Reading the Qur’ān as a Resident Alien

Reading the Qur’ān as a

Resident Alien muwo_1293 689..706

Whitney Bodman
Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
Austin, Texas

W
e Christians who have committed ourselves to the study of Islam
and regular interaction with Muslims commonly find ourselves in a
position not unlike that of the sojourners of the Old Testament, the
“resident aliens,” gēr in Hebrew. Like Abraham sojourning in Egypt (Gen.
12:10) we journey to a place foreign to us, with different customs and
different ways of seeing the world and the cosmos, and we reside there for
awhile, trying to fit in and yet not fit in. Abraham’s sojourn was occasioned by
a famine in Canaan. It would overstate the case to say that we sojourn in the
domain of Islam due to a lack in our own tradition, but it would not be far in
the case of many of us that we do find a larger fullness as a result of our
journey.
The gēr is both resident and alien.1 We who claim Christian identity but
seek to study Islam in depth are both resident and alien. We are alien,
obviously, in not claiming the Islamic tradition as our own, indeed, claiming
an identity that has irreconcilable differences with Islam. Yet we are also
resident in that we seek to sojourn in the Islamic landscape, as it were,
without imposing Christian taxonomies or strictures upon it.
In 2000, David Kerr wrote an article entitled, “Mohammed: Prophet of
liberation — a Christian Perspective from Political Theology,” in which he
raises the question of Christian appreciation of Muhammad as a prophet.2 He

concludes that a Christian can accept Muhammad as a prophet in the primary

sense of one committed to the liberation of the poor. There has been a great
deal of other scholarship on the life and role of Muhammad, but Kerr’s

question takes us in a theological direction: what is a specifically Christian
appreciation of the prophethood of the Muslim Muhammad, and why should

we even ask the question?

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Kerr sought to understand the nature of Muhammad, Muhammad’s story

 
and what Muslims make of that story without forsaking his own Christian
framework. He consults with other Christians, but also with Muslims, in order
to come to an account of Muhammad that addresses both Muslim and

Christian theologies in ways that both Muslims and Christians would
recognize, at least initially. I say “initially” because pursuing such questions
almost inevitably leads to some reconstitution of thought. That is what
theological reflection is supposed to do.
In this article, I ask a similar question: how does a Christian read
the Qur’ān, and to what end? There is a great deal of scholarship on
the Qur’ān in books and in journals such as The Muslim World. Such
scholarship helps us to read the Qur’ān accurately, historically, theologically
and contextually. In such an endeavor we might assume that it makes no
difference whether the reader is Muslim or not, pious or not. What are
required are scholarly credentials and methodologies.
Is this enough? Does this effort to read the Qur’ān “as it is” take into
account the Qur’ān’s own testimony about what it is and how it should be
received? The Qur’ān, as a sacred book, the Word of God, demands to be
read with utmost seriousness. This is not an expectation to be treated casually.
It is as much of the substance of the Qur’ān as is its grammar or vocabulary.
To read the Qur’ān is to understand its intention, which is to transform the
reader, to induce the reader to become a muslim, one who submits to God.
Can we, Christians and others, read it correctly if we are not open to the
possibility of such transformation? It is not necessarily that we must become
Muslim, an adherent of the religion of Islam, but we must enter into the space
of the Qur’ānic world in order to understand what the Qur’ān is trying to tell
us.3 We must become sojourners, alien to be sure, but also resident. Frank
Clooney describes this move as follows:

Texts are sites wherein intentional, integral transformation is plotted

and promoted in a coherent way. Skilled authors compose in such a
way as to transform their intended, attentive readers, to bring their lives
into conformity with the realities and values their texts describe. Step
by step, such texts draw the well-disposed person into a religious
reading that is richly multidimensional and productive of affects
irreducible to reasons offered in justification.4

The Qur’ān, naming God as its author, is addressing us. It is fair to note
that the first intended readers were the Arabs of Arabia. The Qur’ān was sent
down in Arabic (Q 16:103) to and through an Arab messenger (Q 41:44, 42:7).
But the Qur’ān is also addressed to wider audiences, ultimately to all of
humanity (Q 39:41), even to multiple worlds (Q 81:27–28), including the

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 Reading the Qur’ān as a Resident Alien

worlds of angels and jinn. In this light, all of us are its intended readership.
Most of us might, in our own right, demure. We are Christians, Jews, Sikhs,
and so forth with our own holy books, central to our own communities of
faith. It is through those books that we feel ourselves to be addressed
religiously. In none of our communities is the Qur’ān the designated or an
acknowledged source of holy wisdom. It is not religious reading for us. But
this is not the point. The Qur’ān is, in its own right, sacred text. Even if
we do not recognize it as authoritative for us, it recognizes itself as
authoritative for us.
Many will read the Qur’ān casually, out of curiosity. Some will read it with
more academic intent and some with polemical intent (a purpose that the
Qur’ān condemns, Q 2:176). All of these readers are, in the words of
Paul Griffiths, consumers of the Qur’ān.5 These readers are less likely to
understand the Qur’ān as it intends to be understood, or read it as it intends
itself to be read.
Griffiths identifies consumerist reading, the reading that characterizes most
reading including that of academics and, sadly, that of many religious people,
as reading for the purpose of production. For academics the production is
usually the making of writing, i.e., more reading. For others the production
may be that of “writing” their own thoughts, to be conveyed in future writing
or speaking. For consumers, reading is an essentially creative process, with
the text as a tool or component of that creation.
Griffiths contrasts consumerist reading with religious reading. The
difference is both in the attitude toward the work and in the process of
reading the work. The religious work is “a stable and vastly rich resource,
one that yields meaning, suggestions (or imperatives) for action, matter for
aesthetic wonder, and much else.”6 Further, “readers are seen as intrinsically
capable of reading and as morally required to read.”7 Religious works
are commonly memorized, in part or totally (as is particularly true with
the Qur’ān). Commentaries, anthologies and other derivative works are
produced. To sum, “For the religious reader, the work read is an object of
overpowering delight and great beauty. It can never be discarded because it
can never be exhausted. It can only be reread, with reverence and ecstasy.”8
That the Qur’ān has such a character is beyond doubt. “Those to whom
we have sent the Book study/recite it as it should be studied” (Q 2:121). It is
sent to all of humanity, a single people (umma), as a book of truth to judge
between them (Q 2:213). The Qur’ān is irreproducible (Q 2:23), beautiful
(Q 39:23), self-evident (Q 29:49), clear (Q 15:1), and confirming all previous
revelations (Q 35:31). The Qur’ān welcomes any reader, whatever the
initial intention, consumerist or not. The Qur’ān knows itself and its own
purpose.

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It should be explained here that the Qur’ān is being presented as if it

is a person, as having its own will and voice. This is intentional. In literary
criticism it is widely recognized that as we read texts, we may presume
“authorial” intent, but we cannot know it. We have the text and that is all. It is
the text that speaks to us, in words on a page. Obviously, for people of faith,
there is much more than that. There is divine authorship and other theological
constructs, but here we are focusing on the particular aspect of Islam that is
the Qur’ān. Here we are reading sacred text. It is the text that speaks to us,
drawing us into its orbit of meanings.
Frank Clooney has explored the implications of deep and patient
reading of another tradition’s texts, mainly in terms of Hindu texts. In his
view, reading religious texts theologically is the foundation of comparative
theology. When we read the Qur’ān theologically, as it expects to be read, we
are “doing” comparative theology. Clooney defines this as:

. . . a theology that remains rooted in one tradition while seriously

engaging another tradition and allowing that engagement to affect one’s
original commitments. As theological, it harkens back in some way or
another to the basic features and requirements of theology as ‘faith
seeking understanding,’ as an inquiry which seeks knowledge of God
as a meaningful and possible goal. As comparative, it locates both the
possibilities and the obstacles in a context composed of more than one
religious tradition.9

This requires careful reading, attentive and patient. As Griffiths points out,
religious reading is more often re-reading, re-apprehending that which is
familiar yet still unexhausted. Such reading is all the more demanding when
the text is not of one’s own tradition.
As we read a text from another tradition, we must be particularly
conscious of our own role in the reading. Wolfgang Iser and others of the
reader-response school of narratology would remind us that meaning is
generated not simply from the text but from the reader’s interaction with the
text. The reader brings to the reading his or her own memory, experience,
and expectation, a repertoire unique to each reader, that shapes every
aspect of meaning-making. The gaps, blanks, and mysteries of the text are
instinctively resolved, at least provisionally, by the reader in the act of
reading.10
A religious reader is, of course, shaped profoundly by faith, however
defined or articulated. Hence I, a Christian, cannot read the text in the same
way that any given Muslim will read the text. Schooled and practiced in
reading and interpreting the Christian Bible, as well as preaching from that
Bible, inevitably and unavoidably shapes my reading of the Qur’ān. It does

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 Reading the Qur’ān as a Resident Alien

not necessarily shape my agenda in reading the Qur’ān — I wish to read

religiously, and I am practiced in reading religiously — but it will shape the
tools I instinctively bring to reading. I read syntagmatically, looking for the
flow of argument and the internal relationships of parts, where Muslims are
often inclined to read atomistically, a line or two at a time, without relating
individual lines to larger portions of text.11 I am sure that there are other ways
of reading and interpreting that are instinctive to me, but alien to common
Muslim reading practice, and vice versa. These may be more obvious to others
than they are to me. None of this makes my reading less religious or less filled
with wonder and reverence. Neither does it make my reading of the text less
accurate or worthy.
Indeed, if I read the text reverently, but from my own context (would it
be possible to read the text reverently but from a context not my own?), this
opens up significant possibilities for interfaith dialogue. Is it possible that I
gain new insights into my own scripture through a Muslim’s religious reading
of the Bible? If it is religious reading, suffused with “reverence and ecstasy,” it
is possible, even probable.
We read a text in four ways, perhaps in sequence. We read text
exegetically, analyzing its internal dynamics and context. Secondly, we read
it in the context of its commentarial tradition, the canon of interpretation and
application of the faith community. Thirdly, we read it in its contemporary
context as it is perceived and applied both within its community and beyond
it. Finally, we read it theologically as a text active in the project of theology,
faith seeking understanding, a project in which we are also active. If we read
the Qur’ān with the utmost seriousness that it demands of us, we are then
obliged to enter into the theological conversation that it desires, without
abandoning either the other three readings — exegetical, commentarial, and
contemporary, and without abandoning the theological repertoire that we
bring to the conversation. We recognize that our theological repertoire
includes not only our own personal understandings but also those of our
community of faith and its collective memory. We read alone and also not
alone.
The Qur’ān gives its own account of the proper consequence of reading.
One relevant passage refers explicitly to Christians:
. . . and nearest in love to those who believe are those who say ‘we are
Christians.’ That is because among them are priests and monks and
they are not arrogant.
And when they listen to what was sent down to the Messenger you will
see their eyes overflowing with tears because of the truth which they
recognize. They say, ‘Our Lord, we believe, so inscribe us along with
the witnesses.’

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What would cause us not to believe in God and what truth comes to
us, since we long for our Lord to admit us into the community of the
righteous?
And God has rewarded them for what they say with Paradise, under
which rivers flow, in which they remain forever. That is the reward for
those who do good.
Q 5:82–84
The Christians that the passage describes are, first of all, religious
professionals, or those who are associated with religious professionals. The
fact that there are priests and monks among them, people of learning or
spiritual advancement, is significant. They are informed readers. The results of
this state are 1) they have love for those who believe; 2) they are in some way
close to the believers; and 3) they are not arrogant. This description is not
limited to a subset of Christians, but is directed at all those who confess their
faith, those who declare, “We are Christians.” Hence, their identity is clear.
They are not “among the believers” in the sense that “believers” is used
here.12 They are not Muslims.
The response to the reading or hearing of the Qur’ān is tears of
astonishment. They already have some expectation, some yearning for truth
— they are, after all, informed readers. They recognize that truth and their
response is a desire to be included among those who are witnesses. Note that
the response is not that they become believers. They are not converted from
being Christians.
The passage is associated by Muslim exegetes with a particular story
concerning the Negus, the ruler of Abyssinia.13 The sı̄ra of Muhammad

describes the encounter. When the Muslims of Mecca were under threat, a
group of them sought refuge with the Negus. It was he who wept at the
hearing of the Qur’ān, and declared its words true to the Christian scripture.
The sı̄ra describes the conversion of the Negus to Islam. Many biographies,
however, make no such assertion and many present contradictory
information.14 Also associated with the Negus story is Q 3:199, “There are
some among the People of the Book who believe in God and what has been
sent down to you [ Muhammad ] and what has been sent down to them . . .”

This would support the idea that a Christian could affirm the revelations of
Islam while remaining a Christian. 15
The divergence of opinion on the matter is significant. In most of the
Qur’ānic encounters with unbelievers, those who hear the testimony of
Islam either convert or resist in indignant ways and thus are condemned. The
Negus account falls into a different category. It is to be expected that some
renderings of the story would present him as converting. This is the narrative
norm. It is altogether surprising that others would tell the story of a warm and

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lasting relationship between a Christian ruler and Muhammad and his


community that does not involve conversion.
The extra-Qur’ānic association with the Negus aside, the Qur’ānic
passage under consideration here speaks generally of Christians. They are
witnesses to the truth. They find no reason not to believe in the truth of God.
Does this statement mean that they do become believers? Many commentators
make this claim, but the passage itself does not seem to. They long to be
included among the righteous. The goal is not to believe in God — that is
already true of them. They long, rather, to be righteous, and their reward of
admission to Paradise comes due to their righteousness, a quality not
exclusive to Muslims.
The Christians and “the believers” have in common that they both long for
righteousness and that they already believe in the truth, which they recognize
in the Qur’ān. The Qur’ān believes that they have the same belief in God and
the same truth and the same hope for admission to Paradise that Muslim
believers do. The Qur’ānic testimony is not alien to them.
What does this suggest about a Christian reading of the Qur’ān, or rather
what the Qur’ān expects of a Christian reading of the Qur’ān? The Qur’ān
expects that Christians already have enough learning to recognize the truth
that is in the Qur’ān. The Qur’ān expects that the reading/hearing of
the Qur’ān will be profoundly moving, even to tears. A Christian reader
of the Qur’ān, one who seeks to understand the Qur’ān as Muslims
understand it, to comprehend the reverence that Muslims have for
the Qur’ān, must be one capable and willing to be moved to tears.
One word that emerges often in Griffith’s examination is “reverence.”
This would be of no help at all, a redundancy, had not Paul Woodruff given
careful consideration to the word.16 In Woodruff’s analysis, reverence is a
virtue not exclusively, or even mainly, attached to religion. It is a virtue that
encompasses, orders, and modulates the feelings of awe, shame and respect.

Reference begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from

this grows the capacity to be in awe of what ever we believe lies
outside our control — God, truth, justice, nature, even death. The
capacity for awe, as it grows, brings with it the capacity for respecting
fellow human beings, flaws and all. This in turn fosters the ability to be
ashamed when we show moral flaws exceeding the normal human
allotment.17

The nature of reverence not only explains why we might be moved to

tears through a reverent reading of the Qur’ān, it also helps us to understand
the relationship between reverential reading of a text from a different
religious tradition and faithfulness to our own distinctive belief system. As

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Woodruff explains, reverence has nothing to do with belief. This is not to say
that belief is unimportant. It is supremely important to those who hold them
dearly, but belief and reverence are fundamentally different:
It is not reverent to say that all religions are the same deep down.
Well-meaning people who say that they are the same may be setting
the issue of belief aside (as would be fair enough for those whose
religions do not involve belief). But if they are speaking of belief-based
religions, then they are betraying either their own beliefs or the truth. If
they don’t really care whether their beliefs are true, they betray their
beliefs; if they think that every religious belief is true, they betrayed the
truth.18

Frank Clooney makes the same point on different grounds:

When pluralism is more than a muted version of a Christian
universalism or of a post-religious rationalism, it may be taken as a
narrative strategy that speaks powerfully beyond what religious
traditions have always said about themselves, in order to describe how
the world coheres and has meaning when many religious traditions are
noticed together within a new world narrative, and where all extant
stories are subsumed into one greater story. . . . But this option is more
costly than it might seem at first. Given the deep commitments of
religious communities to their own narratives, a pluralist narrative can
well be taken as an aggressive act which religious communities are
quite likely to resist.19

A reverent reading of the Qur’ān does not deny that there are significant
differences between our religions. We do not ignore these dissents, but they
do not inhibit a reverent reading. But what if we believe that the tradition in
which we read is “untrue”? This still does not prohibit reverential reading,
since essential to the nature of reverence is humility. The essence of
reverence is the knowledge that we are not gods or God,20 hence our
apprehension of truth (though not the existence of truth) is always hindered.
We read reverently because we wish to understand this other tradition.
Judgment on that other tradition, if one would wish to exercise such
judgment, is a separate operation.
As a way of exploring this self-conscious process of reading, I have
chosen to read the beginning of Sūrat al-Rahmān (55), an interesting and
engaging sūra. Sūrat al -Rahman ¯ comes to us as soaring poetry, one might

say a litany, but that is not quite accurate, since litanies in Christian worship
are a series of supplications, and Sūrat al -Rahman ¯ is a series of assertions.

As is commonly known, Sūrat al -Rahman ¯ lists God’s many bounties to the

world. An important aspect of these bounties, and a clear point of the sūra, is
that they are paired and balanced.21
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Pairings are a common element in the Qur’ān. An essential pairing is that

of the eschatological destinations of Paradise and the Fire, al-janna and
al-nār. Also common is the contrast between those who believe and those
who disbelieve, the people of the right hand and those of the left. These
pairings represent the clear choices before humanity, much in the same way
that the Torah does:
Today I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.
Therefore choose life that you and your offspring may live. (Deut.
30:19).

This duality of choice is similarly set forth at the very beginning of

the Qur’ān, in that sūra that every pious Muslim recites at least seventeen
¯
times a day, al -Fatiha :

Show us the straight path, the path of those whom you have blessed
Not of those with which you are angry and have gone astray. (Q 1:6–7)

The Divine Names are often paired, marking the end of a section of a
sūra:
And He is exalted in Might; All-Knowing. (Q 27:78)
[He is] the Possessor of Majesty and Nobility. (Q 55:78)

and, of course, the best-known pairing, al -Rahman ¯ al -Rah¯ım that occurs at


the beginning of every sūra save one.
¯ the pairings are of a different nature; they
In Sūrat al -Rahman

demonstrate the careful balance in which God has created the world.
Some of the pairings are given in short, sequential, rhymed verses:
¯ (measured, perhaps in their
5. The sun and the moon are husban
paths). 

6. The shrubs22 and the trees yasjudān (bow in submission).

And:
14. He created humans from clay like the fakhār (potters).
15. He created jinn from a flame min nār (of fire).

Some pairings are contained within a single verse:

17. He is Lord of the mashrigayn (two easts), and Lord of the
maghribayn (two wests).

All of these balanced objects of God’s creativity are subsumed under the
mercy of God. This sūra is the only sūra in the Qur’ān that begins with a
name of God. Al -Rahman ¯ is not simply one name among ninety-nine.23 In

the Qur’ān it sometimes refers not to an attribute of God, but to God’s Self:
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¯ ,’ they say, ‘What is

If it is said to them, ‘Prostrate to al-Rahman
al-Rahman ¯ ? Shall we prostrate to what you command us?’ and it
 for them alienation. (Q 25:60)
increases

Here, at the beginning of Sūrat al -Rahman ¯ , we must take the first āya as

more than a name of God. It is the essence of God, the Self of God that
subsumes all the pairings, all the creativity that follows. From the same root
as Rahman ¯ comes the word rahma , womb.24 The mercy of God is
 
generative. It is not merely a particular attitude of mercy with which God
regards the world. It is that ontological nature of God through which the
world, in all its goodness and provision, is created.25 “My Rahma¯

encompasses everything” Q 7:156.26
I am al -rahman¯ [the Relator] and you are al -rah¯ım [the related to]: I
have derived your name from My name: therefore whoever makes you
close, I will make him close; and who severs you, I will sever him.27

From al -Rahman¯ come two revelations. These are the Book of Signs of

the World and the Book of Signs of the Book. Sufis sometimes add the Book
of the Self.28
We will show them Our signs in the universe and in their souls until it
becomes clear to them that He is the Real. (41:53)

In the universe, all creation testifies to the generative rahma¯ of God.


Within us, the miracles of the human body are also signs. Also within us,
the intonation of the Qur’ān vibrating in our bodies, also testifies to the
generative rahma¯ of God. When Muhammad received the revelations of
 
the Qur’ān, they would often be accompanied by strong physical signs —
trembling, sweats and ringing sounds.29 The Qur’ān’s impact is not simply
spiritual. The Book of the Qur’ān embraces the text and the physical world.
Reading the Qur’ān is not simply a spiritual experience; it is an experience of
being overwhelmed by the signage of God, without and within.
The Books of the World and of the Text are both teachings. While the Book
as Text is commonly described in the Qur’ān as being “sent down,” here it is
specifically “taught.” Verses 2–4 are three statements of al -Rahman ¯ ’s activity.

1. He has taught the Qur’ān;
2. He has created humanity;
3. He has taught [to humanity] distinctions.

This is an odd sequence of acts, if we take it as a sequence. In the first

verse God teaches the Qur’ān. This simple sentence has two elements. There
is the Qur’ān that pre-exists us. It is there, waiting for us to hear it, to study it,
to be guided by it. It has always been there.

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 Reading the Qur’ān as a Resident Alien

Secondly, God is a teacher. To whom does God teach the Qur’ān?

Presuming, as the Qur’ān suggests, that it is only humanity, or humanity and
jinn, who can learn the Qur’ān, why does not the creation of Adam and his
progeny precede the teaching of the Qur’ān?
An answer might be that teaching the Qur’ān is in the very nature of God.
It is the first expression of al -Rahman¯ , of God’s generativity. What emits

from al -Rahman ¯ is the teaching of the Qur’ān. Teaching, here, is not an

activity that begins and ends. It is in the eternal nature of God. “Proclaim! And
thy Lord is Most Bountiful — He Who taught by the Pen — taught humanity
that which they knew not” (Q 96:3–5).
God is a teacher before God is a creator. How is it that we can imagine
God as first and foremost a teacher? Perhaps that is not the right question.
Rather we might ask: what does it say about us that we are students, the
teachable and the taught, even before we are created?
In the Christian tradition we think of God as creator, certainly, but not
primarily as teacher. Jesus is a teacher called rabboni, “my teacher,” by the
disciples. Is this teaching function only visible in his ministry, or is it the
essential activity of the eternal logos? “In the beginning was the logos, and the
logos was with God and the logos was God.” ( John 1:1). Logos is a word with
great breadth of meaning. It is reason and a law of reason, but also the
relationship of things to each other, the ordering and accounting of things. It
also means word or speech. It is divine wisdom that is both distinguishable
and inseparable from God.
What does God teach? God teaches al-bayān. This is commonly translated
in its narrow meaning as “speech” or “expression.” Al-bayān is one of the
tools of Qur’ānic exegesis, often given as the art of rhetorical analysis. But
more precisely al-bayān refers to the necessity of making distinctions. This is,
of course, integral to speech, integral to rhetoric, indeed, integral to knowing.
God teaches the Qur’ān. God teaches distinctions. Logos can mean both
reason and the relationship and ordering of things — al-bayān.
We are being directed to an understanding of God that places us in the
role of student, a recipient of logos, the “life that was the light to all people,”
(John 1:4) and/or of the Qur’ān, which teaches us distinctions, as Adam was
taught the names of all things in the Qur’ān (Q 2:31). As people of faith, we
do not simply worship, nor simply give thanks. We learn to discern, to make
distinctions. Faith is not simply devotion; it is also understanding and
knowledge.
Here the Qur’ān lays the foundations for the recitation of pairings, the
distinctions of shrub and tree, heaven and earth, fruits and palms, husked
grains and aromatic herbs, humans and jinn, the two easts and wests, and so
forth, distinctions in which there is wisdom.

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The meaning of two easts and two wests, a pairing of pairings, a

distinction within a distinction, according to most commentaries means the
separate places of sunrise and sunset in summer and in winter.30 Some
suggest that it means the settings of the sun and the moon.31 The point to be
stressed here is the detail to which the sūra goes to point out the extent of
harmony in the universe, all expressed as dualities, balances. There are
distinctions to be seen, but every distinction is in harmony with its opposite.
All is balanced.
This verse is sometimes interpreted differently by Shı̄‘ı̄ commentators.
Al-Qummı̄ adds that the two easts are the Messenger of God and the
Amı̄r al-Mu‘minı̄n, and the two wests are Hasan ¯ and Husayn .32 Here and
 
elsewhere we see that there are alternative canons of interpretation in the
Shı̄‘ı̄ community and elsewhere, canons often overlooked in scholarly work.
As recipients of the Qur’ān in the modern world, we may extend the
canon of interpretation further, without abandoning the understandings of our
ancestors. We who live in a world in which the terms “East” and “West” have
political as well as geographical meanings might hear this as also
acknowledging the clash of East and West, the “clash of civilizations,” but also
the intimate relationship between the East and the West. According to the
disposition of the viewer, we may see different Easts and different Wests.
Since meaning is in the person reading as well as the text read, as Iser
reminds us, such contextualized receptions should not be ignored.
The catalogue of opposites comes to a conclusion with an affirmation of
the unity of God, again expressed as a paired distinction:
All that is on it [earth] is perishing.
And there perdures the face of your Lord, the One of Majesty and
Glory.
Then which of your Lord’s bounties will you deny?
Whoever is in heaven and on earth implores Him. Every day He is
about some affair.
Then which of your Lord’s bounties will you deny?
We shall attend to you, O thaqal ān!
Then which of your Lord’s bounties will you deny?
Q 55:26–32

Thirty-one times throughout the sūra, occurs the refrain:

fa-bi-a’yyi ‘ālā’i rabbikumā tukadhdhibān
Then which of your Lord’s bounties will you deny?

Rabbikumā is not in the plural, as might be expected, but in the dual. It

is, as the sūra begins to unfold, a mystery as to whom these two addressees
are until we get to v. 31.

700 © 2009 Hartford Seminary.

 Reading the Qur’ān as a Resident Alien

In verse 31 the addressees are spoken of as the thaqalān, also a dual.

This term is commonly taken to refer to humans and jinn, but it can refer to
any two groups that are associated. Lane points out that in other places it has
referred to Arabs and foreigners, or to humanity and other animate
creatures.33
It is not until two verses later in v. 33 that the addressees are clearly
named: “O communities of jinn and humans.” The two groups together
encompass all living beings that have the choice of obedience or
disobedience to God. They are, collectively, the people of choosing.
Here, they have the option of acknowledging or denying the bounties
of God.
All of these dualities, the dualities in nature and the duality of humans
and jinn, are noted in the context of the mı̄zān, the balance:
And the heavens He has raised up and He has placed the balance.
So that you will not transgress the balance.
Q 55:7–8
Often in the Qur’ān the mı̄zān refers to the scales to be employed for the
judgment of souls, measuring virtuous deeds against those that are malicious.
Here mı̄zān has a broader meaning. Everything in the cosmos is balanced
carefully. More importantly, everything in the cosmos is balanced visibly. We,
humans and jinn, can see the symmetry all around us. Further, we ought to
see and give profound thanks for the stability that such balance gives to our
lives. Even beyond that, we should live our lives in such balance, reflecting
the perfection of God’s creation, at least by aspiration, in the daily living of
our lives, everything in its proportion, everything in its place. What such a
balance might be is not clear, but this is understandable. We are still students.
We are still being taught.
God puts this formula before us. Here, everywhere, is a harmony of
opposites. Can you possibly deny such a gift? This is addressed to us, to
humans and to jinn. Or is it something more?
In the last section of the sūra, from verse 46 on, we see a new kind of
pairing. It is not a pairing of opposites, but a pairing of identical forms. For
those who fear their Lord, there will be two gardens. No difference between
them is mentioned. In each of those two gardens there will be two flowing
springs, again, no difference between them. The fruits also will be two by
two. Similarly, there will be two other gardens, in both of which will be two
springs.
This unity in multiplicity is located in heaven. The pairing of opposites, or
at least of difference, is located on earth. In Paradise, duality does not mean
difference. On earth duality does.

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The insight of the Sufis, the Islamic mystics, is that separation, duality,
resolves into unity with the total submission to God such that there is no
longer any consciousness of difference between Self and God. So Rūmı̄
writes:
If you want to be safe from harm, close your eyes to what strikes them
first and look to the end.
See that all nonexistent things are in fact existent! See that all existents
are obviously abject!
In any case, see that whoever possesses an intellect is seeking
nonexistence day and night.
In begging they seek a bounty that is not; in shops they seek a profit
that is not;
In fields they seek a crop that is not; in groves they seek a palm tree
that is not;
In schools they seek a knowledge that is not; in monasteries they seek
a forbearance that is not.
They have thrown existent things behind, they are seekers and slaves
of nonexistent things,
For the mine and treasure-house of God’s making is naught but
nonexistence coming into manifestation.34
Such images are alluring. We live in this world of fields and schools and
shops but what we truly seek is not the work and commerce and schooling of
this world. What we truly seek is that schooling that existed before we were
created. The teaching of God is all around us, in the dualities of sun and
moon, tree and shrub, easts and wests, mortals and jinn. We must close our
eyes and “look to the end.” If we are to allow the Qur’ān to teach us we
might see in each manifest thing some hitherto unnoticed sign of the gracious
generativity of God. The Qur’ān teaches us to see, and always has.
The duality of which Sūrat al -Rahman ¯ speaks is not only the duality in

the conventional meaning of the thaqalān, mortals and jinn. It is a duality in
a deeper sense of the Self and the Other. We may look out onto the rich
tapestry of the universe — sunrise and sunset, the trees and the bushes, the
grains and the herbs — it is not hard to see all these as bounty.
But let us return to the thaqalān. As has already been mentioned, it
commonly refers to humans and jinn, two species of the common family of
living, choosing beings. All other beings do not have the intellect and option
of choosing obedience or disobedience to God. But thaqalān does not only
refer to humans and jinn. It can refer to any two species that share an
essential commonality, but in some important way are also different, even
hostile. Jinn and humans are normally adversaries. People protect themselves
from jinn with charms and ritual. Arabs and foreigners are likewise usually
opposed (by definition), as are humans and the animals in the wild.

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 Reading the Qur’ān as a Resident Alien

The repeated question then put to us is, “Then which of the Lord’s favors
will you deny?” This question is oddly phrased. It asks not whether we will be
grateful. It accepts that all of us will be grateful for some things. It asks:
considering all the bounties that God has provided, which one or few of these
will we not accept? The issue is not simply gratitude; it is comprehensive
gratitude. Thus we need to be schooled. Gratitude that is selective is not
enough. It is natural to be grateful for some things. Gratitude needs to be our
pervasive response.
The most basic of oppositions is that of the Self and the Other, including
the Muslim and the non-Muslim. In terms of Sūrat al -Rahman ¯ , this

difference, this thaqalān, is itself a bounty that we must not deny. In many
renderings of the story of Muhammad and the Negus, the affection between

the two did not negate the difference. They recognized each other, Christian
and Muslims, as bounties from God, thaqalān.
There is much of Sūrat a -Rahman ¯ waiting to be read and reread. This

sojourn has been brief. Each reading adds to the power of its teaching, each
reading will draw us deeper into the pervasiveness of the Qur’ān’s teaching of
God’s all-inclusive, generative bounty. Each reading will expose particular
bounties for which our hearts deny gratitude. But for this to happen, we must
approach the text with reverence, with awe that grants it unending and
unfathomable power to reveal its secrets and our own; with respect that joins
us with a larger community of readers and students, some of whom are
Muslims and some of whom are not, and with shame that allows the Qur’ān
to indict us so that we are capable of transformation.
That we read the Qur’ān as Christians certainly makes a difference. Every
reader reads through his or her own context, and Christianity is the grounding
context of many readers (as may be other religions, or even no religion, for
others). But here the concept of thaqalān may be additionally helpful. The
difference between the thaqalān is not erased. It is affirmed, but also set
within the larger framework of God’s bounty. Our differences do not permit
us to deny the inclusion of the other, any other, within the bounty of God. To
the extent that we do — and we all do, for which shame is an appropriate
response — then the teaching of the Qur’ān, the teaching of God that
precedes the existence of all thaqalān, may guide us to a fuller and more
exhaustive gratitude.
The work of comparative theology to which Frank Clooney has
introduced us has great potential not only for Christian (or any other)
understanding of Islam, but also for Christian understanding of Christianity.
The work of theology is ongoing because it is never finished. As Christians
talk to Christians, the theological discussion becomes somewhat incestuous,
circling around many of the same questions and conundrums as did our

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ancient forbears. When we introduce another tradition into our conversation,

this produces something of a geographical crisis, as the usual coordinates of
discussion shift or even disappear. It is then that we become not only resident
aliens in the landscape of Islam, but we also become alienated from our
stable Christianity which can no longer produce comfortable and comforting
responses to the new questions we find. Yet we are still resident in our faith.
We are resident aliens in the world of Islam, and alienated residents in the
world of Christianity. Once again we are students, seeking to be taught.

Endnotes
1. See the article on “Sojourner” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York:
Doubleday, 1992) VI, 103–4.
2. D. A. Kerr, “ Muhammad : Prophet of Liberation — a Christian Perspective from
Political Theology,” Studies in World Christianity 6/2 (2000): 139–74. See also “The Prophet
Mohammad in Christian Theological Perspective” in Islam in a World of Diverse Faiths, ed.
D. Cohn-Sherbok (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991).
3. An example of the lack of attention to this dimension is On Searching the
Scriptures — Your Own or Someone Else’s: A Reader’s Guide to Sacred Writings & Methods
of Studying Them, edited by J. Pelikan (New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1992).
The book explicitly presents itself as describing methods of studying other scriptures, but
neglects any consideration of the importance of belief and intentions intrinsic to the text
itself for its own reception.
4. F. X. Clooney, “Passionate Comparison: The Intensification of Affect in
Interreligious Reading of Hindu and Christian Texts,” Harvard Theological Review 98/4
(2005): 367–90. 368.
5. P. J. Griffiths, Religious Reading: the Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 40.
6. Ibid., 41.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 42.
´¯
9. F. X. Clooney, Seeing Through Texts: Doing Theology among the Srıvaisnavas of
South India (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 37.
10. W. Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1978), and The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in
Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).
The “gaps” in the text refer to those elements left out because they are not important to the
narrative. “Blanks” are elements left out for some purpose of the author’s, such as the
identity of the murderer in the early parts of a mystery, or key clues.
11. See M. Mir, Coherence in the Qur ’ān: A Study of Islahı¯ ¯ ’s Concept of Nazm in

Tadabbur-i Qur ’ān (Indianapolis, Ind.: American Trust Publications, 1986). Mir describes
th
the work of Amı̄n Ahsan Islahı ¯ ¯ , a 20 century scholar who specifically rejects the atomistic
approach of commentary.
12. The term ahl al-kitāb includes Jews and Christians as believers, generically.
Throughout the Qur’ān, specific groups of Jews and Christians are excluded, as are,
particularly in the case of Christians, certain beliefs. Therefore, depending on the context,
Christians can be understood as believers or as unbelievers.

704 © 2009 Hartford Seminary.

 Reading the Qur’ān as a Resident Alien

¯ ¯’s Asbāb Al-Nuzūl. Great Commentaries on the Holy Qur’ān Series,

13. See Al -Wahidı
translated by M. Guezzou (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae and Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for
Islamic Thought, 2008), 97–8. See also W. Raven, “Some Early Islamic Texts on the Negus
of Abyssinia.” Journal of Semitic Studies 33. 2 (1988) 197–218.
14. M. Husayn Haykal, The Life of Muhammad , translated by I. al-Fārūqı̄. 8th Edition
ed. (USA: North American Trust Publications, 1976), 377. See also M. Lings, Muhammad :
His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions International,  1983),
81. Lings describes a more deceptive approach in which the Negus seems to swear to
Christianity, hand on heart, to his suspicious people, but actually swears to a document he
has hidden in his tunic. In this rendering the Negus appears to swear to Islam and to
Christianity. He also appears to deceive his people, a form of taqiyya (see Raven, Islamic
Texts on the Negus, 204).
15. Raven quotes the following hadıth ¯ from Tabarı̄: 3:199 was revealed concerning
the Negus. The Prophet prayed that the sins of the Negus might be forgiven, and said the
funeral prayers for him when the news of his death reached him. He said to his
companions, “Pray for a brother of yours, who has died abroad.” Some Hypocrites said,
“He prays for a dead person who is not of his own religion.” Then God revealed Q. 3:199.
Raven, Islamic Texts on the Negus, 209.
16. P. Woodruff, Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001).
17. Ibid., 3.
18. Ibid., 149.
19. Clooney, Seeing Through Texts, 302.
20. Woodruff, Reverence, 4.
21. A helpful commentary on the sūra is M. Abdel Haleem, Understanding the
Qur ’ān” Themes and Style (London and New York: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1999, 2001).
22. Most translators render al-najm as “stars,” but Abdel Haleem translates it as
“shrubs” a less common meaning but one that preserves the parallelism evidenced
elsewhere in the sūra. Abdel Haleem, Understanding the Qur ’ān, 164.
23. J. Jomier, “The Divine Name ‘‘Al-Rahman ¯ ’ In the Qur’ān.” In The Qur ’ān: Style
and Contents, A. Rippin, ed. (Aldershot: Ashgate  Variorum, 2001), 197–212.
24. Mentioned 12 times in the Qur’ān, always in the plural, arham ¯ , and referring
sometimes to the wombs of women and at other times to relations of kinship.
25. The name al -Rahman ¯ is often associated in the Qur’ān with creation: 25:59,
67:3, 20:4–5. 
26. Al -Rahman ¯ is believed by most commentaries to be a proper name of God that

is general and ontological, while al -Rahım
¯ is specific and volitional. S. H. Rizvi, “The
Existential Breath of al -rahman ¯ and the Munificent Grace of al -Rahım ¯ : The Tafsı̄r Sūrat
¯
Al-Fatiha 
of Jāmı̄ and the School of Ibn ’Arabı̄.” Journal of Qur ’ānic Studies 8.1 (2006),
68. 
27. E. William Lane. Arabic-English Lexicon. 2 vols. (Cambridge: Islamic Texts
Society Trust. Reprint, 1984 (1863)), II, 1056.
28. See Rizvi, 2006, 58–87.
29. Sahıh¯ Bukharı ¯ ¯ (Riyadh: Maktaba Dār al-Salām, 1999) Bab 1.1 (1). Sahıh ¯ Muslim
Bāb 15.6 (1180), 502; 43.86–88 (2333–4), 1015 (Beirut: Dar Ehia al-Tourath al-Arabi,
2000).
30. I. Kathı̄r, Tafsı̄r IV, 327; al-Baydawı
¯ ¯, Tafsı̄r (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-Ilmı̄yah II,
452; Abū Ja‘far Mahammad Ibn Jarı̄r al-Tabarı̄, Jāmi ‘ l-Bayān. 15 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr,
1988), 17, 127 has one report that suggests that it refers to longest and shortest [days] in the
year.

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31. Daryabādı̄, Tafsı̄r, IV, 162–3 includes both explanations.

32. A. Hasan ’Alı̄b. Ibrahı̄m, al-Qummi Tafsı̄r al-Qummi (Beirut: Mu’ssasa al-‘Ulama’

l-l-Mabu’an, 1991) II, 322.
33. Lane, I: 344.
34. J. al-Dı̄n Rūmı̄, Mathnawı̄ 6:1360–67, Quoted in William C. Chittick, The Sufi
Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1983), 177.

706 © 2009 Hartford Seminary.