As Robert Spencer noted briefly here, according to the four hostages just freed in a daring raid in Nuseirat, they were required by their captors to read the Qur’an. 

Could a more sinister form of mental torture be devised? But it was not meant as a torture. 

These devout Muslims who held them captive believe the Qur’an to be the most beautiful and splendid of all works, the inspired word of Allah. 

This belief in large part stems from Surah Al-Isra (17:88), which states: “Say, Indeed, even if mankind and the jinn assembled to produce something like this Qur’an, they could not produce anything like it, even though they were helpers one of another.”

Now those four hostages — Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40, have been rescued from their Hamas kidnappers and have returned home, to Israel. 

They are safe. They are sound. They are glad to be back in the bosom of their families. And they are absolutely delighted, I am sure, not to any longer have to endure reading the Qur’an, with its “endless iterations,” its “longwindedness,” and its “insupportable stupidity.”