September 7, 2010

In honor of Rev. Terry and his used furniture business

I cannot brook neo-Nazis.  So when news came of the for-profit used-furniture e-Bay church called “the Dove World Outreach Center” (someone with a sense of irony chose that name) burning Talmuds and Qur’ans, I felt I had to do something.

I’m not a big fan of Koranic studies.  Worse, the most popular English translations of the Qur’an are financed by the Saudi government (often with wildly anti-Semitic commentary) – so it is not easy to find decent translations.  But Rev. Terry pushed me over the edge – I decided to order the recent shiny nice new bilingual translation published by Oxford (with a revised translation).  I trust it will be a nice supplement to my other translations (my current favorite) the bilingual Princeton Qur’an translation, the Arberry Koran, and the liberal American translation by Laleh Bakhtiar

Plus, as a bonus, I decided to get Oliver Leaman’s encyclopedia (because who can’t love a Qur’an commentary edited by a Jew?)  to supplement my copy of the “Westerner contributors only” of the Cambridge Companion.

So thank you, Reverend Terry. Without your ravings and ability to attract an incredible amount of publicity for acting like a fool, I’d have more space on my bookshelf.

1 comment:

J. K. Gayle said...

Thanks for the important post, with such good humor. I'm off to read Leaman's encyclopedia now because of you. How does it compare with that "liberal" rendering of The Sublime Quran?