Download or read book Koranic Allusions written by Ibn Warraq and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For anyone with an interest in the early history of Islam, this erudite anthology will prove to be informative and enlightening. Scholars have long known that the text of the Koran shows evidence of many influences from religious sources outside Islam. For example, stories in the Koran about Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other characters from the Bible obviously come from the Jewish Torah and the Christian Gospels. But there is also evidence of borrowing in the Koran from more obscure literature. In this anthology, the acclaimed critic of Islam Ibn Warraq has assembled scholarly articles that delve into these unusual, little-known sources. The contributors examine the connections between pre-Islamic poetry and the text of the Koran; and they explore similarities between various Muslim doctrines and ideas found in the writings of the Ebionites, a Jewish Christian sect that existed from the second to the fourth centuries. Also considered is the influence of Coptic Christian literature on the writing of the traditional biography of Muhammad.
Download or read book Representations of the Divine in Arabic Poetry written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Islam the fascination for “the word” is as vigorous as in Judaism and in Christianity, but an extra dimension is, that the revealed text, the Koran, is considered to be verbatim the word of the Almighty Himself, thereby providing the Arabic language with just an extra quality. No wonder that throughout Islamic history the study of the word, the Koran, the prophet’s utterances and the interpretation of both, has become the main axis of knowledge and education. As a consequence the intellectuals – and also the poets in Islamic culture - were thoroughly familiar with religious terms and the phraseology of a language which was highly estimated because of the divine origin with which it was associated. No wonder therefore, that allusions to religious texts can be found throughout Arabic literature, both classical and modern. The subject of this volume is the representation of the divine in Arabic poetry, be it the experience of the divine as expressed by poets or the use of imagery coined by religion.
Download or read book The Islamic Jesus written by Mustafa Akyol and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intriguing connection between Christianity and Islam, through the lost “heresy” of Jewish Christianity
Download or read book Religious Mysticism written by S. K. Adlakha and published by Mittal Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents: 1. Religious Mysticism: An Introduction, 2. Mysticism Among Oral Peoples, 3. Hinduism: A General Orientation, 4. Krishna, 5. Shiva, 6. Muslimtraditions: A General Orientation, 7. Ghazali And After, 8. God And Brahman, 9. Vedanta In Muslim Dress, 10. Islamic Traditions.
Download or read book The Triumphal Sun written by Annemarie Schimmel and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book on Rumi's life, his poetry, his thought, and his influence. Rumi's work forms one of the pillars of the Sufi orders, particularly the Mevlevi order, better known in the West as the Whirling Dervishes. In this book Rumi emerges not only as a spiritual master, but also as a fully human being grounded firmly in the Koran and in classical Islamic mysticism. The light of the Divine Sun, in its Beauty and Majesty, manifested itself for Rumi through the person of Shams of Tabriz. Transformed by this light, consumed by this fire, Mowlana Rumi saw the world in a new light. Everywhere he perceived God's Grandeur and his Grace. The book also discusses the theological premises upon which Rumi's work rests, his attitude to the problems of free will and predestination, and his analysis of the mystical stages and stations. The book not only gives a very rich analysis of Rumi's language and poetical art, but also a picture of medieval Konya, whose features the mystical poet transforms and transfigures.
Download or read book The Tao of Islam written by Sachiko Murata and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tao of Islam is a rich and diverse anthology of Islamic teachings on the nature of the relationships between God and the world, the world and the human being, and the human being and God. Focusing on gender symbolism, Sachiko Murata shows that Muslim authors frequently analyze the divine reality and its connections with the cosmic and human domains with a view toward a complementarity or polarity of principles that is analogous to the Chinese idea of yin/yang. Murata believes that the unity of Islamic thought is found, not so much in the ideas discussed, as in the types of relationships that are set up among realities. She pays particular attention to the views of various figures commonly known as "Sufis" and "philosophers," since they approach these topics with a flexibility and subtlety not found in other schools of thought. She translates several hundred pages, most for the first time, from more than thirty important Muslims including the Ikhwan al-Safa', Avicenna, and Ibn al-'Arabi.
Download or read book The Critical Qur an written by Robert Spencer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 1271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique resource for understanding the Islamic Holy Book. As Islamic terrorism becomes a distressingly common feature of life in North America and Europe, it has become increasingly important for non-Muslims to be aware of the ideology that animates and motivates jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others—an ideology that’s rooted in Islam’s holy book, the Qur’an. English-speaking people, however, have found attempts to understand the Qur’an and Islam impeded by unclear, densely worded translations and explanatory notes written by Islamic apologists attempting to conceal, rather than reveal, how Islamic jihadis use the texts and teachings of the Qur’an to justify violence and supremacism, and to make recruits of peaceful Muslims. The Critical Qur’an, in contrast, makes clear the passages that are used to incite violence. Historian and Islamic scholar Robert Spencer elucidates the Qur’anic text with extensive references to the principal tafsir, or commentaries, that mainstream Muslims use today to understand the Qur’an, showing how interpretations that sanction violence are unfortunately not outliers, but central in Islamic theology. The Critical Qur’an is the Islamic counterpart to numerous critical and skeptical editions of the Bible that have appeared over the last century and more. It is the one edition of Islam’s book that doesn’t shy away from elucidating why the holy book of Islam is so frequently quoted and referred to with reverence by people who commit and/or justify acts of violence. It is a basic resource for everyone who wishes to understand the persistent phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, and the peculiar provenance of this most provocative book.
Download or read book Early Islamic Poetry and Poetics written by Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a set of key studies on classical Arabic poetry (ca. 500-1000 C.E.), published over the last thirty-five years; the individual articles each deal with a different approach, period, genre, or theme. The major focus is on new interpretations of the form and function of the pre-eminent classical poetic genre, the polythematic qasida, or Arabic ode, particularly explorations of its ritual, ceremonial and performance dimensions. Other articles present the typology and genre characteristics of the short monothematic forms, especially the lyrical ghazal and the wine-poem. After thus setting out the full poetic genres and their structures, the volume turns in the remaining studies to the philological, rhetorical, stylistic and motival elements of classical Arabic poetry, in their etymological, symbolic, historical and comparatist dimensions. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych's Introduction places the articles within the context of the major critical and methodological trajectories of the field and in doing so demonstrates the increasing integration of Arabic literary studies into contemporary humanistic scholarship. The Selected Bibliography complements the Introduction and the Articles to offer the reader a full overview of the past generation of Western literary and critical scholarship on classical Arabic poetry.
Download or read book Routledge Handbook on Early Islam written by Herbert Berg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-10 with total page 795 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The formative period of Islam remains highly contested. From the beginning of modern scholarship on this formative period, scholars have questioned traditional Muslim accounts on early Islam. The scholarly fixation is mirrored by sectarian groups and movements within Islam, most of which trace their origins to this period. Moreover, contemporary movements from Salafists to modernists continue to point to Islam’s origins to justify their positions. This Handbook provides a definitive overview of early Islam and how this period was understood and deployed by later Muslims. It is split into four main parts, the first of which explores the debates and positions on the critical texts and figures of early Islam. The second part turns to the communities that identified their origins with the Qurʾān and Muḥammad. In addition to the development of Muslim identities and polities, of particular focus is the relationship with groups outside or movements inside of the umma (the collective community of Muslims). The third part looks beyond what happened from the 7th to the 9th centuries CE and explores what that period, the events, figures, and texts have meant for Muslims in the past and what they mean for Muslims today. Not all Muslims or scholars are willing to merely reinterpret early Islam and its sources, though; some are willing to jettison parts, or even all, of the edifice that has been constructed over almost a millennium and a half. The Handbook therefore concludes with discussions of re-imaginations and revisions of early Islam and its sources. Almost every major debate in the study of Islam and among Muslims looks to the formative period of Islam. The wide range of contributions from many of the leading academic experts on the subject therefore means that this book will be a valuable resource for all students and scholars of Islamic studies, as well as for anyone with an interest in early Islam.
Download or read book Islam written by Annemarie Schimmel and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1992-05-14 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a splendid introduction—carefully researched and comprehensive, yet readable. It corrects many popular and erroneous notions about Islam that prevail in non-Muslim societies. For the general reader there are many profound insights of great consequence, for example, the passages on women, marriage, and inheritance, or the section on jihad, nearly always completely misunderstood in the press.
Download or read book The Quest of the Historical Muhammad and Other Studies on Formative Islam written by Stephen J. Shoemaker and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2024-07-09 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lead essay in this book is the first effort to approach the historical figure of Muhammad in a manner comparable to the investigations that biblical scholars have made in the effort to recover the historical figure of Jesus. Using comparable methods and approaches, this study demonstrates that despite a widely held belief that Islam was born "in the full light of history," we in fact know considerably less about both Muhammad and the beginnings of Islam than we do about the historical Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity. Also included are republications of four previously published essays dealing with such topics as the Qur'an's status as a late ancient biblical apocryphon, the relation between the Jerusalem Temple and the Holy House revered by the Qur'an, and the imminent eschatology of the Qur'an and the early Islamic tradition.
Download or read book Arabic and Hebrew Love Poems in Al Andalus written by Shari Lowin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-20 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arabic and Hebrew Love Poems in al-Andalus investigates a largely overlooked subset of Muslim and Jewish love poetry in medieval Spain: hetero- and homo-erotic love poems written by Muslim and Jewish religious scholars, in which the lover and his sensual experience of the beloved are compared to scriptural characters and storylines. This book examines the ways in which the scriptural referents fit in with, or differ from, the traditional Andalusian poetic conventions. The study then proceeds to compare the scriptural stories and characters as presented in the poems with their scriptural and exegetical sources. This new intertextual analysis reveals that the Jewish and Muslim scholar-poets utilized their sacred literature in their poems of desire as more than poetic ornamentation; in employing Qur’ānic heroes in their secular verses, the Muslim poets presented a justification of profane love and sanctification of erotic human passions. In the Hebrew lust poems, which utilize biblical heroes, we can detect subtle, subversive, and surprisingly placed interpretations of biblical accounts. Moving beyond the concern with literary history to challenge the traditional boundaries between secular and religious poetry, this book provides a new, multidisciplinary, approach to existing materials and will be of interest to students, scholars and researchers of Islamic and Jewish Studies as well as to those with an interest in Hebrew and Arabic poetry of Islamic Spain.
Download or read book Moon o theism Volume I of II written by Yoel Natan and published by Yoel Natan. This book was released on 2006 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is volume one of a two-volume study of a war and moon god religion that was based on the Mideast moon god religion of Sin.
Download or read book The History of the Qur n written by Theodor Nöldeke and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-05-10 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first complete translation of Theodor Nöldeke’s The History of the Qurʾān offers a foundational work of modern Qurʾānic studies to the English-speaking public. Nöldeke’s original publication, as revised and expanded over nearly three quarters of a century by his scholarly successors, Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl, remains an indispensable resource for any scholarly work on the text of the Qurʾān. Nöldeke’s segmentation of the surahs into three Meccan periods and a Medinan one has shaped all subsequent discussions of the chronology of the Qurʾān. The revisions and expansions of Nöldeke’s initial discussions of the orthography and variant readings of the text have found a new audience among those contemporary scholars who seek to create a more sophisticated understanding of the Qurʾān’s textual development.
Download or read book The Sufi Path of Knowledge written by William C. Chittick and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-03-31 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ibn al-'Arabi is still known as "the Great Sheik" among the surviving Sufi orders. Born in Muslim Spain, he has become famous in the West as the greatest mystical thinker of Islamic civilization. He was a great philosopher, theologian, and poet. William Chittick takes a major step toward exposing the breadth and depth of Ibn al-'Arabi's vision. The book offers his view of spiritual perfection and explains his theology, ontology, epistemology, hermeneutics, and soteriology. The clear language, unencumbered by methodological jargon, makes it accessible to those familiar with other spiritual traditions, while its scholarly precision will appeal to specialists. Beginning with a survey of Ibn al-'Arabi's major teachings, the book gradually introduces the most important facets of his thought, devoting attention to definitions of his basic terminology. His teachings are illustrated with many translated passages introducing readers to fascinating byways of spiritual life that would not ordinarily be encountered in an account of a thinker's ideas. Ibn al-'Arabi is allowed to describe in detail the visionary world from which his knowledge derives and to express his teachings in his own words. More than 600 passages from his major work, al-Futuhat al-Makkivva, are translated here, practically for the first time. These alone provide twice the text of the Fusus al-hikam. The exhaustive indexes make the work an invaluable reference tool for research in Sufism and Islamic thought in general.
Download or read book The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam written by G. R. Hawting and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-12-09 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why and under what circumstances did the religion of Islam emerge in a remote part of Arabia at the beginning of the seventh century? Traditional scholarship maintains that Islam developed in opposition to the idolatrous and polytheistic religion of the Arabs of Mecca and the surrounding regions. In this study of pre-Islamic Arabian religion, G. R. Hawting adopts a comparative religious perspective to suggest an alternative view. By examining the various bodies of evidence which survive from this period, the Koran and the vast resources of the Islamic tradition, the author argues that in fact Islam arose out of conflict with other monotheists whose beliefs and practices were judged to fall short of true monotheism and were, in consequence, attacked polemically as idolatry. The author is adept at unravelling the complexities of the source material, and students and scholars will find his argument both engaging and persuasive.
Download or read book The Universal Islamic Education Methodology written by Roohi A. Ahmad and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2023-08-28 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have we ever wondered why Allah swt uses His name as Allah some places and Rabb in the others? Have we ever wondered what the difference between momin and muslim is? Can we make an argument to prove their meanings from within the Quran? Have we ever wondered why Allah swt uses the word zikar so extensively throughout the Quran; or what the meaning of the word zikar is; or how the meaning of zikar is different from talu, qara, and ratal; and even why there are talu, qara, and ratal, the three different words for reading the Quran? Or have we ever wondered why we are plagued by all kinds of catastrophes? Or why is there so much chaos and conflict in the world, and how can we solve these problems? If we have not wondered about such questions, the reason is that we have not read the Qur’an in its true sense. Today’s Muslims have two main objectives for their children: success in this world and triumph in the life hereafter. Muslim children need natural and social knowledge, but to fully enrich their minds, they also need to learn about the Quran and Islamic traditions. Many Islamic schools in North America are pursuing both of these objectives, but educators often feel that merging these two goals is too difficult. Having spent years teaching in Islamic schools and conducting a wealth of research, Roohi A. Ahmad has observed firsthand how complex the enterprise of Islamic education is. She has also witnessed the void of learning outcomes, teaching goals, and, most importantly, a clear vision and methodology for Islamic education. She has sought to remedy that situation in this book. It provides a practical methodology designed to help Muslim educators create a state-of-the-art Islamic education system that will lead to fully formed students who can function well in this world and ensure a positive outcome in the world to come.
