Of Poets and Jesters: Methodologies and Reception Politics in Qurʾanic Studies

Abstract

Of Poets and JestersMethodologies and Reception Politics in Qurʾanic Studies Celene Ibrahim (bio) As Hadia Mubarak, Halla Attallah, Rahel Fischbach, and Yasmin Amin each rightfully point out, given the polyvocality of the Qurʾan and the exegetical depth of the tradition, much ground remains to be covered. As discussants in this round-table, we find ourselves at the intersection of qurʾanic studies in the secularized academy and the methods for studying the Qurʾan developed within Muslim intellectual traditions over the past fourteen hundred years. We occupy the juncture of the two seas of knowledge production: the secularized academy and the devotional scholarly sphere. Given that the secularized academy is in the midst of a fraught decolonization process—thanks in large part to the efforts of feminist scholars—those of us writing constructive exegesis must think carefully about our positionality. We who sit conspicuously at the juncture of the seas of knowledge production must make self-conscious choices about our scholarly motivations and register. The primary choices, as I have experienced them, are as follows: Get the Bulse, Lose the Pulse Successfully writing for the overlords and sultans of academia, we may vie to secure a feeble stage and some accordingly precarious sense of job security. To do so, we must segregate from the everyday religious folk. We will be cultured and dined, but our intellectual production will become unintelligible to all but those with sufficiently refined tastes, for what is exquisite in sequestered halls is made so precisely through its inaccessibility. We become deadened to living communities of practice. Alas, sacrifices must be made! Better a Jester We could lean into the more applied dimensions of our craft. We may be politely eschewed by academia's caesars and sultans for becoming too vulgar. [End Page 79] Given that we resonate with the everyday folk, we have reason to keep company with the merchants—in our case, the publishers—who happily sell commodities generated by our labor to meet the demonstratable demand. We may have lost audiences in the court, but we have gained audiences in the higgledy-piggledy streets and bustling marketplaces. Realizing that we are in good company, we may find contentment in our freedom from courtly strictures. Caught in the unpredictable currents of intellectual decolonization processes, many of us shape our craft to the tastes of the colonial overlords—the senior scholars who have institutional authority, the search and tenure committees, the elite fellowships juries, and so forth. We know that we must use a register that pleases these caesars and sultans of the academy or we risk becoming demoted jesters, the village fools at the margins of academia who speak out of their indigenous epistemes without fear.1 Considering my intersecting Muslim and secular intellectual genealogies and position as a "tentative mufassira,"2 I advocate for a constructive approach that we might ambitiously describe as tafsir tawḥidī, both in the sense that it deems the two seas of knowledge as one body and that it has explicating the details of Islamic monotheism as its ultimate concern.3 In a preliminary sense, we could describe tafsīr tawḥidī as having a commitment to: (1) conducting rigorous philological, grammatical, rhetorical, and structural analyses in conversation with histories of interpretation; (2) attending to the sociological and affective dimensions of qurʾanic discourse and the emotive impacts of qurʾanic rhetoric; (3) articulating in an accessible manner the moral and pious imperatives that emerge from our engagements with the qurʾanic discourse in light of the pressing social issues of our age; and (4) engaging with theoretical academic discourses on text, embodiment, and phenomenology. The tafsir tawḥidī approach is conscientiously integrative and does not shy away from applied, constructive, literary, historical, or theoretical discourses. [End Page 80] Is there a way to occupy the juncture of the two seas of knowledge production in qurʾanic studies without being swept away by either current? If there is, I will seek it. And if there is not, I await with cap 'n' bells at the ready. [End Page 81] Celene Ibrahim Celene Ibrahim is author of Islam and Monotheism (2022) and Women and Gender in the...