The Koran

A groundbreaking, feature-length documentary by award-winning filmmaker Antony Thomas, The Qur'an asks what Islam's holiest book actually says about issues such as equality, punishment, peace, other faiths and suicide bombing. The film is part of a special week of powerful and thoughtful programmes that aim to de-mystify, as well as celebrate, the world's most talked-about religion and offer an insight into the lives and beliefs of Muslims across the globe. The Qur'an is a powerful and often beautiful journey through the Muslim world to discover how a text that inspires peace and tolerance in the vast majority can also allow a minority to find justification for violent conflict and terrorism. Well over a billion Muslims believe the Qur'an to be the word of God, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad nearly 1,500 years ago. From women's rights to freedom of speech, and from punishment to forgiveness, it touches on all aspects of life. Yet this one volume, often seen as a unified code for living, includes a huge array of attitudes. In some Islamic states girls are denied the right to an education, and women may not vote or drive, but in others women lead political parties. And while there are Muslim countries where executions by stoning, hanging and beheading are carried out in public, elsewhere the death penalty has been abolished altogether. This powerful film asks how - if the Qur'an is the ultimate and changeless message of God - such differences are possible, and looks at what the book actually has to say. And it meets some of the vast range of people living according to their understanding of the Qur'an, from Grand Ayatollahs to peasant farmers, as well as leading Islamic thinkers across the world.