"Music that has the scent of Islam"

Rasmussen says that Indonesians use the term "music that breathes or has the scent of Islam." Discuss.   

Averroes: The Decisive Treatise

This treatise seems to say that philosophy is not only allowed by the Law, but demanded by it. However, it concludes by saying, "Thus whoever tampers with them, by making an interpretation not apparent in itself, or [at any rate] more apparent to everyone than they are (and that [greater apparency] is something nonexistent), is rejecting [25] their wisdom and rejecting their intended effects in procuring human happiness (184).

How is one to determine whether an interpretation is "apparent" or not? This treatise seems to believe it has solved the problem of philosophy and religion, but who can judge this matter of "apparent interpretation" when everyone has his or her own perspective?

How does this idea relate to Midrash and the arguments of interpretation?

Islamic Art and Rules

It was very interesting to learn and know the rules of what kinds of pictures and drawings are not or accepted in Muslim homes and places of worship. I know that calligraphy is a very important kind of art in decorating Mosque . The reading mentioned that Muslims have to be careful about their way of displaying pictures because most prayers are done at Muslim homes. I did not know that display of images and pictures of prophets are forbidden in Islam. I thought Mosques were decorated with pictures of people, animals and other things when I looked them (Mosques) from outside. In Islam, “Statues are believed to bring danger of idolatry” (JCM, 407). It seemed to me that Islam is the only Religion, which rejects statues and display of human and animal pictures in Muslim homes. But I was wondering about Muslim leaders who have their statues displayed everywhere in their countries. How does Islam consider those statues? What kinds of materials besides Arabic letters are used to embellish Muslim Mosques?

Understanding the Qur'an

The experience of the Qur’an in traditional Islamic countries is different from Western attempts to read it as a story with a beginning, middle, and end. For all Muslims, the Qur’an is first experienced in Arabic. When they are learning the Suras, they are not memorizing them like Westerners would, Sells says they are interiorizing the inner rhythms, sound patterns, and textual dynamics-taking it to heart in the deepest manner.

In response to JBK's post, Sells says "the Qur'anic sound figures occur in connection with 3 moments: prophecy, creation, and the day of reckoning. Because the Qur’anic experience is not about reading the text from beginning to end, one does not need to be a Muslim to have this experience, but I believe that one has to act like a Muslim and be open to reciting the text, just as Muslims do. This is because when you read the Qur'an, these 3 moments appear seperate. However, they become intertwined when they are said in Qur'anic recitation. Sells also references gender as a major aspect of Qur'anic sound figures. Although books like the Bible and Torah are male dominated, the Qur'an is gender balanced. He also talks about how the word spirit in Arabic can be both masculine and feminine. If the Qur'an lost these sound figures, it would ultimately damage the way Islam is perceived to treat women in society.

Believe in one God? or the same God?

After I finished reading JCM chapter 6, “Monotheism in Islam,” I came up with one serious question.

Do Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe in the same God?

When President Bush was asked by the same question 3 years ago, President Bush replied, “I believe we worship the same God.”
Scripturally, the Quran is known to insist that its God is the same as the God of Judaism and Christianity; Chronologically, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all recognize Abraham as the first generation.

If President Bush is right, then, why do the Moon God of Mecca, known as Allah, the God of Israel, known as YHWH, and the Christian God, known as God the Father, seem so different from one anther (honestly, I do not see the difference between YHWH and the God the Father. However, the Moon God of Mecca seems so separated from the other two)?

Why do we believe in different doctrines and practices if Allah, YHWH, and God the Father (Jehovah) are the same Supreme Being? Why do we use different scriptures? Why are those different scriptures (the Torah, Qu’ran, and the New Testament) written in different styles if they have been come from the same God?

Why are they so different while believing in the same God?

Revelation of the Qur'an on an Experiential Level

Nearly all of the scholars we've read on the Qur'an refer to its emotional effect on Muslim believers when they recite or hear it being recited. Its sacred qualities as revelation have been described by Muslims as wahy "a sort of idea-word inspiration that came upon Muhammad's 'heart,' as the Qur'an itself declares (26:192-195) [Corrigan et al., p. 60], or ijaz "inimitability," or the Quranic "voice" nazm (its distinctive style of sound and composition) [Sells (2005), p.184]- qualities that apparently are accessible more on an experiential level than a purely analytical or intellectual one. And also, accessible only in its original Arabic.

That being said, Michael Sells in Approaching the Qur'an (and many others), still tries to point to specific features in the form and sounds of the text of the Qur'an, and the ways it is recited and heard, that convey these rather intangible qualities of what Andrew in class called the Qur'an's "sacrality." What are the specific, precise features we can point to in the Qur'an itself, and/or the way Muslims relate to it, that both Muslims and non-Muslims could equally recognize as features of a sacred scripture? How would you as a critical interpreter of religions explain to a non-Muslim what in the text itself makes the Qur'an sacred? Is the experience of the Qur'an as a sacred scripture something only Muslims can know or feel?

Sells suggests that the Qur'an's understanding of "spirit" - ruh in Arabic - is a particularly good example of the distinctively sacred way the Qur'an conveys its message:

One key aspect of Qur'anic articulation is the sound figure. The sound figure is particularly subtle. It is developed within particular Suras (intratextually) and across Suras that are widely separated in the written version of the Qur'an (intertextually)...The Qur'anic sound figures occur in connection with three moments: prophecy, creation, and the day of reckoning. These are boundary moments, points of contact between eternal and temporal realms, in which the structures of language (with temporality built into them) are transformed through contact with a realm beyond temporality. In each moment, the Qur'an invokes the spirit (ruh). [p. 185, my emphasis].

What is he talking about? What are examples of these "sound figures?" (E.g., in Sura 97, the Sura of Destiny "al-Qadr" [go to pages 31 and 32]) And are the "sound figures" structures of language that are universally accessible, i.e., for which one need not be a Muslim to see, hear, and experience? Is the expression of ideas through sound figures the Qur'an's distinctively sacred mode of expression? Is this similar or different to the main ways Jews have classically related to the Torah as a sacred scripture?