Thursday 29 December 2011

This year, I will find the time...



...to read the Qur'an again.

So in the spirit of New Year’s resolutions I decided to reread the Qur’an, something that I have been meaning to do for a very long time now. Instead of making excuses I’m just gonna jump right into it and see how it goes.
I want to read a few translations at the same time just for the sake of good understanding and clarity. So these are the translations that I will read:

1) Yusuf Ali
2) Pickthall
3) Shakir

I've heard they are pretty good and give a rather accurate picture of what the verses mean when combined altogether. I will be reading them here most of the time cause it's just convenient. However, there is also a brilliant website that you can find here which offers many many different translations of the Qur’an and there is also some commentary that comes with it! I will also do my best to read tafsirs as I heard they are important and can give one invaluable insight into the meaning of the verses.

Also, this time I am going to read the Qur’an in the chronological order of revelation cause as far as I am aware the current order is from the longest to the shortest surah. Not sure why but apparently it's easier to keep track of things when you read the Qur'an in the chronological order.
Here you can find a table that explaines the chronological vs traditional order.

Another useful website that I found is quran4u which offers tafsirs in a pdf format. And the last one is the Qur'an Corpus.

Righty! I think I should get down to reading! I will be starting from surah 96.

17 comments:

Safiyah said...

Thank you for the links and good luck! :)


HAVE A FABULOUS 2012!!! :-D

Almost a Muslimah said...

thanks hun! hug! xox

Anonymous said...

Three Stages:- of spiritual development of A persons soul

Stage 1). Nafsul Ammara:
The Passionate soul "I do not absolve myself Lo the (human) soul is prone to evil, save that whenever my Lord has mercy. Lo, Lord is forgiving; merciful." (Surah Yusuf 12:53)

This soul inclines toward sensual Pleasure, passion and self gratification, anger, envy, greed, and conceit. Its concerns are pleasure of body, gratification of physical appetite, and ego.

Hadith "your most-ardent-enemy is your evil self which resides within your body" (Bukhaii).

If this evil soul is not checked it will lead to unusual stress and its resultant effects.

Stage 2.
.Nafsul Lawanunah (The Reproaching Soul). "Nay, I swear by the reproaching soul" (Qur'an 75:10)
This soul is conscious or aware of Evil, resists it, asks for God's grace, and pardon, repents and tries to amend and hopes to achieve salvation.
"And (There are) others who have acknowledged their faults. They mix a righteous action with another that was bad. It may be that Allah will relent toward them. Lo! Allah is relenting, merciful." (Qur'an 9:102)
Hadith "These are two impulses within us. One spirit which calls towards good and confirms the truth. He who feels this impulse should know that it comes from Allah. Another impulse comes from our enemy (Devil= wrong thinking, negativity, wrong interpretations, believing fake ex-Muslims etc..) which leads to doubt and holds untruth and encourages evil. He /she who feels this should seek refuge in Allah from the accursed devil."
This soul warns people of their vain desire, guides and opens the door to virtute and righteousness. It is a positive step in spiritual growth.

Stage 3).
Nafsul Mutmainnah. (The satisfied soul) "O (you) soul in (complete) rest and satisfaction. Come back to your Lord, will pleased (yourself) and will pleasing unto him. Enter you then among my devotees, enter you in my heaven." (Qur'an 89:27-30)
This is the highest state of spiritual development. satisfied soul is the state of bliss, content and peace. The soul is at peace because it knows that inspite of its failures in this world, It will return to God. Purified of tension, it emerges from the struggle with obstacles blocking the peace of mind and heart.
What should we do in panic and despair? In panic non-believers behave differently than believers. They have no one to return to, to ask for mercy and forgiveness, their life is this life, which they cannot control, thus get more depressed and increase in their state of wrong doing. Then we will see that if they are used to casual drinking will start drinking more and become alcoholic, or a barbital criminal.
On the other hand a believer should do the following:
a. Increase dhikr (Remembrance of God)
"who have believed and whose heart have Rest in the remembrance of God. Verify in the remembrance of God, do hearts find rest." (Qur'an 13:28)

ABCD.....to Z

Almost a Muslimah said...

thank you Anonymous for leaving the comment. I'm unsure what was the purpose fo the comment so I will leave it at that.

thank you :)

Ibn Hanif said...

First of all I congratulate you that you have decided to read the holy Quran again.

Although, I fully disagree with your feelings that there are problems with Islam but still I feel that you're just sincerely sharing what you FELT is wrong in Islam.

I wish to read all the previous posts of your blog. Not because I am impressed by your "achievement" of choosing not to become a Muslimah but instead because this is the first blog of its type that I came across since I joined the blog sphere. I really wish to read about the doubts you have about Islam. I believe that your misconceptions have been caused by your pure misunderstanding of the Islamic sources of knowledge.
I loved to see that a harsh or offensive comment does not make you furious but instead you try to maintain the environment of discussions friendly.

This is what I love when discussing about any topic.

While I truly hope that I will follow this blog for long, insha-Allah but still want to say that this does not mean if you ever embraced Islam I would stop following your blog. And why should I do so while I know that the Islamic history is full of the accounts that how the strongest opponents became the closest friends.

I wish that this new year could prove a turning point in your research. Perhaps, you might have read about the conversion story of Umer may Allah be pleased with him he was going to the Prophet with an intention of (naudu billah)killing him but he heard (or read )the verses of the Quran which changed his life.



I hope if you really became a Muslimah you will impress many others as well.
I myself had doubted the belief system which was presented to me with a label of real Islam. But praised be to Allah Who changed my life and helped me to come out of the superstitious sect and attached me to the Quran and Hadith.
I am planning to compare my belief system with nature and wish to prove the truth of Islam through flower close ups, landscapes etc.

I invite you to become a follower of my blog. And this is not a trade I will remain a reader even you decide otherwise.

I hope you wouldn't mind this too long comment.

I pray for myself and for you too.


[My first visit, I came here via your comment at a blog.]

May we chose whatever is the best, ameen.

www.voicofnature.net

Admin said...

Invitation accepted, Great!

I just came back to say thanks for your being be the follower # 39 of the blog.

You were ALMOST becoming the 40th follower.

So a very warm welcome to you,thank you so much.

Almost a Muslimah said...

hello Ibn Hanif and thank you for stopping by, commenting and following :)

wow, such a long nice comment I don't know where to start! :)

by all means you don't have to agree with me as most people who come here don't agree ;-) if you wish to comment, please do.
thank you for the compliment about the comment's section. i think it's somewhat difficult to achieve friendly atmosphere when the topic of discussion is religion and Islam in particular. but I do appreciate ALL the comments cause they show just how different views people have.

On the topic of real Islam... I've heard and read about it so so many times but it seems to mean different things to different people. I wonder what it means to you?

but please be warned - there is a lot of heartbreak drama and posts filled with whining, emotions, desperation etc. just to give you heads up ;-)
stay well Ibn Hanif!

Anonymous said...

Can I make a suggestion? I personally like this guide/translation (or whatever one wants to call it):

Towards Understanding the Ever Glorious Quran. Dr. Muhammad Mahmud Ghali (Facility of Languages and Translation Al Azhar University)

I would say I have a pretty deep vocabulary, but I have to keep a dictionary near by when reading this translation because it tries to use the most accurate words in translation. Which ultimately means they are words most people never use in their common speech. I find this adventagious over other translations that try to simplify the words (to words that are more common). I feel that more of the meaning is lost that way.

I also like this translation because it doesn't "modernize" the meaning. So, you won't see in parentheses today's equivalent. In one translation I picked up briefly, it equated "weapons" to (missiles, tanks, machine guns and hand-grenades) NO JOKE! ahahhaa and "transportation" to (cars, trucks, buses, trains and airplanes)...

Just my suggestion.

Almost a Muslimah said...

good stuff Stephi! I will try to get hold of that translation.
I've heard it before that one translation mentioned guns, tanks etc It's so funny they would put it in in 7th century text!
thanks for the suggestion :)

Admin said...

I like Yusuf,/Shakir and F. Malik Translations.

The most favorite is translation of F. Malik. Because it uses the modern English.

I also don't like the (cars, trucks, buses, trains and airplanes) and I think it is the translation of Dr. Mohsin

Instead of reading why don't you listen the audio recording of F. Malik translation. You may find the audio files here:

http://www.islamicity.com/multimedia/radio/ch152/

May God be with you, ameen.

Almost a Muslimah said...

hi Ibn Hanif,

yeah, these are the translations i will be reading. i'm not very fond of listening to the translation as it doesn't really facilitate my understanding, quite to the contrary i would say. i want to be really really careful when i read this time and I feel that when I listen to it, i might miss a lot of information/crucial details.

Anonymous said...

May I make a suggestion?

Muhammad Asad's translation and commentary is WONDERFUL. It's apparently closest to the intended meaning of the Arabic without much baggage (ie: Yusuf Ali's translation is written like a companion to the Bible. So there's a lot of Thus and Thee and ceremonial additions to the words. Asad is much more contemporary).

The sources he uses for the commentary are also extensive. His is the first Qur'an translation that I can get through the more "problematic" verses without shuddering.

http://al-quran.info/?x=y#&&sura=96&aya=1&trans=en-muhammad_asad,es-muhammad_asad&show=both,quran-uthmani&ver=2.00

And thanks to Becky for leading me over to your blog. It's a great find.

Almost a Muslimah said...

hello Woodturtle!

thank you very much for your kind words, I'm very humbled to hear them from you :)
I've been a long-time lurker of your blog for some time and it taught me a great deal about islamic feminism so thank you for that :)

I will definitely check out the translation you suggested (my list is growing longer!!). there can never be sth as too many resources ;)

Anonymous said...

ONE MORE :

http://wahiduddin.net/quran/ikhlas.htm
Q.

Admin said...

As shared somewhere else, I wanted to introduce here as well my most favorite tafsir of the recent past tafasirs: Tafsir was written by Syed Qutb :


In the Shade of the Qur'an

I recommend that you only read tafsir of the verses which are part of your current research because it will take years to read the complete tafsir.

But when "Almost" is replaced by "Alhamdulillah" you can read as much as you can.


Best Wishes

New Wife said...

I really like the translation from M.A.S. Abdel Haleem. It uses very accessible English and the gives some excellent information and background in the Forward section. Plus it isn't hugely expensive to get a paperback from Amazon :-P It is from Oxford World's Classics.

I would be interested in hearing about your issues with the Qur'an as well, I find it interesting what other people see when they read it.

Also I would recommend reading in the traditional order. They aren't merely arranged from large to small as there are several which would be counted out of order in this case. They are arranged by the Prophet Mohammad (peace be on him)as they were being revealed in the order they were meant to be read.

Also there are a lot of issues trying to put the surahs in chronological order since there is not a good consensus from scholars about the exact date of revelation of each one, and many came broken into pieces revealed at different times.

Another reason I like Abdel Haleem's translation is that he gives a brief summary and background of each surah that you can read ahead of time in order to put things in a kind of order (such as whether it was revealed mainly in makkah or madina, or what main topics it deals with, what led to the revelation etc.)

Good luck inshaAllah, I'm looking forward to reading more!

Almost a Muslimah said...

hello New Wife :)

thank you for stopping by and taking the time to comment :)
i will check out the translation you recommended but I guess in the end i will stick to the three main ones.

If you go to 'Qur'an' tag on my blog i think it should refer you to some posts that briefly outline my issues with the Qur'an and Islam.

I read the Qur'an in the traditional order that's why I want to read it in the chronological order. I am aware that chronological order does have some inconsistencies here and there but still. Apparently, it is supposed to give a different feel.

thanks again New Wife and hope to see you comment again :) take care!