Introducing Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd insists that he is “very, very Egyptian” – a somewhat odd assertion, coming from a man who was born and raised in the country. But this Egyptian has been out of his country for the past fifteen years, in virtual exile, after he was forcibly divorced from his wife on the grounds of apostasy. However, Abu Zayd has just as firmly and consistently affirmed his Muslim identity as his Egyptian one. He is neither a convert to another faith nor a self-appointed critic of Islam. On the contrary, his infamy is in a sense rooted in his Islamic piety and the resulting conclusions he has reached regarding how Muslims should approach their Holy Book.
Abu Zayd was born in 1943 in the village of Quhafa just outside of Tanta. These origins are an important source of pride, especially because his authenticity as both a Muslim and as an Egyptian has been called into question. Although he has traced his distinctive philosophical position directly to his early experiences growing up in this small village, he has primarily encountered criticism and suspicion from his own countrymen.
After working for a period in Cairo, Abu Zayd took up studies at Cairo University, where he ultimately worked his way up to the position of associate professor in the field of Arabic language and literature. The focus of his research had been on approaches to interpretation of the Qur’an. He is certainly not alone in this interest; Muslims have considered and argued over the proper sources and methods for drawing practical implications from the text for centuries, and the familiar debate about the validity of ijtihad is one to which Abu Zayd contributes. However, there is a deeper debate underlying this issue of independent reasoning regarding the question, What kind of text is the Qur’an?
The question hearkens back to a theological debate that has received renewed attention in recent years, especially with the emergence of pressures to defend Islam as a tradition compatible with Western, liberal values. Abu Zayd has also explored the dispute, and definitively sought to support one side of the dispute. The debate emerged in the 10th-11th centuries (CE) over the nature of moral truths and the power and reliability of human reason – a debate that had important implications for reading and interpreting the Qur’an. On the one hand, there were figures arguing that there are objective and unchanging moral truths in the universe. This group claims that human beings are able to know these truths and hence know something about God and moral value, by the power of reason and even without reading scripture. Scripture uniquely conveys these values, but it is only one channel for understanding independent moral truths – truths which God cannot arbitrarily suspend or alter. Against this theological group (known as the Mu’tazilites), there were those arguing that God’s power is supreme and that the fundamental belief in His unity and omnipotence commits us to the claim that reason is helpless without the aid of God. They argued that if we hope to have any understanding about good and evil, right and wrong, we must rely on the closest source of God’s immediate wisdom and will: the Qur’an. This group (the Ash’arites) claimed that the Qur’an is the literal word of God and that it is an “uncreated” text, which communicates eternal truths. This is not to say that it is not in need of careful reading and interpreting. But it is not subject to the same kinds of historical-critical reading that other, human texts are exposed to. Those who tell the story of this theological debate, including Abu Zayd, have argued that the latter approach – the Ash’arite – came to dominate the theological imagination of Muslims and has encouraged a literalist approach to Qur’anic interpretation to this day.
Abu Zayd’s position on this question is the root of the controversy surrounding his work. He is famous for his efforts to approach the Qur’an as an historical document whose contents may only be understood through a historical-critical method of reading. This suggests that the meaning and practical injunctions drawn from the Qur’an are neither self-evident nor fixed. He summarizes his take on the method of historicism in his intellectual autobiography: “My basic argument about the Qur’an is that in order to make Islamic thought relevant, the human dimension of the Qur’an needs to be reconsidered.” However, in an effort to deflect the charge that this method of reading the Qur’an is equivalent to the denial that it is the word of God, he follows up, explaining, “placing the Qur’an firmly within history does not imply that the origins of the Qur’an are human.”
It is probably apparent that his approach runs up against that of many fundamentalist and reform movements today. But crucially, this claim seems to present a challenge to both of the prominent and opposing strands of Islamic thought with which we are most familiar: not only fundamentalists (who put forward fixed and literal readings of the text), but also liberals (who claim that Islam is essentially democratic, and promotes individualism, human rights, and the like) would have to fundamentally rethink the nature of their claims about “Islam” as a fixed tradition, were they to take the work of this thinker seriously. Nevertheless, Abu Zayd has carefully explained that there is nothing about this basic approach to the Holy Book that entails denying its status as divine revelation – as the word of God Himself. To this claim, he remains firmly committed.
His efforts to reassure a deeply suspicious audience that he does not wish to reduce the Qur’an to the same status as any other text have, however, been largely in vain. In 1993 Abu Zayd was denied promotion to full professor at Cairo University, in spite of having earned consistent praises for his academic portfolio. Along with his career, his marriage was threatened with destruction. The accusation of apostasy that had undermined his scholarly authority also made him vulnerable to hisbah – a principle that authorizes vigilantism, enabling individual Muslims to call for institutional, legal enforcement of what otherwise seem like private matters. He was ruled an apostate and subsequently forced to divorce his wife (in spite of the fact that she had no desire to leave the marriage), on the basis that she could not be married to a non-Muslim. It was at this point that he decided definitively to leave the country. Abu Zayd has resided with his wife in the Netherlands ever since.
Abu Zayd’s call for a historical-critical approach to reading Qur’an is rooted in a very specific set of claims and concerns, which are in a sense confirmed by his own persecution: First, although he stands by the orthodox position that the Qur’an is the word of God, Abu Zayd insists that upon being conveyed in human words, with human tongues and human hands, it is no longer possible to claim immediate access to divine wisdom. The Qur’an is intractably rooted in 7th Century Arabia and must be read with as rich an understanding as possible of that context. To do otherwise – to claim infallible knowledge from a literal reading of the text – is to overestimate one’s human capacity, precisely because God is so great. Second, not only the Qur’an, but the claims about it and about the religion of Islam of which it is the wellspring have been shaped from the very beginning by politics and power dynamics. The way he explains it, his approach does entail key challenges to the political platform of what was at the time a growing political force in Egyptian society – Islamism. It thus appeared as though, in a telling confirmation of the very claims he has spent his career defending, Abu Zayd made enemies whose political clout was enough to turn the institution that had employed him against him.
His determination to historicize the Qur’anic text emerged from his observation that the implications of the text for worldly life were politicized from the beginning of Islamic history. His central commitment has been summarized as, “denouncing the link between power interests and hermeneutic preferences.” He has put his efforts at re-opening the text to work with the aim of defending the rights and opportunities of women and religious minorities in Muslim societies. For Abu Zayd, the principle of social justice provides the enduring interpretive key.
Although his work challenges Islamist approaches to reading texts, Abu Zayd rejects justifications for limiting democratic processes out of fear that Islamists will come to power. He describes this argument for limiting democracy in certain parts of the Muslim world as “closed thinking.” Those who argue that we must compromise on democratic values and ideals in order to consolidate power (whether they be Western powers or self-proclaimed voices of progressive Islam) exemplify the very same kind of presumptuousness that Abu Zayd’s work seeks to challenge. Political maneuverings that would selectively close off democratic channels are not only unfair and hypocritical, they ultimately imply a deeply distorted sense of human capacity, whereby we “give ourselves the authority to predict and preempt the future.” With this position, Abu Zayd sheds light on a noteworthy asymmetry between the “Islamist” and the “liberal” approach to political order: silencing Islamists does not count as success.
Underlying Abu Zayd’s approach to the Qur’an and to religion more generally is an important distinction between two senses of this term, “religion”: On the one hand, religion may be understood as a set of unchanging cosmic truths; on the other hand, religion designates a set of worldly claims and practices. The limitations imposed on us as finite beings necessitate a virtually never-ending struggle to merge these two senses. Furthermore, based on these same limitations, we frequently mistake the second sense of “religion” for the first. Abu Zayd’s central effort has been at reminding us of these limitations, calling us to a greater degree of humility with respect to the claims we make about our own knowledge and accomplishments – particularly when it comes to claims about matters of divine wisdom.
BM