In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges and a later meta agreement to have topic challenges lasting for two months and overlapping by one month, it is time to announce the August–September 2022 topic challenge.
Based on the number of votes (+7,-3), the next topic challenge of the year 2022 will be the Koran.
What's a topic challenge?
See the meta posts linked above, and also this main Meta post. In short, during August and September 2022 you are invited to try to read at least part of the Koran and ask questions about it.
Participation is not obligatory in any sense, and questions on other works are more than welcome during August and September too; they just won't count as part of this topic challenge.
How can I take part?
By getting hold of the Koran or one of its translations and asking good questions about it (or them). Questions about the Koran should be tagged with koran and arabic-literature. We'll keep a list of all such questions in an answer to this meta post.
Below is Rand al'Thor's presentation:
- Along with the Bible, this has got to be one of the most read and most culturally significant books in the world. Reading it would give a connection with a very large group of people and an understanding of a culture which perhaps cannot be achieved in any other way.
- Some experts on this book already exist on Stack Exchange, so this could be a great opportunity for cross-site pollination of expertise. If we can attract people for Koran questions, they may also stay for other Arabic literature or religious literature questions.
- Of course, the text is easily available online in practically any language (including "simple English"), and so are many interpretations and discussions of it, in cases where there is difficulty in understanding or following it for those without religious context.
- We've had only three questions about it so far, none of them answered, so despite its ubiquity in many parts of the world, it seems not especially popular among our site's users. I think many of us could learn a lot from this topic challenge.
This definitely meets the criteria of being culturally significant and outside of our site's main bailiwick. I'd love this opportunity to learn more about it.
What's next?
- Vote for the next topic challenge or propose your own!
