Syriac and Aramaic origins of the Qur’an – 2
AT THE BEGINNING of his commentary, Luxenberg refers to al-Suyūṭī (1445-1505 CE), who mentions Abū al-Qāsim in his Languages of the…
Syriac and Aramaic origins of the Qur’ān – 1
THE FACT THAT the orientalist researcher Christoph Luxenberg was able to explain many of the dilemmas thanks to his recourse…
The Qur’anic script – some clarifications – 2
IN FACT THE ISSUE is not how the words were pronounced, but how they were written. The reason for this is…
The Qur’anic script – some clarifications – 1
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION Mr Hisham makes the following observation: The Arabic language as spoken by the Bedouins of the…
Van Ess and the great battle over Orientalism
FROM THE OUTSET, Claude Gilliot gets straight to the point: Some are complaining about the deteriorating situation of Oriental studies…
Josef van Ess and the diagnosis of the Islamic problem – 2
THIS CURRENT PREVAILING image, however, should not deceive us, as we labour under the illusion that the entire history of…
Josef van Ess and the diagnosis of the Islamic problem – 1
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE between two disciplines: the ‘ilm al-kalām, and the ‘ilm al-fiqh. They are not the same thing,…
A word on the Orientalists
IN THE VIEW of such as these, the Orientalists are simply contemporary heirs to the ‘interloper sciences’, and whom the…
Orientalism and the historicization of the Islamic heritage – 2
HEREIN LIES the basic difference between ourselves and the Orientalists; it is a difference of an epistemological basis not an…
Orientalism and the historicization of the Islamic heritage – 1
THE CONFLICT WITH the Orientalists should be one of methodology or epistemology, in contrast to the conflict waged against them…