Might I respectfully suggest that those who don’t want to discuss the Q’uran post in a different thread?
Regards,
Shodan
More striking to whom? To you? Or more meaningful in the context of the countless fatwas that are issued every year, in terms of their impact on the daily lives of a billion people?
The Pope is the spiritual leader of the hundreds of millions of people who follow the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church. There is no single spiritual leader for the world’s Muslims. And for that matter, how many Catholics do you know who have had sex outside of marriage, to name one obvious example?
Frankly, as a Jewish agnostic I don’t have a dog in this fight. But the implication that the literal words of a holy text have any significant impact on the propensity toward violence of anything but a tiny proportion of more than a billion people, who live all over the planet and are the results of a huge degree in variation of degree of observance, and other historical and cultural influences, is ludicrous. And bigoted.
P.S. Monty and the others who would actually like to have a book discussion, I think it’s a great idea and apologize in advance if my posts have hijacked this thread. Agreed that two separate threads are probably in order - I’m not sure how to focus the GD-type one, but would likely participate.
The statistics you cite do not add up to ‘widespread’. Add them up, and you get:
People who agree often or sometimes:
Often or Sometimes
Lebanon 73%
Ivory Coast 56%
Nigeria 47%
Bangladesh 44%
Jordan 43%
Pakistan 33%
Mali 32%
Ghana 30%
Uganda 29%
Senegal 28%
Indonesia 27%
United States 24%
Tanzania 18%
Turkey 13%
Uzbekistan 7%
Note that only two countries list the ‘majority’ of the population as pro-terrorism ‘often or sometimes’, neither that populous.
Now look at the rarely, never, or other column:
Rarely or Never/Other
Uzbekistan 93%
Turkey 85%
Tanzania 82%
Indonesia 73%
Senegal 72%
Uganda 71%
Ghana 69%
Mali 68%
Pakistan 66%
Bangladesh 56%
Jordan 56%
Nigeria 53%
United States 46%
Ivory Coast 44%
Lebanon 27%
Look which countries have ‘rarely, never, or other’ as the majority vote. Look which three do not.
Your statistics don’t prove your case. But thanks for them.
Unfortunately, since this thread has been so completely hijacked, Monty may have to start a new one.
Exactly.
I know. of those three versions…the one that seemed to be more Plain English and less Flowery Godspeak (I hate that…spit it out, already!) was the Shakir. That’s the only reason I thought it would be the easiest one to tackle. The OP agreed. Any nays?
Also, I wonder if there’s a version of that on line without parallel comparison of the other two versions. The three versions makes for a rather plodding read, if you ask me.
Regarding the many excerpts that I read in Harris’s book, “tedious” doesn’t begin to describe it. That alone could prevent me from being able to get through the whole thing.
A lot of people like to quote the “kill the unbelievers” section.
But the first Sura says that anyone who believes in God and does good works attains Paradise.
Therefore anyone who believes in God and does good works is a Muslim.
The Koran also uses the term “People of the Book” which includes Christians who worship a three-in-one God.
So a belief in God incarnate must not be a bar to Paradise.
So, a Hindu (who worship a thousand-in-one God) who does good works is a Muslim.
Huh. Tell that to the christians. And let’s not even get started on what they think of we atheists!
Withdrawing my post. On review, I see that the fact that the only true Qur’an is one in Arabic has already been mentioned.
Yeah, not like that page turner Numbers. 
Try the Marmaduke Pickthall translation. It reads more like the King James version of the Bible.
Re the link, unless I’m using the search function badly, all I can get with a single word query are verse references on which I have to click individually to see each result.
A translation with a more convenient search function would be the University of Michigan site:
Where a simple query on a word displays all verses having that word.
I’ve heard this bizarre claim that: “You must read it in the original Arabic otherwise your understanding is not authentic” nonsense before.
It makes no logical sense and is more likely to be an attempt to foreclose a debate on the Koran’s contents.
If I went to the trouble of learning Arabic just to read the Koran then I’d be doing my own translation and, compared to an expert translator, making a piss poor job of it.
Look, the idea is to treat the book as literature. I figured there would be the usual suspects who couldn’t separatee their ideas of Islam from the simple task of reading a book and talking about the book’s actual literary ideas (plots, characters, and so forth).
Yeah, putting it in Cafe Society was my first thought. If the usual suspects can manage to separate religion from a reading assignment, let’s move this thread (stripped of the off-topic comments) there.
I’m not adverse to discussing the impact of the tome on society, but that’s a different topic. This one is “Let’s read the book, the actual book, and talk about the characters and the plot as written.”
Well, that’s what Muslims believe. They believe God dictated the Koran to Muhammed in Arabic, so any translation will be not be in the language God used. I don’t see that that’s any more illogical than dozens of other religious beliefs I can think of.
I apologise, Monty. I assumed you were talking about evaluating it as a philosophical text, rather than as literature. Your points that there are a lot of people blindly bashing Islam through the Qur’an in the OP suggested to me that the reason for reading it was to debate what it actually said, rather than merely judge it as an interesting collection of stories. Of course, if you’re wanting to just enjoy it as literature, that Muslims hold it to be only “valid” if in Arabic doesn’t come into the equation.
I’m in and it’s the Shakir translation that I amazingly somehow managed to just buy. It was the cheapest. 
There’s a workaround for that: Just find a Doper somewhere who can read classical Arabic, explain the nuances of meaning and grammar, the literary context, etc. and if there’s a question she can point out the basis in the original Arabic for reading it a particular way. It would be almost as good as being able to read it in Arabic yourself.
Ah, but where could we find such a learned person?