Why I Am a Salafi. Michael Muhammad Knight

s to comprehend scripture.

      According to the memory of later generations, the Companions occasionally disagreed on the meanings of verses. In conflicting opinions as to whether the fifty-third sra discusses a personal, visionary encounter between Muammad and Allh, Ibn ‘Abbs believed that Muammad had in fact seen Allh, while others (most vehemently ‘’isha) argued that no one could see Allh in this life, neither with their physical eyes nor the mystical “eyes of the heart”; they insisted that the vision was of the angel Gabriel. Even if we suspend the question of whether these opinions really belonged to the Companions to whom they are attributed, we face the challenge of the Companions’ personal subjectivities. In the case of tagging the unidentified shadd al-qawwa of Muammad’s vision as either Allh or a mere angel, we should consider that this encounter took place before either ‘’isha or Ibn ‘Abbs were born. They would have learned about Muammad’s experience many years later, after the Muslims’ migration from Mecca to Medina—a time in which Muammad’s primary conversation partners and opponents were no longer polytheists, but Jews and Christians, who would have engaged the narrative from their own theological footings. The Qur’n’s more conservative verses regarding human access to Allh are commonly dated from this period. Is it possible that Muammad’s own understanding of his vision changed with time, and that ‘’isha’s opinion represents Muammad’s later memory? This isn’t necessarily a problem, depending on how you view things like the Qur’n’s self-abrogation. On the other side, perhaps Ibn ‘Abbs’s understanding had come from older Companions who clung to earlier ideas about the vision; does this mean that Muammad had not corrected them, and that they never learned of the new interpretation? Could the report in which Ibn ‘Abbs explained that Muammad had seen Allh with his heart or in a dream signify a reconciliation of conflicting opinions?

      The traditional accounts mention the Companions arguing not only about the Qur’n’s meaning, but also its form. In one episode, ‘Umar disagreed with a junior Companion over a sra because they had memorized it at different times. Having memorized the sra first, ‘Umar conceded that his recitation of the sra was less authoritative, since the later recitation must have abrogated the sra as he knew it.¹⁶ In stories of the Qur’n’s compilation into what is now its recognizable form, we find Companions arguing with each other over the inclusion of verses and even suggesting that not all of the Qur’