Inside the Muslim Mind and the Qur'an

Below is most of a short interview with Michael Sells, Professor of Islamic History at the University of Chicago, and author of the book, "Approaching the Qur'an" (think "Controversy in 2002 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"). The interview appeared in the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune.


Q Some Americans would see the title of your lecture, "The Politics of the Qur'an," as synonymous with the politics of terrorism. How do you respond?

A: One of the big problems in the American society is that people do not have a sense of what the Qur'an is. So when someone commits an act of violence and cites a verse from the Qur'an, which seems to justify violence, then it's easy for people to make the assumption that the Qur'an is a document of violence. So one thing that needs to happen is for people to have a general sense of the sacred texts of religious traditions and to see that there is violence and peace in all of the sacred texts and that people have justified violence by quoting all of the sacred texts.


Q Is there a fundamental gap in understanding between Islam and the West?

A: There are translation gaps. Muslims approach the Qur'an primarily through hearing it in Arabic. It's a very different experience than reading the Bible, and it makes it very difficult for people, when they pick up a Qur'an and read it, to understand the spirituality that Muslims feel and sense when they hear the Qur'an.


Q Does that translate into anything practical in terms of our understanding of the Muslim world?

A: What's often lost are the deeper feelings of tenderness, of solidarity with other human beings, of subtlety, of the ability to have many interpretations. All of these things when they are lost lead then to a very stereotypical sense ... a narrow, more rigid sense of what the tradition is.


Q There was lively controversy after the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill assigned students in 2002 to read your book, "Approaching the Qur'an." Critics said you sanitized Islam by leaving out passages commanding violent behavior in jihad. How do you respond?

A: It's a category mistake. If someone were presenting to Muslims aspects of the Bible that most Christians and Jews find deeply personal in their private religious lives, ... you would probably present something like the Book of Genesis. ... You probably would not present the Book of Joshua, in which God requires his people to exterminate all of the people of the Palestine area. ... I took the part of the Qur'an that Muslims learn first, that they memorize most often, and I translated that.