Qur'an Excerpts

Although it would be much more accurate to read the selections in standard Arabic, I thought the combination of the three different translations gave a good general depiction of the tone and style of the text. The Pickthal translation sounded the most biblical, in its sort of old English diction. There is a definite emphasis on reward for the righteous, and punishment for the evildoers and nonbelievers, almost as if they feel like the draw of heaven is not enough and they must frighten people into keeping their faith. One thing that is unclear is the narrator-- they often identify a collective we/us; separate from Allah, but also from the 'you' that is the reader. Who is speaking? Are we to assume that a group of people are writing this together?

Excerpts from the Qur'an

Admittedly, I did have a bit of an issue getting used to the voice that the excerpts were written in (I kept reading "Lo!" int the Pickthal translation as "Lol"), however I did acclimate to the various differences in the writing styles between the three translations. I thought it was interesting to see that the Shakir translation seemed to get across the same messages as the Pickthal and Yu Sufali translations, but did it in a more blunt, succinct way. The Yu Sufali seemed to be the most elaborate in its structure and phrasing, and in general, having the clearest articulation of the ideas in the passages. I found it quite interesting that the Qur'an is an elaboration and a continuation of the book of Revelation. I had not known that prior to reading the excerpts.
It surprised me how similar the stories are between the three main western religious texts actually are. I had always known that they followed the same general plot and told of the same virtues, but there are some stories quite literally involving the same characters and people, which I find fascinating. I had no idea that the stories would be so similar.

Selections from the Quran

"Enter ye the Garden, ye and your wives, in (beauty and) rejoicing," (043.070). Apparently, this particular text is directed directly towards men, who must have wives, based off of the wording; however, I found the majority of the writing to be written by men, about men, for men. Much of the writing dealt with the idea of punishing non-believers--specifically those who do not believe in Islam--directly correlating to what is happening today in the Middle East, where certain Muslim groups have taken it upon themselves to punish the non-believers. Since the foundation of the writing contains so much contempt for non-believers, I believe it is very easy for certain groups to misconstrue this as the rationale to harm others of different faiths or of no faith at all. If there was less of a focus on the punishment of non-believers in these selections, I believe people would not interpret them so violently. These writings were written with an extremely confusing wording, which lays the groundwork for misinterpretations to occur, and many of the sentences did not relate to the ideas that came before them, making it extremely difficult to read smoothly. In addition, the idea of Allah being all-knowing--knowing what has been, what is, and what will be--to be devastatingly confusing: if he knows everything that ever was, is, and will be, what is the purpose of creating non-believers? If he truly did create everything, then he knowingly creates non-believers who deny his existence, which doesn't make any sense at all to me. There are many conflicting ideas which may have made sense in the past when we were unaware of the complex workings of the world, but do not hold up to contemporary thought. I found the writing to be unbelievably righteous, with no respect whatsoever for any system of beliefs outside those of Islam, and I also found the writing to be male-dominated. The three versions of each sentence did a great job of proving how different interpretations of the same thought can be, and I hope readers take that idea into account as they try to understand the meaning behind the text.