Editors

Majid Daneshgar is lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He spent several years studying and teaching in Southeast Asia and his main research interests focus on Islam in the Malay-Indonesian World, and Islam and Science in the 19th and early 20th Centuries

Peter Riddell is Vice Principal (Academic) at the Melbourne School of Theology and Professorial Research Associate in History at SOAS, the University of London. He has published widely on the study of Southeast Asia, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. His books include Islam and the Malay-Indonesian World: Transmission and Responses (London, Hawaii, and Singapore, 2001).

Andrew Rippin is Professor Emeritus of Islamic history at the University of Victoria, Canada and Senior Research Fellow of Qur’anic studies at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. He has published extensively in Islamic and Qur’anic studies and is series editor for Routledge Studies in Classical Islam.

Presentation

The largely Arabo-centric approach to the academic study of tafsir has resulted in a lack of literature exploring the diversity of Qur’anic interpretation in other areas of the Muslim-majority world.

The essays in The Qur’an in the Malay-Indonesian World resolve this, aiming to expand our knowledge of tafsir and its history in the Malay-Indonesian world. Highlighting the scope of Qur?anic interpretation in the Malay world in its various vernaculars, it also contextualizes this work to reveal its place as part of the wider Islamic world, especially through its connections to the Arab world. It demonstrates the strength of these connections, emphasising the number of works by authors based in the Malay world first published in Arabia or Egypt, as well as the scope of the Arabic exegetical works cited by Malay writers, which were unlimited by the Bay?awi-Zamakhshari-Razi genealogy that was so central in the Ottoman and European traditions. The volume is divided into three parts of ten essays written primarily by scholars from Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Beginning with a historical overview, it then moves into chapters with a more specifically regional focus to conclude with a thematic approach by looking at topics of some controversy in the broader world.

Contents

Introduction – Majid Daneshgar & Andrew Rippin

Part I: History
1 Classical Tafsir in the Malay World – Peter G. Riddell
2 The Emergence of Qur’anic Exegesis in Malaysia Haziyah Hussin

Part II: Regions
3 Qur’anic Interpretation in Thailand – Mustaffa Abdullah
4 The Pursuit of New Interpretive Approaches to the Qur’an in Contemporary Indonesia – Izza Rohman
5 Qur’anic Commentaries in the Malay, Javanese and Sundanese Cultural Regions – Ervan Nurtawab Part

III: Themes
6 Signs of Tolereance Towards the People of the Book in Malay Exegesis – Nurhanish Senin & Siti Fairuz Ramlan
7 Religious Freedom in Malaysia: The Reading of Qur’an 2:256 – Mohd Faizal
8 What’s Modern about Modern Tafsir?: A Closer look at Hamka’s Tafsir al-Azhar
9 Intersections of the Qur’an and science in Contemporary Malaysia – Christopher A. Furlow
10 Dhu I-Qarnayn in the Malay World – Majid Daneshgar