rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_85b60e02-26f1-5efd-be3c-b447bc2a3951.jpg"/>n looks like a trace of a specific community’s encounter with divine power—a power whose spontaneous bursts, localized at the site of one man’s body, appeared as an ongoing exchange with that community. Maybe this view compromises the dominant Sunn theological position regarding the Qur’n, namely that it is uncreated and preexisted the world.
In an idealized Salaf method of reading, we would not prioritize our own eyes over those of the Qur’n’s original audience. Instead of attempting to decipher a verse for ourselves, which leaves the Qur’n vulnerable to our prejudices, assumptions, and desires, we instead ask what the Prophet had said to his Companions about that verse, or what the Companions related to the Followers. The Companions do appear in traditional sources as Qur’n interpreters. adth reports portray ‘’isha as an authoritative teacher of the Qur’n who intervened in debates on the text’s meaning.15 Ibn ‘Abbs, the Prophet’s paternal cousin (and ancestor of the ‘Abbsids), is treated as a foundational figure in the field of exegesis, and tradition represents Muammad as praying for Ibn ‘Abbs to comprehend scripture.
According to the memory of later generations, the Companions occasionally disagreed on the meanings of verses. In conflicting opinions as to whether the fifty-third sra discusses a personal, visionary encounter between Muammad and Allh, Ibn ‘Abbs believed that Muammad had in fact seen Allh, while others (most vehemently ‘’isha) argued that no one could see Allh in this life, neither with their physical eyes nor the mystical “eyes of the heart”; they insisted that the vision was of the angel Gabriel. Even if we suspend the question of whether these opinions really belonged to the Companions to whom they are attributed, we face the challenge of the Companions’ personal subjectivities. In the case of tagging the unidentified shadd al-qawwa of Muammad’s vision as either Allh or a mere angel, we should consider that this encounter took place before either ‘’isha or Ibn ‘Abbs were born. They would have learned about Muammad’s experience many years later, after the Muslims’ migration from Mecca to Medina—a time in which Muammad’s primary conversation partners and opponents were no longer polytheists, but Jews and Christians, who would have engaged the narrative from their own theological footings. The Qur’n’s more conservative verses regarding human access to Allh are commonly dated from this period. Is it possible that Muammad’s own understanding of his vision changed with time, and that ‘’isha’s
rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_85b60e02-26f1-5efd-be3c-b447bc2a3951.jpg"/>n looks like a trace of a specific community’s encounter with divine power—a power whose spontaneous bursts, localized at the site of one man’s body, appeared as an ongoing exchange with that community. Maybe this view compromises the dominant Sunn