The Qur’an A User’s Guide ALSO BY FARID ESACK On Being a Muslim: Finding a Religious Path in the World Today Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism OTHER ISLAM TITLES FROM ONEWORLD Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, edited by Richard C. Martin A Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, Gordon D. Newby The Crisis of Muslim History, Mahmoud M. Ayoub Defenders of Reason in Islam, Richard C. Martin, Mark R. Woodward and Dwi S. Atmaja Islam: A Short History, William Montgomery Watt Islam: A Short Introduction: Signs, Symbols and Values, Abdulkader Tayob Islam and the West, Norman Daniel Islam: Faith and History, Mahmoud M. Ayoub The Legacy of Arab–Islam in Africa, John Alembillah Azumah The Mantle of the Prophet, Roy Mottahedeh Muhammad: A Short Biography, Martin Forward Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism, edited by Omid Safi Revival and Reform in Islam, Fazlur Rahman, edited and with an introduction by Ebrahim Moosa Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women, Khaled Abou El Fadl What Muslims Believe, John Bowker The Qur’an A User’s Guide Farid Esack The Qur’an: A User’s Guide Oneworld Publications (Sales and Editorial) 185 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7AR England www.oneworld-publications.com # Farid Esack 2005 ReprintedReprinted2007 2007 All rights reserved Copyright under Berne Convention A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN-13: 978 – 1–85168–354–3 Cover design by Design Deluxe Typeset by LaserScript Limited, Mitcham, UK Printed and bound in India by Thomson Press Ltd. NL08 For Brother Norman Wray who introduced me to Rahman and whose life is a reflection of the rahmah of Al-Rahman. Contents Acknowledgments x Introduction 1 The Uncritical Lover 2 The Scholarly Lover 3 The Critical Lover 5 The Friend of the Lover 6 The Voyeur 8 The Polemicist 9 Where does this work fit in? 10 Clarifying Terms 11 Using the Qur’an 12 1 The Qur’an in the Lives of Muslims 13 The Qur’an is alive 17 The Qur’an as the recited word of God 18 The Qur’an as contested scripture 21 Islam – a Qur’an belt 29 2 The Word Enters the World 30 The stages (history?) of Qur’anic revelation 31 The social world of the revelation of the Qur’an 33 Muhammad, the recipient of the Qur’an 36 The early Qur’anic revelations 39 viii The Qur’an: A user’s guide The nature and modes of revelation 42 Muhammad’s mission as a response to the Qur’an 45 Mecca – laying the foundations of the faith community 45 The Qur’an and the challenges of a new society in Medina 47 The last revelations 52 The beginning of diverse claims about the word of God 54 3 The Qur’an as Written Word 56 Divisions of the Qur’an 56 The disjointed letters 62 Parts and sections (ajza and ahzab)63 The arrangement of the Qur’an 64 The language of the Qur’an 67 The literary style of the Qur’an 69 Categorical (muhkamat) and allegorical (mutashabihat)75 verses 4 Gathering the Qur’an 78 Gathering the Qur’an during the Prophet’s lifetime 79 The Qur’an becomes a canon 85 The Shi‘i perspective 89 Non-Muslim critical Qur’anic scholarship 91 The gradual development of the Arabic script 92 The existence of several variant codices 93 Variant readings or modes 93 Worlds apart 97 5 The Prophet and the Begotten-not-Created Qur’an 100 Recited revelation: development of doctrine regarding 101 the Qur’an The doctrine of inimitability (‘ijaz) 102 The doctrine of the Qur’an’s uncreatedness and eternalness 105 (qadim) The Mu‘tazilites and the emergence of Kalam 106 The implications of the mihnah for Qur’anic scholarship 109 The sunnah: unrehearsed revelation 111 The Prophet Muhammad and the Qur’an 115 Contents ix 6 Understanding and Interpreting the Qur’an 121 Progressive revelation (tadrij) 121 Meccan and Medinan revelations 122 Occasions of revelation (asbab al-nuzul) 124 Abrogation (naskh) 126 Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir) 128 Sources of tafsir 129 Traditional classification of tafsir 131 A non-confessional typology 137 The Qur’an and hermeneutics 142 Farewell to innocence 145 7 Belief in the Qur’an 146 Belief in God 147 Prophethood 150 The Hereafter 157 8 Righteous Conduct in the Qur’an 166 Personal conduct 166 Social and economic conduct 173 Institutionalized religious practices 184 Postscript 191 Bibliography 193 Index 201 Acknowledgments o Professors Tamara Sonn, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Ebrahim Moosa, Tand Richard Martin for their careful reading of the manuscript and ongoing support in this project as well as my other academic endeavors. Their feedback helped to improve this work considerably. As for any of its persistent inadequacies I alone bear the burden. To Muhammad Desai for the meticulous checking of my Qur’anic citations. To Stefan Fix, Abdul Kader Riyadi and David Schweichler for assistance in locating sources and the bibliographical details of various scholars. To the Sondernforschungsbereich at the University of Hamburg, Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia for the wonderful administrative and research support provided while engaged in much of the writing of this book. To Adli Jacobs, Sa’diyya Fakier, and Patrice Brodeur for their critique of my introductory chapter. To my publishers Novin and Juliet Doostdar and their fellow hassler- badgerers, Helen Coward, Victoria Warner and Rebecca Clare for their boundless patience and confidence. Introduction uslims have often expressed their experience of the Qur’an in an Marray of metaphors. It has, for example, been compared to Damascus brocade: “The patterned beauty of its true design bears an underside which the unwary may mistake, seeing what is there, but not its real fullness. Or the Book is like a veiled bride whose hidden face is only known in the intimacy of truth’s consummation. It is like the pearl for which the diver must plunge to break the shell which both ensures and conceals treasure” (Cragg, 1988, 14). The late Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988) also used the analogy of a country, using the categories of “citizens”, “foreigners” and “invaders”, to describe some of the approaches of scholars towards the Qur’an (1984, 81). I want to latch on to the theme of beauty to provide an overview of approaches to the Qur’an and Qur’anic scholarship. Without in any way wanting to pre-empt the discussion on the worldly nature of the Qur’an, in reflecting on the diverse scholarly approaches to the Qur’an, I draw an analogy with the personality and body of a beloved and the ways in which she is approached. The body that comes to mind immediately is a female one and this itself is remarkable for what it reveals as much as what it conceals. The female body is usually presented and viewed as passive, and more often objectified as “something” to be approached even when it is alive, and “ornamentalized” as a substitute for enabling it to exercise real power in a patriarchal world. Yet this body or person also does something to the one that approaches it. The fact that it is approached essentially by men also reflects the world of Qur’anic scholarship, one wherein males are, by and large, the only significant players. When the female body is 2 The Qur’an: A user’s guide approached by other women then it is a matter to be passed over in silence. Like the world of religion in general, in which women play such a key part and yet, when it comes to authority and public representation, they are on the periphery, Qur’anic scholarship is really the domain of men; the contribution of women, when it does occur, is usually ignored. I understand and acknowledge that my analogy fits into many patriarchal stereotypes. Questions such as: “Why does the Qur’an not lend itself to being made analogous with a male body?” “What if a gender sensitive scholar insists on doing this, and how would my analogy then pan out?” “What about multiple partners in a post-modernist age where one finds Buddhist Catholics or Christian Pagans?” etc., are interesting ones which shall be left unexplored. Like all analogies, mine can also be taken too far and can be misleading in more than one respect. THE UNCRITICAL LOVER The first level of interaction1 with the Qur’an can be compared to that between an uncritical lover and his beloved. The presence and beauty of the beloved can transport the lover to another plane of being that enables him to experience sublime ecstasy, to forget his woes, or to respond to them. It can console his aching heart and can represent stability and certainty in a rather stormy world: she is everything. The lover is often astounded at a question that others may ask: “What do you see in her?” “What do you mean? I see everything in her; she is the answer to all my needs. Is she not “a clarification of all things” (16.89), “a cure for all [the aches] that may be in the hearts (10.57)? To be with her is to be in the presence of the Divine.” For most lovers it is perfectly adequate to enjoy the relationship without asking any questions about it. When coming from the outside, questions about the nature of the beloved’s body, whether she really comes from a distinguished lineage – begotten beyond the world of flesh and blood and born in the “Mother of Cities” (42.7) – as common wisdom has it, or whether her jewelery is genuine, will in all likelihood be viewed as churlishness or jealousy.