STUDY QUESTIONS
HUMANITIES CORE COURSE
FALL QUARTER, WEEK 4
20-21 OCTOBER 2010
“Islam: The Covenant Corrected and Restored”
There are no study questions of the usual sort accompanying the Week 4-2 lecture in this HCC segment. Instead, instructors and students are invited to continue the process of close reading of the Qur'an that was begun in the 4-2 lecture, turning their attention to passages that are included in the “Core Guide & Reader” but were not discussed during the lecture itself.
During the lecture, your attention was drawn to how different parts of the several passages seemed intended for different parts of Prophet Muhammad's original audience. What you are now invited to do is to read the remaining passages with the same categories of original hearer in mind, asking yourself as you proceed which audience God seems to have in mind as speaks successive parts of his message/warning to Prophet Muhammad.
To assist you, I have prepared the following shorthand notes. In these notes, the adat numbers (verse numbers) that are grouped below each sura number (chapter number) are followed, respectively, by one of the following audience-code numbers. When the applicability of the verse to the audience segment indicated seemed obvious, I offer no commentary. When it seemed necessary or useful, I have offered what I could.
Audience Code Numbers
P Arab polytheists
C Christians
J Jews
M Muslims
A Muslim apostates
R rival prophets.
Note also as general features of the Qur’anic discourse:
G
H Hell
SURA 2
114, J
116, C
118-119, J; against Jewish lamentation
122, 124, J; covenant abrogated
125-129, M; linking Abraham, Kaaba, and Muhammad
142, J, A
146, J, C
148, M; urging forbearance now, trusting in divine judgment/punishment at end time.
SURA 3
59, C
61, C, “lying”: innocent error a wobbly conception; usually error = lying, culpable
deception
65-68, 81-83, M: this is close to the core of Muslim revelation; the covenant that must
be restored is the primeval covenant between the one God and the monotheist
Abraham; as originally granted to Jews and Christians, later revelations did not
undermine or contradict this one, but those later revelations and scriptures have
been accidentally or wantonly corrupted since the time when they were given.
“Back to Abraham” promises the needed restoration.
85-92, A
96-97, M; why the Kaaba is so supremely holy a structure; cf. 2:125-129
98-99, J & C
100-101, M & A
105, C; allusion to Christological controversies and Christian persecution of heretics
103-106, A
110, M, C, J; Muslim praised as virtuous, contrasted with People of Book
SURA 4
54, J; cf. 2, 118-119; formal lamentation is a part of Jewish religious practice.
56, H, more vividly evoked, in my opinion, than
57, G
101-104, P, clearly a reference to early persecution of Muslim believers by the
polytheists of
the dominant Qureish tribe of
tribe, and within it of the Banu Hashem clan, but they were initially the
reason he and
his followers fled to
108, 110, P; note a very fully developed view of divine omniscience, especially
in judging human consciences and wrongdoing
123, C; the verse may not seem polemical, but in fact it is a rejection of the Christian
notion that “Christ died for our sins”; in the Qur’an, no one can assume another’s
guilt or be saved from punishment by another’s innocence. God sees all,
and all will be requited individually each for his own merit or blame.
125, M; note the close linkage of submission to God, virtue in general, and Abraham,
God’s friend.
SURA 5
3, M, J; the eating of food offered in the course of slaughter to a pagan god or
slaughtered upon a pagan altar was an issue for Christian Jews; it comes up in
Paul (1 Corinthians 8:4-13). The Muslim dietary laws, rather than derived from
the Jewish, reflect general near eastern dietary practice, differently wedding to
religious belief in each case. God has “perfected” the Jewish practices for the
Muslims
6, M, J; “perfect his blessings upon you”: again, ablutions are a part of standard
Jewish practice; God wishes to “perfect” again, in this domain.
6, M, J; “treachery in all but a few of them. Overlook this and pardon them….”
Jewish sinfulness means that the Jewish covenant has been abrogated, but Jews
are welcome in the new people of God
14, C, “they too forgot”; oblivion and adulteration alternate as the charge against the
People of the Book.
14, C: “we stirred up enmity among them”; fights among contending creeds, orthodoxy and heresy, are not mere human arguments; they are divine punishment
17, C; against the Incarnation
61-66, C & J; note how the two groups blend into one as “People of the Book”; how
not all are treacherous, but most are: “some of them are on the right course, but
many of them do evil.” The language is harsh, but note that Jews stand exactly
equal to Christians; in context, since immunity could be had by the payment of
a tax, this led to most of the world’s Jews choosing to live under Muslim rather
Christian rule. Mutual Jewish-Christian hostility, again, is God’s punishment of
both groups.
68, C, J. Without “that which has been sent down”—namely, the Qur’an—the
earlier scriptures avail not.
69, C, J, S. With the Qur’an, their scriptures, and a good life, all “have nothing to
fear or regret.” Note the expression “God and the Last Day” both here and at
2:126. The shahada or declaration of faith does not include the Last Day as an
article of faith, but references like these make it virtually such. Acceptance of
Muhammad in the shahada as rasul, or messenger would include in principle, of
course, the message he brings, in which the Last Day occurs with such extreme
frequency.
SURA 6
74-83, M; discussed in class. The first of what I called “merit of Abraham” passages.
84-89, M; biblical names are multiplied in random order, all regarded as prophets
89, “a lesson for all people”; Islam is potentially a universal religion, paralleling
Christianity
91, A, J, C
92, M, J, C; “confirm what came before it.” A crucial point: Islam is in its way a kind
of non-Christian Protestantism, evoking the practice of Abraham as normative in
the way that the Protestants invoked the practice of the early church as normative.
For both, what lies between represents corruption both in the transmission of
God’s word and in the moral lives of those who should be its conscientious
Custodians
93, R
94, C, P; Jesus is celebrated as intercessor before God, but tribal gods were
commonly understood to have a one-to-one, god-to-tribe relationship and
protective duties, especially in time of danger throughout the ancient near
east. The universality of this understanding faded under Hellenism, whose
pantheon included, most notably, no God of Greece. The gods related to
humans collectively, and the relationship was not one of protection. Judaism
was close to unique in retaining the old sense of covenant relationship with
its god. The Arab tribes of the interior may also have carried forward the
older theology.
101, C. When God is celebrated for anything other than giving the Qur’an and
for reward and punishment at the Last Day, it is typically as the Lord of Nature.
SURA 9
28, C. This is the origin of the ban, still in effect, upon Christian entry into the Hijaz.
29, J,C. “God and the Last Day” again; “payment of the tax”—see Abdel Haleem’s
note: the jizya seems also to have been, functionally, a kind of substitute form of
acknowledgement of the superiority of the Qur’an as revelation.
30, J “Ezra is the Son of God”; Ezra was not treated in Rabbinic Judaism as Jesus in
Christianity. However, as we shall see in our next class, he was a key figure in
linking the rabbis’ radical changes in Judaism to the authority of Moses by a
chain of oral tradition, the “oral law.”
31, J, C. Jewish and Christian error is not infrequently associated with Jewish and
Christian vice; conversely, Mullim truth with Muslim virtue.
35, H; again, more vividly portrayed than G
SURA 19
“In the name of God the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy”—the phrase opens every Sura.
1-26, M, a rather close and laudatory retelling of Luke 1.
Note that God freely acknowledges that he has brought about virgin birth in the past. The Qur’anic retelling introduces an emphasis never much practiced in Christian New Testament commentary, by which Elizabeth’s conception of John the Baptist is miraculous in just the same way that Sarah’s of Isaac was, while Mary’s of Jesus is miraculous in another way. This juxtaposition could underscore my contention in the Christianity readings that it is miraculous birth, rather than the virginal state, that is of religious significance. Note, however, that the retelling makes no reference to John as the future Baptizer.
27-33, M, Jesus, though not divine, clearly has miraculous powers even from birth.
Like all other biblical figures, he is a prophet.
35, C
37, C; “factions,” again, God’s punishment for the error/sin of belief in Incarnation
41-50, M; discussed in class, second “merit of Abraham passage.”
56, M. “Idris” is biblical Enoch, of whom Genesis says that he “did not see death,”
and who later became the vehicle for apocalyptic speculation
SURA 22
18, P
19-22, H
23-24, G
27, M; one of the Five Pillars: Haj
36, “those who do not ask as well as those who do”: Zakat, almsgiving, another of the
Five pillars. Generosity, largesse, is probably second to faith in the frequency of
its mention among the virtues.
37, J, C “neither their meat nor their blood that reaches God but your piety”: the point is, against ancient Jewish practice and later Christian understandings of the meaning of the crucifixion, that the killing of an animal or a human for that matter does not placate or, in and of itself, even please God. That is not its point. Piety is its point, and generosity—the sharing of the meat—is inherent in piety.
SURA 37
11-39, P. In general, neither the Jews nor, certainly, the Christians had to be
persuaded that there would be a Last Day. See Matthew 25, with strong
elements of structural similarity to this scene, though the criteria for
salvation and damnation are different. It was the Arab polytheists who
carried forward the more primitive near eastern notion that the vague
personal afterlife was not a place of reward or punishment, merely of
diminution down to near absence, and that one’s real afterlife was through
and only through one’s offspring. In a sense, the tribal polytheists had to
“get” this much of the late Jewish and early Christian vision to hear God’s
Revelation through Muhammad at full strength.
83-113, M third “merit of Abraham” passage; discussed in lecture; note the far
greater sense of partnership and shared merit between God and his (here
unnamed) son.
SURA 38
17-26, M. Read II Samuel 12. This episode combines elements from it to make a
general didactic or moralistic point (26): “Do not follow your desires, lest they
divert you from God’s path: those who wander from His path will have a
painful torment because they ignore the Day of Reckoning.
30 ff. M. In later Jewish folklore, as here, Solomon’s wisdom became sorcery.
41 ff. M. The biblical Job is celebrated for his patience, as also, in general, in
Christianity. The starkness of his confrontation with God, God’s wager
with the Devil: all this is passed over in silence. Cf. my comment in lecture
that the figures of Jewish and Christian scripture are more uniformly honored
in the Qur’an than in the Bible itself.
65, M,J,C. “I am only here to give warning.” For Christians with only a qualified
belief in Christ’s divinity (miraculous, yes; divine, no), this element in the
promulgation of the Qur’an was potentially of great importance. There was
nothing new to believe; there was only the purification of truths already accepted.
69, M,J,C. “I have no knowledge…” Same point.
82, “Iblis said….” Indirectly, an assertion that Muslims, less messed with by the
great demon Iblis are the most virtuous of men.