Koran

“ Among the Moslems, the Koran has always been looked on as the most perfect model of style and language. This feature of it is in their dogmatic the greatest of all miracles, the incontestable proof of its divine origin. Such a view on the part of men who knew Arabic infinitely better than the most accomplished European Arabist will ever do, may well startle us. In fact, the Koran boldly challenged its opponents to produce ten súras, or even a single one, like those of the sacred book, and they never did so. ”

“ On the 15th day of the month of Adar, I dreamed that I was on my knees, praying in the mosque. Opened before me was the First Kiblah of the Holy Koran. My brother appeared to me and led me forth, wanting to help me realize what he wanted to say to me: ‘I’m dead, but I live. You have not pardoned me, but I’ve forgiven you. I’ll send you my forgiveness. She approaches from the East. Daily, keep a look-out for her and restore again what you have perpetrated against me!’ His words resounded. Then, he disappeared. The Koran closed itself, and I awoke from the dream. ”

“ We will not detract from the real merit of the Koran; we allow it to be generally elegant and often sublime; but at the same time we reject with disdain its arrogant pretensions to any thing supernatural. Nay, if, descending to a minute investigation of it, we consider its perpetual inconsistency and absurdity, we shall indeed have cause for astonishment at that weakness of humanity which could ever have received such compositions as the work of the Deity, and which could still hold it in such high admiration as it is held by the followers of Mohammed to the present day. ”

“ For once in the life of each man—sayeth the Koran—comes to him his chance for happiness or woe. Once and only once. And while all else is written from the beginning in the book of each man's life by the Angel of the Scrolls—sayeth the Koran—there is left one page whereon each is permitted to trace, himself, the record of his choice. ”

“ I learned the Koran by heart, and understood the explanation of it perfectly. "Dear prince," would she oftentimes say, "there is but one true God; take heed that you do not acknowledge and adore any other." She taught me to read Arabic, and the book she gave me to practice upon was the Koran. ”

“ Yet the Moslems themselves consider the book the finest that ever appeared among men. They find no incongruity in the style. To them the matter is all true and the manner all perfect. Their eastern temperament responds readily to the crude, strong, and wild appeal which its cadences make to them, and the jingling rhyme in which the sentences of a discourse generally end adds to the charm of the whole. The Koran, even if viewed from the point of view of style alone, was to them from the first nothing less than a miracle, as great a miracle as ever was wrought. ”

“ I have interrogated the beliefs of each sect and scrutinised the mysteries of each doctrine, in order to disentangle truth from error and orthodoxy from heresy. I have never met one who maintained the hidden meaning of the Koran without investigating the nature of his belief, nor a partisan of its exterior sense without inquiring into the results of his doctrine. There is no philosopher whose system I have not fathomed, nor theologian the intricacies of whose doctrine I have not followed out. ”

“ For every evil that man is heir to, the Koran is the cure. A few words from its precious pages are bound upon the arm of the camel driver, who feels that with this as guardian he will not be lost upon the trackless sands. When ill, the wife will call the astrologer, who writes a few words upon a piece of paper, and soaking it in water, gives it to the wailing child, and the mother is assured that all will soon be well, because has he not drunk of the very fount of wisdom, the words that came from God? ”

“ Even the Arab Moslem of the present day can have but a very dim and imperfect understanding of the Koran, unless he has made a special study of its exegesis. For the great advantage, boasted by the holy book itself, of being perspicuous to every one, has in the course of thirteen centuries vanished. Moreover, the general belief is that in the ritual use of the Koran, if the correct recitation is observed, it is immaterial whether the meaning of the words be understood or not.
A great deal remains to be accomplished by European scholarship for the correct interpretation of the Koran. ”

“ And when mankind shall be assembled together, they will become their enemies, and ungratefully disown their worship.
And when our clear signs are recited to them, they who believe not say of the truth when it cometh to them, "This is plain sorcery."
Will they say, "He hath devised It?" SAY: If I have devised the Koran, then not one single thing shall ye ever obtain for me from God! He best knoweth what ye utter in its regard! Witness enough is He between me and you! And He is the Gracious, the Merciful. ”

“ The Koran treats of death, resurrection, the judgment, paradise, and the place of torment, in a style calculated powerfully to affect the imagination of the believer. The joys of paradise, promised to all who fall in the cause of religion, are those most captivating to an Arabian fancy. ”

“ A distinguishing feature of the Koran is a restless anxiety to mislead the mind by every species of artifice, and to anticipate and answer objections. Frequent challenges are thrown out, which, from the nature of the case could not be accepted, in a style of the most confident and arrogant boasting, and spectres of superstition are conjured up, to bear specific testimony to its merits. ”

“ The Arabs consider the Koran not only a divine revelation in the sense that it is the work of God, but in a more metaphysical one, namely, that the thoughts therein constitute the eternal mind of God, and are his word, his Logos; that they exist, as some say, in the divine essence; that the first copy of the Koran has been from all eternity at the throne of God, written on a vast table that contains his decrees as to the past and future. Is not this Hebrew doctrine uttered by the Arabs? Exoteric Judaism had been very explicit. ”

“ It is not perhaps fanciful to conjecture that one of the hidden causes of this renaissance is the large quantity of Christian truth which Islam literature holds, so to speak, in solution. It is a well-known fact that the Koran has borrowed largely from the Old Testament and the Apocryphal Gospels, but it is not so generally known that Mohammedan philosophers, theologians, and poets betray an acquaintance with facts and incidents of the Gospels of which the Koran contains no mention. ”

“ Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran. We read in it, as we might in the State-Paper Office, unreadable masses of lumber, that perhaps we [pg 199] may get some glimpses of a remarkable man. It is true we have it under disadvantages: the Arabs see more method in it than we. Mohammed's followers found the Koran lying all in fractions, as it had been written-down at first promulgation ”

“ In all dubious cases the Koran forms the authority to which both sides can appeal, and the meaning and application of the Koran are expounded by the men of the law, who make it the business of their lives to prepare themselves for explaining the sacred texts, and to point out and apply the decisions of the fathers. ”

“ These documents collected together formed the Koran, that mass of wild and unmeaning matter, which has been received so devoutly by his followers. [29]
If we consult the opinions of the Moslem on the subject of the Koran, we shall find them as unintelligible and incoherent as the work itself. One tells us that it contains sixty thousand miracles; [30] another that it is itself a miracle greater even than that of raising the dead to life; [31] and all true believers were compelled to acknowledge that it was uncreate, and had been in existence long before the creation of the world. ”

“ The idea involved in both the Arabic and Hebrew words is that what is so designated is the ultimate authority deciding all questions. The Rabbis of post-Biblical times (compare the Jewish Qabbalah) regarded the Old Testament [pg 170] as an encyclopaedia of universal knowledge. In the best-knownMuslim universities of modern times philosophy, science, and everything else are taught from the Koran, which is made in some way to contain implicitly the latest words of modern thought, invention, and discovery.
The Koran did not exist as a whole until after the Prophet Muhammad's [14] death. ”

“ The Seal of the Prophets, the Master of the Chosen Ones hath likened the religion of the Koran to Heaven because of its exaltation, loftiness and greatness, and because it embraces all Religions. As in the phenomenal heaven two great and mighty pillars are fixed which are the luminaries called sun and moon, so likewise two orbs are ordained in the Heaven of Religion, which are fasting and prayer. "Islam is Heaven; fasting is its sun and prayer is its moon." ”

“ O my friend, if thou soarest a little in the heavens of the significances of the Koran, and walkest upon the earth of Divine Knowledge unfolded therein, many doors of knowledge will be opened before thy face and thou wilt be assured that the very things which in this day prevent these servants from arriving at the shore of the eternal ocean, hindered the people during the Manifestation of the Point of the Koran from acknowledging and submitting to that Sun. ”

“ The contents of the different parts of the Koran are extremely varied. Many passages consist of theological or moral reflections. We are reminded of the greatness, the goodness, the righteousness of God as manifested Contents of the Koran. in Nature, in history, and in revelation through the prophets, especially through Mahomet. God is magnified as the One, the All-powerful. Idolatry and all deification of created beings, such as the worship of Christ as the Son of God, are unsparingly condemned. ”

“ The chapters from the Koran which are most often selected for use as amulets and put in the little cases shown in the picture are Surahs I, VI, XVIII, XXXVI, XLIV, LV, LXVII, LXXVIII. There are five verses in the Koran called the verses of protection, “Ayat-el-Hifdh,” which are the most powerful to defend from evil. They read as follows: “The preservation of heaven and earth is no burden unto Him;” “God is the best protector;” “They guard him by the command of God;” “We guard him from every stoned devil;” ”

“ Besides commentaries on the whole Koran, or on special parts and topics, the Moslems possess a whole literature bearing on their sacred book. There are works on the spelling and right pronunciation of the Koran, works on the beauty of its language, on the number of its verses, words and letters, &c.; nay, there are even works which would nowadays be called “historical and critical introductions.” Moreover, the origin of Arabic philology is intimately connected with the recitation and exegesis of the Koran. ”

“ In later years the spirit of the prophet was more subject to the prophet. But the Koran is an unintelligible book unless we can connect it with the biography of its writer. All the incidents of his life took shape in some revelation. A separate revelation was given to encourage or to rebuke him; and in his later years the too subservient inspiration came to appease the jealousy of his wives when a new one was added to their number. ”

“ It may be doubted if the original teaching of any other founder of a new religion is known to us so exactly as Mohammed’s. For the sacred book of Mohammedanism, the Koran, consists entirely of his own revelations, given in the name of God; and among his spoken utterances which have been handed down by tradition there is, mixed up with a great deal that is spurious, so much of what is genuine, that by its aid we are able at many points to supplement the Koran. ”

“ His attributes are expressed by ninety-nine epithets which are used in the Korān, and which in Arabic are single words, and generally participial forms, but in the translation they are sometimes rendered by verbs as “He creates” for “He is the creator.”
Besides a belief in God, the Korān requires a belief in angels; it is claimed that they are pure, without distinction of sex; are created of fire, and neither eat nor drink. Two angels are appointed for each human being, and one stands at his right hand, and the other at his left ”

“ The Koran alone is worth sixty thousand miracles (the number of its verses, or thereabouts) ; one rising from the dead would not be a stronger proof of the truth of a religion than the composition of the Koran. It is so perfect that it ought not to be regarded as a work of creation. ”

“ In our Koran there are a great number of trifles which always appear to me as such, although they receive distinction from the strength and liveliness of the style. At first these inspired books seemed to be only divine ideas stated in the language of mankind: on the contrary, however, one often finds in the Koran the language of God and the ideas of men; as if by some astonishing caprice, God had dictated the words, and man had supplied the thought. ”

“ They entertain reverence for their Prophet; and the Koran is treated with the utmost respect—never, for example, being placed in a low situation—and this is the case with everything they esteem holy. They are fatalists, and bear calamities with surprising resignation. ”