Foehammer’s Anvil

4 Responses to “Spencer: Blogging the Qur'an”

1. 1 Cassandra  |  
   +1 votes
     
   Jun 18th, 2007 at 4:30 pm

   Hey Foehammer, all OK today?
   Here’s something from another angle for you to digest. Interesting stuff, all that, he?

   chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=145581&eng=y

2. 2 Foehammer  |  
     
   Jun 18th, 2007 at 6:54 pm

   Very interesting article, Cassandra. This excerpt is a typical reaction to the Qur’an:

   Q: Why use rhetorical analysis on the structure of the Qur’an? Earlier you used an “atomistic,” fragmentary form of interpretation on small semantic units.

   A: The experience of finding oneself disoriented and quickly discouraged before the apparent disorder of the Qur’anic text is one that is absolutely common to every sort of reader, especially to the non-Muslim reader who has not grown up with this text since his childhood. The Qur’an does not unfold in a linear manner, as the progressive development of one or more themes, as Greek rhetoric taught us. In the Qur’an, the subjects are mixed together: no sooner is one theme mentioned than it is immediately broken off, perhaps to reappear later; and some passages introduce topics that are completely extraneous to the context. The reader immediately gets the impression of complete incoherence, and is drawn despite himself into an atomistic, discontinuous reading of fragments independently from one another.

   It is worth noting that we modern Westerners are not the only ones to have this impression. In the Qur’an itself, some neophyte converts to Islam point out this matter to the Prophet (Qur’an 25:32), and in the first Muslim generations there were some who criticized this aspect of the Qur’an, which then led to the production of an entire series of works attempting to assert the coherence (nazm) of the Book, but whose arguments are not convincing and deal only with some details, in such a way that the problem remains nonetheless.

   The reason for this is obvious. Muhammad was gathering information by word-of-mouth to regurgitate to his scribes. Sometimes he no doubt consulted his Christian cousin or Jews he might do business with or perhaps captured, extracted breadcrumbs of information from them and then once again passed on his “divine learnings” to the scribes the next day. It takes hardly any imagination at all to picture this taking place.

   The Qur’an is ultimately a grand form of plagiarism from the Bible mixed together with a pinch of Arab mythology and a touch of animist religion and injected with a heaping helping of whatever Muhammad found convenient.

   Ah yes, this was the “genius” of Muhammad.

3. 3 Cassandra  |  
     
   Jun 19th, 2007 at 8:59 am

   Foehammer, on an entirely different note, I see you also have Auction Ads on your blog. So have I, but mine looks different, doesn’t have a description of what’s on auction. Do you think it is just another variety, or have I made once again a technical mistake in the HTML, do think?

4. 4 Foehammer  |  
     
   Jun 19th, 2007 at 11:01 am

   @Cassandra: I’d be willing to bet that if you simply picked a larger ad size, that problem would be solved.

Leave a Reply