Robert
Spencer's "The
Critical Qur'an: Explained from Key Islamic Commentaries and Contemporary
Historical Research."
A Must-Read, Essential Book
If I were queen, I would reward every reader
who completed Robert Spencer's new book, "The
Critical Qur'an: Explained from Key Islamic Commentaries and Contemporary
Historical Research." "The
Critical Qur'an" is an essential book that every thinking person would
benefit from reading. About one in four humans is a Muslim. Given child
marriage, polygyny, and women's low status, Muslims have high fertility
rates and the percentage of the world's population that is Muslim is
predicted to increase till Islam
is the world's majority religion in 2075. While it is true that the Qur'an
is often not read or understand by most Muslims, Muslims do revere the Qur'an.
Muslims may have little idea what the book contains, but they are ready to kill
over it. When, in 2005, Newsweek circulated false rumors that Americans were flushing
Qur'ans down toilets – which is of course impossible – at least seventeen
people were killed in ensuing violence and "a council of more than 300
mullahs … threatened to declare holy war."
In the past, reading the Qur'an was difficult. Some translations used pseudo-King-James English, for example archaic forms like "thee, thou, thine," in an attempt to make the Qur'an sound Biblical, and, therefore, holy. Some translations attempt to paper over the Qur'an's lack of clarity by adding parenthetical fixes. For example, Qur'an 2:1 begins "Alif Lam Meem." No one knows what this means. One translation tries to "help" the reader with a parenthetical explanation: "Alif-Lam-Mim. [These letters are one of the miracles of the Quran and none but Allah (Alone) knows their meanings]." The reader is left to wonder how the incoherent equals the miraculous. Translators try to draw a smiley face over darker Qur'anic passages. "Jihad," which clearly means actual warfare to claim territory, booty, corpses, and slaves for Allah, is translated as "struggle." Spencer's new translation avoids these pitfalls, and, on the sentence level, it is easy to read.
