Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology

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Waḥy and tanzīl

Oddbjørn Leirvik

To cite this article: Oddbjørn Leirvik (2015) Waḥy and tanzīl, Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology, 69:2, 101-125, DOI: 10.1080/0039338X.2015.1081617 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0039338X.2015.1081617

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Download by: [University of Oslo] Date: 15 January 2018, At: 01:55 Studia Theologica, 2015 Vol. 69, Issue 2, 101–125, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0039338X.2015.1081617 Waḥy and tanzīl Modern Islamic approaches to divine inspiration, progressive revelation, and human text

Oddbjørn Leirvik

This article analyses modern discourses about “revelation” in the writings of three Western Orientalists (Muir, Bell and Watt) and of a selection of contemporary Muslim reformists (Fazlur Rahman, Farid Esack, Ibrahim Moosa, Abdelkarim Soroush, Mohammed Arkoun and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd). After some terminological considerations, the named thinkers’ views of revelation are analysed in light of their understanding of the Qur’anic terms waḥy (“inspiration”) and tanzīl (“sending down”), which in modern discourses are conventionally associated with the phenomenon of revelation. The author finds that the cited reformists’ understanding of revelation and of the terms waḥy and tanzīl may be wedded to (1) an interest in the inspired person, (2) a progressive view of divine communication or (3) an insistence on the human nature of the sacred text. From a hermeneutical perspective, the author suggests that Paul Ricoeur’s notion of “the world of the text” may offer a more useful framework for discussing the nexus between divine and human communication than the elusive phenomenological category of revelation.

In my teaching about Islam and Christian-Muslim dialogue, I have often discussed the notion of revelation in Islam, in comparison with Christianity. Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 With reference to the Qur’anic terms waḥy and tanzīl (key notions when the issue of revelation in Islam is being discussed), I have occasionally suggested that waḥy – in the sense of personal inspiration – may imply a more open understanding of revelation than the term tanzīl which is con- ventionally associated with the idea of a divine message being “sent down” (verbal inspiration). Having become more doubtful of this possible tension, I have felt the need to take a closer look at these concepts and their relation to modern discourses about “revelation” in Islam. The specific aim of this article is to identify and analyse how some clas- sical Orientalists and a selection of contemporary Muslim reformists have

© 2015 Studia Theologica 102 Oddbjørn Leirvik

understood these terms, and how they have related them to the broader issue of revelation in Islam. In theology and religious studies, revelation has long been a technical term for a cluster of religious phenomena associated with the idea of divine communication or inspiration. There are, however, some problems in subsuming diverse concepts such as waḥy and tanzīl in the Qur’an and apokálypsis in the New Testament under a single, phenomenological heading called “revelation.” In tune with a general questioning of the phenomenology of religion’s tendency to universalize Christian concepts, the very usefulness of the term revelation has been seriously questioned.1 Thus there are good reasons to ask why revelation has become such a key notion in modern Islamic thought, and why waḥy and tanzīl have been singled out as the relevant Qur’anic terms in that respect. Toshihiko Izutsu in his book God and Man in The Koran associates both terms with the broader issue of communication – a perspective that invites a host of other relevant Qur’anic terms such as kalāmAllāh (God’s speech), risāla (message), al-kitāb (the book), hidāya (guidance) and not least āya (sign).2 As regards the phenomenological theme of revelation, however, in the modern context it has mostly been linked with the terms waḥy and tanzīl. In order to avoid the phenomenological fallacy, in the following I will avoid rendering waḥy and tanzīl as “revelation”–translating instead waḥy with “inspiration” and tanzīl with “sending down.” The aim of my study is not, however, to break new semantic ground, but rather to analyse modern understandings of these terms and their implications for the question of revelation. (The restricted format means that classical tafsīr- literature with regard to waḥy and tanzīl will not be considered.) After a brief consideration of (biblical and) Qur’anic terminology, the focus of my investigation will be (1) notions of revelation in the sense of waḥy, as understood by some Western Orientalists, and (2) selected Muslim reformists’ understanding of waḥy and tanzīl in light of broader Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 discussions about the inspired person, progressive revelation, and the human nature of sacred texts.

Revelation and modernity As for my understanding of the terms modern and modernity, I will lean on the Norwegian sociologist Dag Østerberg’sdefinition of “the modern code”–cues of which are the closely interrelated concepts of (1) the free individual, (2) reason and (3) progress. In modernity, the individual claims freedom externally as well as internally; reason challenges the mythical and religious mind; and human progress is conceived of as the Waḥy and tanzīl 103

mounting emancipation of individuals and their potentials.3 In all its aspects, the modern code challenges traditional religious structures and ideas – including the notion of revelation. Historically, Enlightenment- inspired notions of modernity (such as Østerberg’s) have been paralleled by Romantic notions which focus more on authenticity and the inner depths of the individual.4 The latter perspective has inspired modern per- ceptions of revelation as springing from the inspired person’s inner sources. Enlightenment critique of the idea of revelation (associated with superna- tural events) dates back to the eighteenth century, epitomized by Fichte’s Attempt at a critique of all revelation from 1792 and Kant’s Religion within the limits of reason alone from 1793.5 Closer to our time, L. S. Thornton’s Rev- elation in the Modern World (from 1950) inspired the famous Orientalist William Montgomery Watt’s book Islamic Revelation in the Modern World (from 1969). In Thornton’s modernist approach, taken over by Watt, revel- ation is seen as “a mode of divine activity by which the Creator communi- cates himself to man and, by so doing, evokes man’s response and cooperation.” Wedded to a dynamic understanding of communication, Thornton’s understanding of revelation is contrasted with the more tra- ditional idea of “a deposit of truth laid up in scripture.”6 Watt seeks an understanding of the process of revelation that is more acceptable to the modern mind. He also suggests a dialogical and “inter- religious” approach to the phenomenon of revelation, with the explicit intention of increased understanding between Christianity and Islam.7 The two religions have often been seen by Christian apologists as har- bouring two different conceptions of revelation – the one personal and dynamic, the other literal and static. But in the view of Watt, Christianity and Islam face many similar problems in translating the notion of revel- ation to the modern mind. In tune with the modern code, modernist (or modernizing) under- standings of revelation are often associated with a reformist agenda Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 focused primarily on values and ethics. My term reformist Muslims refers to thinkers with a declared commitment to certain “progressive” values such as rationalism, anti-authoritarianism, democracy, gender equality, and pluralism.8 Their discussion of the idea of revelation,as well as their search for a critical scriptural hermeneutics, seems to be inti- mately wedded to modernist values such as those mentioned above.

Some notes on terminology In European languages, the wordrevelation (cf. German Offenbarung)israrely attested before the fourteenth century.9 It harks back to Latin revelatio – a 104 Oddbjørn Leirvik

translation of the Greek word apokálypsis which occurs relatively frequently in the New Testament. Semantically, both words connote “uncovering.”

New Testament usages

This is not the place to detail New Testament uses of apokalúptein and apo- kálypsis and other notions which were later associated with the idea of revelation – such as phanéroun and epipháneia.10 Apokálypsis refers basically to disclosure, often associated with visions – be it “the Book of Revel- ation,”11 the eschatological revelation of Jesus Christ in glory,12 or diverse forms of Spirit-inspired communication.13 With regard to the Qur’anic notion waḥy, the singular occurrence of a similar word in the New Testament is theópneustos (“inspired by God”) in 2 Timothy 3:16. Although the word is only found in this particular verse, its close association with pneuma (spirit) made it a standard refer- ence in later discussions in Christian theology about personal or verbal understandings of revelation.

Qur’anic usages

In comparison with the New Testament, the Qur’an does not contain any word or concept parallel to that of apokálypsis, with the exception of the infrequent verb jallā/tajallā (cf. Q 7:143). Most frequently, the phenomenological idea of revelation is associated with the Qur’anic word waḥy, which is often referred to as the standard Islamic term for revelation.14 Waḥy and its cognates belong, however, to a semantic field quite different from that of apokálypsis and revelatio and connote instead inspiration – most often in a non-textual sense. As Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 for the verb awḥā (to reveal), only three out of seventy-one occurrences are linked to text-related words such as kitāb (book) or qur’ān.15 In its dominant non-textual sense, God is (for example) said to have “put into Moses’ mind by inspiration” to throw his rod on the ground.16 In discussions of the Islamic idea of revelation, the Qur’anic term tanzīl is also a standard reference. Tanzīl refers to a different semantic field from that of waḥy and connotes instead sending down. Contemporary dictionaries, however, tend to blur the diverse semantic origins of waḥy and tanzīl by associating both with inspiration and revelation.17 Also in modern trans- lations of the Qur’an, “revelation” functions as a standard rendering of both terms – probably reflecting the phenomenological approach. Waḥy and tanzīl 105

As noted by Izutsu, tanzīl (with its root meaning “sending down”)is never used in reference to communication between humans. It always connotes divine communication, either directly from God or through “the mighty power” or “the holy spirit” conventionally associated with the angel of revelation, Jibril. Waḥy (with its possible root meaning of “inspiration”) is used in a much broader sense, for instance with reference to bees being “inspired” or prompted to perform a certain pattern of action (Q 16:68), or demons who “inspire” or “communicate with” each other by adorned and decep- tive speech (Q 6:112, cf. 6: 121). But even in such cases, Izutsu notes, the word can be used “only when the communication in question, whether human or animal, occurs in an extraordinary situation, and it is always accompanied by a sense of secrecy and mysteriousness.”18 In the Qur’an, all prophets are said to be inspired by waḥy (e.g., Q 4:163; 7:117).19 What Muhammad received, the Qur’an asserts, “is no less than an inspiration (waḥy) conveyed to him” (53:4).20 A key passage is Q 42:51f, in which waḥy seems to be associated with three different modes of divine communication: by direct inspiration, “from behind a veil,” or through an angelic messenger:

It is not given to any human being that God should speak to him except by inspiration (waḥyan), or from behind a veil, or by sending a Messenger who with God’s permission is inspired and transmits (fa-yuḥiya)21 what God wills. He is exalted, wise. And thus have We inspired you with a Spirit (awḥayna ilayka rūḥan) from Our command. You did not know what the Book or the faith was, but We have made it [the Book?] a light by which We guide Our servants as We will …

Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 As for tanzīl, derivates of the root n-z-l may either describe the descent of an angelic spirit, or the “sending down” of the Arabic Qur’an: “This is a sending down (tanzīl) from the Lord of the worlds. The trustworthy spirit came down with it (nazala bi-hi) to your heart, so that you might become a warner in a clear Arabic tongue” (Q 26:192f). Correspondingly in Q 16:101f, “the holy spirit” is said to have brought down (nazzala) one verse in replacement of another. The sending down of the Qur’an may also be referred to without any mention of the intermediary role of an angelic spirit: “It is We who have sent down (nazzala) the Qur’an to you in stages” (tanzīlan, 76:23, cf. 17:106 and 25:32).22 The related noun nuzūl has also become a technical 106 Oddbjørn Leirvik

term associated with the classical discipline asbāb al-nuzūl, which sought to identify the contextual reasons for the sending down “in stages” of par- ticular verses of the Qur’an. In Stefan Wild’s analysis of the Qur’anic concepts of nuzūl and tanzīl,he notes that the general tendency to translate these terms with “revelation” is in fact highly problematic. He also notes that the terms are spatial meta- phors which only make sense in a space in which there is an above and a below (like in God’s sending down of rain in Q 50:9).23 This may, of course, be problematic to the modern mind. Wild does not, however, seem to be overly concerned with the necessity of demythologization, since it is the Qur’an “as it has been sent down,” i.e. the sacred text as it has been transmitted, which is in any case the object of study (cf. the view of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd below).24 As one can see, the conventional distinction between waḥy (as inspi- ration) and tanzīl (as a text which is “sent down”) is not always clear. In some Qur’anic verses, waḥy seems to be closely connected with a lin- guistic understanding of (inspired) text: “And so We have conveyed to you by inspiration (awḥaynā) an Arabic Qur’an” (Q 42:7; cf. 6:19). The con- nection between waḥy and tanzīl is particularly tight in Q 20:113–114, where one reads: “And thus We have sent down (anzalnā) an Arabic Qur’an … Do not hasten with the Qur’an before its inspiration of you25 is completed (yuqḍā ilayka waḥyuhu) …” The question is whether “completed” (yuqḍā) should necessarily be associated with a fixed, textual content. In several places such as Q 3:7, 4:153 and 6:92, what is sent down (anzala) is identified as “a book,” or “the book” (al-kitāb). Even more than the word qur’ān, which etymologi- cally is associated with recitation, the notion of a book sent from heaven might seem to connote a message fixed in writing. However, as Daniel Madigan has demonstrated, the notion of kitāb “is understood by the Qur’an itself more in terms of process that of fixed content.”26 In Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 general, Madigan argues that the key concepts in the Qur’anic descrip- tion of the kitāb – such as “mercy, recitation, sending down, and commu- nicating”–all refer to processes of engagement between God and humanity that cannot be reduced to the delivery of a pre-existent canon. With regard to waḥy, Madigan (following Izutsu) translates it broadly as “communication,” with no necessary implication of verbatim messages. Although the Encyclopaedia of Islam discusses a possible development from waḥy to tanzīl with regard to “internal” and “external” aspects of Prophetic inspiration respectively, it also notes that the fluid relationship between these two terms makes the picture quite complex –“for the Waḥy and tanzīl 107

semantic range of the latter word appears to duplicate that of the former to a fair extent.”27 For Madigan, the two terms seem to converge in an understanding of divine communication which leads him to speak of “processes of revelation” in the plural.28 In any case, the different contributions of these two terms to a modern discussion about inspiration and revelation cannot be relegated to ety- mology and semantics only. It must be analysed with a view to actual usages in modern discourses.

Orientalist views of revelation in Islam Modern discussions of the idea of revelation, as well as of the terms waḥy and tanzīl, can be found both among Orientalist scholars in the West and (somewhat later) in the works of reformist Muslim thinkers. In the writ- ings of Orientalist scholars, the Islamic idea of revelation is normally dealt with as part of a larger discussion of Muhammad’s personality and the development of his prophetic career. Many Orientalists could have been selected for analysis in this regard. In the following, I shall concentrate on just three prominent Orientalists who are also singled out by the conservative Muslim scholar Mohar Ali in his book The Qur’an and the Orientalists as the source of misguided perceptions of Muhammad’s prophetic inspiration, of the Islamic idea of revelation, and of the term waḥy. The scholars in question – William Muir, Richard Bell and William Montgomery Watt – are all interested in the active role that Muhammad’s personality may have played in the event of revelation, and (in Watt’s case) the progressive nature of Qur’anic revelation.

William Muir Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 An early example of modern Orientalist understandings of Muhammad’s inspiration is William Muir’s Life of Mahomet, which was first published in four volumes in 1861 and in a shortened single volume in 1894. The central notion in Muir is inspiration, not revelation. But he is not particu- larly interested in the term waḥy. Muir associates Muhammad’s gradual assumption of the role of a divine teacher with a “rush of inspiration” which in spontaneous outbursts of eloquence and heavenly speech “gave form and substance to the long conceived yearnings of his heart.”29 Noting that Muhammad was led to assume not only the role of “an inspired Prophet,” but also that of “a Leader commissioned to preach 108 Oddbjørn Leirvik

and summon his people to the faith of Islam,” Muir more than suggests that the political development in Muhammad’s prophetic career might have been induced by something else than divine inspiration.30 Contrast- ing Muhammad with Jesus, who resisted the worldly seductions of the Devil, Muir raises the question of whether his political inspiration ema- nated “from the Evil One and his emissaries.”31 It is interesting to note how Muir associates the alleged diabolic influ- ence on Muhammad with standard ethical and political objections to the religion of Islam among early Western Orientalists. In the final chapters of his 1894 Life, Muir concludes that the main legacy of Muhammad’s reli- gion is negative, associating Islam with “radical evils” such as polygamy and divorce, slavery, the veil, lack of freedom and tolerance – and barriers against Christian mission.32 Muir’s reasoning thus illustrates how the issue of Muhammad’s inspiration is seen in the critical light of some implicitly modern values which – in the view of Muir and his likes – were utterly foreign to the Prophet of Islam.

Richard Bell and W. Montgomery Watt

Seventy years later, and in a far less polemical vein, Richard Bell famously suggested that the word waḥy in the Qur’an must be taken as referring to non-verbal inspiration, associated with “Muhammad’s visions.” Presenting his oft-quoted understanding of the term, Bell claims that “usually, some such word as ‘suggest’, ‘prompt’, ‘put into the heart of’, is a better translation than ‘reveal’”.33 He goes on ask “whether we should not understand, not that the actual words of the Qur’an had been conveyed to him [Muhammad] verbally, but that the idea of composing a Qur’an had come to him in this way.” In an evol- Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 utionary perspective, Bell adds: “Possibly as his theory of revelation developed, he may have extended the signification of the word to cover the communication of long passages in verbal form …”34 Far more positive in his evaluation of Muhammad’s personality than Muir, Bell recognizes that there was probably a divine reality behind Muhammad’s suggestive visions. Bell nevertheless concludes that “[t]he sensitivity of conscience, which we nowadays demand of a religious per- sonality, did not belong to Muhammad, or to seventh century Arabia.”35 As we have seen, Bell discusses waḥy within the framework of Muham- mad’s prophetic visions. In W. Montgomery Watt’s edition of Richard Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’an (first published in 1953), Bell’s Waḥy and tanzīl 109

understanding of waḥy as “as a flash of inspiration” is reproduced by Watt in a chapter about “Muhammad’s prophetic experience.”36 What Bell and Watt seem to be after is an understanding of waḥy that allows for a more active role for Muhammad’s personality than what is con- ventionally associated with the idea of a literal “sending down” (tanzīl)of God’sword– which they regard as “a naïve view of the process of revel- ation.”37 In the understanding of Bell and Watt, “[t]he general content of the utterance was perhaps ‘revealed’ from without, but it was left to Muhammad to find the precise words in which to speak.”38 In line with the general tendency to associate waḥy with an active role for Muhammad in the process of revelation, Watt in his book Muhammad at Mecca suggests that Muhammad may “have done some rearranging of revealed material, and he may have tried to induce emending revelations where he felt that a passage required emendation …”39 Pragmatically, it seems clear that the main point in ascribing an active role to Muham- mad’s personality in the event of revelation is to open up a critical discus- sion of the sacred text and its human (thus also contextual) nature. When later in his career Watt developed his ideas of revelation in Islamic Revelation in the Modern World, he notes the historical and cultural suppositions of the Qur’anic revelation40 and discusses the possibility of whether “a revision of the Qur’an might have taken place.”41 As for the interpretation of the verbal message, Watt raises the following question: “Does the verbal form have many potentialities (meanings) in it, which are only gradually realized in the historical organism? Or is it that men read new, presumably corporate, insights into the verbal form?”42 Coming close to a progressive understanding of revelation, he suggests that “the community is in some sense a part of the revelation – an embo- diment of it, through which the revelation continues to act so that future generations are faced with the decision to respond or not to respond.”43 In Watt’s elaborations on the idea of revelation in Islam, he takes Bell’s Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 insights some steps further by adding a critical hermeneutical perspective which is also akin to the postmodern understanding of reader’s response. Quite differently from Muir’s polemical contrasting of Muhammad and Jesus, Watt also introduces an “interreligious” perspective on how traditional Islamic and Christian understandings of revelation may be translated into terms acceptable to the modern mind.44

Modern Muslim perspectives on revelation Before exemplifying how reformist Muslim thinkers have approached the issues of personal inspiration, progressive revelation and the human 110 Oddbjørn Leirvik

nature of the text, it should be noted that Western Orientalists’ question- ing of literalist notions of revelation in Islam have been energetically refuted by conservative Muslim scholars. For example in his book The Qur’ân and the Orientalists: An Examination of their main Theories and Assumptions (2004), the Saudi scholar Muhammad Mohar Ali sets out to refute the idea that Muhammad – as a human agent – should have played any active part in the event of revelation. For Mohar Ali, such the- ories must be seen as attempts to assail the Qur’an, comparable to the Meccan unbelievers’ allegations that Muhammad had produced the Qur’an himself. Singling out Muir as the main culprit, Mohar Ali also claims that “Muir’s views have been taken over and adopted by his suc- cessor orientalists in some form or other.”45 As for Watt, Mohar Ali acknowledges his claim to impartiality in theo- logical matters and his castigation of previous European writers’ lack of sympathetic understandings of Islam and Muhammad. Mohar Ali never- theless claims that Watt “in fact and essence reiterates mainly his prede- cessors’ views and assumptions, and that too with no discernible degree of greater sympathy towards Islam and the Prophet.”46 From his perspec- tive, Watt’s call for a critical, interreligious dialogue about the phenom- enon of revelation is no better than Muir’s suggestions about Muhammad’s diabolic influence. Whereas conservative Islamic thinkers such as Mohar Ali are bent on refuting what they perceive as Orientalist distortions of the orthodox Islamic understanding of revelation as “sending down” (tanzīl), some modern reformist thinkers in Islam have rather, in search of a less litera- list understanding of revelation, elaborated on the notion of waḥy.Aswe shall see, however, modern understandings of revelation may just as well be wedded to a novel understanding of tanzīl as to the notion of inspi- ration implied by waḥy. In what follows, three reformist approaches to the idea of revelation and Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 the concepts of waḥy and tanzīl will be identified – focusing on (1) the inspired person, (2) progressive revelation and (3) the human nature of the text respectively. Although some of them (like the Orientalists) emphasize the active role of Muhammad’s personality in the event of rev- elation, the reformists in question seem even more interested in finding ways to escape the revealed text’s imprisonment in ahistorical categories. The choice of Muslim authors – mainly Fazlur Rahman, Farid Esack, Ebrahim Moosa, Abdelkarim Soroush, Mohammed Arkoun and Nasr Abu Zayd – is guided by these reformists’ stated aim to rethink the issue of revelation (as related to the notions of waḥy and tanzīl)ina modern context. Waḥy and tanzīl 111

Reformist focus on the inspired person Citing Watt, the South African reformist scholar Farid Esack (b. 1959) notes two different ways of understanding the relationship between Muhammad and the Qur’an: “[1] that the Qur’an is the product of some part of Muhammad’s personality other than his conscious mind and [2] that it is the work of the divine personality but produced through the personality of Muhammad in such a way that certain fea- tures of the Qur’an are to be ascribed primarily to the humanity of Muhammad.”47 In addition to the emphasis on human agency implied by Watt, many modern attempts to reconsider Islamic notions of revelation seem also to reflect a Romantic vision of the extraordinary, inspired person. In the Pakistani-American scholar Fazlur Rahman’s (d. 1988) book Major Themes of the Qur’an, prophets in general are depicted as “extraordinary men” with “sensitive and impregnable personalities” who “shook men’s consciences.” Rahman clearly understands waḥy as inspiration, but tones down the contrast with tanzīl by suggesting that waḥy is under- stood by the Qur’an as a type of inspiration that originally “descends” from “above” (note his modernist quotation marks).48 But he also sees the Spirit as a power or a faculty which develops from the inside, in the Prophet’s heart. Fazlur Rahman’s image of the prophets as extraordinary persons who speak from and to conscience is also found in reformist Egyptian thinkers who were writing in the 1950s and 60s.49 For instance, Khalid Muham- mad Khalid (d. 1996), in his book about “The human qualities of Muham- mad” (InsāniyyātMuḥammad, from 1960), makes the remarkable claim that

If Muhammad had not been a messenger of God he would surely

Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 have been a human being on the same level as a messenger of God! And if he had not received the command from his Lord: “Oh messen- ger, proclaim what is sent down [tanzīl] to you,”50 he would surely have received it from his very nature: “Oh human being, proclaim what is at work in your conscience!”51

Linking the notion of conscience to that of waḥy, ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad (d. 1964) in his book about “The Genius of Muhammad” (‘Abqariyyat Muḥammad, from 1942) suggests that Muhammad’s con- science received calm and reassurance not only by the inspiration (waḥy) from his Lord, but also by the inspiration from his heart and 112 Oddbjørn Leirvik

from his companions.52 And his reformist vision of Muhammad is, as the book title suggests, informed by a modern perception of unique person- alities (cf. his other books about geniuses and “great spirits”–in a rank from Christ via Muhammad ‘Abduh to Gandhi).53

Reformist conceptions of progressive revelation Differently from earlier generations of reformist thinkers, who (like the Orientalists) took great interest in the dynamic personality of Muham- mad, Farid Esack’s interest lies less in the Prophet’s personality than in his dynamic message and what Esack sees as the progressive nature of revelation (cf. Orientalist scholarship on the chronology of the Qur’an54 and the keen interest in the “reasons for sending down”55 in classical Islam). For Esack, who is deeply inspired by liberation theology, the word “progressive” has a double meaning, referring both to gradual rev- elation (tadrīj) in the Qur’an and a progressive agenda for liberal/radical change in the contemporary context.56

Farid Esack and Ebrahim Moosa

In his book Qur’ān, Liberation and Pluralism (1997), Esack unfolds his mod- ernist concept of a progressive revelation. He notes that the Qur’an, “despite its inner coherence, was never formulated as a connected whole, but was revealed in response to the demands of concrete situ- ations” and that the Qur’an itself is “explicit about the reasons for the pro- gressive nature of its revelation.”57 He illustrates “the principle of progressive revelation” by the Qur’an’s gradual prohibition of the con- sumption of alcohol.58 Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 Leaning on Fazlur Rahman, Esack claims that the word of God “remains alive because its universality is recognized in the middle of an ongoing struggle to rediscover meaning in it.” Linking his view of pro- gressive revelation to the pluralist and liberationist idea of “progressive Islam,” he suggests that the challenge for every generation of believers – in their existence as “marginalized and oppressed communities or indi- viduals”–is to discover “their own moment of revelation.”59 The idea of a progressive revelation can also be found in Ebrahim Moosa’s (born in South-Africa, based in the US) chapter about “The debts and burdens of critical Islam” in Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism. In his view, ”critical Islam” will have to abandon Waḥy and tanzīl 113

apologetic responses to modern critique of religion, since “the false utopias of ideal and perfect Muslim societies in the past, widely touted by ideologues of authoritarianism, will [anyway] not survive the scrutiny of history.”60 He also notes that a number of practices seemingly sanc- tioned by the normative sources have in fact been abandoned by modern Muslim sensibilities: “For a whole set of reasons, we no longer consider marriage to what our modern culture deems minors, corporeal punishment, and the death penalty to be acceptable practices.”61 What shines through in Moosa’s reasoning, is an ethical hermeneutics focused on reader’s response which also sheds new light on the notion of revelation. Involving the reader in the very process of revelation, Moosa formulates a theological hermeneutics characterized by interactivity. Criticizing those who exclusively seek authority in some founding text for failing “to engage the text in an interactive manner,” he claims that

It is precisely such interactivity that transforms the human being who is ultimately the subject of revelation, and who has to embody the qualities that combat patriarchy and endorse justice and equality … The truth is that we “make” the norms in conversation with the rev- elatory text.62

Abdelkarim Soroush

The idea of progressive revelation can also be found in the Iranian scholar Abdelkarim Soroush (b. 1945), particularly in his book The Expansion of Prophetic Experience (from 2009), in which he takes a phenomenological approach to the issues of revelation and prophethood. He does not directly discuss the concepts of waḥy and tanzīl, but speaks instead about the “Dialogical Nature of Prophetic Experience.” Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 Discussing the alleged contradiction between the dogma that “the Qur’an was sent down (anzala) to the Prophet’s heart” and the idea that “the Qur’an is the product of the human experience of an exceptional man in unveiling the truth (kashf),” he contends that it is no more out of place trying to understand “sending down” in a non-mythological sense than explaining God’s “sending down of rain” in scientific categories.63 What Soroush is after, in a distinctively modernist vein, is a rational understanding of the “experimental” and “evolutionary” nature of pro- phethood, with the underlying assumption that “the Prophet grew stea- dily more learned, more certain, more resolute, more experienced; in a 114 Oddbjørn Leirvik

word, more of a prophet.” At the same time, “the message of the revel- ation also changed depending on the context.”64 Soroush asks whether there ever existed “a complete, pre-drafted version of the Qur’an” to be revealed to the Prophet later on – or whether it “gradually grew as the Prophet’s personality developed and circumstances and events unfolded.”65 He even suggests that the Qur’an might have come in “a second volume” if the Prophet had lived longer and encountered more events.66 Reflecting also an interest in Muhammad’s dynamic personality, Soroush describes the relationship between Muhammad and the Qur’an as one of “interaction or dialogue.”67 Further explicating his understanding of “God’s word,” Soroush suggests that “the Qur’an is a constant, multi-sided dialogue with God and the earthly, natural and his- torical world in which Muhammad was living.”68 In this sense, says Soroush, “the Qur’an is the product of the prophetic discovery of Muhammad Ibn Abdullah.”69 Marking also his concern for a dynamic development of Islam, Soroush suggests that in so far as the religion that we know as Islam “did not descend upon the Prophet instantaneously, but had a gradual genesis,” the same religion “will also undergo gradual movement and develop- ment in its subsequent existences.”70 He thus concludes: “The era of pro- phetic mission is over, but the opportunity remains for the expansion of the prophetic experience, both spiritually as well as socially.”71

Reformist focus on the human text In his discussion of the notion of progressive revelation, Esack visits the French-Algerian thinker Mohammed Arkoun (d. 2010) and his decon- structive approach to the concept of revelation.72 Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018

Mohammed Arkoun

Arkoun’s view of revelation was first laid out in a public lecture in 1987 entitled The Concept of Revelation: From the People of the Book to the Societies of the Book. Here, he identifies the dominant orthodox view of Qur’anic revelation with a certain interpretation of tanzīl which blocks any recog- nition of human agency in the event of revelation.73 Against the convention among Muslim modernists, Arkoun speaks about tanzīl – not waḥy – as “the Islamic concept of revelation,” Waḥy and tanzīl 115

understood as a fundamental metaphor for ”the vertical gaze … toward God, transcendence.” As for waḥy, he desists from translating it when quoting key passages such as Q 42:51f, but notes that exegetes speak either of “an inspiration putting itself forward, solicited by God in the spirit of a human being to permit him to understand the substance of the Message” or of “an enunciation articulated in human language and communicated to the prophets …”74 Like Abu Zayd (see below), he associates the term qur’ān with “arecita- tion conforming to a discourse that is heard, not read.” Particularly for the initial phase of Muhammad’s prophetic career, he therefore prefers to speak of Qur’anic “discourse” rather than “text.”75 In the orthodox view, however, revelation is “represented as a substantial, unchangeable, divine reality, but, at the same time, it is manipulated according to the immediate, concrete needs of the social actors.”76 Qur’anic revelation, in contrast, “pro- poses ways, opens horizons, and stresses the need for the search for the absolute. At this stage, there is no systematization, no closed coherence, no rift between rational and mythical knowledge …”77 (cf. my reference above to Madigan’s process-oriented understanding of al-kitāb). Arkoun’s concept of text and book is ambivalent, and largely critical. In his view, orthodoxy has transformed the Muslim community to a “Society of the Book,” in a process by which the vibrant intertextuality of the Qur’an is lost in the establishment of an “Official Closed Corpus.” 78 By inclusion of Hadith as the interpretive guide, the Qur’anic text is treated “as a pretext, not as a text, according to our modern linguistic and historical definitions.”79 Critical of the Abrahamic religions’ enclosure of sacred texts in closed official corpuses (“more commonly called Holy Scripture or the Word of God”), he seeks to retrieve the original dynamics of Qur’anic discourse. What Arkoun is after, is “the understanding of revelation as a linguistic and cultural phenomenon prior to any effort at constructing a theology Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 upon it.”80 Although Arkoun associates the centrality of the text with a closed corpus, he realizes that “the substitution of the texts for oral discourse” once and for all has “put the peoples of the Book in a hermeneutic situ- ation.”81 Critically aware of the oppressive potential in “societies of the book,” Arkoun suggests a more dynamic understanding of revelation in history: “one could say that it is a revelation each time that a new voca- bulary comes to radically change man’s view of his condition, his being- in-the-world, his participation in the production of meaning.”82 In this line of reasoning, Arkoun’s critical engagement with the text as discourse touches also the idea of progressive revelation – which can only 116 Oddbjørn Leirvik

be realized if revelation is released from its current captivity in a closed corpus.

Nasr Abu Zayd

Compared with Arkoun’s ambiguous relation to the fixed text as a basis for both authoritarian closure and hermeneutic opening, the Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd’s (d. 2010) view of the Qur’an as literature offers a more positive access to the phenomenon of scripture, as laid out in his book “The concept of text” (Mafhūm al-nasṣ,̣ from 1990). But his literary analysis of and hermeneutic approach to the Qur’an must be read in light of his criti- cal analysis of established interpretations, as unfolded in his Foucault- inspired “Critique of the religious discourse” (Naqd al-khitāb al-dīnī, from 1992). In dialogue with Arkoun, Abu Zayd admits that his own under- standing of text, influenced by literary theory, had to be supplemented by a more critical, discourse analytical approach to the Qur’an.83 A key term in Abu Zayd’s work is “humanistic hermeneutics,” as expressed in his Rethinking the Qur’ân: Towards a Humanistic Interpretation (from 2004). In my understanding, Abu Zayd’s hermeneutics is “huma- nistic” in a double sense. First, like all modern reformists, he aims at a humanistic reinterpretation of the Qur’an with regard to some critical ethical and political issues arising from the collision between tradition and modernity. In addition to the overarching theme of how to overcome authoritarianism in religion and politics, he also mentions critical issues such as the abolition of slavery, equal citizenship for Christians and Muslims, and gender-equal rules of inheritance.84 Secondly, he seeks to achieve a critical and constructive understanding of the human character of the Qur’an which allows for a radical “rethink- ”

Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 ing of the holy text and its established discourse. According to Abu Zayd, the dynamic discourse of the Qur’an must be distinguished from what he terms “the religious discourse” which reduces “the living phenomenon” of the Qur’an “to be only a text.”85 As for the text and its living discourse, he argues that the Qur’an has a human dimension in at least three senses: (1) Like any other text, it has its particular “discourse” related to the basic structures of the Arabic language through which it exercised its influence. (2) It came as a response to the need of the community in certain historical situations, and (3) it was edited and codified after the event of revelation. Above all, it is the Qur’an’s dependency on “the domain of language” that Waḥy and tanzīl 117

expresses its human nature. “It is then not likely,” he concludes, “to assume that the Qur’an presents literally and exclusively the word of God.”86 Like Arkoun, Abu Zayd notes that in the everyday life of the early Islamic community, the Qur’an was never treated as a written text. It was rather recited, and listened to. This brings him to another aspect of the Qur’an’s divine-and-human nature, namely the fact that in prayer, the believer is both reciter and listener. Thus in prayer, a daily “semi- waḥy situation” arises, in which the believer is reciter and listener at the same time.87 The Qur’an, then, particularly through its recitation, is an area of com- munication in which God and Man meet. Coming close to a concept of incarnation, Abu Zayd suggests that “Our human identity is divine as much as the Divine identity is humanized by our perception.”88 In a sum, Abu Zayd sees the Qur’an as “the outcome of dialoguing, debating, augmenting, accepting and rejecting. This horizontal, commu- nicative and humanistic dimension is in the ‘structure’ of the Qur’an, not outside it.”89 He makes a similar point when in Naqd al-khitāb al-dīnī,he quotes the famous saying of Imam ‘Ali: “The Qur’an is a recorded text between two book covers: It only talks when people speak by it.”90 How does Abu Zayd, then, relate his understanding of the Qur’an to the concept of waḥy? Leaning on Izutsu, Abu Zayd notes that waḥy refers ety- mologically to a kind of mysterious, non-verbal communication. In his own understanding, however, waḥy is the channel through which the Qur’an – like all Holy Scriptures – has been revealed.91 Waḥy is thus a time-bound channel of communication between God and Man, in which only the human voice is explicit while bringing to light God’s message.92 The propa- gated separation of the divine and the human overlooks the very nature of divine revelation –“waḥy in its depiction as tanzīl”93– as precisely a com- munication between the divine and the human.94 Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 Abu Zayd also dedicates a substantial part of Mafhūm al-nasṣ̣to the concept of waḥy and its relation to tanzīl.95 Here, he associates tanzīl with God’s sending down of his message through an angel and waḥy with the transmission of the message from the angel to the messenger. He then raises the question of what exactly was sent down: Was it the meaning, or even the wording? In other words, was the communication between the angel and Muhammad a waḥy in the sense of inspiration (ilhām), or in words (bi-l-qawl)?96 For Abu Zayd, this question must be seen in the light of another Qur’anic term, namely ta’wīl (interpretation). As noted by Navid Kermani, Abu Zayd is primarily preoccupied with issues of 118 Oddbjørn Leirvik

interpretation, not with the circumstances of inspiration or how to under- stand the phenomenon of a text being sent down.97 Abu Zayd thus claims that when the Qur’an was recited in the moment of inspiration (laḥzaṭ al- waḥy), it was also transformed from a text being sent down (tanzīl)toan object of interpretation (ta’wīl).98 Does Abu Zayd’s concentration on the text and its interpretation mean that he ends up in promoting an understanding of tanzīl and waḥy which can be characterized as “verbal inspiration”?99 Not so, according to Kermani: The critical question is not whether the Qur’an is “literally inspired,” but whether it is “interpreted in a literal way.”100 Differently from Western Orientalists and Muslim reformers who have emphasized the inspirational aspect, searching in a way for revelation behind the text, Abu Zayd insists that what is revealed is actually the text – only that the text of the Qur’an, by being sent down, has inextricably become part of the Arabic language, of Arab culture and hence of history. As Navid Kermani observes, Abu Zayd’s understanding does not easily fit in with the classical discussion between Ash‘arites and Mu‘tazi- lites about the uncreated or created Qur’an. Although Abu Zayd – like the Mu‘tazilites – denies that the material book can be seen as divine, he affirms the text’s divine “inverbation.”101 Abu Zayd repeatedly emphasizes that the divine origin of the message that is sent down, is inaccessible for research.102 What we have before us is a text which, by virtue of being “sent down,” is essentially human: “The absolute reveals (yakshafu) itself to humanity, it ‘lowers itself’ (yata- nazzalu) to them by speaking through the signifying system of their culture and language.”103 At the level of divine origin, the text remains a mystery. What is left for human endeavour is the interpretation of a human text with divine origin – and the critique of a “religious discourse” which kidnaps the text by insisting on a single, established meaning. Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018

From “revelation” to “the world of the text”? Through his focus on the literary text and its multiple interpretations, Nasr Hamid Abu Zays comes close to Paul Ricoeur’s understanding of revelation as laid out in his essay “Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation” (first published in 1977). A key notion in Ricoeur’s essay is “the world of the text,” pointing towards a kind of hermeneutics which relocates the meaning of the text from the author’s presumed intention and the immanent structures of the text, to “a sort of world intended beyond the text as its reference.”104 In this understanding, (closed) text Waḥy and tanzīl 119

becomes (open-ended) discourse. As one can see, Daniel Madigan’s understanding of tanzīl, waḥy and kitāb as referring to a process of divine-human engagement rather than to fixed content,105 tunes in well with Ricoeur’s and Abu Zayd’s notion of text. Ricoeur associates revelation broadly with “history-making events” and their human responses, as witnessed in the sacred texts. Seeking to ident- ify “the originary expressions of revelation” in the Jewish-Christian Bible, he finds five different discourses of revelation in the Holy Scriptures: prophetic (centred on oracles), narrative (focused on salvific events), prescriptive (expressing the ethical dimension of revelation), wisdom, and hymnic discourses. What Ricoeur is after is an understanding of revelation that is not nar- rowed down to a notion of scripture derived solely from the prophetic genre, and linked with the idea of messages being “dictated in a literal fashion.”106 He is emphatic that revelation as an idea cannot be detached from “the world of the text.” But the text must be perceived as more mul- tifaceted than oracles and prescriptions, and freed from established hier- archies of interpretation (formulated by Ricoeur as “critique of an opaque and authoritarian concept of revelation”).107 Like Abu Zayd, Ricoeur insists on the historical-hermeneutical under- standing of the text as the basic theme of any meaningful discussion of the idea of revelation. In both thinkers, there is no contradiction between a strong focus on the given text and a radical, hermeneutical openness – as opposed to psychologized understandings of revelation which anchor revelatory dynamism in the genius of the prophets and their inspired followers. Ricoeur is also sceptical towards a phenomenological approach to rev- elation which begins with ideas about human existence (“our experience of being-in-the-world”) instead of “the manifestation of the world by the text and by scripture.”108 In short, both Ricoeur and Abu Zayd affirm Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 “the primacy of what is said over the inspiration of the narrator by means of a[n] … analogy that is no longer that of inspiration, but that of manifestation.”109 From the literary critical perspectives of reception history and reader’s response, the manifested text includes the world of the reader and his/her struggle with contemporary challenges and established interpretations.

Conclusion Modern discussions about revelation deal as much with burning ethical issues as with theology. As we have seen, contemporary ethical and 120 Oddbjørn Leirvik

political challenges are strongly present in both the Orientalists’ and the Muslim reformists’ discussions of revelation in Islam. In a polemical vein, Muir discusses Islam’s allegedly repressive nature as regards polygamy, divorce, slavery, the veil, freedom of thought, and toleration. Typical challenges addressed by the (later) Muslim reformists are gender inequal- ity, traditional punishments, interreligious relations, and religious auth- ority structures. Although partly overlapping with Orientalist themes, the reformists’ concerns are of course framed differently, as alternative interpretations of Scripture. Whether focusing on personal or verbal inspiration, the reformists’ primary concern is an open-ended reinterpretation of the sacred text. This seems to be their guiding motive when searching for concepts of revelation that allow for such openness. In other words: rather than rationalist objections against the idea of divine texts being sent down from heaven, the driving hermeneutical issues seem to be ethical and political. The distinctively modern notion of progressive revelation seems to epit- omize a central concern of Muslim reformists of a liberal inclination. Abu Zayd’s search for the basic direction of the Qur’anic text, for instance with regard to women’s right to inheritance,110 presupposes exactly a gradual or progressive perspective of “revelation.” In conclusion, Ricoeur’s notion of the world of the text seems better to capture the real issues at stake than the phenomenological term revelation, which in comparison offers little of critical insight. With regard to my initial contrasting of waḥy as “personal inspiration” (per- ceived as open-ended) over against tanzīl as “verbal inspiration” (per- ceived as closed), the presentation above has confirmed that this distinction was indeed central to some Western Orientalists. In Muslim reformists’ search for interpretative openness and a “progress- ive” understanding of revelation, however, this conceptual distinction Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 seems not to be so relevant. At least in Abu Zayd’s understanding, the verbally “revealed” text is just as human and flexible as the inspired person.

Oddbjørn Leirvik University of Oslo – Faculty of Theology Box 1023 Blindern 0315 Oslo Norway [email protected] Waḥy and tanzīl 121

Notes 1. RGG 6:461. 2. Izutsu, God and Man, 133–197. 3. Østerberg, Det moderne, 11f. 4. Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 26. 5. Marion, The Visible,2. 6. As quoted in Watt, Islamic Revelation,6. 7. Watt, Islamic Revelation, vii, 1–5. 8. Cf. Safi, Progressive Muslims. 9. OED 1984, revelation, n. 10. Cf. RGG 2003, 6: 470–481. 11. Revelation 1:1 (the word apokálypsis does not otherwise occur in the Book of Revelation). 12. E.g. Luke 17:30, 2 Thessalonians 1:7 and 2 Peter 4:13. 13. Such as knowledge, prophecy, words of instruction and speaking in tongues (1 Cor- inthians 14:6, 26). 14. RGG 2003, 6: 462, Izutsu, God and Man, 156. 15. Madigan, “Revelation and Inspiration.” 16. Q 7:117, in the translation of Yūsuf ‘Alī. 17. Wehr, Arabic-English Dictionary, 1124, 1239. 18. Izutsu, God and Man, 153. 19. In a gender critical observation, Farid Esack notes that in English translations of the Qur’an waḥy is invariably translated as “inspiration” in relation to women (Q 28:7), animals, or angels, whereas in relation to men it is always rendered as “revelation” (Esack, The Qur’an, 42f). That is a question of biased translation, however, without anchoring in Qur’anic usage. 20. inna huwa illā waḥyun yuḥā.Yūsuf ‘Alī seems to mix the semantic field of waḥy with that of tanzīl by translating the verse as “It is no less than Inspiration sent down to him.” 21. Yūsuf ‘Alī translates yuhya with “reveal”, whereas my rendering is inspired (!) by Einar Berg’s Norwegian translation: “som med Hans gode vilje inspirert meddeler det Han vil.” 22. In these verses, tanzīlan is either translated as “revelations” (cf. Einar Berg’s Norwegian translation of 76:23 and 17:106) or as a sending down “in stages” (cf. the translation of Yūsuf ‘Alī). 23. Wild, “We have Sent Down,” 142f.

Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 24. Ibid., 153. 25. In tune with established conventions, English translations tend to prefer “its revelation to you” instead of “its inspiration of you.” 26. Madigan, The Qur’ân’s Self-Image, 144. 27. EI 1999, waḥy. 28. Madigan, The Qur’ân’s Self-Image, 139–144. 29. Muir, The Life of Mahomet, 43. 30. Ibid., 53. 31. Muir, The Life of Mahomet with Introductory Chapters, vol. II: 90, 94. 32. Muir, The Life of Mahomet, 505, cf. Muir, The Life of Mahomet with Introductory Chapters, vol. IV: 321. 33. Bell, “Mohammed’s Visions,” 147f. 34. Ibid. 122 Oddbjørn Leirvik

35. Ibid., 153. 36. Watt and Bell, Introduction to the Qur’an, 20f. 37. Ibid., 24, cf. 121, 141. 38. Ibid., 22. 39. Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 52f, cf. 58. 40. Watt, Islamic Revelation, 25ff. 41. Ibid., 17f. 42. Ibid., 68. 43. Ibid., 108. 44. Ibid., 1–5. 45. Ali, The Qur’ân, 99. 46. Ibid., 135. 47. Esack, The Qur’an, 43. 48. Rahman, Major Themes, 95, 99. 49. Leirvik, Human Conscience. 50. Quotation from Q 5:67 (balligh mā unzila ilayka). 51. Khalid, Insaniyyāt Muhammad,9. 52. al-ʽAqqad, ʽAbqariyyat Muḥammad, 22. 53. Leirvik, Human Conscience, 93ff. 54. In particular, see the work of the German scholar Theodor Nöldeke (especially, his Geschichte des Qorâns from 1859). 55. asbāb al-nuzūl 56. Esack, “In Search of.” 57. Esack, Qur’ān, Liberation and Pluralism, 54. 58. Ibid., 59. 59. Ibid., 60. 60. Moosa, “The Debts and Burdens,” 117. 61. Ibid., 122. 62. Ibid., 125. 63. Soroush, The Expansion, 324f. 64. Ibid., 10f. 65. Ibid., 14. 66. Ibid., 17. 67. Ibid., 14. 68. Ibid., 328. 69. Ibid., 326. Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 01:55 15 January 2018 70. Ibid., 13. 71. Ibid., 22. 72. Esack, Qur’ān, Liberation and Pluralism,68–73. 73. Arkoun, The Concept of Revelation,5. 74. Arkoun, Rethinking Islam, 31. 75. Ibid., 30. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid., 21. 78. Arkoun, The Concept of Revelation, 15. 79. Ibid., 17. 80. Arkoun, Rethinking Islam, 31. 81. Ibid., 33. 82. Ibid., 34. Waḥy and tanzīl 123

83. Abu Zayd, Rethinking the Qur’ân, 9f. 84. Abu Zayd, Islam und Politik, 96f, 170. 85. Abu Zayd, Rethinking the Qur’ân, 62f. 86. Abu Zayd, “The Qur’an,” 4. 87. Abu Zayd, “The Qur’an,” 9, cf. Gottes Menschenwort, 143. 88. Abu Zayd, “The Qur’an,” 15, cf. Gottes Menschenwort, 157. 89. Abu Zayd, Rethinking the Qur’ân, 63. 90. Abu Zayd, Naqd al-khitāb al-dīnī, 92/Abu Zaid, Islam und Politik, 85. The saying is found in sermon 124 of Nahj ul-Balāgha (a collection of sermons, letters and sayings by Imam ‘Ali). As noted by Kermani, Abu Zayd quotes a slightly different version of the saying, recorded by al-Tabari (Kermani, Offenbarung als Kommunikation, 9). 91. Abu Zayd, Gottes Menschenwort, 128. 92. Ibid., 137. 93. taḅīʽat al-waḥy al-ilāhī dhātihi bi-wasfịhi “tanzīlan”. 94. Abu Zayd, Naqd al-khitāb al-dīnī, 67/Abu Zaid, Islam und Politik, 66. 95. Abu Zayd, Islam und Politik, 31ff. 96. Ibid., 42. 97. Kermani, Offenbarung als Kommunikation, 27. 98. Abu Zayd, Naqd al-khitāb al-dīnī, 100/Abu Zaid, Islam und Politik, 87. 99. Kermani, Offenbarung als Kommunikation, 81, cf. van Ess, “Verbal inspiration?” 100. Kermani, Offenbarung als Kommunikation, 83. 101. Ibid., 63. 102. Ibid., 88. 103. Abu Zayd, Islam und Politik, 56. 104. Ricoeur, “Toward a Hermeneutic,” 14. 105. Madigan, The Qur’ân’s Self-Image, 144. 106. Ibid., 10f. 107. Ibid., 1. 108. Ibid., 13. 109. Ibid., 15. 110. Abu Zaid, Islam und Politik, 97, 185.

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