How Best to Explain Complicated Surah's

Perhaps the simplest way to deal with people taking things out of context is to research the fuller context and offer (e.g., post) that information.

This is especially true with something like the Qur'an where it's all available online.

If you are posting it for English speaking people then my favorite site is http://www.islamawakened.com/index.php/qur-an  where you will find more than 40 translations (pretty much all of them) available.

The Arabic, transliterations, audio and links to other languages are there also.

And there is also the possibility the fuller context will make things worse than you suspect.

I don't know the reason (either) and have not (yet) spent much time discussing the Qur'an online, here or elsewhere.

However, from what I can tell this is a fairly open site, where people can and do disagree without getting automatically banned, and also were people seem to be (mostly) polite about those disagreements.

One problem may be that the Qur'an itself instructs the believer not to question it.

Another may be that the numerous inconsistencies a logical, straightforward reading of the Qur'an offer are impossible for a believer to even consider while remaining a believer.

Many sources indicate that most Muslims haven't actually read the Qur'an (in a language they understand fluently) and that this is not encouraged by religious authorities for the general public (Umma.)

This may or may not be true -- I am reporting what has been published.

Also it is said that only a minority of believers speak Arabic fluently, and very few of those know the Qur'anic/Religious/Archaic version of the Qur'an.

The Qur'an is largely jumbled and incoherent to a modern reader unless read in companion with an exegesis or tafsir (i.e., an explanation of scripture.)

Much of the Qur'an presumes the reader knows the Biblical stories (both of the Jews and Christians) and current affairs of Mecca, Medina, and the surrounding Arabian milieu during the time of Muhammad.

These stories were apparently in circulation -- remember, the Bible was at that time one of the few books in existence anywhere in the world (thus Christians and Jews are known as "The people of THE Book" -- Bible literally is a synonym for book also.  Even though there probably were few if any copies of the Bible 'books' in the Hejaz, there were various people who told these stories including for entertainment at fairs and such.  (No TV, not pulp fiction -- Arabic poetry and such stories were pretty much the only forms of "literary entertainment".)

You may have read that Khadija's (Muhammad's first wife) had a cousin Waraka ibn Nawfal (although Waraqah is a better spelling) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waraka_ibn_Nawfal who was said by some accounts to have been a Nestorian (Christian sect) priest or a Hanif (Arabian monotheist).

Wikipedia reports, <He [Waraqah] studied the Bible under Jews and Christians and read an Arabic translation of the New Testament.^[4] He also "wrote the New Testament in Arabic,"...>

Khadija went (or took Muhammad) to Waraqah almost immediately after Muhammad's first visions for help in explaining the event.

Waraqa was also a cousin of Muhammed (though Khadija refers to him as Muhammad's uncle -- likely an honorific as Waraqah was an older, educated man, and actually died very shortly after this first event.)

Muhammad and Waraqah had interacted on other occasions (starting from Muhammad's early childhood) and had additional connections according to the early sources.  Also, Mecca had a population of only about 5000 people at that time so most well known people would be known to many/most others.

From a non-religious perspective it is quite likely that Muhammad learned (some of) the "Bible stories" from these sources even though there is some evidence that the claims of Muhammad being illiterate are incorrect.  This includes likely mistranslations of the word "read" when he responded that he could not read, or didn't know what to read.

This is the best secular explanation of the mistakes the Qur'an makes in recounting these "Bible stories" (though Muhammad & the Qur'an generally attribute such mistakes to the 'Jews changing their scripture' -- this is demonstrably false since we now have archeological evidence showing the Old Testament or Torah going back unchanged for thousands of years and the New Testament or Gospels being the same for 400+ years at the time of Muhammad.)






Edited by Ringer - 05 May 2016 at 4:24pm

Thank you for the kind words.

FYI: I edited a few typos in that post above but did not make any material changes to the ideas.