The Qur'an in Context 4

This is also why the popular assumption that a contextualist reading of the Qur'an is necessarily inimical to Islamic belief is mistaken. Much of the current media buzz surrounding the Qur'an in fact appears to be predicated on the assumption that the hypotheses and reconstructions of philologists have the power to profoundly unsettle, or even conclusively disprove, a religious belief system. 

Yet at least in academic Christian theology, which is after all faced with a similar problem, it has become something of a commonplace that historical-critical scholarship does not as such preclude a subsequent 'committed' reading of the Bible.

Historical analysis, it is usually held, constitutes a preparatory stage delimiting the borders of any truly responsible interpretation of the canon; it delineates the ground upon which any attempt to derive contemporary guidance from the canon must operate (rather than eroding this very ground, as some would object." [32]

There is no reason, we believe, to assume that this model is not applicable to the Qur'an; in fact, scholars as diverse as Amin al-Khuli, Fazlur Rahman, Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, Mehmet Pacaci, or Omer Ozsoy have all argued that a contextualist hermeneutics of the Qur'an is not only theologically unproblematic, but can also be seen as an extension of important aspects of traditional Islamic tafsir. [33]

Abu Zaid, for example, distinguishes the universal Qur'anic message from the historically contingent 'code' in which it is expressed. He then insists that in order to make himself understood to an audience within a particular historical context (namely, seventh-century Arabia), God had to make use of his addresses' 'cultural and linguistic semantic system': since human beings are inevitably situated at a particular time and place, they simply will not be able to understand a revelation that is not geared to their cultural and religious horizon. [34]

Thus, what contextual readings of the Qur'an aim at is not to unmask the Qur'an as a mere blueprint of earlier Christian and Jewish 'sources,' but rather to reconstruct, as fully as possible, the cultural lexicon of the Qur'an's audience, i.e., the linguistic and cultural 'code' employed by the text -- whoever its author may be -- in order to make itself understood. [34a]

Nicolai Sinai and Angelika Neuwirth, "Introduction" in The Qurʼān in context: historical and literary investigations into the Qurʼānic milieu / edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 14-15.

The Qur'an in Context 3

However, to assemble the textual background that may shed light on a given Qur'anic passage is not identical with the interpretation of that passage itself; it is an indispensable preparatory step, yet by no means a sufficient one. Indeed, intratextual contextualization of this kind does not provide the only relevant background to a Qur'anic passage; it is perhaps just as important to situate a given text at a particular position within the diachronically extended sequence of Qur'anic discourses, which frequently also generate their specific literary formats.

Nicolai Sinai and Angelika Neuwirth, "Introduction" in The Qurʼān in context: historical and literary investigations into the Qurʼānic milieu / edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 13.

The Qur'an in Context 2

This is underscored by Sydney Griffith, himself intimately familiar with pre-Qur'anic Syriac literature:

Hermeneutically speaking, one should approach the Qur'an as an integral discourse in its own right; it proclaims, judges, praises, blames from its own narrative center. It addresses an audience which is already familiar with oral versions in Arabic of earlier scriptures and folklores. The Qur'an does not borrow from, or often even quote from these earlier texts. Rather, it alludes to and evokes their stories, even sometimes their wording, for its own rhetorical purpose. The Arabic Qur'an, from a literary perspective, is something new. It uses the idiom, and sometimes the forms and structures, of earlier narratives in the composition of its own distinctive discourse. It cannot be reduced to any presumed sources. Earlier discourses appear in it not only in a new setting, but shaped, trimmed, and re-formulated for an essentially new narrative.

fn30: Sydney Griffith, "Christian lore and the Arabic Qur'an: the 'Companions of the Cave' in Surat al-Kahf and in Syriac Christian tradition," In Reynolds (ed.), The Qur'an in its Historical Context, (London, 2008), 116.

Nicolai Sinai and Angelika Neuwirth, "Introduction" in The Qurʼān in context: historical and literary investigations into the Qurʼānic milieu / edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 13.

The Qur'an in Context

To a contemporary audience, research of the kind undertaken by Speyer easily appears as obsessed with the notion that to understand a text is equivalent to unearthing its 'sources.' While such an approach is already frowned upon when applied, for example, to the Bible or to ancient Greek and Latin literature, with regard to the Qur'an it is often suspected of serving an underlying political agenda as well, namely, of aiming to demonstrate that the Qur'an is nothing but a rehash of earlier traditions in order to discredit the Islamic faith and assert Western cultural superiority. [9] 

And it is true that the title of Geiger's study--"What did Muhammad borrow from Judaism?" -- does seem to bear out such misgivings: Muhammad, it is implied. 'borrowed' existing religious concepts and motives--or, worse, he borrowed and misunderstood them -- and passed them on to his followers. An obvious suspicion about the line of research initiated by Geiger would thus be that in his eagerness to demonstrate the Jewish origin of many Qur'anic conceptions, he is prone to overlook the substantial modifications these have undergone on the way, or to dismiss such modifications are mere 'misunderstandings' rather than functionally meaningful transformations. 

Nicolai Sinai and Angelika Neuwirth, "Introduction" in The Qurʼān in context: historical and literary investigations into the Qurʼānic milieu / edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 4.