Ibrahim Zein

Malek Bennabi’s The Qur’anic Phenomenon provides an excellent analysis of Qur’anic revelation through the application of the phenomenology. A closer analysis of the work shows that Bennabi’s major contribution is to be found in his narrative strategies and comparative style as evidenced, among others, in chapters 13 and 14 of the Qur’anic Phenomenon. Here Bennabi provides a balanced picture of the story of Joseph in the Torah and the Qur’an. Bennabi’s textual strategy, narrative and meta-narrative brings out the uniqueness of the Qur’anic account of Joseph. The reconstruction of the story of Joseph opened a new type of discourse in understanding the relationship between religion and modernity.

Malek Bennabi (1905 – 1973), born in Constantine, is an eminent scholar and thinker of post World War II Algeria and one of the foremost intellectuals of the modern Muslim world. Educated in Paris and Algiers in Engineering, he later based himself in Cairo, writing and lecturing on what he believed to be the grand issues: Qur’an, science, civilisation, culture and ideas. Of his many works, The Qur’anic Phenomenon is certainly the most important work written about the Qur’an in the 20th century.1 It provides an excellent analysis of Qur’anic revelation through the application of the phenomenology as a method of understanding and appreciating the Qur’anic text. Given the fact that phenomenology as a method was well-established in Islamic studies, Bennabi’s claim to his use of phenomenology as a new direction or an innovation in Islamic scholarship is unlikely to be accepted. However, the genuine contribution of Bennabi is in both his narrative strategies and comparative style.2

This study focuses on chapters 13 and 14 of The Qur’anic Phenomenon. In these two chapters, Bennabi’s narrative reached its climax providing a balanced picture of the story of Joseph in both the Torah and the Qur’an. While the language of difference is not over emphasised, the uniqueness of the Qur’anic account of the story of Joseph has been well portrayed.3 This success is largely due to Bennabi’s narrative and comparative mode of analysis without compromising his faith or objectivity. This has been explained in this study by paying closer attention to the problem of textual strategies, narrative and meta-narrative.

Anis Malik Thoha

The concern for and the debate on “objectivity” in the scientific study of religions led scholars to advocate two major approaches known as “History of Religion” and “Phenomenology of Religion.” Both approaches are claimed to be “descriptive” and “value-free” as they stringently enforce the principle of epochê or distanciation to ensure objectivity. However, there are scholars who argue that objectivity (be it “descriptive” or “value-free”) is ontologically questionable and epistemologically impossible. It is a self defeating concept and a myth. They argue that objectivity is principally and directly concerned with “the object” under investigation regardless of the types of approach used.

Religionswissenschaft (Science of Religion or Comparative Study of Religion) is a new scientific field that is barely a century old. The origin of this field is attributed to Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900) especially to two of his publications: Chips from German Workshop (1867) and Introduction to the Study of Religion (1873). The scientific method in the study of the world’s religions, according to him, should be similar to the one applied in the field of Comparative Philology(1)  of which he was one of the leading experts. Because of his emphasis on “objective” and “scientific” method and also because of his provocative statement that “He who knows one knows none,”(2)  Max Müller has been crowned as “the father of Comparative Study of Religion.” Using the “objectivity” criteria, scholars rejected the works on religions carried out before the modern era, the bulk of which were contributed by Muslim scholars, as inappropriate in any listing of categories in the field of Religionswissenschaft. These studies were not objective and hence not scientific or at least their “scientificity” is debatable. This seems to be one of the reasons for Western researchers to look down upon classical Muslim scholarship.