from  The Northern Lights

History and the Holy Koran

by Barry Cooper

Professor Cooper is the author of numerous books and essays in political science. He is the editor of several volumes of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. This essay appears in New Political Religions, or An Analysis of Modern Terrorism, University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri, 2004. It appears as an appendix and the references are to chapters in the main volume. This is published  with permission of the publisher and appears in two parts.

In the course of the analysis of Islamist terrorism, we made a basic analytical distinction that needs to be discussed in more detail. On the one hand, we said, there existed the history of societies and political orders informed by Islam, an account of which we called a history of the Islamic community. We assumed here that the status of the history of this community, its res gestae, was as unproblematic as the history of the U.S. mail or of gunpowder. On the other hand we said there existed a paradigmatic Islamic history, which we tentatively described as the account of God and his messengers to humanity. Early in chapter 3 we said further that Islamic history, which we also identified as the "Islamic vulgate," by analogy with the Christian Bible given its official form by Saint Jerome in the fourth century, would be discussed "without preju­dice."

The intention of this terminology was to maintain the frontier between piety and political science; we assumed here that it was possi­ble to study the Islamic story of God and his messengers to humanity without taking a position with respect to the veracity or the literal truth of Islamic history. But this means that it is possible to be neutral before the actual messages that were delivered concretely on specific occasions. We have seen, notwithstanding the Koranic assurance that there can be no compulsion in matters of religion, that this second assumption, even more than the first one concerning the history of Islam, contains or expresses a major problem.

From time to time, in explicating the significance of Islamic his­tory we have imaginatively adopted the perspective of "the pious Mus­lim." This was, of course, a simplification because (we further assume) there may be a plurality of perspectives that are compatible with Islamic piety. Simplification or not, for one holding to that position of piety, the plurality of perspectives presents an issue that cannot be so easily discussed nor, implicitly, so easily disposed of or dismissed. To put the matter more simply still: one is either pious or not. For reasons dis­cussed in chapter 2, for a pious Muslim living the reality of Islamic his­tory, a pious Jew or a pious Christian is a pious Muslim because, within the experienced reality of Islamic history, Islam is the fulfillment of both Judaism and Christianity, to say nothing of paganism.

On the basis of such an understanding of Islamic history, the adjective in the phrase "Islamic piety" is superfluous. Accordingly, the assump­tions we have made, or the attitude we have taken, first, with respect to the distinction between the history of Islam and Islamic history and, second, with respect to the veracity of the latter, may be seen (and for the pious, quite properly) as entirely disingenuous, not to say the ex­pression of an impiety. To begin with, a pious (Muslim) individual, one who we said believed in the Muslim vulgate, would never have made the initial distinction. Furthermore, for a pious (Muslim) individual, the veracity of Islamic history is its meaning, much in the same way as God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. Thus, neutrality with respect to that meaning is rebellion against it, and so rebellion against God's revealed message to Moses.

In short, for a pious individual the problem of existence is not under­standing the word of God but obeying it. Even within Islam, however, matters are not so simple, as the discussion above of the position of the faylasuf indicated. There is an equivalent problem within Western his­tory more generally, a history that, for present purposes, can include the Bible and Greek philosophy as well as Islam.¹ We will first present Leo Strauss's version of this question, then Eric Voegelin's, and finally we indicate how recent scholarship, much of it undertaken outside the Islamic lands, has a bearing on the issues of salafism and Islamism raised in the course of this study.

In 1967, Strauss delivered a lecture, "Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections," at the City College of New York.² According to Strauss, "as far as we Western men are concerned" the genesis of what "Western man" became is "indicated by the names of the two cities Jerusalem and Athens." Today, of course, the realities signified by these intelligible analytic terms — the names of the two cities, Athens and Jerusalem — are widely considered to be cultural options. Strauss then questioned the intelligibility of culture and of a cultural understanding of culture, which calls itself a science of culture. His reasoning is straight­forward: a science of culture claims to be neutral with respect to the plurality of cultures that actually exist. Accordingly, it fosters a universal tolerance of plurality. But this amounts to an assertion of the rightness of cultural pluralism and so of pluralism as right. That is, the science of culture, far from giving cultures their due, reduces them to elements of something they are not, namely, science. The science of culture does not, therefore, lead to scientific objectivity, as often has been claimed. Indeed, the science of culture, or to be more accurate, a tolerant neutral­ity with respect to the validity or veracity of the realities expressed by the terms Athens and Jerusalem, is simply evasive and, au fond, unintel­ligible. The conclusion to be drawn at this point, then, is that there is simply a stand-off between piety and political science.

Strauss did not, however, leave the matter at an impasse. What leads to objectivity, he said on this as on many other occasions, is the attempt to understand the several and various cultures, positions, arguments, philosophies, and so on, as they understood themselves or understand themselves. "Men of ages and climates other than our own did not understand themselves in terms of cultures because they were not con­cerned with culture in the present-day meaning of the term. What we now call culture is the accidental result of concerns that were not con­cerns with culture but with other things and above all with the Truth." But this approach, when the object to be understood is the Bible, and so of the biblical expose of truth — or Truth, as Strauss wrote — presents a major additional problem: it seems to require that the one undertak­ing the enquiry go beyond the self-understanding of the Bible to say nothing of the Greeks, because it amounts to gaining wisdom, or knowl­edge of Truth.

This consideration leads to a further problem: according to the Bible, "the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord; according to the Greek philosophers, the beginning of wisdom is wonder." Can there be two beginnings? But to raise such a question — or any question, for that matter — means that one does not already have the answer, does not already have the knowledge of Truth, or is not wise, however much one may wish to become wise. "We are seekers for wisdom, 'philosophoi,'" said Strauss; but "by saying that we wish to hear first and then to act to decide, we have already decided in favor of Athens against Jeru­salem." However, by taking the side of Athens against Jerusalem, one must abandon the attempt to understand Jerusalem on its own or any other terms: for the pious city, the city of righteousness, one must obey and fear the Lord. End of story. To use the imagery of "hearing the word of God," seeking to understand it would already be an act of impiety be­cause (for the pious) God's word demands obedience, not understand­ing. Indeed, to seek understanding is already to use the imagery of sight, not of hearing: we seek to "see what God's word, or any other word, means," quite a different enterprise than hearing and obeying.

On the other hand, Strauss pointed out, if one follows through on the side of Athens against Jerusalem one is compelled to treat the Bible as a text suitable for the same kind of "historical-critical study" as the Nicomachean Ethics or the Code of Hammurabi. Strauss then proposed an alternative way of reading the Bible and of grasping the tension be­tween Athens and Jerusalem. Unquestionably, Strauss's position on this point is both complex and controversial. Fortunately, it need not con­cern us. What counts is that Strauss was very much aware of the gen­eral problem that concerns us at present.

So was Eric Voegelin. In "The Gospel and Culture," Voegelin discussed this same question along different but complementary lines.³ Charac­teristically, Voegelin began with a brief historical reference to the initial absorption of the "life of reason," or the "culture of the time," namely, Hellenistic philosophy, by the community of the gospel. In this way, Voegelin said, the sectarian community was able to become the Chris­tianity of the church. The gospel was acceptable to the culture of the time, furthermore, because it appeared to answer the questions raised by the philosophers.⁴ In the First Apology of Justin the Martyr, the author claims that the Logos of the gospel is the developing logos of philoso­phy. "Hence, Christianity is not an alternative to philosophy, it is phi­losophy itself in its state of perfection; the history of the Logos comes to its fulfillment through the incarnation of the Word in Christ." Accord­ingly, the distinction between philosophy and the gospel is the differ­ence between stages in the history of reason.

A modern way of posing the same question that has a more direct bearing on the issue under analysis is the controversial 1966 New Cate­chism, published by the Dutch bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. The opening chapter is called "Man the Questioner." It asserts that Chris­tians are human beings with "inquiring minds" and are searching for ways to account for their faith. The motivation of the Dutch bishops is a mirror image of the motivation of Justin: he began as an "inquiring mind" and, following the philosophical schools, was led to the gospel; the bishops, in contrast, had somehow to recover a sense of inquiry because it had been lost and, as is true of many contemporary Christians, they remained in a tranquil state of uninquiring faith. Voegelin adds a "supplement" or a "reminder" that "neither Jesus nor his fellowmen to whom he spoke his word did yet know that they were Christians — the gospel held out its promise not to Christians, but to the poor in the spirit, that is, to minds inquiring, even though on a culturally less so­phisticated level than Justin's." The conflict that lay behind the assertion of the Dutch bishops and what expressed itself in the ensuing contro­versy over the Dutch Catechism, as it is generally known, was not be­tween the gospel and philosophy "but rather between the gospel and its unenquiring possession as doctrine."

The conflict, that is to say, is between an inquiring mind and a doc­trine that prohibits inquiry. Whatever the pragmatic effectiveness of doctrine as a means of ensuring the credal integrity of a community, the price is invariably the suppression of questions that an inquiring mind is apt to ask. Just as Strauss found a way to deal with the tension between Athens and Jerusalem, so did Voegelin find a way to deal with an inquiring mind in the context of Christianity. To put the issue sim­ply: "the question to which, in Hellenistic-Roman culture, the philoso­pher could understand the gospel as the answer" concerns "the human­ity of man," which "is the same today as it ever has been in the past." The emphasis for both Voegelin and Strauss lies on the questions asked, not the more or less adequate answers received, nor on the equally ques­tionable criteria by means of which the more adequate can be distin­guished from the less.

These reflections have a bearing on the issue of Islamist terrorism insofar as Islamists have undertaken the "reducing diets" (to recall the image of Meddeb) of an already astringent regimen. In less colorful language, the issue concerns the relationship of an inquiring mind, which is characteristic of the "humanity of man," and uninquiring obe­dience to the equally unproblematic word of God, the unproblematic status of which is, to the inquiring mind, evidence only of a dogmatic and closed mind.

The literature on this question in the context of Islam far surpasses anything we can discuss here, and the following sketch is intended chiefly to illustrate a political problem rather than analyze or evaluate the un­derlying religious, interpretive, or spiritual problem — which, as men­tioned above, on philological grounds alone far exceeds my competence.

In 1953, Franz Rosenthal began an article with an understated title, "Some Minor Problems of the Qur'an," in this way: "The basic problem involved in the following discussion is whether we are permitted to doubt the traditional understanding of the Qur'an."⁵ In light of the ex­plicit direction given in the Koran (2:1), that "this is the Perfect Book, free from all doubt," the answer, within the context of Islamic history or the Muslim vulgate, is obvious: no doubt at all is permitted because there are no genuine "problems" in the Koran, not minor ones and cer­tainly not major ones. The Koran is not to be doubted because it is meant to be heard and obeyed. Likewise, the title of Warraq's recent book, What the Koran Really Says, which reproduced Rosenthal's paper, raises for Islamic history a thoroughly inappropriate but implicit ques­tion: what does the Koran really say? We are asked, therefore, to see what God's word means, which is a philosophical inquiry rather than an act of obedience.

This is a radical question, an expression of an inquiring mind, be­cause the appropriate answer to the implicit question is: the Koran records God's eloquence. If one is unsure of what God's eloquence means, master the exegetical tradition and find out. The grave problem with this answer, which is the answer of Rosenthal's "traditional under­standing," is that an examination of the tradition will tell you what the exegetes took it to mean, not what God's word means nor even, to fol­low Strauss's formulation, what it meant to the contemporaries of the Prophet, the pious ancestors, nor to the Prophet himself. To answer that question, which is one that eventually the inquiring mind must consider, brings us to a basic fork in the interpretive road: if one rejects "traditional understanding," which in the Islamic context we may call the teachings of the ulema (roughly analogous to the teachings and dis­putes of the pre-Reformation Church), then there is left only indepen­dent interpretation, ijtihad, or something like what Strauss called a "historical-critical study."

In the chapters above, we have already considered the conflict between the "traditional understanding" and "independent interpretation" and in this context analyzed the writings of men such as Ibn Taymiyya, Qutb, and bin Laden from the perspective of political science or "historical-critical study." The issue here, however, involves a different and more radical one: it is possible to bring to light the pneumopathological at­tributes of an Asahara or a bin Laden by analyzing their texts in order to understand them on their own terms. However, it is one thing to try to understand an author as the author understood himself or her­self, which we may call the principle of Straussian hermeneutics, but when the author of a text is God, something quite different is involved. A historical-critical study of a text, for example, that Islamic history upholds as "uncreated"⁶ in the sense that it is the direct Word of God, is a recipe for conflict, even for war.

In other words, to examine the text of the Koran as a product of a particular set of historical or cultural or individual experiences is easily seen by those living Islamic history, whether in accord with "traditional understanding" or in terms of some idiosyncratic ijtihad, as an attack on Islam. Mindful of the post-fatwa life of Salman Rushdie, this is why today so many minds inquiring into "problems of the Koran" use pseudonyms. A half century ago Rosenthal could publish in his own name, which speaks to a changed political rather than interpretive climate today.    

[Part 2 may be read HERE]

NOTES

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."