Belief and holy writ

[Curly]

During my revision period I came across an interesting article on the economist magazine, just at the start of 2005. I was meaning to post a topic on it but didn’t have the time to, so here I am (a month late no doubt) but nevertheless here!

 

Well after reading this article called “Holy writâ€, I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t sure whether to take the article as a personal attack on our beliefs as Muslims or a laughable excuse for a critical report on holy scriptures.

 

The magazine put a few religious holy scriptures, focusing mainly on Islam's- Quran, Christianity's- Bible and Judaism's- Torah under the magnifying glass, with the quote “Why people of the book have such trouble with language, truth and logicâ€.

 

And then the article carried on pointing out contradictions in the bible and discrepancies with historical time lines and events. They then point out the use of profanity in the torah, which the author argues to be conflicting with the idea that the torah is the holy words of God.

 

But the author then moves on to the Quran, not only does he spend and devote more of his time on the Quran he near enough writes a whole page on it and with no real substantial evidence to emasculate it. He uses the argument that “researchers†(I’m not too sure who they are) have not been allowed to investigate the Quran in hope of finding imperfections and any attempt to do so would surely be endangering their lives. (HA!) :rolleyes: The author also mentioned that some research has taken place in Egypt however it had never been published. :rolleyes:

 

Therefore leaving the author with one point to argue, which I have to agree with to some degree. The author pointed out the mistranslation of the Quran to be the biggest problem. The author used the example that a potential Islamic martyr could possible misread the reward of “72 virgins†offered to him in heaven as an incentive to commit a terrorist attack when the word virgins could actually mean "white fruit".

 

Which is completely ridiculous because Islamic martyrs, (be it wrong or right) in places like Palestine are definitely not dying for 72 virgins but for the freedom of their people! :rolleyes:

 

Anyways you wonder why a magazine for the business world, teeming with philosophical atheists would want to discuss religion. Well since they have and funnily enough, as though they read my mind…they too asked why they had bothered and explained (unconvincingly) that the translation of holy scripts could potentially be the difference between a horrific suicide bombings and peace. :eek:

 

What’s your take on this?

 

NB: I wasn’t able to post the actual article, I have it in print.

 

If someone is able to post the full article, please by all means do!

 

 

Belief and holy writ

Dec 29th 2004

From The Economist print edition