Colour coding the Koran

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ECAW on May 29, 2015 at 11:41

Thanks for your comments. I used this as a basis for the selection of jihad verses:

http://www.answering-islam.de/Quran/Themes/jihad_passages.html

but I disregarded some since I thought they weren't definite enough and added some which I thought were. Answering-Islam include 9:24-26 and I agree with them. It seems to me that chiding people for not going forth without a reasonable excuse is just as much about the duty of jihad as exhorting them to do so.

I have deselected several this morning to be on the safe side but still think the following additions are defensible because 1. they are either part of a passage about jihad and seem to belong with them even though words like fighting or striving don't appear, 2. they seem to qualify anyway, or 3. fall into the group above.

If anyone would look at them and give a view I would be much obliged:

2:154

3:127, 139, 147, 168

4:73

5:34

8:8

9: 87, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95

33:9-14, 16, 19, 22

47:13

61:9, 10

Permalink Reply by Kinana on May 29, 2015 at 13:18

ECAW,

it would be good to have a brief colour code on each page for those like me with short memory span!

Permalink Reply by Alan Lake on May 30, 2015 at 4:45

I read 9:24-26 numerous times, and still wasnt sure what it was saying, or if it was bad. So now we enter a very problematic area, about how much intelligence and knowledge we can assume the reader and listener has. I keep imagining myself in a debate and reading these out. You could be right! The tricky question is, could you succeed in getting your rightness communicated to a typical BBC "Hardtalk" audience? I dont know.

Permalink Reply by Alan Lake on July 2, 2015 at 0:54

I've seen the finished website now and it is very good!  Can I make another suggestion though, its about the colours.

• Purple is normally the sacred colour, that's why bishops dress in purple.  (The exceptions are Buddhist Theravada monks and Hindus who may use saffron or orange).  So I think the colour for coding verses about Allah should be purple.
• Green is the correct colour for verses about Muslims, as that is an already used convention
• Red should be the colour for verses about Jihad.  The Jihad is dripping with the blood of the Kuffar over 1400 years, so that's quite easy to remember.  Then, as you progress thru the quran, you can see that the blood letting increases till in the final Surah, it is floating in the stuff.
• Brown is, I suggest, the best colour for verses about the Kuffar.  That's because the kuffar are dirty (Haram) not clean (Halal).  In Muslim eyes, the Kuffar are shit, the lowest of creatures, one of the 10 Najis things.  The reader will then easily see how this book of hate is, oddly, more preoccupied with the filthy kuffar than the muslims.

This kind of natural colour association will also make it easier for those members (I'm not mentioning any names) who find it hard to remember the colour coding from page to page :-)

Permalink Reply by ECAW on July 2, 2015 at 12:33

Glad you like it Alan (any comments on the site are appreciated - just to make the place look a bit more lived in).

We started with Word documents which meant we had a limited choice of colours for that slab effect. Only four were sufficiently distinct from each other and light enough not to obscure the text. Even red obscures it a bit, that's why we chose a relatively large font and put everything in bold.

We chose green for believers because of its positive connotations (as in "go") and red for its opposite negative connotations (as in "stop") plus danger, blood and hellfire. Red for the blood of jihad would have been appropriate too but we liked the pair of opposites for believers and unbelievers. Too late now anyway, it would mean going back to the Word stage. I daresay swanky software like dreamweaver would allow that sort of thing but the free Kompozer (that's how cheap we are) and the basic programming skills of the most technical person among us dictated a lot of our approach. No doubt more sophisticated internet savvy types could do a swisher job, and I hope they might in time.

I was surprised when Kinana suggested a colour key in each sura for those with short term memory problems but someone else came up with the same thing so our programmer guy added some just yesterday:

http://www.koran-at-a-glance.com/sura101.html

Cheers

Permalink Reply by Kinana on July 2, 2015 at 16:01

:)

Permalink Reply by Alan Lake on July 2, 2015 at 18:25

Cool, that's looking good with the key on every page.  Can always change the colours  a few years down the road, if a printed copy is produced.

I agree that  brown could be too dark, depending on the shade, so when it comes to it you just have to use which of the available colours aid visibility.

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