A symbolic approach to the Qur'an (1/3): parables and hidden meaning

By Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch · June 2, 2021 · 8 min read

Contents

The Word of God that addresses us in the Qur’an expresses itself in different modes. At times in a literal form, and the words are then susceptible only of being accepted at the level of their obvious meaning. Thus, in the verses dealing with ontology or metaphysics (ilahiyyat), it is affirmed that God is One, that the prophets are equal before Him. Or again, in the verses concerning worship (’ibadat), it is specified that the Ramadan fast must run from sunrise to sunset. Or even in the indications concerning financial transactions (mu’amalat), the procedures to be followed in matters of inheritance are stipulated. No ambiguity can arise from the terms employed. This does not prevent, in the case of the theological verses, God’s unity or unicity becoming the object of reflection and deepening, or, in the case of the shari’a, of jurisprudential interpretation. Or finally, in that of the ’ibadat, of modalities of application. But none of this belongs to the order of language.

Lectio divina

Things will be altogether different when the Qur’an employs images, parables or similitudes (amthal). It declares: ‘God proposes parables to men’ (Qur’an XIV, 25), ‘He has proposed to you an image taken from yourselves’ (Qur’an XXX, 28). Hakim Tirmidhi (824-892) defines the term thus: ‘The image of a thing is its exemplarity. God mentions a thing which, in the immediate, is hidden, and He describes it by means of another that is manifest and known, so that through it one may be led to the hidden thing’¹.

Thus the use of similitudes and parables will have a didactic aim: that of leading from the image to an abstract truth. Following the Qur’an, the mystics of Islam will constantly resort, for teaching purposes, to comparisons, parables and anecdotes (hikayat) intended to strike the mind and to make it easy to remember the truth they are charged with transmitting. That truth may remain more or less hidden in the memory but, when it presents itself anew, even in the form of a vague reminiscence, it is laden with all its deep significance and its internal logic. It also condenses all the meanings it is capable of containing, which will unfold when the hour comes. The great Persian mystic Mahmud Shabestari (1288-1340) writes on this subject:

All that is seen in the visible world is like a reflection of this world’s sun […]

When these imagistic words are heard by the sensory ear,

at first they designate sensible objects.

The spiritual world is infinite; how can finite words reach it?

(That is why) when the mystics deal with these mysteries,

they render them in images,

for the objects of the senses are like shadows of that world².

Speaking of the relation between form and meaning, Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207-1273) said:

Forms reveal the deep meaning and explain it, for not everyone attains the meaning […] So it is necessary to clothe the meaning in a form, so that those who know only form may discover that meaning exists and come to believe in that meaning a little. The heavens were created in a very lofty aspect, so as to make understood what the heights of the soul are³.

Ibn ’Arabi (1165-1240) in turn evokes the didactic aspect of the Revelation:

The prophets make use of concrete language because they address the collectivity and because they rely on the understanding of the sage who would hear them. If they speak in figurative terms, it is because of the common people and because they know the degree of intuition of those who truly understand […]

Since the prophets, the messengers and their heirs know that there are in the world and in their communities men possessing this intuition, they base their demonstrations on a concrete language, accessible to the elite as to the common man alike, so that the man of the elite draws from it both what the common man draws and more besides […] and it is by this intuitive understanding that the scholars are distinguished one from another⁴.

To arrive at the meaning (ma’na) concealed beneath the words, an effort is required, a procedure. The usefulness of speech will therefore be ‘that it makes you seek and urges you on; not that the thing sought is obtained through speech: were it so, you would not need to make so many efforts. Speech is like a thing you see moving far away, so you run after it to see it, but it is not because of its movement that you see it’⁵.

Speech par excellence, that of the Qur’an, is fundamentally a call (da’wa) to the search for meaning, in all the acceptations of the term: that is, direction and signification. And to read the holy Book as though it were being revealed to himself, as all the mystics of Islam invite him to do, the believer will have to apply to this lectio divina all the resources of his intelligence and his spirit. This mode of interpretation (istinbat), which etymologically designates the act of searching in the depths for what was hidden there, may constitute a juridical procedure making it possible to settle a difficulty by virtue of the gains of personal inquiry. It is a term of Qur’anic origin, employed by the Sufis both in the domain of the spiritual direction given by the shaykh to his disciple, and in that of the mystical interpretations (mustanbatat) of Scripture. In this case it will essentially be a matter of an intuition, an inspiration (ilham) that recovers, by divine grace, the spiritual sense of the Qur’an (batin) contained by the zahir, the outward or literal sense⁶.

The Attributes of God

On one particular point, that of the attributes of God, the Sunni world knew bitter controversies between Mu’tazilites and traditionalists. How indeed were such Qur’anic expressions to be understood: ‘the being whom I created with My hands’ (Qur’an XXXVIII, 75); ‘the Face of your Lord subsists, full of majesty and magnificence’ (Qur’an LV, 27)? Taken literally, these led to anthropomorphism (tashbih). That is why the Mu’tazilites regard them as allegories, to which the affirmations of the Qur’an itself on the clarity of the Book were objected (XXXIX, 28; XLI, 3, etc.). As a last resort, Ash’ari (873-935), a partisan of the middle way, made of them ‘attributes of God’.

Awakening to consciousness

Among the various modes of Qur’anic interpretation, the most classical Sunni exegesis is the one defined by Qushayri (986-1072), for example, as a literal explanation (sharh)⁷. The commentators may study the Qur’an under several aspects (grammatical, linguistic, historical), and the names of Tabari (839-923), Tha’labi (d. 1035), Zamakhshari (1074-1143) and Razi (1150-1210) remain famous. Yet whether it be a more or less rationalist, a more or less allegorical understanding, we are always in the presence of a reflection upon a revealed datum, hence of an explanatory exegesis. The reader of the Qur’an will have to engage in an effort (himma, ijtihad) calling upon all the powers of his intelligence, in order to understand that the parables are like a measure, and the meaning like the grain it contains; he will take the grain of the meaning and will not concern himself with the measure⁸. A properly symbolic reading will situate itself on another level, or rather, it will be of another order.

Whatever the difficulty in defining the symbol, whether one resorts, for the European languages, to the etymology attaching this word to the Greek sumbolon (the clay token⁹, a sign of recognition that must be reconstituted to have exchange value); whether one thinks of what another Greek noun, asumboli, evokes: the idea of meeting, of junction, of fusion, of the drawing together of lips or eyelids; or again whether, according to a well-known Persian adage, the symbol represents a bridge leading to reality, one same notion underlies them all: that of a plenitude to be realised. Thus the symbol has been depicted as ‘the condition of a mind to which is given only an indirect intuition or a refracted apprehension. It is the sign of a lack’¹⁰. Will its efficacy not consist precisely in the awakening to consciousness of this lack, in the incitement to a curiosity, in the provocation to a search, what St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) calls cogitatio? At the point of interference between the communicated Word and the spirit that receives it, an active state is going to be engendered: attention, which first requires silence: ‘When the Qur’an is recited, listen to it and keep silent, so that you may receive mercy’ (Qur’an VII, 204). It is outward silence that will allow the soul to ‘receive mercy’, that is, to hear the language of mystery in the depths of the soul.

By Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch. Extract from Universalité de l’islam*, Albin Michel, 2014.*

Calligraphy of the Arabic letter alif