Quran API | Hacker News Reader

Quran API

m3o.com

185 pointsasim166 comments

You can download an xml or sql file from here

They also provide metadata for download

If you instead send an http request to antoher server, you are just introducing a pointless dependency in your system. It will make your system generally slower because it will take more time to get answers. There's absolutely no benefit.

Sometimes its a preference of use. If the API is simple and easy to use, if it provides translations and transliterations you prefer, if it means not needing to process xml or sql which I believe a lot of us would prefer not to do.

Sure, at the cost of having something that usually has a higher latency for lookups, that only works online, that could have outages due to data center or network problems, that could get hacked and made to return corrupted data, and that may or may not be available forever.

Those seem like pretty high costs to me mainly to avoid processing a local database. Especially if someone could wrap the local database with a library that has the same interface as the network API! (That library could stop being maintained, but the failure modes are much narrower than the failure modes of a network service.)

A lot of the comments in this thread are suggesting that an API to search small public data is not a very productive approach compared to having that data present locally in programs that will use it. I can think of lots of advantages that network APIs could have:

* querying nonpublic data (including nonpublic data that the end user is fully entitled to access all of, but doesn't want to cache on a mobile device because of its sensitivity)

* applying a sophisticated algorithm to the data

* offloading computation or storage to a more powerful device

* dealing with frequent updates or edits to the data

* ...

However, none of those seem to apply readily to the case of searching a specific religious or literary text, because downloading the complete text is usually a very practical option. (I guess the "nonpublic data" part could also apply because some of the translations and transliterations and associated information might be under copyright, and the copyright holder might choose to authorize the API but not authorize bulk downloads of the database. That could also be true for modern commentaries and annotations.)

The only other one that comes to mind for me in terms of people's enthusiasm for this API approach (and indeed in the comment I'm replying to) is

* developers are very used to querying web APIs (and don't like writing their own parsers)

That's fair, but I feel like it's best mitigated by having someone develop a reliable library for parsing a particular database or dataset, with a nice API that the developers will be happy with.

> If you instead send an http request to antoher server, you are just introducing a pointless dependency in your system. It will make your system generally slower because it will take more time to get answers. There's absolutely no benefit.

To expand on that, here downloading the file is a way of caching the data. Caching invalidation can be tricky, but for something like this it's actually easy, so you can afford all the benefits of a cache.

What about the Quran is changing often enough for cache invalidation to be a problem?

"Caching invalidation can be tricky, but for something like this it's actually easy"

The point is that you shouldn't need it at all. There's nothing to invalidate. You don't even need to cache it because there's nothing complex enough to cache. The full dataset is tiny. Adding caching might make it slower, because the cost of computing the data is less than the cost of a cache miss.

My point was that downloading the whole thing compared to using the API could be thought as a form of caching. Since it's with data that doesn't change much, the usual difficulty that comes with caching is not here.

From my limited understanding, not much which is why I think caching is safe in that case.

I can think of a few:

- type safe clients provided by M3o

- reducing app/webapp/binary space by relying on APIs to get a subset of the content you need

- a web interface to query the data

There are probably a few more, YMMV

How is it type safe? Type safety is worse for http calls because you literlly have no idea at compile time what the data will be. Where as, when all the data is in your repository, you can verify the data matches what you expect.

Reudcing space? Really? The data is actually very small. Your npm modules take a lot more space. If anything is really cheap and not worth worrying about, it's disk space.

Have a look at the Go clients for example. There are proper type safe clients for each API generated form our protobuf definitions.

> Type safety is worse for http calls because you literlly have no idea at compile time what the data will be.

We promise we will return data as per API spec ;)

> The data is actually very small

For this particular example, I guess you are right.

Our vision is that all APIs will have uniform clients, docs etc, so in aggregate it will provide a very convenient workflow. So instead of downloading a.json and b.xml and c.yaml (if possible at all due to size) and defining data structures yourself, just import our library and you are good to go.

But as I said, YMMV. If it's not your cup of tea, I understand that too.

> We promise we will return data as per API spec ;)

Unfortunately, I don't think that an assumption about the data that's returned from a web API based on a developer's statement on an online forum is really what's meant by "type safety". :-)

> We promise we will return data as per API spec ;)

ok sure, but that does not mean that "type safety" is an advantage of using your API.

Above I suggested that reducing space could sometimes be relevant -- I think interactive maps are a very familiar example, although offline maps are great for privacy and for being able to use them in the wilderness.

Even though I don't think that the Quran API will benefit many applications, you could probably envision some, like very tiny embedded systems that don't have even megabytes of spare local storage (but do have some kind of user interface).

So the entire Qur'an in XML or SQL file? Is that how some Qur'an apps are able to provide offline reading?

Probably so!

Here's a list of electronic text resources for the Christian Bible

https://hackathon.bible/data/

of which (surprisingly to me) many are also APIs rather than downloads. But there are lots of downloads like XML and text files. One that I found of the King James Version translation has lines like

Gen|4|26| And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.~

i.e. book of Genesis, chapter 4, verse 26, followed by an ASCII string of that verse.

The Quran download mentioned in the grandparent comment at

https://tanzil.net/download/

includes text files with lines like

2|150|ﻮَﻤِﻧْ ﺢَﻴْﺛُ ﺥَﺮَﺠْﺗَ ﻑَﻮَﻟِّ ﻮَﺠْﻬَﻛَ ﺶَﻃْﺭَ ﺎﻠْﻤَﺴْﺟِﺩِ ﺎﻠْﺣَﺭَﺎﻣِ ۚ ﻮَﺤَﻴْﺛُ ﻡَﺍ ﻚُﻨﺘُﻣْ ﻑَﻮَﻟُّﻭﺍ ﻮُﺟُﻮﻬَﻜُﻣْ ﺶَﻃْﺮَﻫُ ﻞِﺌَﻟَّﺍ ﻲَﻛُﻮﻧَ ﻞِﻠﻧَّﺎﺳِ ﻊَﻠَﻴْﻜُﻣْ ﺢُﺟَّﺓٌ ﺈِﻟَّﺍ ﺎﻟَّﺬِﻴﻧَ ﻆَﻠَﻣُﻭﺍ ﻢِﻨْﻬُﻣْ ﻒَﻟَﺍ ﺖَﺨْﺷَﻮْﻬُﻣْ ﻭَﺎﺨْﺷَﻮْﻨِﻳ ﻮَﻟِﺄُﺘِﻣَّ ﻦِﻌْﻤَﺘِﻳ ﻊَﻠَﻴْﻜُﻣْ ﻮَﻠَﻌَﻠَّﻜُﻣْ ﺖَﻬْﺗَﺩُﻮﻧَ

i.e. surah 2, ayah 150, followed by a Unicode string of the text of that ayah. (There's no "book" field because of the sufficiency of the surah numbers.) This file is about 1.3 megabytes uncompressed, although of course it doesn't include additional data that a user might want to have presented (the transliterations or translations mentioned elsewhere in this thread, for example).

There are probably lots of mobile apps that have graphics files alone that are larger than this 1.3 megabyte Quran text file. (Not that mobile apps are the only application for the APIs or anything.)

Another online text at

https://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/htq/index.htm

gives each surah in a separate file (less convenient for downloading, although you could still do it in a few minutes!), so that ayah is

150 ‏وَمِنْ حَيْثُ خَرَجْتَ فَوَلِّ وَجْهَكَ شَطْرَ ٱلْمَسْجِدِ ٱلْحَرَامِ ۚ وَحَيْثُ مَا كُنتُمْ فَوَلُّوا۟ وُجُوهَكُمْ شَطْرَهُۥ لِئَلَّا يَكُونَ لِلنَّاسِ عَلَيْكُمْ حُجَّةٌ إِلَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا۟ مِنْهُمْ فَلَا تَخْشَوْهُمْ وَٱخْشَوْنِى وَلِأُتِمَّ نِعْمَتِى عَلَيْكُمْ وَلَعَلَّكُمْ تَهْتَدُونَ ‎

There's some kind of Unicode issue where the letters in the second version seem to be connecting better (e.g. مَا rather than ﻡَﺍ), but my knowledge of Arabic isn't enough to make it obvious to me whether the second one is a more correct encoding or the first one is just making more assumptions about the rendering or something.

There are probably lots of mobile apps that have graphics files alone that are larger than this 1.3 megabyte Quran text file.

Heck, sacred-texts.com will sell you a Flash drive with a huge chunk of their collection on it: https://sacred-texts.com/cdshop/dvd90/index.htm

It's all of four gigabytes. Once that was a lot. Now it's nothing. Every holy text from antiquity, in something the size of your thumb.

I have a bit of minor frustration with how many different XML formats there are for scripture. We have OSIS and USX/USFX, both supposedly universal but really just used for the Bible and Torah.

I cannot access the tanzil XML file right now due to MobileSafari layout issues (boo). https://github.com/ceefour/qurandatabase has its own consistent DTD, but I doubt this is the only format I will find.

Thank you for the technical explanation. I appreciate it. I have been curious about the Qur'an apps for some time. You gave me a better understanding.

I hope my question isn't seen as rude, but have you worked on a non-web app before? Its been the natural thing to bundle all data needed offline and locally along with the app throughout history. I emphasize I don't mean to sound rude, your question just felt surprising to me. (It seems you are been downvoted and I gave you an up personally.)

No offence taken and I appreciate the upvote. I am a macOS/iOS developer. I expected the Qur'an to be bundled with the app but I wondered about the technical nature. How it is actually done? It could be a database file or a text file etc. There are many ways to accomplish this.

If you use the API, the service maintainer can transparently to you switch to a better storage format, or query engine, or invent a whole new CMS.

Your phone can scan the whole dump in-memory, byte by byte faster than your eyes can blink. If the query engine is the problem, you've chosen a very bad query engine.

Yeah and technically the Quran has a lot of repetition too so it compresses well. It’s so easy to memorize that 13 year old kids routinely do it.

Don’t think it’s possible? There are 114 suras. The longest one is like the screenplay of Star Wars, something many of know by heart even if we can’t recite it. The smallest bunch of suras resemble song lyrics. Most people have memorized considerably more than 114 songs. Replaying them just requires the right stimulus.

Seem like query parameters are going out of style. Doesn't really matter if we use them or a small JSON payload instead, same end result, but it is pretty interesting. This API opts for a body like:

    {"chapter":1}

instead of ?chapter=1 in the URL. Just something I've noticed in a lot of APIs recently.

POSTing a body, when a GET param is more RESTy, is unfortunate. But I am curious if some amount of developer convenience is leading to REST-like APIs (I like the way you put it) going out of style.

A curiosity to be sure, and by no means a critical problem.

EDIT: added some commas to help with parsing since I have my phrasing all turned about.

It's not even a case of being RESTy or not.

A GET request with a `?chapter=1` argument is more correct than POST because then it's cacheable by browsers, proxies or middleware clients, and thus respects the spirit of the HTTP protocol.

Only if the Qur'an is immutable, that is.

Wait until you come across an API that uses POST requests as GET requests. Worked on one recently where all search operations were submitted by POSTing the data. And it wasn't even something like a "send a search request to a queue".

Query-params are not "un-RESTy", and posting when requesting static data is worse primarily for caching and semantics.

For this usecase a ?chapter=1 query string would have been better and not at all less "RESTy".

I think you're read my message in reverse. I've said that POSTing is unRESTful when a GET is preferred.

Ah, yeah, seems I misunderstood!

what is the point of an API for static data like this? storage is cheap... why not just download the entire Quran, Bible, Torah, whatever to your local hard drive... why incur network latency for this task?

Some people find joy and satisfaction in developing systems. I don't have total insight on their plans, so I am not going to ask "What is the point?" I prefer never to ask "What is the point" to anyone unless somehow their efforts are providing a net negative to the human condition.

Sometimes the "point" is because it can be done. Sometimes the point is someone wants to learn about building an API and would prefer to do it with the Quran rather than with movie quotes.

….? Or maybe there is a interesting and expected answer that provides a learning experience? It doesn’t hurt to ask.

> Or maybe there is a interesting and expected answer that provides a learning experience?

Then it should be phrased like that. It's obvious the original comment was phrased as a condescending question, especially since they tried to answer it themselves.

There's a difference between genuine interest and trying to show off how smart you are.

So quick to offense. it wasn't meant to be condescending, it was meant to be a serious technical critique of what appears to be a publicly advertised product.

> it wasn't meant to be condescending, it was meant to be a serious technical critique of what appears to be a publicly advertised product

Oh, I think everyone was confused because there was no serious technical critique. You made a flippant comment about disk space and network latency. Basic observations that anyone building this would have considered.

You can see from all the comments that everyone viewed you as condescending and unhelpful. You might want to revisit your writing style, since your intentions are not clear to anyone.

Judging by the other comments in this thread and the upvotes to my original comment, many people seem to agree with me also.

you are an unpleasant person to talk with

> you are an unpleasant person to talk with

I'm glad you picked up on my tone. I'd suggest not writing pointless criticism.

Them: "Hey, we wanted to build an API!" You: "What if you don't build an API, and just download a file? That's the same right?"

In this context I think it was fairly clear I was referring to HTTP API. If they want to utilize a sqlite client or query local data in some other way I think that makes sense. You could download the whole project as a project dependency, and build your app as an offline app. I wouldn't expect a Quran app to require internet connection.

You must be a joy to peer review at work.

It never hurts to ask. It also never hurts to learn the appropriate way to phrase questions that are genuine. For some reason, a pattern develops in some people where they think there is value is just asking why all the time. It is best to stop and think before firing of your "Why didn't you just use solution X". This rarely leads to constructive dialog and instead generates a low-value conversation a lot like job interview situations where poor interviewers are trying to set up a candidate with why questions just so they can unload some ego boosting bit of advice.

woah woah calm down... I wasn't trying to insult anyone.

"I wanted to build a fun, cool project." Is a perfectly valid answer.

I think there is value in people critiquing methods and designs for various systems. If I were building some new project I would want my peers to give me honest critique and constructive probing. I make mistakes all the time and would never learn from those mistakes if others didn't point them out to me.

> "liabd 1 hour ago [–] This is awesome and will enable a whole suite of apps to be build on top of it. Great work"

So even in this thread people are discussing adding this service as a dependency to their own applications. I think if you are building a project for yourself for fun that is one thing... but If you advertise it for public use, criticism is perfectly valid, and should be expected.

I am not familiar with the Quran, but for the Bible, different translations have different copyright policies. For instance, the ESV text is free for non-commercial use, but if you want to use it for commercial purposes you must pay a licensing fee.

ESV has a pretty decent API, actually! https://api.esv.org/ I used it way back when when Google TV was a thing, to make a verse-display used during bible studies.

Scratching my head over this, too... I have over 50 ebooks on my phone, it barely even registers compared to the videos and apps. All perfectly searchable, too.

Presumably it has value in that it makes it easy to integrate Qur'an content into an existing application.

Beyond that, it seems like this could be used as a base for adding new translations, commenting and conversation on particular verses, personal collections of scripture, etc. If you are planning on going in any of those directions you need to build a platform for the static stuff before you expand.

I used it to create a twitterbot that tweeted quran verses at islamic hate speech tweets. not particularly innovative but funny

maybe they hope someone will do a verse (is it a verse in Islam? I'm not sure) type app that will text that data to subscribers or something.

I think you mean Surah/Ayah (those are the expressions for what in the Quran is akin to Chapter/Verse)

Linguistic curiosity: why would these expressions not be translated into English?

Domain-specific languages / jargon are not just a computer science thing.

its perfectly ok to call it a verse. Dr Zakir Naik, calls it Chapter/Verse in any of his speeches.

It might be easier to use an api instead of having to go through it yourself.

The alternative to the API is not plain text, it's structured data like SQLite.

Yeah, but some people don't feel like importing SQL files into there DBMS or anything like that.

So you'd rather integrate with an API that involves network egress to an untrusted third party system?!

There's plenty of formats they don't involve SQL. It could easily be JSON or XML or YAML or anything else. SQLite is built into Python, you just need to open the file and query it, no importing needed.

This seems very similar to the work over at Quran.com and their API: https://quran.api-docs.io/v4/getting-started/introduction

If you did use their resources, please cite/reference them :)

Yes, we are building on that API. It's referenced here https://github.com/micro/services/tree/master/quran. Unfortunately we're having some issues with our readme processing and haven't yet fixed. All credit will be given where it is due.

This is really useful. Please do an API for Hadiths too.

Thank you. That's what I just started work on! It will be here soon :)

Ask and you shall receive! https://m3o.com/sunnah

I think I need to start an atheist API that returns 404 :)

404 god not found

Revelation place and revelation order should be tagged with the source (I.e. where that information is conning from), as it’s not 100% known in either Muslim canonical or western academic histories, whereas this dataset makes it seems like it is a known agreed upon fact.

Cool effort, but why are they all POST requests? These should all be GET requests with either path or query parameters. They're not creating any resources on the server side, only fetching existing resources. HTTP 101! :-)

I took the view in this thread that downloading a file with the whole text would have a lot of big advantages compared to an API. A lot of other commenters have expressed this idea too.

But I want to highlight something from a comment of mine further down: while looking for examples of downloadable sacred texts, I found this page

https://hackathon.bible/data/

which has -- alongside downloads -- a whole bunch of actively-maintained APIs for Christian Bible verse access, some of them run by pretty prominent organizations.

So, all of our intuitions about the merits of downloading sacred texts to bundle with apps are, apparently, not entirely shared by other developers. :-)

This is awesome and will enable a whole suite of apps to be build on top of it. Great work

A similar thing has also been done with other religious texts (e.g. https://github.com/Sefaria/Sefaria-Project/wiki)

It would be quite interesting if all the world religions’ and philosophies’ texts could be hosted with a common format and available with an API for linking and finding parallels etc.

Maybe then run it all though GPT-3 and generate a new ideology – perhaps a bit scary as to what will come out!

I actually knew a man who spent half his life trying to solve this problem from the 1980s onwards.

One thing which ancient texts require that modern ones don’t is this: there are a lot of commentaries written about these texts. They’re crucial for understanding the original text. In fact in the Arab world commentaries on Greek and other books were sometimes as valuable as the originals. Commentaries on commentaries were common.

In the west we treat the original as sacred and everything else as secondary.

A real value for an API on a sacred text is to capture all the commentary around it, and let people upload the present say contexts in which they understand it. That would be one way to “understand” a text.

That would be a crowd-sourced encyclopedia of hermeneutics.

Call it Wikineutics.

The API is the last part of the puzzle you should solve. The data storage format and queries are the real problem.

If you understand Arabic and are interested in the exploration of the history of Muhammad, Islam, and the Arabic language, I'd recommend checking out https://www.youtube.com/c/KhaledBalkin

Ah remind me days when I made an MSN messenger Quran bot in 2005 and then Twitter bot in 2009. Both used Quran data in XML format which I later converted into Sql.

Good attempt!

Which version of Quran is this? There are 30 different Qurans and if I remenber 6 of them are in wide use. For example Quran in Egypt is different than in the Quran in Turkey.

There is only one Quran. Perhaps you are referring to differences in line or page numbering?

That's a myth. There are many different versions: https://answering-islam.org/Green/seven.htm

No, it isn't. There is 1 version. This myth keeps getting proposed by, quite frankly, anti-Muslim bigots of various types and persuasions, across the centuries. It has been repeatedly debunked.

And you will get the same answer from any of the multitude of non-Muslim professors in Islamic Studies faculties from universities throughout the non-Muslim world.

And in other news, no - the world is NOT flat. That myth was also debunked, long ago.

Mods - this is a blatent attempt to drag what is an interesting thread into the realm of Islamophobia and the resultant mud slinging that comes with it. Isn't there anything you can do to nip this sort of nonsense in the bud?

This has been debunked ad infinitum, and Christians have never provided a rebuttal beyond their first shout into the wind (ie. that answering-islam.org link you provided).

https://yaqeeninstitute.org/read/paper/the-origins-of-the-va...

What about the authenticity of the data?

It is built on top of Quran.com's API, which is a very reliable source.

Stop spreading religious BS

This is brilliant.

Is it free?

It is free yes

This is cool, dunno why the hate though. There was I think a similar one for Bible as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23737601

Yeah, I am somewhat appaled by that too, why could we not have APIs of religious texts (edit: unless it is against the particular religion in question, thus offending believers)?

Disclaimer: I am one of the contributors of the site.

I'm not religious, but I've always assumed belief in one religion means you believe other religions are false maybe even fake. To say you are a practicing _____ (insert religion), you're in essence saying my religion is right and others are wrong maybe even infidels or heathens. I can see how people who believe in these things could take offence if they're of a different belief.

It all sounds so childish to me as a current atheist. Like, who's sports team are you a fan? If not mine, then you're against me.

In fact, an API that allows access to a religious text should be useful for everyone - even those detractors of said religion.

Next up, we need a legal code API and versioning.

It's childish to have issues with someone making their religious texts available via API just because they take that religion to be false, yes. But you're sort of erecting a strawman. I don't see anyone claiming "I hate this API because I disagree with Islam.".

Also maybe this is it? Haven't checked. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/content/help/webservice.html

a law API makes sense to me because laws are updated all the time, especially when you take into consideration all the various jurisdictions. A Quran or biblical text API makes less sense to me because it is essentially unchanging static text until the religious doctrine is amended.

Three things: 1. It may not be as unchanging as you think. The different translations of the Bible (NIV, ESV, NKJV, NASB, etc.) are a pretty important facet to many, with newer translations coming to prominence in English speaking communities every ten years or so (for better or for worse, but that's another topic). I can't speak to other religious texts, but keeping new translation available could be enough of a reason alone to make an API. 2. Having an API can facilitate internationalization if you wanted to ship a project in other languages. 3. Having an easy way for a computer to look up a particular passage is a non-trivial problem to solve, and something like this could give a huge jump start for hobby/personal projects.

Yeah you could just download the Quran and reference it locally or someone could (relatively) easily roll their own version of this, but I think something like this is nice and I can appreciate it's value, even if Islam isn't my cup of tea.

[edited for clarity]

many subgroups of atheism, and many of those fight and have fought each other..

agree 100% on legal code versioning - legislation should be a version control diff with 'git blame' like things for contributors ..

Well, to take the example here of Islam, that's not entirely correct. In Islam, those who are following Judaeo-Christian belief systems are considered 'brothers of the book' (or something to that effect). The worst that some sects believe is that they are 'well meaning, but not aware of the truth of Mohamed'. I'm specifically not talking about radical Jihadist sects, but the more 'middle of the road' Muslims who are closer to the average church going American than an Al-Qaeda member.

We are talking about the Quran here right? I'm not so sure about the brotherly part.

https://quranx.com/5.82?Context=3

> Thou wilt find the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe (to be) the Jews and the idolaters.

https://quranx.com/2.65?Context=3

> And ye know of those of you who broke the Sabbath, how We said unto them: Be ye apes, despised and hated!

https://quranx.com/98.6?Context=3

> Those who reject (Truth), among the People of the Book and among the Polytheists, will be in Hell-Fire, to dwell therein (for aye). They are the worst of creatures.

https://quranx.com/5.51?Context=3

> O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust.

(I do support all efforts to make this publicly available.)

We're not talking about the Quran, we're discussing Islam. You're making pretty common error I see made in the Atheism world, where you're conflating the content of a holy text with the practice of a religion. I'm neither Muslim, nor any religion myself, but there's no sense in taking such a reductive approach.

Yes, you can mine around pretty much any holy book and produce quotes that say anything. If I recall, the bible has some passage about rabbits 'chewing the cud', as well as other absurdities. You'll find no recognized denominational Christian who practices rules derived from this though. In fact, you will notice practice even dictated by the Vatican deviates from the content of the Bible frequently as well.

In Islam, the practice I'm talking about is accepted to the point of being codified in their marriage law: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...

Section specifically allows marriage to unbelievers. Islamic scholars have expanded this into practice which allows marriage between People of the Book.

I'm a former devout Muslim writing this from Islamabad. I have personally witnessed the sheer hatred and violence perpetrated against Christians led by the verses I quoted. So don't teach me about Islam thank you.

A large portion of my family is Muslim. Many people very close to me are. Your experience does not represent every experience there is. Again, I specifically called attention to how I'm discussing the common majority of Islamic followers. You're discussing a subset which deviates from the average by a large margin. You're also discussing this in a nation known for being a hotbed of extremism. The Taliban were formed in Pakistan, so it's no surprise that there's extremists there.

Is the large portion of your family larger than a country of 200 million? "Common majority of muslims" is the western diaspora of a couple million? The nation is known for following the said book so it's no surprise they are extremists. You are not making any sense. What's next, Pakistanis are not Muslims?

I don't recall ever saying that my Muslim family were diaspora, or that the diaspora were the common majority. That's an assumption you made just to discredit me dishonestly. One person is now, as of 6 years ago 'diaspora', the rest are not and still live in their Muslim majority home country of over 40 million people. The problems you're talking about don't exist there.

You're also misconstruing my point in the least charitable way, and in the process implying that all Pakistani Muslims are extremists. I'm sure you see the problem with that. The only reason I brought up my family is that you stated very clearly that by being from Islamabad, and being an ex-Muslim you could not learn anything from me about Islam, with the implication being that I'm therefore ignorant since I lack the same experience.

All I have been trying to suggest is that the violence you are seeing is from a violent minority, who do not reflect the values of all. On top of that, I'm suggesting that the majority follow a different view of the issue that the extremists you're talking about. Which is a fact. Your argument is equivalent to saying that the Irish Christian terrorists mean that Christians hate Protestants. This is false, a small and violent minority do. To say it does would be cherry picking. No matter how many Northern Irish folks tell me until they are blue in the face that it is representative of all Christians, it will not make it true.

On top of that, you're veering into flame-war/abusive territory here. I'd suggest you review the HN guidelines, since your comments are getting less constructive each time: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough. My issue was you saying Islam doesn't consider other religions infidels. In a thread about a book which has 90% content ranting endlessly against infidels and cursing them (I'd know, I've read the entire 600 pages at least 10 times). But as you rightly say majority doesn't take that literally.

Your flamewar accusation is nonsense.

> My issue was you saying Islam doesn't consider other religions infidels

I see the disconnect. I agree that they say everyone else are infidels, however there's some infidels who are more acceptable than others. My understanding has always been that the sentiment is a lot closer to "these infidels are so close to the truth!". Or, at least, close enough to allow marriage and coexistence. This point was intended to counter the comment that religions say others unilaterally wrong. In this case, there's some acceptance that the others are 'on the right track'.

If you hold such high standards of truth (despite all of the unverifiable claims you made to bolster your case), then prove it. Take this Quran API and use the language analysis tools available today to prove to us that 90% of the content is rants 'endlessly against infidels and cursing them'.

The outcome of that will also be telling of whether or not you're being truthful of your quantitative experience of the Quran.

There's at least 6,236 verses of the Quran. Get tagging, make it an open source project, I'll contribute.

Sure but there are so many vastly different versions of Quran (because the author was illiterate and had to pass it on orally, over a period of 23 years) and paper was scarce back then. So no idea which one to start from. Open to suggestions.

> Sure but there are so many vastly different versions of Quran

Since you seem to be acquainted, can you list them and tell us what makes them vastly different from each other?

> (was illiterate and had to pass it on orally)

What are your sources for the claim that the Prophet Muhammad was illiterate? He's described as al-Nabi al-Ummi [1], an "unlettered" Prophet, meaning unacquainted with the scriptures. Sahih al-Bukhari 114 describes the Prophet[2] as literate.

[1]https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20... [2]https://sunnah.com/bukhari:114

> So no idea which one to start from.

As a follow up suggestion, why do you not start with the Quran you already read as per your statement:

> (I'd know, I've read the entire 600 pages at least 10 times).

Here you mentioned a singular Quran, ie. you were not impeded by "multiple versions" to come to your conclusion that 90% of the Quran is what you say it is... so you already know where to start.

Relax, it's a 3 day old post. You're making hate comments against Christians while asserting they're your brothers. The irony is amusing.

I never said they’re my brothers. And sure, weasel your way out.

The real irony is the one accusing hate after himself spreading hate and falsehood, while not justifying or proving any of his claims.

And as if pointing out polemical characteristics is the same as writing hate…

Don’t bother with another response if you aren’t going to focus on backing up all that you’ve said.

Of course, you and I both know you have no choice but to flee from this because there’s nothing for you to justify.

You've also linked to a Christian proselytizing blog above. Please don't claim your background represents all Muslims or even Muslims in Islamabad. Signed another Muslim.

It is common among the digital Christian proselytizing community to pretend to be ex-Muslims.

Ahlul-Kitab or People of the Book.

>To say you are a practicing _____ (insert religion), you're in essence saying my religion is right and others are wrong maybe even infidels or heathens.

I don't really want to shit on any particular religion, so I'll just say that what you've written does not apply to most religious people. Most religions have a live-and-let-live attitude when it comes to other people's religious beliefs.

The premise doesn't make much sense to me in the first place.

I think all religions are probably wrong, as far as their metaphysical hypotheses go. By the same logic, that should actually be more offensive than thinking that N - 1 are religions are wrong, not less. (I don't personally see how either is offensive, to be clear.)

Religion isn’t the answer, it’s a space for the question.

Most religious texts don’t admit a consistent reading, so the degree to which live-and-let-live applies depends almost entirely on interpretation and culture, and very little on what the text actually says.

For example, most real-world Christians and Muslims are highly tolerant of unbelievers in their everyday lives, but that is not what their books say.

> Most religions have a live-and-let-live attitude when it comes to other people's religious beliefs.

This does not apply to monotheistic faiths. The first problem is that they claim that their god is the only god. The second problem is that they prescribe punishments (death, eternal hellfire etc) for those who do not accept their god. True believers then go out and implement these policies making liberal use of both the carrot and the sword. This has been observed everywhere from ancient Egypt under the rule of Amenhotep IV to modern religions like communism where persecution of other religions is almost a given.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atenism

>This does not apply to monotheistic faiths. The first problem is that they claim that their god is the only god. The second problem is that they prescribe punishments (death, eternal hellfire etc) for those who do not accept their god.

No, your "second problem" does not apply to all monotheistic faiths.

I think technically they are henotheistic or monolatrous if they don't deny the existence and divinity of other gods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolatry

(although there are probably religious traditions that don't have an explicit view or doctrine about some of these questions, so they might be hard to classify in this framework)

Monotheistic faiths all have the same god by definition. They're really just quibbling over his attributes.

Classifying communism as a monotheistic religion is... an interesting take.

I'm not sure that I disagree. But I'm not sure that I agree, either. I'm going to have to think about it. (This is about the highest compliment that you can pay to an HN comment.)

> Classifying communism as a monotheistic religion is... an interesting take

Somewhat related. According to Primo Levi (a famous holocaust survivor), there were two classes of people who stood up well in the hell of Auschwitz. One was religious people such as Yahweh's Witnesses, and another was ... Marxists.

Levi totally got lost for words when, shortly after being liberated by Russian army, he chatted with a fellow French prisoner about how lucky they were to survive the Nazi camp, and they did so by only a slight twist of fate, and got a surprising reply: "... but Joseph was there!"

Of course, the French man was talking about Joseph Stalin. He never lost his faith in the camp.

> This does not apply to monotheistic faiths. The first problem is that they claim that their god is the only god. The second problem is that they prescribe punishments (death, eternal hellfire etc) for those who do not accept their god.

You've completely misconstrued the nature of tolerance.

First, the only valid reason to hold to any religious faith is that you are convinced that it is true. Period. This isn't a narrative among many that you can pretend to believe because it adds structure to your life or some other benefit. You believe it primarily because you think it's true. (The benefits are secondary, though you would expect them if you've got truth. Truth allows you to live in conformity with reality and your own nature and thus your own good.)

Second, you have completely misconstrued what Abrahamic religions believe w.r.t. God. God is not comparable to pagan gods. Pagan gods are just more powerful beings. Each pagan god is just one being among many. That is not the case for the Abrahamic religions, certainly not Christianity and definitive not Catholic understanding. God is the Ipsum Esse Subsistens or subsisting Being Itself. Jesus is the Logos, not some guy competing for marketshare with other gods. This sort of monotheism isn't the reduction of the pantheon to one god. It is the definitive abolishment of the superstition of pagan religion. You actually don't need to appeal to any of these religious faiths to arrive at God thus understood. All you need is metaphysics.

Third, the claim that a lack of faith in God is sure to lead you to hell has nothing to do with intolerance. That's like saying that anyone who claims that driving off a cliff will kill you or taking drugs will destroy your life is an intolerant person engaging in fearmongering to control people and keep them from having fun. If you were headed toward a cliff, or about to shoot up some heroin, wouldn't you want someone to tell you that you'd about to ruin your life or kill yourself? If someone believes that a lack of faith will lead to your eternal damnation, then it is rather a sign of charity and love that they should let you know you're in danger, even if they're wrong. You can appreciate the concern at the least. You seem to be suggesting the absurd idea that it is intolerant to be certain of your beliefs and thus certain that someone else is in error. That's preposterous. What's intolerant is this definition that requires people to artificially deny their certainties and "tone it down" because their beliefs make some people feel uncomfortable for some weird reason. Mind you, believing a lack of faith is a path to hell does not imply forcing people to accept that faith. The Catholic and Christian tradition recognizes the need to evangelize, but not the legitimacy of coercion. Coercion doesn't even make sense since free assent is necessary for faith to be authentic anyway. All you'd get are people pretending to believe to avoid unwelcome consequences, and that's pointless and would constitute fraud at best (for which they might not be culpable if the coercion were severe enough). And FWIW Catholic tradition as far as I know is more or less consistent in at least suspecting that most CATHOLICS probably end up in hell.

> You've completely misconstrued the nature of tolerance.

I look at tolerance in practical terms. What the religious texts say, or how scholars interpret those texts is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is real world actions.

If the true believers of a religion have consistently punished people for apostasy, or indulged in forced conversions of conquered peoples, or placed restrictions on the practice of other religions, then I don't consider that religion (or its practitioners) to be tolerant.

> you have completely misconstrued what Abrahamic religions believe w.r.t. God.

I would rather say that my statement is redundant. But "the first problem is that monotheists are monotheistic" sounds absurd. Still, at least the Quran makes a distinction between the God of the Quran (Allah) and any other god (ilaah) when it claims that "there is no god but Allah."

> a lack of faith in God is sure to lead you to hell has nothing to do with intolerance. [...] You seem to be suggesting the absurd idea that it is intolerant to be certain of your beliefs and thus certain that someone else is in error.

If this principle limited itself to words and not deeds, I would probably agree. My issue is with the "carrot and the sword" part. That is intolerance manifesting in physical form. And there are hundreds of millions of people who have borne the brunt of this intolerance over the last few thousands years.

> The Catholic and Christian tradition recognizes the need to evangelize, but not the legitimacy of coercion.

Nice ideas, but they are not reflected in actual actions taken by Christians over the course of history (same goes for most religions and related ideas). Theorycrafting about >1000 year old stories didn't help the Cathars or the Sephardim much, and it isn't going to help anyone in any real religious conflict nowadays either.

>unless it is against the particular religion in question, thus offending believers

Based on how many religions and sects of these religions out there, it is entirely unfeasible to have that as a criteria for anything. Human knowledge/text no matter what it contains could have APIs just fine.

I think it has less to do with the content of the API and more to do with the fact that it's essentially a way to query a small number of megabytes of structured data. You could encode the whole thing as JSON or SQLite and eliminate the network round trip (latency, security footprint, privacy implications) entirely.

In fact, the memory usage required to establish a few TLS sessions might even be greater than the size of the full dataset.

I’m sorry why wouldn’t I just download the whole text? It’s a document?

People may want to not only read but build apps, websites, include the text, translate, etc. So it's more about programmatic access to the text. If you see Quran.com this is exactly what it does.

why can't you have programmatic access to local data though? Store the data in a sqlite database if you care to. there are all sorts of different clients that interact with local or embedded data

I'm not a muslim, but I do build a lot of tools for myself (and to a lesser degree for the public), and open APIs like these are incredibly convenient. Saves me from having to do a lot of data processing.

I believe the gist of the question was "why provide remote access to data that is just several megabytes in size?". You could easily pack both the code AND all the data into a single package. Equally convenient AND works offline at the same time.

good explanation summarizing my critique as well

Is it freely available in a structured, machine readable «here is verse XX» format?

I could ask the same for other holy texts, I guess.

I bet pretty much all of them will be. People have all sorts of weird hobbies, so for every holy text three thousand years old, there will be at least six machine-readable versions.

Didn't you hear? APIs are the new religion. ;)

It's a shame this was flagged. It's unclear why.

Likely because Muslims are very prickly.

We've banned this account for religious flamewar. Not cool, and not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28595832

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

For context, there are a lot of people that also only want the Quran to be consumed in a certain way, such as original language variant, possibly even publisher, binding format.

So English via API doesn't satisfy that.

Could you elaborate?

Or just downloaded it as a PDF, from for example wikimedia: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/The_Holy...

Or even buy a copy of the book! We can do anything if we throw out all our requirements!

Can you explain how I'd make calls from a frontend to a PDF? I'd like to include various search terms, and then get back well-structured data.

Is this something PDF's recently started supporting?

cool

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