mana 11 - surprise surprise the Quran, like the Bible, is internally contradictory and means many thinkings to many people as this extract from Pakistani muslim now living in the w~Est amkes clear:
"So for the next five years [after going through a period of confusion about what it was to be a Muslim] I seriously studied Quran from the first verse to the last. Since I did not understand Arabic, I read many translations and interpretations of Quran. The more I studied Quran and Islam, the more I realized that there are as many Islams as Muslims, and as many interpretations of Quran as Muslim scholars. Let me share a few examples.
Muslim scholar Abul Aala Maududi opposes the Theory of Evolution while another Muslim scholar, Abul Kalam Azad, is in favor. While many Muslim scholars translate the Quranic expression nafs-un-wahida as Adam, Azad translates it as unicellular organism, amoeba, and tries to prove that there is no contradiction between the Theory of Evolution and Quran. Similarly the Quranic expression malaika is translated by many Muslim scholars as angels while Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz translates it as laws of nature. Allama Mohammad Iqbal in his collection of lectures titled Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam states that hell and heaven are "states, not places" and the story of Adam and Eve is the story of man and woman. After studying different and contradictory Quranic translations and interpretations I realized that there was no way for me to find the right meaning of Quran, as some scholars make literal while others make metaphorical interpretations of Quran, and we all know that the Arabic language, like other living languages, has greatly evolved and changed over the centuries. Gradually I realized that Quran was part of folklore and wisdom literature.
The question of the right interpretation of Quran became more complex and complicated when many Muslims, who dreamt of an Islamic state, sought to create laws based on Quran. There has been enormous confusion in the Muslim world as there is no one person, organization or sect that all Muslims agree upon. Unfortunately the situation is as clear as mud, and various Muslim sects believe in different and rather contradictory Islamic laws regarding marriage and divorce, homosexuality, slaves, minorities and many other civil and criminal matters."