Email me at contact@hawramani.com
I’m available to review and edit books that require someone with very good command of both the Arabic and English languages. I have written, edited and published English-language books on learning Modern Standard Arabic and Classical/Quranic Arabic.
I’m also available to review and edit books that require deep knowledge of Islam by someone involved in academic Islamic studies; books that require knowledge of the Quran, hadith, Islamic law (fiqh), history, spirituality, and theology. A quick look at my articles and essays will show my level of knowledge.
I offer both proofreading and developmental editing. I’m also available to review books related to Islam for the accuracy and precision of the information therein.
See below for details:
Arabic-English Reviewing and Editing
I have very good command of the Arabic language, having grown up in Iraq with Arabic schooling and constant exposure to Arabic media and books, along with my later Islamic studies conducted in both Arabic and English in the United States. I am able to review and verify anything from vocabulary to intricate grammatical issues.
To check my command of the English language visitors can check out the essays on my Essays page. I have been an avid reader of English books since 2007, and a very dedicated reader too (for example reading 30 books by C. S. Lewis). I am very familiar with academic writing, as I have been reading graduate-level academic monographs and collections of academic papers and other published academic works for the past 8 years. My focus has been on all areas of Islamic studies (as practiced at Western university departments of religion or Islamic studies) and Western philosophical theology and metaphysics (which is what many professors of philosophy at Western universities are busy with).
I have also done a great deal of reading of the best of English literature, especially Victorian novels and poetry.
Islamic Book Reviewing and Editing
I am able to review and edit books that deal with Islam, whether English-language ones or those that incorporate both English and Arabic, and whether aimed at Muslims or Western, non-Muslim audiences, and whether books for general audiences or academic books.
Apart from being able to review and edit general-interest books that deal with Islam, below are some of the more specific topics and the details of my ability to handle them.
The Quran
Having read the Quran over 120 times in the original Arabic (I keep a record), I am extremely familiar with its recitation and interpretation. I can correct any reciter’s recitation without having to look at a book of Quran myself, and I can bring an extremely sharp eye of critique to any translation or interpretation of the Quran (much of the strength, power and emotion of the Quranic text is often lost when translated to English, even by the best translators. This is often due to their lack of exceptional command of the English language and literature, which is required to arrange the best English approximations of the Arabic words and phrases, and to add poetic power to the verses).
Hadith
When it comes to hadith, this has been an area of intense study by me, which enabled me to create a completely new information-theoretic hadith verification method that turns the best knowledge contained in the classical sources into useful numeric probabilities. Thanks to my academic knowledge and experience in Islamic studies, I am able to verify the isnāds (chains of transmitters) of hadiths (a very difficult task) and rank hadiths from more trustworthy to less trustworthy ones, even comparing authentic hadiths with one another and ranking them by strength. I have read the major hadith collections and I am familiar with their meaning and legal and theological implications
Fiqh / Islamic Law and Practice
I am very familiar with current and historical issues in Islamic law (fiqh, which includes everything from the basics of how to perform the prayer to laws of marriage and contracts), and I have written 1800 question-and-answer articles on this website, most of them answers to legal questions/questions of practice, always citing authoritative classical and/or modern sources and scholars.
Kalām / Theology
I cannot say that I am an expert on kalām (traditional Islamic theology), as it hasn’t been of much interest to me, since in many ways it is far behind the times compared to Western academic theology (which I’m very familiar with) and mainly of historical interest, and because its intellectual framework (adopted from the Greeks and Christians) is often inadequate to truly systematize and encompass Quranic theology. However, thanks to my knowledge of the Quran and hadith, along with my knowledge of Western academic theology, I’m able to critique any opinion given on Islamic theological issues, for example, I am able to immediately tell if a particular theological claim is supported by the Quran or not without having to look anything up, or whether a particular classical opinion has been refuted by others or by modern proofs.
If you’re interested in my services, email me at contact@hawramani.com