Category: Book Reviews
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Ibn Warraq’s “Origins Of The Koran”: A Critical Analysis
This book, edited by the rather nebulous personage of "Ibn Warraq" (neither his full name nor his institutional affiliation, if any, are anywhere given), consists of thirteen previously published essays on the history and nature of the Qur'anic text, twelve of them dating from the half-century between 1890 and 1940 and only the thirteenth dating…
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Review Of “The Collection of the Qur’an” By John Burton
The last work that shall be discussed is a relatively recent one: The Collection of the Qur'an by John Burton. It was published in 1977 by Cambridge University Press. What Burton did was to take the theories of Schacht concerning the validity of hadeeth and apply them to the history of the compilation of the…
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“Geschichte des Qorans” Of Theodore Noeldeke
The first work is by Theodore Noeldeke, a very famous German Orientalist. He entitled it Geschichte des Qorans, or "History of the Qur'an". The work was written with the help of three other German Orientalists: Pretzl, Schwally and Bergstraesser. It was published over a period of three decades, in three volumes. The first volume was…
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Simon Hopkins, Review of “Christoph Luxenberg”, Die syro-aramaiche Lesart des Koran… [i.e., “The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Qur’an..]
It reinforces the claim I have been making for ages that the real problem is not in Luxenberg's interpretation of this or that term, so that a clever selection from his book would enable us to arrive at an all-correct set of Luxenberg's Qur'anic interpretations. Instead, the real problem lies in his fundamental hypothesis and…
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Book Review : Ibn Warraq (ed.), “The Origins of the Koran : Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book”, Prometheus Books, NY : 1998
This is a collection of articles in Qur’anic studies by some of the most influential early pioneers in the field : Noldeke’s famous article for the Britannica (9th edition, 1891); Caetani’s study of the “Uthmanic recension tradition” (1915); Mingana’s : “Three Ancient Korans” (1914) and “The Transmission of the Koran” (1916); four seemingly idiosyncratically chosen articles by Arthur…
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A Review of Geraldine Brooks’ “Nine Parts of Desire : The Hidden World of Islamic Women”
“CyberMuslima” (Pseudonym) I intended this to be a short essay piece, a review of sorts pointing out the most grievous sections of this book. However, as I read on, looking for quotes to use, I found that I could neither highlight any one part of the book nor could I make it short. This book is so wrong, and there is…
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Ali Dashti’s “23 Years : A Study of the Prophetic Career of Muhammad”: A Review
Since this book has come up as a topic, and I have read it, I thought, insha’allah, I’d write my impressions. I ordered the book sight unseen because I like reading sirah and I liked the title. Its kind of dramatic. Dashti appears to have been born Muslim but according to the translator’s introduction, it appears he rejected Islam for “patriotism”…
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Book Review : “Christoph Luxenberg”, The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Qur’an : A Contribution to the Decipherment of the Qur’anic Language
[i.e., Die Syro-Aramäische Lesart des Koran : Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Koransprache] François Clément de Blois The title of this book announces a new ‘reading’ of the Qur’an and the subtitle promises ‘a contribution to the decoding of the language of the Qur’an.’ The author’s theses are summarised succinctly in his ‘resum?’ (pp. 299 – 307): the Qur’an is…
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Scholarship or Sophistry ? Bernard Lewis and the New Orientalism
M. Shahid Alam It would appear from the fulsome praise heaped by mainstream reviewers on Bernard Lewis’s most recent and well-timed book, What Went Wrong ? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford University Press, 2002), that the demand for Orientalism has reached a new peak. America’s search for new enemies that began soon after the end…