lpetrich

is now available at The Skeptic's Annotated Bible site.

Enjoy!

Heathen Dawn

Wow! That’s excellent!

The next step is to have it in Arabic ... Muslims make heavy weather of the claim that the only authentic Qur’an is the Arabic one.

The Bearded One

The reason is that the Quran is the finest example of Arabic poetry ever written. It has never been translated well into any other language (to preserve the poetry as well as the message). Arabic speakers feel as posessive of the Quran as Russians do of Eugene Onegin as English do of Wm Shakespeare.

-- The Bearded One

Brother Daniel

Probably true. But there is another reason as well. Since most people who have negative feelings about Islam do not speak or read Arabic, it is convenient to be able to say "Bad translation!" every time we point to something in the Quran that is less than beautiful (such as an instruction to slaughter infidels).