Some views about: The Koran!
(from web)
Thomas Carlyle observed of the Qur'an translated into English, that "It is as toilsome a reading as I ever undertook, a wearisome, confused jumble, crude, incondite."[1]
The Arabic literary scholar R.A. Nicholson noted the almost unanimous opinion among European readers that the Qur'an is "obscure, tiresome, uninteresting; a farrago of long-winded narratives and prosaic exhortations."[2]
W. Montgomery Watt, a foremost biographer of the Prophet Muhammad, remarked on its "disjointedness."[3]
Issa Boullata notes that "some Western writers have criticized the Qur'an" because of its perceived disjointedness[4] and adds that even Sayyid Qutb, one of the most influential Islamist thinkers, shared this opinion. Qutb, he writes, admits that there is no certainty about the authenticity of [the Qur'an's] order, which he acknowledges is only approximate and not definitive; and he adds that even if there was certainty, the fact is that many suras were not revealed as wholes but rather piecemeal at diverse occasions, of which there is no historical record agreed upon by scholars. Hence, the only option available to him, he says, is that of assumption and preponderation in this matter.[5]
[1] Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus and on Heroes and Hero Worship (London: Everyman, 1908), p. 299.
[2] Reynold A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 161.
[3] W. Montgomery Watt and Richard Bell, Introduction to the Qur'an (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970), p. 22.
[4] Issa J. Boullata, "Sayyid Qutb's Literary Appreciation of the Qur'an," Issa J. Boullata, ed., Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qur'an (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2002), p. 363.
[5] Ibid., p. 359; on Sayyid Qutb, Mashahid al-Qiyama fi al-Qur'an (Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1966, 1981), p. 11.