As I think the Muslim posters have made clear–while the discussion of 72 virgins, young boys, etcetera, sounds very carnal to Western eyes–the point is that these are seen as SYMBOLIC or FIGURATIVE ways of picturing the delights of the Islamic Paradise. The whole point of Munawar’s post that the human body is in the grave is that in Heaven the Redeemed will not have literal bodies with which to ‘enjoy’ the delights of these things. He at least seems to be advocating an interpretation which makes of the ‘72 virgins’ a word-picture of what Heaven will seem like. By the way–most of the denigrating comments about women in Islam come from specific post-Qur’anic writers, not from the Qur’an itself. We can find parallels for such comments in Christian patristic writings and should bear that in mind.
One should distinguish between several things in Islamic authority. First, there is the Qur’an itself which is believed by Muslims to be the words of God dictated literally to Muhammed and addressing all human beings directly. (This is why there is such a turmoil over the possible desecration of the Qur’an in the Middle East). Then there are the Hadith, various collections of the sayings of Muhammed as recorded by persons who knew him or knew someone close to him. These were put together in the secodn Islamic century and in citing the Hadith one should remember that all Hadith are NOT equal in authority. Various redactors of the Hadith assign different levels of reliability to the Hadith based upon whether the saying was attested to by one, two, three, or four or more persons. The level of reliability of the individual is also taken into consideration. There are at least six major collections of Hadith. In addition there are early commentaries on the Qur’an and the Hadith. Finally there are learned opinions and practical applications of the Qur’an by Islamic scholars.
Often, Christian critics of Islam–and Islamic revisionists, both Muslims and non-Muslims–cite these various sources indiscriminately. It is important to realize that the Qur’an has absolute authority over Islamic belief and practice, while the Hadith, the Commentaries, and the learned opinions have less authority on a sort of ‘sliding scale’ of importance. It is not much different than the way Christians view the Scriptures versus the Creeds, versus the opinions of the Patristic Fathers, versus later scholarly exegesis of Scripture. A lot of what gets fobbed-off as Islamic teaching turns out to be speculative applications on the Qur’an, often popularizers of Islam who are addressing a specific and not particularly sophisticated audience. By the way–there are various venues by which one can obtain a free Qur’an, although getting the Hadith is somewhat more difficult and expensive–they run to several volumes.
