Michener refers to this aspect of the Book in "Islam --- the...

Michener refers to this aspect of the Book in "Islam --- the Misunderstood Religion" (Readers' Digest, May, 1955) in these words: "The Koran is probably the most often read book in the world, surely the most often memorised, and possibly the most influential in the daily life of the people who believe in it....

It is neither poetry nor ordinary prose, yet it possesses the ability to arouse its hearers to ecstasies of faith." Laura Veccia Vaglieri writes in "Apologie de I'lslamisme" a translation of which runs as follows: "But there is another proof of the Divinity of the Qur'an; it is the fact that it has been preserved intact through the ages since the time of its revelation till the present day.....

Read and re-read by the Muslim world, this book does not rouse in the faithful any weariness; it rather, through repetition, is more loved every day. It gives rise to a profound feeling of awe and respect in the one who reads it or listens to it. " But we must remember that reciting the Qur'an is just a step towards the ultimate goal: understanding and following. Allah says: Do they not earnestly seek to understand the Qur'an, or are their hearts locked up by them? (Qur'an, 47:24.).

Reading the Qur'an with proper understanding bears the fruits of spiritual and moral upliftment and material and intellectual advancement. It is better to read a few verses with meditation rather than finishing the whole book in a day like a parrot without knowing what is said. The Qur'an is the purest and highest of Arabic literature. But those who depend upon the translations for Qur'anic knowledge often fail to appreciate its lofty standard.

First of all, there is the difficulty of translating this book into any other language; because in the words of A.J. Arbury, it is "a foreign idiom, for the Koran is God's revelation in Arabic, and the emotive and evocative qualities of the original disappear almost totally in the skilfullest translation." (The Holy Koran, an introduction; London, 1953). But according to the same author, "bad translation is not the whole story by any means . . .

No, the fault lies not so much in the manner of translation as in the manner of reading the translations. The root of the trouble is that the ordinary reader, and for that .matter the extraordinary reader as well, has not been sufficiently advised how to read the Koran . . .