Inspiring Quotes

Verses, particularly soothing, imbued with love, tolerance, peace, intelligence, and spiritual elevation

The founders of this reboot of the Abrahamic saga understood one thing: the carnal and the material sell better than the spiritual. Hence a paradise far better stocked than the Christian one, where the resurrected "neither marry, nor are given in marriage" (Matthew 22:30). A tough sell. The Islamic version offers rivers of wine (47:15) and, above all, virgins:

"In both Gardens will be maidens of modest gaze, who no human or jinn has ever touched before."
Quran 55:56

The Quran gives no number: the famous 72 virgins come from a hadith, as a bonus for martyrs (Jami' at-Tirmidhi 1663). A tempting prospect, I admit, even though I personally prefer experienced women. Competition is fierce on the afterlife market, so there is no point skimping on promises. After all, no customer has ever come back for a refund.

Unlike the other Abrahamic religions, Islam does not settle for exploiting our existential anxieties: it also plays on our hormones. Those of fully fledged human beings, of course. Not those of their subordinates, women, who according to the Prophet make up the majority of the dwellers of hell (Sahih al-Bukhari 29).

Their intelligence is deficient, too, and on this point Allah and His Messenger agree. Allah requires two women to replace one male witness, in case one of them forgets (2:282), and describes them as "not commanding in disputes" (43:18). The Prophet draws the conclusion: "This is the deficiency in her intelligence" (Sahih al-Bukhari 304). And of all the trials he left behind him, none is "more severe to men than women" (Sahih al-Bukhari 5096).

I advise reading these verses in several sittings, spread over a fairly long period. Swallowing so much divine wisdom and poetry at once could be dangerous: your brain might not survive the shock.

Daring critics of Islam will object that many other striking verses deserved a place here. No doubt. But the aim is not to copy out the entire Quran: this anthology of instructions from the Creator of all things is spicy and hefty enough as it is. It will grow over time.

To save you time, I have put the key passages of each verse in bold.

The English translation of the meaning of the Quranic verses below was done by Dr. Mustafa Khattab. You can find other translations of the verses presented below at quran.com.

It should be noted that some advocates of Allah claim that all translations profoundly alter the meaning of the verses. According to several Arabic-speaking ex-Muslims, translations are generally sanitized and euphemized compared to the original Arabic version. The original version is, it seems, often darker than the translations.

Enough chatter: let's begin.

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