Is there anything in the Koran saying that those 72 virgins will, um, be willing to change their status once a faithful Muslim arrives? I mean, if not, what male adult would really want to spend eternity with, what, 72 12-14 female middle/junior high school females?
A lot of non-Muslims seem to get really hung up on this particular aspect of material pleasure in the promised afterlife, but it’s not that different from, say, descriptions of Gan 'Eden or the paradise of the righteous in the Jewish Midrash:
The jewish verse you quote describes something lavish but not suggestive in any way.
Here’s some relevant quotes:
"A houri is a most beautiful young woman with a transparent body. The marrow of her bones is visible like the interior lines of pearls and rubies. She looks like red wine in a white glass. She is of white color, and free from the routine physical disabilities of an ordinary woman such as menstruation, menopause, urinal and offal discharge, child bearing and the related pollution. A houri is a girl of tender age, having large breasts which are round (pointed), and not inclined to dangle. Houris dwell in palaces of splendid surroundings.
— Al-Tirmidhi, Jami` at-Tirmidhi
Ibn Kathir also stated that Muhammad confirmed that there would be sexual intercourse in Paradise.
Kathir (2000). “The Reward of Those on the Right After”.
Taken together with the fact that every believer gets more than one Houri as their wife, well what other conclusion can you come to?
I wasn’t claiming that those Midrash passages were “suggestive”, if by that you mean sexual. I was just pointing out that both the Muslim and Jewish descriptions of Paradise emphasize the material pleasure and luxury of the surroundings.
Anyway, there are Jewish writings that describe copulation occurring in Paradise where the righteous pass their afterlife, such as the Seder Gan 'Eden:
So you see, the concept of there being sexual intercourse for the spirits of the dead in the afterlife is not an exclusively Muslim one. Nor does it seem to have been a particularly daring notion for any medieval Abrahamic religion except Christianity, which of course has always tended to equate sexual purity with celibacy.
Medieval mystical Jewish and Muslim visions of Paradise seem to have been more straightforwardly hedonic in conceiving the material aspects of the afterlife: Paradise is where the righteous souls are eternally joyful, sex is joyful, so the righteous souls have sex, big deal.
Modern western culture and spirituality, of course, have been heavily influenced by Christian thought, which is why the idea of sex in heaven seems so shocking and almost perverse even to many people nowadays who don’t consider themselves Christian.
Apparently, according to the same wikipedia article, you can also come to the conclusion that those martyrs will be presented 72 white raisins (along with wine, etc…) rather than 72 virgins. :smack:
Not engaging in the Jihad until I get some clarifications about this raisins/virgins thing. I hate contracts with tricky clauses like that.
Also, for potential jihadists who happen to be homosexual, there should be pretty boys too (still according to the same wikipedia article). So, don’t renounce just because you have no interest in girls.
Cristoph Luxenberg is the penname of a scholar who wrote “The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Qur’an” to much controversy. He argued that the Qur’an was based on Syro-Aramaic Christian texts that got haphazardly translated into classical Arabic by the compilers of the Qur’an, leading to many misinterpretations - the raisins thing being one.
It’s a very interesting work despite its general inaccessibility, more because of what it represents in terms of how Qur’anic scholarship in the west is evolving than in the correctness of his theory. Any of his conclusions should be taken with a huge grain of salt, and in any case should not obscure the fact that recorded Islamic civilizations have not operated under his assumptions.
Similarly, the contention in the (awful) Wikipedia article that there are also male houris that believing women get to have sex with in heaven is new to me, I’d be very interested to see if anyone was suggesting that before 1900. The mainstream historical scholarly understanding, IIRC, is that women are entitled to be with their husbands only in the afterlife, and may be made very beautiful if they were virtuous. All men still receive houris, though, not just martyrs.
Well, coach, that’s just the New Jerusalem, I should hope there are some nice suburbs for those whose tastes are not too urban ;). And it doesn’t say WHAT you’ll be doing there in between chanting praise to the Big Chief.
One thing to be observed when looking at this theme, is that many parts of the common Judeo-Christian-Islamic interpretations of “life in paradise” are NOT taken from the core Scripture (Bible, Qur’an) but from ancillary texts (Midrash, Hadith), or from commentary of various rabbis/imams/church fathers, or even from outright fiction (Dante) or mere folk tradition sometimes from pagan times.
I wasn’t claiming that those Midrash passages were “suggestive”, if by that you mean sexual. I was just pointing out that both the Muslim and Jewish descriptions of Paradise emphasize the material pleasure and luxury of the surroundings.