Négociation, dispute et colloque avec Dieu dans la littérature religieuse musulmane

This paper presents a few examples of how medieval Muslim scholars came to terms with traditional narratives staging conflictual dialogues between man and God. I focus on the intercession of Moses for the Children of Israel and on Abraham’s negotiation for the People of Lot, only briefly mentioning the cases of Job and Jonah. The prophets’ arguing with God raised disquieting theological problems, motivating a number of exegetes to sidestep the issue altogether. But these prophetic models also functioned as paradigms of open dialogue with God for both Sufis and jurists-theologians. For what concerns Sufis, Moses’ intercession played a complex role in the understanding of the “colloquy” (munājāt) with God, which Ghazzālī defined as a kind of bold and free speech arising from intimacy with Him – something comparable to the notion of parrhēsia in late antique Christian hagiography. As for jurists-theologians, Abraham’s dispute (mujādala) with the angels over the right interpretation of God’s commandment to destroy the impious cities became for Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī an exemplar of the open ended negotiation among conflicting interpretations of Scriptures. Moreover, both Abraham’s and Moses’ models stand behind Muḥammad’s intercession with God during his heavenly journey, exhibiting a delicate interplay of intertextual mimesis and interreligious rivalry. This rapid survey shows that Islamic religious literature has much to offer to the quest for dialogue in contemporary religious studies, and should not be left outside the purview of this line of enquiry, which has been significantly influenced by Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue. At the same time, Bakhtin’s distinction between “dialogical” and “monological” forms of dialogue, which provided contemporary Biblical scholarship with an important conceptual tool, also proves to be useful in the study of Islamic religious literature.