Understanding Islam, and reading the Qur'an chapter-by-chapter

[The Mikado]

Reading the Koran from Sura 1 onwards is really not the way it was designed to be read. You'll get very frustrated very quickly.

For those who don't know, it's ordered longest to shortest, barring Sura 1, which is a short introductory one. For example, my Koran has Sura 2 at 36 pages, while, for example, Sura 108 (out of 114) reads:

1. In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. I Surely We have given thee abundance of good.

2 So pray to thy Lord and sacrifice.

3 Surely thy enemy is cut off (from good).

In its entirety. It's best to look up a roughly chronological ordering of the Suras rather than just starting from 1 and moving onwards. For example, 2 is a rather late one and would naturally fit in better towards the end. This is also important because the later Suras take precedence over the earlier ones and going by the number wouldn't give you a good sense of that. Muhammad's views on things were rather more elaborate and nuanced later on in his career, especially after he got to Medina.

[The Mikado]

Sura 2 is also the one where Muhammad implies that apes are the descendants of Sabbath-breaking Jews, so...it tends to be a bit off-putting when it's one of the first things you read.

(Muhammad was rather pissed at the Jews by the end of his career due to the Jews of Medina allying with the pagans of Mecca against him)

[The Mikado]

You are going to see a lot more about Jesus as you go forward. Muhammad was evidently shocked and horrified by the idea that God could have a flesh-and-blood son and viewed that as idolatrous, but was also very impressed with Jesus as a prophet. Muhammad also will maintain that Jesus didn't actually die on the cross, but rather, a body double of some sort was crucified in his place.

The Cow is slow going, to be sure. Muhammad by this point in his career was deeply incensed that the Jews of Medina, a community whom he thought would be a natural audience for his message, both scorned him and outright allied with the pagan Meccans against his Muslim community. This is about the time Islam is trying to forge an identity that isn't Arab-style Judaic monotheism.

[The Mikado]

It's a shame the Quran is organized in such a reader-hostile manner that frontloads all the difficult material. Once you get past about Sura 12 it's clean sailing, and the last 30 or so are 1-2 pages long.

[The Mikado]

When do we get to dogs as pets?  That is a local issue where I live because we have a substantial Bangladeshi community. One little Bangledeshi boy reached out a petted our dog Roby, and then recoiled, knowing that he had sinned.

All of the anti-dog condemnations in Islam are based on Hadith (traditions about the life of the Prophet), not the Quran itself. In the Quran itself, Muhammad passingly mentions hunting dogs and guard dogs in a neutral way, but there's nothing one way or the other about dogs as pets.