OIC = O I See

They came, they spoke the lines put into their mouths, and they left. All of them, in their tailormade suits and uniforms, speaking a babble of empty words, without sound and fury, meaning nothing. More worthless than the pieces of paper on which they had been written by scribes in service. The words uttered at Putrajaya this week were recorded and simultaneously translated into three languages and they would go into the annals of history of infamy as testimonies of shame and humiliation.

The rhetoric is, of course, not new; only some of those who gathered at this new dream capital of Dr. M were new to the game. But there were many who have made OIC a career, and they spoke with the black humor of the one who knows the joke inside out. Their most crisp refrain was: “O, I see.” Anytime someone said something that needed a thoughtless response, they would say, “O I see.” And repeated ad nauseam, this phrase became the most apt symbol of a gathering that has become a laughing matter for the rest of the world, for everyone knows that these summits of the heads of states accomplish nothing but generate documents that gather dust on some old shelves, until they are dusted for the next summit to regurgitate the old material first written in the heydays of the oil-boom for the hired kings and military generals, by dreamy intellectuals who dreamt of building a new Ummah from the ashes of history but whose dreams splintered and fell in the hands of big game-planers sitting in the Western capitals.

In a wide-open field yearning for some meaningful input, it was men around a Pakistani general who first introduced numbers into speeches written in dusty old offices with the help of soon-to-be discarded typewriters. It was the clerks and section officers of Pakistan’s ministry of science and technology who provided numbers to their bosses who were told that numbers impress even the most unconvinced. So, they called for the GDP figures of the entire Ummah, which could not be computed because the hired potentates have kept no records of the billions they have been plundering. But never mind the actual numbers; one can always cook the soup with broth and stir in some fury by adding emphatic phrases (“the Muslim Ummah should” and the “Ummah must”) addressed to no one in particular and meaning nothing at all.

So, the recipe was invented. Henceforth, speeches could be written on the fly, using this magic recipe: Add a few sentences like “The GDP of the entire Ummah is roughly $1.4 trillion, while that of Japan alone is 4.5 trillion.” Then stir in some refrains for dramatic effect: “The Ummah is standing at a historic moment,” and lo and behold, the great game is on. First invented 37 years ago, this recipe has been working and the Ummah is still standing at the same historic moment as it was in 1969, when the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) was manufactured, following the arson which destroyed part of the old wooden roof and the 800-year-old pulpit brought to the sacred mosque by Salahuddin Ayubi after he defeated the Crusaders and liberated al-Quds. Summit after summit, we are told that this is a moment we can either seize and take charge of our destiny, or let others define our destiny. Indeed, we have been standing at a historical monument of regurgitated verbosity.

But times have changed since that old generation of tired old men and dreamy intellectuals ushered us into these meaningless refrains. New challenges have arisen and hence new themes must continuously be invented. The greatest of these themes is, of course, the new Islam that has been invented in the White House and that needs to be poured down the throat of 1.3 billion voiceless, unrepresented men, women and children who now comprise our Ummah. Thus, this year’s gathering at Putrajaya saw the unfurling of this new brand of Islam, an “Enlightened Moderate” Islam that “would bridge the gap between the Islam and the West.”

Among all the potentates who had gathered in Malaysia this year, it was left to the military dictator from Pakistan to elaborate this new vision of Islam that is based on a vague ideology of “Enlightened Moderation” rather than the twin sources that have so far remained the foundation of Islam: the Qurʾān and the Sunnah. But what does “Enlightened Moderation” mean? And what does it mean to bridge the gap between Islam and the West? After all, Islam is a religion, with a definite set of beliefs, one of the most important among which is the belief in the Hereafter, and the West is a geographical entity. How does one bridge the gap between a geographical entity and a faith?

But never mind details. No one is interested in such details. All one needs to win one’s bread and, for some, a glass of the forbidden drink, is to use every single platform to reiterate the falsehood of this new brand of Islam that calls for rejection of “militancy” and that reduces Jihad, one of the key concepts of the Qurʾān, to a fight against “poverty and illiteracy.” So the General spoke his lines, the potentates clapped, the journalists lauded, and the clocks kept on ticking.

That the proponents of this new brand of Islam have nothing to do with the teachings of the glorious Qurʾān and the practices of the noble Prophet of Islam can be easily inferred from their lives, policies, ideas, and, most of all, from their manifest alliance with those who are bent upon imposing their own worldview on the rest of the world through violent aggression, occupation, and oppression. One does not need to look further than the laurels heaped on these kings, generals, and self-appointed presidents by the likes of Rumsfeld and Armitage to attest to their unholy alliance. But for the skeptics, let it be pointed out that OIC came into existence in the wake of Zionist aggression and the desecration of the first Qiblah of Islam, the noble sanctuary which Allah Himself has blessed, and for the last 37 years it has done nothing to liberate that sanctified land from the ever-expanding Zionist state. Nothing, that is, in concrete terms.

It is also to be noted that, in clear contradistinction to the propagators of this new brand of moderate Islam, there is no category of moderate Muslims in the Qurʾān . The Qurʾān only mentions three categories of people: the believers, the unbelievers, and the hypocrites. Further, it says, “O you who believe, do not take the disbelievers as your allies in preference to the believers; do you want to place before God a manifest proof of your guilt?” (4:144). And if this were not enough of a proof for the hypocrisy of these propagators of a made-in-America Islam, then one should open the Noble Book of Allah and read what the revealer of Islam has said about the killing of Muslims by the Muslims and pay heed to what awaits them before they send their troops to Iraq.

If there was anything new and unique in this year’s OIC gathering, it was the appearance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was supposed to remain on the sidelines but who made his way into the main session to assure us that Islam and terrorism are not linked; of course, that was the only thing left for us to discover in our religion because Putin is the ultimate authority on Islam. Never mind that, in return, the so-called representatives of the Muslim world willingly forgot about the terrible plight of their Chechnyan brethren in faith who face atrocities at a genocidal scale, atrocities that cannot be ignored by even secular organizations such as the Human Rights Commission.

So, the wheel turns and they plot and Allah plots, and indeed, Allah’s plot is the best, and in Him we trust.

Published in The News International, Pakistan, October 24, 2003

How Science Became the Burden of the Ummah

For many Muslims, modern science poses a unique challenge. At the root of this unease lies their self-consciousness of inadequate Muslim contributions to the contemporary enterprise of science. This awareness leads to a psychological response: they fall back on vague notions of a glorious past when they had the most robust enterprise of science in the world. They attempt to remedy the current science deficiency by numerous non-scientific means, including the now widespread attempts to claim that various scientific theories and facts recently discovered by modern science are already present in the Qur’an. Millions of Muslims are enthralled by speakers, websites, television anchors, and popular orators who can in some way demonstrate that modern science validates Divine authorship of the Qur’an. Albeit for the most part unacknowledged, the psychological need to see science corroborating their faith is rooted in the tacit recognition of the magisterial role of modern science—even while most of these Muslims would claim that they do not need such scientific validation and that it is only being sought for calling others to Islam and proving to non-Muslims that the Qur’an is indeed a Divine Book.

The enormous popularity of these attempts at appeasement notwithstanding, a science deficit continues to remain the burden of the Ummah, the community of believers whose distinct civilization is rightfully credited by unbiased historians of science to have once been the harbinger of a scientific tradition that existed across a large geographical area and for longer than any other scientific tradition in human history. Yet, all those achievements now appear only in history books, always as a passing reference in the progress narrative of scientific rationality and technique, and always in the past tense; the present and, by extension, the future belong to a uniquely Western scientific tradition that has a claim to universality—a claim that attempts to foreclose even the possibility of the emergence of alternate scientific traditions which could reconstruct the entire structure of science through a radical modification based on a different spiritual, philosophical, and intellectual understanding of the natural world, and which could thereby give birth to a new framework redefining the purpose, methods, and applications of science.

This magisterial power of modern science is not without reason. Modern science and its applications have radically reshaped our conception of the cosmos, restructured the physical space in which we live, and redefined the frontiers of human intervention in the natural, physiological, physical, and biological realms at a scale that was unthinkable prior to its rise. It is, however, simultaneously true that this expanding realm of modern science has brought the entire human race to a state of catastrophic disaster. The unprecedented devastation caused by the use of deadly weapons in recent wars, the destruction of the environment through aggressive projects of monumental scale, and the genetic changes in the food chain (which have already produced a now uncontrollable chain reaction affecting the health of both humans and animals) are all self-evident proofs of the powers as well as dangers inherent in modern science. Yet, no matter how acutely one is aware of such detrimental undersides to the enterprise of science, popular belief in its efficacy and beneficence remains unalterably entrenched at the level of the quotidian routines of life.

The macro- and micro-level reliance of so many basic aspects of our lives on the new scientific knowledge is evident to everyone. The way we now construct our dwelling places, produce food and other consumable commodities, communicate with each other, travel, and work are all dependent on science and technologies produced by its application. When someone’s headache disappears with a little pill as advertized, when a plane takes its passengers from point A to point B within the stipulated time, when surgical instruments successfully remove cancerous tumors, and when a person can actually see and talk to another person living on the other side of the globe through a little device that one can hold in one’s hand, he or she needs no further proof to “believe” in the efficacy and power of science.

It is this conscious or unconscious ‘surrender’ to science (in the sense of giving oneself over to its influence) coupled with the shortcomings of religious institutions and leaders to adequately respond to the challenges of a brave new world that have together eroded the belief of millions of human beings in anything that science cannot prove. Thus when members of a faith community (mostly Muslims and Christians) try to prove the scientific correctness of their Scriptures, they attempt to reassure themselves and show others that what they believe is really true as demonstrated by science. Therein lies the greatest fallacy of this approach, as scriptural content invariably suffers distortions when placed for judgment before the magisterium of science and the scientific method which, by definition, cannot have any say in matters beyond the realm of measurable quantities. For Muslims, subjecting the Qur’an to this treatment also flattens their complex tradition of hermeneutics, reducing it to a system of translation between Qur’anic imagery and the language of modern science. One of the most popular subjects of “scientific verification” of the Qur’an is that of human creation. Countless websites superimpose Qur’anic account from Q 23:13-14 on graphic images taken from embryology textbooks in order to prove that the Qur’anic descriptions of the creation of the human child “in three veils of darkness” (Q 39:6) in stages denoted by nutfa, alaqa, and mudgha (Q 23:13-14) are exactly what modern science has proven. Other attempts of this popular exercise have subjected all descriptions of the natural world to similar treatment. Attempts have been made to calculate the velocity of light from the verses of the Qur’an and enthusiasts have imported and juxtaposed on the Qur’an almost the entire range of subjects earlier used by creationist Christians.

Since the belief in the Divine authorship of the Qur’an is a sine qua non for Muslims, their attempts to attest this belief through science opens a chasm that cannot be filled with any amount of scientific reassurance, no matter how many one-to-one correspondences are found and proven by the scientific method. The Qur’an also mentions numerous details from realms which are not even acknowledged by modern science as probable, let alone possible. Thus claiming that this or that fact mentioned in the Qur’an was recently proved by modern science does nothing to prove to the skeptic the veracity of the Qur’an, because he or she can always point to the supra-scientific content of the Qur’an as a rebuttal. Besides, the Qur’an already provides specific responses to those who question its Divine origin and a wealth of exegetical literature is also available for such responses; hence to leave this material and fall back on modern science is much like showing a candle to the sun. Furthermore, the aspects of the natural and biological world mentioned in the Qur’an are not presented as facts to be verified by science, but are mentioned in the Book because of a higher reason, and that higher purpose remains beyond the reach of science and its methods. In fact, belief in that much higher purpose does not need any validation—scientific or otherwise, for it is inviolably present in every human being in the form of an innate stamp, in the very makeup of every child who comes into this world. Its denial takes away not an iota of that reality which each and every human being will invariably face.

Realism, however, dictates that one must acknowledge the fact that the contemporary world, shaped by modern science and technologies developed through its application, is a unique permutation in human history; there has been no time prior to the modern era when so many human beings lived their lives with a conscious decision to exclude the Creator from the equation of existence because “science” did not prove His existence. This triumph of the secular does not merely rest on the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers—such as Denis Diderot, Voltaire, John Locke, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine—or their latter-day heirs, including all kinds of freethinkers, agnostics, and atheists; rather, it gained its most effective ally in modern science, which has been constructed on the basic premise that the natural world is a self-generated, self-governing, evolutionary cosmos.

The original restrictive nature of Holyoake’s term notwithstanding, ‘secularism’ now stands for a worldview anchored in science—a worldview from which God is excluded not only to separate state and social order from religion, but for the purpose of living a life without consciousness of His presence. Thus, secularism is, in fact, repackaged atheism. For the atheist, God is a proposition which is epistemologically illegitimate, rationally indefensible and experimentally false; the same is true for the secularist. The strongest support for secularism has come from science. Even though a very large portion of the scientific community continues to have faith in God, science as a system does not.

Of all the theories of modern science, it is the theory of evolution which has most rocked the age-old belief of humanity in a Creator; and even though many believing scientists and philosophers have found ways to “harmonize” their faith with the theory of evolution, these attempts can only be said to be successful inasmuch as they have been able to reconstruct religious beliefs to accommodate science, not the other way around. The theory of evolution is now the pillar of modern biology and one hundred and fifty years after Darwin—and numerous reconstructions later—the scientific community is by and large convinced of the veracity of the evolutionary path outlined in evolutionary theories of various kinds. This putatively proven fact has forced many religious communities and institutions to reconstruct their beliefs about the origin of humanity as well as the role of the Creator in numerous aspects of life. Those religious communities which do not have hierarchical religious institutions, or where such institutions do not have a commanding role, have adjusted their beliefs through reinterpretations of source texts written by those who subscribe to evolutionary theory and want to conform religious beliefs to evolution. In the case of Islam, this has meant metaphorical and allegorical interpretations of verses of the Qur’an which deal with realities beyond the realm of modern science: the creation of the first human being; the reality of a physical resurrection and Afterlife; the interactions of the angelic world with the human world, and the like.

Such attempts emerged in the Muslim world in the nineteenth century when Muslims first encountered modern science in a direct and effective manner through the penetrating reach of colonizers who implanted caricatures of their own scientific institutions in the colonies, reformed educational systems to produce third-rate science graduates, restructured communication and mass transit networks primarily for their own needs (and secondarily to allow the “natives” to receive some benefits of their Raj, partially in fulfillment of their mission civilisatrice). In time, there emerged modernist “re-formers” who also implanted the initial seeds of what later became a new exegetical genre, the so-called Tafsir al-ilmi, the scientific exegesis.

Such “Word of God” “Work of God” duality emerged in the Muslim world hand in hand with the mantra of “catching up,” a quasi religious-cum-political motif which urged Muslims to catch up with the West in science and technology and which has remained the rallying cry of all kinds of political, military, and intellectual leaders of the Muslim world since the nineteenth century.

This incisive entry of modern science into the traditional universe of the Qur’anic discourse took place only when that traditional universe had been rent asunder and modernist thinkers interested in justifying an agenda of “re-formation” of Muslim societies on a European model had become the most dominant voice in the Muslim world then just waking up from three centuries of siesta. Since then, this voice has not abated.

As it stands, Muslims continue to be reminded of their backwardness both by their own “re-formed” leaders as well by those who wish to “re-form” them in their own image. There is no dearth of sermons which point to their lack of participation in a global enterprise called science, their inadequate economic, educational and scientific standing (always measured against scales created by Western civilization), and, of course, of their inability to develop democracy. Western-style democracy, science, a certain kind of education, a certain kind of market economy, a certain kind of women’s empowerment—in short, all “fruits” of modernity—are, in fact, a complete package deeply anchored in fundamental shifts in the foundational structure of Western civilization. Any other civilization that “buys into this package” cannot do so without committing suicide; for no civilization can retain its spiritual foundation by eating from this fruit.

To be enthralled by modern science to such an extent so as to develop a psychological need to verify the Divine authorship of the Qur’an is not only an outward sign of a deep-rooted malaise, it is also indicative of the failure of the Muslim intellectual leadership. Confusion produced by three centuries of domination and colonization of the Muslim mind is deep; departure of the colonizers has done little to emancipate minds which have been “re-formed” on the European model and the road to freedom is further blocked by the “scientific fixation”.

This is a revised version of an article first published in Islam & Science, Volume 7, Winter 2009, No. 2 

David King: World-maps for Finding the Direction and Distance to Mecca

If one finds a microchip in a tomb in a pyramid then either some modern put it there or we should revise our opinions of the technological achievements of the ancient Egyptians…But perhaps the idea behind the microchip is simpler than most people would think.

These tantalizing opening lines of a book, whose somewhat misleading and euphemistic title and short “Foreword” suggest that it is a book about the discovery of two scientific instruments (simply called A and B) previously unknown to the historians of science, leads us directly into the heart of a fascinating work by one of the most respected historians of Islamic scientific tradition. But the writing of this work seems to have progressed through spurts of creative insights, meticulous rechecking of facts, figures, data, and, sadly, through numerous after-thoughts. Thus, the work, though coherent in its parts and concise in its details, suffers from an internal incoherence, as if the paint has been applied on unprepared walls, as if the growth of the book has been allowed to happen without a general plan. But in spite of this, the book is a fascinating account of two creative processes which intersect each other at various levels and planes throughout the book: the one dealing with the mysterious instruments and the other providing insights into the working of a creative and analytical mind; both processes provide an opportunity to know more intimately the person behind the book whose solitary labor of love and decades of research have blunted none of the human qualities that one expects from a scholar studying Islamic tradition—a tradition which is deeply entrenched and rooted in genuine human relationships.

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Who Speaks for Whom: Authority, Tradition, and Encyclopedias of Islam

In retrospect, 1913 seems relatively unremarkable, especially compared to the following year which ushered the world into the first of the two great wars of the twentieth century, but it did have one important event which would transform the academic study of Islam. Even though not many would consider the publication of a reference work in a small Dutch town by a little known publishing company a mile-stone or historical event of great importance, Brill’s first Encyclopaedia of Islam certainly marked a turning point in the attempt to establish definitive knowledge about Islam and Muslims. The pace of change was such that it was outdated by the time it was completed in 1936. Five supplements (issued in 1934, 1936, two in 1937, and the last in 1938) added missing entries and supplied corrigenda and addenda to the published volumes. The revisions were completed in 1938, and EI1 was published in English, German, and French to become “the only complete encyclopedia on Islam.”

The raison d’être for EI1 was “the increasing interest in Islam and Islamic culture during the last [i.e. nineteenth] century and the early part of this [i.e. the twentieth] century.” For the “first time in history a truly international [in reality an entirely European] team of scholars began work on a single project.” The four-volume work, with a self-revealing subtitle, “A Dictionary of the Geography, Ethnography and Biography of the Muhammadan Peoples”, quickly established itself in the academic world as the most important and indeed the only reference source of its kind. Its articles carried authority, it was the grand summation of the scholarship of the previous three centuries, and it created a niche for the publisher which has not been seriously challenged to this day.

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The Qur’ān and its Disbelievers

According to the majority Muslim scholarly opinion, the first revelation of the Qurʾān occurred when the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace, was in retreat at the cave of Ḥirāʾ, some fifteen kilometers from the Kaʿba, the ancient House of God rebuilt by the Prophets Ibrāhīm and his son Ismaʿīl, upon them peace, approximately twenty-five hundred years prior to this event; the last verses of the Qurʾān were revealed in 632, a few days before the death of the Prophet in Madina, the oasis town to which he had migrated in 622.

During the twenty-three year period of the revelation of the Qurʾān and ever since then, it has drawn two fundamental responses: (i) belief in its heavenly origin, which simultaneously entails belief in the veracity of the Messenger to whom it was revealed, and (ii) disbelief in its self-referential claim to be the actual Speech of Allah Most High and consequently denial of the Prophethood of Muḥammad, upon him blessings and peace. This article explores, in brief, various aspects of the second response in three categories of works: (i) polemical works on the Qurʾān; (ii) works by the Orientalists; and (iii) the contemporary academic studies of the Qurʾān that are based on an implicit or explicit disbelief in its Divine authorship. The article also seeks to explore inherent connections between these three categories and provides historical background to their emergence.

Keywords: The Qurʾān and its disbelievers; Jewish and Christian responses to the Qurʾān; Polemical works on the Qurʾān; Orientalism; neo-Orientalism; the Qurʾān and Orientalism; teaching of Islam in the Academy; academic discourse on the Qurʾān.

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Virtues of the Imam Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal by Ibn al-Jawzī

This is perhaps one of the most important translation so far in the Library of Arabic Literature Series which offers bilingual editions of key works of classical and premodern Arabic literature as well as anthologies and thematic readers. Philip F. Kennedy, the General Editor of the Arabic Literature Series, notes the purpose of the series is to include “texts from the pre-Islamic era to the cusp of the modern period, [encompassing] a wide range of genres, including poetry, poetics, fiction, religion, philosophy, law, science, history, and historiography. The admirable himma of  the  translator  is  immediately  apparent  in the “Introduction”: “Leaving aside the matter of length, this book was not particularly difficult to translate” (xvii). Even if it is not an understatement, Michael Cooperson is to be congratulated for translating this work by the indefatigable Abūl-l-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Jawzi (d. 597/1200), the outstanding scholar of the twelfth century who wrote over 400 works in fields as diverse as Hadith, Tafsīr, History, Linguistics, and Fiqh. One hundred chapters and over 150,000 words of Munāqib Abī ʿAbd Allāh Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ḥanbal pulsate with energy;… Read full review

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Marwa Elshakry: Reading Darwin in Arabic

This ground-breaking work on the reception of Darwin in the Arab world opens several windows to the complex process of the making of Darwin’s image in the Arab world; it also situates “Darwin’s dangerous idea” in a broader context by exploring attitudes and ideas of a diverse and influential minority including Free Masons, missionaries, colonial agents, officials of the fledging Ottoman Empire, Arab propagators of the new science, and religious scholars (ʿUlamāʾ) who were not equipped to deal with the brave new world of modern science. The opening chapter of the book is a fascinating narrative about the milieu in which Darwin arrived; this is followed by a thorough exploration of the attitudes of chosen individuals and institutions responsible for the spread of Darwin’s views in the Arab world via translations, discussions, and interactions, which were also intertwined with the broader discourse on science and religion in the Arab world.

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“The Gospel of Science”, the first chapter of the book, recounts the story of the spread of science journalism in the Arab world, especially through the influential journal Al-Muqtataf and the missionary zeal of its founders, Ya‘qub Sarruf and Faris Nimr, both “enterprising young Syrian Protestant College instructors who dedicated themselves to campaigning for scientific advancement” (p. 27). The chapter presents a synthetic and layered account of the internal politics of the Syrian Protestant College as well as informative episodes from the public life of the small elite which had started to mold science and religion discourse on a pattern that imitated similar discourse in Europe and America. In this chapter, Elshakry is at home with her sources, she writes with confidence and presents historical evidence for the fast- flowing narrative.

The second chapter, insightfully entitled “Evolution and the Eastern Question” brings into sharp relief the dynamics of the intellectual and political contours of the “Sick man of Europe” (the Ottoman Empire) and especially its flagging fortunes in Egypt, which was formally taken over by the British through a “veiled protectorate” that was to simultaneously re-energize the efforts of Sarruf and Nimr to spread the gospel of new science. They also started a daily, Al-Muqattam, and thus entered “a political minefield—one that ultimately tarnished their reputation and altered the reception of their ideas” (p. 79).

“Materialism and Its Critics”, the third chapter, considerably widens the scope of the book’s narrative. It brings in other actors and links this scene in the Arab world with other parts of the Muslim world, although this attempt remains limited to a few individuals such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who exerted considerable influence on Muhammad ‘Abduh and, through him, impacted other Egyptian thinkers of the time. One fascinating aspect of Elshakry’s work is its frequent perusal into issues of linguistics, as well as social and political aspects of reading Darwin in Arabic. She notes how new Arabic terms were invented and how this process was influenced by both the classical Arabic sources and modern Western. Materialism, for instance, was “called al-maddiya, an abstract noun derived from al-madda (matter or material). But Shumayyil’s particular brand of materialism had very little to say about matters of central concern to most European materialists of the time—such as the relation of mind to matter or the nature of emotion, reason, or consciousness.” (p. 109).

The fourth chapter, “Theologies of Nature”, is the only chapter of the book which does not present what one would expect from the title; it, rather, focuses on another protagonist of the wider discourse, Husayn al-Jisr. It is through al-Jisr that Elshakry brings in a truncated reference to Islamic theology of Nature. This is not a problem in itself, as it serves well the aim of the book, but the misleading title does remind one that the book has nothing to say about the Islamic concept of the critical issues it discusses.

Elshakry’s ability to synthesize a coherent narrative out of a large number of historical accounts and textual sources is best exhibited in the fifth chapter, “Darwin and the Mufti”, which encapsulates the life, works, and ideas of Muhammad ‘Abduh, the architect of Arab modernism. She recounts the story of the life and career of ‘Abduh with remarkable insights and the chapter has several memorable quotes:

Yet “religious modernism” is perhaps not the best way to describe what ‘Abduh saw himself engaging in. In the first place, his vision of science was (as for so many thinkers treated in this book) rather eclectic. Like others of his generation, he drew on the emerging consensus that science as merely the uncovering of the “true principles,” or laws, of nature, which he allied to final causes (and divine laws), an approach drawn as much from past Arabic philosophical and exegetical works as it was from contemporary views.
Second, ‘Abduh was primarily concerned with the fate of the Muslim umma, not with modernism, and his ideas on civilization and even the “West” cannot be separated from this, particularly as his project of reform was critically couched in an older language of islah and tajdid (Muslim communal reform and renewal). (p. 165)

Such insights into the complex, diverse, and overlapping intellectual currents which were transforming the Muslim world are clearly a result of deep reading of sources and clear thinking. Elshakry’s treatment of ‘Abduh maintains a critical detachment throughout the chapter and although the undercurrent of her narrative indicates her own perspective on the life and ideas of her protagonists, she consciously remains objective and non-judgmental. One, however, feels less than satisfied with the section on “Adam and Evolution”, where her treatment is rather cursory. Likewise, the list of Muslim thinkers on page 192 is either due to the lack of familiarity with pre-modern Islamic sources or simply poor proofing; one hopes it is the latter: the names listed here are random, there is no chronological order, and Abu Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ṭayyib al-Bāqillānī is called Abu Bakr al-Baklani. In such cases, the text could have used proper transliteration, at least for names and major technical terms.

“Evolutionary Socialism”, the sixth chapter of the book, focuses on broader social, intellectual, and political currents which informed the reading of Darwin in Egypt through a number of thinkers, such as Farah Antun, Mustafa al-Mansuri, and Salama Musa who were less influential than other protagonists of the book, but who, nevertheless had a place in the making of the intellectual discourse. The general sweep of this chapter is, once again, panoramic, and the summary presented in the last two pages is a highlight of this chapter.

“Darwin in Translation,” the last chapter of the book, is, once again, a skillful treatment of both the story of Arabic translation of the Origin of Species and Isma‘il Mazhar, the person who undertook this task. Elshakry shows deep insights into the process and difficulties of translation as well as cross-cultural and historical currents which informed the choice of Mazhar’s use of technical terms and syllogism. In her own words, this final chapter of the book “explores this process of translation as a complex project of intercalating linguistic, conceptual, and historical references and metatexts by focusing on the figure of the translator himself. Viewing Darwin through Mazhar’s eyes, we can capture the local referents through which Darwin was read. The focus on Mazhar, meanwhile, takes us into the nexus of ideas, places, and people that helped to construct this particular reading of Darwin in translation.” (p. 264).

Ubiquitous Numbers

A newborn baby hardly begins to breathe the conditioned air of the hospital room into which he or she is ushered with the help of ubiquitous technologies which now fashion our lives from birth to death when a computer-generated wristband is attached to the tiny wrist; instead of a solemn prayer welcoming this marvelous creation into our world, the band displays a number. From this point on, until the inevitable passing away of the ephemeral body, numbers permeate our earthly existence like the air that surrounds us; they envelop the entire spectrum of our lives—from personal identifications to global economic transactions. They identify our means of transportation, dwelling places, health records, educational degrees, driving and flying licenses, marriage certificates—in fact, almost everything in public domain. This tyranny of numbers has also invaded the realm of sacred rites.

Unlike Pythagorean numbers, envisaged as principles of existent entities, these modern numbers stand alone, in stark isolation from anything higher than their own utilitarian emptiness. This reign of quantity now overshadows all other aspects of contemporary life and learning, science being its most important territory.

The supremacy of quantity is a result of the severance of modern learning from the metaphysical principle which binds all learning to a principium Unity from which flows the kinetic energy of their myriad forms. With the eclipse of this principle, which keeps all forms connected to itself like a center connects spokes of a wheel, numerous stray disciplines have emerged. These disconnected entities float through the vast canvas of contemporary learning like independent, self- serving bodies, attached to nothing higher than their own limited and profane principles.

If multiplicity is a direct result of this severance, specialization is a corollary that cannot be avoided. Specialization has now produced innumerable isolated circles of detailed knowledge that no human being can ever hope to grasp. This multiplicity has also produced the illusion that humanity today possesses the most advanced form of sciences. This illusion is perpetuated by numerous marvels of modern science and its applications which have given humans unprecedented abilities such as sending a creature of their making to Mars.

Like the misguided practitioner of some occult science who spends a whole life-time mastering the art of floating over water to cross a river, only to be told by the true mystic that instead of wasting his life, he could have given a penny or two to the boatman to take him across, these feats of science and its applications now conceal their deeper crises to such an extent that even the consciousness of the existence of a higher order of knowledge, capable of steering the course of humanity in a manner that would not cause this terrible rupture with the higher order of existence, has almost disappeared. Indeed, it would not be wrong to say that the notion of specialized sciences, accessible to only a small group of practitioners, has now become so firmly established in the Academy that even the possibility of a single science treating nature as one integrated whole has become inconceivable for the large majority. The extent to which the reign of quantity has gripped us today is reflected by the fact that instead of treating it as malaise, it is made into a virtue, as if this multiplicity was a crowning achievement of human learning.

Of course, things could not be otherwise. The very process which drives the so-called learning today takes the lesser and the lower as its starting point and renders the greater and the higher as a relative entity which can only be conceived in relation to the lesser or the lower. This inversion of the means of learning was bound to eliminate the awareness of quality and reduce it to only that which can be measured by the senses or their extensions, produced by the application of scientific principles, which in turn are products of the worldview that refuses to conceive anything higher than what can be measured and quantified.

This Cartesian malady has rendered even primary entities—such as space and time—utterly meaningless by reducing them to quantities. Indeed, by reducing everything to its quantitative aspect, time itself has been hollowed out, as if there remains nothing sacred in its ceaseless motion. Thus reduced, time unrolls with a monotonous uniformity, generally represented by a straight line in modern mathematics and physics. This simplification obscures numerous inalienable links between time and the events that unfold in it—links that bind us with the realm of quality and point to the true nature of things as they really are.

The quantification of learning is not accidental. It has come about through a pervasive process which continues to affect all spheres of contemporary life. Originating in Europe and rapidly spreading to the rest of the world, this sway of quantity over quality has rendered all other ways of learning obsolete. This eclipse of other traditions of learning has now become so complete that except for a few small and isolated domains—such as traditional medicine—almost the entire breadth of learning that explores various aspects of nature is now occupied by quantity-driven disciplines. The very notion of matter being merely an aggregate of atoms quantifies both space and time. This atomism then reduces the whole domain of manifest reality to the measurable and insists on imposing this tyranny upon all modes of investigation, making the very notion of the sacred a foreign idea.

The true nature of the calamity brought about by this incessant stress on quantity cannot be realized without understanding its pervasive nature. Anything that is not “scientific” is now considered to be lesser, not only by scientists but also by the masses. On the other hand, anything carrying the stamp of being “s c i e n t i f i c” is granted a higher hierarchical status. Needless to say that this label comes in myriad forms—from the statistical breakdown of various nutrients on a box of highly processed food to the numbers reflected in an opinion poll in the marketplace or in the political arena, where the same ideology is paraded by different players under different names.

Numbers as such are not the issue here; after all, the ancients did count, carried out their economic transactions and enumerated the most beautiful Divine Names. But they did so while keeping in full view the limited range of the domain of quantity. What is tragic today is the fact that quantity has obscured all other aspects of reality and this reduction has, in turn, concealed the higher order, leaving us bereft of guiding principles.

The Descent of the Qur’an

Two augmented verbal forms of the trilateral root n-z-l are used in the Qurʾān to refer to its own descent, in both spatial and temporal senses, first from the Guarded Tablet to the heaven of this world and then from there to the heart of the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace: Form II nazzala, and its verbal noun tanzīl and form IV anzala, and its verbal noun inzāl.

Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004) says the root n-z-l carries the meaning of “descent of something (hubūṭ) or its falling down (wuqūʿuh), [as in the phrases] ‘he dismounted his horse’ (nazala ʿan dābbatih nuzūlan) and ‘the rain fell from the sky’ (nazala l-maṭar min al-samāʾ)” (Maqāyīs). Both verbal forms are transitive in the sense of sending something from above to below. This “fall” (inḥiṭāṭ) is the original meaning of “descent” (nuzūl), according to al-Rāghib al-Aṣfahānī (d. ca.502/1108), inzāl also carries the meaning of “Allah Almighty’s sending down (inzāl) of His blessings and His punishments on creation, is their granting to them. This can be realized by sending down either the thing itself, as in the sending down of the Qurʾān, or the means and guidance to it, as in [the verses] And We sent down iron (Q 57:25); And We sent down with them the Scripture and the balance (Q 57:25); and, And He sent down for you of cattle eight pairs (Q 39:6).” (Mufradāt)

The Sevillan linguist Abū-l-Ḥasan Ibn ʿUṣfūr (597-669/1200-1297) differentiates between their usage by specifying that form II (tanzīl) denotes an intensive (lil-mubālagha), extensive (lil-takthīr), or multiplicative meaning (lil-taḍʿīf), whereas form IV (al-inzāl) expresses the factitive and causative meaning (lil-taʿdiya) (Mumtiʿ, Dhikr maʿānī abniyat al-afʿāl). Likewise, ʿAlī Muḥammad al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413) states that “[form IV] al-inzāl is used to indicate a one-time action (yustaʿmal fī-l-dafʿa), whereas [form II] tanzīl is used for gradual action (fī-l-tadrīj)” (Taʿrīfāt, no. 562) and Muḥibb al-Dīn al-Sayyid Muḥammad Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (1145-1205/1732-1790) writes that the difference between the two verbal forms is with regard to the frequency of their occurrence (Tāj).

This distinction has led some exegetes to postulate that in general when the Qurʾān uses form II (tanzīl) for its descent, it refers to its serial revelation to the Prophet, one verse after another (tanjīm, as in Q 17:106: And [it is] a Qurʾān, which We have divided [into parts], in order that you might recite it to people at intervals; and We have revealed it in stages), whereas when it uses form IV (inzāl) it refers to a single sending down (as in Q 97:1: Indeed, We sent it down (anzalnāhu) during the Night of Decree—which by exegetical consensus refers to the Qurʾān’s descent to the heaven of this world during that Blessed Night (Q 44:3)).

Qurʾānic descriptions of the revelations of the Torah and the Injīl generally employ form IV, although the descent of the Torah is also mentioned once with form II (Q 3:93). This single exception notwithstanding, most exegetes take other verses, especially Q 3:3 (He sent down (nazzala) upon you (Muḥammad) the Book, with truth, confirming what was before it and He sent down (anzala) the Torah and the Injīl) and Q 4:136 (and the Book which He sent down (nazzala) upon His Messenger, and the Book which He sent down (anzala) before) as key indicators to differentiate the serial revelation of the Qurʾān from the single descent of the Torah and the Injīl. Jār Allāh Abū-l-Qāsim Maḥmūd b. ʿUmar al-Zamakhsharī (467-538/ca.1074-1143), for instance, specifically says that the verbal forms employed differ “because the Qurʾān was sent down in smaller parts and at intervals (munajjaman), while the two [previous Books] were sent down all at once (jumlatan)” (Kashshāf, sub Q 3:3; also see Khāzin, Lubāb and Nasafī, Tafsīr, sub Q 3:3; Rāzī, Tafsīr, sub Q 25:32). Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm Ibn al-Zubayr (d. 708/1308) explains the usage in more detail:

If one asks why the Book (i.e. the Qurʾān) is mentioned with the word nazzala and the Torah and the Injīl with the word anzala, the answer to this can be: the verbal form nazzala (form II) entails repetition (tikrār) in an additive sense (li-ajl al-taḍʿīf) (…). In this respect the Words of Allah He sent down upon you the Book (Q 3:3) can be understood as referring to the division into sections of the thing being sent down (mushīr ilā tafṣīl al-munazzal) and to its being sent down in separate parts (tanjīmih)…and to the fact that it was not sent down all at once (lam yunzal dafʿatan wāḥidatan)…whereas the verbal form anzala (form IV) refers to a single action, as in the case of Mūsā, upon him peace, who received the Torah all at once and in a single moment (fī waqt wāḥid), as attested to by the Words of Allah And We wrote for him on the tablets all manner of admonition, clearly spelling out everything, and [We said:] ‘Hold fast unto them’… (Q 7:145). Whereas the Mighty Book (the Qurʾān) was sent down in separate parts (fa-nuzzila muqassaṭan), beginning with the first words of the revelation, Recite in the Name of your Lord (Q 96:1), until the last words, This day I have perfected your Religion for you… (Q 5:3). And if one of these Books is mentioned alone (mufradan) without the mention of any other Book, or without the definite article, then that refers to something already mentioned in the text, [and for that] the verbal form anzala (form IV) is used, as in And those who believe in that which was sent down (unzila) to you and that which was sent down (unzila) before you (Q 2:4). (Milāk, sub Q 3:3)

Of the 293 occurrences of derivatives of the root n-z-l, examples of verses describing the descent of the Qurʾān, whether directly or through one of its names (e.g., al-kitāb, al-dhikr, al-furqān), include the following (for complete list, see ʿAbd al-Bāqī, Muʿjam):

  • form II (nazzala): The Book sent down with truth (Q 2:176); to the heart of the Prophet by the will of Allah (Q 2:97); by Allah Who will preserve it (Q 15:9); confirming what had come before (Q 3:3; 4:136; 7:196); We have sent down to thee the Book explaining all things, a Guide, a Mercy, and Glad Tidings to those who submit (16:89); the Holy Spirit has brought it down from your Lord with truth (Q 16:102); sent down as the Criterion (Q 25:1) and the best discourse (Q 39:23); And those who disbelieve say, ‘Why was the Qurʾān not sent down (nuzzila) upon him all at once?’ [It is so] that We may strengthen thereby your heart; and We have rehearsed it to you in slow, well-arranged stages (Q 25:32);
  • form IV (anzala): Say: We believe in Allah and that which has been sent down (anzala) to us (Q 2:136); sent down containing clear, unambiguous verses (Q 3:7); the Book and Wisdom (Q 4:113); an Arabic recitation (qurʾān) (Q 12:2); the Light (Q 64:8), blessed (Q 6:92); sent down during a blessed night (Q 44:3); in the month of Ramadan (Q 2:185); during the Night of Decree (qadr) (Q 97:1); while some conceal what Allah sent down of the Book (Q 2:174, 213), others believe in what has been sent down (unzila) upon you (Q 2:4); recalling the Divine favors and what He sent down of the Book and the Wisdom (Q 2:231); for it is Allah Who sent down the Book (Q 3:7; 18:1; 29:47, 51; 42:15, 17, etc.);
  • verbal noun (tanzīl): And a Recitation have We divided [into parts](faraqnāhu), for you to recite it to mankind at intervals, and We have sent it down successively (wa nazzalnāhu tanzīlan) (Q 17:106). The verbal noun tanzīl denotes the revelation itself: it is a “successive revelation” (tanzīl) from the Creator (Q 20:4; 76:23), the Lord of the Worlds (Q 26:192; 32:2; 56:80; 69:43), the Mighty and Merciful (Q 36:5), the Beneficent and Merciful (Q 41:2), the Wise and Praiseworthy (Q 41:42), the Mighty and Wise (Q 39:1; 45:2; 46:2), the Mighty and All-knowing (Q 40:2); brought down in clear Arabic by the True Spirit upon the heart of the Prophet (Q 26:193-195).

From the Preserved Tablet
The eminent Follower (tābiʿī) and early exegete Saʿīd b. Jubayr (46-95/666-ca.714) reported:
I asked Ibn ʿAbbās about Indeed, We sent it down during the Night of Decree (Q 97:1) and We sent it down during a blessed night (Q 44:3), and The month of Ramadan in which was sent down the Qurʾān (Q 2:185)—do these refer to [the descent of] the entire [Qurʾān] or a part of it? Ibn ʿAbbās replied, ‘Allah sent down the Qurʾān, all at once, from the seventh Heaven to the heaven of this world during the Night of Decree, and He set it by the setting stars—So I swear by the setting of the stars (Q 56:75, see below)—from where Jibrīl, upon him peace, brings it down…’ (Ibn Ḥātim, Tafsīr, sub Q 2:185 and 25:32)

In a variant narration, Ibn ʿAbbās says, “The Qurʾān was separated from the Reminder (fuṣila al-Qurʾān min al-dhikr); then it was placed in the House of Might (bayt al-ʿizza) in the heaven of this world; then Jibrīl, upon him peace, began to bring it down to the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace” (Ḥākim, Mustadrak, Tafsīr, bi-sm Allāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm 2:242 §2881, hadith classed by al-Dhahabī as sound of transmission (ṣaḥīḥ al-isnād), although Bukhārī and Muslim do not include it in their collections; Ṭabarānī, Muʿjam al-kabīr 11:438 §12243; Nasāʾī, Sunan, Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān, kam bayn nuzūl awwal al-Qurʾān wa bayn ākhirih, 7:247 §7936).

Jalāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suyūṭī (849-911/1445-ca.1505) writes in his encyclopedia of Qurʾānic sciences, “The concealed secret in sending down the complete (jumlatan) Qurʾān to this heaven is to exalt its status (tafkhīm amrihi) and the status of him upon whom it was sent down. This occurred by informing the dwellers of the seven heavens that this [Qurʾān] is the last of the Books being sent down, [sent down] upon the Seal of the Messengers (i.e. Muḥammad), to the most ennobled community. We brought it nearer to them [to the worldly heaven] in order to send it down upon him” (Itqān, Type 16: fī kayfiyyat inzālih).

The first descent of the Qurʾān occurred in Ramadan (Q 2:185), on a blessed night (Q 44:3), the Night of Decree (qadr) (Q 97:1). A hadith narrated by the Laythī Companion Wāthila b. al-Asqaʿ (22BH-83/600-202), one of the People of the Bench (aṣḥāb al-ṣuffa), provides specific details: “The Prophet, upon him blessings and peace, said: ‘The scrolls of Ibrāhīm, upon him peace, were sent down on the first night of Ramadan; the Torah on the sixth of Ramadan, the Injīl on the thirteenth of Ramadan, and the Criterion (Furqān, i.e. the Qurʾān) on the twenty-fourth” (Aḥmad, Musnad, Musnad al-Shāmiyyīn, ḥadith Wāthila b. al-Asqaʿ, 28:191 §16984; Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, 3:521 §2053; Ṭabarānī, Muʿjam al-kabīr, 22:75 §185; al-Sakhāwī, Jamāl, Kayfiyyat inzāl al-Qurʾān). Al-Ṭabarī adds: “the Psalms were sent down during the twelfth night of Ramadan” (Tafsīr). The Night of Decree, which is better than one thousand months (Q 97:3), saw the descent of the entirety of the Qurʾān, according to many glosses (cf. Ṭabarī, Tafsīr). This descent was “all at once” (jumlatan wāḥidatan) (Ḥākim, Mustadrak, Tafsīr sūrat Innā anzalnāhu), “from the highest heaven to the heaven of this world (ilā al-samāʾ) or “from the seventh heaven to Jibrīl in the lowest heaven (fī-l-samāʾ al-dunyā)” (for a detailed collection of these traditions, see Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, sub Q 2:185 and 97:1-3). Al-Shaʿbī said, “The beginning of the descent of the Qurʾān occurred during the Night of Decree” (see Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Muḥarrar; Qurṭubī, Tafsīr, sub Q 87:1; Suyūṭī, Itqān, Type 16: fī kayfiyyat inzālih).

The Preserved Tablet (lawḥ maḥfūẓ) from which the Qurʾān descended is mentioned once in the Qurʾān: Indeed, this is a glorious Qurʾān, upon a Preserved Tablet (Q 85:21-22) . Abū-l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Wāḥidī al-Naysābūrī (d. 468/1075) comments: “It is [guarded] by Allah and it is the Mother of the Book (umm al-kitāb), from which the Qurʾān and [other Divine] Books are transcribed. It is known as the Preserved Tablet, as devils cannot reach it; it is protected against any increase or decrease.” (Wasīṭ)

Revelation to the Prophet
From the worldly heaven, the revelation to the Prophet began on a Monday (hadith narrated by Abū Qatāda: Muslim, Ṣawm, istiḥbāb ṣiyām thalātha ayyam min kull shahr…) in 610 CE, when he was about forty years of age, and ended in 11/632, a few days before his death. It was a “descent by which light shone upon the world and the guidance of Allah Most High reached mankind” (Zarqānī, Manāhil, Tanazzulāt al-Qurʾān).

Commentaries and traditions often use the verbal form II najjama and its derivatives to refer to the Qurʾān’s descent “in separate parts” (in the sense of “installments”); Q 56:75 (Then I swear by the setting of the stars (nujūm)) is figuratively interpreted to refer to the descent of the smaller parts (nujūm) of the Qurʾān (Tustarī, Tafsīr, Khuṭbat al-kitāb, 1:18; Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Muḥarrar, sub Q 97:1; for lexical meanings, see Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān, sub n-j-m). Abū Shāma (d. 665/1266) cites Ibn ʿAbbās to the effect that ʿalā mawāqiʿ al-nujūm means “slowly” (rasal), “step by step” (rifq), over days and months. Thus “by the setting of the stars” means “like the rising and setting of the stars,” that is, in separated parts (mufarraqan) (Murshid, Fī-l-bayān ʿan kayfiyyat nuzūl al-Qurʾān; Suyūṭī, Itqān, Type 16: fī kayfiyyat inzālih).

The phrases faraqnāhu and ʿalā mukthin are explained by exegetes to demonstrate that the Qurʾān specifically describes its descent to the Prophet as being sequential: And [this is] a Qurʾān that We divided (faraqnāhu) [into parts] that you may recite it to people at intervals (ʿalā mukth) and We sent it down by stages (wa nazzalnāhu tanzīlan) (Q 17:106). Regarding the first of these phrases, Ibn ʿĀdil writes, “Allah divided [the revelation] so that its memorization be easier and so that its understanding (al-iḥāṭa) and grasping its proofs, realities (ḥaqāʾiq), and fine points (daqāʾiq) be achieved in a more complete form” (Lubāb). Variant readings (see Canonical Readings) of this verse(by Ibn ʿAbbās, Ubayy b. Kaʿb, and Ibn Muḥayṣin) have the form II verb farraqnāhu, which intensifies the meaning; Ibn Kathīr glosses it as “sent down verse by verse” (Tafsīr). The disbelievers—either from the Quraysh or the Jews, as per Qurṭubī (Tafsīr)—receive the Divine answer: “We sent down the Qurʾān, one part after another;” and this is consistent with the aim of reciting it to people at intervals, this being what Allah desired from its descent (Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Muḥarrar, sub Q 17:106)

Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Rāzī (543-606/1148-1209) also cites Qatāda (d. 117/735) as saying, “The meaning [of faraqnāhu in the verse] is, ‘We separated its parts (qaṭṭaʿnāhu), one verse after another and one sūra after another’” (Tafsīr). Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) had already noted that this revelation in smaller parts is “that you may recite it to people unhurriedly (ʿalā tuʾada), in such a way that you can explain its recitation and its meanings” (Tafsīr). Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir Ibn ʿĀshūr (1296-1393/1879-1972) considered this an occasioning cause (ʿilla) for the division of the Qurʾān into parts (Tafsīr). His gloss sums up exegetical reflections on this phrase:“We made it separate parts (jaʿalnāhu firaqan), that is, We sent it down at intervals (munajjaman), in separate parts (mufarraqan) and not as a whole composed [book] in one moment (ghayr mujtamiʿ ṣubratan wāḥidatan)” (Tafsīr).

Another reason for the serial descent of the Qurʾān is mentioned in Q 25:32: And those who disbelieve say: ‘Why was the Qurʾān not revealed unto him all at once (jumlatan wāḥidatan)?’ [It is]so that We strengthen your heart thereby; and We have arranged it in order (wa rattalnāhu tartīlan). Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq b. Ghālib Ibn ʿAṭiyya (d. ca.542/1147) writes that it is reported from Ibn ʿAbbās and others that one of the objections of the Qurayshite disbelievers was that the Qurʾān should have been revealed at once (like the Torah and Injīl), were it truly from Allah. This verse likely refers to that objection, accounting for its descent at intervals and in parts (Muḥarrar). Ibn Kathīr says, “Allah Almighty answered them: He sent down the Qurʾān in separate parts (munajjaman) over twenty-three years, in accordance with the [needs arising out of] events and developments (bi-ḥasab al-waqāʾiʿ wal-ḥawādith), and [to address matters] that needed Divine regulation in order to strengthen the hearts of the believers by [the Qurʾān]” (Tafsīr). Al-Suyūṭī says, Al-Suyūṭī says when revelation is renewed for every event, it fortifies the heart, it means greater care for him to whom it is sent, and it requires that the Angel frequently descends to him and renews the knowledge with him and that [part] of the Message which he has already received. (Itqān, Type 16: fī kayfiyyat inzālih)

The gradual revelation of the Qurʾān to the Prophet is historically attested through intertextual evidence from Qurʾānic verses that comment on various contemporary events as well as works from the genres of the “occasions of revelation” (asbāb al-nuzūl), Prophetic biography (sīra), Prophetic military campaigns (maghāzī), and hadith literature. By near consensus, the first revelation consisted of only five verses (Q 96:1-5) (Bukhārī, Badʾ al-waḥy; Suyūṭī, Itqān, Type 7).

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By Muzaffar Iqbal and Csaba Okváth