As I cracked open this year’s fourth issue of The Guilfordian, I did my weekly once-over to look through the issue for face value stuff, like any glaring errors or things that looked out of the ordinary. Much to my surprise, I found a point that made me raise an eyebrow. Funny enough, when I went to my friend’s apartment, I was greeted by a similar, “Hey, this doesn’t look right.”

So I decided to look more into this nugget of misinformation, as it were, because if we are a school newspaper looking to convey truth, what we publish should be unbiased (in all sections other than Opinion), am I right?

The statement that came to my attention was a sentence in the College Republicans’ apology for Andrea Tantaros’ “very insightful” visit. The sentence reads, “The Quran is supposed to be an extension of the Old Testament in the Bible,” written by Will Moore, Guilford College Republicans president.

Well, I’m not well versed in religious studies, but even I knew something was amiss about this statement. Since I’m a psychology major, I did the one thing psych has taught me to do well over the years: research. After skimming through a related blog, I decided to cross-reference the info I found with people I thought were knowledgeable about the subject such as Director of the Friends Center and Campus Ministry Coordinator Max Carter and Daniel Vasiles ’12. Their info on the topic matched what I found on the blog.

In summation, the info says that the Quran is not an extension of the Old Testament. As a matter of fact, the Islamic faith does not even give any merit to the Old Testament. One major reason is because the Torah (or Old Testament) is seen to be corrupted through its iterations over the years by human translators. The Quran is seen as a pure and direct gospel of the word of God. The blog went so far as to point out some inconsistencies in the Torah’s text, like “Did David take with him 700 horsemen (II Samuel 8:4) or 7000 horsemen (I Chronicles 18:4)?” All in all, the moral of the story is to check your sources before you say something like that.

Well, this was a fun excursion into looking into details of certain quotes and stories. I suggest that before you write me off, readers and writers should make sure to pay close attention to works they read and write. Inconsistencies are everywhere, and I got lucky finding this. If you find a few yourself, I suggest you take a trip of your own to look behind the curtain. You never know what you’ll find.