Ingrid Mattson – How the Quran Shapes the Sunni Community
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AI: Transcript ©
So the first our first speaker will be
professor Ingrid Mattson, who will be speaking
on the Quran
in the Sydney community.
Alright. Good morning. Good morning. Salaam Alaikum.
Happy to be here with all of you.
Thanks, Imran,
for inviting me, and I'm so happy to
be here with Hinn Azim today, old friend
from Chicago from many days ago,
so,
should be a good time.
15 minutes for a short, just a little
morsel of the of the topic.
So I begin.
Many years ago, when I was living in
Connecticut,
a well known Sunni traditionalist scholar and preacher
came to my home for dinner.
I placed dishes of rice and bread and
bowls of salad and beef stew on the
dining room table, buffet style.
Everyone filled their plates and we sat together
around the fire in the living room where
we ate and chatted.
After finishing his serving, the scholar stood up,
held out his dish and said,
Helman Mazid,
is there more?
After all these years, I still remember his
words because I immediately responded to them on
so many levels.
As the host of the dinner, as a
fellow believer,
and as a scholar of the Quran
who is particularly fascinated with the way Muslims
engage with the Quran in all different situations.
This phrase, Halmin Mazid, is, of course, from
the Quran.
Phrasing his request for another serving in the
words of the Quran
had the immediate effect of elevating the food,
the meal, the gathering.
More than anything else, the Quran brings holiness
to our lives.
Human beings are constantly pulled as if by
gravity
into a state of dull mindlessness,
raflah, as the Quran says.
We are mostly clueless like groggy teenagers bumping
into walls as we try to get to
the kitchen.
The clues are there, says the Quran.
Think, ponder, reflect, be aware.
The ayat of the Quran, its signs, its
clues
draw our attention to the fact that every
part of creation is a wondrous
sign of God.
However, what was striking about the sheikh's use
of this particular Quranic phrase, halmin mazid, to
request more food,
is the jarring contrast between the context of
the friendly dinner in which it was articulated
and the context in which it occurs in
the Quran.
In Surah Kaf,
Surah 50 verse 30, which says,
when on that day we shall say to
the hellfire,
are you full? And it will say, is
there any more?
The pious scholar was citing the Quran,
but the Quran here is giving voice to
hellfire,
ravenous for more iniquitous souls to consume.
Does the Quranic context matter?
What is the added value as it were
in citing the Quran here?
Was it performative to demonstrate his mastery of
the text?
Was it a joke and should the Quran
be used in that way?
Was he shy to ask for more food
and instead of articulating his own desire, he
was cloaking it in God's words?
Or if each letter, each word of the
Quran is God's word, then as much as
we turn to it for guidance,
we can also bring any part of it
to any situation at any time in any
way, each and every bit is special.
And so Muslims name their children not only
after prophets and righteous people
or to indicate a relationship of servitude to
God,
Abdullah or Amatullah,
but also name their children Plaha and Yassin,
names made up by taking some of the
mysterious letters that open a number of surahs
of the Quran.
And if these are names, why not Baisal,
a name given to an unfortunate Afghan girl
I knew by taking a name out of
the Quran,
basal meaning onion.
On an episode of Little Mosque on the
Prairie, a wonderful Canadian production, how many of
you seen it? It's available in the United
States, at least on YouTube,
which is a story about a, Canadian prairie
Muslim community, small town.
There is a, and a main character is,
the imam,
the Canadian imam of the mosque named Amar.
In one episode,
which draws out the story of Amar's increasingly,
deepening relationship
with a non Muslim friend who wasn't always
a good influence.
His friend gets him in trouble. In fact,
both of them land in jail
after, some trouble,
and the imam is very angry at his
friend.
So his friend turns to him and says,
doesn't the Quran doesn't the Quran say should
old acquaintance be forgot?
Hamar says that is old Lang Syne, not
the Quran,
but there's something in that.
Expecting that the Quran has every good value,
every good sentiment, every good principle should be
found in the Quran.
It's not only something that Muslims expect,
but non Muslims expect of us as well.
There's a famous statement,
reported from ibn Abbas who said, if I
lost my camel's hobbles, I would look for
it in the book of God.
We look for everything in the Quran,
but of course, the question is when we
do that, are we simply imposing ourselves
upon the text
or is might we be even cheapening it
at times?
Quran says we are we created the human
being and we know what his soul whispers
to him for we are closer to him
than his jugular vein.
In my book, the story of the Quran,
I relate an anecdote
told to me by Remus Man, a Syrian
American from the suburbs of Chicago,
who, as a teenager, was certified in Tajweed
by the late great scholar of the Quran,
Abu Hasan Mohiadin al Kurdi,
who died in 2,009 in Damascus.
Certainly, a mercy for him
since he did not have to witness the
horror that would overtake his country soon afterwards.
Reem described her meeting with Sheikh Kurdi as
the final stage in the certification process. After
having undergone extensive
Sheikh's female,
senior female disciple,
Da'ad
Ariel Husseini, an accomplished scholar in her own
right.
On the day of the exam, Reem was
brought to the waiting room where she sat
with a dozen or so other young women,
who 1 by 1 approached a curtain behind
which lay the physically frail
but mentally acute scholar on a day bed.
The sheikh asked the women to recite from
various sections of the Quran to affirm their
mastery of recitation.
Reem described her astonishment at witnessing one of
the teenagers
who was there with her.
After successfully completing her exam,
she pulled open the drapes and said, oh,
Sheikh, I just wanna see you.
When I heard this anecdote,
struck by how it mirrors the Koranic description
of Moses,
who, having climbed Mount Sinai, says, my lord,
show yourself to me so I can gaze
upon you.
It seemed eminently possible to me that having
studied the Quran so extensively,
this young woman's intense emotions were now expressed
in the form of the sacred discourse she
had internalized.
We all long to be close to God.
From Moses to George Harrison,
I really wanna see you, Lord.
I believe that the same longing prompted this
girl to wanna see the one who was
for her in a way the penultimate
source of the Quran
because Sheikh Qardis Isnad
link his chain of transmission of the Quran,
links his knowledge of the Quran directly to
God.
The Quran is the most charismatic
presence in the Sunni community.
All other claims of holiness
are suspect and contingent contingent.
Despite the pervasiveness
of textual renderings of the Quran from printed
must hafs and smartphone apps,
it is the words of the Quran spoken
out
naming a child from it, invoking a Quranic
phrase, or saying
before an action
with which most Muslims,
ordinary Muslims if we wanted to use a
kind of
classist term,
have contact with the Quran.
The Quran is still the soundscape of holy
space and time.
It is the pious phrase to decorate a
speech. It provides the primary substance to khutbas
and many religious talks.
Now most Muslim communities share this cultural
sound and landscape.
So what characterizes
the Sunni community in particular in its relation
to the Quran?
There's a certain difficulty here for a Sunni
because the privileged position of the majority is
that we do not have to know that
much about minority communities to exist
I guess I'm the white male in the
in the room here today.
We assume our normalcy
and all other communities have particularities.
As an adult convert to Islam, I had
the fairly common experience that for some time
I insisted I was just Muslim,
and I refused to accept any sectarian
identity
whatsoever.
I became a Muslim because the Quran, or
to be more accurate, a translation of the
last Jews of the Quran,
cracked open my heart so the light of
God could illuminate it.
Like the men and women of the first
community to hear the Quran,
the person of the prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, elucidated
its message to me.
I heard about the prophet's character from Muslims,
who I sought out to teach me Arabic
so I could read what I heard recited.
But at first, I wasn't even convinced that
I had to become Muslim in the sense
of embracing this religious identity
and becoming part of this religious community.
I left my childhood religious tradition years before.
I quietly walked out of that room of
religion and closed the door behind me,
But my own reading of the Quran led
me to the conclusion that I would have
to make some lifestyle changes if I were
not to deny what I now knew that
this was the word of God.
But I knew it would be difficult to
live as a Muslim.
I didn't want this hassle in my life.
As I was holding back and making a
com a commitment to be a member of
this religious community, I dreamed of the prophet
Muhammad.
I saw him receiving revelations, finding it hard,
almost painful.
I woke up and thought, okay, it will
not be easy to bring the Quran and
all it means into my life,
but the prophet Muhammad will show me the
way.
For the Sunni Muslim, the sunnah of the
prophet Muhammad is intertwined,
inexorably linked with the Quran in shaping shaping
the community.
For a Sunni Muslim, the Quran cannot be
understood fully and truly
without the sunnah of the prophet Mohammed.
The big question is, how do we know
the sunnah? And for many Muslims,
that became
knowing hadith.
But of course this has not always been
the case.
Imam Malik,
the great scholar of Medina,
whose Medina in school is the original school
of law,
believed that the sunnah was best transmitted
through the knowledge through the practice of the
community
and the knowledge of pious people.
Over time, textualism
came to dominate traditional
Sunni Islam
and then was challenged,
by the,
by others
both from, you could say, the right and
the left.
And so
at this point, the question is,
which one of those or which of those
groups
represent Sunni Islam.
If there is a Sunni Muslim community, it
is vast, contradictory,
and contentious.
A nation of undefined borders and regular bickering
over membership.
That diversity and disputativeness
define this community
is a direct result of the fact that
both the Sunnah and the Quran
are texts.
I think we could find one limit or
border of the Sunni community though at the
point where the existence of an interpretive gap
is rejected.
Imran began this conference citing, Adi ibn Abi
Talib's,
words to the Hawarij
that this Quran is merely a scripture between
two covers. It does not speak. It is
men who speak through it.
For Sunnis, the interpretive move between words and
their meaning must be justified according to evidence
and a methodology that is ostensibly
accessible to all rational Muslims who can understand
the sources.
But the belief that it is possible for
the meaning of the Quran to be accessible
to humanity as a whole,
that as the slogan says, there's no clergy
in Islam,
can lead the Sunni community to a radical
egalitarianism
that is disruptive and anti intellectual.
It It can also create a vacuum of
authority to be filled by other manifestations
of power,
imperial power, for example.
Religious anarchy is reined in by the construction
of a foundation of skills and knowledge that
can only be acquired through disciplined and supervised
study.
And this, on the other hand, can lead
to,
to traditionalism
that veers on claretism.
The recognition of a core set of diverse,
equally authentic interpretive methods and schools within Sunni
Islam
is an aspirationally
ironic solution to the rejection
of, the Mamate on one hand.
Although Sunni Muslims,
I would say, especially traditionalist Sunni Muslims love
the Imams and their person and the family,
of the prophet, the Ahlul Bayt.
And the need to establish parameters of orthodoxy
or the appearance thereof on the other. The
embrace of an ethical pluralism that does not
descend into relativism or anarchism
is ideally
the result
of the Sunni approach to the Quran.
But choice
and the proliferation of choices makes us anxious.
As Barry Schwartz,
argues
very clearly and demonstrates in his book, The
Paradox of Choice, Why Less is More.
That human beings become anxious when we have
too many choices, and we seek false certainties
or we seek ways to manage,
our choices.
Sunnism,
traditional Sunnism,
managed this by denominationalism.
The different schools of thought,
the theological schools, and the legal schools were
made ways
of offering
choice within the proliferation of choice, of offering
15 minutes?
Oh, total.
You're 15 minutes out. I see. Okay.
Didn't understand that sign.
So,
there's a lot of sense to denominationalism.
It is a voluntary
embrace of constraints
in order to manage this diversity.
But denominational identity can harden and lead to
sectarianism.
Scholars
have different levels of charisma, there can be
a competition for resources and power,
and just setting an identity, just articulating an
identity
requires
or sets the expectation
that there are differences.
It creates mythologies of origin.
So what is the
balance?
Well, it's difficult.
It is not easy to bear the burden
of the Quran.
When the prophet himself received revelation,
he would sweat.
The Quran is not supposed to be so
easy. The Quran says, we offered this trust
to the heavens and the earth and the
mountains, but they refused to bear it. We're
wary of it. Then man picked it up.
Truly, he is oppressive and ignorant.
Oppressive?
Ignorant?
This echoes the description of humanity by the
angels in the creation story of Surah Baqarah.
Why would you put in charge of the
earth one who will corrupt it and commit
bloodshed?
God's response is I know what you do
not.
So there are no utopias here, just struggle
and trusting in God to help us
understand it all in the end.
And to sum up, I would say there's
a lot to say about Ijma'a
and
about the idea of the community.
But I would say, and maybe we could
discuss this more in the question period, if
you're interested,
that I think we've moved from Ijumah to
jamaah, and I think that's a good thing.
I think Ijumah, which was always
challenged
even within the Sunni community by scholars, of
course, of intemia, launched a devastating critique of
Ijma'a,
of consensus as something that really
did not have a strong methodological
foundation,
but what's to replace it?
Traditionalism itself was characterized by patriarchy,
by being too close to power and empire.
So if we move from Ajam'a to Jama'a,
and I think this is this is
although the traditionalist
would not
embrace this, I don't think,
it's simply happening.
Communities
are interpreting the Quran.
Communities in the sense of religious congregations,
different cultures.
They're interpret receiving the Quran and
custom and cultural interpretations,
a more diffused decision making process, maybe one
that really reflects
the idea of of negotiated,
understanding
is starting to characterize,
Sunnism in the best parts of
it. And I think that's good. I think
it also reflects the Quranic values. The fact
that the Quran identifies
terms like maruf,
what is considered to be fair or just
or right.
These terms, these Qur'anic terms
that put some some
choice and and the decision making process back
in the community is something that I think
could help us. With
that, I'll end. Thank you.
So we have,
about 10 to 90 minutes for
questions.
Do we wanna take it from the audience
first and then the panel or are we
Yeah. Okay. Maybe we can
or Or I don't I don't know how
we're I have a a clarification question. Yes.
I wonder if,
I fear Congress is really intriguing about the.
Jemaq. I wonder if you could,
complexify a little bit
your
understanding of Ijmaq
and the problems and then your understanding of
your sense of jama
as a kind of solution.
I didn't begin that. Yeah. If you have
enough time, I'd Right.
So so in the in,
the theory of Ijma'a
is that is that
if the community agrees
on a an interpretation
that it is correct
and it was the solution for Sunni Islam
to the problem of of
uncertainty,
of wanting to have a certain
decision at least for some points, for some
issues of faith and doctrine
and practice,
and also a way to
to answer,
Shi'ism
as Sunni Sunni and Shi'ism became sectarian identities,
if the Shiites had the infallible imams,
what did the Sunni community have?
But what is consensus?
Who are the people who are needed for
consensus? How do you determine consensus?
What are the qualifications for consensus?
Is someone
vile I mean, these are the questions that
were asked right within the Sunni community and
Ibn Taymiyyah is, you know, very notable for
for saying there's no such thing. You know,
the Ahlul Hadid saying there's no such thing
as consensus is ridiculous.
We still see it being invoked until today
as as professor doctor Aminan Waddud knows very
well, consensus
has been invoked to say, you know, Ijumma
has been invoked to say things like, well,
women can't lead prayer.
And so we go back to this question,
well, who says?
Who's who gets to be a scholar?
And the construction of whose
whose bona fides
account for this consensus is something that is
being more and more and more and more
challenged.
Rightly so, I would say.
Now the the so what's the alternative? The
alternative is say, no. We're gonna have a
more democratic, more egalitarian, more open,
more gender egalitarian
consensus.
To me, I just don't see the mechanism
for that working very well, and I'm very
concerned
personally with the pastoral needs of Muslims.
I'm I'm really focused on on the pastoral
needs and what I see,
Muslims do and what they need in community.
That
when
that when you live in a community
that you agree upon certain mechanisms of decision
making that you're going to follow.
And and an example would be something like
like how do we decide the beginning of
Ramadan?
So you have these claims, well, the scholars
say this this this this position,
then you have the communities
who are living in places, especially in places
like America and Canada,
where the average ordinary Muslim is really burdened,
and I would say oppressed,
by the
the fetishistic
way that traditional scholars,
rely on traditionalist
answers.
It's oppressive to the ordinary
Muslim
who who can express his or her needs
very well and I believe has a right
to bring that in. And if we look
at someone like, you know, the analysis
in law of people like Waal Hallaq
of the decentralization
of decision making
in
pre modern Sunni Islam, I think a return
to something like that is is the way
to go.
Okay.
Can I thank you? Can I give you
the just the information?
He'll he'll be having given his talk. Yeah.
You're giving your talk. Do you did you
have a question?
No.
Maybe. I think questions. Yeah. Are there any
other questions? It is a good question.
Thank you, professor. So my question is about,
so some of
the traditionalists will push back until a year
that if we move from the, it would
lead to groups like ISIS, for example. Mhmm.
They have their own community and yet it's
a it's a different understanding. I cannot say
these guys are not
engaging in proper scholarship that are saying Islam.
So so the conscripts of that approach,
I'd like you to just say something about
it. Right. So traditionalists have been yelling at
violent extremists for centuries saying, you don't understand.
You don't understand. You don't understand Islam. You
don't understand the Quran. You don't understand.
That's not the solution. The solution to groups
like ISIS is political.
You know, there there's people with all sorts
of crazy views in every society,
and,
the question is,
are they
are they
you know,
to have the freedom to say those crazy
views is one thing, but it's always every
every state,
no matter what state structure that is, has
limited that speech when it when it has
led to or become
moved into the
the area of physical action
of actually harming people
with weapons and and guns. So, I mean,
the traditionalists say these things, but I don't
see I mean, for
for an ordinary,
and I don't think you need scholars,
in fact, to say
these things are wrong. In fact,
sometimes the scholars have the the traditional scholars
have the most difficult time
justifying
their argument that these things are wrong. So
if you look at that the the group
of scholars letter to ISIS,
not interested no. Sheikh Abdul Abimbayah
and all of that. I mean, frankly, the
traditionalist position is a little bit problematic to
say that that
the traditionalist were these were the firmest opponents
of the abolition of slavery. If we look
at people like,
Yousef Anabakhani,
a a a a stalwart traditionalist scholar
who opposed the abolition of slavery against the
modernist
because he couldn't accept any kind of
of view that the Quran,
moves us in the direction of moral progress
or these kind of goals.
So now 200 centuries or 200 years after
that, 2 centuries after that, the traditionalists have
caught up to the modernist
view.
And I don't think I I, you know,
I don't place the modernist outside of Sunni
Islam. I think, you know, Sunni Islam this
is why, you know, what is the
so
so
what's interesting to me is the ordinary the
intuitive
view of the ordinary Muslim
has always been and I, you know, I
hear it from ordinary
just
nice, pious, good, ordinary Muslims all the time
is, of course, slavery is wrong.
Like, of course, this is wrong. Of course,
this is.
That's their immediate belief in the same way,
you know, in the same way and we
can't get too much into it now, but
in the same way that I believe that
I mean, the first Muslims
knew something about God and expected the Quran
to affirm their belief like like, like, like,
like Aisha when she was slandered,
like,
like, Asma bin Tumayz when she expected the
Quran to speak to men and women.
You know, I mean, so many Muslims expected
the Quran to be to stand up for
things that were good and you might say
I'm veering into here
but I don't think it's I don't think
you have to move that far. I think
the Materidi,
you
know, theological school can can support that that
view.
So the traditionalist,
I mean, authority and power are 2 completely
different things.
So the traditionalist
confuse their
their authority for power.
Sometimes it's power. It can be in certain
cultural or social context. It can be, but
I don't see it working very well right
now, frankly.
Yeah. Are there any other questions?
You I have a quote from you. We
look for everything in the Quran, but when
we do that, are we imposing on the
Quran or perhaps
even cheapening it?
Can you,
I got the imposing.
Mhmm. Can you elaborate on the cheapening?
Yeah. I think of when I look at
well,
this this struck me first when I
I heard from someone,
a kind of,
you know, secular
Muslim who not an atheist, someone who still
respects sort of religious people and religion,
But one time she told me,
she wanted to come. She said, oh, I
wanna go with you one time to the
mosque just during Ramadan. I feel like like
being with Muslims for Ramadan. Right?
And she said,
my only problem is
I
I every time I hear the Quran recited,
it makes me think of death.
It makes me sad.
And I'm like, what? And and she said,
because
I just that's where I hear, when I
was growing up, that's where I heard all
the time is just the Quran constantly being
recited
when people die and at graves and
I that that really hurt me, you know,
as someone who loves the Quran. Like, to
think about that that the Quran being recited
had this negative impact because of how it
was done. And then I thought
of how many times I've sat in,
say, conferences or different things where they feel
it's necessary for someone to get up and
recite the Quran at the beginning. And I'm
like, why? Like, what?
Does it really bring blessing here or has
it become just like,
I don't know, a box that needs to
be checked off and and other people are
doing other things.
And it it in a way, I think
it we can cheapen the Quran
when
when we just say, okay. We'll just bring
it everywhere.
Should I sit down? Thank you, Ingrid.
We will