Kenneth Cragg was one of the West's most gifted interpreters of Islam and one of the most well-known figures of the Middle Eastern Church. During his 45 years in the Middle East, Cragg was an assistant Bishop of Jerusalem and scholar, he focussed on the Christian understanding of other faiths, particularly Islam. A major figure in Christian-Muslim conversations he was a prolific writer whose books became a forum of intellectual debate about Islam and Christian-Muslim relations. This set re-issues two of his lesser-known but no less important books, which illustrate his deep knowledge of the Qur'an and his lifelong interest in Islamic and Christian theology.

Originally published in 1966, this was the first of Muhammad ‘Abduh’s works to be translated into English. Ris�lat al Tauhid represents the most popular of his discussion of Islamic thought and belief. ‘Abduh is still quoted and revered as the father of 20th Century Muslim thinking in the Arab world and his mind, here accessible, constituted both courageous and strenuous leadership in his day. All the concerns and claims of successive exponents of duty and meaning of the mosque in the modern world may be sensed in these pages. The world and Islam have moved on since ‘Abduh’s lifetime, but he remains a source for the historian of contemporary movements and a valuable index to the self-awareness of Arab Islam.

Originally published in 1973, this volume consists of a sequence of essays in religious thinking, responsive to the impact of Quranic style and emphasis. It traces the implications of the Qur’�n in the related fields of man and history, evil and forgiveness, unity and worship, wonder and the hallowing of the world. It does so with a critical eye for the classical commentators, three of whom are translated here in their exegesis of three important Surahs. The underlying emphasis of this book is inter-religious converse and responsibility in the contemporary world.

What is happening in Islam is of concern to more than Muslims. The Qur'an is the prime possession of Muslims: how then, are they reading and understanding their sacred Book today? This volume, originally published in 1985, examines eight writers from India, Egypt, Iran and Senegal. Their way with the Qur'an indicates how some in Islam respond to the pressures in life and thought, associated in the West with thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Marx, Camus, Kafka, Jung, Fanon and De Chardin.

Kenneth Cragg (1913 - 2012) was one of the West's most gifted interpreters of Islam. In this deeply insightful, classic work of Qur'anic studies, he argues that the West must put aside a "spiritual imperialism" that draws on Western prescripts alien to Muslims and "learn to come within" Islam. Only then can a conversation begin that can relieve the misunderstandings and suspicion that has grown between Islam and the West in the years since 9/11. Cragg's close and thoughtful readings are as timely and relevant now as they were when The Qur'an and the West was originally published. With skill and nuance, he illuminates the difficulty that ensues through the Scripture's contradictory teachings on Islam's manifestation in the world - teachings that have brought about a crisis for modern Muslims living in both the West and the westernizing worlds, where a Muslim's obligation to Islamicize is met with anxiety and distrust. The Qur'an and the West offers a means of study that reaches for a deeper knowledge of the Qur'an, engendering a new understanding of its holy teachings and opening a means for a fruitful discourse.

Originally published in 1966, this was the first of Muhammad 'Abduh's works to be translated into English. Risalat al Tauhid represents the most popular of his discussion of Islamic thought and belief. 'Abduh is still quoted and revered as the father of 20th Century Muslim thinking in the Arab world and his mind, here accessible, constituted both courageous and strenuous leadership in his day. All the concerns and claims of successive exponents of duty and meaning of the mosque in the modern world may be sensed in these pages. The world and Islam have moved on since 'Abduh's lifetime, but he remains a source for the historian of contemporary movements and a valuable index to the self-awareness of Arab Islam.

Originally published in 1973, this volume consists of a sequence of essays in religious thinking, responsive to the impact of Quranic style and emphasis. It traces the implications of the Qur'an in the related fields of man and history, evil and forgiveness, unity and worship, wonder and the hallowing of the world. It does so with a critical eye for the classical commentators, three of whom are translated here in their exegesis of three important Surahs. The underlying emphasis of this book is inter-religious converse and responsibility in the contemporary world.

What is happening in Islam is of concern to more than Muslims. The Qur'an is the prime possession of Muslims: how then, are they reading and understanding their sacred Book today? This volume, originally published in 1985, examines eight writers from India, Egypt, Iran and Senegal. Their way with the Qur'an indicates how some in Islam respond to the pressures in life and thought, associated in the West with thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Marx, Camus, Kafka, Jung, Fanon and De Chardin.

Biblical ethics and eloquence reached a pinnacle with the great writing Prophets - from Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah, to Zechariah. Prophethood has also been central to Islam. Muhammad, its final messenger, is coupled with Allah in the Islamic faith, through confession or shahadah.

Purposeful suicide in contemporary Islam and the deep pathos in its frequency for religious ends is the main impulse to the topic of Faith at Suicide. The Islamic phenomenon needs to be set in a wider context which reckons with suicide's incidence elsewhere, with its uneasy associations in martyrdom and with how it interrogates - or is interrogated by - the ethics of religious faith. The enigma of wilful suicide is no less a challenge to sanity or compassion when such faith is absent from the deed or dimly yearned for by it. 'I am pregnant with my cause', orators may boast. But they were never pregnant with themselves. Our birth was unsolicited on our part. We have all to reach a philosophy about our living, which is perpetually at stake and which we are free to curtail. Dark cynics have said that life is no more than forbearing not to commit suicide. While the sheer mystery of birth demands we disavow all such self-refusal, what then of those who resolve to make it forfeit for an end they must also abdicate in doing so? Selves are 'banished and betrayed' when weary despair registers what ill-fate itself has done to them.;It is more darkly so when the precious human frame, the body's wonder, by 'self-bombing' encases lethal death in and for and from itself. This book sets out to explain how the issue of suicide belongs with the conscience of Islam today, and how suicide in all circumstances, with or without religious overtones - be they Islamic or Christian or other faith - is an inherent contradiction of our common humanity, as expressed in human birth which expressly involves us in mankind.

Reprint of the 1998 work (Collins, San Francisco). Writing for non- Muslims, Cragg offers an abridged literary (as opposed to literal) translation of the Qur'an, presenting the text in eight segments representing eight main themes. He also includes a substantial introductory essay explaining this approach and reflecting on the relevance of the Qur'an in the contemporary world.

"A fascinating and deeply learned book. The core theme is learning. The book rests on a presentation of Jesus as having undergone a process of education: he learned through suffering (Heb. 5: 8). Cragg develops this theme through a many-sided conversation with some modern figures who provide case studies in Christ-learning: Hooker, Newman, Browning, Faulkner, Kipling, Nietzsche and Wilde. This is an exceptional work: first, here is a christology that refuses to downplay the full, human obedience of Jesus, and takes time, history and process seriously; second, this christology becomes integral to an engagement with contemporary culture which would be hard to match for thoroughness, sensitivity and profundity. A very significant achievement." The Expository Times. "Written in a strikingly subtle and penetrating style, this volume reveals an immense erudition, and a truly extraordinary moral and religious sensitivity, theological acumen and critical awareness, literary and other." W. D. Da

A profound and courageous attempt to compare and contrast Islamic ideals of prophecy, as found in Muhammad, with the prophetic traditions of the Hebrew Bible. It challenges Muslims, Jews and Christians to understand their own traditions better and to be open to learn from one another. It rests on prolonged reflection about the character of the three Abrahamic religions.

Contents: Introduction; The House of My Pilgrimage; The Personal Interrogative -- Arjuna and the Gita; 'So Help Me -- Who?'; Pronounal Jewry -- God's Own People; The Self-Encounter in Judaism; The Muslim Personal Pronoun Singular; The Muslim Personal Pronoun Plural; The 'We' and the 'I' in the New Testament; Two Great Sexes Animate the World; Our Dividual Being -- The Irony of Mystical Union; Faiths' Pronoun-Users Now; Notes; Index of Names and Terms.

Can there be genuine 'sympathy' between the Bible and the Qur'an? Their 'peoples' have been at odds so long, disputing their texts and discounting their credentials. Scholars from both faiths have contrived intriguing comparison of narratives about Abraham, Joseph or Moses but with little relevance to the contemporary scene and its demand for religious converse and sanity. "A Certain Sympathy of Scriptures" attempts something more central to the essential 'interest' of both Scriptures, more cogent in this 21st century (the 15th Islam). It is a concern with three shared dimension: The divine will for this cosmos of created order; its entrustment into human hands as creaturely heirs to its order and responsive 'sciences'; and the discipline of their tenancy and privilege by 'messengers' and prophethoods disclosing the intention of divine Lordship in the fact of human vocation. These three dimensions are the supreme theme of both Scriptures. This 'caliphate' of humankind belongs in a now global situation as the abiding reality of Semitic humanism.;We are not 'on our own', but trustees in a sacramental order, neither playthings nor puppets of a bland omnipotence but 'associates' of the God who willed to create and cared to inform, inspire and invite as such to be. Deep disparities remain between our Scriptures. They have to do with what goes beyond our 'education', as more than prophethood. They enlarge into all that Jesus fulfilled in Christhood. They involve a truer measure of human perversity and, in turn, a larger expectation concerning the 'greatness' of God. Yet what divides need not alienate. The mutual ground - this certain sympathy - gives hope of wiser recognition of the divine stake in our humanity.

Semitism is a human story of distinctive intimacy with a God, believed to belong with birth, sealed in history and homed in given territory. These three denominators of tribe, territory and remembered time belong to all human identities, understood as one creation in a single cosmos in the Bible and the Qur'an. Anti-Semitism is a tragic misprision of this long conviction of the Judaic mind, bringing endless suffering to the one, shame and guilt to the other. Its effect has been to make "those counsels dearer" still, whether in Zionist will to recover and rule territory or in a secular diaspora struggling to know itself. Semitism has overtaken itself with the barbarity of a dividing Wall - a scar across a land allegedly "beloved above all," by both God and People.

Contents: Introduction; The House of My Pilgrimage; The Personal Interrogative -- Arjuna and the Gita; 'So Help Me -- Who?'; Pronounal Jewry -- God's Own People; The Self-Encounter in Judaism; The Muslim Personal Pronoun Singular; The Muslim Personal Pronoun Plural; The 'We' and the 'I' in the New Testament; Two Great Sexes Animate the World; Our Dividual Being -- The Irony of Mystical Union; Faiths' Pronoun-Users Now; Notes; Index of Names and Terms.

The hope in exploring this strange paradox further is that it may mediate between Christian -- and perhaps other -- faith on the one hand, and contemporary humanism on the other. Such a "meeting of minds" is much to be desired. For, in their different ways, the two bring together a sense of human liability to be responsible, and responsive, to that which is both in our power and beyond our mercy. To say that "truth is in the care of faith" is to recognize that "faith has to be the care of truth," just as "history" lies very much in the hand of historians (for good or ill) and historians are tributary to "history" as obligation and trust.

This whole approach to the truth/faith/civilization equation may seem dubious to pious minds inured to divine "omnipotence." A more lively and penetrating sense of things divinely human and humanly divine is pursued in this book through ten themes central to religion -- language, law, love, truth, tribe, selfhood, nature, power, time and worship. A final chapter clinches the distinctive case for Christianity as "divine risk." The argument is illuminated by examples from different religions, and from literature, poetry and the humanities.

For six decades Kenneth Cragg has been recognized and praised as one of the West's most gifted interpreters of Islam. In this latest, deeply insightful work, Cragg argues that the West must put aside a "spiritual imperialism" that draws on western prescripts alien to Muslims and "learn to come within" Islam. Only then can a conversation begin that can relieve the misunderstandings and suspicion that has grown between Islam and the West -- especially since 9/11.

Cragg makes clear that a misunderstanding of the tenets of a religion is a condition religions have suffered through the centuries and one to which Islam is no exception. He argues that the terrorists of 9/11 perverted the Qur'an's meaning and yet argues that fanaticism cannot be healed by being deplored or rebuked. Instead, the factors that induced it need to be resolved so that the "anxieties they shelter can be patiently allayed." "The Qur'an and the West "offers a means of study that reaches for a deeper knowledge of the Qur'an, engendering a new understanding of its holy teachings, and opening a means for a fruitful discourse.

Through close and thoughtful readings, Cragg reveals the difficulty that ensues through the Scripture's contradictory teachings on Islam's manifestation in the world -- teachings that have brought about a crisis for modern Muslims living in both the West and the westernizing worlds, where a Muslim's obligation to Islamicize is met with anxiety and distrust. He shows Christians' and the West's failure to appreciate the lack of any distinction between "secular" and "sacred" in Islam and argues that only by understanding this condition can Christians truly appreciate the form their support for Muslims should take -- encouraging Muslims to follow those Qur'anic teachings that champion humanity's cause. For Muslims, he urges an interpretation of the Qur'an that perpetuates the Islamic message rather than the Islamic regime.

We do not do God', politicians may say, explaining that theirs is the art of the possible. Some theologians have been reluctant with that plea, whilst practising the art of the assured. But what might God doing God' entail? God' is a relational word involved in human mutuality. With God, doing' is one with being'. There is always a God and ...' situation obtaining: God and the astronomers', God and the tsunami'. Then quickly a God but ...' situation emerges and the wrong' with it. Shakespearean repartee (God's wrong is most of all: if thou didst fear to break an oath with him', Richard III, Act IV, Scene 4), and from Macbeth and King Lear, may help us focus further the inherent discrepancies of approach. Moreover, by long oath-taking tradition we invoke God in verifying verity, putting perjury on the line. What then of this universal guarantor of truth who is, by the same token, for ever blameworthy? Hence the theme of divine capacity' (a wiser term here than omnipotence'). For can there be a deep costliness, a wrong-bearing', on the part of God vis-a-vis the human scene, with its cry for compassion, pardon and redemption? Christian faith has always believed there is and traces it in this gift of habitable earth and more surely, in the Cross of Christ. That Cross, it has been said, is the avowal and acceptance of divine responsibility'. If, in that human scene, love can turn suffering because of into suffering on behalf of, may it not be so with a love divine? Because of' is plainly there in broken faith, angry blasphemy, base injustice, the sins of the world'. Perhaps the other is known for real in the drama where all these, being suffered, were representatively turned to our salvation. That they were, this book explores.

In this collection of thirteen faith-biographies of literary and religious individuals from Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Indian beliefs, Kenneth Cragg, widely acknowledged as the premier Western Islamicist in the world, tells these stories in ways that emphasize the importance of religious tolerance and respect for others. All these figures stand "in the presence of mystery" and their stories illuminate that sacred experience.