For the past sixty years I have focused my lifes work on the Quran and Hadith and, in that

capacity, I have had to deal with the writings of such Orientalists as Joseph Schacht, Ignaz Goldziher, John Wansbrough, Yehuda Nevo, Norman Calder and many others. These writers and their predecessors, Jewish and Christian in background if not also in fervent belief, have busied themselves with assaulting Islam for more than two and a half centuries and their legacy continues, to this day, disguised under an umbrella of impartial academia. The umbrella is wide and its resources vast: Brills recent Encyclopedia of the Quran, for example, took nearly a decade to complete, while the second edition of its earlier Encyclopedia of Islam required four times that amount. In examining these works, in poring over the featured articles, I feel a revulsion so heavy that I wholehearted believe it is in the best interest of every sincere Muslim scholar to refuse any invitation to participate in these ventures. I myself, in fact, was asked by Brill to contribute an article for their encyclopedia many years ago. The topic they offered me bodily fluids! And who, I wondered at the time, would have the honour of penning the key articles for that edition, those on revelation, prophethood, the nature of the Quran, early Islamic history? I had no doubt that such topics would never be given over into the hands of a practicing Muslim scholar. I rejected their invitation and, having later seen the printed sum of their efforts, I am very glad that no one today can point to me and say that I was a contributing author. But is that stance enough? Can we do no more than refuse participation? What if a venue were to open up, a venue for bright, eager, sincere Muslim scholars to unite and submit their own research to the world? To compose an encyclopedia that extinguishes lies with truth, libel with fact, deceit with honesty? The people undertaking the Integrated Encyclopedia of the Quran are poised in the middle of a great venture, not just for defense of our religion and our beliefs but an absolving of ourselves from the debt that is placed upon all scholars to combat misinformation and spread the truth about Islam. They work with limited resources, reliant on Allahs guidance and eager only for His mercy, and they deserve nothing less than our full support by pen, by money, by word and deed. Even leaving aside the question of non-Muslims, who may often find no academic alternative to answer their curiosity, so many communities and whole nations of Muslims, unpenned in Arabic, face a very real danger of succumbing unconsciously to Orientalist dogma. An associate of mine related to me, not long ago, how someone had confidentially enquired of him whether we could really be sure that all the Quran, every verse, had indeed come from Allah. Who has this someone? He was nothing less than the president of one of the most prestigious Islamic universities in the world. Such are the shocking times we live in. And in such times the goal of this integrated encyclopedia, and of those behind it, is so unique, so vital, that I thoroughly believe that failure to support it on every level would be catastrophic for our ummah.

Muhammad Mustafa Al-Azami 1st Muharram 1431 corresponding 18th December 2009