The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “Value”, arrived with an email note:
OK, last Koran one for a while. Don’t want to be accused of Koranophobia! Mind you, searching for good bits in the Koran is like fishing for prawns in a sewer: it’s hard work, and even if you find one, it’s tainted by the context.
The panel clearly refers to the illiteracy of most of the population then (including Muhammad), but I’m not sure whether failure to understand its words would inspire more conquest. After all, the Qur’an explicitly calls for the killing of nonbelievers. Or maybe I’m missing something again.
“searching for good bits in the Koran is like fishing for prawns in a sewer”.
A book that shrimps with every reading.
Very realistic – what they couldn’t read wouldn’t hurt them. Gutenberg did not come along until the 1400s and most of Europe was required to read by the 1800s by religion so they could read the bible. In america it was illegal to teach slaves to read.
Probably one reason the Vatican kept things in Latin so long, too.
Partially true. The RCC produced vernacular bibles in many languages long before the Protestant Reformation, so they didn’t technically “keep it in Latin” at all. But with everything up to the early 1500s being hand-written, these vernacular bibles were very rare, expensive, and thus generally only resided with priests, churches, or wealthy patrons anyway. What the church objected to was the reformation idea that laypeople had the ability/authority to interpret what the bible meant – that was the priest’s and church’s job. Still is, in fact, according to them: AFAIK the RCC hasn’t changed their stance on that key issue of the Reformation period.
Their reactionary dislike to the printing press was probably due more to the fact that protestants used it to print “heretical” political pamphlets (i.e. pamphlets objecting to one or more points of RCC doctrine…like telling people they could interpret the bible for themselves), not so much the fact that protestants used it to print bibles in German and other languages. Though I’m sure that there were many local RCC authorities who tried to ban that too.
It seems to me that the point is that if you can’t read the Koran (and the bible) for yourself then you have less chance of working out that it is a load of self contradictory rubbish.
Right. And it makes it easier for leaders to use the spreading of Islam as a motivational tool for their illiterate soldiers.
And being poorly written makes it easier for believer’s to recast things according to their own preferences, as is done with the Bible. (Every person remakes god in his or her own image…)
And the Janissary regiments of slave soldiers who area clean shaven but wanted to be free and fully Islamic to grow long beards.
The panel clearly refers to the illiteracy of most of the population then (including Muhammad), but I’m not sure whether failure to understand its words would inspire more conquest.
I don’t think that’s the point. Mo wonders how it could inspire conquest if it were poorly written, and Jesus responds that being poorly written would be irrelevant if you were unable to read it.
Of course, that explanation is unnecessary. Look at the book of Mormon: it happened in a population with a high percentage of literacy, and that didn’t seem to hinder its popularity.
But most would agree, with the increase in population the increase in the gullible will follow.
It may still have inspired violence, but an original AND illiterate group of True Believers rather puts to rest the whole argumentum ad populum which assumes that folks normally sift through new works of faith and inspiration with the critical eye of a large and diverse crowd intent on critique and criticism. People aren’t going to notice a flimsy or flawed product if it HAS to be presented to them by other people whom they trust.
That’s the reason so many religions are so unreasonably popular. Once they get a foothold, they create their own culture. Growing up within the culture obviates any serious analysis – except for a few wiseguys.
I’ve heard the conquest argument from muslims before. But Christian countries have conquered more land than Islamic countries. Are muslims willing to say that Christianity is the true religion since christians really did conquer almost the entire world? Probably not.
Every defense I’ve read about the literary value of the Koran boils down to style, the mesmerizing and melodic quality of the meter and how it lends itself easily to be read aloud in a sing-song sort of way.
This somehow reminds me of JRR Tolkien’s description of the Voice of (the renegade wizard) Saruman, which sounds unbearably soft sweet and hypnotically persuasive even when you know what he is saying is wrong. Tolkien described him (to a friend) as “able to corrupt human reason”.
Tolkien had Adolf Hitler in mind when he wrote of Saruman “Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves.”
This somehow reminds me of JRR Tolkien’s description of the Voice of (the renegade wizard) Saruman, which sounds unbearably soft sweet and hypnotically persuasive even when you know what he is saying is wrong. Tolkien described him (to a friend) as “able to corrupt human reason”.
A fantastic description of Dr. Ben Carson.
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I am sure prawns could eventually adapt to sewage…I am not humans are at a stage now (since Galileo) that we will ever be able to go backwards and adapt to the sewage of the Koran.
“Mind you, searching for good bits in the Koran is like fishing for prawns in a sewer: it’s hard work, and even if you find one, it’s tainted by the context.”
I am *loving* this comment!
Not everyone agreed, not even at the end of the 10thC. Even when Islam had spread through the Levant and across what is now Saudi Arabia and the rest of the middle east there were still dissenters. Wouldn’t last two minutes these days: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/isis/Islamic_viewpoints/al_maarri/