I know many well-intentioned non-Muslims who've begun reading the Koran, but given up, disconcerted by its "" otherness. "" The historian Thomas Carlyle considered Muhammad one of the world's greatest heroes, yet even he called the Koran "" as toilsome reading as I ever undertook, a wearisome, confused jumble. "" (Laughter) Part of the problem, I think, is that we imagine that the Koran can be read as we usually read a book — as though we can curl up with it on a rainy afternoon with a bowl of popcorn within reach, as though God — and the Koran is entirely in the voice of God speaking to Muhammad —