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A few thoughts on the subject of “Hafsonormativity” among Muslims: Some very esteemed scholars I know who graduated from Indian madāris decades ago told me that in their time, the reading of the Shāṭibiyyah and Durrah was required for ALL students, not just qirā’āt students.
The reasoning was that they felt that, even though not everyone needs an intensive study, all scholars of Islam should at the very least have a degree of familiarity with the variants of Qur’anic reading, especially the Farsh (variants which don’t follow any specific pattern).
Nowadays, it seems that Hafsonormativity afflicts some ulema as well. I recall an incident in Pakistan in which a visiting Maghribi scholar spoke from the mimbar. He quoted a verse from Sūrah Yāsīn and said the word سُدّاً as opposed to the Ḥafṣ سَدّاً.
A young ʿālim that was with me became really agitated and complained that the shaykh was mispronouncing Qur’anic words from the mimbar. So I gently had to explain that in the other preponderant riwāyāt, the word is in fact pronounced سُدّاً.
In my encounters with tablighis from Maghribi countries who have gone for khurooj in the subcontinent, they have endless stories about how someone tries to correct their reading of مَلِكِ every day. One told me he just started carrying his Qālūn mushaf around just to show people.
One of my own teachers here in California would occasionally recite in the other variants ONLY in Ramadan, and ONLY in witr. And yet, he was met with opposition from a buzurg of the community who felt uncomfortable that the masses be exposed to this. To canonical readings!
I understand the idea that there’s a time and place for all knowledge. That sometimes it is unwise to introduce advanced material to the laity so that they don’t become confused or fall into doubt. But at some point we have to ask ourselves: is this doing more harm than good?
I see lay-muslims in the YouTube comments of Islamophobic polemicists who call the Warsh and Qālūn and Dūrī mushafs in those videos fake because they’ve never been exposed to the idea of qirā’āt before.
I’ve seen folks who have formally studied tajwīd criticize the recitation of competent reciters simply because they didn’t recognize that the reading was in Warsh. Is that really the direction we want to head toward?
I know some folks are uncomfortable that I share things about the shādhdh variants of the Qur’an. I understand the sentiment, I really do, and sometimes I have to really ask myself whether it’s a good idea to share certain things or not.
But ultimately I believe that it’s important for these variants, ideas, historical reports, all of which come from our OWN tradition, to reach a level of normalcy among Muslims. If we won’t talk about it, others will. And that will include fake Dawah-men & anti-Islam polemicists.
We need to talk about them and we also need to *normalize* the discussion of these topics. Bringing up these topics should NOT be placing anyone into doubts of faith. The greatest theologians of Islam knew about these topics, and they weren’t drastic theological issues for them.
In an age of freely accessible information, I don’t think we’re doing anyone any favors by restricting the awareness of these subjects to the scholars, and even that, only the scholarly among the scholars.
والله المستعان
والله المستعان
