The Koran: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Rating:
Summary: A Piece of Orientalist Junk
Review: Cook hates the Qur'an, as he does Muslims. One can see it clearly in this book's 164 sarcastic pages. Dripping with snideness and flippancy, this academic screed tells little about what the Qur'an actually says. Instead it conveys the prejudices and preoccupations of Orientalist scholarship---largely concerned with maintaining a negative view of Islam in order to further various bigoted and colonialist agendas. To say, as a previous reviewer did, that this book is favorable to Islam not shows one's terminal illiteracy but also testifies to the power of Orientalist propaganda. For a brief introduction of worth, I recommend the enjoyable and informative Introducing Muhammad by Ziauddin Sardar.

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Summary: It ain't the Bible...and that's okay.
Review: I really appreciated this (very) short introduction to the Koran. As a Christian who is fairly familiar with my own tradition's sacred book, the Bible, I found it helpful in explaining how the Koran and Bible are different. The books that make up the Bible were written over many centuries, the Koran was written and compiled in less than a century (and five centuries after the latest book in the New Testament). Most Jews and Christians read their Bibles in a translation (leaving it to their biblical scholars to learn the original languages); the Koran is read and recited exclusively in its original Arabic, even in countries where Arabic is not a native language (Iran, Malaysia). The Bible contains many types of literature--poetry, wisdom sayings, compelling narratives, prophetic utterances; the Koran refers to events and stories (including some, like Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, from the Jewish and Christian Scriptures) but has no narratives of its own (not even the story of its primary prophet, Muhammad) and consists only of prophetic utterances. The Bible is quite long; the Koran is relatively short and some Muslims have memorized it in its entirety. The Bible plays a significant role in the liturgy of Jews and Christians; public reading of the Koran is not part of Islamic public worship.

However, like the Hebrew Bible with its Midrashim and Talmud, and New Testament with the writings of the church fathers, the Koran has gathered around itself a enormous body of commentaries to help explain its difficult and contradicory texts. Many Islamic beliefs that are attributed to the Koran are actually based on the commentaries of its interpreters.

I liked this book because it focused solely on the Koran itself. Most books I've picked up on Islam don't give this much attention to the Koran, or only refer to it intermittently. For a "very short introduction" there's a lot here to digest.

The photos and illustrations are interesting and instructive. The book also includes a short chapter on reading Arabic transliteration, an annotated bibliography, and an index.

Rating:
Summary: A very short collection of hearsay
Review: I recently purchased this booklet, and by the end I realized that I learned nothing about the Koran. This booklet is simply a small collection of every rumor and weak story said about the Koran. It glimpses over the important subjects that someone reading an introduction might be looking for. Waste of money, a simple google search about the Koran will give you much more sound info.

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Summary: Islam and religious toleration
Review: Let's face it: most of us who've lately been reading books on Islam and the Qur'an are doing so to understand a religion we for the most part ignored prior to 9/11. We're putting ourselves through a crash course on Islam and Islamic culture in the hopes that we can figure out what Islam's basic tenets are, and how it is that the Taliban and al-Qaida can claim the religion as their justification for repression and terror.

Obviously one of the first places to start is with the Qur'an itself. But to Westerners who've never opened it, the book can be intimidating and arcane. Michael Cook's little volume on the Qur'an is a decent introduction to its structure, basic principles, interpretation, and history.

Some points in Cook's book are of more immediate service to the beginner than others. Cook's discussion of the difficulties encountered in translating the Qur'an's Arabic into other languages may not be of great interest to the beginner. But his overview of the various Muslim schools of exegesis or interpretation certainly will be, for this discussion begins to reveal to the reader that there's no more of a uniform way of reading the Qur'an than there is of reading the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. As a consequence, Qur'anic verses can mean different things to Muslims coming from different exegetical traditions. Cook illustrates this point in Chapter 4 by discussing the "sword verse" (Sura 9:5) and the "tribute verse" (Sura 9:29). These two verses are frequently appealed to by commentators on Islam's attitude to "infidels." Cook does a fine job of showing that the verses can be read either as harshly intolerant or as live-and-let-live, depending on how one parses the text.

One of the many merits of this short book is that Cook encourages us to think about the meaning of "sacred scripture" in general. Whatever else scripture is, regardless of the religious tradition we're talking about, it's fluid and living and multi-layered. To condemn a sacred text on the basis of a cursory reading and a literal interpretation of a few ambiguous verses is a rush to judgment.

Rating:
Summary: pick your own rating
Review: Note that the religious hate this book, and give it a bad review. Look over the comments; do any other readers trash it? Draw your own conclusions.

Rating:
Summary: a frequently funny and occasionally illuminating romp
Review: The Koran (in the OUP "Very Short Introductions" series,) Oxford 2000.

Pious Muslims may feel that in the presence of the text and its commentaries, they do not need Professor Michael Cook's "very short introduction" to the Koran. The pious may also wish to stay away because Professor Cook was once associated with the notorious "Hagarene hypothesis" (put forth in the 1977 book: Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook) though he has since backed away from some of the more extreme claims of that book. But "The Koran, a very short introduction" turns out to be a very witty and interesting book, full of insights that the most pious Muslim will find informative and stimulating.
There is a very natural tendency to avoid divisive issues at a time when Likudniks, oil barons and Christian fundamentalists are trying to permanently colonize huge chunks of the Middle East, but it is unlikely that the Binladens of the Islamic world will be able to provide an intellectual framework adequate to the task at hand. Un-nerving as it may appear, Muslims have no choice but to re-examine and reconstruct their faith under rather perilous circumstances. Professor Cook's "short introduction" may lead on to better and bigger things.
Professor Cook starts by discussing what constitutes a sacred scripture and the forms such scriptures have taken in different civilizations. He then outlines the role the Koran plays in Muslims culture and how this is similar and how it differs from the role played by the Bible or the Vedas in their cultures. A few short selections from the Quran (the Fatiha, surah alfeel, the "throne verse", the "sword verse", among others) are presented in standard translations and used to illustrate the Quranic message and how it is perceived. The treatment is fair and balanced, though with a touch of levity that some Muslims may find initially disconcerting. One can get an idea of professor Cook's tone from his own description of his latest work:
"Recently I have published a monograph on a very Islamic value: al-amr bi`l-ma'ruf - roughly, the duty of each and every Muslim to tell people off for violating God's law".

The sentence is accurate enough, though the tone is one that a pious Muslim may find out of place in a discussion of religion. But professor Cook is not a pious Muslim and may perhaps be excused as long as he is not unfair (and in this book at least, he is generally fair). After discussing the status of the Koran in the Muslim world today, He goes on to discuss its origins, its content, organization, translation, pronunciation, commentaries, and dissemination. As is to be expected in such a small book, he cannot cover any topic in great detail, but he manages to touch on a very large number of issues and manages to convey a sense of the subject surprisingly well. The text is packed with fascinating little nuggets, like a picture of the Quran with Spanish translation in Arabic script! In every chapter, he says enough to spark a desire to learn more. At every step, he also interjects comparisons with other culture and other scriptures; comparisons that are illuminating and enlightening and, generally, even-handed. Currently "hot" topics like "tolerance" and "women's rights" get highlighted, as expected, but he does point out that prior generations did not necessarily look at them through contemporary lenses. What bothered older commenatators about the quranic reference to wife beating may turn out to be very different from what bothers a "modern liberal". On the other hand, at times the older commentators (and the text itself) turn out to have been much more "modern" than we expected.
Professor Cook's little book works very well as an introduction for someone unfamiliar with the Quran, but if anything, it is even more interesting for someone already familiar with Muslim culture and history. He notes the extraordinary hold of "fundamentalist" interpretations in the Muslim world today, but ends by pointing out that this was not always the case and may not be the case in the future. As an example of how things may change, he points to the work of Abdul Karim Surush in Iran, whose book "siraat-haay mustaqeem" (straight paths) raises the possibility that there is more than one straight path and all may co-exist.
In short, almost anyone wanting to learn more about the Qur'an, will find this a wonderful place to start. It may be a very short introduction, but it touches on many important issues and does so with great erudition and unexpected wittiness. Worth a read.


Rating:
Summary: waste of your time
Review: This book is a waste of your time. It is totally islamophobic and bias. This book is a waste of your time instead read Islam Today: A Short Introduction to the Muslim World
by Akbar S. Ahmed if you want book you can actually learn something from

Rating:
Summary: waste of your time
Review: This book is a waste of your time. It is totally islamophobic and bias. This book is a waste of your time instead read Islam Today: A Short Introduction to the Muslim World
by Akbar S. Ahmed if you want book you can actually learn something from

Rating:
Summary: A fearless respect for the sacred
Review: This little book offers a new, fresh approach to the Qur'an. The title detracts somewhat from its significance as a work of some surprising insights into the world's most influential scripture - the Qur'an.

Cook's work is intended for the contemporary non-Muslim, the critical thinker who engages anything sacred with a charming candidness. He courts the informed reader who takes nothing for granted and he disposes of the refinements of critical discourse, striking neat blows in a penetrating rhetorical onslaught. He tackles not only the polemics of Qur'anic scholars, but also the common faith of ordinary believers. Cook favours Koran instead of Qur'an. His reason for this choice is that Qur'an cannot readily be correctly pronounced by anyone accustomed to English orthography, hence the Anglicised form of an Arabic proper name imposes itself on the original. Yet he takes care throughout the book to accord correct transcription to all other Arabic terms, including diacritical marks for long vowels. The book is about the "role of the Koran in the religious history of the Islamic world," he says. But he does not address the Qur'an as a revealed sacred text. He discusses things like the instances of revelation, the problems of exegesis and the historical record of compilation, but he avoids the matter of the integrity and authenticity of the scripture as a Divinely revealed text.

Perhaps the greatest demerit of the work is Cook's exclusively phenomenological approach to Qur'anic Arabic. In all the passages dealing with the language of the Qur'an, Cook is concerned only with its syntactical, morphological, grammatical and phonic features. He is not at all concerned with the depth and profundity of its spiritual message, or the compelling beauty of its language that has changed the hearts of civilisations, or its fundamental characteristics such the muhkamat and mutashabihat distinctions.

In his discussion on the "Koran and the scientific world view" Cook's cynical dismissal of the vast corpus of contemporary literature in the modern Islamic world that demonstrates the scientific veracity of the Qur'an is suspect. Indeed, this is where Cook's argument is the weakest.

Instead, by repeatedly referring to 2:65 and 7:163 in which Allah says to the Sabbath-breakers: "Be (as) apes despicable", Cook attempts to expose the "positively unscientific" verses of the Qur'an.

Whereas early traditional scholars accept that Allah the most powerful is able to effect such a metamorphosis, whether unscientific or not, other scholars, including Tabari, Zamakshari and Razi, as well as modern traditional scholars like Sayyid Qutb view the Divine decree as a metaphor. Cook, for no good reason, exaggerates tensions between the views of modern scholars like Rashid Rida and early traditional scholars in order to show how "undignified" it is to incline to an interpretation other than the traditional one.

There are places where Cook is more successful in polarising distinctly different views - the traditional and modern interpretation of 4:34 - dealing with the relationship between men and women in Islam. Both traditional and modern scholars, he says, were clearly "bothered" by the verse.

There is truth in his implication that Muslim commentators tend to falter with euphemism and apology when dealing with such verses. The pressures of liberal and feminist discourse gets even the modern Muslim scholar hot under the collar when they have to explain why "men are the managers of the affairs of women" and why it is permissible for a man to beat his wife. Cook places before us the obvious exegetical difficulties without assuming the position of a critic in judgment over these matters.

There are some instances of very informative and interesting revelations quite apposite for a VSI. The Shi'is, he says in another bout with the Sabbath-breakers verse in 7:163, have hijacked the story to construct a myth of their own, clearly with a view to endorse allegiance to the Caliph 'Ali (RA).

Although he speculates how the Qur'an may have been subject to interpolation, he comes to the conclusion that it is remarkable that the authority of the early Islamic State has ensured that there is only a single recension of the Qur'anic text. He also acknowledges - in the absence of any mention of the moral integrity of the Companions - that there is no sign that they were tempted to tamper with the Qur'anic text.

Transliteration (which Cook calls transcription) of the Qur'an occurs in various languages, including Spanish, Polish and, of course, Afrikaans. Many Muslims would be surprised to know that the culture (and industry) of qir'ah has engendered a musical notation of the Qur'an, the first of which was probably produced by E W Lane.

A useful and recurring technique is Cook's comparison of the Qur'an to the Bible and the Vedas. The Muslim reader should find it very informative - especially his discussion that shows the exclusivity of the Qur'an from the Seerah and the inclusivity of the Qur'an in the Seerah, as a stamp of its independent, Divine origin.

For the most part Cook is an academic, showing no reverence or irreverence for the Qur'an. He is no apologist for Muslims and no orientalist with an anti-Islamic agenda. The Qur'an for him remains an object for higher criticism, something of the `other' that must be deconstructed.

Rating:
Summary: Apologetic for Islam
Review: Though a short book, the Koran is like all scripture and enormous topic to tackle. For a book as short as this, it is inevitable that the work will only scratch the surface. Cook does a good job of putting in secular language how one can approach the Koran as a book and as the centerpiece to the Islamic faith. He writes in inverse chronological order, starting with the modern and ending with the opaque early history of the Koran. This is neither a guide to reading to the Koran nor an interpretation of its contents, but rahter, an anecdotal presentation of many topics relating to its contents. For an introduction to the Koran, it is rather disappointing in the end in terms of offerring a strong list for further study focusing on various topics. Much of this is not Cook's fault so much insofar as few interesting works address the Koran at a layman's level and usually tend to be quite technical and assume at least a cursory knowledge of Arabic. Also missing unfortunately is a good summary of some of the modern trends in literary and historio-critical approaches to the Qur'an though some mention is made of Wansborough (about a paragraph). Overall, it's an accessible read that is likely to inspire further study... There are good collections of scholarly articles by the polemicist ibn Warraq that one can buy as well if one is looking for something with more details.