“At least 40 millions Muslim youth in the Muslim world’s religious schools, called madrasas, are avidly memorizing the entire Koran plus a generally extremist body of related traditions—the hadiths” (Don Richardson, Secrets of the Koran, p. 69).
Pietism and Art
“In contrast, from the Middle Ages through the time of the Reformation up to around 1800 when spiritualistic pietism began to drive beauty out of the church (as if one can have inward beauty without the outward signs of it), there may have been simplicity but always beauty in the things Christians did. That was …
House of War
“Both the Koran and the hadiths effectively divide all of mankind into two camps. Muslim commentators call them the ‘House of Islam’ and the ‘House of War.’ Translation: Anyone who is not a Muslim is assumed to be rejecting Islam. Rejecting Islam equates to attacking Islam, Mohammed and even God. Attacking Islam makes one its …
Religion of Peace
“Multiple unabashed Muslim sources varyingly describe Mohammed himself presiding over the beheading of at least 500 Jewish men, five at a time. Their bodies were buried in a long ditch. Other Muslim sources place the number of Jewish men slain as high as 900. Their wives and daughters became sex slaves for Muslim men . …
Humility Produces Great Art
“But even if artists did not have the high honor we tend to grant them today . . . they did make beautiful things—so beautiful, in fact, that we so many centuries later still go to look at their works and often pay much to have their works restored in order to hand them down …
Pious Mutilation
“Islam’s widespread practice of amputating the clitoris and sometimes part or even all of the vulva from the genitalia of Muslim women, affirmed in a hadith by Mohammed himself, most like also traces back to the founder’s deliberate abuse of sex to lure pagan males into his cult” (Don Richardson, Secrets of the Koran, p. …
When Art Was Real
“The role of artists was not always what it is today. In most cultures, including our own before the new period that began somewhere between 1500 and 1800, artists were primarily craftsmen: art meant making things according to certain rules, the rules of the trade. Arts were accomplished workers who knew how to carve a …
Coolness Quotient (CQ)
Finally someone came up with a way to objectively measure this. I was quite pleased. Take the “coolness” test now. HT: David Field
Tell Me More About This Eternal Life
“In the Koran, he repeatedly redefines Judeo-Christianity’s heaven as an enormous God-owned bordello in the sky. In that heavenly brothel, loyal Muslim men—especially those paying the door price of martyrdom—would find a host of virgins called houris, who would forever satisfy all their sexual cravings (see Koran 38:51; 44:54; 55:55-74; 56: 22, 34-36)” (Don Richardson, …
High and Lonely Destiny-ism
“It has been like this since the eighteenth century when the old concept of the artist as craftsman began to be exchanged for a concept that saw him as both a gifted genius and a social and economic outcast” (H.R. Rookmaaker, Art Needs No Justification, p. 5).