#// 'al' means 'the' in Arabic and when people write arabic words in this alphabet (instead of the Arabic one) they romanize it as al-[Noun]

[radioconstructed]

Ms. al-Radiodemon, you are wanted for questioning regarding the explosion of the allegra chicken factory.

⌖ Come back with a WARRANT!

(⌖ Why'd you write my name like you're romanizing the Arabic for Radiodemon? Haha!)

[zamancollective]

Nationalist Mythologies and the False Friendship of Nostalgia

By Mirushe Zylali

Additional Writing by Sophie Levy

What is a mythology?

Through mythology, one locates oneself within history and creates a sense of continuity between the past, present, and future.

The impulse to place oneself in a historical continuum is understandable, especially within postcolonial contexts. For Europeans, myths provide a basis of identity for the nation-state. For Euro-colonized peoples, a desire to return to a pre-colonial body politic often becomes integral to liberation movements, and later, becomes a method of garnering mass popular support for a burgeoning post-imperialist nation-state. Postcolonial mythologies are often manifestations of an emotionally-tinged hunger for a life that does not ache of colonialism.

Mythology has a vital role in legitimizing the construction of modern ethnonationalist states and their respective languages, cultures, and propaganda systems.  When “British India” was cleaved in two, Pakistan adopted an alphabetic script based on Arabic, while India adopted a script based on Sanskrit, though similarities abound between spoken dialects in the subcontinent’s northern regions. To this day, India’s far-right Hindu nationalists are working to incorporate more words derived from Vedic Sanskrit into modern Hindi, while nationalist Pakistanis do the same with Islamic terminology derived from Arabic.

In his construction of the Albanian nation-state, Enver Hoxha outlawed religion and claimed that modern Albanians descended from ancient Illyrian tribes. Modern Turks assert that they are heirs to the Ottoman Empire established by Byzantine tribes over 700 years ago. During WWII, German Nazis even claimed to be descended from Aryans, somehow also insisting upon their origins in the lost city of Atlantis, and repurposed the swastika, a Hindu symbol, to this aim. Later in the twentieth century, Iranian nationalist groups would adopt a link to this “superior” Aryan race in order to incite violence against ethnic minorities within Iran, such as Jews and Kurds. Saddam Hussein insisted upon modern Iraqis’ link to the people and culture of ancient Babylonia in building his autocratic government - just as the Pahlavi Shahs of Iran belabored their connection to Darius’ pre-Islamic empire.

Evidently, it has been a nation-building tactic of autocratic regimes across Europe and Asia to emphasize links between a current population and an ancient culture or mythology. Here, I take time to deconstruct why this method is somewhat futile.

Iraqis, for instance, cannot claim direct historical continuity with Babylonia because its religion-and the way of life it spurred- has not been maintained since the fall of Babylon in 539. Since then, cultural diffusion, conquest, and the shifting borders of empires have made Iraq a thoroughly Arab nation-state, notwithstanding the presence of non-Arab ethnic minorities.

Victors often write what history survives. What records exist of the processes of the Persian and Arab conquerors who altered the culture of ancient Mesopotamia? One could infer that those attempting to keep up the ‘old ways’ would have been brutalized or disenfranchised by their new conquerors. Neither the ethnic composition nor the historical legacy of ancient life in present-day Iraq is continuous with those who live there today, and the recovery of such a culture would be nearly impossible. But why would anyone want to undertake such a task in the first place?

the Eagle of Saladin - often used as a symbol of Ba’athist ideology.

Let us follow the logic of this desire for belonging. A branch of my mother’s family hails from Al-Andalus. What would an ‘un-exiling’ of ourselves look like? With very few Spanish Jews left in Spain, and others having fled to places such as Turkey, Greece, the Americas, the Balkans, and Morocco, which of them can lay a true claim to the “authentic” ancestry that would provide a basis for such a social movement? Do I learn from the Jews of Tangier, Fez, and southern Spain, who would have fallen within the borders of the Umayyad Empire? No. Their cultures, changed by hundreds of years of innovation, diffusion, and empire, may barely resemble our ancestors’ shared Andalusian moment. I can enjoy camaraderie with them for what we share, but to claim a singular flashpoint of origin for all of us, thus suggesting that we share a contemporary ‘sameness’ and deny such unique facets of our respective cultures would do a deep disservice to all of us.

Often intentionally, mythos functions to create ‘out’ groups and ‘Others’, consolidating power for the in-group as they build a new state. The Other can even be transformed into an inhuman creature. The Kurd, at times racialized as white for the purposes of the Iraqi, Syrian, or Turkish imagination, becomes a foreign interloper, even as Muslim Kurds may discriminate against Ezidis, Kurdish Jews, and Kurdish Christians for similar reasons. Within the imagination of the previously-colonized subject, the Jew can stand in as a figure of corrupting European influence, or the Jew can stand in as the backward Other not yet converted to the dominant religion or way of life of whichever empire. The same goes for Christians in southwestern Asia who maintain knowledge of spoken and written Coptic or Syriac. Often, by the logic of Muslim Arab in-groups, Arab Jews aren’t not Arabs. Rather, they just aren’t the right type of Arab. It is difficult to build a pluralistic nationalist movement; just look at the Ba’athist party.

European Zionists explored the idea of land-bound, Jewish nationalism as early as the 1800s. The Haskalah, or “Jewish Enlightenment” that began in the eighteenth century, had already kick-started the initiative to revitalize Hebrew as the lingua franca of the Jewish world. Zionists then harnessed Hebrew’s potential for Jewish unification in their development of a formalized national consciousness.

It is not a coincidence that Zionism’s genesis resembles that of other European nationalisms. Today, its proponents often overlook the fact that Zionists thinkers and leaders formed pragmatic alliances with European colonialists in an effort to solve the Jewish Question or gain a reputation as a “modernized” people. Though a historical and religious Jewish connection to Israel/Palestine cannot be denied, Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was just as willing to establish a “Jewish Nation-State” in what is modern-day Ghana or Argentina. He was desperate to secure any place to use as a safe haven for Jews.  Even as he cast Jews as Oriental Others in the eyes of gentile Europeans, he was playing by the rules of Western colonialists as if he were one of them.

Zionism, then, is a complicated nationalism in that it has to reconcile an orientalized, ancient Jewish mythology with a “modernized” European character. This cognitive dissonance within the Zionist national consciousness has visibly influenced the vocabulary of mainstream modern Hebrew, as developed by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. On one hand, Hebrew’s newfound role in early Zionist settlements as a more broadly and colloquially-spoken language represents the revival of an ancient language, culture, and peoplehood. It centralized a scattered nation in the name of a mythologized history, repurposing the words of a holy language for use in secular contexts - paralleling the incorporation of Qur’anic vocabulary into Modern Standard Arabic.

Yet, if modern Hebrew is meant to be “authentic,” why is the word for tea ‘teh’ and not ‘shai’ as it is in other Semitic languages like Arabic and Aramaic? Why is the word for banana ‘banana’ and not ‘muuza’ as it would be in Arabic? In the same vein, why does the mode of Hebrew pronunciation taught in Israeli schools sideline the guttural sounds of quf, ayin, and het originally spoken by Jews in ancient Tiberias, opting instead for a more European flair?

Most of the loanwords that exist in Modern Hebrew come from Germanic languages. Of course, it is understandable that the introduction of vocabulary not previously existent in biblical or rabbinic Hebrew could be pulled from English, which was already a lingua franca during Hebrew’s revival in a nationalist context. However, such influence does call for further inquiry where existing, foundational verbiage with Semitic origins was discarded and replaced with European terminology.

These small details in the modern Hebraic lexicon reveal much about the sentiments and convictions of European Zionist nation-builders. Firstly, the disposal of selected nouns with Semitic roots arguably reflects a latent desire to separate this artificially monolithic conception of the “Jewish people” from southwestern Asian languages-  languages perceived to not be Jewish. The same goes for the systematic labeling of Mizrahi accents as “incorrect” in professional contexts in Israel. Yemeni immigrants, for instance, have faced and continue to face ridicule and discrimination because of their accents. Ironically, however, Yemenite Jews are generally thought to pronounce liturgical Hebrew most similarly to the ancient Tiberian inflection. Does this mean that all Jews who are not Yemenite have “inauthentic” pronunciations? Of course not. What it does mean is that Arabic, for example, is not an un-Jewish language. The accent that many Mizrahim are discriminated against for having is not a “corruption” of anything.

Secondly, modern Hebrew’s European loanwords and inflection indicate that Zionist leaders seeking to revitalize Hebrew as a “universal” language for Jews heavily prioritized the comfort of Ashkenazi Jews in their adjustment to life in the Holy Land. Of course, learning Hebrew was still very difficult for Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim (read: women) who hadn’t been exposed to the study of rabbinic or biblical Hebrew in the heder, but leaders like Ben Yehuda clearly geared this ancient Semitic language to be as accessible to Europeans as possible in its revival. Had there been a genuine effort to make Hebrew a language for Jewish ‘olim hailing from across the globe, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian-speaking Mizrahim would have been consulted much more.

Lastly, Hebrew’s Germanic loanwords and smoothed-out modern pronunciation made it a more palatable language in the eyes of European colonialists, with whom Israel’s founding parties sought to form pragmatic alliances. The more similar Hebrew could be to European languages while still retaining its own mythologized, ancient character, the more British proponents of settler-colonialism could perhaps be willing to lend a hand to Jewish settlers. And so goes the balancing act between the orientalized nostalgia and modern European appeal of Hebrew.

"Vote for the Zionist list (No. 6), all who believe in the rebirth of our land through Hebrew labor." From the Zionist List in Russia, 1917

Zionists are quick to point out that since a majority of Israelis are Mizrahim, the growth of the Yishuv and Israel’s eventual establishment could not have been functionally settler-colonialist in character, to which I say: What is the Turkish, Iraqi, Persian, and Syrian treatment of Kurds? What is the North African Arab treatment of Imazighen? These, too, are essentially colonial projects which seek to supplant indigenous peoples by relying on idealized ancient mythologies and constructions of “authenticity”. A common source of discomfort for progressive critics of Zionism is the prevalence of conservative viewpoints held by Mizrahi Jews inside and outside of Israel, but the idea of colonized peoples colonizing other peoples should not be a revolutionary or difficult one to reconcile and accept.

Israel may not have taken on the character of a settler-colonial project had the Zionists of old integrated with Palestinian and Samaritan society. Palestinians’ apprehensive or negative reactions to early European Zionist settlers were understandable, considering Zionist collaboration with British Imperial forces. The reactionary right-wing politics of the majority of Mizrahim in Israel is, too, understandable considering their alternatives. The State of Israel has always propped itself up on the rejection and effective demonization of Arabness, so racism against Mizrahim based on accent, physical features, or culture resembling that of gentile Arabs comes as no surprise. Rather than facing social immobility and expendability as a source of cheap labor, conservative Israeli Mizrahim align themselves with Israel’s hybrid mythologized / Europeanized national consciousness, rejecting Arabness because doing so simply benefits their survival in a state established by European Zionists.

Mizrahim live in a time of nesting doll diasporas. In their 2019 song “Hana Mash Hu Al Yaman,” the Yemeni-Israeli sisters of the band A-WA lament a common traumatic thread connecting Mizrahi families in Israel:

“I came to you fleeing

You saw me as primitive.

I came to you as a last resort.”

What does decolonization look like, in a literal sense? Mizrahim living in Israel cannot go back to the countries which initially tried to stamp them out. Why would the current generation want to learn their grandparents’ forgotten Arabic, Darija, Turkish, or Farsi - or dig up their grandparents’ buried memories? To do so is like pressing one’s tongue against a tooth stripped of enamel. Many Israelis are also of mixed heritage. An Israeli friend’s family hosts Tunisian, Arab Iraqi, and Syrian-Turkish Jews. Which nation-state should she return to? For which mythology should she feel nostalgia? People have always migrated. Issues arise when territorial and cultural dominance- not pluralism- becomes the collective goal of populations.

Discarding nationalist mythologies altogether can help afford modern populations some clarity. Mizrahi liberation is inextricably linked with Palestinian liberation, Kurdish liberation, Yazidi liberation, and all other liberations of oppressed indigenous peoples and ethnoreligious minorities. Even within the construct of ‘Mizrahi’ as a label for MENA Jews, Arab Iraqi Jews may hold harmful attitudes towards Kurdish Jews hailing from within Iraqi borders. My close friend, who is a Kurdish Jew, recounts to me the almost Ba’athist undertones of a conversation she had with an Arab Iraqi Jew, whose nostalgia for Iraq was based on a desire for inclusion within Arab supremacist power structures. Nostalgia is a reactionary, false friend. Seeking acceptance within the monolithic ideologies of Pan-Arabism, Pan-Turkism, Pan-Iranism or Zionism is not a solution in the long term, nor is clinging to conservatism under nationalist governments.

Ceding space or resources to other colonized peoples does not mean that there will be insufficient space or resources for you. It is the overlap of these spaces that becomes a vital standpoint for reconciliation. Solidarity begins with truthfully baring the histories witnessed by multiple populations, and remaining able to acknowledge them simultaneously. The nation-state’s mythology does not allow for admission to the atrocities of the Farhud; the Algerian War of Independence; Deir Yassin; the Aleppo Riots. It is up to the people to shift their collective consciousness toward empathy and mutual recognition.

Mirushe Zylali is a junior at Mount Holyoke College double majoring in Studio Art and Religion. Through poetry, nonfiction work, and printmaking, they are interested in examining who remains within cultural memory, and how the Other is constructed in service of the nationalism of post-colonial states. 

[the-golden-city]

Unofficial Name Reference

Once Upon a Time there was a girl named murakumo who said she’d write a list of preferred name spellings for the Shoukoku no Altair fanbase. She’s been pretty busy and kept forgetting to honour her promise, but she finally decided to make a start…

Part 1 - Türkiye

Kato Kotono

Japanese: カトウ コトノ

Explanation: I decided to make an addendum and include Kotono, just because. While romanising her last name as “Katou” or “Katō” isn’t incorrect and Hepburn would be proud, official materials always write it “Kato” in English.

Rumeliana

Japanese name: ルメリアナ (rumeriana)

Other names: Rumeriana, Lumeriana

Pronunciation: roo-mel-YAH-na

Explanation: The roman letters R and L are rendered the same when converted to Japanese using the ninth row of gojuon katakana (ra, ri, ru, etc), so it’s easy to get mixed up between the two. However I believe that Rumeliana is most likely the intended spelling because of its similarity to the name “Rumelia”, in turn derived from the Turkish “Rumeli”, which historically referred to areas of Europe under Ottoman Imperial control. “Rum” is derived from “Rome”, meaning the Roman peoples (i.e. non-Muslims). Incidentally, I call the inhabitants of the continent “Rumelians”. 

Türkiye Stratocracy

Japanese name: トルキエ将国 (torukie shoukoku)

Other names: Türkiye Devleti, Torqye Devleti, Turkiye

Pronunciation: tuhr-kee-eh

Explanation: Türkiye is, pure and simple, the Turkish name for the country of Turkey. Kotono uses this spelling liberally on maps and such. It seems the anime may have changed it to Torqye to prevent any backlash from people mistaking the portrayal as real, rather than fictional? I don’t know. “Shoukoku” is a made-up word indicating a country governed by pashas, or “generals” in Japanese. There’s no accepted English translation, but in the magazines Kotono writes “general nation” in the roman alphabet. The earliest scanlators instead picked “stratocracy”, which is a military government. “Devleti” is a Turkish word meaning “state”, so in using that name the military aspect that sets Türkiye apart from its neighbours is lost.

Altın (The Golden City)

Japanese name: 金色の町 (kin’iro no machi) / アルトゥン (arutun)

Other names: Altun

Pronunciation: AL-tuhn

Explanation: Most common roman typefaces still don’t support several letters of the Turkish alphabet. To avoid using a lowercase “dotless i”, the official English version of the manga decided to call the capital “Altun” instead. Its name is Turkish for “gold” and also the colour “golden”. Most towns in the Katoverse have a phonetically written foreign name, and also a Japanese name explaining the meaning behind it, so Altın’s Japanese name is “the golden city”, or perhaps “golden town”.

Divan (The Council of Generals)

Japanese name: 将軍会議 (shougun kaigi) / ディワーン (diwaan)

Other names: Diwan

Pronunciation: DEE-van

Explanation: “Diwan” is perhaps more commonly known in English (where “divan” refers to a type of furniture), but it’s actually Arabic. Kotono appears to have also made this mistake. “Divan” is the correct Turkish word for a council of state. 

Pasha (General)

Japanese name: 将軍 (shougun) / パシャ (pasha)

Other names: Paşa

Pronunciation: pa-SHAH

Explanation: Ugh okay I’ve been wondering for a long time now whether or not to switch to the Turkish word “Paşa” instead of the romanisation (which is in the English dictionary and everything). But “s-cedilla” is such a bitch to typeset and I feel like many people, most of all myself, are very attached to the name “Pasha” at this point. Maybe it’s the one spelling I’ll never change… For the sake of consistency, I’ve rendered other Turkish ranks “Vizier” (not “Vezir”), Binbashi (not “Binbaşı”), and so on.

Note on Turkish names: Katoverse Turks don’t have surnames, so the first word is an epithet, a kind of official nickname, and the second word is their given name. Their title - if any - comes last.

Burak 

Japanese name: 大将軍 (taishougun) / ビュラク (byuraku)

Other names: Büyük Pasha

Pronunciation: BU-rak

Explanation: Give me strength… I don’t know this man’s name! My main issue is that, while “Büyük Pasha” would make sense as a translation of his title, the katakana rendering of his name isn’t anything like “Büyük”. However, it does resemble “Burak”, which is a masculine Turkish name, so my current theory is that it operates much like the names of cities, combining a Turkish name and Japanese title. It would seem strange, after all, that every other pasha is addressed by first name except him. In Toukoku no Subaru, Turkophile prince Yan Tao adopts the same Japanese title, but is still addressed by name.

Tuğril Mahmut

Japanese name: 犬鷲の将軍 (inuwashi no shougun) / トゥグリル・マフムート (tuguriru mafumuuto)

Other names: Tughril Mahmut, Tuğrul Mahmut, Mahmud

Pronunciation: TOO-ril MAH-moot

Explanation: “Mahmut” is a Turkish variant of the name “Mahmud”, which is Arabic. Maybe the French release thought it sounded more familiar to their audience. Otherwise it’s consistently been “Mahmut”, and Kotono has confirmed this. His epithet is a bit of a headache; “Tuğrul” might be more accurate, if it weren’t for the Japanese pronunciation. In any case, all of the above are variable spellings of the same word, which refers to a mythical bird also called “Turul” or “Togrıl” (and described as a hawk or falcon, not an eagle). It was also the name of the founder of the Seljuk Empire, often romanised as “Tughril”. 

İskender

Japanese name: イスカンダル (isukandaru)

Other names: Iskandar

Pronunciation: is-KAN-dar

Explanation: “Iskandar” is the Arabic and Persian form of the name Alexander, whereas “İskender” is the Turkish form. Kotono has written his name this way in the roman alphabet on several sketches. The name became popular in Middle Eastern countries out of admiration for Alexander the Great.

Zehir Zağanos

Japanese name: 毒薬の将軍 (dokuyaku no shougun) / ゼヘル・ザガノス (zeheru zaganosu)

Other names: Zaganos

Pronunciation: ZEY-heer ZA-ah-noss

Explanation: Note the “soft g”, which is more-or-less silent and always a nightmare to typeset. Kotono doesn’t seem to have realised this at first, judging by the rendering of his name in katakana. I found out a while back that the Byzantine Greeks called certain types of falcon and kestrel “Zaganos”, which sets up a pretty neat contrast to Mahmut. 

Şehir Halil

Japanese name: 大都市の将軍 (daitoshi no shougun) / シェヒル・カリル (shehiru kariru)

Other names: Khalil, Shehir Halil

Pronunciation: SHEY-heer HA-lil

Explanation: Kotono seems to have initially made another mix-up with this name, since “Khalil” is the Arabic form (and even then, the “k” is silent). She later corrected herself and has consistently written his name “Halil” in the roman alphabet on sketches and artwork, though the katakana stayed the same. The curse of “s-cedilla” sabotages attempts to get his epithet right. 

Tesisat-Kapı Saruca

Japanese name: 水門の将軍 (suimon no shougun) / テシサトゥ・ カプ ・ サルジャ (teshisatu kapu saruja)

Other names: Sarjah, Salja

Pronunciation: TAY-see-sat-ku-puh SUH-ru-jah

Explanation: It’s a shame Saruca kicked the bucket before I took over, so I’ve never had a chance to correct his name in the manga. “Sarjah” and “Salja” don’t mean anything as far as I know. I went through a fair amount of trouble finding out the truth, however patience prevailed and I discovered that his namesake was fittingly a real-life pasha who served Mehmet the Conqueror, alongside the men who Zağanos and Halil are named after. May be derived from the Turkish word for “yellow”. His epithet is a bit of a mess; “tesisat-kapı” does not mean “watergate” as the Japanese implies. 

Şanslı Nurcan

Japanese name: 幸運の将軍 (kouun no shougun) / シャンスル・ヌルザーン (shansuru nuruzaan)

Other names: Şanslar Nurzan

Pronunciation: SHANS-luh NOOR-jahn

Explanation: Kotono threw me a red herring with this guy by writing his name in katakana ��zaan”, as the Turkish letter “C” usually becomes “J” in names like Saruca and Cemil. Nurcan is fitting for him, however, since it means “light of life”. In one chapter Kotono miswrote his epithet in roman characters as “Şanslar”, which means “luck” and sounded legitimate enough, throwing me yet again. “Şanslı” is an adjective, but fits the katakana spelling better.

At-Nalı Cemil

Japanese name: 蹄鉄の将軍 (teitetsu no shougun) / アトナル・ジェミル (atonaru jemiru)

Other names: Atnal Cemil

Pronunciation: AT-naluh JEH-meel

Explanation: A minor detail - “atnal” and “at nalı” both mean “horseshoe” and are pronounced roughly the same way in Japanese.

Kara-Kanat Süleyman

Japanese name: 黒翼のスレイマン (kokuyoku no sureiman)

Other names: Suleiman

Pronunciation: KA-rah KA-nat SU-lay-man

Explanation: Yet another case of mixing up the Turkish and Arabic transliterations. His title, “Başkan”, is a pain to typeset, so Bashkan will suffice.

Caterina

Japanese name:  カテリーナ (kateriina)

Other names: Katarina

Explanation: We’re talking about Süleyman’s golden eagle here. Since it came to light that she shares a name with Caterina de Rossi, I changed to an Italian form.

Şapka İbrahim

Japanese name: 飾り帽子のイブラヒム (shapuka iburahimu)

Other names: Shapka Ibrahim

Pronunciation: SHAP-ka ee-BRAH-heem

Explanation: The curse of “s-cedilla” strikes again. In Turkish there are of course two letter i’s, dotted and dotless. They are pronounced quite differently and should not be confused.

Şara

Japanese name: シャラ (shara)

Other names: Shara, Shahra

Pronunciation: shah-ra

Explanation: This caused me so much grief that I was glad the artbook gave me a way out by rendering her name “Şara”. Though it’s not a common name even nowadays, it fits the bill better than any alternative spellings.

Koko & Koran

Japanese names: ココ (koko) / コラン (koran)

Explanation: I’m really not sure about these two girls. Their current names are just romanised Japanese, and don’t resemble anything used either historically or contemporarily in Turkey or Arabic-speaking countries. I’m tempted to assume that Kotono made them up.

Unchanged Names

Liman

Japanese name: 港の町 (minato no machi) / リマン (riman)

Pronunciation: LEE-man

Uyandırma

Japanese Name:  警告の鐘 (keikoku no kane) /  ウヤンドゥルマ (uyanduruma)

Pronunciation: oo-YAN-dur-mah

Kurt Kurt

Japanese name: 狼の将軍 (ookami no shougun) /  クルト・ クルト (kuruto kuruto)

Pronunciation: koort

Mimar Zeki

Japanese name: 建築家の将軍 (kenrakuka no shougun) / ミマール・ゼキ (mimaaru zeki)

Pronunciation: MEE-mahr ZEY-kee

Deve İlkay

Japanese name: 駱駝の将軍 (rakuda no shougun) / デヴェ・イルカイ (deve irukai)

Pronunciation: DE-vay EEL-kai

Abbas

Japanese name: アッバス (abbasu)

Pronunciation: AH-bass

Ahmet

Japanese name: アフメット (afumetto)

Pronunciation: AH-met

Roxelana

Japanese name: ロクセラーナ (rokuseraana)

Pronunciation: ROCK-say-lah-na

[thetruthseekerway]

An Unmet Challenge: The Qur’an

New Post has been published on http://www.truth-seeker.info/jewels-of-islam/unmet-challenge-quran/

An Unmet Challenge: The Qur’an

By Imam Kamil Mufti

The challenge is to produce a chapter (surah) similar to it, even if it were to be a cooperative effort.

The Evidence

Initially, the Meccan unbelievers said Muhammad is the author of the Qur’an. Allah responded to them:

“Or do they say, ‘He himself has composed this [message]’? No, but they are not willing to believe! But then, [if they deem it the work of a mere mortal,] let them produce another discourse like it – if what they say be true! [Or do they deny the existence of God implicitly by denying the fact of His revelation?] Have they themselves been created without anything – or were they, perchance, their own creators?” (Al-Tur 52:33-35)

First, Allah challenged them to produce ten chapters like the Qur’an:

“Or they may say, ‘He forged it,’ Say, ‘Bring ye then ten surahs forged, like unto it, and call (to your aid) whomsoever you can, other than Allah! – If you speak the truth!’ If then they answer not your (call), know you that this revelation is sent down with the knowledge of Allah, and that there is no god but He! Will you then submit (to Islam)?” (Hud 11:13-14)

But, when they were unable to meet the challenge of ten chapters, Allah reduced it to a single chapter:

“And if you are in doubt about what We have sent down on Our slave, then produce a surah thereof and call upon your witnesses other than Allah, if you should be truthful. But if you do not – and you will never be able to – then fear the Fire whose fuel is men and stones, prepared for the unbelievers.” (Al-Baqarah 2:23-24)

Finally, Allah foretold their eternal failure to meet the divine challenge:

“Say: ‘If all mankind and all jinn[1] would come together to produce the like of this Qur’an, they could not produce its like even though they were to exert all their strength in aiding one another!’” (Al-Isra’ 17:88)

The Prophet of Islam said, “Every Prophet was given ‘signs’ because of which people believed in him. Indeed, I have been given the Divine Revelation that Allah has revealed to me. So, I hope to have the most followers of all the prophets on the Day of Resurrection” (Sahih Al-Bukhari).

The physical miracles performed by the prophets were time-specific, valid only for those who witnessed them, whereas the like of the continuing miracle of our Prophet, the Noble Qur’an, was not granted to any other prophet. Its linguistic superiority, style, clarity of message, strength of argument, quality of rhetoric, and the human inability to match even its shortest chapter until the end of time grant it an exquisite uniqueness. Those who witnessed the revelation and those who came after, all can drink from its fountain of wisdom. That is why the Prophet of Mercy hoped he will have the most followers of all the prophets, and prophesied that he would at a time when Muslims were few, but then they began to embrace Islam in floods. Thus, this prophecy came true.

Explanation of Qur’an’s Inimitability

State of the Prophet Muhammad

He was an ordinary human being.

He was [unlettered]. He could neither read nor write.

He was more than forty years old when he received the first revelation. Until then he was not known to be an orator, poet, or a man of letters; he was just a merchant. He did not compose a single poem or deliver even one sermon before he was chosen to be a prophet.

He brought a book attributing it to Allah, and all Arabs of his time were in agreement it was inimitable.

The Challenge of the Qur’an

The Qur’an puts a challenge out to anyone who opposes the Prophet. The challenge is to produce a chapter (surah) similar to it, even if it were to be a cooperative effort. A person may summon all the help he can from the physical and spiritual realms.

Why this Challenge?

First, Arabs were poets. Poetry was their supreme ornament and their most representative form of discourse. Arabic poetry was rooted in the oral; it was a voice before it acquired an alphabet. Poets could compose intricate poems spontaneously and commit thousands of lines to memory. Arabs had a complex system of evaluating a poet and the poetry to meet rigid standards. Annual competition selected the ‘idols’ of poetry, and they were engraved in gold and hung inside the Kaaba, alongside their idols of worship. The most skilled served as judges. Poets could ignite wars and bring truce between warring tribes. They described women, wine, and war like no one else.

Second, the opponents of the Prophet Muhammad were strongly determined to quash his mission in any way possible. Allah gave them a non-violent approach to disprove Muhammad.

Inability to Meet the Challenge and its Consequences

History is a witness that the pre-Islamic Arabs could not produce a single chapter to meet the challenge of the Qur’an.[2] Instead of meeting the challenge, they chose violence and waged war against him. They, of all people, had the ability and the motive to meet the Qur’anic challenge, but could not do so. Had they done so, the Qur’an would have proven false, and the man who brought it would have been exposed as a false prophet. The fact that the ancient Arabs did not and could not meet this challenge is proof of Qur’an’s inimitability. Their example is of a thirsty man next to a well, the only reason he dies of thirst is if he was unable to reach the water!

Furthermore, the inability of previous Arabs to meet the challenge of the Qur’an implies later Arabs are less competent to meet the challenge, due to their lack the mastery of classical Arabic that the previous, ‘classical’ Arabs had. According to linguists of the Arabic language, the Arabs before and during the time of the Prophet, in exclusion to subsequent generations, had the complete mastery of the Arabic language, its rules, meters, and rhymes. Later Arabs did not match the mastery of classical Arabs.[3]

Lastly, the challenge is for Arabs and non-Arabs alike. If the Arabs cannot meet the challenge, the non-speakers of Arabic cannot claim to meet the challenge either. Hence, the inimitability of the Qur’an is established for non-Arabs as well.

What if someone were to say: ‘perhaps the challenge of the Qur’an was met by someone at the time of the Prophet, but the pages of history did not preserve it.’?

Since the beginning, people have reported important events to their succeeding generations, especially in that which captures attention or what people are looking out for. The Qur’anic challenge was well spread and well known and had someone get it, it would have been impossible for it not to have reached us. If it has been lost in the annals of history, then, for the sake of argument, it is also possible that there was more than one Moses, more than one Jesus, and more than one Muhammad; perhaps many scriptures were also revealed to these imaginary prophets, and it is possible the world knows nothing about it! Just like these suppositions are unfounded historically, it is also unreasonable to imagine that the Qur’anic challenge was met without it reaching us.[4]

Second, had they met the challenge, the Arabs would have discredited the Prophet. It would have been their biggest propaganda tool against him. Nothing like this happened, instead, they chose war.

The fact that no effort of the non-Muslim has succeeded in ‘producing a verse’ like a verse of the Qur’an means that either no-one has taken the Qur’an seriously enough to make the effort, or that they made the effort, but were not successful. This shows the inimitability of the Qur’an, a unique and everlasting message. The uniqueness of the Qur’an combined with the divine message it brings to mankind is a sure indication of the truth of Islam. In the face of this, every person is faced with one of the two choices. He either openly accepts the Qur’an is Allah’s Word. In doing so he must also accept that Muhammad was sent by Allah and was His Messenger. Or else he secretly knows the Qur’an is true, but he chooses in his heart to refuse it. If the seeker is honest in his seeking, he needs but explore this question of its inimitability to nurture the inner certainty that he has really found the final truth in the religion it predicates.

    FOOTNOTES:

[1] Invisible beings with parallel existence to humans.

[2] The fact is attested to by non-Muslim Orientalists.

‘That the best of Arab writers has never succeeded in producing anything equal in merit to the Qur’an itself is not surprising…’ (E H Palmer (Tr.), The Qur’an, 1900, Part I, Oxford at Clarendon Press, p. lv).

‘…and no man in fifteen hundred years has ever played on that deep-toned instrument with such power, such boldness, and such range of emotional effect as Mohammad did…As a literary monument the Qur’an thus stands by itself, a production unique to the Arabic literature, having neither forerunners nor successors in its own idiom…’.’ (H A R Gibb, Islam – A Historical Survey, 1980, Oxford University Press, p. 28).

And Christian Arabs:

‘Many Christian Arabs speak of its style with warm admiration, and most Arabists acknowledge its excellence. When it is read aloud or recited it has an almost hypnotic effect that makes the listener indifferent to its sometimes strange syntax and its sometimes, to us, repellent content. It is this quality it possesses of silencing criticism by the sweet music of its language that has given birth to the dogma of its inimitability; indeed it may be affirmed that within the literature of the Arabs, wide and fecund as it is both in poetry and in elevated prose, there is nothing to compare with it.’ (Alfred Guillaume, Islam, 1990 (Reprinted), Penguin Books, pp. 73-74)

[3] Rummani (d. 386 AH), a classical scholar, writes: ‘So if someone were to say: “You rely in your argumentation on the failure of the Bedouin Arabs, without taking into account the post-classical Arabs; yet, according to you, the Qur’an is a miracle for all. One can find in the post-classical Arabs excellence in their speech”, the following can be said in reply, “The Bedouin had developed and had full command of the complete grammatical structure of Arabic but among the post-classical Arabs there are none who can use the full structure of the language. The Bedouin Arabs were more powerful in their use of the full language. Since they failed in the imitation of the Qur’an, so the post-classical Arabs must fail to an even greater extent.”‘ (Textual Sources for the Study of Islam, tr. and ed. by Andrew Rippin and Jan Knappart)

[4] The argument was made by al-Khattabi (d.388 AH).

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Taken with slight editorial modifications from islamreligion.com.