sure thing - should be interesting - if ive listed quite a few, so quick one line responses will suffice as long as we can get a handle on your position and perhaps go into detail on further questioning? Leave it up to you anyway..
Okay, one line responses to these, as a morning distraction.
47) Perhaps Allah is serving tea & coffee hell (make that 1 sugar please)
Quran 037.067 And afterward, lo! thereupon they have a drink of boiling water
You omitted the interesting bit before this -- which is that the boiling water is related to the food of the "tree of hellfire, that is as if it has heads of devils" -- the food -- including the water -- filling the bellies of those there.
In Sufism, we equate human life with the archetype of a particular tree -- the "tree of life" found in lots of cultures. It consists of a number of components -- psychological tendencies, so to speak -- that need to be balanced. Each component is intrinsically good. One of these branches of the tree, for example, is human rahma, human love. It's a very good thing. It is associated with the element of water (waters of mercy) and is primal to our existence (because our essence is that "water"). Another branch of that tree is shariah, human constraint, laws, sciences, reason. That branch is associated with the element of fire. It's also a good thing normally, because without reason, constraints and so on, we wouldn't have science or society.
When these aspects are unbalanced (for example, when someone fixates on a particular form of idolatry, such as fascism or religious fundamentalism), then that "tree of life" becomes inverted -- and then we have the mirror image of the tree.
So each component of the tree is inverted as well -- specifically, that branch of love is inverted and becomes idolatry, fascism, unhelpful desire. Human love, for example, turned from being good into, for example, the adoration of Hitler in Nazi times, adoration of a cruel social shariah etc.
At the point when the tree is inverted, the water of human love and the fire of human judgement come together in a pure negative way, inverted from goodness -- and we have psychosis -- that is, boiling water. Fire and water: adoration of the shariah instead of (what the Sufi tree grows toward) adoration of Love.
I could say more about the use of "bellies" that are filled in this verse. The arabic root is BTN, which has the connotation of womb and, significantly, interiority. Let's leave that for the moment.
59) It’s funny how the word “me” interchanges in the Quran to sometimes mean Muhammad e.g.
Quran 003.183 Messengers came unto you before me with miracles
and other times (like below) to mean Allah. I wonder if the Prophet sometimes got a bit confused during his sermons as to who was supposedly the author of these words..
I don't believe Prophecy is/was confused about this -- not at least the last time I spoke to him -- but the "confusion" of pronouns is sort of the key to understanding Qur'an. It is an approximation to say that God is within everyone -- but the Sufi does seek out exactly this state of confusion you mention -- where we get tangled up in God's Love, so we don't know where we end and where Hu begins.
At any rate, when you read the Qur'an, as a Sufi, you read God reading through you. And, most importantly, the "you" of the Qur'an is not Muhammed the man (so you must ignore the tafsir in the translations) -- it is always "you" the reader, put in Muhammed's place. It's your revelation, just like those find-you-fate second person gamebooks. (This is the point of my own 2nd person gamebook -- available at fernmind.com with all proceeds going to establishing a Tailorite Ashram in Turkestan.)
That is, the Qur'an is a 2nd person gamebook, with you playing the lead character, but where God often speaks through you, inducing a state of Divine confusion. (This is why 5 percenter Muslims use the surname "Allah" -- and why in hip hop slang friends address each other as "G" -- "G" for God. Their system is similar to Sufism in its embrace of the confusion. However, in my school, there are higher states beyond that confusion, though the confusion is embraced and necessary. It's called fana.)
56) Here is needy Allah again, wanting attention over children and wanting us to see them as a temptation rather than young beings who need time, attention & guidance.
Quran 063.009 O ye who believe! Let not your wealth nor your children distract you from remembrance of Allah. Those who do so, they are the losers.
This is about reincarnation -- specifically the Islamic analog of the Hindu-Buddhist notion of karma. "Children" are what your soul becomes/evolves into. We believe the soul splits into other souls -- the way in which it does this -- is answered by all the inheritance laws.
That might sound a bit nuts, but reincarnation is believed to occur at all levels of existence, from microcosmic to macrocosmic. So, for example, this sentence you are reading right now is a bit of my "soul" that happens to be "reincarnated" as a child-sentence from the previous sentences I have written here and elsewhere. So all cause-and-effect is understood to be continual cycles of reincarnation.
Generally the Qur'an informs us reincarnation -- children, descendents etc -- is a blessing and part of the "test" of the (tree of) life. But the Sufi, like the Buddhist, aims to ultimately transcend those cycles of "descent". Hence the verse.
It's got nothing to do with real children -- apart from the particular sense that children are part of this karmic cycle (but everything is).
53) The meaning of our lives according to our creator
Quran 051.056 I created the jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me.
Sufic tafsir would render the intended meaning of this line as
"Love created the psychological drives and your soul-fragments only that they might love the Love."
45) What about assexual reproductive species living in the animal/plant world, in which instance male/female pairs are not required?
Quran 036.036 Glory be to Him Who created all the sexual pairs, of that which the earth groweth, and of themselves, and of that which they know not!
This is a good translation -- because the Arabic is "pairs" but with the connotation of mating, spouses and so on.
Approximately these "sexual pairs" do not refer so much to animal/plant species -- but rather to a cosmic sexuality that underlies all perception/language/creation.
Think of the notion of the yin-yang principle that is meant to underly the cosmos in Taoism -- that's kind of what is meant here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yangOr, alternatively, the Shiva-Shakti principle of Tantric Buddhism/Hinduism:
http://www.sacredsource.com/images/ss.jpgIn the Judaic tradition (from which all Islam originates and Sufism continues to preserve): this masculine/feminine duality is not equated with Allah, but rather with two aspects of Allah's Love to creation -- loving bestowal (father) and loving reception (mother). God gives/is present and God takes away/is felt as absent. We see everything as ultimately a "family resemblance" in combination of these two aspects.
This is the meaning of the hadith where Muhammed was proclaimed a prophet by a Rabbi when he repeated the Talmudic expression that a child (aspect of creation) resembles its father if the father ejaculates first but the mother if she ejaculates first in sexual congress
44) Does this mean it is a sin for a woman to talk to any other man?
Quran 033.055 It is no sin for them (thy wives) to converse freely) with their fathers, or their sons, or their brothers, or their brothers' sons, or the sons of their sisters or of their own women, or their slaves.
This is about how knowledge is transmitted -- it is a kind of cosmology of meditation -- to grasp it requires us to first work out where the "wives" are inside us. Running out of time so I will leave it there for the moment
39) 100 whips for all adulterers
Quran 024.002 The adulterer and the adulteress, scourge ye each one of them (with) a hundred stripes
Yet, as expected by those who think the Quran is manmade, the prophets wives get double this punishment if they got involved with other men:
Adultery is infidelity to God. The number in Arabic numerology is very significant. I have a blog piece on this verse explaining it in detail -- particularly the need for four witnesses (they relate to the four levels of the soul that has been expounded upon by Judaic and Sufic sources).
http://thegoodgarment.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/lashings-and-the-four-witnesses/2) Sounds like predestination to me
Quran 003.145 No soul can ever die except by Allah's leave and at a term appointed.
True -- but as you mentioned, the Qur'an itself confuses who is Hu -- so -- to be consistent with that -- what happens to predestination in that light?
19) The Quranic challenge and so called proof of its divine origins – i.e. bring another Sura like it -
There is a great psychosexual gamebook available at fernmind.com -- all proceeds go to establishing a Tantric Tailorite Ashram in Turkestan.
20) Aren’t Muslims supposed to pray 5 times a day ?
Quran 011.114 Establish worship at the two ends of the day and in some watches of the night. Lo! good deeds annul ill-deeds. This is reminder for the mindful.
I don't see an incompatibility.
4) Allah (or more likely Muhammad as he was illiterate) has got their mathematics muddled up because the sums just don’t add up. Grab a calculator & do it yourself. So again who wrote the Quran, Allah or Muhammad?
Quran 004.011 Allah chargeth you concerning (the provision for) your children: to the male the equivalent of the portion of two females, and if there be women more than two, then theirs is two-thirds
....
Okay, inheritance is basically about transmission of knowledge/soul/reincarnation. Its too complex for a one liner, my blog has a Ramadan Reading on this verse.
But regarding dodgy maths -- it is a common trope in Torah, Talmud, Zohar as well as Qur'an and hadeeth.
Dodgy maths is always deliberate. Check out Idris Shah's tafsir to understand why the maths in holy books is often so dodgy: at 3:38 here ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgOgUZ57pQs&feature=player_profilepage
Topic: Islame re-reads the Quran