Koranic Inheritance Paper
Uploaded by StopSpamming1 on 01.05.2011
Transcript:
Hi guys,
It seems that criticising the inheritance verses in the Koran has sparked some interest
within Muslims, who all seem to think they understand them, but when pushed for explanations
refer to others and essentially, my own research. Why is it that I need to do the research to
deflate the claims Muslims make about their own book? Why don't THEY come up with a clear
and precise line of reasoning and proof?
A "helpful" Muslim called orgolioitalia has come to the rescue. His name always conjures
up the wonderful smell of olive trees in the Italian Tuscany,
but let's concentrate on the issue at hand. He pointed me to a comprehensive and intellectually
stimulating paper on the inheritance laws of the Koran.
It is written by an Assoc. Prof. Dr. Eng. Halis Aydemir from Erzerum in Eastern Turkey.
I remember the city well, as I had a near fatal car crash near there, when 2 trucks
approached us - side-by-side. Not a pleasant memory at all.
But the guy writing it is the issue, not some stupid, Turkish truck drivers. Our good doctor
even has a Wikipedia page, albeit marked for deletion, as the academic claims are unsubstantiated.
I was initially in awe of this proper textual analysis of the 3 verses in the Koran regulating
inheritance, spread over 415 pages. His page numbering seems to be a bit of a problem as
the pdf has 415 pages, yet his pages are numbered down to 503, leaving me wondering what is
in those almost 100 missing pages.
Reading this document I found everything that an analyst can dream of and the tables at
the end were comprehensive and convincing.
I was close to deleting my inheritance video to take time to have a longer think about
this and verify my own approach, when I spotted the catch.
It's a simple magic trick, the mechanism of which I remember James Randi talking about:
deception, refocusing, deceit and distraction, all required to perform a magic trick. And
this paper is just that: a simple magic trick.
And now I know why his academic credentials are restricted to the Social Sciences of the
Hadith. and his Associate Professorship is on Narration Theories and that the title of
his document on inheritance is "Division of Inheritance SAMPLES LOOKING FOR A PUBLISHER".
Yet it is listed under books on his Wikipedia entry. But I don't want to launch an ad hominem
here as the contents might still be better than the academic credentials and presentation.
Reading the paper, I loved the initial setup and the clear presentation of the verses in
the Koran and the supplementary texts of the ahadith.
I loved the structured approach of his grouping of heirs and the associated verses.
I loved the clear correlation of the groups and their corresponding verses.
I absolutely loved the rational thinking behind the starting off simple and then digging in
deeper to the more intricate examples. It was too good to be true.
And then, after reading it for the 5th time, I realised that it was. It was too good to
be true. I now realised that the building up of the
premisses was the distraction that James Randi mentioned. I realised that the apparently
so logical approach was actually the deception.
I realised that he managed to smuggle in a translation of an Arabic word which he interprets
as meaning "however".
Regardless of whether that word can in fact mean however, he uses it to split an inheritance
into phases. So that if there are 3 daughters, they inherit 2/3 rds of an estate. And THEN,
the parents get 1/6 th each. And THEN anyone else. Which reduces the portions and makes
an oversubscription very unlikely.
What this means is that the Koran would have a structure like an inverted triangle working
top down. BUT - yes, there's a but - the Koran is NOT structured or logical.
The estate in this model is sliced up into portions top down.
So as the slices are assigned to a person or a group of persons, the size of the slices
decreases.
But the Koran does nothing to support this model.
And what happens if you have contradicting verses?
4:12: If a man or woman have no heir, but have a brother or a sister, to each of the
two a sixth; 4:176: If a man perishes having no children,
but he has a sister, she shall receive a half of what he leaves
Is it "first come, first serve"?
Or is the "or" in 4:12 "brother OR sister" interpreted as "and" this time around - since
"and/"or" are so flexibly utilised - thus making 4:12 inapplicable as a brother is present?
All what Dr. Aydemir is doing is making sure the estate is not oversubscribed, leaving
the remaining portion to the community. That's the whole trick. The fact that it does not
accurately divide up the estate does not phase him the least. And the title page itself contains
a safety net: "No Error in Qur'an According to Qur'an".
Also, if I enter any of his models or examples into the Islamic Inheritance Calculator, it
ALWAYS displays different results, showing that the Koran does NOT accurately define
inheritance, but leaves it up to us poor humans to come up with a solution.
In a further step, Dr. Aydemir introduces direct and indirect shares, catering for what
is not covered in the Koran, so that the onus is again on humans to make up for the inaccuracies
of the book. I am certain the good doctor would be able to spend hours or entire books
trying to explain his apologetics, but at the end of the day, the question I ask at
this stage will remain unanswered: why, if the Koran was created by a perfect god and
is so eloquent and comprehensive, does it require human intervention to make it better?
Half of Dr. Aydemir's paper consists of templates, which should have been included in the Koran
to make inheritance clear and precise - alas they are not. All we are left with, are 3
badly constructed religious verses.
The biggest joke is in his conclusion, where he brazenly and unashamedly claims that the
division in these verses is totally systematic and precise as every heir is adequately considered,
still leaving sufficient flexibility for complicated situations. And then he applauds the eloquent
language used.
Now why did I have problems understanding these eloquent sentences:
1. you know not which out of them is nearer in profit to you.
2. she shall receive a half of what he leaves, and he is her heir if she has no children.
Why does he think other humans can't think and that nobody will ever look at his explanations
critically? My own conclusion is that this is just another attempt at rescuing the poorly
written text of the Koran and the haphazard distribution of an estate which only works
to a certain extent and only when humans intervene and improve the decrees.
Thank you for your time.
It seems that criticising the inheritance verses in the Koran has sparked some interest
within Muslims, who all seem to think they understand them, but when pushed for explanations
refer to others and essentially, my own research. Why is it that I need to do the research to
deflate the claims Muslims make about their own book? Why don't THEY come up with a clear
and precise line of reasoning and proof?
A "helpful" Muslim called orgolioitalia has come to the rescue. His name always conjures
up the wonderful smell of olive trees in the Italian Tuscany,
but let's concentrate on the issue at hand. He pointed me to a comprehensive and intellectually
stimulating paper on the inheritance laws of the Koran.
It is written by an Assoc. Prof. Dr. Eng. Halis Aydemir from Erzerum in Eastern Turkey.
I remember the city well, as I had a near fatal car crash near there, when 2 trucks
approached us - side-by-side. Not a pleasant memory at all.
But the guy writing it is the issue, not some stupid, Turkish truck drivers. Our good doctor
even has a Wikipedia page, albeit marked for deletion, as the academic claims are unsubstantiated.
I was initially in awe of this proper textual analysis of the 3 verses in the Koran regulating
inheritance, spread over 415 pages. His page numbering seems to be a bit of a problem as
the pdf has 415 pages, yet his pages are numbered down to 503, leaving me wondering what is
in those almost 100 missing pages.
Reading this document I found everything that an analyst can dream of and the tables at
the end were comprehensive and convincing.
I was close to deleting my inheritance video to take time to have a longer think about
this and verify my own approach, when I spotted the catch.
It's a simple magic trick, the mechanism of which I remember James Randi talking about:
deception, refocusing, deceit and distraction, all required to perform a magic trick. And
this paper is just that: a simple magic trick.
And now I know why his academic credentials are restricted to the Social Sciences of the
Hadith. and his Associate Professorship is on Narration Theories and that the title of
his document on inheritance is "Division of Inheritance SAMPLES LOOKING FOR A PUBLISHER".
Yet it is listed under books on his Wikipedia entry. But I don't want to launch an ad hominem
here as the contents might still be better than the academic credentials and presentation.
Reading the paper, I loved the initial setup and the clear presentation of the verses in
the Koran and the supplementary texts of the ahadith.
I loved the structured approach of his grouping of heirs and the associated verses.
I loved the clear correlation of the groups and their corresponding verses.
I absolutely loved the rational thinking behind the starting off simple and then digging in
deeper to the more intricate examples. It was too good to be true.
And then, after reading it for the 5th time, I realised that it was. It was too good to
be true. I now realised that the building up of the
premisses was the distraction that James Randi mentioned. I realised that the apparently
so logical approach was actually the deception.
I realised that he managed to smuggle in a translation of an Arabic word which he interprets
as meaning "however".
Regardless of whether that word can in fact mean however, he uses it to split an inheritance
into phases. So that if there are 3 daughters, they inherit 2/3 rds of an estate. And THEN,
the parents get 1/6 th each. And THEN anyone else. Which reduces the portions and makes
an oversubscription very unlikely.
What this means is that the Koran would have a structure like an inverted triangle working
top down. BUT - yes, there's a but - the Koran is NOT structured or logical.
The estate in this model is sliced up into portions top down.
So as the slices are assigned to a person or a group of persons, the size of the slices
decreases.
But the Koran does nothing to support this model.
And what happens if you have contradicting verses?
4:12: If a man or woman have no heir, but have a brother or a sister, to each of the
two a sixth; 4:176: If a man perishes having no children,
but he has a sister, she shall receive a half of what he leaves
Is it "first come, first serve"?
Or is the "or" in 4:12 "brother OR sister" interpreted as "and" this time around - since
"and/"or" are so flexibly utilised - thus making 4:12 inapplicable as a brother is present?
All what Dr. Aydemir is doing is making sure the estate is not oversubscribed, leaving
the remaining portion to the community. That's the whole trick. The fact that it does not
accurately divide up the estate does not phase him the least. And the title page itself contains
a safety net: "No Error in Qur'an According to Qur'an".
Also, if I enter any of his models or examples into the Islamic Inheritance Calculator, it
ALWAYS displays different results, showing that the Koran does NOT accurately define
inheritance, but leaves it up to us poor humans to come up with a solution.
In a further step, Dr. Aydemir introduces direct and indirect shares, catering for what
is not covered in the Koran, so that the onus is again on humans to make up for the inaccuracies
of the book. I am certain the good doctor would be able to spend hours or entire books
trying to explain his apologetics, but at the end of the day, the question I ask at
this stage will remain unanswered: why, if the Koran was created by a perfect god and
is so eloquent and comprehensive, does it require human intervention to make it better?
Half of Dr. Aydemir's paper consists of templates, which should have been included in the Koran
to make inheritance clear and precise - alas they are not. All we are left with, are 3
badly constructed religious verses.
The biggest joke is in his conclusion, where he brazenly and unashamedly claims that the
division in these verses is totally systematic and precise as every heir is adequately considered,
still leaving sufficient flexibility for complicated situations. And then he applauds the eloquent
language used.
Now why did I have problems understanding these eloquent sentences:
1. you know not which out of them is nearer in profit to you.
2. she shall receive a half of what he leaves, and he is her heir if she has no children.
Why does he think other humans can't think and that nobody will ever look at his explanations
critically? My own conclusion is that this is just another attempt at rescuing the poorly
written text of the Koran and the haphazard distribution of an estate which only works
to a certain extent and only when humans intervene and improve the decrees.
Thank you for your time.