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Aug 25, 2021 · No simple set of rules constitute Shari’a; rather a body of texts, including the Quran, hadith, and legal texts of various genres, constitute the authoritative base for Islamic legal thought and practice.
- ihsan.yilmaz@deakin.edu.au
Textual criticism of the Quran, the structure and style of the surahs, has been opposed on grounds that it questions the divine origin of the Quran.
Sacred Texts. The Qur’an is the primary revelation in Islam, held to be the direct Word of God given to the Prophet Muhammad. The Qur’an affirms that God is the one Creator and Sovereign of the universe, has willed its right order and balance, and that all beings (not only humans) praise and glorify God.
- Sacred Character
- Power and Protection
- Comfort and Need
- Recitation and Memorization
- Teaching and Interpretation
- Influence
- Bibliography
As a revelation directly from God, the Qurʾān is the main theophany of Islam. Although it was revealed to the prophet Muḥammad in the Arabic language (12:2), its text is believed to consist of divine rather than human speech (9:6). Thus, its significance for Muslims is similar to that of the Logos (divine speech) in Christianity. However, unlike th...
Because the word of God resonates continually in sacred scripture, the divine text and even the calligraphic text of the Qurʾān are believed to possess awesome powers. In a well known verse the Qurʾān states: "Were we to cause this Qurʾān to descend on a mountain you would see it humbled and torn asunder in awe of God" (59:21). A tradition reports ...
The Qurʾān also serves as a source of strength and reassurance in the face of the unknown. For pious Muslims, the Qurʾān provides a means of controlling future events or mitigating their outcome through istikharah, seeking guidance or a good omen in the text. Istikharah represents the choice of what God has chosen. It is carried out by averting the...
Because the Qurʾān contains the word of God, its text stipulates that no one should touch it but the purified (56:79), nor should anyone recite it that is not in a state of ritual purity. Before beginning to recite the Qurʾān, the Muslim is encouraged to clean her teeth and purify her mouth, because the body will become the "path" of the Qurʾān. Th...
According to Muslim convention, the Qurʾān is not a book with a beginning, middle, and end. Every portion, even every verse, is a "Qurʾān," a divine lecture, just as the entire book is the Qurʾān, properly speaking. In the history of Qurʾanic exegesis, this belief has led to an unfortunate tendency to take Qurʾanic verses out of context. However, t...
Every verse of the Qurʾān contains seventy thousand potential ways of understanding its text, because each Arabic word of the Qurʾān bears multiple, legitimate levels of meaning. Understanding this truism of Arabic hermeneutics is key to understanding the importance of the Qurʾān to Muslims. Even beyond the creedal confines of Islam, the Qurʾān has...
The role of the Qurʾān in Muslim piety, although crucial to Islamic spirituality, has until recently been neglected in Western scholarship. More surprisingly, it has also been neglected in contemporary Muslim scholarship, where moral and political approaches to Islam have been considered more important. Since the late 1980s, however, the subject ha...
Oct 5, 2022 · How can you improve your understanding of Islam and its most important holy text, the Quran? How can you make sense of a tradition and a text that have been interpreted in different ways across vast geographical spaces for nearly a millennium and a half?
For non-Arabic speakers it may be difficult to understand or to explain the content of the Qur’an, as some believe that key words and concepts can only be fully understood in the original...
Jan 16, 2006 · Islam is more inclusive in the holy revelations it affirms than any other heavenly religion in its present form. Muslims uphold and respect the following scriptures: (i) The Quran itself, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.
