On: Life Is Short (2016)

[brutusborn]

I respect your passion and faith but I think you are very mistaken.

I tried to read some of the Quran but couldn’t find anything that spoke to me. Can you recommend any good sections or translations? Maybe the parts that make you so certain of the afterlife?

I will criticise one of your points since it seems fairly objective. Aren’t there many versions of Quran and countless hadiths? https://answering-islam.org/Green/seven.htm

[erenyeager → brutusborn]

When you say different versions of Quran, what you are talking about is very different from something like different Bible versions and edits and translations etc.

The Quran is multi form. Oral texts tradition and from the Hadith we know that the Quran was recited in different modes by the Prophet Muhammad pbuh. But these are all valid revelation. Actually one of the “miracles” linguistically about the Quran is how the authentic Qiraa’aat (the reading-out of the Quran) can be traced back to a chain of reciters authentically. And each Qiraa’aat adds eloquence to the Quran and it also speaks to the people of a certain dialect. Think about British English and American English and how the same word can be pronounced differently, and you begin to approach an understanding of Qiraa’aat.

Actually, different Qiraa’aat are essential to the revelation of the Quran and giving evidence about how it has been revealed as an “Arabic Quran” in which many examples of mankind and prophets are related.

These qiraa’aat add enhancement to the meaning of the Quran. For example, if you look up tafsir Al-Qurtubi [not sure if there is an English translation but you can find the Arabic text on Quran.com] (tafsir is an explanation of the Quran), of (verse 87 from chapter 20)[https://quran.com/20/87 ] you will find that the word ملكنا has three different readings مِلكنا ، مُلكنا، مَلكنا which when we transliterate to English we get: mulkinaa, milkinaa, malkinaa. Malkinaa and milkinaa translate to “our will”. Mulkinaa translates to “our power”.

And all together in the verse it enhances the meaning that shows that the Children of Israel were made to carry the burdens of weight of the jewelwery/ornaments from the Pharoah’s people.

Also in this verse, we have two readings for حملنا which are: حُمِّلنا and حَمَلنا which is hummilnaa, and hamalnaa, respectively. Hummilnaa is the passive voice and means “we were forced to carry”. While “Hamalnaa” translates to “we carried”.

Both of these convey a similar meaning of carrying, they enhance aspects of what is happening in the verse. Passive voice focuses on how people were forced to Carry while the active voice focuses on how people indeed did carry.

This is just one example of how important and helpful knowing Qiraa’aat are and Arabic.