Category Archives: Islamic Texts

The Quran as a Great Book: Muslim Perspectives, 3

Calligraphy, Islam: Introduction, Qur'an


A 9th- or 10th-century leaf of the Qur’an in Kufic script


[The following is part three of a series on a lecture presented in the Hofstra Great Books Series on December 5, 1993. For part two, click here.].

1. Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds

If there is a phrase in Arabic as frequently used as the bismillah, it is no doubt the hamdillah. Since God is perfect, God alone has the right to receive praise from humanity. God deserves this verbal praise because this mercy comes of his own volition; it was not forced, it was freely given. We are also reminded in these opening words that God rules; he is the rabb of the worlds that be. The word rabb in Arabic has a number of related connotations, including master or lord, chief, determiner, provider, sustainer, rewarder, and perfector. The worlds, perhaps better rendered straightforwardly as the universe, indicated here encompass the material and the immaterial, of flesh-and-blood and of spirits, of those who are well guided and those who are misguided. Whatever is, God is the ultimate master of it. While a non-believer might read this as a base for fatalism, a Muslim sees it differently as a fundamental reason for hope. God’s will will be done, but this hardly frees the believer from doing his or her part, particularly when no one can speak definitively as to what God’s will is in a given matter. The meaning of Islam, after all, is submission.

2. The Compassionate, the Merciful

3. Master of the Day of Judgement

The term malik is that which is used in Arabic for the master of a slave, the owner of property, and the king or sole ruler. For the Muslim, God is the ultimate master of all things. He is not just a judge dispensing justice; God renders reward and punishment (the implication of judgement day) because He alone is the authentic source for such judgement. Who else has this kind of authority, but the one who creates everything and sustains everything? We are reminded quite literally as well that Islam preaches a final judgement, one beyond the grave, a future resurrection of the dead – an idea hardly unique to this revelation. But the Muslim is consoled by the realization that no matter how bad things are (and in many Muslim countries, things are pretty bad right now) God will be the ultimate judge. Continue reading The Quran as a Great Book: Muslim Perspectives, 3 →

The Quran as a Great Book: Muslim Perspectives, 2

Anthropology/Sociology, Calligraphy, Islam: Introduction, Qur'an


Quran in Naskhi script written by the celebrated Turkish calligrapher Hamd Allah (15th century, Topkapi Museum


[The following is part two of a series on a lecture presented in the Hofstra Great Books Series on December 5, 1993. For part one, click here.].

So why am I here?

Let me begin with my discipline. I am an anthropologist by training and experience and a life-long student of Arabic (as a dynamic language and as an extraordinary corpus of folklore and formal literature). You may wonder why an anthropologist would stand before you to discuss a great book, an anthropologist who should seem to be more at home studying “primitive”, non-literate people (who can sadly boast of no “great books”.. Perhaps we should have a “Great Oral Traditions” series).

You see, as an anthropologist, I do not so readily discriminate between societies with books and societies technically without them. More specifically, as a cultural anthropologist, my ethnographic research (that is, my personal observations and documentation of what people do, say they do, or don’t do and think they should do) was in the Arab Islamic country of Yemen (located southwest of Saudi Arabia across the horn of Africa from more newsworthy Somalia). While many of the Yemeni men and women I knew in the field were not formally literate, they were clearly part and parcel of a religion of the book; as Muslims with an impressive local history they all related to the Quran as a vital text and they all (even if unschooled) knew by heart portions of the Quran, at a minimum the fatiha I recited at the start. To talk meaningfully about the Yemen I observed and studied and not to know something reasonably substantial about the Quran that Yemenis revere, would seem to me absurd, or at the very least the sloppiest sort of scholarship. Continue reading The Quran as a Great Book: Muslim Perspectives, 2 →

The Quran as a Great Book: Muslim Perspectives

Books You Should Read, Calligraphy, Islam: Introduction, Qur'an


The fatiha in an Arabic manuscript of the Quran


[The following is a lecture presented in the Hofstra Great Books Series on December 5, 1993].

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ
الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ
إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينُ
اهْدِنَا الصِّرَاطَ الْمُسْتَقِيمَ
صِرَاطَ الَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ غَيْرِ الْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا الضَّالِّينَ

In the name of God, the infinitely Compassionate and Merciful.
Praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds.
The Compassionate, the Merciful. Ruler on the Day of Reckoning.
You alone do we worship, and You alone do we ask for help.
Guide us on the straight path,
the path of those who have received your grace;
not the path of those who have brought down wrath, nor of those who wander astray.

What I have just recited in Arabic is the Quran’s opening or fatiha, consisting only of seven short verses, the first of some 114 chapters of varying length. This is the most oft repeated part of the Quran, recited daily by millions of Muslim men and women during each of the five regular prayers. So integral are these opening words in the revelation of Islam that they have been called the “essence” (literally “mother”) of the Quran (Umm al-Quran ), or as some say, “the Lord’s Prayer of the Muslims.” This fatiha is the opening salvo of a scripture revered as God’s most basic message by more than one billion people on earth today. For these Muslims, most of whom live outside the Middle East, the Arabic Quran is not only a great book but quite literally “the” great book. While non-believers would not approach this book as a true revelation, no one can deny that it is a scripture that has been influential in shaping history across continents for almost 15 centuries and will continue to influence the lives and politics of many of the world’s peoples for a long time to come.

My interest tonight in talking about the Quran differs somewhat from most of the lectures in this series. I feel no need to convince you as an audience in an academic setting that the Quran is a significant text, one of those few great books that we cannot afford to ignore. This is made even more poignant in light of the perceived threat by many in our society of a so-called “militant” Islam on the march against Western Civilization. In our collective cultural ignorance, the Quran is portrayed only as a manifesto, not because non-believers do not take the time to read it carefully but simply because Islam has been branded as a hostile and uncompromising worldview. Continue reading The Quran as a Great Book: Muslim Perspectives →

The Quran in East and West: Manuscripts and Printed Books

Conferences and Talks, Islam and Christianity, Qur'an, Teaching Resources


Burke Arabic MS 1, unsigned and undated (Iraq or Iran, before 1300 CE)

The following is a nicely done website about a Quran exhibition held at the Burke Theological Library of Columbia University in 2005 and curated by the historian Dagmar A. Riedel.

During the month of Ramadan, Muslims commemorate the revelation of the Quran to the prophet Muhammad. In Fall 2005, from October 4 until November 2, Burke Library exhibited some of its Qurans to explore during Ramadan 1426 AH how attitudes toward Islam are reflected in the books that give readers access to its revelation.

Since Burke Library was founded as a Protestant research collection, the study of Islam is not often associated with its holdings. But its small collection of Near Eastern manuscripts includes five Qurans which represent the regional esthetic traditions of Quran illumination between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries CE. Furthermore, Burke Library owns many of the seminal works of Quran scholarship published in early modern Europe, documenting how non-Muslim Europeans translated the Arabic Quran first into Latin and then into European vernaculars. The exhibition traced the process, stretching from the twelfth to the nineteenth century, by which the European approach to the Quran was transformed from an angst-ridden defense against yet another Christian heresy to the investigation of another strain of monotheism.

The 2005 project was made possible by Michael Boddy’s enthusiastic support which in turn ensured the permission of Sara J. Myers, the director of Burke Library, to go ahead with an exhibition that in the middle of the term occupied space in the Burke’s conference and reading rooms. I am also indebted to Jean W. Ashton, the director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, for lending a Quran from the David E. Smith Collection of Oriental Manuscripts for the exhibition. In the winter of 2011, Burke Library director John B. Weaver generously sponsored the web adaptation of the original brick-and-mortar exhibition.

Exhibit Curator
Dagmar A. Riedel

Muhammad Asad Between Religion and Politics

Anthropology/Sociology, Islam and Christianity, Islam: Introduction, Qur'an, Scholars


by Talal Asad, Islam Interactive, May 21, 2012

In April 2011 an international symposium was held in Riyadh, under the auspices of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies as well as the Austrian Embassy to Saudi Arabia, on the life and work of my father. The conference as a whole was entitled “Muhammad Asad – A Life for Dialogue,” but I was asked by the organizers to write specifically on “Muhammad Asad Between Religion and Politics.” Unfortunately I was unable to attend the symposium so I sent in my written contribution to be read out by someone else at the meeting. What follows is a slightly elaborated version of the argument I sent.

I should begin by correcting a view that has become common among people interested in my father’s life and work, that his conversion can be seen as the building of a bridge between Islam and the West. He has even been described by some as a European intellectual who came to Islam with the aim of liberalizing it. Nothing could be further from the truth. When he embraced Islam (aslama, “submitted,” is the Arabic term) he entered a rich and complex tradition that had evolved in diverse ways – mutually compatible as well as in conflict with one another – for a millennium-and-a-half. Thus in his own life’s work he sought to use the methodology of the medieval Spanish theologian Abu Muhammad Ibn Hazm, he drew often and copiously on the interpretations of the nineteenth-century Egyptian reformer Muhammad Abduh, and again, despite strong disagreement on various points of substance with the fourteenth-century Syrian theologian Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, he attempted, like the latter, to integrate reason (‘aql), tradition (naql), and free-will (irāda), to form a coherent and distinctive vision of Islam. His view of Sufism, incidentally, was also influenced by Ibn Taymiyya, for whom it was the excess of Sufis rather than Sufism as such that was the object of reproach. In fact most of what my father published in the early years of his life (Islam at the Crossroads, the translation of SahÄ«h al-Bukhāri, the periodical Arafāt, etc.) was addressed not to Westerners but to fellow-Muslims. I would say, therefore, that he was concerned less with building bridges and more with immersing himself critically in the tradition of Islam that became his tradition, and with encouraging members of his community (Muslims) to adopt an approach that he considered to be its essence. His autobiography was the first publication that was addressed to non-Muslims (as well as to Muslims, of course), a work in which he attempted to lay out to a popular audience not only how he became a Muslim but also what he thought was wonderful about Islam. His translation of the Qur’an into English, completed in the latter part of his life, was not simply a translation: it was a detailed presentation of his final vision of Islam. Continue reading Muhammad Asad Between Religion and Politics →

Journal of Sufi Studies

Anthropology/Sociology, Islamic Texts, Literature, Sufism


Brill has just announced the inaugural issue of a new publication, the Journal of Sufi Studies. The first issue is currently available free online. the following excerpt is from the editor’s introduction:

While the academic study of Sufism has a relatively long and productive pedigree in both western and Islamic academic discourses, in recent years the mainstay philological, philosophical and literary approaches to the subject have begun to give way to a much wider array of approaches drawn from across the humanities and social sciences. In the new conversational vistas and cross-fertilizations attendant to the study of the subject that such a situation portends, it would appear that the time is now ripe for sentiment to give way to assurance. What can, for example, anthropologists bring to the table which might be of interest to art historians? How might the insights of those dealing with philosophical discourse inform the work of those interested in cultural history? How and in what ways might a study devoted to pre-modern Sufi communities be usefully placed alongside one investigating globalized Sufi networks in modern times? While disciplinary territoriality and parochialism might been seen as posing difficulties to an effort seeking to link together scholarly engagements produced in different academic arenas, creating a space for genuine conversation and cross-fertilization on a subject of shared interest is not necessarily as arduous as it may sound. This, especially when dealing with a subject as amendable to a general multivocality, scholarly or otherwise, as that which this journal looks to engage.

It is precisely such a space which the Journal of Sufi Studies looks to create: an international scholarly forum for research on Sufism which, in taking an expansive view of the subject, brings together all disciplinary perspectives so as to promote a wide understanding of the richly variegated Sufi tradition in both thought and practice and in its cultural and social contexts. By providing a forum for academic research of the highest caliber on any and all denotable instances of Sufism wherever they may be situated, the journal looks to make a distinctive contribution to current scholarship on Sufism and its integration into the broader field of Islamic studies. As such, it is the fervent hope of the editors that this journal will come to serve as a meaningful outlet for the field of Sufi studies, one which fosters, shapes and energizes the efforts of those researchers who have ventured to engage one or another instantiation of the particularly persistent feature of the Islamic tradition which is Sufism, and in doing so contribute to those processes which are presently shaping the contours of the field itself.

For the love of Islamic books

Islam in Europe, Islamic Texts, Islamophobia, YouTube Watch

The BBC has recently aired a documentary which tells the story of a group of men and women who risked their lives to rescue the Ghazi Husrav Bey Library – and preserve a nation’s history – in the midst of the Bosnian war. Amid bullets and bombs and under fire from shells and snipers, this handful of passionate book-lovers safeguarded more than 10,000 unique, hand-written Islamic books and manuscripts – the most important texts held by Sarajevo’s last surviving library.

To watch the documentary online, click here.

Ernst on Reading the Qu’ran

Books You Should Read, Islam: Introduction, Qur'an


Carl Ernst, How to Read the Qur’an: A New Guide, with Select Translations. University of North Carolina Press, 2011

by Kristian Petersen, New Books in Islamic Studies, February 27, 2012

Recent events revolving around the Qur’an, such as the accidental burning of it in Afghanistan or the intentional provocations of radical American Christian pastors, suggest that Westerns often still fail to understand the role of the Qur’an in Muslims lives. On occasion, the mere suggestion of having Westerners read the Qur’an in order to gain a better understanding of its message has incited anger and lawsuits, as was the case at the University of North Carolina in 2002.

The inability to bridge these cultural differences and the many inherent challenges the Qur’an possesses inspired Carl W. Ernst, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina, to write his new book How to Read the Qur’an: A New Guide, with Select Translations (University of North Carolina Press, 2011). He wondered how should the non-Muslim read the Qur’an? This comprehensive introduction presents a literary historical approach that enables the reader to understand how the Qur’an’s initial audience encountered it through a chronological reading, traditionally understood through the early Meccan, later Meccan, and Medinan periods of Muhammad’s career. It introduces a reading that understands the structure and form of the text as informing the meaning. Thus, Ernst examines the symmetry and balanced composition of verses, the tripartite structure of certain chapters, intertexuality within the Qur’an, and uses rhetorical analysis and ring composition as a means to approach and understand seemingly contradictory religious claims. Ernst’s text is engaging and informative while achieving its goal of making the Qur’an accessible to the non-Muslim. His new book will certainly motivate a future group of Qur’anic studies scholars and will allow the uninitiated reader to better understand what the previously veiled text says about the cosmos and Muslims position in it.

Note: To hear an audio interview with Carl Ernst about his book, click here and scroll to the bottom.