What are the craziest stories that you know of from the Quran? I’m pretty familiar with all of the crazy bullshit found in the Bible, but I’m still not too familiar with what’s in the Quran.
As far as I can tell from what I’ve read - and I don’t claim to be an expert on the quran by any means - it’s an unremarkable, primitive book. Keep in mind that it’s (supposedly) Allah’s direct word, written largely in the first person. Allah is presumed to be the same god as in the torah and bible, so presumes events like the worldwide flood, the first humans, and so forth, even if referenced only slightly obliquely. e.g. Cain killing Abel.
It therefore seems like an astonishingly pathetic word from a pathetic god. Every surah (chapter) spends an inordinate amount of time praising itself and how all-knowing, how compassionate, how all-wise, how forgiving, how all-hearing, how all-seeing, how powerful, how all-mighty it is. While referring to itself using the royal “we.”
Take, for example, Surah An-Nisa (The Women), one of the longer ones and the one that endorses wife-beating:
https://quranx.com/4.1-176
Depending on which translation(s) you have enabled, look for “Allah is” or “God is”, and spot how many dozens of times Allah’s word rambles about how wonderful Allah is.
When it’s not repeating the nonsense of the bible - such as how the Sun and Moon are both lights and were made after the Earth, how they both go around it, and that the stars are lights in a firmament - and making it worse - such as saying the Sun sets in a puddle of muddy water, that it needs permission from Allah to rise, and that the stars ward off evil..... when it’s not saying how wonderful Allah is (e.g. above) or how perfect Muhammad is..... it’s mostly fixated on kafir (non-believers) and how bad they are, how corrupt the Jews and Xtians are, threats of hell, instructions to fight or punish kafir and so on.
https://quranx.com/Search?Q=disbeliever+OR+disbelievers&Context=quran
Note: https://quranx.com/Help
As far as I can tell - and again, not an expert - it doesn’t provide a moral guide for life, it provides instructions on how to wage war against Allah’s enemies, which are, by definition, anyone who resists subjugation to its demands. To bring peace to the world by enslaving everyone to Allah. Or as Megatron put it, “Peace through Tyranny.”
One of the (ex-Muslim) commentators I’ve been reading points out that “fear” is mentioned in the quran six times more than “love”. None of the instances of “love” are universal love for others - they’re about Allah loving believers, believers loving Allah, warnings not to love money, power or other gods, and how Allah doesn’t love kafir.
Most of the craziness is the crap in the hadith. For example, even things like Splitting of the Moon are only a handful of ayahs (verses):
The Hour has drawn nigh: the moon is split.
Yet if they see a sign they turn away, and they say 'A continuous sorcery!'
They have cried lies, and followed their caprices; but every matter is settled.
That’s all it says. But the hadith run with this:
Abu Ma'mar reported on the authority of Abdullah that the moon was split up during lifetime by Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) in two parts and Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said:
This hadith has been transmitted on the authority of Abdullah b. Mas'ud (who said):
We were along with Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) at Mina, that moon was split up into two. One of its parts was behind the mountain and the other one was on this side of the mountain. Allah's Messenger (may peace be upbn him) said to us: Bear witness to this.
'Abdullah b. Mas'ud reported that the moon was split up in two parts during the lifetime of Allah's Messenger (ﷺ). The mountain covered one of its parts and one part of it was above the mountain and Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said:
Another chain of transmitters reported the like of this hadith.
This hadith has been transmitted on the authority of Shu'ba with a slight variation of wording.
Anas reported that the people of Mecca demanded from Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) that he should show them (some) signs (miracles) and he showed twice the splitting of the moon. This hadlth has been narrated on the authority of Anas through another chain of transmitters.
Anas reported that the moon was split up in two parts and in the hadith recorded in Abu Dawud, the words are:
" The moon was split up into two parts during the life of Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)."
Ibn 'Abbas reported that the moon was split up during the lifetime of Allah's Messenger (may peace he upon him).
It’s high school crap. It’s like Regina George (she of The Plastics) makes some smart-ass off-the-cuff quip, and then her clique/entourage all pipe up to confirm it and embellish it at the same time, and then before too long the entire school believes some bizarre elaborate tale, which has been “confirmed.”
It’s the same with The Night Journey, one of the key legends, where Muhammad (supposedly) flew on Buraq from Mecca to Jerusalem, prayed at a temple there (amusingly, the temple had been destroyed 500 years previous), then flew to heaven to meet with different prophets.
All that’s in the quran is:
Glory be to Him, who carried His servant by night from the Holy Mosque to the Further Mosque the precincts of which We have blessed, that We might show him some of Our signs. He is the All-hearing, the All-seeing
The hadith is where it goes nuts.
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/USC-MSA/Book-1/Hadith-309
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/USC-MSA/Book-1/Hadith-314
https://quranx.com/hadith/Bukhari/In-Book/Book-97/Hadith-142/
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-4/Book-54/Hadith-429
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isra_and_Mi%27raj#The_Mi%E2%80%98raj
Muhammad ascends into heaven with the angel Gabriel and meets a different prophet at each of the seven levels of heaven; first Adam, then John the Baptist and Jesus, then Joseph, then Idris, then Aaron, then Moses, and lastly Abraham. After Muhammad meets with Abraham, he continues on to meet Allah without Gabriel. Allah tells Muhammad that his people must pray 50 times a day, but as Muhammad descends back to Earth, he meets Moses who tells Muhammad to go back to God and ask for fewer prayers because 50 is too many. Muhammad goes between Moses and God nine times, until the prayers are reduced to the five daily prayers, which God will reward tenfold. To that again, Moses tells Muhammad to ask for even fewer but Muhammad feels ashamed and says that he is thankful for the five.
This crap is not metaphorical or allegorical. Indeed, it needs to be literally true, because it’s how salat (prayer) was formalized into 5 times per day, and preceded by wudu (purification), which stems from Muhammad cleansing himself after having touched (ridden) an animal to the temple. Because despite being magical, flying from Mecca to Jerusalem, then literally to heaven, the Buraq is still an animal... apparently.
Regarding the Statement of Allah" "And We granted the vision (Ascension to the heavens) which We made you see (as an actual eye witness) was only made as a trial for the people." (17.60) Ibn `Abbas added: The sights which Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) was shown on the Night Journey when he was taken to Bait-ulMaqdis (i.e. Jerusalem) were actual sights, (not dreams). And the Cursed Tree (mentioned) in the Qur'an is the tree of Zaqqum (itself).
(In reality, it’s known that Muhammad ripped off other religions, such as the Sabians and Zoroastrians who were already doing things like praying 5 times a day, and in the direction of something significant, and he passed these “divine” instructions off with a stupid story.)
The hadith is where the camel piss drinking comes from; where a woman capturing Muhammad’s sweat for perfume comes from; where Muhammad gets cranky when people copy the bling he wears (he liked to wear his rings with the gems turned inwards, and got pissed off when others did the same thing, and like a total diva, threw his rings away saying “I will never wear it”); where Muhammad overrides Allah; where someone deliberately sleazed on one of Muhammad’s wives, in a way she would know, so that Allah would reveal the ayahs relating to veiling women; where black dogs are literally devils.
That is, the really crazy stuff seems to have arisen out of the cult of gullible human idiots that formed around this con artist and the stolen fairytales he told them, rather than from the sock-puppet named Allah that he used to control them.
As far as I can tell, there isn’t all that much really crazy bullshit in the quran proper. It’s just a stupid, primitive manual for war, (supposedly) revealed by an insecure, violent, petty, ignorant god to - unsurprisingly - a prophet who shares the exact same flaws.