Perfection of Religion

One of the most important principles associated with the interpretation of the Qur'an is the idea that the Qur'an is its own best commentary. As Ibn Taymiya states it: "What is given in a general way in one place is explained in detail in another place. What is given briefly in one place is expanded in another."
So, following up on the notion of the seal of the prophets (33:40), it is quite logical for us to ask whether there is another location in the Qur'an where this idea appears, or where a related idea appears that would help us to understand how to interpret this verse. While no direct parallel seems to exist, there is another concept introduced in the Qur'an that could be viewed as helpful. The relevant verse reads: "Today, I have perfected your religion for you, completed My blessing upon you, and chosen as your religion Islam" (Qur'an 5:3).
Like the word seal, the word perfection has a number of possible meanings, implying in many instances both the concept of completion, as well as the idea of being the best, or most correct. If through the Qur'an, and its revelation to Muhammad, religion is complete, then surely this supports the notion that Muhammad is the last and final prophet. There is no more to say about religion, that is, there is no more to be revealed about Islam, therefore there is no need for a further messenger. In fact, some might suggest that if another messenger were to appear, it would cast doubts on the perfect nature of Islam, as well as implying that the Qur'an was either incomplete or incorrect.
In my next post I will examine how these ideas might be viewed less literally, as metaphors or euphemisms.

Ramadan Kareem

Ramadan kareem.
During this holy month, Muslims will read the entire Qur'an as a spiritual exercise and as a commemoration of the belief that the Qur'an was revealed to Muhammad during this month of reflection, prayer and fasting. Tradition tells us that the very first revelation (96:1-5) took place while Muhammad was meditating in a cave outside of Makkah during the month of Ramadan, when he was 40 years old.
Not only is this a month of spiritual development for Muslims, but it is also a time when Muslims are encouraged to increase their knowledge of Islam. For modern Muslims, separated by geography, history, culture and language from the early Muslim community, and from the Muslim populations in the Middle East, this is a perfect time to pick up a translation of the Qur'an, and read it as a means of learning more about the content, context, and intention of the text of the Qur'an. This activity is not intended as a replacement for, but rather as a supplement to, reading the Arabic text.

Moving Forward

Muslimfest last week was an interesting experience. Overall, the event was very well attended, but the turnout for the Writers Expo was somewhat disappointing, possibly because it was situated in a location off the beaten track. Sales of books for the participating authors were very low, but I was pleased to make a number of new contacts and get some exposure for myself and my book.
One of the questions that I received from a number of people was, "What's next?" Well, another book on the Qur'an is the answer.
Tentatively entitled The Women: A Contemporary Exegesis, I intend to use a systematic exploration of the fourth surah of the Qur'an as a means to discuss the themes of wife beating, inheritance, murder and hypocrites. These are all sensitive and timely topics that receive a great deal of attention in the media and have a long history of doctrinal and cultural development. Unlike Reading the Qur'an in English, The Women will be directed towards those readers who are fairly well acquainted with the contents of the Qur'an and who have some familiarity with the hadith literature, shariah, and contemporary debates over women's rights in Islam, and human rights more generally.
On a more selfish note, I am pleased to see that sales of Reading the Qur'an in English are growing steadily, and copies are now available at the libraries of Harvard, Columbia and several other universities in North America.

Muslimfest Writers Expo

I am writing this post early because I will be flying out to Toronto in the morning. I will be participating in the Writers Expo at Muslimfest 2009 in Mississauga this Saturday, August 1, from noon until 7:00 pm. I am hoping to gain some exposure for my book among the Greater Toronto area Muslim community, as well as generate some traffic for this blog. I invite you to write a review of the book, make a comment about some issue raised in the book, or ask a question about the Qur'an. You can get a copy of Reading the Qur'an in English directly from the publisher (Cape Breton University Press), or from any of the well-known internet bookstores (Chapters, Amazon, Barnes and Noble).

Interpolations in the Qur'an

Tradition tells us that the Qur'an was revealed in fragments over a period of some twenty years. It is also quite clear that the various portions of the text of the Qur'an were not revealed in the order in which they now appear. In many instances, in fact, the text of the Qur'an quite explicitly indicates that certain verses were revealed in response to questions asked of or by Muhammad. As a consequence, the Qur'an can be viewed as a reflexive text, meaning that it comments on itself.
The term interpolation is often used when referring to the practice of inserting foreign material into handwritten manuscripts. Sometimes this was done by scribes as a means of filling in gaps in damaged or incomplete texts, or sometimes it was done purposefully to alter or supplement a particular text, often to reflect the point of view of the person paying to have the manuscript copied.
I use the term interpolation in a more positive light to identify certain passages in the Qur'an that appear to have been placed at a particular position within a surah at a different time than the material that either precedes or surrounds them. I would suggest that the purpose of these interpolations was to clarify portions of the text, perhaps to prevent misinterpretation, or perhaps as a means of aiding the Prophet in acquiring a receptive audience for the message of the Qur'an. Whatever, the reason, in my view, the existence of interpolations in the text of Qur'an reinforces the idea that no message stands outside of the context in which it is transmitted.

What We Bring to the Text

No one approaches a text as a blank slate. The art of reading is very much about allowing a string of characters arranged by the conventions of spelling, grammar, and so on, to stimulate new connections among existing concepts, ideas and images that are already part of who we are.
Even though we share many things, each of us is the unique product of our own life experience and education, and each us has developed certain perspectives and values that function as working assumptions or biases, whenever we encounter new text (written or oral).
When we begin to read the Qur'an, even if we think that we know very little about Islam and are completely open to learning about Islam from the Qur'an, our knowledge and attitudes about religion, politics, human rights, community, nature, and many other topics are all called upon as we take in each word, verse and surah of the Qur'an.
In a very real sense, we construct our own version of the Qur'an as we read it. What does your version have to say?

Reading the Qur'an Now

On many occasions people have said to me that they want to read the Qur'an in order to discover why Muslims want to destroy the West, or why Muslim women can be beaten and must be veiled. Only rarely do I hear from people that they want to read the Qur'an to learn how the message it contains has inspired religious faith and practice for fourteen centuries for a global community now made up of more than a billion people.
The fact that the Qur'an is often viewed as a terrorist training manual or a handbook for the subjugation and abuse of women, rather than as sacred scripture, is part of contemporary reality. Words like jihad and hijab have worked their way into common parlance all over the world, and the memory and consequences of what took place on September 11, 2001 live on through personal sentiment, political rhetoric, the imposition of extreme security measures (especially at airports), as well as through the unsettled and unsettling struggles taking place in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere.
When we read the Qur'an today, we cannot erase what has happened in the world over the past few decades, nor can we directly combat the biases that have emerged in response to what has taken place. We can try to bracket out these influences by acknowledging that they exist, and by approaching the Qur'an with an open mind and an open heart, in an effort to see what it has to say on its own terms. I do not mean that we should try to read the Qur'an outside the context of recent history (this, of course, is an impossibility). What I do mean is that we should not look to the Qur'an to confirm our preconceptions about what is happening in the world. Rather, we should see what ideas are presented in the Qur'an and then reflect upon what would be happening in the world if people were to act in accordance with the message it contains.

Competing Monotheisms

I describe my approach to the Qur'an as 'contextualist', by which I mean that the Qur'an, to the extent that it is a tangible object, cannot be treated in isolation from knowledge of the time and place in which it came into existence. Nor can we pretend to be able to view the Qur'an as if fourteen centuries of history have not since taken place. Next week I will have some remarks to make about our contemporary appreciation of the Qur'an, but for now I want to elaborate on a comment that I make in several places throughout my book, that Islam emerged within a context of competing monotheisms.
When I talk about competition I do not mean that representatives of different monotheistic groups were doing their best to acquire the maximum market share of available souls. What I do mean is that the presentation of ideas associated with the One God to the people of early seventh century Arabia would, in virtue of historical circumstance, be compared and contrasted with what those people already had been exposed to, whether formally or informally, with respect to the Jewish and Christian responses to that God.
Even though I do not state the matter this way in my book, my continual reference to the context of religious competition is meant to be a reminder that one of the important questions to be answered about the content and structure of the Qur'an is: Why is so much of the Qur'an devoted to discussing the Jews?

An Arabic Qur'an

In spite of what the title of my book might appear to imply, I make it very clear in the first chapter that only the Arabic Qur'an is the Qur'an, and that there is no adequate substitute for reading the Qur'an in Arabic. However, I also make it clear that because most people, non-Muslim and Muslim alike, lack proficiency in reading and understanding Classical Arabic, there is much that can be learned about the structure and content of the Qur'an, and about the doctrine and early history of Islam, through reading an English (or other modern language) translation of the Qur'an.
Reciting passages from the Qur'an (in Arabic) during prayer, or in its entirety during Ramadan, are an integral part of Islamic religious practice and spirituality, but more is expected. In several places, it is clearly stated in the Qur'an that its contents have been purposely provided in Arabic so that they are accessible and comprehensible to those who will hear the message - "We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur'an so that you [people] may understand" (12:2).
Fourteen centuries after the fact, and living in a world where Islam has spread far beyond the Arabian peninsula, surely it is desirable for people to learn something about Islam through reading a translation of the Qur'an rather than remaining in a state of ignorance imposed by a language barrier.