Answering Rachel (Part 1)
Clearing up a number of misconceptions about Islam
This series of posts is a response to Rachel Shoenberger’s reading of the Quran (or rather her reading of an Islamophobe’s interpretation of the Quran).
This first post deals with the preface to her post.
Robert Spencer is hardly objective when it comes to Islam. It’s a bit like reading a commentary on the Bible by Christopher Hitchens. So, there is the source of your problem with the Quran – you have not read the Quran, you have read a bigot’s impression of it.
AJ Arberry, a distinguished Cambridge Professor of Arabic, Persian and Islamic Studies, was not a Muslim. Rachel, I would recommend that you read his translation of the Quran which is considerably better than Spencer’s.
I mention Arberry because he DID see the spiritual and moral qualities and merits of the Quran. It’s also interesting that Arberry recognised that a translation will reflect the prejudices of the author translating: “Such being the translator's estimate of the merits of the Koran, it is hardly surprising that his version is very far from perfect”, he said of one translation, and it is almost certain that he would have said the same of Spencer’s translation.
Arberry relates in the preface to “The Quran Interpreted” his personal experience of translating the it: “This task was undertaken … at a time of great personal distress, through which it comforted and sustained the writer in a manner for which he will always be grateful. He, therefore, acknowledges his gratitude to whatever power or power inspired the man and the prophet who first recited these scriptures”.
I rather suspect that Arberry’s scholarship of Arabic and of scripture (even Christian scripture) is significantly better than that of Spencer.
Rachel, you claim the Quran is difficult to read. Firstly, it was not the Quran you were reading, but the interpretations of a bigot.
Secondly, the Quran is not a book to be read from cover to cover like other books – there is no beginning, middle or end. The Quran is not read – rather one’s heart engages with the Quran and a conversation takes place. A conversation with God.
That is what Arberry felt – the Quran will only reveal itself to those who open their hearts.
“God has placed a seal on their heart and their hearing, and they are closed from receiving God’s Guidance” Q2:6
If I place my hand in concentrated acid, then in the language of the Quran, God burns the flesh off my hand. I know that acid corrodes; it is a law of chemistry that acid corrodes. And the laws of nature are the Laws of God – and therefore, in the language of the Quran, God burns my hand when the acid eats away at my flesh.
It is in that sense that the Quran says “God has placed a seal on their hearts”; we have closed our hearts to the truth by stubbornly sticking to our prejudices. It is human nature - a nature that God shaped and we corrupt - that we close our hearts to what we do not like. The bigot will see what he wants to see.
You mention, Rachel, a number of points you found offensive about the Quran. I intend to go through them all, God Willing. But for now, I hope I have left you with something to think about.
Until the next post… Peace!
Khalid