WEBVTT 00:00:01.119 --> 00:00:04.548 You may have heard about the Koran's idea of paradise 00:00:04.572 --> 00:00:06.851 being 72 virgins, 00:00:06.875 --> 00:00:09.828 and I promise I will come back to those virgins. 00:00:09.852 --> 00:00:12.806 But in fact, here in the Northwest, we're living very close 00:00:12.830 --> 00:00:15.433 to the real Koranic idea of paradise, 00:00:15.457 --> 00:00:21.102 defined 36 times as "gardens watered by running streams." 00:00:21.900 --> 00:00:26.137 Since I live on a houseboat on the running stream of Lake Union, 00:00:26.161 --> 00:00:28.383 this makes perfect sense to me. 00:00:28.407 --> 00:00:31.407 But the thing is, how come it's news to most people? 00:00:32.707 --> 00:00:34.876 I know many well-intentioned non-Muslims 00:00:34.900 --> 00:00:37.567 who've begun reading the Koran, but given up, 00:00:37.591 --> 00:00:40.120 disconcerted by its "otherness." 00:00:40.912 --> 00:00:43.640 The historian Thomas Carlyle considered Muhammad 00:00:43.664 --> 00:00:45.640 one of the world's greatest heroes, 00:00:45.664 --> 00:00:48.076 yet even he called the Koran 00:00:48.100 --> 00:00:53.466 "as toilsome reading as I ever undertook; a wearisome, confused jumble." NOTE Paragraph 00:00:53.490 --> 00:00:55.766 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:55.790 --> 00:00:58.796 Part of the problem, I think, is that we imagine 00:00:58.820 --> 00:01:02.476 that the Koran can be read as we usually read a book -- 00:01:02.500 --> 00:01:05.476 as though we can curl up with it on a rainy afternoon 00:01:05.500 --> 00:01:07.476 with a bowl of popcorn within reach, 00:01:07.500 --> 00:01:09.020 as though God -- 00:01:09.044 --> 00:01:12.786 and the Koran is entirely in the voice of God speaking to Muhammad -- 00:01:12.810 --> 00:01:15.604 were just another author on the best-seller list. 00:01:17.675 --> 00:01:21.728 Yet, the fact that so few people do actually read the Koran 00:01:21.752 --> 00:01:27.014 is precisely why it's so easy to quote -- that is, to misquote. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:27.038 --> 00:01:28.062 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:28.086 --> 00:01:30.476 Phrases and snippets taken out of context 00:01:30.500 --> 00:01:32.576 in what I call the "highlighter version," 00:01:32.600 --> 00:01:35.687 which is the one favored by both Muslim fundamentalists 00:01:35.711 --> 00:01:38.476 and anti-Muslim Islamophobes. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:38.996 --> 00:01:40.822 So this past spring, 00:01:40.846 --> 00:01:44.908 as I was gearing up to begin writing a biography of Muhammad, 00:01:44.932 --> 00:01:49.166 I realized I needed to read the Koran properly -- 00:01:49.190 --> 00:01:51.952 as properly as I could, that is. 00:01:51.976 --> 00:01:55.086 My Arabic is reduced by now to wielding a dictionary, 00:01:55.110 --> 00:01:57.476 so I took four well-known translations 00:01:57.500 --> 00:02:01.665 and decided to read them side by side, verse by verse, 00:02:01.689 --> 00:02:06.558 along with a transliteration and the original seventh-century Arabic. 00:02:08.812 --> 00:02:11.500 Now, I did have an advantage. 00:02:12.483 --> 00:02:17.151 My last book was about the story behind the Shi'a-Sunni split, 00:02:17.175 --> 00:02:20.588 and for that, I'd worked closely with the earliest Islamic histories, 00:02:20.612 --> 00:02:24.374 so I knew the events to which the Koran constantly refers, 00:02:24.398 --> 00:02:26.375 its frame of reference. 00:02:26.399 --> 00:02:31.476 I knew enough, that is, to know that I'd be a tourist in the Koran -- 00:02:31.500 --> 00:02:33.476 an informed one, 00:02:33.500 --> 00:02:34.975 an experienced one, even, 00:02:34.999 --> 00:02:37.348 but still an outsider, 00:02:37.372 --> 00:02:41.194 an agnostic Jew reading someone else's holy book. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:41.218 --> 00:02:43.293 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:43.317 --> 00:02:44.887 So I read slowly. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:44.911 --> 00:02:49.396 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:49.420 --> 00:02:51.907 I'd set aside three weeks for this project, 00:02:51.931 --> 00:02:54.801 and that, I think, is what is meant by "hubris" -- NOTE Paragraph 00:02:54.825 --> 00:02:59.111 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:59.135 --> 00:03:01.311 because it turned out to be three months. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:01.335 --> 00:03:03.222 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:03:03.246 --> 00:03:05.744 I did resist the temptation to skip to the back, 00:03:05.768 --> 00:03:08.935 where the shorter and more clearly mystical chapters are. 00:03:08.959 --> 00:03:12.476 But every time I thought I was beginning to get a handle on the Koran -- 00:03:12.500 --> 00:03:14.782 that feeling of "I get it now" -- 00:03:14.806 --> 00:03:16.869 it would slip away overnight, 00:03:16.893 --> 00:03:18.547 and I'd come back in the morning, 00:03:18.571 --> 00:03:21.299 wondering if I wasn't lost in a strange land. 00:03:22.038 --> 00:03:24.555 And yet, the terrain was very familiar. 00:03:25.317 --> 00:03:28.180 The Koran declares that it comes to renew the message 00:03:28.204 --> 00:03:29.637 of the Torah and the Gospels. 00:03:29.661 --> 00:03:33.149 So one-third of it reprises the stories of Biblical figures 00:03:33.173 --> 00:03:37.702 like Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Mary, Jesus. 00:03:38.741 --> 00:03:41.385 God himself was utterly familiar 00:03:41.409 --> 00:03:44.476 from his earlier manifestation as Yahweh, 00:03:44.500 --> 00:03:47.500 jealously insisting on no other gods. 00:03:48.638 --> 00:03:53.702 The presence of camels, mountains, desert wells and springs 00:03:53.726 --> 00:03:57.157 took me back to the year I spent wandering the Sinai Desert. 00:03:57.926 --> 00:04:01.476 And then there was the language, the rhythmic cadence of it, 00:04:01.500 --> 00:04:04.721 reminding me of evenings spent listening to Bedouin elders 00:04:04.745 --> 00:04:07.722 recite hours-long narrative poems 00:04:07.746 --> 00:04:09.613 entirely from memory. 00:04:10.827 --> 00:04:15.530 And I began to grasp why it's said 00:04:15.554 --> 00:04:19.666 that the Koran is really the Koran only in Arabic. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:20.539 --> 00:04:24.427 Take the Fatihah, the seven-verse opening chapter 00:04:24.451 --> 00:04:28.451 that is the Lord's Prayer and the Shema Yisrael of Islam combined. 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:32.037 It's just 29 words in Arabic, 00:04:32.061 --> 00:04:35.902 but anywhere from 65 to 72 in translation. 00:04:35.926 --> 00:04:39.693 And yet the more you add, the more seems to go missing. 00:04:40.867 --> 00:04:45.476 The Arabic has an incantatory, almost hypnotic quality 00:04:45.500 --> 00:04:48.758 that begs to be heard rather than read, 00:04:48.782 --> 00:04:50.552 felt more than analyzed. 00:04:51.245 --> 00:04:53.304 It wants to be chanted out loud, 00:04:53.328 --> 00:04:56.112 to sound its music in the ear and on the tongue. 00:04:56.755 --> 00:05:01.476 So the Koran in English is a kind of shadow of itself, 00:05:01.500 --> 00:05:04.331 or as Arthur Arberry called his version, 00:05:04.355 --> 00:05:05.703 "an interpretation." 00:05:07.500 --> 00:05:10.046 But all is not lost in translation. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:10.800 --> 00:05:13.476 As the Koran promises, patience is rewarded, 00:05:13.500 --> 00:05:15.049 and there are many surprises -- 00:05:15.073 --> 00:05:18.229 a degree of environmental awareness, for instance, 00:05:18.253 --> 00:05:21.822 and of humans as mere stewards of God's creation, 00:05:21.846 --> 00:05:23.480 unmatched in the Bible. 00:05:24.349 --> 00:05:27.226 And where the Bible is addressed exclusively to men, 00:05:27.250 --> 00:05:29.876 using the second- and third-person masculine, 00:05:29.900 --> 00:05:32.476 the Koran includes women -- 00:05:32.500 --> 00:05:33.924 talking, for instance, 00:05:33.948 --> 00:05:36.372 of believing men and believing women, 00:05:36.396 --> 00:05:39.584 honorable men and honorable women. 00:05:40.984 --> 00:05:44.961 Or take the infamous verse about killing the unbelievers. 00:05:45.851 --> 00:05:47.476 Yes, it does say that, 00:05:47.500 --> 00:05:50.226 but in a very specific context: 00:05:50.250 --> 00:05:54.587 the anticipated conquest of the sanctuary city of Mecca, 00:05:54.611 --> 00:05:57.135 where fighting was usually forbidden. 00:05:57.159 --> 00:06:00.682 And the permission comes hedged about with qualifiers. 00:06:00.706 --> 00:06:03.476 Not "You must kill unbelievers in Mecca," 00:06:03.500 --> 00:06:05.739 but you can, you are allowed to, 00:06:05.763 --> 00:06:10.134 but only after a grace period is over, 00:06:10.158 --> 00:06:13.016 and only if there's no other pact in place, 00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:16.476 and only if they try to stop you getting to the Kaaba, 00:06:16.500 --> 00:06:19.216 and only if they attack you first. 00:06:19.240 --> 00:06:22.845 And even then -- God is merciful; 00:06:22.869 --> 00:06:24.898 forgiveness is supreme -- 00:06:24.922 --> 00:06:27.640 and so, essentially, 00:06:27.664 --> 00:06:29.117 better if you don't. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:29.141 --> 00:06:32.583 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:06:32.607 --> 00:06:35.370 This was perhaps the biggest surprise -- 00:06:35.394 --> 00:06:37.476 how flexible the Koran is, 00:06:37.500 --> 00:06:41.185 at least in minds that are not fundamentally inflexible. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:42.396 --> 00:06:46.043 "Some of these verses are definite in meaning," it says, 00:06:46.067 --> 00:06:47.936 "and others are ambiguous." 00:06:48.881 --> 00:06:52.683 The perverse at heart will seek out the ambiguities, 00:06:52.707 --> 00:06:57.336 trying to create discord by pinning down meanings of their own. 00:06:57.360 --> 00:06:59.650 Only God knows the true meaning. 00:07:01.031 --> 00:07:04.993 The phrase "God is subtle" appears again and again, 00:07:05.017 --> 00:07:07.619 and indeed, the whole of the Koran is far more subtle 00:07:07.643 --> 00:07:10.147 than most of us have been led to believe. 00:07:10.171 --> 00:07:15.239 As in, for instance, that little matter of virgins and paradise. 00:07:16.444 --> 00:07:19.615 Old-fashioned orientalism comes into play here. 00:07:20.591 --> 00:07:25.169 The word used four times is "houris," 00:07:25.193 --> 00:07:29.650 rendered as dark-eyed maidens with swelling breasts, 00:07:29.674 --> 00:07:32.867 or as fair, high-bosomed virgins. 00:07:33.939 --> 00:07:38.500 Yet all there is in the original Arabic is that one word: houris. 00:07:39.245 --> 00:07:41.749 Not a swelling breast or high bosom in sight. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:41.773 --> 00:07:44.277 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:07:44.301 --> 00:07:48.858 Now this may be a way of saying "pure beings," like in angels, 00:07:48.882 --> 00:07:51.895 or it may be like the Greek "kouros" or "kore," 00:07:51.919 --> 00:07:53.261 an eternal youth. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:53.285 --> 00:07:56.021 But the truth is, nobody really knows. 00:07:56.045 --> 00:07:57.289 And that's the point. 00:07:58.206 --> 00:08:00.622 Because the Koran is quite clear 00:08:00.646 --> 00:08:05.476 when it says that you'll be "a new creation in paradise," 00:08:05.500 --> 00:08:10.629 and that you will be "recreated in a form unknown to you," 00:08:10.653 --> 00:08:13.188 which seems to me a far more appealing prospect 00:08:13.212 --> 00:08:14.791 than a virgin. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:14.815 --> 00:08:21.787 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:08:22.992 --> 00:08:26.303 And that number 72 never appears. 00:08:26.327 --> 00:08:29.993 There are no 72 virgins in the Koran. 00:08:30.017 --> 00:08:33.262 That idea only came into being 300 years later, 00:08:33.286 --> 00:08:36.263 and most Islamic scholars see it as the equivalent 00:08:36.287 --> 00:08:39.889 of people with wings sitting on clouds and strumming harps. 00:08:41.333 --> 00:08:43.978 Paradise is quite the opposite. 00:08:44.851 --> 00:08:46.614 It's not virginity; 00:08:46.638 --> 00:08:48.122 it's fecundity; 00:08:48.733 --> 00:08:50.204 it's plenty. 00:08:50.847 --> 00:08:54.605 It's gardens watered by running streams. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:56.260 --> 00:08:57.412 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:57.436 --> 00:09:04.413 (Applause)