In the eye of the beholder
Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 23 (2003), Literature and the Sacred, Cairo; American University in Cairo Press, 2003. pp501
In this age of the constant politicising of religion and of the clash of fundamentalisms of all kinds, do we really need another volume to provide a dose of the sacred, the holy and the religious? The answer is yes if the volume in question is the 23rd issue (2003) of Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, entitled "Literature and the Sacred". This meaty edition of the journal tackles the various intersections of the literary and the holy across cultures and ages, whether they concern the holy elements present in literature, or the literary dimensions of holy texts. Apart from the political use and abuse of religions or of difficult theological debates, the volume reminds us of the original and often forgotten spiritual and aesthetic impact of the religious principle (and not just the moral and legal imperatives). However, having said so, the collection of articles also does not shun diversity or controversy, in either its English/French or Arabic sections.
Controversy is the subject and spirit of the initial English article by Nasr Abu- Zayd, "The Dilemma of the Literary Approach of the Qur'an." It may be an apt beginning to this thorny issue of the validity and legitimacy of studying the literary dimension of the primary and unequaled divine text in Islam, the Qur'an. Without denying the divinity or sacredness of the "Book", can a literary approach and holy sensibility converge? This is the question that the article attempts to answer through telling the story from its beginning, namely the early modern roots of the controversy as revealed in the case of Mohamed Ahmed Khalafallah's (1916-98) PhD thesis presented to the Department of Arabic of Cairo University in 1947.
The article refreshes our memory of the controversy surrounding this thesis and the unfolding events in the academic and literary circles of the time, then attempts a validation of Khalafallah's work, but more importantly of that of his mentor, Amin El-Khuli, which was centred on the literary study of the Qur'anic text through a tracing of the same controversy in classical times around the concept of I'jaz, or the inimitability of the Qur'an. The author takes us on an informative journey to both classical and modern discussions of the heart of the matter: the historical authenticity of Qur'anic stories versus their allegorical (amthal was the term used by Khalafallah) and literary usage.
Although personally I could never see the need for such strict polarisation, as the Qur'anic narratives can be both historical and for edifying purposes, the ramifications of this problematic extend further for Abu-Zayd, as he forgets momentarily about literary criticism and Khalafallah's work, and delves one more time into his favourite subjects of interpretation of the Qur'anic text, its eternal and temporal aspects, and its cultural context. In the end, accommodating the literary study of the Qur'an remains the real challenge to any new theology bent on tajdid (renaissance) -- the buzz word in current discussions and debates.
Heba Machhour's "Lire dans le parcours d'une création à partir de la surate XCVI du Coran" considers the multiple and varied lexical occurrence of the notion of "reading" in the Qur'an, beginning from the very first revealed word of the imperative iqra' to the meaning of the term qur'an itself. The article demonstrates a good critical effort in linking the linguistic structure of such a notion -- including a detailed exploration of the 16 instances of the verb "read" in the Qur'an -- with modern theories of 'reading' and linguistics, without necessarily shaking or destroying the sacred premise of her subject. Could this approach be looked upon, then, as a successful application of the previous article's call for using the literary textual method in analysing the divine text of the Qur'an?
Politics is not very far from the article by Angelica Maria DeAngelis, "Moi aussi, je suis musulman: Rai, Islam, and Masculinity in Maghrebi Transnational Identity." The author wishes to explain and deconstruct the false "Rai versus Islam" binary, a polarisation that has become a battle zone for all three parties involved in the present Maghrebi scene: Islamism, nationalistic government, and the West. The first section of the article successfully demonstrates the power- struggle over scapegoating Rai, as a moral enemy to Islam and to present authoritarian regimes, then as a Western construct of a rebellious practice against Arabic tradition, thus marketing the genre profitably within its "larger project of neocolonialism or globalisation". The following sections argue that Rai and Islam can be compatible and indeed inter-related in constructing a particular kind of Maghrebi masculine identity, hence adding the dimension of gender to this discussion of the genre's 'religious' relations.
Yet, the value of this volume lies in taking us back to the original spiritual and aesthetic dimensions of the sacred. If, like me, 'spiritual' is what you seek, then enjoy the two articles on Sufi poetry, "Authorship in Sufi Poetry" by Michael Frishkopf and "Pilgrim Clouds: The Polymorphous Sacred in Indo-Muslim Imagination" by Scott Kugle. The first is a well-crafted, albeit at times confusing in its structure, study of problems of authorship in Sufi poetry in the light of modern and post-modern theories, proving that the Sufi poet can be "a metaphysically socialised author who is (ironically) more postmodern than the contemporary secular Arab poet-author".
The second article truly demonstrates the sacred and the literary, or the poetic expression of experiencing the holy and feeling the sacred. Just by virtue of its presenting portions of the modern Urdu poetry of Sayyid Muhammad Muhsin (d. 1905) depicting clouds as the ephemeral intermediaries between earth and sky, between man's heart longing for spiritual pilgrimage and the sacred object of his pursuit, this article constitutes a spiritually moving experience in itself. Literary analysis shows various other uses of this poetic image of the clouds, and all in accentuation of this special Urdu poetic genre of na't, or singing the praises of the Prophet and his qualities.
The collection does not forgo either the comparative dimension of the subject, or its Western mediaeval manifestation. In two provocative articles by Karen Campbell -- "Rilke's Duino Angels and the Angels of Islam" -- and Marla Segol -- "Floire and Blancheflor: Courtly Hagiography or Radical Romamce?" -- the authors touch on the area of interaction between two religious cultures. In the first, Campbell contests the traditional linking of Rilke's Islamic conceptualisation of angels in his poetry and argues that his recourse to the sacred in his angelic apostrophe is rather "continuous with ... the conventions of the German elegiac tradition".
The article also discusses Rilke's understanding of the Islamic version of Prophet Mohamed's relation to the archangel Gabriel, refuting the view that the Austrian poet of the early 20th century had 'spiritual' affinities with Islam, its prophet, or its divine book. Strangely, instead of tempering the long legacy of Western misunderstanding and maligning of Islam's prophet by underscoring Rilke's clear attraction to the sources of divine inspiration within Islam, the author tries to prove that neither Mohamed nor the Qur'an represented anything sacred to the poet: he read the Qur'an not as sacred history but "as a document of prophetic self-assertion", and Gabriel as "Muhammad's [creature] ... generated by the prophet's inspiration".
In the second article, dealing with a typical mediaeval theme of a Christian- Muslim encounter in the form of a love story and religious conversion, Segol presents us with a most amusing mediaeval romance that has survived in several versions. Her study of the 12th-century Old French version comparing its details and changes to other preceding versions proves that differences in versions are a significant social commentary on existing 'crusade' tensions between Christianity and Islam and on the Church's role in forced conversions.
The Arabic section of the volume is equally diverse in scope, time periods, and treatment. It is also in some ways complementary to the English/French section. Said Tawfiq's opening article, for instance, "The Beautiful and the Sacred in Art and Religion", begins at the beginning with an examination of the nature, meaning, and history of the sacred in human communities, guided by such classic writers and thinkers on the subject as Rudolph Otto and Mircea Eliade. He thus proceeds to give a rather generalised but apt presentation of both forms of conflict and of affinities between the "beautiful" and the "sacred" in human experience and asserts that both were originally joined. He focusses on art, architecture, and language as manifestations of the primal and historical overlapping between the artistic and the holy.
Some articles reflect the same tendency to controversy and to the deconstruction of tradition, such as Ali Mabrook's "Institutionalising the Sacred: The Case of al-Shafi'i," which follows in the footsteps of Nasr Abu-Zayd's early work on the Muslim jurist Al-Shafi'i (1992) severely criticising his thought, as well as Abu-Zayd's general approach of critiquing the negative foundations of Islamic culture and history. Through an analysis of Shafi'i's thought and ideas, the author uses the case as an example of the mechanism present in Arabo- Islamic culture in general of artificially constructing the sacred for hegemonic purposes. He proceeds to argue for the 'imitative' nature of the Arabo-Islamic tradition, as opposed, for example, to the centrality of rationality in Ancient Greek culture, proven by the prominence of the science of Hadith and of philosophy, respectively.
Other critical treatments of literary works that either contain religious elements or can be interpreted to reveal such hidden dimension include articles on Arabic mediaeval poetic discourse, on Busiri's famous poem Burda and its imitators, Mahfouz's novel Awlad Haritna, and on Abdel-Hakim Qasim's work Ruju' Al- Shaykh. The section is topped with an evocative personal testimony by the contemporary Egyptian poet Farid Abu Si'da, an emotional narrative of the formation of his unique experience that flowered in a blend of the "beautiful" and the "sacred", the "human" and the "divine", and the "religious" and the "artistic".
On this note of unicity, one comes out of this issue of Alif with a feeling of a terrain well-covered and of balanced approaches, other than the noticeable absence of the subject of female spirituality and women mystics in various religious traditions. On the whole, the content is both inspiring and intellectually challenging, proving that despite all the abuses of politics and global hegemony, religion with its spiritual, aesthetic, and faith components is meant to soothe and ennoble.
Reviewed by Omaima Abou-Bakr
