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Cor a n (arab.
Qur "an) is a religious book, sacred to adherents of all Islamic trends, and serves as the basis for Muslim legislation, both religious and civil.
Etymology
According to traditional Muslim views, the word "Koran" is a common Arabic verbal noun from the verb "kara" - "he read". According to modern researchers, the word "Koran" comes from the Syrian "Keryan", which means "reading, a lesson in the Scriptures." Muslims believe that the Qur'an was transmitted to Muhammad in portions in Mecca and Medina between 610 and 632. New Era through Archangel Jebrail
Composing the Quran
The Koran, as a single book, was compiled after the death of Muhammad, before that it existed in the form of scattered written lists and in the memory of the companions.
After the death of Muhammad, when 70 reciters of the Koran, who knew the entire Koran by heart, died in one of the battles, there was a threat of losing the Koran. By the decision of the first caliph Abu Bakr, all the records, all the verses of the Koran, were collected, but in the form of separate records. The sources of this period say that twelve years after the death of Muhammad, when Uthman became caliph, various records of the Qur'an made by famous associates of the prophet, in particular Abdallah ibn Masud and Ubayya ibn Kaab, were in use. Seven years after Uthman became caliph, he ordered the systematization of the Qur'an, relying primarily on the records of Zayed, a companion of Muhammad. Seven ways of reading the canonical text of the Qur'an were established by Abu Bakr.
The Qur'an consists of 114 suras - chapters, arranged mainly in order from the largest to the smallest. In turn, each sura is divided into separate sayings - verses.
All suras of the Koran, except for the ninth, begin with the words: "In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Merciful ..." (in Arabic: "Bismi-Llahi-R-rahmani-R-rahim ...").
The seventh surah of the most ancient manuscript of the Koran (mid-7th century).
There are 77,934 words in the Qur'an in total. The longest surah, 2nd, has 286 verses, the shortest - 103, 108, and 110th - 3 verses. The verses contain from 1 to 68 words. The longest verse is 282 verses, 2 suras. Ayat about debt. The most important verse is 255 ayah, 2 suras, called Ayatul-Kursi (Ayat of the Throne).
The Qur'an retells the stories of many characters and events in Christian and Jewish religious books (Bible, Torah), although the details are often different. Such famous biblical figures as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus are mentioned in the Quran as the Prophets of Islam (Monotheism).
In the Islamic tradition, these revelations are perceived as the speech of Allah himself, who chose Muhammad for a prophetic mission. Collected together, brought together in one list, during the reign of Caliph Uthman (644-656), these revelations made up the canonical text of the Koran, which has survived to this day unchanged. The first complete such list dates back to 651. Many attempts, over one and a half thousand years, to make at least some changes in the sacred text of the Koran, for discrepancies and subsequent criticism of the followers of Islam, have failed.
For more than one and a half billion Muslims, the Koran is a holy book.
The outstanding artistic merit of the Koran is unconditionally recognized by all experts in Arabic literature. However, many of them get lost in literal translation.
In addition to the Koran, Muslims recognize other holy books, but they believe that the rest of the Scriptures lost their role after the beginning of the revealing of the Koran, which is the last of the Scriptures and will be the last Scripture before the Day of Judgment.
Responsibilities of a Muslim before the Qur'an
According to Sharia, a Muslim has the following obligations to the Qur'an:
Believe that the Noble Quran is the Word of Allah Almighty and learn to read it in accordance with the rules of pronunciation (tajwid).
To take the Qur'an in hand only in a state of ablution and before reading to say: A'uzu bi-l-Lahi min ash-shaitani-r-rajim! (I resort to the protection of Allah from the evil coming from Satan driven by stones) Bi-smi l-Lahi r -Rahmani r-Rahim! (In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Merciful. (Who will have mercy only on those who believe)) When reading the Koran, you should, if possible, turn towards the Kaaba and show utmost respect both when reading and listening to its texts.
Keep the Quran high (shelves) and clean places. You cannot keep the Koran on low shelves and cannot be placed on the floor.
Strictly follow (as far as possible) all the Precepts specified in the Quran. Build your whole life in accordance with the moral principles of the Holy Quran.
A. MEKKAN SURS
Suras of the 1st period (poetic)
96, 74, 111, 106, 108, 104, 107, 102, 105, 92, 90, 94,
93, 97, 86, 91, 80, 68, 87, 95, 103, 85, 73, 101, 99,
82, 81, 53, 84, 100, 79, 77, 78, 88, 89, 75, 83, 69,
51, 52, 56, 70, 55, 112, 109, 113, 114, 1.
Suras 2 periods (Rakhman)
54, 37, 71, 76, 44, 50, 20, 26, 15, 19, 38, 36, 43,
72, 67, 23, 21, 25, 17, 27, 18.
Surahs 3 periods (prophetic)
32, 41, 45, 16, 30, 11, 14, 12, 40, 28, 39, 29, 31,
42, 10, 34, 35, 7, 46, 6, 13.
B. MEDINA SURS
2, 98, 64, 62, 8, 47, 3, 61, 57, 4, 65, 59, 33, 63, 24,
58, 22, 48, 66, 60, 110, 49, 9, 5.
Hadith Qudsi
"Be content with little - and you will not need; get rid of envy - and you will be calm; move away from the forbidden - and your faith will become sincere. Whoever speaks little has a perfect mind, who is content with little, he relies on Almighty Allah. in this light, as if you will not die tomorrow, and you collect riches, as if you will live forever. "
"Do not be the one who permits lapses in repentance, who desires Eternal life in Paradise, but does not do good deeds. If he is given, he is not content with it, and when he is deprived [of something], he is impatient. when he himself does not fulfill it, prohibits the bad, when he himself does not fear it. He loves good people, but he himself is not one of them, he hates hypocrites when he himself is one of them. what is not commanded to him, he demands to fulfill [the promise], but he himself does not fulfill it. "
Valeria Porokhova is the first woman in the world who surprised the Muslim world, who considers Valeria-iman to be the Chosen One of God, an angel on earth, who managed to do what rarely any of the translators succeeded in - to convey the very spirit of the Koran, which is most valuable in Koranistics.
Valeria Mikhailovna, what attracted you, who was born in an Orthodox family, to Islam?
Koran. First of all, the Koran. I read the Quran in English for the first time and was delighted with it. This is incredible! This is how Leo Tolstoy said: "I ask you to consider me an orthodox Mohammedan," so I can say: "I ask you to consider me an orthodox Mohammedan." Do you know that, being excommunicated from the church, the great writer was buried in a Muslim way. Leo Tolstoy is not just a person, it is the conscience of a Russian person.
When you study the Quran, you will be overwhelmed by its incredible depth. Once, after a four-hour lecture at the Russian Academy of Sciences, a 70-year-old venerable academician stood in the hall and said: "If this is the Koran, then I am a Muslim."
The Koran is eternal, and the fact that in the seventh century such knowledge could not exist is unambiguous. And if it was, then it is of the Lord. This is important to understand.
I realized that I had been a Muslim all my life. I didn't know that until I read the Koran. I tell you frankly, if a person reads the Koran, then after turning over the last page, he will say "Praise be to Allah Almighty." The only thing is that he should not rush to read. My return to Islam happened in Syria when I read the Qur'an with understanding, that is, with tafsir (commentary). After all, even the most educated Arabs read the Koran only with tafsir.
What prompted you to the idea of translating the Koran into Russian? And why is it called meaning translation?
- When I started my research, I discovered that there are 106 translations of the Quran into English, a little less than 100 - into French and German. And in Russian there are only 7 (!) Translations. And this - with a 22 million Muslim diaspora in Russia and a 60 million Russian-speaking Muslim community in the CIS countries! I wanted to translate the Koran into Russian so that people could read this Scripture. The existing translations were not made by Muslims and bore the shades of the Christian tradition. Even the best ones.
But there can be no absolute translation. This is one of the amazing facts of human history. The Koran is the only Holy Scripture that has come down to us after fourteen centuries without change. None of the many translators of the Eternal Book ever claimed to be accurate. Basically, any translation, by definition, cannot be accurate. After all, the Koran is written in the old Arabic language, which differs significantly from modern Arabic, which sometimes leads to an involuntary distortion of the meaning of words and text.
And one more important factor: the Koran scribes simply made tracing papers without changing a single sign of the Old Arabic script, because initially theologians knew that a Koran translator must be a specialist in dozens of sciences. There was even, in my opinion, a special opinion in society that the translation of the Qur'an was beyond the power of anybody. This is probably why the most famous scientists did not risk proving the identity of the original and their translation. The famous translator of the Qur'an into English, the Arabic scholar Marmaduke Tekhtal, called his translation "almost literal"; I.Krachkovsky completely forbade publishing his work under the name "Koran". That is why I called my work "translation of meanings".
What I have done is only a modest effort that cannot claim any significant share of the transmission of the divine beauty of the verses of the Koran, the heavenly music of his versification. When I translated the Koran, my skin tightened with awe of the Great Book.
Valeria-iman, how is Islam in Russia and the CIS countries different from Arab Islam? And how did the Orthodox Church react to the fact that a Russian, Orthodox by birth, translated the Koran?
- Do you know what the word "iman" means? Believer. Today we can state that, unfortunately, the followers of Islam in Russia and the CIS are ignorant. This is the biggest problem. We associate Islam with those concepts that were imposed by school and college education - an educational system that attributed to Islam all the flaws that were encountered in the world. However, all this knowledge was never based on a scientific factor, it was tendentiously directed.
Just as the church was declared the opium of the people, Islam was declared a military aggressor. This is the main difference. But do you know what shocked me the most? When we were given freedom of religious expression, such a massive, extremely emotional return to the religion of fathers and grandfathers began! I have very close ties with young people whose parents are ethnic Muslims. I say ethnic because they were not allowed to practice their faith - this is not their fault. But I watch their children strive for Islam. I traveled all over the Volga region: I was in Volgograd, Saratov, Kazan, Ulyanovsk - everywhere young people strive for Islam, just like a thirsty person strives for water. By the way, I observed the same trend in Turkey, where all mosques are overcrowded with people from 18 to 40 years old.
Now there is a very powerful intellectual, namely the intellectual expansion of Islam. In no case is it military, not military, and not even propaganda-missionary. People come to Islam after studying and understanding what it is, and the desire to study religious studies all over the world is now very strong. Everyone is tired of this endless immorality, of this crazy money making, tired of the entertainment side of our life. People want morality, purity - and this is Islam.
If we look at the Parliament of England, we will see how the ethnic British - members of Parliament, by the way, hereditary lords, convert to Islam. This is a very big indicator. I in no way urge people to accept Islam, I urge people to find out what it is, to understand that there is something that summarizes everything and everyone - the Quranic scripture, which with the deepest respect treats believers of other religions - Jews and Christians, calling them with respect "ahlul kitab" ("people of the scripture"). Therefore, for all of us, it is very important to show the highest attention to all religions, especially to Christianity and Islam. After all, we have neither alien Muslims nor alien Christians. We are ethnic, our own Christians and Muslims. We have other religions that have come to us.
Russian tsars and emperors had enough wisdom, political maturity, and social justice to understand that Russia is the land of two primordial religions. And, frankly speaking, Islam appeared in Russia 150 years before Christianity. In addition, he came on "his own feet" along the waterways through the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, ascended the Volga region, while Christianity was decreed in our country, and Russia became Christian at once by the decree of Vladimir Red Sun, who drove everyone into the Dnieper and said, "From now on we are Christians." Moreover, people thought it was an object of food and asked: "And what is it with?" This was a curious historical precedent. But, nevertheless, both religions are ethnically, genetically, nationally ours.
What is Islam for a person?
First of all, it is a way of life. And this is what makes him different from other religions. You wake up in the morning as a Muslim, you live the day as a Muslim, and you go to bed as a Muslim. Moreover, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said a wonderful thing that we should be guided by: "Every morning a person puts his soul hostage, and in the evening he receives it burdened by sins, or lightened and decorated with blessings."
What do I dislike about structures, so to speak, based on faith? There you know a priori that you will come to the Lord's temple on Sunday, confess, take communion and leave there sinless. And all week you live for self-interest, somewhere at the level of the subcortex, realizing that on Sunday you will come and be cleansed of your sins. It seems to me that this is a very dampening element that allows for the commission of sin.
In Islam, you cannot come to the mosque on Friday to confess, take communion and leave sinless. In Islam, you will be held accountable for your every sin. Moreover, Islam insists not only on performing tawb (repentance), it also insists that evil be covered with good in favor of the victim. No mortal person on earth can forgive your sin. This is a very important point.
Today, terms such as "Islamic fundamentalism", "Islamic radicalism" have become firmly established in the vocabulary of the layman. Islam is primarily associated with terrorism, and all teachers calling for a return to Islam are accused of indulging extremists. Why do you think this is happening?
- You know, I liked it when in one of the programs, if I am not mistaken, Vladimir Pozner, the conversation about fundamentalism started. And there Vladimir Lukin, whom it is very difficult to reproach for being biased towards Islam - he is a non-Muslim, - said a wonderful thing that fundamentalism is a return to the foundations of the foundations. Therefore, in this sense, fundamentalism is wonderful! And not only in Islam. It would be nice for Christianity to return to the foundations, that is, to what Jesus commanded, because he is the greatest messenger of the Lord, and in the Quran, the Almighty says about him: "This is my word, and I strengthened him with the spirit from Myself."
In our country, the word "fundamentalism" was given a negative sign, because a return to the origins of morality is always positive.
It is no secret that many terrorists hide behind the banner of Islam to achieve their political ideas, the theme of jihad is popularized, and the number of martyrs is increasing. What does the Qur'an say about these phenomena?
- First, let us immediately emphasize that there is no such thing as "Islamic terrorism". The criminals have neither nationality nor religion. And according to the Koran, such people are criminals. And retribution for them is one thing - death. Any killer must be killed. As soon as we conduct an examination and come to a common denominator, and it is present in all the scriptures: do not kill your soul, do not wish on another that you do not wish for yourself, do not steal, and so on. These are fundamental commandments and prohibitions. Therefore, people who commit crimes should immediately be deprived of the confessional factor. We have no right to say that this terrorist was a Muslim or a Jew or a Christian. He ceases to be such, because he is a criminal, he is outside of religion. He must be judged by the civil code. And then the term "Islamic threat" ... It is absurd in itself. The word Islam means peace. We get a "peaceful threat".
If possible, Valeria-iman, continue your answer. What about terrorists and martyrs? They also talk about Islam.
- Both the Sunnah and the Koran write that outside your borders you have no right to kill anyone. They have not attacked you yet ... There is a very beautiful hadith of the Prophet, which reads as follows: if two Muslims crossed swords, then both the killed and the killed go to hell. When the Prophet was asked: “Well, the one who killed goes to hell, and the one who is killed — why?” And he also had the intention to kill, ”the Prophet replied.
The Quran does not tolerate misinterpretation. For the death of an innocent, you burn in hell, only this way, and not otherwise. And there is no difference in what religion this person is. The faithful are not only Muslims. People of the Christian and Jewish confessions are addressed in the Qur'an as highly esteemed, these are the people of the Book. People who were chosen by the Lord God. Therefore, like the Old Testament Toric Scripture, and the New Testament Gospel Scripture, and the Quranic Scripture, and, of course, the Vedic Scriptures, and the Zoroastrian Avesta, all, of course, were sent with one hand. That is, authorship, excuse me, maybe this is a somewhat vulgar term, all the scriptures belong to the same Creator. Therefore, we do not make a distinction between Christians, Jews, Muslims ... We make a distinction between pagans, atheists and believers. Therefore, if you kill a Christian or a Jew, you are killing a person who believes in God. You cannot kill him until he is conducting military operations against you.
The Quran says very clearly: "And do not kill the soul that was sanctified by your Lord. Fight for the Lord's work only with those who are fighting with you, and if the enemy stopped the war, then lay down your arms." Therefore, the conflicts that are now being resolved by military operations can in no way be called religious or confessional. They are all geopolitical.
There is an opinion that a woman in Islam has almost no rights. She can be taken into a harem, she is forced to wear a hijab, and in case of divorce, she can only take the jewelry that is on her.
- This opinion is just a widespread stereotype generated by sheer ignorance. Nowhere does a woman have so many rights as in Islam. A woman should, above all, be very elegantly and beautifully dressed. When a woman dresses up in black clothes, then know that this color has nothing to do with the Koran, the only scripture of the Lord in the world, where the reader's attention is drawn to color, to a color scheme; where Allah Almighty says: "I gave you a full range of colors that you should use. And also: Who put a covenant on those beautiful gifts that I gave you for your service?"
Asceticism is completely absent in the Quran. A person should live comfortably and beautifully. And the Qur'an does not require women to wear a veil. No chador, no black clothes. It is illiterate to say that the black color of the burqa or abaya is the dictate of Islam. And if in the Qur'an some make a reference to what is written there: "O messenger, tell your wives to tie the blankets on themselves tightly in order to be recognized," this was due to the time period, since in the area where he lived Prophet, there were passionate people and could make an obscene proposal to his wives. To prevent this from happening, such a command was given. And the fact that they are now wearing a chador is a tradition, a preference: geographic, mental. This is the preference that is put by, say, the husband in particular, or the state as a whole. This is no longer Quranic.
As for polygamy, the Qur'an speaks about this as well. Polygamy is now very far gone in the Arab world. The Arabs are increasingly adhering to the fourth sura of the Koran: "If you feel that you will not observe justice for them, marry only one." But there are exceptions. If a woman is incapacitated, cannot give an heir, and a man certainly has the right to an heir, he does not leave his wife, as is done in Europe, where during divorces a woman is often left without means of subsistence, or at least she is discriminated against; he continues family life with a childless wife and takes a second one. Moreover, the husband is respectful and fair to both equally. It is very important. If you bought 100 grams of gold for one wife, you must buy 100 grams of gold for the other. And not a gram less, otherwise justice will be violated.
The percentage of such marriages in the countries of the East is extremely low. And in countries where women are more emancipated, such as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, with rare exceptions, polygamy is practically absent.
About the divorce. The marriage gift that the groom gives remains with the bride for life. Moreover, it is always legally declared in which case she loses it: if she changed it, or, say, was the initiator of an unfair divorce, and so on. If a wife observes her marital duties, is chaste, keeps clean what she is commanded to observe, the husband can never take anything away from her. Everything remains for her: a roof over her head, and jewelry, and gifts, and he leaves without anything.
Another interesting point. If a woman from an Arab family comes to work, then her entire salary goes into her pocket, bypassing the family budget. That is, a Muslim woman is much more full-fledged than a Christian. Here you come to the store, there is a woman, she is all in gold. You are overwhelmed by the amount of gold! The highest respect for the wife in the house, you cannot imagine how the husband trembles before her! I am speaking about this quite frankly. I have lived in Syria for 9 years, lived in the Emirates, in other Arab countries, and have seen it all. This is not like ours, when a woman drags bags of 10 kilograms of cargo each. The Arab woman, if she wears anything, is only a reticule. She only indicates with her finger how many kilograms of what to buy!
About the hijab. Long before the Koran, Christians covered their heads, and in Russia there was such a beautiful verb "goofed up" - got into a mess. Going wild - it means she opened her head. It is very interesting that all Russian empresses wore headdresses. We know Russian classical painting, where all Russian Christian girls are in kokoshniks, with their heads tightly closed. In Islam, this is called hijab.
Any religion dictates the head cover. As for the Koran, it says about it as follows: "Throw a shawl over your head and chest in order to close the chest incision." Specifically, how the hijab should look, or how the veil should look - nothing is said about this. But that you need to cover your head is a must. This is already the fundamental diktat that comes from Christianity, and to Christianity - from Judaism. All Jews who believe in the Most High cover their heads, all Christians who believe in the Most High cover their heads, and all Muslims who believe in the Most High cover their heads.
Here you need to divide people not into religious structures, but into believers and non-believers. What is happening in Europe is hitting a mosquito with a cannon. Who can forbid a woman to wear the headdress she wants? This is her fashion. Jacques Chirac forbids going out in hijabs. What does it matter what this woman is wearing? I cannot understand when a woman is forbidden to wear what she wants. If she wears a miniskirt, it is considered normal, although this is the same pornography. But the hijab, it turns out, is not normal. All our troubles come from ignorance.
What, in your opinion, is the root of the problem of misunderstanding of Islam? And how can this issue be resolved? What is the most conducive factor for returning to Islam today and what is the biggest obstacle to this?
- Education will contribute most of all. The Russian, and indeed any other person, was and remains extremely sensitive to religious truth. This was written by Vladimir Soloviev long before the revolution. They are pure, sophisticated, subtle. I am talking about all peoples formed on the same culture - Russians, Tatars, Chuvashes, Kalmyks and others.
There are many structures built on faith in God - the structure of the church, the structure of the synagogue, etc., and they remain only structures, but this is not faith itself. Therefore, we must carry the knowledge of faith. "Call to God with the wisdom and beauty of broadcasting, and if they do not understand you, tell the world and leave," says the Koran. This is the Qur'anic preaching structure. And it is not at all by violence that one should appeal to Islam.
Porokhova Valeria Mikhailovna- translator of the Koran into Russian, a well-known public figure, educator. She was born in 1949. Belongs to the famous Russian noble family.
In 1975, Valeria married a Syrian citizen, Mohammed Said Al-Roshd, a graduate of the Sharia faculty of Damascus University, who at that time was a student and then a graduate student at IISS. In 1985 he moved from Moscow to Damascus, where he converted to Islam and began to translate the Holy Book of the Koran as the creed of Islam.
In 1991, the translation of the meanings of the Quran was completed and transferred to the Islamic Research Academy Al-Azhar Al Sharif (Egypt, Cairo). Its translation was recognized as the best by the ulama and muftis of Islam. This reputable scientific center, after several years of painstaking study, for the first time canonized the Russian translation. The University of Cairo awarded Valeria Porokhova the title of honorary academician, qualifying her translation of the meanings of the Koran into Russian as exemplary. Mufti of Syria Ahmed Keftaru declared her his daughter.
Since 1991, Porokhova has headed the Council of the Al-Furkan Islamic Educational Center. In 1997, the General Department of the Academy decided to approve the transfer. In the same year she defended her doctoral dissertation on the translation of the Koran.
In 2000, a religious organization of Russian Muslims "Straight Path" was created, the chairman of which is Ali Vyacheslav Polosin, Ph.D., and the co-chairman is Academician, Iman Valeria Porokhova. She is a full member of the Academy of Humanities, a member of the board of the Eurasian International Academy of Culture, her translation of the Koran is nominated for the "Book of the Year 1998" award, a full member of the International Academy of Informatization at the UN, a full member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (section of geopolitics and security).
Valeria Porokhova was awarded the medal "For Spiritual Unity" by the Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of the Central European Region of Russia, the Academy of Natural Sciences - the Honorary Badge of the Academy "For Merits in the Development of Science", the International Inter-Academic Union at the UN - the highest award - the Order of Vernadsky's Stars of the first degree. She was awarded the highest award of the Islamic world "Keeper of the Holy Quran" in Tehran.
She is the first woman in the world who surprised the Muslim world, who considers Valeria-iman to be the Chosen One of God, an angel on earth, who managed to do what rarely any of the translators succeeded in - to convey the very spirit of the Koran, which is most valuable in Koranistics.
Dear Valeria Mikhailovna, you are a public person, very famous in the world and loved by many, and therefore the interest in you is not idle. I would like to know more about your past life - before the "Koranic" ...
- I was born, in my opinion, from a wonderful couple. My mother was baptized in the same Tsarskoye Selo Catherine Cathedral, in which the Tsar's daughters and Nicholas II himself were baptized. For this I have an amazing extract from the register of the Tsarskoye Selo Catherine Cathedral. My grandfather is a hereditary nobleman close to the emperor.
After the revolution, the family suffered terrible persecution: we went through four confiscations - in the eighteenth, twenty-second, thirty-seventh, fifty-first years. As a result of all these vicissitudes, I was destined to be born in the Far North, in the city of Ukhta, in Komi, where my mother was exiled as the wife of an enemy of the people. My dad - half-German, half-English - was a highly educated person. He, like many members of the intelligentsia, was arrested and shot. And this is not surprising, since it was necessary to destroy the brain treasure that could resist the regime. And this could only be done by highly educated people who, at the genetic level, had both the culture of the spirit and the logic of perceiving events and who could pose a threat to the ruling elite.
After the Khrushchev thaw, we returned to Moscow, where we were provided with an apartment and even some money for the confiscated property. In the capital, I entered the Maurice Torez Institute. Then only two institutes trained specialists who know foreign languages at the highest level - this one and the Leningrad one. Having received the specialty of a simultaneous interpreter, I taught at MEPhI and moonlighted at international congresses and symposia. Then I married an Arab from Syria named Muhammad. He studied at the graduate school of IISS. After graduating from graduate school, we left for Syria. It was there that I started translating the Qur'an.
I was fascinated by the way this country lives. I witnessed how Russian specialists leaving Syria were in a state of severe mental depression because of this. It is in such countries as Syria that we can see how fruitfully religion "works", because the value of religion is what fruits it brings. The word "Islam" (from the Arabic sa-li-ma) means peace, security, tranquility, purity of intentions, good taste - all these dictionary meanings are given to us by the Arabic-Russian dictionary. Islam in the Arab world is truly the religion of the Lord. Yes, of course, there is a departure from the norm, but in general we see that there is no alcoholism, no prostitution, no theft.
- What attracted you, who was born in an Orthodox family, to Islam?
- Koran. First of all, the Koran. I read the Quran in English for the first time and was delighted with it. This is incredible! This is how Leo Tolstoy said: "I ask you to consider me an orthodox Mohammedan," so I can say: "I ask you to consider me an orthodox Mohammedan." Do you know that after being excommunicated from the church, the great writer was buried in a Muslim manner. Leo Tolstoy is not just a person, it is the conscience of a Russian person.
When you study the Quran, you will be overwhelmed by its incredible depth. Once, after a four-hour lecture at the Russian Academy of Sciences, a 70-year-old venerable academician stood in the hall and said: "If this is the Koran, then I am a Muslim." The Koran is eternal and the fact that in the seventh century such knowledge could not exist is unambiguous. And if it was, then it is of the Lord. This is important to understand. Once there was an amazing phone call from Ufa: "My name is Vladimir, and my surname is Schmidt. I am an ethnic German, I returned to Islam. In your lecture, I heard that people are returning to Islam, they are born Muslims, but they do not know this. both knowledge and age-related wisdom are required to understand that they were born in Islam, and now is the time to return to this. "
I realized that I had been a Muslim all my life. I didn't know that until I read the Koran. I tell you frankly, if a person reads the Koran, then turning over the last page, he will say "Praise be to Allah Almighty." The only thing is that he should take his time reading. My return to Islam happened in Syria when I read the Qur'an with understanding, that is, with tafsir (commentary). After all, even the most educated Arabs read the Koran only with tafsir.
- What prompted you to the idea of translating the Koran into Russian? And why is it called meaning translation?
- When I started my research, I discovered that there are 106 translations of the Koran into English, a little less than a hundred - into French and German. And in Russian there are only seven (!) Translations. And this - with a 22 million Muslim diaspora in Russia and a 60 million Russian-speaking Muslim community in the CIS countries! I wanted to translate the Koran into Russian so that people could read this Scripture. The existing translations were not made by Muslims and bore the shades of the Christian tradition. Even the best ones.
But there can be no absolute translation. This is one of the amazing facts of human history. The Koran is the only Holy Scripture that has come down to us after fourteen centuries without change. None of the many translators of the Eternal Book ever claimed to be accurate. Basically, any translation, by definition, cannot be accurate. After all, the Koran is written in the old Arabic language, which differs significantly from modern Arabic, which sometimes leads to an involuntary distortion of the meaning of words and text.
And one more important factor: the Koran scribes simply made tracing papers without changing a single sign of the Old Arabic script, because initially theologians knew that a Koran translator must be a specialist in dozens of sciences. There was even, in my opinion, a special opinion in society that the translation of the Qur'an was beyond the power of anybody. This is probably why the most famous scientists did not risk proving the identity of the original and their translation. The famous translator of the Qur'an into English, the Arabic scholar Marmaduke Tekhtal, called his translation "almost literal"; I.Krachkovsky completely forbade publishing his work under the name "Koran".
That is why I called my work "translation of meanings". I worked on my own text in the sacred Al-Azhar, founded in Cairo by Sultan Baybars. It was there, under the guidance of the largest theologians and Russian scholars, that I carefully polished every phrase, every word. What I have done is only a modest effort that cannot claim any significant share of the transmission of the divine beauty of the verses of the Koran, the heavenly music of his versification. When I translated the Koran, my skin tightened with awe of the Great Book. I translated the hadiths in a calmer state, because, nevertheless, this is a guide to the life of a living person in the flesh and, moreover, they have a practical application. The prophet was of the highest noble family. And the fact that he did not receive a secular education was God's plan. He could neither write nor read. But at the same time he possessed a great culture of spirit, which was dictated by the Lord's mercy. And therefore the Qur'an at that time contained things that were said for the first time.
For the first time, the hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad were translated into Russian - a set of Islamic decrees defining the responsibilities of people in relation to their deeds. Every act that a person commits in Islam has a special solution. There are a lot of hadiths, about 600 thousand. 200 was translated. But in order to select these 200, I reviewed about 3 thousand. In choosing, I was guided by those provisions that are most relevant today: socio-political, judicial-production, divorce, etc. Today, not all hadiths of the Prophet are suitable for the conditions of our life. The world has changed, the person has changed. But a society eaten by rust is time to remember the commandments of God. Note that our current laws, according to enlightened religious leaders, are not much different from the previous ones. The laws that govern the country's legal institutions, in their opinion, were not created locally, but were exported from other countries, mainly from Russia. However, you cannot deprive yourself of the roots that have nourished us for 14 centuries.
Valeria-iman, how is Islam in Russia and the CIS countries different from Arab Islam? And how did the Orthodox Church react to the fact that a Russian, Orthodox by birth, translated the Koran?
- Do you know what the word "iman" means? Believer. Today we can state that, unfortunately, the followers of Islam in Russia and the CIS are ignorant. This is the biggest problem. We associate Islam with those concepts that were imposed by school and college education - an educational system that attributed to Islam all the flaws that were encountered in the world. However, all this knowledge was never based on a scientific factor, it was tendentiously directed. Just as the church was declared the opium of the people, Islam was declared a military aggressor. This is the main difference. But do you know what shocked me the most? When we were given freedom of religious expression, such a massive, extremely emotional return to the religion of fathers and grandfathers began! I have very close ties with young people whose parents are ethnic Muslims. I say ethnic because they were not allowed to practice their faith - this is not their fault. But I watch their children strive for Islam. I have traveled all over the Volga region: I was in Volgograd, Saratov, Kazan, Ulyanovsk - everywhere young people strive for Islam, just like a thirsty person strives for water. By the way, I observed the same trend in Turkey, where all mosques are overcrowded with people from 18 to 40 years old.
Now there is a very powerful intellectual, namely the intellectual expansion of Islam. In no case is it military, not military, and not even propaganda-missionary. People come to Islam after studying and understanding what it is, and the desire to study religious studies all over the world is now very strong. Everyone is tired of this endless immorality, of this crazy money making, tired of the entertainment side of our life. People want morality, purity - and this is Islam. If we look at the Parliament of England, we will see how the ethnic British - members of Parliament, by the way, hereditary lords, convert to Islam. This is a very big indicator. I in no way urge people to accept Islam, I urge people to find out what it is, to understand that there is something that summarizes everything and everyone - the Quranic scripture, which with the deepest respect treats believers of other religions - Jews and Christians, calling them with respect "ahlul kitab" ("people of the scripture"). Therefore, for all of us, it is very important to show the highest attention to all religions, especially to Christianity and Islam. After all, we have neither alien Muslims nor alien Christians. We are ethnic, our own Christians and Muslims. We have other religions that have come to us. Russian tsars and emperors had enough wisdom, political maturity, and social justice to understand that Russia is the land of two primordial religions. And, frankly speaking, Islam appeared in Russia 150 years before Christianity. In addition, he came on "his own feet" along the waterways through the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, ascended the Volga region, while Christianity was decreed in our country, and Russia became Christian at once by the decree of Vladimir Red Sun, who drove everyone into the Dnieper and said, "From now on we are Christians." Moreover, people thought it was an object of food and asked: "And what is it with?" This was a curious historical precedent. Nevertheless, both religions are ethnically, genetically, nationally ours.
- What is Islam for a person?
- First of all, it is a way of life. And this is what makes him different from other religions. You wake up in the morning as a Muslim, you live the day as a Muslim, and you go to bed as a Muslim. Moreover, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said a wonderful thing that we should be guided by: "Every morning a person puts his soul hostage, and in the evening he receives it burdened by sins, or lightened and decorated with blessings." What do I dislike about structures, so to speak, based on faith? There you know a priori that you will come to the Lord's temple on Sunday, confess, take communion and leave there sinless. And all week you live for self-interest, somewhere at the level of the subcortex, realizing that on Sunday you will come and be cleansed of your sins. It seems to me that this is a very dampening element that allows for the commission of sin. In Islam, you cannot come to the mosque on Friday to confess, take communion and leave sinless. In Islam, you will be held accountable for your every sin. Moreover, Islam insists not only on performing tawb (repentance), it also insists that evil be covered with good in favor of the victim. No mortal person on earth can forgive your sin. This is a very important point.
Today such terms as "Islamic fundamentalism", "Islamic radicalism" have become firmly established in the vocabulary of the layman. Islam is primarily associated with terrorism, and all teachers calling for a return to Islam are accused of indulging extremists. In your opinion, why is this happening?
- You know, I liked it when in one of the programs, if I am not mistaken, Vladimir Pozner, the conversation about fundamentalism started. And there Vladimir Lukin, whom it is very difficult to reproach for being biased towards Islam - he is a non-Muslim, - said a wonderful thing that fundamentalism is a return to the foundations of the foundations. Therefore, in this sense, fundamentalism is wonderful! And not only in Islam. It would be nice for Christianity to return to the foundations, that is, to what Jesus commanded, because this is the greatest messenger of the Lord and in the Koran the Almighty says about him: "This is my word, and I strengthened him with the spirit of Myself."
In our country, the word "fundamentalism" was given a negative sign, because a return to the origins of morality is always positive. The same can be said of Jewish fundamentalism as a return to the Torah. And if the Torah says that God "will scatter the Jews throughout the world" and "they will be small among the great" and as "dung on the streets" until Moshiach comes, the state of Israel should not be formed, but it is nevertheless formed ... And fundamentalism in Judaism is, first of all, the rejection of the formation of Israel.
Look what happened when the Americans entered Iraq. This is the occupation of pure water. Everyone knows this. The Americans know this, first of all. But who could resist them? Neither France, nor Germany, nor Russia. But this could have been done by Muslim philosophers and theologians of the level of Butey - the greatest scientist, a person of the deepest analytical wealth, but no one listens to them. They are not given a tribune. Others stand aside from what is happening: not that they would not be interested, but simply believe that they will intervene or not, still nothing will change, justifying their position by the fact that such powerful state structures with with such powerful weapons and such powerful media that it is impossible to resist them. Maybe that's why it's easy to label entire countries.
Major specialists in Islamic studies live in Egypt, Syria and Jordan. In Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, all engineers, doctors are Syrians, Jordanians and Egyptians. Syria, meanwhile, is declared the axis of evil. It's the same as if some Ivanov lives in Russia, Petrov, Sidorov is a terrorist, and Russia is declared the axis of evil. Yes, there may be several people living in Syria who are terrorists, but what does the whole country have to do with it?
- I personally know Butey, whose Islamic studies and Koran studies are studied all over the world. But which of the high politicians, pursuing their own selfish goals, will listen to him? No one. Because he is a citizen of Syria, and you know who Syria is ...
Let's talk about Qur'anism. It is no secret that many terrorists hide behind the banner of Islam to achieve their political ideas, the theme of jihad is popularized, and the number of martyrs is increasing. What does the Qur'an say about these phenomena?
- First, let us immediately emphasize that there is no such thing as "Islamic terrorism". The criminals have neither nationality nor religion. And according to the Koran, such people are criminals. And retribution for them is one thing - death. Any killer must be killed. As soon as we conduct an examination and come to a common denominator, and it is present in all the scriptures: do not kill your soul, do not wish on another that you do not wish for yourself, do not steal, and so on. These are fundamental commandments and prohibitions. Therefore, people who commit crimes should immediately be deprived of the confessional factor. We have no right to say that this terrorist was a Muslim or a Jew or a Christian. He ceases to be such, because he is a criminal, he is outside of religion. He must be judged by the civil code. And then the term "Islamic threat" ... It is absurd in itself. The word "Islam" means "peace". We get a "peaceful threat".
Nevertheless, the term exists. And I'll tell you why. Because now more and more people are beginning to accept Islam. That is, people are frustrated with Christian concepts. Disappointment comes from a very powerful flow of scientific and technical information, and a lot of scientists who professed precisely Christianity became convinced of the wrong conceptual content of the biblical text. We could in no way condemn the French Academy of Sciences in the person of Maurice Boukai for being biased or unscrupulous. He is a world-renowned scientist, anthropologist, geologist, and so he already says that Islam will be accepted by people with the widest range of knowledge. Because the Qur'anic creed - precisely the Qur'anic creed - does not enter into any cut or contradiction with scientific data, whereas in the biblical creed we see the opposite. Therefore, people who acquired powerful scientific knowledge at the end of the twentieth century and acquire at the beginning of the twenty-first century already read the biblical text coldly. Nothing moves in their souls. Why? When we open the Bible, we see a powerful violation of scientific and technical aspects. When we open the Qur'an, we see powerful amendments to the biblical text. The Bible says that the Lord created our world in 6 days and rested on the seventh. It is difficult not to notice all the absurdity of the imposition of the Lord's essence of the physiological feeling of fatigue. If this is Supermind, Superpower - it does not need anything, and when it is attributed "the Lord rested on the seventh day" - we are already a little disappointed.
Further - the primacy of light before the appearance of the stars, which, as they say, emit it, or the creation of the animal and plant world before the creation of the sun ... But now we open the Koranic text and read that the Lord created the world in 6 days, and immediately very high sense of the amendment - for a day length of 50 millennia. Could Muhammad the Prophet, on the territory of the Arabian Desert, in the 7th century, take upon himself the greatness to introduce scientific corrections into the text of the Bible ?!
Once Keith More, a Nobel laureate in medicine from Canada, the author of a textbook on embryology, which is used by the whole world, told me: "You know, Valeria, the only Scripture is the Koran." Moreover, this was said by a Catholic. And he explained why: "Because the development of the fetus in the womb of a woman is scheduled in such a way that it could only be done with the technical equipment of the eye." The Qur'an says that "a person is born from a mixture and grows in three environments and three darkness." Relatively recently, it was found by medical scientists that the walls of the female uterus consist of three types of tissue. So, Keith More told me that if he had read the Koran 20 years ago, he would have made this discovery 20 years earlier. Space photography from satellites made it possible to conclude that the fauna of the oceans practically does not mix. Shoals of fish and herds of whales migrate along their routes in their waters. Oceanologist Jacques Yves Cousteau (by the way, he professed Islam) saw a school of fish under water, which seemed to bump into an invisible wall, turn around and go home. He found an explanation in the Quran, which says that there are natural barriers in the water. Some for humans, others for marine life and flora.
Other. Only after the appearance of modern equipment did geologists learn that the mountains rise above the earth by only one-fifteenth of their size, and are, as it were, anchors of the earth's crust. This is said in the Quran for a long time, however, on behalf of Allah, that he created the earth and fortified it with mountains. So the eternal book of the Koran contains so many secrets! Moreover, secrets that sincerely overwhelm modern man.
If possible, Valeria-iman, continue your answer. What about terrorists and martyrs? They also talk about Islam.
Both the Sunnah and the Koran write that outside your borders you have no right to kill anyone. They have not attacked you yet ... Sheikhs and mullahs who talk about "girls in paradise" are not Muslims at all and they preach not at all or not at all what is true Islam. As for the words of Muhammad about the prevention of terrorism in Islam, these words are scattered over many hadiths (or "stories, traditions") of the Prophet: "Indeed, the one who killed himself (intentionally) will be punished by fire, in which he will live forever." .. "And whoever kills himself with an iron weapon, then the iron weapon will remain in his hand, and he will continuously strike him in the stomach in the fire of hell, forever." (hadith narrated by al-Bukhari and Muslim).
Here are the sayings from the Quran itself: "Whoever kills the soul, not for the soul and not for the crime, he is like the murderer of all mankind" (Sura 5, verse 32) and "Indeed, We have lifted up and magnified the sons of Adam" (Sura 17 verse 70).
But most of all I like the words of the Prophet Muhammad from the hadith from Fadal ibn Ubaid - and I would make these words an epigraph to our interview: "A true believer is the one," says the Prophet, with whom people, regardless of whether they are believers or atheists, feel calm and safe. " Our Prophet said a very important thing: the person who committed the terrorist act left us, ceased to be one of us. And the Qur'an says: "Obey the Prophet, because he says what I charge him to say." And if the Prophet said that the person who committed the terrorist act leaves us, we take it as an absolute.
There is a very beautiful hadith of the Prophet, which reads as follows: if two Muslims crossed swords, then both the killed and the killed go to hell. When the Prophet was asked: “Well, the one who killed goes to hell, and the one who is killed — why?” And he also had the intention to kill, ”the Prophet replied.
The Quran does not tolerate misinterpretation. For the death of an innocent, you burn in hell, only this way, and not otherwise. And there is no difference in what religion this person is. The faithful are not only Muslims. People of the Christian and Jewish confessions are addressed in the Qur'an as highly esteemed, these are the people of the Book. People who were chosen by the Lord God. Therefore, like the Old Testament Toric Scripture, and the New Testament Gospel Scripture, and the Quranic Scripture, and, of course, the Vedic Scriptures, and the Zoroastrian Avesta, all, of course, were sent with one hand. That is, authorship, excuse me, maybe this is a somewhat vulgar term, all the scriptures belong to the same Creator. Therefore, we do not make a distinction between Christians, Jews, Muslims ... We make a distinction between pagans, atheists and believers. Therefore, if you kill a Christian or a Jew, you are killing a person who believes in God. You cannot kill him until he is conducting military operations against you. Those terrorist acts that are committed against children, women, the elderly not involved in hostilities in any way are, of course, a crime. When electric trains explode and hundreds of people die, this is also a crime that has nothing to do with Islam. The Quran says very clearly: "And do not kill the soul that was sanctified by your Lord. Fight for the Lord's work only with those who are fighting with you, and if the enemy stopped the war, then lay down your arms." Therefore, the conflicts that are now being resolved by military operations can in no way be called religious or confessional. They are all geopolitical. As, for example, with territorial claims in Israel. There is no question of religion at all, because Al-Aqsa stands at the place where the temple of Solomon was located. The Wailing Wall is what remains of this temple, once built by the order of the Almighty, when He said to Daoud and Solomon: "Build up a house for My name." This is a place blessed by God. And when people start killing each other there, this is a purely geopolitical conflict.
- What is the concept of "jihad" in Islam?
- A lot of Islamic philosophers and scientists. "kill the wrong" is interpreted in only one way - the wrong in oneself. The wrong one who is inside you. Jihad is interpreted only as an effort in the Lord's providence. The largest Islamic scholars of the world speak about this. In a word, jihad is a victory over oneself, a purely psychological category. Military jihad is an extremely rare thing when an enemy attacks you, crosses your state border, or the border of your property, drives you out of your house, deprives you of all social, political and material rights. Then you declare a military jihad on him. More precisely, the head of state always announces, who can agree on this with the mufti, but they must come to one decision.
We are very often materially conditioned, excuse me, boldly materialistic and pragmatic. And now, when you can forbid yourself something, all sorts of, for example, excesses ... The Koran insists on well-being, and not on asceticism. Allah says: "I have given you all the blessings of the world for your service." Therefore, a person should live comfortably, in a good room, have good food and beautiful clothes - "dress up in jewelry, the most elegant clothes" (Sura 30). "Eat and drink to your heart's content," says Allah. "Just do not indulge in excesses." That is, you can live in a magnificent, rich home, but you do not need a second home - this is an overkill. When you can overcome in yourself the desire for excesses, for fabulous money, love for gold and women, you commit a great jihad, "Jihad Kabir" and kill the unbeliever in yourself
In the Central Asian region, people are confronted with such a trend as Wahhabism, about which many have a vague idea. Valeria-iman, please enlighten ...
- The confession of Salafism, what has now begun to be called by another word - "Wahhabism" - gives rise to deviations from Koranic Islam. The mission of Sheikh Mohammed Abdul Wahhab was very rigidly delimited by that territory, that national mentality, and in the meantime: the Arabs had already moved away from Koranic Islam, indulged in temptations, debauchery, and excesses. Wahhab came to return them to the correct path, that is, to the Lord's path. This was the end of the 18th century. His ideology was excellent, but the strategy was very disgusting and bloody. He believed that it was necessary to return it at any cost. They fought under his banner in North Africa, in Maghreb, and in present-day Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. But this religious doctrine was temporary. She has exhausted herself, and in the meantime, and the national mentality.
Importing an outdated religious doctrine into the current mentality. the current culture, the level of civilizational differences is funny, naive and shortsighted. Moreover, the soil where Wahhabism is imported is not suitable for growing its ideas. For example, if we take more than 20 million highly educated Russian Muslims, for them the ideas of Abdul Wahhab are simply absurd, cruel and unacceptable. The same thing happens in other places, but there are countries where the civilizational level is extremely low, I mean the ideological one, and which pass one off as another. It seems to them that this is a struggle against the infidels. In fact, it is a struggle for the difference in civilizational development, the difference, let's say, in the standard of living, for everything. It seems to them that they are so deprived because they are infidels, not Muslims. If they themselves, under excellent conditions and natural resources, treat their riches in an uneducated and disorganized manner, then this is their problem, this is not a problem of religion. Moses led the people across the desert for 40 years to change the mentality of the slave people, and they want to build a caliphate in a short time. It's impossible.
You need to be able to separate religion from political decisions. Look at how, for example, in Afghanistan the Taliban movement, led by Bin Laden, was formed to oppose the Russian military. It was nurtured by political scientists who were paid a lot of money to competently build this machine, rock it and launch it. There are no Russians in Afghanistan for a long time, but the machine continues to work, that is, there is an inertial moment. The Taliban are so divorced from the real state of affairs that, being driven into a completely different framework, they abstracted themselves from the civilized atmosphere around them, so they do not whip it, to put it vulgarly, that they think that what they are doing is right. Why? Because they do not have a review of the situation. The situation has changed, and they are acting out of inertia. It's very scary.
The same thing, it seems to me, is happening, oddly enough, in Palestine. Absolutely: Jews act according to their own inertial process, and Palestinians according to their own. Both sides cannot sit down at the negotiating table and find a common language, because both are angry, and both have big claims, and both reject common sense.
There is an opinion that a woman in Islam has almost no rights. She can be taken into a harem, she is forced to wear a hijab, and in case of divorce, she can only take the jewelry that is on her.
- This opinion is just a widespread stereotype generated by sheer ignorance. Nowhere does a woman have so many rights as in Islam. A woman should, above all, be very elegantly and beautifully dressed. When a woman dresses up in black clothes, then know that this color has nothing to do with the Koran, the only scripture of the Lord in the world, where the reader's attention is drawn to color, to a color scheme; where Allah Almighty says: "I gave you a full range of colors that you should use. And also: Who put a covenant on those beautiful gifts that I gave you for your service?" Asceticism is completely absent in the Quran. A person should live comfortably and beautifully. And the Qur'an does not require women to wear a veil. No chador, no black clothes. It is illiterate to say that the black color of the burqa or abaya is the dictate of Islam. And if in the Qur'an some people refer to what is written there: "Oh, messenger, tell your wives to tie the blankets on themselves tightly in order to be recognized." This was due to the time period, since in the area where the Prophet lived, passionate people lived and could make an obscene proposal to his wives. To prevent this from happening, such a command was given. And the fact that they are now wearing a chador is a tradition, a preference: geographic, mental. This is the preference that is put by, say, the husband in particular, or the state as a whole. This is no longer Quranic.
As for polygamy, the Qur'an speaks about this as well. Polygamy is now very far gone
in the Arab world. The Arabs are increasingly adhering to the fourth sura of the Koran: "If you feel that you will not observe justice for them, marry only one." But there are exceptions. If a woman is incapacitated, cannot give an heir, and a man certainly has the right to an heir, he does not leave his wife, as is done in Europe, where during divorce a woman is often left without means of subsistence, or at least she is discriminated against; he continues family life with a childless wife and takes a second one. Moreover, the husband is respectful and fair to both equally. It is very important. If you bought 100 grams of gold for one wife, you must buy 100 grams of gold for the other. And not a gram less, otherwise justice will be violated. The percentage of such marriages in the countries of the East is extremely low. And in countries where women are more emancipated, such as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, with rare exceptions, polygamy is practically absent.
About the divorce. The marriage gift that the groom gives remains with the bride for life. Moreover, it is always legally declared in which case she loses it: if she changed it, or, say, was the initiator of an unfair divorce, and so on. If a wife observes her marital duties, is chaste, keeps clean what she is commanded to observe, the husband can never take anything away from her. Everything remains for her: a roof over her head, and jewelry, and gifts, and he leaves without anything.
Another interesting point. If a woman from an Arab family comes to work, then her entire salary goes into her pocket, bypassing the family budget. That is, a Muslim woman is much more full-fledged than a Christian. Here you come to the store, there is a woman, she is all in gold. You are overwhelmed by the amount of gold! The highest respect for the wife in the house, you cannot imagine how the husband trembles before her! I am speaking about this quite frankly. I have lived in Syria for 9 years, lived in the Emirates, in other Arab countries and saw it all. This is not like ours, when a woman drags bags of 10 kilograms of cargo each. An Arab woman, if she wears anything, then only a reticule. She only indicates with her finger how many kilograms of what to buy!
About the hijab. Long before the Koran, Christians covered their heads, and in Russia there was such a beautiful verb "goofed up" - got into a mess. She got mad, it means she opened her head. It is very interesting that all Russian empresses wore headdresses. We know Russian classical painting, where all Russian Christian girls are in kokoshniks, with their heads tightly closed. In Islam, this is called hijab.
Any religion dictates the head cover. As for the Koran, it says about it as follows: "Throw a shawl over your head and chest in order to close the chest incision." Specifically, how the hijab should look, or how the veil should look - nothing is said about this. But that you need to cover your head is a must. This is already the fundamental diktat that comes from Christianity, and to Christianity - from Judaism. All Jews who believe in the Most High cover their heads, all Christians who believe in the Most High cover their heads, and all Muslims who believe in the Most High cover their heads. Here you need to divide people not into religious structures, but into believers and non-believers. What is happening in Europe is hitting a mosquito with a cannon. Who can forbid a woman to wear the headdress she wants? This is her fashion. Jacques Chirac forbids going out in hijabs. What does it matter what this woman is wearing? I cannot understand when a woman is forbidden to wear what she wants. If she wears a miniskirt, it is considered normal, although this is the same pornography. But the hijab, it turns out, is not normal.
All our troubles come from ignorance.
What, in your opinion, is the root of the problem of misunderstanding of Islam? And how can this issue be resolved? What is the most conducive factor for returning to Islam today and what is the biggest obstacle to this?
- Education will contribute most of all. The Russian, and indeed any other person, was and remains extremely sensitive to religious truth. This was written by Vladimir Soloviev long before the revolution. They are pure, sophisticated, subtle. -I am talking about all peoples formed on the same culture - Russians, Tatars, Chuvashes, Kalmyks and others. There are many structures built on faith in God - the structure of the church, the structure of the synagogue, etc., and they remain only structures, but this is not faith itself. Therefore, we must carry the knowledge of faith. "Call to God with the wisdom and beauty of broadcasting, and if they do not understand you, tell the world and leave," says the Koran. This is the Qur'anic preaching structure. And it is not at all by violence that one should appeal to Islam. All troubles are from ignorance. It is necessary to give a tribune to major Muslim theologians. Islam is accepted by Germans, French ... Islam is peace and security. Look, there are 175 mosques in London, and in Moscow there are only 5 mosques for two million Muslims. Why? Because the British want to live in peace. The intelligentsia must provide all those around it, regardless of nationality and religion, in an accessible form, truthful, undistorted information about Islam. The most serious problems in our life and the most serious conflicts arise from stereotypes. Sometimes the translation that is quoted by "theologians" has nothing to do with the real meaning of the Holy Quran, which is laid down there. This is an absolutely vulgar, incorrect translation. This arouses anti-Islamic sentiments. The worst thing is when sites of this kind are falsified, aggressive, with an unrighteous presentation of the Koranic text. They are made to please someone, for someone it is a means to earn money. A religion that can somehow pull up the justification of terror is not a religion. Anyone who wants to know about the Qur'anic text and about Islam should know that he should read the text approved by the Al Azhar Al-Sharif Research Academy. In the 9th sura of the 29th verse it is written: "Fight with those people who do not believe in the Lord and on the Day of Judgment. until they pay tribute to you, with their own hand in submissive humility. " Here we are talking completely contextual, because in any Scripture, any indication must be in context. "Fight" - not by military action. It's hardcoded here. “Fight” —that is, don't accept them as friends, reject them as your community, and so on — that doesn't mean take a gun and shoot them. "What is not permitted by the Lord is not considered forbidden." And the Lord is not allowed to kill, and the Lord is not allowed to steal, the Lord is not allowed to fornicate, the Lord is not allowed to take alcohol and psychotropic drugs - it is written about this: "Everything that intoxicates and poison the mind ..." The Lord does not allow a lot of things that, if they will not be respected, they will destroy interpersonal, intercivilizational, interstate relations. It is the observance of the Lord's covenants, indicated in the Koran, and in the Bible, and in the Torah, because the fundamental commandments and prohibitions are the same.
If we talk about the threat of proselytism, then all those who talk about it are weak. They cannot resist it. For some, this is a defensive reaction, as is done in Russia when they talk about the expansion of Islam. And when young people leave Islam, selling for free T-shirts and baseball caps of Western missionaries, it is not the fault of the missionaries, but of the teachers and theologians that they did not bring the light of enlightenment to young minds.
The Qur'an says that Allah himself will keep his word. And when the phone rings in the author's apartment: "My name is Andrey, I am 31 years old, I am a journalist, a graduate of Moscow State University, I read your translation and he turned all my life orientations, changed my whole system of views", when there are 600 people in the Moscow City Hall on Novy Arbat sit for five hours, listening with bated breath "Talk about the Koran", "Islam as it is", then you can calmly say: "Al hamdu lillah!"
Porokhova Valeria Mikhailovna - translator of the Koran into Russian, a well-known public figure, educator. She was born in 1949. Belongs to the famous Russian noble family. Valeria's father was shot during the years of Stalin's repressions, and the mother, as the wife of an enemy of the people, gives birth to a girl in exile, and during the Khrushchev thaw he returns to Moscow, where he has been teaching at the Moscow Medical Academy for 30 years. Valeria graduates from the Moscow Linguistic University, teaches at MEPhI and at the same time receives a diploma in the philosophy faculty of Moscow State University at the House of Scientists. In 1975, Valeria married a Syrian citizen, Mohammed Said Al-Roshd, a graduate of the Sharia faculty of Damascus University, who at that time was a student and then a graduate student at IISS. In 1985 he moved from Moscow to Damascus, where he converted to Islam and began to translate the Holy Book of the Koran as the creed of Islam. In 1991, the translation of the meanings of the Quran was completed and transferred to the Islamic Research Academy Al-Azhar Al Sharif (Egypt, Cairo). Its translation was recognized as the best by the ulama and muftis of Islam. This reputable scientific center, after several years of painstaking study, for the first time canonized the Russian translation. The University of Cairo awarded Valeria Porokhova the title of honorary academician, qualifying her translation of the meanings of the Koran into Russian as exemplary. Mufti of Syria Ahmed Keftaru declared her his daughter. Since 1991, Porokhova has headed the Council of the Al-Furkan Islamic Educational Center. In 1997, the General Department of the Academy decided to approve the transfer. In the same year she defended her doctoral dissertation on the translation of the Koran.
In 2000, a religious organization of Russian Muslims "Straight Path" was created, the chairman of which is Ali Vyacheslav Polosin, Ph.D., and the co-chairman is Academician, Iman Valeria Porokhova. She is a full member of the Academy of Humanities, a member of the board of the Eurasian International Academy of Culture, her translation of the Koran is nominated for the "Book of the Year 1998" award, a full member of the International Academy of Informatization at the UN, a full member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (section of geopolitics and security). Valeria Porokhova was awarded the medal "For Spiritual Unity" by the Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of the Central European Region of Russia, the Academy of Natural Sciences - the Honorary Badge of the Academy "For Merits in the Development of Science", the International Inter-Academic Union at the UN - the highest award - the Order of Vernadsky's Stars of the first degree. She was awarded the highest award of the Islamic world "Keeper of the Holy Quran" in Tehran.