Last week we received an inquiry about publishing an English version of the Koran for PocketBible. This isn’t the first time we’ve been approached with the idea.
As you may know, I wrote the first version of QuickVerse back in 1988 and took it to Parsons Technology. Within just a few weeks after starting work there, a lady came into the office carrying a copy of the Koran. Apparently her recently deceased husband (whose name I don’t recall) had created one of the most popular English translations of the Koran. She wanted to know if we were interested in publishing it.
We ultimately decided not to do it for a couple of reasons, and those reasons became the basis for our thinking on the subject (and related publishing opportunities) over the last twenty-plus years. First and foremost, we were a Bible software company, not a religious software company. We were Christians interested in Bible study, not scholars interested in comparative religious studies. We simply weren’t interested in spending any time on something that wasn’t going to do any good for Christians interested in studying the Bible.
Second, we knew that publishing the Koran was like the proverbial camel who gets his nose into the tent. Sure, we could publish the Koran — perhaps under the theory that doing so would help some Christians better witness to their Muslim neighbors — but next thing we knew, I’m sure there’d would be commentaries and other reference material that we would need to publish to support it. Pretty soon we’d be pressured to publish all kinds of Muslim material, none of which we personally had any interest in.
So when this opportunity came up last week my immediate reaction was “no”. However, it occurred to me that things were a little different now than they were twenty years ago. With the rise of Islamic terrorism there is more interest these days in understanding Islam so that we can be better equipped to win Muslims to Christ. So I decided to post a message on our Facebook fan page asking our fans there what they thought of the idea.
It was going to take an overwhelming tide of “yes” votes to change my mind. I have absolutely zero interest in doing anything to promote the Koran. You’ll notice there’s no picture in the upper right corner of this article. That’s because our stock photo supplier didn’t have any pictures of Muhammad or a burning Koran. I can’t imagine wasting any of my time on tagging the Koran for PocketBible.
In the sixteen hours or so that the question was up on Facebook, we received over 60 replies from 46 different people. 14 people were in favor of the idea and 30 against. A couple didn’t care one way or the other.
There was some controversy in the comments, with 9 of you essentially calling for a boycott of Laridian if we were to do this. Several people seemed to think we were already in the process of doing it, and three of you “unliked” our Fan page during those sixteen hours (two more of you “liked” us so our net loss was only one). I was a little disappointed that despite three follow-up comments from me there were still people who didn’t understand that we were just asking a question, not converting to Islam. On the other hand, at least one negative comment was deleted after I replied and the person had more time to think about their initial knee-jerk reaction.
As I pointed out on Facebook, the Koran is available for Logos in both English and Arabic. I haven’t heard of a mass boycott of Logos, so perhaps this isn’t as contentious as it might appear from our unscientific poll of Facebook fans. Or perhaps you expect less of Logos. 
I’ve deleted the post on Facebook so as to limit any further confusion on where we stand on this issue. Suffice to say that the idea of publishing the Koran in PocketBible was always a long shot, that we were just asking for your opinion, and that we have not been mass converted to Islam, despite what a number of you apparently think.
Last time I checked, we had all the.volumes that were available to us electronically. I’ll check again.
I am a long time customer of Quickverse and Laridian software. I think you guys do good work. I am also a customer of Logos (one of the larger sets). I think the difference is audience. Laridian is affordable and accessible to everyone at any level. For many, it might be the their initial introduction to a electronic bible or even a bible in general. For this reason, I think having a Koran version could cause confusion. At the very least confusion as to what your company is all about.
Logos, which apparently has the Koran (I did not know this until now), is really aimed at a different audience. That audience consists mostly of students, scholars, preachers and teachers. I am not saying Laridian software is not useful to those people just that the typical Logos customer falls into those categories. In that case comparative religion studies would require a Koran, Book of Mormon, etc.
Just my 2 cents.
Steve: I agree the Logos and Laridian customer bases are different. Even when we were at Parsons Technology we strove to be the “people’s product” as opposed to the “scholar’s product”. This affects everything from features and content to price and marketing strategy. It’s why we’ve never, in twenty years, made original language research a priority. We believe the people who write English commentaries and dictionaries are better at translating Greek than 99% of our customers who have taken college-level Greek, so we try to provide lots of good reference material instead of expecting everyone to do their own original translation of the Bible texts.
With all that in mind I think you’re correct that the Logos customer base (in general) is going to be more accepting of a Logos Koran than our customer base would. This is both because they’re coming at their Bible study from a scholarly rather than a primarily personal application perspective, and because they’re more likely to have the background to understand the Koran and how to apply it to their study of scripture. They may be the people writing the commentaries that our customers will later read. So if there’s a reference to the Koran to be made, we can give it to you through our existing reference materials instead of expecting you to buy a Koran and go figure it out for yourself.
As you said, this is not to say that either Logos or Laridian software is superior or inferior to the other, but rather that each company is targeting a different audience with their products. There are a lot of people out there who just want to have the Bible and some basic reference materials on their phone so they can have it with them at church and for doing their personal Bible study. They’re not asking for transcriptions of the Dead Sea Scrolls so they can do original research.
Happy to hear of your decision on a Koran software package. Most importantly your basis for he decision orginally I believe was and is still the best way to make the final decision.
There is plenty of tech talent among Muslims and if they wish to have a SW version for smartphones, they will certainly find that talent.
As a Christian I dislike coming across as ‘anti’ but your beliefs should be the bottom line basis for your decision and I just don’t see a Christian as the one who should be supporting Islam in this way. You have plenty on your plate already just supporting the two leading smartphone platforms as well as the legacy platforms you already support.
You don’t have to ‘go negative’ just keep your focus.