In the 1960s a small boy arrived in London from Pakistan and moved in to his new home by the Pond. There were few mosques in London then and no prospect of attending a madrassa, so he took to studying the Qur'an on his own. Before that, he'd read it with his mother:
"It's an experience shared by most Muslim children. It's usual, once children are about four or five, for mothers to start reading the Qur'an and getting the child to repeat the words, again and again, till they become familiar and can be easily recited from memory. Actually, I started a little late - when I was pushing six. In those days, we lived in a small town on the Pakistani side of the Punjab. After dinner every Thursday evening, my mother would shout: "Sipara time!" I would stop playing, run to her, jump on her lap, and put my left arm around her neck. She would open a slim, rather torn booklet, and start reading: Bismi llahi l-rahmainl-irahim. In the name of God, the beneficent, the merciful..."
The small boy was Ziauddin Sardar, a proud Hackneyite, now author of many books on relationships between Islamic cultures and the West, including his autobiography Desperately Seeking Paradise. His latest project is called Blogging The Qur'an. The quote above is from his Introduction to it. The Guardian's brilliant idea was to invite Ziauddin to spend the year examining every verse of Islam's holy book, offering his interpretation of it and responding to readers comments as he goes. Read more about it here - and, of course, join in.
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