Reading the Qur'an

Gary Wills has written a very interesting new book, "What the Qur’an Meant: And Why It Matters", that is reviewed in the current NY Review of Books by G. W. Bowersock, whose fundamental point seems to be "the Qur’an is utterly incompatible with the barbarous beliefs and conduct of those who have violently espoused an alleged caliphate in its name in the twenty-first century." 

Bowersock also looks at Edward Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", which showed that the Qur’an recognized Hebrew and Christian scriptures alongside the revelations of Muhammad as comprising “one immutable religion.” Muhammad, according to Gibbon, urged strangers of every tribe to worship a single deity: “He asserted the liberty of conscience, and disclaimed the use of religious violence.” 

Wills' reading of the Qur'an reveals at least one thing surprising to me: the Arabic words “jihad” and “sharia” do not occur in the Qur’an with the implications attached to them now. In its Quranic usage “jihad” means simply “striving” or, as Wills prefers, “zeal,” but certainly not “holy war.” The word “sharia” appears only once in the entire Qur’an and means simply the right path, similar to the path (hodos in Greek) invoked by early Christians. Wills contends that “the Qur’an never advocates war as a means of religious conversion”

Further, Wills believed that the Qur’an is well disposed to the other religions of the book and explicitly cites with approval the Torah and the Gospels, recognizing five “antecedent prophets” to Muhammad: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. “We make no distinction between any of His messengers” (Q. 2:285).

The Qur'an also includes God's creation of the world which is similar to Christianity's. In the Quranic creation, God makes Adam and a nameless woman, and Satan tempts both together with a promise of immortality.