amrojjeh/desc.txt

## desc.txt
**Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (b. 1351/1933), editor-in-chief. The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary. Canar K. Dagli (b. 1394/1974), Maria Massi Dakake (b. 1388/1968), and Joseph E. B. Lumbard (b. 1389/1969), general eds. Mohammed Rustom (b. c. 1402/1982), assistant ed. New York: HarperOne, 2017. lix, 1988 pp.

The five named editors, who are also the translators, are all well-known scholars. Born in Iran, Seyyed Hossein Nasr migrated to the United States after the Iranian Revolution of 1978-1979. From 1984, he has been a professor at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He is the author of many books on Muslim spirituality and philosophy, including the well-known and influential introduction to Islam, ideals and realities of Islam. Born in the United States and of Circassian descent, Caner Karacay Dagli who holds a Ph.D from Princeton University, is a professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross. He specializes in Sufism, Islamic Philosophy, interfaith dialogue, and, Qur'anic studies. He has done fieldwork in Turkey and spent 2006-2007 working as a special adviser for interreligious affairs to the royal court of Jordan in Amman. He also translated Ibn al-Arabi's Fusus al-hikam into English as The Ringstones of Wisdom. Maria Massi Dakake is a professor at George Mason University who specializes in Islamic intellectual history, Quranic studies, Shi'i and Sufi traditions and women's spirituality and religious experience. Joseph E. B. Lumbard, originally an Episcopalian, embraced Islam in 1993. He is a professor of Quranic studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar. Mohammed Rustom is a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and has studied or translated from a number of earlier Muslim scholars, including al-Ghazali, Muhyi al-Din ibn al-Arabi, Mulla Sadra, and 'Ayn al-Qudat. All four of the younger editors were students of Nasr at George Washington University.

The Quran translation project was a massive undertaking. Apart from the Ozek translation, it represents the first time that a team of scholars rather than a single individual has worked to produce both a translation and a commentary. This then finally becomes more akin in scope and in resources spent in the effort to the organized Christian translation of the Bible, which has been such a collective effort for centuries. Because it required considerable resources to accomplish, the project required outside funding from philanthropic sources. The most important sources of funding included specifically The Institute for Religion and Civic Values and the El-Hibri Foundation. Support also came from King Abdullah II of Jordan (p. xv), for whom both Dagli and Lumbard worked as advisers on religious matters. Such funding suggests some parallel to how the much earlier translation of Pickthall was funded in part by the Nizam of Hyderabad in the late 1920s.The publisher is HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers that usually produces mass-circulation, popular books, and it was no mean task to get this publisher to produce the book, as normally HarperOne does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Additionally, the publisher added a second print run of 13,000 copies to the original run of 10,000 copies before the book even went on sale, the first time that they had ever done that according to the publisher's own statement. Shortly after publication, by the beginning of 2016, The Study Quran is reported to have sold already 150,000 copies.

The task of translation and commentating on the Quran was divided among the three general editors and the assistant editor as follows: Dagli was the primary translator of surahs 2-3, 8-9, 22-28 and also wrote the commentary on 2-3, 8-9, and 21-28. Dadake was the primary translator for surahs 4-7, 10-12, 14-21, and wrote the commentary for surahs 4-7 and 16-19. Lumbard was the primary translator for surahs 1, 13, and 29-114 and authored the commentary for surahs 1 and 29-114. Rustom wrote the commentary on surahs 10-15 and 20. All four are said to have edited the remainder or the other parts of both the translation and the commentary. This would appear to mean that the team read, checked, and criticized each other's work, also correcting for errors. Dagli in addition "conceived and supervised the design of the book" (p. xiii). Counting the commentary, which is far more voluminous than the translation, it would seem that Dagli wrote 399 pp., Dadake 427 pp., Lumbard 626 pp., and Rustom 133 pp.

The translation appears without the Arabic text, a point for which it has been criticized. it also printed on very thin paper in the time-honored fashion of some Bibles, in order to be able to be accommodated in a handy volume. Beside the translation and commentary, which occupies pp. 3-1594, it also includes front matter... [youtube commentor's note: I'm skipping this and the next few paragraphs since you likely know this stuff as you own the book. The author's simply describing the contents of the book and how it's laid out. Let me know if you'd like these paragraphs added.]

The editors' choice to include such a wide and eclectic variety of commentaries indicates their desire to appeal to all Muslims and to widen the networks of mutual tolerance and acceptance inside Islam. That this is consonant with the Amman Message of 2003 is not surprising, since King Abdullah II has endorsed the work by supporting it and since two of the general editors, Dagli and Lumbard, worked for a time as the king's advisers.

Overall, the commentary can perhaps be characterized as traditionalist or neotraditionalist, even though these terms have not become precisely defined as technical terms. They mean here that the writers have throughout followed the traditional commentary methodology of classical Islam in adhering mostly to the most widely-held positions of past Muslim reception and interpretation of the text, citing textual authorities of the tafsir tradition and the Hadith for backing. This traditionalist position thus seeks to represent the classical reception of the Quran by Muslims now in English. As such, it may not be welcomed either by some liberal modernists who desire radically to change many elements in the received tradition, nor by Salafis, who also represent a form of modernism in seekin to simplify and reunify the religion on the basis of a sole, selectively literaltistic reading of the Quran and Hadith.

Some traditionalist critics, who are neither liberals nor Salafis, have taken issue with the way The Study Quran deals with salvation, as these critics, like most Muslims, strongly defend the idea that there is no salvation outside of the faith. Certainly, one will own that for a religion to be a specific thing, to uphold specific teachings and a specific holy scripture, it must draw borders and set limits. This has often led specific religions historically to establish more and more specifics over time, until their eventual ultraorthodoxies require full-time service and even separatism from other human communities. To a great extent, such developments owe to fear that the religion will not be upheld except by forceful means, thus exhibiting a lack of confidence in the power of the teachings themselves. This is expressed in the rule-making of the main orthodoxies of the religions as well. So The Study Quran writers have opted to some extent to go against the calssical majority view, following what Vaid calls "soteriological pluralism" in leaving open the possibility that some non-Muslims too might achieve salvation through their various religions, although they also do mention the classical majority view. In order to establish their pluralistic interpretation, The Study Quran writers rely heavily on such verses as 2:62, and their point of view on this is most fully elaborated and expounded by Lumbard in the supplementary article titled "The Quranic View of Sacred history and Other Religions" (pp. 1765-1784). It remains to be seen in our pluralizing world whether this view will eventually be found persuasive by many Muslims or not; it is possible that the effects of worldwide mass education, mass communication, and the ending of isolation will indeed lead to a change of traditionally-held views. However, it is also possible that this mass contact might lead to a Toynbeean pammixia where everything previous is dissolved and somethign new emerges instead which might be less resemblant of the Islam actually brought by the Prophet Muhammad than traditional classical Islam has been.

Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the Study Quran stands very high in the ranks of the Quran commentaries currently available in English, simply because it contains so much information drawn from classical tafsirs. No other work really competes with it on this point, although there are some commentaries in this work of ours that do also cite classical sources fairly extensively. As Vaid observes in this regard, "Few exegetical works have been translated, and those which have been are often summarized with their own, often copious shortcomings. In this regard, there is a palpable dearth of available vehicles through which inquiring minds can learn about the Quran and its meanings. For this reason, the SQ is a contribution likely to take hold not only within secular academia but among lay believers as well, and the early reception to the SQ has certainly reflected that vacuum." Thus, it is likely that The Study Quran will continue to exert a major influence for a long time to come.
	**Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (b. 1351/1933), editor-in-chief. The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary. Canar K. Dagli (b. 1394/1974), Maria Massi Dakake (b. 1388/1968), and Joseph E. B. Lumbard (b. 1389/1969), general eds. Mohammed Rustom (b. c. 1402/1982), assistant ed. New York: HarperOne, 2017. lix, 1988 pp.

	The five named editors, who are also the translators, are all well-known scholars. Born in Iran, Seyyed Hossein Nasr migrated to the United States after the Iranian Revolution of 1978-1979. From 1984, he has been a professor at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He is the author of many books on Muslim spirituality and philosophy, including the well-known and influential introduction to Islam, ideals and realities of Islam. Born in the United States and of Circassian descent, Caner Karacay Dagli who holds a Ph.D from Princeton University, is a professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross. He specializes in Sufism, Islamic Philosophy, interfaith dialogue, and, Qur'anic studies. He has done fieldwork in Turkey and spent 2006-2007 working as a special adviser for interreligious affairs to the royal court of Jordan in Amman. He also translated Ibn al-Arabi's Fusus al-hikam into English as The Ringstones of Wisdom. Maria Massi Dakake is a professor at George Mason University who specializes in Islamic intellectual history, Quranic studies, Shi'i and Sufi traditions and women's spirituality and religious experience. Joseph E. B. Lumbard, originally an Episcopalian, embraced Islam in 1993. He is a professor of Quranic studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar. Mohammed Rustom is a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and has studied or translated from a number of earlier Muslim scholars, including al-Ghazali, Muhyi al-Din ibn al-Arabi, Mulla Sadra, and 'Ayn al-Qudat. All four of the younger editors were students of Nasr at George Washington University.

	The Quran translation project was a massive undertaking. Apart from the Ozek translation, it represents the first time that a team of scholars rather than a single individual has worked to produce both a translation and a commentary. This then finally becomes more akin in scope and in resources spent in the effort to the organized Christian translation of the Bible, which has been such a collective effort for centuries. Because it required considerable resources to accomplish, the project required outside funding from philanthropic sources. The most important sources of funding included specifically The Institute for Religion and Civic Values and the El-Hibri Foundation. Support also came from King Abdullah II of Jordan (p. xv), for whom both Dagli and Lumbard worked as advisers on religious matters. Such funding suggests some parallel to how the much earlier translation of Pickthall was funded in part by the Nizam of Hyderabad in the late 1920s.The publisher is HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers that usually produces mass-circulation, popular books, and it was no mean task to get this publisher to produce the book, as normally HarperOne does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Additionally, the publisher added a second print run of 13,000 copies to the original run of 10,000 copies before the book even went on sale, the first time that they had ever done that according to the publisher's own statement. Shortly after publication, by the beginning of 2016, The Study Quran is reported to have sold already 150,000 copies.

	The task of translation and commentating on the Quran was divided among the three general editors and the assistant editor as follows: Dagli was the primary translator of surahs 2-3, 8-9, 22-28 and also wrote the commentary on 2-3, 8-9, and 21-28. Dadake was the primary translator for surahs 4-7, 10-12, 14-21, and wrote the commentary for surahs 4-7 and 16-19. Lumbard was the primary translator for surahs 1, 13, and 29-114 and authored the commentary for surahs 1 and 29-114. Rustom wrote the commentary on surahs 10-15 and 20. All four are said to have edited the remainder or the other parts of both the translation and the commentary. This would appear to mean that the team read, checked, and criticized each other's work, also correcting for errors. Dagli in addition "conceived and supervised the design of the book" (p. xiii). Counting the commentary, which is far more voluminous than the translation, it would seem that Dagli wrote 399 pp., Dadake 427 pp., Lumbard 626 pp., and Rustom 133 pp.

	The translation appears without the Arabic text, a point for which it has been criticized. it also printed on very thin paper in the time-honored fashion of some Bibles, in order to be able to be accommodated in a handy volume. Beside the translation and commentary, which occupies pp. 3-1594, it also includes front matter... [youtube commentor's note: I'm skipping this and the next few paragraphs since you likely know this stuff as you own the book. The author's simply describing the contents of the book and how it's laid out. Let me know if you'd like these paragraphs added.]

	The editors' choice to include such a wide and eclectic variety of commentaries indicates their desire to appeal to all Muslims and to widen the networks of mutual tolerance and acceptance inside Islam. That this is consonant with the Amman Message of 2003 is not surprising, since King Abdullah II has endorsed the work by supporting it and since two of the general editors, Dagli and Lumbard, worked for a time as the king's advisers.

	Overall, the commentary can perhaps be characterized as traditionalist or neotraditionalist, even though these terms have not become precisely defined as technical terms. They mean here that the writers have throughout followed the traditional commentary methodology of classical Islam in adhering mostly to the most widely-held positions of past Muslim reception and interpretation of the text, citing textual authorities of the tafsir tradition and the Hadith for backing. This traditionalist position thus seeks to represent the classical reception of the Quran by Muslims now in English. As such, it may not be welcomed either by some liberal modernists who desire radically to change many elements in the received tradition, nor by Salafis, who also represent a form of modernism in seekin to simplify and reunify the religion on the basis of a sole, selectively literaltistic reading of the Quran and Hadith.

	Some traditionalist critics, who are neither liberals nor Salafis, have taken issue with the way The Study Quran deals with salvation, as these critics, like most Muslims, strongly defend the idea that there is no salvation outside of the faith. Certainly, one will own that for a religion to be a specific thing, to uphold specific teachings and a specific holy scripture, it must draw borders and set limits. This has often led specific religions historically to establish more and more specifics over time, until their eventual ultraorthodoxies require full-time service and even separatism from other human communities. To a great extent, such developments owe to fear that the religion will not be upheld except by forceful means, thus exhibiting a lack of confidence in the power of the teachings themselves. This is expressed in the rule-making of the main orthodoxies of the religions as well. So The Study Quran writers have opted to some extent to go against the calssical majority view, following what Vaid calls "soteriological pluralism" in leaving open the possibility that some non-Muslims too might achieve salvation through their various religions, although they also do mention the classical majority view. In order to establish their pluralistic interpretation, The Study Quran writers rely heavily on such verses as 2:62, and their point of view on this is most fully elaborated and expounded by Lumbard in the supplementary article titled "The Quranic View of Sacred history and Other Religions" (pp. 1765-1784). It remains to be seen in our pluralizing world whether this view will eventually be found persuasive by many Muslims or not; it is possible that the effects of worldwide mass education, mass communication, and the ending of isolation will indeed lead to a change of traditionally-held views. However, it is also possible that this mass contact might lead to a Toynbeean pammixia where everything previous is dissolved and somethign new emerges instead which might be less resemblant of the Islam actually brought by the Prophet Muhammad than traditional classical Islam has been.

	Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the Study Quran stands very high in the ranks of the Quran commentaries currently available in English, simply because it contains so much information drawn from classical tafsirs. No other work really competes with it on this point, although there are some commentaries in this work of ours that do also cite classical sources fairly extensively. As Vaid observes in this regard, "Few exegetical works have been translated, and those which have been are often summarized with their own, often copious shortcomings. In this regard, there is a palpable dearth of available vehicles through which inquiring minds can learn about the Quran and its meanings. For this reason, the SQ is a contribution likely to take hold not only within secular academia but among lay believers as well, and the early reception to the SQ has certainly reflected that vacuum." Thus, it is likely that The Study Quran will continue to exert a major influence for a long time to come.