World's Most Confusing E-Mail

Here is an e-mail I received on Saturday evening from a rather bookish girl in my "Quranic Thought" class. She and I shared a reading and had to do a joint presentation on this Syrian guy's theological ideas (which, as you can see, were totally confusing.)

Anyway, sometimes I think I'm functionally smart... but then I receive notes like this and I feel like a real tard...

Hey! I don't know if you've gotten around to reading our chapter on Shahrour yet, but when you do, please tell me if you have this same problem:

On Page 275:

"Shahrour assigns to the fourth form *anzala* the delivery of a message by which its reception by all intended addressees is uncertain, while its reception is categorically implied with the usage of the second form *nazzala*."

So: al-inzal (form four) would designate transmitted but not-necessarily-received messages, and al-tanzil (form two) would designate transmitted and necessarily received messages. Right?

HOWEVER.

On Page 276:

The uses of al-tanzil ("outside human senses") and al-inzal ("perceivable") in the figure is the other way around.

"The term *al-tanzil* is assigned to the process of objective, other-human communication (reception by human beings is uncertain...)... while the term *al-inzal* reflects the 'process of changing a matter outside the human mind from something unperceived to something perceived.'"

Am I reading this wrong? Or is the article contradicting itself? I'm only bothering you about it b/c I don't want to point out in class that Christmann must have messed his verbs up, when it's really just me being and idiot. :)

Anyway. I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. See you on Monday!

OK, aside from the first and last sentences, WTF did that say?

I had to re-read it about eight times before I even had a clue as to what she was asking me. That didn't help much, especially since I hadn't so much as glanced at the reading as of Saturday (I mean, hey, it's Saturday night... why would I be reading this crap on a Saturday night?). However, I loved that she wondered if I was having the same problem. Hahahaha!

"So you're sayin' I've got a chance!"

In an effort to be a good colleague, I did pull out the reading, and after 20 minutes of staring at this crazy guy's diagrams and language charts, I thought I understood it a tiny bit better, but even then I wasn't prepared to give this girl a response.

In the end, I erred on the side of caution and just told her I thought she was right, but I referred her to a couple of Arabic teachers, who hopefully understand this shit a little better than I do.

The moral of this story? It just made me realize (yet again) that I am in no way shape or form cut out for academia.

Guess I should start job hunting soon. Ugggghhh...