Things Take Time

Among the many differences between academic and trade publishing, the market lifespan of a work is one of the most intriguing. A new novel, or even a piece of trendy non-fiction, that does not sell well within a few months following its release date can be quickly relegated to the remainder bin, as new releases compete for shelf space, promotional funds and the attention span of a media saturated public. In contrast, academic books slowly find their way into libraries and into the personal collections of faculty members and graduate students working in similar areas of interest. The slow pace is due in part to the fact that the key to dissemination is getting a book reviewed in relevant academic journals, which are relatively few in number and which rely on the willingness of subject experts to volunteer their time to critique new materials released in their fields.
In the most recent issue of the Journal of Religious History (2011, Vol. 35, No. 2), Edward Tyler said, "Robert Campbell’s Reading the Qur’an in English is a most useful tool and to be recommended to the interested newcomer. There are careful comparisons made with the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and in general, his book is eminently clear, systematic, and successful. It is a book to be read, and could be used in study groups and tutorials on the Qur’an. This reviewer is very glad to have the book in his possession."

This book was released in March 2009. So, more than two years later, my book is getting the sort of endorsement that a trade publication would have needed within weeks of its release, or preferably prior to its release. According to OCLC, copies of my book can be found in about 250 academic libraries around the globe, the vast majority of which are in the USA, but Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, the UAE and the Netherlands are also represented. With this new review, I am hopeful that scholarly uptake of my book will increase, but perhaps the greater potential lies in my ability to use the review as a means to further promote my book to a wider audience through social media.

Too Late Now

One of the great frustrations with trying to re-construct your family history is the lack of information about various individuals that arises out the assumption that there is no need to write things down because someone will remember. Well, what happens when no one remembers, or when there is no one around to remember?
This is a picture of my father Bill Campbell taken around 1930. Beside him is his sister Jess, and in front of them are Jack and Mary, their two younger half-siblings (same mother, different father).

I do not know when Jess was born and I have no idea whether she is still alive. I know that both Jack and Mary have died, but I do not know exactly when, and I can only guess at when they were born, based on the age they appear to be in this photograph.
Beyond staying in touch with his mother, my father had very little to do with his family and so my exposure to his siblings was minimal. Jack married, but had no children. Mary remained a spinster. Jess married and had one son, but I only remember seeing him on a few occasions when I was still in public school. Of course, it never occurred to me when I was in my teens to ask the sort of questions that would prove helpful in later genealogical research. Too late now.

My Paternal Grandparents

My paternal grandfather, Robert Campbell, was born in Toberhead, a farming community near the town of Magherafelt, Londonderry County, Northern Ireland, on January 29, 1864. He arrived in Canada on May 22, 1881 with his parents and siblings, aboard the SS Moravian. He married Sarah McTavish on December 23, 1891, and they had two sons, Robert (born February 19, 1893) and Peter (born April 16, 1898). Sarah had been born and raised near Arthur, Ontario, northwest of Toronto, and both sons were born in Claremont, Ontario, northeast of Toronto, where my grandfather was working as a carpenter and farmhand. Sarah died sometime before 1909, by which time Robert and his sons were living in the Parkdale area of Toronto.
My paternal grandmother, Mary Jane 'Minnie' Bailie, was born in Ballynahinch, County Down, Northern Ireland, in May 1885. She arrived in Canada on April 25, 1909, aboard the SS Lake Erie, and was employed as my grandfather's housekeeper. They would marry on July 25, 1912. Robert and Minnie had two children, my father William (born August 17, 1913) and Jess (born c. 1915). Robert would be killed in a railway accident at the Parkdale Station on January 31, 1917.
Minnie would go on to marry Thomas Hamilton Cannon on February 28, 1922, and they would have two children, Mary and Jack. 

Can I Read Arabic?

As I discussed in an earlier post, when people learn that I have written books about the Qur'an, their first question is usually to ask me if I am Muslim. Once that issue has been dealt with, they are curious about whether I can read Arabic. I assume that the motivation for asking is to determine by what authority I presume to write about Islam's sacred book - one that is deemed to be a sacred book only in the original Arabic. As with the previous question, however, the answer does not come down to a simple yes or no.
I first point out that I do not speak or read modern Arabic, emphasizing that knowing how to ask directions to the subway, or being able to order eggs and coffee for breakfast, are not really matters that get discussed in the Qur'an. I then go on to point out that while those who are proficient in modern Arabic will be able to read the literal text of the Qur'an, that is not the same as saying that they will then understand what they are reading. The Arabic of the Qur'an represents a stage of linguistic and cultural development in the Arabian peninsula 1400 years ago, and much has changed linguistically, culturally, politically and religiously since then. Even for those modern readers whose first language is Arabic, reading the Qur'an in Arabic means reading the Qur'an in translation.
I then indicate that while I have some ability to read the Arabic of the Qur'an, I do not claim any special expertise as a linguist, nor do I think I will ever reach a point where I consider myself to have mastered the subject. Rather, I see myself as a perpetual student of Classical Arabic, of the Qur'an, and of Islam more generally. I have to read translations of the Qur'an in order to think and write about it, and so does everyone else.

Discovering Distant Relatives

My maternal grandmother Marie Des Neiges Proulx was born on October 8, 1897, in Perce, Quebec. Her great grandfather Joseph Proulx had moved to the Gaspe region from the Quebec City area in about 1802. Joseph was a descendant of Jean Prou, who had come to Canada in about 1666, settling in Montmagny on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. I have not been able to determine at what point and for what reason the spelling of the family name picked up the "lx" ending, but I have discovered that Jean's surname had been changed from Proust to Prou, upon his arrival in Quebec.
Jean Proust had been born in the village of Distre, a few kilometers from Saumur, and about 40 kilometers from Angers, in the district of Maine-et-Loire (formerly Anjou), France, on December 2, 1646. Local records exist for his father and grandfather, both of whom had been named Jean. Not being able to trace the family line back further than the late 1500s, I started to wonder if I could establish a link between myself and the acclaimed French author Marcel Proust, who had been born near Paris, and who had died there in 1922.
Marcel Proust is perhaps best known for his seemingly endless, and actually never completed, epic novel, most commonly referred to in English as Remembrance of Things Past, the title given to it by its first translator Moncrieff, but perhaps more appropriately called, as it is in some more recent translations, In Search of Lost Time. The novel, which runs for more than 4000 pages over several volumes, contains over 2000 characters, and so it only seems appropriate that my relationship to the author is one of Proustian proportions, in that I was able to determine, thanks to the efforts of many distant relatives for whom genealogy research has become an addiction, that I am his fifty-eighth cousin, nineteen times removed.

Are You A Muslim?

A co-worker passed me in the hall this week and said, "I see you have a new Qur'an book out. Are you a Muslim?" I hesitated, smiled and said, "You wouldn't believe how many times I get asked that question." Not wishing to pursue the matter any further at that point, I quickly moved on.
Looking back over the past several years, the question usually arises when I am teaching courses on Islam or the Qur'an, when I am giving public lectures on these topics, and when I am being interviewed about my books. Both Muslims and non-Muslims have asked. My answer is always the same: "I don't answer that question, because I do not want to introduce any sort of bias into the reception of me or my ideas." I do however wonder at the motivation for asking.
While I'm sure that some people are merely curious, as if to say, "Robert Campbell doesn't sound like a Muslim name," I also suspect that others are looking to determine by what authority I speak about the Qur'an, thereby establishing how much credence they should place in what I have to say and to some extent allowing them to slot me into one of the convenient categories of apologist, detractor, heretic or zealot. After all, if I can be pigeonholed, the individual avoids the work of having to listen/read and think about the views that I am expressing.
One young Muslim woman told me that she and her husband had read through my first book (Reading the Qur'an in English) twice, and had spent a good amount of time discussing its content, all the while looking for clues that would help them determine my religious identity. They concluded that, while I certainly had an impressive understanding of the Qur'an, because I left some questions unanswered and appeared to advocate the questioning of some generally accepted precepts, I was not a Muslim. From my perspective, I was ecstatic. I had managed to get two people to carefully read through what I had to say, discuss it at length and draw some conclusions about their understanding of what it meant to be a Muslim. What more could I want?

A Day Late

Well, here I am, only six weeks into this blog, and already I am a day late in posting. I could make all kinds of excuses, such as the fact that I have a new computer and I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to transfer files and get everything set up the way I want it - which is all true - but it is certainly no excuse. I could also say that I wasn't in the mood for writing, but I am almost never in the mood for writing, and that doesn't prevent me from doing it on a regular basis. I could say that I used up all of my energy yesterday shoveling snow - again quite true and very frustrating - but still not really an excuse. I did some reading and I even watched some TV, but I had plenty of time to write a blog entry. I just got lazy and decided it could wait.