Boreal

Pain, Pleasure and Prejudice

Preface to the Legacy Edition

Canadian scholar (sic) Bernard Payeur, and the book is exactly what it’s touted to be: “everything you’ve always known about the Koran, and more, explained in a way we can all understand”.

Mr. Payeur’s original field is not Islamic studies, so he approaches his task as an intelligent outsider. The result is a thorough and comprehensive view of what the Koran actually says, organized in several different ways to provide insights into what it all means.

In addition to the Koran itself, the author has read the hadiths and various commentaries by Muslim theologians, so the book reflects the established Islamic institutional understanding of what Islam’s holy book means.

…, Virginia U.S.A.

Pain, Pleasure and Prejudice - The Final Draft received this glowing endorsement in spite of far too many typographical lapses, for which I am solely responsible and for which you have my sincere apology.

It was shortly after 9/11 that I walked into my local Chapters where I happened upon a pyramid of Korans on sale.

I picked up a copy of Majid Fakhry's Al-Azhar approved "English Translation of the Meanings". On the back cover, Publishers Weekly wrote: "Succeeds in expressing the meanings of the original Arabic in simple readable English.”

The Koran is a short book by holy book standards: an English translation of the Koran will run to about 77,700 words; the approximate size of a standard 300 page book. A first reading more than lived up to Thomas Carlyle [1795 – 1881] description as “a confused, jumble, crude, incondite (disorderly), endless iteration". Is it any wonder non-Muslims know so little about the Book.

I decided to use my training and twenty years of experience in systems analysis to bringing order to the Koran, so that anyone could, in a few minutes or at the most an hour or two, find out all that Allah had to say on any subject. To my knowledge this is an English, if not a historical first.

The Legacy Edition, not only fixes typographical shortcomings in The Final Draft, but honours my wife's immense contribution, which I dared not praise until now.

While battling a chronic condition, which often left her gasping for breath, she worked tirelessly with me, going over every word and syllable making sure our legacy lived up to your expectations.

Bernard Payeur

November 11, 2015