Notes Around
See
post #1595224 for relevant bibliographic information.
PJdude1219 said:
you do know the koran basically states if your not a muslim you should be a christian or a jew right?
I would point to S.A.M.'s post (#22), which notes:
S.A.M. said:
The Quran is a recital which hints at what was given before. It states over and over that there have been previous messages and messengers, and that knowledge is the first step to salvation. That all prophets are from God and we should not discriminate between the prophets.
Or, as author Karen Armstrong explains:
... the Quran insisted that its message was simply a "reminder" of truths that everybody knew. This was the primordial faith that had been preached to the whole of humanity by the prophets of the past. God had not left human beings in ignorance about the way they should live: he had sent messengers to every people on the face of the earth. Islamic tradition would later assert that there had been 124,000 such prophets, a symbolic number suggesting infinity. All had brought their people a divinely inspired scripture; they might express the truths of God's religion differently, but essentially the message was always the same. Now at last God had sent the Quraysh a prophet and a scripture. Constantly the Quran points out that Muhammad had not come to cancel the older religions, to contradict their prophets or to start a new faith. His message is the same as that of Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, or Jesus. The Quran mentions only those prophets who were known to the Arabs, but today Muslim scholars argue that had Muhammad known about the Buddhists or Hindus, Australian Aborigines or Native Americans, the Quran would have endorsed their sages too, because all rightly guided religion that submitted wholly to God, refused to worship man-made deities and preached that justice and equality came from the same divine source. Hence Muhammad never asked Jews or Christians to accept Islam, unless they particularly wished to do so, because they had received perfectly valid revelations of their own. The Quran insists strongly that "there shall be no coercion in matters of faith," and commands Muslims to respect the beliefs of Jews and Christians, whom the Quran calls ahl al-kitab, a phrase usually translated "People of the Book" but which is more accurately rendered "people of an earlier revelation" ....
(
Islam: A Short History)
We might then look to (Q)'s question—
(Q) said:
So, if the angel Gabriel sent a message to Muhammad ONLY in Arabic, for a religion that is supposed to be spread over the earth, why was it not received in other languages?
—and respond on two points:
(1) It is not clear, barring some evidence to the contrary, that the religion should be spread worldwide unless people around the world choose to accept the Quranic revelation.
(2) If people wish to accept that revelation, they might choose to learn Arabic at some point.
An aspect of this topic strikes me peculiarly. Part of it is the time we live in, and part of it is that I'm an American, and have thus been hearing for the last six years a flood of irrational and often hypocritical criticisms of Islam. Thus disclaimed, I would note the following:
• Translation issues exist in other Abramic religions. Among Christians you can frequently find arguments about Biblical translations. There are, for instance, some who insist that the King James Version is the only authentic English translation of the Bible. There was an argument about the Revised Standard Version, and also the New RSV that replaced it, as to the authenticity of the translation; the NRSV, as I remember reading, only exacerbated certain disagreements voiced by evangelical conservative Christians. The New American Standard Bible, as I recall, met strong criticism from evangelicals because it places the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) in its own historical context, instead of considering the Hebrew experience a mere precursor to the Christian revelation through Jesus.
• The Bible is translated from a number of languages, while the Quran comes from one. To avoid translation problems with the Bible, one would need to specialize in several ancient languages.
• The Quranic canon was revealed to one prophet, which comparatively helps it escape a certain problem. The Biblical canon was set in the fourth century amid certain inflammatory debates that would see the Church officially adopt a certain belief that would, in later days, be persecuted as a heresy called "docetism"°. Given that the presuppositions in setting the canon include this heresy, how reliable can the canon be?
• The difference between a "Catholic" and "Protestant" Bible is that the latter simply excludes several books because they're too complicated for the Protestant idea of faith.
I mention these points in large part because the discussion I am accustomed to tends to treat Islam as unique for questions of translation, pretending suddenly that our own homegrown diverse Abramic monotheism—Christianity—is somehow devoid of these questions. It is valuable to bear in mind disagreements between various Christians because it should help us view Islam according to its own diverse contexts. The way I see it, Islam is another redemptive monotheistic faith, and should be regarded no differently.
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Notes:
° docetism — Revolvr's point about the divinity of Jesus should be considered in this sense, too; if Jesus was not fully human, his crucifixion loses its symbolic, and thus redeeming, power. Protestants are not so affixed to this point as Catholic tradition, which persecuted docetism. The Protestant view seems to have no objection that Jesus' sacrifice was purely symbolic in the sense that, being divine, Jesus would be in a position to know what came next. It would be easier to put up with such an end if one knew it wasn't really the end. By that view, one thing Jesus did not endure on the cross was fear. The docetic outlook also complicates God's judgment because it implies that the one thing God still doesn't understand is what it means to be human. Nonetheless, which outlook is "correct"?
