E15 The Qur'an and its Variant Readings with Dr. Shady Nasser

Pleased to have on Dr. Peter Adamson, Professor of Philosophy at the LMU in Munich and host of the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast. What is Falsafa? What types of questions did its practitioners address and how did they go about doing so? What is Kalām? What types of questions did its practitioners address and how did they go about doing so? How did practitioners of these sciences view one another? How did non-Muslims in Muslim-ruled areas engage with and contribute to the study of philosophy? What is the decline narrative? And more!  Link to Professor Adamson's academia page: https://lmu-munich.academia.edu/PeterAdamson Link to the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast: https://www.historyofphilosophy.net/

Join me as I discuss the New Testament with Dr. Thomas Schmidt, Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University. What is the New Testament and what is its anatomy? What is the history of its writing/canonization? What was the status of the NT among early Christians and how did they refer to it? How does the NT relate to the Hebrew scriptures and other writings? How was the NT preserved? What is the Qur'an's understanding of the NT? And more! Link to Dr. Schmidt's Academia: https://fairfield.academia.edu/TCSchmidt Link to Dr. Schmidt's forthcoming publication, "The Book of Revelation and its Eastern Commentators": https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/book-of-revelation-and-its-eastern-commentators/4BF51EA09DB063BC6872DE481D291A62

I'm very pleased to have on Kerwin Holmes Jr., PhD student at the University of Virginia's Department of Religious Studies, to discuss Christianity. What is Christology? What did the early Christians believe about Jesus? What were the different councils and what did they accomplish? What are some of the various interpretive methodologies employed when approaching the Gospels?  What does a practising Christian scholar think of the Qur'an's conception of Christian belief? And more! Link to Kerwin's bio: https://religiousstudies.as.virginia.edu/grad-students/profile/kh2ea

I'm pleased to welcome Dr. Tamara Gray, founder of Rabata (https://www.rabata.org/) to discuss the philosophy of Islamic education in America. What is the purpose of education in general and of Islamic education in particular? How has the curriculum been organized/structured? What are some of the advantages of an online medium for education?  What is the role of Islamic scholarship today (original research, education, etc)?  What is the broader vision for your students' career plans?  And much more!  Link to Dr. Gray's biography: https://www.rabata.org/anse-tamara-gray/ Link to the institute: https://ribaat.rabata.org/  Link to A Compendium of the Sources on the Prophetic Narrative Volume 1 & Volume 2: https://daybreak-international-bookstore.myshopify.com/products/hard-cover-a-compendium-of-the-sources-on-the-prophetic-narrative

I'm pleased to welcome Shaykh Amin Kholwadia, founder of Darul Qasim (located in a suburb of Chicago, IL, USA) to discuss the philosophy of Islamic education in America. What is the purpose of education in general and of Islamic education in particular?  What is the role of Islamic scholarship today (original research, education, etc)? How should Muslim academics from Darul Qasim engage with academics in Islamic Studies/NELC departments at universities? What can be learned from the educational methodologies of these departments? What is the broader vision for your students' career plans? How do graduates of Darul Qasim compete with graduates from similar institutes? And much more! Link to the institute: https://darulqasim.org/ Link to Shaykh Amin's bio:https://darulqasim.org/about-us/leadership/

Join me as I discuss the translation of philosophical texts into Arabic with Dr. Elaine van Dalen, Assistant Professor of Classical Islamic Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. When and where were texts first translated after the rise of Islam? What was the "translation movement" and what was the political and social context of the movement? What was the motivation behind translating texts of certain topics and how did the change in social/religious atmospheres engender the translation of other texts? What was the "Bayt al Ḥikmah"  and how has this been popularly understood? Who was translating? How was medicine practiced during these times? What was the status of medical knowledge of the human body like during this time? And more!

Join me as I discuss the Qurʼān and its variant readings with Dr. Shady Nasser, Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard. What do we mean when we talk about variant readings? How is the presence of such readings accounted for between Muslim and Western scholars? How and when were variant readings canonized? What methodology was applied to determine whether a variant reading was valid or not? How was "Qurʼān" defined between different people? What are the aḥruf? What do we mean when we talk about tawātur and how does it apply to the Qurʼān and the variant readings? What is the concept of the inimitability of the Qurʼān? How is the Qurʼān related to poetry? And more! Link to his forthcoming publication: https://brill.com/view/title/55138

Join me as I discuss pre-Islamic Arabia, epigraphy, and Arabic with Dr. Ahmad Al-Jallad (twitter: @Safaitic). What is pre-Islamic Arabia and how can we know about it? How did pre-modern scholars approach the subject and what were their goals? How has the discovery of new inscriptions advanced our knowledge of pre-Islamic Arabia, the Qur'an, early-Islam, and the Arabic language? Why did people make inscriptions? How do we know an inscription is actually going back to a particular date?  What methodology is applied to determine the pronunciation of certain words in bilingual inscriptions and how important have such inscriptions been for the study of Arabic and other N.E languages? And much more! The professor also discusses some of his findings and the exciting stories behind them.    Link to Professor Ahmad Al-Jallad's Academia page: https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/AhmadAlJallad

Had a good conversation with Professor Jonathan Brown on the important questions. What defines being Muslim? How do we analyze the truth of Islam? What methodology do we use to conclude that the Qur'an is from God? To what extent can we, people of the modern world, take pre-modern figures as role models, especially if we feel we have to constantly contextualize their lives? How do we live in today's highly connected world in a moral and ethical way? And more!

Join me as I discuss the Bible, Qur’an, Midrash, and Tafsir with Dr. Michael Pregill. We discuss the state of Qur'anic studies today and how the field has changed over the past couple decades, as well as Dr. Pregill's new book, "The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an" (recently published by the Oxford University Press). We then move on to several discussions, including: who was the Qur'anic Sāmirī and how is he related to Aaron/Hārūn; Qur'anic "confusions"; how the fields of Late Antiquity, the Bible/Jewish and Christian tradition, and the tafsīr/Islamic tradition relate to the contemporary study of the Qur'ān; and more! Link to Dr. Pregill's bio: https://hcommons.org/members/mpregill/ Link to his book: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-golden-calf-between-bible-and-quran-9780198852421?lang=en&cc=us