10/27/2014
Quran Selections
Usually the Quran is not read in English because it's hard to get the meaning of an Arabic word precisely. It was even confusing for me. When I was reading these selections, I kept relating them back to psychology with the "delay of gratificiation. That if you believe in God and repent/don't commit sins, you'll get heaven or be rewarded. You hold out for your sins because you know there is something better. I also wanted to use this quote: "And this Quran is not such as could be forged by those
besides Allah, but it is a verification of that which is before it and
a clear explanation of the book, there is no doubt in it, from the
Lord of the worlds." I wanted to relate it back to Bill Maher's "Religulous." He used the idea of similar stories to discredit religion, while in Islam, they use it to credit religion. It's really interesting to see the dichotomy between those meanings.
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I also noticed the trend of 'delayed gratification' psychology in the way rewards were portrayed. It is a very extrinsic way to motivate people to make such a long term commitment, and I wonder if that tone of narrative was chosen because it was not believed that people could stick to their faith on intrinsic will power alone. And I agree, the fact that people use the argument of similarity in religious stories to both support and discredit the validity of religion is fascinating.
ReplyDeleteI also related this back to Religulous, because Bill Maher touched upon the similarities in religious stories, and I had never heard of these similarities between religions
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