“Islamic Approaches to Symbolism, أساليب الرّمزية في الإسلام” (Arabic translation, by Gamal Hassan). Published online by the Burhán Institute, March 7, 2022. Original English version: “Islamic Approaches to Symbolism.” (Previously...
more“Islamic Approaches to Symbolism, أساليب الرّمزية في الإسلام” (Arabic translation, by Gamal Hassan). Published online by the Burhán Institute, March 7, 2022. Original English version: “Islamic Approaches to Symbolism.” (Previously unpublished section of the author’s Master’s thesis: Symbolic Quranic Exegesis in Bahá’u’lláh’s Book of Certitude: The Exegetical Creation of the Bahá’í Faith, Chapter 3, “Islamic Approaches to Symbolism,” pp. 69–145.
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English version:
https://www.academia.edu/34170280/_Islamic_Approaches_to_Symbolism_2017___________
Islamic Approaches to Symbolism
by Christopher Buck
ABSTRACT
“Islamic Approaches to Symbolism”—Chapter Three of Symbolic Quranic Exegesis (Master’s thesis, University of Calgary, 1991, pp. 69–137)—was supervised by Canada’s renowned Islamicist, the late Andrew Rippin (d. 2016), in whose memory this study is respectfully dedicated. Now published in 2017, “Islamic Approaches to Symbolism” surveys interpretations (tafsīr) of “ambiguous” (mutashābihāt) verses of the Qur’an (Q. 3:7) and offers a five-fold topology: (1) rhetorical exegesis (§ 2.0, infra); (2) theological exegesis (§ 3.0); (3) philosophical exegesis (§ 4.0); (4) mystical exegesis (§ 5.0); and (5) sectarian exegesis (§ 6.0). Fine scholarly monographs notwithstanding, no typology, to the best of the author’s knowledge, has been offered as an overview of Islamic approaches to passages in the Qur’an that are figurative, and possibly symbolic.
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