There’s no Gender In The Quran…

One of the popular questions often directed at the Quran is ‘why does god refer to himself in the masculine?; The lack of any proper, direct answer to the question has led some to question its authorship, using god’s masculine self-reference to say that the writer (or writers) had been male, for why should god not refer to him in the feminine?, this essay aims to give a conclusive answer to the above.

A language that doesn’t tell, but ‘shows’.

The language of the Quran is not the language that’s used today, its words don’t directly refer to the concrete, like wall, door, man etc.. but rather, to motions, relations, and forces — it’s ‘scientific’. When we see a dog we automatically associate it with the single syllable term ‘dog’, we do this mechanically; we don’t know why such an animal is even called that, why those three letters, why this number of syllables, what is a dog in itself, and why should it be related to this sound that we have for it.

A language that’s omniscient

Ok. I must clarify what I mean by omniscience.

Why do we use metaphors?. what makes us use a term out of their 'proper' context?, this is somewhat of a loaded question if one considers that language terms are all metaphorical (if by metaphorical is meant that a term can be used in contexts other than that to which it's thought to be native, e.g using 'vehicle' to express how the blood carries nutrients where it's typically used in reference to automobiles) the expression ‘proper context’ is itself dubious; words stubbornly tend towards the universal, they want to have as wide an import and application as falls to their share; owing, as said, to some 'poietic' or 'organic' (generative) property in them. The semantic import of the term ‘arm’ extends, literally and figuratively, from the core (body), to its extremities (possessions), or anything with which it may have an instrumental relation,

The body it may be observed, is capable of indefinite extension” writes S. Alexander “We feel the ground at the end of the stick we carry, not at the finger which holds the stick: the stick has become part of our body. So may anything in contact with our bodies; like our dress, injury or offense to which we resent as we do offenses to our body” S.Alexander ‘Space, Time & Diety’ (p105)

Is it all that strange, given so common a case, that language should function like that?. when it’s clear that the relation that the subject has with his/her hands is not different from that shared with anything to which he/she may assign the possessive noun e.g ‘my’, a loss or injury to either will induce pain (no less significant & often more severe, no need for examples).

I’m ‘armed with’, or ‘army’, or ‘armored’ are all examples of the morphological scope that the term ‘arm’ covers, the word has so wide and universal a bearing as to make the question of its ‘Nativity’ (the arms) to the physical subject irrelevant, if anything it shows the ‘platonicity’ of the term — that, in the Jungian phrase “people don’t have ideas, ideas have people”, this indicates the universality of the ‘term’ — that terms transcend both the subject and the subject matter — i.e the given context.

What the subject fancies is a relation in which he’s the master (his control over the arms which are attached to his body) is a relation in which he’s ironically the slave, because the notion of ‘instrumentality’ or ‘possessiveness’ is something which he simply ‘embodies’, not one which he commands, as would seem to be the case. This is the meaning of Plato's oft-misunderstood concept of 'forms'. It simply proposes that 'notions' to which words refer have a wider import and 'range' than normally ascribed to them.

An example from the Quran

The Quran is a book whose vocabulary is expressly used in that manner. One must go beyond the context in which any given word is used in order to access its true meaning. By true I mean something different from that known in ‘ethics’, but something like ‘mathematical truths’, which pertain to the ‘thoroughness’ and inclusivity of use, am I using a term whose full connotations i’m unaware of? Is it adequate? e.g ‘arm’ exclusively in reference to instrumentality; am I using it in the genetic sense? (its genus), in other words, does my use adhere to the ontological concept of which ‘arm’ is merely a case?

What’s ‘truthful’ is sufficient, it adheres to a definite ‘semantic’ genus whose fundamental sense and meaning can be traced (and found consistent) in various cases of use and in multiple domains of application without losing its original sense.

In the Quran, you’ll be surprised to find that the terms ‘male’ and ‘recollection’ (or the general function of ‘memory’) share the same word! Thakar’ ذكر, (highlighted word), now why is that?

This is answered by — obviously — contemplating what the two concepts ‘male’ and memory’ have in common. What’s male-like about reminiscence, and reminiscent about ‘male-ness’ or masculinity? The most obvious answer (given above) is that they are ‘conspecific’ or ‘congenial’; they belong to the same ‘genus’, but this is barely a start. Looking at the various cases of use in the Quran, we see that there’s a reproductive sense in reminiscence and a recapitulatory feature in masculinity; that, when reminded of something, we don’t only remember the event, but all the associations, the memories that accompany the event. The key word here is ‘content’.

(if you speak Arabic, or are interested in the Quran check out Almaany.com, where you’ll find a section ‘the words of the Quran’, in which you can input the word of your choice and you’ll find in it the word that you seek in all its forms and contexts. this will help you understand the meaning of the words, even if you don’t speak Arabic, just by getting a rough idea of the contexts in which a particular word is found, you’ll start to get a general sense of its meaning)

The memory is a surrogate for all sorts of content, each of which is pregnant with other content, the same function is served when a particular thought immediately evokes another, and that another, my ambulation from one memory to the next shows the principle which I, in such instances, embody. this is an operation that’s far more complex than memory since it relies primarily on the logical connection between the content and not necessarily their ‘temporal’ association — temporality itself is predicated on the logical association between the components. the term ‘engram’ that’s known by psychologists approximates this, though some reservation is needed as regards the epiphenomenal connotations of the term.

In a sense, memory as far as this stage is as elementary a function as counting. The principle which I, in such instances, personify, I.e the idea of ‘computer’ evokes, eo ipso, the ideas of keyboard, processor, ram, screen, pad etc, in the sense that these are deducible from it — that is, deducible not as ‘hardware’, but processes, alternatively, the idea of keyboard itself implies the rest just as computer does.

By the same token, ‘male’ is a reproductive agent, and in reproduction the male adds nothing new in the sense that he does not create, but procreates, discharging a genome containing his entire ancestral line, and in a sense, he regenerates that of which he himself is a product. This is precisely the reasoning that dictated that the two contextually, and in a sense widely different concepts of male and reminisce, should share the same word; ‘thakar’ ذكر.

Gender pronoun use in Arabic, do not strictly refer to the biological male and female but certain ‘principles’ or ‘forces’ which they embody.

The biological male or female is simply one of the many forms which these universal principles can take, and this principle is disguised in every form because there’s not a process that isn’t partitioned in so manner, and what are we but processes?, as God notes in the Quran.

The verse refers not only to the biological, but to anything that qualifies as a ‘thing’ — not that there’s something that’s ‘nothing’.

For example, In arabic, ‘typically ‘female’ gender pronouns and suffixes such as ‘ta’ ت are freely used by males, particularly in the first person, as in the case Joseph who uses the expression ‘i saw’ (ra’aytu — -رايت) that contains the suffix ‘ta’ ت in reference to his vision/dream (V4, Chp12), we have here a male agent deploying what appears to be a feminine morpheme. Whether the subject is a male or a female, it will be found that the same morpheme ending with the feminine ‘ta’ is used. This has its justification.

No plurality, no contradictions

All logical contradictions and misnomers disappear once the principle of individuality is sufficiently grasped.

The Quran solves this by ridding itself of plurals, replacing them with ‘stressors’ and ‘intensifiers’; morphemes that stress ‘magnitude’ and intensity’. to be clear, there are actually numerical statements in the book such as this, from God to Abraham

“Then bring four birds, train them to come to you, ˹then cut them into pieces,˺ and scatter them on different hilltops” (Baqara 260),

or the one to Moses “And ˹remember˺ when We appointed forty nights for Moses, then you worshipped the calf in his absence, acting wrongfully” (Baqara 51)

You may be wondering, if you’re right regarding the supposed lack of plurality in the Quran, how do you explain these numbers?, and we answer that number expresses quality, that all number has to do with the intensity of experience, and that said intensity is not uniform — it’s graded, describing stages of consciousness. (this cannot be covered here, so please watch out for the next post)

This may confound some viewers, but the difference in use; the inclusion or exclusion of certain pronouns is owing to the absence, in the Quran, of plurality as such, or, rather, there’s plurality but not in the quantitative’ sense — of discrete quantities with no connection save that they’re joined with others to make up a group, class or heap, the plurality that’s implied here (e.g the suffixes and other inflectional devices involves not ‘multiple’, but complex individuals, a simple rhythm of ‘a thing’ and a ‘thing in the process’.

A complex individual is ‘an identity, something with attributes, but its attributes are synthesised into ‘thing in process’, a computer has components, but the Quran wouldn't emphasise the plurality of said components, but would supply an adjective ascribing ‘intensity’ or ‘magnitude’ or ‘motion’ to the term/concept computer.

The ascendency of ‘multiplicity’ or quantity over quality proves philosophically inept in confronting the phenomenological descriptions that are found in the Quran, on the other hand, a rigorous analysis of said phenomenological descriptions calls for the ‘arithmetization’ of our thoughts so as avoid the, often fatal, problem of infelicity.

Emphasis is placed upon the individual in the Quran, and it’s upon this outwardly simple, but internally complex notion that all correct analysis depends, thus the two above-mentioned rhythms are central.

F.H Bradley illustrates this point “Thus a man is particular by virtue of his limiting and exclusive relations to all other phenomena. He is universal because he is one throughout all his different attributes.” and “So far as it is one against other individuals, it is particular. So far as it is the same throughout its diversity, it is universal” F.H Bradley The Principle Of Logic (chp7, §33)

We often speak of plurals when they are really cases of one individual. the individual is to be found at the base of ‘enumeration’, what overall concept lies at the basis of counting?

They & We

Effusive vs Diffusive

The letters ‘nun’ and ‘waw, are used by and in reference to feminine or masculine, whether we’re talking processes, or people.

And in the Quran, there are specific morphemes used for specific cases, Nun ن and Waw و

Nun may be described as one-in-the-process (Diffusive), this is how the book deals with plurality — it resolves them into vectors, in the sense that anything ‘in the process’ is one. And waw as its projections, or bursts of this one — how they acquire magnitude (effusive). For instance;

The expression ‘they said’ ‘khaloo’ قالوا,(modified by the Suffix waw) depicts a divergent process, it simply & only captures the projectional act — momentary diction or act of speech — with the expansion of the act or dictum being implied.

Now compare this to the declaratory form ‘We said, Khulna قلنا , which God uses frequently in self-reference, in no way is this ‘pluralistic’, rather, as said, it’s a vector ‘one in the process’. Meaning that God, by deploying this, intends to describe his action not simply in its projective, momentary form (effusive), but his action as durational, as having a certain ‘bearing’,; continuity, magnitude or extension (Diffusive).