The zeal in which academic works and research papers on Islam flood major centres of higher learning in the West is understandable considering the nature of the relationship between Islam and the West. That is not to say that other civilisations were safe from Orientalist works and their legendary distortions of facts to suit the Western psychic. Islam is targetted simply because of its characteristic as a living religion – its continued relevance to contemporary settings means it has to be dynamic while keeping its foundation intact, and it is not unbecoming of Islam to be unopinionated about any matters on any given place or time. A religion of such a nature can hardly shy away from being the target of those who would like to take advantage of its dynamism and reduce its concepts and beliefs to mere pedantic exercise.

Over the last few decades, however, Orientalism has lost its vigour as a favourite weapon, simply because more and more Muslims, who were brought up in Western environment and able to digest its academic tradition, have been able to produce, out of this same Western academic tradition, scholarly works in Western languages. Although not intended to counter the attacks against Islam by Orientalist scholars, these works have been able to dampen the heavy reliance of Western scholars on non-Muslim academicians to understand Islam and Muslims. The Qur’an, for example, went through a difficult phase in the West in the eighteenth century, with Orientalist scholars such as George Sale, J M Rodwell and E H Palmer, to name a few, producing translations which not only failed to reflect the message of the Qur’an, but also intended to fulfill the West’s creative myths, biases and romanticism about Islam. However, in the last few decades, even biased Western commentators of Islam have shied away from using these Orientalist translations of the Qur’an in their discourses about Islam, thanks to the rise of a new breed of Islamic scholarship that challenges the quality of Orientalist academic tradition.

More recently, however, Orientalism has taken on a new form. With the creation of Islamic studies faculties and Islamic chairs in Western centres of learning, there has been a trend – symptomatic of the past centuries’ orientalist efforts – to lend legitimacy to non-Muslim scholars’ understanding about Islam, a subject they specialise. The modus operandi is not so difficult to identify: a completely awe-inspiring and overwhelming academic cover is given to their works, resulting in bulky writings labeled as ‘researches’ and ‘rigourous studies’. This new-age Orientalism is no more visible than in Brill’s recent massive work, the Ecyclopaedia of the Qur’an (EQ), the subject of the present essay by Muzaffar Iqbal, of the Center for Islam and Science, Canada.

First published in the Journal of Quranic Research and Studies (Madinah), Dr Muzaffar’s essay attempts to examine this massive work and show how it is no different than similar products of the past century. The claims of ‘plurality’ and ‘rigourousness’, in the final analysis, are nowhere reflected in the work, which as he finds, is filled with insults and disparaging remarks about the Qur’an, ommitting important Qur’anic concepts in the true spirit of Orientalist scholarship.

The publication of this small booklet comes on the heels of a major project, of which the present writer is the prime mover, to publish the Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, a pioneer attempt to bring out an exhaustive reference work on the Qur’an in the English language, inspired and backed by some of the most authoritative contemporary Muslim scholars.