Reading religious texts can be cumbersome. Particularly if the religion
is not that which one is brought up in. Plan B. Interpretations,
translations, excerpts. Reading the Qur’an is a mix of all these, with
underpinnings that attempt to tear the revered text away from
obscurantist clutches and misinterpretations.
Reading the
Qur’an is a wonderful trip. Even if one does not agree – or is not
convinced -- with some of its bits and pieces. A whole lot of miasma
hovering over Islam’s holy book gets cleared. Especially when one feels
the love for the book that the author shows.
Like for many south Asians, Qur’an is not just a holy text for Sardar.
It is a whole tradition, inculcated into a child who sits on the
mother’s lap while she reads it out and interprets it for the child. I
can easily replace the Qur’an with the Ramayana in this happy and
peaceful imagery and see myself in Sardar’s place – the meaning and
context remaining intact.
The systematic “learing” of the
Qur’an in the tradition way has not stopped Sardar from interpreting the
book on his own dynamic terms and rendering a tight slap on the
“collective conscience” (I have begun to hate this term now, thank you
SC) of obscurantist ‘authorities’ of Islam.
The underlying
feel one gets out of the book is that Quran is not a set of laws, but a
set of principles to live through a dynamic world.
A must read for Muslims and non-Muslims.
