By The Sultan’s Jester

The near hysterical reaction to the recently published ‘Study Quran’ by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Co. was entirely predictable from inception: Nasr is an erudite scholar as well as a friend of the late Gai Eaton. Like Eaton, he is found to be a useful ‘face’ to present to the West by Muslims, but then just as quickly bashed with accusations of ‘perennialism’, (without anyone ever explaining what on Earth ‘perennialism’ is, honestly, I still don’t know what it is). He is also frequently accused of Shi’ism, rationalism, modernism and other crimes against humanity ending in ‘- ism’. He is rarely actually quoted or engaged with by his critics, which is why I was delighted to find this bold Hanafite tasking his critics to task for ‘thought policing.’

Nasr’s monumental effort in translating and commenting on the Quran using a diverse set of Quranic exegete’s works is a once in a generation, if not once…