 Out of some 6.6 billion men, women, and children now living on earth, every fourth proclaims there is none worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. This belief makes them Muslims - those who consciously and willingly submit to their Creator.
Muslims believe the Quran is the last revealed Book, sent by Allah to guide humanity to the Straight Path. However, The Quran is in classical Arabic, a language that only 15 percent of all Muslims today speak as their mother tongue. And even within this segment, knowledge of classical Arabic is rapidly deteriorating. As far as the non-Arabic speaking majority is concerned, only about 8 to 10 per cent have knowledge of classical Arabic. This means that, at best, only 20 percent of Muslims now understand the language of the primary source of their religion.
The 20th century witnessed a new social, political, economic, cultural, and educational change of a complex nature and at a speed seldom witnessed in human history. These radical changes, apart from human achievements, also spread a widespread cultural schizophrenia which even the Muslims couldn't avoid. While the world changed into a global society, the Muslims' link with the language of revelation - Arabic - also severed.
Against this historical background, a group of Muslim scholars has initiated an international project to produce The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Quran (IEQ). This is a unique reference work in seven volumes that encapsulates fourteen hundred years of Islamic scholarship on the Quran.
Published jointly by the Center for Islam and Science (CIS) in Canada and the Society for Quranic Studies in Pakistan, IEQ is for both Muslim and non-Muslim readers, academic specialists, general readers, students and scholars. Employing the English language, the project will include articles which explain fundamental themes and concepts of the Quran. It will also discover a much-needed and, to date, unavailable reference work that taps into the vast corpus of Muslim scholarship produced over the last millennium and a half. IEQ is also designed to present references to hundreds of classical works that are otherwise scattered over a vast body of inaccessible texts.
IEQ consists of approximately 600 alphabetically arranged entries spread over six volumes of 550-600 pages each. The English-language format and its intensive cross-referencing make article location easy. The entry words are drawn from the Quran itself and the internal thematic structure of the Holy Book has been followed.
IEQ will also serve as a useful starting point for new research on the Quran, both in the Muslim world as well as in the West, as it will bring to the academic world integrated and well-referenced articles covering all concepts, persons, places, and things mentioned in the Holy Book. Researchers without the linguistic skills to directly access the formidable corpus of classical sources on the Quran, will also find IEQ an essential source that fulfills a long-standing need.
Though IEQ is an international project, the first of its kind being undertaken by Muslims in a western language, there are plans to publish translations in various languages, including German, French, Spanish and Italian. Languages spoken in the Muslim world such as Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Persian and Malay are also to be catered for.
The IEQ represent all the four Sunni schools as well as the Shiite school of thought.
The Quran has frequently been cited (in translation) in recent years by scholars and politicians without considering Muslim interpretations and scholarship. IEQ therefore offers a learned Islamic perspective, thereby playing its part to build a chaos-free Islamic society. 
|
Show/hide comments
Show/hide comment form
