In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

introduction the qurʾanic miracle stories: a puzzling motif? Moses said, “Pharaoh, I am a messenger from the Lord of all the Worlds, dutybound to say nothing about God but the truth, and I have brought you a clear sign from your Lord.” . . . So Moses threw his staff and—lo and behold!—it was a snake, clear to all. . . . The leaders among Pharaoh’s people said, “This man is a learned sorcerer!” —Qurʾan 7:104–9 This book was born out of a casual conversation that first puzzled and then intrigued me. Years ago, I was talking to one of my relatives, and the topic of the virgin birth story came up. My aunt made a remark that has stayed with me since. She said, “I believe in this miracle narrated in the Qurʾan, but I must admit that if a pregnant woman comes to me now and says, ‘No man touched me but I am pregnant,’ it will be very difficult for me to believe her.” I was taken aback. At first, I thought that such a remark simply missed the point. After all, even the most enthusiastic believers would not think that the story was about being incredulous of virginity claims, would they? Yet her comment was also intriguing: she was raising a crucial question about the actual implications of a cherished miracle story. What was such a miracle story really telling its reader? She was asking, in effect, “What does this text want me to do with it? If the point is to be gullible and give the benefit of the doubt to a pregnant woman who claims to be a virgin, I am afraid I will fail to do that.” Obviously, such a question about implications can be raised for other miracle stories in the Qurʾan, in which various other figures—such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, Solomon, and Jesus—are presented as performing 2 understanding the qurʾanic miracle stories in the modern age miracles. For instance, when Abraham is thrown into fire, the fire miraculously becomes “cool and safe” for him (Q. 21:69).1 Similarly, Jesus heals the blind and sick with his touch and revives the dead (Q. 5:110), while Moses’s staff goes through instant metamorphosis, becoming a snake, or performs unusual feats, such as parting seas (Q. 7:117–19, etc.). Likewise, Solomon understands the language of the birds (Q. 27:16), has miraculous means of transportation (Q. 34:12), and so on. These miracle stories are quite similar to biblical stories in content, though, of course, there are also some crucial differences, especially in the explicit emphasis placed on edification and the amount of detail (or rather the lack of it) provided in the Qurʾan. Such miracle stories in the Qurʾan, and in the Bible, may sound strange to many of us in this day and age. It is often thought that one either believes in the historical accuracy of these stories or rejects them as figments of imagination. In fact, miracle stories are often viewed in popular culture as a clear case of the clash between faith and science. It is as if the readers of miracle stories divide into two exclusive camps—believers versus unbelievers, people of faith versus people of reason and science. Yet, as this Muslim woman’s remark shows, the picture is much more complicated than such a binary. Indeed, even for someone who believes a story to be factual, the question of what to do with its narration in the Qurʾan can remain. The aim of this book is precisely to engage with this oft-neglected question of what to do with these miracle stories. To be sure, questioning the relevance of Qurʾanic miracle stories is not a uniquely modern phenomenon. In fact, during the very emergence, or the revelation, of the Qurʾan in the seventh century, such questions regarding prophetic narratives were raised by the opponents of Prophet Muhammad . They claimed that these stories were simply irrelevant stories of the ancients (asāt≥īr al-awwalīn). In contrast, the Qurʾan insisted that these stories offered profound guidance for those willing to heed them. Believers also raised the question of what to do with these narratives. As the Qurʾanic reception history attests, in the centuries after Prophet Muhammad lived, generations of believers engaged with them. This book will offer a glimpse of the ways in which meaningful implications have been drawn from...

Share