I started reading Koran and liked a lot of it

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So I won't be reading Vedas or any other pagan literature. But -- unlike a lot of Christians -- I don't put Koran into that category. I mean Koran is all about Moses and Jesus, and it mentions those prophets more than Mohammad. I like to explore different Christian cults, particularly the ones that strive to combine Christianity with Torah. Islam seems like the same concept except it is much older. So it makes it an interesting study. I just didn't get my hands on Koran till now. But yesterday I was at some store, ran by Muslims, and I saw a bunch of Korans. I asked how much they cost. They said they are free. So I gladly took one.

In any case, I am a rather slow reader, and so far I only read probably around 10-15 pages of it (I read the first half of the chapter "the cow"). But I must say that a lot of what I read resonated a lot with my views. Unlike some parts of the Bible (particularly Paul), Koran actually affirmed that Jews should follow Torah and encouraged them along. Then it criticized Jews for not doing a good job following it -- which is quite parallel to the way they are criticized in the New Testament (both Koran and New Testament talked about them killing their own prophets). Except that New Testament sometimes says "Jews broke Old covenant so it is now replaced with the new one" while Koran tends to say "Jews broke the Old covenant and they better return to keeping it". I kinda like the Koran version better.

But then of course in Koran there are some parts that made me raise an eyebrow. Like I read a mention that they have to face Mecca when they pray, or I read about "Abraham and Ishmael" instead of "Abraham and Isaac". Of course I don't like those parts. I guess the key as to why I like the majority of it is because it tends not to mention those things too often. For example, while I read quite a few mentions of Moses and Jesus, I am yet to run into a mention of Mohammad. I like that.

And then the other thing nice about this whole thing is that, since I am not a Muslim, I don't feel obligated to agree with everything. So when I run into something that I don't like, I can still enjoy the rest of it that I like. But with the Bible its different: with the Bible, as a Christian, I feel forced to agree with the whole thing. And then when I run into something I don't like, its a big problem.

And then the other thing is that Jesus tends to speak in parables a lot, while Koran tends to spell a lot of things out. I like things to be spelled out for a change.

But then again, I only read first 10-15 pages. I guess when I will get into some hard-core stuff, such as claims that Jesus wasn't really crucified and his body was substituted by some other body, I won't like it very much. Again though, as a non-Muslim, I can just focus on the parts that I like and ignore the rest.

Has anyone else tried to read Koran? What do you think?

I bought a copy on a whim a few years back just to see what it was all about. Never got around to reading it. Thank you for reminding me I owned a copy (so did Thomas Jefferson).

I guess thats one selling point for the Koran over the New Testament of the Bible for aspies. Aspies typically like things spelled out.

It would make sense for Mohammed to be mentioned-----since the Koran was purportedly dictated to him from Allah.

I feel like Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are really three "dialects" of one monotheistic religion.

Glad to hear I was useful Doesn't happen that often At least people don't tend to acknowledge it.

One of my short-term ex-s decided to test herself for Asperger after getting to know me, and was confirmed she was aspie. The other of my ex-s decided to look up into her own family history when I told her I was Jewish and she learned that she was 3/4 Jew. One of my long-term ex-s said that I was the main reason why she *didn't* commit suicide during one of the hard times in her life. Then some lady on braintalk.org message board (now defunct) started a campaign holding herself and others accountable about the weight loss after I told her she was "fat". A guy at a university Bible study group started going to Messianic congregation after I suggested it to him. My thesis advisor started a collaboration with someone in a lab prompted by my looking for a topic that is relevant to physics. I ended up not liking what that lab guy does anyway so it didn't work out as far as I am concerned, but *they* are still collaborating.

None of those people gave me any credit for any of the above and it sucks. Glad at least you gave me credit for once.

Oh by the way, here is something else I read in the Koran that I liked. It said that if Jews are sure they are in good standing with God, why don't they wish for death so that they can get their reward? That was a rhetoric question. It then went on to say that no, they don't wish for death. On the contrary, they cling to life more than anyone else. In fact they wish they could live 1000 years. And they use this as a proof that Jews know they are not righteous.

Now, I personally won't agree that its a bad thing, but I can't help but nod my head in saying "good observation: yes Jews do cling to life a lot more than others". In 2017 my mom's landlord died. Now, before he died, his own sons wanted to take a plug off but my mom wanted to keep him on life support. His sons are half Jewish my mom is fully Jewish. And my mom's attitude towards life is very common among Jews. I actually share that attitude myself. I don't like the concept of putting people on hospice care. I think people should fight to stay alive as long as possible. And I am sure my mom would agree.

And yes I think it is a Jewish attitude in general rather than just my mom. As we all know in Islam suicide might not be a bad thing while in Christianity it is one way ticket to hell. Well, Judaism takes even stronger stand against suicide than Christianity does. In Christianity the martyrdom of sorts is being praised, while in Judaism it isn't. In Judaism life is held sacred.

Putting Judaism aside, I would say that the question the Koran raised is also a good one. And, for many years, I was wondering about the same thing, although not in connection to Jews but in connection to Christians. I was wondering if Christians are sure they are going to heaven when they die, why aren't they wishing for death? And then I felt like maybe they aren't that sure they are going to heaven and are only deceiving themselves. I mean, if you are going to look at Jesus' own words, He said only few are saved (Matt 7:13) yet the number of Christians is far from few, which logically implies most of them are not saved. I been asking that question to Christians over and over and nobody really gave me a satisfactory answer.

But I guess the way I asked it is different than the way Koran asked it. Because Koran was trying to criticize Jews specifically, while I was trying to question the certainty of salvation in general. Plus I won't criticize anyone for clinging to life. If anything, I would criticize landlord's sons for pulling the plug off, and I would praise my mom for trying to keep him alive.

Still, however, good observation when it comes to the fact that Jews cling to life more than others. Its so true!! !

Now contrast it with Jesus who accused Jews of not honoring their parents (Matt 15:4,5). When I read this I was like "what? I thought if anything Jews are a lot more family oriented than anyone else". But when I read Koran saying Jews cling to life, I am like "yes they do". Now, would I rather agree that dishonoring parents is bad (Bible) or would I rather agree clinging to life is bad (Koran)? Well I guess I am with the Bible on that one. But would I say Jews dishonor their parents (Bible) or would I say Jews cling to life (Koran)? Well, here I am with Koran.

Although who knows maybe Jews changed during the diaspora after the Second Temple was destroyed? Maybe their culture of honoring parents is what formed as a coping mechanism of dealing with said diaspora? If so, then it makes sense why the way Koran describes Jews seem to match the way I see them a lot more closely: since Koran was written a lot later.

Oh and here is something even more impressive. Not only Koran described Jews to a T, it also described liberals as well. It talked about non-believers that make an excuse they are "only" a "peace makers" while actually they are fighting against God.

It also talked about people who, when they are told "believe as others believe" would respond "should we believe as fools believe" yet they are making themselves into fools.

Now, that one is interesting. Both of those arguments sound very modern. How did Koran predict them? I am impressed!! !

Well like I said I only read small part of Koran so far. So I am sure he is mentioned somewhere.

I am just saying that Moses and Jesus are mentioned more, which is also true.



Yes and no. On the one hand they have points of disagreements. But on the other hand, I like to theorize. So as long as they are "in the same context" (monotheism) its nice to put them side by side and contemplate about the issues.

Exactly.

Also Koran tends to lay out its arguments as well, rather than just state things. For example it oftentimes poses rhetoric questions to non-believers to make its point. Bible doesn't tend to do it.

---

Actually, Wiki Describes Liberal Muslims Better Than
The Quran As There Are Actual Scientific Studies on it now; Yawn,
Typically, According to the Science of Social Scientist, Jonathan Haidt,

Conservatives are More Closed Minded in Personality Traits

And Liberals Are More Open Minded in Personality Traits Which

Means Liberals Are More Likely to Accept Folks Different than

They Are and

Support Their

Rights More like
Obviously Liberal
Jesus Does in the New Testament
Until A Conservative More Old Testament

Ghost Author Suggests He Burn Folks Forever

For Not Following The Newer Traditional Rules too...

This is Human Nature; It's Been Around For A While;

By Very Nature, Tradition Excludes Others Who
Are Different Than From What Tradition DICTATES;

By Very Nature,

Freedom

of Love Includes THE
DIFFERENT AMONG US;

BY STORY, Jesus Was A Super Liberal

Dude In New Testament Directions
ERASING THE RULES FROM THE PAST
LIKE WORKING ON THE SABATH AND
HEALING AND NOT GETTING STONED TO DEATH.

One Will Find Old Testament Closed

Minded Folks in the Tradition of Never
Wanting Things to Change And Remain Stale and Oppressive to Others Who are Different too...

That's Okay, if There is A Storm Coming And Ya Need to Anchor a Boat in A Safe Harbor

Rather than Sail

the Raging Seas

And Perhaps Die;

Yet When It comes to Humanity

It Leads to All Kinds of Sufferings

Where Women are Treated As Less than Males
And LGBQT+ Folks Are Treated As Less Than Human
And If 'You' Are 'Fortunate Enough' to be Born in Saudi Arabia

You May Be Covered to Your Chest as A Lesbian And Stoned to Death...

True, Some Folks

Still Live in a Stoning

Age; Keep Reading You'll

Get to the 'Evil' Parts of that
Tradition, Unless You Exclude
The Different Among God's (Love) Kingdom on Earth of Free Love...

The Main Thing The "Spokes on The Wheel of the Monotheist Religions" Have in Common

Is They Both (Islam And Christianity) Believe in An All Loving Merciful Forgiving God That Tortures Folks

(Other than that the Quran Uses a Lot of Copy and Paste From the Old Christian Bible too For a 80,000
or So Word Effort With Only About 2,000 Words of Vocabulary; Fortunately Rumi, A Sufi Muslim Greatly

Improves on That)

Forever Who
Do Not Comply

By Rules of Tradition;

Yep That's A Pretty Big Made-Up
'Stick' to Keep Folks 'Buried in Traditions' on Earth...

However, For Freer People Who See Through the Obvious MaNiPuLaTiVE

Lies For What Is Often Misattributed to 'PT Barnum' Described as "Suckers Born Every Minute,"
Willing And Ready to Get Hooked into Every Story By So-Called 'Authority' And Swallow
the Bait (The Carrot of Promises After Death in Heaven) And The Sinker too (Suffering
in Hell Forever, Tortured by an All Loving Merciful Forgiving God, For Not Following Rules,

Not so Much...) (Yes, Folks Who Can See Through the Made-Up MaNiPULaTiVE Stories Say HeLL NO...)

On the Other Hand(S), in Desert Regions of Scarcity; Tough Times Require Tough Talks
And Tribal Wars For Basic Subsistence, Shelter, And Successful Reproduction to Survive,

So We Get Religions of Tribal Desert Scarcity in Harsh Environments And Philosophies of Folks
Like Buddha

Where Life

is Lush

And Green
in Abundance;

Similar As the American
Indians Who Saw and Felt
And Sensed The Abundance

Of Nature in 'This New World' of 'Heaven,'

More Easily Respecting Nature As A More FRiEnDLY

God to Get

Along with
in Balance;

Yep, in Tribal Real Estate

Dealings and Religion and
Even Stories of God; Location,
Location,

Location Counts;

Closed Minded Folks May
Stay in the Desert and More Liberal

Folks May Go Far Away from 'the Cave'

And Establish New Arts in America to Thrive close to

Naked,
Enough,

Whole,

And Complete

in A Real Heaven on Earth
Here if they Don't Get Stuck
At one of the 'Bus Stops' Playing

'Candy Crush' And Get too Distracted to
Even come close to Fulfilling Heavenly Creative

Potentials on Earth....

Instant Gratification

Is Almost As Or More
Dangerous in Terms of

Over Dosing on Drugs than

Desert Scarcity; Yet Breaking the
Rules and Getting Stoned With Rocks is

Not much
More (Then or Now)

Fun Either... Sigh...

Don't Be That "PT Barnum

Circus Goer" if 'You' Choose And Will

to Direct Your own Freedoms... Yet
Typically That Requires A More Open Minded

Creative, and Freer in Will, Relatively Speaking, Human to Do...

(Not Suggesting Anything About 'You' Specifically)

It's the Nature
of the Beast

And Science

Is Studying it in
Ways that Old Antiquated
Dusty Books Couldn't Imagine then...

However, For those Who Look Within
And Find the Common Sense and Feel....

That's A Leap over Logic into What's Already Built In...

Hard to Do Though, Distracted By 'Candy Crush' At 'Bus Stops' of Life, 'These Days' too...

Here's Another Clue, if You Can Learn to Generate Your Own Happiness Through
Some Kind of Autotelic Flow of Meditation on Task of What You Are Doing, if So,

It will Never
Matter if

Someone
Says Thanks
For What You Do or Not

As There is No way They Will

Be Able to add Anything to the Creation of Loving Joy Giving You Make Yourself Now...

And Science Shows This Works too; Just Google the Keywords, if You So Choose too...

And No, You Don't Have to Say Thank You, Or Read Any Of This As Someone Else Will

Benefit
Where

Others Will Not;

Some folks Just Don't Talk Much...

Not Every Person on the Autism Spectrum is 'Super Verbal'...

And Studies Show Only 33 Percent of Higher Functioning Autistic Folks
in College Choose STEM Major, Contrary to Stereotypes 'We' Hear too...

And Some folks on the Autism Spectrum, Understand Greater 'Right Brain
Intelligence' in Social-Empathic-Artistic-Spiritual Ways in 'Savant Extent' too...

Compared

to the
Rest

of 'the Crowd'...

In Short, Some Folks Are "Older Testament" in Their Ways of Perceiving And Doing the World;
In Longer, Some Folks Are "Newer Testament' in Their Ways of Perceiving And Doing The World;

Yes, Boats Need Anchors and Sails to Stay Afloat AND ACTUALLY Go Somewhere New;

A Best Case Scenario is To Develop And Balance

Both of that

'Yang and

Yin' of Animus
And Anima' in One Human
Being Balancing Now Yet of Course i Don't
Stick to One Religious Tradition of Ideas Now
Either; i Study Them All, Find My Own Wheat And Discard

The Chaff, Not Really Favoring any Religion over the Other

As They Most
All Have Their
Traditional Flaws
And Positive Attributes
In My Opinion At Least...

Thanks For Your Opinion; i've Never
Expected Any Thanks Here and Never Will Now...

i Suppose Plus 93 Thousand Views on the Close
to 1.5 Million Word Solo Thread Expressed in Free Verse
Poetry Relating my Philosophies on Religion and Politics is

Enough Thanks in 'Depth of the Story'

For What i Give to Others Free HeaR
of Charge With No Expect of Return...

Key: "Expect Nothing; Appreciate Everything"...

It's More Buddhist in Philosophy And Much Improved Over Christianity
And Islam As Both Expect Heaven And Hell After Life, Instead of Understanding the Reality of it in this Life now...

"Liberal Muslims affirm the promotion of progressive values such as democracy, gender equality, human rights, LGBT rights, women's rights, religious pluralism, interfaith marriage,[8][9] freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and freedom of religion;[1] opposition to theocracy and total rejection of Islamism and Islamic fundamentalism;[1] and a modern view of Islamic theology, ethics, sharia, culture, tradition, and other ritualistic practices in Islam.[1] Liberal Islam emphasizes the re-interpretation of the Islamic scriptures in order to preserve their relevance in the 21st century.[1][10]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_and_progressivism_within_Islam

---

One thing I find interesting is that Koran's antisemitic verses sound more mild than their New Testament counterparts. Yet, in today's politics, Christians are pro-Jewish while Muslims are anti-Jewish.

Now I know that today's Christians would say that "antisemitic verses in New Testament aren't truly antisemitic, they are just misinterpretted" and then they re-interpret them to make them not sound this way. But the point is that one can do the same thing with the Koran. Its just that nobody really tried to do it. But if you divide up a classroom and ask one part of the classroom to re-interpret the New Testament to make it not antisemitic and the other part of classroom to re-interpret Koran to make it not antisemitic, I think the part of the classroom dealing with the Koran would have an easier time. Particularly since Koran actually has verses reminding the Jews they are favorites of God and asking them to return, while New Testament goes out of the way to say now they lost that status.

I guess I can answer my own question though. The reason Christians are more pro-Jewish than Muslims is not the issue of Bible vs Koran but rather its an issue of what happened the last few decades specifically. Because if you go to the past centuries, it used to be the opposite. Back in the Middle Ages the Jews were treated far more harshly in Christian countries than in the Muslim ones.

The fact that New Testament is more antisemitic than Koran can also be understood in historic terms. New Testament was written when Jews were in power and Christians were a small persecutted minority. The Koran was written when Jews didn't have any power to persecute Muslims. Hence in Koran they had less of a reason to look at the Jews in this particular light.

And this goes back to Christians re-interpretting New Testament. One thing they say -- among several others -- is that it was referring to first century Jews rather than today's Jews. Well, they might be right. And in this case there isn't that much of a contradiction between Koran and New Testament. They were just each focusing on their own respective time periods.

And that doesn't negate the fact that New Testament is the word of God either. Maybe New Testament did two separate things. One is to focus on its own time period and the other is to make a bigger theological points that go outside of it. Which is pretty much in line of what Christians would say.

As far as Koran being the word of God, I won't say it because I am not a Muslim. My committment is to the Bible and I have to stick with what I am committed to (especially given Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10). But other than that, I think what Koran says is quite reasonable. Looking at "antisemitic" verses in the Koran, I would say I agree with them -- at least on factual level. I just won't necesserely use them to criticize Jews (earlier mentioned verses that talk about clinging to life is one good example).

A Short Summary of Koranic Directives Regarding Women:

• A woman is worth one-half of a man, and men are above women.

• Men are superior to women and have authority over them, while women must obey men or risk being beaten.

• Menstruating women are unclean, and men must stay away from them.

• Muslim men may marry up to four wives, including prepubescent girls, and can own sex slaves.

• Muslims are not allowed to marry non-Muslims, unless the latter convert to Islam.

• Women are men's "fields", and men can have sex with them whenever they want.

• Women must cover themselves and be seen only by relatives, eunuchs, slaves, and children who have not yet had sex with women.

Read the Full Article  HERE 

Yep....a literal interpretation of the Koran yields the above truisms.

Fortunately, we're not living in the 600s, and society has advanced beyond that point.

If you really take the Koran literally, it's really not all that great for women. It ain't bad for men, though!

His point was NOT that he was surprised that the Koran mentions Mohammed.

His point was that he expected it to center on Mohammed, and was surprised that it does not mention him at all in the first pages he has read, but does talk about Moses, and Jesus.

And in fact- he has gotten a good sampling apparently. Though it will mention Mohammed I just recently read somewhere that both Moses and Jesus are each mentioned in the Koran several times as often as is Mohammed is mentioned in the Koran. Its not just in the first few pages.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 11 Apr 2022, 9:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

Maybe that is why men who cannot get dates find Koranic  verses  sutras so attractive.

I am a slow reader and I didn't get to the verses that talk about gender.

When I was looking at the Koran I was thinking more of the whole Jewish-Christian issue which very much applies to me since I am of a Jewish background, converted to Christianity, still observe Jewish laws and go to Messianic congregations. Since Islam is also a type of combination of the two thats why I decided to look into it.

As far as the gender issues, it simply didn't pop into my head until you brought it up just now. If anything, that particular issue only makes Koran *less* appealing, so don't put words into my mouth.