Muslim Students in Scriptural Reasoning:
Transgressive Readings of the Qur'an
Nermeen Mouftah
University of Toronto
"For me, scriptural reasoning is like Islam, it is
about 'wholeness-making.'"
This is the final meeting of the year. It is a
Tuesday evening, a few minutes past six, and we are
seated around the white cloth dining table, our
dinner plates in front of us. The members of Reading
Abrahamic Scriptures Together are answering the last
warm-up introductory question they will get to
answer: What did you get out of RAST? Tonight,
like all of the bi-weekly meetings of the last three
years, we begin with an ice-breaker question as
members break bread in the Burwash Private Dining
Hall of Victoria College at the University of
Toronto. This evening the group reads Matthew 1.18-25
and 27.15-23 to examine how dreams function in the
Gospel as a confirmation of truth. It is an evening
of scriptural reasoning that brings together faculty
as well as graduate and undergraduate students
belonging to Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions,
and others who do not belong to any. The group chose
the final topic, dreams, and already read Daniel and
Yusuf before coming to tonight's text. The selection
is printed as a handout and passed along. Some people
reach for pens and start to mark their pages. Then we
begin to read aloud, taking turns; each person reads
a verse until we have come to the end of the passage.
Some moments of silence pass as readers reflect. One
student has a question about Matthew's audience, and
there is another who asks about the occasion of the
festival in the passage. These are the beginnings of
the litany of questions that lead to reasoning.
"For me, RAST is like Islam, it is about
'wholeness-making.'" This is Mona speaking.[1] She is
invested in RAST and the practice of scriptural
reasoning. It is more than an extra-curricular
activity or even the basis of her academic career: it
is how she understands her faith.
Scriptural reasoning (SR) has its roots with
Jewish text scholars engaging in "textual reasoning,"
a practice that brought together religious text
scholars with scholars of theology and philosophy.
The impetus for the union of textual studies came
from a desire to heal after the Shoah and contemplate
Judaism in a modernity that produced the Shoah.
Textual reasoning discussions suggested a need to
return to scripture, while also inviting in Christian
Scripture with a "postliberal" hermeneutic. In the
1980s, the Jewish pragmatist Peter Ochs led a
scriptural interpretation group at Drew University
that came to include Christians and later Muslims by
the 1990s (Ford, 2006, p. 3). Timothy Winter, a
leading Muslim academic voice in the SR community at
Cambridge and in the growing body of SR literature,
observes: "SR is not a method, but rather a
promiscuous openness to methods of a kind unfamiliar
to Islamic conventions of reading" (Winter, 2007, p.
109). Although many practitioners and individual
groups explicate specific rules of SR, there are no
set doctrines adhered to in all circles. One reason
for this is the understanding that methods of
interpretation are embedded in the texts of scripture
themselves, which come into contact with literary and
historical methods in reasoning sessions.
I came to my first RAST session in September 2008,
in the first month of my doctoral studies in Islamic
religion and philosophy. The idea to introduce SR to
undergraduates was born in discussions between
Victoria College President Paul Gooch, and Professors
Robert Gibbs and Anver Emon, who each had various
levels of engagement with SR. RAST was introduced to
the student body in September 2005 with the support
of a grant from the university's Student Experience
Fund. It was decided that the faculty would act as
group facilitators with marginal roles in group
discussions to allow for three graduate students to
present scriptures and lead discussions for
undergraduate students, primarily students of
Victoria College. Interest in RAST grew through word
of mouth, and in 2008 additional graduate students
and a small number of community members joined the
group. Between ten and fifteen people typically sit
around the dining table and are greeted by Mia with
the Hebrew Bible, Diana with the New Testament and
Mona with the Qur'an. All of the leaders are doctoral
candidates nearing the completion of their
dissertations.[2]
My engagement with the group and interests in
Qur'anic hermeneutics drew me in deeper than my role
as a scriptural reasoner as I found myself observing
how my own reading strategies were shifting as I
trained myself to read across the scriptures for
critical themes and formative differences; I
discovered new questions to bring to the Qur'an that
were born out of my encounter with the Hebrew Bible
and New Testament. By turning to the Hebrew Bible and
New Testament as a novice reader, I was able to bring
myself back to a state of a sort of textual innocence
with the Qur'an—at moments consciously, and at others
involuntarily. It was a challenging, humbling and, at
moments, terrifying experience. Within the reading
community, I felt more alone in making sense of the
texts as a result of the novelty of the reading task.
I could no longer read Surat Yusuf without thinking
of Joseph from the Hebrew Bible. I wondered how other
readers were affected and set out to explore the
impact of SR on Muslim interpretations of the Qur'an
by talking with Muslim RAST members. I wanted to
know: how do the Hebrew Bible and New Testament shape
your understanding of the Qur'an? What I discovered
was that in many ways, the Hebrew Bible and New
Testament are incidental to the effects of SR on
Muslim RAST members. While Muslim readers are
propelled into the group to read from the other
scriptures, they are most affected by confronting
their own tradition. As equally important as the
intertextual encounter is the site of encounter: the
secular university where members attend classes that
preach critical reading, writing and thinking skills
that influence how the readers approach scripture. I
argue that the practice of SR pluralizes
interpretations and meanings for readers in what I
call a “transgressive” reading.
The transgressive reading of the Qur'an is a
reading that is not preoccupied with the canon of
traditional interpretations and is unconstrained by
the authority of religious orthodoxies. A
transgressive reading is marked by its personal
inquiry into the text where the reader's subjectivity
is acknowledged and is integral in forming a
relationship between the reader and the text.
Transgressive readers may share communities, but
transgressive reading is an intimate act that
transpires between the reader and the page. While its
goal is not to subvert orthodoxy, this is often its
effect. Ignorance is accepted as part of the readers'
subjectivity and is a part of the process of reading.
The transgressive reading is filled with
contradiction as it seeks to open up new meanings by
closing off others that claim the final word. SR
itself does not promote transgressive reading,
however among the Muslims of RAST, it both attracts
and nurtures the transgressive reader. None of my
interlocutors describe themselves or their readings
as transgressive, rebellious, or even particularly
unique. The distinguishing feature of the description
of their own reading is a longing for intimacy with
the text and a desire to make meaning from it.
In Saba Mahmoud's "Secularism, Hermeneutics, and
Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation," Mahmoud
describes the convergence of the scriptural
hermeneutics of liberal Islamic reformers such as
Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Hasan Hanafi and Abdul Karim
Soroush and those of the U.S. State Department. This
hermeneutic is characterized most notably by the
primacy of the individual subject and their break
from tradition, accompanied with such interpretive
moves that regard the historicity of the Qur'an and a
literary appreciation. While Mahmoud explores a
secular hermeneutic of the Qur'an as central to an
American political project, my own examination of
transgressive reading is preoccupied with the
experience of the individual encounter with the
Qur'an; critical questions regarding how and why
these readings are cultivated and what the political
ramifications that a transgressive reading may
present, lay outside the scope of the present study,
although the issues remain pertinent to an ongoing
study of Qur'anic hermeneutics and transgressive
readings.
My analysis is intended to contribute to an
anthropological understanding of SR in campus student
groups, specifically how SR impacts the Qur'anic
hermeneutics of Muslim members. The study is informed
by participant-observer field notes of RAST
discussions since September 2008, as well as
interviews with six former and current Muslim
participants. I also engage the ongoing theory and
scholarship of SR. My textual interlocutors include
essays found in The Promise of Scriptural
Reasoning and Scripture, Reason, and the
Contemporary Islam-West Encounter, currently the
only booklength publications of SR, as well as the
Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, an online and
print publication that takes up the practice of SR
discursively.
The DON'Ts that Muslims DO
The Muslims of RAST include those who read the
Qur'an daily and others who identify as Muslim
through their cultural heritage. Despite the
diversity of educational background, age, gender,
piety, and sect, (although the issue of sects did not
come up in any interview), all of my interlocutors
situated themselves outside of their own conception
of a Muslim majority. Members regarded themselves as
somehow different from their Muslim upbringing or
their friends or colleagues. All of my interlocutors
see themselves on the fringes of Islam, whether as a
result of their lifestyle or gender, or in how they
interpret the Qur'an, believe, or do not believe. As
individuals they share a curiosity for the texts and
a desire to submit the scripture to questioning. By
reading scriptures together, members' identities are
shaped and challenged and by the process.
Part of the disaffection of the Muslim members
that attracts them to RAST challenges the theoretical
work on SR that presumes a reverence for the
authority of traditional Qur'anic interpretations. In
Scripture, Reason, and the Contemporary Islam-West
Encounter, Nicholas Adams, a Christian voice in
SR circles and Timothy Winter, a Muslim contributor
to SR discussions, suggest a particularly Muslim
contribution to SR that is based on their proximity
to their texts and witness to the authority of their
traditions. I observe an ambiguity of the RAST
community that is attractive to students who are open
to the texts and their traditions. I suggest that the
undergraduate, non-specialist membership of RAST
subverts the theory on how Muslims regard their
traditions and the Qur'an and how they participate in
the SR process. The SR circles of the American
Academy of Religion (AAR) conferences and Cambridge
reading circles are different from RAST's primarily
undergraduate circle. RAST members are not academics
in religion or theology, but rather come from a
variety of departments with varying levels of
knowledge of their own tradition, and little or no
knowledge of the others. As a result, readers do not
privilege one traditional interpretation over
another, calling on classical tafsirists to support
their understanding of the Qur'an. Instead, the
discussions approach the texts openly, in naiveté and
in anticipation of what the reasoning will yield.
In Adams' "Beyond Logics of Preservation and
Burial: The Display of Distance and Proximity of
Traditions in Scriptural Reasoning," he argues that
there is a Muslim way of reading the Qur'an that
non-Muslims should be attentive to. He refers to
these points as a rule of "DON'Ts" that Muslims
successfully avoid in SR: "Muslims do not approach
their sacred texts in the dominating attitude of an
expert, one who has command over the text and
can bend it to his or her free will" (p. 130). He
elaborates, explaining that Muslim readers do not
espouse "Western liberal paradigms" of regarding the
Qur'an as a historical text, and distinguishes
Western SR participants from a "Middle Eastern seer
who claims that none but the initiated can understand
them" (ibid.). What shapes these “Western” and
“Middle Eastern” readings? At the university, RAST's
Muslims are trained in the same critical reading and
thinking as all other members. They are similarly
interested in the historical context, literary
approaches and other entry points of analysis into
the text, just as other readers in the group are. If
we are to accept either of the binaries that Adams
presents us with, it is that SR itself belongs to a
Western paradigm: Muslim readers engage in a process
that is not indigenous, and that is at the same time
not foreign in its principles. Adams continues:
Muslims do not approach their sacred texts in the
dominating attitude of the absolutely free reader,
whose interpretations are always valid because they
arise from his or her own personal experience. They
do not force the texts to submit to the demands of
their own infinite subjectivity, or distort them
into meaning whatever they want them to mean.
Rather, they approach the texts with a sense that
their own subjectivity is evoked by the texts, and
made possible by the divine love that shines in
those texts, again disciplined by the history of
the authoritative interpretation. (ibid.)
SR brings together academic tools of
historical analysis, literary theory and philosophy
while simultaneously drawing on the interpretative
traditions of each of the texts. Rather than
understanding Muslim engagement based on a “Qur'anic
reasoning” that Winter explores in his writings on
SR, Adams understands interpretive tradition to be a
devotion to and service to the Qur'anic commentaries.
For Adams, the Muslim participant evokes previous
historical interpretations to interpret. In other
words, Muslims do not interpret the Qur'an at all,
but rather recruit canonical tafsir for their
own understanding of scripture; the interpretive act
is the selection of Qur'anic commentary. At RAST,
tafsir is used to prompt discussion, but do
not constrain readers in their own readings. Often
interpretative traditions of all of the texts are
shared with the group in introducing the scripts and
providing context and a starting point for
discussion. Canonical interpreters and theologians
become additional RAST members; they are speakers in
the dialogue. Their ideas are often seminal to the
conversation, whether they inspire readers to
continue their line of reasoning, or depart
completely from their interpretation. This is a part
of Mona's vision of “wholeness-making,” where
dialogue is critical to interpretation. She explains
how Bakhtin's dialogism reflects this ideal:
In Bakhtin's dialogic imagination, you have to know
yourself to know the other. Without the other, you
can't know yourself. This is different from Hegel's
dialectic where someone wins and someone loses,
like siblings fighting. It is also how I think
about motherhood.
As an interpretative authority at RAST,
Mona's conception of dialogue shapes the SR practice.
She incorporates her knowledge of the interpretive
tradition into RAST discussions; the transgressive
reading is not so radical in its postmodern
disposition towards scripture that there is no room
for the interpretative tradition. As Mona reflects on
her role in moulding discussion, she begins: "I'm not
interpreting text." She says that she does not feel
any pressure to interpret, however, as she continues,
she revises her previous statement: "Sometimes I do
interpret. If the group discussion is not bringing
ideas out into the discussion of my own reading, I
will include my own... Everyone is entitled to an
opinion." Mona does not consider the selection of the
texts to suit each topic as interpretive, nor does
she regard her glosses on translation as formative to
the reasoning process. For Mona, her role in leading
the readings of the Qur'anic texts is minimal and
non-authoritative.
As a facilitator, Anver comes to RAST with the
experience of SR groups at Cambridge and the AAR.
Anver is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of
Law, where he specializes in Islamic law and history.
At the academic SR groups, he finds himself
confronted with the limitations of readings that
adhere to a particular religious position. He opposes
this kind of engagement, because it differs from his
understanding of the process of SR. As the Muslim
facilitator, he explains that one of his goals was to
destabilize orthodoxies when reading the Qur'an: "For
me it was about reading the texts with a possibility
for pure openness and recognizing that all
orthodoxies are about choices made... What are the
other possibilities of reading?" Anver articulates a
yearning for a freedom to approach the texts in new
ways that is likened with Western paradigms. This new
reading invigorates some of my interlocutors, such as
Aminah.
Of all of my interlocutors, Aminah is the most
animated in describing how she reads the Qur'an.
Raised in Saudi Arabia with traditional Islamic
teachings, she followed the faith that her parents
taught her. As an adult, she shed some of the Muslim
practices of praying and fasting that held no meaning
for her. While studying for her MA in genetics,
Aminah discovered a website that explained the
mathematical significance of the number 19 in the
Qur'an. Aminah understood the explanation as a
scientific proof of the miracle of the Qur'an and was
inspired to begin to read. In discovering the Qur'an
for herself, she came to believe that she was
responsible for its interpretation:
The more I read the Qur'an, the more I learned, and
the more it was clear to me that the Qur'an is
clear. It says: "We made the Qur'an easy to learn
if you wish to learn." It says "Only the sincere
can grasp the Qur'an." If your heart is sincere and
you want to learn then God will help you and it’s
an easy book. In Saudi Arabia everyone goes by what
the imam says. What I grew up with is that we are
not intelligent enough to know what is in the
Qur'an, but when I read the actual verses, they are
saying that they are easy to learn.
She concedes that she knows that most
Muslims do not agree with the way that she
understands the Qur'an, but she is undeterred. Her
newfound reading is what makes her close to the
Qur'an and her faith. She tells me that she reads the
Qur'an in the evening and after her morning
fajr prayer. As she tells me about her
experience, she says, not boastfully, that it was not
until she felt that she could read the Qur'an on her
own that she became a Muslim. Unlike the other
Muslims from RAST who do not attend Muslim study
circles, Aminah tells me that she is involved in two
other Muslim reading groups where there are other
people like her who make meaning out of the Qur'an on
their own. She describes the group members as
"regular people: there's a security guard, a software
engineer."
Aminah's reading experiences across the groups do
not fit Winter's (2006) description of the Muslim
relationship with scripture and the interpretive
process:
Properly speaking, a Muslim may only interpret
scripture after authorization (ijaza) from
traditional masters, who have themselves been
authorized as part of an unbroken succession
(isnad) stretching back to the Prophet
himself. Historicity is hence an axiom... In this
way Muslims see themselves not just as
interpreters, but as para-witnesses to the
scripture and to the exegetic cumulation. This
imposes formal restraints on the reflections they
are likely to offer. (p. 110)
Winter's "properly speaking" refers to
his understanding of a specific orthodoxy that is
itself, among other orthodoxies, contested. Tracing
authorization of interpretation of the Qur'an through
an isnad that finds its way back to the
Prophet is itself a specific interpretation of how
the interpreter is granted authority. Winter's
understanding vests the authority of interpretation
with the Prophet, and all interpretations are thus
situated as descended from the Prophet, an
understanding that suggests a limit on meaning in its
claim for authenticity. While RAST members are
cognisant of authoritative interpreters and are aware
of the unique nature of their Qur'anic interpretation
at RAST sessions, most would be unaware of Winter's
formalistic limitation on interpretation. Winter's
account of Muslim reasoners does not account for the
Muslims who do not regard Qur'anic commentaries and
other extra-scriptural literatures. When I ask Aminah
if there are any scholars that influence her, she
tells me:
The level of my influence from scholars is zero. I
think a lot of what they have to say is inaccurate.
They sometimes directly contradict the Qur'an.
There are a lot of verses that say that the Qur'an
is complete and fully detailed—the only source of
guidance—there are plenty of verses saying that.
But if you talk to a scholar, they'll tell you that
you need three or four other sources to understand
the Qur'an. But that is in contradiction to the
Qur'an...There is a very clear verse that says that
people take scholars as their lords. So it says:
reflect and think on your own.
Aminah is referring to the Rashad
Khalifa English translation of 9:31 that is prefaced
with the thematic subtitle "Upholding the Teachings
of Religious Leaders Instead of God's Teachings." The
verse reads:
They have set up their religious leaders and
scholars as lords, instead of GOD. Others deified
the Messiah, son of Mary. They were all commanded
to worship only one god. There is no god except He.
Be He glorified, high above having any partners.
(Sura - 9 Ultimatum (Bara'ah))
Khalifa translates ihbarahum wa
ruhbanahum as 'religious scholars,' where
Pickthall and Mohsin translate as 'their rabbis and
their monks.' Aminah understands the 'they' of the
surah, that is understood from the conjugation of the
verb and pronoun suffixes, to be in reference
Muslims, despite the previous verses referring to
Jews and Christians. Her reading is supported by the
footnote:
If you consult the "Muslim scholars" about
worshiping God alone, and upholding the word of God
alone, as taught in this proven scripture, they
will advise you against it. If you consult the Pope
about the identity of Jesus, he will advise you to
uphold a trinity. If you obey the "Muslim scholars"
whose advice is contrary to God's teachings, or if
you take the Pope's advice instead of God's, you
have set up these religious leaders as gods instead
of God. (ibid.)
Khalifa's commentary illustrates a
distrust of Muslim scholars that interfere with and
constrain the meaning of the Qur'an. While Aminah is
critical of Yusuf Ali's translation, the Khalifa
translation and commentary inform her commitment to a
Qur'an that is unmediated by scholarly
interpretations. The limits of the transgressive
reading are apparent. Aminah's reading of 9:31, a
critical verse in forming her approach to the Qur'an,
is dependent on a dubious English translation and a
questionable assessment of who is being referred to
in the verse.
Of all of my RAST interlocutors, Aminah is the
boldest in her independence as a reader, although
some of her critical views of a Muslim malaise with
the Qur'an are echoed in the views of my youngest
interlocutor, Khadija, a twenty-one-year-old, second
year commerce student who grew up between Toronto and
Karachi. Khadija credits RAST with pushing her to
"stop taking things at face value" in the Qur'an and
in her academic studies. While Khadija articulates
the possibility of reading independently, she
witnesses the RAST readings unfold without actively
shaping the new readings. As Muslim readers seeking
to be close to their faith, they are faced with the
desire to read the Qur'an in a way that is meaningful
to them that transgresses a Muslim tradition of
drawing on text scholars. Reading independently—or
independently among other readers, as in the act of
SR—is a transgressive act. Aminah tells me that when
she shares her ideas with her sister; her sister
suggests that she is being too simple, but Aminah
persists: "I feel like people don't want to believe
that they can understand the Qur'an," she tells
me.
It is this transgression that Anver describes when
he refers to the possibility of the "suspension of
orthodoxy" at RAST. For Muslim members, RAST is a
space where people are looking for something
different: to experience the liberty of reading the
Qur'an without feeling the need to exit religion and
enter the secular. Similar to all of the other RAST
members, Muslim participants resist readings of the
Qur'an that Adams suggests are admirable. While
reading strategies are shaped by the practice of SR,
Aminah's approach to the Qur'an took shape prior to
her participation in the group. Aminah's reading
suggests a Qur'anic reasoning that Winter (2006)
refers to in his essay "Qur'anic Reasoning as an
Academic Practice" in The Promise of Scriptural
Reasoning. Winter's notion of Qur'anic reasoning
suggests an inherent hermeneutic for reading the text
embedded in the Qur'an itself. In Basit Bilal
Koshul's (2002) "The Semiotics of Ayah: An
Introduction to Qur'anic Scriptural Reasoning," he
states:
The most authentic commentary on the Scripture is
the Scripture itself. The way the Scripture employs
a certain term or phrase at one place is clarified
and detailed by the way it uses the same
term/phrase at another place. To understand the
Scripture it is of pressing importance to do a
great deal of cross-referencing--as one part of the
Scripture details, highlights, illuminates other
parts, and is illuminated by other parts. This
means that we have to meet the Scripture on its own
terms, leaving aside other terms, methodologies,
and/or theories that we might be tempted to bring
to the table. (The Rules for Scriptural
Reasoning--Some Preliminary Remarks section, para.
2).
Qur'anic reasoning and the notion of a
hermeneutic that is indigenous to the scripture
itself is a significant component of SR. Aminah's
reading represents an individual effort at a Qur'anic
reading that is sensitive to the sign posts of
scripture that illuminate "God's will" of
interpretation. Yet Koshul adds that readers must
avoid a "tunnel vision" that limits the Qur'an's
frame of reference to the Qur'an alone. He explains
the significance of ayaat in the Qur'an as
referring to the signs of the cultural, social and
historical world that are necessary for
understanding. Koshul suggests a Qur'anic hermeneutic
that adds natural sciences to the SR union of
religious and non-religious textual practices. Life
beyond the text cannot be left out of a Qur'anic
hermeneutic. Koshul's notion of ayah
understands the universe as a witnessing of the text,
much as the Qur'an signals to the universe in its
verses. Ayaat, the signs of God, highlights
the individual's encounter with text and the living
world to witness God. Ayah makes the link
between world and text that suggests reading outside
of the Qur'an to understand its meaning. In this
configuration, text is central to a witnessing of
God's word, while the world beyond the scripture,
"God's Word," proves the signs of the text and
testifies to God's presence.
From Islamic contexts to Qur'anic text
Peter Ochs explains that the process initiates a
"return to Scripture" that Winter problematizes when
he states that Muslims cannot "return to Scripture"
since the scripture has not been abandoned and
"Muslim interlocutors in SR are much more likely to
feel part of an unbroken tradition than advocates of
a latter-day ressourcement" (Winter, 2006, p.
110). Winter explains the different approach of
Muslims to SR as based on the historical and societal
experience of Muslim participants:
Unlike many Christians and Jews in SR, who come
from societies wounded by a great divorce from
scripture, Muslim participants are apt to come from
societies wounded by fundamentalist
misappropriations of scripture, and their
appreciation of the insights and moral teleology of
the encounters will inevitably be very different.
(ibid.)
In my discussions with my interlocutors,
they distinguish between their knowledge of Islam as
experienced in their households and communities and a
knowledge of the Qur'an. For students raised in the
Islamic tradition, the Qur'an was part of a community
experience, whether recited in prayer, or quoted to
uphold cultural norms. While the Qur'an was a part of
their cultural context of growing up, they note this
is different from a personal reading of the
scripture. They sense the limits of their own
knowledge and education in Islam and the Qur'an. An
analysis of RAST suggests that the literature on SR
that presumes that Muslim participants know their
texts better than their interlocutors from other
traditions does not anticipate the SR practices
outside of specialized academic and theological
circles. The lack of familiarity with scripture that
characterizes the student Muslim participants cannot
be associated with ideas of Western secularization,
as posited by Adams, as all of the RAST participants
were raised in Muslim countries. Muslims exhibit a
similar scriptural illiteracy as their other reading
partners, which appears to be a product of the
contexts my interlocutors are raised in. Islam was a
critical part of the cultural milieu; however, close
readings of the Qur'an were not. RAST is a site for a
new Qur'anic encounter where recitation is replaced
with close reading and questioning.
Additionally, not all Muslims who are interested
in the practice of SR are educated in Qur'anic
commentary. While the Qur'an is invoked as part of an
Islamic household or classroom, these invocations are
to passages that teach principles and do not reflect
a deeper engagement with the scripture that seems to
be part of the motivation of members’ participation
in the group. SR literature presumes a Muslim
familiarity with their scriptural and
extra-scriptural sources that is not characteristic
of RAST's Muslims. Student members themselves,
particularly undergraduates, highlight the limits of
their own familiarity with the Qur'an and describe
their familiarity with the scripture as something
taught to them as part of Islam. Sahar is a third
year student of International Relations who joined
RAST shortly after arriving in Canada from Dubai. She
describes her parents as secular and explains that
she does not see herself as a Muslim in a traditional
way. Participation in RAST was a way to learn more
about Islam and began to shape a new Muslim identity
for her. She describes how group members looked to
her as a Muslim and she felt as though she were
represented Muslim views: "RAST was my connection to
Muslims. And people treated me like I was a Muslim
and they wanted to know what I thought, as a Muslim."
While Sahar assigned herself the role of Muslim
representative to the group, she was discovering the
limits of her familiarity with the Qur'an and Islam:
"The biggest challenge was realizing that maybe I
don't know Islam as well as I thought I did. I
started wondering: why didn't my parents tell me more
about this stuff? I thought I knew, but I
didn't."
Khadija expresses her own dissatisfaction with her
education in Islam. She is critical of the
superficial curriculum at the study circle she
attended in her early teenage years when she recalls
attending Saturday Islamic lessons in a suburb of
Toronto. The lessons taught proper Islamic etiquette:
how to eat, how to fast. Khadija's experience is not
unique. The other side of Islamic education for
non-native speakers of Arabic is language. In
describing their reading habits and rituals with the
Qur'an, Aminah, Sahar and Khadija share that they
learned Arabic to read the Qur'an, although they do
not understand it in Arabic and rely on English
translations. While none of the women expressed a
frustration with the task of learning a new language
to read the holy text of their tradition, none of
them felt it necessary to know Arabic to understand
the Qur'an. Aminah explains:
I don't speak Arabic, but I can read it because I
was taught that as a little girl. I still don't
understanding it. But I find that reading a good
English translation is good enough. I don't have to
start learning Arabic. Maybe that's why some people
feel limited. I used to read Yusuf Ali. I used to
read his footnotes and they're crazy. He has these
long footnotes... It was more like reading his
personal take on it than the real thing.
While the women are willing students of
Arabic, they are not limited by the mediation of the
English translations they rely upon. Aminah exercises
her own judgment to deem the most popular English
translation of the Qur'an to be inaccurate and
burdened with the author's interpretation. Is their
comfort in reading English translations confirmed by
their RAST experience? While the Qur'anic texts are
presented in handouts to members in English
translation, Mona is meticulous in highlighting
common errors in translations, such as addresses to
men that are taken from the gender neutral Arabic
word nâs. The multiple meanings of Arabic
words continuously occupy significant attention in
discussions as do common Hebrew and Arabic roots.
When it comes to language, RAST sends mixed messages
to its members. On one hand, the Qur'an is presented
in English—with no accompanying Arabic—on pieces of
paper that are studied while drinking a coffee or
finishing a cookie. It is a text made accessible to
all readers, like a poem. On the other hand, members
are introduced to the significance of the text's
language and an appreciation for the literary
argument for the Qur'an made in the scripture. There
is a tension between the accessible Qur'an that sits
in front of the readers and the Qur'an that is
referred to in its analysis as a performance by the
Arabic speakers of the group.
Yusuf is the only student in the group who speaks
Arabic as his native language and reads the Qur'an in
its original Arabic. He is a first year doctoral
student of the Modern Middle East who describes
himself as a person of Muslim heritage. He explains
the significance of knowing Islam through his
community and how this impacts on an understanding of
scripture:
From my experience, if you are brought up in a
particular tradition, your understanding of the
text is understood first and foremost through its
interpretation and practice. So before you are even
able to read the Qur'an, you hear the Qur'an, you
see it being quoted and used. It's referred to as a
text of authority. So before you even read the
Qur'an, you have an idea of what it is saying.
Yusuf is joined by other RAST members in
their descriptions of Islamic environments that shape
their approach to the Qur'an. While Winter identifies
the Islamic culture as a connection between Muslims
and the Qur'an, something that is distinctive from
the Jewish and Christian participants, I argue that
the religiously imbued Islamic culture of my
interlocutors’ formative years does not include a
personal connection with the Qur'an. In this sense,
the Muslim RAST participants are "returning to
Scripture" by experiencing the Qur'an in a different
context of reading for reasoning and questioning. My
interlocutors describe an Islamic environment where
direct engagement with the text is an independent and
lonely venture. With the exception of myself, all
RAST members were raised outside of Canada in Muslim
majority countries. The Qur'anic lessons of juma'
prayer do not substitute for the individual encounter
with the Qur'an. My interlocutors articulate a desire
for a personal encounter with the text that is
unmediated by authority. While Sahar complains of the
absence of the Islamic tradition, Khadija and Yusuf
describe navigating through an Islamic environment to
access a more direct and meaningful experience. Yusuf
explains:
I didn't have any formal training. All I did was I
attended juma' prayers as most kids do from a young
age. My dad is a religious man who talked to me a
lot about Islam and the text. My first personal
engagement with the Qur'an was at the age of
fifteen when I spent almost two months at the
balcony of my house with the tafsir of Mohammed
Jawad Mughnaya who is from the Shi'ite tradition,
and the Qur'an. It was self-designed.
While for Khadija the endeavour of
reading the Qur'an is marked by curiosity and faith,
Yusuf explains that he regards scripture like any
other literature. While he may be motivated from the
questions (answered and unanswered) posed by an
Islamic upbringing, he is similarly motivated to
reason at RAST as a secular, non-religious reader.
Unlike any of my other interlocutors, for Yusuf, the
reasoning process brings him to "exit religion," as
Anver calls it in his description of RAST as an
activity that allows its readers to question without
abandoning faith.
Throughout my many conversations with Yusuf
regarding the group, we examined the different
meanings derived from the texts. The sessions on the
topic of same-sex relationships represents his
understanding of how the group operated. He was
surprised that the Qur'anic scripture selected for
the topic was the story of Lut, since his previous
scriptural reference to the topic that he grew up
hearing in his surroundings was what he refers to as
"the fahisha verse" (4:16). The RAST sessions
on same-sex relationships dealt with the story of Lut
in the Qur'an and the Hebrew Bible, as well as
Leviticus (Leviticus was given much less attention).
The intertextual reading of the story brought forward
a reading that suggests that Lut was sent to a
debauched people who were xenophobic highway robbers
and rapists. While Mia and Diana suggested that the
sin of Sodom is related to a lack of hospitality,
Mona's reading was more ambiguous and seemed to
suggest that the proximity of Sarah and Abraham's
news of having a child to the story of Lut suggests a
Qur'anic message about bringing forth children. As
Yusuf and I discuss the different meanings for the
story of Lut raised at RAST, he states flatly:
"That's wrong. People should face the issues, not
avoid them; don't make it about hospitality, that's
avoiding it." Lut is a troubling story for Yusuf, who
does not accept that a God would exterminate an
entire people. As he reflects on the text, he asks
questions of it as a reader who treats the text as
any other, "there is nothing divine about it." It is
this position that he believes affords him the
ability to think about it more critically, since he
is not limited by accepting all of the Qur'an, a
principle he believes is central to belief in it:
I tend to believe “critically” means you don't have
to have an overall position of the text. Parts can
make sense and other parts don't have to. That
seems to go against belief because it says "if you
don't believe in the entire text, so if you don't
believe in all of the Qur'an, you have a problem."
I can see how that would be problematic.
For Yusuf, the idea of the wholeness of
the Qur'an limits how much one can question and be
troubled by a particular passage, while for Mona, her
definition of Islam as "wholeness making" is a method
of reading that interprets passages in the light of
an overall message. Yusuf maintains that passages
such as the Lut story have definite meanings,
essences, that cannot be healed through
reasoning that changes the meaning of scripture.
While the other Muslims of RAST participate in the
"suspension of orthodoxy" as they probe for meaning
in scripture, Yusuf, who describes himself as a
person who has left faith in Islam, holds on most
tightly to traditional readings. Mona comes to RAST
with an openness to her understanding of the Qur'an
that does not challenge her faith; the
interpretations brought out in discussion are not
final or determinate: "We're not making
fatwas, we're exploring what text says."
Aminah is similarly open to the possibility of
multiple meanings.
There is a verse that says that there are multiple
meanings. So I know that they are there. For me, if
something doesn't seem to make sense, I don't get
stuck on it. I read it and I try to come up with
what I think it means, but I'm not bothered. Maybe
when I come back to it again, maybe I'll get it
later.
Aminah's sense of a plurality of
interpretations does not unhinge her notion of good
and bad. The human ability to interpret is shaped by
the individual's goodness that is inspired by God's
guidance. A good person can reach a proper
interpretation while a bad person will interpret at
their own will and use scripture to do as they
please. This sense of divinely inspired
interpretations and erroneous ones humbles Aminah: "I
ask God for the correct understanding... I tell
myself I shouldn't be too confident."
Openings and closings
Anver and I are sitting in his office. He leans
back in his chair, stumped by the last question he
has asked himself: "Do I think I learned something
from RAST?" Our conversation is winding down and he
will be my final interview. After some moments of
pause, he answers: "I don't know. It has given me the
sense that I am not alone, in a field like mine when
it is easy to feel alone."
As much as SR is opening new hermeneutical
possibilities for its participants, the open readings
that SR is conducive to are not necessarily guided by
the side-by-side reading with the HB and NT. While
Muslim readers may be influenced by how their Jewish,
Christian and non-religious co-readers interpret the
text, RAST is shaped less by a reasoning that is
found within faith traditions, and more by methods of
critical reading that are taught in the university
classroom. Questions of the hermeneutics of SR are
irrelevant to undergraduates beginning their academic
programs in fields unrelated to religion or
scripture. The "academics" of RAST are witnessed and
appreciated; however, they are not pivotal to the
personal experience of the group members. At the same
time, as my interlocutors describe their own
interpretations of the Qur'an, I am reminded of
modern Qur'anic hermeneuts whose methods are
characterized by their subjectivity and confrontation
with authority. Amina Wadud's rereading of the Qur'an
for a 'gender jihad,' as well as Abu Zayd's
humanistic hermeneutic, are only two examples of a
return to the Qur'an for new readings that redefine
Islam by uncovering a call to justice, equality and
ethics; it is an Islamic reform that draws energy
from the encounter between text and world. Through
SR, my interlocutors bring themselves to the text to
find a meaningful way of being in the world.
For readers who find religious significance in the
practice of SR, the transgressive reading—the reading
of text independently of religious authority and
guided, however 'openly' by academic authority—offers
them a personal relationship to the Qur'an and
develops a new sense of Muslim identity. While Muslim
RAST members may come to the group and to each other
as misfits, the RAST reading simultaneously
reinforces this sense of isolation as they engage in
the risky practice of interpretation, while it also
gives them a sense of community where they engage
with other Muslims in the same transgressive
readings. Their 'Muslimness' is confirmed in their
commitment to read their tradition in news ways. It
is also shaped by meeting Muslims and non-Muslims in
a university space that allows them to return to
their tradition with the skills they acquire in the
classroom and in the SR process, uniting their Muslim
pasts with their reading training in a new form of
Islamic education that places the task of critical
reading in religion as paramount.
The significance of the transgressive reading is
not that it displaces traditional religious
authority, but rather that it resynthesizes
tafsir canons into the reasoning process.
Readers are not cut off from interpretive tradition
as they navigate the Qur'an, yet conclusions are
submitted to interrogation. Interpretation is open
for readers to make their own decisions. The process
comes to represent the very crux of Islam itself for
some of RAST's members. It is Khadija, my youngest
interlocutor, who articulates the point most finely
when she tells me: "In the Qur'an, some things are
open-ended and I think that they are supposed to be
that way. We're not supposed to close them up
ourselves."
Notes
[1] All names that appear are
pseudonyms, with the exception of faculty
members.
[2] In particular, Mona's
dissertation is a commentary on Surat al-Baqara,
where she applies a 'holistic reading' in a project
that employs intertextual methods that highlight the
interconnectedness of the scriptures of the Near East
in Late Antiquity.
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