I chanced upon Lesley Hazleton’s Ted Talk video “A “Tourist” Reading the Koran” recently. She is a British author whose work focuses on “intersection and interactions between politics and religion”.
She is also an Agnostic Jew, which makes her talk all the more compelling; one of the finest representation of what the Quran is about.
In the TedTalk she basically highlights a few key facts, some of which I have already known, but some of which gave me astounding insight that I didn’t realise before. Here are a few takeaways:
- 1/3 of the Quran talks about the monotheistic belief. That God is One, unequalled, unparalleled and beyond fathom. This is something that many Muslims, like myself, already understood. The presence of Al-Ikhlas, the single Surah that is said to carry the weight of 1/3 of the Quran because of it is in itself a declaration of faith that there can be no other god but God Himself.
But she went also mentioned that the Quran is is also a testimonial of the stories of the Bible and Torah, in which it serves to affirm some believes, and correct others. The idea, though, is that the nature of Oneness in God is already stated in the previous Books from these monotheistic believes, and that the Quran is created to affirm that.
- The Quran cannot be read like a conventional English book, where the beginning, middle and end structure is favoured. Attempting to read it as such will led you to think that it is a “wearisome, confused jumble”.
Instead, the passages and verses, especially in the parts where instructions are given, are tied to historical context, and that it is absolute necessary to understand the context in order to understand the verse or passage.
- Yet at the same time, the Quran is not meant to be read to be understood. The Quran is meant to recited to be listened to.
- The medieval Meccan-Arab language is so rich that it is near impossible to translate to perfection. In fact, the more it gets translated, the further away the true meaning of the words gets.
Let’s take the word أَحَدٌ (Ahad). In order to fully encompass the meaning of that one word, the English translation needs to try to condense the following description (as translated by Marmaduke Pickthall r.a.) into one equivalent word:
“(the Unique One of absolute Oneness, i.e. single and indivisible with absolute and permanent unity and distinct from all else, who is unique in His essence, attributes, names and acts, the One who has no second, no associate, no parents, no offspring, no peers, free from the concept of multiplicity or divisibility, and far from conceptualization and limitation, and there is nothing like Him in any respect).”
Another word, “houri”, gets the notoriety of being associated to mean “virgin” (as in the 72 virgins of Paradise). But it is not directly defined by such in the Quran. Instead, “houri” is a plural collective noun to masculine (aḥwar) and/or feminine (ḥawra) companion. The word “houri” is a description of the beautiful sets of eyes that these companions in Paradise have.
Dear Legacy, if there is one take away from this is to avoid adapting the “highlighter version” of the Holy Book; that is, to take snippets and and phrases from the text that suffices only to represent your own version of what you thought is the truth.
In my time, where the internet is such a convenient (and most often, frequent) resource of knowledge, there are people out there who likes to do five minute Googling rather than the life time of study that real scholars subject themselves. Avoid getting into unnecessary conversations with such people, and avoid the topic of religion altogether, less you may end up being strayed yourself.
And remember, only Allah knows best.
