Reading the Qur'an and Zell Miller

I recently started reading the Qur'an and have read the first four chapters. It isn't an easy task, as the book is repetitive and often shallow. It's also just plain boring. So far I have learned that you must fight in Allah's way against the unbelievers, who you can and can't marry, how to divide up an inheirtance in various scenarios where there are so many man or so many women, and how to cure dhiarrhea in camels. Okay, I just made up that last part.

I have read a lot about the Qur'an, but not the actual Qur'an itself. Some leftist airhead recently suggested I read the Qur'an to learn of the errors of my ways, i.e., believing that Muslims are anything but gentle lambs in headscarves. So I decided he's right, I need to read it so I can say that I've read it, and thus cut off this leftist argument from the start.

So far everything I've read has been accurately cited or described by other writers. In other words, I have not yet encountered any great revelations about the heretofore unrecognized peaceful attributes of Islam. Maybe President Bush read a different translation.

Reading the Qur'an is difficult because the book is not organized logically. Whoever put it together, in the swirling mists of the ancient past (a little color there), organized it by the size of the chapters. The longest chapter is first, then the next longest, and so forth. It wasn't put together in chronological order, in the order of "revelation" or historical sequence. It was put together in order of size. Well Mohammed always did believe that "size counts."

Another slight problem is that maybe as much as one-fifth of the Qur'anic verses are nonsense, as in "devoid of all meaning whatsoever." I don't know exactly why this is, but Arabs brag about the great poetic qualities of the Qur'an, how wonderful and musical it sounds when recited in Arabic. I suspect that when Mo and minions needed a rhyming word to finish off a verse, and they couldn't think of a real one, they just made one up. Sort of like this:

All the gold and gorgeous gams of captured women
Belong to Mo so he can go swimmin'
So hand over the loot, oh ye Mujahadeen
Or I'll split your head open with my wackytureen.

This is just an example, not an actual verse from the Qur'an. To further illustrate, if the last word "wackytureen" makes too much sense, substitute a nonsense word of your own that rhymes. Have fun with it, you too can be a Qur'anic scholar.

So I will keep reading the Qur'an, safe in the knowledge that the experience will keep me out of Hell. God no doubt figures that if you've read the Qur'an, you've suffered enough. I will need to lay in a good supply of stogies, however, so I can do something pleasurable to offset the reading experience.

Another book I am reading, one much more profound than the Qur'an, is Zell Miller's book, "A National Party No More," about the downfall of the Democrats. Zell Miller was the US Senator from Georgia, and before that, Governor of Georgia. Reading his book is like sitting around a cast iron stove in an old-fashioned country market, smoking corn cob pipes and shooting the bull about friends, family and places. It is as Southern as cornpone and as warm and pleasurable as a snootful of Southern Comfort.

Zell talks about his mom, an extraordinary woman who built her home from stones she dug out of the creek, a home Zell still lives in today. His stories of people and places are rustic and down-home tales of old fashioned values of hard work, good character and determination. I am enjoying it. There was only one part that disturbed me, slightly, and that's when Zell tries to establish his credentials as an enlightened liberal by quoting (you guessed it) To Kill A Mockingbird.

Zell is referring to the time in his governorship when he got into trouble for trying to take the Confederate battleflag out of the Georgia State flag. We all know how tough Zell was when he debated that lefty commentator Chris Matthews and gave him hell for beating up on Michelle Malkin. However, back in 1994 at the height of the Georgia flag fight, it was a different story: Zell got his butt whipped good in debate.

That beating was supplied by a friend of mine, Charles P. Lunsford of Atlanta, like me a life member of Sons of Confederate Veterans, who debated Zell about the flag on the Larry King Live show and, to our shock and disbelief, whipped Zell's ass. I was mad at Zell for a long time after that and only changed my mind about him when he bawled out Chris Matthews. Okay Zell, I guess we can pass you the moonshine jug once again. But shut up about Atticus Finch. You ain't him and we ain't the lynch mob, even if we do like the Confederate flag.

Here in Podunk County, the weather has been cool lately, redolent of Fall, and it is quite pleasant to sit in my backyard gazebo after work and puff and read, my dog at my feet and God overhead. Now if I just had a jug of corn squeezin's life would be at a peak. Oh, and Aunty Belle, you can come and share it with me, but bring your own corncob pipe.