Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Spring 2016 13 this literature, I can only marvel at the origi- nality, intellectual scope, aesthetic power, and sheer humanity we find in the spirituality of Ibn Arabi, the poetry of Rumi, the historiogra- phy of Ibn Khaldun, the poetic theology of Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani, the philosophy of Averroës, the travel reports of Ibn Battuta, and indeed the tales of One Thousand and One Nights, which are worldly – yes, worldly and erotic, and inci- dentally feminist too – while yet being infused throughout with the spirit and language of the Quran. Admittedly, this great literature is not journalistic reporting, and no doubt the social reality of this advanced civilization, like the reality of any age, was much darker and more violent. Yet these literary witnesses tell us what was once conceivable, even self-evident, within Islam. None of this, nothing at all, is to be found in the religious culture of modern Islam – nothing that is even remotely comparable in depth or power of fascination to the writings I came across during my studies. And this is to say nothing of Islamic architecture, Islamic art, or Islamic musical culture; these no longer exist. To give an illustration of this loss of creativ- ity and freedom taken from my own field, literature: it was once thinkable, even self- evident, that the Quran should be approached as a poetic text, one to be understood using the tools and methods of poetry scholarship: that is, as a poem. It was thinkable, even self-evi- dent, that to be a Muslim theologian also meant being a literary scholar and a connoisseur of poetry; in many cases, the theologian was himself a poet. Yet in our day my own teacher, Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid in Cairo, was charged with heresy, fired from his university post, and even forced to divorce his wife because he understood Quranic scholarship as a form of literary scholarship. Thus an approach to the Quran which had long been taken as a given and which, as Nasr Abu Zaid pointed out, was used by the most important scholars of clas- sical Islamic theology, has today been defined as unthinkable. Anyone who approaches the Quran in this undoubtedly traditional way is persecuted, punished, and declared a heretic. In reality, the Quran is poetry not just because the lines rhyme, but also because it speaks in disturbing and enigmatic images with multiple meanings; it is less a book than a recitation, the score of a song that moves its Arab listeners with its rhythms, onomatopoeia, and melodies. Islamic theology not only used to recognize the Quran’s aesthetic qualities but went even further, declaring its literary beauty to be the authenticating miracle of Islam. By contrast, today we can observe all over the Islamic world what happens when one ignores or fails to under- stand the linguistic structure of a text. The Quran is degraded to a how-to manual that can be word-searched for this or that catch phrase. The Quran’s literary power thus becomes political dynamite. It’s often claimed that Islam must pass through the fire of enlightenment or that modernity must win out over tradition. But that seems simplistic considering that Islam’s past is so much more enlightened than its present and its traditional writings often appear more modern than its current The Quran is less a book than the score of a song that moves its Arab listeners with its music, onomatopoeia, and melodies.