Affective entanglements with the sexual imagery of paradise in the Qur’an
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper examines affective structures and power formations that are constructed,maintained or contested when the significance of the sexual imageryof paradise in the Qur’an is divided into sensual and spiritual. I take a fictionalstory by Mohja Kahf as an example of a Qur’an commentary that centresgendered and embodied experiences in the text, and contrast it with MuhammadAbdel Haleem’s commentary, who views the sexual rewards of paradiseas allegorical. Using affect theory, I will argue that allegorical interpretationslimit the affective efficacy of the sensuality of the text to their symbolic function,associating spirituality with a disembodied, hence transcendent masculinity.Kahf’s exegesis, however, shows that affect and meaning are not pre-given, butproduced in interaction with the text. I will conclude that configuring the textas sensual or spiritual is not due to any intrinsic or predetermined content, buta product of power relations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".