The Koran

Scriptural studies and interpretations of the Jewish and Christian scriptures played a key role in loosening the church’s domination of the intellectual and cultural life of Europe and America. The Muslim clerics knowing this are well aware that once the Koran is questioned, it will be subjected to the same scrutiny. And why not? In the 1970s, John Edward Wansbrough an American historian who taught at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, wrote that subjecting the Koran to “analysis by the instruments and techniques of biblical criticism is virtually unknown.” Wansbrough wrote that the Koran is a composite of different voices compiled over hundreds of years. Scholars agree that there is no evidence of the Koran until 691 ─ 59 years after Muhammad’s death ─ when the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem was built, carrying several Koranic inscriptions.

These inscriptions differed from the version of the Koran that had been handed down to date, suggesting that the text may have been evolving in the last decade of the seventh century. More significantly, much of what we know today as Islam ─ the lives and sayings of the prophet ─ is based on texts from between 130 and 300 years after Muhammad died. As a result, some scholars suggest that Muhammad, like Jesus before him, was not a founder of a new religion but a preacher hailing the coming of a messiah.

Wansbrough believed Muhammad, was manufactured, a myth, and that Judeo-Christian scriptures were adapted for the Arab perspective

Many of the early Koranic texts refer to the followers of Muhammad as Hagarenes, and the “tribe of Ishmael,” the descendants of Hagar, the servant girl that the Jewish patriarch Abraham used to father his son Ishmael.

The undisputed fact is that Muhammad was an illiterate camel trader, and that he received his revelations in Mecca, a remote and sparsely populated part of Arabia far from any centers of monotheistic thought, in an environment of idol-worshipping bedouins. It will be interesting when historians finally explain how monotheistic stories and ideas found their way into the Koran. “There are only two possibilities,” said Patricia Crone from the School for Oriental and African Studies. “Either there had to be substantial numbers of Jews and Christians in Mecca, or the Koran had to have been composed somewhere else.”

The Bible

Abraham, Moses and many other prominent figures of the Old Testament probably never existed as portrayed. Especially David. He was probably a provincial leader whose reputation was overblown by spin doctors. The story of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt didn’t happen and the walls of Jericho never came tumbling down, according to archaeologists who have searched in Israel for decades. The theories have gained acceptance among non-Orthodox rabbis. “Etz Hayim” (Tree of Life), a new Torah and commentary published at the dawn of the 21st century, represents the latest findings from archaeology, philology, anthropology and the study of ancient cultures. The idea is to deal with the reality that the Bible is a human document rather than divine.

The evolutionary knowledge and objective of the Old Testament has enabled Jews and the state of Israel to survive centuries of political, religious and military persecution. Israel is the 100th smallest country with less than 1/1,000th of the world’s population. It has been engaged in several wars with an implacable enemy that seeks its destruction. Its economy is continuously strained by having to spend more per capita on its own protection than any country on earth. But it can lay claim to the following: the cell phone was developed by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola; most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel; the Pentium MMX chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel; both the Pentium-4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel; voice mail technology was developed in Israel; both Microsoft and Cisco systems built their only non-U.S. R&D facilities in Israel; the technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.

Israel has the fourth-largest air force in the world ─ after the U.S., Russia and China. In addition to a large variety of other aircraft, Israel has an aerial arsenal of more than 250 F-16s. That is the largest fleet of F-16 aircraft outside the U.S.

U.S. officials now look to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats; Israel’s $10-billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbours combined. Israel has the world’s highest percentage of home computers; Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world; Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin ─ 109 per 10,000 people ─ and has one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed. Israel designed the airline industry’s most impenetrable flight security. Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because this was achieved in an area considered mainly desert. Israel has more museums per capita than any other country. Relative to population, Israel is the largest immigrant absorbing nation on earth. Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,500, exceeding that of the U.K. ─ When it comes to the number of Nobel Peace Prizes won by Israel compared to the Arab World ─ like 80 to one. Pro rata for population, Israel is making a greater contribution to humanity than any other nation on earth.

Isn’t it time the Koran and New Testament were updated and treated as human, rather than divine, documents so that the lives and living standards of people who live by their dictates were improved as well?

Talk Turkey

Looming over the whole EU process is the question of what to do about NATO stalwart Turkey. Turkey is in many ways a schizophrenic country. The Turkish republic was founded in 1923 in reaction to the Ottoman Empire and defined itself in stark contrast to it. The early republicans associated the empire with everything that was archaic, religious and backward. They modeled the republic on modern, secular and progressive lines, similar to those they saw in Europe. It became the first secular Islamic state.

It remains a secular Muslim democracy with powerful military generals who ensure that Muslim fundamentalism is reigned in. This was self-evident again in May 2007, after the military backed by secularists derailed former Islamist Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul’s parliamentary campaign for president. More than a million pro-secular demonstrators took to the streets of Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, Canakkale, Manisa and many others.

The military establishment had issued a public reminder that it was the ultimate defender of the secular Turkish state. The army has removed four civilian governments in 50 years in a country that hopes for European Union membership. Turkey has been trying to get into the European trade bloc since 1959, and has achieved a comprehensive association agreement with it.

Many European governments have never considered Turkey to be part of Europe. Why not? From the prospective of geopolitical location, Turkey occupies a central stage in the southern belt of Eurasia, at the intersection of Asia and Europe, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, and the Balkans, the Middle East and the Caucasus. This is the southern passage between West Asia and Eastern Europe. As a result, Turkey is an East and South European and West Asian country at the same time. Turks have fought and died with American and European soldiers in the Korean conflict and have been prepared to do so again if called upon. Turkey offered to send 10,000 troops for peacekeeping in Iraq but were turned down when the Kurds objected. They let the U.S. use their air bases for NATO-and U.N.-approved military campaigns. In Afghanistan it took over the command of the international peace keeping force in 2004.

Fickle Europe

Europe is an unpredictable and unreliable U.S. partner. More than 20 European states helped the CIA set up a global web of human rights abuses by setting up clandestine prisons and secret flights to hold and transfer terror suspects after 9/11 to countries where they faced torture in breach of the continent’s human rights treaties. First, Europe is a willing partner and then it squelches on the deal. Europe is a continental basket case. The description France’s “national psychiatrist” Gerard Mermet, gave France applies to the Union it founded. They both suffer from a collective form of three mental illnesses: paranoia, schizophrenia and hypochondria. Europe is terminally ill.

The European Union’s hypocrisy has hit a 21st-century cyber Berlin Wall and imploded. As a result, Western Europe experienced a prolonged economic stagnation at the dawn of the 21st century. The International Monetary Fund estimated the GDP growth for 2005 at 1.6 percent, from 2.5 percent in 2004, while growth in the 12-member euro-zone fell 0.8 percent year on year to 1.2 percent – a stagnation that can turn into a depression. Should that happen, then pluralist democracy there may be at serious risk. The EU is much like the Byzantine Empire before it disappeared – a weak center with limited means to pursue its interests and stabilize its periphery. The EU is rudderless and directionless since its draft constitution was defeated in the French and Dutch referendums in 2005. The defeat of the “European Dream” at the ballot box, continued to perpetuate European inertia in the face of globalization, protectionism and a rise in national self-interest. European solidarity is an illusory dream. Of the 15 “old” EU members, 12 have refused free access to their labor markets to eastern Europeans. The images of the cheap Polish plumbers invading France that helped defeat the constitutional referendum, loom larger than life. An EU without the free flow of laborers across national boundaries – as France advocates ─ is a non starter.

The carrots held out by the EU to future aspiring members are not juicy enough to motivate political elites to undertake the painful reforms required to grow or survive. Europe has to go back to the drawing boards and be refounded. “One must unfortunately note that Europe seems to be going down a road which could lead it to take its leave from history,” Pope Benedict XVI warned calling Europeans who want less children “dangerous” individuals. Europe is searching for a new identity that is relevant to the 21st-century.