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undergraduate journal of middle east studies ISSUE 8 2015 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO University of Toronto Undergraduate Journal of Middle East Studies A publication of the University of Toronto ISSUE 8, 2014-2015 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Cover photo by Soroush Javadian The Shrine of Imam Reza, Mashhad, Iran (January, 2015) Please address all inquiries, comments, and subscription requests to: University of Toronto Undergraduate Journal of Middle East Studies Bancroft Building, 2nd Floor 4 Bancroft Avenue Toronto, ON Canada M5S 1C1 journal.nmcsu@gmail.com www.nmc.utoronto.ca/undergraduate-journal-of-middle-east-studies ISSN 1710-4920 Copyright © 2015 University of Toronto Undergraduate Journal of Middle East Studies A note from the editors We are delighted to present the eighth and inaugural international edition of the Undergraduate Journal of Middle East Studies. For the past eleven years, editors have striven to provide an academic forum for the presentation of the finest research and findings conducted by undergraduate students on the region of the Middle East. This year, I am honoured to have had the opportunity to lay the foundation for the with whom we hope to enhance the quality of scholarly research and debate. I would like to extend my deepest thanks and gratitude for the invaluable mentorship offered by Professor James A. Reilly and Professor Timothy P. Harrison, who have generously offered me their time and assistance, and, whose guidance has undoubtedly elevated the quality and status of our work. I am particularly indebted to our executive team, the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, and the Arts and Sciences Finally, I would like to sincerely thank the esteemed members of our advisory board who have generously offered us their time and continued support. It has truly been an honour and privilege to lead this production for the past two years and I hope the Journal will continue to thrive with the support of its readers and further its mandate of depicting a non-monolithic portrait of the region. We hope you enjoy this edition of the Journal. Shirin Shahidi Editor-in-Chief 2014-2015 Editor-in-Chief: Advisory Board *: Shirin Shahidi Editorial Board: Camille Grace Leon Angelo Donald Goodspeed Andrew Lee Shahryar Pasandideh Reagan Patrick Moska Rokay Emilie Terebessy Layout Editor: Sharon Mizbani Special Thanks Maria Brosius, D.Phil. Ahmad Mahdavi Damghani, Ph.D. Department of Near & Middle Harvard University Kaveh Farrokh, Ph.D. University of British Columbia Amir Harrak, Ph.D. Timothy P. Harrison, Ph.D. Robert Holmstedt, Ph.D. Amir Banoo Karimi, Ph.D. University of Tehran Communication Tajmah Assefi-Shirazi, Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania Officers: Calla Payne Leila Zadeh Credits Linda S. Northrup, Ph.D. James A. Reilly, Ph.D. Walid Saleh, Ph.D. Rivanne Sandler, Ph.D. Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Ph.D. Eastern Civilizations Kimia Behzadi Shahrooz Chegini Ahmad Mahdavi Damghani Timothy P. Harrison Encyclopædia Iranica Editorial Staff Soroush Javadian Amir Banoo Karimi James A. Reilly Sandra Sfeir: LSE Middle East Centre Shahed Shahidi Eugenia Tsao *All advisors with the exception of those whose institutions have been noted above are based at the University of Toronto. Contents Literature and Agency in Islamic Discourse Haris A. Durrani Columbia University Vulgärmaterialismus in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic Pia Morar University of Toronto Shane Murphy University of Pennsylvania History, Identity, and the Gulf Arab States Shahryar Pasandideh University of Toronto -Baq A Case of Wahh b Iconoclasm Adeel Mohammadi Harvard University - University of Southern California Revolutionary Terrorism in Algeria and Palestine: A Framework for Explanation Graham Atkins University of Oxford Literature and Agency in Islamic Discourse By Haris A. Durrani - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Works Cited - - - -
Published in University of Toronto Undergraduate Journal of Islamic Studies (2014-15 Issue, p.6-14): http://nmc.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/NMCSU-Journal_2015_protected.pdf Based on research under Professor Wael Hallaq at Columbia University. Literature and Agency in Islamic Discourse Haris A. Durrani Abstract This paper explores the role of amthal (instances of figurative language, translated as “similitudes,” “parables,” or “analogies”) as an element essential to the unity of form and function in Islamic intellectual discourse. The uses of amthal across premodern Islamic discourse — from revelation, to legal and theological treatises, to poetry and narratives by ulema — was for authors an essential means of instilling moral agency in their communities, allowing Muslim intellectuals to transcend textualism, empiricism, and individuality and access internal, divine states through dhawq (spiritual or “fruitional” experience). The use of amthal began to erode with the onset of modernity, causing Islamic discourse to lose the spirit of its law and descend into the polemicism of political theology, dividing form from function in scholarly works; a divide between how a work is communicated and what it communicates. Modern literature may provide a means of catalyzing change proactively: to rise above purely empirical, textual, and polemical discourse and embody the “spirit of the law,” Islamic intellectuals should seek to cross barriers between the academic and literary by integrating the use of amthal in and outside of their scholarly work. Literature and Agency in Islamic Discourse At the 2014 National Book Awards, the seasoned novelist Ursula K. Le Guin delivered a rousing acceptance speech for an award recognizing her life’s work. She addressed her fellow writers of speculative fiction, “the realists of a larger reality,” with a call to literary arms: “Hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being.” Ursula K. Le Guin. "Neil Gaiman Presents Lifetime Achievement Award to Ursula K. Le Guin." Speech presented at 2014 National Book Awards, New York, November 19, 2014. Video file, 11:36. Vimeo. Accessed December 6, 2014. http://vimeo.com/112654091. Contemporary literature has always borne a fascination for the human consequences of modernity, but there may be more to this than a simple preoccupation. Indeed, can literature serve as not only a mirror of social conditions but a catalyst? Perhaps surprisingly, traditions in Shari’a scholarship may provide direction, if not answers, to this question. Most premodern Muslim jurists and scholars were avid Sufis, composing poetry and narrative works alongside their legal treatises. As this paper will argue, the ulema’s uses of literature were not forays, experiments, or side projects. The practice was integral to Shari’a and participated as a means of instilling moral agency for its societies. This paper will ask: 1) How have the uses of figurative language in Sufi literature “Sufi literature” is redundant when discussing premodern scholarship because, paradigmatically, jurists of the premodern era were Sufi. However, I have chosen this language for the sake of clarity and emphasis. By “literature” I include both written works and similar oral traditions, as the latter were often most essential in premodernity., poetry and storytelling served the premodern Islamic legal tradition? 2) How has its use changed with the onset of the modern project, and to what effect? 3) Can the premodern tradition’s use of literature become a model for contemporary movements of proactive resistance that are attempting to dismantle the modern project, bringing about truly post-modern “ways of being?” ### Amthal Enable Moral Agency: Transcending Codified Law and History as Fluid In this section, I will argue that the use of amthal (translated as “similitudes” and “allegories” by Pickthall Marmaduke Pickthall, trans. The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (New York: Knopf, 1930), on Qur’an 22:73, 346 and 24:35, 361. and as “parable[s]” by Asad) Muhammad Asad, trans. The Message of The Qur'an (New York: The Book Foundation, 2003), on Qur’an 22:73, 517. by premodern scholars, jurists in particular, in poetry, fictional narratives, and even treatises, served as a means of enabling the recipients of these works to reach deep internal states and higher truths. These uses of amthal also promulgated notions of time and history outside of modern ideas of progress, eschewing empiricism. Ultimately, by appealing to both inner truths and a conception of history as fluid (rather than as positive) on the societal scale, jurists’ use of amthal maintained the moral agency of premodern communities. # Amthal as a means of transcending codified law by inspiring higher truths (dhawq) The vast majority of jurists across the premodern Muslim world practiced some form of poetry or storytelling, or else employed figurative language within legal doctrines which in the modern era would otherwise be written in “objective” academic legalese. For jurists, using amthal was a means of reaching for a higher, divine reality not otherwise expressible. Perhaps the most famous mathal is that which describes the nature of amthal in the first place—the renowned line from the Qur’an from which Al-Ghazali wrote The Niche of Lights, in which the higher reality of God’s divine presence is described as manifesting as “light upon light” throughout creation. The surreal verse concludes: “And [to this end] God propounds parables [amthal] unto men, since God [alone] has full knowledge of all things.” Asad, trans., on Qur’an 24:35, 541. The origins of amthal begin with Islam’s foundation: the Qur’an itself. As Al-Ghazali emphasizes, God’s divine presence cannot truly be described; it can only be understood through metaphor, through amthal. Al-Ghazali, The Niche of Lights, trans. David Buchman (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1998), 12. Although Al-Ghazali was not known for his poetry, his treatises are well known for their use of colorful analogies which are deeply instructive by suggesting higher truths. For example, he writes in The Niche of Lights, “Know also that the visible world in relation to the world of dominion is like the shell in relation to the kernel.” Ibid, 9. Such amthal abound in his work. They are a means of reaching the unknowable by experiencing a deep, inner state (dhawq, “fruitional experience”). As he describes in Deliverance from Error, dhawq accesses the highest form of knowledge, from which rational senses can be checked. Al-Ghazali, Deliverance from Error, trans. R.J. McCarthy (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2006.), 58. The experience of dhawq cannot be described in words, but in metaphors. It is in this use of figurative language in their scholarly treatises, poetry, and storytelling that these jurists could suggest deeper truths lying beyond the confines of legal and theological texts. Indeed, amthal enabled and embodied a vision of the Shari’a and Islam which transcended codified law or theology. Consider Farid ud-Din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds. The narrative poem is a Russian doll of parables: in itself, the tale is a parable for the journey toward oneness with God, within which Attar has constructed a multitude of smaller parables. He even references the unsubstantiated but oft-quoted hadith to “search for knowledge even as far as China.” Farid ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds, trans. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis (London: Penguin Books, 1984), 181. Al-Ghazali also frequently used unsubstantiated hadith because, despite being empirically in question, these narratives reverberated with the spirit of the law. Indeed, it is the spirit of what this hadith means for the essence of the faith, more than an attention to hard fact, which renders it important for Attar. Perhaps fact and value are intertwined by this use of similitudes in poetry. This use of amthal is symptomatic of the work’s holistic attempt to inspire in the audience a connection with a higher state of being: with divine knowledge. The Conference of the Birds is not only a tale about journeying to become one with the divine; the poem’s spiritual tools, amthal themselves, ferry the audience along a spiritual path toward inner truth, and thereby toward oneness with God. We find a similar unity between form and function throughout the premodern period. In Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, Hayy discovers higher truths, but the tale itself, through its extended mathal (the parable of a man living outside of human society), inspires an order of knowledge within the audience that transcends the text. When Hayy reaches the highest stages of dhawq, Ibn Tufayl must fall back on amthal from the Qur’an, after which he remarks, “Do not ask me to add anything more in words. That would be next to impossible.” Abu Bakr Ibn Tufayl, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, trans. Lenn Evan Goodman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.) 155. Consider also the introductory remarks by Lenn Goodman on Ibn Tufayl’s “Educational Philosophy,” in which Hayy is described as a symbol (amthal) for Adam or mankind. For him, “Wisdom seeks more than knowledge: it seeks an active relationship of love with the beloved, and with God.” (11) Consider also The Sea of Precious Virtues, a treatise on the best practices for Muslim rulers, which sticks not to dry commandments but utilizes various parables in order to communicate the spirit of its message. For example, the text tells a story about the bones of dead kings who sat on the throne, a lesson to a Muslim leader to rule with a consciousness that he, like the common person, is subordinate to a higher power. Julie Scott Meisami, trans., The Sea of Precious Virtues (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991), 212. Although not itself an extended mathal as was the case with Attar and Ibn Tufayl, The Sea of Precious Virtues still uses amthal as an essential means of communicating higher truths about the nature of morality, leadership, and justice; of waging the greater jihad in the inner “battle against the soul.” Ibid, 16. Through all of these, amthal were not used solely to front theology or legal doctrine at face-value. They transcended these empirical realms by evoking in audiences the spirit of the law. The figurative language of amthal has the ability to inspire audiences to reach toward their inner states, accessing these less empirical and higher truths through dhawq. This is at the root of Sufism, which was paradigmatic to premodern Muslim ways of being. Accessing internal truth was integral to Islamic conceptions of free will and agency. As such, the prevalent—if not paradigmatic—use of amthal by ulema throughout the premodern period rendered critical impact on the moral agency of their societies. By assimilating “self to God (so far as lies in human power),” a Muslim unifies his or her will with God’s, “not as something alien” but as a Platonic means of fulfilling one’s own existence. Goodman, Introduction, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, 17. By reaching an inner state of higher truth through dhawq, one shirks external influences (jihad al-nafs) and aligns with divine will, like a moth consumed in flame, as in Al-Hallaj’s refrain, “I am He whom I love / and He whom I love is I!” Al-Ghazali, The Niche of Lights, 16. This butts heads with the modern conception of un-thinkingness in the “banality of evil,” as described by Arendt, whereby individuals are barred from accessing their inner conscience. As she wrote of Hitler’s regime, Note that the Third Reich was far from an exception of modernity—it was a symptom of it. “Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation.” Instead, “the law of Hitler’s land” controlled the people’s “voice of conscience.” Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Group, 2006), 150. In contrast, amthal, seen as a means of inspiring dhawq, provide a path toward moral agency. # Amthal as a means of conceiving fluid notions of history The use of amthal by premodern ulema instilled moral agency within their societies in another way: by presenting a conception of history outside of modern ideas of progress. Consider the example of Ibn Battuta’s travels. They are rife with “tall tales” of mystics who can freeze minds, Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, trans. Samuel Lee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 53. jogis that can transform into floating cubes, Ibid, 162. and trees which shed leaves bearing hadith. Ibid, 171. Mysticism is a prevalent element in The Travels of Ibn Battuta, with amthal evoking deep truths about, for example, the nature of free will in the case of the sheikh who freezes the minds of his dinner guests, or the peril of knowledge in the case of the transforming jogis. Ibn Battuta did not set out to render complete sociological treatises on the various peoples he encountered and their histories, as was the case with Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah. His narrative’s focus on anecdotes and mystical stories indicates that he was chiefly interested in history as a form of entertainment, not as an empirical means by which present conditions were defined. Ibn Battuta did not establish empirical notions of history, but fluid ones. By using amthal to conceive of history as fluid, Ibn Battuta’s narrative runs counter to modern notions of progress. Time was not positive, creative, unfolding, as it was, perhaps, for Ibn Khaldun. In The Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun writes of building knowledge from tabula rasa through “sensual perception” and the “ability to think,” but he does not speak of dhawq. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 340. On poetry, he argues that “Speech is like a mould for ideas” but does not contain ideas themselves, Ibid, 55. which seems to disregard the importance of amthal as an aid to dhawq. This notion of language counters Nietzsche’s characterization of knowledge as “a mobile army of metaphors,” that “truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.” Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense." In The Viking Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1968), 46-47. But for premodern Islamic scholarship, history and its language was not a tool of epistemic violence by which the subject—Ibn Battuta’s audience (or perhaps Ibn Battuta himself)—was transformed, reshaped, and restructured by such a “mobile army of metaphors,” which for Nietzsche represented the fabricated truth of an empirical universe. For Ibn Battuta and the host of similar narratives of his time, amthal allowed for the fluidity of history, free from the external pressures of positive time and of a strictly empirical, causally-driven view. Amthal were a key ingredient in this project, an erosion of the modern barrier between fact and value, a means toward the premodern Weltanschauung in which reality was not empirical but “enchanted,” intertwined inseparably with the unknowable. Wael Hallaq, The Impossible State (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 164-66. # What kind of agency was instilled by these uses of amthal? To this point I have left the term “audience” undefined, and now that the question of moral agency has been settled, I would like to define and contextualize the audiences ulema adressed in their works. It is important to emphasize that their works were rarely received by individuals but, as in communal prayer, by groups—by communities. Their poems were performed to crowds, and legal doctrines were not merely codified—they were lived and expressed through organic relationships between jurists and their communities. Ibid, 55-7. Even historical accounts, such as Ibn Battuta’s travels, served as a form of communal entertainment, to the extent that perhaps The Travels of Ibn Battuta as a text is but a relic of what it meant to these communities as a series of oral narratives. Vital to the premodern Islamic tradition was oral communication, which lived in the social space between individuals rather than with individuals themselves (which is the case for purely textual sources). Therefore, like communal prayer, the deep internal states inspired through the amthal described above were reached within communal contexts. Agency was inspired not only within individuals but, more importantly, for communities writ large. In perhaps the same way Al-Ghazali’s “technologies of the self” contributed to achieving good disposition, Al-Ghazali, On Disciplining the Self, trans. Muhammad Nur Abdus Salaam (Chicago: Great Books of the Islamic World, 2010), generally, as well as Hallaq, Chapter 5 in The Impossible State, “The Political Subject and Moral Technologies of the Self.” which would lead toward a more fully-realized agency (through higher forms of knowledge accessed through deeper internal states), amthal, then, were a means toward the moral agency of premodern Muslim communities. In other words, amthal were a critical means of performing jihad-al-nafs, with implications for the sociomoral fabric of premodern societies. ### Modernity, Empiricism and the Rise of Polemics The use of amthal both as an extended similitude (as with parables like The Conference of the Birds or Hayy Ibn Yaqzan) and within “academia” (such as the figurative language and parables in The Sea of Precious Virtue or the legal and theological treatises of Al-Ghazali, or with nonfiction narratives like Ibn Battuta’s) represents a paradigm within premodern Islamic discourse and the way in which it fostered the spirituality and moral agency of its communities. Yet as one approaches the modern era, the use of amthal becomes overshadowed by the straightforward, empirical language of polemic. Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah suddenly became popular because of its empirical, sociological approach. Similarly, ulema, even those with great poetic abilities like Sayyid Qutb, Hamid Algar, introduction to Social Justice in Islam, by Sayyid Qutb, 1-17. Translated by John B. Hardie and Hamid Algar (Oneonta: Islamic Publications International, 2000), 1-2 and 7-8. became well known via their more straightforward doctrines, declarations, and treatises. Leaders from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to Muhammad Faraj gained authority and popularity because they were known for their doctrines more than their poetry, storytelling, or figurative language. This is not to say that amthal were not employed, or that all ulema became polemicists. Poetry was used, for example, by Faraj in his treatise “The Neglected Duty” when he quotes ‘Abdullah ibn Mubarak, though poetry is cited in the service of propaganda, of rallying behind jihad for political ideology, Muhammad ‘Abd Al-Salaam Faraj, “The Neglected Duty,” in Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought, eds. Roxanne L. Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 330. rather than of instilling in the reader a deep, internal state through dhawq. Similarly, the Charter of Hamas quotes Muhammad Iqbal Hamas, “Charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) of Palestine,” in Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought, eds. Roxanne L. Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 367. and toasts the value of Islamic art and literature, but its purpose is merely for the sake of “ideological education and invigorating nourishment” to maintain “high spirits” in hard times. Ibid, 374. Not all modern ulema are polemicists, but on the whole it appears that the rise of the modern project has eroded the essential role and purpose of amthal in Islamic discourse. This shift away from the centrality of amthal in Islamic discourse has deep consequences for the moral agency of Muslim communities today. Shari’a has lost its essence not only because modern legal systems have resulted in the codification of its law, but because the language of Shari’a—or at least of those who claim to lead it—has itself lost its essence. The “popular” ulema are no longer trained jurists by necessity, and are no longer known for their poetry or use of figurative language as much as they are known for the force or persuasiveness of their political ideology. As with Ibn Khaldun, form and function are not approached in unison. Shari’a no longer lives in parables, narratives, and figurative language that seek to encapsulate the spirit of the law. Through this erosion of amthal in and tangent to juristic practice, Shari’a has become direct, straightforward, and rigid. It belongs to the empirical. The sad irony of the situation is that many of these modern scholars believe the strength of their straightforward polemics is a means of resisting the modern project and constructing Islamic ways of being that are independent of it—yet the diminished prevalence of amthal in their texts suggests that the opposite is at work. If amthal are a means, through dhawq, of instilling agency in an audience, then the erosion of amthal is detrimental to this agency. Scholars of Islam may be calling for a return (whatever this may mean for them) to Islamic ways of being, but the form does not match the function of their written work. In function, their imperative is toward new ways of being, however mired in political ideology; in form they employ the rigid, empirical methods of modern political writing, where amthal are tools of promoting political ideas rather than a means by which audiences can understand ideas not capable of being put into words, let alone promoted or propagandized. Without amthal, modern Islamic discourse fails to take that next step into Al-Ghazali’s higher state of knowledge, and thereby leaves audiences within the unchecked realms of “sense-data” and rational faculty, within the world of empiricism and positive history. As a result, external factors—the “technologies of the self” of the modern state, as Wael Hallaq describes in the Impossible State Hallaq, 117.—become the driving force for action. Perhaps this is why, for all their talk about dismantling the modern state, the range of scholars today, from “moderate” Islamists to jihadists, have merely served to continue modern ways of being. Across the spectrum, the rhetoric appears dangerously reactive. Indeed, Shari’a was nothing without the spirit of its law. And the spirit of the law was upheld, at least in good part, by the spiritual and communal role of amthal within and tangent to its practice. # Modern Literature As A Catalyst for Change Perhaps predictably, the landscape appears bleak. But the conundrum Shari’a faces today may find an ally in modern literature, and, as I will argue, premodern Shari’a can inform today’s literature in valuable ways. Integrating amthal into the language of today’s ulema and their practices may serve as a means toward change, but the critical question I would like to pose is whether modern literature, Muslim or otherwise, can employ the premodern Islamic understanding of amthal in order to proactively forge new ways of being outside of the modern project. Authors today already understand their use of parables and figurative language in much the same way that premodern ulema thought of amthal. In the Introduction to her classic novel The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin writes that literature “says in words what cannot be said in words,” accessing higher truths not capable of comprehension in straightforward language. For Le Guin, “all fiction is metaphor,” and her adherence to speculative fiction is merely an extension of this. As with the amthal in Qur’anic and premodern Islamic writings, Le Guin is not bound to empiricism. Fiction—“lies”—is her means of expressing reality. In an almost Sufi turn of phrase, she writes: “I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.” Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace Books, 2010), i-xix. Similarly, it is quite obvious Some modern ulema’s fixation with taking every verse in the Qur’an at literal face-value is another indication of the erosion of the value of amthal in modern Islamic discourse. Surely God does not sit on a physical throne! that God is not actually light (literally speaking, “light upon light” is not even logically sound), and it would be ludicrous to believe a flock of talking birds would decide to go on any kind of journey for a mystical creature. Yet, as with Le Guin, these “lies,” these “metaphors” and parables—amthal—are a vital means toward expressing unutterable truths and engendering these truths in the hearts and minds of audiences. If, like premodern Islamic works, modern literature has the ability to transcend empiricism and access higher truths, does this imply that modern literature can also instill moral agency within its audiences, acting as a catalyst for movement away from the modern project? This problem returns us to the defining question of the audience. Whereas forms of amthal were received orally within communal contexts in premodern Muslim societies, literature and its metaphors are today received textually and individually. It is true that literature today is often experienced orally and communally through intellectual or social events such as book readings, spoken word poetry performances, and so on, but paradigmatically literature is not received in the same way as in premodern Islamic discourse. It is received individually and textually rather than communally. Modern literature, then, inspires agency for the individual but not necessarily for the community. It is an individually-experienced jihad al-nafs rather than a communal one. By birthing agency within the individual audience member, modern literature encounters the Kantian problem of unbound knowledge. In other words, while it is true that literature may inspire deeper understandings akin to dhawq, they are not bound by a “social praxis,” Hallaq, 55. by a sociomoral fabric which works to form Al-Ghazali’s “good disposition” and maintains the strength of its moral imperative. If we hypothetically consider the opposite case—if modern literature were received communally and orally—it would be a stretch to then claim that communal reception of a work would inherently entail moral bounds on knowledge. As previously stated, Arendt wrote of evil in the Third Reich as losing “the quality of temptation,” with social and legal norms governing the community’s moral agency. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 150. The grassroots is as integral to the modern project as its most obvious proponents, its lawmakers and executors. It would be unreasonable to assume that literature and amthal as they were received and understood in premodern Islamic societies could even exist under modern conditions. Given this, perhaps the current manner in which literature is received—textually, individually—is a lesser evil. At the very least, literature’s emphasis on a unity of function and form, as was the case for premodern discourse, seems partly capable of moving hearts and minds out of the mire of the modern way of being. It is a catalyst of sorts, a jihad waged not with physical violence, but epistemic. ### In sum, it is now clear that the prevalence of amthal across the scope of premodern Islamic discourse, from revelation to legal and theological treatises, to poetry and narratives by ulema, was an essential means of achieving moral agency for their communities by transcending textualism, empiricism, and individuality and accessing internal, divine states with dhawq. This use of amthal began to erode with the onset of modernity, causing Islamic discourse to lose the spirit of the law and descend into the polemicism of political theology, dividing form from function. For literature in Islamic discourse to truly become a catalyst for a shift away from the modern project, the problem seems to lie in the divide between literature and academia. Whereas premodern ulema were steeped in poetry and narrative, using amthal in even their most scholarly treatises on law or theology, it is not customary, on a paradigmatic level, for ulema today to practice both. There are writers, and there are scholars, but rarely are they one and the same. Modern academia may speak of the unknowable, of dhawq and of higher knowledge, but it communicates in the language of empiricism; modern literature may speak of the empirical and of morality or community, but it communicates to the individual in metaphors, the language of the unknowable. Perhaps this is a manifestation of the schism between fact and value. As Booker-Prize finalist Hisham Matar said, “Perhaps the focus [of literature] should not be on unifying the personal and political but rather on the gravity between them...Art might just be that—a gesture of hope. The hope involved in artistic creation that has its feet in the gutter of reality and poverty and injustice, and has its eyes on the stars...It is the hope of active engagement of human reality, a hope implicated in history." Hisham Matar, “Narratives of Social Protest: Personal and Political”, speech, Columbia University, New York, October 17, 2014. In the same way literature must cross the boundaries between personal and political, between individual and community, Muslim intellectuals—and modern society in general—must be comfortable crossing between the academic and the literary. In order to truly enable Islamic discourse to instill agency and catalyze paradigm shifts which forge new futures, modern ulema must walk the ground between academia and literature, the knowable and the unknowable. Bibliography Algar, Hamid. Introduction to Social Justice in Islam, by Sayyid Qutb, 1-17. Translated by John B. Hardie and Hamid Algar. Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2000. Al-Ghazali. Deliverance from Error. Translated by R.J. McCarthy. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2006. ———. The Niche of Lights. Translated by David Buchman. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1998. ———. On Disciplining the Self. Translated by Muhammad Nur Abdus Salaam. Chicago: Great Books of the Islamic World, 2010. Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Group, 2006. Asad, Muhammad, trans. The Message of The Qur'an. New York: The Book Foundation, 2003. Attar, Farid Ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds. Translated by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis. London: Penguin Books, 1984. Euben, Roxanne L., and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, eds. Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Hallaq, Wael. The Impossible State. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Ibn Battuta. The Travels of Ibn Battuta. Translated by Samuel Lee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Ibn Khaldun. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Ibn Tufayl, Abu Bakr. Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. Translated by Lenn Evan Goodman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace Books, 2010.  ———. "Neil Gaiman Presents Lifetime Achievement Award to Ursula K. Le Guin." Speech presented at 2014 National Book Awards, New York, November 19, 2014. Video file, 11:36. Vimeo. Accessed December 6, 2014. http://vimeo.com/112654091. Matar, Hisham. Speech, Narratives of Social Protest: Personal and Political, Columbia University, New York, October 17, 2014. Meisami, Julie Scott, trans. The Sea of Precious Virtues. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991. Nietzsche, Friedrich. "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense." In The Viking Portable Nietzsche, 46-47. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking, 1968. Pickthall, Marmaduke, trans. The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. New York: Knopf, 1930. Durrani / 16