Hasan (Abla), A Qur’anic Reading of Muhammad’s Secret: A Historical-Critical Approach to Muhammad’s Marriage to Zaynab, London, Routledge, 2027, 224 p. ISBN 978-1041360728

Author

Abla Hasan is Professor of Practice of Arabic Language and Culture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA. She is the author of Decoding the Egalitarianism of the Qur’an: Retrieving Lost Voices on Gender (2019), On Pain and Suffering: A Qur’anic Perspective (2022), and The Qur’anic Dilemma: A Hermeneutical Investigation of al-Khidr (Routledge, 2022).

Presentation

This book addresses one of the most enigmatic episodes in the life of Prophet Muhammad: his marriage to Zaynab. The historical-critical approach emphasizes the need to revisit the Qur’an to gain a more authentic understanding of Muhammad’s life and legacy. The contrast between the Qur’anic portrayal of Muhammad and traditional Islamic narratives, as the book reveals, exposes a highly distorted and culturally reconstructed image of the prophet of Islam. Author Abla Hasan argues that the idealization of some traditional Islamic resources, lacking rigorous academic scrutiny in the majority, led to a problematic image of Muhammad.

Hasan employs a combination of historical-critical and Qur’anic methodologies to provide a Qur’anic-based understanding of the most controversial marriage in Muhammad’s life and address accusations against Muhammad’s character. By applying rigorous academic scrutiny to traditional resources, the study rejects traditional attempts to explain the narrative based on both ‘the love narrative’ and the ‘impending marriage narrative’ and ends with a novel Qur’anic interpretation of the secret alluded to in the Qur’an.

A Qur’anic Reading of Muhammad’s Secret: A Historical-Critical Approach to Muhammad’s Marriage to Zaynab will be of great interest to scholars and postgraduate students, not only from within the field of Qur’anic or Islamic studies, but also from related fields, including Islamic law and women’s studies.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on the Text

Foreword Emran El-Badawi

1. Introduction

2. Revisiting the Qur’an as a Resource to Study Muhammad

3. The Story: The Problematization of the Traditional Islamic Narrative

4. The Prophet’s Hidden Secret: A Qur’anic Answer

5. The Exegetical Misinterpretation of Q. 33:37: An Explanation

6. Conclusion.

Bibliography

Index