How Long to Read the Qur'an and Bible?

[Cyrus]

My friend told me to read the Qur'an because he's muslim and knows I am an athiest and judge it for myself to see if Islam is a religion of peace (I don't think it is, anymore than I think christianity is). So I want to get a nice fresh red pen, and in the margins write down every last thing wrong I find as I read through it and give it to him as a gift along with Dawkins or Hitchens book (or maybe another). My question, how long do you think it would take to read the whole thing, it looks pretty big...

That thing is going to bleed from my red pen before I am done with it. Has anyone else read it from cover to cover? How about the bible, how long would that take to read?

I think reading it would give me a lot more ammunition on all the things wrong with it as well. What do u think?

 

[JasonRox]

So, you're going to read it with the intent to rip it apart? That's kind of pointless. Anyone can rip anything apart.

I'm reading the bible just to read it and see what it is about.

You don't even know what it's about and you're already talking about the book bleeding in red pen. Don't bother reading it if that's what you're going to do.

Note: I think being atheist is just as pointless. The existence of God is irrelevant (to how I live) so I won't even bother thinking about whether or not God exists.

 

[Cyrus]

Yes sir, and then I am giving it to him to read my comments. :biggin:

There certainly is a point to being athiest. You should read "The God Delusion", by Dawkings. Great book. The existence of god might be irrelevant to how you live your life, but controls how a lot of people live their lives. (No pork, No beer, no women, etc). These are social constriants that have real social consequences.

Im going to 'throw the book at him!'

Hehe, I love how I have the 'king Fahd' version of the Quran. Seems every good king should have his own bible.

Look at your local bookstore for the king Cyrus' athiest bible.


Edit: Dooooh. You read middle eastern books the other way. I started from the very back by accidnet. Darnit!

Man this things to a lot of freaking pages, and each one is on tissue thin paper...

 

[russ_watters]

You think it looks big? It's only something like 200 pages. If you can stomach it, you can get through it in one sitting. I got about 3/4 of the way through it before giving up. I'll refrain from comment on it (pm me if you want), and remind you of our policy on religious threads...

 

[Cyrus]

This hunk of junk is 2000 pages!

Its literally 3 inches thick!

(Well, it seems that a lot of it is footnotes though)

Page 12 and I am already almost out of ink.

Seriously, does every line have to start off, "praise allah, praise praise praise, more praise, get on your unworthy knees and PRAISE!" Does the bible read this way as well? Seems like there is also a lot of "fear me, fear me FEARRR ME!" so far..

 

[wolram]

Just follow every religious instruction from the manifold of religions, if you follow all of them
you would wish you were dead.

 

[Moridin]

The Qur'an is considered the most perfect book, the infallible word of Allah by mainstream Islam. When reading it, I find that it emphasizes the exposure of the unbeliever as a very, very negative position, often described as getting rather nasty consequences, both in this life and the next.

The Torah / Old Testament is mostly Jew beget Jew or outrageously fantastical stories, like global floods and big wars and sort of strange parts like the book of Ruth. It is interesting to note that the term "we" and "us" is used a lot by the main character of the OT. New Testament is almost, but not entirely resulting in the expression of moral statements after long analogies, but with no underlying moral theory, like Aristotle, Kant or Mill, which is a pity. Its main focus and the heart of NT theology is the story of the supposed death, resurrection of Big-J and atonement for original sin.

Just follow every religious instruction from the manifold of religions, if you follow all of them you would wish you were dead.

Hope no two religions make contradictory religious instructions!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I think reading it would give me a lot more ammunition on all the things wrong with it as well. What do u think?

Eh, you'll probably becomes a convert.

I've read the bible cover to cover a few times. Of course we covered it piecewise many times over in religous studies as a kid. But it's really not a large book.

If you skip the begats it goes much faster. They did a lot of begatting in the old days.

The trouble comes with the original languages and interpretations of those languages. In order to fully understand the text and the context, you have to go back to the original language. And of course you won't find two religious scholars who agree on everything. So it's not like you can just read the bible and fully understand Christianity.

 

[dst]

My friend told me to read the Qur'an because he's muslim and knows I am an athiest and judge it for myself to see if Islam is a religion of peace (I don't think it is, anymore than I think christianity is). So I want to get a nice fresh red pen, and in the margins write down every last thing wrong I find as I read through it and give it to him as a gift along with Dawkins or Hitchens book (or maybe another). My question, how long do you think it would take to read the whole thing, it looks pretty big...

That thing is going to bleed from my red pen before I am done with it. Has anyone else read it from cover to cover? How about the bible, how long would that take to read?

I think reading it would give me a lot more ammunition on all the things wrong with it as well. What do u think?

OK, I take it you're reading the translation? The interpretation is highy subjective and you'd do well with an Arabic dictionary at hand (especially if you actually want to be objective, instead of claiming it). Reading it won't do a thing if you're starting out with that mindset. You will not learn anything in 2-4 hours of reading a translation that hasn't already been said a million times over, for or against islam. There's a lot of bias in the book because the (self-appointed) organized body controlling its interpretation also happen to control the translations. So good luck learning anything about what it actually means.

 

[Moridin]

That seems to be based on the idea that translations aren't really the Qur'an.

 

[dst]

That seems to be based on the idea that translations aren't really the Qur'an.

Well, who would have honestly thought. Arabic words can have many many meanings and they differ based on context. So translating a word with say, 12 meanings into 12 choices of English words without bias - not the easiest job.

 

[Moonbear]

If you really want to understand what's written in the book, I think you'd do better to read large sections at a time and get the overall gist of it than to nitpick line by line and miss the overall meaning. If your intent is only to insult your "friend" by not only severely criticizing his religious beliefs, but defiling his religious text by writing all over the pages of it, then perhaps it would be easier to just stop talking to this person and pretending you are friends.

 

[moe darklight]

If you skip the begats it goes much faster. They did a lot of begatting in the old days.

yea same with the OT, I don't know about the Quran, but in the OT and NT there are pages upon pages you can skip without missing any of the plot.

for example: there are like 20 pages after the jew's exodus from Egypt where God goes on and on about how they should wear their clothes this way, cut their hair that way, burn their meat this way, how you're not supposed to sit in the same chair as a woman who's having her period (wtf?), etc. etc. etc. ... then once he's done telling them how to do it, the book goes on to describe how they did what he told them to do USING THE EXACT SAME WORDS AS HIS INSTRUCTIONS! — in other words, the book repeats pretty much the same thing twice... this happens a lot in the OT, making it way shorter than it seems.

I would read it the same way as you would read something like Homer (which it is. only Homer is written about a religion that is no longer practiced. but let's not forget many Greeks and certainly the Romans took these gods very seriously)... these books can be pretty entertaining... but it's really hard for me to understand how people can take these books literally. often I wonder if religious people have actually read these things from cover to cover.

Annotating these books with everything that is impossible would be like annotating the lord of the rings series with everything that is not possible. if your friend has already chosen (or been raised to) believe that a man lived inside of a whale, or parted the sea in two, or whatever, then how is you pointing out that this is not very likely to have happened going to change his mind?

I think there are better ways to move people to reasonability. but a direct attack like this is more likely to turn him off than to persuade him.

not to mention: he might get very angry at you for scribbling on his holy book. I would write your notes down on a separate notebook or something because he's likely to get extremely offended if you hand him a scribbled Quran.

 

[drankin]

LOL, is he an extremist? Carefule with that book, you might end up in a room with video cameras and a bunch of people chanting "Allah-Akbar!".

 

[drankin]

LOL, is he an extremist? Carefule with that book, you might end up in a room with video cameras and a bunch of people chanting "Allah-Akbar!" with long dull knifes.

 

[Strilanc]

If you really want to understand what's written in the book, I think you'd do better to read large sections at a time and get the overall gist of it than to nitpick line by line and miss the overall meaning. If your intent is only to insult your "friend" by not only severely criticizing his religious beliefs, but defiling his religious text by writing all over the pages of it, then perhaps it would be easier to just stop talking to this person and pretending you are friends.

Agreeing with this.

What you're doing is incredibly arrogant, and sounds incredibly biased from the beginning.

 

[Yonoz]

So I want to get a nice fresh red pen, and in the margins write down every last thing wrong I find as I read through it and give it to him as a gift along with Dawkins or Hitchens book (or maybe another). My question, how long do you think it would take to read the whole thing, it looks pretty big...

That thing is going to bleed from my red pen before I am done with it.

I believe making any sort of mark on the Quran is both disrespectful and a Bad Idea(TM).

 

[ZapperZ]

With that, this is the end of this intermission. It is why we do not encourage a topic of discussion like this. So don't even try next time.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Zz.