In his version of the Islamic holy book, Robert Spencer gives us a valuable tool in the civilizational war of ideas.
[Pre-Order Robert Spencer’s ‘The Critical Qur’an’: CLICK HERE.]
Robert Spencer’s new book The Critical Qur’an is a one volume encyclopedia of the Qur’an. It is a superb reference book with a sound foundation, using multiple translations. It is detailed. All of the knotty problems are solved by direct scholarly references.
In The Critical Qur’an, Spencer clarifies the problems that cloud our understanding of the Qur’an, which lurches from one subject to the next. Ideas come out of nowhere with no context. Topics – like “hell” – repeat again and again and again. The constant repetition is tiresome.
There is no recognition of time in the Qur’an. The chapters are laid out in order of their length, not in a time sequence. It starts with the longest chapter and ends with the shortest. To add to the confusion, it uses many strange names and foreign terms. Basically, it is unintelligible, confusing, repetitive and filled with hate towards the Unbelievers.
The most problematic to most non-Muslim readers is that the Qur’an presents contradictory ideas. One verse will teach tolerance and the next will call for the death of the Unbelievers. Islamic ethics are contradictory or dualistic, with one set of rules for dealing with other Muslims and another set of rules for the Unbelievers.
So no one can understand the Qur’an by simply reading it. There must be auxiliary commentators, exegetes, in order to find meaning in the words of Allah. Robert Spencer guides us through the mire of this contradictory and perplexing work using all the tools of exemplary scholarship.
First, there are many translations of the Qur’an. Broadly speaking, all these translations fall into two categories – soft and harsh. Here is an example using Qur’an 4:34:
Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend of their property. So good women are obedient, guarding in secret what Allah has guarded. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, give them a warning and banish them to separate beds, and beat them. Then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them. Indeed, Allah is always high, exalted, great.
If the Qur’an you use says “beat lightly,” then it is a soft translation. Spencer resolves the fallacious argument that what is needed to make the Qur’an understandable is a better translation. The practical method he uses in his book gives the reader no less than twelve other translations of this verse in order to compare versions and see how they have been changed.
The main translation he provides is clear, free of the obfuscation that mars so many others.And the numerous footnotes in The Critical Qur’an function as the clarifying agents for the contradictory ideas.
The word “critical” in the title The Critical Qur’an is exceedingly important. The approach to knowledge in Western Civilization is analytical and rational, and uses the process of critical thought. There are no forbidden ideas in critical or analytic thinking. Critical thought is the approach which Robert Spencer uses to examine the details of Islam’s most holy book in order to find out the truth of its meaning.
Truth, however, has no meaning in authoritative knowledge. Truth is determined by the correct authority (Islamic doctrine) where there are only thoughts and actions that are “allowed” (halal) and those that are “forbidden” (haram).
Authoritarians forbid critical thought for the simple reason that it cannot co-exist with authoritative thinking. Muslims forbid critical thinking by threatening and inducing fear. Apologists for Islam forbid critical thinking by censorship on the basis that offending any minority is a social evil. The offending speech, or Islamophobia, is considered bigoted and must be suppressed.
Critical thinking exists by debate. Critical thinkers seek truth through the friction of debate in order to tease out the resolution of an idea. Authoritative knowledge forbids debate. Those who want to debate are demeaned and insulted or simply locked out of the venue. Both political correctness and Islam agree that only “allowed” opinions may be expressed and “forbidden” opinions are declared to be a moral evil.
Notice that these different points of view that cannot be reconciled. There is no possible resolution between the view of the West and Islam. The apologists of Islam try to bring about a bridge building compromise, but it is not logically possible.
According to Islam, the Qur’an is a book of the exact words of the only god of the universe, Allah. It is complete, perfect, eternal and universal.
The concepts of Islam are limited to Qur’an and Sunna of Mohammed. No logical conclusions can violate the Qur’an.
The Islamic civilization has an authoritarian intellectual basis in which no idea may contradict the Qur’an or Sunna of Mohammed. Period.
The Critical Qur’an is not just a well-researched scholarly book, but it is also a weapon in an ideological war, a civilizational war of ideas. For 1,400 years, there has been physical war, of “blood and swords” between Islam and the Kafir world. No one has fought harder or longer to save our civilization than Robert Spencer. He is not only a powerful intellectual thinker and writer but he is also a brilliant and courageous warrior.
I only wish this book had been written 25 years ago. It would have saved me from the time-consuming intellectual work of cutting through the thickets and underbrush of tedious research.
Dr. Bill Warner is author and lecturer on Political Islam. This review is cross-posted from FrontPage Magazine.
AdaptivelyEmergent . says
Can’t wait to get a copy!
gravenimage says
The Critical Qur’an: A Weapon In An Ideological War
………….
Good stuff from Bill Warner!
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
Quite apart from the intensity of the beating referred to in Quran 4:34, this verse is deficient even for writing by a child. “Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend of their property.” Allah has made the one *what* superior to the other *what*? The one sex superior to the other sex? Why doesn’t the author of the Quran tell us which sex is which? Is the reader supposed to guess? I thought the Quran was the book that makes things clear. Why the vague pronouns? Who spends of whose property?
“As for those from whom you fear disobedience, give them a warning and banish them to separate beds…” So ordinarily all your women (wives?) sleep in the same bed, but *as punishment* you give each a bed of her own? How is that more-pleasant sleeping arrangement a punishment?
mortimer says
Robert Spencer correctly identifies his subject: “According to Islam, the Qur’an is a book of the exact words of the only god of the universe, Allah. It is complete, perfect, eternal and universal.”
However, TRANSLATION of the Koran into English are almost without exception PARAPHRASES which generally CONCEAL, DISSEMBLE and PREVARICATE about the true meanings (or the lack of meanings) in the original Arabic.
Scholar Gerd Puin said that the Koran is highly opaque and thus impossible to translate correctly, “My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants. The Qur’an claims for itself that it is ‘mubeen,’ or clear, but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Qur’anic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Qur’an is not comprehensible, if it can’t even be understood in Arabic, then it’s not translatable into any language. That is why Muslims are afraid. Since the Qur’an claims repeatedly to be clear but is not—there is an obvious and serious contradiction. Something else must be going on.”
Translating the Koran is in other words a BIG GUESSING GAME. Muslims who study the Koran seriously soon learn this.
The Koran’s actual meaning is highly opaque and thus unknowable.
John T R Gorman says
This is why muslims claim that, “The Koran can only be understood in Arabic” It’s their easy out, because they know that the majority of the CIVILIZED world doesn’t understand their gibberish.
gravenimage says
Of course any language can be translated.
mortimer says
Here’s a key quote from Bill Warner necessary to understand the ‘Islamophobia’ slander:
“Truth … has no meaning in authoritative knowledge (scilicet: such as we find in Islam). Truth is determined by the correct authority (Islamic doctrine) where there are only thoughts and actions that are “allowed” (halal) and those that are “forbidden” (haram).”
Warner identifies the important criterion for Muslims, namely that ‘truth’ is not a defense when discussing embarrassing aspects of Islam which Muslims seek to suppress and keep out of general knowledge.
It is ‘haram’ to discuss anything embarrassing about Islam, even when that aspect may be perfectly true, accurate and perfectly expressed. To express something Muslims don’t want outsiders to know, then it becomes ‘Islamophobic’.
mtman2 says
Yes Warner(Bill French) great man now 80 from whom I lfirst earned much of true Islame yrs ago…
* Robert Spencer can carry on the needed knowledge of this threat into the future being 21yrs younger and on a mission to do so…
Kesselman says
What is evident from studying the Islamic texts is that things come out of nowhere. Allah is rightly described as the omnipotent ruler of the universe. This they have from the Jews. But where and about is unexplained. The koran seems to be collected by Mo swirling the writing sheets up in the air and as they fall in his outstretched hands put them in that order. Completely unsystematic as the Arab mode of thinking.
John T R Gorman says
Islam’s “god” is Satan. Proof? The God of the Bible is clear about His teachings. There’s no confusion. By contrast in John 8:44 Jesus made it clear that murder, which is Islam’s stock in trade, comes from Satan. “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is “a liar” and “the father of lies.”
Walter Sieruk says
For a more full understanding of the actual nature of the Qu’ran a person, needs to look back in time before the coming of Muhammad and then the Qu’ran. Back to the First Century AD which was the time of early Christian church. For the Early Christian Church had and now in modern times, the Christian church still has the Gospel of Christ, First Corinthians 15:1-4.
Much later, in time, came Muhammad and he gave much information, that many believe to be divine, some of which is said to have been obtained from an angle from heaven. This information was written down on different objects and things Those written words in different objects was then compiled together and then eventually went into the composition of what is now called the Qu’ran, As some also call it the Koran . The Qu’ran is actually, that is in reality, another gospel, apart and greatly different from the Gospel of the Christian Church. Such a thing was predicted in the Bible.
For the Bible does warn about those who will come and offer to people another gospel other than the one shown above, First Corinthians 15:1-4. For it is warned about any other “gospel” in the Bible. For it is written in the Bible “Though we or an angle from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so I say now again, if any man preaches any other gospel unto you than ye have received, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:8, 9. [K.J.V.]
Therefore, the Qu’ran is the result of the deception of a false prophet, Mathew 7:15., who may have come in contact with a fallen angle, a demon, So the imams and mullahs who preach it a truth to other are accused of and by God.
Walter Sieruk says
About Muslim clerics, be they living in the UK or the USA or if they are the mullahs of Iran and Afghanistan or the imams of Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia or any other country. All those Muslims clerics are, according to the doctrines of the Bible, Isaiah 8:20. false religious teachers .Meaning false teacher s who teach and indoctrinate the false doctrines of the false religion of Islam into the hearts and minds of others . Such false teachers are described in the Bible ,in Second Peter 2:1. “There were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privately shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.” [K.J.V.]
In addition, it should be make clear that in the context and meaning of the above Bible verse Second Peter 2:1. The word “destruction” does not mean “loss of being but loss of well-being ,as the destruction of well- being . That is “going to ruin” by ending up and a terrible place of awful suffering which the Bible call hell, Luke 16:19-31.
Hank says
“Ideas come out of nowhere with no context.”
“Basically, it is unintelligible, confusing, repetitive and filled with hate”
“The most problematic to most non-Muslim readers is that the Quran presents contradictory ideas.” (a forked tongue)
Indicative of a Seance with a Medium who connects to demons in the occult world and a scribe writing down what the demons are uttering. The source of the Quran is questionable and most likely has its root in occultism, divination, spiritism and false prophets or wizards. Rational Muslims should run screaming out of Islam by now
I once met a schizophrenic person walking down the street who was having a lively conversation with himself and several other beings that were nowhere to be seen. The unfortunate person was having a conversation similar to the above descriptions of the Quran. Ideas came out of nowhere with no context, unintelligible, repetitive and sometimes contradictory.
“Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD…” (Deut. 18:9-12)