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Michael Sells' Approaching the Qur'an is worth the price just for the compact disk inside the back cover, especially for teachers who don't have easy access to a masjid that students can visit. But to focus on the CD is to miss the real jewel here. Sells' translations have a fluid beauty that is all the more visible when his renditions are set side by side with any of a number of other translations of the Meccan suras. The book contains a fine introduction to the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the culture of medieval Mecca. (A good, short life of Muhammad appropriate for secondary school students is not always easy to find.) The biographical material is followed by a wonderful introduction to the holy Book reavealed by the angel Gabriel as the continuation, and perfection, of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The material on the Quran covers its revelation, its composition, and its meaning in the life of a Muslim. The second part of Sells' book entails presentation of a number of the Meccan suras. The Meccan suras were the earliest parts of the Quran to be revealed; they are both shorter and more "poetic" than their later Medinan counterparts. Sells presents a number of these suras and accompanies them by a short and quite readable explanation and commentary. It's all simple enough for the beginner to find useful, but sufficiently insightful, also, to be appreciated by many Muslim readers and specialists. The compact disk contains 70 minutes of the suras, in presentations by experts, a number of whom are world-renowned. Since the Quran is only completely meaningful in the original Arabic, and since it tends to be sung, or chanted, it is impossible for the student with no Muslim contacts to appreciate the beauty of Quranic experience without the sounds that are part and parcel to it. It's easy for the teacher to select a short sura for presentation in class, and then play the sura for students to hear, either before or after discussion of the text. What was a lesson in history or spirituality thus, also, becomes a lesson in aesthetics. review © 1999 by RSiSS
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