So I have finally begun the journey I've been thinking about taking for years, that is to read all the holy scriptures of the world's largest religions. My brother very kindly bought me a side-by-side Hebrew-English Torah for Christmas, which I will have to authentically read from right to left, but realistically it will take me a long time to get to it, the Quran is not exactly light reading. I did however choose a contemporary translation so the language is much easier to digest thankfully. The only other holy text that I've read so far is my own, the Guru Granth Sahib, so my review thus far of the Quran will be a compare and contrast. The more texts I read and the more comparing and contrasting I do, the more connections I can find, and that is the ultimate goal. I'm a big believer in the idea that we are all far more similar as a species than different.
The first difference I noticed between the Quran and Guru Granth Sahib was the formatting. The Guru Granth Sahib rhymes, all 1,430 pages. It even rhymes in the English version I read, which is an incredible feat on behalf of the translators. The reason it rhymes is because all of our scripture is meant to be sung in temple. It's quite logical because rhyming music gets stuck in your head even if you don't want it to, and bam, you've memorized your religious text! It's for this reason that many Sikhs can accurately quote and refer to different parts of the Guru Granth Sahib off the top of their heads. My dad does this all the time to give me "life lessons". The Quran may not rhyme, but it certainly is poetic. However it's not musical, the Quran is chanted and never sung. Despite it being harder to memorize, many people have done it. Those who have memorized the ENTIRE Quran, let me repeat, the ENTIRE thing, earn the title of "Hafiz". There is actually a kid in our grade who has managed to do this and has the title, when he described the years it took to do so I was blown away.
The second piece of formatting difference is that the Quran is beautifully organized. It has a nice table of contents in the beginning that tells you what each chapter discusses. Chapters can be about anything from women to the Virgin Mary (yes she plays a role in the Quran in addition to the Bible, called Myriam in Arabic) to kindness. This is drastically different from the Guru Granth Sahib, which does offer instructions as to how to live a holy life, but it's woven in between about ten million reminders to keep the oneness of the universe in your mind, the whole thing reads like an insanely long ramble. But hey, at least it rhymes.
Digging into the text as I read has been fun. I've been taking mental notes, which maybe I should write down for reference later when I read more religious texts. The tone of the Quran is sort of the mirror image of the Guru Granth Sahib. The Quran mostly says what not to do, while my holy book mostly says what one should do. What's interesting is the message is almost identical, just the approach is different. For example the Quran would say don't kill an animal unnecessarily and the Guru Granth Sahib would say treat all animal lives as holy. What is also interesting is the Quran treats the principles of Christianity and Judaism as common knowledge, often referencing them, addressing them, and agreeing with them. The Sikh text on the other hand treats Hinduism and Islam in this way. It's interesting to then create a map of how time and culture have interconnected all the world religions.
Anyways this has been a pretty loaded post, there's a lot to take in when reading such influential and powerful texts. I enjoyed writing it though and think maybe an ongoing blog as I continue to read them might be a good idea! But for now, thanks for reading!
