The Quran & Modern Science: Compatible or Incompatible? (P/B)

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

Without doubt, to know the cause of a thing, the occasion on which an incident has come in a particular way, and the circumstances under which an event has taken place in a certain manner can remove a great deal of ambiguity because of which it is not only difficult to understand this thing, but also it is possible to understand it quite differently from what it really is.

This fascinating and important book attempts to investigate the nature of the seven Ahruf in which the Qur’an has been revealed and the reason for the variations in readings among the Qurraa of the Quran. It studies, examines, and discusses:

• The revelation of the Qur’an in the seven ahruf concluding that they represent seven linguistical ways of recitation
• The compilation of the Quran during the lifetime of the Prophet and the preservation of the Quran in the memories of the Companions as well as in written form, the compilation during the time of Abu Bakr, and the further compilation during the time of Uthman
• The problem of naskh to demonstrate the completeness and trustworthiness of the Quran and that no verses are missing or were read and abrogated by naskh al-tilawah either with or without hukm
• The Uthmanic masahif and their relation to the seven ahruf
• The language of the Quran and whether it includes one, several, or all the dialects of the Arabs
• The origin of the qiraat and conditions governing accepted readings
• Ikhtiyar (i.e., the selection of one reading rather than another) and the rules governing the Qurraa’ who selected a reading.