In the Beginning: Hijacking of the Religion of God: Volume 1: Judaism

By Sami M. El-Soudani

Preface
It was shortly after I had graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1980, with a PhD Degree specializing in fracture mechanics and failure analysis of materials and structures, that I discovered the dire need for this book. This undertaking began to take shape in the early 1980s with the Middle East aflame, devastated by what some viewed as a holy war, and with millennialists prophesying the end of days by the year 2000 C. E. After publishing and co-authoring 87 scientific and industrial reports, and technical papers, many of which were in national and international magazines on the subject of failure analysis of metals and fracture mechanics of aircraft structures, I came to realize that consequences of failures of the human spirit are far more devastating than failures of metals and aircraft structures.
But now at the outset of the 21st century the world is still experiencing turmoil and devastation by wars spreading like wildfire, with Jews, Christians and Moslems at each other's throats in seemingly never ending battles and ugly strife. Some call it war on terror, others speak of wars of clashing cultures, crusades, jihad, etc., etc., etc. One cant help but wonder how this saga of 99% misery and 1% heroism will ever come to an end. Only the gullible would attempt to explain the ongoing world conflict among People of the Book: Jews, Christians and Moslems, based on the course of events during the past few years, or even the past few decades. This is where this book comes in with a rigorous, rationalized, and hopefully convincing critical assessment of a never-before-explored, most innate aspect of the human nature, and that is its obsession with hijacking of the religion of God. For better understanding of the root cause of the ongoing conflict among People of the Book, who are supposed to be worshipping the same God, we need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and reflect rationally, while ignoring all rhetoric and emotional bias in researching the past three thousand years of religious history. And this is exactly what I did in writing this three-volume book.
More specifically, this book is addressing the religion of God to whom every human being from among the so-called People of the Book today turns in prayer. Whether soldiers or civilians, when they are caught in the midst of the ongoing grisly and devastating wars, some would pray to Yahweh, others call upon Jesus Christ, while Moslem brethren whisper the name of Allah upon taking their last breath. Who is that God? And why is He so shrouded with mystery? Is He truly One and the Same God for all these people? Or are we suffering from some self-delusions and possibly hallucinations that may be the senseless products of our ancient religious fabrications and mythmaking. Going back in time three thousand years brings us to one very special night, when God was said to have come down in person onto Mount Sinai to have a close encounter with human beings through direct speech. This three-volume book examines the course of religious events from that magic and apocalyptic moment onwards till this day.
It took me twenty years of research to show that men who practiced hijacking long before they had wings have been quite active over the past three thousand years engaging in the lucrative business of hijacking the religion of God. All three religious persuasions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam suffered the dire consequences of miserably failing to heed the words of our Merciful and Patient God. No irony intended here in calling it a business, and indeed a lucrative one, because it brings the hijackers: power, enormous wealth, and often glory, all of which, in the sight of God translate, respectively into: arrogance, greed, and most certainly infamy.
In developing the extensive critical review of religion presented herein, detailing the respective histories of the selected three religious persuasions: Jud

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 5, 2009
• ISBN: 9781450046541

Sami M. El-Soudani

Dr. Sami El-Soudani is an aerospace materials scientist specializing in fracture mechanics and failure analysis and has been engaged for over thirty years in averting failures of aircraft structures. For the past 20 years, however, he has been conducting independent theological research prompted by regrettable world events clearly showing that failures of the human spirit are of far more devastating consequences than failures of aircraft structures. Dr. El-Soudani, was born in Egypt, received his undergraduate degree from the Soviet Union, his MSc Degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) and his PhD Degree from the University of Cambridge, England. Nabawia El-Soudani received a Master of Fine Arts Degree at the California Institute of the Arts in the program of Film and Video (May 2006). She has independently produced, directed, and edited film/videos that screened nationally and internationally in festivals and galleries including a feature length documentary, entitled My Father My Friend that complements the research in this book. Her work critiques patriarchal power and the military-industrial-media complex. Having both Western and Eastern heritage, she works to bridge the gap between East and West finding a common ground in the humanity, history, and spirituality that they have in common.

Book preview

Contents

Volume 1—Judaism

Preface

1 Introduction

2 Men Practiced Hijacking Long Before They Had Wings

3 The First Hijacking of Judaism

4 The Second Hijacking of Judaism

Epilogue (Volume 1)

References

In memory of my Parents:

My Mother, Nabawia Mostafa Asfoor

And my Father, Mahmoud Farrag El-Soudani,

With love, respect and gratitude

With prayers forever,

Sami and Nabawia

March 15, 2008

Preface

It was shortly after I had graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1980, with a PhD Degree specializing in fracture mechanics and failure analysis of materials and structures, that I discovered the dire need for this book. This undertaking began to take shape in the early 1980’s with the Middle East aflame, devastated by what some viewed as a holy war, and with millennialists prophesying the end of days by the year 2000 C. E. After publishing and co-authoring 87 scientific and industrial reports, and technical papers, many of which were in national and international magazines on the subject of failure analysis of metals and fracture mechanics of aircraft structures, I came to realize that consequences of failures of the human spirit are far more devastating than failures of metals and aircraft structures. This concern was my prime motive for research into theology, besides the search for truth about who is God? But there was yet another motive prompted by my mixed-religious, Moslem-Christian marriage, with two children, for whom I wanted to leave a legacy behind, derived from rigorous and rational research, which in turn may benefit many others.

But now at the outset of the 21st century the world is still experiencing turmoil and devastation by wars spreading like wildfire, with Jews, Christians and Moslems at each other’s throats in seemingly never ending battles and ugly strife. Some call it war on terror, others speak of wars of clashing cultures, crusades, jihad, etc., etc., etc. One can’t help but wonder how this saga of 99% misery and 1% heroism will ever come to an end. Only the gullible would attempt to explain the ongoing world conflict among People of the Book: Jews, Christians and Moslems, based on the course of events during the past few years, or even the past few decades. This is where this book comes in with a rigorous, rationalized, and hopefully convincing critical assessment of a never-before-explored, most innate aspect of the human nature, and that is its obsession with hijacking of the religion of God. For better understanding of the root cause of the ongoing conflict among People of the Book, who are supposed to be worshipping the same God, we need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and reflect rationally, while ignoring all rhetoric and emotional bias in researching the past three thousand years of religious history. And this is exactly what I did in writing this three-volume book.

More specifically, this book is addressing the religion of God to whom every human being from among the so-called People of the Book today turns in prayer. Whether soldiers or civilians, when they are caught in the midst of the ongoing grisly and devastating wars, some would pray to Yahweh, others call upon Jesus Christ, while Moslem brethren whisper the name of Allah upon taking their last breath. Who is that God? And why is He so shrouded with mystery? Is He truly One and the Same God for all these people? Or are we suffering from some self-delusions and possibly hallucinations that may be the senseless products of our ancient religious fabrications and mythmaking. Going back in time three thousand years brings us to one very special night, when God was said to have come down in person onto Mount Sinai to have a close encounter with human beings through direct speech. This three-volume book examines the course of religious events from that magic and apocalyptic moment onwards till this day.

It took me twenty years of research to show that men who practiced hijacking long before they had wings have been quite active over the past three thousand years engaging in the lucrative business of hijacking the religion of God. All three religious persuasions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam suffered the dire consequences of miserably failing to heed the words of our Merciful and Patient God. No irony intended here in calling it a business, and indeed a lucrative one, because it brings the hijackers: power, enormous wealth, and often glory, all of which, in the sight of God translate, respectively into: arrogance, greed, and most certainly infamy. In this book I used historical events alone as summarized in 95 pages of conveniently organized timeline block diagrams, which I call fault-tree analysis charts, devoid of any rhetoric, and from which the readers will immediately be able to see and deduce along with me the isolated and identified specific religious hijacking events.

In developing the extensive critical review of religion presented herein, detailing the respective histories of the selected three religious persuasions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, I have always aimed at focusing attention on what went wrong and why? The product of this endeavor is a book, which provides easy reading yet thought-provoking, concise, and story-telling exposition of the course of events spanning three millennia of religious history. The book caters to the most general audience of humans seeking truth-in-religion, and requires no prerequisite readings, or special preparation by any one from among its anticipated audience worldwide, which in theory is a huge population segment totaling 3.3 billion people living today. More specifically, as of July 2007 census data base, our target audience is in fact comprised of 2.1 billion people in pursuit of Christianity, plus 1.2 billion people in pursuit of Islam, in addition to 13 ± 1 million Jews worldwide. What the reader will find here between the covers of these three volumes is a non-fiction critical account of the Religion of God that tells it like it is. The author hopes that this, first of its kind, presentation of a uniquely critical and candid outlook on religion will be widely disseminated to such people in search of God, who always look for that long-overdue, rhetoric-free characterization of critical issues of faith whether it is Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. To this end I devoted a painstaking effort spanning some twenty years of research into theology and the history of these religions. To me that was time well spent, as religion is by no means a trivial or superfluous part of our lives. Even those who may not be subscribing to any particular religious persuasion altogether, should in principle be intrigued by our analyses rationale, and the rigorous discussions thereof, leaving no stone unturned in search of truth. In fact, the trigger event, which launched me into this investigation, was my personal struggle with thoughts of atheism, and my doubts about the existence of God. Therefore, I would not be surprised if some atheists, as well as members of other non-Abrahamic religious persuasions (such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc.) may also take interest in learning more about the Abrahamic religious pursuits, their three-millennia-long anticlimax, and the raging turmoil among members of what was supposed to be the religion of One God: Jews, Christians and Moslems. I have no doubt that many observers worldwide today are wondering why these brethren: Jews, Christians, and Moslems are at each other’s throats, engaged in seemingly never ending wars? From recent events I should cite by way of example the nightmare of promised territories in the Middle East (Israel versus Palestine), the oil rush by the United States and Britain in the Middle East waging three devastating wars over soon-to-be-exhausted energy source: crude oil. I would like to call such greed-driven quest: our collective worship of the Black God, reincarnated as crude oil, akin to a demon released by our greed "in the waters under the earth"—to borrow the latter words from the First Commandment? And last but not least, we should not leave out the recently coined slogan by Samuel P. Huntington in his prophecy of a World-War-III erupting as a result of what he claimed to be a pending "clash of civilizations," or in his words "America-versus-Islam," a Huntington-prophesied war along what he called fault lines of cultures.

As an aside the book also critically examines ancient systems of government of four basic categories: (1) State governments dominated by the clergy or particular priesthoods servicing religious doctrines, such as the Temple State, (2) state governments exploiting religion in the service of monarchial imperial goals, such as many European governments during the Age of Kings, and the Crusades, and (3) a short-lived Islamic democracy during early Islam, reverting quickly to Islamic Empires as a way of the world, and finally (4) the Age of Nation States with varying degrees of separation of Church and State in contemporary secular societies. As such this book may also appeal to readers engaged in studies of systems of government, and history of political science. And last but not least, Volume 3 of this book, in dealing with the attempted hijackings of Islam, includes the results of our research into comparative Hebrew-Arabic-English linguistics, whereby new discoveries were made providing better understanding of the close relationship between Judaism and Islam, on the one hand, and between the Torah and the Qur’an on the other. These never-before-explored domains of comparative linguistics research into Judaism, Christianity and Islam, may help our reading audience come to grips with what has always been regarded as a mirage, namely that these are but one religion: The Religion of God—the One God, revealing one Book, for all the People . . . and I mean all 6.67 billion of them inhabiting the earth as of this writing.

As a researcher into theology, I feel fortunate to have been born when I did, because during the second half of the twentieth century a considerable research effort into theology was undertaken, and many publications were released spotlighting critical findings and uncovering new issues never before explored. Examples of such rigorous works are as follows: Who Wrote the Bible (reference here is to the Jewish Bible or the Torah)? by Professor Richard Friedman [1] at the University of California, San Diego; and Who Wrote the New Testament? by Former Professor Burton L. Mack [2] at the Claremont Colleges in California, where he taught early Christianity for many years; publication of the unabridged issue of The Torah—A Modern Commentary Edited by W. Gunther Plaut [3]; and a mammoth six-volume 4013-page interpretation of the Qur’an by Professor Sayyed Qutb in Arabic [4]; Jesus—An Historians Review of the Gospels by Professor Michael Grant [5] of Edinburgh University; Islam Between East and West by Alija Izetbegovich [6], the former President of Bosnia, Islam and the Destiny of Man by Gai Eaton [7]; The Holy Qur’an—Translation and Commentary by Yusuf Ali [8], which I used side-by-side with my personal copy of the Qur’an in Arabic [9] along with The Koran, a contemporary English translation by N.J. Dawood [10]; and of course King James Bible, [11], and the Holy Bible—New International Version [12] as representative readings of the Christian Bible. My intellectual curiosity and thirst for in-depth course of inquiry were truly challenged upon reading two additional Gospels: Burton L. Mack’s The Lost Gospel, [13] and The Gospel of Barnabas [14]. I must mention here also my benefitting from several critical, honest and thought-provoking books by scholarly and staunch religious critics of late, such as A History of God, by Karen Armstrong [15], Bertrand Russell’s Why I am Not a Christian edited by Paul Edwards [16], Jesus a Prophet of Islam by Muhammad ‘Ata ur-Rahim [17], The End of Days by Gershom Gorenberg [18], and last but not least The Writings of Saint Paul edited by Wayne A. Meeks [19].

Relevant historical accounts that I found invaluable in my 20-year research all of which with one or two exceptions came out in the public domain within that time frame are: The Oxford History of Islam Edited by John L. Esposito [20]; A History of the Jewish People Edited by H. H. Ben Sasson [21]; A History of the Arab People by Albert Hourani [22]; War and Peace in the Middle East by Avi Shlaim [23]; A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin [24]; and The Timetables of History by Bernard Grun based upon Werner Stein’s Kulturfahrplan [25]. Enormous help through the use of Alim compact disks [26] and [27], utilizing modern computer technology for quick access to the Qur’anic verses and associated commentary substantially accelerated the later phases of my research. This invaluable source additionally contained quotations of Prophet Mohammad’s statements and conversations with his audiences and companions called Hadith, which is a compilation of non-Qur’anic proclamations, advice and mere declarations or statements made by Prophet Mohammad over 23-year period of his mission. In Arabic the term Hadith simply means statements or conversations.

These tremendous references and valuable contributions to theology were instrumental in enriching my understanding of the issues of monotheism. But there were also many other, equally valuable contributions to this multifaceted subject, particularly those in the fields of science, such as: The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by Barrow and Tipler [28]; Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time [29]; with its companion book by Boslough, Stephen Hawking’s Universe, [30]; The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin [31]; What is the Origin of Man [32] and The Bible, the Qur’an, and Science [33], both by Dr. Maurice Bucaille; and Ever Since Darwin by Steven J. Gould [34]. Hopping back and forth between biology and life sciences, on the one hand, and cosmology, on the other, I found most enlightening and deeply philosophical the book entitled The Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose [35], Infinity and the Mind, by Rudy Rucker [36], and Ideas and Opinions, Albert Einstein, With an Introduction by Alan Lightman, [37].

And as we have become accustomed in this modern day and age to accepting the illusion that religion and politics, or alternatively the Church and State, can somehow be kept separate, it was only upon reading two recent books by Noam Chomsky [57] and [58] that I was forced to reexamine my original interpretations of historical events from a broader geopolitical perspective, but still unequivocally reaffirming my own earlier conclusions of humanity’s obsession with hijacking of the religion of God. As a distinguished scholar of political science, government and linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Noam Chomsky did not discuss religion in great detail in his books. His two noted publications [57] and [58] mainly focused on political science, government and the emerging nation states of the last two centuries, and that is when the United States itself entered the world, first as a significant power, then later as a dominant, hegemonic world superpower, or to use Chomsky’s term, an empire. From Chomsky’s presentations and assertions [57], [58], I was able to deduce by inference that the history of religion is in fact a broken record, with the story of humanity continuously repeating itself from the days of, say the Roman Empire till the days of the U.S. Empire. It is all about power, hegemony or survival of the fittest militarily, with the exploitation of religion being no exception, whether one is reviewing the days of the ancient Crusades or the Bush-Blair modern, civilizing, or rather liberating Neo-Crusades, with which they launched unjustified preemptive wars under the banners of what Chomsky calls demonic messianism.

In more specific terms, what I call here the religion of God was not the only instrument being exploited among other equally effective means aimed at gaining hegemony, power, and ill-perceived strife for survivability as blind tyrants take comfort in oppressing their own people, as well as those of other nations. To mention a few such instruments: (a) the misleading and quite effective multimedia of today, catering to special interests and corporate profiteering, especially television controlling and molding the public perception and beliefs on critical and national issues, (b) the use of fear, as Chomsky eloquently puts it: to whip the population into obedience by the ruling class especially by those public servants with a conflict of interest, (c) the use of hunger, e.g. cruel trade sanctions imposed for fifteen years on Iraq, and intermittently throughout the twentieth century in Africa, and Latin America spanning several decades, with the sole purpose of guaranteeing dominant superpower control, (d) the so-called free trade agreements, and other subtle trade measures privatizing public utility services in third world countries, besides sinister high-interest-rate loan practices forcing developing nations into huge debts with the consequences of depriving whole segments of world population of badly needed food, medicine and other essential commodities, (e) mischievous exploitation of foreign aid to promote tyranny in underdeveloped countries, while robbing them of their natural resources by allied superpowers posing as contemporary empires (PAX Americana, and/or PAX Britannica, the combination of which I will call ‘endearingly’ in this book: PAX Ameritanica). These instruments of destruction of one’s fellow human beings by others are discussed in alarming detail in Noam Chomsky’s numerous publications, and especially in his enlightening two recent books on the present world political landscape: "Hegemony or Survival—America’s Quest for Global Dominance [57] and Failed States [58]. I found these two books in particular quite helpful in my preparations for writing Volume 3 on Islam, especially in improving my understanding of the present turmoil between the United States of America and the emerging so-called nation states" with predominantly Islamic populations.

In preparing the manuscript of this book over such an extended period of time I must first and foremost thank my wife, Holly Robinson El-Soudani, for her enduring patience during the countless days and nights that it took me to complete this investigation, and to write the manuscript. Without her continued encouragement, love, care and understanding, this endeavor would never have come to fruition. I am also deeply indebted to my son, Robert S. El-Soudani, a Software Engineer, for keeping my computer up and running all this time, and for his continued encouragement. In view of the complexity of the 95-page fault-tree analysis charts, which I developed in order to concisely outline the religious hijacking events, without Robert’s help, and the computer use, this manuscript would have never seen the light. Also in conducting the theological research and in preparing the associated documentary I must acknowledge the many valuable discussions with my co-author-artist and daughter Nabawia Jane El-Soudani. In fact her persistent and testing questions forced me to refine and improve my modeling of the Doctrine of Free Will, using set theory until it attained its level of clarity, which in fact earned her the compliments of numerous viewers of her documentary entitled My Father My Friend.

The theme of this book deals mainly with a critical assessment of what turned out to be an anticlimax, based on clearly manifest, and very poor human performance in relation to a Merciful and Oft-Forgiving God. This is true on all three frontiers of religious persuasion: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Because the hijacking events were so many, and are spanning some three millennia of human history, which is unfathomable and beyond grasp of a normally focused human mind, I have written a poem summarizing the entire three volumes in three pages of poetry, in an attempt to bring to mind the process of hijacking of the Religion of God materialized and expressed in concrete exemplary human conducts, as manifest in the personal histories of three selected prominent hijackers of religion, whom I called in the poem "The Three Brethren Kings." Interestingly the three monarchs selected from among many others for the subject poetic presentation happen to be: One Jewish (Jeroboam Ben Nebat, King of Ancient Israel), One Christian (Emperor Constantine of the Eastern Roman Empire), and One Moslem (King Fahd of the Saudi Arabs). My poem turned out to be a sad story, and despite the somber tenor which dominated the main body of my book, its ending with the final lines of the poem is in fact optimistic, not only for Jews, Christians, and Moslems, but also for the rest of humanity. This includes with no exception all nations, ethnicities, genders, colors, with all pulling together in order to get through the darkness of the night. And here "the darkness of the night" in my poem is merely my own way of providing a symbolic representation of the fact that our life on this earth is still shrouded with mystery, and pending our acquisition of a better grip on our individual realities, our lives in this world do seem to be driven by fears of the unknown and by the fear of death. Bertrand Russell [16] named these two fears as the main reasons for humanity’s clinging to religion. While I cannot say that Bertrand Russell’s conclusions are untrue, in my own poem my final and ultimate message of this book is rather different from that of the eminent philosopher. In fact the last few lines of my poem imply that with faith in God and with our acceptance and consciousness of Him in our lives, we humans, given our adherence to morally sound, kind, and honorable behavior, together we shall overcome the sadness of the human condition on this trivial planet of our milky way. And here it is:

The Three Brethren Kings

This is a sad story

Of three Brethren kings

Hijackers of the mind

Who obviously need no wings

Three snatchers of religion,

Three monarchs with ambition

My sad story of shock and awe,

Began three thousand years ago

When calf worship was high and low

As Ben Nebat, the King of Israel

Took off hijacking Judaism

Which is still hijacked by Zionism,

But who in his right mind:

Could have ever even imagined ?

That Ben Nebat’s dreadful mission,

Was the beginning of a long tradition

Of brutal hijackers with ambition,

One hijacker following another;

Kingdoms competing with each other

Till they left the promised land,

To a never-never land,

Where Exodus is open-ended

And the true Torah is suspended

As the Sinai Ark of the Covenant

Has for long been apprehended

And the only true word of God,

With no clue, or alibi

Is nowhere to be found;

Like a pie in the sky

But most sinister of Brethren Kings,

Was Roman Emperor Constantine,

Forcing the invention of a Trinity God,

By inviting the Council of the Nicene,

While he kept an undivided,

Dearest and nearest Roman Empire,

What else a monarch, so cunning,

Could have had for his ultimate desire,

Then he decreed that the Trinity God,

Shall be Master of the Roman Empire,

But the irony came on his deathbed,

Seeking a priest for a final prayer

The Emperor died Unitarian, instead,

For it was Eusebius who baptized,

Constantine as a dying Emperor,

A non-Trinitarian was thus empowered,

And entrusted with the high honor

Of an Emperor departing a miserable world,

In widespread quandary and strife,

With never ending schism and confusion,

Adding serious threat to life

With hundreds of heretics burned to stakes,

Others beheaded by an ax or a knife,

And while limiting religious freedoms

This Trinity God is in fact polytheism,

A Doctrine considered by Jews and Moslems,

To be Shirk: just a form of paganism

And the last of Brethren Kings

Is King Fahd of the Saudi Arabs,

Who pretends to be fighting terrorism

With abundant petro-dollars

Allied with vicious imperialism

Oppressing freedoms and scholars

A most subtle mask indeed

As the mighty rich Saudis,

Plagued with tribal family greed,

Are hijackers of Islam,

In fact audacious King Fahd,

Recently declared a real sham,

As he went on attacking Islam,

Using terms of monarchial deceit,

Calling it a government by the elite,

Devoid of Western-style Democracy,

What ignorance, what hypocrisy!

A self-serving declaration,

For a dictatorial theocracy,

So now the Saudis are carving out

Their Hypocritical Protocol,

Bringing down their entire nation

Under Saudis’ solid control,

With their polygamist breeding wives

Delivering thousands of Saudi lives,

As a one-family-government body

Of corrupt men with dozens of wives,

No longer armed with daggers and knives,

Thanks to their loyal imperial powers,

Their arms are missiles and radar towers,

Whence their grip on political power,

While thoughts of democracy and freedom

Leave them ill-tempered and even sour.

That was my sad story,

Of three brethren kings,

Hijackers of the mind,

Who obviously need no wings,

Exploiters of religion,

Three monarchs with ambition.

But for now my all-time brothers,

And sisters reading my sad story,

These hijackers have had their druthers,

And some even celebrated their glory;

But don’t ye grieve or be uptight

So long as we all this time get it right;

We must reach out and pull one another,

So we all can make it through a very long night,

Rising above the abyss of dirt and mud,

Remembering that with every daybreak,

There is a new beginning with God.

© Sami M. El-Soudani, Los Angeles June, 2005

missing image file

Sami M. El-Soudani, PhD Cantab.

Los Angeles, Friday, October 13, 2006

Chapter 1

Introduction

This major undertaking of research into theology in competition with my other career interests in engineering sciences was driven by a personal concern and overwhelming anxiety, which overtook me as I suddenly found myself seriously doubting the existence of God. This happened in the wake of a thought-provoking incident that was in reality a thermal shock, when my hand suddenly came in contact with a red hot stove top. Upon experiencing the excruciating pain from burning feelings the immediate question that came to my mind was this: How is it possible for anyone to imagine the burning of human flesh in eternal Hellfire? Such a punishment is graphically described in the Scriptures as an inevitable reality to come to those whose misdeeds led them to earn the wrath of God? In our conventional human wisdom, however limited that may be, any punishment must be commensurate with the associated offence. Is the punishment in Hellfire till eternity commensurable with any sin that a human may commit? This question of a punishing deity and with such untold severity is by no means a trivial one. As I learned in my subsequent research it was not merely unsettling to me as a Moslem, but it has also been a basic concern over the course of history among renowned Christian religious critics, Jewish theologians and prominent scientists. Here we elaborate briefly on two such cases.

A former Catholic nun, who later turned religious critic, Karen Armstrong, wrote in her recent book entitled A History of God [15.1]:

The Roman Catholicism of my childhood was a rather frightening creed. James Joyce got it right in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: I listened to my share of hellfire sermons. In fact Hell seemed a more potent reality than God, because it was something that I could grasp imaginatively. God, on the other hand was a somewhat shadowy figure, defined in intellectual abstractions rather than images.

In a somewhat different account Albert Einstein gave a more explicit view on Hellfire dealing with the issue of punishment in a recently published autobiography of Einstein entitled Ideas and Opinions edited by Carl Seelig [37]. Quoting the prominent physicist from an address at Princeton University Theological Seminary on May 19, 1939, published in Out of My Later Years, New York, here is what Einstein wrote:

"Nobody certainly will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and Omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help and guidance; also by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment upon Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?"

During several years that followed, while attempting to rationalize for myself the existence of God, I always felt that I was not alone. The search for God who demands our faith in the unseen or in Arabic "iman bil-ghaib" has been the most difficult test of our human intelligence and consciousness. This is a test of every human being that begins at birth and lasts till death in a continuing saga of search for the Divine. Being a scientist I am naturally inclined to favor the course of scientific inquiry as the first resort in developing a sound rationale for intellectually challenging issues. With this in mind I decided to challenge the scriptures, namely the Qur’an looking specifically for any self-contradictory statements or inconsistencies as may be revealed in the course of a normal scientific inquiry. To Moslems the Qur’an is the infallible Book of God. I