Knowing Without Understanding

 The film, Koran By Heart, showed me how important  quranic recitation is to the practice of Islam. The sells reading stressed the importance of tajwid, or reciting the qur'an, and how it is vitally important to correctly pronounce and sing the text in order to gain a greater emotional connection. Sells stresses the importance of precise rhythm and tone, and even states on page 164 that "sound and meaning are intertwined."I found this to be quite interesting, especially in relation to the documentary. In the documentary, recitation becomes almost like an obsession to not only to the participants, but also to  many muslims. I did not know how to feel about this, especially since I received the impression that some fundamentalists put a greater emphasis on recitation than understanding what the verse actually says. While the Sells reading stresses the idea that recitation is key to gaining an emotional connection to the text, the film showed that it can also overwhelm the balanced nature of the islamic tradition. It  shows this to the extreme. In the film, many of the participants, including the little boys from Tajikistan and Senegal, that they already are masters of recitation, but still cannot read their native arabic, and in the case of the child from Tajikistan, cannot even read his home language. This scared me in the sense that I began to understand the roots of islamic fundamentalism, which is a key overtone throughout the documentary. Even the minister of islamic affairs mentioned the ongoing struggle between religious fundamentalists and moderates. Today, this is even more relevant, with the ongoing struggle in Egypt between the Muslim Brotherhood and the more moderate political factions. I found the documentary to be a wonderful example of how something so important to any religion can be turned into something that can influence and manipulate people into forgetting the real reasons for belief.

Andrew