Despite Discursive Shifts in Approaches, Western Scholars Still Deny Divine Nature of Quran
This is according to Pakistani-born Canadian scholar Dr Muzaffar Ibal while speaking in a seminar in Tehran on Saturday, November 16.
Titled “The Quran in the Western Encyclopedic Tradition: 1913-2013”, the seminar was organized by the Center for Studies of Contemporary Islam, affiliated to Al-Mustafa International University, in cooperation with the Canadian Center for Islamic Sciences (CIS).
In his speech, Dr Iqbal examined the fundamental aspects of Western approaches to the text of the Quran using examples from the entry on the Quran in the Encyclopedia of Islam.
He said in the first edition of the encyclopedia there is no mention of the Islamic view on the source of revelation and that the article on the Quran defines it as “the sacred book of the Muhammadans [which] contains the collected revelations of Muhammad in the form fixed by committal to writing.”
Iqbal said in the second edition, an academic and scholarly structure was given to the encyclopedia but there was no change in the conclusion when it came to describing the source of the revelation.
He noted that in the second edition, the Islamic view, that the Quran was revealed by God to the Prophet (PBUH) through Gabriel, is mentioned but is immediately discarded.
He said the author claims that according to Islamic sources, the prophet (PBUH) received information from sources like the Bible and produced the Quran based on that information, whereas there is no such thing in Islamic sources.
The Canadian scholar then pointed to the Encyclopedia of the Quran (EQ) (2011-2006) and said although Muslim scholars have contributed to this work, the number of articles by Muslim scholars is much lower compared to those written by Western scholars (18 percent as opposed to 82 percent by Western scholars).
He stated that reference to non-Islamic sources or very weak Islamic sources are among other weaknesses of this encyclopedia.
Ibal further said that in order to present a Muslim view of Islamic and Quranic issues, he and his colleagues started compiling the “Integrated Encyclopedia of the Quran” in 2007.
He said the encyclopedia will be published in 7 volumes and will contain 589 articles.
Muzaffar Iqbal is the founder-president of Center for Islamic Sciences (Canada), editor of Islamic Sciences, a semi-annual journal of Islamic perspectives on science and civilization, and General Editor of the seven-volume Integrated Encyclopedia of the Quran, the first English-language reference work on the Quran based on fourteen centuries of Muslim reflection and scholarship.
Dr Iqbal received his PhD in chemistry (University of Saskatchewan, Canada, 1983), and then left the field of experimental science to fully devote himself to study Islam, its spiritual, intellectual and scientific traditions.
Born in Lahore, Pakistan, he has lived in Canada since 1979. He has held academic and research positions at University of Saskatchewan (1979-1984), University of Wisconsin-Madison (1984-85), and McGill University (1986). During 1990-1999, he pursued his research and study on various aspects of Islam in Pakistan, where he also worked as Director, Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH) between 1991-96 and as Director, Pakistan Academy of Sciences (1998-99).
During 1999-2001, Dr. Iqbal was Program Director (for the Muslim World) for the Science-Religion Course Program of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS), Berkeley, USA.
Dr Iqbal has written, translated, and edited twenty-three books and published nearly one hundred papers on various aspects of Islam.
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