Qur Anic Studies

The article deal with a number of the methodological issues in the political interpretation of the Holy Qur`an. It seeks to clarify the most prevalent methodological assumptions which are necessary for the political interpretation of the Qur`an. To this end, the article appeals to the means of the "interpretational" methodology and the documentary research method. The article claims that the explanations of the interpreters of the Qur`an about the political subjects follow a nummber of meta-commentary assumptions, which have been clarified through the article. The results of this article can facilitate the concerning the political interpretation of the Qur`an, methodologies of the sacred text and the Qur`anic khowlage.

Terminologi Ayat Mutasyabihat mewadahi dua jenis ayat, mutasyabihat lafdzan dan mutasyabihat ma'nan. Ayat yang mutasyabih secara lafadz banyak ditemukan dalam al-Qur'an seiring dengan banyaknya kemiripan yang ditemukan di dalamnya. Kemiripan ayat dibentuk oleh beberapa hal baik yang bersifat pengulangan parsial maupun pengulangan utuh.

The Study Quran is an impressive volume intended for scholars and teachers in various fields, as well as for students and general readers, both Muslim and non-Muslim. It is a vital addition to the existing translations of the Quran and to the not-so-vast body of commentaries on the Quran in the English language. The volume contains a comprehensive English translation and an extensive commentary on the entire Quran, as well as several essays on a range of topics, including Quranic ethics and law, branches of theology, death and dying, and art in the Quran. It includes useful appendices on hadith citations, a timeline of major events specified in the Quran, biographies of the commentators and the authors, a solid index, and a number of maps illustrating the ancient world and Arabia in the early years of Islam.

Quoting out of context can become especially serious when dealing with religious texts. As will be demonstrated in this article, attention to context (siyāq) is essential to proper understanding and translation of the Qur'an. However, in much tafsīr writing, and in most of the translations of the Qur'an into English, as well as more general discussion of the Qur'an, we come across examples where insufficient regard to the context seriously mars understanding and results in misrepresentation of the Qur'an's message. The study of context has a central place in rhetoric (balāgha) and in Qur'anic studies in Arabic, but is hardly mentioned in Qur'anic studies undertaken in English. This article explores the significance of context in reading the Qur'an. In the introduction, I outline the various types of context, and then move on to examine its role in determining the meaning of words and sentences, and in determining the inclusion and omission of material...

This paper attempts to apply to the field of early Arab-Muslim numismatics chosen elements of a sceptical approach concerning the genesis of Islam developed recently in the field of Islamic studies in. First, the theory itself is being presented in a general sense (giving its proper place within the field of Islamic studies). Then, its theses are contrasted with the commonly accepted scholarly views on Muslim numismatics of the 7th − 8th centuries CE. A special attention is paid to the issue of intertwining of Christian and Muslim symbols on coins of the early Arab-Muslim Empire.

La lotta per l’uguaglianza di genere coinvolge donne di tutte le parti del mondo. Una delle manifestazioni di questa mobilitazione globale è il femminismo islamico. Si tratta di un appello aperto che vuole unire donne che si battono per penetrare le mura del discorso religioso dominato dagli uomini. Questo libro racconta l’esperienza delle femministe islamiche con focus sul contesto egiziano e sulla voce di Omaima Abou-Bakr. La ricerca e l’azione di questa studiosa e femminista dimostrano il potenziale esplosivo che le donne musulmane portano con sé in quanto soggetti attivi capaci di produrre conoscenza religiosa alternativa favorevole alla giustizia di genere.

The Prophet Muhammad is considered the first commentator on the Qur’an and the exemplar whose actions teach Muslims how live and act in accordance with the Qur’an. Whereas the Qur’an provides accounts of the trials that previous messengers such as Moses and Abraham faced before their prophetic missions began, there are only a few allusions to the life of the Prophet Muhammad before the onset of his prophetic mission. The function of Muhammad as a messenger of god, a spiritual guide, and a temporal leader unfolds gradually through the process of the Qur’anic revelation. Some of the earliest revelations reflect Muhammad’s hesitancy and even doubt regarding his prophetic mission, others allude to god steeling the Prophet for his mission, and others to God amending the prophet’s behavior. Verses from the Meccan period also allude to the Prophet’s developing relationship with the Qur’anic revelation, gradually becoming more accustomed to the manner in which he should receive it and work with it.

This paper deals with some semantic, stylistic and cultural problems of translation and offers modest solutions to each. Among the semantic problems discussed are homonymy; polysemy; and little knowledge of semantic change and its types including semantic generalization, specification, melioration and pejoration. The stylistic problems offered include: clarity, ellipsis, redundancy and extraposition. As regards the cultural problems discussed, they cover the problems underlying the translation of idioms, proverbs and culture-bound words.

This article addresses the question of the messianic motif of Christianity making its way into the Qur’an without wearing a badge of high New Testament Christology. It attempts to explore and understand a potentially underlying connection among the Islamic ‘Isā, the New Testament Jesus, and the Jewish messiah in a quest for the configuration of a historical Christ through the ideological and historical minefields that exist between the Islamic and the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The person of Jesus is, therefore, understood to be historical in the article without positing a response to the fundamental questions raised by the historical Jesus skepticism. What I will try to avoid in the following pages, on the contrary, is to treat and brand the Qur’anic portrayal of Jesus as a “stand-alone” concept—indifferent to the historical context of the Bible—hanging in a theological balance, as some critics would be inclined to call it. The article is linearly structured according to the major...

Late Antique Responses to the Arab Conquests showcases new discoveries in an exciting and rapidly developing field: the study of the transition from Late Antiquity to Early Islam. The contributors to this volume engage with previously neglected sources, such as Arabic rock inscriptions, papyri and Byzantine archaeological remains. They also apply new interpretative methods to the literary tradition, reading the Qurʾān as a late antique text, using Arabic poetry as a source to study the gestation of an Arab identity, and exploring the settlement patterns of the Arabian colonizers in order to explain regional processes of Arabicization and Islamization. Taken together, this volume shows how the Arab conquests changed both the Arabian conquerors and the conquered. Edited by Josephine van den Bent, Floris van den Eijnde and Johan Weststeijn. See https://brill.com/view/title/61267.

I Cent noms de Déu di Ramon Llull sono stati letti, a causa del suo prologo, quasi esclusivamente come un'opera apologetica contro l'Islam. In questo studio si dimostra come questa suggestione islamica sia solo una fonte parziale di questo poema, la cui direzione è prettamente cristiana e legata a tradizioni religiose ben radicate in Europa. Ramon Llull's Hundred Names of God has been interpreted, due to its prologue, almost exclusively as an apologetic work against Islam. In this paper, we will demonstrate that this Islamic suggestion has to be considered only as a partial source of this poem, which is aimed mainly to a Christian public and is founded in religious traditions deep-routed in Europe.

Abstract: How does Islam view substance addiction? What happens to the soul of the person suffering from addictive disorder? What happens to his relationship with God? These are some of the questions that this article tries to answer. Three models on drug addiction from an Islamic theological perspective will be explored here. Two of them are preventative models based on an understanding of society rooted in shame-culture, while the third model called Millati Islami practiced in USA is founded on the Islamic understanding of tawba (repentance). Furthermore, drugs and addiction in scripture as well as medieval Muslims society’s attitude towards them are explored. As a whole the models discussed in the article demonstrate that Islamic theology possesses the intellectual and theoretical tools to develop fully-fledged theological models of addiction, a suggestion to explore one model is made in the conclusion.

notion of existence and being but rather the infinite reality of the Real, whose knowledge and self-awareness embrace all things. Things in turn “find” and “are found” only because of the traces of wujūd within them. Employing well-known theological expressions, Ibn Arabī frequently explains that God in Himself, whom he commonly calls “the Necessary Existence” (wājib al-wujūd) or “the Real Existence” (al-wujūd al-h.aqq), must be understood in terms of both tanzīh and tashbīh. Tanzīh is the assertion of God’s incomparability or transcendence, given that “Nothing is as His likeness” (Q 42:11). Tashbīh is the declaration of His similarity and immanence, for “He is with you wherever you are” (Q 57:4). In Ibn Arabī’s way of looking at things, the rational and analytical approach to understanding wujūd, an approach that underlies the thought of the mutakallimūn and the philosophers, employs aql (“intellect” or “the rational faculty”) to differentiate and discern in terms of tanzīh, assert...

Husein Muhammad, a feminist ‘ālim or kyai of Dar al-Tauhid Islamic boarding school in Arjawinangun Cirebon, West Java, Indonesia, has written various articles and books on women issues and gender problem. Growing up in a conservative family, and graduating from Al-Azhar University, kyai Husein becomes one of the main proponents of Islamic feminism in Indonesia. Apart from leading a pesantren (Islamic boarding school), in 2000 kyai Husein established Fahmina Institute, an NGO which strives to promote community empowerment and gender justice based on pesantren tradition, and Fahmina Islamic Studies Institute, an Islamic higher education, which aims to build a tolerant and unprejudiced Indonesian Islam. This article discusses his approach in reinterpreting the Qur’ānic verses and Islamic traditions on women issues, and his contribution in the light of the discourse of gender and feminism in Islam as well as in mainstreaming gender in Indonesia. [KH Husein Muhammad merupakan ulama femin...

ABSTRAK Manusia dalam kaitannya dengan pendidikan, adalah merupakan makhluk ciptaan Tuhan yang memliki potensi untuk dapat berkembang ke arah yang positif sekaligus memliki potensi untuk berkembang ke arah yang negatif. Demikian pula keberadaan manusia di dunia yang dilengkapi dengan dua unsur, yaitu unsur jasad dan ruh, realitas yang mendasari dan prinsip yang menyatukan apa yang kemudian dikenal sebagai manusia bukanlah perubahan jasadnya melainkan keruhaniannya. Hal itu dapat dicapai jika potensi yang ada dalam dirinya diarahkan kepada yang positif melalui pendidikan.

This article aims to explain the ideas and the significance of Dr. Bilal Philips, a prominent ‘Salafi‘preacher, a major proponent of Neo-Traditional Salafism, and how his writings and activities can aid us in understanding the dynamics regarding the nature of Salafism in the West as a discursive tradition with deep roots in the Islamic intellectual history, as well as an element of global Salafi movements. As such, the article focuses primarily on identifying and analyzing Philips’ ideas on what constitutes a proper approach to interpreting the Qur’ān and Sunna in the light of the Islamic legal and exegetical tradition. After discussing the reasons why the ideas of Philips are significant for understanding Salafism in the West, the article focuses on his views on the conceptual relationship between sunna and hadīth, the broader hermeneutic characterization of the main four Sunni schools of thought (madhāhib), and issues pertaining to the correct methodology of Qur’ānic exegesis (taf...

Tawātur is the concept that if we obtain the same information through a sufficient number of independent channels, we reach certainty about that data. When applied to the transmission of Qur’ān and hadith texts, tawātur can serve as a means by which to assert the truth of a source-text, which in turn has implications for correctness of the religious belief or practice that is conveyed by the text, and hence the orthodoxy of one accepting or rejecting it. This dissertation is an attempt to unravel the twisted historical threads of the conception and usage of tawātur across diverse disciplines, with a view to discovering the extent to which tawātur was used by Muslim scholars to draw and define boundaries of Islam and of orthodoxy. I undertake a diachronic study of primary sources in theology, Qur’ānic studies, legal theory, and ḥadīth studies, with an emphasis on the first five centuries, which represent the formative period for much of Islamic thought. I explore the origins of the term and concept in kalām-circles, its eventual adoption by anti-kalām hadith-folk, its transition into legal theory and thence hadith-studies, and its application to evaluating transmission of the Qur’ānic text and its recitation and to hadiths. I find that tawātur of the Qur’ān (in the broad outlines of the ˁUthmānic text), along with some core beliefs and central rituals found overwhelming acknowledgement among Muslims as a sine qua non of Islam. However, tawātur was not successful in delineating a unanimous canon of ḥadīths, because the mutāwatir status of particular hadiths is sometimes disputed, and because of ambiguities of interpretation of some texts. Nevertheless, the dominant and majority voices in Muslim scholarship (both Sunnī and Shīˁite) reached a steady state of a two-tiered orthodoxy (corresponding to the two-tiered tawātur) that is linked to a conception that knowledge is not unsusceptible to progression over time.

A historically important tradition in exegesis, rooted in a number of scriptural passages, considers the Qur'an to be a self-similar text. This claim, while being sharply debated in literature, has never been independently tested. This paper proposes a strategy to measure self-similarity in classical Arabic texts, based on Leven-shtein distance, within the Self-Similar Qur'an (SSQ) project. The significance of self-similarity is checked against two tests: the similarity found in another religious text written in classical Arabic (the Arabic translation of the Diatessaron) and blind similarity judgments of uniformed readers on the translations of pairs of verses.

... Traductor, confeso y mártir: ocho versiones del Corán en español. Autores: Juan Pablo Arias Torres; Localización: El papel del traductor / coord. por Juan Pablo Arias Torres, Esther Morillas, 1997, ISBN 84-86408-65-2 , págs. 371-386. Fundación Dialnet. ...

Modern scholarship has largely neglected Abu’l-Raja’ Chachi Khumraki (d. c. 1124 C.E.), although he was well versed in Islamic jurisprudence and esoterism, not to mention his unique interest in classical Persian avian literature, which has not received serious, scholarly attention. To date, no study has discussed the significance of Chachi Khumraki’s bird symbolism. This essay focuses upon his conception of salvation in the Rawdat al-fariqayn (The Garden of the Two Schools)—a mysticojurisprudential manual on Islamic law and on Sufism—analyzing the author’s deployment of the motif of the Sīmurgh in the chapter entitled ‘The Salāt al-khawf [Fear Prayer]’. Further, it argues that the Sīmurgh performs two major functions: First, it attempts to bring together two rivalrous Sunni schools of law, i.e. Hanafism and Shafi‘ism, in medieval Transoxania, and second, it warns against neglecting the inner dimension of Islam, i.e. tasawwuf (Sufism). Whilst the author acknowledges the importance of practising fiqh, the Sīmurgh narrative attempts to draw the schools’ attention to the fact that the soul will attain salvation only if it eschews the shackles of the nafs al-ammārah bi’l-sū’ (the soul that commands to evil) by means of the teachings of Sufism.