Literal Meaning

I have been reading about what is happening in Egypt, and I am truly saddened...I love that country and the people of that great nation. For this to be happening on the streets of Egypt, should make us all ashamed, sad, and also force us to rethink how to shape our lives according to religion. I don't believe in religion-like Marx said it is Opium of the masses-but after reading an article by Karen Armstrong in the Guardian, I had to rethink how I view the religion I was born into-Islam-and Christianity. The article is entitled: Unholy Scriptures. In it Karen tries to make the argument that people should stop reading the scriptures so literally, that it is in the essence, the spirit of the texts that we should be taking.
After reading this article, I decided that maybe I should try and see what Armstrong meant when she said that the Koran should not be read from cover to cover. That it was made to be recited aloud, that meaning comes from the sound patterns that link one passage to another. I went to a reading of the Koran, and I completely fell in love with it, not so much what it was saying, but the voice of the man singing, the way the words-their spirit-moved me, like a good song would. I sit and listen to Oum kalthoum sometimes, on my own, and I go into a sort of trance, I no longer can think about anything but her voice, not so much what she is saying, bas the way it sounds, how it is making me feel. The same happened when I went to the Koran reading, it was absolutely beautiful.