Ingrid Mattson – The Place of the Quran in Muslim Life
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Assalam alaikum,
everybody. Welcome to the next episode of conversations.
I'm delighted,
today
because our guest is a very important person
in the life of Islam in North America.
We have with us professor Ingrid Mattson, who
is the London Inventor community chair at Huron
College in Canada.
She has also been the president of Islamic
Society of North America.
When she was president of Islamic Society of
North America, I used
to jokingly call her as the queen of
Muslims of North America.
But she was
she was an important leader because she broke
the glass ceiling for women's leadership
in the Muslim community, but she was also
a very thoughtful leader,
promoted interfaith dialogue, and also increased the outreach
of Islamic Society of North America.
I also want to thank, the Islamic
Community Center of Lancaster for hosting and supporting,
these,
conversations about the Quran.
This will be the last in the month
of Ramadan. This is the 4th in the
series.
You can see the others by subscribing to
conversations.
I'm told that I should tell everybody to
also press the bell icon next to the
subscribe button so that you can get notifications
when I post the next
conversation. I also want to wish you all
an early Eid Mubarak.
By the time you are probably watching this,
you'll be preparing for Eid. This was a
very special Ramadan and a very special Eid
Mubarak to all of you. Welcome to conversations,
professor Ingrid Madsen.
Thank you for inviting me.
I must say I'm a big fan of
your book.
This
this is the book. The story of the
Quran. It is a very unusual book. I
bought it, perhaps, on the day it was
available on Amazon.
I have read it. I used it more
than 2 times, once in a graduate seminar.
I also used it once, with an undergraduate
seminar. I'm using it again in the fall
this year in a class called Islam and
Global Affairs.
What I find unusual about it is that
I don't not find a similar book in
the classical heritage.
When we find lots of books, we find
commentaries on the Quran, specific commentaries, commentaries which
focus on only legal verses,
mystical commentaries, Sufi commentaries, and other types of
books. But there is no book which talks
about the history
and the trace of Quran,
in the in the Muslim culture, in Muslim
society. So, in that sense,
what I like about this book is that
it tells people like us
who
that even 1400 years later,
Muslim scholars can make
a new contribution to the Islamic heritage and
that's what, I like a lot about your
book. So congratulations
on that. I want to ask you a
simple question, which is actually based on
it it's it may not be a very
smart question. But, know, when we talk about
the 5 pillars of Islam,
we never mention the Quran. As if Quran
is not a pillar of the deen,
or when you talk about the 5
There is no mention of the Quran in
the So in whether it is the things
that are the foundations of Islamic law or
things which are the foundations of the deen
itself, we don't mention the Quran. To me,
there is no Islam without the Quran. This
is the only proof that we have of
the existence of God and the presence of
God with us. So what is the place
of Quran in Islam and among Muslims?
Well,
I mean, the the Quran as the word
of God is,
I guess, implicit in everything. It is the
foundation
and the structure
of
all those other things, you know, the maqas
had come out of those. When we say,
in our shahada, in the first pillar of
Islam,
Muhammad Rasoolullah,
the Rasalah that he brings primarily
is is the Quran, is the message. So
it's
it's so important
that,
it can't be pulled out as one part
of Islam
because Islam really is based,
so much on this,
message, these words of God that came to
the prophet Mohammed, and everything flows
flows from there. And even,
all that we see in this creation,
which is also
evidence
for God's creative power and our place in
creation,
has,
is given meaning and light,
primarily through,
our reflections, the reflections of the Quran
upon the creation. So there's this interchange between
what the Quran says about the created world
and the created world itself.
So when you wrote this book, what was
your main goal? Like, what was the gap
that you felt you were trying to fill?
My my main goal was to have a
book that I could assign my class.
So I was teaching at Hartford Seminary
and
I was compiling readings, you know, a little
bit from here, a little bit from there.
Every year redoing my syllabus, trying to figure
out how to put different parts together.
And
I just I was not able to get
everything I wanted in one place. And even
even
some of the perspectives that I thought were
important, I couldn't find.
And so that's why I wrote it. I
primarily wrote it for my class, but I
also wrote it as I was writing it,
It was in the 1st decade of the
2000,
a time when many people were talking about
Islam. Many people were talking about what the
Quran said.
So I also wanted it to be a
book that would be
accessible
to the general
educated reader. You know, someone who
who wanted to know, well,
what is the Quran and what is the
Quran to Muslims? So not what is the
Quran
in
some kind of,
decontextualized
way, but how do Muslims really engage with
the Quran because there were many claims being
made about that,
many ignorant claims, many biased claims, and
I felt that
that if I could write a book that
would be,
accessible and beneficial to my students who at
Hartford Seminary were were graduate seminary students,
primarily Muslim and Christian, so a Muslim and
Christian
classroom,
as well as the general
community
who were educated, who who wanted to learn
something, you know, really
try to understand at least
what what,
many Muslims think about the Quran and how
Muslims engage with the Quran,
then,
I I would be happy if I could
come, you know, if I could get all
of that in one book. So that was
my goal.
I think that is the best reasons for
actually, for academics to write books. I wrote
a book on ASAN in which one chapter
is written primarily for my graduate seminar, and
and there are sections in the rest for
the undergraduate teaching. Because it's sometimes, it's truly
difficult to find, adequate sources, even though a
lot is now available.
In your book,
you you talk about
in the article that you wrote for the
study Quran, how to read the Quran, you
make an interesting point.
The obvious one that there are non muslims
who sometimes,
approach the Quran
with a prejudice and with a purpose,
which is not necessarily about understanding the Quran.
But you also said that Muslims
also approach the Quran with prejudices.
And, to me, that was a little
at first, it it gave me pause, and
then I realized, of course, she is. And
I I was wondering, perhaps, you could elaborate
more on that.
Well,
as,
with the as with people,
as adults, we have no naive encounter.
So we're always encountering this world,
and even revelation
through our experiences
that have shaped us
through,
how we've been told to think about things.
And
it's not
I guess I mean, sometimes it's a prejudice.
Many times, it is simply
cognitive biases
or
frames of reference
or
cognitive
anchors
that limit our ability
to think differently.
So we know that,
that when we when we encounter anything in
the world that,
as human beings, the way our brains work
is immediately
to categorize,
to analogize,
to draw upon past experience,
and that's all necessary for us to be
able to engage with the world.
But when it comes to revelation,
sometimes it can limit us. And so that's
why we look for experiences and ways
to,
to take to shift our perspective,
to look at things a little bit differently.
And it really begins
with understanding
that we are always
shaped by our
our upbringing,
by our culture,
by customs,
by the way things have been framed for
us. And if we if we really want
to open ourselves
to all the possibilities,
then we need to be aware of those
things and try to find ways to to
shift,
our perspective.
I think that that's such a powerful argument,
and I wish there was more work on
that because,
I have noticed that because we are coming
with already developed normative frameworks. So rather than
learning our values from the Quran,
we our reading of the Quran is shaped
by our preexistence
value systems. And so so there is no
learning of the Quran, but there's, in a
way, an abuse of the Quran.
If I were to recite
these verses to you,
Are you listening to the words of God?
Yes. I'm listening to,
I am listening to the words of God,
And
this is a topic that I that I,
discuss in my book, which is
that, you know, this this,
kind of mystery and also puzzle that scholars
wrestled with,
how can this be the words of God
if if what I'm listening to is the
result of,
a a person's voice and vocal cords,
making a sound. So there's air passing over
and and sounds that are coming out of
this human being's mouth. How can that be
the words of God? Isn't this person creating
those sounds?
But the the opinion that I,
I find very compelling is really a kind
of semiotic theory, which is that
is that the sounds that that you are
making
are signify
meaning. So signify meaning, which is what the
Quran is.
So it's not it's not the sounds that
you are making,
but it is the sounds that you were
making that are signifying,
what the Quran is, the language of the
Quran, the meaning, and the words of the
Quran
that is the,
that are the words of God.
You know, when I read your discussion of
this debate, whether the Quran is created or
uncreated, yeah, between the and
and and,
the critics, especially from the Hambly school,
It felt as if
I couldn't gather what your position was on
this. You know, is the Quran created or
is it uncreated? Because if it is
uncreated, then it becomes co eternal with God,
and it could compromise
the concept of monotheism. There are 2 things
that have always existed.
But if it is created,
then what is wrong with the idea that
it is a created product?
Right. So, first of all, I think what's
really important to understand
is that
is that the fact that this is a
significant
issue
in Islamic thought
is not was never inevitable.
And what I mean by that, although of
course everything is by the the Qaldur of
Allah, by the destiny of God,
but the fact that this became such
a significant
point of contention
really
goes back to a particular historical context.
You know, the fact that early Muslims were
in debate
with Christians
about what the word of God is and
Christians in an apologetic
defense of saying that that Jesus
is,
is God, is the Son of God,
and Muslims saying well no, that's, you know,
you're now attributing a partner to God,
Christians responding, no. Jesus is simply the word
of God. Like you say, the Quran is
the word of God. So this is really
what began the whole thing Mhmm. Were these,
debates between Christians and Muslims
about God's being and nature.
And so
the,
and then if you add into that
the,
attempts of the political rulers, namely the caliphs,
especially the Abbasid caliphs,
to claim a kind of
special
religious authority for themselves,
this is where we see one side saying,
no. We we absolutely have to insist
that the Quran is the uncreated word of
God because, otherwise,
we are talking like the Christians and the
other saying no,
or yeah.
That that it one side saying saying we
have to say this is the uncreated word
of God because that is what God has
said and because if you say it's created,
then
there may be other things in creation that
also have have the same authority, namely the
caliph or the imam or the leader,
and then the other side saying no, when
you say that it's uncreated,
then,
you know, you're falling into the error of
the Christians.
So there's there's such a,
a fraught historical
and theological
context.
So for me,
it is
on the one hand, it can be a
very important question. On the other hand,
it's not my priority.
I, you know, I I I for me,
that's not,
getting into that kind of debate.
We're using words that are our own words.
We're trying to frame the Quran with words
or even without words.
So we're trying to frame the Quran by
what we we don't say about it in
the way that we
don't talk about it,
that it it it's all such,
in in many ways, to me, it's a
it's an example of
getting slightly distracted
by not the most important thing. And to
me, the most important thing is that the
is
is guidance to make us aware
of,
of who we are and what our responsibility
is.
I did struggle with it,
when I first read about it, and I
was doing my dissertation at that time when
I encountered this debate. I had never heard
of it till then. And it was to
me surprising that having lived nearly 30 years
as a practicing Muslim, I'd never heard of
this debate. It's not very common in South
Asian discussions. Very common in Turkish, society.
But I I read a tradition in which,
I
it it was enlightening to me on this
issue because, you know, Hadith said that the
prophet, peace be upon him, used to discourage,
the companions from asking too many questions because
he said that if you ask too many
questions, then God will answer all those questions
and then the Quran will become,
very long. And then I realized that everything
that God
says is Quran.
Mhmm. Because Quran is a speech of God.
Right? So therefore, it can't be created. It
is it is a tajalli of Allah subhanahu
wa'ala. It's a manifestation
of the divine rather than a creative product.
I I want to ask you about,
this,
from I mean, this is the ontological status
of the Quran,
to to talking about,
what the Quran means in personal experiences. I
mean, sometimes, we we become so busy treating
it as
an academic pedagogical source or an academic source,
that we sometimes forget that we are also
servants of God and the Quran is our
connection to him.
I feel that when I read the Quran
sometimes,
it's not often, but sometimes I feel that
it's like a conversation with God. What is
your personal experience,
with the Quran?
Well,
my my personal experience of the Quran begins
before I was a Muslim. So when I
was a university student and I was
someone who had been raised,
Catholic,
who had
lost my faith as a teenager,
was not interested in religion
whatsoever
after that. Not angry. Not like these angry
people walk away from religion, but just just
indifferent.
This was not simply anymore part of my
experience.
And then happen
happening to meet
some some Muslims from West Africa when I
was studying in France,
hearing you know, they they told me they
were Muslim. They weren't very pious, but I
was curious about their life, their culture.
So I got a hold of,
you know, kind of poor translation of part
of the Quran just to try to understand
something about my friend's life and background.
And to my surprise, as I was reading
this, it was actually just the last Jews
of the Quran.
I found something stirring what's inside me, and
and what it was was
a very familiar feeling. And it was a
feeling that I had
when as a as a child
in,
in Canada, I would wander around the woods.
With my family, it's our tradition for 2
months of the summer to go to a
place on an island in the woods, no
electricity, nothing around, and basically I would just,
with my brothers and sisters, just wander around.
And I remember as a very young child
sometimes walking through the forest and just feeling
so full of,
a sense of oneness,
joy,
gratitude that I would start singing not even
words, just just
just a primordial
kind of joy.
And when I was reading the Quran, this
this feeling started welling up within me and
it was such a surprise.
And as it grew,
I started thinking, uh-oh, you know, what's happening
here?
And and realizing that I was that what
I had was a sense of
of being aware of
my creator
and of my place in this creation.
And,
and that really is what
made me a Muslim, and it's what made
me love the Quran. And and in some
ways, even
even more than writing this book for my
students, it was
a a way of expressing my deep gratitude,
not only to a law for giving me
that guidance that that reoriented
me and gave me a sense of my
my
purpose
and and the meaning of my life,
but also a way of
of giving thanks
to all those generations of Muslims who through
their scholarship
and teaching
had passed down,
the Quran,
had
had made,
you know,
developed writing to the point where it could
be
be passed down, then those who,
who decided to translate
and publish and disseminate to the point where
I could, in this very haphazard way,
you know,
end up with this,
rather poorly translated,
passages of the Quran come into my hands
as a university student in Canada.
It's amazing. You had a mystical experience, a
profound one.
In your essay that you wrote for the
study Quran, you make an interesting point.
You and I think it's also in your
book,
that the literal reading of the Quran
now before I come to that, I also
wanted to talk about this particular comment you
made.
That is the Quran is a source of
law, not a book of law.
What do you mean by that?
Right.
So, the Quran is not a book of
law. A book of law has a series
of regulations,
laws,
rules
that,
that one applies
in a in a legal setting. The Quran
is not that at all.
The Quran
does have some regulations
in it, but even where the Quran is
very explicit
in terms of
numbers and individuals, for example, with inheritance,
it always needs to be
interpreted.
So even the most,
the most explicit,
clear
regulations in the Quran, which are
a
small part of what the Quran is,
need to
be reconciled with other parts of the Quran,
other teachings of the Quran,
teachings of the prophet Mohammed
on the same issue
and also
within a real living context.
So it's it it is
always
a source of law we go back to
for,
the origins of certain specific rulings,
but more than that, usually,
values,
principles,
goals,
that we aspire to with
legislation.
But, of course, one thing I wanna say
is that,
unless you're a legislator,
you know, unless you're a legislator in a
country where you're being
asked to draw upon the Quran for your
legislation,
that's
not our rule primarily. You know? You and
I,
we have no legislative power
we have except upon ourselves.
Right? And we,
we're not when we gather together as a
community, as a Muslim community, for example, in
a masjid, we're not creating a mini state.
That's not that's not in any way what
it is. Even if we wanted to, we
absolutely lack the power to enforce
any anything in a real way. And we
see that, for example, when when people have
marriage problems and, you know, they go to
the masjid
and they want,
the rules, Islamic legal rules to be enforced,
and then one of the parties just just
leaves and disappears.
And there's no power for the, you know,
the imam can't go and put out an
arrest warrant
or,
you know, to bring the person back.
So so we really have to embrace the
fact that in most cases,
we we do not have that power,
and what we're trying to do is to
shape our lives in accordance with
with all that the Quran is giving us,
regulating our own lives, primarily, which we have
responsibility over, and then having it inform having
having the Quran inform our
our values, how we interact in the world
where we do have
some influence.
You know, I like the the the discussion,
on interpretation
in your section of the book.
And,
and it if you read that,
especially the last two chapters of the book
are very clearly full of teachable moments. And
you can you can see that, that you
you're going to have a conversation about this
in the class. So I want to talk
a little bit about the the
the anecdote or the encounter between Abu Dhabi
law Anwar and Amir Moawiya that you discussed
in it. And Amir Moawiya was living
he was living an ex an expensive lifestyle,
you know, wearing clothes with golden buttons. And
Abu Zar went to him and basically
criticized him and cited a verse from the
Quran. I actually have the verse of the
Quran, and, let me just pull it up.
So so
and you discussed this verse of the Quran.
Can you see it? Yes. So so, basically,
Abu Dhal goes and says, and those who
hold gold and silver and spend it
not in the way of Allah, give them
a tidings of painful punishment. Could you just
share with us your thoughts about that at
that point?
Right. So here we have,
a a good example of a verse of
the Quran, an eye of the Quran
that is very clear in its meaning.
We can understand
what it says.
You know, there's no doubt about what gold
and silver is,
that not spending it in the way of
God
is is,
that they will be giving tidings of a
painful punishment,
and we know what hoarding is. So so
all of this is very clear, and it
is the kind of verse that
all of us, I think, have encountered in
our lives where we've been in a conversation
with with someone
and they pull out a verse of the
Quran or sometimes a hadith and say, here
you go. This is proof you're wrong. This
is definitive. End of story, end of conversation.
Right?
Yeah. And
and if you,
you know and then if you try to
talk more, they say, well, this is this
is what God says. This is what the
Quran says.
But
what we see from that encounter, what we
see from from,
Muawiyah's
response to Abu Zar
is that it's not
maybe it's not as simple as that.
And,
this this is the kind of
of what Christians call proof texting.
So proof texting in in Christian,
hermeneutics
is
is the word that they give when someone
takes one verse from the Bible
and uses it and says,
this is the answer. This is a definitive
answer.
But, of
course, both the bible and the Quran have
many other verses.
Right?
And this is this is the point. So,
Well, in the discussion,
you report that Moabia says that,
your report you are only citing part of
the verse. If you look at the full
verse of the Quran, it applies to to,
essentially,
Jews and Christians,
or to people of the bulk and does
not apply to to Muslims.
And to me, it was very
I mean, I'm familiar with this conversation. And
to me, it has always been puzzled as
to how
a majority of the companions,
took this interpretation of Moawiya and said, you
know, does it mean
that Muslims can hold gold and silver?
Was Abu Dhar wrong? If were wrong, then
Muslims can hold hold gold and silver. But
I don't think any Muslim scholar will say
Muslims have.
Christians and Jews are forbidden, but Muslims can't
hold
gold and silver.
Right. And and Abu Adar's response is this
verse is for us and them. Yes. And
what's interesting is that many of the people
who would agree with,
in his interpretation
that this verse is for us and them.
Right? Yeah.
In other cases,
we'll not do that.
They will see the Quran criticizing
Christians or criticizing Jews or criticizing
the Bedouin
or criticizing,
you know, some group of people, and they'll
say, oh,
criticizing Banu Israel, for example, and say, see
see how bad they are when they did
this.
And not
taking the message of that and applying it
to themselves. Right? And so this is the
question.
Who is the Quran speaking to? And I
I really do believe with those who say
that
that anyone
who appears in the Quran, anyone who is
being spoken about,
can represent
us in some stage or state of our
of our lives. So, for example,
the story of Banu Israel in the desert
and,
and, you know, God has liberated them from
the oppression of pharaoh.
You know, they're finally free. All of these
miracles have happened,
and
start complaining about the food that they've been
given.
They want more flavorful food. They want, you
know, they want some some onions. They want
some lentils, they want something that's that's more
tasty. They're bored of this food.
Well, there are some people who would say,
see, those those people are never satisfied,
But my view is that we should say,
when when are we like that? How many
times do we say, I'm so bored of
this food. I'm so bored of eating this.
Oh, I'm so in our this pandemic, for
example, I'm tired of eating at home. I
can hardly wait to go to a restaurant.
You know, here we are, we've been given
safety, those of us who are able to
shelter in our homes,
we have food, yet we're still complaining
that we don't get to eat, you know,
at our favorite restaurant.
So I think this is part of it.
I I would also say that in in
these verses in particular and the debate between
and
is really important,
for us in our time because there are
many Muslims
who who will look to Islam
as primarily
a message of political liberation from the oppression
of people.
And there are others,
and there are those who, when they do
that,
might take it to an extreme,
for example,
where they
they would simply criticize
any kind of political compromise, let's say,
and,
will then, you know, cancel out any person
who at all ends up in any, you
know, sort of orbit of of power even
if those people
want to, you know,
at least apparently want to
try to serve the public good. So this
idea of some kind of politically pure position
and and one of the things that is
true with the verse that you're showing is
that is that hoarding
hoarding is about keeping for oneself.
Now now what
started to do
was to
keep a treasury,
and that was something new in in,
the Islamic
community.
So the the leaders of the Muslim community
in Medina followed the
example of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him, where he constantly,
divested himself of any any wealth that came
in. So it was always being given away.
So there was no there was no treasury.
There was no,
you know, funds being put away for a
rainy day as it were. And you could
say, well, so any leader after that should
do the same thing.
Yet, and this is why we have to
read the Quran holistically,
we also see that Sayidna Yusuf
is praised in the Quran for having the
foresight
to advise the ruler of Egypt
to hold in store,
7 years' worth of grain because there a
drought might come.
So
so which is the which is the proper
Islamic position?
Is it
to continually
return the wealth to the community and never
have any store,
or
is the proper Islamic
position
to, set aside
that the leader
should set aside,
some,
some money and some goods
in case of a future disaster. And that's
really where,
that that demonstrates why the needs to be
interpreted
and cannot simply
take one verse,
and say that this is the rule about,
about a treasury or about storing.
Yeah. I I think you you presented it
very well. This is a very interesting
thing to use. I just wanted to share
another verse with you.
I don't know whether you recognize this, but
every time I run into a Hizbout Tahrir
type of organization
and it's not just people like ISIS and
Al Qaeda, but a lot of Muslims who
advocate,
the Khalifa,
use the second part of this verse again.
And and, basically, it says, whoever does not
judge by what Allah has revealed.
And then it is those who are,
defiant and Farsiphone,
really.
But it is the same thing. I mean,
you could make the Moabia's argument that this
book is addressing
the the people of the book and does
not really imply.
I want to turn to another interpretive issue
that you touched upon in the Quran, in
which you make the case
that
the literal reading of the Quran is is
not better than informed
interpretation. And so so the importance of as
Bab al Masul and looking at the past
commentary, looking at the Hadith literature,
if the prophet himself has provided some tafsir
of the ayah.
And it is in that context that I
want to ask you
what you think about the
the the trend of the feminist interpretations
of the Quran.
What they are trying to do in many
ways is
bypass
the the heritage
of commentaries
and,
because they feel that the heritage has been
strongly patriarchal
and has been promoting patriarchal
values.
So they go back to a literal reading
of the text as the most important way
to understand
what the text really means. And,
and,
so my question to you is,
the where do you stand on this? Is
your reading of the Quran a feminist reading?
Or is yours a traditional reading of the
Quran? And what do you think of this
approach?
It is not just the feminists who are
adopting that. A lot of modernists also
are going back to the text of the
Quran.
Then and saying, god spoke to me, and
this is what I understand.
Right.
So it it's interesting.
We're all, as human beings,
we are all,
we all cherry pick. We all, kind of,
you know, apply
none of us are are perfectly consistent
in
our methodology.
For example, some people say, well, I'm only
gonna go by the Quran
because the hadith are too complicated.
They're, you know, epistemologically
uncertain.
In the end, they usually will
find 1 or 2 hadith that they really
like will support their position in any case.
And,
I think one of the
I mean, it depends what we talk we
what we mean by literal. Certainly,
linguistic,
analysis of the words is is
one of the first,
modes
of having a deeper understanding of the Quran.
So, for example, we know that Abdullah ibn
al Abbas, may Allah be pleased with him,
used to who was the the prophet Muhammad's,
peace be upon him, his cousin, his first
cousin,
used to teach what the Quran meant. And
one of the ways he did that was
by,
linking it with the,
language, the semantics
semantical landscape of of preassignment poetry.
So by having
a deeper
semantic analysis of the words, one could have
a richer understanding of what simply words in
the Quran meant.
Also, the syntax,
rhetorical devices,
all of these things.
And I see that,
when that continues,
and is based in in the language and
is based in
a reading the Quran through other parts of
the Quran, I think that's, you know, that's
a continuation of that heritage.
I
I I do
believe the tradition has so much to offer
us.
None of us can reproduce the amount of
of study analysis on so many levels that
the tradition gives us.
At the same time, we also do have
the responsibility
to engage with that tradition
meaningfully,
and
to not simply
obey,
you know, submit to a particular person's interpretation.
So
there is
there is no,
no. When we talk about literal meaning of
the Quran, when someone says, well, this is
what the Quran says,
and that's the end of story, what they're
trying to do is to erase their,
to to erase the the human agent in
that,
in that encounter in that
encounter of
of claiming meaning, and that's impossible.
All of us are interpreters.
Not all of us are interpreters of the
same knowledge.
Not all of us are interpreters of the
same
sincerity.
Certainly,
one of the ways of, you know,
how do we and this is really where
what I'm trying to get at in the
last chapter of the book is how do
we get around the fact that we all
do have biases and perspectives?
And that's why
to be in a community of interpreters is
important,
and and and tradition
is a really important part of that,
as are the people that we live with
now.
So if someone says, look. It's just about
me and the Quran.
I'm not gonna really buy that because
I know that
myself
for myself and for every other individual, we
are simply
too boxed in by our our own limitations,
to really be able to over to be
able to overcome them,
to,
to even be able to see
where we
have have biases in our cherry picking.
But
as part of a community of interpretation,
engaging in a discussion with others, putting my
ideas out,
being open
to,
to listening and to changing my perspective, all
of that is important, and I don't see
that Muslims living now
should discount
the gifts that God has given us.
I mean, we it would be a denier
denial of the favors of God
for us to say, well, let's just,
not think and just accept.
Because I don't believe that that
that is what God wants from us. You
know? I
I I say to my students,
it it would have been perfectly possible. I
mean, God is capable of all things, and
god could have created us
as,
like computers
and the Quran like digital code
where there would have been input
into our brains and there would be no,
interpretive gap. There would be no ambiguity.
But God chose to speak to us in
language,
using words
that are part of a human language, the
Arabic language,
that contains,
shades of meaning that has ambiguities,
structures
of the sentence,
you know, all sorts of linguistic devices
using explicitly
the you know, Allah says
he will tell us stories and parables
where, you know, with stories and parables you
it's a different mode of expression.
So God chose to speak to us in
this way and chose to create us as
people who are
in space, time, have experiences, have different experiences,
have gender,
you know, age, culture, all of these things.
And that means we will always
be looking at things a little bit differently.
And so to me,
I'm not going to try to find to,
you know, push all that down and deny
that. I'm gonna say, wow. Like, that's that's
amazing.
So why did God do that? Because it
is
through it is through our struggle, our reflection,
our correction,
our engagement,
our arguing,
our agreeing,
that that we grow. We grow ethically. We
learn how to live with each other. We
grow spiritually.
We hopefully become a little bit humble.
We learn to be a little bit suspicious
of of ourselves and of our our certainty.
So so I absolutely do believe that,
all of these different modes, we should be
open to listening to. It doesn't mean they're
alright,
and I can argue very strongly for a
position.
But we need to engage with the Quran
in the way
that,
you know, that we're being called to.
I I you know, otherwise,
we are simply we're not submitting ourselves to
the Quran. We're submitting ourselves to certain people
who are claiming
that the Quran has these meanings.
You know,
a lot of us who are
academics
as well as,
engaged with the Muslim
public life and engaged with the community's work.
We live in 2 worlds with 2 different
modalities.
So unlike our,
non Muslim colleagues who work in Islamic studies,
etcetera, their life is, shaped more by the
modalities of academia and nothing beyond that. So
sometimes, there is a distance between what we,
as public intellectuals, as scholars say, and
and, in in Muslim forums and what we
write
in our academic,
there can be a different style to it.
So
as a woman leader in North America, you
have broken many glass ceilings. There's no doubt
about it.
You've been the leader of the biggest Islamic,
organization slash movement in North America.
One of the most popular ones, the ones
who had the greatest impact,
while president of ISNA.
You speak at
most of the important events that, American Muslims
and Canadian Muslims host. So so you've gone
far beyond
most women in having an impact on Islam
in North America.
But in your writings,
especially this book and the other,
there is a reluctance to to touch upon
issues of patriarchy,
for example.
In this book, you'll you take Tabari to
task,
about one particular
instance, where he ultimately uses Israeli art to
try to blame
Eve for what happened in heaven, even though
the Quran is very clear and explicit that
both
Adam and Hawa were responsible and were forgiven
by God.
So so
my question to you is
that do you subs do you see yourself
as
also a feminist Muslim
from a scholarly perspective?
Or or you're reluctant to
to to go down that, epistemological
and political path?
Are you more traditionalist?
Is this also a pressure that you feel
because you are a convert
that I'm coming in, and then now I
want to criticize I have embraced this faith.
Now I'm going to criticize
its most important,
source,
from a perspective which is very modern.
No. I not at all. I mean, I've,
I have no problem with,
with criticizing
patriarchy,
with criticizing misogyny,
but I also, at the same time, have
no problem with criticizing classism,
elitism,
colonialism, white supremacy.
If I'm only going to criticize misogyny
and I'm a white woman,
who's living in a world dominated by white
supremacy, then that to me, that's a very
easy move to make.
I I try as much as possible
to keep shifting my analysis
to be both self aware and self reflective
as well as address, you
know, injustices
and structural,
structural injustices,
of power where where they are. For example,
2 years ago, I founded,
a major research project called the Hodama Project,
which is
dedicated
to
to uplifting the sacred and viability
of,
individual
Muslims,
who are subject to exploitation
and abuse by those with religious power, knowledge,
and authority.
And many of those, most of those are
men
in a male dominated,
Muslim discourse. So
I have,
I have a dedicated research project to that.
At the same time, it's not just about
men or patriarchy. There are women who misuse
their authority and power as well,
and,
and so it is primarily
about power.
It's funny when I when I when the
book first came out,
the story of the Quran,
I was a little bemused at many of
the reviews that said things like, this is
the first major book on the Quran written
by a woman.
This gives a uniquely woman's perspective,
and I thought that was so interesting because
it was not,
there was some consciousness of it, but it
was not consciously
a book by a woman about women.
It's just that I see women
in a way that very often men do
not.
And what I mean by that is
is, you know, the story of Kaula, for
example,
that the book begins with, the.
I think that that story,
struck me not only because
it's a it's a powerful story of the
Quran, but also because it's the story of
a woman
who is,
in her
her older age being kind of
discounted,
kind of tossed off.
She's subject to
a a very vile and misogynistic,
pre Islamic practice,
And it's not exactly what happens to women
today because this is a this is an
ancient pre Islamic custom no one engages with
anymore. No one says, you know, anti.
You are, like, to me as the backside
of my mother,
but
you will find someone saying, oh, you're old
now, you're ugly,
I'm not attracted to you,
you know, dumping the first wife for a
for a second trophy wife or
whatever it is.
So
implicit in the book is,
my experience
as a woman.
I am a woman,
you know, and I'm I'm
I see what happens with other women in
a patriarchal
society,
and so their stories
are
are woven throughout
the the book
while at the same time not being the
only the only story because
if, you know, I am always afraid that
when we only point
to the
to the oppressor outside
that we never take the time for self
reflection and we all have power in some,
in some way, in some context.
You know,
if if you had
all the resources you had,
you wanted,
what would be the best way you think
in which,
American Muslims could contribute
to the Quran?
Like, what could American Muslims with all their
resources
do for the Quran, which would benefit,
not just not American Muslims, but Muslims everywhere?
Well,
in our time, at least,
I think the
the biggest issue that we see
facing the world perhaps is
is,
you know, and many people say the Anthropocene.
You know, the fact that human beings
have irrigated ourselves,
in our
irrigated ourselves so that our own priorities,
our own wants, our own desires
matter more than anything else.
And we are
we have shaped the world now
for at least a century
according to our desires
and our sense of being superior,
the superior beings in creation. We're the smartest.
We're the we're the most important creatures.
The Quran
does not support that view.
The Quran
talks about the human being as part of
creation.
You know, very often we talk about, as
Muslims, we talk about okay we're Muslims
and we're Muslims, we're part of the Abrahamic
religions
or we're part of
Ahlul Kitab, the
the,
communities of revealed faiths.
But but beyond that, the most fundamental
distinction
in the universe is that between the creator
and the created things. So I I think
of ourselves,
what the Quran can tell us and what
we really need to embrace is that we
are part of,
part of the family of created things.
And to read the Quran
through that lens, we see that all things,
all other beings
are are Muslim. They worship God.
They have, as the Quran says, they have
their communities like ours.
They are social.
They have their own language, their own customs,
their rule.
The beautiful story of Anembla,
the little ant
who
who warns the people in her colony,
the little other little ants to run away
because Suleyman's army is marching through and he's
going to
going to crush them, you know, that is
the perspective that we need to engage now
in,
and it is urgent for,
our own survival
and because we will be held accountable. All
of those creatures
will be
will testify against us on the day of
judgment.
So I really do hope that this is
this is the way
that we will all embrace reading the Quran
now because everything flows from that.
You know, what what would you say to
people who say that,
angels have bowed only to 2, to God
and to Adam, not to the ant, not
to the mountains, not to planets.
And God has said in many places that
we are the best of creations, and we
have been sent as wise students,
of God. Not ants, not elephants.
So so the fact that human beings,
as cognitive beings, to whom the Quran has
been revealed,
are privileged among the creation
is pretty
strong even in the Quran. Isn't it?
Right. But it's a it's a
it's a,
it's a responsibility
and it's not an entitlement.
So
a a Khalifa
is you know, there are different views about
who human beings are Khalifa to. Are they
the god's vicegerent? Are they
or are they the
the successor, because Khalifa means successor, are they
the successor to other,
beings who inhabited the earth before? So there's
actually 2 positions on this. What we do
know is that human beings
can have the opportunity.
I mean and this is where we are
we have the privilege
of,
of
struggling and striving
to attain a state
of spiritual
awareness and enlightenment
through choice
that is
beyond other things other than jinn.
And,
at the same time, we can also be
the lowest creatures.
So we can be worse
through our choices. So what we really need
to focus on
is
what we're responsible
for.
We're responsible for caretaking
this earth.
And if we don't do that, if we
abuse and exploit it for our own interests,
you know, it's not
we do not have this position just to
satisfy ourselves and satisfy our desires. It is
in many ways, it's like being a parent.
So the parent is given authority over their
children,
and,
certainly, we also derive some benefits, some joy
from our children. But we we
are
we cannot use our children in any way
we want.
Right? They're not to not to be instrumentalized
for our desires.
We are there as their guardians
to let them
explore, be able to grow in a safe
environment
so that they can realize all of their
human capacities
and,
and be healthy.
And we get the bonus, you know, the
kind of
the thing that makes
that,
the kind of privilege
is that while we're doing that, we also
get to look at their cute little faces,
you know, and
and and so that's that's just that's that
fobble
of Allah.
And and it's true in this creation
too.
We do have that position of caretakers of
the earth. And by having that, we also
get the benefit of being able to
see so many wonders and and enjoy
so much of it.
But
but that's the of a law. It comes
after our primary responsibility, which is to exercise
these capacities that God has given us
in a responsible way and within the Hudud
of Allah.
Professor Ingrid Madsen, thank you very much for
taking the time out to talk to me
in such detail.
You
I pray to God that you continue to
do with your work. I wish you success,
in your new project that you have started.
It is fascinating that you're talking about
the use and abuse of power within the
community itself, especially religious authority.
I wish you and your family a happy
Eid Mubarak.
And I want to thank everyone who has
been supporting and watching
the conversations about the Quran with Ramadan.
I want to, once again, thank the Islamic
Center,
Islamic Community Center of Lancaster, Pennsylvania for hosting
this.
And I will, at the end of this
conversation,
post
a
photograph and a link to Amazon. So please
get a copy of professor Mattson's,
the new edition of the Quran. I was
also scanning your your bookshelves in the back,
and I noticed that you don't have my
book on Hassan.
I do. That's it. That's in my office,
but I can't go into my office these
days. Okay. So so then thank you. So
much, professor Khan, for inviting me to this
conversation. I've really enjoyed it.
Thank you very much.