Volume 19 - Issue 26
December 21, 2002 - January 03, 2003
BOOKS
Reading the Quran
A. G. NOORANI
Approaches to the Quran; edited by G.R. Hawting and Abdul-Kader A. Shareef; Routledge; pages 336, £55.
Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective by Amina Wadud; Oxford University Press; pages 118, Rs.195.
Islamic Family Law in a Changing World: A Global Resource Book; edited by Abdullahi A. An-Naim; Zed Books; pages 320.
TWO aphorisms coined by Judges of the U.S. Supreme Court have been often quoted by Judges of our Supreme Court. One is that the worst way to read a Constitution is to read it literally. The other, that a word is the skin of a living thought. The skin survives. The thought acquires a new meaning in changed context. Reading scripture is an even more challenging a task. As Karen Armstrong has written, "We have to know how to read our scriptures. They demand an imaginative effort... A true meaning of scripture can never be wholly comprised in a literal reading of the text, since that text points beyond itself to a reality which cannot adequately be expressed in words and concepts... "
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