Sura to the rescue

H., a junior high school student, stopped obeying his mother. He told her he's too old for that. He even started going out in the evenings and returning late at night. The guidance counselor at his school summoned both H. and his mother for a talk. But H. just repeated his position: "I listen to my father more because I'm grown-up and responsible. My mother shouldn't interfere with the way I live my life."

What do you do with a boy like H.? Guidance counselors are likely to dismiss his behavior as a classic case of teenage rebellion, and refer to standard educational theories. Yet, sometimes professionals complain that even these well-established tools can't really help. For several weeks now, guidance counselors have been able to make use of another tool: A book called "Koran for Educating Children" (in Hebrew, published by Ben-Gurion University Press), written by Dr. Ofer Grosbard, a clinical psychologist and an expert in education, with the help of Muslim students.

Does it seem odd to expect that a teenage boy will obey the Koran? Not to those who helped write the book. Bushra Mazarib, a master's student in guidance counseling at Oranim College, explains that in certain instances, the Koran can actually provide the decisive argument. "There are parents and there are those who don't understand the language of Western culture. For them, the moment you say 'in the name of the merciful and compassionate Allah,' as a preface to a Koranic verse, they sit up, willing to listen. It is, after all, a divine text and no one argues with it," she says.

The idea to write the book came from Mazarib. After taking Grosbard's course on developmental psychology, she approached him and explained to him that the theories he was presenting in the class could not help her. "You want to know the truth? Nothing you teach will help me," she said. When he asked her what would help, her answer was clear: the Koran.

Their exchange resulted in a joint effort on the part of the 15 Muslim students in the class, who scanned the Koran in search of appropriate verses.

They began working on the project after receiving the approval of the founder of the Islamic movement in Israel, Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish; the Education Ministry's supervisor of Islamic studies, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Omri; and Dr. Faruk Mawasi, of Al-Kassami College in Baka al-Garbiyeh.

The book is made up of almost 400 Koran verses that relate to the problems faced by guidance counselors. Each verse is accompanied by a story illustrating how the verse is used, such as a short psychological-educational explanation written by Dr. Grosbard. "I realized that there was no cultural correlation between the material I taught and the group that was studying it. This is exactly what we have come to change," he said.

Many of the verses deal with issues that are usually difficult to discuss in public, such as the attitude toward women, the Koran's view of premarital sex, rape, domestic violence and violence outside the family, as well as its view of others.

A deceitful Israeli trap?

The book's publication was announced on the Foreign Ministry's Arabic language Web site, Tawasol, which prompted a series of negative reactions in the Arab world. Even before reading the book, religious clerics denounced it as an attempt to distort the Koran, the divine text that forms the basis of Islam, which, according to Islamic laws, cannot be translated, only interpreted.

Abdallah Bin Jamai, an Algerian imam who lives in Switzerland, told CNN Arabic: "The only thing I can be sure of right now is that this is not an innocent effort, given the Jews' attitude toward us." On IslamOnline, Shweiki Abd al-Latif, the deputy minister of religious affairs, is quoted as saying that the purpose of the project is to draw Muslims to fall into the deceitful Israeli trap.

The project also aroused reservations in the Islamic Movement in Israel. Its spokesman, Zahi Nujidat, told Al-Arabiyeh that the goal of the book is to raise a generation in the manners of Israel and the United States. The book was even discussed in the movement's journal, Sawat al-Haq w'al-Huriya, which wrote about it in the lead item of its Friday edition.

Grosbard, for his part, is surprised at the reactions. "This book is a work of love. It emerged from an appreciation of the Koran, not from an attempt to distort or twist it. This is a divine text that focuses on human relationships and it differs from the Bible and the New Testament," he says.

According to Grosbard, he plans to set up a Web site (Quranet) that will be accessible to all and will contain relevant quotes from the Koran, in numerous languages. He is still looking for funding for the project. "Our aim was to serve as a bridge between cultures. If you're a Muslim, this book gives you the verse you need; and if you're from the West, you discover the beauty of the Koran and find that this is a book based on respect for man," he says