Aethernaut

Today I recieved the copy of the Qur'an that I ordered from Amazon. I've never read it before but on first inspection and light skimming it seems that Allah really likes to hear his own name. Is it just me or is the god of Islam full of himself?

The book would probably be about half as thick and a lot easier to read if there were less pointless praise of god for god's benefit.

-SK

On a side note: I ordered a rice cooker and a George Foreman grill with the book, that should screw with Amazon's demographic research.

x-member

On the Q'ran:

Praise be to Allah, you'll read, praise be to allah, a lot, praise be to allah, or repe- praise be to alla-ticious junk in it. It reads in an almost hypnotic manner, IMO.

As for the rice cooker... Buy Basmati!

Aethernaut

Mmm... Basmati...

I suppose the Qur'an may have been written to be intentionally hypnotic. That would seem to be the best kind of brainwashing.

Isn't there some speculation as to the style it is written in being completely different from anything written before or since?

-SK

Orpheous99

I have an electronic version and read some of it as well. I find that it reads like disjointed poetry and no real context at all. No wonder so many terrorists use it as an excuse. You can make it say whatever you please more so than with the Christian bible. Even the bible is a better read and has some context as any fictional story would be.

sidewinder

I am currently reading a biography of Muhammad which was written by Karen Armstrong. I think Armstrong used to be a Catholic Nun. It's obvious that she feels that most, if not all, of the negative Western views of Islam are wrong, but she's wrong. There are some very valid Western criticims of Islam. I don't think she's a Muslim but she does seem to believe that Muhammad was a prophet of Allah (God of the universe)and that the Qur'an is the revelation of Allah.

My long-winded point is that she claims that the Qur'an has to be divinely inspired because Muhammad was illiterate and could not possibly have written such "beautiful" and "profound" verses. This raises a question for me. Can it be verified that the Qur'an was written by Muhammad? I've heard that Muhammad didn't write the Qur'an but that he taught his disciples the revelation he was receiving and eventually they wrote them down. If this is true, it seems possible that one or more literate Muslims could have written the Qur'an. This brings up the question if any of these writers changed the verses. Any comments?

repoman

I've heard that Muhammad was not a very good poet and was very jealous of talented poets. It is said that he ordered the death of a very old poet because he ridiculed Muhammad's ideas. I have also read in excepts of 'Why I am not a Muslim' by Ibn Warraq that the Koran was completed about 200 years after his death.

Corwin

I'd have to agree that a lot of western criticisms of Islam are entirely justified. The entire basis of the religion is slavery. In the west we see this as a Bad Thing(tm). (Personally I find slavery to be repulsive, and I don't CARE if it's God that's the slavemaster. It's still slavery and still repulsive.)

David Bowden

Armstrong does tend to whitewash Islam in an attempt to be sympathetic to her subject, although I'm pretty sure I've read someplace that she's not a Muslim; certainly she's not a conservative one. I've read her History of God a couple of times, and I just breezed through her very readable Islam: A Short History in January.

In the latter book especially, the tone she uses feels "politically correct" and "tolerant" in a way that sometimes irritates me, but I admit that she is good at reconstructing the issues that have defined Islam over the centuries. Others analyze Islam's obvious and enormous faults; Armstrong seems to be aiming at showing us why Muslims are devoted to their faith, and why that faith looks like it does today.

She is concerned that people tend to equate all of Islam with the violent fundamentalism that crops up everywhere, it seems, eventually. I think she's trying to point out that most Muslims mean well, and want basically the same sort of things most people do: political self-rule without foreign interference, safe and generally homogenous communities, enough food to eat, and the right to live as they feel right in living, without getting picked on gratuitously.

She wants to show us a more complete picture than we usually get, and does a pretty good job of showing us Islam from a variety of angles. Whether she's accurate overall or not is beyond my knowing as a non-specialist and a non-Muslim, but even as I complain about her whitewashing, I admire her ability to create a convincing picture of a full-bodied religion that defies caricature.

If Armstrong is right about Islam being mainly about building and reinforcing a tolerant and healthy community of people who believe in an ultimately benevolent God, then there are some negative generalizations about Islam and Muslims that could be moderated a bit, even if we disagree with them regarding the authority of their holy book, the existence of their deity and/or the value of Islam's other teachings.

</logorrhea>

-Wanderer

[ March 21, 2002: Message edited by: wide-eyed wanderer ]</p>

Aethernaut

Well, just judging from my reading last night and a bit this morning Islam seems to be, in my opinion, a pretty repugnant religion. Not that I didn't already guess that from things that I had read but now it's confirmed.

And I thought the bible was bad.

-SK

[ March 21, 2002: Message edited by: Schroedinger's Kitten ]

[ March 21, 2002: Message edited by: Schroedinger's Kitten ]</p>

sidewinder

Great post, wanderer!

It comes across in Armstrong's book that Muhammad was basically just reforming the ancient Hebrew faith which first gave birth to Judaism and then to Christianity. The Arabs felt inferior to Jews and Christians because the Hebrew God had not given them a revelation. Muhammad was essentially a religious reformer. He believed, like many before him, that he was called by the Hebrew God to give a revelation to the Arabs. The revelation was basically a reformed version of the ancient Hebrew faith. I think the Qur'an states this revelation was necessary because the Jews and Christians had corrupted past revelations.

I'm hoping to get some answers on my other question about the composition of the Qur'an.