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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I read the Quran and was not tempted to convert, in fact quite the opposite.

DD read the Quran in high school and was, quite frankly, shocked. She actually told me, "this is not a religion of peace."[/quote]

I don't think you can read the Quran and say it is a religion of violence.  However, a huge amount of the Quran is devoted to the end of days and what happens if you go to hell--it is a bit harrowing, but not an exhortation to violence on earth; it is much like what one sees depicted in Hermonius Bosch's paintings that one finds hanging in museums.

In my view, if you've heard one harrowing description of the end of days and of hell, you've heard them all.  The Quran has many iterations of this, which is one of the reasons I find it overall not very interesting.  In Arabic, it is quite different because it is actually poetry so the language, meter, and sound all come together in a euphonious whole.

I suspect this is the real reason the vigilant defenders of the Quran, like some of the PPs here, insist you can't really understand the Quran unless you read it in Arabic.  It is not really about understanding the words, but about being captured by the beauty of the language.

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That's fine , I think we can all appreciate the beauty of the melodious recitation. I should point out that since classical Islamic law frowns on music and singing (which is why all Islamic countries have few orchestras or professional musicians apart from pop stars), Quranic recitation industry is one of the few halal outlets for the musically inclined. In a different country you may see that reciter rocking the Carnegie Hall.

But to me the actual meaning and substance of the Quran is incredibly tedious and repetitive. [/quote]

As far as I know classical Islamic law does not frown on music and singing.  Even the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia permit it--there have been music radio stations there for decades and singing is an integral part of wedding celebrations and even mournings.

The banning of music is a latter day invention of Islamic fundamentalists, who necessarily have to retreat every time they try to outlaw music because it is so deeply entrenched in the culture.  They try to ban secular music because they see it as competition to recitation of the Koran.  These people have no sense of humor, nor of human nature.

This is one of the reasons these people are doomed to failure (albeit after leaving lots of tragedy in their wake)--they keep trying to impose laws that are totally antithetical to not just human nature, but to the cultures of the peoples they are trying to control.

There are few orchestras because western music is based on a completely different scale (probably the wrong term--I'm no musicologist).  Also, while people do love listening to Arab music, being an "artiste" as they say is not viewed as a respectable profession (think of how many people here over the decades have viewed jazz musicians).  If a child shows talent in drawing in the Arab world, people don't say, "Oh, he'll be an artisit," they say "Oh, he'll be an architect" (architecture being viewed as a respectable profession).

In any case, none of this prevented millions of people showing up for Um Kalthoum's funeral.  [/quote]

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