The Tablet Interview
Among
the believers
It is generally held that the Qur’an teaches that
Judaism and Christianity must submit to Islam.
Here a Christian scholar, Michel Cuypers, tells
James Roberts of an alternative reading which
could bring new mutual respect between the
three Abrahamic faiths
H
aving difficulty finding words for
certain atrocities, we resort to
numbers: 9/11, 3/11, 7/7, for the ter-
rorist attacks in New York, Madrid
and London, for instance. The fact that those
responsible quote from the Qur’an when
explaining their actions and talk as if the crimes
they commit are somehow pleasing to God,
means that the Islamic religion is associated
with horrific and irrational violence in the
popular, non-Muslim imagination.
It also means that while the murderers them-
selves might have placed themselves beyond
the reach of words and reason – with only num-
bers describing what they have done –
dialogue with the non-fundamentalist Islamic
world has taken on a new urgency.
At Heythrop College in London last week,
Michel Cuypers, a Catholic scholar originally
from Belgium but now based at the prestigious
Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies
(Ideo) in Cairo offered a way of interpreting
the Qur’an that is not only convincing and
entirely respectable in terms of Islamic schol-
arship, but also pulls the rug from under those
who have used and continue to use a rheto-
ric of violent martyrdom, extracted from the
Qur’an, to commit mass murder.
At Regensburg in 2006, the Pope argued
that religion was a comfortable bedmate of
reason, but not of violence, and quoted from
the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II who in 1391
suggested that Islam and violence were insep-
arable. Some Catholics took the Pope to task
and Muslims protested – sometimes violently
– but a more vigorous Catholic-Muslim dia-
logue was set in train. So how should a Catholic
engage with Muslims? Guided by our gospel
faith, we should love Muslims as our neigh-
bours, but what does this mean in practice?
The life of Michel Cuypers, who has spent
most of his adult years in the Muslim world,
offers an answer to this question on both a
personal and an intellectual level. With
regard to the latter, he has through his schol-
arly work – first in Iran, then in Egypt – found
10 | THE TABLET | 19 June 2010
a way of reading the Qur’an that could
change the way Islam views Judaism and
Christianity. The fact that contemporary
Muslim scholars have found his ideas per-
suasive means that his work could shift the
foundations of inter-religious dialogue, and
provide intellectual ammunition for those who
wish to undermine the advocates of violence.
I talked to Br Michel while he was in London
to attend an international conference of
bishops, academics and scholars on the forth-
coming Middle East Synod, to be held at the
Vatican in October. He is gentle, with no dis-
cernible self-importance, but with a quiet,
passionate awareness of the importance of his
work. I wondered whether he would have made
such groundbreaking discoveries about the
Qur’an if he had not been blessed with, or
learned, a humility that is liberating for the
imagination as well as the personality.
Born in Ghent to a French Algerian mother,
he learned from her an enthusiasm for
Charles de Foucauld, the priest and teacher
beatified in 2005, who lived among the
Tuareg in the Algerian Sahara until he was
murdered in 1916. Cuypers joined the
Foucauld-inspired Little Brothers of Jesus at
the age of 17, and the broad path of his life
was decided. The specific details, however,
could hardly have been imagined.
The charism of the order includes living
among the poor and, given the countries where
the order is most active, these people are usu-
ally non-Christian. At the age of 23, in the
mid-1960s, Br Michel was invited by the order
to go to care for Iranian lepers in Tabriz. He
had the option of refusing, but did not.
“I just thought, ‘why not? I am ready’,” he
told me. He worked as a nurse, dressing and
cleaning skin lesions and diseased hands and
feet. In this new culture and “in the special
milieu of poor and ill people”, he was “happy
from the very beginning”. Iranian culture is
“very different from what we see in the
media today”, he said, “rich and dedicated”.
After two years he moved back to Europe,
to pursue academic work in Paris, where he
became familiar with structuralist literary
theories. But by 1977 Iran had “called him back”
and he took up Persian literary studies at the
University of Tehran. If, however, he had been
expecting a life among dreaming minarets, the
tide of history had other ideas. “I was in the
heart of the [Islamic] revolution at the uni-
versity,” he said. He somehow managed to
continue his studies, in the middle of what was
a “catastrophe” for his university, and was
awarded a doctorate in Persian literature in
1983. He survived for a time working for the
university press, but before the decade was out
he had been expelled in a diplomatic tit-for-
tat between Iran and Belgium.
Cuypers then moved to Cairo, from the
Persian world to the Arab one, and joined Ideo.
He has devoted the major part of the inter-
vening years to studying the Qur’an. His latest
book, The Banquet: a reading of the fifth sura
of the Qur’an published in French in 2007 and
by Convivium Press in English in 2009, was
given the “World Prize for the Book of the Year”
by the Iranian Ministry of Culture and
Islamic Guidance in 2009, which described
it as “one of the best new works in the field
of Islamic studies”.
Clearly under the influence of his earlier
encounters with structuralism, he points out
that a “verse-by-verse reading of the Qur’an,
that is linear and atomistic without consid-
ering the context”, is a flawed reading. This
approach has been embraced by Islam’s
jurists and according to Cuypers allows for
interpretation “any which way”. And when
verses are found that contradict one another,
the principle of abrogation is introduced.
According to this idea, later verses abrogate
earlier ones that they contradict. This also
means in practice that harsher verses tend to
abrogate the earlier, more tolerant ones.
Cuypers rejects the principle of abrogation
outright, arguing instead that the weightier
verses are discovered through structural
analysis, not through their sequential position.
Symmetrical structures can be discovered in
the Qur’an – he mentions parallel and mir- cafod.org.uk/connect2
ror structures – that help interpretation
through looking at verses in context rather than
in isolation. But the most important structural
context for his purposes is the typically Ever wondered how people
cope with severe drought?
Semitic one of the concentric ring.
In the definitive sura five, the subject of his
recent book, Cuypers finds verses that give guid-
ance on relations with Jews and Christians. Or the constant threat of losing
There is both an explanation of the existence
of other religions; and there is a pronounce- their homes?
ment on the status, in terms of salvation, of
adherents of the Jewish and Christian faiths.
And the story is very different from the com- WWe’ve all seen the television
monly held notion that these people should nnews stories – technology is
simply be made to “submit” to Islam.
bbringing the world closer. But

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n verse 48, we read “For each of you [the wwhat happens when the cameras
different religions], we have decreed laws lleave? Find out how Savoeun
and different rites. Had God willed, he
could have made you one congregation. ffrom Cambodia, who lost her
But he thus puts you to the test through the hhome, is now setting up her own
th
Annie Bungero

revelations he has given each of you. You shall bbusiness. Or meet Ato Alemayo,
surpass yourselves in good works. To God is
your final destiny, all of you, then he will inform nd her fam
ily, ffrom Ethiopia, who is striving to
Saveoun a
you of everything you had disputed.” Ca m bo di a mmake sure that severe drought
So, the fact of different religions is God’s will;
doesn’t destroy his way of life.
they exist for him to test us; and he expects
us all to compete in good works.
A little later, in verse 69, we are told: “Surely,
those who believe, those who are Jewish …
and the Christians; any of them who believe Connect2 is your chance to get
in God and believe in the Last Day, and lead behind the headlines and hear
a righteous life, have nothing to fear, nor will from ordinary people across the e
they grieve.” So Christians and Jews are not
damned but saved. And there is no obligation world living extraordinary lives.
to force them into “submission”. Join now and find out how you
“I propose this can give the basis for a kind
can help them change their
Mulu

of Qur’anic theology of religions,” Cuypers told

Atakliti

me. “The text may not be about love per se, lives for the better.
but it is about having respect for the other, Woize
and says that these people are saved, and there ro Ma
Alema nn
yo, Et a and Ato
is an insistence on competing in good deeds.” hiopia

connect2:
Other parts of the Qur’an contradict this
tolerant view, but Cuypers’ response is clear:
these particular verses are positioned in the
narrative, at the centre of a “ring”, with his- El Salvador
torical passages before and after. These central Ethiopia
passages have a different literary quality,
Bangladesh
exhibiting moral and wise pronouncements, Brazil
distinct from the passages of the outer “cir- Cambodia
cle”, for which they are a guide to interpretation. Rwanda
But a central position in a “ring” structure
also means that a verse located here carries
a universal weight that does not pertain to all
the verses in the Qur’an. “I believe that the
more violent, intolerant, polemical verses are
circumstantial verses,” Cuypers told me, “and
probably not central but peripheral.”
“So is the Christian God, the God of love,
compatible with the Qur’an?” I asked.“I do not Join the journey. Be inspired…
pretend that the rule of love is as clear in the

Join connect2
Qur’an as in the Gospel,” Cuypers replied. “But
even if there are a few verses which open such
a way, we must exploit these verses.”
To sign up visit cafod.org.uk/connect2 and contact
■ The proceedings of “Synod for the Middle your local CAFOD diocesan office for more information.
East: Catholic Theological and Ecclesial Connect2. Join the journey. Be inspired.
R28766
Perspectives” at the Centre for Eastern
Christianity, Heythrop College, University of Registered charity no. 285776
London, will be published in September.

19 June 2010 | THE TABLET | 11