Diversity in the academy and the Quran

Our analyst Muhammad Faisal Khalil looks at the lack of diversity in how to academically study the Quran.

This weekly comment was written by Muhammad Faisal Khalil and reflects his personal analyses and opinions, rather than those of EARS.

Nicolai Sinai gave the Yale Law School’s 2021 Abdallah S. Kamel Lecture. Sinai, who is leading the ‘Quranic Commentary: An Integrative Paradigm’ project at the University of Oxford, shared insights into the Quran’s meaning. His project, worth €1,777,962 in funds from the European Research Council, promises to deliver a dictionary on the ‘keywords’ of the Quran.^[1] He was joined by three scholars of Islam: Michael Cook of Princeton University, Joseph Lowry of the University of Pennsylvania, and Frank Griffel of Yale University.

At the close of the discussion, Lowry highlighted the lack of diversity in the discussion, observing that they were advancing “the Northern European, white male, non-Muslim Quran.”^[2]

Only two ways to study the Quran

Lowry’s observation lies at the very heart of the challenge scholars in European and North American universities face in the study of the Quran. These scholars largely appear to be limited to only two ways of studying the Quran.

One way, advanced by Sinai and the International Quranic Studies Association, is to study the Quran in light of biblical literature.^[3] The second way, heralded by the publication of Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s Harper Study Quran, favours traditional literature.^[4]

Unfortunately, both ways are developing without either side talking to each other about the Quran. They are, therefore, unable to benefit from each other’s knowledge, particularly to discover solutions to shared problems in the Quran.

Another key concern is that both ways feel contemporary Muslims, in the words of Lowry, “are too unsophisticated to pursue the study of what the Quran really meant.”^[5] Sinai’s Quran does not fully engage with similar work done by contemporary scholars working in Muslim countries. Indeed, generations of Muslim scholars in South Asia have made efforts similar to Sinai’s.

Nasr’s Harper Study Quran is also not aware of contemporary Muslim scholars either, because they do not fit into the idea of ‘traditional’. Firstly, they exist on the margins of the Arabic-speaking world. Secondly, they are not medieval. Nasr’s Harper Study Quran is dominated by medieval sources in Arabic, with only two of its 41 sources dated within the 20th century.^[6]

The lack of diversity

This lack of diversity in European and North American universities has meant excluding many other ways to study the Quran. This exclusion has a big impact.

Scholarship using any ‘third’ way to study the Quran does not receive the funding or recognition comparable to what Sinai’s or Nasr’s projects receive. Moreover, contemporary Muslim scholarship has not found its way into the curriculum of any mainstream European or North American university.^[7]

Where it is present, such scholarship only exists as an ‘exotic’^[8] case in Islamic intellectual history. The only other avenue for such scholarship is the more ‘plural’ or ‘inclusive’ fields of history, regional studies, and political economy,^[9] where the work of Muslim scholars often appears in half-concealed forms.

But any space for a third way to study the Quran is marginal. So the focus remains on the two ways described above. This leaves the work by many scholars, who are variously non-white, non-Arabic, or female, outside the academy.

This weekly comment was written by Muhammad Faisal Khalil and reflects his personal analyses and opinions, rather than those of EARS.

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^[1] Qur’anic Commentary: An Integrative Paradigm | QuCIP Project | H2020 | CORDIS | European Commission

^[2] Nicolai Sinai: Qur’anic Semantics and the Nascency of an Islamic Lexicon – Yale Law School

^[3] International Quranic Studies Association

^[4] Nasr, S., Dagli, C., Dakake, M., Lumbard, J., & Rustom, M. (2015). The Study Quran: A new translation and commentary (First ed.). New York, NY: HarperOne, An Imprint of HarperCollins.

^[5] Nicolai Sinai: Qur’anic Semantics and the Nascency of an Islamic Lexicon – Yale Law School

^[6] Nasr, S., Dagli, C., Dakake, M., Lumbard, J., & Rustom, M. (2015). The Study Quran: A new translation and commentary (First ed.). New York, NY: HarperOne, An Imprint of HarperCollins.

^[7] This scholarship has found a place in alternative learning spaces, such as the Cambridge Islamic College’s ‘Diploma in Introduction to Classical Islamic Texts’

^[8] Diversifying curriculum as the practice of repressive tolerance

^[9] See for example: Is Tolerance Liberal? Javed Ahmad Ghamidi and the Non-Muslim Minority – Humeira Iqtidar, 2021