Discovering [The Qur'an]
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Christopher Buck, Discovering [The Qur'an], Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, bahai-library.com.
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The Blackwell Companion to the Quran
Edited by Andrew Rippin
Copyright © 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

CHAPTER 2

Discovering
Christopher Buck

Why the Qur>ān?

The Qurān, the holy book of Islam, may well be the most powerful book in human
history, with the arguable exception of the Bible. Both in world history and contemporary affairs, it is doubtful that any other book now commands, or has in the past
exerted, so profound an influence. Objectively, one of every five people on earth today
is Muslim, each of whom subjectively believes that the Qurān actually supersedes the
Bible, and that it is the Qurān – not the Bible – that is unsurpassed. Since Muslims see
Islam as the last of the world’s religions, they view the Qurān as the latest and greatest book. Even if one does not share this view, the sheer magnitude of its influence commands respect, and one cannot be cross-culturally and globally literate without some
understanding of this monumental text. The purpose of this chapter is to inspire and
assist readers in discovering the Qurān for themselves, with the helpful synergy of
insider and outsider – religious and secular – perspectives.

Academic Study of the Qur>ān

The study of the Qurān in an academic setting has raised a number of legal and pedagogical issues in recent decades, some of which have thrust the scripture into the
public eye in a way that has not been previously experienced. Of course, religion in
general is a controversial topic within education, and demands inevitably arise to know
why the Qurān should (or even can) be taught in a publicly funded university. The situation in the United States, for example, is one that has provoked legal discussions and
challenges. Doesn’t the study of the Qurān in the university violate the Establishment
Clause of the First Amendment? What about the separation of church and state?
These very concerns were recently raised in US federal courts. A national academic
and legal controversy erupted in summer 2002 when the University of North Carolina
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(UNC) at Chapel Hill required incoming freshmen, as part of its Summer Reading
Program, to read and discuss Michael Sells’ Approaching the Qurān: The Early Revelation
(Sells 1999). This text – a fresh translation and elucidation of the early Meccan sūras
of the Qurān – was recommended by UNC Islamicist Carl Ernst in order to promote an
understanding of Islam, especially in light of the events surrounding the September
11, 2001 terrorist attacks (Burdei 2002).
Alleging that UNC violated the Establishment Clause and abridged students’ rights
to religious free exercise by forcing incoming freshmen and transfer students to study
Islam against their will, a conservative-Christian activist group, the Family Policy
Network (FPN) filed suit in US District Court, Middle District of North Carolina (MDNC),
on July 22, seeking a preliminary injunction to keep UNC from conducting its summer
program. The case was captioned (named) Yacovelli v. Moeser (after James Yacovelli, an
FPN spokesman, and James Moeser, UNC Chancellor). When the FPN lost, it immediately appealed to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but lost again. This case was widely
reported (see Euben 2002), both nationally and internationally, but was not judicially
“reported” (that is, the district and appellate decisions were not published).
A later challenge was filed in 2004 but was lost on appeal. Without going into the
technicalities of the Lemon test, which the Court applied along with the endorsement
and coercion tests, the challenge failed. In his decision, Chief Judge N. Carlton Tilley,
Jr. ruled:

Approaching the Qurān simply cannot be compared to religious practices which have been
deemed violative of the Establishment Clause, such as posting the Ten Commandments,
reading the Lord’s Prayer or reciting prayers in school. The book does include Suras, which
are similar to Christian Psalms. However, by his own words, the author endeavors only to
explain Islam and not to endorse it. Furthermore, listening to Islamic prayers in an effort
to understand the artistic nature of the readings and its connection to a historical religious text does not have the primary effect of advancing religion. (Yacovelli v. Moeser, 2004
US Dist. LEXIS 9152 [MDNC May 20, 2004], aff ’d Yacovelli v. Moeser [University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill], 324 F.Supp.2d 760 [2004].)

This ruling is consistent with the US Supreme Court’s endorsement of the academic
study of religion in public schools and universities, when Justice Tom C. Clark in 1963
declared that “one’s education is not complete without a study of comparative religion
or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization”
(Abington v. Schempp, 374 US 203, 224, n. 9 [1963]). It is the secular approach that
makes the academic study of religion constitutionally permissible: “Nothing we have
said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with
the First Amendment” (Abington v. Schempp, 374 US 203, 224, n. 9 [1963]). As Justice
Powell has said more recently: “Courses in comparative religion of course are customary and constitutionally appropriate” (Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 US 578, 607 1987]
[Powell and O’Connor, JJ., concurring]). Based on Justice Clark’s statement as it applies
to the Qurān specifically, university officials now argue that – in addition to being
constitutionally permissible – one’s education is not complete without a study of the
20    CHRISTOPHER BUCK

Qurān (as well as the history of Islam) and its relationship to the advancement of
civilization.

How to Read the Qur>ān?

A nineteenth-century mystic once said that the Qurān eclipses all of the miracles of
all of the previous prophets, for the miracle of the Qurān, alone, remains (Shirazi
1950; Lawson 1988). That is to say, the staff of Moses may have turned into a serpent
and swallowed up the magicians’ snakes in Pharaoh’s court, but that prophetic scepter
has vanished. Moses may well have parted the Red Sea, as Muslims themselves believe,
but that prodigy is long gone. No empirical evidence of either miracle remains today.
What alone abides is the “miracle” of the Qurān – its prodigious ability to transform
the lives of those who believe and accept the Qurān as the best guide for their lives.
This transformation is spiritual alchemy, taking the base appetites that most of us are
born with and transmuting these into the pure gold of a refined moral and spiritual
character. The Qurān can transform a pair of horns into a set of wings, changing the
pious believer from a devil into an angel. Such is the nature of Muslim belief about
the Qurān.
The Qurān can and should be taught in the university – not to convert students into
pious Muslims, but to convert pious Muslim beliefs into something students can understand, so that they can appreciate the power of the book to influence those who believe
in it. However, beyond the question of why the Qurān should be taught, there is the
problem of how it should be taught. In whatever course and context it may be taught,
the challenge is to engage readers in the study of this text, to assist them in discovering the Qurān for themselves.
Reading the Qurān is far easier said than done. The Qurān is a challenging text. To
the uninitiated, the book is both simplistic and enigmatic. To the untrained eye, the
Qurān, on first impression, may strike one as arcane, florid, repetitive, or otherwise
impenetrable to Westerners wholly unprepared to study the text dispassionately.
However, there is a deeper hermeneutical issue involved, one of attitude and assumptions as to the authority and nature of the text.
The Qurān makes its own particular truth-claims, which are quite audacious. It tells
the reader that its source is an archetypal “mother of the book” (umm al-kitāb) in
heaven. The Qurān is therefore of divine origin. It is not only authorized, it is actually
authored by God Himself. This is an extraordinary claim, indeed. As such, from a
Muslim perspective the element of divine revelation is of paramount importance. God
wrote the Qurān, Muslims believe, and thus the book commands their respect. But
should it command the respect of those who have not been raised in its culture, who
might consider it in the university? Absolutely. So where does one begin? There are
methodological considerations that must first be addressed. The Qurān may be a diffi-
cult text for non-Muslims, but it is not unfathomable.
The still-predominantly Christian West may have serious misgivings as to the truth
of such claims. Isn’t the Qurān an ersatz version of the Bible – a derivative imitation?
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Table 2.1 Polarities in the study of the Qurān
Western                                                                    Muslim
Secular academic                                                   Traditional academic
Analytic                                                           Synthetic
Tendency to over-differentiate                                     Tendency to harmonize
Use of reason and bias                                             Use of reason and faith
Sometimes offensive                                                Sometimes defensive

This very assumption largely biased the Western reception of the Qurān from the very
start, and affected (infected) its study until now. As a result, polarities in the study of
the Qurān have emerged, although these are beginning to disappear. The great divide
in Qurānic studies has historically been the tension between traditional Muslim
approaches and Western academic approaches. Although problematic for gaining a
coherent understanding and appreciation of the Qurān, these two competing paradigms are somewhat synergistic. If you combine the two, you get what Wilfred Cantwell
Smith (Smith 1959: 53; but cf. McCutcheon 1999) regarded as the insider–outsider
dynamic. In principle, he suggested that the best approach to the study of the Qurān
and Islam is to be able to enter into a believer’s (emic) perspective while maintaining
some degree of relative objectivity (etic perspective). Indeed, Smith’s canon of believer
intelligibility requires that “no statement about a religion is valid unless it can be
acknowledged by that religion’s believers.” This “creative principle” offers the best of
both worlds, for it “provides experimental control that can lead” scholars “dynamically
towards the truth.” However, unless one adheres to Smith’s principle, polarities will
inevitably arise. Table 2.1 highlights the nature of these polarities.
The table shows a complement of productive and reductive approaches. The method
of reading largely determines what is read and how it is understood. The Muslim
approaches the Qurān reverentially and with full faith in the truth it enshrines. The
Western secular approach can be just the opposite: it is skeptical and analytic. But it
does not have to be. Where there are apparent difficulties and even apparent contradictions in the text, the Muslim will try to resolve those anomalies by harmonizing them
on a higher plane of understanding, while a person approaching the text from a secular
perspective (the Westerner) may be dismissive of the Qurān as simply a human enterprise where inconsistencies and errors are to be expected. Such a conclusion is not only
misguided according to any knowledgeable Muslim, it is also an attack upon the
integrity of a sacred text that is divinely revealed.
This concept of the Qurān as a revealed scripture is basic to an appreciation as to
why Muslims both revere the Qurān and orient their entire lives according to its dictates, for the Qurān and the h.adı̄¯th (oral traditions that report the sayings and actions
of the Muh.ammad) are the two principal sources of authority for Muslim doctrine and
praxis. So, to the questions of where to begin in discovering the Qurān, it only makes
sense to start with the concept of revelation.
22    CHRISTOPHER BUCK

Revelation and the Abrahamic Faiths

Scholars have long recognized that claims of revelation are central to the three
Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. What these faiths have in common
is that each is monotheistic. That is, they each preach a belief in a supreme Being, a oneand-only, all-powerful God. Historically, monotheism is a conscious revolution against
the archaic, pre-monotheistic mind-set. This revolution was not prevalently theoretic
but dynamic. It effected a radical shift in the concentration of what some scholars
call the numinosum, or the locus of the supernatural. Archaic (“primitive” or “primal”)
culture is founded on the idea of an anthropocentric correspondence of microcosm and
macrocosm, of part-to-whole, as in astrology. In the archaic worldview, the numinosum
is situated in and around nature, whereas in a monotheistic framework, the numinosum is a supreme being, located outside nature. Monotheism disenchants the universe
by exorcizing the very existence of gods, demons, and sprites. The nature spirits disappear, ghosts vanish, and the astrological basis of fate and predestination collapses.
Experimental science of a pre-modern type could not have been born without the
demythologization of nature that monotheism put into motion. By moving God outside
of nature, monotheism contributes to the revaluation of the ideas of infinity and
the void.
This revolution in worldview – disenchanting nature and seeing divinity as its prime
mover – gave rise to two major defining features of Western civilization: historicism and
technique. The first affects the human sciences; the other impacts the physical sciences.
The argument that Islam is one of the unacknowledged roots of Western civilization
flows from this historical perspective: Islamic philosophy and science impacted the high
medieval and renaissance cultures to produce Western civilization, especially after the
Enlightenment.
Within the monotheist worldview that is central to Islam, the Qurān is the literary
amber of revelation – the primary mode of disclosure of God’s will for humanity. The
Qurān speaks of itself as a revealed text. Phenomenologists of religion have identified
five characteristics or phenomena typically associated with revelation (Dininger 1987:
356). There are two prime characteristics. (1) Origin or source: All revelation has a
source – God, or something supernatural or numinous communicates some kind of
message to human beings. Wah.y is the technical term for revelation in the Qurān. The
fundamental sense of wah.y seems to be what those steeped in the European romantic
ethos would call a “flash of inspiration,” in the sense that it is sudden and unpremeditated; (2) Instrument or means: Revelation is communicated supernaturally, through
the agency of dreams, visions, ecstasies, words, or sacred books. Nuzūl is a synonym for
revelation, but with the explicit notion that the Qurān was “sent down” from its archetypal original in the spiritual realm known as the heavens.
Other key phenomena of revelation, all of which the Qurān exemplifies, are: (3)
Content or object: Revelation is the communication of the didactic, helping, or punishing presence, will, being, activity, or commission of the divinity. In this case, the Qurān
is a revelation from God, pure and simple, communicated through a series of revelations imparted to Muh.ammad over the course of twenty-three lunar years. Thus, it
would be error and sacrilege to speak of Muh.ammad as the “author” of the Qurān.
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(4) Recipients or addressees: The Qurān itself is a revelation of the universal type. It is a
message from God to the world; (5) Effect and consequence for the recipient: Revelation
transforms its recipient. As the agent of revelation, Muh.ammad was commissioned
with a divine mission to present the Qurān as the voice of God, calling the entire world
to righteousness and justice, to morality and decency, and to a life of prayer and fasting,
and surrender to the will of God. The fact that Muh.ammad was commissioned with a
divine mission does not make Muh.ammad himself divine, as the Qurān itself states:
“He would never order you to take the angels and the prophets as Lords” (Q 3:74).
This idea may be seen in an early Christian text: “Neither is there salvation in believing in teachers and calling them lords” (Homilies 8:5 in Roberts and Donaldson
1989–90).

How the Qur>ān Was Revealed

With an understanding of revelation generally, the specifics of the revelation of the
Qurān may now be addressed. Such considerations focus on the person identified as
the prophet of Islam, Muh.ammad.
It was Muh.ammad’s practice to meditate prayerfully in a cave on Mt. H.irā. He was
practicing tah.annuth, some sort of pious exercise, when he first encountered the
archangel Gabriel, who revealed the Qurān to him over the next twenty-three lunar
years. Tradition is unanimous that Gabriel was the agent of revelation, even though he
is mentioned only twice in the Qurān. The Qurān itself explains how God reveals: “It
belongs not to any mortal that God should speak to him, except by revelation, or from
behind a veil, or that He should send a messenger and he reveal whatsoever He will, by
His leave; surely He is All-high, All-wise” (Q 42:50). In other words, while the prophet
revealed the Qurān, it was God who authored it, according to Muslim belief.
The Qurān is modeled on an archetypal al-lawh. al-mah.fūz., the “preserved tablet”
(Q 85:22), having been sent down to the nearest heaven on the “night of power”
(Q 97) in the holy month of Ramad.ān, in order for Gabriel to transmit it to Muh.ammad.
The text of Qurān is from God, Muslims believe, while the recording and editing of
Qurān is by men. It is important to understand the implications of the Qurān being
originally revealed over a period of time, and thereafter collected and edited. Just as the
Qurān cannot be read from cover to cover in quite the same way that one reads a novel
or treatise, the Qurān was not written from cover to cover as well. Just as writers have
flashes of inspiration, Muh.ammad experienced flashes of revelation. These cumulatively became the Qurān.
The h.adı̄th literature provides many anecdotes as to how revelations would come
upon Muh.ammad. The descriptions vary. The agent of revelation Gabriel taught
Muh.ammad to recite the first passages of the Qurān. Most frequently the accounts
speak of revelations “descending” upon Muh.ammad such that he would hear the
sound of buzzing, or of bells, or would feel a great weight come upon him, or would
enter a trance, after which the words of the Qurān would become indelibly inscribed
in his heart, and subsequently dictated to scribes. The revelations of the Qurān were
first recorded by scribes who wrote down the verses on whatever writing materials
were available: leaves and branches of palm trees, white stones, leather, shoulder blades
24    CHRISTOPHER BUCK

of sheep, ribs. One early account states that a revelation was actually eaten by a domestic animal, because it had been recorded on something organic and edible.
After Muh.ammad’s death in 11/632, there was no authoritative record of the revelations. They had to be collected. The process of assembling, collating, and codifying
the Qurān was not informed by a great deal of available information as to dating and
other historical information on which to base the traditional form that the Qurān eventually took. According to tradition, the decision to preserve the Qurān was taken after
hundreds of reciters were killed in the Battle of Yamāma (12/633). Umar (who was to
become the second Caliph) suggested to Abū Bakr that the Qurān be collected and
written down. Finally, the text was fixed under Uthmān, in the dialect of the Quraysh
tribe (that of Muh.ammad), said to be the clearest of dialects, according to tradition.
Where difficulties in establishing the text arose, the dialect of the Quraysh, the tribe to
which the prophet belonged, was given preference. Written texts required attestation
from reciters, who had heard and memorized the Qurān by heart. Thus, the canon
of the Qurān was fixed as well as the order of the sūras and the integrity of the
consonantal text.
The urgency with which the text became fixed under the decree of the caliph
Uthmān afforded precious little opportunity for a systematic, much less scientific ordering of the text. Its preservation was more important than its sequencing, and it was left
to later Muslims scholars to provide a critical apparatus for more fully appreciating the
pieces that made up the larger whole. How much editing and how intrusive or interpretive such editing may have been is largely a modern question that has occupied
much of Western scholarship on the Qurān.
Soon after the Qurān was revealed, it spread like wildfire, racing with the Arab conquerors during the first two centuries of Arab expansion. The rapidity and breadth of
that expansion was dramatic. At this stage, the Qurān had not yet achieved its status
as a world text, for the simple reason that it was considered an “Arab” book (or, rather,
“the” Arab book, since the Qurān is the first book in Arabic). Non-Arab converts were
at first obliged to attach themselves to various Arab tribes, in a kind of process of spiritual and social adoption. It did not take long before non-Arabs, especially the Persians,
took umbrage with this. How could a scripture with a universal message, they argued,
be restricted to just a single ethnicity? And, if not, on what grounds were Arabs justi-
fied in relegating to non-Arabs a secondary status, when the category of “Muslims”
constitutes a spiritual and social “nation” that embraces all races and nations, yet transcends them? Was not the prophet Abraham a Muslim (“one who surrenders” to the
will of God)? And is not anyone who professes belief in the oneness of God and in
the authenticity of the prophet Muh.ammad to be accounted as a believer, on equal
footing with every other? And so it came to be: the appeal to the Qurān’s universalisms,
expressive of its egalitarian ethic, prevailed. Thus Islam, although based on a message
revealed in Arabic, was transposed to other cultures and climes, although it took
centuries before the Qurān itself was actually translated into other languages. This
singular revelation became a universal scripture.
In its final form, the Qurān’s 114 sūras are arbitrarily arranged by the longest sūra
first (except for the short “opening” chapter). The traditional dating of these sūras has
the “early Meccan sūras” spanning the first thirteen lunar years (with early, middle, and
DISCOVERING        25

final periods), shifting to the period of “Medinan sūras” in 1/622, coinciding with the
first year of the hijra or migration of the early Muslim community from Mecca to
Medina, followed by the “later Meccan sūras” on the prophet’s triumphal return to his
oasis-city of Mecca shortly before the end of his life in 11/632.
Taking what has become a classic, two-part division of Muh.ammad’s life (Watt
1953, 1956), the early Meccan sūras exemplify Muh.ammad’s role as “prophet” while
the Medinan and later Meccan sūras present Muh.ammad’s vocation as “statesman.”
Thus the earlier revelations are intended to kindle hope and to strike the fear of God
into the heart of the hearer by the promise of heaven and the threat of hell. Accordingly, the prophet’s role is that of a “warner” who has come to make people alive to
the threat of impending doom and death unless they repent and surrender to the
will of God.
First warned, later governed – this is basically the purpose of the revelations and the
logic of their sequence. The later Qurānic revelations enshrine laws and principles for
Muslims to follow. Once a Muslim community had formed (the migration of Muslims
to Mecca in 1/622 effectively created the first Muslim state), laws were needed. Accordingly, Muh.ammad became a statesman in addition to his role as prophet, and began
revealing the laws and ethical principles that later became the foundation for the four
Sunnı̄ schools of law and a distinctive way of life.

Sources of Revelation?

Whether the Qurān is informed by previous sources is a vexed question. To suggest that
the Qurān somehow derives from predominantly Jewish or Christian sources is tantamount to discrediting the Qurān as a document of revelation. For Muslims, the question should be the other way around. The Qurān is the gold standard of divine truth.
Since it is pure and unadulterated, it is previous scriptures that should be measured
against the Qurān, not the other way around. Indeed, the Qurān comprehends all previous scriptures:

Within itself, the Qurān provides Muslims with a view of the Bible. Mention is made of
the “scrolls” of Abraham and Moses, the Tawrā t (Torah) of Moses, the Zabūr (usually
understood as the Psalms) of David and the Injı̄l (Gospel) of Jesus, all conceived as direct
revelation from God to the prophet concerned: “Surely we sent down the Torah wherein is
guidance and light” (Qurān 5.48); “And we sent, following in their footsteps, Jesus son of
Mary, confirming the Torah before him; and we gave to him the Gospel, wherein is guidance and light” (Qurān 5.50). In this way, all previous scriptures are pictured within the
revelatory and compositional image of the Qurān itself. (Rippin 1993: 250)

To say that Muh.ammad was “influenced” by his religious world and that the Qurān
is a hodge-podge of intermixed influences is not only highly reductionist, but suggests
that the prophet was himself the author of the Qurān and not God. Surely God had
no need to borrow from previous scripture or religious lore, from the Muslim perspective. So the tension between traditional Muslim and Western academic approaches is
perhaps nowhere more intense than in discussing this question.
26     CHRISTOPHER BUCK

One approach that is both methodologically sound as well as religiously acceptable
is to look at the foreign vocabulary of the Qurān and also the religious technical terms
and concepts that the Qurān mentions. This area of study has proven fruitful for elucidating the text. But then, again, what exactly is being proved? If used as evidence that
the Qurān is derivative, then this crosses over from a purely descriptive phenomenology into an explanatory phenomenology that is inherently reductive. This latter
approach tries to “explain away” the Qurān, presenting it as the product of past influences rather than as an original work that absorbs and reconfigures its cultural content
to produce an Islamic civilization of world-historical proportions.
For Muslims, the only pre-Islamic source for the Qurān is the archetypal “mother
of the book” of which the earthly Qurān is a faithful copy. But Muslim scholars will
readily admit that the Qurān speaks to its historical-contemporary world, which
includes the immediate past. Thus we find specific references to practices from the pre-
Islamic period that the Qurān explicitly forbids. This is “influence” in the other direction. For instance, the pre-Islamic practice of female infanticide was quite common,
where parents would bury their infant daughter in the hot, desert sand, if they thought
it too much of a financial burden to raise a girl. So, in this respect, Islam functioned as
a women’s protectionist movement. Suffice it to say that knowledge of pre-Islamic
Arabia is the natural starting place for developing a fuller understanding and appreciation for how the Qurān represents a significant moral and social advancement after
the pre-Islamic “age of ignorance.”

Major Themes of Revelation

Knowing something of the history of the revelation of the Qurān and its codification
provides a necessary orientation. But the real heart of the Qurān is its message. One
useful way of approaching the Qurān is to see it as the vehicle for expressing profound
truths regarding God and the universe, and humankind and its civilizations. God is the
creator, and humankind the creative. The themes of the Qurān, therefore, are
the organizing principles of Islamic religion and civilization. What follow are several
of the major themes of the Qurān. Most of the Qurān’s religious principles are
common to the Abrahamic faiths, and many of its morals may be appreciated as universal ethical truths.

Exaltation

One feels the presence of God in the Qurān, which makes it such a powerful text. Since
Muh.ammad is the revealer, not author, the pious read the text as the voice of God
Himself. This is not a mere poetic device, as the voice of God in the Puritan poet Michael
Wigglesworth’s “God’s Controversy with New England” (1662). The Qurān is the real
thing, like a whole book of the Ten Commandments and more. This direct communication of God to man is charged with a power and authority that Muslims feel makes
the Qurān inimitable, and without peer. No other text can compare with it, except
DISCOVERING    27

previous scriptures. And rarely are they so direct and compelling. The Qurān is a
conduit to the presence of God, and to follow the Qurān’s dictates is to manifest the
will of God.

Creation

The Qurān accounts for the creation of the world – not as a scientific treatise, but
rather as a prophetic narrative. Scholars call this cosmogony. The important thing to
remember is that cosmogony often functions as “sociogony” – the genesis of society.
Just as God is the creator of the physical universe, the Qurān is the great moral and
social civilizer of human (Muslim) society, when ideally applied.

Revelation

We have stated earlier that the Qurān is a revelation (actually a series of revelations)
direct from God. In practice that means that everything the Qurān says is taken as
truth. This fact is clearly of profound importance in appreciating the status and authority of the Qurān. While all of the Qurān is God’s revealed truth, the Qurān does not
contain all of God’s revelations. The Qurān “confirms” the truth of previous revelations, as embodied in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Much of the Qurān, in fact,
is retrospective. It harks back to the days of previous prophets and relates what became
of them and tells of the fate of peoples who rejected and persecuted the warners and
messengers that God sent to them. These historical narratives have a didactic (edifying)
function. They are homilies on religious history, and thus serve a religious purpose.
With its dire warnings of the day of judgment, the Qurān is prospective as well as
retrospective. It endows history with teleology – a purpose and a final result. While this
teleology is predestined, the individual can largely choose the outcome for his or her
salvation. Here, salvation is not absolution from sin, but a resolution to abide by the
will of God. This is true for entire societies as well, since they are aggregates of individuals and families. That is to say, an entire social order can be transformed by following the way of life illuminated by the Qurān. Thus, revelation contains within it
the seeds of a higher civilization.
And so it happened: Islam reigned as the world’s “superpower” during the so-called
dark ages of Europe, when great Muslim civilizations exerted a moralizing, philosophical and scientific influence on the West. Historically, Islam is one of the catalysts that
sparked the Renaissance. Ideally, revelation is the genesis of ideal civilization.

Consummation

The Qurān is not just one of a series of progressive revelations sent by God to help steer
the course of civilization. The Qurān literally is the latest and greatest revelation to
date. We know this because we are told that Muh.ammad is the “seal of the prophets”
28    CHRISTOPHER BUCK

– that is, the final messenger. He has, in a real sense, completed the series of revelations. The Qurān is therefore the capstone of God’s messages to the world.
Muh.ammad’s station as the “seal of the prophets” is of fundamental importance in
Islam. This appellation comes from the famous “seal verse” (Q 33:40). Although interpretations of this key verse did vary in early Islam (Friedmann 1986), there is now a
consensus among Muslims that the term “seal” means “last,” in the sense of both
“latest” and “final.” While Muh.ammad is considered fully human and not divine (Islam
rejects the doctrine of incarnation), this truth-claim easily rivals – in both its audacity
and centrality of dogma – that of Jesus being the son of God. Rather than a person
being the “word” of God, for Muslims the Qurān is the word of God literally. However,
that Muh.ammad is the seal of the prophets is a major truth-claim and is effectively nonnegotiable. It has achieved the status of a dogma, and one learns not to debate this point
with Muslims if friendship is a priority. Accepting Muh.ammad as the seal of the
prophets is absolutely fundamental to Muslims everywhere. And this belief is firmly
anchored in the Qurān itself.

Salvation

For Muslims, salvation consists in much more than simply being forgiven for one’s past
sins and transgressions. The act of repentance itself effects much of this. Indeed, the
true test of one’s sincerity is a matter of public record, purely in terms of one’s actions.
This record is not simply what gets recorded in the proverbial “Book of Deeds,” to be
read back to each individual on the day of judgment. Rather, pious deeds both manifest and further nurture purity of heart and soul. Here, salvation is active, not passive.
One’s salvation is a matter of degree, not of status. But Islam sees a spiritual life beyond
forgiveness. Salvation is not a change of status that magically and suddenly averts
God’s wrath. Salvation is a process, a refinement of one’s character over time.
A deeper walk with God on the “straight path” of Islam can come about through
spiritual growth and transformation. But how does one do this? What can serve as an
infallible spiritual guide? For Muslims, the way to bring one’s life into greater conformity with God’s will is through following the laws of the Qurān and the example of
Muh.ammad. The truest sign of one’s transformative faith is conformity and dedication
to the principles and teachings of Islam which are preserved, first and foremost, in the
Qurān itself. The single most important act of piety is to surrender one’s own will to
that of the will of God. The word “Muslim” means “one who has submitted” or surrendered to the will of God. “Surrender” is not the best translation, because following
God’s will is an act of free will, a vigilant choice, a matter of strength through commitment and practice.
Then what is the will of God? There is a Zoroastrian scripture that states: “The
will of the Lord is the law of holiness” (the Ahunwar, the most sacred formula in
Zoroastrianism, a common refrain found throughout the Zend Avesta – see Vendidad,
Fargard 19, and passim). This means that, rather than trying to divine what the will of
God is in terms of making important life-decisions, the will of God is not so much what
DISCOVERING   29

one believes, or what one is, but what one does. What a Muslim believes and what a
Muslim does combine to produce what a Muslim is.
Surrendering to the will of God begins with professing one’s self to be Muslim, by
proclaiming that “There is no god but God” and that “Muh.ammad is the messenger of
God.” As a general rule, Muslims pray more frequently than in any other religion. They
also fast longer, for thirty days during the holy month of Ramad.ān (the dates of which
annually vary because Islam is based on a lunar calendar). Once one is properly oriented towards God, and is conscious of God throughout the day, it becomes much easier
to fulfill one’s moral obligations as a pious Muslim. For salvation to be complete, it must
be perfected. But salvation is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It is a process of drawing
ever nearer to God, which process involves becoming more God-like in one’s deeds. Here
is where faith and works combine to effect salvation.
Therefore, the requirements of the Qurān for the true believer may be described, in
Christian terms, as a “faith of works.” In other words, Islam is ideally a “faith at work”
(in Christian terms, a “way of life”) and thus a “faith that works” – for the benefit of
individual and society alike. If, as Christians often say, “faith without works is dead,”
the “faith with works” is very much alive. This is the spiritual life that Islam breathes
into the physical lives of pious Muslims. Readers may be familiar with the way in which
Martin Luther dichotomized faith and works. Individuals would not be “saved” by
unaided efforts, but by faith alone. Islam has no such doctrine of salvation by grace.
The most efficacious grace is not to give up on the sinner and allow another to die in
his place as in Christianity. The better way is to promote the spiritual and moral growth
of the individual. This takes discipline as well as a certain amount of faith. Daily obligatory prayer and following the laws and precepts of the Qurān is the truest salvation
by grace, because works and faith combine to become, in the words of the beloved spiritual, “Amazing Grace.”

Civilization

Salvation is not just for the individual. There is collective salvation as well. The purpose
of the Qurān is to communicate God’s will for humankind – all of humanity. Through
its laws and moral principles, the Qurān is meant to benefit the world through restructuring human society, to infuse it with the consciousness of God and to make it alive
to the will of God for human society. It is a call to righteousness and brotherhood, to
human solidarity in a community of principle and commonality of values. The Qurān
is nothing less than an attempt to reorder human society, to rescue it, Muslims would
say, from the moral appetites and turpitude that threaten to make the West morally
uncivilized while remaining technologically advanced. Islam offers to fill a spiritual
vacuum to which Western society has largely turned a blind eye. Islamic spirituality
can be harmonized with the best of Western – Christian as well as contemporary
secular – traditions of civic virtues, of moral decency and of family values, informed
by the West’s traditional Judeo-Christian ethic. Just as the biblical “ten commandments” are still relevant, the Qurān still has much to say, although even some Muslims
30     CHRISTOPHER BUCK

would say that it needs to be understood anew within the changed circumstances of
modernity and postmodernity.

Final destination

Few other sacred texts depict the afterlife so vividly as the Qurān. Whether literal or
metaphorical, paradise is described as the abode of the righteous, dwelling in peace in
Edenic gardens inhabited by dark-eyed damsels that seem to represent higher passions
rather than lower ones. Conversely, the Qurān portrays hell in equally graphic
terms, as a pit of fire and brimstone, with a descriptive immediacy that the sermons of
Jonathan Edwards can scarcely rival. Indeed, it is said that around a full one-third
of the Qurān is eschatological, dealing with the afterlife in the next world and with
the day of judgment here on earth at the end of time. As in Christianity, the day of
resurrection plays a prominent role in the Qurān with a focus on inevitable
moral accountability, both individual and collective in nature. Through promise and
threat, the Qurān instills a healthy fear of God in the believer, who is constantly
taught to respect divine authority and to expect the consequences of one’s own
actions.

Reading Revelation

The Qurān presents a number of challenges for interpreter and reader alike.
Many Western readers have complained that the Qurān is dull and repetitive. If the
Qurān were read as a novel from cover to cover, there might be some truth to this. But
just as the Qurān was revealed in piecemeal fashion, so also should it be read. The final
redaction of the Qurān obscures this fact. There are few obvious markers that will
signal, to the untrained eye, the beginning and end of various discrete, revelatory sections known as pericopes. The best examples of a piece of revelation preserved in its
entirety and discretely identifiable would be most of what are known as the early
Meccan sūras.
The Qurān was not intended to be read as a book in one or two sittings. The more
that one reads, the more the reader will have the sense that the Qurān repeats itself.
Some expressions recur like a refrain. They have a rhetorical purpose, in that they are
repeated for stress. The reiterative nature of the Qurān notwithstanding, certain passages have achieved such renown that they have come to be known as what al-Ghazālı̄
(d. 505/1111) referred to as the “jewels of the Qurān.” These include such celebrated
passages as the “throne verse” (Q 2:255) and the “light verse” (Q 24:35).
Shifting from the mystical to the perplexing, some Qurānic passages defy easy explanation. The most obvious examples are the so-called “mysterious letters of the Qurān,”
which occur at the very beginning of twenty-nine chapters. Muslims themselves often
have a mystical relationship with the Qurān that does not require that they understand the text, divine its enigmas or derive mystical meaning by probing its depths. In
popular or “folk” Islam, instead of trying to divine its truths, Muslims may turn to the
DISCOVERING         31

Qurān as a source of divination. One common practice is to consult the Qurān as a
kind of oracle. If a person wishes to know the solution to a personal problem, he or she
can look to the Qurān for personal guidance by carefully meditating on the passage
that first falls into view.
It is instructive enough simply to be able to see the different modes of discourse that
give texture and vitality to the Qurān. Although the Qurān does not have a definite
structure in any kind of systematic method, it has a complex of structures within it.
These have been identified in various ways by Muslim and Western scholars alike. One
way to discern the various shifts in revelatory content is to perform a genre analysis of
a sūra or part of a sūra in question. The major genres, or the various styles of Qurānic
revelations, are as follows.

Prophetic revelations

A narrative is simply a story. If the story is true, it qualifies as history. Some narratives
have a purely edifying (instructive) function. Whether historically verifiable or not, all
of the Qurānic narratives are morally true. Such a distinction will probably be lost on
those pious Muslims who take the sacred text at its word (literally). Take for instance
the story of Jesus as a young boy. The Qurān states that, as a child, Jesus would fashion
birds out of mud, then breathe life into them, and the birds would fly away:

And He [Jesus] will teach him the book, the wisdom, the Torah, the Gospel, to be a messenger to the Children of Israel saying, “I have come to you with a sign from your Lord.
I will create for you out of clay as the likeness of a bird; then I will breathe into it, and it
will be a bird, by the leave of God. I will also heal the blind and the leper, and bring to life
the dead, by the leave of God.” (Q 3:43)

Despite the abundance of miracle narratives in the four gospels, this particular prodigious ability of Jesus is unreported in the gospels found today in the New Testament.
Thus, as the Qurān itself states, some stories it relates may be traced back to previous
scriptures, and some not. This is a case of one that is not.
Prophetic narratives are what they purport to be – stories of the prophets. The
Qurān has many such narratives. Indeed, the Qurān speaks much more about past
prophets than about the prophet Muh.ammad himself. These narratives, for the most
part, are partial, even fragmentary. The only complete prophetic narrative in the
Qurān is the sūra of Joseph (Q 12). The nature of these narratives is referential and
homiletic. They serve an edifying purpose.
Many of the Qurān’s prophetic narratives will no doubt be familiar to readers who
are conversant with the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. However, in addition to the “new” material on Jesus just mentioned, the Qurān contains many other
stories that are not to be found anywhere in the Bible. For many readers, this adds to
the Qurān’s mystique. Whether such stories are those of Moses and Khid. r (Q 18), the
story of the Seven Sleepers (Q 18), or other nonbiblical narratives that add to the overall
impression, the reader must not assume that these stories are untrue or merely
32     CHRISTOPHER BUCK

apocryphal. Whether they are or not is not the point. For Muslims, the Qurān confirms
much material found in previous scriptures, and adds new material as well. Even if such
stories may be found in Jewish lore or elsewhere, it is safe to say that the Qurān presents these as morally true and as paradigmatically important. The stories are authoritative and, by virtue of their status as revelation, are true for Muslims howsoever they
may be nuanced or explained.

Edifying revelations

While the majority of narratives are stories of the prophets, other narratives have a
purely edifying purpose. One example is the Qurān’s use of parables. These function
in quite the same way as the parables of Jesus. Maxims, aphorisms, and other wisdom
sayings enrich the didactic dimension of the Qurān. This material regulates the lives
of Muslims in ways that laws cannot. Laws may govern outward actions, and conform
them to moral and religious standards. But the Qurānic wisdom literature is the heart
of piety, which can take on mystical dimensions not contemplated by observant praxis
alone.

Legal revelations

As stated earlier, the Qurān is one of the two major sources of Islamic law. The other
is the h.adı̄th literature, which is a body of traditions that report the extra-canonical
sayings and actions of Muh.ammad. Together, the Qurān and h.adı̄th make up the
sunna, the way of the prophet, which, in turn, becomes the sharı̄ a, the code that
Muslims should follow. If the Qurān is the revealed word of God, then the life and
sayings of Muh.ammad represent the will of God. Muh.ammad is the perfect Muslim.
Therefore, the pious Muslim will try to emulate the prophet in just about every way,
beyond his singularly prophetic mission.
Given the harsh realities of the day, the Qurān can at times be uncompromising.
Some of its corporeal punishments are objectionable and unacceptable in the modern
world today. Some Muslim reformers advocate dispensing with the letter of certain
Islamic laws yet preserving principles and social goals that stand behind them.

Liturgical revelations

The Qurān has liturgical value because it is used in private and public worship. Among
the many and varied devotional uses of the Qurān, the first sūra is used in daily obligatory prayer (s.alāt). Qurānic recitation – that is, chanting the verses of the Qurān
according to stylized canons of intonation and cadence – became an art-form in itself,
just like Qurānic calligraphy. In a sense, Qurānic recitation re-enacts those original,
revelatory moments of the spoken Qurān as they were first dictated by Muh.ammad to
his scribes.
DISCOVERING   33

The Qurān loses much of its force on the barren printed page. Emotions thrill to the
spirited invocation of Qurānic passages, as a whole religious culture comes alive. One
does not have to know Arabic to be struck by the emotional depth that is conveyed by
Qurānic recitation. The hearts of the pious are swept with awe and fascination by the
measured accents of the text, as it is experienced in the depth of the soul.

Polemical revelations

To promote Islam is also to defend it. Secular as well as religious charges were leveled
at the prophet of Islam. Muh.ammad was variously accused of being a crazed poet,
soothsayer, or sorcerer, as well as a liar. In all of these cases, Qurānic polemics are to
be seen as both actual and theoretical. They may be historical and localized, or doctrinal and generalized. Sometimes the Qurān directly cites the charges it refutes. The
important thing to remember is that the Qurān, despite its exalted claims to revelation,
is personalized through the formative experience of Islam as a historical movement.
Muh.ammad and the early Muslims faced challenges, debates, and outright persecution.
Under these circumstances, polemics served an immediate purpose, yet had a paradigmatic value as Islam spread to countries outside Arabia, where Islam was just as new
then as before.
Another aspect of Qurānic polemics is apologetic in nature. Among the detractors
of Islam were Jewish communities. This fact becomes problematic in the modern
context and has fueled charges of a latent Muslim anti-Semitism. The many references
to Judaism, however, are for instructive purposes, and a much greater focus is placed
on the prophethood of Moses, who is really a prototype of Muh.ammad himself.
The Qurān has a certain degree of affection for Christians. During times of persecution in the early days of Islam, Christians tended to be the most sympathetic of
onlookers. Muslims share a great deal in common with Christians. However, the Qurān
brooks no tolerance for the Christian doctrine of the trinity. Although the
Qurān affirms the virgin birth, it does not accord Jesus the status of the son of God
(nor that of God, for that matter). The Qurān also views original sin as absolute injustice and complete predestination. Pure Christianity is pure Islam, since there is only one
true religion. What would Jesus do if he met Muh.ammad? Muslims would say that Jesus
would embrace the truth of Muh.ammad’s revelation, considering the fact that the
Qurān states that Jesus prophesied the advent of Muh.ammad.

Assessing the Qur>ān

Is the Qurān a revelation sent down by God, as Muslims claim? This is clearly a theological question. If the answer were yes, Christians and others might feel compelled to
become Muslims. The simplest solution is to recognize Islam for what it is – a system of
salvation at the center of which is the Qurān, which is functionally and effectively the
word of God, entirely independent of what non-Muslims have to say about its truth
claims. The Qurān invites all humanity to respond to the call of God. It sees itself as
34    CHRISTOPHER BUCK

the latest and fullest testimony of God and the most direct expression of the divine
purpose for humanity. This is a monumental truth-claim, and must be taken very seriously when studying the text. Readers will wish to keep this salient fact in mind because
it goes far to explain the power of the Qurān to command allegiance and serve as the
effective constitution of entire Islamic societies.
An understanding of the Qurān is analogous to music appreciation, although
saying so is by no means meant to trivialize the purpose or process of gaining that
understanding. Muslims have a coherent worldview, one that originates from the
Qurān itself. To appreciate the Qurān is to develop a sensitivity to the operation of
the divine in a culture removed for centuries from the Euro-American world but now
increasingly an integral part of it. One can only gain from such an understanding.
Indeed, one can only be enriched by it, but only if one’s prejudices are first abandoned.
The Qurān is a world unto itself, a palatial architecture of meaning that is multidimensional and comprehends the totality of the human experience. On the moral and
spiritual foundation of the Qurān, an entire history and civilization has been built. The
West can continue to clash with Islam – which is the religion of the Qurān – or
embrace it.
To acknowledge the beauty and depth of the Qurān is not to convert to Islam, but
to converse with it and with Muslims who are enlivened by it. Yes, the Qurān is a text
of monumental historical importance. But it may have an even greater contemporary
relevance, for in an increasing number of Western nations the population of Muslims
is beginning to surpass the number of Jews. Thus the religion of Islam is rapidly
entrenching itself as a French religion, as part of UK society, as a feature of the
Canadian mosaic, and as an essential element of the spiritual landscape of the United
States.
To know the Qurān is to better prepare oneself for inevitable encounters with
Muslims both in America and abroad – not as the exotic “other” somewhere in the
distant Orient, but as the religion and way of life of our fellow compatriots at home –
friends, neighbors and, through increasing religious intermarriage, that of our immediate and extended families. The events of September 11, 2001 have riveted world
attention on Islam (albeit radical Islam). Sales of the Qurān and texts on Islam have
skyrocketed.
For the non-Muslim, reading the Qurān is an act of moderation, a significant form
of communication, an act of intellectual and perhaps spiritual empathy, and, for some,
a religious moment without a religious commitment, and a gesture of understanding.
It is an act of humanity. Moreover, the Qurān is a text of world-historical proportions
that institutions of higher learning can scarcely afford to ignore, because our domestic life, as well as international affairs, will be increasingly informed by it. Discovering
the Qurān on a personal basis can be rewarding for its own sake. Studying the Qurān
will equip university students with a competence they are sure to find useful in an
increasingly multicultural world, one-fifth of which is already under Islam’s spiritual,
political, and cultural authority – with an even greater part of the world affected by it.
The US courts have already weighed in on the University of North Carolina Qurān controversy. While reading the Qurān cannot be required, it is required reading for reli-
DISCOVERING    35

gious, political, cultural, and global literacy. In its own way, it is a democratic as well
as academic enterprise.

Further reading

Bausani, Allesandro (1974) Islam as an essential part of western culture. In: Studies on Islam:
A Symposium on Islamic Studies Organized in Cooperation with the Accademia dei Lincei in
Rome, Amsterdam, 18–19 October 1973. North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam,
pp. 19–36.
Buck, Christopher (2006) University of North Carolina’s Quran controversy. In: Ahmad, M. (ed.)
The State of Islamic Studies in American Universities. Alta Mira Press, Lanham MD.
Friedmann, Yohanan (1986) Finality of prophethood in Islam. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and
Islam 7, 177–215.
Rippin, Andrew (1993) Interpreting the Bible through the Qurān. In: Hawting, G. R. and
Shareef, A.-K. (eds.) Approaches to the Qurān. Routledge, London and New York, pp. 249–59.
Sells, Michael (1999) Approaching the Qurān: The Early Revelations. White Cloud Press, Ashland,
OR.
Watt, William Montgomery (1953) Muhammad at Mecca. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Watt, William Montgomery (1956) Muhammad at Medina. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
-- Discovering [The Qur'an] (Used by permission of the curator)