Approaching the Qur'an Introduction & Glossary and Suras

Hello,

I thought that the book we were assigned to read this week was very interesting. Starting from the introduction, the book caught my attention in that the author wrote about how the reading of the Qur'an is so important to Muslims that some people weep when it's read beautifully, which was a part of Islam that I didn't know. Also as I was reading about the background of the religion I felt that Islam seemed like a culture as well as a religion. Such as that in order to fully understand the Qu'ran it is best to learn Arabic and the praying that takes place has to be done like part of a daily routine.

Raised in a Christian family, as I was reading this book I couldn't help but compare it with what I learned as a child. I realized that there were some aspects that stood out to be similar between Christianity and Islam. For example, on page 2 the author mentioned something about a "Qur'anic answer." When I read the word I immediately thought of what Christians call a "church answer," which is what the answer would be according to the Bible. While reading the selected Suras I also felt that they were extremely similar to the book of Psalms from the Bible in that they praised God in hymn-like chapters. However, even with the commentaries it was slightly difficult to understand the meanings of all the Suras.

I agreed with the author's purpose of writing this book which was that he was trying to help people approach the Qur'an because it is difficult to simply read and understand with no background information or translations. Many people learn Arabic to fully understand the Qur'an which is similar to how people who study theology and Christianity learn Hebrew to understand the Bible perfectly. I was told sometimes that some parts of the Bible are not 100% accurate because there is no English word that directly translate what is said. Also similar to this idea was what we talked about in class how there is no English word that directly translates the meaning of being "nirvanized." Also the fact that in the glossary all the key concepts and words didn't have a one word meaning but a long description showed that many words can't simply be translated directly.