What the Qur'an Meant
And Why It Matters
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What the Qur'an Meant
Narrated by:
Robertson Dean
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Robertson Dean
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By:
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Garry Wills
About this listen
Garry Wills has spent a lifetime thinking and writing about Christianity. In What the Qur’an Meant, Wills invites readers to join him as he embarks on a timely and necessary reconsideration of the Qur’an, leading us through perplexing passages with insight and erudition. What does the Qur’an actually say about veiling women? Does it justify religious war?
There was a time when ordinary Americans did not have to know much about Islam. That is no longer the case. We blundered into the longest war in our history without knowing basic facts about the Islamic civilization with which we were dealing. We are constantly fed false information about Islam—claims that it is essentially a religion of violence, that its sacred book is a handbook for terrorists. There is no way to assess these claims unless we have at least some knowledge of the Qur’an.
In this book Wills, as a non-Muslim with an open mind, reads the Qur’an with sympathy but with rigor, trying to discover why other non-Muslims—such as Pope Francis—find it an inspiring book, worthy to guide people down through the centuries. There are many traditions that add to and distort and blunt the actual words of the text. What Wills does resembles the work of art restorers who clean away accumulated layers of dust to find the original meaning. He compares the Qur’an with other sacred books, the Old Testament and the New Testament, to show many parallels between them. There are also parallel difficulties of interpretation, which call for patient exploration—and which offer some thrills of discovery. What the Qur’an Meant is the opening of a conversation on one of the world’s most practiced religions.
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Critic reviews
"Wills has written perhaps the best introduction to the Quran that I know of: elegant, insightful, even at times joyful...his encounter with it is a pleasure to read for anyone as open to discovery as he is."
—The New York Times
“A useful and worthy interpretation that non-Muslims will find illuminating...Best-selling Wills’ stature will draw many readers.”—Booklist
“A work of intimate and charitable interreligious dialogue.” –Publishers Weekly
Additional Praise for Garry Wills:
“Garry Wills is not only one of the country’s most distinguished intellectuals but also one of its most provocative, bringing his learning to bear on great questions of history and contemporary politics.” —The New York Times Book Review
“America’s greatest public intellectual.” —Chicago Tribune
“Garry Wills is simultaneously one of this country’s leading public intellectuals and American Catholicism’s most formidable lay scholar. . . . What makes Wills’s contribution unique in a country whose shelves of religious books these days overflow with vitriol, bombast and treacle is his singular combination of intellectual integrity and authentically unsentimental spirituality.” —Los Angeles Times
—The New York Times
“A useful and worthy interpretation that non-Muslims will find illuminating...Best-selling Wills’ stature will draw many readers.”—Booklist
“A work of intimate and charitable interreligious dialogue.” –Publishers Weekly
Additional Praise for Garry Wills:
“Garry Wills is not only one of the country’s most distinguished intellectuals but also one of its most provocative, bringing his learning to bear on great questions of history and contemporary politics.” —The New York Times Book Review
“America’s greatest public intellectual.” —Chicago Tribune
“Garry Wills is simultaneously one of this country’s leading public intellectuals and American Catholicism’s most formidable lay scholar. . . . What makes Wills’s contribution unique in a country whose shelves of religious books these days overflow with vitriol, bombast and treacle is his singular combination of intellectual integrity and authentically unsentimental spirituality.” —Los Angeles Times
big introduction to know more about Quran
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He truly applies a wealth of information and experience to this topic and world affairs. It's easy to judge from the outside when you lack true knowledge it's when look from the inside out and begin to understand the view of the other, this is when we can build bridges.
Wonderfully insightful and thought correcting.
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Very Perceptive
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A useful, unbiased, inoffensive (mostly) analysis
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no words to describe my happiness
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