Critique of Religious Discourse

321 Pages·2018·1.18 MB·English

by  Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

Critique of Religious Discourse
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Critique of
Religious Discourse
Naqd al-Khitab al-Dini
Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd
Translated by Jonathan Wright
With a Scholarly Introduction by Carool Kersten
New Haven and London
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Th is publication was made possible in part by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation
of New York. Th e statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of
the author.
Introduction and English translation copyright © 2018 by Yale University.
Originally published as Naqd al-Khitab al-Dini in 1990 by Dar al-Th aqafa al Jadida.
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isbn 978-0-300-20712-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
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Contents
Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd: An Introduction to His Life and Work,
by Carool Kersten, 1
Critique of Religious Discourse, 23
Introduction, 27
1. Contemporary Religious Discourse: Its Strategies and
Intellectual Premises, 34
First: Th e Strategies Used in the Discourse, 48
Confl ating Ideas and Religion, 49
Explaining All Phenomena by Reference to One Starting Point, 53
Reliance on the Authority of Tradition and the Early Muslims, 59
Intellectual Dogmatism, 66
Dismissing the Historical Dimension, 74
Second: Th e Intellectual Premises, 81
Divine Sovereignty, 81
Th e Text and Nass, 106
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2. Tradition Interpreted or Colored: A Reading of the Project of the
Islamic Left, 136
Interpretation: Th e Linguistic Sense and the Technical Sense, 138
Coloring: A Tendentious Reading, 141
Productive Readings, 144
Th e Islamic Left and the Priorities of Religious Discourse, 148
Th e Past and the Present: Th e Root and the Branch, 163
Tradition: A Construct of Consciousness or a Historical
Construct, 173
Tradition: Rebuilding or a Fresh Coat of Paint, 183
Th e Texts: Interpretation or Coloring, 199
Syncretism: Success and Failure, 212
3. Reading Religious Texts: An Exploratory Study of Types
of Meaning, 226
Notes, 273
Index, 291
vi(cid:6)Contents
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Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd
An Introduction to His Life and Work
Carool Kersten
It is not often that a relatively obscure academic specializing in the
literary study of sacred scriptures comes to the attention of audi-
ences beyond that of the select and erudite company of his or her
peers. But this is exactly what happened to the author of this book,
the late Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943–2010). When, in the early
1990s, a dispute about his promotion to full professor at the Uni-
versity of Cairo exploded into a full-blown political scandal, it did
not just turn him into a scholarly cause célèbre; sadly, it also eventu-
ally forced Abu Zayd into exile abroad. His advocacy of subject-
ing the Qur(cid:2)an to rigorous scholarly investigation using innovative
methods and techniques of textual criticism and discourse analysis
1
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used in literary studies was considered anathema by Islamist activ-
ists, driving them to persecute the beleaguered scholar by declar-
ing him an apostate and—adding insult to injury—petitioning the
court system to forcibly divorce him from his wife, the noted pro-
fessor in Romance languages Ibtihal Younis. Unfortunately, this
was not an isolated case: In 1992, members of the terrorist group
al-Gamā(cid:3)ā al-Islāmiyya had murdered the writer Farag Foda; two
years later, another religious fanatic almost fatally stabbed Naguib
Mahfouz, the doyen of Egyptian literature and the fi rst Arab No-
bel Literature Prize Laureate. Th erefore, the couple, electing not to
fi nd out what the consequences of the verdict would be, opted for
asylum abroad. Rebuilding his academic career in Europe, Nasr
Hamid Abu Zayd has since been recognized internationally as a
scholar who has made pioneering—and controversial—contribu-
tions to move the study of the Qur(cid:2)an and of the wider Islamic
intellectual legacy forward.
In this he has not been alone: Abu Zayd is part of a group of
contemporary intellectuals from the Arabic-speaking part of the
Muslim world known as the turāthiyyūn, or “heritage thinkers.”
Th is strand of Islamic thinking developed in the 1970s and 1980s in
response to the traumatic outcome of the 1967 war between Israel
and the surrounding Arab countries. It ran chronologically paral-
lel to the Islamic resurgence (al-sahwa al-islāmiyya), which also
emerged in the wake of what had been for the Arab world such
a disastrous confrontation. Although both have turned their gaze
on the Islamic past, interpretations of Islam by the turāthiyyūn
form a counter-narrative to the puritanical religious revivalism
and uncompromising politics of the Islamists, who felt encour-
aged by the revolution in Iran and the ongoing military resistance
2(cid:6)Introduction by Carool Kersten
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of the Afghan mujahideen to the invading Soviet Army. Th ey be-
came further emboldened when Egyptian President Anwar S adat
was assassinated by members of a violent Islamist cell after he
signed a peace treaty with Israel. Islamist organizations, including
the mass movement of the Muslim Brotherhood, rally around the
slogan al-Islam huwa al-hall (“Islam is the solution”), presenting
it as a total—and totalitarian—way of life. By contrast, the heri-
tage thinkers have a very diff erent comprehensive understanding
of Islam. Instead of presenting Islam as a political instrument, they
celebrate it as a civilization with important and wide-ranging in-
tellectual, cultural, and artistic achievements that should inspire
Muslims to reassert themselves. For that purpose, the heritage
thinkers encourage a critical examination of the Islamic legacy:
interrogating dominant discourses, challenging the hegemonic or-
thodoxy, and protesting the repression of so-called heresies. In this
they are helped by a double intellectual genealogy: intimate famil-
iarity with the Islamic tradition combined with solid knowledge
of the advances made in the humanities and social sciences in the
Western academe.
Pioneered by intellectuals like Zaki Naguib Mahmud and
Mah moud Amin al-Alem, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd belonged to
a younger generation that rose to prominence in the 1980s and
1990s, which also included the Moroccan philosopher Moham-
med Abed al-Jabri, his Egyptian colleague Hasan Hanafi , and the
French-Algerian historian of Islam Mohammed Arkoun. Except
for Arkoun, who writes mainly in French and English, the works
of the others are almost exclusively available in Arabic and there-
fore are by and large unknown to the wider public without knowl-
edge of that language. Th e present integral translation of one of
Introduction by Carool Kersten(cid:6)3
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