The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 8, No. L 1991 167 

Book Review 

The Sublime Qur'an and Orientalism 

By Muhammad Khalifa. Karachi: International Islamic 
Publishers (Pvt.) Ltd., 1989, 262pp., second edition. 

The Qur'an, being central to both the Islamic faith and its practice, has 
been studied in a plethora of orientalist writings-ranging from such a crudely 
polemical one as Alexander Ross's English translation of the Qur'an entitled 
The Alcoran of Mahomet . . . for the Satisfaction for all those who Desire 
to look into the Turkish Vanities (1649) to those with scholarly pretensions 
and claiming to be "objective" studies, such as Noldeke's Geschichte des Qorans 
(1860), Goldziher's Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslesung (1920), 
Bell's The Quran translated with a Critical Rearrangement of the Surahs 
(1937-39), Wansbrough's Quranic Studies (1977), and Burton's The Collection 
of the Quran (1977). 

The book under review, first published in 1983, recounts the full tock 
of the orientalists' misconceptions, down the ages, about the Qur'an-their 
outlandish theories about its authorship (pp. 7-18), their assaults on its textual 
history and its arrangement (pp. 52-63), their brazen attempts at twisting 
its meaning in their Qur'an translations (pp. 64-92), and their bizzare views 
on abrogation in the Qur'an (pp. 93-104). Khalifa deserves every credit for 
assembling so much information. What is more remarkable is that it is followed 
by a stout refutation of these allegations about the form and contents of the 
Qur'an and an extensive, authentic exposition of the Qur'anic teachings, 
concepts, and morals, all of which constitutes the second part of the book 
(pp. 111-205). In elucidating the Qur'anic worldview, Khalifa's discussion is 
subtle, in large part persuasive, tenaciously pursued, and well presented. 
Appended to the book are two highly informative appendices on the order 
of the Qur'an's surahs. 

This well-intentioned and detailed scholarly study, however, does not 
really succeed in delivering what its title promises. In discussing the orientalists' 
ventures into establishing the chronology of Qur'anic surahs, Khalifa says 
little about Gustav Fli:lgel's Corani Textus Arabiscus (1834) and the theories 
propounded by Grimme and Hirschfield's New Researches in the Composition 
and Exegesis of the Quran (1902). More serious is the lack of any reference 
to a host of orientalists' writings on the philological and lexical aspects of 
the Qur'an, namely Baljon's Modern Muslim Quran Interpretation (1961), 
Torrey's The Commercial-Theological Terms in the Quran (1892), Watt's 



168 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 8, No. I, 1991 

Companion to the Quran (1967), and Welch's "Muhammad's Understanding 
of Himself-the Koranic Data" in Hovannisian and Vryonis (eds.), Islam's 
Understanding of Itself (1983), among others. The theme of the so-called 
Judea-Christian antecedants of the Qur'an is taken up in Khalifa's book, but 
he appears to have overlooked some quite significant writings in English on 
the subject: Hirschfeld (1902), Horovitz's Jewish Proper Names and Derivatives 
in the Koran (1964), Katsh's Judaism in Islam: Biblical and Talmudic 
Backgrounds of the Quran and Its Commentaries (1954), and O'Shaughnessy's 
The Development of the Meaning of Spirit in the &ran (1953). The inclusion 
of these writings would have made Khalifa's book all the more authoritative. 

Khalifa does not go in for any dense treatment of the orientalists' 
translations of the Qur'an. One wishes he would have been more forthcoming 
in bringing out their motives, their dogmatic presuppositions, their mental 
make-up, instances of unpardonable mistranslation and omission, and 
unaccountable liberties in their translations of the Qur'an. Moreover, Khalifa 
would have done well to have used a proper, consistent transliteration system. 
His far-ranging exploration of the Qur'anic worldview is nonetheless one of 
the valuable elements of the book, for it reflects his meticulous scholarship, 
wide familiarity with relevant works, and constant insights into the slrah and 
Islamic history. 

Despite the narrowness of its concern in places, it is indeed a coherent 
and impressive work, perhaps the first systematic book in English by a Muslim 
evaluating the writings of the orientalists. The book well serves the purpose 
of bringing into sharp focus, for the benefit of both orientalists and Muslims, 
the fallacies and pitfalls in the orientalist discourse on the Qur'an. 

A. R. Kidwai 
The Islamic Foundation 
Leicester, England