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You may have heard
about the Koran's idea of paradise

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being 72 virgins,

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and I promise I will come back
to those virgins.

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But in fact, here in the Northwest,
we're living very close

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to the real Koranic idea of paradise,

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defined 36 times as "gardens
watered by running streams."

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Since I live on a houseboat
on the running stream of Lake Union,

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this makes perfect sense to me.

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But the thing is, how come
it's news to most people?

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I know many well-intentioned non-Muslims

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who've begun reading
the Koran, but given up,

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disconcerted by its "otherness."

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The historian Thomas Carlyle
considered Muhammad

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one of the world's greatest heroes,

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yet even he called the Koran

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"as toilsome reading as I ever undertook;
a wearisome, confused jumble."

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(Laughter)

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Part of the problem,
I think, is that we imagine

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that the Koran can be read
as we usually read a book --

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as though we can curl up
with it on a rainy afternoon

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with a bowl of popcorn within reach,

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as though God --

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and the Koran is entirely in the voice
of God speaking to Muhammad --

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were just another author
on the best-seller list.

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Yet, the fact that so few people
do actually read the Koran

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is precisely why it's so easy to quote --
that is, to misquote.

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(Laughter)

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Phrases and snippets taken out of context

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in what I call the "highlighter version,"

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which is the one favored
by both Muslim fundamentalists

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and anti-Muslim Islamophobes.

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So this past spring,

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as I was gearing up to begin writing
a biography of Muhammad,

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I realized I needed to read
the Koran properly --

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as properly as I could, that is.

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My Arabic is reduced by now
to wielding a dictionary,

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so I took four well-known translations

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and decided to read them
side by side, verse by verse,

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along with a transliteration
and the original seventh-century Arabic.

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Now, I did have an advantage.

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My last book was about the story
behind the Shi'a-Sunni split,

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and for that, I'd worked closely
with the earliest Islamic histories,

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so I knew the events
to which the Koran constantly refers,

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its frame of reference.

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I knew enough, that is, to know
that I'd be a tourist in the Koran --

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an informed one,

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an experienced one, even,

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but still an outsider,

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an agnostic Jew reading
someone else's holy book.

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(Laughter)

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So I read slowly.

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(Laughter)

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I'd set aside three weeks
for this project,

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and that, I think,
is what is meant by "hubris" --

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(Laughter)

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because it turned out to be three months.

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(Laughter)

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I did resist the temptation
to skip to the back,

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where the shorter and more
clearly mystical chapters are.

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But every time I thought I was beginning
to get a handle on the Koran --

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that feeling of "I get it now" --

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it would slip away overnight,

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and I'd come back in the morning,

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wondering if I wasn't lost
in a strange land.

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And yet, the terrain was very familiar.

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The Koran declares that it comes
to renew the message

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of the Torah and the Gospels.

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So one-third of it reprises
the stories of Biblical figures

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like Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Mary, Jesus.

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God himself was utterly familiar

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from his earlier manifestation as Yahweh,

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jealously insisting on no other gods.

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The presence of camels, mountains,
desert wells and springs

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took me back to the year I spent
wandering the Sinai Desert.

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And then there was the language,
the rhythmic cadence of it,

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reminding me of evenings spent
listening to Bedouin elders

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recite hours-long narrative poems

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entirely from memory.

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And I began to grasp why it's said

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that the Koran is really
the Koran only in Arabic.

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Take the Fatihah,
the seven-verse opening chapter

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that is the Lord's Prayer
and the Shema Yisrael of Islam combined.

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It's just 29 words in Arabic,

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but anywhere from 65 to 72 in translation.

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And yet the more you add,
the more seems to go missing.

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The Arabic has an incantatory,
almost hypnotic quality

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that begs to be heard rather than read,

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felt more than analyzed.

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It wants to be chanted out loud,

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to sound its music in the ear
and on the tongue.

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So the Koran in English
is a kind of shadow of itself,

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or as Arthur Arberry called his version,

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"an interpretation."

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But all is not lost in translation.

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As the Koran promises,
patience is rewarded,

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and there are many surprises --

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a degree of environmental
awareness, for instance,

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and of humans as mere stewards
of God's creation,

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unmatched in the Bible.

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And where the Bible is addressed
exclusively to men,

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using the second-
and third-person masculine,

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the Koran includes women --

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talking, for instance,

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of believing men and believing women,

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honorable men and honorable women.

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Or take the infamous verse
about killing the unbelievers.

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Yes, it does say that,

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but in a very specific context:

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the anticipated conquest
of the sanctuary city of Mecca,

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where fighting was usually forbidden.

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And the permission comes
hedged about with qualifiers.

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Not "You must kill unbelievers in Mecca,"

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but you can, you are allowed to,

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but only after a grace period is over,

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and only if there's no other
pact in place,

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and only if they try to stop
you getting to the Kaaba,

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and only if they attack you first.

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And even then -- God is merciful;

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forgiveness is supreme --

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and so, essentially,

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better if you don't.

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(Laughter)

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This was perhaps the biggest surprise --

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how flexible the Koran is,

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at least in minds that are not
fundamentally inflexible.

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"Some of these verses
are definite in meaning," it says,

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"and others are ambiguous."

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The perverse at heart
will seek out the ambiguities,

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trying to create discord
by pinning down meanings of their own.

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Only God knows the true meaning.

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The phrase "God is subtle"
appears again and again,

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and indeed, the whole
of the Koran is far more subtle

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than most of us have been led to believe.

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As in, for instance, that little matter
of virgins and paradise.

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Old-fashioned orientalism
comes into play here.

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The word used four times is "houris,"

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rendered as dark-eyed maidens
with swelling breasts,

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or as fair, high-bosomed virgins.

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Yet all there is in the original Arabic
is that one word: houris.

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Not a swelling breast
or high bosom in sight.

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(Laughter)

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Now this may be a way of saying
"pure beings," like in angels,

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or it may be like
the Greek "kouros" or "kore,"

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an eternal youth.

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But the truth is, nobody really knows.

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And that's the point.

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Because the Koran is quite clear

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when it says that you'll be
"a new creation in paradise,"

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and that you will be "recreated
in a form unknown to you,"

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which seems to me
a far more appealing prospect

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than a virgin.

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(Laughter)

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And that number 72 never appears.

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There are no 72 virgins in the Koran.

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That idea only came
into being 300 years later,

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and most Islamic scholars
see it as the equivalent

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of people with wings sitting on clouds
and strumming harps.

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Paradise is quite the opposite.

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It's not virginity;

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it's fecundity;

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it's plenty.

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It's gardens watered by running streams.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)