Reading The Quran

There is seemingly no shortage of people who, when it comes to religious texts, are not willing to actually read the books in question before believing and claiming that the religion contains a given idea.  Hearsay or even just assumptions made without someone else promoting them are assumed to be accurate.  As with science and broader philosophy, assumptions based on mere perceptions or conversations are treated as authoritative.  Religious theology of any kind, whether it is initially derived from a book like the Bible or Quran or from something else, is selectively mishandled by some people.  For example, evangelical Christians are unlikely to ever read the Quran and yet are still likely to make assumptions about its contents, while the same Christians are almost certainly going to plead with other people to read the Bible and, even though evangelical theology is riddled with philosophical errors and Biblical misrepresentations, they will think they are encouraging a rational analysis of the Bible.

The kind of Christian who wants others to read the Bible without making assumptions (which means evangelicals are automatically excluded from this category in its most genuine sense) and yet refuses to make no assumptions about a text like the Quran, forever avoiding the process of actually reading it, is a hypocrite who has no philosophical sincerity.  He or she just wants other people to do what is convenient for them since they have made assumptions, not for them to do what is necessary to understand either Christianity or Islam.  The most foundational and important parts of reality do not need to be read about in a book or brought up by conversations, as logical axioms and introspective phenomenology (as well as what follows from them) are knowable with absolute certainty in the absence of all else, but reading is essential to realizing what any book says. 

Reading the Quran is indeed just that: a necessity for anyone at all to understand what Islam does and does not entail, although even reading the entire Quran without the rationality to avoid assumptions about concepts is bound to lead to errors that do not represent Islam or to ignorance.  There is no Christian or Muslim who can know what Islam holds by looking at the words of Imams, the random assertions of others besides Imams, or even books written about the Quran (unless they quote the Quran, but one would still have to read the Quran itself to see if it was misrepresented).  As with the Bible or any other religious or nonreligious text, you cannot know what the Quran says just by thinking about it prior to reading it.  Similarly, you cannot know what does and does not follow from the claims of the Quran, if there any any parts of Islamic theology that are true by necessity, or if there is evidence for the other parts of Islam without looking to reason.

Only after reading the Quran and making no assumptions can someone rationalistically analyze its teachings.  Even the genuine errors in Islamic theology are not justification for believing Islam is false or even misidentifying the concepts within Islam apart from direct familiarity with the Quran itself.  It is a testament to how shallow many Christians are that they will not even read a few chapters of the Quran before they denounce it as a book of false teachings, for they betray reason by making assumptions and fail to grasp the real philosophical contradictions of Islam.  There is even more to Islam than just its errors: some of Islam overlaps perfectly with Christianity or at least does not contradict it (for example, both condemn legalistic adding to the commands of the Quran and Bible in Deuteronomy 4:2 and Surah 16:116-117 respectively).  Someone who refuses to ever read the Quran, regardless of whether they are a Christian or atheist or something else, has no idea what it actually teaches.