In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research, Fred M. Donner reviews Michael Penn’s When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015). Since the publication of Patricia Crone and Michael Cook’s Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1980), several collections of non-Muslim sources used to reconstruct the history of Early Islam have appeared in conversation, bringing together languished manuscripts that were previously unpublished and often untranslated into one place. A major milestone was the appearance of Robert Hoyland’s Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (1997), a collection whose value has hardly diminished in the two decades since its publication. Also critical in this regard is Andrew Palmer’s The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles (1993). Michael Penn’s When Christians First Met Muslims is a welcome addition to this list of useful compendium of non-Muslim sources that describe the origins of Islam.
Space Available for the Mentorship Lunch – Reserve Yours Today!
Current grad students and new PhDs! There is still space available for the IQSA Mentorship Lunch in San Diego! Scheduled for Saturday 22 November, during the upcoming IQSA Annual Meeting, the Mentorship Lunch is a special opportunity to connect with leading scholars in Qur’anic studies and learn practical tips for finding your place in the field. Fred Donner, Ebrahim Moosa, Angelika Neuwirth, Gabriel Reynolds, and Andrew Rippin look forward to sharing with you their perspectives on issues that matter to emerging professionals, including:
networking skills
publishing strategies
marketing your work in a diverse job market
achieving a healthy work-life balance
charting your career path for long-term success
Act now to take advantage of this great opportunity! To sign up for the Mentorship Lunch, please email IQSA at contact@iqsaweb.org.
Mentorship Lunch at IQSA San Diego: A Special Opportunity to Connect with Leading Scholars
Current grad students and new PhDs! IQSA is delighted to offer you a special opportunity to connect with established scholars of the Qur’an and learn practical tips for finding your place in the field. This year’s IQSA Annual Meeting, which brings together students and scholars from around the world, includes a one-hour Mentorship Lunch scheduled for Saturday 22 November. If you are planning to attend the Annual Meeting, please consider signing up for this Lunch. It is an especially valuable opportunity to develop your knowledge and skills in the business side of Qur’anic studies – things that aren’t necessarily covered in grad school! You can learn more about:
networking skills
publishing strategies
marketing your work in a diverse job market
achieving a healthy work-life balance
charting your career path for long-term success
IQSA Board members Fred M. Donner, Ebrahim Moosa, Gabriel Reynolds, and Andrew Rippin will be happy to meet you and share their insights into what it means to be a professional in Qur’anic studies.
If you are interested in signing up for the Mentorship Lunch, please email IQSA at contact@iqsaweb.org.
International Qur’an Conference: “Recent Trends in Qur’anic Studies”
by Mun’im Sirry
IQSA and State Islamic University (UIN) Sunan Kalijaga in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, are co-hosting an international conference on “Recent Trends in Qur’anic Studies,” to be held in Yogyakarta on 4-7 August 2015.
This international Qur’an conference will be a forum where the Islamic tradition and rigorous academic study of the Qur’an will meet, and various approaches to the Qur’an will be critically discussed. In the spirit of learning from, and enriching, one another, we are working on a conference that will introduce our unique model of collaboration between IQSA and UIN Sunan Kalijaga to enhance the field of Qur’anic studies.
Over the last few decades, Qur’anic studies emerged as an exciting and vibrant field of research among scholars both in the West and in the Muslim-majority countries. This is evident not only in the flurry of books and articles that deal with the Qur’an and in the convening of various workshops and seminars on the subject, but also in the controversies that this field engenders. Diverse methodologies are currently applied to Qur’anic studies, and various issues are raised. Some of these methodologies and issues are new discoveries, while others revive older researches. As a result, many assumptions that for years have been taken for granted are now under rigorous scrutiny and often disputed to such an extent that, as Fred Donner has rightly noted, the field of Qur’anic studies seems today “to be in a state of disarray,” in the sense that there is little consensus among scholars. Questions such as the milieu within which the Qur’an emerged, the Qur’an’s relation to the Biblical tradition, its chronology, textual integration, and literary features are hotly debated today.
This international conference aims to explore major methodological and thematic issues in recent scholarly studies of the Qur’an in different parts of the world. We also wish to engage in scholarly conversations about the possibility of collaborative works to enhance the field of Qur’anic studies by bringing together scholars who may have little other chance to directly interact. There clearly needs to be closer collaboration among scholars of different perspectives and backgrounds. Rather than deepening conflicting approaches to the Qur’an, these scholars will explore the extent to which they may learn from one another in terms of methodological/hermeneutical approaches as they will also address current issues being debated in the field.
Among scholars in the field who will participate in the conference, to mention a few names (in alphabetical order), are: Fred Donner, Ali Mabrouk, Daniel Madigan, Jane McAuliffe, Gabriel Reynolds, Andrew Rippin, Abdullah Saeed, Nayla Tabbara, along with Indonesian scholars such as Amin Abdullah, Noorhaidi Hasan, Moch. Nur Ichwan, Syafaatun el-Mirzanah, Yusuf Rahman, Quraish Shihab, Sahiron Syamsuddin.
If you are interested in presenting your research on any of the following topics, please send your abstract (250 words) to Mun’im Sirry (msirry@nd.edu).
Possible topics:
Critical Approaches to the Qur’an
Qur’anic Milieu
Intertextuality: The Qur’an and the Biblical tradition
The Qur’an and Other Religions
Re-assessing the Exegetical Tradition of the Qur’an
Modern Trends in the Tafsir Tradition
The Indigenization of the Qur’an: Is there an Indonesian Tafsir
Please note that abstracts, papers and presentation must be in English.
Important Dates:
Deadline for submission of abstract: November 1, 2014
