This book makes the Qur'an accessible to the English-speaking student who lacks the linguistic background to read it in the original Arabic by offering accessible translations of, and commentary on, a series of selected passages that are representative of the Islamic scripture. Mustanstir Mir, Director of the Center for Islamic Studies at Youngstown State University, offers clear translations and analysis of 35 selected passages of the Qur'an that will help students understand what kind of book the Qur'an is, what the scripture says, and how it says it.

This book makes the Qur'an accessible to the English-speaking student who lacks the linguistic background to read it in the original Arabic by offering accessible translations of, and commentary on, a series of selected passages that are representative of the Islamic scripture. Mustanstir Mir, Director of the Center for Islamic Studies at Youngstown State University, offers clear translations and analysis of 35 selected passages of the Qur'an that will help students understand what kind of book the Qur'an is, what the scripture says, and how it says it.

Here is a highly informative yet accessibly-written introduction to the life and works of the writer and political thinker Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), who as President of the Muslim League played a vital role in the birth of Pakistan, and is revered today as its spiritual founder. In discussing Iqbal's thought, and analysing his poetry and prose at some length, Mir suggests that Iqbal represents a paragon for modern Muslims, caught as they are between tradition and modernity. Iqbal's attempt to integrate Islamic and Western elements in his intellectual, artistic and political lives makes him a figure that Muslims may respect and emulate, since he declared his passionate loyalty to the religion of Islam while at the same time differentiating between the eternal, or essential, and the historical, or incidental, in the Islamic tradition.

"Justice and Rights" is a record of the fifth "Building Bridges" seminar held in Washington, DC in 2006 (an annual symposium on Muslim-Christian relations cosponsored by Georgetown University and the Church of England). This volume examines justice and rights from Christian and Muslim perspectives -- a topic of immense relevance for both faiths in the modern world, but also with deep roots in the core texts of both traditions.

Leading scholars examine three topics: scriptural foundations, featuring analyses of Christian and Muslim sacred texts; evolving traditions, exploring historical issues in both faiths with an emphasis on religious and political authority; and the modern world, analyzing recent and contemporary contributions from Christianity and Islam in the area of freedom and human rights.