A 'Creative Actualization' of the Qur'an: Is It Possible?

"Alif Lam Mim" 1998, watercolor by Haji Mohamed Bin Haji Abdul Kadir (S. Mohdir)

'The Gospels are not transcripts but invitations to discipleship.'
- Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza

By Andrew Carter

Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, a professor of divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, is a highly respected representative of the Liberationist school of feminist Biblical interpretation and Christian feminist philosophy. She believes that modern Christians must engage themselves and others in a radical re-interpretation of the Bible if they wish to reverse the use of the scriptures as an ideological legitimization and justification for patriarchy. She also advocates the use of 'creative actualization' in order to 'analogize' ancient Biblical passages with current struggles against oppression: “It is about choice and deliberation and the power to take control of our own life and thought, rather than about control, dependence, obedience and passive reception.” Under her unique interpretive method, people of faith should feel free to embellish or even re-write entire Biblical passages to better reflect their lived experience and personal engagement with religious traditions.

To the extent that such an approach yields an innovative interpretation of revealed scripture, it fundamentally re-writes and re-images sacred text. Scriptural literalists reject allegorical interpretations or creative re-interpretations and assert that religious doctrine can only be argued from literal meaning. However, liberal theologians and jurists would argue that to assume multiple layers of meaning which might appear to contradict the surface reading of a sacred text is to reinforce and enrich that text rather than to subvert it.

I have often wondered how Muslims might respond to such an approach. Is the Qur'an amenable to “creative actualization” or re-interpretation?

Which Muslims might feel free to embellish or re-write Qur’anic passages to better reflect their own struggle with text and tradition? Are there any historical antecedents for such practices?

I am a follower of the Sufi path in one of its most formless and universalist expressions. I was once shown some extracts from a secret scripture called the “Hidden Tablet” which purports to be an “alternative Qur'an” (whether it is or not is open to conjecture). This scripture is situated within an Indian Sufi tradition which seems to resemble a ghulat (“extremist”) sect affiliated with Kashmiri Shaivism: its phrases bear some similarity to passages from the Bhagavad Gita as well as the Qur'an. There appear to be elements of tanasukh al-arwah (reincarnation) in some of its aphoristic, surah-like lines. Is this text an authentic remnant of an obscure spiritual path or merely a pious curiosity of the past? Does it represent an attempt to creatively re-write passages from the Qur'an which might have been perceived as problematic within an antinomian Sufi tradition? Here are those selections from the “Hidden Tablet” which were shown to me (rendered into contemporary English by an anonymous translator):

“The Qur'an is a dream concealed within a mirage. The dream is liberation and the mirage is tradition.”

“Let the sleeping bury the dying and let the dreaming inspire the living.”

“To fast for heaven is to feast on fear. To feast in love is to fast from hell.”

“Those who eat their own virtue will drink their own bile on the day of recompense.”

“It is better to love with a single heart than to pray in a common tongue.”

“It is better to caress the flesh of a whore than to build the tomb of a saint.”

“Satan sleeps with the pious to comfort them when We seem absent.”

“Paradise is a garden in the wilderness and hell is an oasis in the desert.”

“We created Adam and Eve through which to multiply Our pleasure. What need save pleasure have We for offspring? Upon Whom does the universe depend: the pleasure of its Creator or the coupling of its stewards?”

“We prefer the fruit of the vine to the flesh of orphans. We prefer the flesh of swine to the carrion of men. To eat pork and drink wine may be forgiven before it is begun, but to shed the blood of one's brother and consign his body to the grave may not be forgiven until the balance of debt is forfeited. For this has hell been created: an oasis of sorrow in a desert of solitude, a midnight of mourning before a new dawn.”

“The soul is a stream whose waters disappear into the sands of the desert. Once the soul surrenders itself into the arms of the wind and loses itself within it, it will be borne aloft and lifted over the sands and into the clouds. Then it will fall as rain and become a stream again. Its true essence will never be lost.”

“The wheel of causation revolves upon the pedestal of the Beloved and only the hands of the Beloved may stop its motion.”

“We seek compassion, not submission; refinement, not imitation. It is better to suffer with a sinner than to pray with a saint.”

Many of these phrases appear to reference Rumi or the Gita more than they do Muhammad and the Qur'an. They seem to embrace metaphysical models of paradox and contradiction rather than clear and unambiguous statements of revelation.

More immediately, what would the Qur'an itself reflect if it were re-interpreted from the perspective of a Muslim woman who is required against her will to wear the veil as a seal of her submission to Allah and her subjection to shariah (Islamic law)? Or of a gay Muslim man who is forced to conceal his sexual identity and desires rather than receive a barbaric hudud sentence of execution or amputation? What would the Qur'an say if it could be “creatively actualized” and recited by those whose hearts and voices its traditional interpreters have always wished to silence?

Are we able to contemplate this and reverently engage it as a creative possibility or does it represent a limit we dare not exceed but can only speculate upon? If there are Signs of God within the purposeful universe of divine revelation, who decides which of us is worthy to trace them? Which ultimate authority privileges our human struggles to wrestle with God: the self-referential domain of scholars and jurists or the embodied experiences of individual men and women? This is the challenge that “heretical” scriptures like the “Hidden Tablet” and the “Gnostic Gospels” offer us.

Andrew Carter follows an Indian Sufi path somewhere in Vancouver, Canada.