Interviewing Religion – A Chat With Scott Lucas

Welcome to Part Three of the project “Interviewing Religion,” where I interview scholars of Middle Eastern religions about their research, discuss how their work connects to broader public issues, and ask for suggestions for further reading. [You can read the other parts here!] A huge thank you to the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Luce Foundation, who supported my work with one of their Advancing Public Scholarship Grants. I couldn’t have launched this project without their assistance.

For my third interview, I’m excited to introduce Dr. Scott Lucas. Lucas is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies (MENAS) at the University of Arizona. His research explores the creative process by which Sunni and Zaydi scholars composed works in the genres of law, hadith, and Qur’anic commentary during the classical period of Islamic civilization. He recently published a two-volume, unabridged translation of thirty passages from al-Tabari’s Qur’an commentary, titled Selections from the Comprehensive Exposition of the Interpretation of the Verses of the Qur’an. I’m particularly excited about his upcoming publications on early hadith works and Zaydi commentaries, many of which remain relatively unstudied by Western scholars or exist only in manuscript form.

I recently spoke to Lucas, who graciously answered a few questions about his research and publications. I encourage you to read his work, listen to his lecture series on YouTube, and check out the many resources he mentions here.

1) How did you first get interested in studying Zaydi theology?

Lucas: I became interested in rationalist Islamic theology in college. While there was relatively little written on Zaydi theology in English (or even Arabic) at that time, most surveys of Islam mentioned that Zaydi Muslims embraced the rationalist tradition called Mu‘tazilism to a greater extent than any other Islamic group. I also studied Arabic in Yemen during my junior year of college, which is home to most of the world’s Zaydi Muslims, and returned to study and enter Islam at the hand of a Zaydi scholar in late 1995. For a variety of reasons, I did not begin to study Zaydi theology academically until about 2016, when I started researching Zaydi Arabic manuscripts and reading published Zaydi works. But personally, I’ve found Zaydi theology compelling the entire time I’ve been a Muslim. And I’m grateful so many Zaydi books of theology have been published during the past thirty years. 

2) You’ve been asked to present your work at a local community center. How would you describe your research on hadith, law, and Qur’anic commentary by Zaydi-Yemeni scholars? 

Lucas: The first thing to mention is that the Zaydi intellectual tradition is both very rich and very local. These are important caveats because I do not want to give the erroneous impression that the vast majority of Muslims adhere to all of the teachings of the traditions I study. One of the aspects I find fascinating about the Yemeni Zaydi tradition is that one can witness the tremendous impact the importation of books from Iran and Iraq had on Yemeni Zaydis during the 12th through 14th centuries of the Common Era. Yemeni scholars at this time were transmitting and building upon these books in creative ways that seem to have climaxed in the 14th and 15th centuries.   

With regard to hadith, Yemeni-Zaydis composed works in two broad genres—ethical and legal. I am making revisions on a chapter that introduces two of the most important legal hadith compilations from the 12th and 13th centuries, both of which have been published and are based on earlier Zaydi hadith collections from northern Iran. I also have published a chapter on two forty-hadith collections, both of which are ethically oriented. [NOTE: The full book Beyond Authenticity, Alternative Approaches to Hadith Narrations and Collections is available here] 

In fact, one of these forty hadith collections, known among Yemenis as Silsilat al-ibriz, was transmitted by the great South Asian Sunni scholar, Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi, and has been translated into English. This is important because in the cases of hadith and Qur’an commentary, there is considerable shared material between Zaydis and Sunnis, despite the theological differences between these two Islamic orientations. Zaydi scholars benefited from Sunni Qur’an commentaries and drew upon them a great deal in several of their own commentaries. 

I think this overlap is less obvious in the case of law, although Zaydi legal positions generally fall within the positions of the four primary Sunni schools of law and, on a practical level, Zaydis and Sunnis prayed together in the same mosques when I was a student in Yemen in 1996. Also, Zaydi scholars are very familiar with the range of Sunni legal positions on thousands of topics, as can be seen from their encyclopedic works of law, like Imam Ibn al-Murtada’s Kitab al-Bahr al-zakhkhar.

3) Tell me about your recent projects and publications. Which works are your favorites and why?

Lucas: Starting in the 12^th century, Yemeni Zaydi scholars initiated and developed a tradition of explaining theology in thirty topics. This tradition is almost entirely preserved in manuscripts, and fortunately the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, Italy, has more than twenty works that follow this template in manuscript. Nearly the entire Arabic collection of this Italian library is available on microfilm at the Medieval Institute of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, so I was able to examine these manuscripts and publish an article “Islamic Theology in Thirty Topics: a Yemeni Zaydī Tradition Preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana” that can serve as a guide to this rationalist tradition.  

I have also prepared a guide to Zaydi Qur’an commentaries, most of which are still in manuscript too, that will be part of an edited volume on Qur’anic hermeneutics. This was a challenging assignment because there is virtually no secondary literature in European languages about Zaydi Qur’an commentary and it involved drawing on online manuscript collections beyond the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. I propose that Zaydi commentaries can be classified in the following categories: 1) Imam-centered commentaries; 2) Adaptations of Sunni commentaries; 3) Commentaries on legal verses; and 4) Modern commentaries. 

One of my favorite Zaydi commentaries is Ibn Abi l-Qasim’s Tajrid al-Kashshaf, which regrettably remains in manuscript. I published an article about this work in the Journal of Qur’anic Studies and included an Arabic critical edition of Ibn Abi l-Qasim’s commentary on the Sura of the Star (Q. 53). Hopefully there will be a published edition of this valuable commentary soon.

4) Your neighbor wants to know more about your field. What books, websites, videos, or other resources would you recommend to them? (why?)

Lucas: Islamic Studies is a vast topic that is researched by a modest number of scholars in the United States and Europe. Our work is facilitated by the important efforts of Muslim scholars in the MENA region to publish hundreds, if not thousands, of premodern Islamic texts, along with their analytical studies from which Western-based scholars can benefit. 

Some of the subfields of Islamic Studies include 1) Qur’anic Studies, which is divided into the study of the Qur’an itself and studies on Qur’an interpretation (tafsir); 2) Islamic Legal Studies; 3) Islamic intellectual history, which includes theology and philosophy; 4) Sufism, the spiritual-ethical traditions and fraternities of Islam; 5) Shi‘i Studies, which allows space for the study of the approximately 15% of Muslims who are not Sunnis and frequently are overlooked in most subfields of Islamic Studies; 6) Modern Islamic Movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizbollah; and 7) Contemporary Islam, which in turn requires specialization in specific regions and languages beyond Arabic, given that the majority of Muslim today live in South and Southeast Asia. There are additional smaller subfields in Islamic Studies, like hadith studies, and then there are affiliated fields, such as Islamic history or Islamic architecture.  

A good general introduction I have used in community classroom settings is Abdullah Saeed’s Islamic Thought: An Introduction. An even shorter introduction that I use in introductory courses is Islam: A Short Guide to the Faith, edited by Roger Allen and Shawkat Toorawa. The new Oxford Handbook series is very good for a more committed reader. I have benefited from their volumes on Islamic Theology, Islamic Philosophy, and Qur’anic Studies, although there are many other volumes on topics, such as Islamic Law and American Islam.      

I confess I am not as familiar with online resources and videos produced by my colleagues in Islamic Studies. I generally view online videos to get a sense of normative Islam that is articulated by Imams and Muslim religious scholars, rather than lectures by Western academics. I find it to be a useful way to get a sense of which issues are attracting attention, especially among Muslims in the United States. There is also a lot of odd and disturbing material online related to Islam, so one must use caution and not jump to broad conclusions after watching a few YouTube videos by individuals who are detached from mainline Islamic traditions.

A documentary I still use in class that is available online is Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think. It is a bit dated, since it came out shortly after the September 11^th terrorist attack. But it remains valuable, especially because it features a highly educated Muslim researcher, Dalia Mogahed, who, along with Gallup’s polling data, helps shatter several stereotypes about Islam and Muslims.

5) How does your research connect to broader public issues?  What overlap do you see between the topics you study and contemporary issues around the world today?

Lucas: I began my career in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attack when there was much anxiety about and interest in Islam. I remember visiting many mainline Protestant churches in Tucson and talking about Islam and Muslims in America. I was actively involved in our local mosque during that time, which gave me insights into the actual challenges Muslims were facing, while my academic background allowed me to critique extremist Muslim groups whose positions deviated from mainstream Muslim tradition. I feel that this public interest has waned considerably in recent years, although I am looking forward to teaching a non-credit class on Great Thinkers of the Muslim World through the Humanities Seminars Program at the University of Arizona this fall.

There is pressure, especially if one wishes to receive federal grants, to make one’s research clearly relevant to contemporary issues, and it is good that there are academics who do this. I confess I’m not one of those academics. Instead, I see my role as identifying and elucidating Islamic traditions, like the Zaydis, that are close to mainstream Sunni Islam, yet offer something special. In the case of the Zaydis, I find their commitment to theological positions, such as their rigorous defense of free will and the absolute singularity of God, as valuable alternatives to mainstream Sunni theology. These topics are not the popular, burning issues of the day, like the topics of same-sex marriage or systematic racism, but they are issues that are of tremendous importance for Muslims who think deeply about God and the universe. I don’t think I am alone when I say that certain Sunni theological positions do not make sense from a rational perspective, whereas for me at least, the Zaydi explanations do.  

It is for this reason that I produced a ten-part lecture series on YouTube based on a 13th-century Zaydi text that introduces the core thirty topics of Islamic theology. It is a normative project, insofar as I try to communicate faithfully traditional Zaydi theological positions, rather than critique them or put them in historical context. I would like this knowledge to be accessible for free to anyone who is curious or perhaps unpersuaded by aspects of mainstream Sunni or Twelver Shi‘i theology, the orientations to which nearly all Muslims belong.

6) What other scholars/writers do you think are doing the most interesting work on religion in the Middle East? 

Lucas: From my vantage point, working primarily with pre-modern texts, Sabine Schmidtke of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton is always working on multiple interesting projects, among which are several related to Zaydism and Shi‘ism more broadly. Her long-term Zaydi Manuscript Tradition project and efforts to make accessible Zaydi manuscripts in Yemen by means of digital surrogates is a highly valuable endeavor.

I find Sherman Jackson’s scholarship highly insightful, especially since it is grounded in normative Sunnism and thus elucidates aspects of the traditions to which the vast majority of Muslims adhere. Professor Jackson, who holds the King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California, has a new book, The Islamic Secular, that I am excited to read. It addresses contemporary issues that affect Muslims today while being rooted in mainstream Islamic sources and his own extensive experience in the American Muslim community. Jonathan Brown at Georgetown University is someone you will probably want to reach out to, as he is also very well versed in traditional Sunni texts and fearlessly explored the controversial topics of slavery and anti-Blackness in his recent books, Slavery and Islam and Islam and Blackness. 

I’m also always learning something new and exciting from Sajjad Rizvi at the University of Exeter, who has illuminated the Twelver Shi‘i post-classical and contemporary intellectual traditions in Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. Finally, Walid Saleh at the University of Toronto continues to do foundational and ground-breaking research in the study of Qur’an commentaries, which is so critical for understanding the diverse ways Muslims have understood their most sacred book over the past 1,300 years. 

7) How can people find out more about you and follow your work?

Lucas: I try to make my work accessible on Academia.edu (https://arizona.academia.edu/ScottLucas). And I’m usually happy to share it with people who contact me over email (sclucas@arizona.edu). I’ve already mentioned the Zaydi theology series that is on YouTube and we hopefully will add additional content about the Zaydi school of Islam to the Madhhab Ahl al-Bayt channel in the future, inshallah. 

---

Thanks so much to Dr. Scott Lucas for speaking with me and sharing these details about his studies of Sunni and Zaydi scholars during the classical period of Islamic civilization. I really encourage you to check out his work, listen to his lecture series on YouTube, and consult the other great resources he mentioned here. For a complete list of the books, websites, and articles listed in this interview, you can also visit Interviewing Religion’s Books and Resources page.

And look for more interviews like this to come soon! You can subscribe to the blog here to get new posts directly by email.