Although translation and commentary are often treated as distinct, separable activities in literary and intellectual history, the Persian tradition of Qur'an exegesis demonstrates that they are best understood in relation to each other. Introducing the concept of hyper-exegesis as a mode of interpretation that approximates translation, we examine the dialectical relationship between translation and commentary by focusing on how Persian exegetes have dealt with the so-called “disjointed letters” (ḥurūf muqaṭaʿāt). The disjointed letters inaugurate twenty-nine chapters (sūras) of the Qur'an. We show how six Persian translator-exegetes (the anonymous author of Tarjama-yi Tafsir-I Tabari, Isfarayini, Surabadi, Nasafi, Maybudi, and Razi) used commentary in response to their understanding of the Qur'an's inimitability. Persian translators’ confrontation with the disjointed letters are presented here as a case study of the ways in which translatability and commentary overlap and enrich each other. As a contribution to translation studies and literary theory, this research reveals how untranslatability is situated at the core of the translational enterprise, and how commentary functions as a mode of translating the ineffable.

This article uses ethnography of a studio recording project underway at a Qur'anic school in Salé, Morocco, to offer new insight on sound, media, and religious authority in Islamic contexts. The aim of the project is to record the entire Qur'an incorporating all of its seven canonical, variant readings (qirā’āt), which are enjoying a small renaissance in Morocco. Several of the school's faculty, known as shaykhs, engaged as expert listeners and overseers of the process. I show how a historical model of such expert listenership, which I call “aural authority,” is transformed by the technologies of the studio and then dispersed across a collective of productive agents that includes the reciter and the sound engineer. I argue that these transformations, along with erasure of the shaykh's role from the medium of circulation—the recording—presents significant challenges to the broader qirā’āt tradition and raises questions about its future.

This essay is a reflection on the very notion of “pluralism” examined in a philosophical and theological approach. It evokes Quranic verses on pluralism and then examines the thoughts of different Muslim thinkers on the question, such as al-Farabi (d. 950), al-Ghazali (1058–1111) in the tenth and twelfth centuries, and Tierno Bokar Salif Tall (1875–1939), from Mali, in the twentieth.

The process of scriptural reasoning promises to facilitate dialogue and understanding across religious divides. In this paper, the author reflects on the experience of scriptural reasoning with Anglicans and Muslims; describing the phenomenon of ‘fellowship, not consensus’ with reference to key points of doctrinal difference between the two religious traditions.

Scriptural Reasoning is the study and discussion of Tanakh, Bible and Qur'an together, usually by Jews, Christians and Muslims. On its Christian side it has had strong Anglican participation since it began in the mid-1990s. This article recounts its origins and development (including its spread beyond the academy and to many countries, including China); offers guidelines for its practice; discusses four key publications that offer Anglican theological understandings of it; summarizes its significance; and proposes that it be practised more widely in the Anglican Communion. The article concludes with meditative and prophetic postscripts.

A prolonged (yet telescoped) rendition of the chequered history of relations between Christianity and Islam, as each religious community operated out of different political contexts, illustrates diverse modes of interaction, from disputation to mutual illumination via a shared Hellenic philosophical tradition. A theological probe takes us to the heart of Christian teaching—the triune God—only to unveil remarkable affinities with Islamic developments regarding divine unity. The key to our entire exploration—intellectual humility—functions specially well here: recognizing the comparable logics of revelation, as well as acknowledging the power of these revelations to transform human beings into holy men and women, should motivate us to attempt to reconcile apparent contradictions between Abrahamic faiths in a manner similar to the way philosophical theologians of these traditions proceeded in the Middle Ages to reconcile their respective revelations with reason. A tactic axial to this analysis compares Qur'an with Jesus, rather than Qur'an and Bible, to show the fruitfulness of this more coherent approach. Support from both traditions for a pervasive attitude of intellectual humility shows how to open ways forward.