Understanding the Qur’an Today

About the Book

In Islam, there is a long tradition of interpretation regarding the meaning and significance of Divine revelation, reflecting a plurality of views.

Mahmoud Hussein argues that whereas God transcends time, His Word is inscribed within time. It is not a monologue, but a living exchange, through which God reveals to His Prophet different orders of truth, weaving together the absolute and the relative, the general and the particular, the eternal and the contingent.

An international bestseller, Understanding the Qur’an Today offers a contemporary perspective on one of the world’s most influential texts and adds an invaluable contribution to the debate on Islam and modernity.

About the Author

Mahmoud Hussein is the pseudonym of Bahgat Elnadi and Adel Rifaat, French political writers of Egyptian origin. Together they have published many works, including Al-Sira, le Prophète de l’islam raconté par ses compagnons.

Reviews

‘Timely and provocative … Knowledge of the context of revelation is indispensable to our very understanding of the Qur’an and of the wisdom behind sharia. This alone makes Hussein’s work a much needed intervention, especially when dominant currents in modern and contemporary Islamic thought tend to ignore the particularity of the event in favour of the generality of the signifier.’
Journal of the Society for Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World