On reading the Koran Lesley Hazleton

you

may have heard about the quran’s idea of

paradise being 72 virgins

and i promise i will come back to those

virgins but in fact here in the

northwest

we’re living very close to the real

quranic idea of paradise

defined 36 times as gardens

watered by running streams

since i live in a houseboat on the

running stream of lake union

this makes perfect sense to me but the

thing is

how come it’s news to most people

i know many well-intentioned non-muslims

who’ve begun reading the quran but given

up

disconcerted by its otherness

the historian thomas carlisle considered

muhammad one of the world’s greatest

heroes

yet even he called the quran as toilsome

reading as i ever undertook

a wearysome confused jumble

part of the problem i think is that we

imagine that the quran can be read as we

usually read

a book and so we can curl up with it on

this rainy afternoon with a bowl of

popcorn within reach

as the god and the quran is alien the

voice of god speaking to muhammad

we’re just another author on the

bestseller list

yet the fact that so few people do

actually read the quran

is precisely why it’s so easy to quote

that is to misquote

phrases and snippets taken out of

context in what i call the highlighter

version

which is the one favored by both muslim

fundamentalists

and anti-muslim islamophobes

so this past spring as i was gearing up

to begin writing a biography of muhammad

i realized i needed to read the quran

properly

as properly as i could that is my

arabics reduced by now to wielding a

dictionary

so i took four well-known translations

and decided to read them side by side

verse by verse along with a

transliteration

and the original seventh century arabic

now i did have an advantage

my last book was about the story behind

the shia sunni split

and for that i’d worked closely with the

earliest islamic histories so i knew the

events to which the quran constantly

refers

its frame of reference i knew enough

that is to know that i’d be

a tourist in the quran an informed one

an experienced one even but still an

outsider

an agnostic jew reading someone else’s

holy book

so i read slowly

i’d set aside three weeks for this

project and that

i think is what is meant by hubris

because it

it turned out to be three months

i did resist the temptation to skip to

the back where the shorter and more

clearly mystical chapters are

but every time i thought i was beginning

to get a handle on the quran

that feeling of i get it now it is slip

away overnight

and i’d come back in the morning

wondering if i wasn’t lost in a strange

land

and yet the terrain was very familiar

the quran declares that it comes to

renew the message of the torah and the

gospels

so one third of it reprises the stories

of biblical figures like

abraham moses joseph mary

jesus god himself was utterly

familiar from his earlier manifestation

as yahweh jealously insisting on

no other gods the presence of

camels mountains desert wells and

springs

took me back to the air i spent

wandering the sinai desert

and then there was the language the

rhythmic cadence of it

reminding me of evenings spent listening

to bedouin elders recite

hours long narrative poems entirely

from memory and i began to grasp why

it said that the quran is really the

quran

only in arabic take the fatiha

the seven verse opening chapter that is

the lord’s prayer in the shmai’s hail of

islam combined it’s just 29 words in

arabic

but anywhere from 65 to 72 in

translation

and yet the more you add the more seems

to go missing

the arabic has an incantatory almost

hypnotic quality

that begs to be heard rather than red

felt more than analyzed it wants to be

chanted out loud to sound its music in

the ear and on the tongue

so the quran in english is a kind of

shadow of itself

or as arthur aubry called his version an

interpretation but all is not lost in

translation

as the quran promises patience is

rewarded and there are many surprises

a degree of environmental awareness for

instance

and of humans as mere stewards of god’s

creation

unmatched in the bible and where the

bible is addressed exclusively to men

using the second and third person

masculine the quran

includes women talking for instance of

believing men

and believing women honorable men and

honorable women or take the infamous

verse about

killing the unbelievers yes it does say

that

but in a very specific context the

anticipated conquest

of the sanctuary city of mecca where

fighting was usually forbidden

and the permission comes hedged about

with qualifiers

not you must kill unbelievers in mecca

but you can

you are allowed to but only after a

grace period is over

and only if there’s no other pact in

place and only if they try to stop you

getting to the kaaba

and only if they attack you first and

even then

god is merciful forgiveness is supreme

and so essentially better if you don’t

was perhaps the biggest surprise how

flexible the quran

is at least in mind that are not

fundamentally

inflexible some of these verses

are definite in meaning it says and

others are ambiguous

the perverse at heart will seek out the

ambiguities

trying to create the score by pinning

down meanings of their own

only god knows the true meaning

the phrase god is subtle appears again

and again

and indeed the whole of the quran is far

more subtle than most of us

have been led to believe as in for

instance that little matter of

versions and paradise

old-fashioned orientalism comes into

play here

the word used four times is hurris

rendered as dark-eyed maidens with

swelling breasts

or as a fair high present virgins

yet all there is in the original arabic

is that one word

who is not a swelling breast or high

prism inside

now this may be a way of saying pure

beings like in angels

or it may be like the greek cross or koi

and eternal use but the truth is nobody

really knows

and that’s the point because the quran

is quite clear when it says that you

will be

a new creation in paradise and that you

will be

recreated in a form unknown to you which

seems to me a far more appealing

prospect than

a virgin

and that number 72 never appears

there are no 72 virgins in the quran

that idea only came into being 300 years

later

and most islamic scholars see it as the

equivalent of

people with wings sitting on clouds and

strumming hearts

paradise is quite the opposite

it’s not virginity it’s fecundity

it’s plenty it’s

gardens water by running streams

thank you

you