- Tucked away at the end of the Pickthall translation is an “Index of
Legislation”. This index of sharia laws is very short: less than two pages
of topics. The only topic with more page references than the laws on
“War and Fighting” is the entry on “Worship”. See Muhammad Pickthall,
The Koran, London, 1930, pp.692-693. Anyone who looked at this index
with an open mind would conclude that Islam was a religion of war, and
absolutely not a religion of peace. “Peace” is not even listed in the topics.
Besides the topic of “War and Fighting” there is a separate topic of
“Fighting” which lists additional laws; the number of entries under that
topic is greater than the number under the topic of “Ramadan”. Indeed,
there is an entry for “Booty” (the things stolen by warriors) which has
more page references than there are page references for “Honest-dealing”.
The law on “Slaves” has as many page references as the laws on
“Divorce” or “Food”. It is clear from this that the Koran is more about
rules for war, fighting, slavery and robbery than it is about rules for the
observance of halal food and Ramadan. ↵
dana p.
(Dana P.)
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