Islamic Mythology

"When Adam sinned it was not he who cried, 'God, where art Thou?' It was God who cried, 'Adam, where art thou?'"

"That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures — because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer — because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage."

"And [mention] when We said to the angels, "Prostrate to Adam," and they prostrated, except for Iblees. He was of the jinn and departed from the command of his Lord. Then will you take him and his descendants as allies other than Me while they are enemies to you? Wretched it is for the wrongdoers as an exchange."

"Adam Had 'em."

"I have not the strength, to provide food for the herd of Adam's descendants."

"'Twas on the sixth of June, about the hour Of half-past six—perhaps still nearer seven— When Julia sate within as pretty a bower As e'er held houri in that heathenish heaven Described by Mahomet, and Anacreon Moore, To whom the lyre and laurels have been given, With all the trophies of triumphant song— He won them well, and may he wear them long!"

"It is true that simple-minded religious men have conceived their goal as a state of continued existence beyond the grave filled with all happy things and experiences. But plainly such happy things and experiences were no more than symbolic, and the happy heavens containing such things have the character of myth. To the human mind, fast fettered by the limits of its poor imagination, they stand for and represent the goal. One cannot conceive the inconceivable. So in place of it one puts whatever one can imagine of delight; wine and houris if one's imagination is limited to these; love, kindness, sweetness of spiritual living if one is of a less materialistic temper. But were these existences and delights, material or spiritual, to be actually found and enjoyed as present, they would be condemned by the saint along with all earthly joys. For they would have upon them the curse, the darkness, the disease, of all existent things, of all that is this or that. This is why we cannot conceive of any particular pleasure, happiness, joy, which would not cloy – which to be quite frank – would not in the end be boring."

"The blessed Verse 56 treats of the six Blessing – chaste spouses in Paradise. The blessed Verse is saying that there shall be women in those palaces in Paradise who restraining their glances solely look at their husbands and love no one but them and no jinni or man has ever touched them. Thus, they shall be virgin and undefiled in any respect.It is narrated on the authority of Abudhar Ghaffari that the woman in Paradise shall say unto her husband:"By the Glory of my Lord! I find nothing better than you in Paradise. Praise be to God Almighty Who married me unto you.""

"Then the lady took the cup, and drank it off to her sisters' health, and they ceased not drinking (the Porter being in the midst of them), and dancing and laughing and reciting verses and singing ballads and ritornellos. All this time the Porter was carrying on with them, kissing, toying, biting, handling, groping, fingering; whilst one thrust a dainty morsel in his mouth, and another slapped him; and this cuffed his cheeks, and that threw sweet flowers at him; and he was in the very paradise of pleasure, as though he were sitting in the seventh sphere among the Houris of Heaven."

"Thy wife or thy daughter, that Eastern houri that thou lockest under thy arm as thou wouldst thy treasure-casket?"

"He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees, His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas."

"What pictures to the taster rise, Of Dervish or of Almeh dances! Of Eblis, or of Paradise, Set all aglow with Houri glances!"

"Abu Ja`far Muhammad ibn Ali "When he emerges, he will establish a new matter, a new book, a new Sunnah, and a new judgment" saying to the Shia that this is the Tablighi Jamaat from Ali who said "When there are battles in shaam go fought into them and take from the booty and follow the Tablighi Jamaat of the Mahdi which will be peacefull and establish the religion of the Mahdi on earth"."

"The face of the Mahdi shall shine upon the surface of the Moon."

"During the occultation of the Wali al-'Asr (may God hasten his reappearance), the leadership of the Islamic world devolve upon the just and pious person, who is fully aware of the circumstances of his age, courageous, resourceful, and possessed of administrative ability."

"Christ will, of course, be Muslim. He will return as a Muslim. It is said that he will break the cross and kill the pigs. He will abide by what Islam permits and prohibits. He will pray behind the Mahdi and then, Islam will rule the entire world."

"The Mahdi is the 12th descendant of the prophet Mohammad, whose reappearance is predicted for a time when the Muslims are suffering from disaster and injustice; true Islamic rule is possible only upon his return."

"Muhammad bin Hammam and Muhammad bin al-Hasan bin Muhammad bin Jumhoor narrated from al-Hasan bin Muhammad bin Jumhoor from his father from Sulayman bin Suma’a from Abul Jarood that Abu Ja'far al-Baqir (s) had said: “When al-Qa'im appears in Mecca, his caller will announce that no one is to carry with him food or drink. He (al-Qa'im) will carry with him the rock of Prophet Moses, which is as a burden of a camel. Whenever they stop to rest, the rock will well. Hungry and thirsty ones will eat and drink and feed their cattle until they will reach Najaf, which is near Kufa.”"

"Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Sa'eed bin Oqda narrated from Ali bin al-Hasan at-Taymali from Muhammad bin Ali from Muhammad bin Issma'eel bin Buzay’ from Mansoor bin Younus bin Bazraj from Hamza bin Hamran from Salim al-Ashall that Abu Ja'far al-Baqir (s) had said: “Prophet Moses (s) looked up in the first Pentateuch what abilities and virtues would be given to al-Qa'im of Muhammad’s family and then he said: “O my Lord, make me al-Qa'im of Muhammad’s family!” It was said to him: “He is from Muhammad’s progeny.” He looked up in the second Pentateuch and he found the same things. He prayed Allah for the same thing and he was answered with the same answer. Then he opened the third Pentateuch and found the same thing. He asked his Lord for the same thing and the same was said to him.”"

"The Bible depicts a world that, seen through modern eyes, is staggering in its savagery. People enslave, rape, and murder members of their immediate families. Warlords slaughter civilians indiscriminately, including the children. Women are bought, sold, and plundered like sex toys. And Yahweh tortures and massacres people by the hundreds of thousands for trivial disobedience or for no reason at all. These atrocities are neither isolated nor obscure. They implicate all the major characters of the Old Testament, the ones that Sunday-school children draw with crayons. And they fall into a continuous plotline that stretches for millennia, from Adam and Eve through Noah, the patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, the judges, Saul, David, Solomon, and beyond. According to the biblical scholar Raymund Schwager, the Hebrew Bible “contains over six hundred passages that explicitly talk about nations, kings, or individuals attacking, destroying, and killing others. . . . Aside from the approximately one thousand verses in which Yahweh himself appears as the direct executioner of violent punishments, and the many texts in which the Lord delivers the criminal to the punisher’s sword, in over one hundred other passages Yahweh expressly gives the command to kill people.” Matthew White, a self-described atrocitologist who keeps a database with the estimated death tolls of history’s major wars, massacres, and genocides, counts about 1.2 million deaths from mass killing that are specifically enumerated in the Bible. (He excludes the half million casualties in the war between Judah and Israel described in 2 Chronicles 13 because he considers the body count historically implausible.) The victims of the Noachian flood would add another 20 million or so to the total. The good news, of course, is that most of it never happened. Not only is there no evidence that Yahweh inundated the planet and incinerated its cities, but the patriarchs, exodus, conquest, and Jewish empire are almost certainly fictions. Historians have found no mention in Egyptian writings of the departure of a million slaves (which could hardly have escaped the Egyptians’ notice); nor have archaeologists found evidence in the ruins of Jericho or neighboring cities of a sacking around 1200 BCE. And if there was a Davidic empire stretching from the Euphrates to the Red Sea around the turn of the 1st millennium BCE, no one else at the time seemed to have noticed it."

"Yet for all this reverence, the Bible is one long celebration of violence. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God took one of Adam’s ribs, and made he a woman. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. With a world population of exactly four, that works out to a homicide rate of 25 percent, which is about a thousand times higher than the equivalent rates in Western countries today."

"All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action. You know that every Muslim is the brother of another Muslim. Remember, one day you will appear before Allah and answer for your deeds. So beware, do not astray from the path of righteousness after I am gone."

"That was the birth of sin. Not doing it, but KNOWING about it. Before the apple, [Adam and Eve] had shut their eyes and their minds had gone dark. Now, they peeped and pried and imagined. They watched themselves."

"The true unconscious is the well-head, the fountain of real motivity. The sex of which Adam and Eve became conscious derived from the very God who bade them be not conscious of it."

"The first pages of memory are like the old family Bible. The first leaves are wholly faded and somewhat soiled with handling. But, when we turn further, and come to the chapters where Adam and Eve were banished from Paradise, then, all begins to grow clear and legible."

"Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story of Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all."

"When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: "My dear, we live in an age of transition"."

"None of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors. The record does not show that Adam and Eve were ever married."

"When Eve upon the first of Men The apple press’d with specious cant, Oh! what a thousand pities then That Adam was not adamant!"

"Eve was not taken out of Adam's head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him."

"The Lord made Adam, the Lord made Eve, he made ‘em both a little bit naive."

"Had Adam tenderly reproved his wife, and endeavored to lead her to repentance instead of sharing in her guilt, I should be much more ready to accord to man that superiority which he claims; but as the facts stand disclosed by the sacred historian, it appears to me that to say the least, there was as much weakness exhibited by Adam as by Eve. They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality."

"Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on."

"Oh, but of course the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn't it? Symbolic?! So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual? Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than "barking mad". (Part 2, 00:30:25)"

"The builder mixes a thick sand with a thinner one in the mortar, by which contrivance the latter becomes very strong and the building more substantial."

"The appearance of Adam and Eve, when just formed, was like that of persons of twenty years of age."

"Michael and Gabriel acted as 'best men' at the nuptials of Adam and Eve. God joined them in wedlock, and pronounced the marriage benediction on them."

"Adam was created with two bodies, one of which was cut away from him and formed Eve."

"O you, Jews, which is more difficult, for a virgin to bear a child, or for a rod to quickened into a living thing? You admit that at the time of Moses a perfect straight rod took the form of a serpent and became an object of terror to him who cast it down, and he who before had held the rod fast now fled from it as a dragon..."

"When Adam dalf and Eve span, go spire – if thou may spede – Where was than the pride of man that now marres his mede?"

"“Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived.” It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive."

"Devil was more generous than Adam, That never laid the fault upon his madam But like a gallant and heroic self, Took freely all the crime upon Himself."

"An Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Russian were arguing about the nationality of Adam and Eve. “They must have been English”, declares the Englishman. "Only a gentleman would share his last apple with a woman.” ”They were undoubtedly French", says, the Frenchman. “Who else could seduce a woman so easily?” "I think they were Russians", says the Russian. "After all, who else could walk stark-naked, feed on one apple between the two of them and think they are in Paradise?""

"In the Garden of Eden sat Adam, Disporting himself with his madam, She was filled with elation, For in all of creation, There was only one man – and she had’m."

"After several days absence from the Garden of Eden, Adam returned to find the lonely Eve sulking and suspicious of his actions. “Really, now darling”, said Adam, “How could you possibly be jealous of me? Don’t you realize that I am the first man and you’re the first woman – the only two humans in existence There just are'nt any others”. Yes, I know replied Eve. Still... Adam was finally able to soothe his wife and soon they both drifted off to sleep. In the midst of the wee dark hours of morning, Eve arose from her sleep, pulled the bearskin covering off Adam and then counted his ribs!"

"Surely God must have been disappointed in Adam: He made Eve so different."

"The Bible says that the last thing God made was Eve. He must have made her on Saturday night – it shows fatigue."

"The story of Adam and Eve takes a lot of believing. It’s probably just a rib."

"And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew."

"And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground."