Between the Tunisian woman, the Muslim, and the psychoanalyst, Olfa Youssef cannot choose any path other than ambiguity. That, well established if one dares say, between the signifier and the signified in analytic work. Also, the ambiguity of the mysterious “dark continent” of femininity mentioned by Freud or the “not-wholly woman” conceptualized by Lacan. But can a Muslim woman dare this Quranic ambiguity, that of multiple, multi-directional interpretations that are ultimately debatable, to define the path meant to guide her daily life? To those who would make the mistake of considering the title of her book a mark of uneasy caution, Olfa Youssef counters with its content, an extension of a state thesis on “the plurality of meanings in the Quran” combined with an analysis, a most formal rebuttal. She also claims a fortunate lineage: Françoise Dolto preceded her in a similar interpretation of the Gospels. But unlike the present-day Islam, Christianity was experiencing a less troubled period. Her study, therefore, is all the more courageous and interesting.
The ambiguity of the text, the author explains, may come from the transition from oral to written at the time of the compilation and collection under the Caliphate of Othman, of all the scattered sources of the Divine Recitation. Fundamentally, Olfa Youssef explains, it is “God” Himself who “chose this ambiguity”. The author highlights certain verses that she considers as irrefutable proof of this initial ambivalence. Verse 7 of Surah 3 is a brilliant paradigm: it acknowledges the existence of “ambiguous” verses that only the faithful who “lean towards misguidance” will seek not only to highlight but worse, to “interpret”. Ambiguity within ambiguity, according to the psychoanalyst and the exegete, as the convoluted construction of the sentence does not fully reveal if the interpretation is “reserved to God or shared with men of science”. From this “open” grid of reading, Olfa Youssef dissects the most often controversial points of the Quranic text: corporal punishments inflicted on women, prohibition of wine, freedom of belief, and holy war. She reminds in passing the verse 256 of the Surah “The Cow”: “No compulsion in religion”. Particularly thorough and based on solid knowledge, her study offers a modern, adapted, and also “luminous” reading of the Quran. In the presence of contradictory verses, the principle of contextual rather than diachronic abrogation, based on the discipline “Asbâb al-nuzûl”, the conditions of the revelation, should be applied: the “verse that best fits the context” should be retained. Those among them that advocate freedom of worship thus prevail over those that call for fighting the unbelievers. The same goes for the “polygamy of four wives”, transition, according to the author, between a “pre-Islamic polygamy where the number of women was unlimited” and a “monogamy in line with the Quranic spirit but impossible to implement suddenly in the time of the Prophet”. Between the original Quran, the “Umm al-Kitab”, the mother of the Quran (did Ibn ‘Arabi not note that in Arabic, all terms indicating origin and cause are feminine?) and the verbalized (recited) Quran, there existed a loss of the sense of divine intention. Hence the interpretations and advice given by the Ulama, intended to reassure Muslims in search of definitive answers. At the crossroads of psychoanalysis and Muslim faith, Olfa Youssef finds herself in the thoughts of Ibn’ Arabi: it is deep within himself that man can find the essence of the divine message, thus joining his voice with those of other authors tempted by the same path of enlightenment (cf Abdennour Bidar, “Self Islam”).
It is understood: the analytical interpretation of an “Other” sense of the Quran proposed by the psychoanalyst Olfa Youssef does not oppose the extraordinary spiritual richness of a lifetime of work by Henry Corbin. He asserts in one of the many appendices of the book that “sympathetism through active Imagination” is strengthened by research in analytical psychology: “each brings with him the Image of his own Lord and that is why he recognizes himself in him”. The reciprocity of this sympathesis occurs according to each “other”, based on “the knowledge he has of himself”. Between God and His follower: the same Light.
