Western Scholarship And The Qur'an Report Samples

Abstract

Understandably, Rippin knows that primitive Christian authors will never have the same approach of the Quran with the same assumptions as a believing Muslim. Through the “Western scholarship and the Qur'an” Rippin elucidates the growth of scholarly approaches to Qur’an. He notes that the Western Scholarly is not vibrant as it once might have been thought. Rippin articulates that Muslim scholars, though, have been precarious of both approaches they have been capable to find polemic in even the most composed research. Rippin draws attention to the significance of Tafsir, which answer the dilemmas of the discipline of every literary work of the Qur’an.
“Western scholarship and the Qur'an” is a chapter in “The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an” book edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe of Georgetown University. The author of the topic is Andrew Lawrence Rippin, born 16th May in the year 1950, and he is a sound Canadian scholar of Islam. Rippin is a prior Professor of History at the University of Victoria, British Columbia as a Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Rippin is widely respected Muslims, an author of many literary works on the Qur’an as well as its interpretation. He has also interpreted Muslims religious beliefs and their practices.
The main topic of the chapter is the history of the growth of “scholarly” approaches to the Qur’an. Scholarly is in quotation marks since it is a question that Rippin develops from this chapter. Rippin notes that the denotation of the scholarly adjective in the chapter is no longer vibrant as it once might have been thought (McAuliffe, 2006). From his perspective, calling an approach disinterested, academic, non-confessional or secular does not make it free from its value, whether unconscious or conscious. In this chapter, Rippin concisely reviews that the approach to the Qur’an from Muslims and compare it with the approach taken by the primitive Christian authors. He concluded by saying, “medieval Christian writers certainly remained hostile towards Islam and the Qur’an, but investigative processes underlay their efforts” (McAuliffe, 2006). Later in the chapter, Rippin designates the literary works of three sound scholars of the 19th century. He states that, Gustav Weil, Abraham Geiger, and Theodor Noldeke got studies of Qur’an off the ground (McAuliffe, 2006).
Later on the philological approach of the three medieval Christians writers was discovered as the scholarly. However, Rippin knew that the writers and most of western scholarly of the 20th century did not actually counter attack the fundamental assumptions of the Muslim tradition about the Qur'an. As expected, Rippin highlights the initiative of Wansbrough to discourse questions that were not raised within the scholarly framework (McAuliffe, 2006).Wansbrough argues that the structure of the Qur’anic text do support the claim of presumption of composition over short time which Muslims accounts make (McAuliffe, 2006). What has remained as the most profound impact of Wansbrough’s work is the opening up of new modes of working with the Qur’an. The models attempt to scrutinize the text with a set of assumptions obligated to a wider range of literary and religious models (McAuliffe, 2006).
Angelika had the most successful attempts, and that is why she was recommended by Rippin in examining the literary structure of the Qur’an (McAuliffe, 2006). In Rippin’s description, the spirit of modernism is reflected by the Encyclopedia of the Qur’an regardless of which religion since religion is a personal affair (McAuliffe, 2006). However, the spirit of openness and seriousness is also what divides the literary work from contemporary polemic. He compares this with the modern polemic, which he describes it very negatively. Upon the end of his article Rippin notes that Muslim scholars, though, have been precarious of both approaches (McAuliffe, 2006). The Muslim scholars have been capable to find polemic in even the most composed research.
At the end of the article, Rippin draws attention by bringing in the significance of Tafsir within the religious tradition. This is the field that the western academic scholars have dedicated substantial attention. This devotion and interest have remained dynamic in current days and become a representation of important areas of research in modern Islamic studies (McAuliffe, 2006). Rippin discovers that in the Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, there is a branch of Qur’anic studies that has tried to avoid some aspects of the problems raised in his article. This involves the study of Muslim approaches to the text of scripture by responding the message positively. The primitive polemical authors put their interests in the Tafsir traditional and are referred as modern scholarly approaches to the Qur’an. However, it remains ill-defined when it faces difficult questions. Therefore, the main modern study of Tafsir is to answer the dilemmas of the discipline of every literary work of the Qur’an (McAuliffe, 2006). In a nutshell, in Tafsir everyone should interact positively with the text from the perspective of their own era making them true modern scholars.

Bibliography

Leaman, Oliver, ed. The Qur'an: an encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis, 2006.
McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
McAuliffe, Jane Dammen. Encyclopaedia of the Qur'ān. Leiden: Brill, 2001.
Nickel, Gordon. "Western Scholarship and the Quran | Qur'an and Injil." Welcome | Qur'an and Injil. Last modified 2011. http://quranandinjil.org/west-schol-quran.
Rippin, Andrew. "Andrew Rippin." University of Victoria - Web.UVic.ca. Accessed April 6, 2015. http://web.uvic.ca/~arippin/.