Quranic studies and the literary turn.

• Author: Zadeh, Travis
• Position: Essay

The study of the Quran has been enjoying a surge of attention of late, both in and beyond the Western academy. One indication of this interest can be measured by the sheer number of publications in European languages that engage the Quran in some fashion, intended for both specialists and general readers alike. This is in addition to the profound impact that Internet resources are having on the field, in terms of telegraphing information and shaping modes of interpretation. While much of this scholarship focuses on exegesis and the historical reception of the Quran, there is a growing body of research tracing the lineaments of the Quran's historical formation through such literary methods as lexicography, codicology, and textual criticism.

Given the pronounced philological character of much of this work, it is perhaps not surprising that the pioneering classics of German Quranic scholarship from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have continued to find relevance. This is reflected most recently in the English translations by Wolfgang Behn of Geschichte des Qorans by Theodor Noldeke and his successors (1909-38; Eng. tr. 2013) and of Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung by Ignac Goldziher (1920; tr. 2006). Prior to their English translations, these two works, which tackle the historical formation of the Quranic text and the autochthonous practices of Quranic exegesis respectively, enjoyed translations into non-European languages--Geschichte des Qorans has been partially translated into Turkish (1970) and fully translated into Arabic (2004), while Goldziher's study has appeared in Arabic (1944, 1955) and in Persian (2004). This broad translation activity reflects the multiple constituencies and readerships that have engaged with Western Quranic scholarship.

The often divergent frameworks, assumptions, and methodologies that have shaped the modern field of Quranic studies, both in and beyond the West, at times have made the exchange of ideas between religious and intellectual communities rather tenuous. Needless to say, many modern Muslim scholars have closely followed Quranic research by non-Muslims in terms that have been neither adversarial nor confrontational. As with much of the earlier Western academic writing in the field, Regis Blachere's Introduction au Coran (1947) could imagine a non-Muslim readership composed largely of aspiring Orientalists. Blachere's prolegomenon, however, found an entirely different audience with the Persian translation by Mahmud Ramyar (1980). A scholar of Islamic studies at Mashhad University, Ramyar pursued a second doctorate with William Montgomery Watt at Edinburgh University; Ramyar is best known today for his Tarikh-i Qur'an (1967). As the title suggests, this study draws inspiration from Noldeke's foundational work in the field. Ramyar engages with a host of modern European scholars as well as classical Muslim authorities of Quranic exegesis. For Watt's part, in his 1970 revision of Richard Bell's Introduction to the Qur'an (1953), he duly noted a sea change underway in what he found to be "the strange new world" of the later twentieth century. Seeing Muslims and non-Muslims in greater proximity to one another, Watt called for new research on the Quran to be undertaken by both communities, in a collaborative spirit. Just as writing for an imagined coterie of only non-Muslim scholars is no longer tenable, so too are university classrooms in North America and Europe increasingly diverse spaces, in religious and ethnic terms.

These transformations can be felt in the wide array of introductory offerings in English on the Quran, by both Muslims and non-Muslims, directed to a general audience, in and out of the undergraduate classroom. The situation has changed much from the days when the available English introductory materials were limited to, say, Watt's survey, the introduction to the Quran by Kenneth Cragg (1971), and Fazlur Rahman's thematic study (1980). The last two decades have witnessed a perennial march of publications exploring the Quran in some fashion. Included in this list are introductions by Neal Robinson (1996), M. A. Abdel Haleem (1999), Michael Sells (1999), Mohammad Abu-Hamdiyyah (2000), Michael Cook (2000), Farid Esack (2002), Bruce Lawrence (2006), Mona Siddiqui (2007), Abdullah Saeed (2008), Ingrid Mattson (2008), Walter Wagner (2008), Clinton Bennett (2009), Anna Gade (2010), John Kaltner (2011), and Ziauddin Sardar (2011). This is not to forget multi-authored volumes, such as those edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe (2006) and Andrew Rippin (2006), which are also aimed at the introductory level. To be sure, these materials present different areas of focus and exhibit a range of perspectives, from the religiously committed to the agnostic yet largely sympathetic. Even the more skeptical treatments of the Quran tend to express a good deal of deference toward the sacred text. Admittedly, much of this propaedeutic attention to the sacred scripture of Islam has emerged within broader political contexts of war and terrorism, which have foregrounded the Quran as a key to understanding current events. Many of these introductory works address in some fashion the inadequacies of conflating scripture with religion while underscoring the profound epistemic and ethical shortcomings of interpreting scripture solely through the prism of modern conflicts. However, in no small measure such presentist concerns have fueled interest in Islam in general and in the Quran in particular and have helped to generate an expanding market of publications for scholarly and general interest audiences.

Keenly aware of this confluence between publishing, scholarship, and the public sphere is Carl Ernst, whose decades of scholarship reflect a profound expertise in Islamic studies and the academic study of religion. Ernst has contributed recently to this growing body of publications with his 2011 introduction How to Read the Qur'an, a concise and thoughtful guide written after several years of experience teaching the Quran largely to American university students. This work offers a lucid presentation of the Quran, specifically designed for the undergraduate classroom. Ernst is a sympathetic and close reader, committed to a broader project of demystifying Islam and building bridges of communication between various cultural, intellectual, and religious divides. He succeeds in maintaining this larger ethical concern, while also closely analyzing the Quran as a textual and historical document, worthy of literary attention on its own terms.

Ernst introduces his readers to much of the recent research on the Quran, and does so while making a compelling case for a literary approach to the sacred text. The richly referenced endnotes bear testament to his broad engagement with current Western (particularly German) scholarship in the field. Reference is also made to a handful of modern Muslim scholars, intellectuals, and reformers (e.g., pp. 64-65). From both the main body of the text and the supplementary notes, a reader may easily be left with the impression that the most important scholarship on the Quran today comes from outside the sphere of Islamic learning, however broadly construed. Ernst's commitment to a non-theological reading of the text may well contribute to the general absence of modern Muslim scholarship in his work; it may also reflect the ambivalence and suspicion expressed by some Muslim religious authorities toward Western form criticism of the Quran, which constitutes a primary locus of attention for Ernst's enterprise. Indeed, Ernst explicitly aims to bracket out interpretations rooted in religious commitments as a means of advancing what he terms a non-theological reading, accessible to a wide range of audiences.

The name of Ernst's book finds a parallel in numerous publications entitled, in some fashion, How to Read the Bible. While the title features prominently in nineteenth-century Protestant Sunday school instruction, it has for some time been associated with college-level introductory courses on the Bible. This trend has recently crossed over to the teaching of the Quran, as reflected first with the Pakistani-British scholar Mona Siddiqui, who published a guide entitled How to Read the Qur}an (2007). Siddiqui also aims to lead a general audience through a reading of the Quran. Building upon a paradigm that already exists for biblical scholarship, this shared title highlights the growing desire of publishers, readers, and teachers for introductory pedagogical materials designed to explain a text long marginalized in Western education.

Like Ernst, and many of the other recent scholars in the field, Siddiqui addresses the particular challenges of reading the Quran in the post-9/11 era. However, in contrast, Siddiqui also writes as a Muslim academic, devotionally committed to the Quran as a "book of divine guidance and inspiration." As such, she engages with largely normative arguments concerning how Muslims ought to read the Quran with a "mature" spirit of religious pluralism and tolerance as a direct challenge to the literalist hermeneutics vocally advanced by fundamentalists (p. 86). Siddiqui's short guide follows a largely thematic progression, presenting key topics in the Quran and in the development of Islamic history, by which she seeks to distill a foundational message of justice and compassion. She concludes with a reflection on the challenges and benefits of recent Western critical scholarship on the Quran and exhorts Muslim believers to be receptive to both devotional and critical engagements with the text, as part of a broader ethical imperative to promote mutual understanding and respect (p. 105). Siddiqui does not critically address the limitations of this moral-ethical framework of pluralism and multiculturalism in terms of practice or implantation within the privileged spheres of Western secular education and public life...