Voices of Islam (19 page)

In short, although the traditional complex of Arabic religious sciences that earlier scholars developed to study and interpret the Qur’an necessarily remain the domain of a handful of intellectual specialists, the manifold expressions of the Islamic humanities have continued to provide other, often strikingly effective tools for conveying the meanings of the Qur’an to much wider popular audiences. Indeed, their spiritual, moral, and cultural effective- ness have been demonstrated over many centuries, especially through the complex creative passages from one Islamicate language or culture into new cultural and linguistic settings. So Western students who wish to grasp the ethical and spiritual dimensions of the Qur’an are often well advised to begin their study with such proven masterpieces of cross-cultural translation and communication as the readily available English translations of Jalal al-Din Rumi’s
Masnavi,
Farid al-Din ‘Attar’s
Conference of the Birds,
and a rapidly expanding body of other forms of the Islamic humanities, including spiritual music and traditional visual arts. Such historically effective creative means of expressing and communicating the meanings of the Qur’an have been inti- mately shaped by many of the unique qualities of the language and symbol- ism of the Qur’an that are introduced below.

STUDYING THE QUR’AN IN ENGLISH

Students approaching the Qur’an in English have literally dozens of trans- lations available now, with several new versions and related introductory studies appearing each year.
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Such efforts of translation usually reflect a con- trasting set of motives. Some seek to render more adequately the undeniably powerful beauty of the original Arabic Qur’an, with its unique magic of sound, imagery, and poetic rhythms.
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Others seek to communicate what

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their translators consider the Qur’an’s theological dimensions of meaning or right belief, whether through an emphasis on particular types of interpreta- tion (sectarian, scientistic, or apologetic) or by incorporation of, for first- time readers, more of the complex dimensions of traditional historical and contextual scholarship discussed above.
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Still others, like many contempo- rary Bible translators, strive to communicate something of the Qur’an in more popularly accessible, ‘‘easy-reading’’ narrative prose.

However, the suggestions, cautions, and interpretive guidelines suggested here relate to another, quite different and specifi ly pedagogical motive: How can students limited to the English language begin to discover the underlying meanings of the Arabic Qur’an? This kind of informed contextual understanding is indispensable for grasping the underlying connections between the unique structures of the Qur’an, on the one hand, and their sub- sequent interpretive unfolding throughout the two key dimensions of Islamic civilization we have just discussed, on the other hand: that is, the learned dis- ciplines of the traditional Arabic religious sciences, and their endless creative manifestations in the Islamic humanities. This educational motive likewise reflects the pedagogically obstinate reality that the Arabic Qur’an itself is any- thing but easy reading, without even considering the further problems intro- duced by translation. At least as much as any other classical text a student is likely to encounter, the Qur’an is very challenging to understand—although the effort required to appreciate it is also revealing and rewarding, so long as its intrinsic difficulties and resulting interpretive potentials are openly recog- nized from the outset.

For this pedagogical purpose, there is so far no substitute for A.J. Arberry’s
The Qur’an Interpreted,
despite the misunderstandings that are fre- quently generated by Arberry’s recourse to quasi-Biblical (King James) English vocabulary. For study purposes, Hanna Kassis’s
A Concordance of the Qur’an,
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provides an indispensable tool for opening up the distinctive semantic possibilities of the Arabic Qur’an, since it relates every word of Arberry’s English translation to its underlying triliteral Arabic roots and thematic interconnections. The careful use of this concordance enables students using the Arberry translation to quickly locate all the scattered passages involving a particular Arabic root (or wider semantic field) that express and develop a common symbolic theme. Just as with music, this underlying thematic–symbolic structure, which is initially invisible or only dimly discernible in English translation, is the most basic key to discovering the multifaceted meanings and intentions of the Qur’an. Finally, the new multivolume
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
(supplemented by the second edition of the
Encyclopaedia of Islam
) provides helpful explanations of the Qur’an’s many unfamiliar references, contexts, and literary forms in short entries that are readily understandable by nonspecialists.
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Since the problems encountered when students first approach the Qur’an in English differ according to each individual and the particular passages

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and problems the student may encounter, it is diffi lt to propose a single logical order of exposition that would integrate all of the cautions and suggestions that may be helpful to different readers. For this reason, the following observations have been divided into three sections, beginning with a series of fundamental considerations that apply to almost every reader of the translated Qur’an. These are followed by some helpful basic interpre- tive principles drawn from the Qur’an itself, as well as from a wide range of classical Muslim interpreters. The fi al section concludes with immediately accessible unifying themes that are central to interpreting the Qur’an. It should be kept in mind that some of the following suggestions are intended for students who are trying to understand the Qur’an as a whole, which requires demanding study and much time for beginning readers. But most of these points deal with fundamental themes and literary features that can be grasped through study and meditation on a few carefully chosen Suras, something that many students are already trained to do in the analysis of poetry, for example. This kind of close, repeated reading and empathetic, comparative study of shorter passages is most effective and rewarding for those readers who can devote only limited time to the study of the Qur’an.
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Initial Cautions and Considerations

Historical Contexts

Perhaps the most basic consideration that any beginning reader of the translated Qur’an must keep in mind is the radically different situations of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers during the earlier (Meccan) and later (Medinan) periods of the revelation of the Qur’an. The original audien- ces and aims of different Suras intricately refl t this fundamental contrast between the Prophet’s spiritual guidance of a handful of often persecuted devotees during the initial Meccan period of his teaching, on the one hand, and the complexly evolving, much more publicly social and political situation throughout his leadership of the nascent Muslim community in the oasis city of Yathrib, later known as
al-Madina
(The City [of the Prophet]), on the other hand.
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While the scholarship of traditional Muslims and modern phi- lologists differs in many ways about where to situate chronologically particu- lar Suras and verses in this chronology, what is most important for anyone approaching the Qur’an for the fi time is to begin by focusing on those Suras—primarily located in the second half of English translations—that are normally accepted to be Meccan. This is because these earlier Suras do not pose the complex issues of relevant historical interpretive contexts and often highly problematic assumptions that are unavoidably raised by the recurrent theological, social, legal, and political issues that readers must be aware of throughout the later, Medinan Suras.

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Muhammad’s role, as reflected in the Meccan Suras, is that of a preacher, guide, and warner leading a threatened and initially quite small group of highly devoted monotheists in a hostile pagan city. In that early context, the revealed teachings of the Qur’an focus vividly on a recurrent set of meta- physical and spiritual concerns. These include the awareness of the reality and manifold attributes of the One God, the Creator and Sustainer of the uni- verse; the teaching of humankind’s spiritual origin and ultimate destiny and Judgment; and the appropriate ethical and spiritual responsibilities within that metaphysical context. These same metaphysical and spiritual concerns continue to pervade and inform the later, Medinan sections of the Qur’an. However in this later period, many verses of the Qur’an also refer to the Prophet’s increasing role in leading and shaping a much larger and increas- ingly distinct socioreligious community that was constantly engaged in a military and political struggle for survival. The Medinan Suras therefore refl ct the challenging circumstances and motivations of markedly different groups of supporters (and enemies) during a period in which the nascent Muslim community gradually became differentiated from surrounding reli- gious group in both its prescribed practices and its ethical and spiritual norms.

A significant problem for readers approaching the Qur’an is that there are no contemporary historical sources that independently describe the complex local events that are constantly alluded to in these later, Medinan Suras. Instead, the traditional contextual materials that were elaborated by the scholarly Arabic disciplines in subsequent generations frequently reflect later theological, sectarian, and political concerns and assumptions. Such visibly later historical concerns include, for example, the bloody intra-Muslim civil wars and sectarian divisions that marked the century following the Prophet’s death; the elaboration of different theological, juridical, and political schools of interpretation; and the complex challenges involved in relating the Qur’an to the vast body of Hadith portraying the Prophet’s teaching and example that accumulated in the following centuries.

The unavoidable pedagogical problem posed by the later, Medinan verses for all readers of the Qur’an (even in the original Arabic) is therefore twofold. First, there is no way to reliably summarize all of the problematic historical contexts and corresponding interpretive assumptions in a simple and value- neutral way. Even a brief glance at the relevant scholarly literature makes clear how much each traditional interpretive approach remains essentially hypo- thetical and dependent on selective readings of historically later evidence. Second, Qur’an translations or commentaries that supply simplified, highly selective versions of the events in question almost inevitably lead English- speaking readers to approach the Medinan Suras as they would the more familiar ‘‘historical’’ or ‘‘legal’’ books of the Hebrew Bible. Unfortunately, such an approach tends to prevent students from grasping what in fact remains central to most later strands of Muslim Qur’an interpretation.

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Rather than focusing on Medinan events simply as remote ‘‘sacred history,’’ traditional Muslim exegetes have often highlighted the ways in which these exemplary tensions and confl cts, and the challenging ethical and spiritual issues they raise, provide archetypal situations illustrating the Qur’an’s peren- nial ethical, practical, and metaphysical teachings. To take but one key exam- ple: the many Medinan verses referring to the ‘‘hypocrites’’ in the Meccan period are often understood as refl ing recurrent spiritual dilemmas that in fact all human beings necessarily encounter in the course of discovering and deepening their faith. For reasons such as these, beginning students of the Qur’an are well advised to first develop their familiarity and understand- ing of the Meccan Suras. Engaging the problematic historical contexts of the Medinan Suras requires a degree of well-informed, appropriately bal- anced tutorial guidance that is not yet fully available in English sources.

Order and Structure

Moving on to the even more fundamental issue of overall form and struc- ture, any beginning reader of a translated Qur’an needs to take account of the manifold ways in which the Arabic Qur’an is different from what we ordi- narily think of as a ‘‘book.’’ To begin with, as already highlighted above, according to traditional accounts the initial revelations were first
recited
and then recorded, in accordance with the initially intermittent form in which they were revealed. Thus, the current written arrangement and order of Suras and their constitutive verses is generally acknowledged, even by most Muslim authorities, to have been codified at a historically later stage. This later codi- fication process is reflected in the traditional names (included in most Arabic printed texts and many translated versions) of Suras, in the standard division of particular verses within Suras, and in the traditional designation of certain Suras as being either Meccan or Medinan.

The traditional order of the codifi Suras—with the exception of
al- Fatiha,
the short ‘‘opening’’ Sura whose central liturgical role in Islam has already been discussed—is primarily based on their relative length. Hence tra- ditional study and memorization of the Qur’an normally begins with the shortest Suras and then moves toward the longest ones.
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While there is no pretense of a strictly chronological organization, the longest Suras tend to be from the later, Medinan period. Thus readers in English can safely begin at the ‘‘back’’ of the translated Qur’an, as already suggested, with the many shorter Suras that are almost entirely from the earlier, Meccan period.

Readers of the Qur’an in translation need to keep in mind that neither the Sura numbers nor the apparent ‘‘titles’’ of Suras provided in translations (these are simple mnemonic words that were used at a very early stage to identify a particular group of verses) should be considered part of the origi- nally revealed Qur’anic text. Likewise, the original Arabic of the Qur’an is

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