For another approach, you may wish to have a look at this post
https//free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=12328.msg96637#msg96637

Peace

The verses tell us that the disbelievers believed it to be majic,

Hi Bigmo,
Could you please tell me which verses you are talking about ?
Peace

You may wish to have a look at my post about the social purpose of rituals.
http//free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9597335.msg182758#msg182758

It may help linking the ritualistic aspect of the salat with its non ritualistic aspect.

peace,

Many people have written on this, including many posts on this forum, to name a few e.g.

http//fazlur-rahman.livejournal.com/2102.html
http//quransmessage.com/articles/riba%20FM3.htm
http//free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=12997.0
http//free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9604876.0

If you do have an alternative, please also state clearly why other understandings may be wrong, be specific etc.

Another article, according to which Riba is interest charged when the borrower is no longer solvent.
http//www.islamicperspectives.com/Riba3.pdf

Here is the second part of the article
http//www.lescahiersdelislam.fr/Des-Houris-des-hommes-2-2_a334.html

I have not carefully studied the verses about how people of the book were distorting the message of God they had.

But here is an opinion about it

Gary Miller (Abdul-Ahad Omar) believes that the Qur'an criticizes the handling of scripture by some Jews and Christians rather than their holy books. According to Gary Miller, Qur'an only makes the following three accusations

• "The Qur'an says some of the Jews and Christians pass over much of what is in their scriptures."

• "Some of them have changed the words, and this is the one that is misused by Muslims very often giving the impression that once there was a true bible and then somebody hid that one away, then they published a false one. The Qur'an doesn't say that. What it criticizes is that people who have the proper words in front of them, but they don't deliver that up to people. They mistranslate it, or misrepresent it, or they add to the meaning of it. They put a different slant on it."

• "Some people falsely attribute to God what is really written by men."

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahrif
http//www.missionislam.com/comprel/gospelsmean.htm

Many people of this forum may think the same can be said about traditional muslims and the Quran.

In The Quran, there are (at least) 2 groups

• The ones that are currently receiving the message of God (the Quran), and thus are in the right path

• The ones who belong to people who have received the message of God centuries before.

To which group are the people who today follow the Quran (be it with hadith or not) closer?

In my opinion, we are closer to those who are called ?people of the book? in the Quran.
Because like them, we are following a message of God that was revealed centuries before.

And as a consequence, we should be cautious of not falling in the same traps as the ?people of the book?, and be more humble about our faith.
We should see all critics made to ?people of the book? in the Quran as warnings for us.

Does it make sense ?

If it makes sense, anyone who claims to follow the Quran (regardless of whether he follows hadiths) should easily admit it.

The understanding of DRB in 434 as "cite / indicate / put/show forth them" (to the authority) is the ONLY understanding that provides perfect internal coherence in The Quran.

Why not translating it by "move away" / "depart" / "leave" ?
http//gender-az.org/index_en.shtml?id_doc=457
In Lane, you can find the confirmation this translation is possible.

Peace

Islam Between Divine Message and History (Abdelmajid Charfi)
http//avaxhome.ws/ebooks/theology_occultism/9639241873514.html

Salaam,

Hasnuddin Ahmed from Hyderabad, India?

Mohammed M. Khan

Yes. Do you know this book ?

Another book that can be put on the list
http//www.scribd.com/doc/14659850/SyroAramaic-Reading-of-the-Quran-Christoph-Luxenberg

Peace

Anyway, I will be hanging around this site for some more time, who knows perhaps I will begin to understand what this is all about and why I should (re)consider taking the Qur'an more seriously in my life. Because I know there is something in me which wants to believe,- living with the knowledge that this wordly life is everything and that Divine Justice and an hereafter doesn't exist freaks the hell out of me.

Without the belief in God and in the hereafter, the belief that good deeds will be rewarded and bad deeds will be punished; there is no incentive to act good.

So atheism leads to egoism, acting in order to get rewards by the society ; that is, some king of slavery. In an atheistic world, we are slave to our desires, which are shaped by the pressures of the society, which are driven by multinational corporations.

The core message of the Quran is just that one should believe in God and in the hereafter, and act good.
To be a slave of God implies refusing to be a slave of anything else. It just means you are free.

Peace

Many thanks for all what you are sharing, it is quite helpful.

Just a question, about A New Approach to the Study of The Quran (Ahmed Hasnuddin) you do not give a link to a free PDF, is it willful ?
And is this book valuable ?

To drive away the waters and part the Red Sea, Moses needed a different location than previously thought, according to a new study on the miraculous biblical event.

Previous studies of wind, waves and bathymetry have called on hurricane strength winds blowing from the northwest to push away the water. This exposed a long reef which allowed Moses and the Israelites to escape the advancing cavalry of Pharaoh.

The problem is It would be nearly impossible for Israelites to stand in such a wind, much less walk to safety.

What's more, the Book of Exodus includes some nice meteorological details "(T)he Lord drove the sea away all night with a strong east wind and turned the sea-bed into dry land."

"If you are going to match the biblical account, you need the wind from the east," said researcher Carl Drews of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Drews has been studying the Red Sea story for years as a student and now has published a paper on the matter, which was his master's thesis, in the journal PloS One.

Drews took that east wind and tried to perform a computer simulation of the event in a couple of different places.

He found that a steady 63-mile-per-hour (100-kilometer-per-hour) wind over a digitally reconstructed east-west running lake at the Mediterranean end of the Nile, near today's Port Said, would push the water west to the far end of the lake, as well as south, up the river.

The model showed that this would expose wide mud flats where the river entered the lake and leave a land bridge high and dry for four hours.

The hardest part of the study, said Drews, was reconstructing the geography of the area. He chose the area known today as Lake Manzala because it seems to fit with the Exodus story. It is oriented so that an east wind can actually blow across it lengthwise and push water to one side -- something that is not the case for the north-south running Red Sea.

Drews used research done by others regarding the past geography of that area, which was once known as Lake of Tanis, along with the earliest maps he could find to try to recreate what the site looked like in 1250 B.C. The exact date is, however, not crucial, he said.

Of course, this location raises another problem The Nile Delta is not the Red Sea -- or is it?

"There is some controversy over the body of water they crossed," said Drews. "The Exodus text says in Hebrew 'yam suf,' (which) literally means 'Sea of Reeds.'"

That description fits the area he studied a broad lake filled with papyrus reeds stretching to the horizon.

"Many Bible translations render 'yam suf' as 'Red Sea,'" Drews told Discovery News. "Red Sea" has become the common terminology.

However, biblical scholars Kenneth Kitchen and James Hoffmeier have explored the issue at length and have concluded that the marshy area along the Suez Canal is also an acceptable location for "yam suf."

Hoffmeier, for his part, is cautious and not sure the location fits.

"Attempts to understand biblical events in the light of geographical and climatological considerations are welcomed," said Hoffmeier, of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School at Trinity International University. "But the investigator must also incorporate a careful and contextual reading of the biblical text."

"The value of studying the event described in the Old Testament certainly lends support to the thesis that physics is a natural phenomenon, a normal part of our universe," said Stephen Baig, a researcher who has studied storm surges for the National Hurricane Center. "If there is a miracle, it is that we are able to describe such events with numbers."

http//news.discovery.com/history/moses-red-sea-parting.html

Moreover, laws are amended and those who follow Quran, will evolve under new law,especially the jews as they had received some laws as a form of punishment for their evil behaviour... such as prohibition to consume fat.

one thing that is in torah that has changed is stoning for adultery, its been 'abrogated' and is now lashing.

Peace,

What about ?

He has decreed for you the same system He ordained for Noah, and what We inspired to you, and what We ordained for Abraham, Moses, and Jesus

Peace,
Respect.

I think these verses are clear

241 And believe in what I have sent down, authenticating what is with you, and do not be the first to disbelieve in it! And do not purchase with My revelations a cheap gain, and of Me you shall be aware.
289 And when a Book came to them from God, authenticating what is with them; while before that they were mocking those who rejected; so when what they knew came to them, they rejected it! The curse of God be upon the rejecters.
291 And if it is said to them Believe in what God has sent down; they say We believe only in what was sent down to us, and they reject what came after it, while it is the truth authenticating what is with them. Say Why then did you kill the prophets of God if you were believers?
297 Say Whoever is an enemy to Gabriel, then know that he has sent it down into your heart with the permission of God, authenticating what is with him, and a guide and good news for the believers.
2101 And when a messenger came to them from God, authenticating what was with them, a group of those who had already received the Book placed the Book of God behind their backs as if they did not know.
33 He sent down to you the Book with the truth, authenticating what is between his hands; and He sent down the Torah and the Gospel.
381 And God took a covenant from the prophets For what I have given you of the Book and wisdom, then a messenger will come to you authenticating what is with you. You will believe in him and support him. He said Do you testify, and agree to this burden? They said We testify. He said Then bear witness, and I am with you bearing witness.

There are few other verses with same word - authenticate.
We all know what authenticate means, yes?

I'd say it is clear.
God bless you.
Peace.

Peace Alen,
Thanks for your input.
How do you interpret ?

The main characteristic of Arkoun thought is in the conjoining between Western world and Islamic world, in line with his dream to arrange the specific combination of different ways of thinking. The effort in combining the two elements, the most divine of Islamic thought (Islamic Reason) and the most valuable in the modern western thought (modern thought), is his wish that motivates his activities and works, that is particular combining of different ways of thinking.

http//repository.ui.ac.id/contents/koleksi/2/1a21e511085b1bc990f890bb3dd7e7373cc82580.pdf

A Berber from the mountainous region of Algeria, Mohammed Arkoun is an internationally renowned scholar of Islamic thought. In this book, he advocates a conception of Islam as a stream of experience encompassing majorities and minorities, Sunni and Shi?a, popular mystics and erudite scholars, ancient heroes and modern critics. A product of Islamic culture, Arkoun nonetheless disagrees with the Islamic establishment and militant Islamist groups; as a student of twentieth-century social science in the West and an admirer of liberalism, he self-consciously distances himself from Western Orientalists and Western conceptions of liberalism.This book?the first of Arkoun?s works to be widely available in English?presents his responses to twenty-four deceptively simple questions, including Can one speak of a scientific understanding of Islam in the West or must one rather talk about the Western way of imagining Islam? What do the words ?Islam,? ?Muslim,? and ?Qur?an? mean? What is meant by ?revelation? and ?tradition??? What did Islam retain from the previously revealed religions?Judaism and Christianity? What did it retain from the religions and customs of pre-Islamic Arabia? In answering these and other questions, Arkoun provides an introduction to one of the world?s great religions and offers a biting, radical critique of Islamology as it has been practiced in both East and West.This is a book for the beginning student of Islam and for the general reader uneasy with media images of Islam as a monolithic, anti-Western, violence-prone religion. It is also a book for specialists seeking an entr? into Arkoun?s methhodology?his efforts toapply contemporary thinking about anthropology, philosophy, semiotics, history, and sociology to the Islamic tradition and its relationship to the West. It is a book for anyone concerned about the identity crisis that has left many Muslims estranged from both a modernity imposed upon them and a tradition subverted for nationalist and Islamist purposes.

http//books.google.fr/books?id=lvrXAAAAMAAJ&dq=islamology%20arkoun&source=gbs_book_other_versions

The taboo that orthodoxy has always laid on Qur??nic studies was more easily lifted during the period of historical-philological positivism than today The euphoria of scientist reasoning was boosted by colonial rule. Hence, the battle for a critical edition of the text of the Qur??n, including most notably a chronological ranking of the s?r?t is not as persistent as it was in the period between T. N?ldeke and of R. Blach?re. All the same, this subject has lost nothing of its scientific relevance since it implies a more reliable historical reading less dependent on suppositions, hypotheses and the quest for the plausible (despite the trust she puts in her methods, J. Chabbi cannot avoid writing in the conditional mood). Unless more revealing manuscripts related to the history of the text are found, which is still possible, it seems better to draw the conclusion that an irreversible situation was created by the systematic destruction of precious documents or by the lack of interest of people today in all that has become essential for modern historical knowledge. This field of research does not seem to have broadened its horizons or inquiries, if one is to judge by three collections of articles bearing carefully chosen signatures Approaches to the history of the interpretation of the Qur??n, ed. Andrew Rippin, Approaches to the Qur??n, ed. G.R. Hawting and Abdul-Kader A. Shareef, and The Qur??n as text, already cited above, the title of which does not fulfill its promises, as its editor, S. Wild, has admitted. Each contribution seems to be limited to verifying the continuity of historicist problematics, philological procedures and peripheral curiosities. This syndrome, clarified by J. van Ess, is apparent in each researcher contributing to this collection, who considers him or herself an expert in a well-defined domain but who is never a reflective researcher vis-?-vis an object of knowledge that demands precise intervention on all levels and manners of production and propagation of meaning and assumptions of meaning. All of this includes those involved in the collection under examination as well as those produced by the writing of the researcher and those which circulate among the community interpreting its heritage (la communaut? interpr?tante). The problem must be reiterated We are dealing with a corpus of which the primary constitutive function of its linguistic articulation is to say the true meaning of human existence- the objective, ideal, intangible, insurmountable norms which have to be strictly observed to keep this existence in line with its true meaning. We are also dealing with secondary corpuses derived from the first, of which the linguistic articulation has, in its long history, similarly functioned (the yaq?lu-ll?hu of the exegetes and of current discourse or j??a f?-l-had?th perpetuate, throughout the long course of history, the illusion of a lived continuity between revealed norms and meanings and the accumulated interpretations and plans used by the living tradition of the community of believers. We are thus dealing with such an existential structure translated into multiple, developing existential realities Is the researcher permitted to sever systematically knowledge of marginal facts from the critique of prophetic discourse as a discourse of existentiation (the Arabic term, ?j?d renders the causative function more explicit) which gives shape, content and orientation to the actual existence of the believers. This is the problem toward which the reflective researcher directs his or her sights, in reaction against the dominance of scholastic reason which imposes its manner of cutting and pasting the heritage, not on the basis of an intellectual authority which would create a debt of meaning in its regard, but by the mechanisms of academic power which are intertwined with and dependent on the political philosophy of modern states, just as the clerics who create and guard religious orthodoxies, were enmeshed with these state powers before the secular revolution.

It is necessary to open up the Qur??nic fact by situating it in a comparative approach not only within the three monotheist religions, but also within a historical anthropology of the religious phenomenon in its geo-historical and geo-cultural ambiance that can, for the time being, be qualified as Mediterranean. The historical phase of what historians explore under the name of the Near East should always be kept in sight, although not in order to rediscover so-called origins or to reconstruct linear filiations of ideas, representations, linguistic forms and rituals of expression. The aim should be to deepen our knowledge of constituent elements common to the monotheistic religious conscience in its global historical genesis and strategies of differentiation to preserve its exclusive vocation to receive, interpret and transmit the revealed Truth. This requires more than accumulation of names, facts, dates, titles of major works; it needs a deconstrutive analysis of the organising themes common to monotheist conscious the inaugural Moments of spiritual history, the new departures from cultural codes that engender logical existential systems, dogmatic enclosures, societies of the Book-book, elected communities promised to salvation in contrast to anonymous groups destined to stray and be damned; in brief, it is a matter of deepening our knowledge of all these historical formations that the ethnographic view imprison in so-called identities and enclose in equally alleged regions, traditions and cultures.

http//sites.google.com/site/mohammedarkoun/QURANintrod.pdf

Understanding The Quran Themes and Styles
by Muhammad Abdel Haleem

Currently out of print. Re-print due out soon.
http//www.amazon.com/Understanding-Quran-Themes-Styles-Studies/dp/1860646506/

PDF download here
http//www.filedropper.com/understanding-quran-abdel-haleem

Noteworthy, is the discussion of the story of "Adam" in The Quran, in comparison to The Bible.

Peace,
The PDF download does not seem to work.
NB I really appreciate your book recommendations.

Peace Samia,
More than 3 years later, is there something new in your understanding ?