The Qur'an's Contribution to Biblical Criticism

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-176
Author(s):  
Muhammad Khalifa Hasan

The Islamic science of Biblical Criticism is one of the earliest to emerge from the study of the Qur'an. It was developed by Muslim scholars specialising in the history of religions and reached its peak with the contributions of Ibn Ḥazm al-Andalūsī in the fifth/twelfth century. This ‘traditional’ Islamic science has more recently been complemented by the incorporation of Western Biblical Criticism Theory in the works of Raḥmat Allah al-Hindī, Ismāʿīl al-Fārūqī, Muḥammad Khalīfa Ḥasan, and others. This study will seek to determine the role of the Qur'an in the establishment of the Islamic science of Biblical Criticism and its centrality as a source for this discipline, through the elaboration of certain principles, such as the moderating position of the Qur'an between the Tanakh and Christian Bible, and the moderating position of Islam between Judaism and Christianity. Among these principles are the Qur'an's critical awareness and theories of taḥrīf and tabdīl, for example. The objectivity of the Qur'an is shown in the way it accepts previous revealed texts, and acknowledges them as a matter of belief, while seeking at the same time to conclusively clarify the revelation. In conclusion, this paper urges the usefulness of the Qur'an as a source of Biblical Criticism and Jewish and Christian interpretation and exegesis of the Tanakh and the Christian Bible.

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 98-100
Author(s):  
Muhamad Ali

Studies of Islam in Southeast Asia have sought to better understand its multifacetedand complex dimensions, although one may make a generalizedcategorization of Muslim beliefs and practices based on a fundamental differencein ideologies and strategies, such as cultural and political Islam.Anna M. Gade’s Perfection Makes Practice stresses the cultural aspect ofIndonesian Muslim practices by analyzing the practices of reciting andmemorizing the Qur’an, as well as the annual competition.Muslim engagement with the Qur’an has tended to emphasize the cognitiveover the psychological dimension. Perfection Makes Practice analyzesthe role of emotion in these undertakings through a combination ofapproaches, particularly the history of religions, ethnography, psychology,and anthropology. By investigating Qur’anic practitioners in Makassar,South Sulawesi, during the 1990s, Gade argues that the perfection of theQur’an as a perceived, learned, and performed text has made and remade thepractitioners, as well as other members of the Muslim community, to renewor increase their engagement with the holy text. In this process, she suggests,moods and motivation are crucial to preserving the recited Qur’an and revitalizingthe Muslim community.In chapter 1, Gade begins with a theoretical consideration for her casestudy. Drawing from concepts that emphasize the importance of feeling andemotion in ritual and religious experience, she develops a conceptualizationof this engagement. In chapter 2, Gade explains memorization within thecontext of the self and social relations. She argues that Qur’anic memorizershave a special relationship with its style and structure, as well as with thesocial milieu. Although Qur’anic memorization is a normal practice for mostMuslims, its practitioners have learned how to memorize and recite beautifullysome or all of the Qur’an’s verses, a process that requires emotion ...


1991 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 409-421
Author(s):  
Ghulam-Haider Aasi

History of Religions in the WestA universal, comparative history of the study of religions is still far frombeing written. Indeed, such a history is even hr from being conceived, becauseits components among the legacies of non-Western scholars have hardly beendiscovered. One such component, perhaps the most significant one, is thecontributions made by Muslim scholars during the Middle Ages to thisdiscipline. What is generally known and what has been documented in thisfield consists entirely of the contribution of Westdm scholars of religion.Even these Western scholars belong to the post-Enlightenment era of Wsternhistory.There is little work dealing with the history of religions which does notclaim the middle of the nineteenth century CE as the beginning of thisdiscipline. This may not be due only to the zeitgeist of the modem Wstthat entails aversion, downgrading, and undermining of everything stemmingfrom the Middie Ages; its justification may also be found in the intellectualpoverty of the Christian West (Muslim Spain excluded) that spans that historicalperiod.Although most works dealing with this field include some incidentalreferences, paragraphs, pages, or short chapters on the contribution of thepast, according to each author’s estimation, all of these studies are categorizedunder one of the two approaches to religion: philosophical or cubic. All ofthe reflective, speculative, philosophical, psychological, historical, andethnological theories of the Greeks about the nature of the gods and goddessesand their origins, about the nature of humanity’s religion, its mison dsttre,and its function in society are described as philosophical quests for truth.It is maintained that the Greeks’ contribution to the study of religion showedtheir openness of mind and their curiosity about other religions and cultures ...


Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 22-34
Author(s):  
Andreea Apostu

This paper aims to analyze the way in which Mircea Eliade became, in 1926, a vector of the cultural and scientific transfer between Western Europe and Romania, through his translations of eight fragments from Aldo Mieli, Raffaele Pettazzoni and Sylvain Lévi’s major works. Two out of these eight translations seem to have been ignored to this day by researchers, whilst the others have only been mentioned in passing. The choices made by Eliade, the context in which these translations were published (the journal Orizontul/The Horizon and its public, the precarious state of the history of religions at that time in Romania etc.) and their echoes in Eliade’s works prove that they can be seen as an example of cultural transfer. They also play an important part in the foundation of the history of religions as a discipline in Romania, being, in a way, the textual equivalents of Eliade’s institutional aspiration to found an association and a library for the study of religions, as expressed in his letters to Raffaele Pettazzoni.


Religions ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Ahmed Abou El Zalaf

Existing scholarship has largely focused on the role of Sayyid Qutb’s ideas when analyzing the Muslim Brotherhood’s violent history. Perceiving Qutb’s ideas as paving the way for radical interpretations of jihad, many studies linked the Brotherhood’s violent history with this key ideologue. Yet, in so doing, many studies overlooked the importance of the Special Apparatus in shaping this violent history of the Brotherhood, long before Qutb joined the organization. Through an in-depth study of memoires and accounts penned by Brotherhood members and leaders, and a systematic study of British and American intelligence sources, I attempt to shed light on this understudied formation of the Brotherhood, the Special Apparatus. This paper looks at the development of anti-colonial militancy in Egypt, particularly the part played by the Brotherhood until 1954. It contends that political violence, in the context of British colonization, antedated the Brotherhood’s foundation, and was in some instances considered as a legitimate and even distinguished duty among anti-colonial factions. The application of violence was on no account a part of the Brotherhood’s core strategy, but the organization, nevertheless, established an armed and secret wing tasked with the fulfillment of what a segment of its members perceived as the duty of anti-colonial jihad.


Author(s):  
Richard Swedberg

This chapter looks at the role of theory in theorizing. Knowing theory, in order to be good at theorizing in social science, is not the same as having a knowledge of the history of social theory. It is true that it is helpful to have some of the skills of an intellectual historian when one tries to figure out what a concept means, why a theory looks the way it does today, and similar issues. However, this is not the kind of knowledge that one basically needs to have in order to be good at theorizing. The two types of knowledge that are needed in order to theorize well are knowledge of the basics of social theory and knowledge of a number of concepts, mechanisms, and theories.


Chapter One deals with several central issues with regard to understanding the role of religious motifs in contemporary art. Besides being a repetition of imagery from the past, religious motifs embedded in contemporary artworks become a means to problematise not only the way different periods in the history of art are delimited, but larger and seemingly more rigid distinctions as those between art and non-art images. Early religious images differ significantly from art images. The two types are regulated according to different sets of rules related to the conditions of their production, display, appreciation and the way images are invested with the status of being true or authentic instances of art or sacred images. Chapter One provides a discussion of the important motif of the image not made by an artist’s hand, or acheiropoietos, and its survival and transformation, including its traces in contemporary image-making practices. All images are the result of human making; they are fictions. The way the conditions of these fictions are negotiated, or the way the role of the maker is brought to visibility, or concealed, is a defining feature of the specific regime of representation. While the cult image concealed its maker in order to maintain its public significance, and the later art image celebrated the artist as a re-inventor of the old image, contemporary artists cite religious images in order to reflect on the very procedures that produce the public significance and status of images.


2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Hughes

AbstractThis article provides a theoretical discussion of the genre of commentary writing. Rather than examining the role of commentary in a specific religion, it attempts to articulate a set of useful questions to begin the process of rethinking what this genre is and, in the process, help create a theoretical vocabulary and conceptual framework for an analysis of commentary from the history of religions. The article is divided into three parts. The first broadens the traditional concept of a "canon", ostensibly the raw data upon which the commentary imposes a taxonomy. The second argues that the human condition, what Heidegger calls the way in which we are thrown into the world, demands that we interpret it. Finally, it is suggested that commentary is fundamentally about location or space, thereby providing the classificatory schema that is necessary for contextualizing both past and present. The main goal of this article is to problematize the current discussion of commentary in a theoretical way.


2014 ◽  
Vol 679 ◽  
pp. 6-13
Author(s):  
Hafedh Abed Yahya ◽  
Muna Hanim Abdul Samad

The argumentation of previous studies demonstrated the historical evolution of the materials in architecture and the position of the materials in the design process. The purpose is to recognize the role of materials in architectural design, and the materials are a core element of the design process. This paper is about the way materials can be used to create personality and character of the design. The research finds two overlapping roles for materials which are providing technical functionality and building personality. Thus building materials were one of the major factors for new innovation forms through the history of architecture. Keywords: Building Materials, Architectural Design, Technical Functionality, Aesthetic Attributes.


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