Nightspirit has blog zomg

I often hear the story about good Islamic martyrs getting 72 virgins when they die. My own theory is that they get one virgin only, aged 72 (har har). But it seems they’ll receive nothing like that at all!

The famous passage about the virgins is based on the word hur, which is an adjective in the feminine plural meaning simply “white.” Islamic tradition insists the term hur stands for “houri,” which means virgin, but this is a forced misreading of the text. In both ancient Aramaic and in at least one respected dictionary of early Arabic, hur means “white raisin.”

Now eat that, stupid martyrs. And enjoy it, because that’s all you’re gonna get

Radical New Views of Islam and the Origins of the Koran