From: Josef 'Jupp' Schugt <jupp@...>
Date: 2009-03-06T08:10:15+09:00
Subject: Re: What is the Qur’ân?

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* al albani, 2009-02-26, 03:04:

> The Qur=E2=80=99=C3=A2n is the name given to Allah=E2=80=99s speech that =
He revealed to His
> servant and Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him); speech that is
> recited as an act of worship, is miraculous, and cannot be imitated by
> man. It is the name of Allah=E2=80=99s Book, and no other book is called =
by
> this name.

Some observations concerning this book (the name of which is correctly
transliterated al-qur=E2=80=99=C4=81n btw.)

0. It is an interesting topic but should not be discussed on this list
   because it is off-topic.

1. There is some doubt about the language in which it is written, see
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syro-Aramaic_Reading_Of_The_Koran

2. It identifies the Torah given to Moses, the Book of Psalms given to
   David, and the Gospel given to Jesus as genuine divine revelations
   taken from the same Guarded Tablets as the Qur'an itself and brought
   by true messengers to both Jews and Christians respectively. Belief
   in the divine inspiration of all of these books is one of the
   fundamental tenets of Islam. However, it is assumed that the
   revelation had become corrupted or distorted in its handing down (in
   Arabic: tahrif); which necessitated the giving of the Qur'an to
   Muhammed, to correct this deviation. The Qur'an contains passages
   that may or may not be read to mean this.

3. It is widely accepted that the Qur'an should not be read as a
   translation but in its original form. This indeed is something
   reasonable; my native language is German but I practice English
   for many years now; when I compare Luther's translation to the
   Authorized King James Version (both are in the public domain) of the
   bible I am sometimes surprised how large the differences are even
   though both are just different translations of the same text.

And now for a bit of logic: If you want to interest people for a
certain faith you should always carefully make sure that your attempt
will not result in the opposite. If you approach them in a manner that
they are likely to find inappropriate even people who otherwise might be
interested can be scared off.

To give this e-mail an on-topic twist: The problem is not specific to
religion but also exists for software. If you advertise software in an
inappropriate manner you are likely to scare off people that otherwise
might have tried and loved it. In the case of Ruby there are still too
many pages for programs and libraries that are in Japanese. Not that I
dislike Japanese but it is one of those languages that are almost
exclusively understood by native speakers. A page written in English
would reach a much wider audience even if that English happens to be
very bad because you can expect that many people reading it do not have
great skills in that language either.

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt
--=20
Blog: http://penpen.goodaddress.eu/
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