For those of you who have actually read it, is it really THAT bad?

For those of you who have actually read it, is it really THAT bad?

yes of course it fucking is
shitty style, shitty content

care to post more than just a cover?

i dunno what your caps is meant to signify
it's more coherent than the OT/NT but of course, one guy wrote it
it's not as pretty, but maybe in arabic it's awesome
if you're talking politically, yes, it's quite bad. not because the things in it are any worse than the OT, but rather because it combines 8/10 of the shit in the OT with coherence, so it's actually believable that one could adhere to it. the OT has a lot of things that are irrelevant without the temple or even somewhat contradictory, so that kind of saves it as you're looking for metaphor.

It's very repetitive. Unlike the OT/NT, the Qur'an is essentially a series of orations delivered through the Prophet by God Himself. I would say that over a hundred pages (out of about 400) are the same repeated warnings to repent and to abandon polytheism/paganism.

That said! The parts that are less repetitive are pretty good. One line that had stuck with me, paraphrased: "A man without God in his heart is like a garden which has its soil washed away during a heavy rain, revealing only bare stone. A man with God in his heart is like a garden which, following a heavy rain, blooms, and becomes more beautiful than before."

Even though I'm totally secular/agnostic, that quote sums up the value of religious practices very well, imo.

Yes. The actual content is violent, horrifying and absurd. The prose is terrible, boring and repetitive. There is no story arc to speak of. It is merely an instruction manual for a depressing, stunted life full of fear. There are no redeeming aspects. It doesn't even have literary value, like some of the Bible books have (Song of Songs comes to mind).

It is boring and incoherent as it is not like the Bible which is a sequential set of stories but instead a bunch of random stuff put together in the order of longest to shortest. It is repetitive and it is incredibly obvious that it is nearly entirely ripped off from OT and some Talmudic stories with the occasional personal input (eg. Mohammed was born to a widower and became an orphan and, by crazy coincidence, God decided those people deserved special attention in the Quran).

you sound like a mix between a fedora and a trigger queen

Whatever makes you feel best, friendo

It is pretty in Arabic though. Almost the entire thing rhymes and it incorporates various styles of Arabic rhyme.

source: Shia familia

Agreed. It also has a much stronger effect to those within the culture.

Great piece of Arabic literature. I thought Veeky Forums would like it, especially since the first word is "Read".

I don't get you people.

...

>so it's actually believable that one could adhere to it
This really is the problem with Islam.

>For those of you who have actually read it, is it really THAT bad?
Pretty much yes.

I haven't read the whole damn thing of course, but I've had to read a good bit for school.

It is, much like the Talmud, entirely profane, evil and clearly written by people with ugly souls, therefore the prose and poetry is the same.

I don't need to see shit. I can smell it.

Halfway through it at the moment, it comes across as being far more prescriptive in its teachings (covering a wider scope of areas) than the Bible.

I wanted to like it, honestly. And I'm only about 3/4 through the book, and maybe it's the translation I've read -- but it's hard to pick up, easy to put down. Very repetitive, with little emotional appeal, for me personally.

On a purely aesthetic level it's remarkably beautiful, and I say that as somebody who hates Muslims and their pedophile-worshiping death cult with every fiber of my being. I totally disagree with the sanctimonious, destructive, and contradictory ideology it promotes, but I can't deny that the writing absolutely coruscates with grace and artistry.

It's beautifully written, esp in Arabic where there's a strange rhythm to it.

kek

Is that what it is - the rhythmic prose style in Arabic? Is that why it inspires so many fanatics? Because in English it's a pile of dogshit.

Yeah, I tried it, got bored a quarter of the way through but
>reading translations
is actually relevant here. Obviously it's something completely different in its native language, but I'm not going to spend 18 months studying arabic for this shit.

So ignorance is bliss?

>quadrilogy

I dont like that the entire fucking thing is a song. A song about killing infidels. ALLAHU ACKBAR MOTHER FUCKERS

Nah, friend.

Regardless of your view as to the question of whether God exists, or whether life has inherent meaning, or whether there exists an afterlife or an absolute concept of justice -- choosing to adopt and believe in a framework that your community also believes in can be hugely beneficial in life.

Or, to put it a different way -- there's no real knowledge to be gained from fretting over the seeming reality that life is meaningless, that you will die, and that there will come a time when your name is mentioned for the last time. As a philosophical exercise, it might be worthwhile to consider all of those things, but as a way of life, it's probably best not to dwell on them.

Or, put yet another way: There's nothing ignorant about believing in things that make life easier to bear. There's nothing heroic about denying yourself the things that your ancestors, friends, family members, etc., believe in, unless you really do think they make your life worse.

Again, I'm secular agnostic, and I don't practice any faith. For me, personally, I am not connected to a religious community, and so it doesn't seem like it would be particularly useful/worthwhile for me to adopt any religious beliefs. And I certainly am not advocating for Islam. But saying that religiosity is the same as ignorance is edgelord-tier, and I think it might be worthwhile for you to reconsider the opinions that you hold.

You're not really making a convincing case that religiosity is anything but ignorance (reinforced, usually, by peer pressure from other ignorant people).

Agreed, aquina-who? Just a load of turkey, that guy was so fucking stupid and ignorant!

Using science to prove god's real? How ignorant they can't co-exist

Let's head back to redit.

You're not making a whole lot of sense.

Holy fuck, someone coherent and rational.

I agree. I'm a secular humanist but I can still see the value in religion. If you look at it from an existentialist's pov, meaning is assigned according to choice. In an innately meaningless world, you can only really say whether something serves you or not. If it does, then that's reason enough to participate in it. There's no divine jury to punish you for arbitrary reasons, so if spirituality enriches your short, insignificant life, then there's no logical reason to deny yourself of it.

Yeah, I totally agree with that.
Too bad once you red-pill yourself out of it there's no going back.
Personally I miss the existential stability and happy community it provided.
BTW, I used to be Protestant Christian.

That being said, the destructive practices of religions, like Islam, cause far more practical suffering than any amount of existential pain it could spare us.

It's not particularly impressive in English, but its contents aren't worse than any other religious book. I will admit that I liked its descriptions of hell.

they are evocative, but it's shit philosophically
there are so fucking many of them, it's like some baptist cunt wandering around screaming "the wages of sin is death"
no subtlety; boring

You are now aware that if a verse contradicts another verse, then the verse later in the Koran overwrites the previous one. This means that everything you read gets abrogated by the second half. You basically just wasted your time.

Thats funny because i actually read the first few chapters and they said "dont kill innocent people" so im assuming the second half says "kill innocent people"?

not as far off as you might think

Fuck the Quaran and fuck Muslims; religion and culture are societal institution that causes people to be unequal. They need to be deconstructed so we can all gain more power.

up the wit on your trolling; it's a boring mess

Bingo.

>so it's actually believable that one could adhere to it.
this is kinda interesting
so you're saying the quran's batshit craziness is usually referential to some other established part of the doctrine? can you give examples?

Translating arabic to english makes for a pretty difficult read, you are better of being taught by a muslim who directly, english translates arabic phrases into single words, 'Jihad' for example..

Aquinas did not make a case for God that's compelling to any present-day educated person.

i was not informed we solved the problem of the first cause

You can determine absolutely nothing about the first cause other than it being the first cause. You can't determine if it's a God, an event, fifty gods or a retarded blind horror screaming forever in the void.

There are also events on a smaller scale that we don't understand the cause of. Radioactive decay is one of these. Shall we attribute the timing of radioactive decay to tiny gods inside each atom?

I think it is more likely that we simply do not understand the origins of the universe than that there is a God we are capable of conceiving of at root of it, just as we will probably eventually figure out the mechanics behind radioactive decay and other seemingly spontaneous events in physics.

You'll recall that we once thought insects were raised form the earth itself by God because we hadn't caught them mating yet.

"Causation" is a man-made schema for organizing patterns of experience. The notion of a "first cause" is nonsensical.

But you should also be aware that the Quran is not written in chronological order.

And a complete , precise, official ordering of the different chapters does not exist. There are several partial orderings which are considered quite authoritative.

If you want to claim that causation is totally arbitrary then you have to claim that events are able to cause other events that occurred earlier in time.

>If you want to claim that causation is totally arbitrary then you have to claim that events are able to cause other events that occurred earlier in time.

1) I didn't claim causation is "totally arbitrary".
2) Even if causation were "totally arbitrary", it doesn't follow that retrocausation must exist.
3) In any case, retrocausal explanations may indeed be valid, given what we know from QM and GR.

So you have achieved the perfect trifecta of wrongness in a single sentence. Congratulations.

Why are you guys so soft, just because it's violent doesn't make it inherently bad.

I've read like half of it. It made me believe in a God again, as I realized that most atheists became atheists because of their romanticized depictions of a God.

The Quran made me consider the possibility of a boundless, infinitely powerful and always right God. Many people use the argument of "well, if everything god does is good, and he's sooo powerful, why does bad exist?"

I realized, that if a god IS a god, everything "it" does is good by default, because it "writes the rules", and if it decides that killing humans is good, regardless of our opinion, killing humans becomes the good thing.

Then again, I'm not saying that I think that killing humans is good, I just use that as an example to understand a powerful and benevolent god.

Sure, but it's hard to enjoy something that's openly hostile towards you.

Wow, it took the whole Koran to introduce you to divine command theory?

Hadn't thought of that when you're reading from the perspective of the 'enemy'.

>I realized, that if a god IS a god, everything "it" does is good by default, because it "writes the rules", and if it decides that killing humans is good, regardless of our opinion, killing humans becomes the good thing.

that's not a specific muslim idea... it rather contradicts with that part of genesis that we were made after the god image and furthermore later acquired the ability to tell good from evil

it's rather weird if our inner moral sense contradicts the god's will and we appear to be more merciful than the god himself, isn't it

I'm not saying it's muslim-specific, just that I learned that while reading muslim literature.

Still, what if it seems weird? If we are the science project of a god, and he decides to be an asshole, what he does is still good. You don't listen to Lego blocks while playing with them.

it seems self-contradictory

if everything which the god commands is good because it's what he commands and he can command anything not self-limiting himself, then we don't truly have the ability to tell good from evil

Why are you obligated to say it's good? Is everything you do with lego blocks good, or do you sometimes fuck around?

I think the biggest thing is that everyone has a choice to either believe that we live in a meaningless, chaotic reality where nothing has meaning and your actions have no consequence -- or the opposite. The opposite doesnt have to be overly romantic either, but I think it's a better way to live

why should we?

I'm not a God. I say it's good, because I part from the definition of a god that always does good.

>why should we?
because it's said in the old testament which is both accepted by christians and muslims

Again, I'm not being muslim specific. A muslim text helped me to realize the idea, but I'm applying it to a general idea of a god. If it contradicts a passage of the bible or w/e, then you've found a flaw in the religion, not in the god.

But, since we are already at this point of the conversation I want to add that this is also the reason of why I find a god necessary:

I, as a human being, can have a set of values and rules to which I live by. However, every single other human being can do that as well. And we both, as human beings, have no priviledge over the other. Nothing grants me the power to force the other to do what I find good.

But if a god tells us what's good, since it is a god, and we are humans, it's our duty to obey, as what he deems good is good. This is why I find a god necessary for a society to exist. And you could even see it in a "secular" way, I don't remember who said it (voltaire?) but it goes something like "if god didn't exist, we'd need to invent one".

confirmed for not reading. The first word written in the book is not "read", "read" is the first word in the first surah, which is in the very last chapter (yes, the Surah in Qur'an is not chronological).

It is very different reading it in translation compared to arabic (I can read in arabic), some surah that is nice for non-muslim:
>Al Kahf (time traveller)
>Ar Rum (roman empire)
>Yusuf (a handsome prophet that is betrayed by his brothers)
>Al Kafirun (tolerance)
>Al Fiil (about birds (aircraft?) protecting Mecca)
>Ad Dhuha (depression)

Needs a revised edition.

By that logic Islam is about peace and not killing, see surah 109.
>In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
>Say: Oh you who turn away
>I do not worship what you worship,
>nor do you worship what I worship.
>And I will not worship what you worship,
>Nor will you worship what I worship.
>Your way is yours, and my way is mine.

The translation is a bit off, but it means "mind your own business"

Wait what.

When you say the first surah, are you talking about al Fatiha? Because that's at the very start of the book, or do you mean An-Nas, which is the very last surah?

Al Fatiha doesn't start with "Read", but An-Nas does start with "Say".

You forgot a few

Surah al-alaq begins with read and was the first one revealed, I think that what he means

>penguin classics predates the Torah

It's incredible as literature (don't even reply to me if you haven't read it in Arabic - it's impossible to translate) and ridiculous as philosophy / metaphysics / ethics like most religious literature.

the quran is much more liberal than orthodox islam, as it doesn't contains hadith shenanigans

It has several beautiful surah's, for example:

"Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth; a likeness of His light is as a niche in which is a lamp, the lamp is in a glass, the glass is as it were a brightly shining star, lit from a blessed olive-tree, neither eastern nor western, the oil whereof almost gives light though fire touch it not – light upon light."

(Surah an-Nur, reminds me of Psalm 119:105)

why would i bother. eastern literature STILL hasn't gotten to the point western literature was at in the 1400s

It doesn't work that way. The Qur'an is arranged in an autistic manner. When he says the second half abrogates the first half, he means the second half of a Qur'an arranged in chronological order. Verses revealed later trump those revealed earlier.

>light upon light

Wasnt Muhammad taught under a Christian missionary?

> In the midst of that night, in my darkness,
I saw the awesome sight of Christ
opening the heavens for me.
And he bent down to me and showed himself to me
with the Father and the Holy Spirit
in the thrice holy light --
a single light in three, and a threefold light in one,
for they are altogether light,
and the three are but one light,.
And he illumined my soul
more radiantly than the sun,
and he lit up my mind,
which had until then been in darkness.
Never before had my mind seen such things.
I was blind, you should know it, and I saw nothing.
That was why this strange wonder
was so astonishing to me,
when Christ, as it were, opened the eye of my mind,
when he gave me sight, as it were,
and it was him that I saw.
He is Light within Light, who appears
to those who contemplate him,
and contemplatives see him in light --
see him, that is, in the light of the Spirit...

>Mahabharata
>Shahnameh

>prose

its poetry you pleb

where can i get the zend avesta?

how good is that penguin edition?

...

this desu

this is what jihadists want you to believe

one can imagine adhering to "it's too bad they don't believe, if they don't listen they will have to die" or "be nice to your slaves, but really, do whatever you want"
there are reasonable rules (ISIS follows them)
in the OT, there is a whole bunch of bullshit that doesn't even make sense without the temple, it's just too complicated
the quran is simple, and because of that, dangerous

this is a meme pushed by retarded Muslims and the book itself
the thing reads like shit

Name a better book in Arabic of the same time period.

...

>all these niggas saying Mohammed wrote the Quran

baka desu senpai

Read it partly. Waste of time.

>in the thrice holy light --
>a single light in three, and a threefold light in one,
>for they are altogether light,


I would say they (your quoted poem was written by Symeon the New Theologian) were both inspired by some other text, since Symeon was born in 949 AD. Or perhaps Symeon had access to the Qu'ran, as a Byzantine monk?

weird copy caste

Al Alaq is the first surah