QUTB, SAYYID (9 October 1906–29 August 1966), more fully, Sayyid Qutb Ibrahim Husayn Shadhili, literary critic, novelist, poet, Islamic thinker, and Egypt’s most famous Islamic activist of the twentieth century, exceeding in reputation even the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Husan al-Banna’ (1906-1949). His passionate writings contain powerful images of the maladies of contemporary Islamic
Read More
QUR’ANIC RECITATION. The name for the Islamic revealed scripture, al-Qur’an, means “the recitation,” in both informative and performative senses. With respect to the first, the Qur’an is a “message” (risalah) that has been communicated to humankind through Muhammad, the “Messenger” (rasul). But the recitation is also oral performance of the text in worship, meditation, and
Read More
The Qur’an in Muslim Thought and Practice Because Muslims view the Qur’an as the very word of God, it naturally occupies the central place in their religious life. It is the one means for discovering the will of God and for measuring the success of a life lived in accordance with it. The Qur’an has
Read More
The Qur’an as Scripture The term Qur’an, most often translated as “reading” or “recital,” has been linked etymologically to Syriac qeryana (“scripture reading, lection”) and to Hebrew miqra’ (“recitation, scripture”). Some Muslim commentators have also proposed that it comes from the Arabic verb qarana, “to put together” or “bind together,” thus giving the approximate translation
Read More
QUR’AN 1-History of the Text 2-The Qur’an as Scripture 3-The Qur’an in Muslim Thought and Practice The first article gives a brief history of the origin, collection, and structure of the text. The second presents the Qur’dn as a unique communication from God and provides a survey of modern exegesis of the text. The third
Read More
QOM. A small provincial town south of Tehran, Qom (or Qum) is the site of Hazrat-i Ma’sumah, the shrine of Fatimah, sister of the eight Imam, the second most important Shi’i shrine in Iran, and the leading center of Shi’i theological seminaries in Iran. The gold-domed shrine and its spacious New or Atabegi Courtyard are
Read More
Qiṣāṣ (Arabic: قصاص) is an Islamic term meaning “retaliation in kind” or revenge, “eye for an eye”, “nemesis” or retributive justice. It is a category of crimes in Islamic jurisprudence, where Sharia allows equal retaliation as the punishment. Qisas principle is available against the accused, to the victim or victim’s heirs, when a Muslim is
Read More
Qatar (/ˈkætɑːr/, /ˈkɑːtɑːr/ (About this sound listen), /ˈkɑːtər/ or /kəˈtɑːr/ (About this sound listen); Arabic: قطر Qatar [ˈqɑtˤɑr]; local vernacular pronunciation: [ˈɡɪtˤɑr]), officially the State of Qatar (Arabic: دولة قطر Dawlat Qatar), is a sovereign country located in Western Asia, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Its sole
Read More
QARAMANLI DYNASTY. A Turkish dynasty founded by the original Qaramanli, Ahmed Bey, controlled Ottoman Tripolitania and, intermittently, Cyrenaica and Fezzan, from 1711 to 1835. Ahmed Bey had been appointed to a subprovincial administrative position and took advantage of disorders within the Ottoman military to usurp power. Efforts by Sultan Ahmed III to install a new
Read More
Qanun is an Arabic word (Arabic: قانون, qānūn; Ottoman Turkish: قانون, kānūn, derived from Ancient Greek: κανών kanōn, which is also the root for the modern English word “canon”). It can refer to laws established by Muslim sovereigns, in particular the Ottoman sultans, in contrast to sharia, the body of law elaborated by Muslim jurists.
Read More
