400 Words NOW

I haven't published since the 26th? I knew I had missed a few posts, but nothing like that. I consoled myself, saying that I'd do a double-post to catch up, but apparently I'll need to do a series of double or triple posts to get back to 400 words a day.

So as punishment - no, as restitution, here's at least 400 words.

I needed another class for this semester, and I was already taking all the journalism courses I could, so I looked through the online courses and found one on the modern Middle East. It looked interesting and relevant, so I signed up.

Today, I finally woke up and realized what's going on in Tunisia and Egypt. There is full scale, people-burning-themselves, flipping-over-police-cars, tear-gas-rioting for the downfall of tyrants and I cannot for the life of me understand why I didn't hear about this earlier.

In my journalism ethics course, we did a quick and dirty overview several major world religions and their implications on ethical decision-making. I was somewhat upset with the professor's treatment of Judaism and Christianity (as well as Atheism), but I realized I didn't know enough about Islam to comment on his portrayal.

Note to self: Read the Koran.

So, I got distracted as soon as I wrote those words and went off looking for a translation of the Koran I could download onto my Nook. Though I immediately found several translations on Project Gutenberg, I suddenly realized that I knew nothing about the people who translated them, and my own experiences with the Bible (and anime, and news) have taught me that who is doing the translations and why can very much impact the final product.

The two versions of the Koran that I can find easily are J. M. Rodwell's and George Sale's, neither of which seems to have much of a following in Muslim circle, despite being easy to find. At worst, Sale's translation was made intentionally to discredit Muslims and both have serious omissions and distortions, from what half an hour of research can tell me.

In the end, I think I'm going to track down of copy of Marmaduke Pickthall's translation. His work seems to be the most widely accredited, and several other good translation have been based on his. I found a text version, but that won't serve me well on a Nook, now would it?

Which brings me back to the point of this whole rant: I personally don't know enough about Islam and the Muslim world, and I intend to change that.

For my next 400 words, I'll probably discuss what's going on in my national identity class.