03 March, 2007

Suicide bomber goes to heaven

Imagine this: man enters crowded place. Man blows himself up. There is a flash of light. Man find he is still alive. Or wait! He is dead! But he is in the afterlife, and there are the gates of heaven!

Man goes to gate. Gate opens. God is standing there to greet him.

“Welcome, young martyr,” says God. “For fighting them infidels, you get to come to heaven. And you know what you’re here to do, don’t you?”

“Yes,” says Martyr. “I know. I was a loser on earth, but here I finally get some action. Bring me the 4000 virgins.”

“4000 virgins?” says God. “Ha ha ha. You got to be kidding me.”

"Ok,” says Martyr, “72 virgins then.”

“72 virgins!” says God. “Ho ho ho. I don’t know who spreads these rumours.”

“Ok, ok,” says Martyr, “I knew I should have gone for the conservative estimate. Give me 70 virgins then.”

“Sigh,” says God. “You chaps really do come here with the wrong expectations. Here, you have fought infidels, here is your reward: 72 raisins.”

* * *

Michelle Tsai writes in Slate:

From the 9th through the 12th centuries, Muslim scholars described paradise as a place of sensual delights—for men. They debated whether men remained married to their wives in heaven, whether they could have sex with the virgins, and whether the heavenly virgins had anuses. (Some said there was no need for elimination in the afterlife.) There was even disagreement on the number of virgins assigned to each man. While Al-Tirmidhi said it was 72, Mulla Ali Qari, an 11th-century imam, counted 70 virgins and two human wives. Imam Al-Bayhaqi was more generous, granting men 500 wives, 4,000 virgins, and 8,000 previously married women. The meaning of the word hur is also open to interpretation, since it reads as ”white raisins” when translated as a Syriac rather than Arabic word. [Link in original.]

So there you have it. Raisins!