Qur'aan today

Qur’anic Sharia (laws) on Divorce

2012-01-20T09:58:00.003-06:00

Note: Since I began my Journey into finding the truth about life and living, I have found Quraan to be document of common sense and the broader picture is for the society to coexist in harmony. I would say with the same sincerity that all religions preach the same essence. Prophet Muhammad had reemphasized that Islam is not a new religion, it is the same message delivered in different communities. In the following document, you can see how similar it is to our laws in the United States. - Mike Ghouse

The Qur’anic Sharia (laws) on Divorce. Triple divorce, Temporary Marriage, Halala Stand Forbidden (Haram)

By Muhammad Yunus, NewAgeIslam.com

Co-author (Jointly with Ashfaque Ullah Syed), Essential Message of Islam, Amana Publications, USA, 2009

Qur’anic concern on the prevalent customs regarding divorce

In Pre-Islamic Arabia, men could abandon their wives at whim by simply declaring, “You are to me like my mother’s back” (58:2).

Since handing down a divorce was a man’s prerogative, he needed no ground and did not even release his abandoned wife, who preferred to stay in her husband’s home for want of any other place to go. There is a tradition from Aisha reported in Sahih al-Bukhari (Acc. 134/Vol.7) that institutionalizes this custom. It reads:

“… the women whose husband does not want to keep her with him any longer, but wants to divorce her and marry some other lady, so she says to him: `Keep me and do not divorce me, and then marry another woman and you may neither spend on me nor sleep with me.”

The Justinian Code that dominated the thoughts of the era, placed a woman under the ownership of a man. After marriage the husband became her owner and treated her as he wished. Thus, he could divorce his wife by simply declaring ‘I divorce thee triply or thrice.’

A system of temporary co-habitation (muta marriage) was also in vogue that permitted a woman to live with different men when their husbands were away from home on trading or any other mission. The Shi‘itee Ithna ‘Ashari school retains the practice. Thus according to the dictum of the theologian, al-Hurr al Amili, “The believer is only perfect when he has experienced a muta [1], though there can be little doubt that the custom virtually conflates legalized prostitution. While this did not raise any question of divorce, the married women who practiced this were virtually temporarily divorced from their husbands and had no means of livelihood for themselves or their children and therefore took to heterosexual habitation as part of social norm.

The Qur’an with its key agenda “to lift from them (humanity) their burdens and shackles that were upon humanity (before)” (7:157) had to deliver the women from the curse of arbitrary divorce, conjugal oppression and lifelong bondage. At a higher plane, it recognizes the serious emotional and financial implications of a divorce for either or both the spouses, as well as the offspring of a broken marriage. It, therefore, discourages divorce by a set of well-guarded stipulations, but allows it if the alternative was life-long unhappiness for the family.

The Qur’an, however, does not consider divorced women as a social burden. It protects their financial interest and those of the children born to them from their broken marriages, permits them to remarry and treats them practically like any other unmarried women.

Context of the Revelation

In the immediate context of the revelation, the Qur’an abolishes the pre-Islamic custom that permitted a man to abandon his wife indefinitely by an oath, but retain her in wedlock, thus preventing her remarriage or freedom. It therefore declares (2:226):

“Those who vow (to abstain) from their wives must wait for four months. Meanwhile if they go back, (remember,) God is Most Forgiving and Merciful” (2:226).

The concluding God’s attribute of Forgiveness and Mercy is suggestive of Qur’anic encouragement for reconciliation between the spouses and restoration of an effective marriage tie. However, if a man remains firm in his decision on divorce, and abandons his wife for four consecutive months, he must terminate the marriage at the end of this period and release his wife (2:227).

“However, if they decide on a divorce, (let them remember that) God is All-Knowing and Aware” (2:227)

Legislation of a Time-frame for a divorce to take effect as norm for humanity

In a legally phrased passage (2:228/229) the Qur’an prescribes, among other things, a three-month waiting period for a woman under divorce notice (2:228), and commands a man who initiates the divorce to formally articulating his intention at least twice over the period (2:229), obviously in the presence of witnesses. The time-framing is reiterated in two other verses (2:231, 65:2).

“Divorced women shall wait by themselves for three monthly periods, for it is not lawful for them, if they believe in God and the Last Day, to conceal what God has created in their wombs…. (2:228). (O men, you must) pronounce the divorce over two occasions. Thereafter live together (with your mates) honorably, or part with (tasrihu) them honorably…. (2:229).

“And if you divorce women, and they reach (the end of) their term, then either live together honorably, or part with (sarrihu) them honorably, but do not keep them to injure them, (or) to exceed limits. Anyone who does that merely wrongs his own soul…” (2:231).

“And when they reach (the end of) their term, then either live together honorably, or part with (fariqu) them honorably, calling to witness two just members from among yourselves and uphold the evidence (as) before God. This is to instruct anyone who believes in God and the Last Day. (Remember,) God will find a way out for anyone who heeds Him” (65:2).

Remarriage after divorce.

The Qur’an does not permit the marriage of a divorced woman with her ex-husband after the expiry of the three month-timeframe. She must marry a new spouse, live with him as his wife and should this second marriage fail and her new husband divorces her, she could remarry her first husband after the expiry of the three month waiting/notice period (Iddat) (2:230).

“If he (the husband) divorces her (at the end of the waiting period), she becomes unlawful to him afterwards until she marries another man. If he (her new husband) then divorces her, there is no blame on the (former) couple to reunite - provided they feel that they can keep within the limits set by God. These are the limits set by God, and He clarifies them to a people who have knowledge” (2:230).

This was obviously to allow full freedom to a divorced woman to find a new spouse and marry. The absence of this clause would have led many ex-husbands to prevent their divorced wives from marrying a new spouse out of grudge that normally precedes a divorce. Accordingly, the Qur’an warns men:

“And when you have divorced women (after) they have reached their term, you must not obstruct them from marrying (their would be) spouses (azwaj) if they have mutually agreed in a fair manner. This is instructed to anyone among you, who believes in God and the Last Day. (Remember,) this is more appropriate for you and purer; and God knows, yet you do not know” (2.232).

Any permission to remarry an ex-husband after an irrevocable divorce would have led to the continuation of a pre-Islamic practice of a man divorcing his wife at whim and marrying her back at whim thereby never allowing her a separation. It would have totally frustrated the intent of the divorce: to release a woman from the bondage of a failed marriage.

Maintenance of divorced pregnant wife, and the offspring

In a clearly stated verse (2:233) the Qur’an spells out: i) the social and financial responsibilities of a man divorcing a pregnant wife, ii) the moral responsibility of his divorced wife to disclose her pregnancy, iii) the need for mutual consultation between them if they wished to put the child under the care of a foster-mother, and iv) the responsibility of the heir of the father if a child was born posthumously (2:233).

“Mothers shall nurse their children for two whole years if they wish to complete the nursing.” The father (has to) provide for them, and clothe them reasonably. No soul is to be burdened beyond its capacity. A mother should not be made to suffer for her child, nor a father for his child, while the heir (is liable) likewise. If they both wish to wean the child by mutual consent and consultation - there is no blame on them; so if you wish to give your children out to wet-nurses, there is no blame on you, provided you pay what is reasonably expected from you. Heed God and know that God is Observant of what you do” (2:233).

The Qur’an further commands men folk to supporting a divorced pregnant wife (65:6), and that they should spend according to their means (65:7).

“Accommodate them (the women in Iddat) in the manner you lodge, according to your circumstances, and do not harass them to reduce them (to straits). If they are pregnant, meet their expenses until they bring forth their burden; and if they suckle (the baby) for you, give them their due, and consult together honorably. But if you find it difficult (for her health reason, or she intends to remarry), let another woman nurse (it) on behalf of him (the father) (65:6). (In all these matters) the rich should spend (according to) his abundance, but the one whose means is limited should spend of what God has given him. (Remember,) God does not burden anyone beyond what He has given him. Surely God will grant relief after distress” (65:7).

Settlement of dower if neither marriage is consummated nor dower fixed

The Qur'an directs men to give a reasonable provision to their divorced wives, even if the marriage was not consummated (2:236, 33:49).

“There (will be) no blame on you to divorce women before you have consummated (marriage) with them, or fixed their dower (faridah), but provide for them: the rich according to his means, and the poor according to his means – a reasonable provision, a duty binding (haqq), on the compassionate”(2:236).

“You who believe, when you marry believing women and divorce them before you have consummated (marriage) with them, you do not have to count (the waiting) period for them. So make provision for them, and part with (sarrihu) them in a handsome parting”(33:49).

The verse 2:236 uses the term faridah for marriage dower, while the verse 4:4 calls it saduquat.

“Give women their dower (saduquat), as a gift but if they voluntarily favor you with anything from it, take it and enjoy it in good spirit” (4:4).

The former (faridah) connotes with a binding obligation, while the latter (saduqat), with a gift, or charity. Thus, the Qur'an leaves no ambiguity about the legal position of marriage dower: it is a binding obligation of a man towards his wife, and is performed as a gesture of goodwill or charity (saduquat) that s non-refundable. Thus there can be no question about deferring its disbursement and linking it with any other financial or post divorce transaction.

Settlement of dower if marriage is not consummated, but dower is fixed

The Qur’an states:

“If you divorce them before you have consummated (marriage) with them, but you have fixed their dower (faridah), then (give them) half of what you have fixed, unless they (the women) forgo it, or the one in whose (alladhi) hands is the marriage tie forgoes it. To forgo is nearer to heedfulness (taqwa), and do not forget to be generous between yourselves. (Remember,) God is Observant of what you do” (2:237).

The common gender pronoun alladhi, rendered above as whose, is traditionally identified with a husband, implying that only the husband can terminate a marriage that is yet to be consummated. But this purports to revoke a woman’s Qur’anic privilege to dissolve a marriage unilaterally under compelling circumstances (2:229). Therefore the pronoun alladhi must be interpreted in its common gender form, implying that either of the couple - husband or wife can lawfully dissolve an unconsummated marriage. Based on this, the pronouncements of the verse may be broken down into the following simple tenets:

• If a man initiates a divorce, he has to pay half the dower to the woman, unless she forgoes it.

• If a woman breaks the marriage from her side, she has to forgo her claim on half the dower that she would have received if the man divorced her.

• A man, who gives a divorce, has the option to forgo the exempted ‘half' part, and give full contracted dower as a gesture of generosity (fadl).

• Both the partners of a divorce should be generous to each other, and refrain from exploiting one another.

Maintenance for a divorced woman

The Qur’an declares:

“(There shall be) a reasonable maintenance for divorced women - a duty (haqq) binding on the heedful (muttaqin) (2:241). Thus does God clarify His messages to you, that you may use your reason” (2:242).

The Qur’anic injunction is in broad terms: it does not say whether a man is required to make a one off provision, or give a maintenance allowance to his divorced wife until she remarries. The Qur'an, however, asks the menfolk to use reason. Thus, if a man is required to make a provision, commensurate to his income, to a woman with whom he has only contracted marriage but not yet consummated it (2:236 above), he must be fair and considerate to the woman he is divorcing after living together as a husband and wife. He must therefore arrange spousal maintenance, commensurate to his income, and to the financial need, age, health and circumstances of his spouse. This obviously is a matter for the court to decide, depending upon the merit of the case, the prevalent social conditions and securities, and the relative financial positions of the partners in a divorce case.

The Qur’an forestalls any manipulative interpretation of its commandments

The Qur’anic dictates on divorce as discussed above date from two different periods of its revelation. The passage 2:226-242 dates from early Medinite period, while the passage 65:1-7 from mid Medinite period. The passages, separated chronologically by at least three to four years, complement each other with immaculate consistency and clarity in spelling out a husband’s obligations during a divorce. This Qur'anic repetition is understandably to help avoid (i) any misinterpretation by later generation scholars and (ii) any ambiguity on the subject.

Conclusion: The Qur’an deals with the process of divorce in a balanced and phased manner comprising a three month time frame, so that this most agonizing experience in a person’s life is faced in a balanced, phased and harmonious manner, and there is no bitterness and ill feelings between the erstwhile spouses. The institution of temporary marriage (muta) and triple divorce are in direct contradiction to the Qur’anic message and therefore stand haram. Some local customs such as Halala that allows a man to divorce his wife at the spur of the moment, such as in a state of anger or drunkenness and then force her into marriage and sexual intercourse with a friend and get him to divorce her to marry her back the next day or so totally disregarding the three month time for his divorce and that of his friend to take effect also stands utterly haram and sexually shameful sadistic. These practices that remain part of the Classical Islamic Law have defiled and demonized Islam, no matter how few Muslims practice it, and how the Muslims glorify their faith, and reduced Islam to a medieval misogynist cult in the eyes of a section of Western people as summed up By Newt Gringer the 2012 Presidential candidate from the Republicans in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington in July 2010: “I believe Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” It is time for the Islamic doctors of law to treat the Classical Islamic Law as a closed corpus - and draw a Modern Law of Islam based on its divine Sharia (the Qur’an) and not the Classical Islamic Law, which is not a word of God and contradicts the Qur’anic paradigms on many counts as detailed in a recent article:

http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamIslamicShariaLaws_1.aspx?ArticleID=5714

http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamIslamicShariaLaws_1.aspx?ArticleID=5723

Final Comment: Muslim Ulema in India are sticking to the personal law that their pre-Islamic ancestors established under the behest of Hanafi law. For the medieval era, when women were grievously oppressed in the non-Muslim word, these brazenly anti-Qur’anic laws held sway. With the liberation and empowerment of women and a quantum change in gender dynamics in the non-Muslim world – much in line with the Qur’anic message (I am not suggesting they copied it from the Qur’an for if that was so, why couldn’t the Ulema do it), it is time for the Muslim Ulema to reform their laws in line with the Qur’anic paradigms.

One wonders why a section of the Muslim Ulema in India pass Fatwas or stick to rulings that patently contradict the Qur’an, are highly misogynistic, grievously violate international human rights and so immensely preposterous (condoning incest, forcing Indian Government to pass a law to limit the maintenance of a woman after more than 30 years of wedlock.) that one finds it hard to make any candid comment lest it could be too unsavory. The least one may say about the practice of Halala is that a time may also come that a Maulvi from some obscure village of India may insist on watching and filming it as hard core evidence?? God save us from that day.

Notes

1. Azaf A.A.Fyzee, Our lines of Mohammedan Law, Oxford University Press, Fifth Edition, 2005, p. 117.

Muhammad Yunus, a Chemical Engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, and a retired corporate executive has been engaged in an in-depth study of the Qur’an since early 90’s, focusing on its core message. He has co-authored the referred exegetic work, which received the approval of al-Azhar al-Sharif, Cairo in 2002, and following restructuring and refinement was endorsed and authenticated by Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl of UCLA, and published by Amana Publications, Maryland, USA, 2009.

URL:http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamIslamicShariaLaws_1.aspx?ArticleID=6391

Quraan Videos

2012-01-09T18:37:00.001-06:00

Here is a collection of videos on Quraan by Non-Muslims:
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Flexibility of Quran for minds that are not fundamentally inflexible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XNxfT1B62uM
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Quraan Preserved

2012-01-09T07:29:00.005-06:00

Personal note - I walked away from Quran and Islam for nearly 30 years, the translations of Quran I was reading did not appeal to me, they were not polished.

About a dozen years ago, I read a verse in Bhagvad Gita, "finding the truth is one's own responsibility." I continue to study different religious texts and find that the truth has been revealed to every nation and every tribe. Indeed, that was the turning point in my life to find the truth on my own, and question my own views and what others have said about Quraan.

Over the years of research, I found out it was the work of translation, it was a hit and miss thing, most Muslims may not even be aware of the fallacy of Hilali Khan translation that I read. Then checking several translations it dawned on me that two translations were political one by the Kings who were Christians and another one by a Muslim who may have wanted to restore the Caliphate, both are historical and political and both versions have injected translations for Jews and Christians to hate Muslims and vice-versa. There is a whole industry built around it.

The culmination of my work came in the form of a Quraan Conference, and a presentation of Scriptural reading at the Parliament of World's religions. It is a very unique approach that is producing results and people are going thru the same process as I did.

Being a pluralist, I read Quraan in the light of creating a cohesive society where every one of the living being feels safe and secure when Justice is the core value of the society, to me Quraan is a pluralistic document. Like any other book, if you just think through while reading, you will enjoy this. I want to make sure you understand this, Quraan and Islam do not negate or denigrate other religions, which are all from God, but simply enhances the truth. Thank God no one has messed with the Arabic version of Quraan, it is the translations they have played with and even Muhammad Asad's translation needs updating, as Dr. Lailah Bakhtiar has doen extensive research and has corrected the the translation of Q4:34 which was mistranslated by men for nearly 1000 years.

I hope you enjoy the following article, check out the verese, go to the following link and make sure the translator is Muhammad Asad, as there are 3 others in the link: http://www.islamicity.com/QuranSearch/

Mike Ghouse
Committed to build cohesive societies
www.MikeGhouse.net
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The Qur’an was Never Edited and any Effort to Edit the Qur’an will be Self-Contradictory

A pedagogic, rationalist, secular, historic, critical study that can overrule in any ontological argument' secularist international debate and hold itself in the highest secular court of law and shut the mouths of the ignoramuses and the intellectuals skeptical of its integrity

By Muhammad Yunus, NewAgeIslam.com

Co-author (Jointly with Ashfaque Ullah Syed), Essential Message of Islam, Amana Publications, USA, 2009

There are suggestions to ‘edit out the lines (of the Qur’an) that were meant for a different time and are no longer applicable today.’ If this argument were correct, there would have been innumerable editions of the Qur’an down the fourteen centuries since its introduction. In every era and each region of Islam, the scholars would have spotted verses/ passages that were no relevance and dropped or modified them. But that is not the case. Here are the arguments:

1. The Infallibility of its text as a Divine Speech:

The opening statement of the Qur’an declares that beyond any scruple of doubt, it is a divine writ (2:2). Any suggestion to edit the Qur’an will contradict this very fundamental premise and raise the obvious question – what kind of a divine writ is the Qur’an that needs editing by humans.

The Qur’an also claims to be a book of wisdom (10:1, 31:2, 43:4, 44:4), that is made clear and distinct (12:1, 15:1, 16:64, 26:2, 27:1, 36:69, 43:2, 44:2), with all kinds of illustrations (17:89, 18:54, 30:58, 39:27) and explanations (7:52, 11:1, 41:3), sent as guidance and mercy for the believers in God (7:52, 16:64, 27:77) and doers of good (31:3), and as truth, guidance and message for all humanity (2:185, 10:108, 14:52).

It also claims to be the divine criteria of right and wrong (2:185, 25:1), the balance of justice for humanity (42:17, 57:25) and the verifier of a part of the previous Scripture that clarifies the differences between the Jews and the Christians (5:15, 5:48, 6:92, 27:76).

All these Qur’anic claims will ring hollow if a bench of jurists or a house of parliamentarians were to delete portions from it to adapt it with civilization realities of their era.

The Qur’an’s concern and seriousness to ensuring the integrity of its text is best reflected in the following early passage harshly threatening the Prophet with a fatal consequence, if he were to add anything into or alter the text of the Qur’an:

“If he (Muhammad) attributed to Us any false speech (69:44), We would seize him by the right hand (45), then We would sever his aorta (46) and none of you could prevent it (69:47).

Given that the Prophet’s followers held him in utmost veneration, the gravity of this warning, however symbolic it might have been, must have heightened their spiritual alertness to ensuring the integrity of the revealed passages as they memorized them. The passage also stood out, as it does to this very day, as a loud testimony to the divinity of the Qur’an. Had Muhammad authored it, he could never put in the passage, as no writer can ever claim to stick to a discourse, word for word; he is evolving over a long span of time, as was the case with the revelation.

2. The Qur’anic claim of preserving the integrity of its text.

As the Qur’anic revelation was underway (610-632), the pagans continued to put pressure on the Prophet to alter the wordings of the revelation (10:15, 11:113) such as by accommodating their deities. The Qur’an declares (6:34, 6:115, 15:9, 18:27, 41:42, 85:21/22)

“The Words of your Lord will be fulfilled truthfully and justly: none can change His Words, for He is All-Knowing and Aware” (6:115).

“Surely We have sent down this Reminder, and surely. We will protect (preserve) it” (15:9).

“Nay! This is a Glorious Qur'an (85:21). (Inscribed) in a Tablet (well) guarded (lauh al-mahfuz) (against corruption)” (85:22).

Whatever be the exact meaning of the expression lauh al-mahfuz, rendered as ‘Tablet (well) guarded’ that theologians hotly debated in early centuries of Islam, it denotes a divine commitment to preserve the Qur’an word for word as a cast on stone divine edict that cannot be altered by humans.

These Qur’anic pronouncements serve as irrefutable proof of the integrity of its text. Had there been any alteration of its text in course of the revelation, or any kind of tampering, the Prophet’s enemies as well as the general Arab public would not have embraced Islam during his lifetime as they would seen it contradicting its own claims. And even if, for the sake of argument, they did so under the prevalent historical setting, they would have definitely rejected the Qur’an immediately after the Prophet’s death. However, this did not happen. The Prophet’s immediate successors were as intense in their faith in the Qur’an as their predecessors during the Prophet’s lifetime. The veneration of the Qur’an among the second generation Muslims was so immense that the mere sight of its pages held up on lancer tips brought a raging battle between rival Muslim armies to an immediate halt [1]. Thus, from purely rationalist historical perspective, there can be no iota of doubt that the Qur’an was handed down to the Prophet’s successors and through them to the posterity in its original form.

3. Integrity of the preservation of Qur'an’s original manuscripts (suhuf).

As the diverse indigenous materials (palm leaves, camel hides, white stone, animal bones, hardened clay, wooden tablets etc,) that the Prophet’s scribes had employed to preserve the revelations were compiled into a single book form some 20 years after the Prophet’s death [2], doubts have been cast about deliberate or inadvertent corruption. But human memory, particularly in relation to a rhythmic composition such as the Qur’an, gets indelibly engraved in the brain. It can fade over time but unlike a written record, it cannot lend itself to a partial deletion or corruption without any detection by the memorizer. In the case of the Qur’an, the huffaz (the memorizers) must have been reciting the Qur’an regularly through those 20 years as any hafiz does this very day. Therefore, there is absolutely no likelihood for any of them to corrupt or forget any word or verse of the Qur’an without noticing a disruption in the rhythmic flow.

4. The dread of the Qur’an among its audience.

As the Qur’an was under revelation, it virtually cast a spell on its listeners. As it testifies, the Meccans kept away from it, deterred others from it and asked people to chat and make noise during its recitation, understandably, to foil its magical effect (41:26). They turned away from it in dread as if they were frightened donkeys fleeing a lion (74:49-51). The truth is all the Arabs that entered Islam in Mecca (610-622), where the Prophet was openly rejected and despised were won over by the compelling effect of the Qur’an. Its lyrical intonation from Muhammad’s mouth mesmerized the listener, overwhelmed and crushed his whole personality and compelled it into submission unawares. The Qur’an’s open challenges to match its literary grandeur or even to find a contradiction in it only heightened their awe and admiration of the Qur’an (for had Muhammad been its author or plagiarized it, he could never make these claims.

“If you (O people,) are in doubt concerning what We have revealed to Our Servant, then produce a chapter like it; and call on your witnesses besides God – if indeed you are truthful (2:23). But if you do not do (it) - and you can never do (it), then heed hellfire, whose fuel is human beings and stones - prepared for the disbelievers” (2:24).

“Don’t they ponder over the Qur’an? Had it been from (someone) other than God, they would have surely found in it much contradiction” (4:82).

“Praise be to God who has revealed to His devotee the Book, and did not put any distortion in it” (18:1).

Therefore the Arabs – both the Prophet’s followers and enemies waited in anxiety and apprehension lest a revelation may declare something terrible for them. In sum, the Arabs saw in the Qur’an unalterable commands of God – His threatening, promises, challenges and strategic guidance that served as the final word on all matters they faced including the killing of their next of kin in the battlefield. It is therefore inconceivable that a handful of Arabs will muster courage and conspire to alter its verses.

5. The Qur’an’s defense against any possible doctoring during the revelation (610-632) or the later years until compilation (632-652).

A historical document is doctored either to glorify its architects/ promoters or record the history in a biased manner or to show those on the opposite side in a negative light. Thus, if the Qur’an were doctored following of its enunciations must have gone through an editing process and either deleted or altered.

5.1 Projecting Muhammad as an ordinary human being

• Muhammad was of humble descent (93:6-93:8).

• He was a human being like others (18:110, 41:6).

• He was not a prominent man in the two towns (Mecca and Medina) (43:31).

• He was unable to harm or benefit himself (10:49) or harm and guide others (72:21).

• He was not capable to show any miracles (6:37, 11:12, 13:7, 17:90-93, 21:5, 25:7/8, 29:50).

• He was reproved for ignoring a blind man for his untimely intervention (80:1-10).

• Muhammad deriding the poets despite their role as the transmitters of news in the absence of any other new media (26:221-226).

• Muhammad making loud claims about the consistency of the revelation despite its fragmentary references to different themes (18:1, 39:23, 39:28).

• Muhammad is found helpless in a cave with a companion whose name is not even mentioned (9:40). According to early reports, the other person was his father-in-law and foremost companion, Abu Bakr who later became the first Caliph of Islam.

5.2 Not crediting Muhammad for some of the greatest achievements of his mission or for being the greatest among the Prophets.

• Reproving rather than glorify Muhammad for taking high value captives at Badr (8:67/68).

• Placing Muhammad at a spiritual parity with other Prophets (2:136, 2:285, and 4:152).

• Preventing Muhammad from putting any pressure on his followers to accompany him to the battlefield (at the planes of Uhud) (4:84). This declaration gave a good ground to a faction of his followers who were merely opportunists (known as the Hypocrites) to desert Muhammad on way to the battlefield near Medina where a powerful Meccan army had camped, ready to attack (3:167).

• The verses 8:10, 3:126 clarifying that God’s promise of sending angels down to the battlefield at Badr (624) and Uhud (625) were merely to reassure them.

• The verse 33:52 revoking a permission given to Muhammad barely a few years earlier to have any number of wives (33:50) as an exclusive privilege over other believers who were permitted to have up to four wives. Both the verses were revealed when Muhammad was in late 50’s, and the head of a rapidly growing community, but without a male survivor that was highly prized in his society. There can be no second example in the entire history of mankind of a man occupying the position of a king with unlimited power (as was the case with Muhammad) to take a vow of not contracting any further marriage at the zenith of his career at an age that must have promised him many more decades of life and many more issues including sons from further marriages.

• The reference to the killing of some of the banu Qurayzah (not named as such in the Qur’an) and their expulsion from Medina. Had the Qur’an been doctored the reference to the killing of ‘some of them’ (the banu Qurayzah) must have been removed. The alleged massacre would have then remained unrecorded and spared Muhammad the blame of massacring his adversaries. Ibn Ishaq (d. 738) who lived more than a hundred years after his death (d. 632) put the number of execution at 800-900, which has been quoted by his successors - al-Waqidi, Ibn Sa‘d; but the authenticity of this number was challenged by other early scholars - some of them called Ibn Ishaq a devil, a liar [3].

• Not crediting Muhammad with any military glory for the integration of Mecca and his march to Tabuk – a bordering outpost of the mighty Roman Empire (48:24, 48:26, 110:1-3).

5.3. Omission of the names of all of the Prophet’s close relatives and companions and of any reference to the traumatic moments of his mission.

The Qur’an does not bear the name or the role or contribution of any of the companions or blood relatives – martyred or living, of the Prophet. It also maintains complete equanimity over the most traumatic and saddest events of the Prophet’s life, notably the death of his wife for some 25 years, Khadija three out of his four daughters, his infant son, his protective uncle, and loss of close relatives in battlefields. Had the Qur’an been doctored the most sorrowful moments of his life must have occupied some place in it for history enhances the glory of its great figures by drawing powerful imageries of his sufferings. There is not a word on the anxiety and agony that must have occupied his mind on receiving the first revelation (96:1-5) as he meditated in a cave above Mecca (96:1-5) - except for an oblique reference in the opening word (mudaththir) of the 74th Sura, that connotes one who is lost in thoughts.

There is no reference to the feelings of depression, elation, suspense and anxiety that failures and successes of his protracted mission must have caused him. A doctored Qur’an would have been far more embellished and personalized than the present impersonal and unemotional original version that described his refuge in a cave while fleeing Mecca in only one terse sentence (9:40):

“If you did not help him (Muhammad), (it does not matter), for God did indeed help him when the disbelievers drove him out, the second of two, when they (Muhammad and Abu Bakr) were in the cave, and he said to his companion (Abu Bakr): ‘Do not despair. Surely God is with us.’ Then God sent down His sakinah (tranquility) upon him, and strengthened him with forces invisible and made the word of disbelievers lowly, and the Word of God uppermost, and God is All-Mighty, All-Wise” (9:40).

5.4. Veneration of the Prophets Jesus and Virgin Mary.

Given the Qur’an’s projection of Muhammad as an ordinary human being as summarily captured under 5.1 above, and its omission of the name of any of his wives and companions (5.3 above), editing of the Qur’an would have straight away removed the verses that venerate the Prophets Jesus and Virgin Mary – one illustrative passage each rendered below:

"The angels said: "O Mary! God gives you the good news of a Word from Him: his name will be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and of (the company of) those nearest to God. He shall speak to the people in childhood and in maturity. And he shall be (of the company) of the righteous. She said: "O my Lord! How shall I have a son when no man has touched me?" He said: "Even so: God creates what He wills: When He has decreed a plan, He only says to it, 'Be,' and it is! "And God will teach him the Book and Wisdom, the Law and the Gospel, And (appoint him) an apostle to the Children of Israel, (with this message): "'I have come to you, with a Sign from your Lord, in that I make for you out of clay, as it were, the figure of a bird, and breathe into it, and it becomes a bird by God’s leave: And I heal those born blind, and the lepers, and I bring the dead to life by God’s leave; and I declare to you what you eat, and what you store in your houses. Surely therein is a Sign for you if you did believe; '(I have come to you), to attest the Law which was before me. And to make lawful to you part of what was (before) forbidden to you; I have come to you with a Sign from your Lord. So fear God, and obey me” (3:45-50).

“(Thus is) Mary mentioned in the Book: When she withdrew from her family to a place in the East, and secluded herself from them, We sent her Our Spirit, and h16-e appeared to her as a man in perfection. She said: ‘I seek refuge in the Benevolent against you, if you do heed (God)’. He said: ‘I am only an emissary from your Lord, and bring you (the news of) a sinless son’. She said: ‘How can I have a son, when no man has touched me, and I have not been wayward’? He said: ‘So be it’: Your Lord says, ‘that is easy for Me; and We shall appoint him as a Sign to humanity and a Mercy from Us.’ Thus is the matter decreed” (19:16-21).

Conclusion: As the foregoing tiers of arguments demonstrate, any editing of the Qur’an post the revelation would have inevitably:

i) Compromised the acclaimed infallibility of its text as a Divine Speech (1 above), and led to massive exit from the faith of Islam as Muhammad’s companions and the common Arabs with their mastery in Arabic language would have seen Muhammad as a mere imposter, a charlatan.

ii) Refuted its claim of textual integrity (2 above) with the same consequences as in i) above,

iii) Created confusion among the huffaz (memorizers) and scribes who preserved the text in their breast and available writing materials (3 above) and created many versions of the Qur’an, and raised serious questions about its infallibility / divine character.

iv) Terrified the whole Arab community and warned them of an imminent doom given the awe and dread the Qur’an inspired among them (4 above).

v) Projected Muhammad as an astute politician, a military genius, a chivalrous warrior, an invincible conqueror, a liquidator of the Jews and the pagans, a merciless avenger, an admirer of the opposite sex, a seeker of worldly treasures, pleasure, glory and fame to set an ominously promising precedence for later dynastic rulers (5.1).

vi) Credited Muhammad for the greatest achievements of his mission or for being the greatest among the Prophets (5.2above),

vii) Included the names of the Prophet’s close relatives and companions in the Qur’an (5.2 above)

viii) Punctuated the Qur’an with and references to the traumatic and most melancholy moments of his mission. (5.3)

ix) Removed the passages venerating of the Prophets Jesus and Virgin Mary.

It is simply impossible to explain why none of these listed alterations occurred – that any cursory reader of the Qur’an can readily verify. It was probably this complete absence of self falsification of the Qur’an that led such illustrious scholars as Geoffrey Parrinder and John Burton to make the following observations:

“Concepts of prophesy, inspiration and revelation must be re-examined in view of the undoubted revelation of God in Muhammad and the Qur’an.” [4]

“The text which has come down to us in the form in which it was organized and approved by the Prophet ….What we have today in our hands, is the mushaf (manuscript) of Muhammad.” [5].

For the seekers of truth, the debate should end here. The Qur’an as we have in our hands is the exact copy of the mashaf (manuscript) that the Prophet approved and that during its advent (610-632) was simply impossible to edit, and once Uthman’s authenticated version was issued some 20 years after the Prophet’s death, any scope for any alteration / editing was closed for ever. Any possibility of tampering during those 20 years was ruled out by the fact that as a lyrically harmonious litany that was recited every day as the most sacred reading, any attempt at tampering would have been immediately spotted and quashed. Only those half baked in the knowledge regarding its collection and preservation can suspect of it being edited in that transitional period or suggest to editing it. The truth is any attempt at editing will falsify the Qur’an and open a floodgate of editing options and create thousands if not hundreds of its version throwing Islam into a sacramental morass from which there will be no coming out and the Word of God will be gone with the wind – and that cannot happen – for indeed the Qur’an is a Word of God. As for those who the Qur’an confuses, they should probe the verses that are clear and unambiguous (3:7) approach it with a pure heart (56:79), probe into its verses (38:29, 47:24), and seek the best meaning in it (39:18, 39:55).

Note:

1. This happened during the encounter between the armies of Caliph Ali and his opponent, Mu‘awiyah, the rebel governor of Syria in the battle of Siffin (657). When Ali’s forces were on the point of victory, Mu‘awiyah’s commander played a ruse. He had his men fasten pages of the Qur’an on tips of spears and raise them up. The sight of the sacred pages brought the fighting to an immediate halt. Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 1937, 10th edition; London 1993, p. 180-181.

2. Some of the Prophet’s foremost companions compiled their own manuscripts (masahif). Zayd bin Thabit, the foremost among the Prophet’s scribes collated all the original sheets (suhuf) within two to three years of the Prophet's death (632). These were retained originally by the first Caliph, Abu Bakr (632-634), then by the second Caliph, ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab (634-644), then by Hafsah bint ‘Umar, one of the Prophet’s widows, and finally authenticated by the special committee set up by the third Caliph, ‘Uthman Ibn ‘Affan (644-656). The personal manuscripts of the Prophet’s companions showed nominal differences in spelling, arrangement and numbering of chapters (Suras) and synonyms. Uthman's commission cross checked Hafsah's original sheets (suhuf) with each of these manuscripts as well as with the memorized litany, and arrived at a ‘singular' text, which had the concurrence of all the companions of the Prophet, and was declared authentic without doubt (mutawattir). Some of Uthman’s manuscripts are preserved. He made five copies and sent one copy each to Egypt, Syria and other dominions of Islam. Three of the copies have survived, and modern secular research has also established that except for dots and orthographic marks that were introduced later, they are identical to what we have today. Ahmad von Denffer, Ulum al-Qur’an, U.K. 1983/ Malaysia 1991, p. 163.

3. To quote Rafique Zakaria:

“He (Ibn Ishaq) has been sufficiently meticulous in the collection of facts, but sometimes he does not distinguish between facts and fiction. That is why many of his contemporaries denounced him... Malik, one of the founders of four schools of Muslim theology, who was a contemporary of Ibn Ishaq, called him ‘a devil’. Hisham bin Umara, another prominent theologian of the time said, ‘the rascal lies.’ Imam Hanbal, one of the greatest jurists of Islam refused to rely on the traditions collected by him. There were many other learned men who held similar views about Ibn Ishaq’s works. The same is more or less true of his successors like al-Waqidi, Ibn Sa‘d…” - Muhammad and the Qur’an, London 1992, p. 12.

4. Jesus in the Qur’an, One world Publications, U.S.A., 196, p.173.

5. The Collection of the Qur’an, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1977, p.239’240.

URL: http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamIslamicShariaLaws_1.aspx?ArticleID=6316

What Is the Koran?

2012-01-04T18:37:00.002-06:00

Publisher's note at the end of the article.

Researchers with a variety of academic and theological interests are proposing controversial theories about the Koran and Islamic history, and are striving to reinterpret Islam for the modern world. This is, as one scholar puts it, a "sensitive business"

COURTESY ATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By TOBY LESTER,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-koran/4024/1/?single_page=true

IN 1972, during the restoration of the Great Mosque of Sana'a, in Yemen, laborers working in a loft between the structure's inner and outer roofs stumbled across a remarkable gravesite, although they did not realize it at the time. Their ignorance was excusable: mosques do not normally house graves, and this site contained no tombstones, no human remains, no funereal jewelry. It contained nothing more, in fact, than an unappealing mash of old parchment and paper documents—damaged books and individual pages of Arabic text, fused together by centuries of rain and dampness, gnawed into over the years by rats and insects. Intent on completing the task at hand, the laborers gathered up the manuscripts, pressed them into some twenty potato sacks, and set them aside on the staircase of one of the mosque's minarets, where they were locked away—and where they would probably have been forgotten once again, were it not for Qadhi Isma'il al-Akwa', then the president of the Yemeni Antiquities Authority, who realized the potential importance of the find.

Al-Akwa' sought international assistance in examining and preserving the fragments, and in 1979 managed to interest a visiting German scholar, who in turn persuaded the German government to organize and fund a restoration project. Soon after the project began, it became clear that the hoard was a fabulous example of what is sometimes referred to as a "paper grave"—in this case the resting place for, among other things, tens of thousands of fragments from close to a thousand different parchment codices of the Koran, the Muslim holy scripture. In some pious Muslim circles it is held that worn-out or damaged copies of the Koran must be removed from circulation; hence the idea of a grave, which both preserves the sanctity of the texts being laid to rest and ensures that only complete and unblemished editions of the scripture will be read.
Some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard seemed to date back to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., or Islam's first two centuries—they were fragments, in other words, of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence. What's more, some of these fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God.
The mainly secular effort to reinterpret the Koran—in part based on textual evidence such as that provided by the Yemeni fragments—is disturbing and offensive to many Muslims, just as attempts to reinterpret the Bible and the life of Jesus are disturbing and offensive to many conservative Christians. Nevertheless, there are scholars, Muslims among them, who feel that such an effort, which amounts essentially to placing the Koran in history, will provide fuel for an Islamic revival of sorts—a reappropriation of tradition, a going forward by looking back. Thus far confined to scholarly argument, this sort of thinking can be nonetheless very powerful and—as the histories of the Renaissance and the Reformation demonstrate—can lead to major social change. The Koran, after all, is currently the world's most ideologically influential text.

Looking at the Fragments

THE first person to spend a significant amount of time examining the Yemeni fragments, in 1981, was Gerd-R. Puin, a specialist in Arabic calligraphy and Koranic paleography based at Saarland University, in Saarbrücken, Germany. Puin, who had been sent by the German government to organize and oversee the restoration project, recognized the antiquity of some of the parchment fragments, and his preliminary inspection also revealed unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography and artistic embellishment. Enticing, too, were the sheets of the scripture written in the rare and early Hijazi Arabic script: pieces of the earliest Korans known to exist, they were also palimpsests—versions very clearly written over even earlier, washed-off versions. What the Yemeni Korans seemed to suggest, Puin began to feel, was anevolving text rather than simply the Word of God as revealed in its entirety to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century A.D.

Since the early 1980s more than 15,000 sheets of the Yemeni Korans have painstakingly been flattened, cleaned, treated, sorted, and assembled; they now sit ("preserved for another thousand years," Puin says) in Yemen's House of Manuscripts, awaiting detailed examination. That is something the Yemeni authorities have seemed reluctant to allow, however. "They want to keep this thing low-profile, as we do too, although for different reasons," Puin explains. "They don't want attention drawn to the fact that there are Germans and others working on the Korans. They don't want it made public that there is work being done at all, since the Muslim position is that everything that needs to be said about the Koran's history was said a thousand years ago."

To date just two scholars have been granted extensive access to the Yemeni fragments: Puin and his colleague H.-C. Graf von Bothmer, an Islamic-art historian also based at Saarland University. Puin and Von Bothmer have published only a few tantalizingly brief articles in scholarly publications on what they have discovered in the Yemeni fragments. They have been reluctant to publish partly because until recently they were more concerned with sorting and classifying the fragments than with systematically examining them, and partly because they felt that the Yemeni authorities, if they realized the possible implications of the discovery, might refuse them further access. Von Bothmer, however, in 1997 finished taking more than 35,000 microfilm pictures of the fragments, and has recently brought the pictures back to Germany. This means that soon Von Bothmer, Puin, and other scholars will finally have a chance to scrutinize the texts and to publish their findings freely—a prospect that thrills Puin. "So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Koran is just God's unaltered word," he says. "They like to quote the textual work that shows that the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Koran has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Koran has a history too. The Sana'a fragments will help us to do this."

Puin is not alone in his enthusiasm. "The impact of the Yemeni manuscripts is still to be felt," saysAndrew Rippin, a professor of religious studies at the University of Calgary, who is at the forefront of Koranic studies today. "Their variant readings and verse orders are all very significant. Everybody agrees on that. These manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic text is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed."

Copyediting God

BY the standards of contemporary biblical scholarship, most of the questions being posed by scholars like Puin and Rippin are rather modest; outside an Islamic context, proposing that the Koran has a history and suggesting that it can be interpreted metaphorically are not radical steps. But the Islamic context—and Muslim sensibilities—cannot be ignored. "To historicize the Koran would in effect delegitimize the whole historical experience of the Muslim community," says R. Stephen Humphreys, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "The Koran is the charter for the community, the document that called it into existence. And ideally—though obviously not always in reality—Islamic history has been the effort to pursue and work out the commandments of the Koran in human life. If the Koran is a historical document, then the whole Islamic struggle of fourteen centuries is effectively meaningless."

The orthodox Muslim view of the Koran as self-evidently the Word of God, perfect and inimitable in message, language, style, and form, is strikingly similar to the fundamentalist Christian notion of the Bible's "inerrancy" and "verbal inspiration" that is still common in many places today. The notion was given classic expression only a little more than a century ago by the biblical scholar John William Burgon.

The Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the Throne! Every Book of it, every Chapter of it, every Verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of it ... every letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High!

Not all the Christians think this way about the Bible, however, and in fact, as the Encyclopaedia of Islam (1981) points out, "the closest analogue in Christian belief to the role of the Kur'an in Muslim belief is not the Bible, but Christ." If Christ is the Word of God made flesh, the Koran is the Word of God made text, and questioning its sanctity or authority is thus considered an outright attack on Islam—as Salman Rushdie knows all too well.

The prospect of a Muslim backlash has not deterred the critical-historical study of the Koran, as the existence of the essays in The Origins of the Koran (1998) demonstrate. Even in the aftermath of the Rushdie affair the work continues: In 1996 the Koranic scholar Günter Lüling wrote in The Journal of Higher Criticism about "the wide extent to which both the text of the Koran and the learned Islamic account of Islamic origins have been distorted, a deformation unsuspectingly accepted by Western Islamicists until now." In 1994 the journal Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islampublished a posthumous study by Yehuda D. Nevo, of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, detailing seventh- and eighth-century religious inscriptions on stones in the Negev Desert which, Nevo suggested, pose "considerable problems for the traditional Muslim account of the history of Islam." That same year, and in the same journal, Patricia Crone, a historian of early Islam currently based at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey, published an article in which she argued that elucidating problematic passages in the Koranic text is likely to be made possible only by "abandoning the conventional account of how the Qur'an was born." And since 1991 James Bellamy, of the University of Michigan, has proposed in the Journal of the American Oriental Society a series of "emendations to the text of the Koran"—changes that from the orthodox Muslim perspective amount to copyediting God.

Crone is one of the most iconoclastic of these scholars. During the 1970s and 1980s she wrote and collaborated on several books—most notoriously, with Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977)—that made radical arguments about the origins of Islam and the writing of Islamic history. Among Hagarism's controversial claims were suggestions that the text of the Koran came into being later than is now believed ("There is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century"); that Mecca was not the initial Islamic sanctuary ("[the evidence] points unambiguously to a sanctuary in north-west Arabia ... Mecca was secondary"); that the Arab conquests preceded the institutionalization of Islam ("the Jewish messianic fantasy was enacted in the form of an Arab conquest of the Holy Land"); that the idea of the hijra, or the migration of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina in 622, may have evolved long after Muhammad died ("No seventh-century source identifies the Arab era as that of the hijra"); and that the term "Muslim" was not commonly used in early Islam ("There is no good reason to suppose that the bearers of this primitive identity called themselves 'Muslims' [but] sources do ... reveal an earlier designation of the community [which] appears in Greek as 'Magaritai' in a papyrus of 642, and in Syriac as 'Mahgre' or 'Mahgraye' from as early as the 640s").

Hagarism came under immediate attack, from Muslim and non-Muslim scholars alike, for its heavy reliance on hostile sources. ("This is a book," the authors wrote, "based on what from any Muslim perspective must appear an inordinate regard for the testimony of infidel sources.") Crone and Cook have since backed away from some of its most radical propositions—such as, for example, that the Prophet Muhammad lived two years longer than the Muslim tradition claims he did, and that the historicity of his migration to Medina is questionable. But Crone has continued to challenge both Muslim and Western orthodox views of Islamic history. In Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam(1987) she made a detailed argument challenging the prevailing view among Western (and some Muslim) scholars that Islam arose in response to the Arabian spice trade.

Gerd-R. Puin's current thinking about the Koran's history partakes of this contemporary revisionism. "My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad," he says. "Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants."

Patricia Crone defends the goals of this sort of thinking. "The Koran is a scripture with a history like any other—except that we don't know this history and tend to provoke howls of protest when we study it. Nobody would mind the howls if they came from Westerners, but Westerners feel deferential when the howls come from other people: who are you to tamper with their legacy? But we Islamicists are not trying to destroy anyone's faith."

Not everyone agrees with that assessment—especially since Western Koranic scholarship has traditionally taken place in the context of an openly declared hostility between Christianity and Islam. (Indeed, the broad movement in the West over the past two centuries to "explain" the East, often referred to as Orientalism, has in recent years come under fire for exhibiting similar religious and cultural biases.) The Koran has seemed, for Christian and Jewish scholars particularly, to possess an aura of heresy; the nineteenth-century Orientalist William Muir, for example, contended that the Koran was one of "the most stubborn enemies of Civilisation, Liberty, and the Truth which the world has yet known." Early Soviet scholars, too, undertook an ideologically motivated study of Islam's origins, with almost missionary zeal: in the 1920s and in 1930 a Soviet publication titledAteist ran a series of articles explaining the rise of Islam in Marxist-Leninist terms. In Islam and Russia (1956), Ann K.S. Lambton summarized much of this work, and wrote that several Soviet scholars had theorized that "the motive force of the nascent religion was supplied by the mercantile bourgeoisie of Mecca and Medina"; that a certain S.P. Tolstov had held that "Islam was a social-religious movement originating in the slave-owning, not feudal, form of Arab society"; and that N.A. Morozov had argued that "until the Crusades Islam was indistinguishable from Judaism and ... only then did it receive its independent character, while Muhammad and the first Caliphs are mythical figures. "Morozov appears to have been a particularly flamboyant theorist: Lambton wrote that he also argued, in his book Christ (1930), that "in the Middle Ages Islam was merely an off-shoot of Arianism evoked by a meteorological event in the Red Sea area near Mecca."

Not surprisingly, then, given the biases of much non-Islamic critical study of the Koran, Muslims are inclined to dismiss it outright. A particularly eloquent protest came in 1987, in the Muslim World Book Review, in a paper titled "Method Against Truth: Orientalism and Qur'anic Studies," by the Muslim critic S. Parvez Manzoor. Placing the origins of Western Koranic scholarship in "the polemical marshes of medieval Christianity" and describing its contemporary state as a "cul-de-sac of its own making," Manzoor orchestrated a complex and layered assault on the entire Western approach to Islam. He opened his essay in a rage.

The Orientalist enterprise of Qur'anic studies, whatever its other merits and services, was a project born of spite, bred in frustration and nourished by vengeance: the spite of the powerful for the powerless, the frustration of the "rational" towards the "superstitious" and the vengeance of the "orthodox" against the "non-conformist." At the greatest hour of his worldly-triumph, the Western man, coordinating the powers of the State, Church and Academia, launched his most determined assault on the citadel of Muslim faith. All the aberrant streaks of his arrogant personality—its reckless rationalism, its world-domineering phantasy and its sectarian fanaticism—joined in an unholy conspiracy to dislodge the Muslim Scripture from its firmly entrenched position as the epitome of historic authenticity and moral unassailability. The ultimate trophy that the Western man sought by his dare-devil venture was the Muslim mind itself. In order to rid the West forever of the "problem" of Islam, he reasoned, Muslim consciousness must be made to despair of the cognitive certainty of the Divine message revealed to the Prophet. Only a Muslim confounded of the historical authenticity or doctrinal autonomy of the Qur'anic revelation would abdicate his universal mission and hence pose no challenge to the global domination of the West. Such, at least, seems to have been the tacit, if not the explicit, rationale of the Orientalist assault on the Qur'an.

Despite such resistance, Western researchers with a variety of academic and theological interests press on, applying modern techniques of textual and historical criticism to the study of the Koran. That a substantial body of this scholarship now exists is indicated by the recent decision of the European firm Brill Publishers—a long-established publisher of such major works as The Encyclopaedia of Islam and The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition—to commission the first-everEncyclopaedia of the Qur'an. Jane McAuliffe, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Toronto, and the general editor of the encyclopedia, hopes that it will function as a "rough analogue" to biblical encyclopedias and will be "a turn-of-the-millennium summative work for the state of Koranic scholarship." Articles for the first part of the encyclopedia are currently being edited and prepared for publication later this year.
The Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an will be a truly collaborative enterprise, carried out by Muslims and non-Muslims, and its articles will present multiple approaches to the interpretation of the Koran, some of which are likely to challenge traditional Islamic views—thus disturbing many in the Islamic world, where the time is decidedly less ripe for a revisionist study of the Koran. The plight of Nasr Abu Zaid, an unassuming Egyptian professor of Arabic who sits on the encyclopedia's advisory board, illustrates the difficulties facing Muslim scholars trying to reinterpret their tradition.

What Is the Koran?

By TOBY LESTER

THE Koran is a text, a literary text, and the only way to understand, explain, and analyze it is through a literary approach," Abu Zaid says. "This is an essential theological issue." For expressing views like this in print—in essence, for challenging the idea that the Koran must be read literally as the absolute and unchanging Word of God—Abu Zaid was in 1995 officially branded an apostate, a ruling that in 1996 was upheld by Egypt's highest court. The court then proceeded, on the grounds of an Islamic law forbidding the marriage of an apostate to a Muslim, to order Abu Zaid to divorce his wife, Ibtihal Yunis (a ruling that the shocked and happily married Yunis described at the time as coming "like a blow to the head with a brick").

Abu Zaid steadfastly maintains that he is a pious Muslim, but contends that the Koran's manifest content—for example, the often archaic laws about the treatment of women for which Islam is infamous—is much less important than its complex, regenerative, and spiritually nourishing latent content. The orthodox Islamic view, Abu Zaid claims, is stultifying; it reduces a divine, eternal, and dynamic text to a fixed human interpretation with no more life and meaning than "a trinket ... a talisman ... or an ornament."

For a while Abu Zaid remained in Egypt and sought to refute the charges of apostasy, but in the face of death threats and relentless public harassment he fled with his wife from Cairo to Holland, calling the whole affair "a macabre farce." Sheikh Youssef al-Badri, the cleric whose preachings inspired much of the opposition to Abu Zaid, was exultant. "We are not terrorists; we have not used bullets or machine guns, but we have stopped an enemy of Islam from poking fun at our religion.... No one will even dare to think about harming Islam again."
Abu Zaid seems to have been justified in fearing for his life and fleeing: in 1992 the Egyptian journalist Farag Foda was assassinated by Islamists for his critical writings about Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and in 1994 the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed for writing, among other works, the allegorical Children of Gabalawi (1959)—a novel, structured like the Koran, that presents "heretical" conceptions of God and the Prophet Muhammad.
Deviating from the orthodox interpretation of the Koran, says the Algerian Mohammed Arkoun, a professor emeritus of Islamic thought at the University of Paris, is "a very sensitive business" with major implications. "Millions and millions of people refer to the Koran daily to explain their actions and to justify their aspirations," Arkoun says. "This scale of reference is much larger than it has ever been before."

Muhammad in the Cave

MECCA sits in a barren hollow between two ranges of steep hills in the west of present-day Saudi Arabia. To its immediate west lies the flat and sweltering Red Sea coast; to the east stretches the great Rub' al-Khali, or Empty Quarter—the largest continuous body of sand on the planet. The town's setting is uninviting: the earth is dry and dusty, and smolders under a relentless sun; the whole region is scoured by hot, throbbing desert winds. Although sometimes rain does not fall for years, when it does come it can be heavy, creating torrents of water that rush out of the hills and flood the basin in which the city lies. As a backdrop for divine revelation, the area is every bit as fitting as the mountains of Sinai or the wilderness of Judea.

The only real source of historical information about pre-Islamic Mecca and the circumstances of the Koran's revelation is the classical Islamic story about the religion's founding, a distillation of which follows.
In the centuries leading up to the arrival of Islam, Mecca was a local pagan sanctuary of considerable antiquity. Religious rituals revolved around the Ka'ba—a shrine, still central in Islam today, that Muslims believe was originally built by Ibrahim (known to Christians and Jews as Abraham) and his son Isma'il (Ishmael). As Mecca became increasingly prosperous in the sixth century A.D., pagan idols of varying sizes and shapes proliferated. The traditional story has it that by the early seventh century a pantheon of some 360 statues and icons surrounded the Ka'ba (inside which were found renderings of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, among other idols).
Such was the background against which the first installments of the Koran are said to have been revealed, in 610, to an affluent but disaffected merchant named Muhammad bin Abdullah. Muhammad had developed the habit of periodically withdrawing from Mecca's pagan squalor to a nearby mountain cave, where he would reflect in solitude. During one of these retreats he was visited by the Angel Gabriel—the very same angel who had announced the coming of Jesus to the Virgin Mary in Nazareth some 600 years earlier. Opening with the command "Recite!," Gabriel made it known to Muhammad that he was to serve as the Messenger of God. Subsequently, until his death, the supposedly illiterate Muhammad received through Gabriel divine revelations in Arabic that were known as qur'an ("recitation") and that announced, initially in a highly poetic and rhetorical style, a new and uncompromising brand of monotheism known as Islam, or "submission" (to God's will). Muhammad reported these revelations verbatim to sympathetic family members and friends, who either memorized them or wrote them down.
Powerful Meccans soon began to persecute Muhammad and his small band of devoted followers, whose new faith rejected the pagan core of Meccan cultural and economic life, and as a result in 622 the group migrated some 200 miles north, to the town of Yathrib, which subsequently became known as Medina (short for Medinat al-Nabi, or City of the Prophet). (This migration, known in Islam as the hijra, is considered to mark the birth of an independent Islamic community, and 622 is thus the first year of the Islamic calendar.) In Medina, Muhammad continued to receive divine revelations, of an increasingly pragmatic and prosaic nature, and by 630 he had developed enough support in the Medinan community to attack and conquer Mecca. He spent the last two years of his life proselytizing, consolidating political power, and continuing to receive revelations.
The Islamic tradition has it that when Muhammad died, in 632, the Koranic revelations had not been gathered into a single book; they were recorded only "on palm leaves and flat stones and in the hearts of men." (This is not surprising: the oral tradition was strong and well established, and the Arabic script, which was written without the vowel markings and consonantal dots used today, served mainly as an aid to memorization.) Nor was the establishment of such a text of primary concern: the Medinan Arabs—an unlikely coalition of ex-merchants, desert nomads, and agriculturalists united in a potent new faith and inspired by the life and sayings of Prophet Muhammad—were at the time pursuing a fantastically successful series of international conquestsin the name of Islam. By the 640s the Arabs possessed most of Syria, Iraq, Persia, and Egypt, and thirty years later they were busy taking over parts of Europe, North Africa, and Central Asia.
In the early decades of the Arab conquests many members of Muhammad's coterie were killed, and with them died valuable knowledge of the Koranic revelations. Muslims at the edges of the empire began arguing over what was Koranic scripture and what was not. An army general returning from Azerbaijan expressed his fears about sectarian controversy to the Caliph 'Uthman (644-656)—the third Islamic ruler to succeed Muhammad—and is said to have entreated him to "overtake this people before they differ over the Koran the way the Jews and Christians differ over their Scripture." 'Uthman convened an editorial committee of sorts that carefully gathered the various pieces of scripture that had been memorized or written down by Muhammad's companions. The result was a standard written version of the Koran. 'Uthman ordered all incomplete and "imperfect" collections of the Koranic scripture destroyed, and the new version was quickly distributed to the major centers of the rapidly burgeoning empire.
During the next few centuries, while Islam solidified as a religious and political entity, a vast body of exegetical and historical literature evolved to explain the Koran and the rise of Islam, the most important elements of which are hadith, or the collected sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad; sunna, or the body of Islamic social and legal custom; sira, or biographies of the Prophet; and tafsir, or Koranic commentary and explication. It is from these traditional sources—compiled in written form mostly from the mid eighth to the mid tenth century—that all accounts of the revelation of the Koran and the early years of Islam are ultimately derived.

"For People Who Understand"

Roughly equivalent in length to the New Testament, the Koran is divided into 114 sections, known as suras, that vary dramatically in length and form. The book's organizing principle is neither chronological nor thematic—for the most part the suras are arranged from beginning to end in descending order of length. Despite the unusual structure, however, what generally surprises newcomers to the Koran is the degree to which it draws on the same beliefs and stories that appear in the Bible. God (Allah in Arabic) rules supreme: he is the all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-merciful Being who has created the world and its creatures; he sends messages and laws through prophets to help guide human existence; and, at a time in the future known only to him, he will bring about the end of the world and the Day of Judgment. Adam, the first man, is expelled from Paradise for eating from the forbidden tree. Noah builds an ark to save a select few from a flood brought on by the wrath of God. Abraham prepares himself to sacrifice his son at God's bidding. Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and receives a revelation on Mount Sinai. Jesus—born of the Virgin Mary and referred to as the Messiah—works miracles, has disciples, and rises to heaven.

The Koran takes great care to stress this common monotheistic heritage, but it works equally hard to distinguish Islam from Judaism and Christianity. For example, it mentions prophets—Hud, Salih, Shu'ayb, Luqman, and others—whose origins seem exclusively Arabian, and it reminds readers that it is "A Koran in Arabic, / For people who understand." Despite its repeated assertions to the contrary, however, the Koran is often extremely difficult for contemporary readers—even highly educated speakers of Arabic—to understand. It sometimes makes dramatic shifts in style, voice, and subject matter from verse to verse, and it assumes a familiarity with language, stories, and events that seem to have been lost even to the earliest of Muslim exegetes (typical of a text that initially evolved in an oral tradition). Its apparent inconsistencies are easy to find: God may be referred to in the first and third person in the same sentence; divergent versions of the same story are repeated at different points in the text; divine rulings occasionally contradict one another. In this last case the Koran anticipates criticism and defends itself by asserting the right to abrogate its own message ("God doth blot out / Or confirm what He pleaseth").

Criticism did come. As Muslims increasingly came into contact with Christians during the eighth century, the wars of conquest were accompanied by theological polemics, in which Christians and others latched on to the confusing literary state of the Koran as proof of its human origins. Muslim scholars themselves were fastidiously cataloguing the problematic aspects of the Koran—unfamiliar vocabulary, seeming omissions of text, grammatical incongruities, deviant readings, and so on. A major theological debate in fact arose within Islam in the late eighth century, pitting those who believed in the Koran as the "uncreated" and eternal Word of God against those who believed in it as created in time, like anything that isn't God himself. Under the Caliph al-Ma'mun (813-833) this latter view briefly became orthodox doctrine. It was supported by several schools of thought, including an influential one known as Mu'tazilism, that developed a complex theology based partly on a metaphorical rather than simply literal understanding of the Koran.

By the end of the tenth century the influence of the Mu'tazili school had waned, for complicated political reasons, and the official doctrine had become that of i'jaz, or the "inimitability" of the Koran. (As a result, the Koran has traditionally not been translated by Muslims for non-Arabic-speaking Muslims. Instead it is read and recited in the original by Muslims worldwide, the majority of whom do not speak Arabic. The translations that do exist are considered to be nothing more than scriptural aids and paraphrases.) The adoption of the doctrine of inimitability was a major turning point in Islamic history, and from the tenth century to this day the mainstream Muslim understanding of the Koran as the literal and uncreated Word of God has remained constant.

Psychopathic Vandalism?

GERD-R. Puin speaks with disdain about the traditional willingness, on the part of Muslim and Western scholars, to accept the conventional understanding of the Koran. "The Koran claims for itself that it is 'mubeen,' or 'clear,'" he says. "But if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn't make sense. Many Muslims—and Orientalists—will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Koranic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Koran is not comprehensible—if it can't even be understood in Arabic—then it's not translatable. People fear that. And since the Koran claims repeatedly to be clear but obviously is not—as even speakers of Arabic will tell you—there is a contradiction. Something else must be going on."

Trying to figure out that "something else" really began only in this century. "Until quite recently," Patricia Crone, the historian of early Islam, says, "everyone took it for granted that everything the Muslims claim to remember about the origin and meaning of the Koran is correct. If you drop that assumption, you have to start afresh." This is no mean feat, of course; the Koran has come down to us tightly swathed in a historical tradition that is extremely resistant to criticism and analysis. As Crone put it in Slaves on Horses,

The Biblical redactors offer us sections of the Israelite tradition at different stages of crystallization, and their testimonies can accordingly be profitably compared and weighed against each other. But the Muslim tradition was the outcome, not of a slow crystallization, but of an explosion; the first compilers were not redactors, but collectors of debris whose works are strikingly devoid of overall unity; and no particular illuminations ensue from their comparison.

Not surprisingly, given the explosive expansion of early Islam and the passage of time between the religion's birth and the first systematic documenting of its history, Muhammad's world and the worlds of the historians who subsequently wrote about him were dramatically different. During Islam's first century alone a provincial band of pagan desert tribesmen became the guardians of a vast international empire of institutional monotheism that teemed with unprecedented literary and scientific activity. Many contemporary historians argue that one cannot expect Islam's stories about its own origins—particularly given the oral tradition of the early centuries—to have survived this tremendous social transformation intact. Nor can one expect a Muslim historian writing in ninth- or tenth-century Iraq to have discarded his social and intellectual background (and theological convictions) in order accurately to describe a deeply unfamiliar seventh-century Arabian context. R. Stephen Humphreys, writing in Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry(1988), concisely summed up the issue that historians confront in studying early Islam.

If our goal is to comprehend the way in which Muslims of the late 2nd/8th and 3rd/9th centuries [Islamic calendar / Christian calendar] understood the origins of their society, then we are very well off indeed. But if our aim is to find out "what really happened," in terms of reliably documented answers to modern questions about the earliest decades of Islamic society, then we are in trouble.

The person who more than anyone else has shaken up Koranic studies in the past few decades is John Wansbrough, formerly of the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Puin is "re-reading him now" as he prepares to analyze the Yemeni fragments. Patricia Crone says that she and Michael Cook "did not say much about the Koran in Hagarism that was not based on Wansbrough." Other scholars are less admiring, referring to Wansbrough's work as "drastically wrongheaded," "ferociously opaque," and a "colossal self-deception." But like it or not, anybody engaged in the critical study of the Koran today must contend with Wansbrough's two main works—Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (1977) and The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History (1978).

Wansbrough applied an entire arsenal of what he called the "instruments and techniques" of biblical criticism—form criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, and much more—to the Koranic text. He concluded that the Koran evolved only gradually in the seventh and eighth centuries, during a long period of oral transmission when Jewish and Christian sects were arguing volubly with one another well to the north of Mecca and Medina, in what are now parts of Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Iraq. The reason that no Islamic source material from the first century or so of Islam has survived, Wansbrough concluded, is that it never existed.

To Wansbrough, the Islamic tradition is an example of what is known to biblical scholars as a "salvation history": a theologically and evangelically motivated story of a religion's origins invented late in the day and projected back in time. In other words, as Wansbrough put it in Quranic Studies,the canonization of the Koran—and the Islamic traditions that arose to explain it—involved the

attribution of several, partially overlapping, collections of logia (exhibiting a distinctly Mosaic imprint) to the image of a Biblical prophet (modified by the material of the Muhammadanevangelium into an Arabian man of God) with a traditional message of salvation (modified by the influence of Rabbinic Judaism into the unmediated and finally immutable word of God).

Wansbrough's arcane theories have been contagious in certain scholarly circles, but many Muslims understandably have found them deeply offensive. S. Parvez Manzoor, for example, has described the Koranic studies of Wansbrough and others as "a naked discourse of power" and "an outburst of psychopathic vandalism." But not even Manzoor argues for a retreat from the critical enterprise of Koranic studies; instead he urges Muslims to defeat the Western revisionists on the "epistemological battlefield," admitting that "sooner or later [we Muslims] will have to approach the Koran from methodological assumptions and parameters that are radically at odds with the ones consecrated by our tradition."

Revisionism Inside the Islamic World

INDEED, for more than a century there have been public figures in the Islamic world who have attempted the revisionist study of the Koran and Islamic history—the exiled Egyptian professor Nasr Abu Zaid is not unique. Perhaps Abu Zaid's most famous predecessor was the prominent Egyptian government minister, university professor, and writer Taha Hussein. A determined modernist, Hussein in the early 1920s devoted himself to the study of pre-Islamic Arabian poetry and ended up concluding that much of that body of work had been fabricated well after the establishment of Islam in order to lend outside support to Koranic mythology. A more recent example is the Iranian journalist and diplomat Ali Dashti, who in his Twenty Three Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammed (1985) repeatedly took his fellow Muslims to task for not questioning the traditional accounts of Muhammad's life, much of which he called "myth-making and miracle-mongering."

Abu Zaid also cites the enormously influential Muhammad 'Abduh as a precursor. The nineteenth-century father of Egyptian modernism, 'Abduh saw the potential for a new Islamic theology in the theories of the ninth-century Mu'tazilis. The ideas of the Mu'tazilis gained popularity in some Muslim circles early in this century (leading the important Egyptian writer and intellectual Ahmad Amin to remark in 1936 that "the demise of Mu'tazilism was the greatest misfortune to have afflicted Muslims; they have committed a crime against themselves"). The late Pakistani scholar Fazlur Rahman carried the Mu'tazilite torch well into the present era; he spent the later years of his life, from the 1960s until his death in 1988, living and teaching in the United States, where he trained many students of Islam—both Muslims and non-Muslims—in the Mu'tazilite tradition.

Such work has not come without cost, however: Taha Hussein, like Nasr Abu Zaid, was declared an apostate in Egypt; Ali Dashti died mysteriously just after the 1979 Iranian revolution; and Fazlur Rahman was forced to leave Pakistan in the 1960s. Muslims interested in challenging orthodox doctrine must tread carefully. "I would like to get the Koran out of this prison," Abu Zaid has said of the prevailing Islamic hostility to reinterpreting the Koran for the modern age, "so that once more it becomes productive for the essence of our culture and the arts, which are being strangled in our society." Despite his many enemies in Egypt, Abu Zaid may well be making progress toward this goal: there are indications that his work is being widely, if quietly, read with interest in the Arab world. Abu Zaid says, for example, that his The Concept of the Text (1990)—the book largely responsible for his exile from Egypt—has gone through at least eight underground printings in Cairo and Beirut.

Another scholar with a wide readership who is committed to re-examining the Koran is Mohammed Arkoun, the Algerian professor at the University of Paris. Arkoun argued in Lectures du Coran(1982), for example, that "it is time [for Islam] to assume, along with all of the great cultural traditions, the modern risks of scientific knowledge," and suggested that "the problem of the divine authenticity of the Koran can serve to reactivate Islamic thought and engage it in the major debates of our age." Arkoun regrets the fact that most Muslims are unaware that a different conception of the Koran exists within their own historical tradition. What a re-examination of Islamic history offers Muslims, Arkoun and others argue, is an opportunity to challenge the Muslim orthodoxy from within, rather than having to rely on "hostile" outside sources. Arkoun, Abu Zaid, and others hope that this challenge might ultimately lead to nothing less than an Islamic renaissance.

THE gulf between such academic theories and the daily practice of Islam around the world is huge, of course—the majority of Muslims today are unlikely to question the orthodox understanding of the Koran and Islamic history. Yet Islam became one of the world's great religions in part because of its openness to social change and new ideas. (Centuries ago, when Europe was mired in its feudal Dark Ages, the sages of a flourishing Islamic civilization opened an era of great scientific and philosophical discovery. The ideas of the ancient Greeks and Romans might never have been introduced to Europe were it not for the Islamic historians and philosophers who rediscovered and revived them.) Islam's own history shows that the prevailing conception of the Koran is not the only one ever to have existed, and the recent history of biblical scholarship shows that not all critical-historical studies of a holy scripture are antagonistic. They can instead be carried out with the aim of spiritual and cultural regeneration. They can, as Mohammed Arkoun puts it, demystify the text while reaffirming "the relevance of its larger intuitions."

Increasingly diverse interpretations of the Koran and Islamic history will inevitably be proposed in the coming decades, as traditional cultural distinctions between East, West, North, and South continue to dissolve, as the population of the Muslim world continues to grow, as early historical sources continue to be scrutinized, and as feminism meets the Koran. With the diversity of interpretations will surely come increased fractiousness, perhaps intensified by the fact that Islam now exists in such a great variety of social and intellectual settings—Bosnia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United States, and so on. More than ever before, anybody wishing to understand global affairs will need to understand Islamic civilization, in all its permutations. Surely the best way to start is with the study of the Koran—which promises in the years ahead to be at least as contentious, fascinating, and important as the study of the Bible has been in this century.

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Note: You have a choice to read the critical evaluation of Quraan, if you don't feel the need to read, please don't. I believe finding the truth is one's own responsibility. As a Muslim who walked away from Islam and then came back to it after 30 years, I have full faith in Quraan being the right guidance to its followers. You may consider visiting www.QuraanConference.com about the conference we held in Dallas in 2010. No one is denigrating or decimating Islam, it is all in the minds of the frightened ones. Studying Quraan critically is the right thing to do for the wisdom of the words in creating cohesive societies.

Mike Ghouse

Muslims and the Koran

2012-01-04T17:56:00.008-06:00

In the beginning were the words http://www.economist.com/node/21542162
Muslims revere the Koran. But its study is not taboo—and is in some quarters increasingly daring

Dec 31st 2011 | from the print edition

RELIGIONS invite stereotypes, holy texts even more so. Non-Muslims often see Islam as a faith followed by people who hew so closely to an unchanging set of words that they ignore awkward new facts sooner than contradict its message. For critics, this attachment to a text encourages extremists—like Boko Haram, a group that in December attacked Nigerian churches: hotheads can generally find a passage that seems to justify their violence.

Such passages abound in the Koran, just as they do in the founding texts of Christianity, Judaism and many other religions. There is also a long tradition of interpreting such verses in reassuring ways. For example, it is often stressed that the Koran’s injunction to “slay the unbeliever wherever you find him” relates to a specific historical context, in which the first Muslims were betrayed by a pagan group who had signed a truce.
In this section

»In the beginning were the words
Believe it or not
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But when it comes to parsing holy writ, there is one big difference between Islam and most other text-based faiths. Barring a brief interlude in the ninth and tenth centuries, and a few modern liberals, Muslims have mostly believed that the Koran is distinct from every other communication. As God’s final revelation to man, it belongs not to earthly, created things but to an eternal realm. That is a bigger claim than other faiths usually make for their holy writings.

The Koran may be interpreted but from a believer’s viewpoint, nothing in it can be set aside. Yet, at least in the calm, superficially courteous world of Western academia, debating the precise text of the Koran is increasingly common—as at a conference hosted by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), part of the University of London, in November. One organiser was Muhammad Abdel Haleem, an Egyptian-born professor who has translated the Koran into stylish modern English, drawing acclaim from many, but grumbles from purists. Other contributors included a professor from Turkey, and a scholar based in Iran.

But most were non-Muslims who study the text as they would any other written material—as prose whose evolution can be traced by comparing versions. New techniques, such as the use of digital photography, help compare variations and solve puzzles. All participants implicitly accepted the idea that methods used to analyse Homer, say, or German myths might elucidate the Koran.

In much of the Islamic world, even the agenda of such a meeting would be controversial. What can be debated in most Muslim countries differs hugely from what is discussed in the West. Staff at a London-based Islamic research body, the Institute for Ismaili Studies, have ranged from radicals like Mohammed Arkoun, a leader of the French deconstructionist school, to traditional Sunni or Sufi scholars. They follow the trail of al-Suyuti, a 15th-century Egyptian who accepted the existence of slightly different versions of the Koran.

Such diversity under a single roof would be impossible now in Karachi or in Cairo, the bastion of Islamic scholarship. There, the interpretation of Islam and its history is strictly a task for believers. Non-Muslim offerings would be called “orientalism”, based on colonial arrogance. Muslims in such places who take a different view face not only academic ostracism but physical danger. Egypt’s leading advocate of a liberal reading of the Koran—Nasr Abu Zayd, who died in 2010—was denounced as an apostate, forcibly divorced from his wife and had to spend his later life abroad. The rise of Islamism in Egypt offers no prospect of a friendlier climate.|

Meanwhile, scholars in Europe, stimulated by the manuscripts in great European libraries, are working hard to find out how and when the Koran’s written form was standardised. In America more effort has gone into relating the Koran to what is known from other sources about political and social history. Patricia Crone, of America’s Institute for Advanced Study, once argued that Islam originated in a revolt by Semites against Byzantine and Persian power. She has revised her views, but copies of her 1977 book “Hagarism” change hands for hundreds of dollars.

A burst of new Koranic scholarship erupted at SOAS in the 1980s. These days, it is one of several British campuses where scholars say they find it hard to get funding for work that threatens orthodoxy—a change they ascribe to the influence of conservative Saudi donors. But in France, the home of literary theory, and Germany, the fatherland of textual analysis, free-ranging study of the Koran continues. If you want to argue that partial versions of Hebrew and Christian stories are visible in the Koran, or that its historical portions are inaccurate, nobody will stop you.
Most Muslim children are told that they need know only one thing about the Koran’s origin: that it was revealed over a period of 23 years by the angel Gabriel to Muhammad. But Islam has more to say than that. A well-known narrative tells how the fourth ruler of the Muslims, Caliph Uthman, realised that several variants of God’s revelation were circulating, and established a single version, ordering the destruction of all the others. Non-Muslim scholars, too, see signs of a conscious, but not wholly successful, effort to settle on a definitive form. The continuing variations are not all trivial. Dots over a single letter can change the tense or person of a verb, notes Keith Small, an American participant in the SOAS event. His book, “Textual Criticism and Qur’an Manuscripts”, says efforts to standardise went on for four centuries after Uthman.

Before the beginning

Excitement surrounds the study of some Koranic material found in Yemen in 1972. Early analysis of images of these folios suggests some may precede the first big standardisation. This study is being undertaken in Germany, not Yemen. But in the light of the Uthman story, the survival of divergent early material (which escaped the standardisers’ efforts) need not be unbearably shocking. After all, Islamic tradition also credits Muhammad with accepting at least seven oral versions of the Koran, albeit differing only a little.

Turkey and Iran stand out as mainly Muslim countries where, in academia at least, it is possible to talk about the Koran’s textual origins. Turkey’s secular constitution helps to safeguard free inquiry. Ankara University and Istanbul University still reflect the rationalist ethos of a secular republic; the Islamist tone of Turkey’s present government affects newer campuses.

If Iran is a little more open than most Arab countries, that is because of Shia Islam’s stress on theology, and the interpretation of texts, as a continuous enterprise. A Paris-based Shia writer, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, has caused a stir recently by arguing that the Sunni/Shia split was really over the text of the Koran.

Most Shias would say this overstates the schism. On core beliefs Iran’s Shia clergy remain united: they agree that the text they now have is exactly what Muhammad was told. Such tenacity is a reminder that if people expect Islam to change into something like liberal Christianity—treating scripture as a useful but fallible aid to belief—they are wrong. As Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish writer, says: “If you say the Koran is a human text, then you cease to be Muslim.” Over hadiths, sayings about Muhammad’s life, there is flexibility; some can be weeded out as unsound or outdated. But nothing in the Koran can be dismissed.

Yet some attitudes can shift, Mr Akyol adds. His book, “Islam without Extremes”, cites slavery as an issue where the Koran’s words can be reread. The text favours freeing slaves, but does not demand the abolition of the practice. “Does that mean God condones slavery, or that God spoke within the norms of the seventh century which are open to change?” he asks, noting that several Muslim theologians have said the latter. As it happens Christians have made similar points, picking over the words of Saint Paul. Islam, like Christianity, offers rigidity for those who yearn for it. But it leaves room for nuance too.

Taqwa and righteousness in Quran -Koran

2011-11-27T10:38:00.002-06:00

http://quraan-today.blogspot.com/2011/11/taqwa-and-righteousness-in-quran-koran.html

AA

Brother Mohiddeen,

Thanks for sharing this. I have added the translations of Muhammad Asad to your work. However, in Asad Translations (http://www.islamicity.com/QuranSearch/) The word Taqwa did not show up. But righteousness showed up 9 times. Piety 5 times (completely different than your search) and right conduct 3 times.

This is amazing, how the same word Piety is not referred to in the same verses by two different translators. Indeed, if an America born and raised Muslim who is well informed about other religious traditions as they present themselves ( and not as we want it to be) the word righteousness will dominate in the translations/ interpretations replacing the word piety.

The Quraan Translations have added to a deeper understanding and further research. The Quran had been purposely mistranslated down through history.

(http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/steve-blow/20100919-In-defense-of-Islam-pursuing-9397.ece)

In the Middle Ages, European leaders commissioned a hostile Quran translation to foster warfare against Muslim invaders.Later, Muslim leaders produced another translation to inflame Muslims against Christians and Jews. It was all for politics.

We had conducted a conference on Quraan Translations in Dallas,
“Ghouse said he hopes to present Jeffress with a modern, faithful translation and challenge him to find evil verses."If he can, I will convert. I will join his church," Ghouse said. "If he can't, I will call on him to retract his statements and become a peacemaker."

The details are at: www.Quraanconference.com

I have given out copies of Asad’s translations to the clergy, politicians and influential leaders, indeed, I gave a copy to Pamela Geller (the one who initiated trouble against the ground zero mosque then and I have been against her on Radio and TV shows) and Sean Hannity (# 2 watched show in the US) – and here is what she writes: http://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2011/10/pamela-geller-sean-hannity-and-quraan.html

Indeed, I am writing a personal note on the copies reminding people that Quraan is a book of guidance to the humanity and God does not discriminate anyone of his creation and the Prophet had emphasized in his last sermon the same. There are 25 translations now, 2 of them are ugly and false 23 are ok. This one is fine but more corrections need be made.

Mike Ghouse
Muslims together are committed to cohesive and just societies
www.Islamtogetherfoundation.com

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Assalaamu Alaikum Wa Rahmathullahu Wa Bharakhathuhu.

Recently you forwarded an email from sister Zina talking about Taqwa as the Ismaili Muslims see it. It is unfortunate that the email got deleted by mistake. Inshah Allah I would have helped the Ismaili Muslims by indicating her misconceptions.

Alhamdhulillah, I looked at the meaning of Taqwa as in the Holy Quran and the results are below.

http://www.searchtruth.com/search.php?keyword=taqwa&chapter=&translator=6&search=1&start=0&records_display=10&search_word=all

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The word(s) "taqwa" appears 17 time(s) in 17 verse(s) in Quran.

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No.	Verse	Meaning
1	2:197	Right conduct
2	2:237	Righteousness
3	5:2	Righteousness and piety
4	5:8	Be just
5	7:26	Righteousness
6	9:108	Piety
7	9:109	Piety
8	20:132	Righteousness
9	22:32	Piety
10	22:37	Piety
11	47:17	Piety and restraint (from evil)
12	48:26	Self-restraint
13	49:3	Piety
14	58:9	Righteousness and self-restraint
15	74:56	Righteousness
16	91:8	Its right
17	96:12	Righteousness

Out of the above 17, we find:

9 times righteousness, 7 times piety, 3 self-restraint (from evil) and 1 be just

Please notice that ‘to be just’ appears only once. It is possibly because delivering justice is done by the Imam of the local Masjid within his community; by the local leader as the communities are combined for different congregations like Juma prayer, Umrah, and Hajj. Allah Subhana Wa Taala knows best.

The transliteration and the meaning of these 17 Verses are given below.

http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=2&from_verse=197&to_verse=197&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 2:197

Alhajju ashhurun maAAloomatun faman farada feehinna alhajja fala rafatha wala fusooqa wala jidala fee alhajji wama tafAAaloo min khayrin yaAAlamhu Allahu watazawwadoo fainna khayra alzzadi alttaqwa waittaqooni ya olee alalbabi

Yusuf Ali 2:197

For Hajj are the months well known. If any one undertakes that duty therein, Let there be no obscenity, nor wickedness, nor wrangling in the Hajj. And whatever good ye do, (be sure) Allah knoweth it. And take a provision (With you) for the journey, but the best of provisions is right conduct. So fear Me, o ye that are wise.

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Al-Baqara (The Cow)

2:197 (Asad) The pilgrimage shall take place in the months appointed for it. ^[180] And whoever undertakes the pilgrimage in those [months] shall, while on pilgrimage, abstain from lewd speech, from all wicked conduct, and from quarrelling; and whatever good you may do, God is aware of it. And make provision for yourselves - but, verily, the best of all provisions is God-consciousness: remain, then, conscious of Me, O you who are endowed with insight!

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Transliteration 2:237

Wain tallaqtumoohunna min qabli an tamassoohunna waqad faradtum lahunna fareedatan fanisfu ma faradtum illa an yaAAfoona aw yaAAfuwa allathee biyadihi AAuqdatu alnnikahi waan taAAfoo aqrabu lilttaqwa wala tansawoo alfadla baynakum inna Allaha bima taAAmaloona baseerun

Yusuf Ali 2:237

And if ye divorce them before consummation, but after the fixation of a dower for them, then the half of the dower (Is due to them), unless they remit it or (the man's half) is remitted by him in whose hands is the marriage tie; and the remission (of the man's half) is the nearest to righteousness. And do not forget Liberality between yourselves. For Allah sees well all that ye do.

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Al-Baqara (The Cow)

2:237 (Asad) And if you divorce them before having touched them, but after having settled a dower upon them, then [give them] half of what you have settled - unless it be that they forgo their claim or he in whose hand is the marriage-tie ^[226] forgoes his claim [to half of the dower]: and to forgo what is due to you is more in accord with God-consciousness. And forget not [that you are to act with] grace towards one another: verily, God sees all that you do.

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Transliteration 5:2

Ya ayyuha allatheena amanoo la tuhilloo shaAAaira Allahi wala alshshahra alharama wala alhadya wala alqalaida wala ammeena albayta alharama yabtaghoona fadlan min rabbihim waridwanan waitha halaltum faistadoo wala yajrimannakum shanaanu qawmin an saddookum AAani almasjidi alharami an taAAtadoo wataAAawanoo AAala albirri waalttaqwa wala taAAawanoo AAala alithmi waalAAudwani waittaqoo Allaha inna Allaha shadeedu alAAiqabi

Yusuf Ali 5:2

O ye who believe! Violate not the sanctity of the symbols of Allah, nor of the sacred month, nor of the animals brought for sacrifice, nor the garlands that mark out such animals, nor the people resorting to the sacred house, seeking of the bounty and good pleasure of their Lord. But when ye are clear of the sacred precincts and of pilgrim garb, ye may hunt and let not the hatred of some people in (once) shutting you out of the Sacred Mosque lead you to transgression (and hostility on your part). Help ye one another in righteousness and piety, but help ye not one another in sin and rancour: fear Allah. for Allah is strict in punishment.

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Al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread)

5:2 (Asad) O you who have attained to faith! Offend not against the symbols set up by God, nor against the sacred month [of pilgrimage], nor against the garlanded offerings, ^[4] nor against those who flock to the Inviolable Temple, seeking favour with their Sustainer and His goodly acceptance; and [only] after your pilgrimage is over ^[5] are you free to hunt. And never let your hatred of people who would bar you from the Inviolable House of Worship lead you into the sin of aggression: ^[6] but rather help one another in furthering virtue and God-consciousness, and do not help one another in furthering evil and enmity; and remain conscious of God: for, behold, God is severe in retribution!
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http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=5&from_verse=8&to_verse=8&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 5:8

Ya ayyuha allatheena amanoo koonoo qawwameena lillahi shuhadaa bialqisti wala yajrimannakum shanaanu qawmin AAala alla taAAdiloo iAAdiloo huwa aqrabu lilttaqwa waittaqoo Allaha inna Allaha khabeerun bima taAAmaloona

Yusuf Ali 5:8

O ye who believe! stand out firmly for Allah, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to piety: and fear Allah. For Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do.

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Al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread)

5:8 (Asad) O YOU who have attained to faith! Be ever steadfast in your devotion to God, bearing witness to the truth in all equity; and never let hatred of any-one ^[19] lead you into the sin of deviating from justice. Be just: this is closest to being God-conscious. And remain conscious of God: verily, God is aware of all that you do.

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Transliteration 7:26

Ya banee adama qad anzalna AAalaykum libasan yuwaree sawatikum wareeshan walibasu alttaqwa thalika khayrun thalika min ayati Allahi laAAallahum yaththakkaroona

Yusuf Ali 7:26

O ye Children of Adam! We have bestowed raiment upon you to cover your shame, as well as to be an adornment to you. But the raiment of righteousness,- that is the best. Such are among the Signs of Allah, that they may receive admonition!

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Al-A'raf (The Heights)

7:26 (Asad) O CHILDREN of Adam! Indeed, We have bestowed upon you from on high [the knowledge of making] garments to cover your nakedness, and as a thing of beauty: ^[17] but the garment of God-consciousness is the best of all. Herein lies a message from God, so that man” ^[18] might take it to heart.

http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=9&from_verse=108&to_verse=108&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 9:108

La taqum feehi abadan lamasjidun ossisa AAala alttaqwa min awwali yawmin ahaqqu an taqooma feehi feehi rijalun yuhibboona an yatatahharoo waAllahu yuhibbu almuttahhireena

Yusuf Ali 9:108

Never stand thou forth therein. There is a mosque whose foundation was laid from the first day on piety; it is more worthy of the standing forth (for prayer) therein. In it are men who love to be purified; and Allah loveth those who make themselves pure.

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At-Tauba (The Repentance)

9:108 (Asad) Never set foot in such a place! ^[144] Only a house of worship founded, from the very first day, upon God-consciousness is worthy of thy setting foot therein ^[145] -[a house of worship] wherein there are men desirous of growing in purity: for God loves all who purify themselves.

http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=9&from_verse=109&to_verse=109&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 9:109

Afaman assasa bunyanahu AAala taqwa mina Allahi waridwanin khayrun am man assasa bunyanahu AAala shafa jurufin harin fainhara bihi fee nari jahannama waAllahu la yahdee alqawma alththalimeena

Yusuf Ali 9:109

Which then is best? - he that layeth his foundation on piety to Allah and His good pleasure? - or he that layeth his foundation on an undermined sand-cliff ready to crumble to pieces? and it doth crumble to pieces with him, into the fire of Hell. And Allah guideth not people that do wrong.

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At-Tauba (The Repentance)

9:109 (Asad) Which. then, is the better: he who has founded his building on God-consciousness and [a desire for] His goodly acceptance-or he who has founded his building on the edge of a water-worn, crumbling river-bank, so that it [is bound to] tumble down with him into the fire of hell? For, God does not grace with His guidance people who [deliberately] do wrong:

http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=20&from_verse=132&to_verse=132&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 20:132

Wamur ahlaka bialssalati waistabir AAalayha la nasaluka rizqan nahnu narzuquka waalAAaqibatu lilttaqwa

Yusuf Ali 20:132

Enjoin prayer on thy people, and be constant therein. We ask thee not to provide sustenance: We provide it for thee. But the (fruit of) the Hereafter is for righteousness.

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Ta-Ha

20:132 (Asad) And bid thy people to pray, and persevere therein. [But remember:] We do not ask thee to provide sustenance [for Us]: ^[117] it is We who provide sustenance for thee. And the future belongs to the God-conscious. ^[118]

http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=22&from_verse=32&to_verse=32&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 22:32

Thalika waman yuAAaththim shaAAaira Allahi fainnaha min taqwa alquloobi

Yusuf Ali 22:32

Such (is his state): and whoever holds in honour the symbols of Allah, (in the sacrifice of animals), such (honour) should come truly from piety of heart.

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Al-Hajj (The Pilgrimage)

22:32 (Asad) This is [to be borne in mind]. And anyone who honours the symbols set up by God ^[47] [shall know that] verily, these [symbols derive their value] from the God-consciousness in the [believers’] hearts

http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=22&from_verse=37&to_verse=37&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 22:37

Lan yanala Allaha luhoomuha wala dimaoha walakin yanaluhu alttaqwa minkum kathalika sakhkharaha lakum litukabbiroo Allaha AAala ma hadakum wabashshiri almuhsineena

Yusuf Ali 22:37

It is not their meat nor their blood, that reaches Allah. it is your piety that reaches Him: He has thus made them subject to you, that ye may glorify Allah for His Guidance to you and proclaim the good news to all who do right.

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Al-Hajj (The Pilgrimage)

22:37 (Asad) [But bear in mind:] never does their flesh reach God, and neither their blood: it is only your God-consciousness that reaches Him. It is to this end that We have made them subservient to your needs, so that you might glorify God for all the guidance with which He has graced you. And give thou this glad tiding unto the doers of good:

http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=47&from_verse=17&to_verse=17&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 47:17

Waallatheena ihtadaw zadahum hudan waatahum taqwahum

Yusuf Ali 47:17

But to those who receive Guidance, He increases the (light of) Guidance, and bestows on them their Piety and Restraint (from evil).

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Muhammad

47:17 (Asad) just as for those who are [willing to be] guided, He increases their [ability to follow His] guidance and causes them to grow in God-consciousness. ^[21]

http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=48&from_verse=26&to_verse=26&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 48:26

Ith jaAAala allatheena kafaroo fee quloobihimu alhamiyyata hamiyyata aljahiliyyati faanzala Allahu sakeenatahu AAala rasoolihi waAAala almumineena waalzamahum kalimata alttaqwa wakanoo ahaqqa biha waahlaha wakana Allahu bikulli shayin AAaleeman

Yusuf Ali 48:26

While the Unbelievers got up in their hearts heat and cant - the heat and cant of ignorance,- Allah sent down His Tranquillity to his Messenger and to the Believers, and made them stick close to the command of self-restraint; and well were they entitled to it and worthy of it. And Allah has full knowledge of all things.

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Al-Fath (The Victory)

 48:26 (Asad) Whereas they who are bent on denying the truth harboured a stubborn disdain in their hearts - the stubborn disdain [born] of ignorance ^[36] God bestowed from on high His [gift of] inner peace upon His Apostle and the believers, and bound them to the spirit of God-consciousness: ^[37] for they were most worthy of this [divine gift], and deserved it well. And God has full knowledge of all things
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http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=49&from_verse=3&to_verse=3&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 49:3

Inna allatheena yaghuddoona aswatahum AAinda rasooli Allahi olaika allatheena imtahana Allahu quloobahum lilttaqwa lahum maghfiratun waajrun AAatheemun

Yusuf Ali 49:3

Those that lower their voices in the presence of Allah’s Messenger,- their hearts has Allah tested for piety: for them is Forgiveness and a great Reward.

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Al-Hujurat (The Dwellings)

49:3 (Asad) Behold, they who lower their voices in the presence of God’s Apostle - it is they whose hearts God has tested [and opened] to consciousness of Himself; [and] theirs shall be forgiveness and a reward supreme.

http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=58&from_verse=9&to_verse=9&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 58:9

Ya ayyuha allatheena amanoo itha tanajaytum fala tatanajaw bialithmi waalAAudwani wamaAAsiyati alrrasooli watanajaw bialbirri waalttaqwa waittaqoo Allaha allathee ilayhi tuhsharoona

Yusuf Ali 58:9

O ye who believe! When ye hold secret counsel, do it not for iniquity and hostility, and disobedience to the Prophet; but do it for righteousness and self- restraint; and fear Allah, to Whom ye shall be brought back.

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Al-Mujadilah (The Disputation)

58:9 (Asad) [Hence,] O you who have attained to faith, when you do hold secret confabulations, do not conspire with one another with a view to sinful doings, and aggressive conduct, and disobedience to the Apostle, ^[16] but [rather] hold counsel in the cause of virtue and God-consciousness: and [always] remain conscious of God, unto whom you all shall be gathered.

http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=74&from_verse=56&to_verse=56&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 74:56

Wama yathkuroona illa an yashaa Allahu huwa ahlu alttaqwa waahlu almaghfirati

Yusuf Ali 74:56

But none will keep it in remembrance except as Allah wills: He is the Lord of Righteousness, and the Lord of Forgiveness.

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Al-Muddaththir (The One Enveloped)

74:56 (Asad) But they [who do not believe in the life to come] will not take it to heart unless God so wills: ^[30] [for] He is the Fount of all God-consciousness, and the Fount of all forgiveness.

http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=91&from_verse=8&to_verse=8&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 91:8

Faalhamaha fujooraha wataqwaha

Yusuf Ali 91:8

And its enlightenment as to its wrong and its right;-

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Ash-Shams (The Sun)

 91:8 (Asad) and how it is imbued with moral failings as well as with consciousness of God!

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http://www.searchtruth.com/chapter_display_all.php?chapter=96&from_verse=12&to_verse=12&mac=&translation_setting=1&show_transliteration=1&show_yusufali=1&show_shakir=1&show_pickthal=1&show_mkhan=1

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Transliteration 96:12

Aw amara bialttaqwa

Yusuf Ali 96:12

Or enjoins Righteousness?

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Al-Alaq (The Clot)

96:12 (Asad) or is concerned with God-consciousness? ^[6]

Kindly pass on to all the Ismailis you know so that they understand Taqwa in its many aspects and do not blindly follow a mortal and his interpretatation.

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With prayers to Allah Subhana Wa Taala,

Your brother,

Mohideen Ibramsha

http://www.google.com/profiles/MohideenIbramshaPhD

Was Salaam.

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Displaying Verse 1 through 9 of 9 Verse(s) found. ( 9 Verse(s) displayed). Back - Print This Page

Search For: RIGHTEOUSNESS - -

Al-Anfal (The Spoils of War)

 8:40 (Asad) and if they turn away [from righteousness],know that God is your Lord Supreme: [and] how excellent is this Lord Supreme, and how excellent this Giver of Succour!

At-Tauba (The Repentance)

 9:100 (Asad) And as for the first and foremost of those who have forsaken the domain of evil and of those who have sheltered and succoured the Faith, ^[132] as well as those who follow them in [the way of] righteousness - God is well-pleased with them, and well--pleased are they with Him. And for them has He readied gardens through which running waters flow, therein to abide beyond the count of time: this is the triumph supreme!

Hud (The Prophet Hud)

 11:116 (Asad) BUT, ALAS, among those generations [whom We destroyed] before your time there were no people endowed with any virtue ^[146] - [people] who would speak out against the [spread of] corruption on earth -except the few of them whom We saved [because of their righteousness], whereas those who were bent on evildoing only pursued pleasures which corrupted their whole being, ^[147] and so lost themselves in sinning.

Al-Mu'minun (The Believers)

 23:102 (Asad) And they whose weight [of righteousness] is heavy in the balance - it is they, they who will have attained to a happy state;

Al-Ahqaf (The Curved Sandhills)

 46:15 (Asad) NOW [among the best of the deeds which] We have enjoined upon man is goodness towards his parents. ^[16] In pain did his mother bear him, and in pain did she give him birth; and her bearing him and his utter dependence on her took thirty months. ^[17] and so, when he attains to full maturity and reaches forty years, ^[18] he [that is righteous] prays: “O my Sustainer! Inspire me so that I may forever be grateful for those blessings of Thine with which Thou hast graced me and my parents, and that I may do what is right [in a manner] that will meet with Thy goodly acceptance; and grant me righteousness in my offspring [as well]. Verily, unto Thee have I turned in repentance: ^[19] for, verily, I am of those who have surrendered themselves unto Thee!”

Al-Waqi'a (The Event)

 56:38 (Asad) with those who have attained to righteousness: ^[15]

Al-Waqi'a (The Event)

 56:90 (Asad) And if one happens to be of those who have attained to righteousness, ^[31]

Al-Muddaththir (The One Enveloped)

 74:39 (Asad) save those who shall have attained to righteousness: ^[25]

Al-Balad (The City)

 90:18 (Asad) Such are they that have attained to righteousness; ^[8]

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Search For: PIETY - -

Al-Baqara (The Cow)

 2:177 (Asad) True Piety does not consist in turning your faces towards the east or the west ^[143] - but truly pious is he who believes in God, and the Last Day; and the angels, and revelation, ^[144] and the prophets; and spends his substance - however much he himself may cherish - it - upon his near of kin, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, ^[145] and the beggars, and for the freeing of human beings from bondage; ^[146] and is constant in prayer, and renders the purifying dues; and [truly pious are] they who keep their promises whenever they promise, and are patient in misfortune and hardship and in time of peril: it is they that have proved themselves true, and it is they, they who are conscious of God.

Al-Baqara (The Cow)

 2:189 (Asad) THEY WILL ASK thee about the new moons. Say: "They indicate the periods for [various doings of] mankind, including the pilgrimage." ^[165] However, Piety does not consist in your entering houses from the rear, [as it were,] but truly pious is he who is conscious of God. ^[166] Hence, enter houses through their doors, and remain conscious of God, so that you might attain to a happy state.

Al-Imran (The Family of Imran)

 3:92 (Asad) [But as for you, O believers,] never shall you attain to true Piety unless you spend on others out of what you cherish yourselves; and whatever you spend - verily, God has full knowledge thereof. ^[72]

Maryam (Mary)

 19:14 (Asad) and full of Piety towards his parents; and never was he haughty or rebellious.

Maryam (Mary)

 19:32 (Asad) and [has endowed me with] Piety towards my mother; and He has not made me haughty or bereft of grace.

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Search For: RIGHT CONDUCT - -

An-Nisa (The Women)

 4:25 (Asad) And as for those of you who, owing to circumstances, are not in a position ^[29] to marry free believing women, [let them marry] believing maidens from among those whom you rightfully possess. ^[30] And God knows all about your faith; each one of you is an issue of the other. ^[31] Marry them, then, with their people's leave, and give them their dowers in an equitable manner - they being women who give themselves in honest wedlock, not in fornication, nor as secret love-companions. ^[32] And when they are married, and thereafter become guilty of immoral conduct, they shall be liable to half the penalty to which free married women are liable. ^[33] This [permission to marry slave-girls applies] to those of you who fear lest they stumble into evil. ^[34] But it is for your own good to persevere in patience [and to abstain from such marriages]: and God is much-forgiving, a dispenser of grace.

Yunus (Jonah)

 10:108 (Asad) SAY [O Prophet]: "O mankind! The truth from your Sustainer has now come unto you. Whoever, therefore, chooses to follow the right path, follows it but for his own good; and whoever chooses to go astray, goes but astray to his own hurt. And I am not responsible for your conduct."

Hud (The Prophet Hud)

 11:46 (Asad) [God] answered: "O Noah, behold, he was not of thy family, for, verily, he was unrighteous in his conduct. ^[68] And thou shalt not ask of Me anything whereof thou canst not have any knowledge: ^[69] thus, behold, do I admonish thee lest thou become one of those who are unaware [of what is right]." ^[70]

Apostasy is anti-Islamic

2011-11-27T09:27:00.002-06:00

Any Punishment for Apostasy, Let Alone Capital Punishment, is Anti-Islamic

By Muhammad Yunus, NewAgeIslam.com

(Joint Author, Essential Message of Islam, Amana Publications, USA, 2009.)
A set of Qur'anic verses that are fundamental to its message clearly and conclusively refute the notion of punishing a Muslim man or woman who wants to convert to any other faith, or even renounce God. They are listed below under three headings.

1. Universality of the concept of Islam and of the criterion of divine judgment.

The Qur'an's use of the noun Islam and its other roots (asslama, Muslim) demonstrates that members of all faith communities - Christians, Jews, and others - regardless of whether or not they are mentioned in the Qur'an (4:164, 40:78) belong to the universal din (way of life) of Islam that espouses submission (orienting oneself, asslama) to God and doing good deeds. The followers of the Prophet Muhammad are also given this name.

"Indeed! Whoever commits (asslama) his whole being to God, and does good deeds - will get his reward from his Lord. There will be no fear upon them nor shall they grieve" (2:112).

"And who can be better in faith (din) than the one who commits (asslama) his whole being to God, and does good deeds, and follows the way of Abraham, the upright one, and God took Abraham as a friend" (4:125).
"And who is finer in speech than the one who invites to God, does good deeds and says: 'I am of those who submit to God (Muslimun)'" (41:33).

"When his Lord said to him (Abraham), 'Submit (aslim)', he said, 'I submit (Aslamtu) to the Lord of the worlds' (2:131). Abraham enjoined his sons to do so, as did Jacob: 'O my sons, God has chosen the religion (din) for you; so you should not die unless you have submitted to God (Muslimun)' (2:132). Were you (among) witnesses when death came to Jacob? He said to his sons, 'What will you serve after I am gone?' They said, 'We will serve your God; the God of your fathers, Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac - the One God; and to Him we have truly submitted (Muslimun)'" (2:133).

"Those who believe, and those who are Jews, Christians and Sabians - and (in fact) anyone who believes in God and the Last Day, and does good deeds - shall have their reward with their Lord. They have nothing to fear, nor will they regret" (2:62).

"Those who believe, and those who are Jews, Sabians and Christians - (in fact) anyone who believes in God and the Last Day, and does good deeds - they have nothing to fear, nor will they regret" (5:69).

"And do not debate with the People of the Book, but in a way that is better (than theirs), except with those of them who oppress (others); and say 'We believe in what was revealed to us, and what was revealed to you, for our God and your God is One (and the same), and it is to Him that we (all) submit (Muslimun)'" (29:46)
"…This day, those who reject (this Qur'an) despair of (ever harming) your religion. Therefore, do not fear them; fear Me. This day I have perfected your religion for you, completed My favor on you, and have chosen Islam for your religion…" (5:3).

Note: This has also been discussed at length in light of Qur'anic illustrations in a recent publication [1], but reproduced above to avoid any need for cross reference.
2 There is no compulsion in religion.

The Qur'anic spirit of religious pluralism, intrinsic to the universality of the concept of the Islam (1 above) is reflected in its following pronouncements on the freedom of religion:

"(There is) no compulsion in religion. Truth stands out clearly from falsehood; so whoever rejects false deities and believes in God, has grasped a firm handhold, which never breaks. (Remember,) God is All-Knowing and Aware" (2:256).

"If your Lord so willed, everyone on earth would have believed, all together. Will you then compel people until they become believers" (10:99)?
"We know best what they say; but you (O Muhammad,) are not to force them. So remind with the Qur'an those who fear My warning" (50:45).

"So remind (them, O Muhammad) - for you are one who reminds (88:21); and have no power over them" (88:22).

The Qur'an's position on religious freedom is amply demonstrated in a verse (60:11) dating from the Medinite period allowing pagan women to leave for Mecca, if they did not opt to convert to Islam along with their husbands:

"And if any of your wives should go over to the pagans, and then you have your turn (as many converted wives of the Meccan pagans left their pagan husbands and came over to Medina), then pay to those whose wives had left the equivalent of what they had spent (on their dower). And heed God in whom you believe" (60:11).

The Muslims who turn atheist will be punished after their death

The Qur'an declares:

"…And if any of you turn back from their faith and die in a state of atheism, their deeds will be of no avail in life, or in the hereafter; and they will be the inmates of hellfire and they will remain there" (2:217).
"…Anyone who, after believing in God, denounces his faith, - except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in faith - but such as open their breast to atheism, on them is Wrath from God, and theirs will be a dreadful punishment" (16:106).

"Those who turn atheist after entering faith and then go on increasing in their disbelief - their repentance will never be accepted. And they are those who are astray" (3:90).

"Those who believe, reject faith and then believe (again), and again reject faith, and go on increasing in atheism, God will not forgive them nor guide them along the (right) path" (4:137). [See also 47:25-27]
Finally, the Qur'an reassures the Muslims that "if anyone abandons his religion, God will replace him with others whom He loves and who love Him" (5:54).

These verses clearly demonstrate that apostasy will be punished only by God. Not a single verse in the Qur'an offers any basis to humans/ Muslims to punish an apostate, as apostasy is between a person and God and God is enough to deal with the apostates. Thus, there is no Qur'anic basis to legislate capital punishment, or, for that matter, any punishment for apostasy or for renouncing faith in God altogether (atheism).

Historically, in all major civilizations, the cessation from the established religion of the State was conflated with treason and carried most severe punishments. Thus, as late as 'the eighteenth century of the Christian era, the Christian churches in Western Europe condemned the heretics to the stake or the gallows; no distinction was made on the score of sex or age'. [2] In the Islamic world, the traitors turned apostates and joined the enemy camp. So the punishment for apostasy was in true sense the punishment for treason rather than for abandoning faith.

Conclusion. In the past centuries, the world was divided on strictly religious lines and apostasy equated with treason in the political and military sense for which death sentence was normative for the era. With a major paradigm shift in civilization in terms of the relegation of religion to the personal domain, commercialization and secularization of the armed forces, and evolution of secular nations, the religion of a soldier does not define his national identity or loyalty and the change of religion does not conflate with political treason or sedition. Therefore, in light of the Qur'an's recognition of the divinity of all religions (1 above), and its unqualified sanction of religious freedom, there can be no Qur'anic basis whatsoever for any punishment, let alone capital punishment, for changing religion or apostasy.

Notes:
[1] Muslims have NO Qur'anic basis for Religious Supremacism: http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamIslamAndSpiritualism_1.aspx?ArticleID=5802

[2] Asaf A.A.Fyzee, Outlines of Mohammadan Law, fifth edition 2005, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, p.178.

Muhammad Yunus, a Chemical Engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, and a retired corporate executive has been engaged in an in-depth study of the Qur'an since early 90's, focusing on its core message. He has co-authored the referred exegetic work, which received the approval of al-Azhar al-Sharif, Cairo in 2002, and following restructuring and refinement was endorsed and authenticated by Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl of UCLA, and published by Amana Publications, Maryland, USA, 2009.
URL: http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamIslamicShariaLaws_1.aspx?ArticleID=5998

Noble Qur'an - HH The Aga Khan

2011-08-21T22:20:00.000-05:00

The Noble Qur’an – An Inexhaustible Well-Spring of Inspiration and Knowledge

By His Highness the Aga Khan

A portrait of His Highness the Aga Khan. Jehangir Merchant Collection.

…Rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, [the discourse of the Qur’an-e-Sharif] has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations. This freedom of interpretation is a generosity which the Qur’an confers upon all believers, uniting them in the conviction that All-Merciful Allah will forgive them if they err in their sincere attempts to understand His word. Happily, as a result, the Holy Book continues to guide and illuminate the thought and conduct of Muslims belonging to different communities of interpretation and spiritual affiliation, from century to century, in diverse cultural environments.

The Noble Qur’an extends its principle of pluralism also to adherents of other faiths. It affirms that each has a direction and path to which they turn so that all should strive for good works, in the belief that, wheresoever they may be, Allah will bring them together.

Tradition honours the vocation of the learned scholars who are gathered here for this colloquium. The Qur’an itself acknowledges that people upon whom wisdom has been bestowed are the recipients of abundant good; they are the exalted ones. Hence Islam’s consistent encouragement to Muslim men and women to seek knowledge wherever it is to be found. We are all familiar that al-Kindi, even in the 9th century, saw no shame in acknowledging and assimilating the truth, whatever its source. He argued that truth never abases, but only ennobles its seeker. Poetising the Prophet’s teaching, Nasir Khusraw, the 11th century Iranian poet-philosopher, also extols the virtue of knowledge. For him, true jihad is the war that must be waged against the perpetrators of bigotry, through spreading knowledge that dispels the darkness of ignorance and nourishes the seed of peace that is innately embedded in the human soul.

This colloquium covers a range of Muslim expressions in the Arts, across time and space. Some among the eminent scholars present today have observed that, while the Qur’an may not propound a doctrine of Islamic art or material culture, it does offer imaginative scope in this direction. From early on, its passages have inspired works of art and architecture, and shaped attitudes and norms that have guided the development of Muslim artistic traditions.

In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur’anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah’s will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers?

Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur’an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah’s benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: ‘Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah’.

Does not the Qur’an challenge the artist, as much as the mystic, to go beyond the physical – the outward – so as to seek to unveil that which lies at the centre but gives life to the periphery? Is not a great work of art, like the ecstasy of the mystic, a gesture of the spirit, a stirring of the soul that comes from the attempt to experience a glimpse of, and an intimacy with, that which is ineffable and beyond being?

The famous verse of ‘light’ in the Qur’an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah’s creation and mercy.

…It is my sincere hope that this colloquium will bring additional insights to an understanding of the Holy Qur’an as a message that encompasses the entirety of human existence and effort. It is concerned with the salvation of the soul, but commensurately also with the ethical imperatives which sustain an equitable social order. The Qur’an’s is an inclusive vision of society that gives primacy to nobility of conduct. It speaks of differences of language and colour as a divine sign of mercy and a portent for people of knowledge to reflect upon.

Ours is a time when knowledge and information are expanding at an accelerating and, perhaps, unsettling pace. There exists, therefore, an unprecedented capacity for improving the human condition. And yet, ills such as abject poverty and ignorance, and the conflicts these breed, continue to afflict the world.

The Qur’an addresses this challenge eloquently. The power of its message is reflected in its gracious disposition to differences of interpretation; its respect for other faiths and societies; its affirmation of the primacy of the intellect; its insistence that knowledge is worthy when it is used to serve Allah’s creation; and, above all, its emphasis on our common humanity.

Date article posted: Saturday, August 20, 2011
Credit: The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, UK, www.iis.ac.uk.
______________

The above excerpts are from the speech delivered by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Ismaili Centre, London, on October 19, 2003. To read the full transcript and watch His Highness delivering the speech, please click Word of God.

Please also click Seeking the Forgiveness of the Imam of the Time: A Short Explanation, published for Lailat al-Qadr (2011).

Courtesy: Simerg.com

About this site - Quraan Today

2011-08-21T21:45:00.001-05:00

God wants his creation to co-exist in harmony and the Qur’aan is God’s guidance to live in peace with oneself and what surrounds one; life and matter. The human weakness manufactures imaginary enemies, so did the European Medieval Kings in the 11th century, who paid to deliberately mis-translate the Qur’aan for their obvious gains, they duped the public then, and most of non-Muslim Islamic Scholars today are doing the same thing.

Hilali Khan, a Muslim also mistranslated the book to appease his extremist friends, that is the free copy you may have it in your hands. Just remember God wants goodness for his creation, every one of it, then read Qur’aan in that light. Mohammad Asad’s translation is recommended at this time until a good one comes along where anyone on the earth can read it and feel that God wants all of us to live in peace and harmony. Finding the truth is your own responsibility.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this blog is to clarify the misunderstandings about Qur'aan. Qur'aan is the word of God, and God is about Justice and peace. It is his creation and he certainly wants harmony and co-existence and a balance for his creation.

Qur’aan is in Arabic language and every word of it is preserved through the process of memorization over a period of fourteen centuries. Every t and I are checked thoroughly to ensure its accuracy.

As the curiosity to learn about Islam arose, translation work began. Since, translations hinge on one's understanding of God's words, three versions were produced; Genuine translations, ill-translations and mis-translations.

The first known translation was made in 1143 CE upon the request of the Abbot of monastery and abounds in inaccuracies, several translations have occurred since then multiplying the errors. European knowledge base on Islam is founded on mis-translations. Most of the Christian and Jewish scholars draw their knowledge from it and propagate the same for material gains. The European and American Islamic Scholars need to add a refresh button to their knowledge.

To you, the common man, who has access to the translation in English, you are genuinely confused, which one is the right one.

Apply the litmus test: Does the translations build hatred and ill-will in you, then it is the wrong one. On the other hand if it causes you to think in terms of harmony and co-existence, you got the right one.

Today we have about 22 translations on the net; many are closer to the word of God and some are not. It is up to you to find the truth.

Recommended: Mohammad Asad's translation.

Falsified Translation: Hilali Khan - it is the free Qur'aan you pick up in the market. It is hateful towards Jews and Christians.

Orgins of Islamophobia

Deliberate defamation & Propagation of Misconceptions.

Roots of Islamophobia in the early Orientalist Translations

The first Qur'an translation was into Latin by Robert of Ketton in 1143. It was made at the request of the Abbot of the monastery of Cluny. (Abounds in inaccuracies)

Another Latin translation by Ludovicus Marracci was published in 1698. It was supplemented with quotes from Qur'an commentaries "carefully juxtaposed and sufficiently garbled so as to portray Islam in the worst possible light" (Colin Turner, 1997 p. xii).

The title of the introductory volume of such translation was A Refutation of the Qur'an.

Such translations formed the foundation for a number of subsequent translations into English, French, Italian, German, etc.

The first English translation was that of Alexander Ross published in 1649. In his introduction, Ross says "I thought good to bring it to their colours, that so viewing thine enemies in their full body, thou must the better prepare to encounter … his Alcoran" (p. A3).

Similarly, H. Reckendorf (1857) says in his Hebrew translation of the Qur'an, "I can now stop writing and ask God's pardon for the sin I committed when I profaned our sacred language and transferred to it the talk of lies and falsehood" (as cited in Abdul Aal, January 29, 2006, p. 78).

In 1734, George Sale’s translation came out based on Marracci’s earlier notorious work. In 1861, J. M. Rodwell’s work provided a further example of a writer "gunning for Islam" (Turner, 1997, p. xii).

Courtesy: Ibrahim Saleh & Dahlia Sabry Researchers at Al-Azhar University, Cairo

Foundationless castles

You may discover to your chagrin, that many of the Neocons Doctors on Islam have built their castles on wrong foundation. In fact Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham Junior's information on Islam comes from these falsities.

When the European Kings were attacked by the invading Arab Armies, one of the ways they could get their subjects to defend their Kingdoms was through a campaign of hate.

They roped in the pope to issue a fatwa against 'infidel' Muslims, and then paid the evil writers to mis-translate the Qur'aan with the intent of enraging the good Christians to go on crusades to kill the infidels. This is one part of the equation; the second part is even the Arab Kings had the Qur'aan mistranslated to enrage Muslims against the other infidels. Check out the Hilali translation in the title Bismillah on this Blog.

Neither Islam nor Christianity would have approved any of the non-sense of crusades, inquisitions and other massacres. It was all done to protect and annex the lands that belonged to each other.

I wish the average Christians and Muslims had not fallen into the trap of hatred for the gains of the dead Kings and today's virtual Live Kings with similar goals of controlling resources with no care for their faith or human lives.

It is time for the humanity to go for the truth. All religions were issued by the creator for the individuals to find a balance and peace for themselves and with other humans and environment.

The truth is all religions are for the good of mankind, where ever you see wickedness; it has the non-Godly element in it.

Musilms Together sites and Blogs

2011-08-21T21:33:00.002-05:00

The following twelve (12) blogs highlight and nurture the pluralistic values embedded in Islam. To be a Muslim is to be a peacemaker, one who seeks to mitigate conflicts and nurtures goodwill for peaceful co-existence.

America Together Foundationwww.AmericaTogetherFoundnation.com

The organization is committed to bring Muslims together regardless of the denomination, it is something every Muslims dreams of, it is coming together to do good for humanity. What is good for Muslims has got to be good for the world and vice versa to sustain peace and goodwill for years to come. Our Mission

World Muslim Congresswww.WorldMuslimCongress.org http://WorldMuslimCongress.blogspot.com

This site chronicles events that affect co-existence and offers solutions to build cohesive societies. It is about nurturing pluralistic values embedded in Islam.

www.WorldMuslimCongress.com
A new site is in the making, this would be the mother site for all the sites.

Quraan Todaywww.Quraantoday.com http://quraan-today.blogspot.com/
God wants his creation to co-exist in harmony and Qur’aan is God’s guidance to live in peace with oneself and what surrounds one; life and matter. There are nearly 25 translations available now with two of them deliberately mistranslated by the right wing European Kinds in 11^th Century and right wing Muslims in the 20^th century. At this time Mohammad Asad’s translation is recommended until a good one comes along where anyone on the earth can read it and feel that God wants all of us to live in peace and harmony. Finding the truth is your own responsibility.

Quraan Conference www.QuraanConference.com http://www.quraanconference.com/

Myths are manufactured about others without any substantiation; it is an old business of maligning others to have a momentary gain. The purpose of this conference is to remove such myths in an open forum in the public and restore the cohesiveness of our society and build a safe and secure America. Details are in the link Qur’aan Conference. The holy book is about living in harmony with free will, there are mis-translations and mis-interpretations that are addressed, and it will done by non-Muslim clergy from all faiths.

Sharia Laws www.ShariaLaws.com http://sharialaws.blogspot.com/

First of all, Sharia Law is not divine; it is the human interpretation of God’s word to create just societies, as with all human endeavors, a few clauses of Sharia Law needs amendments. I have made an effort to write in an easy to understand language. The personal Sharia guides an individual to live a life of piety and gratitude to the creator while the Public Sharia governs the relationships between individuals and the society like the civil laws. Like all other laws of any given society, abuses creep into Sharia Law as well. The old west mindset is still prevalent in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Nigeria, where 50 other Muslim majorities nations are are in line with the civil laws of the world.

The American civil and criminal laws serve justice to all of her population and American Muslims have no desire to replace the American laws with Sharia. Even though the right wingers among Muslims like the right wingers among Christians dream of imposing their laws on others, the desire to impose on others stems out of insecurity and inability to handle the otherness of other.

Women in Islamhttp://muslimwomenandmen.blogspot.com/.

Whether it is the American society, India, Chinese, Mexican, Greek, Arab or the English Autocrats, men have always taken advantage of women. While a few Muslim men shamelessly beat their wives, a few African men mutilate the women genitally do deprive them of the joys of live, a few American men will brutally kill their wives or drown them under water, Hindu Mother in laws may douse the women in Kerosene. While a few men will not go to a place of worship where women preach, the other would not shake hands with females that include Imams, Rabbis, Monks and Priests. No one can cast the first stone and all us must work on creating a spiritual balance and harmony between men and women to have a peaceful life with the fear of waiting for the opportunity to get even. Without any reserve men and women have equal rights in Quraan and Islam, even a few of the Muslims have misunderstood the value Islam places on justness and fairness.
Blasphemy Laws www.BlasphemyLaws.com http://blasphemylaws.blogspot.com/

The purpose of this site is to bring together differing views on Blasphemy, and develop an understanding from Islamic point of view for the good of all humanity. Current Blasphemy laws and practices do not go with the values of Islam; free will and respect for life. Quraan prohibits judgment, prejudice is discouraged and there is no punishment for the ones who maligns God or his prophet. It is a political tool of oppression by right wingers among Muslims.

Muslim Press Releases http://muslimpressrelease.blogspot.com/ Muslim Press releases concerning issues of the day. Since the formation of the organization in 2003, we have continuously condemned any wrong doing and appreciated the good work. Much of the work is the blogs listed on the site.

Dallas Muslim Center www.DallasMuslimCenter.com http://dallasMuslimCenter.blogspot.com

The purpose of this site was to provide information about Dallas Muslims. The information is updated as and when I get the time.

Ramadan Exclusivehttp://ramadanexclusive.blogspot.com/

There are three great seminal articles on the spirit, politics and Rituals of Ramadan. In the spirit of Ramadan, I pray that Ramadan gets into our hearts and minds and make us embrace all factions of Muslims without undermining their tradition and further pray that we treat every human on the earth with dignity, respect and care. The first year to set the pace, I worshipped and did the Iftaar (breaking the fast at the dusk) in every Muslim Denomination including praying at Masjid-al-Aqsa, the third most revered place of worship for Muslims, that completes my pilgrimage to all the three Mosques.

That is indeed the wisdom expressed in Qur'an, Al-Hujurat, and Surah 49:13: "O mankind! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. The noblest of you, in sight of God, is the best in conduct. God Knows and is Aware of everything you do."

Ground Zero Mosque
http://groundzeromosque.blogspot.com/
This issue is engaging the American Public, both for and against, in this blog I will save the links of articles that come across my knowledge as a reference for the researchers. We have to find solutions for co-existence and sustainable harmony. It is a shrine and it is a catalyst to consciously create a society we desire; where all of us will learn to respect the otherness of other and accept the God given differences. It is anti-theatrical to radicals from all traditions.

Peter King Hearings
http://www.peterkinghearings.blogspot.com/

We are concerned about the hearings and hope and pray that Mr. King would be honest, sincere and fair, although his record is marred with bigotry. We hope he will not destroy the fabric of our society and pit one American against the other. If he does, the American people will not put up with it, as they have done that time and again. I trust our system and our people who have stood up against Vietnam War, Iraq war and supported abortion and civil rights and one of these days’ rights for GLBT and every American.

Qur'aan today

Qur’anic Sharia (laws) on Divorce

Quraan Videos

Quraan Preserved

What Is the Koran?

Publisher's note at the end of the article.

COURTESY ATLANTIC MAGAZINEBy TOBY LESTER, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-koran/4024/1/?single_page=true

What Is the Koran?

By TOBY LESTER

Muslims and the Koran

Taqwa and righteousness in Quran -Koran

Apostasy is anti-Islamic

Noble Qur'an - HH The Aga Khan

About this site - Quraan Today

Musilms Together sites and Blogs

COURTESY ATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By TOBY LESTER,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-koran/4024/1/?single_page=true