Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

Qur’an and hadith 31
to believe, or to adopt a virtue, the Qur’an invariably presents arguments
based on premises that it takes to be universally accessible, since it
addresses unbelievers as well as those who have accepted it as the word of
God. It thus provides an original model for dialectical theology. The
hadith, by contrast, are largely addressed to believers, and furnish later
generations of theologians with data on which to reflect.
Further reading
Abdel Haleem, M. A. S., The Qur’an: A New Translation (Oxford, 2004).
Understanding the Qur’an: Themes and Style (London, 2001).
Babu Sahib, Moulavi M. H., The Tenets of Islam: Being a Translation and
Extensive Commentary on Kitab Jawharatu ‘t-Tawhid of Imam Burhanu’ddin
Ibn Harun al-Laqqani (Singapore, 2000).
Ibrahim, Ezzedien, and Johnson-Davies, Denys (trans.), An-Nawawi’s Forty
Hadith (Damascus, 1976).
Izutsu, Toshihiko, God and Man in the Qur’an: Semantics of the Qur’anic
Weltanschauung (Tokyo, 1964).
Mahmoud, Abdel-Haleem, The Creed of Islam (London, 1978).
Motzki, Harald (ed.), The Biography of Muh _
ammad: The Issue of the Sources
(Leiden, 2000).
Rippin, Andrew (ed.), Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the
Qur’an (Oxford, 1988).
Robinson, Neal, Discovering the Qur’an: A Contemporary Approach to a
Veiled Text (London, 1996).
Robson, James (tr.), Mishkat al-mas _
abıh _
(Lahore, 1965).
Siddiqi, A. H. (tr.), Sahih Muslim (Lahore, 1973).
Welch, A. T., ‘‘K _
ur’an’’, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn, vi, pp. 400–29.
Notes
1. Mahmud Shaltut, al-Islam ‘aqıda wa-sharı‘a (Cairo, 1990), p. 1471;
M. S. Lashın, al-La’ali’ al-H _
isan fı ‘ulum al-Qur’an (Cairo, 1982), p. 19.
To this definition should be added the property of i‘jaz, inimitability,
which makes the text an evidentiary miracle (mu‘jiza), greater than the
Prophet’s other miracles of healing the sick, etc.; see Sophia Vasalou,
‘‘The miraculous eloquence of the Qur’an: general trajectories and
individual approaches’’, Journal of Qur’anic Studies 4 (2002), pp. 23–53.
2. See for instance 15:6; 21:3–4; 25:4–8.
3. Many have sought to identify a grand thematic or stylistic plan; cf. for
instance M. A. Draz, Introduction to the Qur’an (London: 2001); Neal
Robinson, Discovering the Qur’an: A Contemporary Approach to a
Veiled Text (London, 1996), pp. 271–83; such attempts remain unproven.
4. S _
ubh _
ı al-S _
alih _
, Mabah _
ith fı ‘ulum al-Qur’an (Beirut, 1981), pp. 65–7;
William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of
Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 96–109.
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