Marmaduke Pickthall Islam And The Modern World

This new volume of essays marks eighty years since the death of Marmaduke Pickthall. His various roles as translator of the Qurʾan, traveller to the Near East, political journalist writing on behalf of Muslim Turkey, and creator of the Muslim novel are discussed. In later life Pickthall became a prominent member of the British Muslim community in London and Woking, co-worker with Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, supporter of the Khilafat movement, and editor of the journal Islamic Culture under the patronage of the Nizam of Hyderabad. Marmaduke Pickthall: Islam and the Modern World makes an important contribution to the field of Muslims in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Contributors are: Humayun Ansari, Adnan Ashraf, James Canton, Peter Clark, Ron Geaves, A.R. Kidwai, Faruk Kokoglu, Andrew C. Long, Geoffrey P. Nash, M. A. Sherif and Mohammad Siddique Seddon.

Marmaduke William Pickthall, born in 1875 London to Mary O'Brien and the Reverend Charles Grayson Pickthall, is remembered-if he is remembered at all-as a translator of the Qur'an. The fact that a practicing English Christian would convert to Islam and become a renowned translator of the holiest of Muslim texts during years of volatile relations between Britain and the Ottoman Empire is itself exceptional. Yet Pickthall was much more than an historical oddity or gifted translator: he was a novelist, journalist, political and religious leader, and an often confusing mix of allegiances and beliefs. Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim is an examination of his ideas and writings. For twenty years of Pickthall's adult life, he was a devout Christian, and for the last twenty years he was a devout Muslim. Peter Clark's book raises issues of Muslim and national identity. Pickthall wrote much about Islam which he saw as an open, tolerant and progressive religion. A reissue of the book is a timely and authoritative contribution to current debates.

The classic translation of the Koran by a convert to Islam In 1930, Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, a Western Islamic scholar and convert to Islam, published this English translation of the Koran, the central religious text of Islam, which the Times Literary Supplement lauded as “a great literary achievement.” The aim of this work is to present to American readers what Muslims the world over hold to be the meaning of the words of the Koran, and the nature of that Book, accurately and concisely, with a view to the requirements of English-speaking Muslims. The first English translation of the Koran by an Englishman who is a Muslim, the Book is here rendered almost literally, and every effort has been made to choose befitting language. Regarded by Muslims as God’s actual words revealed to the prophet Mohammed, the Koran remains the supreme authority of the Islamic tradition. Comprising laws, moral precepts, and narratives, its timeless texts are the inspiration and guide of millions of Muslims. With this remarkably readable and scholarly translation, Pickthall introduces the sacred scriptures of the Koran to Western readers—and provides invaluable and fascinating insight into one of the world’s great religions.

From the first centuries of Islam to well into the Middle Ages, Jews and Christians produced hundreds of manuscripts containing portions of the Bible in Arabic. Until recently, however, these translations remained largely neglected by Biblical scholars and historians. In telling the story of the Bible in Arabic, this book casts light on a crucial transition in the cultural and religious life of Jews and Christians in Arabic-speaking lands. In pre-Islamic times, Jewish and Christian scriptures circulated orally in the Arabic-speaking milieu. After the rise of Islam--and the Qur'an's appearance as a scripture in its own right--Jews and Christians translated the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament into Arabic for their own use and as a response to the Qur'an's retelling of Biblical narratives. From the ninth century onward, a steady stream of Jewish and Christian translations of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament crossed communal borders to influence the Islamic world. The Bible in Arabic offers a new frame of reference for the pivotal place of Arabic Bible translations in the religious and cultural interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

With a focus on the areas of theory, literature, culture, society and film, this collection of essays examines, questions and broadens the applicability of Postcolonialism and Islam from a multifaceted and cross-disciplinary perspective. Topics covered include the relationship between Postcolonialism and Orientalism, theoretical perspectives on Postcolonialism and Islam, the position of Islam within postcolonial literature, Muslim identity in British and European contexts, and the role of Islam in colonial and postcolonial cinema in Egypt and India. At a time at which Islam continues to be at the centre of increasingly heated and frenzied political and academic deliberations, Postcolonialism and Islam offers a framework around which the debate on Muslims in the modern world can be centred. Transgressing geographical, disciplinary and theoretical boundaries, this book is an invaluable resource for students of Islamic Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociolgy and Literature.

Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.

After formally announcing his conversion to Islam in the late 1880s, the Liverpool lawyer William Henry Abdullah Quilliam publicly propagated his new faith and established the first community of Muslim converts in Victorian Britain. Despite decades of relative obscurity following his death, with the resurgence of interest in Muslim heritage in the West since 9/11 Quilliam has achieved iconic status in Britain and beyond as a pivotal figure in the history of Western Islam and Muslim-Christian relations. In this timely book, leading experts of the religion, history and politics of Islam offer new perspectives and shed fresh light on Quilliam's life and work. Through a series of original essays, the authors critically examine Quilliam's influences, philosophy and outlook, the significance of his work for Islam, his position in the Muslim world and his legacy. Collectively, the authors ask pertinent questions about how conversion to Islam was viewed and received historically, and how a zealous convert like Quilliam negotiated his religious and national identities and sought to indigenise Islam in a non-Muslim country.