Zwemer Center

Dr. Peter Riddell Lecture: Tafsir (Pt.1)

Dr. Peter Riddell delivered a lecture on Tafsir during a CIU course. Here, Riddell presents the Tafsir principles within Islamic exegesis and different styles within Tafsir literature. 

 

 Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. Peter Riddell’s Lecture: Tafsir (Pt.1):

 

Welcome back to understanding the Quran. We’re going to turn our attention now to the question of commentaries on the Quran, known in Arabic as tafsirah Quran. The word tafsir, t a f s I r, is a term that you need to be familiar with. It refers to exegesis or commentaries, and you’ll hear it often used in connection with this course. Now before we consider commentaries on the Quran, I’d just like you to take a moment to think about commentaries on the Bible.

 

What commentaries do you have? What commentaries did you study if you studied theology in a seminary? What, were the commentaries? Were the biblical commentaries that you consulted? Were they ancient commentaries?

 

Were they modern commentaries? What different kinds of commentaries on the Bible have you encountered? How would you differentiate between them in terms of style? They are all important questions in connection with biblical studies. And the same sorts of questions, occur in terms of the study of the Quran as well, in terms of the study of tafsir, al Quran, exegesis of the Quran.

 

Now what I’d like to do is I would like to begin, this lecture by looking at a few general principles of tafsir before we actually look at some commentaries. I hope you’re keeping in touch with the Moodle page because you will see on the Moodle page that, I have uploaded quite a number of different commentaries, different, Muslim commentaries on the Quran. And they’re listed as tafsir ibn Abbas, tafsir atustari, and so forth. You have quite a number of them listed there. Now we will delve into those commentaries shortly.

 

Before we do so, I would like to first talk about principles of commentary writing, principles of exegesis on the Quran. Now Andrew Rippon is an important scholar on this topic, he has written a lot about the study of the Quran and exegesis of the Quran and Ripon identifies a traditional division of Islamic commentaries into 5 different types. First, there are the traditional, the tradition based commentaries, the Arabic is Tafsir bin Mathur, that is those commentaries that draw draw very heavily on the traditions, on the Hadith accounts for the common commentary task. Secondly, there are the dogmatic commentary, says Ribbon. Those are the commentaries that draw more on rationalist, speculative kind of thinking.

 

We’ll look at some examples of that in due course. There are also mystical commentaries, commentaries produced by Sufi mystics. There are sectarian commentaries, commentaries produced by people belonging to certain sectarian groups, perhaps Shiite commentaries, and then there are modern commentaries produced in the mod the modern period. Now we’ll look at examples from of all of those. A very good book on this topic is the book by Jane McAuliffe called Quranic Christians, an Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis.

 

And what McAuliffe does in this book is she looks at the how the commentaries deal with Christians, with narratives about Christians that occur within the Quran. Now what does McAuliffe have to say? Well, she observes that in the case of Koranic exegesis, classical and modern tafsir is essentially coherent and homogeneous. The classical, the commentaries written 100 of years ago, over a 1000 years ago, and the commentaries written today are largely coherent and homogeneous, she says. That’s very interesting.

 

There are limited numbers of hermeneutical principles, limited numbers of techniques and methods of commentary writing in the Islamic materials. And she says that modern exegetes are fully conversant with their classical predecessors. In other words, there’s a straight line of transmission and dependency from classical to modern. Now this is very different from the biblical context where there have been many commentaries written down the ages, but modern commentators don’t necessarily ground their commentary by referring to the classical commentaries. It’s a very different principle.

 

And that difference derives from essentially different perspectives on the authorship of scripture. For Muslims, Muslims believe that the Quran is God’s word, God’s direct word, the words of God directly transmitted by Mohammed without change. And therefore, Muslims are very very cautious about commenting on that word that is considered to be the actual speech of God. In the case of the Bible, the Christian view of the Bible is that the Bible is an inspired text recorded by people under inspiration. Now that allows for a greater measure of evolving Christian engagement with the text according to contemporary context and environments.

 

So I’ll just like you to digest that. I’d like you to think what kinds of questions in that context, given the caution of Muslims for dealing with the text, what kind of questions might be inappropriate for Muslim exegetes, whether classical or modern? Just think about that. The fact is because early Muslim scholars were cautious in dealing with the Quranic text because the Quranic text was seen as God’s direct word, there was great conservatism in the exegetical process. In writing commentary on the Koranic text, Muslims were very, very cautious.

 

You find this quote by Abu Abu Bakr, the early the very first caliph we encountered him, in an earlier lecture. And he said, which sky could provide me with shade and which earth could bear me if I were to say something concerning the book of God, which I do not know. In other words, pity me if I were to say something about the Quran, which I would do which I do not know, if I were to speculate without knowing. So you get the sense of caution in dealing with this question of commenting on the Quran. And this this caution, this conservatism in commenting on the Quran was very prominent in the very early centuries of Islam and even applies today as well.

 

Now it was ultimately resolved by the identification of a hadith, which stated that whoever interprets the Quran according to his own light will go to hell. In other words, every interpretation had to be traceable to Mohammed, not to the individual commentator. No personal judgments were permitted and only linguistic explanations were acceptable. And what that really meant was that the only form of commentary on the Quran that was acceptable in the early years was use of the Hadith on the Quran. I do encourage you to obtain Jane McAuliffe’s book if you’re interested in this topic, if you’re planning to write an assignment on this topic.

 

And she says in approaching, exegesis of the Quran, it’s important to have an understanding of Koranic chronology. And the principal commentaries are tafsirmusalsal. In other words, what that means is chain commentaries, the the the method of commentary writing that was established from right up until the modern day is a little bit of a Quran is given and then a commentary, a little bit of a commentary. So a bit of Quran followed by a bit of commentary like a chain. Quranic chronology is a very important concept to understand as well.

 

Now McAuliffe restates this this point, really, when she says that Koranic Koranic commentary writing, except Sufi writing, is remarkably cohesive and continuous body of discourse, fully preoccupied with an established range of concerns and considerations. And this is the big point of departure with Christian commentary writing on the Bible. Christian commentary writing has a sense of dynamic evolution, changing with the times to address changing context, not being bound down by preceding methods and so forth. That’s a dynamic process. Whereas in the case of commentary writing of the Quran, new commentaries owe much to their predecessors, to former generations of commentators.

 

John Wansbrough, who we encountered in an earlier lecture, writes some interesting things about the study of commentary writing in the Quran as well. He also came up with a categorization for different kinds of commentaries, and he uses, terminology which, is probably best translated. He says that there are 5 kinds of Koranic exegetical works, 5 kinds of commentaries. There are narrative commentaries. There are legal commentaries.

 

There are textual commentaries. There are rhetorical commentaries, and there are allegorical commentaries, says Wansbrough. And he undertook a major task, really, of surveying a whole different set of commentaries and he came up with these elements or procedural devices as he calls them, which occur across 5 different exegetical styles. So he set out in front of him a whole range of different commentaries on the Quran and asked what are the component features of these commentaries, and that is a list of them, Variant readings, proof texts, lexical explanations, grammatical explanation, and so forth. It’s interesting to consider that list of elements within Quranic commentary writing in the light of what elements are present in biblical commentary writing, how many of these issues occur in Bible commentary.

 

One of the books which I have given a link to on the Moodle page is this book by Ahmed von Denfer, Uluma Quran. And we encountered this book when we were discussing, translation of the Qur’an. Now this is an important work also in the context of, commentary writing of exegesis of the Quran. So as we take stock and as we move ahead with this topic, I do want you to be not simply studying the Islamic materials, but asking for points of connection and disjuncture between Islam and Christianity, between the Quran and the Bible? How does this material on the commentary writing on the Quran square with commentary writing on the Bible?

 

As a Christian, how will you respond to some of the claims of Muslim commentators? That question will be unpacked as we go along in succeeding lectures. Welcome back to understanding the Quran. We’re continuing on with our, consideration of commentary writing on the Quran. Tafsir al Quran.

 

Remember that word tafsir, exegesis or commentary writing. What I’d like us to do now is to turn our attention to actual commentaries, and we’re going to get a taste as to some different styles, some excerpts from the different commentaries. Now as I said in the last lecture, I’ve included on the Moodle page links to the key, Islamic Commentaries, that we’re going to be referring to. And, we will draw on those as we go through these slides now. Now the first kind of commentary writing which I want to deal with are those commentaries that draw very heavily on hadith or narrative for the commentary task.

 

Those commentaries that in explaining a Quran verse decide to do so by telling a story or by quoting a hadith rather than engaging in philosophical thinking. So these are the narrative and the hadith based commentaries. Let’s go back to the very early years. This commentator by the name of Muqhatil ibn Suleiman, he died in 765 AD. Now that’s about 133 years after Mohammed.

 

So this is these are early times. And let’s cast our mind back to our discussion in the earlier lecture about the Hadith. Remember that the Hadith collections were canonized in the 800. So this man died in 765 before the canonization of the Hadith collections. So think about what that means.

 

If he used Hadith before they’d been canonized, questions might be asked about some of the hadith that he used because the canonical collections were not yet available. Now on the Moodle page, I’ve uploaded a a document which includes commentary on the first chapter of the Quran, surah 1. So I’d like you to stop the recording now and read that link, that page. Get a feel for style. Look to see how he’s using hadith.

 

Ask yourself questions about the feel of the commentary, its stylistic features? Is it narrative? Is it hadith based? Do you get a sense of any philosophical thinking? Make notes as you go through.

 

We’re going to be looking at quite a number of excerpts from different commentaries and it’s a good idea to be taking notes of your impressions as you read each one as you go along to try and get a sense as to evolving commentary style because this is what happened in Islam. The very early commentaries depended very heavily on story and on hadith. And later on, the later commentaries brought in philosophical thinking as we shall see. Let’s move on to the next commentary. That is the tafsir of Atabari.

 

Now this is a great watershed moment in Islamic history. At Tabari was a great early scholar, and his great commentary really does represent a watershed moment in the history of Islamic commentary writing. His style is very hadith based. He explains the Quran by use of the hadith. That’s what he tends to do.

 

He died in 923. So this is still fairly early, though, 300 years after the death of Mohammed. But, of course, unlike the previous commentator, this man died after the Hadith had been canonized and so he was able to draw on the respectable canonical collections of Hadith. Therefore, his commentary is regarded as quite respectable. In fact, it’s a it is a significant commentary in the history of the field.

 

He was a very significant man. He lived in Baghdad. His significance was such that he even had a a law school named after him. He was part of a great conflict that took place at the time, between a group called the Mu’tazilites and the Hadith followers. I will say more about that later.

 

But he was a champion of the use of hadith, and he stood against those early Muslims that wanted to engage more in a reasoned philosophical speculative kind of approach to writing commentary on the Quran. They were the, and we’ll talk more about them later. And his commentary is entitled the collection of explanations for the interpretation of the Quran. He also wrote a great history, a history of the world called the history of messengers and kings. And it presented itself as a history of the world from creation until his time, until 915 AD.

 

And it’s been translated into English in 39 volumes. Now his inclination towards historical writing in part explains his inclination to use of the hadith in his commentary writing. He wasn’t a philosopher. He was very much a historian. He was a Hadith expert.

 

That was his style in his two great works, his Koranic commentary and his great history. Now what I’d like you to do is, again, to stop your recording and to look at a sample of Tabari’s exegesis, which is presented in the book by Helmut Gachi, the Quran and its exegesis, published in 1996, pages 123 to 125. That those pages present a translation of Tabari’s commentary on chapter 5 of the Quran verses 114 and following. As you read that, ask yourself, does it differ in any way, stylistically, from the earlier commentary we saw by, or does it feel much the same? What’s going on in the cometary star?

 

This was the period of narrative, really. It was a this was the heyday of hadith based or narrative based commentary writing on the Quran. And this was the safe approach to exegesis in this early period at a time when Muslims were very cautious about writing commentaries on the Quran because they were afraid of being seen to write something that was from them and not from Mohammed. So narrative commentaries and deep based commentaries were very popular. Now John Wansbrough, as we saw in the earlier lecture, considers narrative exegesis to be the very earliest type of exegesis.

 

And I’m now going to look at 3 great narrative commentators. The first one I’m going to look at has recently been the subject of a of a detailed study by Walid Saleh, who wrote the book, the formation of the classical Tafsir tradition, focusing on the Quran commentary of Athalibi. Athalibi, that’s the name of this particular commentator. He died in 10 1035 AD. So it’s still early days, 400 years after the death of Mohammed.

 

His approach was very narrative based. His commentary was entitled in English, translated as unveiling and clarifying the interpretation of Quran, And he draws very heavily on stories of the prophets. Now I’d like you to hold that idea because we’re gonna be talking in detail about stories of the prophets in a couple of lectures. But he, again, he draws on stories. It’s narrative.

 

His commentary has been somewhat controversial as we see in this statement by a Muslim scholar, Abu Abu Ghaffar ibn Ismael al Farisi, who says that Athalabi’s commentary contained many traditions and many sheikhs names. But there are some scholars who considered that it could not be trusted, and its reporting was not reliable. Why is that? We’ll talk about the reason in a couple of lectures. But there is some suspicion among some Muslim scholars about the narrative style of commentaries for reasons that we will discuss shortly.

 

Now the commentator we just considered, athalaby, produced a commentary which formed the basis of the next one we’re looking at. That is the tafsir al Bahawi. Al Bahawi. Al hossein, ibn Mas’ud, ibn Muhammad, al Alema, Abu Muhammad al Farah al Barawi he based his commentary very much on the comment the previous commentary that we considered. He also was interested in traditions.

 

He wrote a collection of traditions and his commentary is entitled the signposts of the revelation. But it also has been quite controversial. This man died in 11 22 AD. And some of the criticisms have come from people like ibn Taymiyyah, who wrote, Bahawi’s commentary is a bridge from that of athalibi, but he safeguards his commentary from inferior traditions and heretical opinions. Al Qattani is not as persuaded.

 

He says they can be found in it doctrines and anecdotes, which can be judged by their weakness or shallowness. Again, we find some suspicion coming from some scholars about the narrative based approach to commentary writing. Why is that? We’ll consider that shortly. But in the meantime, I’d like you to stop the recording and to read an excerpt from this commentator from that’s available on the middle page where there is a translation of his commentary on surah 18 verses 75 to 79.

 

Again, as you read, ask yourself how the style compares to the previous examples that you looked at of exegesis. We come now to yet another narrative commentator, and yet again, we find that this commentator depended on the last one that we saw. And in fact, they were sort of like a chain of of transmission where one commentator who died in 10 36 left a commentary which formed the core of another commentator who died in 11/22, who left his commentary, which became the core of this commentator who died in 13 40. So you can see the interdependence of the story based narrative style of commentaries. This, commentator’s name is Al Khazin.

 

He wrote a commentary which can be translated as the core of interpretation in the meanings of revelation. His commentary is is quite widely used. It has had quite an impact in Southeast Asia, in Indonesia, Malaysia down the centuries. It’s also found in collections of manuscripts in India. It’s been quite a significant commentary.

 

And in many ways, this commentary by Alkazin is the window into the whole narrative style of commentary for many Muslims because it records what the previous commentators did and makes them available to the masses. That’s an important commentary. But it also, of course, is subject to suspicion, And we hear this in the, statement of this modern writer, Adhabi. He read Al Khazin’s commentary, and he said, I read a great deal in this commentary, and I found that it made mention in detail of the Istrah Iliad. Hold that idea.

 

We’ll come back to that. There was much which Al Khazin copied from many commentaries which were concerned with this matter, such as the commentary by and others. But he mostly does not comment on that which is cited from the Israelite nor does does he look at it with the eye of a discerning critic. On a number of subjects, he passes on from the story without clarifying for us its weakness or falsehoods except on rare occasions.

Dr. Peter Riddell Lecture: The Hadith as Commentary

Dr. Peter Riddell delivered a lecture on The Hadith as Commentary during a CIU course. Here, Riddell presents the historical evolution, structures, and types of categorization of the Hadith collections found within the Islamic traditions.

 

 Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. Peter Riddell’s Lecture: The Hadith as Commentary:

 

Welcome back to understanding the Quran. We’re going to move on to our second lecture topic now, and that relates to the Hadith collections. Now this is a very important topic for understanding the Quran because the Hadith serve to expand and to elucidate, to explain the Quran in significant ways. The fact is that the Quran itself is full of guidelines, injunctions, prescriptions. It’s it’s it’s a guide for Muslims in many ways, but that’s especially so at the macro level.

 

At the level of generalities. For example, the Quran says that a Muslim should pray, but the Quran doesn’t specify exactly how many times to pray and exactly how to pray. So the Quran is relevant in terms of macro level guidelines for Muslims. But for the micro level detail of being a Muslim and prayer and all different sorts of areas of Muslim life, the Quran doesn’t provide that sort of detail. And so in early Islamic history, the practice emerged of copying the practice of Mohammed, which came to be known as the sunnah.

 

We’ve encountered the word sunnah before. The sunnah or the model of Mohammed, his behavior, his practice, was, very important for the formulation of Islamic law. And at the time that Islamic law was emerging in the in the 8 100, the Hadith were also being canonized. The Hadith or the compilations of traditions which describe Mohammed’s experiences, his behavior, his statements in various ways. How did these hadith collections emerge?

 

Well, in the early 1800 in the early 800, a decision was taken by Muslim rulers that the law and the customs and the belief should be based upon the practices found support in a particular Koranic verse, Surah 33 verse 21, which states, indeed, in the messenger of Allah, you have a good example to follow for him who hopes for Allah in the last day and remembers Allah much. But also Surah 59 verse 7, which states, and whatsoever the messenger gives you, take it and whatsoever he forbids you abstain from us. In other words, the message to Muslims was do what Mohammed did. Use Mohammed as your model. And that was, a key factor that emerged in the early centuries of Islam.

 

And, of course, today, it is still very much in the forefront of Muslim behavior and Muslim belief and explains, for example, why the person of Mohammed is, held in such esteem and, is such a volatile topic if the person of Mohammed is seen to be insulted in in any way. So during the 1st 2 centuries of the Muslim era, thousands of traditions about Mohammed’s statements and practices and deeds came into circulation. And a number of them, quite a number, quite a significant number, were invented by rulers, it appears, and rival claimants to strengthen their own claims. In other words, in the early centuries of Islam, there was widespread forgery of traditions about Mohammed’s statements and deeds according to Islamic sources. And so Muslims considered by the 3rd century of the Islamic era, which is the 800, they considered that it was necessary to take action to determine what were reliable traditions, and so a process of canonization, classification was carried out.

 

A three way system of classifying the individual traditions was identified. And it’s interesting as you think about the canonization of the hadith to take account to have one eye on the process of canonization of the biblical text as well. Muslims developed this three way system of classification of individual traditions of little hadith accounts. They were considered as either sound, which is the most solid and reliable, fair, which is fairly reliable, and weak, which is less reliable. Now the first collection to gain canonical authority was the collection that we encountered earlier in this course.

 

That is the collection of al Bukhari. He died in 870. This was a period of great activity in Hadith canonization. He evaluated around 600,000 traditions, we’re told by the Islamic, records, And he reduced 600,000 to around 4,000, around 6,000 with some duplication. So 66100000 down to 4,000, you can imagine that that means that there was a a lot of unreliable traditions out there, which were effectively discarded.

 

Now on the Sunni side, there are 6 authoritative Sunni collections, that by al Bukhari, who died in 870, that by Muslim, ibn Hajjaj, who died in 875, and collections of Abu Dawood, ibn Majah, Atir Mehdi, and An Nasai as well. The collections of Al Bukhari and Muslim are considered as the most reliable of the lot. Remember that the purpose of our course is understanding the Quran. We’re studying the hadith because the hadith is an essential tool for Muslims in understanding the Quran. The great medieval Islamic theologian, Al Ghazali, we will encounter him later, he made a statement about the status of the hadith in the Quran, which is quite interesting.

 

He wrote, God has but one word, which differs only in the mode of its expression. On occasions, God indicates his word by the Quran On others, by words in another style not publicly recited and called the prophetic tradition or hadith. Both are mediated by the prophet. So we can understand just how central Mohammed is to the to the literature, to the primary text of Islam. Muslims believe that Mohammed received the Quran directly from God via the angel, Gabriel.

 

They also believe that the records of Mohammed’s statements and deeds, the Hadith, are also part of sacred text. So Quran and Hadith are two sides of a similar coin according to the statement by Al Ghazali, and then Mohammed is central to both. The relationship between the Hadith and the Quran is is crucial, and this is a whole area of, study. The topic of, for example, is a significant area of study for for Muslims. The idea that within the Quran, some Quranic verses abrogate other verses.

 

They replace them. They supersede them. But, also, abrogation operates between the Quran and the Hadith. According to ibn Hanbal, a a classical Islamic writer, again, a founder of one of the leading law schools, the Hanbalites. According to ibn Hanbal, any tradition, any hadith account can be abrogated by a verse in the Quran, but not the reverse.

 

So as we seek to understand the Quran and to respond to the Quran as Christian students of Islam, we can’t underestimate the importance of the Hadith, the role that the Hadith plays in elucidating and explicating the text of the Quran. Study of the Hadith is important. And in this context, it’s useful to turn to the the famous 20th century Islamic scholar, Fazlur Rahman, a modernist, who addresses the question of hadith and sunnah, the interrelationship between hadith and sunnah. Remember that we saw earlier that the sunnah represented the model of the behavior of Mohammed. Well, Rahman says that the sunnah really has two meanings.

 

It originally meant the contact or the conduct or the behavior of Mohammed. But it came to represent in time, says Rahman, with the actual content of the behavior of each succeeding generation. Rahman observes that although the sunnah as a concept referred to the behavior of the prophet, its content, nevertheless, was bound to change and derive largely from the actual practice of the early community. So as you engage with Islam, you will encounter the word sunnah a lot, and you need to be aware that it can be used in 2 ways. It can be used to refer to Mohammed’s behavior and conduct as well as the established enormity of behavior of Islamic generations.

 

Rahman, in his in chapter 3 of his book entitled, quite simply, Islam, he surveys various scholarly approaches to Hadith study, both Muslim and non Muslim. And I would encourage you to access Rahman’s study, that chapter, chapter 3, which is available online, and to read it. Now he makes quite a telling statement. He says, if the hadith as a whole is cast away, the basis for the historicity of the Quran is removed with one stroke. If the Hadith as a whole is cast away, the basis for the historicity of the Quran is removed with one stroke.

 

In other words, understanding the Quran depends significantly on the Hadith, hence our focus on the Hadith in this lecture. So think about the Hadith as a significant text in the Islamic literary corpus. Ask whether the Hadith has any parallels within Christianity. Think of the text. Think of its significance.

 

Think of its role. Think of think of its function. How do we respond as Christians to the hadith and to the function and role that it plays? Are there any parallels within Christianity? Welcome back to understanding the Quran.

 

We’re continuing on with our study of the Hadith collections, and we’ve already looked at, the evolution of the Hadith collections, the historical process that led to the Hadith collections, and we’re going on now to consider, issues of structure and issues of types or categorization of Hadith reports. The hadith are a very important body of Islamic literature and, these, particular approaches to study of the hadith will help us as we understand their significance and as we respond to the hadith as Christian students. There are thousands and thousands of hadith accounts that have been gathered together into the authoritative collections. Now each account is divided into 2 parts. The first part is called the isnad, or it’s best translated as the chain of authorities.

 

And the second part is the mutton or the actual text of what Mohammed is reported to have said or done. Let’s look at an example. This is a a hadith account that’s taken from the famous, collection of al Bukhari, and it goes as follows, that al Bukhari reported that Yahya ibn Bukhair narrated to us from Aleith, from Ukkaya, from ibn Shurba, from Orwa, from Aisha, who said. Now that part that you can see in red is the isnad, and it’s the chain of authorities. It’s the list of people who passed down the generations, this particular report.

 

So beginning at the end, Aisha is the wife of Mohammed, and she got this account from Urwa who got it from ibn Shuhbah, who got it from Ukayah, who got it from Alaith, who got it from Yahya ibn Bukayr. So you can see that each account is tracked back through generations back to the original reporter. Now that part, the SNAD, gives us, in a sense, the history of the account, but the second part, the mutton, gives us the actual content, so continuing to read. Whenever the prophet was given an option between two things, he used to select the easier of the 2 as long as it was not sinful. But if it was sinful, he would remain far from it.

 

Now you can imagine that the first part, the ISNAD, often becomes very unwieldy. And so very often when hadith collections are printed, they summarize the isnaad and they simply give the name of the last person who gave the account to Mohammed. So in this case, this this Hadith would simply be presented as Aisha said whenever the prophet was given an option, etcetera. That makes the Hadith accounts much more, manageable. Now this is NAD or the chain of authorities is, represented here, in generational terms.

 

And you can see on the left hand part of the page at the bottom, you can see the name of the collector. Now in this case, on this slide, the collector is Bukhari or Muslim, and Bukhari or Muslim has gathered this particular account from a reporter who got the account from a successor of the successors, who got it from a successor, who got it from a companion, who got it from a saying of the prophet. Now it’s important to understand the role of the different generations, if we go back to the Muhammad’s generation, which is represented here by the sayings of the prophet, let’s go through that process in in the downward direction. So Mohammed passed the account to his companion, who was a friend of his. Now that companion passed it to the next generation, a successor, the successor generation, And the successor passed it to the successor of the successor generation, who passed it on to a reporter, who passed it on to Bukhari.

 

Now this whole concept of the chain of authorities is crucial for determining whether a hadith account is reliable or not, And hadiths are classified according to their reliability. Sometimes they’re considered extremely reliable, sometimes they’re considered not so reliable. And the reliability will be determined by how many generations it can be tracked back easily by the reputation of the people who passed on the account, and by various other factors. So hadiths are classified as very reliable or less reliable. And the importance of the companions is crucial in this.

 

The companions are those who knew Mohammed. That’s a very important link in the chain of these hadith accounts. Now there’s an interesting definition of a companion by ibn Hanbal, a very early Islamic scholar. He defined a companion as anyone who knew Mohammed for a year or a month or a day or an hour or even saw him. I do want us to be trying to think about Christian, responses as we go through this material.

 

Because this Islamic idea of the importance of a companion to give credibility to the report is clearly something which has distinct echoes in the Christian tradition as well, where Christ spent time with his disciples, and those disciples in turn became a primary source of the accounts that became the gospels, the accounts of the life of Christ. And this can provide food for thought in discussion with Muslims. Another way of classifying hadiths is according to whether they present text which Muslims consider almost like the Quran. So these kinds of hadiths are called hadith Qudsi. They include what Muslims believe to be God’s direct words as with the Quran, and they’re really considered as an extension of the Quran.

 

Now within the thousands and thousands of hadiths in the major collections, there are only about 400 of these kinds of hadiths, and they constitute in a sense an appendix, an addendum to the Quran. Now the other kind of hadith are the vast majority, the Hadith Sharif or the hadith Nabawi, and they don’t purport to contain God’s direct words, they record Mohammed’s words and deeds. Now given how many hadith accounts there are, there are literally 1,000 and 1,000 and they constitute many volumes of the major collections. For ordinary Muslims, it’s important that they have access to these materials, and often the best way that Muslims could gain access to these extensive hadith materials was through summary collections. Now 2 very famous summary collections are listed in this slide.

 

There’s the Mishkat al Masabir, which emerged, in fairly early in the Islamic period by a writer who died in 516, 516 Islamic years after the death of Mohammed. But in many ways, perhaps the most popular summary collection is the next one, the 40 Hadith by An Nawawi. Now I have given a link to this collection, the 40 hadith by An Nawawi, on the Moodle page. In fact, the Moodle page includes links to the major collections by Bukhari and by Muslim as well as to the summary collection by An Nawawi. So I do encourage you to stop your cassette, to stop this this recording, and to take some time to look at that link, to look at the footy hadith by Anawawi, to get a sense as to how it’s structured, and to get a sense as to the kind of text that ordinary Muslims engage with.

 

At this stage of our course, we’re focusing very much on the textual materials, the primary textual materials. I’d like to finish this lecture with a brief consideration of some modern debates which are taking place increasingly in the Islamic world today. Let us begin by looking at this summary discussion was reported in the Egyptian newspaper, Al Haram, on the 9th August 2002, and in fact, it was an interview with the Mufti of Egypt. He is the head of the Islamic community in Egypt, the chief religious authority, and he was asked a question by the interviewer, What do you see as the best way to purify the Islamic heritage from myth? And his answer was interesting.

 

He replied that a specialized committee of Al Azhar Islamic Research Academy had been set up to work on purifying the sources of the prophets hadith and the tafsir or the commentaries from the strange, the false, and from forgery. Now let’s take a moment to think about this. Al Azhar is the leading Islamic higher education institution in Egypt and one of the leading ones in the Muslim world. So from this leading authority, questions are being asked about the hadith and about elements of the commentaries as to whether they are reliable or whether there are strange and false elements in there. So you can see that the within the Islamic community of scholars, there are questions that are being asked about the Hadith collections even today.

 

And there’s another very interesting project that’s taking place in Turkey, in which Turkish scholars are preparing a new collection of Islamic hadith, prophetic hadith, as they’re called, prophetic traditions. And the aim is to only include those hadith accounts which bear, bear a relation with the realities of the modern world. And their aim is to eliminate those hadith accounts, which they do not see as relevant to the modern day. So Islamic scholars around the world are aware that within the canonical collections of hadith, there are elements which are more relevant than others to the 21st century. And some Islamic scholars are trying to find ways of addressing the lack of relevance of some hadith in favor of those Hadith which are more relevant.

 

So I’d like you to wind up this lecture by considering the process of the identification of authoritative hadith collections in comparison with canonization of the biblical text. How was the biblical text canonized? What processes were gone through by early Christian scholars to canonize the biblical text? How does that compare with the processes taken by Islamic scholars to canonize the hadith collections?

Dr. Peter Riddell Lecture: Qur’an Text & Translation (Pt.2)

Dr. Peter Riddell delivered a lecture on the Text and Translation of the Qur’an during a CIU course. In the second part, Riddell presented the revisionist debate and the issues related to the translation of the Qur’an.

 

 Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. Peter Riddell’s Lecture: Qur’an Text & Translation Pt2: 

 

Welcome back to understanding the Quran. We’re continuing on with our lecture topic, the Quran text and translation. I’d like to turn our attention now towards the revisionist debate. What does the revisionist debate refer to? Well, on the one hand, we have the standard Islamic accounts and standard Islamic views of of the text of the Quran, what the Quran is.

 

We began by looking at Muslim statements about the Quran. We looked at how, Muslims believe that the Quran was revealed to Mohammed. We looked at, Muslim approaches to, the variant readings of the Quran. But, of course, there are other approaches as well apart from the Muslim standard accounts. And some of those other approaches, some of those alternative approaches are summarized under the title revisionism, alternative ways of viewing the Koranic text, its evolution, and its present form.

 

Now there’s a whole set of debates this which surround this topic, and, these slides will address those debates, and they will also, connect with, materials that are available on the Moodle site. So I refer you to that for further reading. There’s a lot of material available if you’re interested in this topic, and this topic would provide, good possibilities for for an assignment, if that’s your area of interest. A key name in the whole revisionist project, the whole revisionist school of thought is that of John Wansbrough. And I’m going to spend a little time now, the next few slides, devoted to his statements and his views because they’re foundational to much subsequent scholarship.

 

Although subsequent scholarship has moved on in certain ways from John Wansburys, pioneering research. It’s important to understand what he had to say in order to understand what subsequent scholars have had to say. John Wadsworth wrote 2 books which were published in 1977. 1 was called, Koranic Studies, and the other was called The Sectarian Milieu. And drawing on his book, Quranic Studies, Wansbrough identifies from exegetical materials about formation of the canonical text of the Quran.

 

He suggests that there is either an official recognition of a corpus left intact by the Arabian prophet, a so called urtext, or the imposition of a uniform recension produced by an officially constituted variant versions. Now this is classic Wandsborough. It’s very flowery language, and it’s somewhat difficult. But, basically, what he’s saying is that you can have two approaches to understanding the Quran. Either you believe in an original text which has come down unchanged, which is effectively the Islamic view, or you can believe that there has been a process which has forced a standardized text down the years resulting in a text today which resembles the original text.

 

So it’s either an original text has survived or there has been a process to ensure just one primary text. Now, of course, he goes along with a second line of thinking. Wansbrough continues. He says that the Muslim scripture is not only composite, but also that the period required for its achievement was rather more than a single generation. But this is quite revolutionary.

 

It’s quite different to the standard Muslim view of of the chronic text. The standard Muslim view is that Mohammed received the Quran, and it has not changed in one dash or one dot since he received it. Whereas Wansbrough was suggesting in 1977 that, actually, the Koranic text is composite. And it’s composite in terms of its authorship, but it’s also composite in terms of the period of time over which it it was developed. He continues, with very few exceptions, Muslim jurisprudence was not derived from the contents of the Quran, that it also is revolutionary, and we’ll consider that in later lectures.

 

He talks about different types of exegesis, referring to legal or, as he termed it, halachic exegesis, and we’ll consider that in our next lecture topic. And perhaps his most revolutionary claim is this latter point on this slide where he says that there is an absence of or material providing information on an agreed text of the Quran before the 3rd or 9th century. In other words, although Mohammed died in 632 and the Muslim view is that the Quran was fixed in its form during the time of Mohammed and within a generation of his death. Wansbrough is saying that, actually, that the text of the Quran wasn’t finalized until the 9th century. Quite revolutionary.

 

So the establishment of a standard text such as is implied by the authentic recension of 650 happened around the time of intense literary activity related to the subject in the 9th century, says Wansbrough. And in response to the Muslim view of Uthman producing a standard Quran in 650, Wansbrough says that either suppression of substantial deviations was so instantaneously and universally successful that no trace of serious opposition remained, or that the story was a fiction designed to serve another purpose. He’s questioning the whole story, the whole account of an Uthmanic recension of a production of the Quranic text by the 3rd code of Uthman in 6 50. So you can see why this is termed revisionism, because it’s very much a revisionist approach to the story of the Quran. He also makes reference to formulaic systems.

 

Now this is quite an interesting topic in itself. He says both the very high frequency and the uniform distribution in the Quran of formulae and of formulaic systems could indicate not only a long period of oral transmission, but also composition. By this, he refers to phrases in the Quran that are set phrases that reappear from time to time. He says, and and other scholars claim, that the Quran itself contains lots of set formulaic phrases, the kinds of formulaic phrases that are typical of oral storytelling, of oral story. That’s quite revolutionary.

 

And in introducing another topic, Wansbrough refers to the formulation of the sunnah. The sunnah is the way of Mohammed, the story of Mohammed’s model as embodiment of prophetic practice and judgment. Now the formulation of Mohammed as the model cannot be dated, he says, before the beginning of 3rd of 9th century and thus may be seen as coincident with recognition of the Quran as the canonical collection of prophetic logia. Canonization of the Quranic revelation could only have been affected within the community once its content could be related to that of the prophetical sunnah. In other words, Wansbrough is suggesting that not only the Quran itself was not finalized until 9th century, a full 200 to 250 years after Mohammed.

 

But the very story of Mohammed himself wasn’t finalized until that same period. Now Wansbur wrote in 1977, and there have been many other scholars since then who have picked up on his writings and have either carried them further or have challenged them. A contemporary scholar writing in the 21st century is Angelica Neuert. She’s a German scholar, a very widely published and very, very, gifted, scholar, and she has written a lot on the whole question of the text of the Quran and somewhat responded to Wansbur’s claims. Some of her writing can also be found online.

 

And in one of her interesting very interesting articles in the journal of Quranic studies entitled the Quran and History, a disputed relationship, Newvert’s New Wirtz, points up the controversy surrounding the history of the Quran. She argues that canonization, the process of canonization is crucial for understanding the history of the text. She points out that Koranic studies lags far behind biblical studies. She observes, as we discussed previously, that there is no critical text of the Quran. There’s no critical edition of the Quran as such, and that the whole question of the variant readings has been under studied.

 

She says that looking at the Quran itself, one is confronted with a uniquely complex scenario that would be extremely difficult to invent. So she’s skeptical about the idea that the Quran itself is an invention. She’s challenged by some of the most extreme of the revisionist claims. She surveys the revisionist writings of people like John Wansbrough, Patricia Kroner, Michael Cook, Joseph Van Ness, Fred Donner. And she asked questions about the revisionist claim.

 

She writes, the crucial shortcoming, however, in my view, is the total neglect of the Koran itself as a literary text, and thus as a source that has to be decoded and evaluated historically. She surveys quite a number of revisionist writings, writings by people like Guenter Luling and Christoph Luxenberg, for whom a link is available on the Moodle page. And Angelica Newvert issues a call. She says, let us shift the focus from the circumstances of the Quranic event back to the Quran itself as the center of the query, arguing that the Quran is not meant as a book to study but as a text to recite. This is somewhat reminiscent of Adrian Brockett’s comments earlier, reminding us that the Quran was not designed to be primarily a written text but was more an oral account, an oral record.

 

Nuverts calls for us to turn from Quran history to a history of the Quran. And she writes significantly that the history experience in the Quran is not least representation of significant past evoke to shed light on the lived present and to make it partake in the aura of salvation history. The Quran thus is not only in its later communal use, but from its very genesis, a liturgical text. So she’s calling for an a recognition of the Quran as liturgy, as orality rather than getting bogged down in the written text of the Quran. This is her approach.

 

And she observes that the surahs, the chapters of the Quran, constitute complex genres that set them apart from biblical storytelling, so she’s questioning the an approach which uses the biblical text as the reference point in examining the Quran. So you can see this room here for huge debates. The whole revisionist question is one which is a a work in progress. Much work remains to be done. In some ways, the greatest strength of the whole revisionist approach is not so much in the answers provided, but rather in the questions asked.

 

And more and more things are being discovered. I have given you a link on the Moodle page to a a YouTube film called the Quran original manuscript and interpretation, which deals with yet another element in the whole revisionist conversation. That is the Yemeni manuscripts, the manuscripts of the Quran that were discovered in Yemen in 1972. I will let the the film speak for itself. But if you’re interested in revisionism, it’s important to understand the significance of the discovery of the Quran manuscripts in Yemen.

 

The Moodle page also includes a link to an article by Toby Lister in The Atlantic Monthly of 1999, January 1999, in 3 parts, which looks at the Yemeni manuscripts, placing that conversation in a more popular forum. It’s a good read and well worth reading. Now in discussing revisionism, some of the concepts in revisionism are quite difficult, but they are important as another voice about the Quran. And as we finish our lectures on the Quran text and translation, I’d like you to digest the materials. I’d like you to be listening for Muslim voices and Muslim views on the Quran and considering non Muslim approaches as well, because there are some very interesting discussions and debates taking place.

 

I’d like you to distill from the previous discussion those revisionist claims about the Quran that are at odds with Muslim views. I’d also like you to be considering some of the questions that non Muslims ask. For example, should non Muslims pose such critical questions of the Quran if it causes discomfort for Muslims, and it does cause discomfort for Muslims. Now some Christians feel that we shouldn’t be asking these questions. Others say these are question important questions to ask.

 

There’s a debate there among Christians. What do you think? And I do encourage you to read as much as you can online about the Yemeni manuscripts and about revisionist approaches to the Quran as well as, of course, reading Muslim approaches to the Quran. Because in order to engage with the issue of the Quran as Christians, we need to be aware of both of what Muslims are saying and believing, but also of what non Muslims are saying and believing. Can the Yemeni manuscripts be compared with the Dead Sea Scrolls?

 

Why? Why not? There’s much food for thought here, and I do wish you well as you proceed in your studies of the Quran, its text, and its translation. Welcome back to understanding the Quran. We’re continuing on with our 1st lecture topic, the Quran text and translation.

 

And, we’re going to finish it off now by looking at the issue of, translation of the Quran. This is a very interesting topic because it intersects quite, significantly with the whole question of Bible translation. As you are no doubt aware, there is a very rich tradition of translation of the Bible in Christian history going right back to the very earliest centuries. In the case of the Quran, the story is somewhat different. Because the Quran in its Arabic original text has been prescribed in a liturgical context by 3 of the 4 Sunni law schools since the earliest period of Islamic history.

 

Now what that means is that within Sunni Islam, the majority, of Islam, perhaps 85% of Muslims in the world are Sunnis. There are 4 key remaining surviving law schools, and 3 of those four required that the liturgy of worship in the mosques should be conducted in in Arabic, not in local languages. Now when we consider that the majority of Muslims in the world today are non Arabic speaking, that has some quite some considerable significance. It’s like saying that the majority of that all Christians, when they’re conducting their liturgy, should conduct it in Greek or Latin. You can imagine that that would pose a challenge for for many Christians around the world in terms of their understanding of of the actual acts of worship.

 

But that is the tradition within Islam that the Quran itself is in Arabic, and it has been the Arabic Quran has been central to Islamic liturgical practice for the vast majority of Muslims, whether they were Arabs or non Arabs since the beginning of Islamic history. There’s really only one law school that’s, shown greater flexibility on this score, and that is the law school of the Hanafites. We encountered the Hanafites earlier when we saw that reading, that comment by Abu Hanifa about a view of the Quran. So the Hanafite law school, which is centered on Turkey and associated regions, has been more flexible in terms of using translated texts of the Quran in liturgical context. Now why is this?

 

Well, there are a whole range of reasons, but especially that the wording of the Quran was seen as a miracle, as a divine miracle, which could not be reproduced by mankind. So the actual words of the Quranic text Muslims believed to be divine and miraculous. And, therefore, the idea of rendering those words in another language was problematic. Now this was allow this was somewhat resolved by allowing interlinear renderings, providing the explanatory text, but not superseding the Arabic text. Now an interlinear text, of course, has the original text plus the translated text in between the lines.

 

And some, Muslims got got around the issue by that. But things changed quite significantly in the early 20th century when there were some pronouncements coming out of Cairo by leading scholars on Maraghri and Shaltout, where they allowed for Muslims who didn’t know Arabic to recite the coranic text in of their prayers in their local languages, saying that meaning was really paramount. Here’s an example of an interlinear text of the Quran, with the Chinese translation provided in between the Arabic text of the Quran. That still allows for the key Arabic text to be present, but it allows for translation on the same page. If you’re interested in this question of translation of the Koranic text, perhaps with a view to a comparative study of biblical translation, I would refer you to this book by Ahmed von Denfa, ulumaal Quran, an introduction to the sciences of the Quran.

 

Now on the Moodle page, I have provided a link to an online, copy of this text, and it’s a key source for understanding Muslim views of translation of the chronic text. Fontenba writes, without translations of the Quran today, there’s no way of effective dawah, that’s Islamic mission, either to non Muslims or to Muslims themselves since those familiar with the language of a Quran are few in number, And the vast majority of people have no opportunity to become acquainted with the meaning of the Quran unless it be rendered into their mother tongue. So clearly, Ahmed von Denfer, who’s a German convert to Islam, he’s very much in favor of the Quran being translated and the translated text being used because it helps the process of Islamic mission, Islamic outreach, whether it be to Muslims who are less observant or to non Muslims. Interestingly, von Danfel lays down clear criteria for those who translate the Quran. He doesn’t advocate that Any person can translate the Quran.

 

He says only certain people can translate the Quran. He says, firstly, they must be a Muslim. Secondly, they must have an adequate knowledge of both the source language, which is Koranic Arabic, of course, and the target language. And he says, thirdly, they must be well acquainted with the related sciences with this Islamic subjects. So in other words, it’s not enough simply that a person be a Muslim and that they know Arabic and the target language, but they must have formally studied Islamic, the Islamic subjects, perhaps in a seminary, an Islamic seminary or equivalent, subjects such as hadith, such as tafsir.

 

That’s exegesis. We’re gonna start talk about that in a later lecture. So in other words, the only people who should translate the Quran in the view of von Denver are people who are Muslim, have a good knowledge of the relevant languages, and have been formally and properly trained in Islamic theology and the study of Islam. I’ve provided a link on the Moodle site to, a very interesting YouTube lecture, by a an Islamic a young Islamic scholar by the name of Abu Ruh Mesa in which he conducts a survey of Quranic translations, the history of Quranic translations, and he conducts a comparison of, the Islamic translations. Now it’s actually, his lecture is in several parts.

 

I’ve provided a link to part 1, and I suggest you at least listen to part 1, making notes on the issues which he raises. And remember that our purpose in this course is not simply to to study Islam, but it’s to think about the ramifications for Christians to think in a comparative sense, but also to equip ourselves as Christians to engage with Muslims. So as you listen to the lecture by Aburumasa, make notes and consider these issues in the light of bible translation. Do the same issues arise? If not, how will you respond to the Muslim view of translating the Quran this lecturer is presenting?

 

I’d also like you to, browse the website. Again, a link has been provided on the Moodle page, dot info, where there are multiple translations of the Quran available. Look at any selection of verses in different translations. Just take take 5 verses perhaps from or take surah 1, the first chapter of the Quran, and look at how it’s translated differently in the different versions, different translations. Ask yourself, what are the differences?

 

How are different approaches being taken? And, again, consider it in the light of bible translation.

Dr. Peter Riddell Lecture: Qur’an Text & Translation (Pt. 1)

Dr. Peter Riddell’s lecture on the Text and Translation of the Qur’an was delivered during a CIU course. In the first part, Riddell presented Islamic perspectives on the historical and contemporary understanding of the Qur’an and issues related to the variant readings of the Qur’an.

 

 Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. Peter Riddell’s Lecture: Qur’an Text & Translation Pt1: 

 

Welcome back to understanding the Quran. In this, first lecture, we’re going to be addressing the Quran itself, the Quran text and translation, and we’re beginning, this first segment of this, lecture topic by listening to Muslim voices on the Quran. Now I would draw your attention to the course website, to the resources available there. I’ve provided links to some important web materials. There is a vast amount of information on the Quran and on its text, and on its interpretation on the on the, Internet.

 

And I draw your attention to up the, top of the course website to a link that’s provided to thequran.com website. It provides a vast amount of information on the Quran, various translations, word studies on the Quran. I’d also, note the Quran and Hadith Explorer that’s available there through a link, again, a good resource, and we should start our study of the Quran by reading and listening to what Muslims say about the Quran. And those 2 websites and other materials available, will help you do that. How do Muslim view the Quran?

 

What I’m providing in these slides is merely, the tip of the iceberg, but I’m going to take 2 views, 2 stated views by Muslims of what they consider the Quran to be to give us a window into Muslim attitudes. And in the next segment, we will, look at non Muslim attitudes so that we have a sense of the range of opinion that exists out there about the Quran. The first, voice I want to listen to is the voice of Abu Hanifa. Now Abu Hanifa, as you can see, he died in 765. He’s a great early scholar of Islam.

 

In fact, he was the founder of the Hanafi, law school, one of the 4 surviving law schools in Sunni Islam named after him, the Hanafi law school, Hanafites, they’re referred to named after Abu Hanifa. That is the dominant law school in Turkey and Turkish influenced areas of the Muslim world. He’s a very key thinker and a key writer. He’s left a lot of writing and so what he says carries a lot of weight. Let’s listen to what he says, and let’s think about his description of the Quran.

 

The Quran is the word of God and is his inspired word and revelation. It’s a necessary attribute of God. It’s not God, but still it is inseparable from God. It’s written in volume. It’s written in language.

 

It’s remembered in the heart, and its letters and its vowel points and its writing are all created for these are the works of man, but God’s word is uncreated. Its words, its writing, its letters, and its verses after the necessities of man, for its meaning is arrived at by their use. But the word of God is fixed in the essence of God, and he who says that the word of God is created is an infidel. Now a couple of thoughts about this. Note the last sentence, the last phrase, in fact, he who says that the word of God is created is an infidel.

 

That’s actually a window into a big debate that was taking place during his lifetime. He died in the middle of the 700, and this was a period of a huge debate bit between a school of thinkers who could be termed liberal in the modern in modern terminology, who argued for human free will, and they also argued that the Quran was a created text. Now he is responding to that and rejecting that stance and that opposition, the view that the Quran was uncreated came to be the dominant viewpoint and it came to be part of orthodoxy. So he’s speaking into a debate there and, obviously, living that debate as well. The other thought that strikes me as I look at this statement is, that while not every Muslim today out there in the Muslim communities around the world will necessarily know the writings of Abu Hanifa or know his words, Nevertheless, his school of thought is a very significant school and through subsequent writers in Hanafite law school, he still carries a great influence on on Muslims today.

 

So it’s important to study him and to understand the kinds of things he’s saying about the Quran. So let’s hold his ideas in our mind as we go to a second statement about the Quran. Now this is a much more popular modern statement. It’s taken from a website, written by an unknown author, uploaded to the islamonline.netwebsite, so this is a modern statement giving another perspective on the Quran. What does this writer say?

 

How does this writer view the Quran? Well, he writes, before the reader begins to study the Quran, he or she must realize that, unlike all other writings, this is a unique book with a supreme author, an eternal message and a universal relevance. Its contents are not confined to a particular theme or style, but contains the foundations for an entire system of life, covering a whole spectrum of issues, which range from specific articles of faith and commandments to general moral teachings, rights and obligations, crime and punishment, personal and public law, and a host of other private and social concerns. Now the first statement we we read was written in the middle of the 700. This statement was written in the early 21st century, a big distance in time.

 

How are they different? Think about those two statements and compare and contrast the Muslim views of the Quran as articulated in the previous slides with Christian views of the Bible. So there’s 2 tasks there, so stop the recording, think about how those two Muslim statements complement each other and contrast with each other, if you feel there is a contrast. And secondly, do a contrast of analysis with between those statements and views of the bible among Christians. Now we’re staying on Muslim views, and, of course, the Quran is believed by Muslims to be the result of a set of experience that Mohammed had during his lifetime in Mecca, in a cave outside the city of Mecca.

 

So, again, let’s listen to the account in the hadith collections of Muhammad’s experiences in that cave where Muslims believe he received revelations which became the Quran. What actually happened in the cave? Well, this is the account that Muslims accept as historical. It’s presented in the great hadith collection of, the collector, al Bukhari. He died in 870, al Bukhari, and he was one of the great six collectors of traditions in, Sunni Islam, and his collection is called the Sahir, which means the sound collection, the reliable collection.

 

We’ll talk more about the hadith in a later lecture. For now, let’s listen to what Abu Dhabi’s work, the Sahih, has to say about Mohammed’s experiences in the cave. As you listen, I want you to be thinking about the concept of revelation in the Bible as well. So as we listen to the account in the Sahih al Bukhari of Muhammad receiving the Quran, think to yourself how that compares and contrasts with biblical accounts of prophets receiving divine revelation. The account begins, narrated Asia.

 

Aisha was Muhammad’s wife, so she is the source of this account. The commencement of the divine inspiration to Allah’s apostle, that’s Mohammed, was in the form of good dreams which came true like bright daylight, and then the love of seclusion was bestowed upon him. He used to go in seclusion in the cave of Hira where he used to worship continuously for many days before his desire to see his family. He used to take with him the journey food for the stay and then come back to his first wife, Khadija, to take his food likewise again till suddenly the truth descended upon him while he was in the cave of Hera. The angel came to him and asked him to read.

 

The prophet replied, I do not know how to read. The prophet added, the angel caught me forcefully and pressed me so hard that I could not bear it anymore. He then released me and again asked me to read and I replied, I do not know how to read. A small comment at this stage, the translation of read could also be translated as recite. It comes from the Arabic verb, which means both read and recite.

 

This translator has decided to translate it as read, but it could also be translated as recite. Continuing on, thereupon he caught me again and pressed me a second time till I could not bear it anymore. He then released me and again asked me to read, but again I replied, I do not know how to read. Thereupon, he caught me for the 3rd time and pressed me and then released me and said, read in the name of your Lord who has created has created man from a clot. Read and your lord is the most generous.

 

Now those words are found in verses 1, 2, and 3 of the Surah 96, chapter 96 of the Quran. And they’re believed to be the first words that Mohammed received. Continuing on, then Allah’s apostle returned with the inspiration and with his heart beating severely. Then he went to Khadija bint Hawaylid, his first wife, and said, cover me. Cover me.

 

They covered him till his fear was over, and after that, he told her everything that had happened and said, I fear that something may happen to me. Khadija replied, never, by Allah. Allah will never disgrace you. You keep good relations with your kith and kin, help the poor and the destitute, serve your guests generously, and assist the deserving calamity afflicted ones. So I’d like you to think about that and think of parallels with prophetic revelation in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

 

Think of points of distinction. How are they similar? How are they distinctive? And in those statements, we have the beginnings of Muslim statements about the Quran, its inception and how it’s perceived. A very good source for comparative studies and apologetics on this topic, is the book, the the bible and the Quran, a question of integrity by Stephen Masood.

 

A copy of this is held by the CIU library, and I’d encourage you to refer to that for a comparative discussion of views of revelation between Islam and Christianity. Well, welcome back to our course on understanding the Quran. We’re going to continue on with the, first lecture topic that is the Quran text and translation. And, this time we’re going to address what is a quite a controversial issue in some quarters, and that is the issue of the variant readings of the Quran. Variant readings.

 

Now on the screen at the moment, we have, a a view of a book that was written, by a Muslim scholar by the name of Ahmed Ali Al Imam, and it deals with the variant readings of the Quran. This topic has attracted a lot of attention from both Muslim and non Muslim scholars, and, non Muslim scholars use, they taken often taken approach which questions the variant readings in terms of some of the standard, claims of of of Islam about the Quran being an unchanged text since the time of Mohammed. We’ll look more at that as we go through these slides. Let’s first briefly talk about the standard view about the actual compilation of the Quranic text. If we look at the hadith accounts, which we encountered earlier, they tell us that the first official collection of the Quran took place under the first caliph, Abu Bakr.

 

When Mohammed died in 632, he was replaced as head of the Islamic community by his close associate, Abu Bakr, who was already an old man. He served as the first caliph or head of the Islamic community for 2 years, and Islamic tradition tells us that during those 2 years, the first collection of the Koranic text occurred bringing together records from diverse materials from writings on camel bone, writings on pieces of wood, and various materials. Now if that first collection actually took place, it’s likely that it was distributed to different cities in the, Islamic empire, in the growing Islamic empire. And as time went by, little differences occurred in the records of the Koranic text in the different cities, and that led to some difference of opinion among Muslims as to certain words and phrases in the Quranic record. So in around 650, according to this traditional view, the 3rd caliph, Uthman, he had an official collection made during his reign.

 

And Muslims believe that that official collection in 650 is what we find today in the Quran that we can obtain in many outlets in our cities and towns. Nevertheless, further, changes took place to some extent because the Arabic language of that period wasn’t in its final form in terms of its alphabet. It hadn’t finalized certain dots and dashes and other ways that distinguish some Arabic letters from others. And so after the reign of Uthman and after that first collection, there was ongoing debate about certain words and phrases. And the famous Abu Bakr ibn Mujahid, who died in 936, he wrote a book which officially identified what became known as the 7 official readings of the Quran, which allows for minor differences with certain words, different parts of the quranic text.

 

Now that’s the official account, and one does get challenges to that official account coming from various quarters. But what I’d like to do for the moment as we go through through the slides is think further, about the different approaches to this question. We’ll begin by looking at other Muslim statements. Let’s consider the Hadith accounts themselves. What do they tell us about the collection of the quranic text?

 

I’m going to be drawing on this book, by William Goldsack called selections from Mohammedan traditions, a link to which is provided on the Moodle page for this course. Now what Goldsack did was he selected traditions from the big collections, and he compiled them into a a volume. So he’s not by any means the author of these. He’s merely a collector, a reporter of established traditions. Now one of the, accounts that Goldsack draws from, the big collections of traditions relates to the question as to whether the Quran existed in textual compiled form during the life of Mohammed.

 

And citing from Gold sack, he gives a text, a a a a hadith account, which says it’s related from ibn Umar that the apostle of God forbid traveling with the Quran towards the land of an enemy. That’s drawn from Muslim and Bukhari, 2 of the greatest collections of hadith. And similarly, in another account drawn from the collection of of Muslim, that’s the name of the collector, Muslim, in another tradition, it runs do not travel with the Quran for I cannot protect it from being taken by the enemy. Now these two Hadith accounts seem to suggest that the Quran existed as a volume during the life of Mohammed, which is at odds with the established view that the Quran wasn’t collected until the lifetime of Abu Bakr, who followed Mohammed. Further on, Muslim and Bukhary, the 2 great Sunni collectors of traditions, they point to variations in reading occurring during the lifetime of Mohammed and being accepted by him.

 

Let’s read this account. It’s related from that he said, I heard a man reciting the Quran, and I heard the prophet reciting differently from it. Then I brought him to the prophet and informed him, and I perceived in his face signs of displeasure. Then he said, both of you are right. Therefore, do not contradict each other.

 

For verily, those who were before you differed and were destroyed. Now that tradition is drawn from the great collection by Abu Dhabi, and it seems to suggest that Mohammed was willing to accept some slight variations on the Koranic record himself. Similarly, in another account that GoldSec presents before us, it’s recorded that Uthman instructed Abdullah ibn Zubayr, Sayed ibn al-‘As, and Abdullah ibn al Harith to assist Sayed ibn Thabit in collecting the authoritative text of the Quran, specifying that where they differed on a detail of the text, that particular word or phrase should be recorded in the Qureshi dialect. Now the Quraish were the dominant tribe, Mohammed’s tribe, in Mecca. So in other words, if there was any difference of opinion among the early Muslims about the meaning of a word or phrase or a detail, they had to follow the dialect of the Quraish, namely the dialect of Mohammed.

 

Staying on Muslim perspectives on this view, let’s listen to, the writing of a couple of Indonesian sources. One is by a writer by the name of Shalih, and he writes a book about these seven readings. And the other one is drawn from the official Indonesian government translation of the Quran that was published in 1974, beginning with Shaliha. Shaliha shaliha considers how to categorize different readings if the Quran has variant readings. In other words, if the Quran has some words and phrases where there are variant readings, how can they be categorized?

 

Well, this Indonesian writer draws on the classic writer, Aljazari, to say that there are 6 categories of variant readings, some that are firm, some that are famous, some that are anomalous, some that are contrived, some that are interpolated, and are solitary readings. Now that gives you a kind of hierarchy of, I suppose, acceptability. Firm being the variant readings that are most reliable and solitary readings being those that are questioned. And he also quotes another classical scholar by the name of Ibrahim Uthwa Alaud who said that the 7 readings take account of and allow for Arabic dialectal differences. 2nd, that the 7 readings reflect dialectal differences absorbed by the language of the Quraish, which thus emerged as the language of unification.

 

In other words, when we think of the variant readings of the Quran, Muslims have a way of dealing with the variant readings by categorizing them, but by accepting that there can be certain little differences in articulation of different words and phrases, providing they fit within this system of 7 readings. Shalihah argues that there are two reasons for the emergence of the Kira art. First, the script of the Quran itself based on the authentic edition written by the companions, namely Mohammed’s friends, whose writing skills could not be considered as among the best with the result that sometimes written errors occurred. And second, differences in cause variant readings to emerge. Now this is how Muslims go about Muslim scholars, especially, go about dealing with the existence of the variant readings.

 

It should be said that most Muslims, ordinary Muslims, don’t really know about the variant readings. It’s it’s a study that is scholars Islamic scholars talk about, that most ordinary Muslims in in the mosques and in the street, they’re not aware of the whole issue of the variant readings. What about non Muslim scholars? How do they deal with the question of the variant readings? Well, Adrian Brockett is, a British scholar who, wrote a, a thesis, his PhD thesis, which was, which appeared in 1988.

 

And he considered 2 of the systems of variant readings, and he compared them. As we saw, there there were originally 7 variant 7 systems of variant readings allowed, but only 2 of them have really survived today. And we tend to find one system that’s predominant in North Africa out in Algeria and Morocco and Tunisia, and the other system that’s predominant pretty much everywhere else in the Muslim world. Now Adrian Brockett compared those two systems, asking the question, well, how different are they, and how significant are the differences? And we’ll come back to him in a moment.

 

But the existence of variant readings raises the question, what about a critical addition? We see in the Christian tradition that, it’s easy to find a critical edition of the Bible, which contains the biblical text in the center of the page. And in the margins, there are, words and phrases, where there is some debate about the exact original word. That’s a critical addition. Now the existence of variant readings in Islam allows for the idea of a critical edition of the Quran to be made, but so far that has not been made because the existence of the variant readings is something that’s kept among the scholars and does not circulate among the general Islamic public.

 

So it’s left to non Muslim scholars to try and produce a critical edition of the Quran, and there’ve been several attempts by people like Bergstrasse, a German scholar, Arthur Jeffrey, an Australian scholar, Alfred Welch in the United States. But while they’ve made movement in that direction, it’s never really come to fruition. Coming back to Adrian Brockett, he considers the differences between the huffs and the variant reading systems. Huffs and are the 2 surviving systems of variant readings, the 2 of the 7 that have survived today. The Huff system is predominant in most of the Islamic world.

 

The wash system is predominant in North Africa. And he says, well, basically, there are vocalic differences there. That means sound differences. There are graphic differences. That means there are writing differences, and he analyzes them.

 

And he really concludes as follows. He he is not a skeptic in the way that some non Muslim scholars are. He writes, many orientalists who see the Quran as only a written document might think that in the graphic differences can be found significant clues about the early history of the Quran text. If Uthman issued a definitive written text, how can such graphic differences be explained? They might ask.

 

For Muslims who see the Quran as an oral as well as a written text, however, these differences are simply readings, certainly important, but no more so than readings involving, for instance, find differences in assimilation or in vigor of pronouncing the hamza. Rocket is not a skeptic. He he accepts the differences at face value as being insignificant in the overall scheme of things. He does not see the existence of these variant readings as undermining the standard Islamic claims about the Quran, whereas some non Muslim scholars see the existence of variant readings as representing a fundamental challenge to standard Islamic claims about the Quran and is pointing back to much bigger differences. You can read more about, online.

 

But let’s turn our attention to doctor Keith Small, who produced a recent PhD thesis in which he addressed the whole question of textual criticism and Quran manuscripts. This was a very interesting study in which doctor Small considered the history of textual criticism in the biblical context, he took the methods of textual criticism in the biblical context and applied it to a study of 20 or so early Quran manuscripts. His conclusions were as follows. Examining the New Testament, he said that the New Testament having a wider range of variants shows a lack of active standardization of the text, a lack of organized suppression of variant texts. In other words, within the biblical tradition, within the Christian tradition, variants have been preserved and kept for posterity.

 

Whereas, he concludes, for the Quran, one form of the text has been kept extremely well, but the process for keeping this form of text required destruction and continued suppression of variant texts. With initial and repeated editing and improvement of the remaining text over 300 years to make the orthography of the Quran a complete phonetic system. In other words, in the Christian tradition, variants of the biblical text have been preserved and studied and examined and made available to the general Christian public. Whereas in the Islamic case, variants of the Koranic text have been suppressed, and there has been an ongoing attempt to standardize the Koranic text to eliminate variation, quite a different tradition. This topic is a big topic.

 

It’s, an interesting topic to in terms of preparing an assignment. And, you may well wish to prepare your assignment around this topic. And the purpose of this lecture is to give you an introduction, but much more needs to be said and read about it, of course. I I would like you to consider whether the existence of variant readings of the Quran undermines the Islamic claim that the Quran has not been altered in a single respect since the lifetime of Mohammed. Also, it’s worth considering whether the standard Islamic claims about the status of the Quran significantly are significantly different from Christian views about the bible.

 

And to conclude, let us move back to Koranic perspectives and refer to the hadith in some in examining some interesting perspectives on the Koranic text recorded in the Hadith. These again are found within William Goldsack’s book where we read that the Quran is seen as serving as an intercessor on the day of resurrection. We also read that memorizing Surah al Baqarah, that’s the second chapter of the Quran, the longest, memorizing that chapter or surah is a blessing and neglecting it is a grief, giving special status to one particular chapter. We also read from the the hadith accounts presented by Goldsack that surah 2256, that means chapter 2 verse 256, is supposedly the greatest verse of the Quran. Surahs 1112 are also especially important.

 

Also, Surahs 20, 92, and 96 are important, as are surahs 113 and 114. So these haditha counts give particular weighting to those particular Koranic chapters, chapter 2, chapter 1, chapter 112, chapter 20, chapter 92, chapter 90 6, chapter 113 and 114. And finally, in an interesting hadith account presented by Goldsack, there seems to be a suggestion that the physical text of the Quran, the actual text itself, had magical properties. Golczyk presents this hadith account, which says it’s related from Uqba ibn Amir that he said, I heard the apostle of god say, if the Quran were placed in a leavened skin and cast into the fire, it would not be burned.

Held Hostage in Afghanistan!

Joel DeHart was captured and held hostage for 6 months in Afghanistan. He shares his story of God’s faithfulness and how he grew to love the people of Afghanistan.

 

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Held Hostage in Afghanistan!:

 

Alright. We’re back. It’s been a long time. Yeah. It’s been almost 2 months for Truth About Muslims podcast, but we are back.

 

And you guys are probably wondering where we’ve been. We know that you’re wondering where we’ve been because we’ve received your emails and they’ve been, for the most part, kind, a little bit demanding. Yeah. But we appreciate it. I keep getting these notices that are saying we want more.

 

We want more. So what Howard and I have decided, we took a long break, reflected about our lives, considered the fact that I’m still homeless. It’s going on 5 months now for those of you that are interested. And here’s what we’re gonna do. We are relaunching this podcast.

 

We’ve got a big announcement. We’re joining a podcast network because there’s been a huge demand for this sort of stuff and the audience is gonna grow and we’re excited about it. And you mean this kind of stuff. What are you what are you saying? I’m saying that people want to hear an alternative narrative about Muslims and about Christians and about the interaction of these 2 faiths and how, basically what we’ve been talking about for the last year.

 

I was gonna say, hey, we fit that bill. That’s right. Boom. So in that sense, we’re excited because we’re gonna be doing some new things. Some of you will not follow us over to the new show because, it requires going on back on Itunes and signing up for a new podcast and I know that’s really, it can wear you out.

 

Nope. Nope. But we’re hoping most of you, join us with the new show. It’s got a new name which we feel like we need to explain. Yeah, please.

 

You guys might want to take a seat. No, I think we better just start with this show, this podcast, and then at the end we’ll explain where we’re going, what the new name will be, and how everybody can join in. So I think we should just get started with this show. Yep. Hope you enjoy it.

 

My name is Joel DeHart, And about 25 years ago, I had an experience where I was working in Afghanistan, and I was taken captive and held for a period of 6 months. Hey, this is Howard. And I’m Trevor. And I don’t know about you, Howard, but I am excited about the show today because of that intro. I’m compelled.

 

We are privileged to have people like Joel DeHart come in and share their story in the studio. So before we get into Joel’s story in great detail, you gotta understand something about his background. He’s not, your typical American, I guess you’d say. Yeah. He was born and raised in Pakistan.

 

His parents were actually missionaries. So my father was, a keen traveler, and then flew to Iran, and that was when I was in just finished 3rd grade. Then my brother and I traveled in 1979. We traveled by road through Afghanistan, through Iran, all the way to Europe. So that was the era when lots of people were traveling.

 

There were lots of Europeans on their way to Kathmandu and going back and forth. Yeah. So obviously, he’s not a typical kid growing up. Right. Not the typical childhood.

 

I mean, I have a 3rd grader. Disney was about the most exotic thing that we’ve done here in the United States. So in that sense, Joel, in some ways, feels that he was born and bred for this experience. And as a as a child growing up, I’d always had a fascination for, Afghans, Pashto speakers, because we would see them often in Pakistan. And I just felt like this is something that God had prepared me for.

 

So why all the Afghan speakers in Pakistan? Well, when you have, Afghanistan as sort of being the buffer between the spread of communism and the Soviet invasion into Central Asia. You had all of these refugees fleeing outside of Afghanistan and going to places like Iran, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and they’re all fleeing for their lives and looking to start new lives until the government can settle down in Kabul. So as a kid, he’s grown up in Pakistan, but then he gets to meet all these Afghan refugees that are coming in from the border, and he’s exposed to all this culture and these ideas and these thoughts and this language. Right.

 

And he hopes one day that he’s gonna get to actually go to Afghanistan and work with these people, and that day comes. Because he knows the language, because he knows the culture, he gets to work as a translator for a veterinary clinic that’s doing a vaccination program in Afghanistan. For 2 weeks, we’ve been going around to different villages, but we knew this was our last day. So we planned one village and going from house to house doing some vaccinating. And we were kind of gathered back to our vehicle when suddenly we saw these 2 jeeps come over the hill and they’re just going so fast that it was unusual.

 

So we wondered who these guys were. But then when they jumped off their guns and stuff, then we knew something was this wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. So something had gone wrong or we didn’t know what was happening, but it we didn’t really have time to think. They just said, okay. You guys hop in the jeep.

 

It’s immediately obvious that these guys mean business. Right. This was not the way it was supposed to be, and apparently, word had gotten out that this was their last day, and they didn’t want them to leave. According to Joel, they have no idea at this point why they are being taken captive. We we drove for several hours, parked the jeep, and then they said, come on.

 

Let’s walk. We’re going. So while we were walking, then things started coming out because they said, so we know you guys are being unfair. You’re helping some people and not others, and this is why we’re taking you. Yeah.

 

I was scared. I mean, I’d never faced something like this before, and it just took a while to get used to the idea that now we weren’t in control of our circumstances. Somebody else was. Okay, so I actually feel really bad about doing this and I know it’s gonna drive some of you crazy. We’re sorry.

 

So if you want to keep hearing the rest of the show, you have to stop what you’re doing. You have to go to truthaboutmuslims.com. We’ve set up a GoFundMe page. So those of you that like what we’re doing, you wanna keep hearing more shows, you’re able to donate because we are 100% listener supported at this point. Yeah.

 

And Trevor and I, we, I’m just gonna be frank. We have a lot of mouths to feed. Yeah. Howard’s got 5 kids. Woah.

 

Woah. Woah. Don’t make it sound like it’s weird. It is a little bit weird. But I have 3.

 

So There you go. Yeah. But we we are also doing some new things that we’re really excited to share with you guys. We’re gonna be rebranding the show. We’ve got a new name.

 

A new name. We’re gonna be having the same content. It’s gonna be better though. It’s going to be better. Right.

 

Because we’re gonna invest a little more time in this. And a lot more heart. Because honestly, a lot of people are starting to write in and say, Hey, we like it, and so we’ll just see if that’s actually true, I guess. So, when you go to truthaboutmuslims.com, you’ll see the GoFundMe page. If you can’t afford to donate, that’s fine.

 

If you can only afford to give a dollar or 2, that’s awesome too. If enough people give, then we’re able to raise the funds that we need to keep going, and we’d be really excited about that. Really, really excited because, Trevor and I talk about this all the time, but we actually love doing the show, and it’s one way to be able to connect with a huge audience that, that we ordinarily wouldn’t be able to. So please, if you can and you enjoy the show, and tell others too, just to give. Just give some and, you know, we don’t really ask for money.

 

I don’t think we’ve ever asked for money. No. Yeah. So we did this for a year and now we’re We volunteered for a year. We volunteered for a year.

 

But now we’re at this place. So, but we’re really excited about what’s coming in the future just like Trevor said. And so when you see the name of the new show, don’t panic. The name of the new show is really cool. We’ve done some market research, and we’re really pretty confident that we’re gonna grow a pretty big audience here.

 

And we’re gonna keep discussing these same issues that need to be discussed. So we just hope you guys stay with us and stay excited and continue to be encouraging. And if you hate the name, it’s it’s still the same. We’re gonna be hanging out with you. It’s gonna be us, me and Trevor.

 

So It’s just a name. Yeah. Don’t worry about it. I mean, Howard’s name is Howard, and he’s okay. And that’s awesome.

 

It was number 2 in the US census of popular boys’ names in 1930. Are you that old? No. No. That’s just the name.

 

It’s it’s it has heritage, brother. Korean heritage. I don’t I don’t know. Okay. And, there is one more thing as well.

 

Since we’re doing a new show and we’re gonna have a new name, we’re not gonna have any reviews. And so, we would really, really appreciate those 48 people that left reviews. Please rewrite your review for us. We really find it encouraging and it gives a good idea what the show’s about. And, if you don’t rewrite the review, those of you that have been saying, hey, I’m gonna send in a review, and you haven’t, there’s gotta be more than 48 of you.

 

And, we really need this because, that’s what gets us exposure. And if you like the message and what we’re saying and you think it’s important, then this is the way to do it. Anyway, thanks for listening.

Sufism: The Hunger for God in Islam: Dr. Dave Cashin

Dr. Dave Cashin shares about the desire of all humanity to experience God. Find out how Muslims have responded to this problem through Sufism.

 

 Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Sufism: The Hunger for God in Islam:

 

Let me tell you a story, about a Sufi meeting that I attended, in a pretty remote part of Bangladesh, and it was a meeting of a group called the Panchon Rosh, which means the 5 juices. I won’t go into all of what that means, but, it was a typical Qawali Sufi devotional meeting. It began about 9 o’clock at night with a big meal that we all shared together. And then there was a musical group, that were singing and, through their kawali music, through their singing, the audience is invited to, come and take part by dancing ecstatically, before the dais where they’re performing. And, I was sitting, quite far back from the main, you know, center of action.

 

And I was having a conversation with a a gentleman who was the principal of the local school that was just down the street from this kawali meeting. Round about 11:30, 12 o’clock at night, As we’re having this conversation, he’s kinda moving a little bit in his chair. And and all of a sudden, he says, I can’t talk anymore. So he said, I just gotta dance. And he stands up, and he runs down to the front of the dais and just begins to dance ecstatically, by the dais.

 

And I’m thinking to myself, looking around the the group, and there are 100 and 100 of people there. I’m thinking, this guy has undoubtedly got some of the students of his school sitting here in the audience. And he’s down there in the front, just dancing ecstatically. And it was just so different. What was interesting about it is that the it would be like going to a, an a dance, the Friday night sock hop, and the students are sitting in the audience, and it’s the teachers and the principal that are up in the front dancing around ecstatically.

 

I mean, it was just as as incongruous from an American cultural perspective as you could possibly imagine, that this guy wouldn’t be embarrassed to do this in front of his students. The longing, the desire for imminence, for experience of God, so powerful. And and if you think about that, for an adult, that might even be stronger than it is for a child. And therefore, a lot of the people up in the dancing in front of the dais were older people, not the kids. Well, once again, Muslim terrorists.

 

A terrorist. A terrorist. Islamist. Extremist. Now these are the mistrial terrorists.

 

And deadly. Newsflash America. These Muslim extremists are, are alive and well. They are not dead, and their video is not gratuitous, and it certainly is not irrelevant. It is a warning.

 

Welcome the Truth About Muslims podcast. The official podcast of the Zwemer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Alright. Welcome to truth about Muslims.

 

We’ve got a return guest in the studio today, doctor Dave Cashin with Columbia International University. Doctor Cashin spent quite a few years working with Muslims in Bangladesh? That’s correct. How many years were you there? 9 years.

 

82 to 91. Okay. And you were also instrumental. I don’t know if a lot of folks know this, but instrumental in the starting of the Zweymer Center back in 1979. Yeah.

 

I had the opportunity to work with doctor, Don McCurry. We traveled around the world in 1976. It was interesting. He was gonna do his PhD research, and, we sort of helped him with his planning. And then partway into the planning, we said, well, gee, we’d kinda like to tag along, and, he was open to that.

 

So from, June until September of 1976, we bounced around. We started in Indonesia. We went through, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco. We just covered everything. You guys all together went to all these countries?

 

Yeah. All those countries. Yeah. It sounds like a few other non Muslim countries as well on the way. It sounds like Paul’s missionary journey is his third one.

 

It’s like he has an entourage coming with him and Well, I wish I could say we were doing church planting, but it was mostly just to learn what what God was doing in the Muslim world at that point. And that was back in the days when there weren’t very many Muslims who’d come to faith. Right. The numbers were quite small in most areas. It’s interesting listening to Patrick Johnstone who mentioned when the book Operation World first came out in the sixties, he said there were perhaps, 4000 Christians everywhere, in the Muslim that is who were former Muslims who’d become Christians in the entire Muslim world.

 

That was his estimate back in 63 or 64 when the book first came out. And he said, today he estimates 10,000,000. That’s insane. And and, some of the countries that you guys named actually, you know, like, it would be very difficult for us to get into today. Right?

 

Yes. But you were just able to get in? I mean, they just had no problem letting you Well, Iran was completely open country. My wife, we we almost, passed as ships in the night. I didn’t know her at that point.

 

But, she was in Iran with Operation Mobilization going door to door selling Christian Bibles to Muslims. I love I love I love early strategies. It’s like, you know, let’s just do it. Can you imagine that that could have even been done? But that was done back in those days.

 

So, I mean, when we think about the Muslim world today, so much has changed. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This was 40 years ago. You guys are traveling around the Muslim world.

 

What are some of the things that you think over the last 40 years of your watching, participating in Muslim ministry, that have been the most significant sort of milestones? Well, lots of things you could say about that. One of the important milestones, of course, were was the reality of Christians asking the question, how much of a Muslim’s culture can he keep and say with integrity that Christ is Lord of his life? The realization that Muslims, should not be trained to be westerners but should stay within their own context, and be able to witness and bring their own people to Christ. Don McCurry actually was the one who first, gave me that question about Muslim culture back in 1976.

 

And so we’ve been kind of grappling with that issue ever since, haven’t we? Everything from insider movements to, you know, issues of what what does a church planting movement look like in in the Muslim world. And how do you think that we’ve been doing as the church in kind of parsing that out, figuring that out? Well, I would say it’s more God Right. Quite frankly.

 

You know, we’re often thinking in terms of techniques and methods and that’s very anthropocentric. The reality is there are times when the spirit moves and God is doing a new thing in the Muslim world. I would be very, nervous about somebody saying, oh, we’ve got a method that works. I’m finding places in the Muslim world today where there is such openness to the gospel that any old method will work. Mhmm.

 

Just tell them about Jesus. That’s that’s really the, you know, frankly, the main method that needs to be done. Yeah. You mentioned Patrick Johnstone. I I listened to that interview as well.

 

And one of the things he mentions is that he really appreciates the missionaries that are coming out of Africa, particularly the Nigerian missionaries. Yep. And I was really excited to hear why, what was going on, what method were they using. And he said it’s because they actually believe in the power of the gospel. They don’t need a method.

 

They don’t need a model. They just actually believe that if you preach the gospel that the Spirit of God will move in the heart of someone and I thought, there it is. Yeah. Imagine that. So a lot of your work in Bangladesh has been with Sufism.

 

Your doctoral dissertation, actually, you studied in Stockholm, correct? Stockholm, Sweden? Yeah. Yeah. I studied at Stockholm University and all of the time that I was in Bangladesh, I actually was there as a student.

 

So I began with Indian history, did a master’s degree in Indian history at Dhaka University. But my my main interest was out in the villages. I went out and was involved in in church planting and that kind of work in in different villages outside of Dhaka. But I quickly became interested in that group of Muslims who believe in various ways in the possibility of knowing God. Now in Islamic Orthodoxy as Ismail Farooqi would put it, you cannot know, you cannot experience, you cannot have a personal relationship with God.

 

All you can know about God is his law, which is why Islamic theology is really a misnomer. It quickly bleeds into law or fiqh because it’s really not about knowing God. But the human heart, we are created in the image of God for the purpose of intimate relationship with God. And that need, that hunger of the heart is designed into every human being including all Muslims. So in spite of Islamic the denial in Islamic theology of the possibility of relationship with God, Sufis, amongst many groups of Muslims, nevertheless, long for that, seek for that, desire that.

 

And if you have I’ve I’ve spent hundreds of hours in different Sufi meetings. I I’ve watched them singing their devotional songs, often called kawali, in, the Indian subcontinent. And all those songs are a form of what they would call zikr or remembrance of God. And the remembrance is really an effort. You’ll even see pictures of them waving or or signaling to God to come down, come, come be with me as I remember you, as I devote myself to you, and the music is is really a vehicle for a fleeting sense of contact with God.

 

Now you said come down. Is that something that is common amongst Islamic theology? Like, this idea that God would come down and meet with somebody? Well, absolutely not. In fact, that would be considered shirk.

 

That would be considering you it would be considered, associating something with God. You cannot associate with God. If you think about it, the word association is a word we use for relationship. Right. To associate but to associate anything with God is the ultimate sin in Islam.

 

And if you think about that, that means that in in orthodoxy, as the Wahabis in particular would, interpret it, there’s no possibility, what whatsoever, for God to come down or for you to have an experience of God. Yeah. And I noticed that, with Sufis, they might, have be perceived as, heretics, I guess, maybe Oh, absolutely. Many Muslims. They’re under tremendous pressure right now.

 

They’re a little bit charismatic maybe. Right. Yeah. I was gonna say really akin to that. But at the same time, is it is it that, that it’s the tradition is so strong or they the the experience of it is that that compelling that they stay in Sufism?

 

Well, Sufism was a vehicle for many of these people groups to become Muslim. In other words, when the Muslim contextualizers came to places like India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, they recognized that some sort of a message in Arabic wouldn’t speak to people. And in fact, I have documents that I’ve translated from that period, where the Sufi guy would say, it’s impossible to do the Islamic thing here because they don’t understand it. So we’ll take what they do and we’ll baptize it into Islam. And they, quite frankly, were syncretizers in that sense and, borrowed local esoteric Vaishnava, Shoghodgia tantric ideas.

 

And someone actually called my thesis on this, you know, the story of the tantric Muslims. I don’t think that title would have gone over very well in the Muslim world. No. No. It wouldn’t.

 

It would would get you into trouble. But let let’s, we need an experience here. Since we’re talking about experience of God, we need we need to have an esoteric experience. So I’m feeling a little bit nervous. What I what I need esoteric experience.

 

So I’m feeling a little bit nervous. What I what I need you to do is is we’re gonna do a Sufi song together. Okay? And, you guys are gonna be the, backup singers and it’s real easy. All you have to do is drone.

 

Well, Howard’s already clearing his throat. He’s he’s gonna Okay. Yeah. All you have to do is it’s kind of like humming with your mouth slightly open. So you go.

 

Alright. Just kidding. That’s how it’s trying to harmonize. Yeah. We could do it at different levels.

 

I’ll try and And then if you need to take a breath, you know, just keep on going and then I’ll sing the melody line. Alright? Okay. Stop Now. You know, if you did this for a few hours, you would kind of go on a trip, wouldn’t you?

 

I feel a little light headed. I was missing. The choice of hyperventilation. Yes. I’m like, I don’t know how long I can hold it.

 

Now now let me translate the song for you. Hello? Hey, ladies. I’m from, Truth About Muslims podcast. Have you heard of it?

 

Yeah. Okay. So we want you to read an ad for us. Can you do that? You’ll be famous, like, world famous.

 

It’ll be amazing. C I u? C I u. C I u. CIU.

 

CIU. I’m Kevin Kekaisen. Kevin and George. Mama, wait a minute. Oh, wow.

 

Look nice. Luke Fainte. Luke Fainte. Luke. Alright.

 

CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. You wanna read that again? Yeah. I feel like I’ll be so embarrassed to make it up there. What we sang was, or what I sang as the melody line to your backup, was, I, Mohammed, come, Mohammed, game wala, granter of all desires, I, hey, Allah, come, oh, God, amar buke aye, come into my chest.

 

And as you sing that song, you toke up on your hash pipe. Wait. That that that was just a part of it? That was yeah. That was part of the you know, in other words, God is synonymous with Muhammad, is synonymous with the hashish that you are imbibing into your chest.

 

And as you sing the song and smoke the hashish, you experience God. I feel it necessary to explain to people we don’t actually have a hash pipe. And we did not partake in that part. No. No.

 

Just the breathing part. There are standards at CIU. That’s right. We try to hold 2 here. So this this would be utter heresy to suggest that Mohammed could come and dwell a human It’s associating Mohammed with God.

 

Right. Which would be sure. The the grievous sin. This is as bad as it gets. Wait.

 

So wait. I didn’t get that from that song that, Mohammed you were inviting Mohammed in, but it was inviting Allah in. Right? Well, here’s an interesting thing. Within Sufism, there is a tacit critique, and sometimes it’s explicit, of orthodoxy.

 

In other words, I’ve had Sufis say to me things like this, We don’t follow the son of Abdullah, we follow the light of Muhammad. Now who is the son of Abdullah? Muhammad. Exactly. So who are the 2 different Mohammed’s?

 

So they’re deifying Mohammed. In other words, they’re saying the the son of Abdullah was the human Mohammed who gave us the Sharia. We don’t really follow Sharia. We follow the light of Mohammed which is a kind of a spiritualized reality of Muhammad revealing God to us. And they would claim that all of their spiritual techniques were derived from the teaching of Muhammad, But the way they do that is by taking Arabic terminology, that nobody understands or at least didn’t in the Middle East and excuse me, in in Bangladesh and, we read new meanings into it.

 

Let me let me give an example. You know, you’ve all heard the word Bismillah Ar Rahman Ar Raheem, in the name of God, the merciful, and the compassionate. Well, quite frankly as by those who were Sufis in the medieval period, and is, of course, the Sanskrit word for or seed or mantra. Okay? So Bismillah became the mantra of God in their thinking and then they would they would use mantras to experience God through the whole meditative process.

 

Yoga is involved in this, various forms of other kinds of esoteric techniques to achieve ecstasy is involved in this and this became what Islam was. In that area. In that area. So wait, so is Sufism just confined to a certain area, geographic area of the world or is it now spread out everywhere? You’ll find Sufis everywhere.

 

And and I think Sufism and your use of the word charismatic revival is actually a good word because in a sense, Islam at its core is a no holds barred Pharisaic legalism. Right. Law law. And and if you look at what ISIS does today, ISIS pulls up the most arcane, obscure elements of Islamic law, you know, like sex slaves or, you know, executing sorcerers, and and pulls that up and makes it, you know, front page news for all Muslims. This is exactly how we have to behave.

 

And I think Don McCurry I’m actually copying Don McCurry at this point. McCurry felt that Sufism arose out of the hunger of the Muslim heart for imminence. Imminence is our Imminence is our response or reaction to And in Christian theology, we talk about the, transcendence of God but we also talk about the imminence of God. God is transcended. He’s above all.

 

He is other in that sense, but he’s also present and, of course, within Christianity incarnationally present. He’s imminent in his creation. So this is the importance of trinitarian theology is that we have the transcendent God the Father and we have the imminent, Christ and then we also have the indwelling Spirit of God. Exactly. So this Trinitarian concept, they actually write into Muslim essentially, by making Believe it or not, you’ll love this.

 

Yes. About 30 years ago, one of the Sufis in Bangladesh published a book and it almost got him killed. It got his house burned down. It got into all kinds of trouble. But the title of the book was, which means, gentlemen, the trinity, the truth of God.

 

He was a Trinitarian Muslim. And Is there such a thing? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Within Sufism because he understood that apart from Trinity, you can’t have relationship.

 

In other words, trinitarianism teaches you that within God, within God’s person, there is complexity and therefore there is relationship. Father, Son, Holy Spirit in eternal relationship. Human beings created in the image of God are invited into that relationship. Well, there’s the, Al Ghazali is often quoted, and I’ve never been able to find this quote. I’ve read extensively his works looking for it.

 

But he’s often quoted in saying that God is incapable of love because there would have to be a recipient of his affection. And because there is no trinity Mhmm. Therefore, law would not be capable of love. Now, I’ve never found the quote. A lot of Christians have quoted it and there’s never an accurate citation.

 

Yeah. But in essence, our Trinitarian relationship with God does demonstrate that that God is doesn’t need humanity to be a God of love because he is complete in the God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit equally, loving and receiving love relationally. Right. And that’s there at the core of Christian theology. I can even show you where that comes from in in the early, Islamic texts.

 

This would be in Bangladesh Islamic, texts of origin, power, and destiny which are at the core of all cultures. Our culture now is controlled by evolutionism as our myth of origin, power, and destiny. If you go into the earliest documents, that would give you the story of of how the world arose, you know, where did what was the origin, in every one, you had a similar problem within monistic Hinduism that within monism, how can there be plurality? How can there be relationship? And, within, the Brihat, Ranyaka Upanishad, which is of the earliest of the Upanishads, you have this myth of the original, unity somehow gains self perception.

 

And they often use the story of of the godhead somehow seeing himself in a mirror. Where the mirror came from, I don’t know. But somehow he sees himself and he becomes infatuated and, frankly, the the picture of creation that emerges is one of sexual intercourse. He essentially unites with himself and the particulars of the universe emerge from that. If you go into the earliest Muslim text in Bengali that describe origins, it’s the exact same thing.

 

You have Allah gaining the perception of himself in some sort of a mirror and engaging in some kind of cosmic intercourse conjoining out of which the universe emerges. In other words, if you’re gonna have relationship, you’ve gotta have complexity. You can’t have an absolute unity. And, so, yeah, Ghazali was correct. And in Ghazali’s Sufism, he did try to reconcile Sufism with or orthodoxy.

 

And what he was really aiming for is we’ve gotta have a sense of imminence in this situation where Allah is so distant. So how does that imminence happen? Well, he called it the halal, which is the alighting. And and his theory of emanations was we never really get to God, you know, but there are these veils, these emanations that come from his power and at some point we can connect with the emanations of God. Like like rays, like sun rays kind of thing?

 

Yeah. You never get close to the sun but you might be able to feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. The effect of the sun. Okay. So that’s this is a typically Islamic problem.

 

But for most of the Muslim world, that did not answer the question. They want imminence. They want God that you can know and touch and feel and experience. You know, this is interesting because Augustine really has this in his theology in the early church fathers with this idea of desire. Like, desire in and of itself is good, but our desires are corrupted and what they’re desiring is good.

 

They desire relationship with God. They desire the imminence of God. Exactly. So they created Sufism in order to have it. But there is some things in the Quran, right, that would give them, you know, text that they could build on.

 

For instance, God is closer to me than my own jugular vein would probably be a text that the Sufis would just love. Oh, yeah. It’s also interesting that the ultra orthodox like the Wahhabis, if you go into Ibn Kathir’s tafsir al Quran where he takes that particular verse. He claims Quick translation, he means commentary. Yeah.

 

Commentary. Tafsir means commentary. And, ibn Katiir basically interprets that verse to be not Allah but an angel. And, so there’s a in other words, he wants to get rid of any possibility of of imminence. But there are those who disagree with him at that point.

 

But the Sufis pick up on everything, and they also pick up, as I said before, particularly on the word remembrance, zikr, the idea that remembrance is of the nature of relationship and you remember God and through the ecstasy of remembrance, you experience God. Interesting. Because in the past podcast, we’ve been talking about how, a foundation of Islam Remembering the law, remembering and it seems like their vehicle is to do this in a very experiential Yeah. Experiential way. Now let’s take this to a missiological application.

 

Please. Macquarie’s viewpoint was that if it were not for Sufism, Islam would have collapsed of the sheer weight of its obscurantus legalism. Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad.

 

So if you wanna be a part of the show, you wanna partner with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know. Pure, you know, Pharisaism on steroids, where everything is just law law law law law, and it doesn’t satisfy the hunger of the heart. So Sufism became a way of restoring a sense of imminence to the imbalanced, utter transcendence of the Allah of Islam. And, McCurry was of the opinion that this not only was the leading edge of Islamic missions, but that it was the very thing that preserved Islam in the, you know, centers of Islam, in the middle in the Middle East and in the North Africa because it restored that concept of imminence. What’s interesting now is particularly Islamic State, Jabat al Nusra, Al Shabaab, all of these other, jihadi groupings have essentially declared war on Sufism.

 

And, there are suicide bombers that have gone into Sufi shrines in Pakistan. They did 5 different shrines were blown up in the period of a single year in Pakistan with hundreds of people blown apart in while they were doing their ecstatic worship. The all of the shrines of, North and and Central Africa, in Timbuktu, for instance, were all bulldozed, when, the local Al Qaeda, group took over in in Mali. If you go into, the Islamic State in Syria, they I just watched a film yesterday where they mowed down the so called, Moses tree in Syria. It’s a it’s a great big old oak tree, that different Muslims through the centuries have revered and they they hang little, prayer requests off the branches of the tree and and they just came with a big bulldozer and they knocked the whole thing down and then they burned it.

 

Woah. And that was on I got that film from ISIS yesterday. And and these are all aspects of saying we will get rid of any expression of imminence of God in creation. We will destroy it. Now, I’m assuming that Sufism is not a huge percentage of Islam.

 

I would say quite the opposite. In Bangladesh, we used to guess 80%. I mean, let me give you an example. I I used to walk through the villages, particularly in the wintertime, January, February when it’s fairly cool. And, I went on a 15 mile walk one time going into a very remote area of Sylhette.

 

And we did it in the middle of the night. I don’t know why. Probably not a smart thing to do with snakes on the pathway or whatever. But we were never out of earshot of a group of singing Sufis. In the middle of the night, in the middle of the night, 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock in the morning, somebody would say, well, why are they all singing in the middle of the night?

 

We see Orthodox people have to get up at 4 in the morning to say their prayers. So, when they all go to bed by 8 or 9 o’clock. So if you wanna have fun and sing your songs and not be disturbed by the Orthodox coming around to beat you up, do it in the middle of the night. So the Sufis come out in the middle of the night while the Orthodox are asleep. Kinda putting this into our own, context as Christians, do you see a correlation with, looking at church history when the Christian church becomes incredibly inward looking, overly, maybe theological.

 

I know that seems like an oxymoron overly theological, but they kind of forget the, the imminence of God and the experience of God. It seems like there is revival. Yeah. We can we can sort of trace the ebbs and flows of Church history with revival and, you know, shakers and Quakers and Pentecostal revivals and all of these things that happened throughout church history. And right now it seems the Pentecostal Church is probably the largest church and fastest growing movement within Christianity.

 

Absolutely. Do you see any correlations there with that same sort of For sure. Yeah. There are different ways that you can attack imminence. Islam does it at a theological level by denying the possibility, but the Western world did that through rationalism.

 

You know, the rational movement, the enlightenment project really reached its apex, in the late 19th early 20th centuries where, you know, human beings thought that through technology, through logic, through science, we would solve all of humanity’s problems. And that was really even right up through the 19 fifties. My own dad, you know, I can remember him talking to me when I was a little kid saying, you know, son, by the time you get to be my age, they’ll have a pill that you can take then you live to be a 150. You know, of course, who wants to be a 150? I you know, that’s you’re gonna be really decrepit.

 

But here’s the interesting thing, you know, here’s the interesting thing. You you’ve got this rationalistic, and and with rationalism basically came the deist idea that God was the cosmic watchmaker who basically turned the clock on and walked away from it. Had nothing to do with it. Unitarianism came out of this, you know. And and why is it why is it important to call it Unitarianism?

 

Because Unitarianism taught that, okay, there’s a God but he’s an absolute unity. He’s not involved in us. There’s no imminence. There’s no incarnation of Jesus coming down to earth. And at at the apex of that thinking in the early or late 19th early 20th centuries, the charismatic movement began.

 

And it was really a reaction against the rationalism, the lack of imminence, the lack of of ecstatic, emotional, experiential love relationship with God. And and it’s interesting to note that in the 18 nineties, less than 1% of the world population, Christian world population was charismatic, Pentecostal. Today, they’re 37%. Yeah. And and I feel the I feel the need to say.

 

I’m not by any means suggesting that Pentecostals are charismatic or not orthodox, Christians. I I well, and those of you that know me, I was actually saved and my wife too in a Pentecostal revival in in Brownsville, Pensacola in the late nineties. And, Dave, if I’m not mistaken, you came out of something very similar, a charismatic movement, the Jesus movement. And Yes. And and I would say Jesus movement broadly, speaking was of that nature.

 

Although I wasn’t in a, you know, I was part of Campus Crusade for Christ, which is not a Pentecostal organization by any stretch of the imagination. But, they were in by any stretch of the imagination. But, they were impacted by that reality. And and I think, if you look at the churches in Africa, Asia, Latin America, all deeply influenced by the concept of the imminence of God. Right.

 

I I work at a Korean church and we have this kind of joke because we have all these Korean denominations in my city, in Augusta, Georgia. And, they all act the same. They’re Presbyterians, you know, like, they speak in tongues, you know, they’ll they lift hands. I mean, they just they they weep, they pray, you know. And then the method Methodists, same thing.

 

The the, you know, the Assembly of God, same thing. I mean, it’s not you don’t find any difference, really. It’s weird. Well, how about the Baptist spirit filled the Koreans. Yeah.

 

The Baptist too. Yeah. How about how about the Baptist in Uganda who appointed themselves a bishop? Alright. How’s that for a variation on the theme?

 

Yeah. So at this point, give us some stories. Give us some some some Sufi stories, either some folks that you know I know a great one for you. I’ve got a great one for you. And it’s not my personal, but, it’s one that, and again, I only use my own personal stories or stories of those who are close friends of mine.

 

And this is a Don McCurry story. In 1962, there was a young Sufi influenced Urdu poet by the name of Daoud Raqbar. Probably Sufi influenced, you know, a poet, a musician, a really, really top notch professional level qawali musician, singer, player of the sitar. And, he came to the United States, to do his PhD work, but not in music or music theory or that sort of thing. He actually did his study in Islamics.

 

And in 1963, the book that he produced, was published by, Leiden, EJ Brill or In Leiden by EJ Brill in the Netherlands. And the title of the book was The God of Justice. And, basically what Dawud Rahbar did was he studied the texts of the Quran as a Sufi influenced person, but he was looking really for Sufism and for imminence and for relationship to God because his music, that’s what it’s all about. It’s contact with God, it’s relationship with God. And at the end of his study, he concluded that the God of Islam was a God of pure, retributive justice.

 

That there was no imminence. There was no relationship. He was a God who defined Himself in terms of law, defined relationship to human beings purely and exclusively in terms of law, and at the end of his study, Dawud Rahbar, left Islam. And he left it with a powerful thought. And the thought was this, quote, I cannot worship a god who does not understand understand human suffering.

 

I cannot worship a God who does not understand human suffering. And when you get into incarnation, what’s the biggest problem that Muslims will, raise with Christians about the incarnation of Jesus? Well, it’s a very simple thing. When Jesus died, was God dead? Legitimate question to ask, but what it really means, if you think about it, you can throw that question you can reverse it to a Muslim and say, okay.

 

Does that mean that your God has no concern, interest, or experience, or understanding for human suffering? And once you remove imminence, you and you have an absolute unity in tawhid, the oneness of God, you therefore have a God who really couldn’t care less about human beings. We’re just puppets to be played with because he’s the only action in the universe. And everything he does is totally self referentially within himself. You could almost argue that he doesn’t even know himself in that kind of a context.

 

That led Daud Raqbar eventually to become a follower of Christ. I might call him the early fruits of a coming wave of Muslims turning to Jesus. Because in Jesus, yes, it’s a mystery. When Jesus died, what did that say about Trinity? What did that say about God?

 

I don’t know. And I don’t really care. What it does say is, I have a God who fully understands what it means to be human experientially. He knows suffering, but who through his suffering restores relationship, brings us back in through this process of imminence into intimacy with God. And frankly, that is a message that has increasing power across the Muslim world.

 

And as ISIS and these other Wahhabi groupings smash Sufism wherever they find it, and in most cases violently smash it, it, there is a hunger of the heart that is coming across the Muslim world as fanatic legalism not only doesn’t satisfy the hunger of the heart, but it does not create the utopia that these guys are talking about. It creates hell on earth. There’s gonna be a hunger amongst Muslims. Millions of Muslims looking for a way out of the hell that Sharia creates. Dave, thanks so much for being with us today and sharing a little bit about your time in Bangladesh and helping us to see how God is working despite what is oftentimes so discouraging.

 

And so thanks for being with us. Yeah. Thank you, Dave. I was just gonna say, like, I don’t think we should keep going. I think that point was so poignant.

 

At the end, I’m like, we just gotta we just gotta end it and let everyone think about it. Just gonna just gonna cut it right there. Right. Yep. That was so good.

 

Invite me back sometime if you dare. And we might sing some more.

Moyra Dale Lecture: Feminism and Trends Among Muslim Women

Moyra Dale explores how women find their place within Islam, outlining four main trends: traditionalists, secular feminists, Islamists, and Islamic feminists. Dale introduces influential women who embody each trend and delves into the ongoing discourse about gender equality within Islamic systems.

 

 Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Moyra Dale Lecture: Feminism and Trends Among Muslim Women: 

 

Islam, feminism, is it a contradiction in terms? How do women find their place within Islam? Nawal El Sadawi was born in 1931 in the Egyptian Delta. She managed to avoid early marriage and continue at school and eventually graduated as a doctor. She became minister or director of health under President Sadat, and she wrote a lot of books about the place of women in Egyptian society, particularly poorer women, wasn’t afraid to write about female genital mutilation.

 

She was eventually imprisoned by Sadat in 1981 and released after his assassination later that year. And then in 1988, political persecution and pressure from Islamicists meant that she had to leave Egypt, and she’s held lecturing positions at a number of US universities. She returned to Egypt, and in the Arab Spring, she joined the crowds in Tahrir Square. And here is a wonderful photo of her facing off in the square against a young Islamicist arguing for women being able to pray in mosques alongside the men. So how typical is she of Muslim women today?

 

I want to suggest we can look at maybe 4 trends, but they’re general trends rather than tightly exclusive groups. And for most of them, I’m going to introduce you to 1 or 2 women who kind of embody that group. So there’s the traditionalists, secular feminists, Islamists, Islamic feminism. The traditionalists, well, they’re the majority of Muslim women in the world today, 70% or more. Their life is shaped by the authority of the Quran, the Hadith, the traditional interpretations, and perhaps even more by cultural norms.

 

If they’re able to learn the texts, then maybe they can use them to challenge some of the cultural norms, and they have generally a patriarchal understanding of religious and of family life. So most of the women you meet, I think, would come in that category. The secular feminists, and I think Nawal El Sadawi is part of that group, developed in the late 19th century, and they drew on ideas of secular nationalism, Islamic modernism, human rights, democracy, rather than trying to use the religious texts to question traditional or patriarchal understandings of family. Around about the mid 20th century, they were organized a lot around laws of women’s status, marriage, divorce, issues of contraception, female genital mutilation. For them, Islamic feminism is an oxymoron.

 

It’s a contradiction in terms. How can there be equality, they say, in an Islamic system that’s built, that’s premised on difference between men and women and between non Muslims and Muslims? So there’s Nawal al Sadawi. There’s a number of others. Most of them tend to live in the west.

 

Islamism, a third group, began appearing more widely in the 19 seventies. It was linked to a sense of moral breakdown in society, the failed promises of nationalism after colonialism. In the Middle East, it was given impetus by the 1967 defeat by Israel of the Arab nations and by the 79 Iranian Revolution against the Shah. In the seventies, we saw the hijab beginning appear more widely, particularly among university students. Writers Islamist writers tend to emphasize the moral decadence of the west and the sexualized, consumerized position that Western women occupy.

 

And they say the Islamic understanding of family offers a solution maintaining family ties and community coherence. Let me tell you about Zaynabele Ghazali. She lived in Egypt from 1917 to 2005. And in her teens, she joined the Egyptian feminist union for a while, but then she decided that Islam gave rights to the women that no other society has granted them. Her father, who was a trained independent religious teacher and cotton merchant, used to ask her, do you want to be a Sharawi, the leader of a feminist union, or an Usayba bint Kaab who fought alongside the prophet Mohammed?

 

And Ghazali would say, I’m going to be an Usayba. When she was 18, she founded the Muslim Women’s Association, which is said to have had 3,000,000 members by the time the government disbanded it in 1964. Her weekly lectures are said to have drawn 1,000, and her association offered lessons for women, published a magazine, ran an orphanage, helped poor families, and demanded that the Quran govern Egypt. Zainab worked quite closely with Hassan Albana who founded the Muslim Brotherhood, and she helped organize the brotherhood when it was banned and when Albana was associated. Imprisoned for a number of years, she was tortured repeatedly and describes being sustained in that time by visions of Mohammed.

 

She encouraged women to become educated but to submit to their husbands to stay at home while rearing their children. Then in the late 20th century, Islamic feminism developed. It begins with the understanding that in the Quran is the possibility for equality between men and women. So it seeks a rereading of the text and a rereading, a reunderstanding in which women are involved towards a more egalitarian understanding of Islam and a more holistic understanding. Amina Wadud was born in 1952.

 

Her name was Mary Teasley. Her father was a Methodist minister. Her mother descended from Muslim slaves of Arab, Berber, and African ancestry. She joined Islam in 1972 and that’s when she changed her name about 1974, I think, to Aminu Waddud. And her book Quran and Women, Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective has been widely translated.

 

Aminu Wadud has controversially led mixed prayer for men and women, mixed salah, and also given the Friday sermon, practices which many Muslims believe are reserved for men. Asma Balas was born in Pakistan in 1950. She was one of the first women to be inducted into the forest the foreign service there, but she was dismissed by general Zia Al Haqq in Pakistan when she criticized his program for Islamicizing the country. She’s now a lecturer in the US and she also teaches a non patriarchal reading of the Quran. So for general trends, traditionalist, secular feminist, Islamicist and Islamic feminist, I wonder where the women you meet place themselves.