re: #634 Cato the Elder

That’s simply not true. The only requirement to be a Muslim is to say the shahada and follow the five pillars. Many ordinary non-Arab Muslims know a smattering of phrases in Arabic, and not much else. That does NOT make them infidels. If it did, there would be far fewer Muslims in the world.

The fact is that the Arabic in the Koran has very little in common with demotic Arabic. Many of the “reciters” (the boys who learn the whole Koran by heart), even the Arabic speakers, do not know what it is they’re reciting. I can learn from rote repetition how to chant “Beowulf” all the way through and still not know Old English!

And scholars estimate that something like one fifth to one sixth of the Koran is, frankly, just plain incomprehensible even to those steeped in Classical Arabic. There are similar cases in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles where we just don’t know what a word or phrase actually means, especially if it’s a hapax legomenon, but the incidence of such puzzles is far higher in the Koran.

So, to recapitulate: You do NOT have to learn Arabic to be a Muslim, and many of those Indonesian and Afghani boys in the madrassahs have NO IDEA what they’re chanting. If you say the shahada (Lā ilaha illa al-Lāh, Muhammadun rasūlu l-Lāh) and endeavor to follow the pillars, you are a Muslim.

Oh, and the “correct spelling” is not “Qu’ran” but “Qur’an” - although since it’s a transliteration, even “Koran” (or in Gibbon’s day, “Coran”) will do perfectly well.

Thank you for the additional education, Cato, and no this is not sarc. I did not know these things.

^{/ongoing self-flagellation}