Take the Pledge: Read the Quran

Some people say Islam is a religion of peace and that Islam has been hijacked by extremists, terrorists, and stealth jihadists who twist and distort the peaceful teachings of the Quran and quote it out of context.

Others say that political, supremacist, and even violent teachings are fundamental to Islam, and that people who say otherwise either haven’t read the Quran or are protecting Islam with religious deception (taqiyya).

We have important decisions ahead of us, and we need to be knowledgeable voters. I therefore pledge to read the Quran and find out for myself what is true about Islam.

Question: What if the Quran you recommend in the sidebar is somehow biased or not authentic?

Answer: This is surprisingly easy to find out for yourself. I had the same concern when I bought my first copy of A Simple Koran. So I checked it against my other Quran. I had already tried reading a standard-issue Quran I bought at my local bookstore.

So I checked verse against verse until I was satisfied it was authentic. Each chapter and verse of the Quran is numbered, so it is easy to cross-check like this.

You can do it online as well. Lots of web sites have the entire Quran available to read online. Here are a few: A Chronological Qur'an, IslamiCity, USC, NobleQuran, The Koran, The Holy Quran, The Quran, Pickthall's Quran, Yusuf Ali Quran, Rodwell's Koran, Quran, Skeptics Annotated Quran.

Why Take This Pledge?

Because some people speak confidently about Islam without any real knowledge of it, and because some who know a lot about Islam speak with another agenda besides simply speaking honestly, and because of the principle of taqiyya, the only way to know for sure what's true about Islam is to read the Quran yourself.

Once enough of us read the Quran, we will know enough to vote into office representatives who understand Islam and will propose and endorse informed policy decisions.

Please join with us and take the pledge to read the Quran. And please convince everyone you know to take the pledge.

An exceptional version of the Quran is now available. It is 203 pages, written in modern English. It contains all the information in the Quran without any repetition. And it gives you enough background information to understand what each passage is about. Perhaps most importantly, it is written in chronological order (this is important because of the principle of abrogation).

The book is An Abridged Koran published by CSPI. When you are done with this book, you will know what's in the Quran.

If you want to make sure you have read every single word of the Quran — repetition and all — we recommend: A Simple Koran, also by CSPI.

Read more about why the standard Korans are usually so difficult to decipher.

We've created a page on Facebook where we'll be posting reasons to read the Quran — not to convince you, but to help you convince your friends. If you become a friend of the page, you can share these reasons easily with your Facebook friends.

Take the Pledge: Read the Quran

Read and sign the pledge here:

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