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Muhammad Faisal Khalil

March 10th, 2022

The third Qur’an: viewpoint diversity in Qur’anic studies

1 comment

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Muhammad Faisal Khalil

March 10th, 2022

The third Qur’an: viewpoint diversity in Qur’anic studies

1 comment

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Muhammad Faisal Khalil looks at the lack of viewpoint diversity in the academic study of the Qur’an and its impact on Muslim society, and the world, more broadly.

As part of the 2021 Abdallah S Kamel Lectures series at the Yale Law School, Nicolai Sinai of the University of Oxford presented a lecture on the semantics of the Qur’an. A leading member of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA), Sinai shared a sliver from his five-year research project Qur’anic Commentary: An Integrative Paradigm. Positioned as groundwork to an unprecedented historical-critical understanding of the Qur’an, the project is worth €1,777,962 in funds from the European Research Council and promises to deliver a dictionary on the “keywords” of the Qur’an by 2023.

During his lecture, Sinai offered illuminating insights into a number of keywords and how the original recipients of the Qur’an may have understood these. He was joined by three scholars on Islam: Michael Cook of Princeton University, Joseph Lowry of the University of Pennsylvania, and Frank Griffel of Yale University. At the tail end of the discussion on Sinai’s lecture, Lowry paused to comment on the state of Qur’anic studies to “note parenthetically that, today we seem to be setting here … the Northern European, white male, non-Muslim Qur’an, which is kind of interesting given how many diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are going on in my school.”

today we seem to be setting here … the Northern European, white male, non-Muslim Qur’an, which is kind of interesting given how many diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are going on in my school.

Joseph Lowry

Only two Qur’ans

Albeit parenthetical, Lowry’s note about diversity, equity and inclusion lies at the very heart of the challenge scholars in universities are facing in the research, teaching, and learning of the Qur’an. There is concern that Qur’anic studies is threatened by the dominance of two Qur’ans. One is a late antique biblicised Qur’an, advocated by Sinai’s IQSA – that seeks to contextualise the Qur’an in biblical literature and uses traditional literature only as a secondary source. The other is the traditional Muslim Qur’an, heralded by the publication of Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s Study Qur’an, that favours traditional literature over late antiquity or biblical intertexts. The two Qur’ans are the result of the Qur’an being studied in these two methodologically different ways and with either side unable to talk to each other about their methods and evidence.

A key feature of both methods is that they, in the words of Lowry, “feel that Muslims are too unsophisticated to pursue the study of what the Qur’an really meant.” Sinai’s late antique biblicised Qur’an does not adequately engage with the century-long work on a comparably sophisticated understanding of the Qur’an already completed by contemporary indigenous Muslim scholars in South Asia. Sinai’s project is examining pre-Islamic Arabic to decipher the keywords of the Qur’an, to one day build a historical-critical commentary of the Qur’an. This is very similar to the project undertaken by three generations of scholars in South Asia – Hamiduddin Farahi (1863-1930), Amin Ahsan Islahi (1904-1997), and Javed Ahmad Ghamidi (b. 1951) – that has produced not one but two commentaries [5,6] using comparable but meaningfully distinct methodologies. The traditional Muslim Qur’an also does not adequately engage with these South Asian Muslim scholars because they do not fit into the classification of ‘traditional.’ Firstly, they exist in the periphery of the Arabic-speaking world. Secondly, they are not medieval: even Nasr’s Study Qur’an is dominated by medieval sources in Arabic, with only two of its 41 sources dated within the 20th century.

A third Qur’an

This lack of viewpoint diversity – the exclusion of a third viewpoint by two predominant ways to study the Qur’an – is significant in three ways. Firstly, the two Qur’ans are parochial in the sense that they are not able to benefit from each other’s perspective as Sinai’s IQSA Qur’an and Nasr’s Study Qur’an do not discover solutions to common problems in Qur’anic studies through a shared repository of tools and knowledge. Secondly, it is evidence of how the reliance on exclusive interpretations leads to the full exclusion of a host of other potentially useful – albeit meaningfully different – interpretations of the Qur’an. This limited interpretative repertoire has meant not only their exclusion of each other, but also the exclusion of contemporary works on the Qur’an by indigenous, often Muslim scholars, who are variously non-white, not Arabic-speaking, and female. Lastly, it has meant that scholarship which represents any third Qur’an receives neither the funding nor the insertion into curricula that the two Qur’ans of Sinai and Nasr receive. The nearly €1.8 million investment that Sinai’s project received is impossible for Qur’anic studies projects within, say, Pakistani universities, because of both limited resources and state censorship. Such investment is also unimaginable in Sinai’s Oxford, Cook’s Princeton, Lowry’s Pennsylvania, or Griffel’s Yale because of the lack of legitimacy any third Qur’an has in the eyes of both academics and university bureaucracies.

Where indigenous Muslim scholarship has been introduced in the curriculum, it is seen as an exotic case in Islamic intellectual history.

To be sure, teaching and research opportunities on the Qur’an for indigenous, Muslim scholars are rare. As such, this indigenous Muslim scholarship has not been inserted into the curriculum of any mainstream university (though it has found a place in alternative learning spaces, such as the Cambridge Islamic College’s Diploma in Introduction to Classical Islamic Texts). Where indigenous Muslim scholarship has been introduced in the curriculum, it is seen as an exotic case in Islamic intellectual history. This largely occurs in more allegedly plural or inclusive fields such as history, regional studies and (even) political economy, which offer only a narrow life to this scholarship in often half-concealed (or technically incidental) forms. As a result, the Qur’anic scholars in South Asia have largely survived in a world of self-funded, independent institutions, conducting research on subsistence, and teaching future generations of scholars through indigenous forms of voluntary learning, such as dars and majalis.

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi sitting at a desk with the Qur'an open in front of him. A dars on the Qur’an by Pakistani scholar, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi. These dars are held by Ghamidi’s eponymous Ghamidi Center of Islamic Learning.

The need for viewpoint diversity in Qur’anic studies

The state of Qur’anic studies shaped by the two dominant Qur’ans is a challenging one in terms of academic as well as social outcomes. Without any acknowledgement of or access to contemporary indigenous Muslim scholarship, the Qur’an is still understood to be allusive and disjointed by both historical-critical and traditional academics (see Hawting’s chapter, on Qur’anic Exegesis and History). Matthias Radscheit, for example, called the Qur’an “a text without a context”, while traditional scholars still understand the Qur’an only as a verse-by-verse assembly of divine speech and decrees. This is unable to meet or recognise the conclusions of Farahi, Islahi, and Ghamidi, for example, who claim that the Qur’an possesses both, clear language and deep coherence. Similarly, while the two Qur’ans still struggle to use their results to benefit social outcomes such as gender equality, religious diversity, and counter-extremism, Ghamidi specifically has produced transnational counter-narratives in support of these social outcomes, and in methodologically sound ways.

It follows that supporting viewpoint diversity in Qur’anic studies is both a normatively and practically attractive way forward. In the context of research, teaching, and learning in universities, including meaningfully different interpretations of the Qur’an will not only expand the field and its interpretative repertoire for researchers and students alike, but also help reduce social harm by producing solutions to significant social problems, including the lack of diversity itself. Muslims are ‘sophisticated’ enough to pursue the study of what the Qur’an really meant. And their study can be valid, even desirable, in the context of research, teaching, and learning in universities. As Lowry, himself said, “The Islamic tradition is one of the great humanistic traditions, and the Qur’an is also at its centre. And it would be a shame, I think to lose sight of the Qur’an’s role in Islamic intellectual history, which is what I worry will happen if the Qur’an, as an academic pursuit, becomes exclusively the preserve of [a few] people.”

Note: A version of this post first appeared on 23 April 2021 on the Contemporary Issues in Teaching and Learning Blog, part of the PGCertHE programme at the LSE.

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This post is opinion-based and does not reflect the views of the London School of Economics and Political Science or any of its constituent departments and divisions. 

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Main image: Anis Coquelet on Unsplash
Second image: Courtesy Ghamidi Center of Islamic Learning (2021)

About the author

Headshot of Mohammed Faisal Khalil

Muhammad Faisal Khalil

Muhammad Faisal Khalil is a DPhil candidate at the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford. He teaches international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Posted In: Ahead of the Curve

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