Thoughts on the Koran

Perhaps both can be meant. the name itself, Quran, in arabic is a verbal noun form meaning “Recitation” or reading, but at the time probably more recitation…

It was not even fully written down during the lifetime of Mohammed, it was memorized and recited. It was the action of the Caliph Abu Bakr after Mohammed’s death after a number of reciters were killed that had the first full written version.

So it is very useful to understand it as first an oral work, not one that was experienced first in reading alone, but by recitation, and this feels different I think.

Even now in the Islamic tradition, what is greatly valued is the Recitation - not just reading, but the memorization and the recitation. There are the international competitions around this.

I suppose we can say some parts are poety and some parts of recited verse, maybe not poetry, but it is not certainly the intentionally written narrative. I am not a literature person so I do not like to pretend to characterize what is poetry or what is not, but I think it is clear the narrative verse meant to be recited and memorized for the oral recitation has a quality different from the text that is primary written narrative.

Yes, it is a very, very strong ideological bias, it feels perhaps sinful to create a work to compete with the original - which is what in its own ideological framework a believing translation will be it if it is too attractive.

as a matter of rendering the original poetry if I use the idea of poetry in the wide sense

yes I am aware of the historical change, from the protestant era, although already the Latin language bible is itself a translation, so the idea of resistance seems strange to me…

But the vernacular Bibles had huge effort to render them beautifully when this resistance broke. It can not be said that this is the case of the Quran where the ideological resistance remains.

Thus the decades of effort as I understand it - even centuries maybe - against for the Quran only some recent (decades) of comparatively limited indivudal efforts.

Thanks - very interesting.

True. As I said, I am Lutheran, so the idea of resistance as it was taught to me (whether completely accurate or not) was that the educated Church spoke Latin as well as Greek so the resistance was to translating into vernacular languages like German and English. As long as it was only Greek and Hebrew and the Vulgate in Latin, the Christian Scriptures were still under control of the Church.

But thanks for your responses.

A while back there was a thread to discuss the Quran in CS, but it fizzled out. And the pastor at my church wrote his doctoral thesis on Islam in Cameroon, where he was a missionary, and he led a series on Islam during our adult education hour for a while.

Part of my long-term attempts to educate myself is to read the major writings of the world’s religions. I have done the Bible (many times), the Quran, the Analects of Confucius, the writings of the Buddha, and the Book of Mormon. I am considering tackling Doctrines and Covenants and learn more about Mormonism, if I can find it online or as an audiobook. Or perhaps I should do the Hadith and learn more about Islam, but I don’t know enough to be able to tell if the Hadith will distract me with sectarian controversy. Is the Hadith also considered only authentic if in the original Arabic, like the Quran is?
Oops, work calls. Gotta go - thanks.
Regards,
Shodan

Even after vernacular translations were being done and accepted on the continent, translation into English was a special case of prohibition. It was more of an issue of governmental control (with “divine right” authority, of course) than of the church maintaining control. Of course, the church in England was the government-sanctioned church at the time.

Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Doctrine and Covenants of Community of Christ (This only goes up to Section 144 as later sections are copyrighted.)

Back to the original topic: here is a very cool site with the Qur’an in both Arabic and English, with audio of both. The site plays each verse in Arabic first, then in English, then goes on to the next verse. You might notice that the Arabic recitation is more of the nature of a song, just as a cantor would read the Torah. I think that is partly what people mean when they say the Qur’an is poetry.

In a (pointless) meeting right now, but thanks - I will have a look.

Regards,
Shodan

That’s pretty much the message. The Koran demands that its believers kill anyone who isn’t Muslim.

If you haven’t heard compliments for the Old Testament’s prose, you haven’t met many Hebrew speakers.

True story: a few years ago, my wife and I were watching some series of, when one of the characters started to read a passage from the King James Bible. I happened to look over at her, and saw an expression of shock on he face.

Me: What happened?

Her: What IS that?

Me: I’m pretty sure it’s Psalms 23.

Her: But they’re ruining it!

Me: …it’s the standard translation…

Her: Tell them to stop.

My wife - who, incidentally, is an atheist - was absolutely right. English translations of the Jewish Bible are crap. They get the words, but they miss the music.

Nice hate site. Seriously, is that what you consider a contribution to this discussion?

The Koran is bad Mojo .

“Since when did they learn to read Arabic?”

I understand that might be at least in part a feature of Arabic. According to classroom talks during my translation coursework, it uses repetition a lot more than European languages.

No, islam is a cult based on deception & violence. It’s NOT hatred to point out the hate preached & practiced by muhammad & his followers on down to today. Hate speech is found throughout the quran & sunnah.
Why is the west taking the word of a cult of mass murderers over the word of those they tried to massacre & calling them liars & haters for speaking out against islam?

The majority of terrorism being committed worldwide is being done by followers of muhammad, maybe it would be wise to go study their beliefs to understand it.

2 concepts keep popping out: taqiyya & abrogation.

Allah is also known as the best of all deceivers, which should immediately stand out in comparison to the God of the Bible, who they say Allah is. God was not a deceiver, but Satan is.
Qur’an 3:54—And they (the unbelievers) planned to deceive, and Allah planned to deceive (the unbelievers), and Allah is the best of deceivers.

Anything to say about the Bible verses I quoted?

At least when it comes to the story of Noah God doesn’t come off looking quite so mad in the Quran. There is no automatic buy-in for family members(one son pretends to believe, then drowns while hiding on a mountaintop), in some verses it is indicated that there were some non-family conversions that got onboard, they were instructed to gather pairs of every animal available to them(not every animal on Earth), and most significantly (as far as I can tell) The Flood was designed to wipe out the unbelievers of Noah’s people-it was not apparently world-wide in scope.

KC & The Sunshine Band 1:1: “Do a little dance, Make a little love, Get Down Tonight”

I’ve seen that Christian mistranslation before of “And the disbelievers planned, but Allah planned. And Allah is the best of planners.” if you want a little background on that verse from a source not predisposed to hate, you might try reading this.

No, it doesn’t. You’ve been sold a lie.

Wow … if Muslims are supposed to kill any non-Muslim … there’s a shit load of Muslims out there who aren’t very good at being Muslim … where do people come up with this ignorance … and it’s stone cold blind ignorance … consider the world’s most populous Islamic country in the world, Indonesia, I know they have some problems, but she’s hardly a hotbed of terrorism …

Does racism by any other word still stink like shit?

Yes it is an aspect of the rhetorical style, but it maybe can also be tied to aspects of the grammar where it is possible to use a doubling to indicate an emphasis.

Oh how nice, the angry stupid person who thinks he is smart but in fact is very stupid and goes around complaining about warnings has come in to share with us that he is also a very stupid bigot.

Of course we have the real record of history - for one thousand years the Muslims actively did not slay non Muslims, in fact it was much better to be the religious minority (whether christian or Jewish or other) under a Muslim rule than under the Christians - who developed the nice habit of burning even their internal dissenters alive and had the ideology of conversion or die - so the Middle east still has strange little religious minorities like the Yazidis - where in the Christian Europe not one single pre christian religion survived even a century of christian rule. Luckily for the Muslims, we had the built in tax incentives for the regimes to not follow such thinking.

It is always amusing to see the religious bigots bringing up this, and using the Shia idea in a kind of way like the Elder Protocols text…

The angry stupid bigot and racist will come back to shout that the Muslims are not a race, so he is only guilty of being an angry stupid bigot in this case.

In the shades of the forementioned story:

Don’t get me wrong … I’m not saying Muslims are completely innocent … they did invent Algebra after all …

C’mon, that was a single guy! You can’t blame a whole religion for the actions of a single man!

(Plus, as much as I’m definitely not an algebra person, it does make things easier for the non-geometrical).