Who is the Qur'an speaking to ?
The message of the Qur'an is universal, i have no doubt in that.
Time and time again, various prophets from different eras were named as "muslims" in the Qur'an.
To be a muslim is to submit to god and everyone who believes in Allah and the hereafter is our brother in religion.
Yet, when it comes to the law the "mu'minun" were supposed to uphold, am I the addressee ?
It may appear as a strange question but from what read, the Qur'an is highly interactive with it's orignal audience. It talks about their struggles and guides them while narrating the stories of the old to extract unchanging moral truths.
When addressing the jews and Christians, the Qur'an isn't really keen on them observing the islamic rituals, rather it tries to purify their ideology from association and deviance.
This leaves me with a question, am i supposed to read the Qur'an as an observer who extracts moral lessons from the long gone 6th century arabs or am i addressed in the pages of the book ?
While I'm very pleased by following Allah's command, (and I'm an arab), it's obvious that a lot of the islamic rituals are very arab-centric.
You pray in Arabic, you perform pilgrimage in mecca, you observe the arabic lunar months, you even do animal sacrifices annually which somewhat imply that you're from a pastoralist background.