Speaking in God's Name

Islamic Law, Authority and Women

Khaled Abou El Fadl

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780744681
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Teologia islamica

Drawing on both religious and secular sources, this challenging book argues that divinely ordained law is frequently misinterpreted by Muslim authorities at the expense of certain groups, including women. Khaled Abou El Fadl cites a series of injustices in Islamic society and ultimately proposes a return to the original ethics at the heart of the Muslim legal system.

1 Induction

At the conclusion of a characteristically fascinating passage, the Qur’ān proclaims: “No one can know the soldiers of God except God” (wa mā ya‘lamu junūda rabbika illā huwa).¹ The statement sounds rather decisive but it is also teasingly ambiguous. Who are these soldiers? Does it make any sense to even pose this question to the reader if only God knows God’s soldiers? What should the reader understand from this statement? That God knows what humans cannot know? That the reader should not try to search and identify God’s soldiers, or that the reader should not fancy himself/herself to be God’s soldier? As a prelude to this statement the Qur’ān speaks of a Hellfire guarded by nineteen angels. As if anticipating the reader’s mind, the Qur’ān elaborates upon the significance of the number nineteen. The Qur’ān explains that God has decreed that only angels may guard Hellfire. As for the specific number nineteen, the Qur’ān states, the unbelievers will be cast into doubt because they will see no sound reason that nineteen angels, as opposed to eighteen or twenty, should guard Hell. But the “People of the Book” (Christians and Jews), the Qur’ān contends, will be reassured and comforted, and the believers (presumably the Muslims) will only increase in faith. The Qur’ān does not explain the reason for this avowed comfort or increase in faith; it simply goes on to state that part of the reason for this revelation is so that the People of the Book and the believers will be assured and not suffer the pangs of doubt. The Qur’ān adds that those whose hearts are diseased will say, “What did God intend by this mathal?” Mathal could mean symbol, parable, metaphor, or simile. After affirming that God has the power to lead people astray or guide them, the Qur’ān concludes by stating that none can know the soldiers of God except God, and that “verily, this is a reminder to humankind.”²

This Qur’ānic passage highlights several intriguing problems of interpretation. As a prelude to the analysis, we ought to ask, what is humankind being reminded of, and what or who defines this memory? If the passage reflects a private dialogue between a one-time author and a one-time reader, how is this private dialogue relevant to anything beyond its own particular dynamics? More importantly, what is the methodological process by which we go about investigating the meaning of the text? It appears as if the Qur’ānic verse invites the reader to join an ongoing conversation that started a long time ago, and so the question becomes, to what extent can or should the reader even attempt to join this conversation?

A reader implementing a reasonable reading of the text will probably understand that there are nineteen angels guarding Hell, and that the unbelievers responded to this revelation with a certain amount of jeering. But a reader will not necessarily know why this revelation will increase the faith of believers or provide assurance to the People of the Book. Possibly, this verse is historically specific; possibly it is the product of a particular context and specific debate that is now lost to us forever. However, it is also possible that the text is invoking a sign for a deeper meaning or set of associations. Perhaps the passage is an invitation to those whom Umberto Eco aptly describes as the “followers of the veil” to investigate the signs that point to the discrete and deeper meaning of things.³ This method of interpretation has had its strong proponents in the Kabbalistic tradition in Judaism, mystical Christianity, and Sūfi Islam.⁴ Under this approach, the number nineteen might hold the secret to an esoteric truth that is discoverable only by the truly knowledgeable.⁵ The esoteric possibilities are confirmed by the fact that the passage employs the word mathal, which could mean a sign or symbol. Nonetheless, the passage concludes by ascribing to the text the function of remembrance – the discourse serves as a reminder to human beings. Can readers be reminded of the esoteric if the esoteric is not readily accessible? Another possibility is that the text is not opening itself to interpretation but simply affirming the supremacy of God’s knowledge and futility of human endeavors to make sense of this knowledge. Believers, whether People of the Book or Muslims,⁶ will be comforted by this awareness but unbelievers will respond with skepticism and doubt. This creates an ambiguity as to the meaning of the statement that only God knows God’s soldiers. Does this statement prescribe a sense of unquestioning submission to God’s knowledge – a knowledge that is ascertainable only by transmission and mechanical absorption? Alternatively, does it mean that there are, in fact, soldiers of God, but these soldiers are only known to God and that God’s knowledge can be investigated but can never be ascertained or fully acquired? If it is the former, then effectively the text denies the reader access to the process that constructs and generates meaning from a text. If it is the latter, then this passage is a wonderful negation of authoritarian interpretive methods.

To put the issue differently, does this Qur’ānic passage open or close the text to interpretation? Umberto Eco has suggested that open texts operate at the level of suggestion and the stimulation of constructive interpretive activity. In contrast, closed texts aim to define and closely limit the interpretive activity of the reader.⁷ In stating that only God knows God’s soldiers, does the text stimulate and validate the constructive efforts of the reader, or does it, effectively, take the meaning of the text away from the reader and deposit it in the exclusive domain of the author? We will have more to say about this issue later, but for now it is important to note that we have two distinct, but not exclusive, possibilities. If only God knows God’s soldiers, the reader may conclude that only God has the power to define and identify God’s soldiers, and that human beings must search the divine text for any possible identification of these soldiers. The role of the reader becomes fairly mechanical; after a close reading, the reader will conclude that God identifies the nineteen angels as God’s soldiers and that is the end of the interpretive process. Alternatively, the passage may suggest or stimulate more complex constructions. For instance, the reader may reason that the passage has a more general and timeless dynamic. The passage is not a private conversation limited to a specific contextual setting, rather it is a more inclusive and accessible conversation with a wider and more transcendental application. The reader may argue that since only God knows God’s soldiers, it might follow that human beings cannot conclusively ascertain whether a specific individual or set of individuals are, in fact, God’s soldiers. If the passage is read normatively, it might mean that any person may aspire to be a soldier of God, and that she or he can strive with the utmost exertion to achieve this status, but such a person will never know if they succeeded in achieving the esteemed position of being God’s chosen soldier. Assuming that God’s soldiers enjoy a delegated divine-authority, the reader can argue that everyone, in principle, has access to God’s authority, but no one, in fact, is assured of receiving it. Since no one is assured of receiving it and God’s knowledge is not accessible to human beings, then a reasonable person can never rest assured that any human being has, in fact, reached the exalted status of being God’s chosen soldier.

I should confess that I have always understood this Qur’ānic verse to be a negation of the authoritarian – it denied any human being the claim that he or she is a soldier of God endowed with God’s authority. A person can strive, hope, and aspire to be God’s soldier, but no person may claim that they have, in fact, achieved this status. My understanding, however, raises difficult issues concerning the relationships between the reader, the text, and the author of the text. To what extent do I, as the reader, decide the meaning of the text? To what extent are my sensibilities and subjectivities determinative in constructing the text’s meaning? May I or should I submit the text to my use, and permit my needs to be determinative in constructing a meaning for the text? If the peculiarities of the reader are determinative, what then happens to the intent of the author? Should the reader focus on the intent of the author and consider the author’s intent determinative as to the meaning of the text? Isn’t this more respectful towards the author, especially when the author is divine? But how can the intent of the author be ascertained if the author’s motives are not accessible? One can argue that the author has deposited and entrusted the authorial intent to the objectified medium of language – a medium that is accessible to human beings. But, then, are the semiotics of the language purely the product of the subjectivities of the author or does the medium partly, or wholly, re-formulate the authorial intent by forcing the author’s subjectivities to yield to the structure and logic of the language? Does it make sense to talk of the author’s subjectivities in the case of a divine authorship? Can we properly speak of divine subjectivities or even of intent? If God chose to communicate through an objective linguistic medium how will this medium interact with human subjectivities or even idiosyncrasies? As explained above, the Qur’ānic passage seems to assume a specific historical context that might have been familiar to a certain group of readers at a certain point in time. But when and to what extent does the text become independent and autonomous from the host of subjectivities, whether authorial or historical, that once generated the text? If, for a contemporary reader, the context is significant but unreachable, does this mean that the author or text has delegated the meaning to the reader, or that the reader may use the text in whichever way he/she deems fit? Every reader brings his/her own historical context to bear upon the context, so what are the appropriate dynamics between the historical context that generated the text in the first place and the historical context of the reader? Finally, as a reader, to what extent am I bound or limited by the communities of meaning that have been generated around the text? For instance, if Qur’ānic exegesis over a period of fourteen-hundred years chooses an interpretation of the verse that is decidedly different from my own, should that limit or direct my own interpretive efforts?⁸

These types of questions will be familiar to students of literary criticism but are largely unfamiliar to specialists in Islamic law. The “citizenship” of these questions, however, is not nearly as important as the fact that they raise several issues directly pertinent to the purpose of this book. As will be discussed later, these types of questions about the role of the author, the text, and the reader help bring into focus some of the tensions that exist in the Islamic interpretive tradition. Foremost among these tensions, is the uncomfortable relationship between the authoritativeness of the text, and the threat of authoritarian constructions of the text. For the purposes of this book, understanding the role and purpose of ambiguity in the authoritative texts of Islam is of pivotal importance. Much of the analysis of this book will deal with the extent to which ambiguity is part of the intended meaning of the authoritative text, and, at a more basic level, the extent to which ambiguity is purposeful in the processes and dynamics of Islamic law.

This study presents an analysis of the use of legal authority in contemporary Islamic discourses. I do not intend to analyze or generalize about all Islamic discourses; this would be empirically impractical and probably unwise. Rather, I focus on certain types of legal discourses that I characterize as authoritarian. As will be elaborated upon later, I am using the word “authoritarian” in a very specific sense. At this point, I should note that authoritarianism, as used here, refers to a hermeneutic methodology that usurps and subjugates the mechanisms of producing meaning from a text to a highly subjective and selective reading. ...