2015-07-20T20:29:32Ztag:sursumcorda.salemsattic.com,2018:/isso/thread/post/reading-the-qur-anComments for sursumcorda.salemsattic.com/post/reading-the-qur-antag:sursumcorda.salemsattic.com,2018:/isso/1459/4918Comment #49182015-07-20T20:29:32ZStephan<p>I finally finished it today. I'd summarize it like this:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Allah is one, no son, no consort, no nothing. He created everything, and that was easy for him.</p>
</li>
<li><p>Allah keeps warning people, and they keep disregarding the warners, upon which they get chastised.</p>
</li>
<li><p>But getting chastised isn't the real danger. The real danger is hell. If you disbelieve and do evil, that's where you're going, and there's a painful chastisement.</p>
</li>
<li><p>If you believe and do good, you'll get to relax in a garden, with people that tend to you (and presumably the garden).</p>
</li>
<li><p>But mostly if you don't believe you'll be drinking boiling water and then freezing water. And you'll say: "Gosh, if I had only known." But you were told, so you'll have missed your chance.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>There is little discussion on how to live aright. What's there focuses on prayer, giving alms, giving to Allah, compassion with the poor, and such things. "Hope" and "encouragement" and "faith" make no appearance, "love" very few (and not in discussions on love or how to love, but merely as descriptors for Allah). I missed Paul's practical, generally upbeat advice.</p>
<p>It bears mentioning that the insistence on Allah's separateness and precedence before everything else does intimate that he had nobody to relate to before he created the world. In other words, he wasn't self-sufficient for being a relational being.</p>
<p>My translation was more cumbersome, and sometimes hard to understand. Whether that was a deficiency in the English ability of the translators or because they set out to be more literal or another reason, I do not know. I don't recommend it.</p>