03-26-2004, 06:53 PM
Salaam Alaikum!
There’s a point I wanted to make. I strongly believe that in the current situation going on in Israel-Palestine is nationalistic. And, to that extent, they (both Israeli’s and Palestinians) use the bible and the Quran to justify their positioning.
I protest against this narrow approach. Being a former Christian, I had the luxury to read the bible from a religious standpoint. Now that I’m a Muslim, who as an undergraduate at university studies Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, I can read the bible from the standpoint of an objective Muslim with tentative credentials in Biblical criticism. When I look at the bible and read its stories, propaganda, prose fiction, and myth I can only frown at how most zealous Israeli’s (and some Jews) take the bible literally and use it to erect apartheid policies. For instance, some take the story of Moses (Musa in Arabic) and epitomize it for Israeli nationalism. Struggling to make a relevant connection between that story and the modern-day conflict, they become textual manipulators and slap the bible hard with their one-sided, barbaric and despotic understanding of a biblical story.
With that said, we have a similar vogue in Islam. Though, unlike the Bible, the Quran is the unadulterated word of Allah (swt). It’s a text of transcendence, history, poetry and understanding. It was purely a mercy from Allah (swt). Though, some have went far enough to pervert Allah’s (swt) word! How? Political Islamologues take simple verses out of the Quran and apply them whenever the argument or situation seems convenient. By doing so, they reduced the Quran to the format of a cookbook (Do’s and Don’ts). They take the Quran out of context, insert their very own commentary of the verses, and spread it like wildfire. If that’s the kind of Quranic studies one wants, one can have it! But for us Muslims who want Quranic studies redolent of values—morality—correct commentaries and transliteration—I say protest against such a narrow reading of the Quran.
No! I am not a scholar of the Quran nor am I a scholar on Islam. But, never let the Quran lose its true meaning---that would be to follow in the footsteps of the ‘People of the Book’.
Ibn