Books by Zouhair Ghazzal
This book provides an anthropological exploration of the
ways in which crime is perceived and def... more This book provides an anthropological exploration of the
ways in which crime is perceived and defined, focusing on notions of truth, intentionality, and evidence. The chapters contain rich ethnographic case studies drawn from work in the Middle East, Africa, India, Mexico and Europe. Instances discussed include court proceedings, police reports and newspapers to moments of conflict resolution and reconciliation. Through analysis of this material, the authors reflect on how perception of an act as a crime can differ and how the definition of crime may not be shared by all societies. The approach takes into consideration local standards as well as social, legal and contextual constraints.
This book is based on 34 criminal cases from the 1980s, 1990s to the present from the troubled Sy... more This book is based on 34 criminal cases from the 1980s, 1990s to the present from the troubled Syrian north, the triangle of Aleppo, Idlib, and Bab al-Hawa on the Turkish frontier. It examines the criminal cases based on their inherent narratives and discourses which are furnished by witnesses, defendants, lawyers, judges, and court experts.
This is my first book based on my doctoral dissertation submitted at the Sorbonne in 1986. What i... more This is my first book based on my doctoral dissertation submitted at the Sorbonne in 1986. What is still valuable in hindsight is the portrayal of the "political economy" of 19th-century Damascus as dominated by the rent-seeking notables (a'yan) who were a prebendal class of rentiers surviving from state land grants as individuals and families. As a class, therefore, the a'yan failed to meet the preconditions of an "aristocratic class" with grand "political" strategies for their city and region (the province of Damascus). Timur Kuran has recently voiced similar views on the lack of an "aristocratic class" in the Ottoman world at large. I should add that that's precisely an outcome of an absence of "feudalism" which comes in conjunction with strong "patrimonial" structures at the state level, with strong kinship ties for the populations at large. Developed even further, we could understand more forcefully the weaknesses of state structures in contemporary Syria. But that's the subject of another book project.
The main purpose of our collective project La Syrie au présent is to propose new horizons for res... more The main purpose of our collective project La Syrie au présent is to propose new horizons for research, based on the social sciences, on contemporary Syria. The rarity of publications on Syria poses a problem all by itself. Moreover, the bulk of current research focuses mainly on broad political and economic phenomena, and at times, their social and cultural underpinnings. We want to explore the possibility of doubling the broad political and economic stakes with a démarche that would take into consideration major societal transformations from the vintage point of view of the social actors (or users) themselves. A rapid look at recent articles extracted from Internet databases points to a certain desire to transcend the purely political and economic towards more precise objects of research which would require a fieldwork experience at a micro level. We therefore want to experiment with various levels of macro research in conjunction with smaller fieldwork practices. The collective book is composed of broad chapters of synthesis on politics, the economy, law, society and religion, in conjunction with much shorter fieldwork experiments. More specifically, the book is structured on a dozen articles of “synthesis” to which are appended several “snapshots,” which are much shorter pieces based on fieldwork experience. The two parts—that of “syntheses” and “snapshots”—are not, however, necessarily separated: we have thought more in the direction of juxtaposing the long articles of synthesis along with the other much shorter ones, so that the latter would act as a counterpoint to the former (the work directed by Pierre Bourdieu, La Misère du monde, could serve as a model in the way it combines various texts with different tonalities).
Most studies on Islamic, Arab, and Ottoman societies and civilizations are trapped into the evide... more Most studies on Islamic, Arab, and Ottoman societies and civilizations are trapped into the evidentiary role of the texts that researchers have at their disposal, considerably reducing the role of text and language to a mimetic description of what happened. This book argues that an understanding of social relations primarily implies taking into consideration the textual production of society in terms of the meanings that could be ascribed to the texts themselves, and, second, that the analysis of texts, whatever their societal and institutional contexts, should look at its sources as discursive practices, in order not to reduce them to their preliminary role of bearers of factual evidence. Drawing from a large variety of Ottoman “legal” texts from nineteenth-century Beirut and Damascus, this book avoids ascribing such texts to the normative values of “Islamic law,” by documenting instead how various discursive practices concretely operate within a particular terrain. Different levels of practice therefore emerge, all of which documented by the social actors that made their very existence possible.
Papers by Zouhair Ghazzal
Communication. …, 2011
This article examines the succession of comments posted on a forum/message board hosted by Al-Ara... more This article examines the succession of comments posted on a forum/message board hosted by Al-Arabiya, in reaction to a news release concerning incidents of a religious nature in Esna, Upper Egypt. It raises the question of identity, as both constitutive of this succession of comments and its main object. In this case, identity belongs to the constitutive elements of the virtual activity itself, and it is displayed to characterize others, to characterize oneself and to link rights and duties to these categorical acts. In this regard, it is part and parcel of the normative character of practical cognition, i.e., cognition as it is captured in action. The article describes the concrete forms of the ordering of people’s conceptual, communicational, relational and instrumental behaviour, as it unfolds in situ on the forum/message board.
In the Syrian penal system, which loosely follows the French model of evidence, a judge construct... more In the Syrian penal system, which loosely follows the French model of evidence, a judge constructs evidence based on forensic reports, interviews of and statements delivered by suspects and witnesses, and memos drafted by judges, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals appointed by the court in the course of the investigation; all of which constitute truth claims, as constructed by the judge from the vintage viewpoint of his or her own narrative. In other words, statements taken individually would be problematic in terms of receiving their validity through forensic evidence alone. If they do not stand on their own, it is because their validity would only be established through the judge’s narrative.
Considering that the problems in Syrian society have been longue durée and chronic in their natur... more Considering that the problems in Syrian society have been longue durée and chronic in their nature, it does not make much sense to look for any “beginning” of the current civil war in terms of deeply-seated causal elements. We relate the question of beginning to that of the imaginary: Syrians, like the rest of the Arabs, and the world at large, have been throughout 2011 consuming images of civil strife on their TV, computers, tablets and smartphone monitors. Such images have put on hold, at least temporarily, the authority and prestige of the state in the Arab world, the rule of dictators, as it is commonly known. Such prestige and authority is particularly vital for authoritarian, fascist, or totalitarian states and societies. That is to say, a great deal of what constitutes “society” does not come from its inner sense of “cohesion,” associations, cooperatives, chambers of commerce, trade, and labor, political parties, free elections, and vibrant parliamentarianism. By the 1960s, amid the failure of the Union with Egypt and the botched experience of the United Arab Republic (U.A.R.), Syria had set itself, to get out of its social and political crisis, at establishing, in line with neighboring Iraq and Egypt and other Arab states, a representative state without politics: an authoritarian dictatorship.
This paper reconsiders the discourse of expropriation in contemporary Syria based on four episode... more This paper reconsiders the discourse of expropriation in contemporary Syria based on four episodes. First, the ḥall al-awqāf al-dhurriya (dissolution of mortmain family properties) which was initiated by Husni al-Zaʿīm (who acted as the nominal head of state) in his brief tenure in 1949, and which kept the civil courts busy in the 1950s and later; second, the agrarian reforms of the 1960s and later; third, the nationalization of the cotton and textile manufactures in Aleppo and Idlib in 1965; and, fourth, the expropriation of properties in Idlib since the 1990s for the sake of the public projects. For the most part this study is based on sporadic family archives which would in all circumstances be difficult to retrieve from court records, considering the lack of appropriately kept and accessible public archives, and the sensitivity that surrounds all matters related to family wealth.
The text of the new rental law that was passed in parliament only recently, in April 2014, and wh... more The text of the new rental law that was passed in parliament only recently, in April 2014, and which in principle should put permanently at rest the episode of old rents by 2025 at the latest, has been under the hood for many years, receiving many revisions prior to its publication in the Official Journal in early May 2014. But even though there is a constitutional probation period of six months, prior to the enactment of the law, which makes it eligible to be revoked by parliamentarians and Cabinet ministers, or the house speaker and president of the republic, the published text is worth our attention for its own sake, considering how much controversy it has already stirred.
Article 2 of the Egyptian constitution states that “Islam is the religion of the State, Arabic is... more Article 2 of the Egyptian constitution states that “Islam is the religion of the State, Arabic is its official language, and the principles of the Islamic sharia are the main source of law.” The Syrian constitution carries a similar clause, except that the sharia is substituted for fiqh, the various law schools (madhāhib) which represent different interpretations of the holy sharia, based on the Qur’an and hadith (the sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad). The clause in the Syrian constitution on the sources of law may be historically and hermeneutically more accurate, as we are dealing more with interpretations of the sharia than with the holy law itself, which stands as divine, hence could only be approached hermeneutically: the corpus of the fiqh, in its various Sunni and Shi‘i law schools, does indeed assume a principle of contingency, as each interpretation would be contingent on both the school that carries it and the jurist that has propounded it.
The question, however, as raised by Hussein Ali Agrama’s Questioning Secularism, is, would such constitutional clauses make a country like Egypt more “religious” than “secular”?
This French text was originally delivered at the University of Tunis in October 2010, prior to Bo... more This French text was originally delivered at the University of Tunis in October 2010, prior to Bouazizi's self-immolation and the Arab Spring. Based on two sharia court cases of "minorities" from 19th-century Ottoman Mount Lebanon, it pleas for a textual hermeneutical analysis of Ottoman documents, and for a consideration of property not just in terms of its material possession, but also as a symbol for wealth, status, community, kinship and family. Borrowing from cultural anthropologists like Marshal Sahlins, it argues for the non-economic value of the economy of property in non-industrialized pre-capitalist societies.
Is the current violence in Syria a revolt of “society” against an oppressive state, or should it ... more Is the current violence in Syria a revolt of “society” against an oppressive state, or should it be read more meaningfully as a full fledged civil war? If we assume the perspective of civil war, then the “state” and its various apparatuses would stand as just one “civil party” among others, protective of its own social and political interests, while revealing the multi-layered relations of power in Syrian society which cannot be solely attributed to a dysfunctional state–society relation. That is to say, even though the violence was originally meant to displace the apparatuses of the state, it has since then sprawled in different directions, not to be restricted to the problems of legitimacy that an authoritarian state has engulfed itself into since the Baathist revolution in the 1960s. It is such hypothesis that we want to explore, first, by contextualizing the antinomies of the Syrian nation-state in historical perspective, since its inception from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire and the French colonial state. Second, through a combination of sociological and anthropological approaches, we want to analyze the contradictions that the Baathist state has set itself into once it has opted for a hegemonic takeover of civil society, in particular in the 1970s, with Asad’s “corrective movement” and its aftermath, which led to a massive expansion of the state apparatuses.
The Lebanese market would have been in the category of open competitive leases were it not for th... more The Lebanese market would have been in the category of open competitive leases were it not for the tenancy law of 1944 which institutionalized the distinction between leases that were “renewed” amid an explicit willingness from both landlord and tenant, on the one hand, and others that were “prolonged” beyond what the contract had originally stated, which is usually one year on the other. It is indeed that kind of opening towards a legalized “prolongation” that would create the well known crisis of low rents, but only beginning in the 1980s; hence even in the early stages of the civil war in 1975–76 “prolongation” of contractual leases did not seem to have created widespread shortages on the market. What Lebanese legislation harnessed on in three decades, in the 1944–74 interim, was this link between “renewal” and “prolongation,” providing ample reasons to go for the latter. In those prosperous decades, up to the early 1980s, the economy was doing well with acceptable inflation, low unemployment, cheap and abundant local labor, affordable housing, and a strong lira in respect to the dollar and other robust currencies. So why not opt for yearly tenancy contracts? Why legalize “prolongation”? It is usually assumed that with the end of the French mandate, a larger than expected rural or mountainous population moved to the cities, in particular Beirut, which formed the backbone of manufacturing and industries. Being unfamiliar with city life and its risks, the law sought to mitigate that uncertainty by legalizing the prolongation of contracts whenever the tenant felt legible to do so. At the time neither landlords nor tenants had much to complain about, considering the economy’s good standing.
It is well admitted that the Ottomans began their late reforms, known as the Tanzimat, as an atte... more It is well admitted that the Ottomans began their late reforms, known as the Tanzimat, as an attempt to modernize their bureaucracy and their sharia-based legal system. This was in reaction to British and other western pressures to treat more fairly the Christian minorities, to open up regional and international trade to consuls and foreigners, and to abolish the aging rent system known as the iltizam. However, what has often been overlooked is the crucial role of the Egyptian Tanzimat which were fostered by Muhammad Ali. What in effect may have triggered the Ottoman Tanzimat in 1839 was the Egyptian Expedition in Greater Syria (1832–1840) and the attempt of the occupiers to reorganize the local “Syrian” bureaucracy on new grounds, primarily by establishing local councils, known as the majalis, in Aleppo and Damascus. This paper explores for the first time the workings of Aleppo’s majlis in 1838. Composed of a dozen or so notables from the city, the majlis adjudicated iltizam conflicts, fixed prices on commodities, and found solutions to finance the expenses of the occupying Egyptian army. With that kind of work, Aleppo’s “Egyptian” majlis has set a precedent for the councils that would be instituted in the aftermath of the 1839 Gülhane edict. We therefore have to roads for modernization on the eastern Mediterranean, one Egyptian and the other Ottoman. The two survive until this day.
There is neither a science of "criminology" for the Arab world at large nor a sociology of crime ... more There is neither a science of "criminology" for the Arab world at large nor a sociology of crime for that matter. In my forthcoming book "the crime of writing" I attempt to study the narratives of contemporary criminal case-files in Syria by looking at how crimes are narrated from the perspective of actors participating in the criminal investigation, beginning by accounts of witnesses, lawyers and judges, doctors and various court experts. This chapters tackles criminal cases where land stands as the main source of conflict. What is important is to be attentive to the logic of narrative and avoid recoiling the case into broader sociological perspectives that would distract us from that main endeavor.
In many Arab and Islamicate societies honor killings are neither severely punished nor looked upo... more In many Arab and Islamicate societies honor killings are neither severely punished nor looked upon as homicides per se; their punishment goes even far below manslaughter. Considering that (young) women are usually the main target in honor killings, all what the male assailant must do is deliver himself to a nearby police station in the aftermath of the killing, and declare that his crime was “a killing for an honorable purpose.” Amid a short and hasty trial, he would be punished for two years maximum. In this Chapter from my forthcoming book, “The Crime of Writing,” I explore such crimes in contemporary Syria within a triadic structure of the criminal act: the assailant, the victim, and the third-party audience. That is to say, the attempt is not to reduce crime to its dualistic component of assailant and victim and to the court’s verdict, but to further explore the “audience,” which the murderer had unconsciously in mind, beyond what the courtroom has to offer. I propose that in honor killings the “audience” is the community itself, to which the crime is addressed, as a tool to absorb the internal (female sexual) violence, whereby men reassert themselves as the prime bearers of morality.
Even though the sharia courts have been widely used in Ottoman historiography for a reconstructio... more Even though the sharia courts have been widely used in Ottoman historiography for a reconstruction of economic and social history of the center and the provinces, little attention has been devoted to how judges write their cases and the logic of their narratives. This paper examines how judges write in 19th-century Damascus and Beirut based on a selection of criminal cases. Such cases are notoriously rare—on average a case or two per register—hence they pose a problem of their own. First of all, they’re extremely short—a paragraph or page at most—for the simple reason that they lack any investigation as to the murder and its circumstances. In effect, in the absence of a public prosecution office and a police force, only the next-of-kin can come to a judge and report the alleged murder of one of their relatives, hence there was no such thing as a public responsibility for a crime, whatever its nature. What is at stake and strange here is that in the absence of any investigation the aim is to settle for a “compensation” with the accused, for instance, through an implicit acknowledgment by the judge that the plaintiff(s) are the sole heirs of the victim. As the defendant is generally cleared of any wrongdoing for lack of evidence, the plaintiff(s) benefit from the compensation, which may include the diya or blood-money. The wager here is to understand the logic of a procedural fiction as it applies to crime, avoiding to take such criminal cases at face value.
This is the French version of "writing qadis" (see above):
Even though the sharia courts have bee... more This is the French version of "writing qadis" (see above):
Even though the sharia courts have been widely used in Ottoman historiography for a reconstruction of economic and social history of the center and the provinces, little attention has been devoted to how judges write their cases and the logic of their narratives. This paper examines how judges write in 19th-century Damascus and Beirut based on a selection of criminal cases. Such cases are notoriously rare—on average a case or two per register—hence they pose a problem of their own. First of all, they’re extremely short—a paragraph or page at most—for the simple reason that they lack any investigation as to the murder and its circumstances. In effect, in the absence of a public prosecution office and a police force, only the next-of-kin can come to a judge and report the alleged murder of one of their relatives, hence there was no such thing as a public responsibility for a crime, whatever its nature. What is at stake and strange here is that in the absence of any investigation the aim is to settle for a “compensation” with the accused, for instance, through an implicit acknowledgment by the judge that the plaintiff(s) are the sole heirs of the victim. As the defendant is generally cleared of any wrongdoing for lack of evidence, the plaintiff(s) benefit from the compensation, which may include the diya or blood-money. The wager here is to understand the logic of a procedural fiction as it applies to crime, avoiding to take such criminal cases at face value.
Kuran, Timur, The Long Divergence. How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East, Princeton: Princeto... more Kuran, Timur, The Long Divergence. How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. ISBN 978–0–691–14756–7. U.S. $29.95.
Even though Timur Kuran is overall convincing at laying out arguments on the backwardness of Islamic practices regarding partnerships, corporations, banks, loans with interest, waqfs (mortmain properties blocked from circulation), and contracts in general, he seems less convincing at explicating why Islamic societies were held back from competition with Europe from the middle ages up to modern times. Indeed, his main assumption that it was Islamic law that held back the economy escapes the problem rather than points at its cause in a convincing way. Legal systems in general are more an outcome of social conditions, rather than the major force that would bring social relations to a more developed level. In other words, history shows that whenever the law is “behind” social practices, whether cultural or economic, they tend to be addressed sooner rather than later. A case in point, which Kuran explains at length, is the ban on loans with interest that both Jews and Christians had to abide by in the early European middle ages, which in both instances were bypassed due to the socio-economic conditions in Europe at the time. Even in modern times, legal systems tend to struggle in order to match cultural and economic developments.
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Books by Zouhair Ghazzal
ways in which crime is perceived and defined, focusing on notions of truth, intentionality, and evidence. The chapters contain rich ethnographic case studies drawn from work in the Middle East, Africa, India, Mexico and Europe. Instances discussed include court proceedings, police reports and newspapers to moments of conflict resolution and reconciliation. Through analysis of this material, the authors reflect on how perception of an act as a crime can differ and how the definition of crime may not be shared by all societies. The approach takes into consideration local standards as well as social, legal and contextual constraints.
Papers by Zouhair Ghazzal
The question, however, as raised by Hussein Ali Agrama’s Questioning Secularism, is, would such constitutional clauses make a country like Egypt more “religious” than “secular”?
Even though the sharia courts have been widely used in Ottoman historiography for a reconstruction of economic and social history of the center and the provinces, little attention has been devoted to how judges write their cases and the logic of their narratives. This paper examines how judges write in 19th-century Damascus and Beirut based on a selection of criminal cases. Such cases are notoriously rare—on average a case or two per register—hence they pose a problem of their own. First of all, they’re extremely short—a paragraph or page at most—for the simple reason that they lack any investigation as to the murder and its circumstances. In effect, in the absence of a public prosecution office and a police force, only the next-of-kin can come to a judge and report the alleged murder of one of their relatives, hence there was no such thing as a public responsibility for a crime, whatever its nature. What is at stake and strange here is that in the absence of any investigation the aim is to settle for a “compensation” with the accused, for instance, through an implicit acknowledgment by the judge that the plaintiff(s) are the sole heirs of the victim. As the defendant is generally cleared of any wrongdoing for lack of evidence, the plaintiff(s) benefit from the compensation, which may include the diya or blood-money. The wager here is to understand the logic of a procedural fiction as it applies to crime, avoiding to take such criminal cases at face value.
Even though Timur Kuran is overall convincing at laying out arguments on the backwardness of Islamic practices regarding partnerships, corporations, banks, loans with interest, waqfs (mortmain properties blocked from circulation), and contracts in general, he seems less convincing at explicating why Islamic societies were held back from competition with Europe from the middle ages up to modern times. Indeed, his main assumption that it was Islamic law that held back the economy escapes the problem rather than points at its cause in a convincing way. Legal systems in general are more an outcome of social conditions, rather than the major force that would bring social relations to a more developed level. In other words, history shows that whenever the law is “behind” social practices, whether cultural or economic, they tend to be addressed sooner rather than later. A case in point, which Kuran explains at length, is the ban on loans with interest that both Jews and Christians had to abide by in the early European middle ages, which in both instances were bypassed due to the socio-economic conditions in Europe at the time. Even in modern times, legal systems tend to struggle in order to match cultural and economic developments.
ways in which crime is perceived and defined, focusing on notions of truth, intentionality, and evidence. The chapters contain rich ethnographic case studies drawn from work in the Middle East, Africa, India, Mexico and Europe. Instances discussed include court proceedings, police reports and newspapers to moments of conflict resolution and reconciliation. Through analysis of this material, the authors reflect on how perception of an act as a crime can differ and how the definition of crime may not be shared by all societies. The approach takes into consideration local standards as well as social, legal and contextual constraints.
The question, however, as raised by Hussein Ali Agrama’s Questioning Secularism, is, would such constitutional clauses make a country like Egypt more “religious” than “secular”?
Even though the sharia courts have been widely used in Ottoman historiography for a reconstruction of economic and social history of the center and the provinces, little attention has been devoted to how judges write their cases and the logic of their narratives. This paper examines how judges write in 19th-century Damascus and Beirut based on a selection of criminal cases. Such cases are notoriously rare—on average a case or two per register—hence they pose a problem of their own. First of all, they’re extremely short—a paragraph or page at most—for the simple reason that they lack any investigation as to the murder and its circumstances. In effect, in the absence of a public prosecution office and a police force, only the next-of-kin can come to a judge and report the alleged murder of one of their relatives, hence there was no such thing as a public responsibility for a crime, whatever its nature. What is at stake and strange here is that in the absence of any investigation the aim is to settle for a “compensation” with the accused, for instance, through an implicit acknowledgment by the judge that the plaintiff(s) are the sole heirs of the victim. As the defendant is generally cleared of any wrongdoing for lack of evidence, the plaintiff(s) benefit from the compensation, which may include the diya or blood-money. The wager here is to understand the logic of a procedural fiction as it applies to crime, avoiding to take such criminal cases at face value.
Even though Timur Kuran is overall convincing at laying out arguments on the backwardness of Islamic practices regarding partnerships, corporations, banks, loans with interest, waqfs (mortmain properties blocked from circulation), and contracts in general, he seems less convincing at explicating why Islamic societies were held back from competition with Europe from the middle ages up to modern times. Indeed, his main assumption that it was Islamic law that held back the economy escapes the problem rather than points at its cause in a convincing way. Legal systems in general are more an outcome of social conditions, rather than the major force that would bring social relations to a more developed level. In other words, history shows that whenever the law is “behind” social practices, whether cultural or economic, they tend to be addressed sooner rather than later. A case in point, which Kuran explains at length, is the ban on loans with interest that both Jews and Christians had to abide by in the early European middle ages, which in both instances were bypassed due to the socio-economic conditions in Europe at the time. Even in modern times, legal systems tend to struggle in order to match cultural and economic developments.
This project focuses on one such Aleppo “illicit” neighborhood at three interrelated levels. First, it examines the norms of the habitat created by the inhabitants themselves. The latter have to decide not only at planning their own homes, but also public infrastructures, such as roads and pavements, water, electricity, telecommunication and sewage facilities. Second, it analyzes the contractual norms that lie behind the exchange and sale of properties. Since such neighborhoods fall outside state regulations, the users must create their own contractual norms to exchange property, in such a way that contracts would eventually become “legal” once endorsed by state officials. Third, we examine the private and public norms that help construct the space for a “society of individuals.” Taking into consideration Erving Goffman’s motto that “the street is a society,” we follow actors in their face-to-face situated encounters, paving the way to the dialogical structures that make the existence of a “society” possible.
In the Qur’anic text, anger is always depicted as God’s anger and it was usually oriented towards the Jews. The Hebraic religion constructed God’s anger to explain the misfortunes and social and political problems which had befallen on the Jewish community; the Prophet Muhammad did nothing more but to pick up a theme which was already there in the first monotheistic religion and created a strategy of differentiation out of it. Thus the Qur’an lavishly recaptures many of the episodes in which the Jews were subject to God’s anger for having perversely played with the meaning of His signs and words. Roughly, one-third of the Qur’anic text is devoted to the “People of Moses,” and this in itself is a sign of how much the Prophet feared the competition from Jewish monotheism. The verses dealing with God’s anger are therefore there not simply to show the misfortunes that had befallen on Jews, but, more importantly perhaps, to deliver a message to the Muslim community, the umma, which has not been subjected to God’s anger: there are even signs showing that the umma did in fact so well (for example, in the battle of Badr) that it got its just reward from God. Ironically then, because the theme of God’s anger over the community of believers who betrayed His message had been already made use of by the Jews, the Qur’anic text became ipso facto limited in its uses of the theme of anger. In fact, beyond this strategy of differentiation between Islam and the two other monotheistic religions, anger was used in a very conservative manner in the Qur’an: only God gets angry—and even His Messenger does not have the luxury for such an opportunity.