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1
Introduction
In the preface I gave an outline of the concerns of this study and of the approach which it adopts. This raises several important questions, of two basic types. Firstly, there are objections which would apply in general to any Western critical study of the QurÉan. These are: (a) that it is inappropriate to study the QurÉan from outside the perspectives of the Muslim faith-community; (b) that Western study of Oriental texts is set within a history of cultural imperialism; and (c) that much contemporary critical theory suggests that we should study the history of reader-response to the QurÉan, rather than the QurÉan itself. The first part of this chapter responds to these three objections in order to establish the legitimacy of this study in general terms.
Secondly, it will be necessary to say in specific terms how the study will be carried out. Here the issues discussed will be: (a) in what sense the QurÉan is used as a source for this study; (b) why the Hadith are not also used; (c) the adoption of a thematic approach; (d) the chronological sequence of the QurÉanic passages; and (e) an issue of terminology.
1.1 General Objections to this Study
1.1.a The Study of the QurÉan by Non-Muslims
Critical studies of the QurÉan by non-Muslims are often received by Muslims with suspicion and indeed hostility. As Rippin comments: âThe perception of many Muslims towards a critical approach to the QurÉan is of an attack from the outsideâ (Rippin 1983, p.41), and in an essay entitled âThe QurÉan in the Inter-Faith Futureâ Cragg writes that some Muslims will âquestion whether there is any posture appropriate to the QurÉan other than complete and unquestioning submissionâ (Cragg 1980, p.165).
A good example of the attitude defined by Cragg is provided by Abdul-Raufâs essay âOutsidersâ Interpretations of Islam: a Muslimâs Point of Viewâ. Towards the end of this piece, AbdulRauf states the traditional Islamic view of the divine authority of the QurÉan, and of its transmission and compilation. He then makes the following comments on Western critical scholarship on the QurÉan:
Why have certain orientalists wasted so many precious years of their lives trying to re-order the text of the QurÉan chronologically under the assumption that a human hand played a role in the formation of the text? Such programs of research are not merely an offense to the consciences of millions of Muslims, but are also misleading and thus unworthy to be considered as scholarship. The pursuit of knowledge about the contexts and circumstances in which the various parts of the QurÉan were revealed, a genre called âthe occasions of revelationâ (asbÄb al-nuzĆ«l), represents a well-known discipline among early Muslim scholarsâŠ. These works present a âhistoryâ of revelation that stands in conformity with the life of the Prophet, not a destructio of the tradition.
(Abdul-Rauf 1985, p.187)
One is struck here by Abdul-Raufâs pitying surprise at the failure of orientalists to see the self-evident reasonableness of the traditional Islamic account of the QurÉan and its origins. Even to consider the possibility that there was any human initiative in the production of the QurÉan is merely to waste oneâs time. Muslim scholars have established the contexts to which different QurÉanic passages refer, so why should orientalists bother going over the same ground? While Abdul-Rauf may be quite right to question the claims of some orientalists, he seems remarkably unaware of how uncompelling his arguments are to the outsider, who by definition is neither committed to nor constrained by the traditional Islamic account of the origins of the QurÉan. Underlying Abdul-Raufâs approach seems to be the attitude that non-Muslims are welcome to study Islam, so long as they do not question traditional Islamic convictions.1
It can be argued that there is a certain logic to the attitudes of scholars such as Abdul-Rauf, given Islamâs foundation on the QurÉan, and the nature of the QurÉanâs self-attestation as a book âlÄ rayba fÄ«hiâ (âin which there is no doubtâ, (2:2)), a book which can readily be understood to discourage the interrogation of its credentials (Cragg 1980, p.165). Arnaldez suggests that it is indeed the underlying Islamic conception of revelation which generates opposition to critical studies of the QurÉan by those who do not acknowledge its divine origin a priori. He characterizes the Islamic response to such work as follows:
It is not acceptable to submit the very Word of God to historical criticism. God transcends time. He reveals what he wishes to reveal and in the manner he wishes to do soâŠ. All comparative approaches are excluded; the QurÉanic revelation is sheltered from all external influenceâŠ. The deep tendency of Muslim thinkers is to make of the QurÉan a world unto itself, entirely definable by itself and by itself alone, a sort of impregnable fortress before which all human ventures directed against it must fail.
(Arnaldez 1983, p.7)
It may, then, be true that there is something deeply rooted in the QurÉanâs view of its own authority that generates this sense of the inappropriateness of its being critically examined by the outsider.2 But to leave the matter there, fearful of offending Muslim sensibilities, would make sense only if there was a shared understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims that Islam is a matter of purely private significance, relevant only within the community of Muslim believers. However, there is clearly no such understanding, since Muslims generally believe that Islam is of universal significance and that the QurÉan is addressed to all people.
This observation can be related in more concrete terms to two contexts in which Muslims cannot avoid encountering the ways in which outsiders perceive their faith, and here in particular their Scripture. Firstly, in the context of inter-faith dialogue (to which some Muslims are committed), it is crucial for all participants to be ready to see how their own cherished beliefs and practices strike those outside their faith-community. This readiness to see oneself and oneâs faith through the eyes of the Otherâ, the outsider, is a necessary attitude to bring to any kind of dialogue. It should be noted that such an attitude does not imply a relativistic indifference to questions of ultimate truth, and can indeed co-exist with a firm confidence in the objective truth of oneâs own beliefs. What it does involve is a willingness, at least as a preliminary exercise, to take the otherness of the outsider seriously, to attempt as far as possible to think as he or she thinks, even with regard to oneâs own faith, and even when this is unsettling. Without such an attitude, dialogue is simply not possible. An implication of this for Muslims who are concerned with inter-faith understanding is that they will acknowledge unaggressively that non-Muslims formed in the traditions of Western scholarship will investigate the QurÉan in the light of these traditions, and may thus come to conclusions about the QurÉan which differ from those held by Muslims. The capacity of Muslim scholars to accept this is a measure of their readiness to engage with the Otherâ as genuinely other.
Secondly, if one leaves aside the language of inter-faith understanding (which may or may not appeal to particular Muslims), one can make more or less the same point with reference to the widespread Muslim claim that Islam is the final and definitive religion for the whole human race. This point can be illustrated by reference to Seyyed Hossein Nasrâs publication A Young Muslimâs Guide to the Modern World (Nasr 1993). Nasrâs basic message is that the West is in a crisis which has its roots in a turning away from revelation to mere human reason. Muslims in the West are to commend Islam to the sick society in which they live as the only ultimate solution to its predicament. In order to commend Islam intelligently, however, Muslims must understand the West and its intellectual and cultural traditions.
Implicit in Nasrâs vision is the hope that the West will one day acknowledge the divine authority of the QurÉan. So the question must be asked: how is it expected that this will happen, at least at the level of Western intellectual life? Will the West suddenly be converted to the Islamic view of the QurÉan without any serious intervening intellectual process? Given the emphasis placed by Islamic apologetics on rationality, this is presumably not what is hoped for. But if not, what kind of process will intervene? Unless they intend to by-pass all critical engagement with the QurÉan by simply asserting its divine authority as an unassailable given (an approach which should then be clearly stated), Muslims such as Nasr must expect such an engagement with the QurÉan by those Western non-Muslims for whose sick culture it is offered as the remedy. However, this topic is absent from Nasrâs account of what is involved in Islamâs missionary engagement with the West.
A strikingly different approach to Nasrâs, much more open to hearing what the âOtherâ might have to say about Islam and the QurÉan, can be found in Akhtarâs study A Faith for All Seasons: Islam and the Challenge of the Modern World. To a far greater degree than Nasr, Akhtar demonstrates a capacity to understand how the QurÉan might appear to the Western non-Muslim (Akhtar 1990, e.g. p.76). He acknowledges that âSooner or later Islam must, like its monotheistic rivals, face the tribunal of secular reason and patiently endure âtrial by modernityââ, and asks: âAre Islam and its scripture ⊠capable of patiently tolerating disciplined investigation?â (ibid., p.17: my italics) Later he argues that âAny constructive engagement between Islam and modernity must involve the rejector [i.e. the non-Muslim]: the rejector must reserve the right to examine critically the contents of the Koranâ (ibid., p.68; cf. pp.31â2). Although in this study Akhtar does not provide us with the kind of critical engagement with the QurÉan which he advocates, and although he admits that his views are not widely representative of Muslim thinking (ibid., p.viii), his words are nevertheless an important reminder that there is more than one kind of Muslim attitude to the Otherâ.
This non-Muslim study of the QurÉan stems, then, from an awareness of the unavoidable necessity to take seriously a book which is believed by hundreds of millions to be the Word of God. Muslims can expect courtesy in those who write about the QurÉan, and giving wilful offence is certainly no part of my intention. However, so long as Muslims challenge non-Muslims to take the message of their Scripture seriously, they will need at least to tolerate the conclusions which such outsiders come to in the course of their studies. âNon-Muslim reckoning with the QurÉan must have its due place and so also must an Islamic relation to such external bearings of their Scriptureâ (Cragg 1971, p.185).
A final comment. I have been speaking of this work as a study by a non-Muslim, but I should also say more specifically that I write as a Christian. Although this will rarely emerge explicitly in the course of the study, at many points it will doubtless be evident to the reader. As will be discussed below (pp.12â13), there is no neutral vantage-point from which texts can be read; we cannot block out all our prior assumptions. No such claim to a supposed objectivity is made for this study. The fact that I am a Christian has certainly shaped the way I have read the QurÉan, as has the more general fact that I am a Western non-Muslim. It is to be hoped, however, that none of this provides grounds for dismissing such a study a priori.3
1.1.b Orientalism
A related question which should be raised in this introduction, however briefly, is that associated with the work of Edward Said, especially in his study Orientalism (Said 1985). His thesis has been summarised as follows:
Following Michel Foucault, Said argues that Western orientalism has developed ways of âdiscoursingâ about the Orient (by which he means primarily the Muslim Orient, particularly the Arab) that establish and perpetuate a sense of European cultural superiority over that âotherâ, âalienâ culture.
(Martin 1985, p.14)
Saidâs claim is thus that the wider relationship between the Orient and a politically and economically dominant West has deeply moulded Western writing on Islam, leading to seriously distorted perceptions of it.
By reminding Western orientalists of the context within which they work, Said issues an important challenge which should be kept in mind. However, there are serious problems with his approach. For example, Said has been criticized for âoffering an interpretation that is more blatantly ethnocentric and politicized than most of the targets of his own criticismâ (ibid., p.15). A review of a later work by Said detects within it a âkind of unsustained, facile inverse colonialismâ (Gellner 1993, p.3). In other words, it is not just Western orientalists who need to heed Saidâs warnings. Said also leaves it unclear what the way ahead should be. He says himself that he has done little to help in this respect by asking âhow one can study other cultures and peoples from a libertarian, or a nonrepressive and nonmanipulative, perspectiveâŠ. These are all tasks left embarrassingly incomplete in this studyâ (Said 1985, p.24). As Martin says, Saidâs essay âhas elicited much righteous indignation on both sides, but has spurred little helpful communicationâ (Martin 1985, p.15).
Every study with an inter-cultural dimension to it must be alert to the issues raised by Said; one cannot ignore the wider cultural, economic and political situation in which one lives and works as if one is uninfluenced by it. Nevertheless, such awareness need not breed a paralyzing fear that all attempts to understand the âOtherâ are doomed from the start. Akbar Ahmed suggests that it is time âto move beyond Saidâs arguments. In an important sense he has led us into an intellectual cul-de-sacâ (Ahmed 1992, p.185). In the end, Western students of the Orient, like everybody else, can only do their best, aware of the limitations of their perceptions, and humble enough, one hopes, to have them corrected.
1.1.c Recent Critical Theory and the Study of the QurÉan
An interesting development in Western Islamic studies in recent decades has been a movement away from the study of the QurÉan itself to the study of TafsÄ«r, Muslim commentary on the QurÉan. No student of Islam should underestimate the importance of the TafsÄ«r-tradition, so the increasing attention paid to it is welcome. However, one reason for this shift of focus from QurÉan to TafsÄ«r is the view that it is misguided to attempt to study the QurÉan itself apart from the TafsÄ«r-tradition which has grown up in response to it. Sin...
