My New Qur'an

Believe it or not I am back at the Starbucks [actually Cipriano – this is not much of a mystery…] OK, so I’m here a lot.
Today’s blog-moment may seem like a real contradiction of my former posting called Let’s Be Reasonable!
As though I slipped a cog or went full-out schizophrenic overnight – but I’m all excited about my new Qur’an.
I’ve always wanted to have one – no wait, not always, [see, maybe I am schizo!] but I’ve wanted one in the past few years when certain portions of Islamic scripture are alluded to in so many of the theological things I tend to read.
Now I will be able to look up the reference points.

I work with a devout Muslim guy. For a couple of weeks he was working in my building and one afternoon we struck up an interesting religious-type conversation. He asked me if I wanted a Qur’an. I said “Most definitely.”
But the next day he was relocated to our Headquarters [our main building] and I never saw him. Till today.
I went to Headquarters at lunchtime to say Goodbye to a colleague who is leaving the company and today was her last day. [Well, plus there was free pizza there! Oh my Allah... I hope she's not reading this!]
To be honest I had sort of forgotten about the Qur’an thing, but soon my co-worker whom I had not seen in a while walked into the lunchroom and gave me this beautiful Qur’an you see here. It’s true title is The Noble Qur’an.

Originally, I thought he had meant he would bring me some sort of used paperback copy or something. I had no expectation that the book would be so beautiful, and so expertly bound. I mean this is a REAL NICE book.
Incredibly well-crafted, even has one of those bookmark-ribbons as you can see in the photo below.
The paper is just gorgeous. High-quality. On one half of the page is the Arabic script, and to the left, the translation in English. It is loaded with commentary at the bottom of the pages, much like an NIV-Study Bible.
One thing I’ve noticed early on here. Part 1 is way at the back. In other words, right at the start you’re already at what’s known as Surah 114. And there are only 114.

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