Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (42 page)

action of divine revelation. With it are other implications: that the source of revelation, which Muslims say is Allah, is above, and that the recipient of the revelation, the Prophet Muhammad, was below, in a descending direction from Allah. Yet above and below are also potentially metaphoric, as I explained in the
tawhidic
paradigm. Coincidentally, the same meta- physical direction, whether directly to the Prophet’s heart, mind, soul, being, or via the archangel Jibril (Gabriel), “
ruh al-amin
” (the faithful spirit), a physical direction is also implied. The source is above; the receiver is below. Thus, when we say that the Qur’an was revealed “through the mind of the Prophet,” the combination of Allah’s transcendence as source of the message, onto or into the Prophet, a mundane human being selected for the receipt of revelation, we rely upon mundane or human language alone. We can only conclude that we do not and cannot know if the Qur’an was created or eternal with Allah, since we cannot know how it can actually be both at the same time. We do not, however, have the language to express this transcendent simultaneity.

I might note in passing other references to
nazala
or
anzala
used with a metaphysical downward movement, as it is principally used to describe reve- lation. For example, actions, like peace descending to the hearts of frightened soldiers are mentioned in the Qur’an. There are other physical actions of descent, or going down, that the Qur’an mentions when describing actions from this world – notably rain descends to earth from the sky above. But there is no term for a downward movement of the sun in the Qur’an. It never says “the sun
sets
,” or “the sun goes down.” The semantic “westing” of the sun is more scientifically accurate, and no attempts are made to show corollary between the downward movement of the sun vis-à-vis the earth, despite the limitation of human knowledge and the present limitation in the English human linguistic formulation.

Conversely, the Arabic grammatical construction for sunrise has the same limitation as the English. This complex nuance discloses more em- phatically my point. For example, in
surat-al-Kahf
(18), the Qur’an actually uses the verb
tala‘a,
to rise, with reference to the sun. For example at 18:17 and 18:90,
tala‘a
is used as verb attached to sun as subject. In addition,
matla‘i,
the passive participle of the verb, is also used with reference to the sun. However, the verb
tala‘a
, placed as a direct action of the sun, in this case “
tala‘at ash-shams
,” means the sun ascended, or the sun rose. The English grammatical construct, “the sun rises,” articulates the phenomenon in the same way. Again, from the perspective of an earthly inhabitant, the sun does
appear
to rise, but sound or correct scientific knowledge of the

210 inside the gender jihad

universe has proven otherwise. It is the earth that acts vis-à-vis the sun, by turning on its axis, until the sun appears in the east.

Although the Qur’an talks about both the east and the west, locations relative to human perceptions on the earth, its language does not strictly adhere to the scientific reality that the sun’s appearance in the east only results from earthly movement. It refers to the movement of the sun as “rising,” although physically it neither rises nor sets. From the perspective of an earthly inhabitant, the sun does appear to rise, but through sound or correct knowledge of the workings of the universe, we know otherwise. It is the earth that acts, by turning on its axis, and gives the sun its appearance in the east and the west. But the sun neither rises nor sets. Regarding sunrise, the Arabic phrase is fossilized like the English phrase. Both accurately reflect a perception of reality from the perspective of human experience and the epistemology of human language. This in turn leaves an effect on the human mind. Neither phrase expresses what actually occurs in nature. Although the Qur’anic phrase “the sun wests (itself),” which is technically closer to the physical reality, exists without the “sun set” equiv- alent to the English, it is ambivalent in the Arabic whether the sun achieves its “position” in the west by its own movement or the movement of the earth. It is through the absence of a scientifically accurate articulation that such linguistic inadequacy occurs. This points us toward an elementary exploration of the primary function of human language. Language is a meaning- making facility only relative to human perception.

Sunrise and sunset are so standard in English, with at least one of them standard in Arabic as well, that we no longer question the imprecision of their articulation. On other occasions, the development of human scientific knowledge was so radical that the language used to articulate it had to be altered. For example, the relationship of the sperm as the agent of human procreation and the egg as a passive recipient: we now know the female egg is the actual seed which begins cell division when penetrated by the male sperm for ultimately achieving a complete, new, and unique human being. Other linguistic and semantic derivations easily cross the threshold from the strict technical circumstances in which they were constructed into everyday English parlance. One of my favorites is the statement “on par.” It infil- trated mainstream English while only a small minority of golf players existed. Indeed, I even “understood” the meaning of this term twenty years before I even knew its origins in golf.

Revelation and, in our particular discussion, the Qur’an, is accepted as “the direct words of Allah” to the Prophet Muhammad. For simplicity’s

Qur’an, Gender, and Interpretive Possibilities
211

sake, let us begin with Allah’s omniscience. The Creator of the Universe knows and has always known the actual reality of movement of the matter in the universe. When human scientists discovered and confirmed the evidence that it was the earth’s rotation causing what appears as “easting”/ “rising” and “westing”/“setting” of the sun, they exposed evidence of a reality that had already existed, and was therefore already known by Allah, but new to humankind. Before human research provided evidence to verify that previously existing reality, human language had formulated grammat- ically sensible articulations to express what they perceived. Ironically, the English phrases “the sun rises” and “the sun sets” have not been adjusted to reflect these newly recognized realities.

This investigating into seeming linguistic discrepancies between Qur’anic language and scientific fact directs us to a necessary encounter with the createdness of revelation, the linguistic means of divine disclosure. Although the divine is not created, the only means for humans to receive a revelation in “clear Arabic” was for the Qur’an to utilize the linguistic constraints of Arabic as it strove to express the full nature of the divine. But it did not merely give meaning relative to human linguistic competency, it also guided humanity toward new meanings relative to human experiences, experi- ments, and perceptions yet still containing numerous pointers beyond the moment and circumstance of revelation, to help us as we develop and make new discoveries of reality. The most immediate task for a self-described text of “plain Arabic” (26:190) was in fact the imperative of the Qur’an to adapt the language of revelation to be plain or clear at the time of its revel-

ation.
22
It did not and, as it says directly, could not exhaust the knowledge

of Allah through language alone. “If all the trees on earth were pens, and the seas [were] ink, with seven [more] yet added to it, the words of Allah would never be exhausted: for verily Allah is all might, wise” (31:27).

Simultaneously, the Qur’an must speak the Truth as it intended universal guidance. This only leaves open the idea that one feature of universality is its eternal reality. In this way I have said “the Qur’an is constrained” not only by language, but also in particular by the Arabic language, especially

in its seventh-century context.
24
To achieve this dual purpose – contextual

clarity and eternal or universal guidance – the Qur’an has necessarily left

clues that allow the

explicit Qur’anic linguistic compliance with human

reasoning, while challenging the limitations of the reasoning present in an inevitable preparation for newly verified historical and scientific develop-

ments

in human

civilization. I

have referred

to this as

a
Qur’anic

trajectory, pointing us to higher moral practices even if not fully

212 inside the gender jihad

articulating these because of the context.
24
The whole of the Qur’an as guidance points toward the directions of moral excellence and ethical propriety. These are not static through time, place, and circumstance, but are relative and continue to require alterations in order to serve the highest values and principles.

The term
ayah
provides another clue to this reasoning. An
ayah
is a sign, a pointer, or an indicator. It points humans toward a certain direction. That pointer is a guide, but only inasmuch as it continues to be followed. The Qur’an uses this word often. It reveals that certain circumstances, certain people, certain discussions, and certain occasions are signs guiding or pointing to understanding or comprehension of the Truth. As it said, it also proclaims itself as universal guidance (2:2), pointing all who have moral consciousness in the direction of an ethical basis for living. But ethics inevi- tably develops, transformed by the constant makeover of human knowledge, experience, and change. If all there is to the Qur’an was its grappling

with

human linguistic competency in seventh-century Arabia, we should

not

only

all still ride around

the

desert on

camels and

live

without

air-conditioning, we should also still enslave other human beings, accept silence as a woman’s agreement, and think that the sun moves around the earth each day until it rises in the east and sets in the west, while the earth stands still as the center of the universe.

The moral, technological, economic, social, and ecological context at the time of revelation, including its linguistic utterances, was necessarily constrained by the limits of that context. The expansive and eternal intent of universal guidance toward right actions, as known to an omniscient divine, whose Self-disclosure as revealed in seventh-century Arabia, was not properly rendered but was particularized within the parameters of the social-cultural, moral, legal, and linguistic constraints of that context. If one truly believes in the eternity of the divine, then one cannot accept that Allah begins or ends with the particulars of Qur’anic utterances. Indeed, philosophically, limiting Allah to the utterances of the Qur’an, a specific text, would also limit Allah to seventh-century Arabia. The extent to which Allah’s particular textual exposure is equated with Allah’s totality in Its transcendent and unknowable reality is the same extent to which some think that Qur’anic patriarchy reflects Allah, rather than that context. One scholar expressed the idea that the god of the Qur’an
is
patriarchal, reducing Allah to the patriarchal contextual articulation and nothing else. That is a kind of
shirk
(violation of
tawhid
). It holds the seventh- century Arabian conceptual framework of Allah, and the epistemological

Qur’an, Gender, and Interpretive Possibilities
213

constraints of that context as equal to Allah. Such thinking, which con- cretizes Allah to the limitation and literalism of the Qur’an’s revelatory context, parallels the Christian discourse that literally takes the notion of God’s incarnation as the body of Christ.

Therefore, it would appear that the limits of linguistic epistemology, formed as a reflection of the human mind and in correspondence to human experience, is incorrect vis-à-vis astronomical science. Allah’s knowledge could not be adequately or accurately expressed in the existing Arabic epistemology. This process of adjustment of truth, fact, or Allah’s know- ledge to the contingencies of human language is a hint at the formidable task of revelation in the human language medium. Human language limits Allah’s Self-disclosure. If revelation through text must be in human lan- guage, in order for humans to even begin to understand it, then revelation cannot be divine or Ultimate. This is distinguished from the idea that revelation is from a divine source: rather, it indicates how the source availed itself of the limitation of human language to point toward the ultimate direction for human moral development, otherwise known as guidance.

Furthermore, the Qur’anic revelation constantly hints at and opens up to new meanings. The extent to which these hints were possible to more fully achieve or be understood is directly proportionate to the facility of percep- tions in the human being, and to the potential they have to extend their perceptions by indicators both in language and elsewhere, which lead toward such meanings, despite the limits by, or constraints of, structural coherence in the existing language used for the revelation.

I return to my particular interest in the patriarchal implications of text and language as a representation of the limiting constructs of semantics, despite Qur’anic attempts to both work within the seventh-century limit- ations and to reach beyond them. In this case, the mind of the Prophet acts as a filter through which divine disclosure takes place. Just as “Islam” reminds us that the Prophet was an ordinary, albeit exceptional, human being, he was also an ordinary, albeit exceptional, male. He was also an inhabitant of seventh-century Arabia, chosen as the context of this revelation because of the absence of the message of truth. The aberrations of behavior, etiquette, and thought in that context were chastised in no uncertain terms by

Qur’anic

revelation itself. The arrogance, misogyny, and unfair business