Feeling curious, yesterday I pulled a copy of the Qur'an (Koran) off the shelf and started reading. I read quite a bit, actually, in the first part of the book.

My reaction? Briefly put, I'd simply say that while the Koran certainly is a religious book using a lot of religious words, it ain't no Bible. I realize that this is subjective and that as a Christian I would be inclined to look for reasons to disbelieve Islam, but to me the Koran really does seem like a disjointed series of unremarkable religious thoughts.

Afterwards I went online and looked up some critiques of the Koran. One of them talked about the numerous obvious mistakes and/or contradictions in the book. On his website one Christian pointed out that Muslims just love to make lists of seeming contradictions in the Bible, but do not at all take kindly to our doing the same with the Koran.

Some examples I came across were these: the Koran refers to Mary, mother of Jesus as the daughter of Amram and Jochobed--thereby mixing her up with Miriam of the Old Testament (sister of Moses). Another example is that in the Koran it has the Pharoah (who had kept the Israelites as slaves) having people crucified--something that wasn't instituted until Roman times.

As for an example of a contradiction: in one account in the Koran it says that Pharoah drowned in the Red Sea; in another it says Pharoah cried out to God as the sea rushed in and God saved his life.

Obviously the Bible has some difficulties as well, such as the two accounts to the ending to the life of Saul: in one, he falls on his sword, in another a man says that he slew Saul at his own request. But it would appear that such difficulties can be explained far easier (in the above case, for example, some have said that the man's claim that he slew Saul was braggadocio, thinking he'd get a reward from David instead of the axe) than those in the Koran.

Muslims, of course, have been playing an unfair game of hardball and would raise a great howl of protest if a person, particularly in a Muslim country, were to point out in a public way such difficulties with the Koran. "Do not blaspheme our holy book (or our holy prophet, Mohammed.)" In fact, obviously, in many countries, the life of a person raising such issues would be in danger.

A final point about the teaching of the Koran: it explicitly states that Jesus was not God and that he did not die on a cross. (Instead, it says, Judas was crucified in Christ's stead.) From our perspective, therefore, the Koran, far from being a book from God, is the epitomy of blasphemy. ("If any man does not acknowledge that God has come in the flesh [of Jesus] let him be anathema [accursed]," say our scriptures.)

In sum, the Koran's supposed improvements and clarifications on the Bible (as Muslims believe) simply don't pan out. J.B. Phillips, one of the first to paraphrase the New Testament into modern English, wrote that as he went through the New Testament doing his paraphrase, it was as if a little bell kept ringing in his head. It was, he said, "the ring of truth."

As I sat reading the Qur'an last night, by contrast, I was having the opposite experience. Instead of the tinkling of truth, what I kept hearing was the clunking and the clanging of clumsy falsehood.