Tag: Quran in the West

  • [Watch] Garry Wills and the Q’uran

    A Catholic Mr. Garry Wills speaks about the Quran.

    “The thing about the people who are carrying out terrorist attacks is that they obviously don’t know their own religion.”

    “What can we tell about their religion? Naturally we should go to the Quran. In the Gospel of Matthew they ask Jesus how to pray to the Father and he gives them the Lord’s prayer. In the Quran they ask Allah, through Prophet Muhammed, how they should pray. Here’s one of many creed’s in the Quran: ‘We believe in God and what was sent down to us and what was sent down the Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the 12 tribes and what was given to Moses, Jesus and all the Prophets by the Lord. We make no distinction between any of them and we devote ourselves to Him in all of them.’ That’s a very inclusive creed.

  • [Watch] Getting Muhammad Right and Wrong By Lesley Hazleton

    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.”

  • [Watch] The Quran in the West Today

    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.”