[mahmud]

The Quran uses the royal-we consistently. It's an entirely big fat condescending lecture cum morality tale.

One of my favorite verses reads "We have created man in the greatest form, we then made him the most deformed" (speaking of decaying corpse)

لقد خلقنا اﻻنسان في احسن تقويم. ثم رردناه اسفل السافلين

[abdulhaq]

No, poor mistranslation there. "We have certainly created man in the best of stature; Then We return him to the lowest of the low, Except for those who believe and do righteous deeds, for they will have a reward uninterrupted." "The Fig" 95:4-6

[mahmud]

Thank you for the correction :-)

I'm not a believer but I read the Quran from time to time. Pretty potent stuff. The imagery is rich!

انا صببنا الماء صبا، ثم شققنا اﻻرض شقا. فأنبتنا فيها حبا، وعنبا وغضبا، وزيتونا ونخلا

[cturner]

Until I'd read that I'd not realised what a powerful play the royal we is. It's an attempt to craft the identity of the listener into the project of the speaker. In its own way a hack - it makes for our reasoning via our language processing.