Lesbians, raisins and Islam

Irshad Manji is out to revolutionize Islam by bringing it back to what she claims are its feminist, fun-loving roots. Manji, whose book The Trouble with Islam Today has been causing quite an uproar in the Islamic world, is an activist for both lesbian and Islamic issues. The London Times offers an oddly-toned profile of Manji today - it reads a little like something off the society pages - but the all-time best spit-take inducing paragraph in the article has got to be this, in response to the interviewer's suggestion that the London suicide bombers were looking forward to their 72 virgins in the afterlife:

But Manji says recent research shows all that virgin stuff was based on an erroneous translation of the Koran: what awaits in heaven are 72 raisins. What? Could 54 people really have been blown up for a bag of raisins? "Well in 7th century Arabia raisins were so exalted as to be promoted to paradise."

Man. I bet there are some pissed off jihadists in heaven right now. (Hat tip to the Fixer.)