In their sanctuary, the Ka’ba, and around it there was a multiplicity of gods, usually a god representing a tribe. One was the socioeconomic disparity, and the other was the Meccan polytheism. Muhammad, just before the age of about forty, was disturbed by two problems in this city. There was, in short, a very considerable socioeconomic disparity. There were in this community, however, despite its prosperity, or rather because of its commercial prosperity, certain darker sides to the picture: a fairly large-scale exploitation of the poor, of the disenfranchised, of the have-nots. It was, therefore, on the whole quite a prosperous community. The Meccans several generations back had been Bedouins in the desert but some generations before the advent of Muhammad, they settled in this place and mediated the trade between India and the Indian Ocean and throughout the Byzantine Empire. He was brought up by his uncle, Abu Talib. His father had predeceased him and his mother died when he was a child. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born in Mecca in northern Arabia around A.D. In what I am going to say to you, I will therefore try to present the general structure of the main ideas of the Qur’an. The Qur’an, as you know, is for Muslims the revealed scripture of God. All of these factors are organized by the two great messages of the Quran: the sovereignty of God and the need for social justice, lofty and noble ideals that have seen their working out in the hundreds of cultures that have embraced Islam. The topics he discusses with such deceptive simplicity include the nature of God, the nature of man, the origin of evil, the relationship between the Creator and his creations, sin and salvation, individual responsibility, and collective accountability. Using the Qur’an itself as the key to understanding the Muslim world, Professor Rahman discusses the historical context for the appearance of the religion itself, Muhammad’s role as its prophet, and its key beliefs. In discussing “Elements of Belief in the Qur’an,” he performed the difficult task of making an ancient, complex, and unfamiliar religion intelligible and coherent to an audience almost entirely unacquainted with it. His book, published in 1979, is entitled simply, Islam. Admired and respected by his colleagues and students, he is a recognized authority on the culture and religion of Islam. Fazul Rahman, originally from West Pakistan and a professor at the University of Chicago when this was published, served with distinction on the faculties of universities in four countries: his own Pakistan, Canada, England, and the United States.

The Noble Qur'an by Anonymous