ideas is true.

How important is the Koran? It contains about 153,000 words. The Sira (by Ibn Ishaq) contains about 292,000 words, and the Hadith has 646,000 words (using the Bukhari text). So Allah is about 14% of the total of the Trilogy and the Sunna (Mohammed's words and deeds) is 86% of the total. These are only a quantitative measure, but still, it points out how important Mohammed is compared to Allah, based upon the amount of text.

This is born out further by noticing that the Koran does not contain enough information to practice even one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Only the Sunna (primarily the Hadith for religious practice) tells the Muslim how to worship. So the statistical measure shows that Islam is also Mohammedism.

Once the Koran is rearranged in the right time order, categorized and Mohammed's life is woven back into it, another fact leaps from the page. Very little of the Koran is devoted to how to be a Muslim, the religion of Islam. Instead, the majority of the Koran is about kafirs, non-Muslims. Kafirs are the worst of the creation. Allah hates kafirs and plots against them. Kafirs can be tortured, murdered, robbed, raped and enslaved. The Koran is fixated on kafirs, as was Mohammed.

To measure the Koranic fixation on kafirs, let us measure the fixation by counting the amount of text devoted to them. In Mecca an astounding 67% of the text is devoted to the kafir. In Medina 51% was about kafirs. The amount of text in the entire Koran devoted to kafirs is 61%.

As an aside, Islam excludes kafirs in every way from its religious practice. Since the kafir is outside of Islam, the term political Islam is used to describe the doctrine of Islam as it is applied to the "others", the kafirs. So 61% of the Koran is about political Islam, not religious Islam. (KS Lal gives the figure of 63% in Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India, Aditya Prakashan, 1999, N. Delhi, pg. 4).

The Sira shows the importance of Islam's political nature. Mohammed preached the religion of Islam for 13 years in Mecca and only gained 150 followers. He moved to Medina where he became a politician and warrior. After 10 years of violence he became ruler of all Arabia without a single enemy left standing. He was involved in an event of violence every 6 weeks for the last 9 years of his life. Statistical conclusion-Islam's success came from war and politics, not religion.

Another statistical conclusion: Islam is primarily a political doctrine, not a religion.

Simple statistics also reveal the true nature of the political/religious idea of jihad. When the word jihad is used, Muslims say that there are two kinds of jihad. There is the religious jihad, the greater jihad--the inner struggle against personal problems. The war jihad is the lesser jihad.

The Hadith of Bukhari gives all of the tactical details of jihad. A simple counting method shows that 3% of the hadiths are about the inner struggle, whereas, 97% of the hadiths are about jihad as war. So is jihad the inner struggle? Yes, 3%. Is jihad the war against kafirs? Yes, 97%.

This leads to a very important concept. Islam is based upon contradictory statements. How do we sort them out to get the complete meaning? We measure the amount of text devoted to each side of the dichotomy. That is what we did with the question of which jihad is the real jihad. It gives a complete statistical answer.

There is nothing new here. Only single value state ideas can be measured by one number. Multi-state ideas must be evaluated by statistics that measure every state of the variable. If an idea has different manifestations, then instead of arguing which is the right manifestation, just measure all of the manifestations.

There is an exact analogy to the measurement of the state of the electron in an atom. Quantum physics does not give a single answer about the energy and position, but gives us the statistical probabilities of each possible state. The same is true about Islam. We need to know its total state, not something about one category.

In conclusion, statistics is a superior way to gain complete knowledge of the texts of Islam. Statistics allows us to explore Islam in its totality. Remember the old story of the blind men feeling the elephant? One said the elephant was like a rope, another a tree, a wall and so forth. Was each man right? Were any of them wrong? No. But none of them were completely right. Statistical analysis cannot tell us the qualitative story but it allows us to remove the blinders of only looking at one category and forces us to look at the total picture.

Notice that this approach also effectively tells us how to evaluate the "experts" that get trotted out to buttress a favorite position. This is the iron rule of Islam-only Mohammed defines the truth of Islam. If what an expert says agrees with Mohammed, then the he is right, but he is redundant. If what the expert says contradicts Mohammed, then the expert is wrong. So experts are either redundant or wrong. Only Mohammed tells us the truth about Islam and he is never wrong or redundant. Skip the experts and move straight to Mohammed. The statistical approach does just that.

Bill Warner

Permalink /blog/statistics-and-the-meaning-of-islam/

politicalislam.com Use and distribute as you wish; do not edit and give us credit.

"Fantastic Analysis. I have placed a link to this page on my site, please don't change the URL.

Do you plan to do further statistical analysis with respect to:

1) Islam and slavery
2) Status of women

etc.

Also do you have a page showing your research like listing all the jihad is internal struggle phrases in one column and jihad is war against kafirs in another column so we can 'see' your research by seeing which side is longer?"

dd — November 7, 2008 @ 10:00 AM

"Measuring words in hadith and quraan doesn't mean that GOD is less important than Prophet, Prophet said, bring me lot of empty papers just to explain for you one Soura (in Quraan) Fatiha 7 verses.

this is not true measurment, sorry to me it seams silly."

Seek Truth — November 8, 2008 @ 3:20 AM

"For Your Information (not finding any eMail adress)
- - - - -
http://chromatism.net/current/images/ifwienposter.jpg

Trueman said...
This effort by the IFW is appreciable. Our Prophet, a blesser of mankind, could never have wished what these guys like Al-Qaeda followers, their suicide bombers or their mentors sitting in safe havens Gods knows where; but they are definitely doing such a disservice to Islam which perhaps arch enemies of Islam would never have thought to do.

These billboards by Islamic Federation of Vienna, Austria (IFW) are a right step in the right direction. The world needs to know about our faith, which is neither Mulla-ism, nor fundamentalism - it’s a message of peace, a message of warmth and sharing, between individuals, communities and nations. If some people are doing wrong things in Islam, that doesn’t means Islam asks them to do wrong things. Same is the case with the guys, the neocons sitting in Washington and Pentagon. What bad things they have done to this world, doesn’t mean all America is to be blamed. The American, the Western values of democracy, enlightenment and fair chance to every body are things which we Muslims need to understand. Good deeds are neither the monopoly of Muslims nor those of non Muslims; they are a common heritage of the whole human race.

In my own blog "Wonders of Pakistan" I posted an essay on Prophet's views on conservation of nature, on rights of the earth, the birds and the animals. A person who is kind to such things of nature, how can he be aggressive or harsh to Allah's noblest creation, the man. This is a message which needs to be understood by the al-Qaedists as well as the neocons in the west.

There is a dire need that our brothers in faith and those who do not believe in Islam, should know that Islam is nothing but a message of peace, peace for everybody, Muslims and non Muslims alike.

11/08/2008 2:46 AM
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/11
/he-is-admired-who-respects-his-family.html
========================================================

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/11/khader-bashes-bashy.html

Erich said...
For our purposes, Naser Khader is a more dangerous Muslim than Quraishy.

Khader said of Quraishy:

"He’s not even a practicing Muslim"

You see what Khader is telegraphing to us? He is reinforcing the PC MC paradigm, whose basic axiom about Islam is that Islam is never at fault, and that Muslims who follow Islam are never at fault, and that any time you see a bad Muslim, it is because he is NOT practicing "true" Islam.

It is this basic axiom that is the cornerstone of the single most important reason why the West cannot deal rationally with the danger of Islam. And Khader is subtly, slyly, cleverly serving to reinforce it.

"He’s not even a practicing Muslim"

Khader cannot be that stupid. He must know what Islam is, and what its "practice" entails. No. He is banking on our stupidity, our gullibility, to massage us with another reiteration of the PC MC axiom that the Muslims who practice real Islam are harmless, good, decent people who will "enrich" the multicultural "tapestry" of Europe, and the West at large.

The Quraishy type Muslims are easy to spot and to criticize. The Khader type Muslims are more subtle, sly and clever in their reinforcement of the PC MC idea that the Quriashy type of Muslim reflects only a "small minority of extremists". The Khader type Muslims are more subtle, sly and clever in their underhanded promotion and insinuation of Islam into the warp and woof of the West.

In fact, one major indication of the cleverness of the Khader type Muslim is the fact that a significant portion of the anti-jihad movement apparently thinks he's a useful ally against "extremist" Islam!

And unfortunately, the majority of Westerners -- beyond our small minority of anti-jihadists who do not trust the Khaders -- are stupid and gullible, because they have swallowed from birth through their formative educational years the PC MC paradigm and worldview.
11/06/2008 5:43 PM
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/11/khader-bashes-bashy.html

Erich said...
Henrik,

From this Danish blog, here are some apparent facts about Naser Khader.

http://agora.blogsome.com/2006/02/25/a-prize-immigrant/

-- which I shall parcel out and enumerate in 12 points:

1. Naser, the oldest of five siblings, proved himself a gifted scholar. He did well in school and impressed people in the mosque.

2. The boy often went to the mosque with his grandfather, who was the second-most important man in the mosque outside Damascus, after the Imam.

3. It impressed the men at the mosque that Naser rapidly learned whole sections of the Quran by heart. He attended the Friday prayers, went to the Quran-school, prayed five times a day and fasted all through the month of Ramadan.

After his family emigrated to Denmark when he was age 11, the blogger quoted above notes:

4. The spiritual base for the family was still Friday prayers at the mosque of The Islamic Community.

Then he goes on to note:

5. ...as Naser entered his teenage years, a change came over his way of perceiving at the world. He would sit for hours reading Danish litterature, learning how Danish society had evolved through the ages to finally reach the stage of modern democracy. ...he was introduced to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who said: "God is Dead", and the Danish Kierkegaard with his "Either, Or" of the the duty of each single man to choose his own way in life, [and so] Naser decided: He would no longer practice Islam.

Later, the blogger notes:

6. He was especially struck by the fact that most Danes’ knowledge of Islam was almost non-existant.

7. Therefore Khader published the book "Honour and Shame" in 1996. Here he tried to give an introduction to the central tenets of Mid-Eastern culture which were based partially on ancient culture and partially on Islam.

Then the blogger notes:

8. Now, having put aside Islam, Naser Khader began to call himself a "Cultural Moslem". He acknowledged his cultural heritage, but only practiced it to the degree that he would participate in prayers at funerals.

The blogger then notes that, after the cartoon controversy:

9. [Khader] had to stand up to the Imams. In his view, the Imams don’t represent the Moslems of Denmark at all. They may speak for a few thousand, but there are 200000 Moslems in Denmark.

10. He decided to form the Democratic Moslems to show that the majority of Moslems in Denmark want democracy.

The blogger then quotes Khader from an interview he had with him:

11. "My modest hopes are to create the determining factors needed to create a reformation and enlightenment for Islam. That may sound ambitious. But the people who are needed to create the conditions needed for that are us - the Moslems of the West. My ambitions are - apart from making integration less painful - to show that Islam and democracy can be made to be compatable."

12. "I think I am fighting my mother’s fight. She’s a Moslem, religious, who prays five times a day and wears a scarf. But she believes in Danish democracy. In that way she is a lot like many of my friends - Moslems with their hearts, but not Islamists or Extremists. I feel I am fighting a fight for the majority of Moslems. Islam was once a religion which was about the personal relationship of man to Allah. But some Imams have intervened, like the publicans of the Bible and have taken for themselves the power of Allah."

Discussion:

Facts #1-4 (as well as #7) indicate that Khader is not “ignorant” about Islam and indicate that he has had years of study and contact with Islam through a) Muslim communities both in Syria and in Denmark, b) family, c) mosque sermons, d) personal study of the Koran and other related materials.

Khader also seems to have extensive familiarity, experience and knowledge of Danish Muslims (cf. #9, 10 and 12) -- enough to pronounce that the “majority” of them are moderates like him. Either the majority of Danish Muslims are all ignorant of Islam like Khader, or Khader does not really know the Islam of the majority of Danish Muslims, or Khader is lying about this.

His apparently extensive familiarity, experience and knowledge of Danish Muslims (cf. #9, 10 and 12) also undermines the theory that he is “ignorant” of Islam.

As for Khader’s degree of “Islamicity”, we see from #8 that he has followed that path of incoherent twilight ambivalence -- the “Cultural Muslim” -- about which Hugh Fitzgerald has written aptly:

It is precisely those intelligent and charming and very-close-to-being-right-but-refusing-to-deal-with-Islam Muslims, the kind who if asked will tell you that "well, I'm a cultural Muslim" or "culturally, I come from a Muslim backround" or "there is much I find of great interest and which I am sympathetic to in Islam" (without more) and who, of course, are then part of the problem.
Why? Because Westerners, Americans in particular, are innoocent. They do not wish to investigate the tenets of Islam. They would prefer to believe that those tenets are ignored by most Muslims, and that they can go on ignoring them. They would prefer to believe that the history of Islam is not what it is.

When on television Kanan Makiya begins to express his affection for his pious Muslim grandmother, who wouldn't hurt a fly, we are sympathetic. We understand. We are perfectly aware that there have always been pious Muslims intent only on the rituals of worship. Ibn Warraq never fails to remind people of his own family, and of his own gentle, pious brother. But when that leads people to shift their attention away from Islam, to substitute the unrepresentative from the representative, to substitute wish for reality, it is a menace to us.
http://jihadwatch.org/archives/008758.php

Meanwhile, Khader’s #9-12 shows that he is a true believer in the Myth of the Moderate Muslim -- worse yet, the myth that the moderate Muslim is the majority, and that the extremists are the minority. Closely related to this is his constant implication that “true” Islam is good and harmless. But this brings up the screamingly obvious question, if “true” Islam is so good and harmless, why has he distanced himself from Islam over the years to the point where he is virtually (but not quite) an ex-Muslim? One cannot expect coherence from Muslims like Khader -- either because their reason is deformed, or because they are lying while trying to articulate the impossible and the preposterous.

Most importantly, Muslims like Khader are purveying the notion that most Muslims are harmless, and thus he is reinforcing the PC MC mindset that sees nothing dangerous about admitting thousands, yea millions, of Muslims into the West. Among these thousands, even millions, there will be innumerable Muslims who will form underground terror cells and who will spend years planning horrific attacks on us.

And Khader is doing his small part to enable them.
11/08/2008 3:48 AM"

LN — November 8, 2008 @ 5:38 AM

"Exceptional, outstanding and crystal clear. I now understand the enemy.
All Western politicians and schools should teach with regard to this article.

Keep up this good work. The world is in need of such clarity."

Tim — November 8, 2008 @ 5:44 AM

"Thank You for a insightful article. We have posted this on our blog to enlighten Maldivians to the truth about Islam."

Ismail Rasheed — November 8, 2008 @ 9:58 AM

"Perfect site! You've put it together very well, and covers your life & passions jumbo shrimp recipe and ming So, good luck to your team! thai therme coffee bar century, pecans salty recipe, by by"

Cyril — November 16, 2008 @ 8:26 AM

"Very clear analysis. Easy to understand. I like it."

Flashbuck — September 8, 2009 @ 5:35 PM

"Islam is the best religion"

jack — September 17, 2009 @ 8:56 PM

"THE best religion????
YES it is.It is the best RELIGION nothing else.Is it good for human being? NO NO NO.visit www.faithfreedom.org."

chris — November 19, 2009 @ 9:08 AM

"Jack,
Your opinion that Islam is 'the best religion' is probably due to the fact that you have not read the Sira.
The Sira is the only authorative biography on Mohammed. Everything else is conjecture. The unrelenting violence of the Sira should alert you to the supremacist world conquest utopianianism of this desert bandit. He used God to justify cruelty and greed."

Democracyistheanswer — December 6, 2009 @ 1:19 AM

"LN writes: "Khader’s #9-12 shows that he is a true believer in the Myth of the Moderate Muslim -- worse yet, the myth that the moderate Muslim is the majority..."

Khader's facts are conjecture. The fact is: about 60% of all Moslems worldwide want a caliph and Sharia law. That means Khader is totally wrong...perhaps he is committing taqiyya (sacred deception).

Islam and democracy are oil and water.

Islam is to be imposed 'even if the infidels are averse.' So much for democracy."

Democracyistheanswer — December 6, 2009 @ 1:28 AM

"assalam,you now what mean this world?this world wichs the musilmans said about a bilion years?it's mean peace.
dont read the book,writing by the hand of ennemy of god,read curan.
you know my brother,nothing change about curan.but the others books changed a million time,for exempel babel have 1500 diffrent copie,what that mean?that mean that peaple changed this book year after year.
my brother there is one god ho give us evry thing,and he make us the best creachur in the world.there is one god no son no fother no mother.juste one god power,tell to the thing "be" and well be.read my brother curan,dont read just one book,you dont know ecry think for jujing,in your religion the juhing for some thing is forbiden,dosnt?read,read,read this is the furst word in islam,this is the furst word god told mohammed alayhi assalam.dont believe what peaple said ,read and believe you heart lake what i done.my brother.muslims believe about all the profet about all the massegers,about jesus,about abraham our fother about moossa,about josef,we believe in mary.read my brother and im sur that god well show you the writ roud,and all well be clear in your eys.assalam alayk,peace with you.and god protect you."

ben adam — March 27, 2010 @ 4:43 PM

"Ben Adam,
Your religion is for slaves. We are free.

NON-MUSLIMS: ALLAH SAYS ISLAM WILL DOMINATE WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

Qur'an Chapter 9, #33

He it is Who hath sent His messenger [Muhammad] with the guidance and the Religion of Truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religion, however much the idolaters may be averse.
http://www.quranbrowser.com/cgi/bin/get.cgi? version=pickthall+yusufali+khan+shakir+sherali+khalifa+arberry+palmer+rodwell+sale+transliterated& layout=auto& searchstring=009:033

In Sahih Bukhari, the most canonical of hadith collections, Muhammad said,

"I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.' And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah."
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/008.sbt.html#001.008.387

In other words, Muhammad says that if you are non-Muslim, your right to life will not be sacred to Muslims, nor your right to property.

Bill Warner,
The statistical method is clearly the way to go, much better than only quoting sentences from the Qur'an. I hope to do a lot of counting in the future."

traeh — May 18, 2010 @ 3:31 PM

"Dear Mr Bill warner,
thanks for my opening the eyes by your phantastic analysis about sira hadith and kuran, now my problem is i am born muslim and live in uk and whenenver i go back to pakistan i am confronted with all those muslims who never understood, because the read in arabic but they argue with me all the time, i dont know how to deal with the situation because i am also born muslim.

pl help me"

Tayyab talu — August 23, 2010 @ 5:10 PM

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