The distributor of a new translation of the Qur'an has been arrested in Afghanistan after complaints from religious scholars that the new edition was un-Islamic, and misinterprets verses about alcohol, begging, homosexuality and adultery.
Unsurprisngly, the BBC doesn't actually mention HOW these verses were misrepresented; I think it wants the reader to assume that the translator made these passages more "radical" than they really are. I mean, let's take a passage like 24:2, for example: "The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment." I'm sure these scholars are outraged that he made that more extreme than it really is...
Then again, given that these passages are ALREADY extreme, and given the angry comparisons to Salman Rushdie, I'd say it's actually far more likely that the reason this man has been arrested is because he made the Qur'an TOO SOFT on such matters.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment