"And we have parcelled out the Koran into sections, that thou mightest recite it unto men by slow degrees, and we have sent it down piecemeal." Surah 17, “The Children of Israel,” verse 106This makes it the most sacred book of the religion of Islam. It would be the Bible of Islam or, from their point of view, the Bible is the Koran of Christianity.
If you spend any time reading you will notice that there are spelling problems. I will use the spelling “Koran” because that is what I am used to. You will also see “Quran” and “Qur’an” and possibly other versions. You will see the same types of varieties with the spelling of the name Mohammed. In my last software the computer gave me five accepted spellings of the name. My current program gives me six.
The basic problem is deciding how to represent the Arabic script in Roman letters. You see the same problem in Chinese. These languages have their own script that is based on a different system than Western Europe. Over the ages different people have developed different ways to represent the sounds they hear. Add to that different regional twangs. As an example, how would you phonetically spell the word “oil” if you heard it pronounced by J. Vernon McGee? I would go for “awl.” That is different from the way Dan Rather would say it. So get used to it.
Another issue is arrogance. I am using a textbook that spells Mecca as Mekkah and Medina as Medinah. These types of things come from “scholars” needing to impress people with their knowledge. You always need to factor arrogance in. The pronunciation of “Muslim” can also be a problem of arrogance. I have people telling me how to say it. They claim there is only one way. When I ask Muslims they tend to shrug and say it doesn’t matter.
All Koran quotes are from the translation by Rev. J.M. Rodwell, M.A. provided by the Gutenberg Project.
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.