Very interesting point made by ex-nun Karen Armstrong in today’s The Guardian. She suggests that the Bible, Qu’ran, Torah and so on were never actually meant to be read by people in the privacy of their own homes but recited in particular, symbolic circumstances.

These ritualistic recitations - usually carried out by a holy man - put the congregation in a particular state of mind; the option to pick and choose your favourite verse to read did not, in ages of widespread illiteracy (and, of course, no printing technology) exist. She says that the experience of hearing or chanting from the texts was at least as important as the content of the texts itself:

Hitherto the scriptures had always been transmitted orally, in a ritual context that, like a great theatrical production, put them in a special frame of mind. Christians heard extracts of the Bible chanted during the mass; they could not pick and choose their favourite texts. In India, young Hindu men studied the Veda for years with their guru, adopting a self-effacing and non-violent lifestyle that was meant to influence their understanding of the texts. In Judaism, the process of studying Torah and Talmud with a rabbi was itself a transformative experience that was just as important as the content.

She is specific about the Qu’ran. ‘Qu’ran’ actually means ‘recitation’ and is designed to be read out aloud rather than cover to cover on your own. Like poetry, there is a transcendent quality that adds a special layer to the experience:

Much of the meaning is derived from sound patterns that link one passage with another, so that Muslims who hear extracts chanted aloud thousands of times in the course of a lifetime acquire a tacit understanding that one teaching is always qualified and supplemented by other texts, and cannot be seen in isolation. The words that they hear again and again are not “holy war”, but “kindness”, “courtesy”, “peace”, “justice”, and “compassion”.

When the ritual that accompanies the text’s reading is missing the reader can only approach his study on a cerebral level. The emotional and therapeutic effects of reading is lost. This leads to the problem that, if you want to blow up a bus or murder a ’sinner’ you can usually find - and focus on - those passages that appear to give you the authority to do so:

Solitary reading also enables people to read their scriptures too selectively, focusing on isolated texts that they read out of context, and ignoring others that do not chime with their own predilections. Religious militants who read their scriptures in this way often distort the tradition they are trying to defend. Christian fundamentalists concentrate on the aggressive Book of Revelation and pay no attention to the Sermon on the Mount, while Muslim extremists rely on the more belligerent passages of the Qur’an and overlook its oft-repeated instructions to leave vengeance to God and make peace with the enemy.

Unfortunately, Ms Armstrong finishes her illuminating piece with a clumsy defence of Islam (this is The Guardian, remember) and blames the media for concentrating ‘obsessively on the more aggressive verses of the Qur’an, without fully appreciating how these are qualified by the text as a whole’. With all respect to the lady, it’s the perpetrators of Muslim terrorism who have actually focussed on the aggression of the Qu’ran and distorted - I’m sure Ms Armstrong would agree - the peaceful message of the text.

If the thrust of her piece is correct it is actually Muslims - and the adherents of religion in general - who need to relearn the correct way to approach their texts rather than reporters to learn new ways of reporting on the consequences of incorrect practise.