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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Islam requires one simple belief:  "There is no god but God and Mohammed is His prophet."  (Then you are supposed to faithfully do a couple of practices: praying five times a day, fasting in Ramadan, giving zakat to the poor and making the pilgrimage to Mekka (if you can).  If you believe in that one statement and do the practices then you are a religious Muslim in good standing.

Islam emphatically is not a gnostic religion that requires special knowledge available only to the properly initiated to understand.  PP's insistence that you can't possibly understand Islam without knowing Arabic or without recourse to scholars borders on heresy.[/quote]
I disagree, because the belief in Muhammad as a messenger requires belief in his message, i.e. the Quran. There is no such thing as a devout Muslim who doesn't believe the Quran or rejects parts of it.

I agree that the tafsir industry in its present form was born out of the desire for job security for the unemployable.[/quote]

But there is such a thing as a devout Muslim who has only the most passing knowledge of the Koran.  This pretty much suffices--one doesn't have to have recourse to Arabic or learned scholars or have a really deep understanding of what is in the Koran; I maintain that to say so borders on heresy.

Further, you don't have to have any knowledge of the Koran to convert.  All that conversion to Islam requires is a recitation of "there is no god but God...." in front of witnesses.  It does not require that you demonstrate knowledge of the Koran.[/quote]

If you do not trust others to translate the Quran, then you must learn Quranic Arabic yourself. [/quote]
It's not me who doesn't trust others. It's an article of faith for the Muslim discourse that the Quran is untranslatable and all translations are too feeble to convey the glory of the holy book.  That's why, when reasonable people express doubts about something in the Quran, they are told to sit down and shut up because "you don't understand Arabic, and you have to."[/quote]

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