Commentary on a holy book that isn’t of my faith tradition is sort of like walking into someone’s house and criticizing their decor. It’s not only rude, it presupposes one’s own taste is better than theirs, or what they like and enjoy and find comfortable is somehow suspect because it doesn’t work for me.
That said, I’ve made a stab at reading the Qur’an (in a translation to English by John Medows Rodwell). It was … not successful.
Part of it was the language. In shopping through the several translations at the local Buns & Noodle, I was driven by (a) wanting a mass market paperback so as to keep the cost down, and (b) looking for a translation that was more clear and less poetical in its language. I succeeded in (a), not so much in (b). Rodwell did his translation in the late 19th Century, it turns out, and it takes the KJV as its literary model.
A greater part is probably as much because of what I expect Scripture to be. The Christian Bible is a series of stories, for the most part. The Chosen People encounter X. Person Y has this happen to him. He does Z. The Lord responds with W. Conclusions are drawn, faith is rewarded, violation of the Lord’s commands is punished, and on to the next book. Even Gospels are narratives, telling the story of Jesus from (in some cases) childhood through ministry through execution through (in some cases) his return.
The Qur’an, on the other hand, is essentially a series of speeches / sermons by Mohammed to the folks in Mecca during his struggle to establish Islam through Arabia. Nor are they sequential (in many translations; Rodwell’s translation supposedly is). I really need to do some meta-reading about the Qur’an specifically, but what it boils down to is much closer (from a Christian perspective) to Paul’s Epistles, John’s Revelations, and some of the Old Testament Prophets (Jeremiah comes to mind) than the story-telling I’m useful.
The result is sort of a fire hose of theology to drink from. After plowing through the first four Suras (chapters), and doing some spot reading, I can’t say that I understand Islam much better than I did before, nor that I read much that struck me as particularly outre or evil or menacing. While there are some differences in a few particulars, bottom line Mohammed’s preaching would not sound wildly out of context if someone slipped it into the readings in most Christian churches some Sunday. (In fact, in some areas — treatment of women in marriage — I’d stack Sura 4 against the virginity- / menstruation-obsessed Deuteronomy and Leviticus.)
(There are some stories told — retellings, for the most part, of Jewish and Christian tales, coming across as third- or fourth-hand renditions. Mohammed is not imposing something utterly new, nor is he dealing with a completely blank slate before his audience.)
So …
I have more reading to do, but it will likely be more meta (“The Idiot’s Guide to the Koran”) than the book itself. I’m still interested in getting some basic description of the tenets of Islam, and the Qur’an. Regardless of what one thinks about the role of Islam in the world, or this country, knowing about it is of great value. Knowledge is, after all, power.
Actually, looking for a less poetic version is probably not a good call. The faithful claim that it has to be read in the original language because it is written as a series of poems in Arabic, a deliberately poetic language. Learning Arabic to understand the Qur’an is a bit of a stretch for someone who isn’t a convert, but I’d be inclined to look for a version that better represents the tone of the original.
Back in my ancient college days I took a comparative religion class on Islam, because it looked to me that Islam was going to be part of our lives for a long time (this was around the time of the first gulf war).
My overall impressions were these:
-Islam is a religion, and it’s good or evil is entirely dependant on the actions of its followers, not its tenets.
-Muslims have contributed a great deal to the world, but have been greatly hampered by their own fundmentalist wing. Many Muslims mourn for the loss of their leadership role in the sciences.
-The majority of the Qur’an is made up of the PRophets revelations of the visions granted to him by the angel Gabriel. Written down on scraps of treebark, while the Prophet and his family tried to escape persecution.
-I’m thinking there must be some sort of Arabic Peninsula version of Mescaline out in that desert. Just sayin’!
-There is a very Old Testament feel to the Qur’an, in the sense that the OT is designed to build a society.
-The Qur’an and Islam acknowledge that Jews and Christians are ‘People of the Book.’ So Islam is build on the judeo-christian foundation qith the Qur’an being an addition to those teachings. Like so many other follow up religions (I’m looking at YOU protestants!) they regard those who came before as well intentioned but misguided. Barring the ancient (and MODERN!) crusades, Islam would be happy to co-exist!
So, yeah, a good topic to study!
Unsurprising that you found NT stories – the same way as you shouldn’t be surprised bits of the OT are suspiciously similar to the Torah!
If I get the chance I’ll chat to one of the Imams at work, and ask him what a good introduction for a (non-converting) outsider would be.
I’d appreciate it. I was actually quite serious about “The Koran for Dummies,” which the local B&N has on the shelf (meant to get it at lunch today but didn’t quite make it that for).