Ineffability, Asymmetry and the Metaphysical Revolt: Some Reflections on the Narrative of Job from Muslim Traditions

Rizvi, Sajjad

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-95373-7_4

Sajjad Rizvi⁴

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Abstract

This chapter argues that while the scriptural and exegetical traditions in Islam treat the case of Job as one of the trials and patience of the suffering friend of God who passively submits, some of the mystical and philosophical traditions take the discussion beyond theodicy. On the one hand, I present the systematic ambiguity of being present in monistic approaches to reality as one response to difference, evil, and suffering, and on the other hand I show how some philosophical approaches attempt a resolution through the essential erotic nature of the cosmos. But perhaps most important is the suggestion that casts Job as the hero of a metaphysical revolt against God that is the true sign of a friend of God.

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Notes

1.
Samīḥ al-Qāsim, al-Qaṣāʾid (Jerusalem: Maṭbaʿat al-sharq al-ʿarabīya, 1991), 2: 77; Jeries N. Khoury, “The figure of Job in modern Arabic poetry”, Journal of Arabic Literature, 38.2 (2007): 187.
2.
Another interesting example of such a heroic Job is Carl Jung, Answer to Job, rpt. (London: Routledge, 2002).
3.
This is suggested in his examination of artistic depictions of Job, not least by Dürer in Navid Kermani, Wonder Beyond Belief: On Christianity, tr. Tony Crawford (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), 108–114.
4.
A good example of the former is a short pamphlet of homiletics in poetry and prose within a series of introductions to the narratives of different Qurʾanic prophets written a preacher at the Jāmiʿ Masjid and Madrasa-yi Ḥusaynīya Ḥanafīya in Delhi and editor of a religious monthly entitled al-Waʿẓ established in 1909, Mawlawī Ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad Isḥāq (1872–1952): Ṣabr-i Ayyūb, ed. Muḥammad Zubayr Qurayshī (Delhi: Garg and Company Booksellers for Mawlawī Ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad ʿIrfān, 1976). A good example of the latter is the composition of the modern Arab poet Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb (d. 1964) and the revolutionary poetry of resistance in the post-war, postcolonial, and post-Zionist period; see Jeries N. Khoury, ‘The figure of Job in modern Arabic poetry’, Journal of Arabic Literature, 38.2 (2007): 167–195.
5.
A good scripturally based collection of Abrahamic studies on the theme of Job and the critique of God is Job et la critique de Dieu, Cahiers Évangile Supplement no. 182 (Paris: Cerf, 2017).
6.
For one consideration on this, see Stefan Schreiner, “Der Prophet Ayyub und des Theodizee-Problem um Islam”, in Leid und Leidewältigung im Christentum und Islam, eds. Andreas Renz et al (Regensburg: Pustet, 2008): 49–63.
7.
Mark Larrimore, The Book of Job: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); David Burrell (ed), Deconstructing Theodicy: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2008).
8.
‘Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered.Verse
Verse Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing, then whence is evil?
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. David Popkin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 19, 1986), 63.
9.
Carl Jung, Answer to Job.
10.
Cited in Larrimore, The Book of Job, 13.
11.
Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, A Scriptural Commentary Concerning Providence, tr. Anthony Damico, (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989), 68, cited in Larrimore, The Book of Job, 97.
12.
Jean-Louis Déclais, Les premiers musulmans face à la tradition biblique: trois récits sur Job (Paris: Harmattan, 1996), 27.
13.
For a discussion of the post-Biblical narratives of Job that were present and some of which may have informed early Muslim engagements, see Jean-Louis Déclais, Les premiers musulmans face à la tradition biblique: trois récits sur Job (Paris: Harmattan, 1996), 35–80.
14.
Anthony H. Johns, “Narrative, intertext and allusion in the Qurʾanic presentation of Job:, Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 1 (1999): 1–25; idem, “Aspects of the prophet Job in the Qurʾan: a rendering of al-Ṭabarī’s exegesis of Sūrah al-anbiyāʾ 83–84”, Hamdard Islamicus 28 (2005): 7–51; idem, “Three stories of a prophet: al-Ṭabarī’s treatment of Job in Sūrah al-anbiyāʾ 83–84”, Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 3 (2001): 39–61 (part I), 4 (2002): 49–60 (part II); Jean-François Legrain, “Variations musulmanes sur le theme de Job”, Bulletin d’études orientales, 37–38 (1985–6): 1–64, 37–38 (1988): 51–114.
15.
All Qurʾan translations are taken from ʿAli-quli Qaraʾi, The Qurʾan with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation, London: ICAS Press, 2004), with slight modifications (Allah > God).
16.
Abūʾl-Qāsim Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt, ed. Ibrāhīm Basyūnī (Cairo: Dār al-kitāb al-ʿarabī, 1968), 1: 390–391, tr. Kristin Sands as Subtle Allusions Sūras 1–4 (Amman: Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought/Fons Vitae, 2017), 468–469.
17.
Ibn ʿArabī (sic!), Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm [=ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī, Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān] (Beirut: Dār al-Andalus, 1978), 1: 298.
18.
Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī, 1997), 5: 142–143.
19.
Déclais, Les premiers musulmans face à la tradition biblique, 115.
20.
Ibn ʿArabī (sic!), Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 1: 386–387.
21.
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān, 7: 250–251.
22.
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān, 7: 261–262.
23.
Imam ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn, The Psalms of Islam, tr. William C. Chittick (London: The Muhammadi Trust, 1988), 76.
24.
Johns, “Narrative, Intertext and Allusion”.
25.
Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, Cairo: Būlāq, 1905–12, vol. 17, pp. 38–50; Johns, ‘Three stories of a prophet part I’, pp. 47–48.
26.
Johns, ‘Three stories of a prophet part I’, 41.
27.
Johns, ‘Three stories of a prophet part I’, 47, and Johns, ‘Three stories of a prophet part II’, 59.
28.
Déclais, Les premiers musulmans face à la tradition biblique, 143–171.
29.
Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt, 5: 186–188; see also the analysis in Martin Nguyen, Sufi Master and Qurʾan Scholar: Abūʾl-Qāsim al-Qushayrī and the Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt (Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2012), 193–197.
30.
Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr, ed. Sayyid ʿImrān (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmīya, 2001), 2: 10.
31.
Ibn ʿArabī (sic!), Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 2: 87–88.
32.
Rashīd al-Dīn Maybudī, Kashf al-asrār wa-ʿuddat al-abrār, ed. ʿAlī Aṣghar Ḥikmat et al, Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1952–60, 6: 294, and see the discussion in Annabel Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics: The Qurʾan Commentary of Rashīd al-Dīn Maybudī (Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2006), 196. The hadith is found in a number of (canonical) collections including al-Tirmidhī, Jāmiʿ, kitāb al-zuhd, hadith §2398.
33.
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān, 14: 315–316.
34.
Déclais, Les premiers musulmans face à la tradition biblique, 115–117.
35.
Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt, 6: 258.
36.
Ibn ʿArabī (sic!), Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 2: 358–360.
37.
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān, 17: 209–212.
38.
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān, 17: 213–217.
39.
A useful study of the notion of a trial and an attempt to resolve the theodicy through mysticism is Nasrin Rouzati, Trial and Tribulation in the Qurʾan. A Mystical Theodicy (Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2015).
40.
Rouzati, Trial and Tribulation in the Qurʾan, 76–77; A.H. Johns, ‘Job’, Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾan.
41.
Rouzati, Trial and Tribulation in the Qurʾan, 150–156.
42.
In the following analysis, I shall also draw upon the commentaries on the Fuṣūṣ of Dāwūd al-Qayṣarī (d. 1350).
43.
Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, eds. Mahmud Erol Kiliç and Abdurrahim Alkiș (Istanbul: Litera Yayincilik, 2016), 159–163, tr. R.J. Austin as The Bezels of Wisdom (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 213–217.
44.
Dāwūd al-Qayṣarī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. Ḥasanzāda Āmulī (Qum: Bustān-i kitab, 1382 Sh./2003), 2: 1099.
45.
Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, 102, 139–140, 169, tr. R.J. Austin as The Bezels of Wisdom, 147, 189–190, 226.
46.
For a useful discussion on this, see William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn ʿArabī’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 79–95.
47.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīya (Cairo: Būlāq, 1310/1293), 3: 515–516.
48.
Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, 121 and 178; see also Suʿād al-Ḥakīm, al-Muʿjam al-Ṣūfī: al-ḥikma fī ḥudūd al-kalima (Beirut: Dandara, 1981), 87–93, and Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ʿArabī, tr. Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 124–125, 195–200, 265–267; Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 335–344.
49.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīya, 4: 386.
50.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīya, 1: 266.
51.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīya, 4: 142.
52.
Michael Rea, The Hiddenness of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 2.
53.
These two sentences describing the paradox of the nature of how God is with humans and within and without the knowledge of humans recalls the sermon of ʿAlī recorded in the Peak of Eloquence (Nahj al-balāgha) of al-Sharīf al-Raḍī (d. 1021), ed. Sayyid Hāshim al-Mīlānī (Najaf: al-ʿAtaba al-ʿAlawīya al-muqaddasa, 2015), 39–42.
54.
Imam ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn, al-Ṣaḥīfa al-kāmila al-Sajjādīya (The Psalms of Islam), tr. William Chittick (London: The Muhammadi Trust, 1988), 16–17.
55.
Teresa, Come Be My Light (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 186–187, cited in Rea, The Hiddenness of God, 3.
56.
J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), and The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul Moser (eds), Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
57.
Samuel Balentine, The Hidden God: the Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 172.
58.
Rea, The Hiddenness of God, 7.
59.
William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (London: Chatto and Windus, 1930), 3.
60.
Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, 62.
61.
Thérèse-Anne Druart, “Ibn Sīnā and the ambiguity of being’s univocity”, in Ibn Sīnā and Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī, ed. Mokdad Arfa Mensia (Tunis: Bayt al-ḥikma), 2014, 15–24; Alexander Treiger, “Avicenna’s notion of transcendental modulation of existence’, in Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas, ed. Felicitas Opwis et al (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 327–363.
62.
Fazlur Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1975), 11–15.
63.
Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā, 34–37.
64.
Jaako Hintikka is rather critical of the theory as applied to the term ‘be’ and considers it to be resolved by considered context and hence it is not an actual type of ambiguity—see “On the different identities of identity: A historical and critical essay”, in Philosophical Problems Today: Language, Meaning, Interpretation, ed. G. Fløistad (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), 117–139.
65.
See Nadine Faulkner, “Russell and vagueness”, Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 23 (2003): 43–63.
66.
Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Mashāʿir, ed. Henry Corbin, tr. Parwiz Morewedge (New York: Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science, 1992), 85.
67.
Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār, safar 1, 1: 343.
68.
On the first text, see ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī, Shakwā al-gharīb ʿan al-awṭān ilā ʿulamāʾ al-buldān, ed. ʿAfīf ʿUṣayrān, rpt. (Paris: Dār Biblīyūn, 2005), tr. A.J. Arberry as A Sufi Martyr: the Apologia of ʿAyn al-Quḍāt (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969). On the second genre, see Sunil Sharma, Persian Poetry at the Indian Frontier: Masʿūd Saʿd Salmān of Lahore (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2000).
69.
In the supplications of the Imams, one often finds the benediction upon the prophet and his progeny as a refrain which is because it is consider to be a supplication to which God always responds and hence the etiquette of petitioning God entails places one’s wishes between the refrain of benediction upon the prophet to make sure it is efficacious.
70.
Imam ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn, The Psalms of Islam, 42.
71.
Imam ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn, The Psalms of Islam, 235–236.
72.
Navid Kermani, The Terror of God: Attar, Job and the Metaphysical Revolt, tr. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), 15.
73.
Kermani, The Terror of God, 23–24.
74.
Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, Muṣībatnāma, ed. Nūrānī Wiṣāl (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Zavvār, 1374 Sh/1995), tr. Isabelle de Gastines as Le livre d’épreuve (Paris: Fayard, 1981).
75.
Kermani, The Terror of God, 36–39.
76.
ʿAṭṭār, Muṣībatnāma, 67; Kermani, The Terror of God, 41.
77.
ʿAṭṭār, Muṣībatnāma, 88, tr. Kermani, The Terror of God, 42.
78.
ʿAṭṭār, Muṣībatnāma, 96, 132, tr. Kermani, The Terror of God, 43.
79.
ʿAṭṭār, Muṣībatnāma, 373, tr. Kermani, The Terror of God, 51.
80.
ʿAṭṭār, Muṣībatnāma, 9; Kermani, The Terror of God, 52.
81.
ʿAṭṭār, Muṣībatnāma, 119, tr. Kermani, The Terror of God, 56.
82.
Kermani, The Terror of God, 77.
83.
Kermani, The Terror of God, 133–134.
84.
ʿAṭṭār, Muṣībatnāma, 249, tr. Kermani, The Terror of God, 144.
85.
ʿAṭṭār, Muṣībatnāma, 291ff; Kermani, The Terror of God, 155.
86.
ʿAṭṭār, Muṣībatnāma, 251; Kermani, The Terror of God, 163.
87.
For a good analysis of erotic motion and the role of love in divine providence in Avicenna and Mullā Ṣadrā, see Muḥammad Ḥusayn Khalīlī, Mabānī-yi falsafī-yi ʿishq az manẓar-i Ibn Sīnā va Mullā Ṣadrā (Qum: Bustān-i kitāb, 1388 Sh/2009).
88.
Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār, gen. ed. Sayyid Muḥammad Khāminihī (Tehran: Ṣadrā Islamic Philosophy Research Institute, 2004–), 7: 210–211.
89.
Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār, 7: 214–224.
90.
Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār, 7: 243–245.
91.
Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār, 7: 246–247.
92.
Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār, 7: 249.
93.
Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār, 7: 252.
94.
Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār, 7: 254–255.
95.
Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār, 7: 256–257.
96.
Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Asfār, 7: 258.
97.
Larrimore, The Book of Job, 248.

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Rizvi, S. (2022). Ineffability, Asymmetry and the Metaphysical Revolt: Some Reflections on the Narrative of Job from Muslim Traditions. In: The Protests of Job. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95373-7_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95373-7_4
Published: 07 May 2022
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-95372-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-95373-7
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)

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