Themes of the Quran (P/B)

The Qur’an reigns supreme in Muslim hearts as the most sacred of texts: a profusion of exalted ideas to rouse the mind, noble histories to stir the soul, universal truths to awaken the conscience and precise injunctions directing humanity to its own deliverance, all distilled into the melodious essence that is the Word of Allah. Through fourteen centuries Muslims have persevered in championing the text against corruption, memorising its every word and contemplating its every phrase, so that in our own times untold millions have enthusiastically committed each letter to heart.

Beginning with a catalogue of ancient and contemporary attacks on the Qur’an, this expansive book provides unique insights into the holy text’s immaculate preservation throughout its history, as well as exploring many of the accusations leveled against it. The reception of divine revelations, Prophet Muhammad’s role in teaching and disseminating these verses, the text’s compilation under his guidance and the setting of its final external shape shortly after his death, are meticulously and scientifically examined alongside such topics as the origins of Arabic, its paleography and orthography, the so-called Mushaf of Ibn Mas’ud, and the strict methodology employed in assembling textual fragments.

By way of comparison the author investigates the histories of the Old and New Testaments, relying entirely on Judaeo-Christian sources including the Dead Sea Scrolls and uncovers a startling range of alterations that touch almost every fact of the Biblical Scriptures. Using this as a springboard for assessing Western theories regarding the Qur’an, he makes a sophisticated yet passionate case for questioning the aims of Western scholarship in continuously undermining Islam’s holy book, and illustrates convincingly that such research, motivated by more than mere curiousity, has no scientific bearing on the Qur’an’s integrity.

This monumental effort, a scholarly work composed in an impassioned tone, provides a welcome foundation for sincere study at a time when assailing the Qur’an has become all too common.

A cornerstone addition to any personal library. A Truly monumental effort. This work presents a cogent and powerful argument for the Qur’an’s unique inviolability.

An enduring classic work on the etiquette that a Muslim must or should have with regard to handling and reciting the Quran (the Muslim scripture). The topics this volume raises include: ritual cleanliness, opportune times for recitation, the etiquette that students have with their teachers (and that teachers must have with their students), and variety of other issues that every Muslim should know and frequently ask about.

He present works was designed and written to explain to men and women how best to benefit from the Book of Allah. The blessing of the Quran is that whoever recites it as it should be recited is changed by it, and brought by imperceptible degrees to see why everything is the way it is. The seed of this knowledge is a humble intention to draw nearer to the Divine, the soil in which it takes root are reverence, awe, and love, ant its fruit is this world and the next. It is well known to everyone conversant wuth the Islamic disciplines that the learning of many thins does not teach wisdom, and that traditional books do not reveal their secrets or bestow their benefits to those without the key to them.

This key is adab, the “the right way of doing things,” rendered in the title as “etiquette.”… Books, especially sacred ones, give their knowledge to those of adab, and Westerns who know something about the sciences of Islam have been waiting for a book like this in English for a long time.
-From the Foreword by
Nuh Ha Mim Keller