THE QURAN - Well worth a read. (The Koran)

Member Name: somerton

Product:	The Koran
Date:	12/03/08 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Opens your eyes to another religion

Disadvantages: Repetitive and perhaps contradictory

The Qu'ran - AN OVERVIEW

The Glorious Qu'ran is the holy book of the Islamic religion.
This review is mainly intended as an overview for westerners who perhaps have never read The Qu'ran.

TRANSLATION/TRANSLITERATION
The Qu'ran was written in the Arabic language. It is apparently not possible to accurately translate the words. The Qu'ran has an internal rhythm that is lost to us non-Arabic speaking westerners. So we can only work with what we have. We must trust that the transliteration we have (and there are several different versions) is close enough to the original Arabic. Many versions claim to transliterate directly from the Arabic script into English, others claim to translate the MEANING of the Arabic . Whichever we read, it is hoped that such has been undertaken with due diligence.

THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD
The angel, Jibril (Gabriel) commanded The Prophet (peace be upon Him*) to recite in the name of Allah. After refusing at first, The Prophet* opened His mouth and began to recite The Qu'ran. The entire Qu'ran was revealed over a period of some 23 years. The followers of The Prophet* memorised the revelations and recorded some on leaves, stones and eartenware fragments.
Eventually it was collated into a book.

THE LAYOUT
The Qu'ran is separated into 114 sections known as SURAHS.
The Surahs are of various lengths, some being about 12 pages or more in length, some being no more than a few lines short.
Th Qu'ran can also be divided into 30 sections called JUZ. The possibility being that one can read the entire Quran in one month ,by reading a Juz-a-day.

THE CONTENT
It would assist western readers to have at least SOME knowledge of The Bible before reading The Quran. That way, one would have an idea of the timeframe involved, the characters mentioned and how each relate to each other. For example, do you know whether Joseph was alive before Moses? It would help if you knew the answer to this before reading The Quran.
Some accounts of biblical characters, such as, Lot, Abraham, Joseph and Jesus are covered in the Quran, but they do not always agree with the biblical account. Sometimes they vary quite noticably.
The Quran to the western reader can come across as very repetitive. You will see expressions like, "Allah is not ignorant of your doings" time and time again. But persevere with it, it's repeated for a reason.

I hope that this short overview will help some people to decide whether to read The Quran, it is a good read. I have read it 4 times and I am on my 5th time through now. I still enjoy it, still find it fascinating. I hope you will too.

P.s. I am not a Muslim

Summary: Try it for yourself once!!