Islam Class

Once of the classes I am taking this semester focuses on the history of Islam. Before I started the class, I thought I had a decent grasp of the subject. WRONG. I know nothing.

This is what I knew: there are two main branches of Islam, the sunni and the Shiite who are still arguing over shit that doesn’t matter. A caliph is an Islamic emperor. There are no caliphs today. The Koran is the holy book of Islam. The Sharia is the legal word of Islam. Muslims as expected to renounce all other gods, pray five times a day, give alms to the poor, not eat pork, and attempt to make a the haji; the pilgrimage to Mecca to the Ka’ba. I have learned that these are gross simplifications.

The subject matter is fascinating but incredibly complicated. Most people have heard about the 70 virgins waiting in paradise for a muslim who commits jihad. Well the exact word used to describe the women is “hurries”. Our professor spent about half an hour trying to explain it. I am still confused. This is what I’ve got: the word may mean “handmaid” but was mistranslated leading to the “virgin”. Kind of like how there was no word besides “virgin” to refer to a young woman for Mary, when the bible was being translated which created some awkward misconceptions.

Then there was the day when he tried to explain the concept of Sunnah and the different schools of interpretation. Sunnah, from what I understand, is not part of the Koran. Its stories about Muhammad meant to demonstrate how to be a good muslim. Here’s what I learned from the lesson: There are many different ways of interpreting Sunnah. They have names and are clearly defined. I do not know how they differ.

Despite teaching an incredibly confusing class, our professor is filled with lots of little gems of knowledge. Were you aware that the Aramaic version of the bible says that Moses died when “God gave him a kiss” meaning took his breath away? Literally! Did you know that according to Islam, Jesus did not die on the cross? How did he die, you ask? I don’t know. I was scribbling information down furiously and missed the answer. Were you aware that we know next to nothing about Muhammad’s life? We don’t know the exact years of his birth or death. We don’t know how old he was when he married or when he fled to Mecca. We also don’t know exactly how many wives or sons he had. Today we were informed that the concept of marriage differed greatly during that time period. How? I don’t know.

Here’s some more random knowledge I have acquired: the ‘sem” part of the word Semitic refers to Shem, the first son of Noah. There are/were hundreds of thousands of semitic languages. Aramic was the most prominent when Muhammad lived. There are currently more Aramaic speaks in the U.S. (mainly in L.A.) then in the whole Middle East. Also, the Aramaic in Mel Gibson’s move Passion Of The Christ was crap. And Harold Bloom is an idiot who knows nothing about Coptic but he thinks he does.

Good times. Glad I took this class.