According to Nicholas Kristof (via Milt’s file), new Koranic scholarship is disputing that old line about 72 virgins waiting for you in paradise:
[N]ow the same tools that historians, linguists and archaeologists have applied to the Bible for about 150 years are beginning to be applied to the Koran. The results are explosive [sic].
The Koran is beautifully written, but often obscure. One reason is that the Arabic language was born as a written language with the Koran, and there’s growing evidence that many of the words were Syriac or Aramaic.
For example, the Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get “hur,” and the word was taken by early commentators to mean “virgins,” hence those 72 consorts. But in Aramaic, hur meant “white” and was commonly used to mean “white grapes.”
This could be the big breakthrough in the fight against Islamic terror. Who’s going to blow themselves up for a bunch of grapes?
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