The Koran, a living text

Can we go in search of a primary sense of the Koran, refraining from taking into account the posterior elements that overloaded the meaning ? While the proponents of the tradition prohibit any reflection on this subject, it is good to remember that the Koran is a text saturated with history, but also immersed in time and societies where the faithful live.

The authors of Think the Koran Take an immense task: since the word considered divine has been gathered in a vulgate that has become the last reference for anyone declaring himself Muslim, this question has continued to flow ink. Is it possible, today, to penetrate the Koranic corpus more to better understand what was said to be at the origin and not what has been said since ? The authors offer keys and tracks to go in search of the immediate reference, without calling on the posterior elements which overloaded or extrapolated the meaning.

Their interest in this subject was born during a tour in Europe and in Arab countries to present their previous works on the life of the Prophet. On this occasion, they noted with a deep despite that they had to face a very incomplete and selective knowledge of the Koran among practicing Muslims. They expected to be beset with questions about the two themes of their works: the figure of the prophet rendered to his humanity and the revelation of the Koran rendered to his context. This was not the case.

Let us pay tribute to the authors for the good feeling that animates them so that the tear that the Muslim lives, in his heart, “ Between submission to the argument of authority and the exercise of personal reflection (P. 20). Their conclusion is a hymn to an ideal Islam as lived by the Companions of the Prophet in the depths of themselves, through the verses of the Koran whose meanings they internalized (p. 187). Supporting evidence, their goal tends to demonstrate that the Koranic text has not been a frozen text, as literalists claim, since its semantics evolve according to its context.

An enticing title, a shy achievement

The authors rightly show that Islam of the beginnings was in total interaction with the context where it was born. From this observation, they explain that tears and errors do not result from the Koran, but that they are the fact of thea priori Literalist (p. 21). The strict compliance with the letter founds, for them, the right to obscure the temporality of the Koranic text. It is a doctrine that gradually took shape after the death of the Prophet (or perhaps a little later) and which, since then, has continued to wreak havoc. It is based on unstoppable reasoning on the surface: the Koran is the Word of God, it is therefore not dependent on time ; His verses are definitively formulated, they are thus to be taken at the foot of the letter. However, according to the authors, a careful reading of the so -called divine speech and without a priori reveals that temporality and timelessness are intimately linked to the interior of the Koranic text.

Without dispute of the divine origin of the Koranic message and without referring to the recent work in the field of research on the Koran, they conclude that the Muslim believer who lives this word in other places and other eras must make an effort of interpretation to grant it to the changing conditions of life (p. 22). By too rapid an analysis, they reduce a complex story to two readings of the Koran which are diametrically opposed: one that sticks to the text and another which uses reason.

They note, with force, that this opposition of the two visions on the essence of the Koranic text and its interpretation gave rise to controversies, which we no longer even suspect fertility, specifying that we are no longer able to conduct such debates without facing a new mihna (test) and without a fatwâ be pronounced. The proponents of tradition have ended, almost definitively, to any reflection going against the idea that the substance of God is inseparable from a word put in writing. The Koran thus appears as a text which must consolidate a faith and not an intelligence because the initial meaning would have kept its evidence (p. 27).

We would like to stand out from the authors on this specific point. What they call “ primary sense It is in fact only the literal meaning as it has been transmitted by a majority tradition. The real “ primary sense “Is upstream of what has submerged and obscured it, from this shield -shaped stratification, all exegeses and other interpretations relating to an intertextuality whose waiting horizon is the Koranic text. The first listeners did not need intermediary to explain the meaning of the speech stated.

Exegesis and historical truth

It would seem that the need for a commentary imposed itself at a time when the Koranic text was dispossessed of its statement of enunciation, because of the distance from its era of revelation and the conversion of populations. The exegesis was born, thus, of a double necessity: to explain the text for the new converts and to install a historicity of the coherent text which would stick to the events which one imagined being really occurred, hence the invention of “ sciences “Like exegesis (Tafsîr) and the circumstances of the revelation (Asbâb al-nuzûl)… Who have nourished theology, historiography and Muslim law still in gestation.

The authors insist that the Koran traces events actually lived. Analysis of a story or a term, from this point of view, cannot be dissociated from the framework of its own ; it’s necessary “ make the effort to understand it by relating it to the context of its advent (P. 59). The Koranic text constantly and explicitly responds to Muhammad’s historical situation. The authors give many examples, whether in the chapter devoted to the beginnings of revelation (p. 39-49) or in that devoted to God’s response to the arguments of polytheists (p. 83-87), Jews (p. 89-101) and Christians (p. 103-106).

However, there is a reliable chronology neither of the Koranic text, nor of events. The only reference in our possession is based on late texts. The authors are aware of the difficulty: the corpus consists of a set of suras whose revelation lasted around twenty years in a discontinuous manner. The development of a chronology of this set was only imposed after the vulgar, giving birth to the literature of Asbâb an-nozûlaimed at locating the different verses in a historicized setting. The authors judge that this instrument is essential to the one who tries today to approach the Koranic text (p. 31). They are partially right when they declare that the works of traditionists and those of columnists “ have the immense merit of existing, since they are the only ones to connect us in any way whatsoever at the time of the beginnings of Islam, (…) even if it requires the history researcher a patient to cross -check, comparison, approximation (P. 62). Despite these precautions, they allow themselves to be trapped by this system of “ circumstances of revelation ». This system ended up establishing itself as standard spatio-temporal frame ; which goes completely, unlike the framework in which the approach which tries to “try to” rediscover the past in the past and not the past by or for the future ».

Desecate the past

When we analyze these primary chronological lists, we note that ancient schools were able to agree either on the exact chronological order of suras, nor on the meaning of verses: the comment cascade illustrates the absence of consensus. The reconstruction site is immense. When the authors declare that “ It was obvious for all commentators of the first four centuries “, It is therefore a historical misinterpretation. Literature of Asbâb an-nozûl must be manipulated with more caution. These texts aimed to build up as an intermediary serving as a commentary to the said Koranic … two centuries after the emergence of Islam. It was therefore completely natural, according to Chelhod, that their editors engaged in proselytism and that, alongside historical events, there are posterior additions under the individual or collective imagination, dictated by both the religious and the political.

The authors are right to use these sources to desecrate a past which continues to weigh on Muslims, to bring them to an adaptation of the teachings in their environment. But they cannot consider these same sources as works of history in the current sense. Rightly, they find that most Muslims will not venture into a search for meaning, even less in an interpretation. How can they get there, while most researchers agree that this requires a overhaul of all the achievements concerning the history of this period ? Contemporary Muslim thinking works behind closed doors. Since literalism is essential, it is urgent to change the education system in most Arab countries but also Muslim, where learning is deficient and where it is out of the question to take a critical look at the sacred texts. Teaching is based on passive learning, from kindergarten to the university’s high spheres. Now how a person, guided by a referent from his birth to the grave, can, with a magic wand, acquire the capacity of a personal reflection ?

The observation issued by the authors is not without interest. It is obvious that any good Muslim must be able to understand the text that he is led to repeat five times a day. But, given that it has always been done in its place, does it have the means ? Do we give them ? It seems to me that the answers are to be sought at this level. The strongest moment of the work is when the authors apply to show that Muslims of the first centuries of Islam had the freedom to ask frank questions, that they did not hesitate to decry everything that could seem to them in disagreement with their vision of things. But it should be remembered that this was only possible before the central power – and through it tradition – supports the restructuring of what would become the model to follow for any Muslim.

The work may seem essential by the times that run. The purpose announced by the authors is to call on the intelligence of Muslim readers by encouraging them to ask questions that they are not used to asking and daring to approach the Koranic text from a different angle than that which has always been imposed on them. We can only congratulate them. But the work has its limits. Confiding a historical character to the presence of God, as did the authors, in a space-time framework is a challenge of a completely different scale. It is a God that historiography and tradition have made present in order to legitimize events. There are two moments to distinguish. The exegetical corpus is after the events of the “ revelation », He is there to frame or crop, when the proponents of tradition see theological discourse escape them.