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A Two-Hour Koran
The Koran In about the time it takes to watch a professional sports event, you can comprehend the Koran. Since the Koran is famously known to be unreadable, how can this be? The Koran found in the bookstore is not the historical Koran of Mohammed. The original Koran was a story that unfolded as Mohammed's life situations changed. The bookstore Koran is arranged by length of chapter, not time. The bookstore Koran has no time, no Mohammed and no story. Therefore, it makes no sense. Using statistical methods to select the verses, the Two-Hour Koran has woven Mohammed's life back into the Koran itself. Now the verses have context and meaning. Everything is in the right order and the original story has been restored. Once you have read A Two-Hour Koran, you can pick up a bookstore Koran and understand what you are reading.
108 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 2010
38 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
About the author
Bill Warner
60 books67 followersBill Warner is the pen name of Bill French (born 1941, United States), a writer, critic of Islam, and the founder of the Center for the Study of Political Islam. He is a former Tennessee State University physics professor. He is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as part of a core group of 10 Anti-Muslim hard-liners.
Warner has said that his focus is on the political aspects of Islamic doctrine related to kafirs (non-Muslims) rather than on the beliefs of contemporary Muslims. He differentiates Islam as a religion and what he refers to as Political Islam. Warner defines "political Islam," which he also calls Islamism, "as a belief that Islam should control society and politics, not simply personal religious life."
Warner has said that his focus is on the political aspects of Islamic doctrine related to kafirs (non-Muslims) rather than on the beliefs of contemporary Muslims. He differentiates Islam as a religion and what he refers to as Political Islam. Warner defines "political Islam," which he also calls Islamism, "as a belief that Islam should control society and politics, not simply personal religious life."
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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June 8, 2017If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle -Sun Tzu
April 30, 2016
Doctor Warner does not need to spell out what you will find in the Koran; neither does he. He takes very good care to let the Koran tell you all about itself by itself. The verses are carefully arranged so that it becomes clear how its content shaped political islam and how political islam shaped its content. The two are so strongly intertwined that there is no discernible difference. Indeed, for all practical purposes the two are one and the same thing.
As an added bonus, the narrative clearly shows how the verses helped the prophet Mohammed fulfill his short-term goals, such as goading his followers to the battlefield, justifying the stealing of someone else's wife, intimidating opponents into submitting to his will, having multiple wives, imposing his will on them etc. One might almost start to believe that the Koran was written for the purpose of serving Mohammed's own agenda.
Clear into mind comes the passage where Mohammed's secretary was put on a deathlist for being an apostate to the religion. His reason for doing so; on writing down the revelations of the prophet, the prophet regularly accepted the secretary's improvements to his own texts. This caused the secretary to lose faith in the true nature of islam. Surely the Koran was not all made up, was it?
Overall, a quick and revealing introduction-level work into the Koran. Strongly recommended, especially for those islam apologists who so seldom show any real knowledge of the work at the center of the ideology.
As an added bonus, the narrative clearly shows how the verses helped the prophet Mohammed fulfill his short-term goals, such as goading his followers to the battlefield, justifying the stealing of someone else's wife, intimidating opponents into submitting to his will, having multiple wives, imposing his will on them etc. One might almost start to believe that the Koran was written for the purpose of serving Mohammed's own agenda.
Clear into mind comes the passage where Mohammed's secretary was put on a deathlist for being an apostate to the religion. His reason for doing so; on writing down the revelations of the prophet, the prophet regularly accepted the secretary's improvements to his own texts. This caused the secretary to lose faith in the true nature of islam. Surely the Koran was not all made up, was it?
Overall, a quick and revealing introduction-level work into the Koran. Strongly recommended, especially for those islam apologists who so seldom show any real knowledge of the work at the center of the ideology.
August 27, 2020
Read August 17 to August 19
I picked up this concise little book per my parent’s recommendation and I learned a lot about Islam, Mohammed and specifically, the Koran. Here are a few takeaways. First of all, the original Koran is an incredibly disorganized, jumbled and confusing document. I thought the Bible was confusing, but my standards for confusing were re-calibrated after five minutes of researching the Koran. The books are not organized in chronological order. The text is repetitive to an extent that is just downright strange (almost like trying to hit a word count for high-school English). The Two Hour Koran is a useful tool because it organizes the book into chronological order and elucidates the key pillars of Islam, as well as giving a clear biographical description of Mohammed.
My second takeaway from the Koran is that it contains many of the famous Biblical stories that we know so well: Noah’s Ark, Abraham becoming the father of many nations, Jesus Christ’s life and ministry (not his death) and many more. However, the Koran presents each of these stories through the lens of Islam and Allah. For example, the flood comes when the people refuse to listen to Noah’s exhortations to turn back to Allah. Abraham actually takes Ishmael up the mountain to be sacrificed as opposed to Isaac. Jesus is regarded as a prophet, but he is still subordinate to Mohammed, the most recent prophet sent by God. Jesus also ascends to heaven before dying, as opposed to the Christian belief in his death and resurrection. What is interesting to note is that the latest books of the Bible are dated earlier than 100 C.E, whereas the earliest writings in the Koran are dated to the early 600’s C.E. Simply put, the Bible is way older than the Koran. I will not overstep my bounds as a layman on religious texts, but my conclusion is that the Koran is largely a derivative work of the Bible, simply superimposing Mohammed and Allah into the texts. In my opinion, a classic case of too little, too late.
The last theme that I noticed is a fiercely antagonistic attitude towards the non-believer, or what is known in Koranic terms as the kafir. Kafirs are anyone who does not claim Allah to be God, and they will meet a tortuous fate in hell. If you are a Christian or a Jew, you are a Kafir. However, take heart my fellow Kafirs! There are some ways you can be relieved of this fateful title while maintaining your Christian faith. We Christians simply have to reject that Jesus died, reject that he resurrected, reject that he was God, believe that Mohammed is the true and final prophet and finally, believe that the entire Bible was maliciously revamped to replace Allah and Muhammad with Yahweh and Jesus (even though it was written thousands of years earlier). We have found the loophole. Become a Christian that rejects all the core doctrines of Christianity and you can be saved. Interesting solution. In reality, Islam is just like any other monotheistic faith. You profess faith in Allah or you do not. What is interesting is the lack of evangelism within Islam. The Koran strictly discourages friendships with Kafirs, and has an almost giddy excitement with the thought of non-believers being tortured in hell. It has the feeling of a God who is out to get you. In regards to the damnation of the Kafir, there is very much so an undertone of “I told you so, and now you’ll learn” in the Koran. I found this to be repulsive, and I was astonished at the joy that was expressed in those in heaven looking down at those in hell and basically saying, “suck it.”
I hope that in this short review you were able to learn something new, as I learned so much from this book. I want to make clear that I am not reducing my entire understanding of Islam to an 80-page book. There is still so much to learn and I want to understand more about Islam from other sources and perspectives. For example, I sensed early on that there was no love lost between Bill Warner and Islam, so I can infer that one of his goals was to expose the contradictions and fallacies in the Koran just as many authors do with some parts in the Bible. With that being said, I appreciated that Warner relied heavily on the Koranic text itself and far less on his own commentary. With respect to the text, my questions and reservations persist. Nonetheless, I will always make it a priority to learn about other cultures and beliefs. It is not only interesting, but it is respectful to do so. I love to sit across from people who are different me and learn about their stories and tell them my own. Therefore, it is my responsibility to not just know that we are different, but have insight into the intricacies of those differences. I will never know everything, and that’s the reason I would be sitting down with this or that person to understand more. Still, something is far better than nothing, and it shows people that you care deeply about them.
I picked up this concise little book per my parent’s recommendation and I learned a lot about Islam, Mohammed and specifically, the Koran. Here are a few takeaways. First of all, the original Koran is an incredibly disorganized, jumbled and confusing document. I thought the Bible was confusing, but my standards for confusing were re-calibrated after five minutes of researching the Koran. The books are not organized in chronological order. The text is repetitive to an extent that is just downright strange (almost like trying to hit a word count for high-school English). The Two Hour Koran is a useful tool because it organizes the book into chronological order and elucidates the key pillars of Islam, as well as giving a clear biographical description of Mohammed.
My second takeaway from the Koran is that it contains many of the famous Biblical stories that we know so well: Noah’s Ark, Abraham becoming the father of many nations, Jesus Christ’s life and ministry (not his death) and many more. However, the Koran presents each of these stories through the lens of Islam and Allah. For example, the flood comes when the people refuse to listen to Noah’s exhortations to turn back to Allah. Abraham actually takes Ishmael up the mountain to be sacrificed as opposed to Isaac. Jesus is regarded as a prophet, but he is still subordinate to Mohammed, the most recent prophet sent by God. Jesus also ascends to heaven before dying, as opposed to the Christian belief in his death and resurrection. What is interesting to note is that the latest books of the Bible are dated earlier than 100 C.E, whereas the earliest writings in the Koran are dated to the early 600’s C.E. Simply put, the Bible is way older than the Koran. I will not overstep my bounds as a layman on religious texts, but my conclusion is that the Koran is largely a derivative work of the Bible, simply superimposing Mohammed and Allah into the texts. In my opinion, a classic case of too little, too late.
The last theme that I noticed is a fiercely antagonistic attitude towards the non-believer, or what is known in Koranic terms as the kafir. Kafirs are anyone who does not claim Allah to be God, and they will meet a tortuous fate in hell. If you are a Christian or a Jew, you are a Kafir. However, take heart my fellow Kafirs! There are some ways you can be relieved of this fateful title while maintaining your Christian faith. We Christians simply have to reject that Jesus died, reject that he resurrected, reject that he was God, believe that Mohammed is the true and final prophet and finally, believe that the entire Bible was maliciously revamped to replace Allah and Muhammad with Yahweh and Jesus (even though it was written thousands of years earlier). We have found the loophole. Become a Christian that rejects all the core doctrines of Christianity and you can be saved. Interesting solution. In reality, Islam is just like any other monotheistic faith. You profess faith in Allah or you do not. What is interesting is the lack of evangelism within Islam. The Koran strictly discourages friendships with Kafirs, and has an almost giddy excitement with the thought of non-believers being tortured in hell. It has the feeling of a God who is out to get you. In regards to the damnation of the Kafir, there is very much so an undertone of “I told you so, and now you’ll learn” in the Koran. I found this to be repulsive, and I was astonished at the joy that was expressed in those in heaven looking down at those in hell and basically saying, “suck it.”
I hope that in this short review you were able to learn something new, as I learned so much from this book. I want to make clear that I am not reducing my entire understanding of Islam to an 80-page book. There is still so much to learn and I want to understand more about Islam from other sources and perspectives. For example, I sensed early on that there was no love lost between Bill Warner and Islam, so I can infer that one of his goals was to expose the contradictions and fallacies in the Koran just as many authors do with some parts in the Bible. With that being said, I appreciated that Warner relied heavily on the Koranic text itself and far less on his own commentary. With respect to the text, my questions and reservations persist. Nonetheless, I will always make it a priority to learn about other cultures and beliefs. It is not only interesting, but it is respectful to do so. I love to sit across from people who are different me and learn about their stories and tell them my own. Therefore, it is my responsibility to not just know that we are different, but have insight into the intricacies of those differences. I will never know everything, and that’s the reason I would be sitting down with this or that person to understand more. Still, something is far better than nothing, and it shows people that you care deeply about them.
February 3, 2017
After Mohamed's death, Uthman rewrote the Koran and burned all other copies. He changed the order of the chapters from chronological to longest to shortest. In The Two Hour Koran, author Warner attempts to restore the original order, and with it, light from darkness. Thank you Dr. Warner! You succeeded. Highly recommended!
April 6, 2015
This book is a primer for the Koran. It was interesting but so depressing. As compared to Christianity, this religion is based on threats, mayhem, etc. It is good to have this background knowledge of the religion, but it definitely is not for me!
June 3, 2024
Full of pseudo-scientific claims that could not withstand basic logical or empirical scrutiny. Certainly not a balanced presentation of the topic. However it may be the best presentation of the anti-Muslim perspective available in the USA as not many US citizens bother with learning about Islam. This is worth reading or listening to if you balance it with other authors, but should not be you sole source as you may never sleep again.
March 25, 2023
Amazing book, as every single one written by Bill Warner. No opinionating, pure knowledge that you can gain from.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews