In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research (Vol. 7, no.4), Ameena Yovan (University of Chicago) reviews Gabriel Said Reynolds’ Allah: God in the Qur’an (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).
In the review, Yovan writes “Gabriel Said Reynolds’ most recent book, Allah: God in the Qur’an, explores Allah’s characterization in the Qurʾān through His relationship with creation. Reynolds frames his discussion around the dichotomy of divine mercy and justice (or vengeance) in the Qurʾān; but the book is more than an analysis of the Qur’ān’s presentation of these characteristics. Rather, the book offers a wide-ranging introduction to theological debates framed by the Qurʾān, with a methodological intervention by Reynolds as to how to reconcile these dichotomous elements and the contentious debates they engender…”
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New Publication— “Allah: God in the Qur’an” by Gabriel Said Reynolds (Yale University Press)
IQSA’s own Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor of Islamic studies and theology at Notre Dame University, has recently published a new book titled Allah: God in the Qur’an (Yale University Press, 2020)
Overview The theme of God’s mercy runs throughout the Qurʾan, every Sura of which (except Sura 9), begins with the invocation “In the name of God the merciful, the benevolent.” The Qurʾan, however, also emphasizes God’s justice and even His vengefulness. The Qur’an has God destroy nations for their rejection of prophets, and oppose unbelievers by sealing their hearts and leading them astray. It also describes the punishments of hell in gory detail. Thus the Qur’an does not offer a God who is simply merciful or vengeful. He is both.
The God of the Qur’an transcends any simple classification. He is personal and mysterious. Because of this, no limits can be placed on His mercy. Allah: God in the Qur’an argues that the Qur’an is open to God’s salvation of both sinners and unbelievers. At the same time, the book argues, Allah can and does lead humans astray. This paradox reveals the homiletic nature of the Qur’an.
This portrait of the dynamic and personal God in the Qur’an is illuminated with reference to the classical Islamic theological tradition, careful analysis of the Qur’an’s vocabulary, and reference to modern thinkers including Muhammad Ahmad Khalafallah.
While Allah: God in the Qur’an emphasizes the uniqueness of the Qur’an’s God, it also shows how many of His characteristics – including mercy and vengefulness – have antecedents in the Bible.
The epilogue of Allah: God in the Qur’an argues that because Allah demands the right to exact vengeance, humans have no license to do so. The Qur’an provides no justification for religious violence.
In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research (Vol. 5, no.3), Gabriel Said Reynolds (University of Notre Dame) reviews Francisco del Río Sánchez (ed.), Jewish Christianity and the Origins of Islam (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2018).
In his review, Reynolds writes “While the volume under review is dedicated to the Qurʾān’s relationship to Jewish Christianity, a number of its contributions call into question the very usefulness of this category. Accordingly, the work is more than a consideration of the relationship between supposedly Jewish Christian groups such as the Ebionites, or supposedly Jewish Christian scriptures such as the Pseudo-Clementines, and the Qurʾān. It offers a broad consideration of the nature of Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity and the ways in which the Qurʾān engages with this sectarian milieu. The volume, which emerged from an ASMEA panel in 2015, is a significant contribution to the study of the Qurʾān in its late antique context…”
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In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research (Vol. 4, no.8), Gabriel Said Reynolds (University of Notre Dame) reviews Youssouf T. Sangaré’s Le scellement de la prophétie en Islam: Khatm al-nubuwwa (Paris: Geuthner, 2018).
In his review, Reynolds writes… “Le scellement de la prophétie en Islam is a learned and well-argued study of the qurʾānichapax legomenon khātam al-nabiyyīn (seal of the prophets; Q Aḥzāb 33:40) and more generally of the notion of the cessation of prophecy in Islam…Along the way Youssouf Sangaré illustrates the complications surrounding the notion of the sealing of prophecy and amplifies those voices in Islamic tradition which resist the idea that God went silent with the death of Muḥammad…”
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By Gabriel Said Reynolds (University of Notre Dame)
In his 1996 work Dieu et l’homme dans le Coran the French Dominican scholar Jacques Jomier devotes a chapter to ”The Psychological Certainty of Muslims” (“La certitude psychologique du musulman”). The premise of this chapter is that Muslims are especially confident of the truth of their faith. Jomier explains:
In many circumstances Muslims appear sure of their faith, persuaded that it is self-evident, even suspecting (in certain extreme cases) that those who do not share their faith are insincere.[1]
From Jomier’s perspective some Muslims are so certain of their religion that they imagine even non-Muslims secretly recognize the truth of Islam (he finds this idea implicit in a verse of the Qurʾan– Q 2:42 – which tells the Jews not to conceal the truth that they know). Jomier presumably developed his notion regarding “the psychological certainty” of Muslims from his many years living in Egypt (1945-1981). He does not, however, seek to prove this notion in any systematic way.
Are Muslims in fact especially “certain” of their religion? Pew has found (in a 2011 survey) that only 35% of American Muslims answered yes to the proposition “Your religion is the one true faith” (compared to 30% of American Christians).[2] It may be that a higher percentage of Muslims from Islamic countries such as Egypt would answer yes to this question. Pew did not ask the same question when it surveyed Egyptian Muslims in 2012. In that survey, however, Pew did find that 78% of Egyptian Muslims report that “there is only one true way” to interpret the teachings of Islam, a result which may correspond, indirectly, with Jomier’s notion of certainty.[3]
In any case, my point here is not to prove or disprove Jomier’s notion of the “psychological certainty of Muslims.” Instead I’d like to draw attention to his explanation for this supposed phenomenon. According to Jomier there is something in the nature of the Qurʾan itself which engenders certainty. Jomier points to the simplicity and binarity of the Qurʾanic style. The Qurʾan, he argues, leaves the audience with only two stark choices: submission to God or rebellion against Him. Commenting on Qurʾan 6:50 (where the Prophet is commanded to say, “Can the blind and the seeing be deemed equal? Will you not, then, take thought?”), Jomier observes, “All of one’s attention is drawn to the question regarding which no doubt is possible.”[4] Elsewhere he describes the “binary” style of the Qurʾan in more general terms: “There is God or there is not God, there is the blind and the seeing, truth and falsehood, the believer and the unbeliever, the good to do and the evil to avoid, paradise and hell.”[5]
Jomier’s efforts to describe how the rhetorical turns of the Qurʾan engender psychological certainty are taken up in a second French language work: L’action psychologique dans le Coran, “Psychological Action [or Operation] in the Qurʾan” by Dominique and Marie-Therèse Urvoy.[6] The Urvoys develop the ideas of Jomier still further, attempting to identify certain “strategies” of the Qurʾan’s rhetoric, strategies intentionally deployed to win the unyielding allegiance of its audience. Under the rubric of “Subliminal Processes” in the Qurʾan the Urvoys include something they name the “subtle insertion” (literally, “sliding in,” Fr. “glissement”) of secondary messages. They argue that the Qurʾan has a way of adding in “almost insidiously” a secondary message, parallel to the development of a principal theme, in a manner which is “practically subliminal.”[7] The ideas of the Urvoys far exceed a simply analysis of the Qurʾan’s logical strategies of argumentation, such as that found in Rosalind Ward Gwynne’s Logic, Rhetoric, and Legal Reasoning in the Qurʾan.[8] Indeed the Urvoys seem to go further still than Jomier in insisting that the Qurʾan’s author intentionally (“almost insidiously”) imbedded certain patterns in the text in order to win total devotion from his audience.
The studies of Jomier and the Urvoys on these matters are fundamentally problematic. They assign a contrived motive to the Qurʾanic author which exceeds simple argumentation. In addition they underestimate the intellectual independence of the Qurʾan’s audience.
Still it is worth noting that their arguments – strangely enough – have certain connections to Islamic apologetical works which are meant to underline the supposed brilliance of Qurʾanic rhetoric. Notably Jomier was particularly interested in the arguments of Muhammad Ahmad Khalafallah (d. 1991), the author of the well-known 1951 work al-Fann al-qasasi fi al-Qurʾan al-karim, “Narrative Art in the Noble Qurʾan.” Jomier was one of the first scholars to draw attention to this work – and to the controversy which it engendered — in a long 1954 article entitled “Quelques positions actuelles de l’exégèse coranique en Egypte révélées par une polémique récente.”[9] As Jomier notes, the original form of Khalafallah’s work – that is, his dissertation at King Fuʾad University (now the University of Cairo) – was entitled Min asrar al-iʿjaz, “On the Secrets of [the Qurʾan’s] Inimitability.” Khalafallah originally wrote this study of Qurʾanic “inimitability” to combat the views of “atheists, Orientalists, and missionaries.”[10]
In order to wage this combat Khalafallah sought to show that the Qurʾan need not be judged by the historical accuracy of the stories which it tells, since those stories were written not with the goal of relating “historical truth” but rather “literary truth” (al-ḥaqīqa al-adabiyya).[11] In other words, from his perspective the Qurʾan relates stories in a way meant to convince its audience of its message, and in a special way to inspire fear and piety among them. At one point Khalafallah comments that the Qurʾan’s stories appeal to the “emotional logic” (manṭiq al-ʿaṭifa) of its audience, and not to the “logic of intellectual reflection” (manṭiq al-naẓar al-ʿaqli).[12] This does not take us very far from the Urvoys’ notion of the Qurʾan’s psychological “action.”
A more recent pious exploration of the Qurʾan’s supposed ability to convince or enrapture its audience is found in Navid Kermani’s God is Beautiful.[13] Kermani, who focuses on the reception history of the Qurʾān, describes in vivid detail Islamic stories meant to redound to the doctrine of Qurʾanic inimitability. He is particularly interested in those traditions which speak of pious believers who were so affected by hearing the Qurʾan that they were struck down and died.[14] Now Kermani does not imagine that his readers will all accept the idea of Qurʾanic inimitability. As he puts it, Kermani does not expect every reader to “sway to the rhythm of the Qurʾān recitations.”[15] He does, however, seem convinced that there is something remarkable in Qurʾanic rhetoric, and in its sound, which leads its audience to be swept away. At the same time Kermani does recognize that there are certain historical and sectarian factors which led to the development of the Islamic doctrine of the Qurʾan’s inimitability.[16]
Still it seems to me that the critical works of Jomier and the Urvoys, and the more apologetical works of Khalafallah and Kermani are two sides of the same coin. The notion that there is something contrived, magical, or miraculous in Qurʾanic rhetoric that overwhelms its audience is simplistic. Of course there are many pious Muslims (and non-Muslims) who are enthralled with the rhetoric of the Qurʾan. Some converts attribute their conversions to the qualities of the Qurʾan (ʿUmar, the second caliph, is said to have accepted Islam after hearing a recitation of the Qurʾan). But others are not. One of the Prophet’s own scribes, Ibn Abi Sarh, is said to have left the Prophet’s service, and Islam, when he came to believe that his messages did not come from God. Christians and other non-Muslims are compelled in the Islamic world to hear the Qurʾan time and again over loudspeakers and yet still do not convert to Islam.
In other words, religious convictions cannot be attributed simply to the logic, rhetoric, or aesthetics of a scripture. Instead such convictions are connected to a social context. Religious “certainty” is necessarily linked to the experience of belonging which believers find in a community of faith. “Certainty” is accordingly found not only with Muslims but presumably found also with others – such as evangelical Christians or Latter Day Saints – from groups in which esprit de corps (or ʿasabiyya) is strong. It is also connected to the efforts of missionaries (or “daʿwa practitioners”) whose vocation is to increase devotion among believers while bringing unbelievers into the fold. In other words, the Qurʾan, like other scriptures, does not find its meaning in a vacuum. The Qurʾan has meaning in context.
[1] J. Jomier, Dieu et l’homme dans le Coran (Paris : Cerf, 1996), 161.
[13] N. Kermani, God is Beautiful, trans. T. Crawford (Maldin, MA: Polity, 2015). Original German: Gott ist schön (Munich: Beck, 1999).
[14] In particular he focuses on the work of al-Thaʿlabi (d. 427/1035): Qatlā al-qurʾān, ed. Nāṣir b. Muḥammad al-Manīʿ (Riyadh : Maktabat al-ʿUbaykān, 2008).
Les trois piliers de l’Islam: Une lecture anthropologique du Coran
In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research, Gabriel Said Reynolds reviews Jacqueline Chabbi’s Les trois piliers de l’Islam: Une lecture anthropologique du Coran. In this volume, Chabbi makes the case that Islam as we know it from medieval sources is not the same as Islam as it was in its original Arabian context. According to Chabbi, academic scholars and pious Muslims alike too often fail to recognize elements of Islam which were introduced in later centuries, and too often assume that medieval ideas about the Qurʾan reflect what the Qurʾan meant to its original, Arabian audience. Les trois piliers de l’Islam is her effort to set things straight, to recover Islam’s original message.
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Who were Abu Lahab and His Wife? A View from the Hebrew Bible
by
Ercan Celik*
In The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext, G. S. Reynolds observes that
…scholars of the Qur’an accept the basic premise of the medieval Islamic sources that the Qur’an is to be explained in light of the life of the Prophet Muhammad…
However, he proposes that critical Qur’anic scholarship not depend on prophetic biography (sīrah) or traditional Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr), but rather,
…the Qur’an should be appreciated in light of its conversation with earlier literature, in particular Biblical literature…This argument necessarily involves an examination of both the relationship of Muslim exegetical literature to the Qur’an and the relationship of the Qur’an to Biblical literature.
Sūrat al-Masad (Q 111) offers a valuable example for how a Biblical perspective can augment our understanding of the Qur’anic text. The text of the sūrah names its main character Abu Lahab, and mentions that he has a wife, but does not provide any further identifying information. Only extra-Qur’anic literature can give us more details about who he was. In this blog post, I compare how he may be identified through the Islamic literary sources and through the Hebrew Bible.
Abu Lahab In Islamic Literature
Image courtesy of Vince Pahkala; accessed from Wikimedia Commons.
Abu Lahab, meaning “the father of flame,” is identified as the uncle of the prophet Muhammad, ʿAbd al-ʿUzza ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, nicknamed Abu Lahab on account of his reddish complexion. He is said to have been a rich and proud man, and he and his wife Umm Jamil, sister of Abu Sufyan, are depicted as fierce enemies of Muhammad and the early Muslim community. There are many anecdotes in the Islamic literary sources about their verbal and physical attacks on the prophet. Some Qur’an commentators say that Umm Jamil used to litter Muhammad’s path with harmful thorns of twisted palm leaf fibres, and that this is the historical context for the final verse of Sūrat al-Masad: “Will have upon her neck a halter of palm-fibre” (Q 111:5).
Abu’l-Ahab in Biblical Literature
In searching the Hebrew Bible for a wicked man whose name resembles Abu Lahab, one finds Ahab (Hebrew: אַחְאָב), the seventh kings of ancient Israel (r. ca. 885-874 BCE), son of King Omri and husband of Jezebel of Sidon. We could read “Abu Lahab” alternatively, and without substantial change, as “Abu’l-Ahab,” father of Ahab. According to the Hebrew Bible, the father of Ahab is Omri, who is described in 1 Kings 16:25 as having acted “more wickedly than all who were before him.” His son Ahab, in his own time, “married Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went to serve Baal and worshiped him . . . Thus Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him” (1 Kings 16:31-33).
Frederic Leighton, “Jezebel and Ahab,” ca. 1863, Scarborough Art Gallery; image from Wikimedia Commons.
As for Jezebel, it is said that she ordered the killing of prophets (1 Kings 18:4). The prophet Elijah escaped her persecution and with God’s command confronted Ahab with a challenge to the priests of Baal: “You call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord; the god who answers by fire is indeed God” (18:24). The supporters of Baal called upon their god to send fire to consume their sacrifice, but nothing happened. When Elijah called upon the name of the Lord, fire came down from heaven immediately and consumed their offering.
Eventually Ahab in killed in battle, and when Elisha, successor to the prophet Elijah, anoints Jehu king of Israel, the latter had the house of Ahab killed. Jezebel was captured by her enemies, thrown out of a window, trampled by a horse, and her flesh eaten by dogs.
A Comparison of the Qur’anic and Biblical Characters
There are some significant parallels between the qur’anic character of Abu Lahab and the biblical character of Abu’l-Ahab. To illustrate these, let us evaluate Sūrat al-Masad in light of the biblical account:
May the hands of Abu Lahab [Abu’l-Ahab] be ruined and ruined is he. The biblical story of Ahab fits well with this verse, in both linguistic and narrative/thematic terms. The father is invoked for ruin. Omri was the first person to introduce the worship of Baal in Israel, for which his progeny are to be ruined. In Qur’anic Arabic terminology, hands (here, yadā) are symbolic of power and of progeny. The fate of Omri’s progeny is pronounced not so much in the tafsir literature as in the biblical texts.
His wealth will not avail him or that which he gained. The Ahab of the Bible seems to have had greater wealth than the Abu Lahab of Islamic tradition; his great wealth failed to prevent his demise by God’s command.
He will [enter to] burn in a Fire of [blazing] flame. Hellfire is an eschatalogical concept associated with unbelief, especially with the sort of idolatry instituted by Omri and Ahab.
And his wife [as well]—the carrier of firewood. The feature of firewood (ḥaṭab) is key. The challenge at Mount Carmel consisted of sacrificing bulls on firewood in order. We can imagine Jezebel supporting the Baalist priests by collecting the best woods to burn the sacrifice easily. The image of Jezebel carrying firewood makes more sense of this verse than that of Umm Jamil dumping thorns.
Around her neck is a rope of [twisted] fiber. Traditional exegetes struggle to explain the meaning of the rope of palm-fiber (masad). It may be better understood in light of the Jezebel story. The term masad appears to be a hapax legomenon in the Qur’an that might have a Hebrew root and be related to Jezebel’s violent death. This term begs for further examination along these lines.
* Ercan Celik is a certified public accountant in Turkey.
Cover of Michel Cuypers, La composition du Coran (Librairie Gabalda, 2012).
In the latest installment of IQSA’s Review of Qur’anic Research 1, no. 2, Prof. Gabriel Said Reynolds offers a lucid assessment of Michel Cuypers’ provocative 2012 work, La composition du Coran, which analyzes rhetorical structures in the Qur’an to argue for its textual coherence.
Full access to the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR) is available in the members-only area of our IQSA website. Not an IQSA member? Join today to enjoy RQR and additional member benefits!
International Qur’an Conference: “Recent Trends in Qur’anic Studies”
by Mun’im Sirry
IQSA and State Islamic University (UIN) Sunan Kalijaga in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, are co-hosting an international conference on “Recent Trends in Qur’anic Studies,” to be held in Yogyakarta on 4-7 August 2015.
This international Qur’an conference will be a forum where the Islamic tradition and rigorous academic study of the Qur’an will meet, and various approaches to the Qur’an will be critically discussed. In the spirit of learning from, and enriching, one another, we are working on a conference that will introduce our unique model of collaboration between IQSA and UIN Sunan Kalijaga to enhance the field of Qur’anic studies.
Over the last few decades, Qur’anic studies emerged as an exciting and vibrant field of research among scholars both in the West and in the Muslim-majority countries. This is evident not only in the flurry of books and articles that deal with the Qur’an and in the convening of various workshops and seminars on the subject, but also in the controversies that this field engenders. Diverse methodologies are currently applied to Qur’anic studies, and various issues are raised. Some of these methodologies and issues are new discoveries, while others revive older researches. As a result, many assumptions that for years have been taken for granted are now under rigorous scrutiny and often disputed to such an extent that, as Fred Donner has rightly noted, the field of Qur’anic studies seems today “to be in a state of disarray,” in the sense that there is little consensus among scholars. Questions such as the milieu within which the Qur’an emerged, the Qur’an’s relation to the Biblical tradition, its chronology, textual integration, and literary features are hotly debated today.
This international conference aims to explore major methodological and thematic issues in recent scholarly studies of the Qur’an in different parts of the world. We also wish to engage in scholarly conversations about the possibility of collaborative works to enhance the field of Qur’anic studies by bringing together scholars who may have little other chance to directly interact. There clearly needs to be closer collaboration among scholars of different perspectives and backgrounds. Rather than deepening conflicting approaches to the Qur’an, these scholars will explore the extent to which they may learn from one another in terms of methodological/hermeneutical approaches as they will also address current issues being debated in the field.
Among scholars in the field who will participate in the conference, to mention a few names (in alphabetical order), are: Fred Donner, Ali Mabrouk, Daniel Madigan, Jane McAuliffe, Gabriel Reynolds, Andrew Rippin, Abdullah Saeed, Nayla Tabbara, along with Indonesian scholars such as Amin Abdullah, Noorhaidi Hasan, Moch. Nur Ichwan, Syafaatun el-Mirzanah, Yusuf Rahman, Quraish Shihab, Sahiron Syamsuddin.
If you are interested in presenting your research on any of the following topics, please send your abstract (250 words) to Mun’im Sirry (msirry@nd.edu).
Possible topics:
Critical Approaches to the Qur’an
Qur’anic Milieu
Intertextuality: The Qur’an and the Biblical tradition
The Qur’an and Other Religions
Re-assessing the Exegetical Tradition of the Qur’an
Modern Trends in the Tafsir Tradition
The Indigenization of the Qur’an: Is there an Indonesian Tafsir
Please note that abstracts, papers and presentation must be in English.
Important Dates:
Deadline for submission of abstract: November 1, 2014
Moses Set Out on the Nile in a Reed Basket. Engraving by Bernhard Rode, ca. 1775; photo accessed via Wikimedia Commons.
Qurʾan 20:39 recalls how God instructed Moses’ mother to place her infant son in a tābūt and set him upon a river, that he might escape Pharaoh. In Modern Standard Arabic, tābūt can mean “box, case, chest, coffer” or “casket, coffin, sarcophagus,” and many translators render tābūt in the Qur’an in light of one or another of these meanings. Asad (“chest”), Hilali-Khan (“a box or a case or a chest”), Yusuf Ali (“chest”), Hamidullah (“coffret”), and Paret (“Kasten”) all choose the first meaning; Quli Qaraʾi (“casket”) chooses the second.
The awkward image of the infant Moses floating on the Nile in a casket illustrates the problem of understanding Qurʾanic terms in light of their meanings in Modern Standard Arabic. Not all translators do so. Pickthall and Arberry, among others, render tābūt, “ark.” This dramatically different translation presumably reflects the influence of Qurʾan 2:248, where the Qurʾan uses tābūt for the Ark of the Covenant.
In fact, Q 2:248 is the key to understanding tābūt in Q 20:39. Tābūt reflects the Hebrew term tebā (itself a borrowing from Egyptian), the term used for the basket in which Moses’ mother places him (Exodus 2:3; tebā evidently means “basket” here because it is made out of reeds). Tebā is also used for the ark that Noah builds (Genesis 6:14, 15, passim). As Arthur Jeffery (Foreign Vocabulary, 88-89) notes, Qurʾanic tābūt is closer in form to Aramaic tībū (used in Targum Onkelos for both Noah’s ark and Moses’ basket) and even more so to Ethiopic tābot. The connection with Ethiopic tābot might be particularly important since it (like Syriac qebūtā) is used for Noah’s ark, Moses’ basket, and the Ark of the Covenant.
In any case, my point here is not to make an argument about a particular etymology for tābūt but rather to illustrate the danger of relying on Modern Standard Arabic in our reading of the Qurʾan. The way in which the Qurʾan uses tābūt for both Moses’ basket (Q 20:39) and the Ark of the Covenant (Q 2:248) reflects the Biblical background of this term. Therefore, in Qurʾan 20:39, tābūt might be understood in light of this background to mean simply “basket” (even if this meaning is not found in Hans Wehr’s dictionary).
Tābūt is not the only example of the problem of Modern Standard Arabic understandings of the Qurʾan. Qur’an 3:44 alludes to the account of the contest between the widowers of Israel over Mary. In the version of this account in the (2nd century) Protoevangelium of James, all of the widows hand their staffs (as lots) to the priest Zechariah, in whose care Mary has been kept in the Jerusalem Temple. From the last staff, that of Joseph, a dove emerges, indicating that he is God’s choice. The term that the Qurʾan uses for these staffs is qalam (pl. aqlām), from Greek kalamos (“reed”). Yet qalam also came to mean “pen,” and indeed this is its common meaning in Modern Standard Arabic. Thus if one reads the Qurʾan in light of Modern Standard Arabic, Q 3:44 would seem to involve throwing pens around.
A final case, the term dīn, has theological consequences. As Mun’im Sirry points out in his recent work Scriptural Polemics: The Qurʾan and Other Religions (esp. 66-89), many modern commentators understand Qurʾanic occurrences of dīn to denote “religion,” and indeed translators almost always render dīn “religion” (for Q 3:19 I did not find any cases where it is translated otherwise). This has important consequences, especially with verses such as Q 3:19 and 85, which can be read to mean that Islam is the only acceptable religion. Yet in light of Semitic and non-Semitic cognates (such as Syriac dīnā), Qurʾanic dīn might have—in some instances at least—a more general meaning of “judgment” (hence the phrase yawm al-dīn). In other instances, dīn might mean something closer to religious disposition, rather than religion in the modern sense of a communal system of faith and worship. Accordingly, students of the Qurʾan should be wary of reading dīn, or any Qurʾanic term, through the lens of Modern Standard Arabic.
* Gabriel Said Reynolds researches the Qur’an and Muslim/Christian relations and is Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology in the Department of Theology at Notre Dame.
Video Lecture: “How (Not) to Translate the Qur’an”
The public lecture “How (Not) to Translate the Qur’an,” by Dr. Shawkat Toorawa—an event hosted by the Qur’an Seminar project earlier this year—can be viewed online in its entirety here.
Toorawa is associate professor of Arabic Literature and Islamic Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. His areas of specialty are medieval Arabic literature and modern poetry. He has a special interest in the lexicon of the Qur’an and is currently preparing a critical edition of the Shifa’ al-‘alil by the eighteenth-century belletrist Azad Bilgrami. For a selection of books that Toorawa has authored and edited, see here.
The Qur’an Seminar is an academic project dedicated to advancing scholarly understanding of the Qur’anic text. The project—led by IQSA codirector Gabriel Said Reynolds and steering committee member Mehdi Azaiez—involves the collaboration of scholars worldwide, a series of public lectures by leading Muslim intellectuals, and the production of an innovative commentary on fifty central Qurʾanic passages. It is funded by a Sawyer Seminar grant of the Mellon Foundation and hosted by the University of Notre Dame.
Seventh Mingana Symposium on Arab Christianity & Islam: “The Qur’an and Arab Christianity”
By David Bertaina
The Alphonse Mingana Manuscript Collection at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom holds an important yet underappreciated repository of early Qur’an folios and papyri. In support of the Mingana collection and its legacy, a number of scholars gathered on 17-20 September, 2013, to discuss the importance of “The Qur’an and Arab Christianity.”
Fifteen papers were delivered at the Seventh Mingana Symposium on Arab Christianity & Islam. Topics ranged from pre-Islamic Arabic to medieval approaches to the Qur’an. This post highlights some of the important contributions made to the textual history of the Qur’an by scholars at the conference. The papers revealed the range of Middle Eastern Christian attitudes toward the Qur’an, their role in its emergence and interpretation, and the text’s subsequent impact upon Christian Arabic literature.
Chronologically, the papers tended to fall within the following parameters as: 1) the emergence of the Qur’an; 2) Abbasid-era Christian Arabic responses to the Qur’an; and 3) Later medieval Arab Christian inculturation of the Qur’an.
In the earliest chronological period, Robert Hoyland presented his case for the existence of pre-Islamic Christian Arabic literature based upon an Arabic martyrion inscription dated to ca. 570, among several other examples, which has implications for the formation of the Qur’an and its possible references to Christian Arabic dialects and/or Syriac.
Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala presented a reconstruction of the story of the destruction of Sodom in the Qur’an. His paper argued that we can discover the “textual archaeology” of the Qur’an’s many references to Sodom by assembling them together. The result is that the Qur’an’s homily on the event, probably transmitted via oral or written interactions, suggests a pre-canonical Qur’anic version of the story that was complete and closer to Late Antique versions of the legend.
Photo by David Bertaina
Alba Fedeli’s study examined a number of early Qur’an fragments from the Mingana Collection. The group was able to visit the repository at the University of Birmingham and inspect a number of these early fragments thanks to her preparations. In her presentation, Fedeli pointed out examples of textual emendation in early Qur’an texts that suggest a re-writing of texts to conform to later canonical versions of the holy text (see the bottom line of the pictured insert for an example). Moreover, her study of a Qur’an palimpsest in a Christian Arabic manuscript suggests the concept of linking early Islam with Arab Christianity needs further attention in the academy.
Krisztina Szilagyi examined Muslim and Arab Christian interpretations of Q 53:7-10 and Q 112 in reference to the fact that God is called al-ṣamad. She pointed out eight instances from Christian Arabic sources, ranging from the eighth century through eleventh century, that assume that early Muslims understood this word to associate corporealism with the divine. Szilagyi argued that corporealism might have been more prevalent than previously thought among the first Muslims and that these Christian critiques were one of the possible reasons for the decline of corporealism in Islamic theology.
Thomas Hoffmann argued that scholars need to escape textual assumptions about the Qur’an’s changeable attitude toward Christians. This position assumes Qur’anic theological unity and understands the text’s ambivalence toward Christians solely through historical contingencies and/or divine guidance. Hoffmann argues that scholars should approach the Qur’an not as a smoothed-out unified work but as a document of heterogeneous and competing positions.
Gabriel Said Reynolds presented on recent scholarly debates concerning the history of the Qur’an, arguing that many studies presuppose a later Islamic interpretive framework that potentially hinders our knowledge concerning the earliest stages of the formation of the Qur’an. Instead of presupposing a “normative” ʿUthmānic codex on which to judge early manuscripts, scholars need to read the texts while being open to surprising discoveries regarding its textual formation.
The second chronological period covered in the conference was Abbasid-era interactions concerning the Qur’an. Mark Beaumont discussed the ninth-century theologian ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī and his response to the Islamic critique of the Christian Scriptures. Beaumont argued that ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī was less concerned with philosophical categories inherited from the Greek tradition and was more focused on defending the logic of Christian theology as consistent with the presuppositions of Islamic thought based on the Qur’an.
Sandra Keating and Emilio Platti both presented on the Arab Christian author ʿAbd al-Masīḥ al-Kindī (ca. 825). His history of the collection of the Qur’an is one of the earliest accounts about the formation and collation of the text, even predating most Islamic hadith about the circumstances of its emergence. Purporting to be an exchange of letters between the Muslim al-Hashimī and the Christian al-Kindī, Keating and Platti explained how al-Kindī was deeply familiar with Islamic and independent sources regarding its origin and collection as well as the text itself.
Mike Kuhn explored the Muslim view of the Apostle Paul in the Abbasid period and how several authors employed the concept of taḥrīf to explain his role in the development of Christianity. Focusing on the Mu’tazilite ʻAbd al-Jabbār (d. 1025), he argued that his account of Paul’s life was a response to the analysis of the true religion by the ninth-century Syriac Church of the East member Hunayn ibn Isḥāq. Whereas Ibn Isḥāq argued that Christianity was not established by coercion, ʻAbd al-Jabbār claimed that Paul was motivated by political ambitions, which had implications for later Islamic polemics.
Gordon Nickel examined the impact of Q 7:157 on Muslim interaction with Arab Christianity. Since interpreters assumed this passage suggested Jews and Christians were expecting a prophet foretold in their Torah and Gospel, they had to explain why the communities failed to accept Islam. Nickel argued the Muslims began to claim verses in the Qur’an referred to the falsification of the earlier scriptures because Jews and Christians denied the existence of references to Muhammad in their holy books.
There were three papers on later medieval acculturation of the Qur’an in the Arab Christian milieu. David Bertaina presented on the concept of Qur’anic authority in the work of a Muslim convert to Coptic Christianity named Būluṣ ibn Rajāʾ (ca. 1000). He explained how Ibn Rajāʾ used the Qur’an in a positive sense arguing that his former co-religionists had failed to live up to its standards. Bertaina argued that his use of the Qur’an contrasted with other Arab Christian assessments of the Qur’an as a distorted Scripture.
Ayse Icoz examined the use of Qur’anic terms and phrases in the late tenth century Christian Arabic encyclopedia entitled Kitāb al-Majdal. Focusing on the particular examples from the text, Icoz argued that the form and the extent of the use of Qur’anic terms in Christian context reveal the author’s high acquaintance with Islamic vocabulary and deeper engagement with the surrounding culture.
David Thomas, the organizer of the conference, closed with an analysis of the use and abuse of the Qur’an in Paul of Antioch’s Letter to a Muslim Friend, composed in the thirteenth century. While some passages were quoted faithfully, Thomas argued that Paul’s misuse of the Qur’an suggests an established polemic in the Arab Christian repertoire and lessens the likelihood that the letter would have had a serious impact on its audience.
Many of these papers will be published with E. J. Brill under the History of Christian-Muslim Relations series edited by David Thomas. It will be a valuable addition to any scholarly collection or academic library. The conference will be held again in 2016 or 2017 in Birmingham, focusing on Christian-Muslim interactions in the earliest periods of encounter, and will once again be a lively place for the discussion of matter relevant to those who study the textual history of the Qur’an.
In the review, Yovan writes “Gabriel Said Reynolds’ most recent book, Allah: God in the Qur’an, explores Allah’s characterization in the Qurʾān through His relationship with creation. Reynolds frames his discussion around the dichotomy of divine mercy and justice (or vengeance) in the Qurʾān; but the book is more than an analysis of the Qur’ān’s presentation of these characteristics. Rather, the book offers a wide-ranging introduction to theological debates framed by the Qurʾān, with a methodological intervention by Reynolds as to how to reconcile these dichotomous elements and the contentious debates they engender…”
