Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
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122 t CHAPTER FIVE<br />
distinction that was current, <strong>and</strong> debated, in legal circles. Most of<br />
the commentators <strong>and</strong> commentaries discussed to this point operated<br />
within a tradition that regarded the body of prophetic hadith<br />
as the primary exegetical instrument <strong>for</strong> underst<strong>and</strong>ing the Quran,<br />
particularly on legal matters, much the way the Talmud served the<br />
rabbinic exegetes in Judaism. On that underst<strong>and</strong>ing, the difference<br />
between tafsir <strong>and</strong> tawil was not, then, between exoteric <strong>and</strong><br />
esoteric passages but rather between clear <strong>and</strong> ambiguous ones.<br />
Where tawil took on its allegorical association was when exegetical<br />
principles began to be used to elicit from Scripture dogmatic<br />
<strong>and</strong> mystical underst<strong>and</strong>ings of which both Muhammad <strong>and</strong> the<br />
Quran were apparently totally innocent.<br />
The Quran was not a historical document in Muslims’ eyes, nor<br />
was Muhammad a historian. Since the Enlightenment secular<br />
critics have looked on the Bible, the New Testament, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
Quran as revelations not of God’s will but of the desires <strong>and</strong> anxieties<br />
of their times. The believers, however, see in those Scriptures<br />
a point of contact with God himself. Each of the three communities<br />
continues to take its Scripture seriously as history, of course,<br />
first in the sense that it was revealed at a fixed moment of human<br />
history, <strong>and</strong> then, that its behavioral prescriptions refer to ongoing<br />
human life, in all times <strong>and</strong> places, <strong>and</strong> that they have historical<br />
relevance. But Philo, as we have seen, attempted to peer beneath<br />
the historical surface of the Bible into the timeless riches beneath.<br />
He thought he could discern there the truths of which the Greek<br />
philosophers also had some presentiment, or may even have borrowed<br />
from Israel. The <strong>Christians</strong> peered through the same aperture<br />
that Philo had opened, <strong>and</strong> then the Muslims after them, <strong>and</strong><br />
all saw in their Scriptures the same perennial truths. But there were<br />
some who looked even more deeply, into the profound heart of<br />
Scripture where God himself dwelled. This is the Scripture of the<br />
mystics, the Torah of the Kabbalists, the New Testament of Bernard<br />
of Clairvaux, <strong>and</strong> the Quran of Ibn al-Arabi, a presence<br />
contained not only in the whole of Scripture but also, without distinction<br />
of importance, in each verse <strong>and</strong> even in every word <strong>and</strong><br />
letter.