K N Shaposhnikov

S I Vavilov

Concerning my article on the empirical accuracy of the optical superposition principle 2 , K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v considered it necessary to publish remarks apparently directed against this article but in essence having no relation to it at all. K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v defends the "mechanical" theory of light quanta in which the quanta a cross section of the order 𝜆 2 is ascribed to. In my article, purely empirically the question of the e f f e c t i v e, i. e. accessible to observation, "impenetrable" dimensions of the quanta is being studied which could be observed through the "self-scattering" of light. I write: "If the effective size of the quanta was of the order of the light wave, we should observe a completely noticeable scattering of light, as can be calculated easily, when two bundles from the most modest light sources intersect. This is not so and, therefore, in reality the magnitude of such a quantity in any case has to be physically small or has a formal, symbolic character". K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v saw in this phrase, cited by him without the last sentence, a criticism of his "mechanical theory". In fact this phrase only contains the empirical finding that an effective dimension of quanta of the order 𝜆 is not being observed, which, K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v, as I hope, will not deny. In my article, confining myself to the empirical side of the question I have deliberately not dealt with the manifold hypotheses concerning light quanta known to me, among them also the hypotheses of K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v. I completely understand that in these or those theoretical constructions it is reasonable to ascribe to quanta sections of the order 𝜆 2 , however, this section will either necessarily be conditional or inaccessible to any direct observation. In empirical respect one could speak of quanta of the size 𝜆 only in that sense that the determination of the coordinates of the quanta to an accuracy better than the wavelength is impossible by virtue of the limited resolution capability of optical devices. From this discussion it is evident that the subject of 394 the remarks of K. N.

K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v believes that the superposition principle "is extremely easily reconciled with the mechanical (corpuscular) theory of light". In my article which has a purely empirical character, naturally I have not dealt with this question but here I am allowing myself to make some remarks concerning the deliberations of K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v. For reconciling superposition and corpuscles K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v reproduces a part of his work published some years ago. 1 Precisely from the equations of energy and momentum conservation (at the speed of light) follows that in the general case the superposition principle is . . . b e i n g v i o l a t e d. For the salvation of the superposition one has to assume that the quanta either are completely penetrable for each other, or in collisions they exchange frequencies and directions. Such ad hoc hypotheses hardly represent an "easy" way of reconciling the fact of the superposition and the corpuscular hypothesis and is it not easier to simply ascribe to quanta vanishing small dimensions in order to prevent collisions? To K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v it appears to be "strange and not understandable" why I "contrast the developed wave theory with the primitive corpuscular idea and do not say anything about the more or less developed corpuscular theory". I did not apply such a contrast in view, I reminded the reader of the old corpuscular ideas in historical respect only, and further then dealt in §1 of my article with the modern state of understanding of light corpuscles. In passing it should be mentioned that for reconciling superposition and corpuscles K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v better should have relied on "primitive" representations than on the "mechanical theory". Indeed, if one assumes that the masses of the corpuscules do not change in collisions and the velocity is preserved, then from the laws of energy and momentum conservation completely uniquely the mutual penetrability of the quanta will follow, i.e. the superposition, or vanishing small effective dimensions of the quanta. Authors in the past did not draw this conclusion for the reason alone that they assumed a change in the velocities. "Easily reconciling" corpuscles and superposition, K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v writes: "As the above considerations are completely independent of the dimensions of the quanta of light, reasoning about the latter cannot be performed from out the superposition principle". Indeed, the e f f e c t i v e dimensions of the quanta which I only talked about in my article can be estimated from the rate of the violation of the superposition only. K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v writes that I "consider the superposition as an empirical 395 fact". I am allowing myself to mention that the aim of my article consisted in establishing limits for the empirical accuracy of the principle, which I indeed did. In principle, in the theory of light quanta the superposition s h o u l d b e v i o l a t e d as a consequence of the gravitational deflection of one quantum in the field of the other (if there are not any further causes for aggravating this deflection). Of course, this deflection should be negligibly small what, however, does not deprive it from its significance in principle. 1 The objections of K. N. S h a p o s h n i k o v finish with the phrase: "The mechanical theory demands that the linear extensions of the cross section of the quanta should be of the order of the wave length. As we have convinced ourselves, this idea spelled out by many sufficiently competent authors cannot, under no circumstances, be undermined by the critical remarks by Prof. V a v i l o v". Once again I repeat that I did not intend to criticize this i d e a, what concerns the competence of authors defending it one should remind oneself that the "primitive" corpuscular theory has been defended by the no less competent N e w t o n, L a p l a c e, P o i s s o n, and B i o, and the wave theory by H u y g e n s, F r e s n e l, and many others.

С. И. Вавилов.

По поводу моей статьи об эмпирической точности оптического прин ципа суперпозиции 2 К. Н. Шапошников счел нужным опубликовать замечания, с внешней стороны направленные против этой статьи, но по сути дела не имеющие к ней отношения.

К. Н . Шапошников защищает «механическую» теорию световых квантов, в которой кванту приписывается поперечное сечение порядка λ2. В моей же статье чисто эмпирически разбирается вопрос об эффектив ных, т. е. доступных наблюдению, «непроницаемых» размерах кванта, которые могли бы обнаружиться «саморассеянием» света. Я пишу: «Если бы эффективные размеры кванта были порядка световой волны, то при самых скромных источниках света, как легко рассчитать, мы должны бы наблю дать вполне заметное рассеяние света при пересечении двух пучков. Этого нет, и, следовательно, размеры такой величины во всяком случае физически мало реальны, или имеют условный, символический характер». К. Н. Шапошников увидал в этой фразе, цитируемой им без послед него предложения, критику своей «механической теории». В действитель ности эта фраза содержит только эмпирическое утверждение в том, что эффективные размеры кванта порядка λ не наблюдаются, чего, надеюсь, К. Н. Шапошников отрицать не будет. Я намеренно не касался в моей статье многочисленных известных мне гипотез о световых квантах, в том числе и гипотезы К. Н. Шапошникова, ограничившись только эмпирической стороной дела. Вполне допускаю, что в тех или иных теоре тических построениях целесообразно приписать кванту сечение порядка λ2, это сечение будет, однако, неизбежно условным, ибо недоступно непосред ственному наблюдению. В эмпирическом отношении о квантах размеров λ позволительно говорить только в том смысле, что определение координат кванта неосуществимо точнее, чем до длины волны, в силу ограниченности разрешающей способности оптических приборов. Из сказанного видно, что [Facsimile of Zh. Russk. Fiz.-Khim. Obshch., Ch. Fiz. 61(1929)393-395] предмет замечаний К. Н. Шапошникова и тема моей статьи не сов падают.

К. Н. Шапошников полагает, что принцип суперпозиции «чрезвы чайно легко примиряется с механической (корпускулярной) теорией света». В моей статье, носившей чисто эмпирический характер, я, естественно, не касался этого вопроса, но здесь позволю себе сделать некоторые заме чания по поводу рассуждений К. Н. Ш ап ош н и кова. Для примирения суперпозиции и корпускул К. Н. Шапошников воспроизводит часть рассуждений своей работы, напечатанной несколько лет тому назад. 1 Именно из уравнений сохранения энергии и импульса (при условии скорости света) выводится, что в общем случае принцип суперпозиции... нарушается. Для спасения суперпозиции приходится предположить, что либо кванты вполне проницаемы друг для друга, либо они обмениваются частотами и направлениями при соударении. Такие гипотезы ad hoc едва ли являются «легким» способом примерения факта суперпозиции и гипо тезы корпускул, и не проще ли просто приписать квантам исчезающие малые размеры во избежание соударений? К. Н. Шапошникову кажется «странным и непонятным», почему я «противополагаю разрабо танной волновой теории примитивные корпускулярные представления и ничего не говорю о более или менее разработанной корпускулярной теории». Такого противоположения я не делал, упомянул о старых корпу скулярных воззрениях только в историческом аспекте, а в дальнейшем коротко коснулся в § 1 моей статьи современного состояния учения о све товых корпускулах.

Должен заметить впрочем, что для примирения суперпозиции и кор пускул К. Н. Шапошникову выгоднее было бы воспользоваться «при митивными» представлениями, чем «механической теорией». В самом деле, если предположить, что массы корпускул при ударе не меняются, и ско рость сохраняется, то из законов сохранения энергии и импульса будет следовать вполне однозначно взаимная проницаемость квантов, т. е. супер позиция, или исчезающе малые эффективные размеры кванта. Старинные авторы не делали этого вывода только потому, что предполагали изменение скоростей.

«Легко примирив» корпускулы и суперпозицию, К. Н. Шапошни ков пишет: «так как предыдущие соображения совершенно не связаны с размерами кванта света, то о последних нельзя судить с точки зрения принципа суперпозиции». В действительности об эффективных разме рах квантов, о которых я лишь и говорил в моей статье, можно судить только по степени нарушения суперпозиции.

К. Н . Шапошников пишет, что я «считаю суперпозицию эмпири

  MoscowInstitute of Physics and Biophysics (Received at the Redaction on June 10, 1929) вып. 4. ОТВЕТ НА ЗАМЕЧАНИЯ К. Н. ШАПОШНИКОВА 1.

  1 К. Шапошников. Ж. Р. Ф.-Х. О., ч. физич. 61, 215, 1929. 2 С. И. Вавилов. Ж. Р. Ф.-Х. О., ч. физич. 60, 555, 1928.

  я обязан Я. И. Френкелю.

  фактом». Позволю себе заметить, что цель моей статьи была в уста новлении пределов эмпирической точности принципа, что я и выполнил. Принципиально в теории световых квантов суперпозиция должна нару шаться вследствие гравитационного отклонения одного кванта в поле дру гих (если нет еще других причин, усугубляющих это отклонение). Разу меется, это отклонение должно быть ничтожно малым, что не лишает его принципиального значения. 1Возражения К. Н. Шапошникова кончаются фразой: «механиче ская теория требует, чтобы линейные размеры поперечного сечения кванта были бы порядка длины волны. Эта идея, высказанная многими в доста точной мере компетентными авторами, ни в коем случае, как мы убедились, не может быть поколеблена критическими замечаниями проф. Вави лова». Еще раз повторяю, что критиковать эту идею я не намеревался, что же касается компетентности авторов, ее защищавших, то должен напомнить, что «примитивная» корпускулярная теория защищалась не менее компетентными Ньютоном, Лапласом, Пуассоном и Био, а волновая теория Гюйгенсом, Френелем и многими другими.

1 K. S с h а р о s с h n

i k o v . ZS. f. Phvs. 33, 706, 1925.

ческим

K. S c h a p o s c h n i k o v. ZS. f.Phys. 33, 706, 1925.

I am indebted to Ya. I. F r e n k e l for this remark.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to T. B. Avrutskaya (museum cabinet of academician N. I. Vavilov, Vavilov Inst. General Genetics, Moscow) and M. S. Aksent'eva (redaction of the journal Usp. Fiz. Nauk, Moscow) for their invaluable help in exploring the copyright situation of the original Russian article.

Contents

Supplementary information

Translator's notes:

1. Given the copyright situation in the Soviet Union at the time of publication (1929) of the original article it seems reasonable to assume that the article is in the public domain.

2. The numbers on the right margin refer to the page numbers of the original article. A facsimile of the original article is appended (see p. P-9).

3. The English translation of the quotes from the preceding articles by Vavilov himself (Zh. Russk. Fiz.-Khim. Obshch., Ch. Fiz. 60(1928)555) and by Shaposhnikov (Zh. Russk. Fiz.-Khim. Obshch., Ch. Fiz. 61(1929)215) are taken from their respective English translations (see subsection: Full details of the cited literature, below).


Dominique Avon

Abdellatif Idrissi

The Koran and Freedom of Thought

There was an age when people had the right to criticise the entourage of the prophet, when religious controversy was carried out with a great freedom of tone, and when Islamic scholars glorified atheism. Today, all the many debates relating to Islam present one single dilemma: the abandonment of faith or fundamentalism. In this article, a linguist and a historian relate how the two "givens" of Islam -the integrity of Mohammed's entourage and the inimitability of the Koran -gradually became established over time. To them, Islam should be reconciled with the science of texts and freedom of thought.

In what follows, the author singles out the legal professions who have failed in their tasks by closing off the sciences over which they have reigned masterly for centuries. He

Mohammed's entourage: opening up the pantheon

According to documents long neglected in the interests of smooth narratives, Mohammed's close entourage was not only capable of glorified acts of heroism, loyalty to the faith and friendship, but they were also accused of murder, adultery, drunkenness and apostasy. In Sharh Nahj al-balâgha, Ibn Abî al-Hadîd (1190-1257) denounces the excessively sacred qualities accorded to the companions of the Prophet of Islam and his closest entourage.

While this tendency to bestow sacred qualities upon the group has been amplified by the Tradition, it was inexistent at the start of Islam. To back up his argument, Ibn Abî al-Hadîd tells of the disputes, controversies and disagreements witnessed, not only within Mohammed's family, but also among his companions and successors, accused of major errors. He points to internal struggles, motivated by politics and power-seeking, known to everyone; medieval texts cite them in detail, and authors even allow themselves to take sides with the protagonists in question. The list Ibn Abî al-Hadîd gives is non-exhaustive, as the actual causes for discord were indeed numerous. He talks of the insinuations about the supposed Judaism of Zayd b.

Thâbit, pointing to the two du'âba (sidelocks) he wore when he was a child and his games with "small Jewish children" 5 . The issue is important; Zayd was one of Mohammed's

defends a principle of "freedom" supported by a principle of "justice" and the necessity to extend reflection (tafkîr) in reference to 'Abbâs Mahmûd al-'Aqqâd (1889-1964). The apologist intentions of the latter are well-known from his biography of Mohammad which, by his own admission, was more a testimony to a genius than the work of a historian 3 . The biographer was a talented journalist, with more than seventy works to his name and a committed and caustic polemicist with an encyclopaedic knowledge that he owed to his personal library of nearly 40,000 works. The very kind of figure that contemporary Islam needs, explains al-Bannâ, not to reproduce what he has done but to live up to the example of his efforts of thinking, an effort that he also applied beyond the confessional corpus.

We would like to go further and show that, several centuries ago, Islam had an even larger scope for discussion. Our publishers should remember this -or be told -, particularly in these times where a large publisher like Random House censors its own publications for fear of possible reprisals over a novel about Aicha 4 .

1 Jamâl al-Bannâ, "La pluralité en islam", al-Masrî al-Yawm, August 9, 2006. 2 A slogan developed by the Frères Musulmans in the 1940s, and that is still fashionable today in some circles. 3 'Abbâs Mahmûd al-'Aqqâd, 'Abqariyyat Muhammad, Cairo, 1943. 4 The forthcoming manuscript is that of Sherry Jones, The Jewel of Medina (see Libération, August 18, 2008).

secretaries and the person behind the compilation of the Koran after his death. It was unthinkable for people to believe that the Prophet of Islam might have been informed by Zayd of anterior Jewish and even Christian writings 6 . And yet having consulted specialists in Baghdad, the names of whom he gives, Abû al-Qâsim al-Balkhî (who died in 931) rejects the traditions according to which Mohammed ordered him to learn these languages. Zayd frequented the Jewish school of Yathrib (the future "city of the Prophet", Medina) 7 , he knew Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew before the coming of Mohammed to the city. 5 Ibn Abî al-Hadîd, Sharh nahj al-balâgha, Beirut, Dâr ihyâ' al-thurât al-'arabî, 1960, 20 vol., p. 2090-2092. 6 Claude Gilliot, "Le Coran, fruit d'un travail collectif?", in Daniel De Smet, G. de Callatay and J.M.F. Van Reeth (eds), Al-Kitâb. La sacralité du texte dans le monde de l'Islam, Actes du Symposium international tenu à Leuven et Louvain-la-Neuve du 29 mai au 1er juin 2002, Bruxelles, Louvain-la-Neuve, Leuven, Acta Orientalia Belgica. Subsidia III, 2004, p. 195-99 (185-231); Id., "Une reconstruction critique du Coran ou comment en finir avec les merveilles de la lampe d'Aladin?", in M. Kropp (ed.), Results of contemporary research on the Qur'an. The question of a historico-critical text, Beirut, Orient Institut/Würzburg, Ergon Verlag, 2007, p. 62-66 (33-137). 7 Michael Lecker, "Zayd b. Thâbit, 'a Jew with two sidelocks': Judaism and literacy in Pre-Islamic Medina (Yathrib)", JNES, 56 (1997), p. 259-73.

Aicha, one of the Prophet's wives8 , is also at the heart of controversy. She was accused of adultery, before she was found not guilty. It was she who contradicted the companions who claimed to quote Mohammed when they said "three things bring misfortune: women, homes and horses". Versions vary according to the reasons behind this denunciation of the falsification. A hadith indicates that Aicha hated Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, who was set to become the fourth caliph and first Imam of the Shiites, to the extent that she wouldn't even say his name [START_REF] Al-Bukhârî | tome 1, chapitre "al-ghusl wa al-wudû' fî al-mikhdab wa al-qadah wa alkhashab wa al-hijâra" (The use of lotion and the ablution of basins, pitchers, wooden and stone vases)[END_REF] . Traditionalists -the authors of the Tradition -carried out definite and definitive choices, electing figures for reasons that were later difficult to comprehend, but around which much was at stake. This was the case with the issue opposing Aicha against 'Abd Allâh ibn 'Umar 10 , about the number of 'umra (the Mecca pilgrimage) carried out by the Prophet. The Traditionalists chose to adopt Aicha's position, the mother of believers [START_REF] Chabbi | Le Seigneur des tribus[END_REF] . From a certain era onwards, her utterances became considered implicitly as the substitution for the prophet's words, naturally outside the inspirational framework" 12 , because her words were supposed to provide an infallible recollection of the memory of Mohammed's day-to-day activity.

What is important to highlight is that the successors of the companions had a great freedom to criticise and judge the behaviour of the entourage, especially when their errors were established. They considered them as they did their own entourage and did not think twice about denouncing them. It is only subsequently that the Tradition, followed by the vox populi, turned them into sacred figures. Ibn Abî al-Hadîd supports his argument with Koranic sura, which to him constitutes the proof that the companions, as well as the prophet's entourage, were not totally free from error and sin. These references, he says, applied to all of them: "Say, I who dread, if I rebelled against my Lord, the chastisement of a terrible Day" 13 ; "Arbitrate among men according to the truth, do not follow your passion, it will make you stray far from the path of God, those who stray from the path of God have a terrible torment awaiting them for forgetting judgement day" 14 . As a fervent defender of the Shiite cause, he accuses Mu'âwiya (the fifth caliph, who fought against Ali, the fourth caliph) and his successors with being at the origin of the prohibition to oppose the companions through accusations of "fabricator", "miscreant", "apostate" or "hypocrite". As Jacqueline Chabbi has shown, "one mode of representation and accreditation of the past" has been imposed.

According to these mechanisms and criteria, in the chains of heritage transmission dating back to the times of these figures and the words and actions associated with them, there is no room for doubt 15 .

In-depth study is possible and desirable, using other tools, to trace the evolution of these narratives. The first remark necessary is that the figures involved in these anecdotes, recounted in the books of Hadîth, Maghâzî (military expeditions), and Sîra (the Prophet's biography), as well as other types of work, most often have an excessively symbolic value in the roles that they play. They are codified and organised in a very precise way. Each has become untouchable, a salaf whom the Tradition has rendered sacred. The Traditionalists have boxed them off into a closed group at a specific moment of Arab-Muslim history. 14 Sâd 38/26. 15 The prevalence of a feminine narrative emanating from the wife of the Prophet "'umm al-mu'minîn" the mother of believers or from her daughter Fatima, an even more sacrosanct figure, is questioned in today's strongly patrilineal Arab society.

figures go back to the early days of Islam. Not at all. Ibrâhîm ibn Sayyâr al-Nazzâm (who died in 846), associated with the mu'tazilisme doctrine, was so daring that he categorically denied all the hadith or would make up ridiculous ones himself (on the superiority of the cat over the dog for example), allegorise the verses of the Koran he didn't like, and denied the literary inimitability of the Koran and accused all the companions of the Prophet with committing serious sins 16 . He is an example of a radical who set out to show the possibilities for increased openness eleven centuries ago, including what today appears the most sacred.

Considering the period, we cannot talk of freedom of thought; the idea would be meaningless.

Those mu'tazilites who formed a school around two radical principles were considered blasphemous. Those principle were firstly that everything that exists is the result of a Creator, and his "word" is therefore created-in other words, the Koran is not the expression of God himself; and secondly that man is not only capable of discovering through the work of his intelligence the great moral truths himself, but he is also free to follow them if he wishes. This school with its various tendencies tied its destiny to the authority of Abbasid caliphs-al-Ma'mûn and his two successors-while persecuting its adversaries, who, in turn, became adept at stifling mu'tazilites writings for more than a century 17 . This is interesting to the extent that it was born from a legal problem relating to the validity of contradictory testimonies. The issues are considerable here because, as a function of the outcome, the weight of the Tradition of the prophet's acts and words depends on the channels of transmission of the heritage that go back to Mohammed, and is open to attack. However, many of our contemporaries are afraid of attack. They are not aware of the pioneering work showing that the Muslim historiography of origins is constructed in part in continuity with the late tradition of Antiquity, which cannot be extracted from the context in which it came to be 18 . Let us wager that the work announced on the total re-examination of the hadith collections by the Turk religious authorities will manage to get things moving. No equivalent commitment is forthcoming in the Arab world. 16 Robert Caspar, Traité de théologie musulmane. Tome 1 Histoire de la pensée religieuse musulmane, Rome, P.I.S.A.I., 1996, p. 150. On the subject he cites the thesis of Mohammed Abû Rîda, Ibrâhîm b. Sayyâr al Nazzâm wa-arâ'uhu l-kalâmiyya al-falsafiyya, Cairo, Lajnat al-ta'lîf, 1946, 183 p. 17 Dominique Urvoy, Histoire de la pensée arabe et islamique, Paris, Seuil, 2006, p. 174-191. 18 Abdesselam Cheddadi, Les Arabes et l'appropriation de l'histoire. Émergence et premiers développements de l'historiographie musulmane jusqu'au IIe/VIIIe siècle, Paris, Sindbad/Actes Sud, "La Bibliothèque Arabe", 2004.

The Arabic language has a history

This is maybe because the Arabic language remains a stumbling block 19 . Contrary to appearances, the language does not necessarily have an acknowledged history, as is witnessed in the frequent affirmation that God created the Arabic language with the exclusive aim of spreading Islam; Adam-whose existence is not put into question by the proponents of this opinion-talked Arabic and his son Cain too, because texts attributed to them have been published 20 . A century ago in Basel, the German researcher August Fischer (1865-1949) launched the idea of a historical dictionary. He collected a number of lexicographical reports that were later deposited at the Arabic Language Academy in Cairo 21 . In 1934, his idea was resurrected by the Academy, whose members created a "dictionary committee", of which Fischer was a member. The Second World War put a halt to the work; the orientalist was in Germany, and his collaborators and data in Egypt. He died in 1949 without ever finishing the undertaking. In Cairo, the academy made his notes available to all, but nobody in Egypt picked up the research to finish it. In their preface to their Grand Dictionnaire (1956), the authors however recognise that the history of the Arabic language does not stop in the 2 nd century of the Hegira, and that the language has a past, present and future 22 . In the Arabic language world, little has been done for a half-century to illustrate this affirmation. Research carried out by the Institute of Arab Manuscripts, under the direction of Salâh al-Dîn al-Munajjed and his successors, has added useful elements to the study. But scholars are waiting for qualified workers, financial support, and a will capable of overcoming the obstacles posed by the representatives of the religious magisterium. There is still no etymological dictionary of the Arabic language. Some German scholars have been able to obtain copies of Fischer's notes that they have used alongside those of Theodor Nöldeke (1836-1930), Hermann Reckendorf (1863-1924), H. L. Fleischer (1801-1888) and Heinrich Thorbecke (1837-1890).

In 1956, they started working on the publication of a dictionary of classical Arabic 23 . 19 Claude Gilliot and Pierre Larcher, "Language and style of the Qur'an", Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an (EQ), III, Leyde, Brill, 2003, p. 109-135. 20 The time has come to realise that it is possible to have several approaches to one and same thing, without perceiving the other to be at the service of a goal of harm and destruction.

A civilisation, a culture and religion that are most solid are those that are not afraid to reach out and be confronted with others, because they have a solid base, founded on conceptions that do not stifle debate out of hand. The confrontation with other viewpoints represents enrichment. Excessive protectionism (women without faces and mosques forbidden to non-Muslims 24 ) and attempts at a total clampdown have never constituted strength. On the contrary, they reveal deep faults and weaknesses which plunge us into the meanderings of obscurantism from where it is difficult to interact with points of view that are not our own. Can we really, today, teach in total serenity and without scruples, that "Arabic is the language of Heaven", and that before we get there everybody will be confronted with the "linguistic analysis of the tomb", which means that the angel charged with questioning the dead on their arrival at the tomb will ask questions in Arabic, and may misfortune befall he who cannot answer? Some adhere to this vision of things, even though Muslims with a command of Arabic are only a minority in the world (not to mention the non-Muslims), is not at all reprehensible. But what becomes worrying is when it is not possible to simultaneously hold a different argument. While in the West, many believe in clairvoyance and horoscopes, there is always someone around to say that these are deceptive, charlatan practices; having heard the other side, people are still free to believe. The problem is that in the case of the "linguistic analysis of the tomb", no ulema has opposed this point of view, even though linguistic studies have progressed and evolved considerably.

Less freedom of speech today than yesterday

Naivety is a poor advisor. Discussions about these subjects are trapped in major political stakes. To say for example that Nabatians were Arabs or be of the opposite opinion has inevitable implications for the most burning issue of the region in the last sixty years: the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian conflict. The shortfall in research should not be reduced to this question. The disquiet goes much deeper. In the controversy between Ernest Renan and Jamâl al-Dîn al-Afghânî in 1882, al-Afghânî asked Renan to not condemn the Islam of the future, in the name of a glorious past, while recognising the blockages of the moment:

"I know all the difficulties that Muslims will have to overcome to reach the same degree of civilisation; access to the truth through philosophical and scientific processes is prohibited to them.

[…] Yoked to the dogma to which he is a slave, like an ox to a cart, he shall walk eternally in the same furrow ploughed before him by those who interpreted the law. 25 " The scholar's words bear the mark of a kind of fascination for scientism, the quintessence of which is apparently embodied by Europeans. He also fosters the so-called "double truth" thesis: for the humble, the faith of the coalman, for the elite, access to philosophy. Al-Afghânî has never been translated into Arabic and this is not insignificant. According to others, the breaking point comes in the middle of the 1970s. Basing his study on sometimes unpublished sources, Hamadi Redissi noticed how Wahhabism had slipped from the margin of Sunnite orthodoxy to the centre with the ability to fix norms. One of the key moments of this passage is according to him the failed discussion between Habib Bourguiba and Sheikh Ibn Bâz, then one of the authorities of the University of Medina.

Through a fatwa, Ibn Bâz accuses the Tunisian President of flagrant impiety, punishable by death sentence. Bourguiba escaped the sentence but the basis of Ibn Bâz's position received support from ulemas in positions of responsibility, all the way to India 27 . He recalled that the scriptural space was definitively closed and that all he was doing was applying the law, instigated in the Middle Ages by his predecessors, which consists of fixing norms and modes of enquiry. He therefore posited himself as an authority deciding the legitimacy of opinions on writings. To Ibn Bâz, thought could not be reduced to itself and it could not dissociate itself from the founding text, even from the mouth of a President of a sovereign and independent State who cast doubt on the literal reading of the transformation of the "staff of Moses" into a snake. The staff of Moses really did turn into a snake and to blazes with allegory and metaphor! It is possible that metaphor is little appreciated by jurisconsults, to the extent that it has an ability to transgress meaning. But is not Balâgha (rhetoric) important, because it controls the figures of speech, that is to say, the production of meaning?

The fact of refuting stories that seem implausible, in the way in which they are presented, is perceived as a challenge to the divine word. For Ibn Bâz, as for Medieval Islam, there was no distribution of ways of thinking or literary genres. The vision of philosophers, political experts, literary critiques, historians and even heads of state could not be dissociated from that of the muhaddith (the transmitter of prophetic traditions) or from the faqîh (the jurisconsult). In this perspective, everything has a common basis, defined by the predecessors of Ibn Bâz, where exemplariness consists of conforming to norms, to a hierarchy of thought and writing. Thus no rereading is possible and anybody who attempts to do so leaves himself open to heavy sanctions. 27 Hamadi Redissi, Le Pacte de Nadjd, ou comment l'islam sectaire est devenu l'islam, Paris, Seuil, "La couleur des idées", 2007, p. 217-232.

Since this aborted debate, we have seen a hardening of positions and an exaggeration in the accusations of apostasy, an inflation of fatwas. This is not the place to dwell upon the political or structural causes of the phenomenon [START_REF] Kepel | Expansion et déclin de l'islamisme[END_REF] . The assassination of Faraj Foda and the forced exile of Nasr Hamid Abû Zayd, accused of apostasy for their writings on the Koranic texts, are the most emblematic examples. There are also less public ones. Hassan Hanafî, head of philosophy at the University of Egypt for more than thirty years, is careful recalling the positions of his youth: "Atheism is the purification of religion of all schemas applied to it throughout its history. Atheism is a return to religion in its original purity. It repossesses the essence of all revelation. Atheism is often the position of the man who feels crushed beneath the weight of the God of theologians […]. It is the fact of human reason that refutes superstitions, mystery, idolatry and all exteriority. […] Atheism is also the point of freedom. [START_REF] Askari | Les Musulmans. Consultation islamo-chrétienne entre Muhammad Arkoun[END_REF] " Hanafi proclaimed himself a disciple of Qotb and Mawdûdi, then embraced Khomeini inviting him to inject a little Marxist analysis so as to reach the real "Islamic revolution" [START_REF] Carré | Les Frères musulmans[END_REF] .

Today he denounces the writer Abdelwahab Meddeb as "sold out to the West" [START_REF] Meddeb | Sortir de la malédiction. L'islam entre civilisation et barbarie[END_REF] .

In French research, Islam has inherited a status apart, and is not studied to the same extent as Judaism and Christianity in the "history of religions". It no longer exists in a sector once known as "orientalism". Alexandre Popovic is no doubt the last great specialist to make a public claim to it. Although balanced out very early on 32 , the thesis of Edward Saïd 33which has been oversimplified -undermined its foundations: the East is the construction of European scholars and scientists on which to support a cultural domination underpinned by military might. Sociology and political sciences therefore picked up an escheated phenomenon. Otherwise, French specialists of contemporary Islam can be counted on the fingers of two hands. Because of its history, the state of research in North America is different, but the vogue for "cultural studies" like the weight of American external politics leads to a similar result: Islam and Muslims are often part of a total otherness.

Comparative studies have often proven to be very productive. In linguistics there are Arabic specialists working together with Hebrew specialists (for example at INALCO or the University of Aix-en-Provence 34 ), but their work is little known by a broader readership. They remain very timid in the field of history and look first at the most spectacular or most radical aspects 35 . Actors in this area never fail to point out analogies to their reactions. In al-Afghânî's answer to Renan, cited above, the Islamic intellectual accurately observes that "the revered heads of the Catholic church have still not disarmed" in the struggle opposing them to the "intellectual or philosophical movement" of their time. The religious authorities were disconcerted by disciplines claiming autonomy in relation to theology and confessional rights.

In this framework, the relationship to the text considered as a divine expression ceased to be regarded as sacred, the notions of "revelation", "creation", "supernatural" and "conscience" were debated unreservedly. Archaeological discoveries (the remains of a man in the German valley of Neader) in philology and in linguistics upset established narratives, and with the public reading of the Epic of Gilgamesh, it was no longer possible to claim that the Bible was the most ancient of the history of humanity. The self-questioning was painful and it became known as the "modernist crisis" in the Catholic Church 36 . The church pursued a philosophical combat which, over time, took on the form of a vigorous dialogue on the presuppositions behind the epistemology of sciences. It was joined in this domain by believers from other Churches, and their most dynamic expression was the Radical orthodoxy movement 37 . However, it did lose the trench warfare it had been leading with the historico-critical exegesis. Today the Roman magisterium does not uphold that the first five books of the Bible were written by Moses. The Catholic faith has not been undermined by this fact 38 . Couldn't the same happen with the Koranic text?

Islam, a simple expression of religion

The Arab-Muslim culture is defined by its solid centre. This centre or nucleus is the Koran. It is from the centre that the norms, models of thinking and legitimisation of writings have been determined. Any undertaking in the Arab-Muslim domain has to be confronted, in an implicit or explicit way, with the Koran, which has become the legitimising authority, the supreme model of reference, and the founding narrative. All Medieval writings and (for the most part) modern writings have based themselves on the founding text, from moral epistles to the grammatical text. The paradox is that, on the one hand, believers invoke inimitability (al-i'jâz), a barrier that forbids the human use of Koranic processes. This means that we are faced with a form of speech-writing that refuses all imitation, but that is posited at the same time as a model. By definition, a model is used for reproduction and imitation. Here there is total ambiguity. Beside a narrative of confession, it should be possible to talk of Islam as one form of religious expression among others, nothing more. It is in this permanent coming and going between the two poles-confessional thought and non-confessional thought-that a majority of believers in Judaism, Christianity, and many other religions, have accepted to move. Their representatives have walked this line with difficulty, and sometimes incompletely, as shown in the recent debates on creationism in the United States. In the Muslim world, the movement is 36 Émile Poulat, Histoire, dogme et critique dans la crise moderniste, Paris, Albin Michel, "Bibliothèque de l'Évolution de l 'Humanité", 1996 (1962). Pierre Colin, L'Audace et le Soupçon. La crise du modernisme dans le catholicisme français 1893-1914, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, "Anthropologiques", 1997. 37 Adrian Pabst and Olivier Thomas Venard, Radical Orthodoxy. Pour une révolution théologique, Genève, Ad Solem, 2004. 38 François Laplanche, La Crise de l'origine. La science catholique des Évangiles et l'histoire au XX e siècle, Paris, Albin Michel, « Bibliothèque de l'Évolution de l'Humanité », 2006.

a timid one but it is not non-existent [START_REF] Abdou Filali-Ansary | Réformer l'islam? Une introduction aux débats contemporains, Paris, La Découverte[END_REF] . It may find a decisive impetus in Europe. The condition is to recognise that, in the past, there has not always been "consensual acceptance" between Muslims on "the immutable rules stemming from the authentic sources of Islam: the Holy Koran and the Sunna (the tradition of the prophet)" [START_REF]La "Charte des Musulmans d'Europe[END_REF] . The passion to challenge this position was strong, a century ago, when Mohammed 'Abduh respectfully crossed swords with Farah Antun, founder of the Al-Jami'a review, in which the latter published texts translated from Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo or Darwin. To not continue this movement is to hold a part of humanity apart from an intellectual labour where speech is never closed.

  After the death of Abel for example, Adam composed an elegy (rithâ') in which he cried for his son; Wahb Ibn Munabbih, Kitâb al-Tîjân fî mulûk Himyar, Sanaa, Edition Markaz al-dirâsât wa al-abhâth al-yamaniyya, s.d, pp. 24-25. 21 Jörg Kraemer, "August Fischer Sammlungen zum arabischen Lexikon", ZDMG, 105 (1955), p. 81-105; Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schriftttums, VIII, Leiden, Brill, 1982, p. 4-5. 22 Ibrahim Madkour, "Le dictionnaire arabe au XXe siècle", MIDEO, n°6, 1959-1961, p. 337-345. 23 Jörg Kraemer, Helmut Gätje (1927-86), puis Anton Spitaler (1910-2003), Manfred Ullmann (1931-), et al. (hrsg.), Wörterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache, auf Grund der Sammlungen von August Fischer, Theodor Nöldeke, Hermann Reckendorf, I-IV (lettres kâf et lâm), Wiesbaden, O. Harrassowitz, 1957-2006 (the translations of the Arabic are given in English and German). It is hoped the publication will continue.

  There are two groups who claim the heritage of the scholar and his companion in exile in Paris, Mohammed 'Abduh (1849-1905), to break with the relative spiral of decline noted in a mainly Muslim world. The first (Taha Husayn, Abd al-Razîq brothers, etc.) highlights the need to not take the tradition inherited as an established fact, to open up to foreign languages and new disciplines, in particular the human sciences and linguistics, and to reconsider the expression of Muslim faith in the present day. The second (Rachid Ridâ, Hasan al-Bannâ, etc.) invites us to return to the model of the elders (salaf), convinced that there is in the Medina paradigm from the time of Mohammed a model that cannot be bettered. Between the two positions are the conservative ulemas, guardians of the temple at the service of the State interests of authoritarian regimes. Their story is punctuated with well-known confrontations, most often lost by the first tendency 26 . But what is important to highlight, beyond the legal notice and trials, is the freedom of expression that prevails in such discussions. Today such freedom has in part disappeared. 25 Ernest Renan, L'Islam et la science (avec la réponse d'al-Afghânî), Montpellier, L'Archange Minotaure, 2003, p. 40. 26 By way of example, see Ali Abd al-Raziq, L'Islam et les fondements du pouvoir, Cairo, 1925 (new translation and introduction by Abdou Filali-Ansary), Paris, La Découverte / CEDEJ, 1994.

  Paris, Seuil, 1980.34 Philippe Cassuto and Pierre Larcher, La Formation des mots dans les langues sémitiques, Publication Université Provence, 2007. Pierre Larcher is a professor of Arabic and Philippe Cassuto a professor of Hebrew, both at the University of Provence.35 Élie Barnavi, Les Religions meurtrières, Paris, Flammarion, "Champs actuel", 2006.

32

Maxime Rodinson, La Fascination de l'Islam, Paris, Maspero, 1980.

33

Edward W. Saïd, L'Orientalisme. L'Orient créé par l'Occident,

Aicha is the daughter of the first caliph of Medina (from 632 to 634) and the most faithful companion of the Prophet for the Sunnites. According to the Tradition, Aicha was considered as the favourite wife of the Prophet; she is said to have been twenty when she died. The date of her death is traditionally believed to be 678, that is to say, more than forty years after Mohammed.

The prohibition of non-Muslim foreigners to enter mosques, instituted by Maréchal Lyautey under the French protectorate still exists in Morocco.

Published in www. laviedesidees.fr , December 23, 2008 © laviedesidees.fr

The authors take full responsibility for the content of this article, but they wish to thank Claude Gilliot, professor at the University of Provence, for his advice and his proposals for additional material.


Suicide, Islam and Politics

Reflections on the Events in Tunisia

Dominique AVON

The revolts rocking the Maghreb were set off by a surge of suicides that greatly perplexed Islamic authorities. Were they a symptom of secularization, or even of a radical transgression of a Koranic prohibition?

In January 1969, a young man entered Wenceslas Square, doused himself with petrol and set himself on fire. 1 This was a desperate act to dramatize the failure to follow up the momentum of the "Prague Spring" of the previous year. For a whole generation of young Europeans, eastern as well as western, Jan Palach was a symbol, both tragic and heroic. In their eyes, what could be more anthropologically definitive than to give one's life, to die voluntarily -and not slowly? 2 This was a rejection of the idea that suicide is scandalous. The young Czech student had imitated the action of a bonze, Tich Quang Duc, who had burned himself to death in Saigon in 1963 to protest against the Ngo Dinh Diem regime that was dependant on the United States, which was already engaged in fighting against North Vietnam and its allies in the south. At the end of 2010, the same gesture was made by a Tunisian fruit and vegetable merchant. In this case, Mohammad Al-Bu'azizi, in addition to the despair associated with being despised and underprivileged, a condition shared by many of his compatriots, also had the personal humiliation of having been struck by a woman, who represented the established order. But that was not the crucial factor, because within a month, around thirty people were to repeat this action of self-immolation, in Tunisia, Algeria, (1975), especially the passage about the "peace of the cemetery", quoted in Essais politiques, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, "Points", 1990, pp. 31ff.

Morocco, Mauritania, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen. This is a headstrong action, and its effect is even greater for being the visible part of an increasingly widespread phenomenon, which breaks with the traditional idea that life is not primarily self-dependence.

Norms and Realities

Researchers know that the "real" is not the "norm"; among the duties of a specialist in the study of religion is that of measuring the distance between the "prescribed" and the "lived". 3 Suicide does exist in Muslim-majority societies, as elsewhere, both among women (with more attempts) and men (with more deaths), especially among the unemployed and the generation aged 18 to 30. 4 In the middle of the 2000's, in an article headlined "Every day, an Algerian commits suicide…", El Watan reported: "Ending their lives in order to flee a reality too hard to endure: that is how 177 Algerian souls counted by the police were carried off during the past year, in addition to 128 sadly recorded by the national gendarmerie. Is there reason for alarm? The answer is undoubtedly yes, for the curve is going up and the number of suicides is increasing, even if only slightly." 5 The first official figures date from 1993, coming from the security services, who noticed a progression that, according to them, is putting Algeria up near the mean of Arab countries: from 0.94 per 100,000 in 1999 to 2.25 per 100,000 in 2003. 6 These statistics understate the reality, the journalists add. With few or no self-immolations, the methods currently used are barbiturates, jumping, hanging, gas, guns and chemicals. Suicide attempts are made by consuming "spirit of salt", a euphemism for products used to unblock drains. And, since sometimes it is only a short step from misery to humour, 7 here is a short story: A man walks into a local shop. The shopkeeper asks: "Can I help you, sir?" The man replies: "I would like a bottle of spirit of salt, please." The shopkeeper asks: "To eat here or to take away?" 8 3 The author assumes full responsibility for what he has written, including the translations from Arabic. However, he wishes to thank Anaïs-Trissa Khatchadourian, Mouna Mohammed Cherif, Samah Mohammed, Samia al-Mechat, Nahed Caracalla, Amin Elias and Augustin Jomier for their exchanges with him about sources and views, without which this article would never have seen the light of day. 4 According to the Jeune Indépendant. Summary by Mourad: http://www.algerie-dz.com/article18367.html. 5 Nadjia Bouaricha, "Chaque jour, un Algérien se suicide…", El Watan, 27 March 2008. Reprinted in http://www.afrik.com/article13962.html. 6 "Suicide en Algérie: L'une des principales causes de mortalité", Le Soir d'Algérie, 18 October 2005. Reprinted in http://algerie.actudz.com/article0606.html. 7 See the caricature by Hic published on the site of the daily El Watan: "Vent de révolte au Maghreb: Les Tunisiens passent le Flambeau" ("Winds of Revolt in the Maghreb: Tunisians Pass the Torch"): one man in flames touches the hand of another, who is overtaking him. 8 Reported by Mouna Mohammed Cherif, 18 January 2011.

Suicide has been a taboo subject for ages. The same is true of a number of practices related to customs concerning, for example, sexuality as it is actually experienced rather than as it is idealized in a projected denominational model (e.g. sexual relations before marriage, or homosexuality). Fearing the opprobrium that will descend on the suicide's family, there is a tendency for the cause of death to be hushed up. So in the current state of things, it is not possible for an analysis to be based on reliable statistics. The publicity given to the selfimmolations of 2010-2011 has loosened some tongues, but has not removed doubts about the numbers. Thus, the Syrian website Dpress contends that countless numbers of self-immolaters have followed in Al-Bu'azizi's footsteps. 9 According to some sources, the suicide rate in Tunisia surpasses that of the other Arab countries. The views of psychotherapists (psychoanalysts, psychologists, and psychiatrists) have been sought, and civil associations have set up professional bodies to respond. For example, in Algeria, there is SOS Suicide Phénix and SOS Amitié. Also, imams in charge of Friday prayers constantly deliver messages forbidding suicide. 10 The ills of the predominantly Muslim Arab world are often understood in geopolitical terms: contemplating its last two centuries, including colonization and the creation of nation states -Israel among them -conveys the image of recurring humiliation and of being outclassed on the international scene. Recent events have encouraged taking into account the salience of internal causes. Even if religious authorities are quick to see suicide as a sign of mental imbalance, they do not deny that men are willing to give their lives for the immanentto buy bread and basic food inexpensively, to denounce social injustice (such as denial of housing, losing a job, or divorce and marginalization because of infertility), to combat dictatorship, and to have freedom of expression. It is possible to see in this an indication of secularization. In contrast to the South Asian context -or to the secularized European context -and with no explicit wish to rule out religious references, the gesture of self-immolation and of suicide more generally is clearly at odds with a proscription that is rooted in centuries-old traditions, which are based on the belief that fire is an instrument of divine punishment, and are reinforced by legal definitions.

The Divided Counsel of "Men of Religion"

The recent wave of self-immolations has deeply troubled the "men of religion" [rijâl al-dîn] and generated disagreements among them. Two questions arise: (1) What is the view of Islamic law [hukm al-Shari'a al-Islamiyya] about these men [suicides]? and (2) Would it be right to consider them as martyrs [shuhada']? The main line of division among Sunnis runs between the International Union of Muslim Scholars on one side, and the religious authorities connected with the Arab states (the affected principals) on the other. For some time, these scholars and other jurists who constitute magisterial authority were careful not to speak up about this matter, to avoid publicizing what is described as a "sin." [START_REF] Abdellatif | La notion de péché, de la période préislamique au début de l'islam, entre récit biblique et représentation locale[END_REF] During the last quarter century, the only type of suicide that is sometimes justified as "legal" [mashru'a] has been the "martyrdom" of the Muslim engaged in a "great mission" of armed jihad against the enemy in order to defend "his religion, his country, or his umma". That is the position taken by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qardhawi on the subject of Palestinians who commit suicide attacks against Israelis. [START_REF] Danino | Le Hamas et l'édification de l'Etat palestinien[END_REF] As President of the International Union of Muslim Scholars and the host of the program "Sharia and Life" on the Qatar television station Al Jazeera, he is heard by tens of millions of viewers. Sheikh Qardhawi has supported the "revolution of the Tunisian people" and viewed the action of Mohammad Al-Bu'azizi as a jihad against injustice and corruption. After the flight of Ben Ali, he committed himself to continuing the struggle against all the "symbols" of dictatorship, to "bring down the rest of the familiar idols, Alat and Al-Uza, [START_REF]A reference to anti-Muslim Meccan deities, alluded to in the so-called "Satanic" Verses[END_REF] and the other servants associated with the regime that has made the Tunisians suffer all these years." [START_REF] Yusuf | [END_REF] This language sparked vigorous reactions which drove him to explain that he had not issued a fatwa but had simply made a comment, explaining: "I call on God Almighty and implore him to pardon this young man, to absolve him, and to ignore the act that has put him at odds with the law [shar'] that forbids one from ending one's life." At the same time, he added that "unjust tyrants" are the ones who ought to be burned. [START_REF] News | [END_REF] While he justifies using "means of resisting injustice and tyranny", that does not include recourse to things that are "forbidden"

[haram] such as suicide and "setting one's body on fire." [START_REF] Yusuf | [END_REF] The position of the Mufti of Tunis is noticeably different. Othman Battikh's reaction was unreserved condemnation of the self-immolation: "Suicide or attempted suicide is one of the greatest crimes. There is no legal difference between trying to kill oneself and [trying to kill] someone else." In Al Sabah, he made it clear that the method is unimportant: whether it be by self-immolation, poison, drowning, hanging or anything else, suicide is an "abominable" act that constitutes a "crime" forbidden by the "law" [shar'], and it results in expulsion from the Muslim community and censure: "the miscreant should not be washed, prayed for, or buried in the Muslims' cemetery." [START_REF]The Mufti of Tunis Advises Not Praying for 'Suicides by Fire[END_REF] The position of the Mufti of Tunis was reinforced by the declaration of the Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee, formulated by its president, Sheikh Abd al-Hamid al-Atrash: "Whatever the circumstances, it cannot be legal for a man to commit himself to suicide, no matter what means he has used -fire, drowning, or strangulation. Suicide is subject to God's mercy, and only the community of disbelievers despair of God's mercy." 18 Sheikh Al-Atrash made it clear that there was no case in which suicide was justifiable, and consequently that it was impossible to call anyone who has killed himself a "martyr"; it belongs to God alone to pardon this man if he recites the shahada. The Koranic citation is to verse 195 of Sura Al-Baqara (The Cow): "And spend in the way of Allah. And do not throw yourself into destruction by your own hands. And do good. For Allah loves those who do good." [START_REF]The extract from this verse is repeated over and over again[END_REF] Citing a hadith in which Mohammed is placed in a situation of opposition to his Companions on the question of sharing some plunder, Sheikh Al-Atrash emphasizes the fact that "the poor should not be the ones who are most fearful" about the ultimate reward. This reply goes to the heart of the argument about respecting all established authority. Without any consensus, it justifies the terms of a single alternative presented to the Muslim believer: give thanks if he who guides [imam] the community is just; be patient if he is not.

Suicide and Jihad

According to the testimony of survivors of suicide attempts by fire, or of those close to victims, if there is indeed an awareness of a religious transgression, suicide is sought not because of but in spite of that fact. In any case, whatever the motive for suicide is, the number signing up for it shows that the ban does not constitute a final, absolute barrier. And it is in this sense that it is possible to talk of it as a symptom of secularization. Majority Muslim societies are not -and have never been -closed off: their practices and values, norms and behaviour, are as elsewhere the product of a very complex motion of synthesis between "own" and "input" that continues to change over the centuries. Exposed to pressures less controlled today than previously, because of the greater circulation of people (tourism, business, migration) and the asymptotic growth in new means of communication, these societies no longer have the homogeneity that more strongly influenced them at independence. The challenge to "unjust" authority is more active among Shiites than among Sunnis.

True to its dual struggle -"anti-imperialist" against Israel and in favour of the "poor" in the world at large 20 -Hezbollah has applauded the revolutionary action against the corrupt Tunisian regime, but without commenting on self-immolation. 21 And for good reason, for the veiled denunciation of an old Mazdean tradition of self-immolation that was introduced into the Arab Sunni majority by Shiites (even though "among the Maghrebian crypto-Shiites, sacrifice by blood, human or animal", was preferred) is not guileless. 22 Between 1998 and 2003, there were about 100 suicides by fire attempts in northwestern Iran. 23 Shiite authorities therefore say that the criticism should not be accepted, given the context of accumulating interdenominational tensions: persecutions in Pakistan; the war in Iraq in 2003 and continuing 20 Dominique Avon and Anaïs-Trissa Khatchadourian, Le Hezbolla. De la doctrine à l'action, une histoire du "parti de Dieu", Paris, Seuil, 2010. 21 Notice the silence maintained on the site http://www.moqawama.org/. 22 Chawki Amari et al., " Immolation: I burn, therefore I am", El Watan, 21 January 2011. http://www.elwatan.com/dyn/imprimer.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elwatan.com%2Fweekend%2F7jours %2Fimmolation-je-brule-donc-je-suis-21-01-2011-108133_178.php 23 According to Michael Ayari, interviewed by Perrine Mouterde: "L'immolation, un geste de désespoir à forte charge politique", France 24, 19 January 2011.

DPress: http://www.dp-news.com, 17 January 2011. This is a Syrian news site.

The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia condemned self-immolation in his sermon on 21 January: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qs6TQzEIJ0

attacks there; blips in the divisions in Lebanon (2005, 2008 and 2011), bringing fears of a new civil war; rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with effects on the nuclear issue as well as on the Israeli-Palestinian and Lebanese conflicts; political claims of Shiites in the states of the Arabian Peninsula, and of Sunnis in Syria, and so on. The offices of the three main Shiite religious authorities (the schools of Khomeini, Sistani and Fadlallah) were interviewed. Only the first of them responded to the question of how to describe the act of suicide: "killing oneself for an important end or a major interest is not suicide, it is jihad." 24 Because of what they reveal about the condition of the societies in the majority Muslim world, the events in Tunisia, followed by those in Egypt, constitute an upheaval comparable in scale to the Iranian revolution of 1979. Overwhelmed by popular initiatives aimed at challenging "injustice", the religious authorities -Sunni as well as Shiite -have revealed internal disagreements. The unease is all the greater because of the fact that since the end of the eighteenth century the elites in these societies, with varying degrees of constraint in the various authoritarian regimes imposed from within or from outside, have vainly sought to agree on the configuration of the desirable polity. 25 First published in French in laviedesidees.fr. Translated by John Zvesper with the support of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme.

Article published in Books and Ideas, 6 May 2011. ©booksandideas.net 24 Response sent on 28 January 2011 by a representative of the Ghurfa al-islâm al-'asîl fî ghurfa al-bâltûq (contact : ahkam@islamasil.com or ahkam@irib.ir). 25 Dominique Avon and Amin Elias, "Laïcité: Navigation d'un concept autour de la Méditerranée", published on 3 January 2011 in the online journal Droit de cité: http://droitdecites.org/2011/01/03/religions-secularisation-etlaicite-des-concepts-en-mouvement-dcie/#more-9529.


Alexis Michaud

Barbara Kühnert

A pilot study on the F 0 curve of syllable-initial sonorants, comparing nasals, lenis stops and fortis stops

Several publications raise the issue whether the F0 curve of syllableinitial sonorants can play a prosodic role. The experimental evidence adduced in the present pilot study consists of 15 C1VC2 words, where C1 = /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/, /g/, /m/ or /n/, V = /ɑː/, /iː/, /uː/, and C2 = /t/; these words were said twice inside a carrier sentence by four Cambridge undergraduates (speakers of Southern Standard British English). Comparison of the F0 curves of the /m/-initial syllables with those of the obstruent-initial syllables suggests that only the part of the F0 curve which corresponds to the syllable rime is to be taken into account at the stage of the interpretation of the word's intonation pattern.

INTRODUCTION

Some preliminary definitions

Prosody as defined here consists of accentuation, intonation, and several performance factors (such as speaking rate). Accentuation includes all nonphonemic lexically distinctive properties, e.g. stress in English, tone in Mandarin, or pitch accent ("tonal stress") in Japanese

and Swedish. Intonation, which is often (and perhaps somewhat abusively) identified with the parameters whereby it manifests itselfand especially with fundamental frequency-, is a complex, abstract structure, which essentially reflects syntax (in the broader sense) and information structure; it also comprises attitudinal and emotional dimensions, that convey speaker attitudes and emotions. Further detail is proposed in Vaissière and Michaud 2006; this approach is (in our view) close to those of [START_REF] Coustenoble | Studies in French intonation[END_REF][START_REF] Delattre | Les dix intonations de base du français[END_REF][START_REF] Rossi | L'intonation, le système du français: description et modélisation[END_REF]and Niebuhr 2013.

The prosodic role of the F0 curve of syllable-initial sonorants

It is generally accepted that fundamental frequency during voiced stops is not controlled by the speaker. Maintaining voicing during stop consonants is difficult due to the buildup of air pressure behind the locus of constriction; a fortiori, it appears very unlikely that fundamental frequency (the rate of vibration of the vocal folds, hereafter F0) can be controlled during these consonants. On the other hand, it is possible to realise F0 modulations during the articulation of a sonorant consonant such as [m] (witness onomatopoeia such as "Mmh!"). Then again, this does not entail that the portion of the F0 curve that is carried by a sonorant consonant necessarily plays a linguistic role. 'Linguistic role' is here understood very broadly, to refer to a role at the lexical level, i.e. participating in the realisation of lexical tone or lexical stress, or at the intonational, supralexical level.

This issue has a bearing on prosodic studies, insofar as a nasal+vowel syllable in the course of which F0 increases during the nasal onset and decreases during the vowel can, depending on whether the portion of the F0 curve corresponding to the initial consonant is taken into account or not, be described as having a rising-falling F0 pattern, or simply a falling one. This is illustrated by figure 1, taken from the Aix-MARSEC corpus [START_REF] Auran | The Aix-MARSEC Project: An Evolutive Database of Spoken British English[END_REF], where the F0 increases during the /m/ of emerged and decreases during the following vowel.

The perspective proposed here is inspired by some reflections on the lexical tones of some East/Southeast Asian languages (set out in section 1.2). Like these lexical tones, English stress is lexically attached to the syllable; the questions raised by the domain of realisation of the two sets of phenomena appear similar to a certain extent.

The situation in prosodic systems that possess lexical tones: the syllable is divided into onset and rime; the tone-bearing unit is the rime

In the study of the phonologically monosyllabic languages of East/Southeast Asia, which have a relatively simple syllabic structure, the syllable is traditionally divided into onset and rime. In a syllable such as /man/, the onset is /m/ and the rime is /an/, i.e. syllable-final sonorants are part of the tone-bearing unit whereas syllable-initial consonants (including sonorants) are not part of it. This situation is epitomised by Vietnamese (Tran 2007:48-50;Brunelle 2009:83).

This division is verified in numerous languages (with some complexities introduced by medial consonants, such as the semi-vowel in syllables such as /mjan/; for more details on the traditional analysis of Chinese syllables, see Sagart 1993:35 and references therein). The tone is lexically associated to the syllable, but is carried by the rime. The prosodic description of many languages echo this division into onset and rime (for Yoruba, a language of the Niger-Congo family, see Laniran 1992:61; for Danish: Gårding 1998:137; for the Yi/Ni languages-Sino-Tibetan family-: Burling 1967:56; on the notion of tone-bearing unit: Clements and Ford 1979:181).

The syllable-alignment approach: taking the F0 curve of the entire syllable into account

Several studies, which bear on a broad range of languages, consider the F0 curve carried by sonoral initial consonants to play a part in the interpretation of the syllable's intonation contour (e.g. [START_REF] Ladd | Constant "segmental anchoring" of F0 movements under change in speech rate[END_REF]for English, Xu Yi 1998[START_REF] Yi; Wang | Pitch targets and their realization: Evidence from Mandarin Chinese[END_REF]for Mandarin Chinese, Arvaniti et al. 1998for Greek, Prieto et al. 1995for Mexican Spanish, Prieto 2009 for Catalan, Chahal and Hellmuth 2014:391 for Arabic). The idea is that prosodic targets -defined as including lexical tones as well as intonational phenomena -are specified with reference to syllable boundaries. [START_REF] Xu | Tonal alignment, syllable structure and coarticulation: toward an integrated model[END_REF] propose "a general model of temporal organization, in which the syllable is the basic time structure that specifies the alignment of consonants, vowels, tones (...)". Likewise, a study of child speech in English, Spanish and Catalan only uses the onset and end of accented syllables as segmental landmarks, rather than the boundary between the initial consonant and the vowel part of the syllable, i.e. between initial and rhyme [START_REF] Astruc | Tonal targets in early child English, Spanish, and Catalan[END_REF]). These studies rest on the idea that, at a certain level of abstraction, F0 is continuous; if it does not appear as continuous in the acoustic signal, that is due to the absence of voicing of some of the segments, not to the absence of an underlying F0 curve.

On this basis, voiced sonorant consonants are preferred in the experiments set up by these authors. Several experiments focus on the 'segmental anchoring of F0 curves', i.e. they study fine details in the temporal alignment of F0 curves with the 'segments' (vowels and consonants). This is exemplified by the study of the semantic nuances associated with various alignments of an F0 peak with the syllable /lo/ in the German sentence Sie hat ja gelogen, which concluded that "Early F0 peaks signal established facts, middle peaks new information, and late peaks emphasis and contrast" (Kohler 1991:307; this study was followed and complemented by other studies, such as [START_REF] Niebuhr | Perceptual study of timing variables in F0 peaks[END_REF].

This view of things contradicts the conception set out in section 1.2, without actually entering into an open debate with it. For instance, a study puts forward the idea that, in Mandarin Chinese, the F0 curve and the segments are aligned by the beginning of the syllable, i.e. that the tone-bearing unit is the entire syllable (Xu Yi and Wang 2001:321), a suggestion which contradicts the findings of several experimental studies of the same language (in particular [START_REF] Howie | On the domain of tone in Mandarin[END_REF][START_REF] Hallé | Evidence for tone-specific activity of the sternohyoid muscle in Modern Standard Chinese[END_REF].

The pilot study presented here is based on a small body of experimental data on "Received Pronunciation"/"Standard Southern British English". It consists in comparing the F0 curve of two sets of monosyllables, the ones with sonorant onsets, the others with stop onsets. The results will be discussed in light of a comparison with the phonetic realisation of lexical tone in some Far Eastern languages.

METHOD

Corpus and speakers

Four speakers (hereafter M1 to M4) were recorded at the Phonetics Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. They were undergraduate students at the Department of Linguistics. They were retributed for their participation. We focus here on three series of consonants: fortis /p/, /t/, /k/ (realised as aspirated when in onset position, in a stressed syllable); lenis /b/, /d/, /g/ (realised as unvoiced in the same context); and the nasals /m/ and /n/. 1 In an effort to give a reasonably large scope to the experimental paradigm, disyllables as well as monosyllables were used, so that the results could be checked across these two word structures. The 48 items recorded are twenty-four monosyllabic (C1VC2) lexical words, with C1 being one of /p, t, k, b, d, g, m, n/, V one of /ɑː/, /iː/, /uː/, and C2 a final stop: e.g. boot, cart, deep; -twenty-four disyllabic ('C1VC2ə) lexical words, of the same phonemic composition as before, but with an added /ə/: e.g. booter, Carter, deeper.

The words were read twice inside the same carrier sentence, with different indications of context (chosen for the sake of a cross-language comparison; see Michaud 2005:107-128, 381-390). The first task will hereafter be referred to as condition C (for Careful) and the second one as condition E (for Emphatic; needless to say, these labels are chosen simply for convenience). These two different attitudinal conditions are a source of variation-a variation above which the linguistic regularities under investigation should emerge.

Task 1: You're teaching a foreign student who made a mistake when reading a word. (Class context.) Read each item inside the carrier sentence, making a long pause (breathing in and out once) in-between sentences: Look, this is ___ here. Task 2: A child who is learning to read has asked you how to pronounce this word time and again; (s)he asks you yet another time; you answer, less patiently: Look, this is ___ here! Remember to make a long pause (breathing in and out once) in-between sentences.

Both sentences being statements, the expected pattern within the traditional British notation of intonation would be a Fall.

In order to obtain a very precise measurement of F0 (as well as indications on voice quality, not used here), an electroglottographic recording was conducted simultaneously with the audio recording.

Data analysis

The beginning and end of each syllable and the boundaries between initial nasal consonants and vowels were determined on the basis of inspection of the audio signal, detecting the abrupt change in the shape of the signal at the transition between the nasal onset and the vowel (see figure 2 for an illustration). Segmentation was easy, as the reading purpose of the present study, labials, coronals and velars are bunched up together in the results.

conditions elicited an especially clear (hyper-articulated) rendering. In dubious cases, segmentation was verified spectrographically. (The software used were SOUNDFORGE, www.sonicfoundry.com, and PRAAT, www.praat.org.) F0 was calculated by detecting the positive peaks ("glottis-closure peaks") on the derivative of the electroglottographic signal, under the computing environment MATLAB (www.mathworks.com). On this method, see [START_REF] Henrich | On the use of the derivative of electroglottographic signals for characterization of nonpathological voice phonation[END_REF] and references therein; the MATLAB routines implementing the method, developed by the first author of this paper (and described in [START_REF] Michaud | Final consonants and glottalization: new perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese[END_REF], are available for download from the GitHub repository COVAREP (Degottex n.d.). Requests for the MATLAB routine created for calculating average curves for each data subset should be sent to the authors.

The present pilot study rests solely on observations on the time course of F0; this is a limitation, given the perceptual role of other parameters, such as loudness and voice quality. A refined understanding of the present issue would require a multiparametric investigation, as well as a perceptual evaluation.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Comments on the figures

Figure 3a shows, for one speaker (M1) and one reading condition (condition C: careful reading), the F0 curves of the three types of monosyllables (with fortis stops, lenis stops, and nasals). Each point corresponds to one glottal cycle. Figure 3b shows the same data without indicating standard deviation, in order to make the figure more legible. Figure 4 shows the results for condition E (emphatic reading). Figures 5 and6 represent data from another speaker. In order to evaluate the degree of proximity between the curves obtained (i) on nasal-initial syllables when the initial nasal is disregarded in the calculation, (ii) on syllables beginning by a lenis stop, and (iii) on syllables beginning by a fortis stop, these three data subsets were aligned by their point of origin.

Looking at the F0 patterns on the rimes in figures 3-6, the following differences emerge: the fall realised on syllables with initial fortis consonants generally begins from a higher value than after a lenis or nasal consonant, and tends to have a stronger downward slope. This may be put down to the well-attested aerodynamic and physiological effects of initial aspiration, an effect often referred to as 'micromelodic' or 'microprosodic' (see, e.g., Di Cristo 1985).

The curves calculated over the whole length of the nasal-initial syllables (thin line) consistently show a gradual rise (or a flat portion of curve) that precedes the decrease of F0. This flat or rising portion of curve is considerably longer than that occasionally observed on syllables with onset /b, d, g/ (squares).

For all conditions, final glottalisation occurs in some cases (see figure 3), resulting in irregular glottal cycles; this can be overlooked for the purpose of the present investigation.

Overall, the F0 curves calculated over the rimes exhibit a stronger resemblance than those calculated over entire syllables.

Similarity of the F0 curves over the rimes

The context of utterance being the same for all the items, their F0 curves correspond, at a certain level of abstraction, to the same linguistic phenomenon: a certain kind of realisation of word stress. This phenomenon would be categorised in different ways in different frameworks: for instance, as a Fall in the British tradition of intonational studies, or as a H*L tone sequence in a ToBI-style notation (ToBI, for Tones and Break Indices, is a system of notation of intonation which was proposed as a standard by [START_REF] Silverman | ToBI: A Standard for Labeling English Prosody[END_REF], and which is still very influential, despite major shortcomings pointed out by [START_REF] Wightman | ToBI or not ToBI? Proceedings of Speech Prosody[END_REF]Vaissière 2002, among others). As the choice of one model or another does not have a direct bearing on the present issue, the phenomenon under investigation will simply be referred to, in the abstract, as 'A'. The differences between the curves of the stop-initial syllables and those of the nasal-initial syllables can be interpreted in at least two ways.

(i) Under the first view, the curve of sonorant-initial syllables provides the most complete image of A, whereas the F0 curve of syllables with an unvoiced onset is incomplete: an F0 pattern is specified for the syllable as a whole, and aligned with the beginning and end of the syllable; part of it is not phonetically realised because of the consonant's features (obstruent, and unvoiced).

(ii) The curve of obstruent-initial syllables provides a complete image of A; as for the curve of nasal-initial syllables, only that portion of the curve which corresponds to the rime needs to be retained in order to bring out the portion of the F0 rime which corresponds to A. The flat or rising F0 curve during the initial consonant reflects a transition inbetween A and the previous prosodic events (in the present case, the rise is to be interpreted as an anticipatory movement towards the startingpoint of a falling curve).

Following interpretation (i), which we believe corresponds to the orientation set out in section 1.3, one is led to describe A as made up of two parts: a stable part (slightly rising) followed by a fall, resulting in what could be considered as a Rise-Fall. This conclusion does not accord with the British framework of intonational studies (e.g. [START_REF] Palmer | English Intonation, with Systematic Exercises[END_REF][START_REF] Kingdon | The Groundwork of English Intonation[END_REF][START_REF] O'connor | Intonation of Colloquial English[END_REF], in which the realisation expected in this context is a Fall. On the other hand, going by interpretation (ii), which is inspired by the traditional division of the syllable into onset and rime, A is a Fall in all cases: as pointed out previously, once the F0 curve of nasal-initial syllables is simplified to the part which corresponds to the rime, a greater degree of similarity (in terms of length and of shape) is observed between the three subsets (with nasal onset, with fortis stop onset, and with lenis stop onset). The considerable difference in length between the curves with initial nasal and those with initial stop by and large corresponds to the length of the initial nasal consonant. These visual observations are in keeping with the traditional notion that the rime, not the entire syllable, is the carrier of prosodic phenomena (lexical tones, stress, and intonational phenomena).

Hypotheses on perception

Recent research has established that listeners can make use of tenuous phonetic clues to lexical oppositions (see, in particular, [START_REF] Hawkins | Roles and representations of systematic fine phonetic detail in speech understanding[END_REF]; this might cast doubt on the validity of a stylisation that excludes the portion of the F0 curve carried by an initial consonant. But in fact, this choice does by no means amount to denying that syllable-initial consonants can play an intonational role, by their degree of length, and their articulation (at the supraglottal, glottal and subglottal levels), as shown by [START_REF] Fónagy | La vive voix: essais de psycho-phonétique[END_REF], among others, who investigates the importance of consonantal articulation in the expression of emotions. Moreover, it appears plausible that listeners can use the F0 curve of syllable-initial sonorants as a secondary cue to the syllable's melody: e.g. a rise during a syllable-initial /m/ could help perceive a fall on the following vowel.

It must also be acknowledged that the present conclusion is based only on a very limited spectrum of intonational functions. Looking at other intonational categories, Gartenberg and Panzlaff-Reuter 1991 and van Santen and Hirschberg 1994 observed quite different F0 courses for accented syllables with and without a voiced initial, beyond the differences expected on the basis of the intrinsic characteristics of these consonants. These findings show that simply truncating F0 curves in the way it was performed for the sake of our demonstration cannot be recommended in every case as an adequate way of factoring out the effect of initial consonants.

CONCLUSION

The results of the experimental pilot study lead us to conclude that, in the case of the English monosyllables under study, leaving aside the portion of the F0 curve which is carried by the initial consonant /m/ makes the prosodic phenomenon realised on the syllable emerge more clearly than when the curve for the entire syllable is taken into account.

Our observations evidently do not mean that F0 movements during initial sonorants, and F0 perturbations due to initial consonants, are not used by listeners as cues; but ironically, this information, whilst used for gaining segmental information, seems to be discarded at the level of the perception of prosody (Reinholt Petersen 1986).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to Francis Nolan for allowing use of the facilities of the phonetics lab at Cambridge University, to Geoffrey Potter for technical help, and to the speakers for participating in the experiment. Many thanks to Oliver Niebuhr, and to our anonymous reviewers, for detailed comments and helpful suggestions.

In a previous study (reported inMichaud and Kühnert

2006), only labials /p/, /b/ and /m/ were studied, for the sake of the homogeneity of the results; for the