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Dialogism in story of Abraham and his father

(in Surat Maryam (19:41-50

            The Qur'an is an important literary text.  It contains all the elements and qualities of good classical Arabic literature poetic imagery, metaphors and similes, stories, parables, moral precepts and religious injunctions. These and other elements of the Qur'anic literary style and idioms have been studied and elaborated in terms of the inimitability (I'jaz) of the Qur'an. There is, however, another dimension of the construction of the Qur'anic text that has not been examined at length: dialogism.  I would like to suggest that by looking at dialogism in the Qur'an, especially Qur'anic stories, it would possible to read the Qur'an in a new way that would first, shed light on the composition of the Qur'an and second, produce new meaningful readings of its stories.

            For current purposes, I will focus on the story of Abraham with his father in the Qur'an. A combination of the theories of 'Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjan? (471/1078) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1975) serve as theoretical framework for my intended literary analysis in which I highlight the ways in which meaning is derived from an overlapping of semantic and rhetorical functions of language (al-Jurjan?) and, more significantly, from dialogism of worldviews embedded in language use (Bakhtin). The dialogues of Abraham may seem a straightforward expression of the conflict between Islamic monotheism and pre-Islamic idolatry.  A closer scrutiny of the workings of language and dialogue in the story reveals not only this ideological contest, as I shall demonstrate, but also a debate around notions of community and the role of individual.