Understanding the Qur’an – Muhammad Abdel Haleem

Abstact:

“Understanding the Qur’an is intended to help the general reader, and also the scholar, to understand the Qur’an by combining a number of ap- proaches: thematic, stylistic and comparative. Many English studies of the Qur’an tend to regard it as nothing more than a jumble of borrowed and rambling thoughts with no sense of direction. This approach has resulted in a series of unstudied theories which, instead of mapping out the Qur’anic world, have added more confused ideas to an already confused compre- hension.“

Abdel Haleem, Understanding The Qur'an
Abdel Haleem, Understanding The Qur’anDownload

The Sound of Silence -William Chittick

Abstract

“I tried to imagine how the authors of
the old texts that I read would have reacted
to the phrase “the silence of God.” Probably
they would have muttered, “Try listening
for once.” Or they might have quoted the
Qur’anic verse, “They have hearts but they
do not understand with them, they have
eyes but they do not see with them, they
have ears but they do not hear with them”
(7:179).
The word silence (in Arabic, śamt) is”

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The Qur’an and its Interpretive Tradition. By Andrew Rippin.

The Qur’an and its Interpretive Tradition. By Andrew Rippin. (Variorum
Collected Studies Series). Pp. 356. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2001. £62.50.
Each volume of the Variorum Collected Studies Series musters long term writings by
some noteworthy scholar (in this case, one of the biggest names in Qur’anic studies
in the West); by grouping articles on sundry fields, perhaps written over decades, it
allows a clear glimpse of the scholar’s development, their deeper presuppositions, the
methodological patterns and mental habits which undergird their work. Rippin’s cor­
pus is avowedly built on groundwork laid by John Wansbrough. Two whole chapters
(II and IV) of the book at hand are indeed given over to aspects of Wansbrough’s
work. The tell-tale framework of haggadic, halakhic, massoretic, rhetorical and alle­
gorical genres/phases in the elaboration of the Muslim scriptures is assumed through­
out the book, which brims with references to Quranic Studies and praise for its late………

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Islam in English

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Tafsir Ibn Abbas

Tafsir Ibn Abbas

Themes of Love in Islamic Mystical Theology by William Chittick

Abstract:

“Muslim scholars who talked about love agreed that it is indefinable. In discussions of human love, they typically limited themselves to describing its symptoms, characteristics, and consequences. They summarized these along the lines of “yearning for union.” By using the word union, they were saying that the goal of lovers is to come together, not to stay apart. They understood love as the energy that brings about the encounter of God and man…”

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Themes_of_Love_in_Islamic_Mystical_Theology_Chittick-libreDownload

Rashid al-Din Maybudi’s Tafsir Kashf al-Asrar – Tr. William Chittick

Rashid al-Din Maybudi’s Kashf al-Asrar – Tr. William Chittick

The full name of this commentary is Kashf al-asrār wa ʿuddat al-abrār (“The unveiling of the mysteries and the provision of the pious”). It is the longest Sunni commentary in the Persian language.  Selections translated by William Chittick.