Reading the Qur’an
Abraham Lincoln once remarked that a man isn’t well-read until he’s read the Bible; if Lincoln were born and raised in Muslim country, he would have said this about the Qu’ran instead. On the advice of this Arab-ham Lincoln, I’ve started reading through an English translation of the Qur’an. I bring a unique perspective to this text and will be able to provide unique commentary, for three reasons. First, the majority of the readers of Allah’s Word are (I imagine) indoctrinated with the text from birth, making it very difficult for them to objectively analyze their holy book. Second, as my father was a graduate student in Old Testament history and taught all of us kids about everything Bible from early childhood, I already have a pretty strong grasp on Islam’s mother-religions. But third, despite this Biblical familiarity, I’m not the kind of Bible thumper one might expect to “read” the Qur’an with explicit intentions to discredit it.
The copy I have here is a 1997 edition published by Abulqasim Publishing House, translated (1) by Saheeh International. The original Arabic script accompanies the English translation, which is a cool touch and something the Christian Bible ought to try. The author is officially the prophet Muhammad, though it’s allegedly the word of God revealed through an angel. The work is divided into 114 chapters called surahs. I’ve read the first (very short) surah and the first half of the second one.
Initial Observations
I was rather surprised to find the book is not apparently self-contained. Whereas theoretically you could crack open the Bible and understand its stories with no background whatsoever, Muhammad’s scripture freely refers to figures like Adam, Moses, and Jesus with no introduction whatsoever. In other words, the contents of the Christian scripture seem to be assumed. The text I’ve read so far would be completely incomprehensible to the average Japanese or Chinese reader, or anyone at all who doesn’t already know quite a lot about Judaism. And this doesn’t just go for references to historical figures. All sorts of cultural knowledge is assumed, such as in verse 173 of the 2nd surah, which invokes Islamic dietary law, as if the reader already knows this law.
As literature read for pleasure, the Islamic tome seems markedly inferior to the King James Bible. There’s no plot, and the only underlying thread seems to be: “Allah’s gonna seriously punish lots and lots of people, oh, but don’t forget how merciful and forgiving He is.” (Really, Muhammad? That’s sooo Old Testament!) In fairness, though, I’ve barely cracked the surface, and maybe it gets better in the later surahs.
On the other hand, the book has a kind of hypnotic appeal. It’s hard to describe. You have to read it for awhile to feel this. You sit down and open the book, and at first you can’t help but think: “Wow, I’m reading the Qur’an. I feel bored/silly.” But as you struggle through verse after verse, you fall under its spell and there’s a kind of ebb and flow to the words. I drifted into a light doze while reading, and I found my brain continuing to spin up Qur’anish gibberish, as if it had gotten stuck in some generative grammar used to generate the book. Maybe it’s the repetitive nature of the text. With this entrancing quality in the English translation, I can only imagine the original Arabic!
Another thing that surprised me about the Qur’an is that it is not aimed at its readers, but at the prophet Muhammad. It’s as if Allah sent an angel to personally address Muhammad, and there was a hidden tape-recorder in the room and you have a transcript of the address. This put me off balance at first, since one generally doesn’t read literature written with this structure. But then it made me realize, this mode is exactly what a divinely inspired work should use. Both Christians and Muslims assert that their holy books are the direct word of God, but this is nonsense in the case of the Bible. To whatever extent if any the Bible is divinely inspired, it’s decidedly not the word of God: at absolute best it’s the word of Moses, Peter, Paul, and so on. If the Bible were the direct word of God, it would more closely resemble the Qur’an, a monologue delivered to a prophet (or prophets), rather than a mish-mash of stories, laws, songs, snailmail and begats.
As I continue reading, I’ll publish additional commentary as it comes to me. The reading is going quite slowly, though. We’re talking about a book with over 900 pages. Opening it to some random pages doesn’t suggest the reading gets much easier than these first couple sulahs.
NOTES
(1) From the editor’s forward: “The words of Allah can never be translated literally. Therefore, it is incorrect to use the term ‘translation of the Qur’an’. What is rendered into other languages can be no more than a brief tafseer (explanation of the meanings).” Refreshing change from the Christian community in the U.S., where they implicitly assume English is God’s Own Tongue!
FURTHER READING
A Modern Version of Genesis 1
The Law of Beliefs
Merlin Carothers