Distinct from the hermeneutics of scripture, a decipherable text holding
doctrinal truth, the Quran functions as sound producing an emotive
response in the believer.^10 Michael Sells describes this combination of
meaning with evocative sound as a“soundfigure, a sound-complex that
picks up semantic, emotive, and gender associations or‘charges’through
its deployment within the verse.”^11 Similarly, Arkoun describes this ritual
reenactment:
Quranic time is fully existential time in duration, chronology and spirituality.
Every instant lived through isfilled with the presence of the God who speaks,
judges and acts in the Quran, and is then reactivated in the‘heart’of every believer
as he performs his daily religious practices, meditation, rememorization (dhikr)of
the History of Salvation and liturgical recitation of the revealed Word, as well as his
ethical and legal conduct in accordance with the normative standards (ahkam) laid
down by God.^12
Within the oral context in which the practice of recitation recorded the
Quranic revelation, memorized text was not in a sequence, as in a written
book. It functions as a simultaneous surface from which the mind of the
memorizer (hafiz) can choose as needed, making connections with other
modes of memory including the personal and the cultural. A memorized
text, after all, exists not outside the individual but within the layered
perpetual space of sentient perception engaging with all experiences inha-
biting the same mind.^13
The Quran can thus be understood less as a book than as a sonic image of
the divine continually present in all its parts. This presence precedes its
analytical or linguistic content. The Quran declares itself as the re-pre-
sentation of the“preserved tablet”(al-lawh) kept within the divine sphere
(Q85:22). This image unfurls temporally in the act of its articulation. Faith
emerges not in affirmation or obedience to meaning, but in sensory
recognition of this sound image. The Quran indicates this sense as unique
to believers:
[Prophet], when you recite the Quran, We put an invisible barrier between you and
those who do not believe in the life to come. We have put covers on their hearts that
prevent them from understanding it, and heaviness in their ears. When you
mention your Lord in the Quran, and Him alone, they turn their backs and run
away. (Q45–46)^14
(^10) Martin, 1982. (^11) Sells, 1993. (^12) Arkoun, 2002 : 91. (^13) Arkoun, 2002 : 48, 83.
(^14) Abdel-Haleem, 2004 : 178. This notion of eyes without sight and ears without hearing resembles
the reference to those who“have eyes but are blind, who have ears but are deaf”in the biblical
book of Isaiah (43:8).
Perception and the Quran 107