Grubby little hack I may be, or would be given the chance, but I'm an equal opportunities grubby little hack. I did the Bible yesterday, so today it's the Koran.

As for those who disbelieve in Our communications,

it says,

We shall make them enter fire;
so oft as their skins are thoroughly burned,
We will change them for other skins,
that they may taste the chastisement;
surely Allah is Mighty, Wise

Sura 4.56

The verse appears to be saying that people who don't believe in the Koran will be burnt alive for their disbelief, and that once their skin has been burnt off, and therefore their nerve endings, it will be replaced so that the torture can continue unabated. Very Wise, I'm sure.

One should always be careful with texts from another language, of course. It may well turn out that fire is a mistranslation for delicatessens, skins for strudels, and chastisement for sugary goodness. Even if true, however, that would still leave the other 171 instances of the word fire in my translation of the Koran to account for. I took a random sample of 20, and in all cases but one unbelievers were providing the kindling.

I like to use this quote for polemical purposes because of its sheer malice. The Bible of course is frequently just as offensive.

Let's assess this hypothetical deity’s moral code by applying a human analogy. I teach computing classes for adults in a Bristol community centre. I am currently the only tutor who runs classes in Photoshop. Suppose that a student had said that I wasn't the Photoshop tutor, that Baal or Zeus was, or that there were many tutors, or that there were no tutors and the students taught themselves.

This statement would in fact be incorrect, as I am the only Photoshop tutor (although some observers claim I actually send my son, who is simultaneously me). I might possibly be slightly peeved, although I probably couldn't be bothered. Either way, it would seem excessive to roast its originator over an open fire, even if I only burnt their skin off the once.

If I, small and imperfect as I am, can rise above such things, why can’t the creator of life, the universe and everything? Given his omniscience one might have hoped for a level of emotional maturity. What could it possibly be about disbelief that upsets him so much?

Like Jonathan Creek, Allah may well have come to find his disciples a little wearying. I only accuse him of non-existence, they accuse him of crimes (infinitely) worse than Hitler's. If I was him, I would claim to have been misrepresented.

This is a selective quote, of course. There are other things in the Koran which are perfectly nice, in an unremarkable kind of way. And Christian commentators can be just as bloodthirsty. The saintly Augustine, for instance, approves the use of torture for heretics, on the grounds that if finite earthly torture drives them to convert and saves them from infinite tortures in hell it must be a good deal for them.

But the point is, there are plenty of moral philosophers who manage to produce perfectly reasonable work without lapsing into war crimes every few pages. Why aren't they better than the holy rollers?