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Qur'an: Islam
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The idea that the Qur'an and prayers must always be in Arabic was not firmly established in early Islamic theology. After the initial Muslim conquests, converts in some non-Arabic speaking areas established their own translations of the suras to use for salat. This was especially true in Persia. However, this idea later fell from favor in the inter-Muslim political struggles, and by the 1400s, the idea that only the original Arabic was truly the Qur'an was strongly agreed upon.
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The public reading of the Qur'an is a major form of performance art in the Islamic world. Crowds fill stadiums to hear musical and poetic recitations. Listeners derive great pleasure from the rich rhyming prose of the Qur'an. Muslims hire reciters for weddings, funerals, conferences, and a variety of other events. The most famous reciters can earn a comfortable living from their performances and commercial recordings.
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Project Transparency A -- decoration of the Qur'an was not the only use of art. The slide showed a Qur'an of the 1700s from a country north and east of Iran in modern Uzbekistan, but the style was used from the 700s all across the Islamic lands, from Spain to India. This is a design from a wall mural in a palace in Spain built in the thirteenth century. Note the two types of script in the calligraphy (coloring in each script in the transparency in different colors will help students identify the two)
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Modernists noted that the early followers of Islam were willing to accommodate new ideas in their understanding of the Qur'an and its guidelines for society. As a result, during the Middle Ages, the Islamic societies had thriving centers of learning. The modern reformers advocated a revival of this earlier flexibility as a way to restore dignity and greatness to the Muslim world. They believed that a flexible and continuous reinterpretation of the Qur'an would enable Muslims to reform various aspects of their societies, making them more suited to modern life.
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Muslim tradition holds the nature and source of the Qur'an to be well established and well understood. But for something which is supposed to establish the center of Islamic belief and practice, it is remarkable just how little can be reasonably claimed about either its nature or its origin. Scholarship over the last few decades has undermined many of the traditional beliefs regarding the Qur'an, but unfortunately Muslims themselves have done little to confront this scholarship in order to either rebut it or incorporate it into their own, evolving religious beliefs.
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