As far as I can tell, the Quran does not make it known or clear who or what, if anyone at all, is going to have the authority to enforce anything that one may call a law or command or rule. It does not, for instance, make it possible to turn to some group of people around me and know that they are the ‘believers’ (or unbelievers) that the Quran speaks of and to. People resort to ideas, institutions and categories outside of the Quran to sustain their ‘legal’ readings of what they call fiqh-related or legal verses. They assume, on the strength of tradition and claims made by other human beings, who is and isn’t in a particular social category as per the Quran. In their approach, such readers imagine (and assert), without warrant, that the Quran means by, for instance, “beleivers”, those people over there who say or do x y z and so on. They assume that there should be such a group who will then enforce or uphold the “commands” of the Quran – and this approach it seems led to the legitimacy of a whole class of people who were considered the experts and a whole social enterprise with its rules and legitimate status and criteria and so on an so forth – all of it external to revelation and based on a flawed approach the revelation. The flaw in that approach is this: that something that reads like a command (do x, or don’t do x or y is forbidden etc) can be and should be accepted without finding out whether what is being commanded or forbidden is true and revelatory – it is something that, for instance, if done or realized, would save me from some darkness, would deliver me from perdition and burdens and heal the wounds of my soul and be guidance to my misguidance.
Neither does the Quran ever say who and who isn’t, in empirical terms, belongs in the attitudes it describes nor does it make clear how anyone or any group woud be legitimate authorities and it does not say any such authorities are needed (those who want to read revealed claims as laws – they are claims until their truth is witnessed – insist upon the need for authority so that their legal readings of verses can become viable and sustainable).
Any claim on a page, whether it presents itself as a command or prescription or prohibution, is only a claim and my first interest as someone looking for truth from my creator (i.e. revelation) should be to reflect on the verse/claim to witness its truth. Until I have witnessed its truth, I have not yet seen it as truth from my sustainer (which is what other verses in the Quran claim is what is expected from those who are rightly oriented towards God as their guide and helper). But what does this look like in practice? People are so deeply embedded in frameworks that take truth for granted (and therefore ignore the wtinessing of it entirely, in favor of religion and knowledge and tradition and accepted cultural norms etc) that they are at a loss to begin to read revelation’s claims as mere claims, which have to be presumed true in order to witness if they actually are true but which cannot be procaimed to be true without such witnessing. To claim or proclaim something to be true, explicitly or implicitly, without knowing it to be true, would be to tell a lie. It is dishonesty. My soul rejects dishonesty. I can only hope yours does too.
So whatever ‘witnessing the truth of claims made in any book that claims to be revelation’ looks like, it does not look familiar to people. Its not something that seems intuitive. To the contrary, it seems strange, forced, unnecessary, deviant, reactionary, contrarian etc etc. This is understandable. One has to ask themselves – is their soul at peace being dishonest and mainstream (community-strengthening member of the religious tradition with due deference for the right authorities) person or honest but non-mainstream? As for me, my goal is really to help myself and so i do not care about mainstream or non-mainstream but i care about being honest and being helped (by whoever has made me since I did not make myself and i find myself deeply unreconciled with reality as I see it on my own – there is a painful and cruel gap between what I need and what is available).
Let me consider the verse 24:2 as an example: ٱلزَّانِيَةُ وَٱلزَّانِى فَٱجْلِدُوا۟ كُلَّ وَٰحِدٍ مِّنْهُمَا مِا۟ئَةَ جَلْدَةٍ وَلَا تَأْخُذْكُم بِهِمَا رَأْفَةٌ فِى دِينِ ٱللَّهِ إِن كُنتُمْ تُؤْمِنُونَ بِٱللَّهِ وَٱلْيَوْمِ ٱلْـَٔاخِرِ وَلْيَشْهَدْ عَذَابَهُمَا طَآئِفَةٌ مِّنَ ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ
AS FOR the adulteress and the adulterer flog each of them with a hundred stripes, and let not compassion with them keep you from [carrying out] this law of God, if you [truly] believe in God and the Last Day; and let a group of the believers witness their chastisement. (asad)
I have a feeling that most people who otherwise make big claims about how beautiful the Quran is to read or listen, oh the Arabic! etc (and its another topic how aesthetic experiences have come to serve as a cover-up for finding the Quran either meannigless or deeply troubling in its meanings) don’t actually look forward to opening the Quran to this verse every morning and every night to behold and enjoy the immense beauty they attribute to the Quran (so that they can look and fee like good muslims).
Ask yourself: where are you going to find out what “adultery” is or isn’t? What is or isn’t marriage in the Quran (assuming you think adultery is sex outside of marriage)? How much of what you think or have to say is from the Quran and how much is actually from outside, from other sources? I have not met many people who realize what it means to be with someone ‘in God’s name’ and why it is true and what it means to be with someone in any other way and why it fails to be truthful companionship. Most people think of ‘being together’ and ‘fornication’ in terms of traditions and rules that one does not find in the Quran at all! Also, where are you going to find a ‘party of beleivers’ to witness the floggings? who is going to flog whom? Who will determine (in a social sense) who is married, who is adulterer, why flogging the adulterer against their consent is just, what flogging actually looks like, who gives themselves or others the authority to be the police and judge and jury in a practical/legal sense? One does not find any clear answer about any of this in revelation. And it is, I think, because what I am reading is not a law to be enforced by anyone on anyone else. It is a revelational claim. The goal of the claim would be met if I, as the reader, can be convinced of its truthfulness and meaningfulness (the help and guidance and goodness and light and good news it brings to me).
What needs to be done in response to this verse, I think, are three things (maybe more)
- I need to understand what ‘believing in God and the hereafter’ means (it is, to put it in a nutshell, the safety/ease that comes to the soul if and when it sees its existence and its needs as signs of eternal existence in a higher realm (the ‘higher’ witnessed as ‘higher’ in the realization of the lowliness of the present realm) and the unbearable loss and trepidation that comes from seeing existence tending rapidly into non-existence and one’s needs and desires protesting and accusing you and the world of despairing cruelty and deep injustice)
- I need to understand that the ‘group of believers’ are all the needs and desires of the soul that need perfect fulfillment (and hence safety): they need to witness and experience the floggings and punishment (azaab) that comes if they were to seek fulfillment in pleasures except as signs revealing who their sustainer is and what perfections and beauties He wills for souls (including mine) He has made. Outside of being such signs, pleasures are pleasure of the body, without divine meaning, and to go after them as such is as much a humiliation of the soul as a public flogging of bodies would be. As a desperate and lowly seeker of pleasures, pleasures that I see as nothing but passing phenomenon (that came from nowhere and went into nothing without any residual and real meaning for a being, me, who is also nothing but a transient conciousness that just happens to exist) going to end in non-existence, I would be in the world a person who is, as if, desperately trying to kiss a hammer (because its wooden handle feels nice on my lips) that is hitting me violently and causing me to bleed and, soon, die.
- And the third thing I would need to reflect about are the concepts of ‘fornication’ and ‘flogging’ within the description of reality Quran offers – what is it and why ‘hundreds’ of lashes are the consequence (if i reflect on my reality honestly) of ‘fornication’? Some of the remarks I have made breifly above could be part of a longer reflection on what the coming together of pair could mean (“marriage” vs “adultery”). These are concepts that speak of the reality as the creator has put in place, not as cultures have theorized and instituted and practiced.
At any rate, the truths of any and all textual claim must be witnessed as truthful revelations, revealing to reason those satisfactory meanings that it doesn’t already have. When one abandons the yearning for truth that saves the soul from its predicament here and now, the Quran’s verses do not make sense (in the best case), and lead to religious authorities implementing ‘shariah’ (floggings) onto people who are told they were “lucky” to be born Muslims and now have to endure, against their will and choice, a merciful God’s brutal punishments, clearly stated in the Quran, for daring to fulfill what they see as their natural and harmless desire for intimacy outside of marriage, for instance, to their 20 year old make cousin when they are themselves 15.
The Quran as Revelation 