Lexicologists go to war

[Carl Remick]

[An interesting new psywar component of the war on terrorism opens today in 
the NY Times (excerpt below), which argues, basically, that Moslems don't 
have a clue what God's will is because their holy book is muddled by shoddy 
wordsmithing.  Somehow I doubt these findings will cause fewer people to 
heed the muezzins' call to prayer.  I seem to recall that the Blessed Virgin 
Mary's credentials are also suspect, and that the word "virgin" there is 
merely a mistranslation of "young woman."  But Mariolatry continues to 
flourish, and there seems no lack of Mary Gardens.  Myths are stubborn 
things.]

Radical New Views of Islam and the Origins of the Koran

By ALEXANDER STILLE

To Muslims the Koran is the very word of God, who spoke through the Angel 
Gabriel to Muhammad: "This book is not to be doubted," the Koran declares 
unequivocally at its beginning. Scholars and writers in Islamic countries 
who have ignored that warning have sometimes found themselves the target of 
death threats and violence, sending a chill through universities around the 
world.

Yet despite the fear, a handful of experts have been quietly investigating 
the origins of the Koran, offering radically new theories about the text's 
meaning and the rise of Islam.

Christoph Luxenberg, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages in Germany, 
argues that the Koran has been misread and mistranslated for centuries. His 
work, based on the earliest copies of the Koran, maintains that parts of 
Islam's holy book are derived from pre-existing Christian Aramaic texts that 
were misinterpreted by later Islamic scholars who prepared the editions of 
the Koran commonly read today.

So, for example, the virgins who are supposedly awaiting good Islamic 
martyrs as their reward in paradise are in reality "white raisins" of 
crystal clarity rather than fair maidens. ...

In many cases, the differences can be quite significant. Mr. Puin points out 
that in the early archaic copies of the Koran, it is impossible to 
distinguish between the words "to fight" and "to kill." In many cases, he 
said, Islamic exegetes added diacritical marks that yielded the harsher 
meaning, perhaps reflecting a period in which the Islamic Empire was often 
at war.

A return to the earliest Koran, Mr. Puin and others suggest, might lead to a 
more tolerant brand of Islam, as well as one that is more conscious of its 
close ties to both Judaism and Christianity.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/02/arts/02ISLA.html]

Carl

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