[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Druid_Elf

You are absolutely right. More people should read the koran instead of them being read too. Fact is that many people in those countries can't read the arab language, and it are the imams that tell their version of the koran which is the underlying problem (anyone sees the reference to Christianity in the dark ages )

It's an interesting question, and I've seen similar claims. (Like suggestions that Pakistani Muslims reading the Koran in Urdu aren't real Muslims because they aren't getting the original Arabic version.) Translation is an art that few have mastered. You can't simply do a word-for-word translation, because there often aren't words in the second language that are exact equivalents of those in the first. and even if similar words exist, they may have entirely different underlying meanings. (If you can find a copy, see S. I. Hayakawa's _The Use and Misuse of Language_ for some articles that address the issue. Hayakawa was examining the work done by the UN translators, who are generally very good indeed.)

I've actually read it, out of curiosity and in a translated version, but many things which are in their are not practiced correct. The head veils for one, you can't find one damn reference to it. It states that a woman should not draw the attention of men.. In the western world you draw attention by wearing that.

Color that cultural, and not religious. I believe that particular proscription actually comes from the Hadith, not the Koran, and likely predates Islam. The Hadith are sayings attributed to Mohamed by close friends and associates who were there when he said them. They are second only to the Koran as sources for Islamic law. A group of Islamic scholars in Turkey are in an effort to reexamine the Hadith based on current circumstances. The prohibition against a woman traveling alone, for example, dated from a period when it simply wasn't safe for a woman to travel by herself, and you can make a good case that Mohamed wasn't trying to subordinate a woman to her husband, merely trying to keep her alive. Now that it usually is safe for a woman to travel alone, does that prohibition still make sense? I wish them a lot of luck on this. It's a very fraught issue, and there will be people hopping mad no matter which way they jump.

The burka is another cultural thing. Every culture will have standards that define acceptable behavior. The question is where the controls reside. Are they internal or external? In our culture, for example, a man is expected to control himself, and behave properly in the company of a woman. The controls are internal. The culture in many Islamic states assumes he can't control himself, and must be given no provocation. The control must be external. Hence, the burka. Woman, cover yourself from head to toe so men don't get ideas...

Religion shapes culture, and vice versa. It wouldn't surprise me if the Arabs had the burka as a cultural fixture long before Mohamed founded Islam, for the reasons stated above.

Smoking is something that they can't do as it intoxicates the brain (nicotine does that for you), yet they all smoke.

The prohibition I'm aware of is against alcohol. That's an obvious intoxicant. Try to tell a Muslim that tobacco should be proscribed for the same reason alcohol is, and I expect funny looks at the very least.

Burning a book should be prohibited as it has happened before in history and many great works got lost. And think of the poor trees that got chopped down for your pages

Well. trees are a renewable resource...
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Dennis