Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur'an (Toshihiko Izutsu)

ISBN: 9839154559
Author: Toshihiko Izutsu
Publisher: Islamic Book Trust (2004)
Pages: 346 Binding: Paperback

Description from the publisher:

In this work, Toshihiko Izutsu analyzes the guiding spirit of the Islamic moral code, the basic ethical relationship of man to God. Izutsu asserts that, according to the Qur'anic conception, God is of an ethical nature and acts upon man in an ethical way. The resulting implications for man are enormous, requiring devotion not merely to God but to living one's life ethically. Izutsu shows that for the Qur'an our ethical response to God's actions is religion itself; it is at the same time both ethics and religion. Izutsu explores these themes by employing ethnolinguistics, a theory of the interrelations between linguistic cultural patterns, to analyse the semantic structure of major concepts in the Quar'an. Islam, which arose in the seventh century, represents one of the most sweeping religious reforms ever to appear in the East. The Qur'an shows in vividly concrete terms how time-honoured tribal norms came into bloody conflict with new ideals of life, and finally yielded to the rising power.

This transitional epoch is of particular importance in the whole of Islamic thought, a time during which the key terms of a traditionally fixed system of values were transformed in their connotative structure, modified in their combinations, and finally integrated into an entirely different system.