Could new Quran(translations) help curb extremism in Islam?

[Luiz 4,253]

 

CNN)On a warm November night in Washington, a small group of American Muslims gathered at Georgetown University to celebrate "The Study Quran," new English translation of Islam's most sacred scripture.

By the next evening, several said, the need for the book became painfully apparent.

........

 

"The whole program of ISIS is to turn Muslims against the West and the West against Muslims," said Joseph Lumbard, one of the five scholars behind "The Study Quran."

"They want the West not to understand Islam."

Thus far, many English translations of the Quran have been ill-suited to foiling extremist ideology or introducing Americans to Islam. Even after 9/11, when interest surged and publishers rushed Qurans to the market, few of the 25 or so available in English are furnished with helpful footnotes or accessible prose.

Meanwhile, Christians or Jews may pick up a Quran and find their worst fears confirmed.

"I never advise a non-Muslim who wants to find out more about Islam to blindly grab the nearest copy of an English-language Quran they can find," Mehdi Hasan, a journalist for Al Jazeera, said during the panel discussion at Georgetown.

Ten years in the making, "The Study Quran" is more than a rebuttal to terrorists, said Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Iranian-born intellectual and the book's editor-in-chief. His aim was to produce an accurate, unbiased translation understandable to English-speaking Muslims, scholars and general readers.

The editors paid particular attention to passages that seem to condone bloodshed, explaining in extensive commentaries the context in which certain verses were revealed and written.

"The commentaries don't try to delete or hide the verses that refer to violence. We have to be faithful to the text, " said Nasr, a longtime professor at George Washington University. "But they can explain that war and violence were always understood as a painful part of the human condition."

The scholar hopes his approach can convince readers that no part of the Quran sanctions the brutal acts of ISIS.

"The best way to counter extremism in modern Islam," he said, "is a revival of classical Islam."

 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/25/living/study-quran-extremism/

[Benji 20,113]

I studied it for two years in school and the translation we had was perfectly understandable, you have to look through it with the same mindset as the bible and look for the moral etc.

Modern Islam, in fact Islam as whole in general isn't a problem. People are going to kill people no matter what, it's just the fact that Islam is the popular choice in religion from these areas where these ideologies are from that these people try to justify their brutality with God.

You can brainwash anyone with false ideas, you could do it with any religion but we won't go and translate / censor their holy books.

[AlphaMonster 1,806]

It might help, but essentially problem is related to low socio-economical and socio-cultural situation of most muslim populations under reactionary, obscurantist governing regimes... 

[lego 44,165]

Iranians often have funny ideas.

The Qur'an is in Arabic, those who want to study it are encouraged to learn how to read and write classical Arabic, it rhymes so many often memorize it all, again in Arabic. Quranic verses are explained by 1)other verses; 2)authentic hadiths (Sunnah); 3) Sirah (biography of the Prophet), but not every, if it contains many fabricated hadiths as sources. There is such thing called 'science of the hadiths', each hadith(they are thousands) has long list/chains of narrators, there are specialized scholars who memorize each narrator's name and bio so they can verify it something is authentic, weak or false/fabricated.

There are old tafseers (explanations of Quranic verses) written by some scholars centuries ago.

The extremism doesn't come from wrong translations. There are many other things involved and I have to say again, if any other religion would be prevalent in Middle East but all other circumstances would be the same, you would see same type of terrorist groups emerging and trying to justify their actions by their holy book. Or even without religion, wars are fought for land, power and wealth. There are politically motivated terrorists too.

So this guy is wrong.

And don't quote me, I'm not gonna answer any questions.  

 

[McMonster08 4,528]

Sad how many Christians have mistaken Islam to promote violence. The Holy Bible discusses things like violence, adultery, etc. but does that mean it's promoting such stuff?

 

smh  <---that's me crying in stolen crude oil

[TimisaMonster 31,073]

Extremism can rise from anywhere tho...revising the Quran won't change anything ISIS isn't already trying to accomplish and probably is inspiring rn the next wave of extremist terrorist group...