72 virgins and religious morality

Faustus, Augustine, religious morality, 72 virgins

72 virgins and religious morality

This story looks into the 72 virgins of Islam....it starts with this quote which has been completely used out of context with reality since 2002. The 72 virgins story wouldn't be full without comparing a bunch of other religious philosophy.

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In August, 2001, the American television channel CBS aired an interview with a Hamas activist Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: "I described to him how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness." Wardeh was in fact shortchanging his recruits since the rewards in Paradise for martyrs was 72 virgins. But I am running ahead of things .  link to the article Virgins. What Virgins ?

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In the end you make up your own mind about the truth. Typos are free...Enjoy!!!

Prophet Mani

Augustine was born in 354 AD in Souk -Ahras which at the time was a market ( Souk ) town near the ancient city of Hippo Regius. This Souk was located on the shores of the Mediterranean sea and across from the island Sardinia. His father was a pagan. His mother was a Christian. The Souk-Ahras was a combination of both. Augustine was like all other adolescent kids and during his youth he partied with the crowd.  He later confessed to having brought a child into the world?.? Augustine is a smart kid and his mind is riddled with the cause and effect of sin and he seeks a philosophy of life that will make him happy. Like his father, he is not baptized.  He joins up with the Manichean religion which had recently been founded by the Persian Mani who came from the the Seleucid area of Persia. Like other potential prophets, Mani claimed to have had divine revelations telling him to teach the true meaning of Christ. He was only 13 years old when his heavenly twin appeared to him and told him to leave his father's gnostic sect. Some years later Mani travels to India then turns his sails towards Afghanistan where he settles in the Zoroastrian influenced court of Shapur I. It isn't certain that Shapur I, second king of the Second Persian Empire, was a convert to Mani's religion but he did tolerate the preacher's desire to spread the word in Western Iran. Mani dedicates some of his writings to his Persian King patron. A few kings later however, Mani is arrested and and dies in prison. King Bahram I had devoted himself to the Zoroastrian revival  of the reformer Katir and outlawed the teachings of Mani.



Doctor of the Church Augustine
Sandro Botticelli

 Manicheaism claimed that the inspired writings  recognized by the Church of God, the Holy Writs were spreading false beliefs. Mani was looking for evidence of the natural scientific mystery of creation. ( sounds a bit like scientology ). Augustine was impressed by this philosophy. The philosophy of Mani was kind of like a Unified Theory of Religion which professed that all religions of the day could be synthesized into one flavour. That flavour of course was Manicheism. Basically Mani philosophy claimed that all ideas stem from two eternal principles : good and evil, the sun and the moon. The Mani philosophy goes that people and societies are materially fused, attached and attracted, isolated or at war, by good or evil deeds and ideas propogated by the two celestial elements. That is my understanding of it.

Salvation by knowledge was the preacher's message. Unlike the myste
rious Christian faith this doctrine claimed to be able to explain all that exists including the genesis of the universe, the composition of it, and the future of it. To the Christian bishops Mani's religion would have be no more than a Gnostic School and by no means a system of Churches, yet they remained tolerant.

Throughout the middle ages the four Doctors of the Christian Church ( Doctores Ecclesiea ) were Augustine, Gregory the Great, Ambrose, and Jerome. They were given this title for their doctrines on religious philosophy which the church elders claimed to be divinely inspired.

In time Augustine renounced his affiliation to the Mani sect. He had never been ordained a priest of Manecheism and his highest rank was that of "auditor". ( reflections of scientology again ). He states as some reason of leaving that he was anything but free spirited in that circle and that he was often disenchanted, depraved and isolated. " They destroy everything and build up nothing" ....they explain nothing of science nor the knowledge of nature and its laws, nor the movement of the stars...." Wait for Faustus " they proclaim when asked, " he will explain everything to you. ". Augustine does get to meet Faustus but is even less impressed with his choice of religion after.

After nine years in the sect, Augustine bumps into Ambrose while in Milan, Italy. From the moment of this meeting to his full conversion three years passed. It took him this long to shake the spirit of Mani from his soul.

Enter Doctor Faustus.....

Doctor Faustus knows all the secrets of nature and he is our chosen healer, so claimed Mani and his followers which grew in numbers for a thousand years mostly in parts of India, China, Tibet, Mesopotamia and other mid east places.

Doctor Faustus was Faustus of Mileve. He was an ordained Bishop within the Manichean bishopry.

Later on in life Augustine mentions Doctor Faustus in his confessions while he is assessing the merits of morality. On this subject, he claims that the Mani sect had no morals and were bent on materialism. For Augustine it was through his conversion to Christianity that he found true freedom and happiness in philosophy. The Christian church loved his message and in time made him a Saint.

Faustus of Mileve meanwhile....

According to Mani and Doctor Faustus, it is possible to refine and perfect the self through rational application of morality..

Rational is the key word here. Rational is a scientific term where sin and damnation are words given to Christian religion. Sin and damnation are the mystery of Christian religion. The Mani sect preached against such hidden meaning and proclaimed that natural science could explain sin and damnation.

That argument continues to this very day. Science continues to explain the psychology which drives humanity. Science also comes up with all kinds of drugs to control the ill effects of nature. It is a bit like Man (i) and Faust are still playing god with reality which is a truth hidden in the dark matter of the time untime machine.

Faust was reintroduced by Goethe who starts writing about the subject back in 177? and continues to improve his sketches until the 1830's. Faust is introduced through a partially printed book then becomes the main character of a two part tragedy play. In the first part of the play Faust sells his soul to the devil and that is the theme of the play. In the second part of the Faust tragedy Goethe goes looking at how people react to social events and compares mysticism to natural phenomena.  Goethe uses the Faust character to enlighten the relationship between mystery and reality. History in the end is just a recording of the way people react psychologically to events that must be dealt with . Morality is the scale of good and evil but where and who dictates the measure of good and evil and are humans really ever capable of shaping themselves according to principles of morality ? Sin is a dirty word. In a world gone mad sin seems easily quantifiable. Rationalizing sin seems the more scientific appraoch to feeling free.

Am I moralizing ?????

Since this is supposed to be about the number 72 then I guess I should qualify 72 virgins as part of this story of morality and rationalizing social behaviour.

Where can one find 72 vested virgins on this preditor infested planet or in the Islamists holy book or it's traditions ( hadiths ).

We mentioned the Persian Mani. Well actually Mani was born in Babylonian territory but who's going to count to 72 on that detail.

Persia is Iran and Iran is Islamist territory. I am no more an Islamist then I am a good Christian and these are just passing thoughts on the mystery of the number 72 so keep an open mind if you read on.

I know that Persia is the hub of the world's oldest civilization and the culture of Iran deserves credit for many of the great things that are part of our library of knowledge today.

One claim is that Persia literally means " land of the Aryans ". That little piece of knowledge is full of religious mystery in itself. Arius was one of the main reasons why councils held meetings in Niceae ( where Hipparchus was born ). Arius was a priest and a Christian who tried to get the bishops to become his disciples. The bishops would have none of it claiming that they were the disciples of only the highest priest which is the lord himself. In Niceae they decided which books of testimony were considered divinely inspired and Arius's testament failed the test. They also decided how the church would proclaim the mass and the affairs of the church. The Nicean creed is still used in many mass rituals today.

Another claim is that Persia is a derivative of Parsua which was the name of an Indo European tribe.

Yet another claim goes that Perses, son of Andromeda and Perseus, is where the name Persia comes from.

Persia was influenced by the philosophical ideas of the Zoroaster for centuries. Zoroaster is a very mysterious prophet on his own and whether he ever existed is legend.

Some people think that Aryanism is a product of Persia and claim that this inscription is proof of that.


I am Darius, the great king, the king of kings
The king of many countries and many people
The king of this expansive land,
The son of Wishtaspa of Achaemenid,
Persian, the son of a Persian,
'Aryan', from the Aryan race
"From the Darius the Great's Inscription in Naqshe-e-Rostam"


Darius I was King of Persia in about 500 BC. He was a member of the Achaemenid royal family and by legend of the bloodline of Acheamenes. Whether or not Acheamenes really lived is also legend. One such legend goes that Acheamenes was raised by an eagle and becomes chief of the Pasargadea tribe. His mother was an Ethiopian Queen named Andromeda and his father was Perseus, son of Zeus.

Regardless of the true nature of the players in this Faustian reality play the fact remains that Darius I conquers territory by defeating the son of  Cyrus the Great who became Shah ( King ) of the Acheamenid Empire or First Persian Empire after defeating the Median Empire overlords.

Today's Iran is more Islamist that Aryan or Zoroastrian ( I don't think Iran is tolerant on other religions ) and that happened about the same time as the Muslims conquered Persia back in 651 AD. Prophet Mohammad, messenger of God had received his revelation from the archangel Gabriel who in part told him how to restore an uncorrupted monotheistic faith. Prophet Mohammad died in 632 AD.

Islam

The Muslims who followed the Islamist Qu'ran brought the religion with them into the territory they had recently conquered. ( Now if you are a Mormon you will definitely not like the fact that Muslims believe their prophet to be the last prophet - such a claim states that Joseph Smith is a fraud and all followers of LDS are slightly bent and likely candidates for conversion - " complete surrender to Him is the only way " ??????. )   Granted the message of the Qu'ran could be interpreted as saying that Prophet Muhammad is to be the last prophet of the Islamist. The list of prophets named in the Qu'ran starts with Adam, then Enoch, Noah,..........Jesus.....and the last prophet is Muhammad.

Interpretation is a little like predicting the future or telling the truth about the past. Everything in both direction is lost in the fog of time.

The Qu'ran is where we find the 72 virgins. Or do we ???

"Verily, for the Muttaqun [righteous], there will be a success (paradise); gardens and grapeyards; and young full-breasted (mature) maidens of equal age; and a full cup (of wine)" (An-Naba 78:31-34)

That is what the Qu'ran says about pure women waiting in heaven for the righteous Islamist who serves Allah while on Earth.

"The least [reward] for the people of Heaven is 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome of pearls, aquamarine and ruby."  Sunan Hadith 2562 of Iman al-Tirmidhi


The idea of 72 virgins in heaven waiting for a Jihad warrior started with this quote

In August, 2001, the American television channel CBS aired an interview with a Hamas activist Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: "I described to him how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness." Wardeh was in fact shortchanging his recruits since the rewards in Paradise for martyrs was 72 virgins. But I am running ahead of things .  link to the article Virgins. What Virgins ?  which also states...

"They shall recline on jewelled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine (that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason); with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds... We created the houris and made them virgins, loving companions for those on the right hand..."


Here are some places that mention 72 pure companions for those who fight the cause of Allah and his prophet......

Muslims are offered a palace; in it are 72 mansions with 72 homes with 72 sheets on 72 beds with 72 virgins that never lose their virginity. Mohammed said, “The person who participates in (Holy Battles) in Allah's cause and nothing compels him to do so except belief in Allah and His Apostle, will be recompensed by Allah either with a reward, or booty (if he survives) or will be admitted to paradise (if he is killed).” (Al Bukhari vol. 1:35.) “They [true believers] will sit with bashful, dark-eyed virgins, as chaste as the sheltered eggs of ostriches” (Sura 37:48). This gives us insight into their denial of this life and being rewarded in the next. The promise of heaven to those who die in battle for the cause of Allah is quite a promise. Let us Reason