درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The Qur’an is the most fundamental and authentic source of the Islamic law ( sharīʿah ) and the primary reference for attaining the principles of Islam among all Muslims. Throughout the history of Islamic civilization, scholars have derived answers to many of their religious questions on diverse issues from the noble verses of the Qur’an. Within this framework, the Qur’anic verses have also served as the primary fountainhead of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), guiding the practical lives of devout Muslims. Nevertheless, it appears that certain opinions expressed in the corpus of fiqh literature are not fully aligned with the recommendations and guidance offered in the Qur’an. One such area of tension concerns the Qur’an’s proposed model for dealing with those who show disrespect toward religious sanctities, which seems to be inconsistent with the prevailing jurisprudential approach. In view of the importance of this issue, the present study adopts a problem-oriented approach and employs a descriptive-analytical method. It first elucidates the manner in which the Qur’an addresses this phenomenon and then, based on the Qur’anic model, critically evaluates the Shia jurisprudential opinions in light of these teachings. The findings indicate that the current jurisprudential approach is not capable of withstanding the unequivocal principles ( muḥkamāt ) of the Qur’an or the practical conduct ( sīrah ʿamalīyyah ) of the Prophet and Shia Imams. At the very least, this approach destabilizes the basis of the prevailing  jurisprudential ruling and suggests the adoption of a perspective that maximizes the protection of human life and does not permit coercive measures except on the basis of definitive evidence.

Research findings have shown that acquiring proficiency in reading is highly dependent on morphology. Also, it has been proved that morphology is a stronger determiner and predictor for reading in Semitic languages such as Arabic. Due to the fact that Qur’anic reading is an important skill for the Muslim community and the gap in the literature on Qur’anic reading, the current research is an attempt to study the effect of morphological awareness on Qur’anic reading fluency and accuracy. To this aim, an intact group entailing 29 native English-speaking adults (aged 19-43) enrolled in a lower-intermediate Qur’anic course was selected through purposive sampling in which outliers were removed (N=27). The remaining participants underwent three sessions of morphological instruction on some of the challenging and frequent Qur’anic roots and morphemes and then took part in three different reading tests on a standard Arabic text, a pseudo-word text, and a Qur’anic text. The results of an analysis through ANOVA (F (2, 72) = 67.483, p = .000) showed that the group performed differently in the three tests, i.e., the morphology instruction enhanced their performance in reading the Qur’anic text as well as the standard Arabic text while leaving the performance on the pseudo-word text almost unaffected. The post-hoc test showed that this effect was strongest in the Qur’anic test, revealing that Qur’anic reading  is significantly affected by morphological awareness-raising. This indicates that raising awareness of morphology through instruction promotes the reading of difficult languages such as the Holy Qur’an and standard Arabic. These findings have implications for Qur’anic teachers, learners, and Arabic language practitioners. 

The number words in the Qur’an are generally considered to have numerical meanings, while other meanings of these words have been reported under some verses (especially the creation verses). There are diverse cultural-ritual symbols of the number words employed by the people living in different geographical regions of the world from ancient centuries to the present. The peresent research aims to conduct a comparative study of the non-numerical meanings of number words and their numbered objects in the Qur’an and different rituals and cultures, using the method of ritual-cultural symbology, in order to discover and analyze the relationship between the literal meanings of Qur’anic numbers and their symbolic meanings. According to the results of this research, it seems that the non-numerical meanings of number words in the verses of Creation are not metaphors, ironies and parables, and they are possibly symbolic. Moreover, there is a close relationship between the ritual-cultural symbology and the literal meanings of numbers and their associations in the Creation Verses, so it can be suggested that there is a kind of language that all people can understand regardless of culture and geography.