What does it mean to be well-educated in a Muslim country?? If they understood the concept of the 72 virgins, they wouldn't be bothering with it.

In past ages, they divided the heavens into 12 signs to form a circle--similar to a clockface--called the zodiac (or "circle of animals"). These 12 were special because they touched the ecliptic which is the sun's apparent path through the sky. Each sign, then, was 30 degrees (30x12=360) with the degree being equal to a day (five days/degrees were added at the end of the year which did not belong to any calendar).

They had to subdivide each sign into equal sections so they chose various non-zodiacal signs that rose 10 days apart which divided each sign into three 10-degree sections. For this reason, they were called decans. There were 36 decans (12x3). Then, they needed to divide the decans into halves when they needed more precision in their measurements. These 5-degree sections are called quinaries. There are (36x2=) 72 quinaries. And there are your 72 virgins in heaven.

The word used for virgin is "houris" which not only harks back to Horus the sun-god but to words like "hour" because reading the movements of the heavens gave us the concept of time (which is exactly why the face of a clock and the circle of the zodiac resemble one another in the extreme). But houris also refers to white grapes or raisins which are considered a great delicacy. These white grapes are, of course, the stars themselves.

Education does you no good if you are going to subordinate it to your religion which is filling your head with bulls-hit.

^^^^

Thanks for the insight.

Actually, on re-reading what I wrote, I made some errors. The decans are constellations not signs. I called decans "non-zodaical signs" which doesn't even make sense. There are no non-zodiacal signs. Only the constellations on the ecliptic are represented by signs.

This sounds like conciseness for the sake of being concise.

Right. You're too busy saving the whales from those terrible Japanese.

Aunt Viv can move those hips.

In this case, precise not concise.

But you'll notice her leg movements are stiff.

But concise rhymes better.