An Anthropology of the Qur'an

Ahmed Achrati

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032060187
• eBook ISBN: 9781000469097
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

This book presents an anthropological study of the Qur'an, offering an unprecedented challenge to some of the epistemological and metaphysical assumptions of the taw??dic discourses. Combining primary textual materials and anthropological analysis, this book examines transcendence as a core principle of the Qur'an, uniquely signified in the divine name al-Qudd?s (the Holy). It shows how the taw??dic representations of Allah constitute an inversion of this attribute; examines how this inversion has been conceived, authorized, and maintained; and demonstrates how it has affected Islamic thinking and practices, especially as relates to authority. This book also explores how a return to the Qur'anic primacy of God's otherness as al-Qudd ? s can influence Islamic thinking and practices moving forward. Therefore, it will be highly useful to scholars of Islamic Studies, philosophical theology, Qur'anic studies, political science, ethics, anthropology, and religious studies.

Part I

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003200321-1

When Khadija, the wife of Muḥammad, announced to her Christian cousin Waraqa Ibn Nawfal what Muhammad had told her about what he saw and heard, Waraqa exclaimed: Quddūs, Quddūs! Al-nāmūs (divine order) has been revealed to him!

(Ibn Hishām, al-Sirah al-Nabawiya, vol. 1, p. 254)

There are numerous anthropologies of Islam, but the anthropology of the Qur’ān does not exist as one coherent and systematically organized system of thought. My aim in writing this book is to offer such an anthropology.

An anthropology of the Qur’ān, as defined in this project, is concerned primarily with how the construction of Qur’ānic text frames the representations of Allah and the engagement with the divine; it also investigates this construction and engagement as understood in the various authorizing discourses of Islam. Although an anthropology of the Qur’ān is a novelty, this approach is consistent with the conceptual and methodological requirements of the anthropology of religion. Anthropologically, as Talal Asad and others have argued, the distinctive feature of religion in a generic sense is a special awareness of the transcendent, the promptings of which are realized in acts of symbolic communication and translated into living experiences.¹

Though they vary in practices, all Muslims – Sunni, Shi’ite, Ibadite, Sufi, Ahmadiyya, mainstream traditionalist, reformist – believe in Allah, a divine being whose transcendence is affirmed in the Qur’an, the collected revelations presented to and by the Prophet Muhammad, whom all Muslims affirm as Allah's messenger. As articulated in shahāda – the confession of faith (“There is no deity but God”) – and described in the Qur’an, transcendence is conceived as the unity of Allah, or tawḥīd.

The Qur’an also uses various attributes known as asmā’ Allāh al-husnā (“The Most Beautiful Names of God”) to refer to God, the significance of which continues to be debated among theologians and anthropologists. Talal Asad, for example, thinks that “the meaning of the ninety-nine names is not whether they are correct representations of [Allah]; it is whether, and if so how, they engage the right bodily and spiritual attitude.”²

Indeed, Muslims have always used these names as guidance for devotional and ethical practices. However, by themselves, devotional practices do not constitute the “correct representation” of Allah, or tawḥīd. Rather, they derive their meaningfulness from representations of Allah that are established by the tawḥīdic discourses. In the end, it is how the authorizing discourses construct their representations of Allah that shapes a Muslim's habitus and determines how he or she engages Allah.

My study approaches the divine names as a basis for understanding transcendence in the Qur’an and in the tawḥīdic representations of Allah. The central thesis of this book is that the tawḥīdic discourses differ significantly in their representations of God from the Qur’an's own conception of Allah.

Transcendence provides a metaphysical grounding for understanding the finite reality of the universe or being. And in the Qur’an, the nature of God is presented as the primary cause, or first principle, and as a creator, he is different from the created world.

In philosophy as in theology, the ontological question of difference remains unresolved.³ In the face of the metaphysical limits of absolute, or categorical, difference, the Abrahamic religions look for alterity as the grounding of being. As a metaphysical grounding, otherness means that difference is not necessarily an expression or effect of some hierarchy or opposition.⁴ In theological thinking, this otherness is realized in the creator being so far distant as to be totally incomparable.

Epistemologically, this alterity presupposes the limit of human reason – which is philosophically palatable considering that the issue here is one of faith.

Conceptually, this alterity, or absolute otherness, requires that there must be a distinction between God and the contingent, regardless of whether the frame of reference or analysis is transcendence or immanence. This distinction of God in the Qur’an is realized in the metaphysical distance, or écart, which marks the apartness of God, and signifies “the non-coincidence of God with any concept of God,” or, as in the Qur’an, “There is nothing like unto him” (42:11).

As presented in the Qur’an, this écart defines an asymptotic relationship between God and the created world. Though unknowable, Allah is “nearer to [man] than his jugular vein” (50:16). But this nearness is an asymmetrical relationship in which the distance from Allah to man tends towards the infinitely small, while the écart from man to Allah tends towards the infinitely great. Or, as the Sufi el-Emir Abdelkader has suggested, the more human knowledge of the divine grows, the more ignorant of God is the individual knower.

Of all the divine names, this book will establish, this asymptotic écart is uniquely inscribed in al-Quddūs (“the Pure,” “the Holy”), making it the most eminent signifier of transcendence in the Qur’an. The otherness of al-Quddūs, it will be shown, also uniquely preserves the ontological relationship between God and the contingent without altering the boundaries of transcendence and immanence.

The book will also show that, in the constructions of their representations of Allah, the tawḥīdic discourses give primacy to attributes of power, majesty, knowledge, and so on, which presupposes a mode of existence that God shares with creaturely beings. This shift in ontological focus in the tawḥīdic representations of Allah significantly attenuates, and even erases, the distance which characterizes the concept of transcendence as articulated in the Qur’an.

This tawḥīdic erasure of distance also involves an inversion of al-Quddūs. While the Holy in the Qur’an is the signifier of Allah's otherness, the Qur’anic sacred, the book will establish, is primarily an orientation towards the Holy, expressing how divine otherness is apprehended and how it is played out in life. The tawḥīdic discourses, however, identify the metaphysical otherness of God with the domain of the sacred, the result of which is the assimilation of the two Qur’anically distinct categories. This inversion of al-Quddūs also entails a collapse of the categorical distinction made in the Qur’an between the human and the divine and a systematic sacralization of authority in an un-Qur’anic way.

Although the tawḥīdic ambivalence towards transcendence may seem to derive from the ambiguity of the Qur’an itself – which is undeniable, considering its metaphysical nature – the fact is that it is precisely the tawḥīdic discourses which insist on this ambiguity and cultivate it in order to sustain their definitions of Allah's otherness. Indeed, as they assumed their immanent character, the tawḥīdic representations of Allah became constitutive of the “proper understanding” of the Qur’an. In other words, the tawḥīdic representation of the sacred as the Holy became more than ontology; it also became an epistemology.

I begin this study with a discussion of transcendence as a category of understanding within the anthropology of religion and then explore the meaning of this concept as it applies to the Qur’an, focusing on the ontological difference between the Holy and sacred. I then show how the construction of the Holy and the sacred in the tawḥīdic discourses clashes with the otherness of Allah as represented in the Qur’an, and how the immanent character of the tawḥīdic representations of Allah has had a distortive effect on the concept of authority in Islam. The consequences of the tawḥīdic distortion of otherness and divine authority are then investigated with respect to Islamic life and practices in the areas of ethics, gender, art, and economy.

Overview

Combining primary textual materials and anthropological analysis, this book examines a major misunderstanding of a core principle of the Qur’an, transcendence, uniquely signified in al-Quddūs, and shows how the tawḥīdic representations of Allah constitute an inversion of al-Quddūs, and how this inversion has been conceived, authorized, and maintained, as well as how it has affected Islamic thinking and practices, especially as relates to authority. This book also explores how a return to the Qur’anic principle of the primacy of the otherness of God, which is the representation of al-Quddūs, can influence Islamic thinking and practices moving forward. To achieve these aims, this study is organized as follows.

Part one

The first part of the book lays the ground for an anthropological approach to the Qur’an, provides the analytical tools for understanding the Qur’anic concept of transcendence, and examines the discursive process behind the tawḥīdic transformation of transcendence into immanence.

Chapter 1 provides a review of current anthropological theorizing of religion and theism, with emphasis on the concepts of the “sacred,” the “holy,” “transcendence,” and “authority.” It then explores anthropological insights into transcendence, focusing on the notion of écart as constitutive of divine alterity. Chapter 2 discusses how transcendental écart is articulated in the Qur’an, focusing on al-Quddūs (The Holy) as the Qur’an's most eminent of signifier of transcendence. Chapter 3 examines the relationship between the Holy and the sacred in the Qur’an, showing that the Holy is presented as the transcendent, while the sacred is constituted as an orientation towards the Holy. Chapter 4 relates the concept of divine freedom to the idea of transcendence in the Qur’an, adding another dimension to transcendental écart. Chapter 5 examines how the tawḥīdic discourses have dealt with the question of ontology: the relationship of God to being, stressing the relevance of this issue to anthropological meaning of boundaries, difference, identity, and alterity. Chapter 6 shows how the most eminent signifier of divine otherness, namely, al-Quddūs (“the Pure,” “the Holy”) is so constituted in the Qur’ān that it preserves the distinction of God while it bridges the gap between the metaphysical and the anthropological. Chapter 7 provides a more in-depth examination of the tawḥīdic authorizing discourses and the marginalization and disabling of al-Quddūs. Chapter 8 demonstrates how the marginalization of al-Quddūs and elevation of the sacred as a manifestation of Allah exacerbated the influence of enchantment and distorted the idea of authority, leading to the sublimation of the Sunna (Prophetic Tradition). Chapter 9 examines how écart is realized in the disclosure of the divine as withdrawal and how the Prophet Muhammad inscribed this withdrawal in the constitutive features of the Islamic tradition. Chapter 10 dis...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Part I
• Part II
• Index