I’m a regular reader of The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan. I generally like his take on religion, and I find his criticism of religion to be even-handed and insightful. However, he recently published a quote by Sam Harris saying that the Qur’an is “not that good,” followed by his own question of “can any readers counter?” It was a shocking and, I thought, lazy post. Not because of Harris’ statement, which is to be expected, but that Sullivan would give it air and frame it in such a way as to give the impression that he agrees. I was very pleased to see that numerous readers did respond, and Sullivan did give them the space to do so.
I was most impressed by the last commentator, an incoming graduate student at the School of Oriental and African Studies. The individual wrote about many of the things that make the Qur’an valuable to Muslims, and attacks many of the assumptions present in Harris’ quote. The Qur’an is a text in Arabic, a language to which I do not believe Harris has access. How do you judge the value of a text if you don’t know the language, or even know how to judge a translation? The King James Version of the Bible is considered a masterwork of English literature, but it is not sound in its translation. I can go on, but again, Sullivan’s commenter did a good job with many of the technical aspects.
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