I've had a copy for years, translated by M.H. Shakir. I've read a large part of it. I remember curiously wandering the religion section of the local community college and reading parts of it in grade school during my free time. At the time it fascinated me that it spoke of Musa (Moses) and Isa (Jesus). I also took careful note the Ishmael was also one of Abraham's sons. At the time I thought it was a noble unitarian faith, much like what I belonged to as a JW. This mental idea of Islam generally being tolerant carried well into my 20's, and was also a product of my public school education: my textbook tried hard to note that Islam considered Jews and Christians to be "People of the Book". Unfortunately, a liberal public school education will tend to only mention the unsavory aspects of Christian and Western history, and not the that of others, but I digress.
I still think the less fundamentalist sects, like the Sufis, have a great deal of good to recommend them. Islam itself, like nearly everything in this world, is not all bad. I bought a copy as an adult during my last few years in the JWs when I wanted to see what the life was like on the Outside and I endeavored to read at least most of it. Tough going, at least for me. They say that in Arabic a large part of it is literally gibberish. I think it is Ibn Warraq that says about one-fifth of it is unintelligible. Since I can't read Arabic, I can't say for sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Warraq
BTS
