Emran El-Badawi is a scholar of Quranic studies. He is dean of the College of Liberal & Fine Arts at the Tarleton State University. [1]
El-Badawi earned his doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a master's degree from the University of Chicago. He also holds a master's degree in religion from Temple University and a bachelor's degree in computer science, with a major in religion, from Rutgers University. [2]
El-Badawi taught Arabic at the University of Chicago from 2006 to 2010 and served as a lecturer in religion at Temple University from 2003 to 2005. [2]
He also chaired the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Houston as Associate Professor and Program Director of Middle Eastern Studies. [3]
Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia included indigenous Arabian polytheism, ancient Semitic religions, Christianity, Judaism, Mandaeism, and Zoroastrianism.
In Islam, Jesus also called The Son of Mary is believed to be the penultimate prophet and messenger of God and the Messiah sent to guide the Children of Israel with a book called the Injīl.
In the biblical Book of Genesis, Ishmael was the first son of Abraham. His mother was Hagar, the handmaiden of Abraham's wife Sarah. He died at the age of 137. Traditionally, he is seen as the ancestor of the Arabs.
In Arabian mythology, Hubal was a god worshipped in pre-Islamic Arabia, notably by the Quraysh at the Kaaba in Mecca. The god's idol was a human figure believed to control acts of divination, which was performed by tossing arrows before the statue. The direction in which the arrows pointed answered questions asked of the idol. The specific powers and identity attributed to Hubal are equally unclear.
The Buraq is a supernatural winged horse-like creature in Islamic tradition that served as the mount of the Islamic prophet Muhammad during his Isra and Mi'raj journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and up through the heavens and back by night. The Buraq is also said to have transported certain prophets such as Abraham over long distances within a moment's duration.
In Islam, the terms ḥanīf and ḥunafā' are primarily used to refer to pre-Islamic Arabians who were Abrahamic monotheists. These people are regarded in a favourable light for shunning Arabian polytheism and solely worshipping the God of Abraham, thus setting themselves apart from what is known as jahiliyyah. However, it is emphasized that they were not associated with Judaism or Christianity—which are described in Islam as originally righteous religions that later corrupted the message of God—and instead adhered to a unique monotheistic faith that exemplified the unaltered beliefs and morals of Abraham. The word is found twelve times in the Quran: ten times in the singular form and twice in the plural form. According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad himself was a ḥanīf and a direct descendant of Abraham's eldest son Ishmael. Likewise, all Islamic prophets and messengers before Muhammad—that is, those affiliated with Judaism and/or Christianity, such as Moses and Jesus—are classified as ḥunafā' to underscore their God-given infallibility.
The Mazmuur is, according to Islam, the holy book of David, one of the holy books revealed by God before the Quran, alongside others such as the Tawrāh (Torah) and the Injīl (Gospel). Muslim tradition maintains that the Zabur mentioned in the Quran is the Psalms of David.
Musaylima, otherwise known as Musaylima ibn Ḥabīb d.632, was a claimant of prophethood from the Banu Hanifa tribe. Based from Diriyah in present day Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he claimed to be a prophet and was an enemy of Islam in 7th-century Arabia. He was a leader of the enemies of Islam during the Ridda wars. He is considered by Muslims to be a false prophet. He is commonly called Musaylima al-Kadhāb by Muslims.
Dhu al-Qarnayn, appears in the Qur'an, Surah al-Kahf (18), Ayahs 83–101, as one who travels to the east and west and sets up a barrier between a certain people and Gog and Magog. Elsewhere, the Qur'an tells how the end of the world will be signaled by the release of Gog and Magog from behind the barrier. Other apocalyptic writings predict that their destruction by God in a single night will usher in the Day of Resurrection.
In Islamic tradition, the Zaqqum is a cursed tree that is rooted in the center of Hell. It is first referred to in the Quran on five occasions, the latter three referring to it by name. There, it is described as producing fruits torturously fed to those condemned in hell as they burn the stomachs of the damned. Afterwards, those in hell are fed boiling liquids in a frenzy.
Taḥrīf or corruption of the Bible, is a term used by most Muslims to refer to believed alterations made to the previous revelations of God—specifically those that make up the Tawrat, the Zabur or Psalms, and the Injil. The term is also used to refer to what Muslims consider to be the corrupted Jewish and Christian interpretations of the previous revelations of God, known as “Tahrif al-Mana”. This concept holds that earlier revelations have been misinterpreted rather than textually altered.
Herbert Berg is a scholar of religion. Trained at the University of Toronto's Centre for the Study of Religion in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he is currently a Visiting assistant professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College. He previously taught as a professor in the Department of International Studies and the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and was the Director of the International Studies from 2011 to 2018. At UNCW, he has been recognized with the University of North Carolina Board of Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching (2019), the Governor's Award for Excellence for "Outstanding State Government Service" (2013), the Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award (2013), the Board of Trustees Teaching Excellence Award (2012), the Distinguished Teaching Professorship Award (2012), and the Chancellor's Teaching Excellence Award (2006).
The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran is an English-language edition (2007) of Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Koransprache (2000) by Christoph Luxenberg.
The realm of Malakut, also known as Hurqalya or Huralya, is a proposed invisible realm of medieval Islamic cosmology.
The Quran states that several prior writings constitute holy books given by God to the prophets and messengers amongst the Children of Israel, in the same way the Quran was revealed to Muhammad. These include the Tawrat, believed by Muslims to have been given by God to the prophets and messengers amongst the Children of Israel, the Zabur revealed to David (Dawud); and the Injil revealed to Jesus (Isa).
Prophets in Islam are individuals in Islam who are believed to spread God's message on Earth and serve as models of ideal human behaviour. Some prophets are categorized as messengers, those who transmit divine revelation, most of them through the interaction of an angel. Muslims believe that many prophets existed, including many not mentioned in the Quran. The Quran states: "And for every community there is a messenger." Belief in the Islamic prophets is one of the six articles of the Islamic faith.
Raḥmānān was an epithet and theonym predominantly used to refer to a singular, monotheistic God from the fourth to sixth centuries in South Arabia, beginning when the ruling class of the Himyarite Kingdom converted to Judaism and replacing invocations to polytheistic religions. The term may have also been monolatrous until the arrival of Christianity in the mid-sixth century.
Quranic studies is the academic application of a diverse set of disciplines to study the Quran, drawing on methods including but not limited to ancient history, philology, textual criticism, lexicography, codicology, literary criticism, comparative religion, and historical criticism.
Gabriel Said Reynolds is an American academic and historian of religion, who serves as Jerome J. Crowley and Rosaleen G. Crowley Professor of Theology and assistant professor of Islamic Studies and Theology at the University of Notre Dame. His scholarship focuses on World Religions and World Church, History of Christianity, Qur'anic Studies, Origins of Islam, and Muslim-Christian relations.