The track was originally part of their 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. It is considered to be one of the inspirations behind modern music sampling. The album was recorded on analogue equipment and features samples of "found objects", Arabic singers, radio DJs, and an exorcism. The album was released in February 1981 and rereleased as a 25th anniversary expended edition in 2006 (March in the UK, April in the US). With the new release seven new tracks were included. What it does not include however is the track Qu'ran. What made the track so controversial is that fact that it features Algerian Muslims chanting sections of the Qur'an. David Byrne had this to say in an interview about not including the track in the release:
"Way back when the record first came out, in 1981, it might have been '82, we got a request from an Islamic organization in London, and they said, 'We consider this blasphemy that you put grooves to the chanting of the Holy Book.' And we thought, 'Okay, in deference to somebody's religion, we'll take it off.' You could probably argue for and against monkeying with something like that. But I think we were certainly feeling very cautious about this whole thing. We made a big effort to try and clear all the voices, and make sure everybody was okay with everything. Because we thought, 'We're going to get accused of all kinds of things, and so we want to cover our asses as best we can.' So I think in that sense we reacted maybe with more caution than we had to. But that's the way it was."
Qu'ran is featured as part of the temp score in early mixes of the film (the song choice is credited to Ridley Scott), however with the new release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut, The "dancing girls with hockey masks" scene was reinstated back into the film and with it the temp music thus making it part of the "official" soundtrack.
Qu'ran will be included in this collection.