A Study of the Entries of Reward, Punishment, Heaven, and Hell in Two Quranic Encyclopedias by Orientalists

Abstract

Leiden Encyclopedia of the Quran and Oliver Lyman's Encyclopedia of the Quran are among the most important Quranic studies of Orientalists that have been written with the aim of presenting the teachings of the Holy Quran. This article examines the entries of reward, punishment, heaven and hell in these two encyclopedias and explains their methodological and content-related flaws separately. The overlap of some entries with each other, the existence of incomplete entries, citing non-original or invalid sources, incompatibility and inconsistency of the content of articles with each other are among the most important methodological drawbacks, and regarding the teachings of the Quran as an echo of previous religious teachings, considering Satan angelic, depicting heaven and hell with material terms, presenting a harsh and unbalanced image of punishment and reward in the Qur'an, and describing incorrectly the human being's relationship with God's rule and Satan in Hell are among their most important content-related flaws. This article, citing authoritative Islamic sources and referring to solid Quranic arguments, shows that the orientalists who have studied and written on the Quran have not been able to gain an accurate understanding of the religious teachings of the Qur'an, and therefore their encyclopedic works are unreliable.

Keywords

• encyclopedia of the quran
• orientalists
• heaven and hell
• reward and punishment