A couple weeks ago, I discussed the importance of sacred texts and intentionally focused on Buddhism and Christianity. This week, coming back to the idea of sacred texts, I explored the religion of Islam and its holy text, the Qur’an.
In my opinion, holy texts offer a reference to answers in life. These answers include how to live life, the purpose of life, and after life. For the Islamic faith, the answers lie in the Qur’an.
Originally written in Arabic text, the Qur’an offers guidance and direction for mankind. The Islamic faith rose to existence as the angel Gabriel spoke to Muhammad while he resided in the mountains. Muhammad soon gathered followers to memorize and recite the word of Gabriel. These teachings did not become documented right away, like many other religions. Instead, Islam continued orally, and eventually, individuals began recording the Qur’an on tablets and other surfaces. Individuals pooled together the tablets and other surfaces with the holy text to produce the completed version of the Qur’an after Muhammad’s death.
The text consists of one hundred fourteen chapters each of varying length. Interestingly, the text does not seem to have a beginning, middle, and end. Also, the Qur’an mentions stories of people and events found in the Jewish and Christian religion, some including Noah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and John the Baptist.
One of the principles of the Islamic faith consists of prayer. Prayer, typically, involves reciting segments of Qur’an. For this reason, many Muslims end up memorizing much of the Qur’an.
Originally written in Arabic text, printed on large tablets, the Qur’an appeared to be an inconvenience. However, in today’s society, an individual can access the Qur’an in different languages, fonts, and sizes. With improving technology in the past decade, individuals have uploaded the Qur’an to the internet for anyone to access.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Great post! I never really knew that the Qur'an included references of Isaac and John the Baptists as well as others. Thats really interesting as I'm a christian and know the bible well. Great post!
ReplyDeleteThe importance of sacred texts cannot be underestimated. Muslims do not consider a translation of the Qur'an to be equivalent to the actual Qur'an written in Arabic. The book itself is considered sacred, not just the words in the book. This is why it upsets Muslims when the book is treated disrespectfully. For example, there have been incidents at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility where guards threw the Qur'an on the floor and stepped on it. This is unacceptable and shows the refusal of Americans to understand other cultures.
ReplyDelete