ABSTRACT
In centuries past, only a bare handful, if indeed any at all, of those non-Muslims who have studied the Qur'an would themselves have found their inclusion with Muslims as "those who study and teach the Qur'an's either desirable or even conceivable. Traditional Qur'an study among Muslims has thus been premised upon recognition of the Qur'an as the verbatim revelation of God's Will for human affairs. Buddhist, Marxist, or other non-Muslim Islamic scholars who prefer to see their work on the Qur'an or other subjects as all but completely divorced from whatever Muslim scholars have done or are now doing with the Qur'an and related studies. The particular emphases of non-Muslim scholars in their treatment of the Qur'an might be classified according to a variety of schemes, each using different rubrics. Perhaps the oldest of these three non-Muslim scholarly concerns is the problem of understanding and translating as accurately as possible the text of the Qur'an itself.
