I've learned a couple alphabets, Hebrew among them, just for fun. I'm pretty confident I could learn to recite the Quran with a month of steady practice.
But memorize the whole thing? Like, name a sura, and I'm off to the races? That's very impressive.
And without any understanding of the underlying words! That's even more impressive, but my heart sinks a little at the waste of human potential which it represents.
Perhaps they're right, and they earn a lifetime in Paradise for their trouble. I can't help but thinking there are better ways to spend ones youth.
I think in his case he was criticizing the scribes who memorized the scriptures, yet had no mercy for others.
It’s certainly an amazing feat of perseverance to memorize anything, but without understanding and transformation for good, it might as well be a million digits of pi.
I don't think that matches the definition of "can read" of most people. Maybe you can pronounce Hebrew, but "being able to read a given lamguage" implies some level of understanding.
Note: most religious schools I know of do try to teach the kids to understand what they're reading as well, but that's a more advanced phase - first the kids learn to read Hebrew, which is the bare minimum requirement to be a functioning member of religious society, and then they're taught to understand what they're reading.
My experience was that some kids learned enough to translate a passage of average difficulty by high school, while others never quite got past the very basic vocabulary. But no one in my school got past second grade without being able to read and transcribe a text. (This was at a religious day school in the US).
So, even if I can fluently read the Quraan, I wouldn't be able to figure out the right way to read a simple poster.