Who Were the Qur'anic Pagans? | What does Kafara Mean? | Dr. Juan Cole
2024 ж. 5 Қаң.
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This is a clip about the meanings of the words kafara and kafir in the Qur'an. This is taken from a longer interview with Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan. You can find the full interview here: kzhead.info/sun/e9uDmLdxpJx4lWg/bejne.html
The issue with Dr. Cole's analysis (and thst of most historical linguists) is they do not give more weight to a text's own use/nomeclature of a word. It's all very well puzzleing out what a word "should" mean in a text by reference to outside sources, but ultimately more weight should be given to text's own semantic field surrounding said word. So i agree with Izutsu far more than Cole on this issue; the Qur'an reshaped words for its own use, revived others for its own use with new conotation, abd practically invented whole new terms (mu'min) for example
❤❤❤❤.
@@perfectdawah4535 Hey Salam Muji!
Im about to complete your audio book, “THE BIBLE AND THE QUR’AN. A comprehensive study.” This book was so good! I loved it. I recommended it to friends interested in the subject. Dr Gabriel Reynolds, do you have any other recommendations, of your books or others?
Thank you. A great history book on early Islam is Robert Hoyland's In God's Path. I've also written Emergence of Islam (get the second edition), available on kindle and audible.
@@ExploringtheQuranandtheBible thank you, I will get both.
Juan cole is a great expert. Can we see the whole video? Interesting views... his likening kfra to sin is found in Islamic theological debates.... and kufr Duna kufr
The link is in the description.
The word kufr should be better understood as 'denying the truth' as opposed to disbelief.
And what should we consider " the truth " in any context ?
@@ultrasignificantfootnote3378 Good question. Truth is what is true based on facts and reality. For example, a kafir would be denying an evolutionary process to our existence and believing in a miraculous Adam, or denying human rights when he observes persecution. This elaborates further on what and who are designated as such: Kufr = Denial or rejection of the truth = Concealing the truth = Ingratitude = Choosing to live in the darkness of ignorance = Hiding or covering something = Closing eyes to the light of truth = Stubborn denial of the truth = Concealing the truth = Knowingly oppose the truth = Uncritical adherence to ancestral views = Trying to be with the majority without discernment. Kafir = One given to Kufr = One who adamantly denies or opposes the truth = Commonly translated as ‘infidel’ = Derivatively and positively, a farmer who hides the seed under the soil (57:20). Therefore, Kufr or Kafir does not apply to the unaware, anyone to whom the Message has not been conveyed or reached.
@@ultrasignificantfootnote3378 pure monotheism
@@zaidhosni5114 Is there only one supernatural force in pure monotheism ?
@@ultrasignificantfootnote3378 reflect to universe , rain , day and night and complexity of its system, if your phone come from somewhere and someone create it, how about ourself that more complicated than our technology creation, who maintain our existenct?
Kafir means reject. As we see in Quran 2:256 Kafir means rejecting the tyrants not disbelieving in them. Rejecting Allah's commands is Kufr not rejecting his existence as we see in Quran 16:83 when Allah says most disbelievers are kafir not all of them.
The Aramaic word for God is "Alaha". It's the word Isa PBUH used. Sounds familiar? Written without the confusing vowels it is written A-L-H ܐ ܠܗܐ (alap-lamed-he) as found in Targum or in Tanakh (Daniel, Ezra), Syriac Aramaic (Peshitta), reduced from the Arabic original (of which Aramaic is a dialect continuum as will be explained) it is written in the Arabic script 'A-L-L-H' (Aleph-Lam-Lam-Ha) add an A before the last H for vocalization. The word God in another rendition in Hebrew ʾĕlōah is derived from a base ʾilāh, an Arabic word, written without confusing vowel it is A-L-H in the Arabic script, pronounced ilah not eloah. Hebrew dropped the glottal stop and mumbled it, aramic mumbled a little less and it became elaha. Infact both are written written A-L-H in Arabic, it is pronounced i in Arabic and not A because it is an Alef with hamza below (إ أ ) They are two different forms of Alef. And it mean "a god", it is the non definitive form of A-L-L-H, in which the Alef is without a glottal stop/hamza,(ا), but this kind of nuance is lost in the dialect continua. infact "YHWH" itself is an Arabic word as discussed by Professor. Israel Knohl (Professor of Biblical studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) in the paper" YHWH: The Original Arabic Meaning of the Name." 'kafara" means deniers, it means for all who deny the oneness of the creator, it can also mean 'ingrates' for any who deny him after having been gifted life are but ingrates. It is a technical term not an abstraction. Arabic is Exact, not Abstract. This can be seen from the epistemological connection between the two. And it refers to those who deny the aforementioned. jesus as his name is often misspelled due to the lack of the ayin sound in Greek, which was rendered to Iesous, coupling the nearest sound to ayin, same letter found in 'Iraq', which sounds entirely different in Arabic form 'Iran' in Arabic, with the -ous Greek suffix that Greeks typically add to their names 'HerodotOS', 'PlotinUS', 'AchelOUS' and later mumbled into a J. The yeshua rendition of Isa (his name in the Qur'an) PBUH which is purported to be the name of Jesus is KNOWN to had been taken from greek. Western Syriac also use "Isho". Western Aramaic (separate from Syriac which is a dialect of Eastern Aramaic) use "Yeshu". Western Syriac has been separate from Western Aramaic for about 1000 years. And sounds don't even match up. Syriac is a Christian liturgical language yet the four letters of the name of Jesus «ܝܫܘܥ» [ = Judeo-Babylonian Aramaic: «ישוע» ] sounds totally different in West vs East Syriac, viz. vocalized akin to Christian Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic «ܝܶܫܽܘܥ» (Yēšūʿ) in West Syriac, but pronounced more akin to Muslim Arabic Quran character name Isa in East Syriac «ܝܑܼܫܘܿܥ» (ʾĪšōʿ). The reason for this confusion is their dropping of phonemes. Only someone that has no idea what the letters are or how they sound would have a name ending in a pharyngeal fricative like the ayin, if it were to be used in a name it would have had to be in the beginning, thus the Arabic rendition is the correct one. An example in English is how the appended -d is a common error amongst the English pronouncing Gaelic names. The name Donald arose from a common English mispronunciation of the Gaelic name Donal. Just how it is with donal becoming donald and the two becoming distinct and the original being regarded as something seperate so too did Isa PBUH turn to Iesous turn to jesus and when they tried going back to the original they confused it for yeshua ( ysu is how it is actually written) for Isa PBUH ( 3'eysah ) Schlözer in his preparation for the Arabia expedition in 1781 coined the term Semitic language: "From the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, from Mesopotamia to Arabia ruled one language, as is well known. Thus Syrians, Babylonians, Hebrews, and Arabs were one people (ein Volk). Phoenicians (Hamites) also spoke this language, which I would like to call the Semitic (die Semitische)." -Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German By Han F. Vermeulen. He was only half right though, Arabic is the only corollary to "proto-semitic", infact the whole semitic classification is nonsensical as will be shown. "protosemetic" Alphabet (28), Arabic Alphabet (28), Latin transliteration, hebrew (22) 𐩠 𐩡 𐩢 𐩣 𐩤 𐩥 𐩦 𐩧 𐩨 𐩩 𐩪 𐩫 𐩬 𐩭 𐩮 𐩰 𐩱 𐩲 𐩳 𐩴 𐩵 𐩶 𐩷 𐩸 𐩹 𐩺 𐩻 𐩼 ا ب ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن ه و ي A b t ṯ j h kh d ḏ r z s sh ṣ ḍ ṭ ẓ ʿ ġ f q k l m n h w y א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ ל מ נ ס ע פ צ ק ר ש ת Merged phonemes in hebrew and aramaic: ح, خ (h, kh) merged into only kh consonant remain س, ش (s, sh) merged into only Shin consonant remaining ط, ظ (ṭ/teth, ẓ) merged into only ṭ/teth consonant remaining ص, ض (ṣ, ḍ/Tsad ) merged into only ḍ/Tsad consonant remaining ع, غ (3'ayn, Ghayn) merged into a reducted ayin consonant remaining ت, ث (t/taw, th) merged into only t/taw consonant remaining The reason why the protoS alphabet here is 28 and not 29, is because the supposed extra letter is simply a س written in a different position, but it was shoehorned to obfuscated. In Arabic letter shapes are different depending on whether they are in the beginning , middle or end of a word. As a matter of fact, all of the knowledge needed for deciphering ancient texts and their complexity was derived from the Qur'an. It was by analyzing the syntactic structure of the Qur'an that the Arabic root system was developed. This system was first attested to in Kitab Al-Ayin, the first intralanguage dictionary of its kind, which preceded the Oxford English dictionary by 800 years. It was through this development that the concept of Arabic roots was established and later co-opted into the term 'semitic root,' allowing the decipherment of ancient scripts. In essence, they quite literally copied and pasted the entirety of the Arabic root. Hebrew had been dead, as well as all the other dialects of Arabic, until being 'revived' in a Frankensteinian fashion in the 18th and 19th centuries. The entire region spoke basically the same language, with mumbled dialect continuums spread about, and Arabic is the oldest form from which all these dialects branched off. As time passed, the language gradually became more degenerate, Language; When one looks at the actual linguistics, one will find that many were puzzled by the opposite, that is, how the other "semetic" languages were more "evolved" than Arabic, while Arabic had archaic features, not only archaic compared to bibilical Hebrew, Ethiopic, "Aramaic" contemporary "semetic" languages, but even archaic compared to languages from ancient antiquity; Ugaritic, Akkadain. What is meant here by Archaic is not what most readers think, it is Archaic not in the sense that it is simple, but rather that it is complex (think Latin to pig Latin or Italian or Old English, which had genders and case endings to modern English), not only grammatically, but also phonetically; All the so called semitic languages are supposed to have evolved from protosemetic, the Alphabet for protosemitic is that of the so called Ancient South Arabian (which interestingly corresponds with the traditional Arabic origins account) and has 28 Phonemes. Arabic has 28 phonemes. Hebrew has 22, same as Aramaic, and other "semitic" languages. Now pause for a second and think about it, how come Arabic, a language that is supposed to have come so late has the same number of letters as a language that supposedly predates it by over a millennium (Musnad script ~1300 BCE). Not only is the glossary of phonemes more diverse than any other semitic language, but the grammar is more complex, containing more cases and retains what's linguists noted for its antiquity, broken plurals. Indeed, a linguist has once noted that if one were to take everything we know about languages and how they develop, Arabic is older than Akkadian (~2500 BCE). And then the Qur'an appeared with the oldest possible form of the language thousands of years later. This is why the Arabs of that time were challenged to produce 10 similar verses, and they couldn't. People think it's a miracle because they couldn't do it, but I think the miracle is the language itself. They had never spoken Arabic, nor has any other language before or since had this mathematical precision. And when I say mathematical, I quite literally mean mathematical. Now how is it that the Qur'an came thousands of years later in an alphabet that had never been recorded before, and in the highest form the language had ever taken? The creator is neither bound by time nor space, therefore the names are uttered as they truly were, in a language that is lexically, syntactically, phonemically, and semantically older than the oldest recorded writing. In fact, that writing appears to have been a simplified version of it. Not only that, but it would be the equivalent of the greatest works of any particular language all appearing in one book, in a perfect script and in the highest form the language could ever take. It is so high in fact, that it had yet to be surpassed despite the fact that over the last millennium the collection of Arabic manuscripts when compared on word-per-word basis in Western Museums alone, when they are compared with the collected Greek and Latin manuscripts combined, the latter does not constitute 1 percent of the former as per German professor Frank Griffel, in addition all in a script that had never been recorded before. Thus, the enlightenment of mankind from barbarism and savagery began, and the age of reason and rationality was born from its study. God did bring down the Qur’an, Mohamed is his Messenger.
Swiss linguist Ferdinand De Saussure in 1879 reconstructed "laryngeals" that had been lost in moden Indo-European languages. De Saussure constructed three "laryngeals": *h1, *h2, and *h3 the exact phonetic quality of these sounds were debated until Danish linguist Hermann Möller (1917), showed that they are infact the same as modern Arabic laryngeals ( less old than Classical Arabic) [Ɂ], [ʕ], and [ħ] - /ʔ/ (ء) , /ʕ/ (ع) and /ħ/ (ح) For instance, while *h1 does not affect the adjacent vowel *e (cf. *h1esti ‘is’), both *h2 and*h3 changed the pronunciation of an adjacent *e in PIE, through a process called laryngeal coloring. Thus, *e > *a next to *h2 (*/h2entí/ → *h2antí ‘front’ > Latin ante ‘before’, Hittite ḫanti ‘in the face’) and *e > *o next to *h3 (cf. */h3erbh-/ → *h3orbh- ‘to move from one social sphere to another’ > Greek orphanos ‘orphaned’) These laryngeals were mostly deleted in the known IE languages, and when they were lost they sometimes altered preceding vowels through processes of compensatory lengthening. For example, *bhuh2tis became *bhūtis “being, existence” (Greek phýsis). There is also similarity between the verbal systems of PIE and Arabic. Both are inflected by the ablaut of the root, together with the addition of an optional suffix and required ending -Suffixes and endings indicate a variety of grammatical information, including voice (for instance, active vs. passive), mood (for instance, indicative vs. imperative), tense (for instance, present vs. past), person (for instance, the speaker vs. the listener), and number (for instance, singular vs. plural). In PIE there were two voices just as in Arabic, although the contrasting functions are slightly different (in PIE there is a distinction between active and mediopassive, while in Arabic it’s active vs. passive). PIE has in general three tense-aspect categories (present, past, and perfect), while Arabic has only two (present and aorist). In PIE the personal endings differ according to the voice whether it is active or middle and according to the tense so we have five sets of personal endings. In Arabic, endings do not differ whether the verb is active or passive but it differs according to the tense whether it is past or present. However Arabic has not only endings but also prefixes added to the beginnings of roots making the system significantly more complex and the best candidate for the Pre-PIE language as not only is the entirety of the PIE system contained in Arabic m,ore so than any living IE language, Arabic has what can be supposed to have been an even older system from which had split before splitting again and becoming the known European languages we have today, only Arabic has the phonemic inventory that would account for the laryengeals as well. Textual criticism in christianity began when the bible was first translated into european vernavular in the 16th century (was translated into Arabic in the 19th century), it is why protestant "reformation" happened. it reached a professional level around the 19-20th century and is still ongoing today, In Islam however it started in the first century. Unlike the Quran, the hadith are transmitted oral accounts which were written 2-3 centuries after they happened and even in the canonical collections of Bukhari and Muslim there are several narrations of the same hadith due to some people paraphrasing and others forgetting part of it. Most of the hadith are without context, this is not to take from the value of hadith as in practice it was the first serious endeavor of having authentication of the historical record. The hadith are transmitted by way of chains of narration, x heard from y who heard from z that .... took place, a study of who x, who y, and who z were and whether what they are saying is true by checking what others had said about them and whether they had indeed met those who they are purported to have taken the accounts from began and so the first "peer review" mechanism took place, all before the internet in the 2nd and 3rd centuries fo the hijra, which unlike the christian calendar has been continously kept, the current gregorian calendar for example was first instanced int he year 535 CE by Dionysius Exiguus, the 25th of December in addition for example being the pagan holdiay of the roman deirty 'Sol Invictus' is clearly shown in the "Chronograph of 354", the earliest christian calendar predating the current one, but I digress, the writing down of hadith was forbidden by the prophet himself for the aforementioned issue (people forgetting, paraphrasing, taking words out of context) only the Quran was ordered to have been written and linguistically they are too far apart, it is clear that the Matn of the hadith, the substance or the wording was altered as the language used seems to be more modern in many instances (Arabic had not changed in any significant way since the Abbassids, 1200 years ago sound as "modern" as things written in the last 50 years. Arabic is the oldest continuously spoken language in the world, the only possible corollary, chinese, has script which has no relation to the actual language hence why Japanese and old vietnamese use it, event the script itself was only codified in the 1700s in the kangxi emperor's dictionary. A miracle in plainsight blinded by familiarity). Hadith for example has several levels of correctness, from Hasan which means "well" to rejected as pertains to the Matn or the substance of the hadith itself, the "isnad" of the Hadith or the chains of transmission / citation also have varying levels from Marfu' meaning quoted without having actually met any of the people in the transmission chain or a second hand account or Mudalas meaning plagarised from another transmitter of hadith without citing and Marfud meaning outright rejected for various reasons, There is another layer of complexity here called ilm-aa-rijal, the study of the bibilogrophy of those in the chains of transmission themselves and their soundness whether objectively by crosschecking where they lived and whome they met or subjectively by seeing what their peers said about them regarding their character. Those unaware of the aforementioned would not only have not been allowed to cite hadith it would have been a criminal offense and there are hadith which clearly contradict one another and one ought not be citing hadith without knowing all other hadith from the colossal hadith collections that were written, even the earliest hadith collection, Musannaf Abdel Razaq Al-Sanani ( 137-211H / 744- 827 CE) and Musannaf of Ibn Abi Shaybah ( 159H-235H / 775-849 CE). for instance had over 53,000 hadith with their chains of transmissions included has yet to be translated into English . Yes, Bukhari and Muslim are taken the most correct as they had the most narrow criterion, but an enormous study is required before citing either one of them. Later scholars such an Al-Darqutni show that there were mistakes made. I say later here though he is still over a millennium old this seriousness of scholarship was the first endeavor of its kind in human history, what became today known as university degrees started with the institutions giving "ijaza" or certificate t transmit hadith and talk about it , indeed they are the origins of the University system we know today. There are texts from the 800's CE debating whether, if one for example were to take a log of wood that was not theirs, make a column out of it and have it as a foundation of a house, later the original owner of the column comes back and demands the log to be retrieved into his custody and refuse monetary compensation ought the judge comply, tear down the structure and give him the log or ought he enforce a monetary compensation. this was 1200 years. Property rights were taken that seriously, you could not simply handwave it and enforce a monetary compensation as that property in question was not attained by proper channels, hence it' s ownership and how much ought be the compensation for it is judicated by its owner and no one else has the right to, not the governor or even the caliph. Stephen Langton, the writer of the Magna Carta (12th century, contemporary with the crusades for a reason) studied in the university of Paris which archives show had plenty of Arabic treatises in its procession, there can be no question about it being inspired by the "Sharia". This scientific method of studying hadith and jurisprudence was developed and already in practice in the 2nd and third centuries of the hijra (around 800 CE) back when most of europe did not have a written script for their vernacular, enormous encyclopedia such as the 40 volume history of Al-Tabari which, averages 400 pages per volume (and is only one of his works) were written, the only corollary of which in the west would have been the "decline and Fall of The Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbons in the 1700s, considered a watershed, a monument of its time, with a span that would have hardly constituted a volume and a half of Al-Tabari's encyclopedia and written a millennium later. Now how is it that the Qur'an came thousands of years in a language that is lexically, syntactically, phonemically, and semantically older than the oldest recorded writing? Now how is it that the Qur'an came thousands of years later in an alphabet that had never been recorded before, and in the highest form the language had ever taken? What started this cognitive revolution, what started this sharp contrast between before Islam and after it, what started the real Enlightenment of humanity? God did bring down the Qur’an, Mohamed is his Messenger. God did bring down the Qur’an, Mohamed is his Messenger. God did bring down the Qur’an, Mohamed is his Messenger. God did bring down the Qur’an, Mohamed is his Messenger.
I think ,what really matters is metaphysics, There hv been many enlightened ones in every times period(past,present future), They defined that experience(of very same truth) in their words , this would be childish and superficial to be fanatic /dogmatic about those words, those words meant for higher truth which cant be expressed in words, still eastern traditions defined it more precisely in straightforward and inclusive manner(truth for people of every level of intellect/tendencies and multiple ways to attain it/realise it/see it)
"Semitic" is just mumbled Arabic, really. Imagine English with a third of its letters removed and simplified grammar. That's Aramaic, Hebrew, etc. For example, combine T and D into just T; there's no need to have 2 letters. The same goes for i, e, y - they should all be just y from now on, etc., etc.. The difference between Arabic and the other creoles and Pidgin is the same as the difference between Latin and pig Latin or Italian. "Phoenician" is an Arabic dialect continuum, and not only that, it is pidgin. It is simplified to the point of stupidity. Anyone with a basic knowledge of Arabic would see this clearly. What happened was that Arabic handicapped "scholars" saw the equivalent of Scottish Twitter spelling, with added mumbling due to phonemic mergers (22 letters, not 29), and mistakenly thought they were seeing a different language." 'kafara" means deniers, it means for all who deny the oneness of the creator, it can also mean 'ingrates' for any who deny him after having been gifted life are but ingrates. It is a technical term not an abstraction. Arabic is Exact, not Abstract. This can be seen from the epistemological connection between the two. And it refers to those who deny the aforementioned. The exactness in Arabic can be seen from the roots and patterns .f or example, the root كتب (k-t-b) can be used to create words such as: - kitaab - book - kaatib - writer - maktab - office - maktuub - written - yaktubu - he writes - kitaabah - writing - khutbah - sermon (different letter but with t-b bilateral root) - maktabah - library - kutub - books - kataba - he wrote - yaktubu - he writes - aktubu -I write - kutiba:- it was written All of these words have a common relation to the concept of writing, while they differ in their meaning and function, they are epistemologically related This means that Arabic can create new words from existing symbols without changing their logical form or content. Arabic has epistemology in the etymology itself without requiring outside inpput. Both etymology, ontology and epistemology are inbuilt. This can only be true if a language without outside intervention (and no human design can achieve this) if Arabic was the first language and language here refers to tool for cognition. No other language poses this, indeed it is this very system which Arabic grammarians developed from analysing the syntax of the Quran which was used to decipher all the ancient texts. Arabic itself began being studied in europe in the 17th century to translate the "old testament" and along the way came the decipherment of the other ancient scripts .
Hello Dr. Cole, or I have to salute by AllahuAbha?
But the plural of Kafer is not Kafiron! It is Kafara.
الكفر يشمل الشرك و هو عكس الإسلام اطاعة الله و عدم الشرك به . كفر ابليس عصى الله عيانا بيانا . اتخاذ اله او ارباب من دون الله مثل النصارى و اليهود يعتبر كفر . او حتى عدم الإيمان برسالة الرسول رغم الايمان بخالق واحد يعتبر كفر
I have the advantage of not believing any of it.
And go wherenever the elites takes you, hoping they care about you and not selfish
What is your agenda, you always explore Quran not Bible
No agenda? Wtf
I am watching this podcast long time for indepth analysis. Website is exploring Quran and Bible, but I have not seen any podcast exploring Bible..