MORALITY IN THE QUR'AN

The book under review is the translation of Muhammad [Abdullah Draz’s doctoral thesis written originally in French under the title La Morale du Koran. His supplementary thesis for the same doctoral thesis under the title Introduction to the Qur’an, was reviewed by this reviewer in the Muslim World Book Review (vol. 33, issue 2, 2013). Draz was born in Egypt, graduated from the well-known al-Azhar University in 1916 and then proceeded to Sorbonne University in Paris on a scholarship for a doctorate. On his return to Egypt, he resumed his teaching and academic career at his alma mater, al-Azhar. He died relatively young in 1958 at the age of 64 at an international conference in Lahore, Pakistan. Draz’s original intention was to confine his thesis to morality as explained in the Qur’an. However, his thesis advisor asked him to incorporate into it certain doctrines of the well-known schools of Islamic jurisprudence as well as a number of western philosophies (p. xii). The editor decided to remove all the comparative material and extract only what Draz would have included in his study, ‘had he pursued his initial plan’ (p. xii). Her reasoning for removing the comparative material is that ‘the vast majority of believers who only require a guide to what the Quran states’ and that this effort is intended for ‘those of us who wish to understand morality in the Qur’an, pure and simple’ (p. xii).