This post is based on the conversation with Khalil Andani about his dissertation on Revelation in Islam. The post was generated by AI but edited by a human.
When Muslims speak of the Quran as the word of God, what exactly does that mean?
Did the Prophet Muhammad hear the Arabic words of the Quran and repeat them exactly as they were communicated to him?
Or did he receive a form of divine inspiration that he subsequently expressed in human language?
And is the Quran that Muslims recite today identical to God's eternal speech, or is it a humanly accessible manifestation of something transcendent?
These questions have occupied Muslim theologians and philosophers for centuries.
Yet the history of Islamic revelation is often presented as though there were only one answer.
In this episode of The Levantini Podcast, I speak with Islamic studies scholar Khalil Andani about his award-winning doctoral dissertation, Revelation in Islam: Qurʾānic, Sunnī, and Shīʿī Ismāʿīlī Perspectives.
Andani argues that the history of Quranic revelation is far more diverse than conventional introductory accounts suggest.
By examining the Quran itself alongside Sunni theology, Shiʿi Ismaili thought, and Islamic philosophy, he reconstructs competing understandings of what revelation is, how it occurs, and what role Muhammad plays in transmitting it.
Our conversation explores the Quran's original oral character, the distinction between divine writing and human recitation, the meaning of waḥy and tafsīl, and the theological controversies surrounding the created or uncreated Quran.
It also raises a broader comparative question: how do Muslims, Jews, and Christians understand the relationship between divine revelation and human language?
Is the Quran the Literal Word of God?
Many introductory accounts of Islam describe the Quran as the eternal, literal speech of God, communicated word for word to Muhammad.
In this model, the Prophet receives the Arabic words of revelation and recites them without alteration.
His role is that of a transmitter.
Andani emphasizes that this is a genuine and important Muslim understanding of revelation.
But he challenges the assumption that it represents the only historical Islamic understanding.
He argues that different Muslim communities developed different accounts of the relationship between God, Muhammad, and the Arabic Quran.
Some theologians maintained that the Quran's words were communicated directly to the Prophet.
Others distinguished God's eternal speech from the Arabic words through which that speech becomes accessible.
Still others understood Muhammad as receiving nonverbal divine inspiration and expressing it through his own prophetic capacities.
These are not merely differences of terminology.
They involve fundamental questions about divine transcendence, prophetic authority, and the relationship between revelation and language.
Did Muhammad Have a Role in Formulating the Quran?
One of Andani's central concerns is the question of prophetic agency.
If revelation consists of a word-for-word Arabic dictation, Muhammad's role in producing the Quranic discourse is limited to faithful transmission.
But if revelation begins as nonverbal inspiration, the Prophet may have a more active role in expressing its content.
Andani notes that modern Muslim thinkers such as Fazlur Rahman and Abdolkarim Soroush have explored models in which the Prophet participates in the formulation of revelation.
These theories are sometimes presented as radical departures from Islamic tradition.
Andani argues that this characterization overlooks important historical precedents.
In particular, Shiʿi Ismaili philosophers and other Muslim thinkers developed models of revelation in which the Prophet receives intelligible or spiritual content and expresses it in language.
In these traditions, prophetic agency does not necessarily mean that revelation ceases to be divine.
Rather, the Prophet becomes an essential participant in communicating divine guidance to human beings.
Three Elements of Revelation: Principle, Process, and Product
To compare the different theories, Andani proposes a three-part analytical framework.
He distinguishes between the revelatory principle, the revelatory process, and the revelatory product.
The Revelatory Principle
The revelatory principle is the transcendent source of revelation.
It is not simply the physical Quran or the Arabic recitation.
Rather, it is the divine reality from which revelation originates.
Depending on the theological tradition, this principle might be understood as God's eternal speech, divine knowledge, or a transcendent divine writing.
Different Muslim thinkers describe it differently.
But Andani argues that their theories generally presuppose some transcendent source of revelation.
The Revelatory Process
The revelatory process explains how the transcendent source becomes accessible to human beings.
This is where the theories diverge most sharply.
One model holds that divine content is expressed as Arabic speech and communicated verbally to Muhammad.
Another proposes that the Prophet receives nonverbal inspiration and then articulates it in Arabic.
The distinction concerns the relationship between divine communication and human language.
The Revelatory Product
The revelatory product is the accessible manifestation of revelation.
The Arabic Quran is one such product.
But Andani argues that different Muslim traditions recognize additional revelatory products.
In Sunni thought, the Prophet's Sunnah may also be understood as divinely guided.
In Shiʿi traditions, the inspired teachings and interpretations of the Imams can carry revelatory significance.
Some Ismaili philosophical traditions also understand the cosmos and human intellect as disclosures of divine reality, although not all forms of disclosure possess equal authority.
The advantage of Andani's framework is that it allows scholars to compare different theories without assuming that every Muslim thinker means the same thing by revelation.
What Is Waḥy in the Quran?
The Arabic term waḥy is central to Quranic revelation.
It is commonly translated as revelation or inspiration.
But what does the Quran itself mean by it?
Andani argues that the Quran presents waḥy as a form of divine communication that need not consist of spoken words.
In his interpretation, Muhammad receives nonverbal divine inspiration.
This inspiration reaches the Prophet's heart through the agency of the Spirit.
Andani points to passages such as Quran 42:52, which associates divine communication with a spirit from God's command.
He also discusses Quran 2:97, where Gabriel is said to bring revelation to Muhammad's heart.
Later Islamic traditions commonly identify the Holy Spirit with Gabriel.
Andani argues that the Quran's own language is more complex and deserves to be examined independently of later theological identifications.
His conclusion is that the Quranic revelatory experience is fundamentally spiritual rather than a straightforward auditory dictation.
The Divine Writing: What Does Kitāb Mean?
A particularly important part of Andani's argument concerns the Quranic word kitāb.
The term is commonly translated as book or scripture.
But Andani argues that in important Quranic contexts it refers to a transcendent divine writing rather than a physical book.
This divine writing contains God's knowledge, commands, decrees, and record of creation.
He discusses expressions such as umm al-kitāb, often translated as Mother of the Book, alongside other descriptions of divine writing.
In his interpretation, this transcendent reality is the source from which the Arabic Quran emerges.
He therefore distinguishes between the divine writing and the Quranic recitation.
The two are related, but they are not identical.
This distinction is essential to his understanding of how revelation operates.
Does Quran 2:2 Refer to This Book or That Book?
Andani offers an intriguing reading of Quran 2:2.
The verse begins with the Arabic expression dhālika al-kitāb.
English translations often render the phrase as “This is the Book.”
But Andani draws attention to the demonstrative dhālika, which ordinarily indicates something more distant: “that.”
He argues that the expression originally referred to a transcendent divine writing rather than the physical Quran being read.
In later interpretation, the distinction was often collapsed.
Once the Quran existed as a compiled book, readers naturally understood the verse as referring to the scripture in their hands.
Andani suggests that this change in reading reflects a broader historical transformation.
A discourse originally experienced as oral revelation came to be understood primarily as a written scripture.
The linguistic argument is debated: Arabic demonstratives can carry rhetorical and contextual functions beyond simple physical distance.
Nevertheless, Andani's interpretation highlights the importance of considering the Quran in its earliest oral setting.
Was the Quran Originally an Oral Revelation?
Andani emphasizes that the Quran emerged as oral proclamation.
During Muhammad's lifetime, revelation responded to changing circumstances over a period traditionally understood as approximately twenty-three years.
The Quran was not initially experienced by its audience as a single completed volume arranged in its later canonical order.
Instead, individual recitations addressed particular situations, questions, disputes, and communal needs.
Andani argues that this oral and responsive character is essential for understanding the Quran's original concept of revelation.
He uses a memorable modern analogy.
The Quran, he suggests, originally functioned more like Google Maps than a printed set of directions.
When circumstances changed, new guidance could respond to the situation.
A completed scripture, by contrast, must be interpreted and reapplied to circumstances that arise after its compilation.
This analogy is intended to illustrate the distinction between ongoing oral guidance and a fixed scriptural canon.
It does not mean that the Quran was never written during Muhammad's lifetime or that early Muslims lacked written records of recitations.
The extent of early writing, collection, and transmission remains a major subject of scholarly investigation.
Did Muhammad Intend the Quran to Become a Book?
The relationship between the original oral proclamations and the later written Quran raises another historical question.
Did Muhammad intend the revelations to be collected into a single physical volume?
Andani argues that the Quran itself does not clearly present the compilation of a complete earthly codex as the Prophet's project.
He also discusses a traditional report concerning Abu Bakr, Umar, and Zayd ibn Thabit.
In that account, the proposal to collect the Quran initially produces hesitation because Muhammad had not undertaken the same task.
Andani interprets the report as evidence that the early community remembered compilation as a departure from the Prophet's established practice.
He acknowledges that the historical reliability of hadith reports is debated.
His broader point is that the compilation of the Quran transformed the way the revelation could be encountered and interpreted.
A living sequence of oral proclamations became a bounded scriptural corpus.
That development had profound consequences for Islamic theology, law, and religious authority.
What Is Tafsīl?
The Arabic term tafsīl is important to Andani's account of revelation.
He interprets it as a process of specification or adaptation.
The transcendent divine writing encompasses knowledge and guidance beyond what any human community could receive directly.
That content must therefore become accessible in a form appropriate to particular circumstances.
In Andani's interpretation, tafsīl describes how divine content becomes expressed through specific Arabic recitations.
He proposes that Muhammad himself performs this adaptation.
The Prophet receives nonverbal inspiration and expresses it in language suited to his audience.
Other Quranic scholars, including Nikolai Sinai and Daniel Madigan as discussed in the interview, have offered interpretations that differ on where prophetic agency enters the process.
The debate is therefore not simply whether the Quran is divine.
It concerns the mechanisms through which divine revelation becomes humanly accessible.
Did God Dictate the Quran Word for Word?
Andani distinguishes two broad models.
In the verbal dictation model, the Arabic wording of the Quran is communicated to Muhammad.
The Prophet recites what he receives.
In the nonverbal inspiration model, Muhammad receives divine content that he subsequently expresses in Arabic.
Andani favors the second interpretation as an account of the Quran's own presentation of revelation.
He argues that shifts in the Quran's speaking voice may support this view.
The Quran sometimes speaks in the first-person divine voice, sometimes refers to God in the third person, and sometimes shifts between perspectives.
Andani suggests that these transitions may reflect a prophetic discourse expressing or translating divine communication.
Other scholars interpret the same features as literary or rhetorical conventions.
The shifts in voice therefore do not independently establish Andani's theory.
But they form part of his broader historical and literary argument.
The Quran, Sinai, and Jewish Theories of Revelation
Our conversation also explores a striking comparison with Jewish biblical scholarship.
Andani refers to the work of Benjamin D. Sommer on revelation at Mount Sinai.
Sommer argues that biblical texts and later Jewish traditions preserve different models of divine communication.
Some present revelation as direct divine speech.
Others can be read as allowing a human role in interpreting or articulating divine communication.
Andani sees a potential parallel with his interpretation of Quranic revelation.
In both cases, the relationship between divine content and human language becomes central.
The comparison does not establish that the Quran borrowed a specific Jewish theory or that the traditions are identical.
Rather, it demonstrates that questions about prophetic agency and divine speech extend across the Abrahamic religions.
Is the Quran the Speech of God?
A further distinction concerns the expression kalām Allāh, or speech of God.
Andani argues that the Quran's own references to God's words and speech do not necessarily identify the Arabic recitations as an eternal verbal transcript.
He discusses Quran 9:6, where the expression kalām Allāh appears.
In his interpretation, the phrase may refer to divine promises or decrees within the surrounding passage rather than to the Quran as a complete literary corpus.
This reading challenges the way later theologians understood the expression.
Andani argues that the language of God's speech became increasingly important in Islamic theological debates after the earliest period.
Was the Quran Created or Uncreated?
The created-versus-uncreated Quran controversy became one of the most consequential debates in early Islamic theology.
Some thinkers emphasized God's absolute transcendence and argued that God does not speak through physical vocal organs.
Accordingly, the audible sounds of revelation must be created.
Others defended the Quran as the uncreated speech of God.
Andani discusses early figures such as Jaʿd ibn Dirham and Jahm ibn Safwan, whose views survive largely through later reports.
He also discusses Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who resisted the claim that the Quran was created.
The debate was connected to broader questions about God's eternal attributes, including knowledge, power, life, and speech.
If God's speech is eternal, how does it relate to Arabic words recited at particular moments in human history?
If those words are created, what does that imply about their divine authority?
Different theological schools developed different answers.
The controversy illustrates why the phrase “word of God” cannot be treated as a simple or universally defined theological statement.
Sunni, Shiʿi, and Ismaili Understandings of Revelation
Andani's dissertation is especially concerned with the diversity of Islamic traditions.
He argues that Shiʿi Ismaili philosophical accounts of revelation are frequently omitted from introductory presentations of Islam.
In the traditions he examines, revelation may involve an intelligible or spiritual communication that the Prophet translates into language.
The Prophet's intellect and spiritual capacities are therefore essential to the revelatory process.
This does not mean that all Shiʿi Muslims hold one identical theory or that Sunni theology is internally uniform.
Indeed, one of Andani's main points is that the labels Sunni and Shiʿi can conceal considerable theological diversity.
The history of Islamic revelation must be reconstructed through particular authors, schools, and texts rather than through a single generalized model.
Conclusion: A More Complicated History of Revelation
Khalil Andani's research challenges a familiar assumption.
The history of Islamic revelation cannot be reduced to a single theory in which God dictates Arabic words and Muhammad repeats them.
That model has been influential, but it is not the only one developed within Islamic intellectual history.
Muslim theologians and philosophers debated the nature of divine speech, the role of prophetic intellect, the relationship between oral recitation and written scripture, and the distinction between eternal divine knowledge and its earthly expression.
Andani's framework of revelatory principle, process, and product provides a way to compare these different positions.
His interpretation of the Quran as a dynamic oral discourse rooted in transcendent divine writing offers one provocative reconstruction of the earliest understanding of revelation.
Whether or not one accepts every part of that reconstruction, the larger historical lesson is important.
Islamic traditions have long contained sophisticated and competing accounts of how divine guidance reaches human beings.
Understanding those debates gives us a richer picture of the Quran, Muhammad's prophetic role, and the development of Islamic theology.
Quranic Revelation: Frequently Asked Questions
1. How was the Quran revealed to Muhammad?
Islamic traditions describe revelation in different ways. A widely held account involves verbal communication through Gabriel, while other theological models emphasize nonverbal divine inspiration and the Prophet's role in expressing it.
2. Is the Quran the literal word of God?
Many Muslims affirm that the Quran is God's word, but Islamic theologians have differed over whether its Arabic words are identical to God's eternal speech or are expressions of a transcendent divine reality.
3. Who is Khalil Andani?
Khalil Andani is a scholar of Islamic studies whose research examines Quranic revelation, Sunni theology, Shiʿi Ismaili thought, and Islamic philosophy.
4. What is Khalil Andani's dissertation about?
His dissertation, Revelation in Islam: Qurʾānic, Sunnī, and Shīʿī Ismāʿīlī Perspectives, investigates competing historical Islamic theories of revelation.
5. What is waḥy in Islam?
Waḥy is an Arabic term commonly translated as revelation or divine inspiration. Its precise meaning and mechanism have been interpreted differently by Muslim scholars.
6. Did Muhammad receive the Quran word for word?
The verbal dictation model says that Muhammad received and recited the Arabic words of revelation. Other historical Islamic theories allow a more active role for the Prophet in expressing divine guidance.
7. What is the revelatory principle?
In Andani's framework, the revelatory principle is the transcendent source of revelation, such as divine speech, divine knowledge, or divine writing.
8. What is the revelatory process?
The revelatory process describes how transcendent divine content becomes accessible to human beings.
9. What is the revelatory product?
A revelatory product is an accessible manifestation of divine guidance, such as the Arabic Quran. Some traditions recognize additional products.
10. What does kitāb mean in the Quran?
Kitāb can mean writing, book, or scripture. Andani argues that some Quranic references concern a transcendent divine writing rather than a physical volume.
11. What is Umm al-Kitāb?
Umm al-Kitāb, often translated as Mother of the Book, is a Quranic expression associated with the source or foundation of divine revelation.
12. What does dhālika al-kitāb mean?
The phrase in Quran 2:2 is commonly translated in English as “This is the Book.” Andani argues that its demonstrative may point to a transcendent divine writing.
13. Was the Quran originally oral?
The Quran was originally proclaimed and transmitted through recitation, although written recording also formed part of its early transmission history.
14. When was the Quran compiled into a book?
Islamic tradition associates early collection with Abu Bakr and standardization with Caliph Uthman in the seventh century. The historical details remain subjects of scholarly investigation.
15. Did Muhammad intend the Quran to be compiled?
Andani argues that the earliest Quranic discourse does not clearly present the creation of a completed physical codex as Muhammad's project. This is an interpretation rather than a settled historical fact.
16. What is tafsīl?
Tafsīl can refer to detailed explanation or specification. Andani uses it to discuss how transcendent divine content becomes expressed in context-specific Arabic recitations.
17. What role does Gabriel play in Quranic revelation?
Gabriel is traditionally understood as the angel who transmitted revelation to Muhammad. Andani examines how Quranic references to Gabriel and the Spirit relate to later theological interpretations.
18. What is the Holy Spirit in Islam?
The Quran refers to the Holy Spirit and the trustworthy Spirit. Later Islamic interpretation commonly identifies the Holy Spirit with Gabriel, although Andani emphasizes the complexity of the Quranic language.
19. What is kalām Allāh?
Kalām Allāh means speech of God. Islamic theologians debated whether this refers directly to Arabic words or to a transcendent divine attribute expressed through revelation.
20. Is the Quran created or uncreated?
Different Islamic theological schools developed different positions on the Quran's relationship to God's eternal attributes and to created Arabic recitation.
21. Who was Ahmad ibn Hanbal?
Ahmad ibn Hanbal was an influential early Muslim scholar associated with resistance to the doctrine that the Quran was created.
22. What is the Ashʿari understanding of God's speech?
Classical Ashʿari theology distinguishes God's eternal speech from its temporal expressions in sounds and letters, although details vary among scholars.
23. How do Ismailis understand revelation?
The Ismaili philosophical traditions examined by Andani often describe revelation as divine intelligible or spiritual content expressed through the Prophet's intellectual and spiritual capacities.
24. What are the qirāʾāt?
The qirāʾāt are recognized traditions of Quranic recitation that preserve differences in pronunciation, vocalization, and sometimes wording.
25. What are the seven aḥruf?
The seven aḥruf are mentioned in Islamic reports concerning permitted forms of Quranic recitation. Their exact meaning and relationship to the later canonical readings are debated.
26. How does Quranic revelation compare with revelation at Mount Sinai?
Andani compares his research with Benjamin D. Sommer's work on biblical revelation, especially the possibility that divine communication may be expressed through human interpretation.
