British author exercises free speech regarding the Koran

What we hope is that Sebastian Faulks enjoys a long and healthy life despite having stated his very strong opinion about the Koran:

Best-selling novelist Sebastian Faulks has risked incurring the wrath of Muslims by dismissing the Koran as just ‘the depressive rantings of a schizophrenic’ with ‘no ethical dimension’.

The author of Birdsong and Engleby also claimed that, compared to the Bible, the Islamic holy scripture is ‘barren’.

Faulks, who turned to the Koran while researching his latest novel, said: ‘It’s a depressing book. It really is. It’s just the rantings of a schizophrenic. It’s very one-dimensional, and people talk about the beauty of the Arabic and so on, but the English translation I read was, from a literary point of view, very disappointing.

‘There is also the barrenness of the message,’ he told The Sunday Times. ‘I mean, there are some bits about diet, you know, the equivalent of the Old Testament, which is also crazy.

‘But the great thing about the Old Testament is that it does have these incredible stories. Of the 100 greatest stories ever told, 99 are probably in the Old Testament and the other is in Homer.

‘With the Koran there are no stories. And it has no ethical dimension like the New Testament, no new plan for life. It says ‘the Jews and the Christians were along the right tracks, but actually, they were wrong and I’m right, and if you don’t believe me, tough — you’ll burn for ever’. That’s basically the message of the book.’

I’m much struck by his point about the lack of a story in the Koran. It’s absolutely true that part of the Bible’s continuing relevance lies in the story-line it presents, whether the history of the Jewish people in the Old Testament, or the Rashoman-like presentation of Christ’s life and teachings in the New Testament. The Koran is just Mohammed’s “me me me” — which isn’t helped by the fact that he doesn’t come across as a very nice “me” but, rather a violent, vindictive, self-centered “me.”