veiled4allah: married to grapes, and other strange fruit of Quranic analysis

Newsweek has an article out called Challenging the Quran. The tone of the article leaves much to be desired, such as using the 9/11 hijackers and suicide bombers as examples of Muslim interpretation of the Quran (let's also ask the KKK how they interpret the Bible in an article on textual analysis of that Scripture). I could say a lot more about that, but I'd like to focus instead, inshallah, on the real issue in the article: textual analysis of the Quran. A much better introduction to the project mentioned in Newsweek is this article in the Lebanon Daily Star (I'm currently getting a server error accessing this link but the article may be available again later).

Although I didn't blog about the Daily Star article at the time, Zack Ajmal did (Zack has also commented on the Newsweek article), and I corresponded with Brian Ulrich, who had posted about the article and asked via email for my feedback.

I've also been corresponding today with Allen Brill of The Right Christians, who has an excellent post up that looks at some incidents in the history of textual analysis of the Bible and how this has been received by Christians and Jews.

Let me first start with the grapes/white raisins thing since Newsweek chose to make it the focus of their article. The claim is made that the Arabic term hur al-ayn or hur ayn (which is Anglicized as "houri") does not mean "maidens" or "virgins" but rather means "grapes" or "white raisins". Newsweek coyly suggests that the interpretation as "maidens" is all a mistake, which seems to imply that Muslims are crashingly stupid and that all the scholars of the Quran and Arabic are incompetent since none of them noticed this basic error (oh, sorry, I was trying to avoid editorial comment).

Apparently the word hur is similar to a Syriac word which means "grapes" or "white raisins". According to the revisionist theory, the current text of the Quran is based on a Syriac text (why exactly people in Arabia would be using a Syriac text is not clear to me from the article) so that's why we should read hur al-ayn as "grapes" or "white raisins".

But let's step back a little. The Quran describes the delights of Paradise¹ in many verses and quite a number of these mention the celestial or angelic companions that will be present (incidentally, there are not only the female heavenly beings, the houris, but also male heavenly beings and even angelic children who will be present to keep the people of Paradise company) (also incidentally, Newsweek contains a basic factual error: the Quran does not anywhere state that there are 72 houris for each man or that the houris are the reward of martyrs; the latter comes from other traditions). Some of these verses use the term hur al-ayn to refer to the female heavenly beings; others do not but they use the same descriptive words and phrases that appear in the hur al-ayn verses. When we look at all these verses together we can get a picture of what the hur al-ayn are even if we leave the word untranslated.

I've looked up these verses myself and can type them up on request. However, I think this verse should be sufficient:

Muttaki'ina ala sururin masfufatin wa zawwajnahum bi hurin aynin.
Reclining on ranged couches. And We will marry them (zawwajna) to the hur ayn
- Surah at-Tur verse 20

Does the "grapes" interpretation even make sense here? God is going to marry people to grapes? It seems rather unlikely to me. If this example is typical, then the analysis is far too atomistic, looking at verses in isolation. A better method of analysis would be to collect all the verses on a given topic and see what they say when taken together and then check the interpretation against that.


But there's another problem with the analysis from the Muslim point of view that's far more serious than houris and grapes.

Muslims believe, based on a verse in the Quran that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) not only transmitted the Quran, but he also explained it and showed how to implement it (see here for more). This example of the Prophet (pbuh) is known as the Sunna (an Arabic word meaning "way" as in "the way of the Prophet"). The Sunna is primarily preserved in the hadiths, which are reports of the words and actions of the Prophet (pbuh) as transmitted by his companions to their successors and so forth.

When Muslims go to interpret the Quran, therefore, they don't take the text by itself, but they examine the text in light of the Sunna. This is similar in some way to Orthodox Jews, who do not take the Hebrew Bible by itself but always examine it in light of the Talmud. Taking the Scriptural text by itself seems to be a Christian, particularly Protestant, approach.

Wherever this approach comes from, it illustrates what I see as one of the major flaws of the revisionist interpretation: it does not take into account the way that Muslims actually approach the Quran. As such, it is not likely to make much headway among Muslims even if what it said was uncontroversial.

This brings me to my third point. The Newsweek article gives the impression that Muslims do not engage and perhaps never have engaged in any real textual or critical analysis of the Quran. Even if we could make such a sweeping generalization about Muslims today, which would be a mistake, that fails to take into account 1,400 years of Islamic history.

A good overview of the sciences of the Quran is provided in Ulum al-Qur'an (Arabic for "sciences of the Quran"). For instance, Chapter Two looks at the study of the oral and written transmission of the Quran. Among other things, it mentions two books, the Fihrist of ibn Nadim (d. 995 C.E.) and Kitab al-Masahif by ibn Abu Dawud (d. 843 C.E.), that examine reports of variant texts of the Quran among the early generations of Muslims including details about exactly where these texts vary from the canonical text.

Chapter Four looks at the text of the Quran itself. It mentions a book called Mutawakkil by Suyuti (d. 1505 C.E.), which examines non-Arabic words found in the Quran and their meaning.

Chapter Five discusses studies into the historical context of the verses of the Quran and attempts to determine when and under what circumstances each passage was revealed. It cites a book called Asbab an-Nuzul by Wahidi (d. 1075 C.E.). This chapter also looks at different modes of reciting the Quran and cites a book called Itqan by Suyuti (same guy as above) as a detailed study of these different modes.

Chapter Six finally looks at interpretation and commentary on the meaning of the verses and the different kinds of interpretation and commentary that have been done. These include commentary based on hadiths and other reports and traditions, commentary based on grammatical and lexicographical analysis, and commentary based on mystical interpretation of the Quran.

A good resource for articles written about the textual integrity of the Quran based on classical sources is Text of the Quran.

The point of all of this is, there is a very rich tradition of analysis and interpretation of the Quran among Muslims. Some works are well-known, others are known only to advanced scholars in the field, and there are undoubtedly works that have been forgotten and are waiting to be rediscovered.

And that is another reason that revisionist interpretations may not gain headway among Muslims. Many Muslims, myself included, would like to see scholarship done from within the tradition and based on it rather than starting from scratch, which may imply that there is nothing of value in the traditional works.

I am not saying that other forms of analysis should not be performed, and this is a point that I had to clarify to both Brian and Allen in my correspondence with them. But scholarly analysis is something very different from interpretation by believers who look to Scripture for moral and spiritual guidance. What works well as scholarly analysis may completely fail to address the concerns of religious seekers.

Update: More posts are up on this topic, from Brian Ulrich, Zack Ajmal, Allen Brill and Aslam Karachiwala.

Update 2: Also sharing their feelings about this issue are Hajir and Ubaid.

Update 3: Pulled up from the comments thread, Menj cites some examples from pre-Islamic Arab poetry that use the term hur al-ayn - it's pretty clear these aren't talking about grapes or raisins either! Menj also points to an article from the Near Eastern and Semitic Studies Institute of America, which debunks the idea that there is a sound Syriac basis for the grapes/raisins claim. You can also read responses from the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Islam Online, Dr. Maher Hathout, and Abid Ullah Jan.

Update 4: Check out Arabic Script & The Alleged Syriac Origins Of The Qur'an, a very lengthly investigation and analysis of the issue.

¹ A long footnote to clarify a bit more about houris. A basic principle in the Quran is that men and women will receive equal reward in the Hereafter for their good deeds. There are many pleasures that will be available in Paradise, from the sensory (delicious food and drink, luxurious clothes, etc) to the emotional (the companionship of friends and family and others) to the spiritual (enjoying the good pleasure of God). Each person will be rewarded with what their heart desires and also with what is beyond their imagination to desire. The Quran may choose to emphasize some rewards over others if these rewards are particularly attractive to people; that does not mean these are the only rewards that exist. Some traditional scholars have argued that women may well be married to male heavenly beings in Paradise: The Holy Qur'an keeps a high sense of modesty in addressing the sexual rewards of women in Paradise because clarification of such matters was and is beneath the dignity of a woman to seek, especially an Arab woman, and most especially an Arab woman of the Quraysh or the Ansar. This does not mean that such rewards do not exist, on the contrary - Allah Most High is able to create them, plus He is Most Just and Equitable, plus He is the Most Generous of those who possess generosity! But out of tact, the "how" or "what" of this particular matter, is not broached. Another point that I like to keep in mind is that those men who are really keen on having houris are probably the type of men who like to have women serving them and providing for their needs. If they were with their wives in Paradise, guess who is expected to do the serving and the providing for these men: the wives. That certainly wouldn't be heaven for the women! Having the houris present to serve and provide frees the women (the wives) to pursue their own enjoyment. OK, just one of my crazy interpretations. Finally, lest we imagine that the houris go around dressed in harem-girl outfits, there is this report (Sahih Bukhari Book 76 #572) from the Prophet (pbuh) to think about. He said: ...if one of the women of Paradise looked at the earth, she would fill the whole space between them (the earth and the heaven) with light, and would fill whatever is in between them with perfume, and the veil of her face (niqab) is better than the whole world and whatever is in it. So the houris are veiled, then?