Language
and religious ritual are specifically linked.
They are both mankind’s means of expressing and connecting to the
numinous; they both function as the alter to for us to meet the Eternal, the
Spirit World, the Ancestors, or God. “Words, which arise from the true,
spiritual locus of the will, are the spirit made manifest (Spyer 24).” When language’s source is internally pure,
it is then the soul expressing itself freely and communicating to God or the
Gods. It is thus almost a truism to say
that a natural place for language is in ritual, specifically religious
ritual. “Both ritual and language are
modes of communication, and it is not surprising that some anthropologists
should take ritual to be a kind of language (Rappaport 202).” This “languageness” of ritual, and
especially ritual speech and language, is the Ultimate gift from the God: The
best, or rather, the most natural use for language is the religious use for the
purpose of communication. Religious
ritual is the ultimate form of communication with God. “Communication …not only
includes ‘saying,’ but certain sorts of ‘doing’ as well (Rappaport 179).”
It is
hard to think of a religious tradition that exemplifies this communicative
notion of the importance of language to religion and ritual better than Arabic
and Islam. For over a thousand years,
Arabic has been the lingua franca of
Islam. What was once the language of a
limited number of Bedouin tribes in Arabia quickly engulfed the world from
Spain and North Africa to as far east as China. Under Arabic’s reign, some languages died and were replaced,
while others survived only in vernacular speech. Wherever Islam went, so did Arabic.
From
this incredible importance of Arabic within Islam arises the inevitable
question: Why are the two so inexplicably linked? As Keane establishes (Spyer 24), religions with a written, holy
book seem to fall under two categories.
One is a religion in which the sacredness of the book is found in the
semantic content, like Christianity.
The majority of Christians assert that the Gospels are not the actual
voice of God, but rather of Jesus’ disciples.
Islam, on the other hand, is the consummate example of the other kind of
religion in which the “transparency of language” is not presupposed and semantic
content cannot be divorced from the actual words. Because the holy book of Islam, al-Qur’an, is believed to be the
exact and real utterances of God to said unto the Prophet Muhammad, the
language God spoke in as well as the semantic content are equally vital. And because of this marriage between
language and content it is clear how Arabic, the language chosen by God when he
spoke to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel, holds such power. What is interesting is how Arabic’s
religious power is cross-cultural.
Muslim societies the world over recognize Arabic as the liturgical
language, the language of their religion.
This
essay will show that Arabic is specifically tied to Islam
cross-culturally. The importance of
Arabic in Islamic societies proves Arabic’s valence to Islam. The powerful
relationship between them then begs the question: Is the power that Arabic
holds a manifestation of its own fetishness?
Through the ritual of Qur’anic recitation, a distinct Islamic ritual
with its own terminology and customs different in every society, this essay
will prove that indeed liturgical Arabic has a fetish-like power in Islam
cross-culturally. To understand
Qur’anic recitation clearly, this essay will discuss the anthropological,
particularly Rappaport’s, conceptualization of ritual and show how Qur’anic
recitation clearly fits that definition of ritual. An explanation of Qur’anic recitation and its relevant
terminology will also be discussed.
Lastly, this essay will assert the myriad of uses of Qur’anic recitation
in many Islamic societies and prove that Qur’anic recitation itself holds many
public and private fetishistic qualities for Muslims.
To
learning Arabic means you must learn about Islam. And conversely, learning about Islam means you have to learn
Arabic. Islam is a scriptural religion,
with Muslims beliefs are grounded in all sorts of written documents like the hadith (saying of the Prophet) and most
importantly, the Qur’an. Unlike Christianity,
a religion where the semantic content of God’s revealed word is more important
than the actual utterances of those words, Islam calls it adherents to speak
and know the true language of God and his final Prophet. Thus, a Qur’an in English, or any other
language, is not a Qur’an at all.
For
Muslims, the Qur’an is God’s book. It
is “the eternal, uncreated, literal word of God sent down from heaven, revealed
one final time to the Prophet Muhammad as a guide for humankind (Esposito 17).” Being that the Qur’an is the literal word of
God, the power the language holds over the people is an urgent one. “All Muslims, regardless of their national
language, memorize and recite the Qur’an in Arabic, whether they fully
understand it or not (Esposito 19).” It
was historically established as the lingua
franca of Muslim societies because it was the chosen language for God to
speak to mankind directly. The language
of the Qur’an, “the parameters of rhythm, timbre and phonetics are all
perceived as having a divine source and organization (Nelson xv)” thus holds
obvious religious authority and actual power.
This necessity to grasp the religious power of Arabic spilled its
importance over to the learning of Arabic as a second language for even
non-native speakers. For Muslims the
world over, to understand their religion means to understand Arabic. But the religious power of Arabic is not
just found in the understanding of the Qur’an, but also in understanding the
scholarship of Islam (i.e. theology and philosophy, as well as other academic
genres), also rendered in the language God chose to speak when he revealed his
prophesy to Muhammad.
So it
is interesting to see the importance of Arabic in a non-Arab, Muslim
setting. In Nigeria, a predominately
Hausa speaking culture, the Qur’an used for personal religious utility is
carefully titled ‘A translation of the meaning of the holy Qur’an into the
Hausa language (Peel 432).’ The
official Muslim organizations and ‘ulama (clergy) of Nigeria recognize
that while the meaning of the Qur’an is translated, it is by no means a Hausa
“Qur’an”, because a translation of the Qur’an is no Qur’an at all (432). For Nigerian Muslims, “the literate command
of Arabic was the sine qua non of
membership in the learned ‘ulama class
who saw themselves as the protectors and interpreters of the Muslim religious
tradition (433).” Command of Arabic meant a command of Islam over those who did
not have the luxury of knowing Arabic, as knowledge of liturgical Arabic
escapes most Nigerians, and thus reinforces Arabic’s religious power by “the
simple fact that most people do not understand it (433).” What is interesting is that until recently,
Hausa was seen as one of the languages of ‘Habe’, or unbelievers. Its authority was historically subordinate
to the power of Arabic. But even as
religious literacy evolved amongst the Nigerian Muslim population in the latter
twentieth century, the fetish-like power of Arabic is held intact by the
invariant belief that Arabic is the literal word of God. When Hausa language is used to clarify
issues and meanings of Islam, it is still a “translation of meaning”, and not a
substitute for Arabic. No Hausa
nationalist movement has been able to unseat the throne of Arabic upon the
kingdom of Nigerian religion.
The
power of Arabic is best exemplified by the Muslim educational institution, the madrasa,
a learning convention popular from Indonesia to Africa. This form of learning for Muslims
institutionalizes Islam, and, more importantly, emphasizes Arabic. In southern
Kenya, where Muslims are not the religious majority, madrasas function
as religious-training institutions “complementary to government schools (Brenner 204).” “One of the more important
subjects is Arabic language. Pupils
learn Arabic from their first day in the madrasa. Arabic is also used as the
language of instruction throughout the madrasa (204-5).” This system of Arabic
instruction is found all over the Muslim world, in both native Arabic-speaking
and non-Arabic speaking countries. The
implication is that with the learning of Arabic all over Muslims succumb to the
power of their liturgical language. The
necessity to understand one’s religion yields to the necessity to wield power
in one’s religious system; one has to speak the language of that power.
Like
any religious system, Islam is an unmonolithic, active religion that has many
nuances from culture to culture. But as
shown in the previous section, one very basic and vital aspect of Islam, the
power and necessity of Arabic, is found cross-culturally. In this vein, the power of the Qur’an and
the verbal recitation of the Qur’an are found in all varieties of Islam. Of course, with each culture that embarks
upon this special ritual there are different functions and meanings
attached. But in every distinct setting
in which Qur’anic recitation takes place, the functions and meanings hold a
special power akin to the power of the anthropological fetish that empowers the
speaker, can have healing effects and unites the ritual congregation.
To
understand Qur’anic recitation’s ritual fetishistic power an understanding of
Qur’anic recitation as a ritual must be clear.
The basic definition of a ritual is “any formal and customarily repeated
acts or series of acts, usually related to religion (Webster’s Dictionary
1000).” Roy Rappaport sees ritual like
a multilayered object to be unfolded, but before ritual’s function and
definition are unfolded, there are
“obvious” aspects to it that should not be overlooked just because they are
obvious (Rappaport 173). “Formality is
an obvious aspect of all rituals: both observers and actors identify acts as
ritual in part by their formality.
Rituals tend to be stylized, repetitive… and they also tend to occur at
special places and at times fixed by the clock, calendar or specified
circumstances (175-6).” Formality, stylization, and repetitiveness are all
characters of Qur’anic recitation cross-culturally. Because the person engaged in Qur’anic recitation as well as the
observers are engaged in the oral interpretation of God’s holy, unchanging
Word, the formality and repetitiveness of recitation is apparent. The stylization of this Islamic ritual as
well as its fixed usage will be discussed in greater detail later.
Ritual
is also highly performative (176), having players of the ritual as well as an
audience, though they can be one and the same.
The difference between a play and a ritual, says Rappaport, is that
ritual’s audience is the congregation, while a play has an audience in the
fullest sense of the term. Furthermore,
ritual is in earnest (176), even when, like Qur’anic recitation, it serves an
entertainment function. Qur’anic
recitation again complies with this aspect of ritual’s definition: It is highly
performative, involving an active utterance of the Qur’an as well as active
participation of the spectators.
Rappaport
also stresses the conveyance of information as being vital for a ritual
(180). He divides the types of
information conveyed by ritual as indexical and canonical. “All rituals, both animal and human, carry
indexical information, information concerning the current states of the
participants, often if not always transmitted indexically rather than
symbolically (182).” Indexical
information “points to” something about those engaged in the ritual. It is very surface information, but because
it is often “transmitted…symbolically” it can be difficult to decode. In every instance of Qur’anic recitation,
indexical information such as the education of the reciter, , the purpose of
the recitation, or the local of the recitation is conveyed just by the act
itself. Because Qur’anic recitation is
an art, almost a science, the amount of study of the reciter is reflected in
exactly how well he or she does. Purpose
of the recitation is shown usually by which passages of the Qur’an are chosen,
and, although there is a standard Arabic used when reciting the Qur’an,
linguistic peculiarities shine through a person’s language (Nelson 137).
The
second variety of information conveyed by ritual is more elusive; Rappaport
terms this canonical information. “The
canonical is concerned with enduring aspects of nature, society or cosmos, and
is encoded in apparently invariant aspects of liturgical orders. The invariance of a liturgy may be an icon
of the seeming changelessness of the canonical information (182).” This information more closely resembles
esoteric content of the ritual, that is, hidden by the symbol of the ritual. There are two important facets to canonical
information. Firstly is the invariance
of the ritual. Although nothing is
static in human culture, the “seeming changelessness” of rituals represents the
“seeming changelessness” of the semantic content of the ritual. Secondly, utterly different than indexical
information, canonical is the pure meaning of that ritual; when the ritual is a religious one, the
canonical informations conveyed are the truth claims of the religion. Again, Qur’anic recitation contains this
information, as it is the utterance of the primary religious text of Islam.
“The
recitation of the Qur’an is… significant in any Islamic context(Nelson
xiv).” While the act of Qur’anic
recitation is vibrant and efficacious and its presence found in every Islamic
context, its purpose and function vary from place to place, culture to
culture. Following Rappaport’s
definition of ritual, Qur’anic recitation in highly stylized. There is a basic terminology that trained
reciters adhere to which helps explain and define recitation in its different
contexts. This is not to say that all reciters must be trained (because they
all are not) but rather that the training of Qur’anic recitation implies
another Islamic institution. “The centrality of the Qur’an in the Islamic community
is unquestioned, yet scholars have tended to ignore the dynamics of its most
obvious manifestation: recitation (Nelson xvi).” The first formal Qur’an learning for Muslims begins with oral
learning of the Qur’an. Indeed
recitation is the only access many Muslims have to the Qur’an.
Nelson’s
book The Art of Reciting the Qur’an, while working entirely with the
Egyptian cultural framework, provides excellent scholarship into the academic
institution of Qur’anic recitation and its vocabulary. She begins her book by examining the
historiography and scholarship, remarking that scholars like Goldziher,
Bergsträsser, Pretzl, Jeffry and Wansbrough all ignore the dynamics of
practices and concentrate more upon the unchanging precepts behind recitation
(xviii). She points to comparative
religious and anthropological studies like that of Geertz, Eickelman and Martin
as the proper multidisciplinary approaches that “do [Qur’anic recitation]
justice (xix).” She then defines three essential terms to understanding
Qur’anic recitation: tajwid, murattal style and mujawwad style. Tajwid is “the system which codifies the
divine Arabic and accent of Qur’anic recitation in terms of rhythm, timbre,
sectioning of the text, and phonetics.
It is the very basis and identifying mark of the recited Qur’an
(xvii).” Most of the available
literature about recitation centers on this, although the meaning of recitation
to the people is not ever mentioned.
Thus to understand meaning and the fetishistic qualities of recitation, tajwid is not a sufficient place to
look. Murattal style of recitation is recitation of the private nature
(xxiii), while mujawwad is reserved
for public occasion (xxiv). These terms
help define the purpose of Qur’anic recitation in different cultures.
Further
following Rappaport’s definition of ritual, Qur’anic recitation is done in a
fixed setting. OF course this setting
varies from culture to culture.
Egyptian culture concentrates primarily upon mujawwad recitation. The
power, purpose and fetishness of recitation all lie in the public domain. I viewed a videotape of a popular Egyptian
reciter performing in a mosque. By his
presentation and through Nelson’s book, I found that recitation in Egypt holds
a power similar to that of American celebrity.
The Egyptian case is the classical idea of recitation, that the
indexical information is seen through the observing crowd’s often emotional
reactions and the performer’s celebrity, and the canonical within what he or
she recites. It is not far off to call
the Egyptian reciter an Islamic rock star.
Indeed the exact nature of the fetish is elusive, but nonetheless it is
clear that Qur’anic recitation in Egypt empowers the speaker and gives him or
her a reason to be revered while also bringing the congregation together. Entire radio stations, programs on TV, and
collections of recording add to the power of the reciter’s act, and,
subsequently, the reciter himself.
Information
about the murattal style is more
interesting and more classically fetishized. Muslims in Bosnia often seek the assistance of faith healers for
advice or in times of personal crisis or when in need of divine protection.
(eHRAF 214) Although it is not at all
condoned by “official Islam” (i.e. the madrasa-educated
Muslim clergy), faith healing is in fact popular, and what is more, it is
popular not just to these Bosnians.
During the Olympic Winter Games in Sarajevo of 1984, Muslim visitors
from distant countries “took the trip all the way from Sarajevo to seek the
help of faith healers (215)” in distant villages. Qur’anic recitation is an important ritual practice invoked by
these faith healers for the purpose of relief from mental and physical ills, as
well as a means of concentration for the faith healer to tell a client’s
future.
Men
without any formal religious education who are faith healers are called hodza, while the women are called bula (The more pejorative terms sihirbaz for men and sihirbazica holds the connotation of
sorcery that the hodza and bula disdain [eHRAF 214]).. For any faith healers to practice their
“magic,” knowledge of Qur’anic recitation is needed. The power of the words is the basis for their spells; just the
right passage or two from the Qur’an along with certain amulets and potions
will bring forth the desired effect (eHRAF 214-15). Part of the power of the Arabic words is in the fact that the
person desiring the benevolent effects has no idea what they mean, only that
they come from the Word of God and hold unknowable power.
Prayers
of istihara and practice of salijevati stravu are done specifically
to predict the future. Istihara requires intense concentration,
as it revolves around intense dream interpretation and recitation. Salijevati
stravu is less taxing; it involves putting a heated chunk of lead into a
basin of water, whereupon, while reciting the Qur’an and using other Muslim
prayers, the bula (typically women
endeavor in fortune-telling) interpret the lines in the lead. In both cases, the power of the spoken
Arabic is in its efficacy to concentrate the bula. By speaking Arabic,
she can concentrate her thoughts upon reading the client’s dreams, worries or
the heated lead an predict the future.
Another culture which uses the power of the ritual Qur’anic recitation in a more murattal style is the Hubeer of southern Somalia. The funeral ritual, in and of itself a complicated ritual, uses “uninterrupted Qur’anic recitations (eHRAF 76).” The purpose of recitation at these funeral ceremonies is that they “help for the deceased in the grave and the next world (76).” Qur’anic recitation abets the resurrection of the deceased to heaven. It is clear that human language in Hubeer culture has an effect upon the afterlife, more proof of the utter power of the language within the Islamic faith.
The power of the Qur’an and the spoken word even has an effect even upon the supra-terrestrial culture of the Internet. On a popular website called “Ask the Imam,” questions are put forth by inquisitive people, mostly Muslims, about the nature of the Islamic faith and specific problems they encounter. The Imam of the website then uses his scholarship and knowledge of scripture to answer any questions. One such concern was, “I have a friend who tends to stutter sometimes. He tends to stammer on some words. I was wondering if there are any Qur’anic passages to recite that can help him decrease his stuttering (“Ask the Imam”).” In response the Imam offered particular passages from the Qur’an that would “cure” his friend, provided his faith in the passages recited was strong. Again, the healing fetish-effect of the Qur’an is evident.
The
power of Arabic is representative of the Muslim doctrine of tawhid, or
unity. Everything within Islam binds
the Muslim community together.
Obviously the Arabic language is no exception. But it seems that the fetishness of Arabic and Qur’anic
recitation is more manifest in cultures where Arabic is not the spoken
vernacular. The power of the word, the
spirit of the word (Spyer 23) as well as utility of the word converge for the
pious in the form of the Qur’an and become a power to be accessed through
Arabic learning and recitation.
Utterances of that word have salutary effects for the speaker: in Egypt,
it’s prestige, while in Bosnia it’s a healing power. But at its most basic, the fetishistic power of Arabic and
Qur’anic recitation are made clear by the religious enlightenment they allow
the Muslim; he or she, especially when Arabic is not the first language,
receives the knowledge of his or her religion, thus making them independent and
utterly powerful from clergy or other people’s interpretations of Islam. It is the ultimate fetish, in a sense,
because it makes the Muslim man or woman religiously sovereign; they can personally
communicate in God’s language.
Works Cited and Bibliography
“Ask the Imam.” April 5, 2001. <http://www.islam.tc/cgi bin/askimam/ask.pl?q=1740&act=view>
“Bosnian
Muslims and Qur’anic Recitation.” eHRAF Database. March 23, 2001.
<http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/cgile/ehraf/hraf-idx?typer=html&rgn=SUBSECT&byter=275663709>
pp.214-217
Brenner,
Louis ed. Muslim Identity and Social
Change in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. pp-200-9
Esposito,
John. Islam: The Straight Path.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Nelson,
Kristian. The Art of Reciting the
Qur’an. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1985.
Peel,
J.D.Y. ed. Popular Islam: South of
the Sahara. “Role of Language in
West African Islam.” Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1985. pp-432-45
“Qur’an recitation and
Somali Culture.” eHRAF Database. March 23, 2001.
<http:ets.undl.umich.edu/cgi/e/ehraf/hraf-odx?typer+toc&rgn-SUBSECT1&byte=288839726>
pp. 76
Rappaport,
Roy. Ecology, Meaning and Religion. Richmond, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1979. pp-173-221
Spyer,
Patricia ed. Border Fetishisms. New York: Routledge, 1998. pp. 13-34