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Contents 1 Qur'an FAQ 1.1 What is the difference between Koran and Qur'an? 1.2 Is the Qur'an used as a source for law? 1.3 Did Christianity have any influence on the Qur'an? 1.4 Do Muslims try to memorize the Qur'an?

Qur'an FAQ

I will collect questions students ask most often about the Qur'an in class and provide answers. This is not a traditional FAQ in that it won't cover what I think the basics are, but rather the most frequently asked questions about the Qur'an in my classes. The FAQ will build up over time as the Questions come in.

What is the difference between Koran and Qur'an?

• Because the Qur'an is in the Arabic language the different spellings are due to differences in transliteration. Arabic does not use a Latin script, so we have to come up with Latin script equivalents that help us represent the sounds of the words best. "Koran" was a very early transliteration used by Western scholars of Islam. It has become so common, that many consider it an English word. Nevertheless, it is not a very accurate transliteration of the Arabic word. The Arabic word begins with the letter "qaf." "Qaf" sounds like a "q" but said further back in the mouth with a bit of a click of the back of the tongue against the uvula or the flat of that part of the roof of the mouth. It does not sound much like a "K" at all. Moreover, there is another Arabic letter that does sound like a "K", "kaf." So Qur'an with a "q" is simply more accurate. There is more to it than that, though. The transliteration "Koran" arises out of classical Orientalist scholarship on Islam. The transliteration "Koran" thus carries the historical weight of the Orientalist claim to civilizational superiority over Muslims. The best analogy I can make is the difference between transliterating the name of the Chinese city "Beijing" as "Peking." "Beijing" is more accurate with respect to transliterating the Chinese language. "Beijing" also does not carry the historical weight of British imperialism in China and so is more respectful to the Chinese right to self-definition.

Is the Qur'an used as a source for law?

• Yes. The Qur'an is understood to be the word of God in the Arabic language as given to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. About 300 of the Qur'an's verses are sources for legal rulings on matters of worship such as the ritual prayer or human interactions such as wills and testaments, contracts, and social norms (but many of these verses are repetitive, so in practice there are fewer). The Qur'an is considered by most Muslims to be the primary source for legal rulings. But knowing what the Qur'an has to say on a particular legal matter is not so easy as it might seem. You cannot just open up the Qur'an, find some legal sounding verses and say "Hey, that is what God wants us to do!" For instance, just how do you figure out what God wants you to do? Should you take every verse that uses the imperative as a command? If you do decide a verse is a command, then how do you know how to carry it out? What do you do when the verses contradict each other?

1. There is the verse saying "Establish the [ritual] prayer." Clear enough command it seems. But what does that mean? How many times? The Qur'an says pray 3 times a day. But Muslims pray 5 times a day. Hey, and what is its form? There is nothing in the Qur'an about the exact form of the ritual prayer.

So Muslims turn to Muhammad's example to sort out exactly how to fulfill commands in the Qur'an. Muhammad is understood to be the best interpreter of the Qur'an so Muslims have taken great care to sort out the surviving reports about what he said and did, called Hadith. Hadith are used to clarify commands and other matters in the Qur'an. Hadith are also used to address legal matters that are not addressed in the Qur'an. Hadith are understood by most Muslims to be the second source for legal rulings following the Qur'an.

But do not think that the Hadith literature is perfectly clear and one can take a lingering question from the Qur'an to the Hadith for an easy answer. One has to determine which hadith are most likely to have been transmitted without errors. Then of these remaining sound hadith how does one deal with contradictions? Some hadith will give different advice on the same matter. How do you know which one is more likely to have been Muhammad's position on the matter? Different schools of law have developed different methodological means to help sort out how to apply hadith to legal questions.

2. Then consider the verse saying, "When you leave the sanctuary [after the Hajj rituals are finished], go hunting." Does everyone have to go hunting after Hajj? Obviously not. Common sense tells us that this is not an obligation.

3. What if the commands in the Qur'an contradict one another? There are 4 different verses on drinking wine in the Qur'an. 1. prohibits wine totally, 2. supports selling wine as a source of income and drinking wine for intoxication, 3. prohibits performing the ritual prayer while intoxicated, 4. warns against wine despite its benefits.

So given these 4 verses how do Muslims know God wants them to do about drinking wine? The only way to answer this question is to sort out which verses were revealed in what order. The Qur'an was revealed over 23 years and Muslim scholars argue that commands were given to the community gradually over time. These scholars argue that this helped the early Muslims get used to their new way of life. If we look at the verses according to the approximate dates they were revealed, we find that the first verse on the subject says that wine is good business and good intoxication, the second is that wine is both good and bad, the third is the partial prohibition for Muslims not to pray while intoxicated, and the final verse is the total prohibition. Hence, wine is prohibited.

But wait a second. The verses only talk about wine. What about Whiskey? What about Ecstasy? Those did not exist in Muhammad's community. Jurists use legal analogy to consider new situations. So here, they look for the effective cause of the prohibition of wine. They consider intoxication to be the reason (or the effective cause) wine is prohibited. So if the effective cause of the prohibition of wine is intoxication, then all intoxicants are analogously prohibited. But not all scholars agree that all intoxicants are prohibited. Some have argued that marijuana is permissible, for instance. While the majority of scholars have agreed by consensus that all intoxicants are prohibited, the consensus still allows for "agreeing to disagree." Hence, the differing arguments stand as possible rulings to rely on even when the majority of the legal community seems to have made a straightforward decision on a matter.

In sum, the Qur'an is a source of law, but there is nothing simple about how one sorts out rulings from the Qur'an. Legal scholars turn to Muhammad to clarify matters raised in the Qur'an, use their own discretion, common sense, and legal analogies, and try to reach some consensus by sorting things out among themselves. In the end, we could say that the Qur'an is a source of law in the manner of the US Constitution. It seems rather straightforward at first, but not at all in practice. Just like in Constitutional law, there is a long history of sorting out its meanings and rulings in different times and situations. Just like in Constitutional law, not just anyone gets to decide what those meanings and rulings are. Legal specialists are required to sort things out in theory and in practice and judges are required to settle matters in dispute. Just like in Constitutional law, without a government to enforce the rulings they have no actual power in society. Muslims living in countries without a religious legal court system and the police powers to enforce court decisions follow Islamic legal rulings inasmuch as their conscience, abilities, and common sense dictate.

Did Christianity have any influence on the Qur'an?

• Yes. But first, we have to clarify the question. By "Christianity's influence" you mean what Christian textual and oral sources can we find reflected in or repeated in the language of the Qur'an. Second, we have to clarify the nature of "influence." In the past, influence has been understood to determine the nature of the object influenced in such a straightforward and powerful way that scholars assumed that the object had no right to its own claims of "orginality." The object influenced was passive; in other words, the object was largely determined by the elements influencing it. Part of this has to do with Modern obsessions with finding the true origin of all things. Think about Darwin's Origin of the Species or the search for the historical Jesus. The feeling is that once we accurately trace all questions back to their origin, we'll know. Know what? I am not sure, but people have tended to think it would be the key to unlock the puzzle of whatever was puzzling them. Now scholars tend to think that cultural products are a result of multiple influences drawn from all aspects of human experience and the world environment. In his book Greek Thought Arab Culture, Dimitri Gutas called this process "Cultural Polygenesis." Human beings take material from their surrounding environment and transform it for their own needs. Sometimes this available material is transformed into new versions of old myths, stories, laws, social networks, political systems, and even civilizations. Note that this new way of thinking about influence both acknowledges the influence of the surrounding cultural material and the agency of those who are creating a new way of thinking out of what they have on hand.

So back to the original question restated given what we just learned: Do we find evidence of Christian textual and oral sources in Qur'anic material? Yes, we do find it. In particular, we find references and material specific to the Christians of the surrounding area. We do not find references to Christian doctrine or sources that had been deemed "orthodox" by the church in the West. So for instance, you will find a narrative about Jesus that is very similar to the "Gospel of Thomas." You will also find Rabbinic material in the Qur'an.

Now let's ask the follow-up question that typically arises in response to this discovery. How can the Qur'an be divine if it contains material from the surrounding Christian and Jewish community? First, as scholars of Religion we are not interested in proving the divinity of any source. That is a theological question that should be hammered out by believers in appropriate forums. In the secular study of Religion we try not to make claims based on negative evidence. In short, you cannot trot God into the room to prove His existence so stop worrying about it and talk about what you can given the evidence we've got. The evidence we've got only tells us about what human beings have done, so we'll leave God and His intentions out of it. So we cannot even answer the follow up question. Or rather, we can answer it if we reformulate the question in keeping with the secular study of Religion:

How do Muslims understand the presence of plainly Christian and Jewish material in the Qur'an? Muslims are not scandalized by finding Christian and Jewish material in the Qur'an for a number of reasons, but I will set out only two here. 1. Muslims understand the Qur'an to be the final, full, and correct revelation from God to humankind. So the presence of that material is a correction to earlier revelations that have been corrupted by human hands and the passage of time. 2. The Qur'an has a verse explaining that God only sends revelations to people in their own language and culture. God claims in the Qur'an that he wants to be understood, so He uses familiar stories and language to make His point.

Related to these points, scholars of Religion have examined how the cultural material of the surrounding areas were taken up in the Qur'an. In his book God and Man in the Koran, Toshihiko Izutsu, for instance, looked at how the Qur'an takes up words and concepts and uses them in new ways such that the semantic fields of the words change. Old words and ideas, new contexts and new meanings. I would say that Jesus' statement about old wine in new skins is appropriate here. We should also note that cultural polygenesis includes rejecting old ideas as well as taking up what is useful. I would argue that religious traditions are fairly well aware of their agency in reinterpreting themselves as a new community from the raw stuff of the surrounding communities even as they claim that the call to make a new community comes directly from the divine.

Do Muslims try to memorize the Qur'an?

• Yes. The Qur'an is easy to memorize the way that popular songs are easy to memorize. Fair amounts of it will stick in your head without too much effort if you hear it enough. This is because the Qur'an is primarly an oral source. Nevertheless, many Muslims begin memorizing the Qur'an formally from an early age. Muslim children might attend Qur'an school at which they begin the process of memorizing verses, starting with the opening chapter and the shorter chapters at the back. All practicing Muslims have enough of the Qur'an memorized to perform the ritual prayer (the opening chapter and at least 3 other verses). But most Muslims have memorized a bit more of the Qur'an than that. A good number of Muslims have large sections or the whole Qur'an memorized. A few people even have two or more of the variant recitative forms memorized (To read about the different recitations go to my IIRS students' summaries of important terms and concepts on the Ulum al-Qur'an page).

Oral "literature" is marked by how easy it is to memorize. Think about great epic poetry such as the Odyssey. The Odyssey uses oral forumulations such as repetition of key phrases, epithets, and rhythmic phrasing so that it can be memorized easily. The Qur'an uses similar stylistic devices that allow for its easy memorization. Phrases and stories are repeated in whole or in part. God is described by the 99 Most Beautiful Names. These Names are repeated in clustered relations that call attention to the meaning of particular verses in a similar way that epithets do in epic poetry. For instance, the Throne Verse describing God's all-encompassing nature ends with the phrase "And God is the Most High and Most Exalted." The rhyme and rhythm in the Qur'an make it very easy to memorize but also communicate meaning by recalling similar rhymes and rhythms in other verses. Michael Sells has written an extraordinary book on this topic entitled Approaching the Qur'an. The book comes with a CD and appendices of Arabic verses transliterated into Latin letters and translated into English so that the non-Arabic speaker can follow the way in which sound and meaning come together in recitation.

The Qur'an is not a "book" on a shelf, but rather an oral recitation that has been preserved from the time of Muhammad. Verses are commonly recited in both devotional and mundane circumstances. In Muslim majority countries, one typically hears Qur'an recitation being played over boomboxes in stores or on the street, on the radio or on television. Some people weave verses from the Qur'an into conversation. Verses from the Qur'an will be represented in calligraphy seen hanging in store windows, homes, and decorating religious buildings. Muslims are culturally surrounded by the recitation of the Qur'an and so it is not a huge feat to have at least a few verses memorized.

Finally, we should note that the Qur'an is not a linear narrative like Torah which begins with Genesis and ends with Moses' death. The Qur'an does not make any claims to be a narrative history of human civilization or the history of a people. It tells the same stories several times in different places each offering a different take that adds to the overall sense of the meaning of that story. For instance, take a look at the different takes on God and the Angels' dispute over Adam. There is an interesting Christian anti-Qur'an website that collects all these "contradictions" and so makes a useful resource for pulling all the different narratives together. You'll find the God/Angels/Adam disputes here. The website is a great example of what goes wrong when people expect a revelation to act like a high school history textbook and not a source that claims to strike a relationship between God and a particular community. Contemporary Muslims are guilty of this too, so their defense of the Qur'an can have a lack of insight equal to the claims of the non-Muslims attacking it. Their disagreements are nevertheless a fine example religious debate in the contemporary age and no doubt will be the subject of someone's dissertation sometime soon.