An agnostic Jew, Ms. Lesley Hazleton gives a powerful talk about her account of the Prophet Muhammed, his humanness and the Holy Quran.
“The Quran is infinitely more subtle than many people can think to imagine. The phrase ‘God is subtle’ appears several times in the Quran… It contains the awareness that things can’t be stated directly. The Divine cannot be stated correctly. The Divine is beyond direct human apprehension. It can only be expressed through metaphor.”
A talk by Mr. Robert Lumbard at the University of Oslo in Norway.
A discussion on the Quran by renowned scholars Mr. Joseph Lumbard, Ms. Karen Armstrong, and Mr. John Esposito.
“It is no good judging the Quran from our Western oriented modern identity. We need to see where people are coming from and see the sacredness of sound (when the Quran is being recited).”
“I couldn’t approach the Quran from the vantage point of a Western educated person. You need to empty yourself of these preconceptions and open yourself to a different experience.”
“The word Jihad means struggle or effort and sometimes its a struggle to give food or money to somebody when you have very little yourself because they are worse off. Similarly, many of these passages (in the Quran) that use the word ‘Jihad’ especially in the early period when the Muslims were being persecuted in Mecca, he says you have to struggle to have sabr (patience), to endure without retaliating… You must hold yourself and respond with sabr. The people of God walk gently on the Earth and when the aggressive people approach them, they respond with salaam (peace). That is a struggle. This is the tragedy of the human predicament – we dream of peace and we struggle perpetually against our own instinct. That is what jihad (struggle) is.”