#  Video: Narrating for Love and Change: Reading Women’s Stories in Search of a Feminist Qur’anic Narrator 

 





December 03, 2024

 

 

 

Zahra Moballegh is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies in Iran. Her current research project is "Narrating for Love and Change: Reading Women’s Stories in Search of a Feminist Qur’anic Narrator."

This event took place on December 3, 2024.



 

  

 



 

 

 

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: Narrating for Love and Change. Reading Women's Stories in Search of a Feminist Quranic Narrator. December 3, 2024.

ANN BRAUDE: Good afternoon. I'm going to start making some announcements while you enjoy your lunch. Feel free to get some more food. This will be, of course, our last public lecture for the semester, but our spring term lectures are all scheduled. And we look forward to seeing you at those.

We'll hear from Wendy Mallette on March 4, who will talk about her project on Lesbian Feminist Killjoys-- Sin, Pessimism, and Queer Histories, which we really look forward to. And then we'll hear from Ashley Bacchi. Where's Ashley? There she is. On March 26, on her project on The Sibyl-- A Forgotten Female Voice of Prophetic Justice, which should be really fascinating. And then finally, we will wrap up the year with Aysha Hidayatullah's project, This Body Called Muslims. So please, for those of you who are here for Islamic studies, don't miss this one on April 8. It connects with the work we're going to hear today in very interesting ways.

Our speaker today is Zahra Moballegh, who we're so pleased to have with us after a remarkable career in Iran as a real innovator in feminist scholarship, in philosophical and Islamic studies in Iran. She's published the first book in Persian about feminist philosophy and theology. Her book, Faith As Reason-- An Epistemological Approach to Feminist Theology.

She's also published a number of other books in Farsi and worked for many years, for eight years, at the Encyclopaedia Islamica Foundation, where she wrote and edited many entries about Quranic concepts, including the insightful entry on women in the Quran, which gave birth to the work that you're going to hear about today. Before she begins that, though, I do want to also mention one of her-- I believe this is your most recent book in Farsi, Between Sacredness and Violence-- In Search of the Roots of Violence in Metaphysics.

And this book is also a bridge to the work that she does here today. It investigates the main critics of violence in the philosophical traditions, from pre-Socratic philosophers, through Levinas' and Derrida's, and concluding with the feminist philosophers' critiques of violence. As she launches her first book in English, which she's going to speak to you about today, we hope that all of these other works will also be translated now that she is becoming an English language scholar.

So I won't say anything about the project you're going to talk to us today, but I'm happy to invite to the podium Zahra Moballegh.

\[APPLAUSE\]

ZAHRA MOBALLEGH: Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much, Ann, for this generous introduction and for whatever you are doing at the program of Women's Studies in Religion. Thanks to everyone who is supporting this program. Thanks to Dean Marla. She supports us so much. Thanks to Catherine, Professor Ahmed, whoever that supports this program. And special thanks to-- Tracey is not here-- for her organizational works. Without her works, we can't do whatever we are doing here.

And so many thanks to my colleagues, sisters here-- Aysha, Wendy, Bacchi, Ghazal, and Herminia-- for the insightful comments on my work. I learned a lot from their insights. And special thanks to my closest friend and companion, Ali, for his unconditional support. Every line of my research here has been a shared journey that was made possible with his boundless encouragement.

So it's another time that I have the opportunity to speak here, present about my project in this program. Since beginning it in 2018, it has experienced numerous interruptions and challenges. Now, as it is near to its conclusion, I can step back and examine it from a broader perspective. As you can see from the title, today, I will discuss the narrator or narrators of the Quranic stories as a collective voice.

But before diving in, I would like to briefly share what this project has meant to me and the intentions behind this project. For me, studying Islamic texts and analyzing the stories of women is not merely an academic investigation aimed at achieving an egalitarian reading of Islam for benefit of Muslim women. It is not just about the fact that today, women in, for example, in Iran are being controlled and suppressed under Islamic rulings regarding hijab and other things and are resisting and fighting back, which is a deeply significant issue in itself.

And as you may know, recently, very recently, a law was passed in Iran that imposes shocking financial penalties against women for varying levels of dress. And this law was justified through a particular reading of Islamic text. But so it's very important that we analyze this text. We have different readings. We critique these kind of rulings.

But beyond this, I believe that the issue of women is fundamentally and inherently both theological and political. Women's bodies have historically been the battlegrounds for exclusionary, discriminatory, and oppressive theological policies. Womanhood itself could arguably be considered the greatest historical symbol of such exclusionary theological frameworks. All the women who has always been and had the potential to form the foundation for inclusive and compassionate theological systems, this potential has been constantly overlooked. Instead, the category of woman has been inverted into a pretext for exclusion and enmity, and making some beings as the others.

From this perspective, women, or the category of women, represents a neglected theological category with untapped capacity for reform. Simultaneously, throughout much of history, it has been treated as a political category for discrimination and exclusion. If we are to acknowledge the weaknesses or even the crises in democracy, our democracies today, if we recognize the need to rethink concepts such as justice, diversity, and humanity, then all of these require innovations in religious and theological studies and the studies that address the issue of women.

Unless we revise theological models with a focus on women, we cannot expect meaningful changes in democratic paradigms or justice frameworks. Whether we are believers in a specific religion, agnostics, or atheists, we remain intertwined with the shared history of humanity. A continuum of myth, narratives, and the leaves preceding us. As human, we possess an idea or ideal of what it means to be human and to be connected to something beyond the individuals we know personally. These ideals or these beyond guides our interactions and aspirations.

So theology in its broader sense encompasses all of us, because it addresses the fundamental events of existence that are birth, death, and the experiences that connect us and encore us in the face of mortality. Almost without exception, we entered this world connected to the womb of a mother. From the beginning, we were a we, existentially linked to a mother. Yet we quickly forget this foundational unity. And instead of using this as a basis for theological rethinking, we let it fade and reducing the category of woman to an excuse for discrimination and oppression. I will return to this point at the end of this presentation.

So today, I wish to explore the ethical possibilities within what I offered as the concept of the Quranic narrator in crafting a collective and loving theology that transcends the boundaries of belief and non-belief. I will argue how the Quranic narrator, especially in the stories of women, not only supports the women within these narratives, but more importantly functions as a collective narrator who is capable of viewing the stories' words from multiple perspectives and empathizing with diverse beings and fostering solidarity and coexistence.

These narrators' identity can be reconstructed as one stretched across history, characterized by empathy, connection with other, and collaborative action towards shared ethical goals. Its profound empathy is evident in its use of the pronoun "we" that encompasses itself and others as well. It embodies the act of collective storytelling, which reaches its culmination through the participation of every member of this collection.

I argue that this narrator is distinct from God. A close analysis of the Quranic text and the speech acts of this collective narrator can lead to a new understanding of the Quranic text nature and history. This, in turn, allows us to broaden or reframe our questions about the history and the origins and functions of the Quran. As you all know, for centuries, Muslims have read and interpreted the Quran to uncover the meanings and messages that God intended to convey through its words and to understand his messages that were intended in the text.

Of course there have been theological and exegetical schools that have diverse intentions, diverse theories behind them. And they had many significant disputes among them. And at times, they accusing one another of heresy or issuing severe judgments. But the overarching view has been that the Quran is the word of God, and the task of the commentators, or the mufassir, is to uncover the divine meaning within these words.

With the advent of modern methodologies in the study of religion and hermeneutics, however, critical questions about Quranic interpretation have shifted toward exploring the historical formation of texts and its social contexts and the literary roots of these texts. These questions, initially raised by Western scholars, have examined how the Quranic text was formed, who authored or compiled the Quran, and what sources might have been available to the authors of the text.

Scholars have investigated discrepancies, whether meaning or significance discrepancies, between the Quranic narratives and their biblical counterparts. This includes inquiries into the hypothetical library of texts or oral traditions that may have been accessible to the prophet Muhammad or later compilers of the text, as well as the religious and cultural context in which the text of the Quran was emerged and evolved.

It has been now evident that the Quran was not originally a complete written book in its beginning days, but rather, began as an oral rhythmic recitation that developed over time and eventually being recorded in various forms before solidifying into a single codex. Throughout the long history of Quranic interpretation, literary and aesthetic approaches to the text have also existed. Though their prevalence has been limited.

Often, these approaches took the form of aesthetic reflections on scattered parts of the Quran. And they contributed little to a comprehensive historical understanding of the Quran or a systematic theology. Only if we consider mystical approaches to the Quran as aesthetic approaches, then we can argue that some of the most coherent theological systems within the Islamic tradition belong to this aesthetic or literary study. Nevertheless, literary approaches pose questions to the text that are often neglected in traditional exegetical discourses or in modern historical investigations.

One particularly important literary method that we can read the Quranic text through it is narratology, or narrative criticism. Unfortunately, this approach has rarely been applied systematically to the Quran. Narratology examines stories or narrative discourses. And by narrative discourse or a story in a very simplified meaning, I mean a text or a speech that, through the voice of a narrator, conveys a sequence of events over time and space usually constructing a plot and involving characters engaged in conflicts or challenges that they must overcome.

So narratology begins with a key premise that the narrative text must be treated as a self-contained word that establishes its own fictional reality to be understood and interpreted according to its internal logic and its internal structure. And for this reason, narratology sets aside the authority of history, exegetical traditions, and theological ideologies. And after all of these, the narratology engages with the story as an autonomous linguistic event that is being unfolded before the audiences.

So at first glance, it may seem that narratology or narrative criticism decontextualized or depoliticized the text. However, the opposite is true. From the outset, narrative criticism frames its engagement with any text or any oral narrative as inherently political. Its central questions revolve around the rights and power to speak. Questions like, whose voice is heard in the narrative and whose voice is omitted. Who is telling the story, and for what purposes? And how does the narrator construct the narrative word and represent its characters? What elements are left unsaid, implicit, or ambiguous?

These inquiries link storytelling to the issues of power and ideology. And especially in the case of the Quran, that is replete with silences and omissions. It is very tightly intertwined with the politics of narrative authority. In the Quranic narrative style-- I have discussed this earlier, so I don't elaborate on this much. In the Quranic narrative style, these silences or many gaps that are left in the plot have often been overlooked in its reception history. When acknowledged, they are usually dismissed or interpreted as rhetorical devices such as brevity or explain in modern comparative readings as the result of the author's incomplete knowledge of biblical sources or as deliberate ideological adjustments.

\[COUGHS\] Excuse me. I have water. Thank you so much, Ann. However, from a narratological perspective, these silences are an integral part of the Quranic storytelling style. They are purposeful narrative tools woven into the fabric of the stories that are capable of fundamentally altering the plots and shaping how we should understand these plots.

By examining these silences in the Quranic stories, especially those involving women, we can uncover a different portrait of the narrator of these stories. The Quranic narrator, particularly in the stories of women and more broadly throughout the entire text, is neither a transcendent god that traditionally has been presumed in theology, nor an individual such as the prophet Muhammad, or a group of scribes or editors from the first century of Islam.

When viewed through the lens of literary and narrative criticism, the Quranic narrator or the agent who communicates with us through the voice and act of storytelling emerges as a strange feminist narrator. In a sense, each story, or more broadly, the entire Quranic text, can be seen as a set of speech acts performed by this narrator. And these acts simultaneously reveal and conceal these narrators.

The narrator hides within the wards and stories it conveys, and often making us forget that there is a voice behind this narrative textual world. And at the same time, the only way to recognize and uncover this narrator is to peel back the layers of the story, the layers of the words, and the layers of the silences to see who is constructing and directing and narrating these auditory visual world.

As Irene de Jong notes, "Perhaps the most central concept in narratology is that of the narrator. For most narratologists, his presence or her presence is the main criterion for calling a text a narrative. A narrative text is a text in which a narrative agent tells a story. It is an important principle of narratology that this narrator cannot automatically be equated with the author. Even when he bears the same name"-- he is not the author of the text-- "rather, he is a creation of that author."

So in our analysis of the Quranic narrator, especially in stories about women, we sought to answer some key questions. Who is this narrator? Whose voice is telling the stories? And how does it construct the fictional worlds of women, and more broadly, the words within the stories and the whole text. What purposes guide its narrative construction, and how does it represent or marginalize certain voices? Where is the narrator unable to speak, and where does it intervene in its created world and where it is powerless to act?

In each story, we analyzed where the narrator stands within the narrative world. Not merely in terms of its physical location, but also its emotional and evaluative stance toward the characters and toward the events and processes in the storyboard. Thus, the narrator, beyond describing the characters, take an emotional and judgmental position toward the characters.

Concepts like focalization, where the narrator focalizes on some characters or on some events. And the narrative movements. The verbs that are used for showing the movements of the characters, like approaching, retreating, drawing near, or stepping away, all of these help us identify the narrator's physical and emotional position within these stories. So the familiar term that we all know and we use or refer to as the point of view, this term in narrative analysis becomes a complex framework to reconstruct the role and position of the narrator in relation to the story and its characters.

Through this study, we identified recurring features of the narrators in the Quranic stories. For example, the Quranic narrator consistently portrays the women in their stories positively, while avoiding at the same time detailed characterizations of women who play negative roles. And furthermore, in every narrative that features a positively portrayed woman, an underlying patriarchal cultural atmosphere is subtly constructed beneath the story. And this patriarchal context is often critiqued through narrative tools such as the characters' silences or complex metaphors.

For this reason, the Quranic narrator could be described as an advocate for the women in these stories. Or with some, I used the word "feminist" for this narrator, with some flexibility and caution, because in the context of this tradition and this text, it is a little disputative to use the word "feminist" for this narrator. But I don't think that I can find a better term for this narrator.

And beyond this shared characteristic of the narrator of the Quran, our analysis of Quranic stories revealed a fundamental difference between the narrator and the traditional theological conception of the Quranic author. Whether we understand this as a divine author or a human author. The Quranic narrator takes on different forms in various stories. Sometimes it is embodied, tangible, and deeply human. Sometimes it is transcendent and godlike. And sometimes, it is fused with elements of nature.

It is distinct from the character of God that is depicted in the Quranic narrative words. Here, I should remind that narrative and literary criticism do not address the existence of an external objective God that is outside or is not. Instead, narrative criticism focused on the narrator as a textual construct. In nearly every case in the Quranic narratives, the Quranic narrator does not claim to be a god and clearly differentiates itself from the character that is identified as God within the stories.

For instance, in the story of Mary in Surah Al-Imran, the narrative unfolds as a series of fragmented recollections by a deeply affectionate and lover narrator. It begins with a brief account of Mary's mother before her birth, and then transits to a mention of Zachariah, and then presents several seemingly scattered scenes of Mary, who joins worshippers and later the miraculous birth of her child.

When we attempt to reconstruct the plot or the chain of the cause and effect relationships, we find that the key turning points of the story are left unsaid or remain silent. Yet the narrator, who acts throughout these mosaic-like narrative as an external observer and is reporting the scenes and actions from outside, intervenes in two crucial moments. When Mary's mother laments giving birth to a daughter instead of a son. And during the scene of casting lots to determine Mary's guardian.

In both instances, the narrator's intervention critiques patriarchal norms and helping us reconstruct the silent turning points of the story. Here, in this story, we encounter a narrator who deeply loves its protagonist. Yet despite being the creator and director of this narrative world, the narrator is unable to save Mary. In a scene where Mary is trapped amidst the lustful desires of men in her city, the narrator, who is powerless to help Mary, shares its sorrow with the audience and weeps in their arms and shed tears in the arms of the audience.

This inability to save the protagonist of the story stands in stark contrast to traditional theological views of the Quranic author as an omniscient, omnipotent God. Instead, the narrator here resembles the narrator in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, particularly in the scene of Anna's suicide, where Anna is on the train tracks. And here, we see that the narrator, with deeply emotional descriptions from Anna's perspective, reveals her regret in her final moments, but remains powerless to save her. The story proceeds as it must. And the narrator, alongside the readers, weeps for Anna and does nothing for her.

In another story from another surah, Surah Maryam, still concentrated on the character of Mary, the narrator is not portrayed as a transcendent God in the heavens, but instead takes on the form of the trunk of a date palm. The story begins with a significant gap or question. Mary, for an unspecified reason, leaves her city and family and journeys to an Eastern location. And after an extraordinary experience, she returns to her city, again for an unspecified reason.

This enigmatic beginning of the story, marked by a silence that sets the tone for the whole story, frames a narrative in which Mary continuously moves further out from the audience's views. But midway through the story, the verbs describing Mary's movements shift in a striking way. While most of the narrative emphasizes her withdrawal and distancing, a sudden turn occurs. Her pain brings her toward the trunk of a date palm. This verb of "bringing," or in Arabic, the verb \[ARABIC\], serves as a textual clue that suggests the narrator is not simply an external observer, but is physically present by the tree or embodied within the tree.

While classical and contemporary exegetes have largely overlooked this verb and the details of this scene, our analysis highlights how this act of bringing, this verb of bringing the character toward the trunk of the tree, indicates the narrator's presence in the tree or the narrator's identification with the tree. Beyond this single verb, which in some non-canonical readings is recorded differently, other elements of the narrative, such as focalization, the naturalistic metaphors, and the personification of nature, also point to the narrator being embodied with the trunk of the date palm.

Our analysis of this story further demonstrates how the silences within the narrative, alongside Mary's own silences within the world of the story, contribute to constructing a discourse of resistance. This silent resistance counters the cultural and verbal violence directed at women in a patriarchal society and reflect Mary's agency through the narrator's subtle yet powerful alignment with her.

These short examples illustrate the complexity of the Quranic narrator, especially in the stories of women. It is not the external God as presumed in traditional theology. Not a specific human author or group of scribes or editors. Instead, it is a distinct, multifaceted narrative voice that operates within a unique textual and theological framework.

A consistent feature across these narratives is that the Quranic narrator speaks in the first person plural "we." This collective voice dominates nearly all the Quranic stories about women and much of the Quranic text as a whole. It introduces itself with statements such as, we did that, we did so, we hear, we listen, we see, we do that, we speak. In traditional Quranic interpretation, this plural pronoun has often been equated with God's voice and understood, as you may know, the majestic plural. It means that this pronoun we is like a linguistic marker for the divine greatness and transcendence similar to its use in the biblical tradition.

This theological assumption that the we pronoun is for God's majesty, combined with the historical beliefs about the divine origin of the Quran, has led to the automatic association of the we in the Quran with God. However, a closer literary and narratological examination reveals that this collective narrator often distinguishes itself from God. At the same time, this narrator is closely connected to God, occasionally attributes actions to itself that are typically understood as God's or divine actions. Like sending the Quran, reading the Quran, and aiding the faithful people.

But in other instances, the narrator seamlessly refers to God as an absent third person character within the narratives. These references, from the we narrator to the absent God, happened very smoothly in the Quranic text so that it seems there is an interplay between this we narrator and the God character in the text. Commentators have often interpreted this shift as a rhetorical device and a literary technique that is called as \[NON-ENGLISH\], and that is designed to introduce variety to the text and enhance its aesthetic appeal and broaden its opportunities to engage the audience in dialogue in a dynamic interactive text.

For example, al-Suyuti, who is a permanent classical scholar in the 15th century, described this shifting voice between first person, second person, and third person perspectives in the Quran as a stylistic technique to maintain the audience engagement and add variety to the text. Yet in many cases, these shifts reveals a distinct narrator speaking about God rather than as God. However, the weight of ideological beliefs and the long history behind them often make it difficult to clearly perceive this distinction between this narrator and the God character.

Consider, for example, this closing verse of Mary's stories in Surah Al-Imran. Here, the verse is read as, "And God does not love the unjust." So here, we have a reference to God as an absent character. And then it says, "These are the signs and the wise reminder that we recite to you." So here, the narrator in the whole story, as is shown here, is a we narrator, and God is another character within the story.

The entire story is narrated by the collective "we." The character of God referred to by names such as "Allah," "Rabb," or another names, and described externally in dialogues between the characters and God, as well as in this polemic conclusion of the narrative. So clearly, God is not the narrator. Rather, the narrator speaks about God.

Yet in understanding this story and the broader Quranic text, this distinction is often overlooked. The collective first person narrator tells all the stories of women and most of the Quranic narrators. And about 90% of the Quran is narrated by this plural first person narrator. While other narrators appear in the Quran, the collective first person narrator is dominant, and particularly in constructing the narrative words and serving as the voice behind the stories.

Regarding this we narrator, there are two critical questions. The first is that, are the narrators in different stories in the Quran the same entity? Is this even a valid or precise question? And the second is that, what role does the collective narrator play in the Quran? Why does the Quranic discourse consistently use a collective voice instead of the more familiar narrators found in other historical writings, religious texts, and poetry?

Regarding the first question, narrative criticism suggests that each story has its own different narrator. It is very challenging to attribute all the different collective narrators in different stories to a single unified entity. Unless we have strong textual evidence that supports the presence of an overarching narrator implied throughout the text, assuming a single narrator is very problematic. Exploring this possibility would require extensive analysis, which I try to pursue as part of a separate next project.

But as to the second question, contemporary studies in literary theory and historiography and philosophy have extensively debated the concept of collective narrators. One of the most significant philosophical questions is whether a true collective we narrator is even possible. Can a group of individuals share a single perspective and speak with one voice and collectively recount a narrative? Can, for example, we in this room truly share the same experience at the same time?

For example, could we all perceive the brightness of this room or the aroma of food in the air and be aware that others are sharing the same experience? And then are we able to collectively describe and report this experience as a group? So the question that, is this collective narrator we in the Quran something like this, that if it happens that we can have the same experience and report it at the same time with the same voice? Or is it more likely that a single voice speaks on behalf of the others while we don't know if everyone in the group actually shares the same experience?

This question has sparked important philosophical and literary debates about whether a collective narrator is even possible, and what it might mean. Examples of collective narrators abound in human history, from the Bible, other sacred texts, to ancient historiography, and in modern literature. In biblical traditions, the plural we is often, as you may know better than me, is often understood as a majestic plural for God or the voice of the heavenly assembly.

However, discourse analysis show that these plural also cannot always be attributed to God or celestial entities. So there are so many various interpretations across different texts in the Bible and in other texts to discuss who is this we narrator. For example, Thomas Kaiser attributes this we narrator in the book of Genesis to the plurality in God's head.

Or in ancient historiographies, collective narrators are also found. And they typically represent the historian's attempt to include others who witnessed the events or to add credibility to their accounts. So they show a single historian who is reporting. But he tries to add the voices of the other to his own voice. So they aren't not exactly we narrators, but they claim that they are the collective narrators.

And in modern literature also, there are many cases of collective narrators, particularly in stories with strong social or political themes. For example, Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus is maybe the first or one of the first cases of this we collective narrator, where a group of Black people who are struggling with problems collectively narrate their shared resistance to oppression and injustice. These collective voices often emerge in response to a shared experience or a common oppressor and uniting individuals on their collective goal or perspective.

Some narratives employ a collective narrator to express genuinely shared experiences rather than politically driven unity. In such cases, the question arises that, where does this collective narrator's shared experience occur? How do we recognize that we share an experience? How and under what conditions can we truly become a unified we?

This question connects the collective narrative perspective to the philosophical issue of intersubjectivity. Is there a time, a place, or a situation where individual minds come together and recognize that they share the same experience? Do we perceive shared experiences purely through external observation and noticing others' actions or behaviors, and drawing comparisons to our own? For example, I see you smile, and I infer that you are happy. Because when I am happy, I smile.

Is it the case about intersubjectivity? Or is intersubjectivity not a problem to solve, but the very foundation of human understanding? Do we ever truly have isolated individual experiences, or is it that all understanding shaped within the fluid spaces of shared interactions? Are we constantly moving within dynamic networks of connection, shifting from one we to another we? Is it the meaning of intersubjectivity? If this is the case, singular narrators fall short of capturing the complexity of human experience. While the collective narrator becomes a more genuine and meaningful representation of our complex experience as human beings.

Now, returning to my main question about the Quranic narrator who constitutes the we narrator in the Quran. I should say that this inquiry cannot be answered solely through historical studies that are the most prevalent studies today. Instead, understanding the Quranic narrator requires recognizing its unique theological, literary, and ethical dimensions. The sacristy of systematic usage of collective narration in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry further complicates the historical approaches to this question.

So historical approaches to this question cannot be completely helpful to answer this question. And also, the sayings that are attributed to soothsayers or \[NON-ENGLISH\], at the beginning or the first years of the emergence of Islam do not exhibit a systematic application of collective narrative practices. So this raises the question of whether the model or precedents for the Quranic collective narrator might-- where these collective narrator might have been originated from.

Günter Lüling, a German scholar, was among the first to draw parallels between the Quranic collective narrator and the chorus in the ancient Greek drama. And recently, Jessica Mutter has further developed this idea. And some literary theorists argue that the only truly possible form of a collective narrator is the Greek chorus, where a group of individuals can cohesively articulate a single perspective.

However, this comparison falls short of explaining the Quranic narrator. For one, the Greek chorus serves fundamentally different literary and dramatic purposes. It is not the primary narrator, but rather, a secondary voice that comments on the events and often reveals the inner emotions of characters that are not visibly expressed on this stage. Moreover, the chorus may air, may have conflicts with characters or present perspectives that are not entirely reliable.

By contrast, the Quranic narrator is the primary storyteller that constructs the narrative world with comprehensive knowledge and direct-- the storyboard, the story processes, and what is happening in the storyboard. Thus, the collective narrator in the Quran cannot be considered as an imitation or inspiration from the Greek chorus. Instead, its unique functions demand a closer analysis.

Beyond the historical and material roots of this narrative approach, the collective narrator also raises inherently political questions. Who speaks for whom? Who is excluded from the discourse? These are deeply political issues that are tied to power and representation issues. Whose voice do we hear as the narrator of the we, and what is the ethical relationship between the narrator and its audiences?

These dimensions, the political and moral dimensions of the collective narrator, further complicate the study of the Quranic collective narrator. Today, as we focus specifically on the collective narrator in Quranic stories, particularly about the stories of women, we must adopt a nuanced and comprehensive perspective. When we analyze the narrator's portrayal in these stories, various facets of the identity of this narrator image emerges.

This narrator can act as a mirror of ourselves. But who this we or these ourselves is. This we is so expensive that it encompasses not only humans, but also trees, nature, natural processes, and spiritual entities. The Quranic narrator is an elastic being who is capable of uniting itself with any other. It can see the world from anyone's perspective. It can empathize with anyone, and it can speak from their point of view in different levels and in different perspectives. It can become the trunk of a tree or a lonely woman who is leaning against that tree. It can become a lover. It can shed tears for longing and simultaneously align itself with the spiritual beings, angels, God, and praises the very God among us, the humans.

In this sense, the Quranic narrator embodies interconnectedness with diverse beings across various meanings and narrative words. It becomes we in each instance with different audiences. If we consider critics like Monika Fludernik, who argued that collective narration is logically implausible, the Quranic narrator's insistence on its collective identity signals that it is always in relation with others.

It consistently adopts perspectives beyond its own. It refuses a singular, isolated world view. It is neither like a deity that issues judgments from a transcendent, supra ethical stance, nor a solitary human bound by limited vision. Instead, it exists in an intersubjective space, constantly becoming we and connecting with others in making connections with others.

I understand that so many unanswered questions remain about this narrator and its method and its processes. However, comparing this collective narrator to the rigid traditional image of the Quranic source reveals stark differences. Viewing the Quranic narrator as a collective we contrasts sharply with understanding it as a historical or divine author. While historical inquiries into the narrator's identity may never yield definitive answers to our questions about the source of the Quran, examining the narrator as a textual phenomenon offers valuable insights.

What might be relevant today is considering how this narrator we and its portrayal of the Quran as a collective narrative of connection and empathy could open new horizons for theology. A theology built on shared understanding of human and non-human connections, and the profound shared experiences of living being can open a new way to understanding our connections and the meanings of humanity. These connections, reinforced by the ethical act of storytelling, strengthen the bonds between us and invite us to transit from smaller, exclusive we's to broader, more inclusive ones.

Storytelling is not merely recounting events. It ties the narrator to all elements of the narrative worlds, to the characters, the materials, places, times, and processes. Storytelling can itself be an ethical act, a process of transforming the I's into we's, and enabling the narrator to view the world fro the perspectives of the others. This ethical journey of becoming broader we's, expanding beyond smaller and exclusionary groups, holds profound theological and political implications.

How expansive this we can become? Can this we transcend the boundaries of smaller exclusionary groups to form a universal, all encompassing we? These questions are very important in our theological frameworks and new approaches to theology. I believe the Quranic narrator can open a theological and political possibility for such an inclusive vision. And I return to what I first began this presentation with, about the category of women and its importance in our reforming or revising theological frameworks.

Every child that enters this world does so through an intimate, loving connection with a mother. Every human being before the events we call birth has experienced a profound we with a mother. This foundational human connection precedes individual identities and the solitary I, even if we forget about these. Could these shared human connection, this primal unity, not serve as the basis for revisiting contemporary theologies and political systems.

Thank you so much for listening, and for your patience.

\[APPLAUSE\]

ANN BRAUDE: Thank you so much, Zahra. Thank you for not only illuminating this really consequential approach to the Quran, but for also demonstrating the ethical impact of storytelling in your presentation. I hope I can speak for the collective we in saying that we are drawn into the really expansive possibilities that you have offered us.

SPEAKER 2: Sponsor-- Women's Studies and Religion Program.

SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2024, the President and Fellows of Harvard College.



 

 



 

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