Know ye the truth

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

Lately, on many boards and on different websites, I've seen people "quoting" the Qur'an in an offhand manner, basically saying, "Yeah, in the Koran it says this"--with no citations of sura and verse. I always check out what is said and try to find what they are talking about. So far, every time I have either not found a verse they say is there or I've found that the verse they quoted has had key words taken out to change the meaning. Whenever possible, I respond with the information I have found.

If any of you DUers find the Qur'an "quoted" in the way I described, you can check it out for yourself. I've found a great site that gives the three major English translations of the Qur'an for each verse (fascinating in and of itself to read) plus an easy-to-use search engine. There is also a collection of the Hadeeths (sayings of the Prophet) with a search engine there, too.

Anyway, here's the link:

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/

Use it so you can make up your own mind about what the Qur'an says. And please pass the link along to others.

[Book Lover]

1. Link bookmarked

Thank you, Ayshahaqqiqa!

[knowbody0]

2. I recently bought my own

and sincerely enjoy reading the verses.

[silverweb]

3. Thank you!

Bookmarked right next to www.biblegateway.com!

[Silent3]

4. Of course, you can't really make up your mind what the Quran says...

...unless you can read it in the original Arabic, the only "valid" and true form.

Or so they say. :)

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. You can get an idea, though

If we cannot rely on translations, then that means you also cannot make up your mind what any book written in a language other than English means. So I guess that means no Christian can make up their mind on what the New Testament says without learning Aramaic and Hebrew. Wouldn't you agree that you can get SOME idea of what is being said via not one, but THREE popular translations? Or that you can tell if someone "quoting" an English translation of the Qur'an is quoting it correctly and not leaving out words?

The Muslim hate posts I see (mostly on other boards, but sadly, sometimes even here) all quote English translations of the Qur'an. So you CAN use the source I have given to find out if the translations are correct, distorted, or even made up of whole cloth. This was the point of posting this.

Frankly, I'm tired of people telling me that I should be killed or incarcerated or deported because "It says in the Koran for all Muslims to kill people" or "lie to infidels" or "The goal of all Muslims is to make everyone else become Muslim". I'm tired of people threatening my husband and my friends with physical harm because of our faith. You know that I don't dare mention my faith to my boss, because he said he'd fire anyone he found out was a Muslim? You know how I feel when I find out a mosque has been firebombed, a brother's restaurant has been vandalized and messages of hate scrawled on the walls? Where do you think all this hate comes from? People who have set out to make it their goal to demonize Islam through distortions and outright LIES about the Qur'an. They don't go into subtlties about language for their audience, many of whom, I daresay, think Jesus spoke King James English.

Sorry for the rant, but when your job and your life is on the line, when you have seen pure hatred in people's eyes, you get a bit touchy.

[Silent3]

9. You did see the smiley, didn't you?

Following the words, "Or so they say?" It's Muslims (all? most? many?) who insist on the primacy of Arabic here, not me. I'm merely amused by that insistence. :)

As we say in the world of software engineering, GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Take a lot of bullshit in one language and translate it into another language -- it's still bullshit, no matter how "true" to the original bullshit it is. Whatever scraps of true wisdom are in the Qur'an and other "holy" books, I doubt that they're terribly original, I doubt that the same wisdom can't be found, minus the dogmatic baggage, in many languages.

[Az]

5. Ah but the Quran has a further escape clause

You are only supposed to read it in its original language. So any translation is insufficient to properly debate a Muslim.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Are you implying by that

that we should allow blatant misquotations and outright lies to go unchallenged? That was the point of my post.

Of course it is better, when discussing ANY book, to have read it in its original language-Goethe's Faust is different if you read it in German rather than English-subtle differences, but the basics of the story are there even if you read an English translation.

The point of this post was to give everyone a link to not one, but to three different translations, so that they could get a sense of what the original verse might mean. Also kindly note that I said the citation was given so that people could check information given about the Qur'an to see if the citations given were accurate for at least one translation. This was to empower the reader so that they could make up their own mind about what is being said.

[Az]

7. I did not mean that

I was merely pointing out that it is the official position of the Islamic faith that you are supposed to read the Quran in the original language. That is all I meant.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

10. I just might do that, thanks

You know, I suppose that is one "positive" (Oh, God, please don't let this end up on a freeper website) result of 9/11. So many of us are now curious about Muslims and their beliefs. I would say they certainly got my attention.

And of course, I know that 9/11 was an awful way to do so.