So this year I went back to my favourite version of the Quran–the A. Yusuf Ali translation. It’s the translation I grew up with, with the Arabic Quran (the actual Quran is in Arabic–the English is always a translation!) on the right side of the page and the English translation with its attempts at Olde English, on the left.

Between the ages of I don’t know, six or seven and about twelve, my father, myself and my older sister went through the entire translation about three times.

Imagine a squirmy little kid, who’d rather being doing ANYTHING else, suffering through the ‘thee’s and thou’s, the couldn’sts and wouldn’sts of very bad Shakespearean English! Just imagine how hard that would be!

And yet we did it. We endured, and I even ended up listening to a lot of it because if I didn’t, if my Dad caught us not listening, if we couldn’t answer his sudden, “What did I just read?” ambush question, then we’d get a good hard slap.

Oh sure, my sister and I played wrestling footsies under the table where we thought he couldn’t see us (turned out he did see us, he just overlooked it), but we actually benefited from the reading of the scripture.

It left a mark on both of us.

Wrote on the slate of who we were, so to speak, and so I did the same with my own children as they were growing up. But not to the same degree.

And every year I try to read the whole Quran in Ramadan and it reboots me.

The negative influences of mainstream culture kind of get sloughed off, like dead skin cells with a loofah sponge, and I return to my roots. Recharge my soul, replenish my faith, that sort of thing.

But a funny thing happened when I began reading it this Ramadan.

I kept hearing parody as I was reading the verses.

Now the thing about Ramadan is that the devils are supposed to be locked up. Everyone really does have a devil assigned to them to tempt them, but during Ramadan, they’re chained up. Can’t say a word.

Imagine trying to fast with the whispers of temptations abounding??? It would be a LOT harder!

But the fact that the devil’s chained is both a good and bad thing. Good because it makes it easier to worship God, in fact you’ll even find some Muslims who only practice Islam during Ramadan, but it’s bad because you can no longer blame any distractions during the prayer, or in this case, any comedic whisperings on any sort of devil.

It’s all you.

It was really quite disturbing!

Here I was reading the translation of the words of God Himself, and yet there was a priggish little voice at the back of my mind making stupid comments about the melodrama of the Olde English.

Yes, now that I think of it, I was really reacting to the melodrama of the unfortunate translation. How it was trying too hard to sound scripturely!

But then A. Yusuf Ali was originally from India, living in Britain at the time that he wrote his translation, and he probably suffered from a supersized colonial inferiority complex.

Honestly the best reason I’d read his translation over others was because of the index. Most of the others didn’t have indexes where you could find particular verses that easily.

Anyway, after being repeatedly disturbed by the phenomenon, of this parody going on inside my head, I realized where it was coming from. Too much comedy.

And I started to contemplate how our society has changed a LOT over the years, and how comedy and farce has infected almost every aspect of our life to the point that even our newscasts vie with Stephen Colbert to toss out one-liners and dwell on frivolous news stories.

We’ve lost our sense of gravitas.

This Ramadan I re-acquired my sense of gravitas.

I ignored the little parody quips, and eventually they faded away, and I was able to immerse myself in the beauty of the words of the Quran.

I remember hearing from some people who read the Quran that they found it very confusing.

And I thought, ‘really?’

I don’t think it’s confusing at all. I mean sure there are parts that are symbolic and you can’t quite figure them out, but most of the Quran is very plain and basic verses.

There’s a LOT of warning of hell fire as a punishment!

I can’t count the number of verses I’ve read where God says, “If you could only see the unbelievers, when they see the punishment and that which they were wont to deny…”

shudder

And there are as many beautiful descriptions of heaven.

Having grown up in the ’60’s and ’70’s I still remember the Bible stories that the teachers would read to us in school.

This was back when they still infused public school with religious references.

I remember hearing the story of the tower of Babel, and how apparently God got ‘nervous’, asthaghfirullah! That mankind was getting higher so He created the languages so that they couldn’t understand one another when they asked for a hammer or a nail, so they couldn’t build the tower higher.

And I remember even as a kid thinking, ‘Wait a minute! If God is All powerful, why is He ‘scared’?” asthaghfirullah!

And as I grew, and I read bits and pieces here and there, and heard references from preachers talking, they always spoke of the devil as a powerful being who’d ‘gotten away’ from God.

As if God was always trying hard to contain the devil. Again, asthaghfirullah!

You just get such a different feel of God in the Bible.

For those who find the Quran confusing, it’s because it doesn’t follow any sort of chronology. Pretty much all the same prophets that are mentioned in the Bible are mentioned in the Quran. There are twenty-five prophets of God mentioned in the Quran and as Muslims we have to believe in all of them.

The five greatest prophets of God are considered: Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them).

But I think the biggest difference between the Quran and the Bible is perspective!

The Quran is written from God’s perspective.

It doesn’t contain the ‘salacious details’ that the Bible contains.

Not till I was full grown and watching a youtube video had I even heard the story of King David (one of the prophets of God) coveting another man’s wife and sending the man into the front line of battle so he could be killed. What a despicable thing to do.

I actually heard the story from a former Christian youth minister here: (the King David segment of the story go to around 16:30 in the video)

He’s got an amazing story! I particularly found it fascinating his explanation of why it was so important that the messiah could not be killed/crucified.

Anyway, I was thinking of Joshua Evans when I came across a particular verse in the Quran that had always puzzled me. It was a reference to David. He was in his private chambers and all of a sudden two men breached the walls and King David became very scared.

So the men approached him to settle a difference between them and he said to King David, here’s my brother he has 99 ewes and I only have one, but he says I should give him mine too.

And King David started espousing on injustice and how wrong it was to take someone else’s property and right before his eyes, the two men vanished and he realized his error, and he appealed to God to forgive him his transgressions.

Maybe A. Yusuf Ali didn’t know about this incident in the Bible. Because when I finished reading it this time, having seen Joshua Evans’ video I suspect (I’m no scholar) but I strongly suspect that the ewe story was a reference to that very incident with David and Bathsheba.

Oh it was a moment when I realized that!

Anyway, you’ll find that the Quran does contain stories of the prophets, but it’s very different from the Bible.

I’m almost done reading the Quran.

There’s only about four days left of Ramadan, yup, it flew right by! Just like I knew it would.

But this year my enjoyment of it was marred by all the turmoil going on in the world.

I was washing the pots from supper and thinking how fortunate we are even to have running water! How fortunate to have peace, and a functioning country…

My heart breaks for the people of Myanmar, Syria, Egypt and of course Gaza! May God have mercy on all of them!

And yet, one of the things that has really comforted in this Ramadan’s reading of the Quran is the ‘confidence’. That God will hold to account all those who commit injustice.

It comforts me even as it scares me.

I think if I didn’t believe so strongly that one day God will hold us all to account for everything we’ve done, how on the day of Judgment He will reward the good and punish the evil-doers, I think I’d go insane.

And yet the punishments described…horrendous!

And yet repeatedly God says that on that day no injustice will He do to any one.

I pray that God saves me, my family, and all those I love, from such penalties!

Peace to you all.

Looking forward to Eid.