Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald explores the implications of Muslim attorney Tom Nelson’s assertion that a bellicose version of the Qur’an distributed in Oregon is somehow anomalous:
“This version of the Quran was printed before the Sept. 11 attacks, when jihad did not have the same holy war connotations as today, Nelson said.” — from this article
It was an earlier version, an uncorrected version, of the Qur’an that was distributed in Oregon. Please ignore all previous versions. They are full of typos. Read only the new edition, the one that has on the cover the special “For Americans Only” lettering across the top, and the CAIR Seal-of-approval (“Tells you all you really need to know about Islam”) and a scholarly introduction by Professor Michael Sells.
Or, if you wish, you can get the even more thoroughly abridged version, from the same company that, for last-minute and lazy students, offers a version of Anna Karenina in eleven pages and King Lear in three. And that 8-page version of the Qur’an will naturally carry blurbs:
“This is certain to be, for Infidels, the most painless way to learn about the Qur’an. This book should be — no, this book definitely is — required reading for today’s crop of Infidels. And if its lessons are understood, then the whole family may be ready for the full text. Why make life even more difficult for your children than it would be otherwise? Read this book now. Read it as if your life depends on it.” — Douglas Hooper, Washington, D.C.
“In the breathtaking poetry of its misty vistas, from the highest hill of humanity where nightingales and roses bloom along the verdant slopes of the high uplands of justice which has always been the voice of the oppressed speaking truth to power, even when that power has gone out, but if one knows where to find the light-switch of the human heart, this is the book which can turn that light-switch of that human heart, not to mention the sometimes also necessary lungs, spleen and pancreas, on again, so that not only mere man but Man is made whole, the earth is made whole, the whole universe is made whole, and made whole in the best and only possible way — holistically. Read it, again and again and again. The purest poetry that like a tree only God could have made, only God, or quite possibly Edward Said, had one of his admirers only been able to have been there for him, when he needed me, to take dictation.” — Hamid Dabashi, New York City
“If we are to avoid a conflict of civilizations, we will need to replace conflict with dialogue, attachment to our old ways of thinking with a willingness to accept entirely new ways, and to give up those silly concepts of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ for a much broader ‘They Are We’ and ‘We Are They.’ Since it is ‘they’ who are now among ‘us’ and not ‘we’ who are among ‘them,’ surely the most sensible and painless solution is for ‘us’ to give up our shopworn and outworn and useless categories, and to try to do whatever ‘they’ require of ‘us’ so as to ‘reassure’ them.
“And just as they — Muslims — need reassurance that we are not out to get them, after the Crusades, after colonialism, after Israel’s brutal oppression of unarmed Palestinians, after the cruel way that Saddam Hussein, that brave Arab leader, was removed, after the neo-colonialism and then the post-neocolonialism which has no sell-by date and therefore goes on forever as long as Infidels continue to exist, not only do ‘they’ (the ‘Muslims’) need some sign from us (the so-called ‘non-Muslims’) that ‘we’ are not out to get ‘them,’ but just as important, we need to study the Qur’an, and much more than the Qur’an, in order to reassure ourselves. We need to reassure ourselves that we have not lost our moral bearings, not retreated into some cruel dungeon or Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib of our own narrow mindedness, need to make sure that we have not lost our moral bearings, lost all of our own habit of, or habitat for, humanity.
“And there is no better indication of our own willingness to listen to others with compassion and understanding and acceptance as they tell us what they think or what they think we should think they think, and also tell us what to think, saving us the trouble, which given all of our advantages and our privileges and our narrow-minded indifference to all those who are different from us is the least of what we should be prepared to do in this diverse world of diversity that we live in.
“When the oppressed people of this earth, in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates and in so many other places, want so clearly to reach out to us, to affect us, to help us see things as they see them, what better way to engage in that dialogue than to read, study, read again, study again, the book that means so much to them, means — everything to them. Personally, I’ve read the Qur’an from cover to cover, and I’ve come to love it more every time.” — James Earl Carter, Georgia
“If you can only read one book in your life, let this one be it. Sometimes, you come across one book that makes all the difference. This is that book.” — Statement of the Joint Committee on Civilizational Literacy, a cooperative effort of the Modern Language Association, the American Historical Association, the American Association of University Presidents, the American Association of University Professors, and MESA Nostra
“The book our generation needs.” — Britney Spears, Honorary President of the What-Our-Generation-Needs Foundation (a 501 (c)(3) organization)