Islamic Israelites

These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.  And you shall repeat them diligently to your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk on the road, when you lie down, and when you get up.  Deuteronomy 6:6-7 NASB

Repeat them diligently – Islam is the premiere example of a religion of precise repetition.  In fact, it is not required to actually know what the repeated words mean.  It is only required that they be repeated exactly as they have been taught. This is particularly useful in preliterate societies but that isn’t the reason Islam insists that its sacred texts be repeated in Arabic in this way.  The reason is that these words, and only these words, are actually God’s words, so if I speak them in any other language, in any other order, or in any other cantillation, I will have offended God by desecrating His exact words.  By repeating them in the holy tongue exactly as they were transmitted to the Prophet, I honor God even if I don’t know what I am saying.

This remarkable fact of Islam underscores the essential oral character of the faith.  The written Qur’an is nothing more than a useful memory guide.  The actual words are the spoken words.  And this distinction reminds me of Moses’ command about the Torah.  Yes, there are those instructions to write the commandments on the door posts, but most of the training is verbal.  That’s how it is “on your heart.”  Repetition, again and again, everywhere you go, whatever you are doing.  Why?  For exactly the same reason that Mohammed included the technique in the Qur’an.

 “Literate or not, it is virtually impossible for someone raised in a strongly Muslim environment not to imbibe the fundamental values and norms, let alone the aesthetics and sensibilities or the actual words and phrases, or the sacred text, simply because its presence is ubiquitous.”[1]

We could rewrite Graham’s comment by simply replacing “Muslim” with “Hebrew.”  If you want to establish an unquestioned foundation for a society, simply demand that members of that society repeat key thoughts over and over until they become part of the way of being in the world.  Once you have accomplished that, almost nothing can overturn the result.  This is also why conversion from this form of life to another paradigm is virtually impossible.  The very categories of being are tied to the sacred words.  There just isn’t any other way to think, or perhaps we should say, there isn’t any other way to be since thinking is no longer a critical exercise.  “A text that is holy to a person is finally its own verification and justification; memorizing and repeating its words are exercise in appropriation of its meaning, but not always, and rarely only, at the discursive level.”[2]  How much of your world is determined by those repeating voices in your head is quite scary, especially when it is so difficult to determine where they came from.

Topical Index: repeat, paradigm, non-discursive, Islam, oral, Deuteronomy 6:6-7

[1] William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 114.

[2] Ibid.