Qur’an

According to Islamic and Qur’anic basis, monotheism is the core of Islamic Art and the real art is the one that calls toward spirituality and remembering God in the life and condemns any form of artwork which hinders human being from religiosity and divinity, (Qur’an 31:6). Qur’an from one hand addresses the story of prophet Josef, as the masterpiece of Qur’anic narratives (12:3) but it condemns, from the other hand, using ugly art to show distance human being from Divine beauties, (31:20). The main characteristics of Divine and Islamic Art is that the artist by his or her artwork tries to gain proximity to Allah, the Almighty, the creator of whole universe, and getting away from the worldly desires by observing the universe and the nature by realistic approaches than the eyes of benefit or loss. This perspective is totally different from the ugly or human-centered art which looks at everything by the vision of subjectivity and none or anti-metaphysical perspective looking at world on the basis of worldly benefits, desires, lust, hatred, disparity and animosity. This article intends to survey over several aspects of Islamic Art, from philosophical, spiritual and religious perspective.it will also illustrate some instances from Qur’an or from Hadith (Narration) from the holy prophet of Islam, Muhammad (S) and his Ahlulbayt (A.S). In this article Iranian Shi’a art which is the combination of the art of Iranian culture and also Iranian Shi’ite perspective on religion will also be elaborated on.

Ijtihad from the Qur'an and Hadith can have two approaches: One: The conditions that individuals need to reach the stage and power of ijtihad. Two: the conditions that mujtahids face for ijtihad in a religious context; that is, the existence or non-existence is the ground of the possibility of definitive ijtihad from the religious text. A healthy and acceptable ijtihad must fully meet the requirements of both approaches; and disruption in any of these circumstances can overshadow the certainty of religious ijtihad. The current interpretation of the propositions of the Qur'an and Hadith relies heavily on the ijtihad of lexicographers two centuries after the life of the Prophet. Thus, in spite of this historical rupture of the word and the absence of numerous all-contemporary dictionaries of the Prophet, there is no requirement that the lexical ijtihad of two centuries after the Prophet, as we now use it, be one with the spiritual reality of the language of early Islam. Therefore, even if the mujtahids of religious texts are correct in their personal ijtihad, because the conditions for interpreting the text are not available. The current interpretation of the text and propositions of the Qur'an and their hadith is basically uncertain; and at most, it is suspicious. 

The most holy nature of God is described in the Holy Qur'an with many attributes of glory and beauty, all of which indicate the exaltation of God's dignity and His purity from the attributes of imperfection and deficiency. Some of these attributes are also found in the text of the today text of Torah. Believing in the heavenly nature of the Jewish religion, there should not be any difference regarding the mention of divine names and attributes in these religions. This research, which is aimed at the comparative study of the attribute of divine knowledge in the Holy Qur’an and Torah (Old Testament) and the descriptive-analytical method based on library and documentary information, tries to explain the common and different theological points of Islam and Judaism to present the attributes that refer to divine knowledge in these two great Abrahamic religions. Findings show that although the principle of monotheism is common between Islam and Judaism, its difference in Islam is the negation of human attributes from the divine essence. Unlike the Qur'an, which considers the knowledge of God Almighty as unlimited, the Torah deals with the divine knowledge as Human science accompanied by limitations, with the feature of regret arising from the deficiency in knowledge and.... Also, in the Torah, the oral traditions of the Jews, many of these attributes are mentioned with other words.

This research delves into the intricate art of translating cultural elements and identifying appropriate equivalents for Quranic words. The primary objective is to investigate the strategies employed in the translation of Qur’ānic and religious terms, while also shedding light on the main sources of mistranslation. The study examines four renowned English translations of the Holy Qur’ān, namely those by Muhammad Shakir (1976), Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1987), Marmaduke Pickthall (1986) and Arthur Arberry (1955). The dataset comprises terms derived from the original Arabic text of the Holy Qur’ān and their corresponding equivalents in the aforementioned English versions. Consequently, this study identifies and compares the religious and culture-specific terms within these translations, aiming to ascertain the underlying causes of mistranslations. The findings of this research reveal that the process of finding accurate equivalents for Qur’ānic and religious terms is inherently complex. Furthermore, it highlights that the challenge of finding suitable equivalents arises from translators' lack of awareness regarding the culture of the target language as well as the intricacies involved in transferring the source language's essence to the target language.

Metaphor, as a rhetorical device, is mostly culture-specific and plays a vital role in some texts. In some sacred texts such as the Holy Qur’ān, the form and meaning are inseparable, and hence, translating metaphors can be challenging. This study aimed to demonstrate the translation of metaphors in the Holy Qur’ān and to identify the strategies applied in the translation of Qur’ānic metaphors. To this end, Chapters 18 to 30 of the Holy Qur’ān, which included thirteen chapters, were selected and analyzed for metaphorical expressions along with their English translations by three celebrated native translators: Arberry (1964), Irving (1985), and Pickthall (1954). These chapters contained forty samples of metaphor, which were analyzed using six celebrated commentaries to find their literal and metaphorical meanings. The translations were then compared to the source text. The procedures suggested by Newmark (1988b) were used to find the strategies used by the translators. The results revealed that among the proposed procedures, five procedures were applied in the translation of the Qur’ānic metaphors. The most dominant procedures were the first and fifth procedures (reproducing the same image in the target language and converting the metaphor to sense, respectively); whereas, the remaining procedures were only used in two or three cases. It was also revealed that in most of the cases, the translators preferred to preserve the form of the original texts.

According to historiographical evidence, Surah al-Baqarah was the first Surah that was revealed after the Hijrah in Madinah. The variety and extent of the topics in this Surah caused it to be revealed two times during the first and second years of the Hijrah. During its revelation, the society in which the Messenger of God (PBUH) appeared was not uniformed, rather it was formed by scattered tribes, groups, and masses. The lack of a central government and a single religion had caused them not to have a common identity. Therefore, an important part of their political-social life was spending in war with each other. With the efforts of the Messenger of God (PBUH), this scattered society turned into a united form with an Islamic identity. Surah al-Baqarah has advanced the process of building a religious community in Medina step by step, and in this way, there have been suitable platforms for the vulnerability of the prophetic community. Since these platforms could create favorable conditions for the weakening and collapse of the internal cohesion of the prophetic community and as a result of the violation of the collective covenant and the scattering of the believers from around the Prophet (PBUH), in Surah al-Baqarah, through designing an engineering model, God provided the path of integration and cohesion in the prophetic society