Approaching the Qur'án: Study Questions
(Refer to Approaching the Qur'án: Assignment for more details.)
Introduction
1. What did you really know about the Qur'án before reading this book?
2. What ideas or impressions did you have about Muslim cultures more generally? Has reading these parts of the Qur'án affected or changed those ideas or impressions about Islam? How?
3. Do these selections from the Qur'án, or the recitation of passages on the CD, remind you of anything you have read or heard before? What?
Thematic, Literary and Aesthetic Perspectives
4. The suras or parts of the Qur'án resemble hymns or lyrics more than stories. Does this make it more difficult to understand the message of a particular sura? If so, how?
5. Try to paraphrase one of the suras. What seems to you to be its main theme or purpose?
6. Make a list of themes or common threads that run through these suras. How do specific suras present or develop some of the themes or ideas on your list?
7. How important are images, metaphors, symbols and figures of speech in the language of the Qur'án? What are some of the more prevalent images or metaphors in the text? In your opinion, how effective are they in their particular context?
8. Listen to the recitation of one or two of the selections on the CD while silently reading the translation yourself: how does the sound seem to you to create meanings and effects that are not present when you just read the text alone?
Ethical and Comparative Religious Perspectives
9. What are the main human and personal virtues and vices or flaws that these readings emphasize?
10. From your perspective, how comprehensive are these lists of virtues and vices? Is there anything you would add? Or de-emphasize? Why?
11. How does the relationship between human beings and the Divine figure in these suras? How does the idea of a day of reckoning or judgment appear in them? How do such ideas appear in other religious traditions that you know about?
Cultural and Social Perspectives
12. What do you think are the problems or benefits of reading a religious text from a religious tradition other than your own?
13. Are there problems or benefits from discussing a religious text in a group when some group members share that religious tradition and others do not? Or if some group participants profess no religious tradition at all? What if most participants do not share the religious tradition of the text?
14. A key concept of the Qur'án is the idea of a day of moral reckoning, followed by a distribution of rewards and punishments, according to people's merits. How important or necessary is this concept for human welfare in ordinary life?
Conclusion
15. Now that you have read parts of the Qur'án, do you think more Americans should read all or parts of the book?
What do you think would be the results if they did?
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