The Qur'an and the Secular Mind; A Philosophy of Islam (2008) - Shabbir Akhtar

A note on transliteration and
abbreviations
I have followed the Library of Congress system for Arabic transliteration. I retain
the final ‘h’ to indicate feminine nouns. Arabic has no upper case but I have
capitalized proper nouns and the initial word in transliterated titles of Arabic works.
Some words can occur with an upper case (Al-Qur’ān) and a lower case (qur’ān).
This is explained in the text. Elision of vowels is not indicated.
Words such as ‘Shi’ite’ are now naturalized into English. In such words, the
length of vowel, any diacritical dots, and glottal (’) and guttural (‘) stops are not
indicated. Other naturalized words include Islam, Quran, Ramadan, Muhammad,
fatwa, jihad, and so on.
Abbreviations: References to the Quran are given in the text and are set apart
by the use of a capital Q followed by the number of the chapter and verse. This is
explained in Chapter 1, note 2. Other abbreviations used are standard.
Note on sexism
I have used inclusive language even at the expense of style. In a few cases, however,
I could not avoid traditional language. For example, the Quran recognizes only
men as prophets. It would be contrived to use gender-neutral language in such
a discussion. Again, the Quran’s discussion of human nature uses the male as
a prototype.