Business Standard

Thursday, December 19, 2024 | 08:15 PM ISTEN Hindi

Notification Icon
userprofile IconSearch

Dissecting the Quran

Book review of 'What The Qur'an Meant'

Image
Premium

Lesley Hazleton | NYT
WHAT THE QUR’AN MEANT
And Why It Matters
Garry Wills
Viking Books
226 pages; $25

I know many well-intentioned people who’ve begun reading the Quran and given up within a few pages. The historian Thomas Carlyle considered Muhammad one of history’s heroic greats, yet called the Quran “as toilsome reading as I ever undertook. A wearisome confused jumble.”

It’s hard not to sympathise. Over the years, I’d picked up various translations, started reading, and rapidly found myself very much an agnostic Jew lost in a Muslim landscape. Good intentions, it seemed, were not enough. The Quran may look like a short book, but it’s not one

What you get on BS Premium?

  • Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app.
  • Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them.
  • Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006.
  • Preferential invites to Business Standard events.
  • Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more.
VIEW ALL FAQs

Need More Information - write to us at assist@bsmail.in