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On reading the Koran

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    You may have heard
    about the Koran's idea of paradise
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    being 72 virgins,
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    and I promise I will come back
    to those virgins.
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    But in fact, here in the Northwest,
    we're living very close
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    to the real Koranic idea of paradise,
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    defined 36 times as "gardens
    watered by running streams."
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    Since I live on a houseboat
    on the running stream of Lake Union,
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    this makes perfect sense to me.
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    But the thing is, how come
    it's news to most people?
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    I know many well-intentioned non-Muslims
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    who've begun reading
    the Koran, but given up,
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    disconcerted by its "otherness."
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    The historian Thomas Carlyle
    considered Muhammad
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    one of the world's greatest heroes,
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    yet even he called the Koran
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    "as toilsome reading as I ever undertook;
    a wearisome, confused jumble."
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    (Laughter)
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    Part of the problem,
    I think, is that we imagine
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    that the Koran can be read
    as we usually read a book --
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    as though we can curl up
    with it on a rainy afternoon
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    with a bowl of popcorn within reach,
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    as though God --
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    and the Koran is entirely in the voice
    of God speaking to Muhammad --
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    were just another author
    on the best-seller list.
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    Yet, the fact that so few people
    do actually read the Koran
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    is precisely why it's so easy to quote --
    that is, to misquote.
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    (Laughter)
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    Phrases and snippets taken out of context
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    in what I call the "highlighter version,"
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    which is the one favored
    by both Muslim fundamentalists
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    and anti-Muslim Islamophobes.
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    So this past spring,
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    as I was gearing up to begin writing
    a biography of Muhammad,
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    I realized I needed to read
    the Koran properly --
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    as properly as I could, that is.
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    My Arabic is reduced by now
    to wielding a dictionary,
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    so I took four well-known translations
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    and decided to read them
    side by side, verse by verse,
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    along with a transliteration
    and the original seventh-century Arabic.
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    Now, I did have an advantage.
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    My last book was about the story
    behind the Shi'a-Sunni split,
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    and for that, I'd worked closely
    with the earliest Islamic histories,
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    so I knew the events
    to which the Koran constantly refers,
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    its frame of reference.
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    I knew enough, that is, to know
    that I'd be a tourist in the Koran --
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    an informed one,
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    an experienced one, even,
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    but still an outsider,
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    an agnostic Jew reading
    someone else's holy book.
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    (Laughter)
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    So I read slowly.
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    (Laughter)
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    I'd set aside three weeks
    for this project,
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    and that, I think,
    is what is meant by "hubris" --
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    (Laughter)
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    because it turned out to be three months.
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    (Laughter)
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    I did resist the temptation
    to skip to the back,
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    where the shorter and more
    clearly mystical chapters are.
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    But every time I thought I was beginning
    to get a handle on the Koran --
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    that feeling of "I get it now" --
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    it would slip away overnight,
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    and I'd come back in the morning,
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    wondering if I wasn't lost
    in a strange land.
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    And yet, the terrain was very familiar.
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    The Koran declares that it comes
    to renew the message
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    of the Torah and the Gospels.
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    So one-third of it reprises
    the stories of Biblical figures
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    like Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Mary, Jesus.
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    God himself was utterly familiar
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    from his earlier manifestation as Yahweh,
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    jealously insisting on no other gods.
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    The presence of camels, mountains,
    desert wells and springs
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    took me back to the year I spent
    wandering the Sinai Desert.
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    And then there was the language,
    the rhythmic cadence of it,
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    reminding me of evenings spent
    listening to Bedouin elders
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    recite hours-long narrative poems
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    entirely from memory.
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    And I began to grasp why it's said
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    that the Koran is really
    the Koran only in Arabic.
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    Take the Fatihah,
    the seven-verse opening chapter
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    that is the Lord's Prayer
    and the Shema Yisrael of Islam combined.
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    It's just 29 words in Arabic,
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    but anywhere from 65 to 72 in translation.
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    And yet the more you add,
    the more seems to go missing.
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    The Arabic has an incantatory,
    almost hypnotic quality
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    that begs to be heard rather than read,
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    felt more than analyzed.
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    It wants to be chanted out loud,
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    to sound its music in the ear
    and on the tongue.
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    So the Koran in English
    is a kind of shadow of itself,
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    or as Arthur Arberry called his version,
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    "an interpretation."
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    But all is not lost in translation.
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    As the Koran promises,
    patience is rewarded,
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    and there are many surprises --
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    a degree of environmental
    awareness, for instance,
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    and of humans as mere stewards
    of God's creation,
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    unmatched in the Bible.
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    And where the Bible is addressed
    exclusively to men,
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    using the second-
    and third-person masculine,
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    the Koran includes women --
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    talking, for instance,
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    of believing men and believing women,
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    honorable men and honorable women.
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    Or take the infamous verse
    about killing the unbelievers.
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    Yes, it does say that,
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    but in a very specific context:
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    the anticipated conquest
    of the sanctuary city of Mecca,
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    where fighting was usually forbidden.
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    And the permission comes
    hedged about with qualifiers.
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    Not "You must kill unbelievers in Mecca,"
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    but you can, you are allowed to,
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    but only after a grace period is over,
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    and only if there's no other
    pact in place,
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    and only if they try to stop
    you getting to the Kaaba,
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    and only if they attack you first.
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    And even then -- God is merciful;
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    forgiveness is supreme --
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    and so, essentially,
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    better if you don't.
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    (Laughter)
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    This was perhaps the biggest surprise --
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    how flexible the Koran is,
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    at least in minds that are not
    fundamentally inflexible.
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    "Some of these verses
    are definite in meaning," it says,
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    "and others are ambiguous."
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    The perverse at heart
    will seek out the ambiguities,
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    trying to create discord
    by pinning down meanings of their own.
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    Only God knows the true meaning.
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    The phrase "God is subtle"
    appears again and again,
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    and indeed, the whole
    of the Koran is far more subtle
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    than most of us have been led to believe.
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    As in, for instance, that little matter
    of virgins and paradise.
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    Old-fashioned orientalism
    comes into play here.
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    The word used four times is "houris,"
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    rendered as dark-eyed maidens
    with swelling breasts,
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    or as fair, high-bosomed virgins.
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    Yet all there is in the original Arabic
    is that one word: houris.
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    Not a swelling breast
    or high bosom in sight.
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    (Laughter)
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    Now this may be a way of saying
    "pure beings," like in angels,
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    or it may be like
    the Greek "kouros" or "kore,"
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    an eternal youth.
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    But the truth is, nobody really knows.
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    And that's the point.
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    Because the Koran is quite clear
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    when it says that you'll be
    "a new creation in paradise,"
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    and that you will be "recreated
    in a form unknown to you,"
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    which seems to me
    a far more appealing prospect
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    than a virgin.
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    (Laughter)
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    And that number 72 never appears.
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    There are no 72 virgins in the Koran.
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    That idea only came
    into being 300 years later,
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    and most Islamic scholars
    see it as the equivalent
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    of people with wings sitting on clouds
    and strumming harps.
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    Paradise is quite the opposite.
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    It's not virginity;
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    it's fecundity;
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    it's plenty.
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    It's gardens watered by running streams.
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    Thank you.
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    (Applause)
Title:
On reading the Koran
Speaker:
Lesley Hazleton
Description:

Lesley Hazleton sat down one day to read the Koran. And what she found -- as a non-Muslim, a self-identified "tourist" in the Islamic holy book -- wasn't what she expected. With serious scholarship and warm humor, Hazleton shares the grace, flexibility and mystery she found, in this myth-debunking talk from TEDxRainier.

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
09:13
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Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for On reading the Koran
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