1-Bibical Prophets in the Qur'an and Muslim Literature
(Curzon Studies in the Qur'an)
Roberto TottoliThis book explains what the Muslim tradition has to say about Biblical figures. The first part deals with the Qur'anic treatment of the subject, giving a full analysis of the features and characteristics of the narrative parts of the text dealing with Biblical prophets, along with an analysis of the Qur'anic concept of prophetology. The second part of the book is dedicated to the general Muslim literature dealing with the prophets. This is a literary history touching on various genres of Muslim literature. It also gives many passages in translation, and provides a study of the motifs and contents of the traditions.
2-th Reverence for the Word:
Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Editor),
Barry D. Walfish (Editor),
Joseph W. Goering (Editor)
This volume is a trilateral exploration of medieval scriptural interpretation. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are often characterized as religio-cultural siblings, traditions whose origins can be traced to the same geographical region and whose systems of belief and institutional structures share much in common. A particularly important point of commonality is the emphasis that each of these traditions places upon the notion of divine revelation, especially as codified in the text. During the medieval period the three exegetical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam produced a vast literature, one of great diversity but also one of numerous cross-cultural similarities. The three sections of this book, each of which begins with an introduction to one of these exegetical traditions, explore this rich heritage of biblical and Qur'anic interpretation.
Book DescriptionThis volume is the first trilateral exploration of medieval scriptural interpretation. The vast literature written during the medieval period is one of both great diversity and numerous cross-cultural similarities. Here, McAuliffe explores this rich heritage of biblical and Qur'anic interpretation.
3-Women in the Qur'an, Traditions, and Interpretation
Barbara Freyer Stowasser
Women and the Qur'an, Traditions, and Interpretation presents the Qur'anic revelations on female figures associated with God's prophets from Adam to Muhammad. Revealed narratives and legislation are then pursued through their medieval, modern, and contemporary interpretations. The theological exegetic sources here chosen, all Sunni include the major classical works as well as, for the modern period, examples of modernist, traditionalist, and fundamentalist exegesis. For Hadith materials beyond the theological tafsir, Stowasser analyzes both popular narratives of the "tales of the prophets" genre and also representative samples of the classical historical and legal Hadith. A close reading of modern sources, including by lay writers, shows the waning influence of these traditional materials in present-day Islamic thought.
By telling the stories of the women of sacred history in Qur'an and interpretation, this book presents an introduction to past and present Islamic paradigms of doctrine and their socio-economic and political applications. Stowasser establishes the link between the female figures as cultural symbol, and Islamic self-perceptions from the beginning to the present time. 4-thinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought
by
Daniel Brown (Author),
Charles Tripp (Editor),
Julia A. Clancy-Smith (Editor),
Israel Gershoni (Editor),
Roger Owen (Editor),
Yezid Sayigh (Editor),
Judith E. Tucker (Editor)
Cambridge Univ Pr (Trd) 01 March, 1999 Paperback
Questions about the authenticity and authority of sunna have long been of central importance to the study of Islam, especially to those concerned with Islamic law. In this fascinating study, Daniel Brown traces the emergence of modern debates over sunna, focusing in particular on Egypt and Pakistan where these controversies have raged most fiercely, and assesses the implications of new approaches to the law on contemporary movements of Islamic revival. Using the case of modern Islam as a starting-point, the author considers how adherents of any great tradition deal with change.
Contents Introduction: the prism of modernity
1. The relevance of the past: classical conceptions of Prophetic authority
2. The emergence of modern challenges to tradition
3. Boundaries of revelation
4. The nature of Prophetic authority
5. The authenticity of hadith
6. Sunna and Islamic revivalism
7. Conclusion: the spectrum of change.
The subject of Daniel W. Brown's Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge: U.P., 1996; pp. x + 185. 30 [pounds sterling]) is the way in which the hadith, the traditions of Islam, which together with the Koran and the sunna, the customs of the Prophet, form the basis of the shariah, or sacred law, have been reassessed and reinterpreted by a number of Muslim scholars over the past century or more. One is inclined to murmur, `vast project', but Dr Brown has kept himself on a tight rein, confining himself largely to the work of Pakistani scholars of Islam, with excursions into the thoughts and writings of notable Egyptian commentators like Muhammad `Abduh and Rashid Rida. The sunna of the Prophet are the focus of his study: how they were transmitted and interpreted, and the divisions in the Muslim community at large to which these interpretations gave rise. Much of the impulse for the re-examination of the meaning and significance of the sunna over the past century and a half came from the advance and inroads of the Christian West into the Muslim world. The apparent inability of the Islamic religio-legal establishment, the `ulama, to resist or repulse Western ideas eventually brought about the emergence of a reform movement -- though `movement' is perhaps a misleading term for the work of individual Muslim scholars. In Pakistan, where Brown has pursued most of his research, two schools of Islamic interpretation arose in the early part of this century, the Ahl-i-Hadith (`People of the Hadith') and the Ahl-i-Koran (`People of the Koran'), the former associated with Lahore, the latter with Amritsar. As their names indicate, the one insists upon the indispensability of the sunna and hadith to interpret the meaning of the Koran, while the other holds, with equal tenacity, to the view that the Koran alone is a sufficient guide to God's will and requirements. Without coming down on either side, Brown judiciously sets out the arguments of both schools: the one that the sunna are to be taken as a source of revelation (wahy) of God's commands, along with the Koran; the other that the Koran alone can be regarded an the authentic and exclusive word of God. However, Brown also indicates that most of the criticism offered and challenges made to Orthodox Islamic doctrine in the past 150 years have been directed at the sunna, not the Koran. There is no doubt that over the past century scepticism has been growing over the relevance or authority of the sunna, even about their authenticity. The scepticism, naturally, spills over on to the hadith the traditions by which the sunna are transmitted. How reliable are they? How vulnerable have they been to corruption, with the passing of the centuries? One has only to look at present-day Western Christianity, though Brown for-bears from making this comparison, to comprehend how rapidly deterioration of belief, doctrine and practice can set in. If there is a criticism to be made of Brown's work, it is that, for a study concerned with modern Islam, it borders on the scholastic. One would dearly like to know his thoughts on the current soi-disant revival of Islam, more particularly, perhaps, as exemplified by the behaviour of the taliban movement in Afghanistan or, more sickeningly, by the conduct of the GIA (groupe Islamique arme) in Algeria. Could either of them be categorized as Ahl-i-Hadith or Ahl-i-Koran?
