Perspectives from Some Modern Muslim
Intellectuals
Abdul H. Manraj
Introduction
This
article is a brief summary of the book “Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the
Qur’an,” edited by Suha Taji-Farouki.
The book is a collection of essays profiling ten Muslim intellectuals and their
ideas, and since the profiles are brief and this synopsis is a summation of
those profiles, it can only provide a glimpse into the minds of these great
thinkers, so to truly understand their contributions in the field of Islamic Studies,
one has to read their works. A tremendous amount of intellectual effort has
been devoted to understanding the Qur’an from the earliest of times, and Suha’s
book is a continuation of that endeavor, demonstrating that there is a wide
diversity of opinions and plurality of methodologies when it comes to the
significance and impact of the Qur’anic
worldview over the ages.
There
are a few key themes emanating from these Muslim scholars, including:
1)
Muslims must find a way to come to terms with modernity as it is impossible to
recreate seventh century conditions in today’s world in order to try and
relive the past;
2)
Islam in not monolithic, i.e., there is no consensus, central authority, or
monopoly when it comes to interpreting the Qur’an, so there is plenty of room
for debate and diverse views; and
3)
The Qur’anic
message is primarily one of social justice and egalitarianism, regardless of
gender, race, or creed.
Furthermore,
these academics demonstrate that while the Qur’anic
message is divine and applicable to all times and places, how that message is
interpreted depends on each commentator’s methodology, intellect, and
prevailing knowledge and conditions. In other words, while the Qur’anic
revelation is eternal, its rulings are not meant to be taken and applied
literally regardless of time and place. Instead the Qur’an provides a framework
from which humans can derive guidance as environments change and civilizations
progress. This is not to say that there aren’t certain binding principles that
remain unchanged, rather, much is needed in the way of Islamic reform that many
Muslims either refuse to come to terms with and address rationally, or they
advocate outmoded and / or myopic viewpoints which cannot realistically be
applied in today’s modern world.
Muslims
have been in a state of intellectual lethargy for over half a millennium. While
the reasons for this state of affairs are varied, the primary reason for this
ossification is most likely due to the fact that any kind of bid’ah
(innovation) is viewed with skepticism and disdain. Since Islam permeates every
aspect of a Muslim’s daily life, there is no separation between what is deemed
religious and secular per se, therefore many Muslims have struggled to come to
grips with modernity. What these Muslims fail to realize is that the Prophet’s
reported directive on bid’ah
is confined to ritual worship (like prayer, hajj,
and umrah),
however, innovation is an absolute necessity for all other aspects of life. The
majority of the ummah
(global adherents of the faith), comprised mainly of traditionist-minded and
largely uninformed followers, are content with banality and elect to remain
within the confines of a straitjacketed, static version of Islam. They do so at
their own peril, as is evident from the level of backwardness and chaos in the
Muslim world. On the other hand, the intellectual Muslim class (albeit a small
fraction of the world’s one and a half billion Muslims) believe that they have
no choice but to adapt to the modern age in order to avoid putrefaction.
Moreover, they feel that this is what Islam requires of Muslims, and settling
for anything less is actually a disservice to the faith.
Since
most Muslims adhere to what can be termed “popular Islam,” and as such function
within a constrained, traditional Islamic construct, many will probably find
the concepts outlined by these thinkers difficult to comprehend, and some may
even consider them heretical. However, it should be borne in mind that our
predecessors were products of their time, and their understanding of the Qur’anic
message was based on the knowledge available during their respective eras and
applicable to their surroundings. In any aspect of life (religious or secular),
to remain static is to become a relic. Those who promulgate blind obedience to
medieval directives, i.e., intellectual stagnation and laziness, should ponder
the comprehensive meaning of the Qur’anic verse
about “an ass carrying books.”(Q62:5) Muslims have trivialized Islam to a level
where it essentially provides emotional gratification based on the timely
performance of rituals, perfecting modes of dress / appearance, saint worship,
waiting for saviors (viz., Jesus and the Mahdi) who will never come, and the
like. A common thread throughout these scholars’ writings is that Islam needs
to be reinvigorated so that it can once again become a beacon for humankind as
God meant it to be. The Qur’an is a Book that appeals to reason, which in turn
is supposed to foster action that benefits all of humanity and make the world a
better place. The power to affect change starts with knowledge. Suha’s book is a refreshing
contribution to Islamic scholarship and highly recommended for Muslims and
non-Muslims alike who believe that progressive change is very much needed in
the Muslim world. What follows is a synopsis of the aforementioned ten
intellectuals, and in parentheses are the names of the academics who profiled
them.
Fazlur Rahman: a framework for
interpreting the ethico-legal content of the Qur’an
(Abdullah Saeed)
Fazlur Rahman
(1919-1988) was a Pakistani-American scholar and one of the most prolific
Muslim thinkers of the twentieth century. He was born in the Hazara
district in what is now Pakistan. His father, Mawlana Shihab
al-Din, was an alim
(scholar, plural: ulama)
and graduate of the Deoband Seminary
in India. Under his father’s tutorship, Rahman
received his religious education in tafsir
(Qur’anic
exegesis), hadith (reported Prophetic
sayings and actions) and law, and theology and philosophy. He obtained Bachelor’s and
Master’s degrees in Arabic from Punjab University in Lahore, and went on to
write his dissertation on Ibn Sina’s
philosophy at Oxford University. Rahman was widely
read in Islamic law and history, ethics, tafsir,
and hadith. After finishing his
studies at Oxford, he went on to teach Islamic philosophy at Durham University
in the UK from 1950 to 1958. From there he taught Islamic Studies at McGill
University in Canada for three years. Rahman returned
to Pakistan to lead their reformation program as Director of the Central Institute
of Islamic Research under then President Ayyub Khan,
however, he faced stiff opposition from religious conservatives mainly in the
areas of women’s rights and family law. The country’s embedded traditionalism
and mass illiteracy did not help, and threats were made against Rahman’s
life. He returned to academic life in the United States and was Professor of
Islamic Thought at the University of Chicago from 1968 until his death in 1988.
In 1983, he was the ninth recipient of the Levi Della Vida award for Islamic
scholarship presented by UCLA. In 1987, the University of Chicago made him the
Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in recognition of his
contributions to scholarship.
While
Rahman is not generally known in the Arab world or
traditionist religious circles, his sphere of influence was still extensive
especially for a number of postgraduate students from countries like Indonesia
and Turkey. He taught one of the other scholars profiled in Suha’s
book, Nurcholish
Madjid
(Indonesia), and profoundly influenced another one, Amina
Wadud
(United States). Rahman’s writings go well beyond his
primary field of Islamic philosophy. He delved into the reform of Islamic
education, Qur’anic
hermeneutics, hadith criticism, early
development of Islamic intellectual traditions, and reform of Islamic law and
ethics. Rahman believed that the primary decline of
Muslim societies was rooted in intellectual ossification, closing the gate of ijtihad
(independent reasoning), and relying solely on taqlid (blind imitation). He
argued relentlessly that pristine Islam as reflected in the Qur’anic
message was lost with the formation of the orthodoxy, i.e., what later became
known as Sunnism.
Rahman believed that the Sunni Orthodoxy, which was established during the Umayyad dynasty,
departed from Qur’anic teachings and developed as
a result of sectarianism. He felt that this event had the most negative impact
on the development of Islamic thought, and Sunnism coincided with the break
between politics and law / Qur’anic ethics.
Rahman admired the Mu’tazili
theories of prophecy, the nature of revelation, and use of reason, but he was
also critical of their more extreme rationalist positions. His severest
criticism was reserved for Ash’arism,
which was plagued with the idea of predestination and stripping humans of
responsibility for their actions. Rahman believed
that the Ash’arite
view was a gross misrepresentation of the Qur’anic
message, which depicted humans as having free will. He devoted his intellectual
energies towards a new Islamic methodology, as he thought that traditional
methods could not bring Muslim thought into the intellectual framework of the
modern age. Rahman’s opinion was that the Qur’an
and Sunnah
(Prophetic example) were mediated by certain historical realities, and neither
one should be viewed as immutable as all religious traditions are in need of
constant revitalization and reform. His view was that the rigidity of the
jurists’ interpretation of the Qur’an, and their denial of a historical context
to the revelation, had resulted in archaic laws that stymied Muslims from
dealing with modernity and also placed stress on the vibrancy of Islam itself.
Rahman believed that the Qur’an’s primary
objective was one of social justice, and he recommended judicious use of the hadith. He believed that the hadith included many superstitions that
developed in the post-Prophetic period, e.g., the Prophet’s mi’raj (ascension) which has
virtually no support in the Qur’an but is replete in the hadith literature. Rahman always gave
priority to the Qur’an and its overall message on any given issue. When the hadith conflict with the Qur’an (as
they frequently do), there was no doubt in Rahman’s
mind that the Qur’an is to be given preference as it truly represents the Prophet’s
legacy. Rahman thought that there was not a single
authoritative interpretation of the Qur’anic text,
and saw multiple interpretations as not only necessary but essential for the
Qur’an’s relevance and the survival of the religion. While the linguistic
phenomenon of the Qur’an requires multiple interpretations for it to remain
valid as a universal message for all mankind, this in no way detracts from the
sacredness of the text as originating from God. Rahman’s
summary of his methodology from the late 1960s is still relevant today.
The implementation of the Qur’an cannot be carried out literally in the context of today
because this may result in thwarting the very purposes of the Qur’an, and that,
although the findings of the fuqaha
(Islamic jurists, singular: faqih)
or the ulama of Islam during the past thirteen
centuries or so should be seriously studied and given due weight, it may well
be found that in many cases, their findings were either mistaken or sufficed
for the needs of that society but not for today. This approach is so
revolutionary and so radically different from the approaches generally adopted
so far in that it seeks to bring under strictly historical study not only fiqh
(understanding of Islam) and sunnah
of the Prophet but the Qur’an as well, that not only the traditionists but
even most of the modernists seriously hesitated to accept. But this would seem
to be the only honest method of appraising the historic performance of the
Muslims and of genuinely implementing the purposes of the Qur’an and the
Prophet. There would be naturally bitter opposition to this kind of approach
and particularly the results reached through it. But there is reason to believe
that in the span of a decade or so the larger part of the liberals will come round
to some such view. Failing this, this writer does not see any alternative for
Islam except, in the course of time, to be reduced to a set of rites which will
claim emotional attachment for some time to come.
From
the mid to late twentieth century, Rahman’s approach
to the Qur’an was among the most original, daring, and systematic. He proposed what he termed the double movement theory, i.e., try to understand the socio-historic context of the revelation and determine the rationale behind certain decrees, and then apply the same logic in today's society, realizing that the Qur'an is not a law book with stringent rules but a book of moral guidance. His emphasis on the context of the revelation has had far reaching influence among Muslims when it comes to issues such as women’s rights, human rights, and social justice. An increasing number of Muslims have utilized Rahman’s
methodology to relate the Qur’an to contemporary needs, and he continues to be a major influence among younger Muslim intellectuals.1
Nurcholish Madjid and the
interpretation of the Qur’an: religious pluralism and tolerance
(Anthony H. Johns and
Abdullah Saeed)
Nurcholish Madjid
(1939-2005) was born in Jombang, a small
town in the plains of East Java and was one of the best known Muslim public
figures in Indonesia. His father was director of a madrasa (religious school). Nurcholish
attended it as well as a secular government school, and displayed a penchant
early for combining religious with secular studies. During his adolescent
years, he observed how divisions between Muslims were exacerbated by Muslim
leaders of various leanings: reformist, traditionist, etc. He also noted
their failures to make any effective contributions for the public good. Nurcholish
went on to complete his tertiary studies in Jakarta at the State Institute of
Islamic Studies and in 1968, he submitted a thesis titled “The Qur’an: Arabic in Language, Universal in Significance.” The
title indicated a significant shift in his intellectual development: a
perception of the tension between the role of a single language given unique
status by divine revelation, and the plural world in which this one language
and the religion revealed through it were destined to play a universalistic
role.
Nurcholish saw periods of
turbulent politics in Indonesia and realized that religion could easily be
politicized for nefarious purposes. He coined the phrase “Islam Yes! Islamic
Parties, No!” This aspect of his thinking was firmly
established by 1972:
The concept of ‘Islamic state’ is a distortion of the
[properly] proportioned relationship between state and religion. The state is
one of the aspects of worldly life whose dimension is rational and collective,
while religion is an aspect of another kind of life whose dimension is
spiritual and personal.
His
life entered a new stage when he went to the University of Chicago in 1978 and
transferred from sociology to philosophy in an Islamic Studies program under
Professor Fazlur
Rahman.
In 1984, he submitted a successful thesis titled “Ibn
Taimiya
on Kalam
and Falsafa:
problems of reason and revelation in Islam.” The years Nurcholish
spent with Fazlur
Rahman opened new intellectual horizons for him. He
argued that the meaning and message of the Qur’an and the basis for its
continued relevance lay not in any single verse, but in the book as a whole.
This led him to develop a contextual approach to interpreting the Qur’an.
In
1984, Nurcholish
returned to Indonesia with a broader perspective on the problems facing the
Muslim world after his encounter with Fazlur Rahman.
He loved and revered the Qur’an as a revealed Book that is simple and
uncomplicated. Its status is unique and it is God’s divine word that is
error-free. Nurcholish believed that the
authority to interpret the Qur’an is open to everyone and not restricted to any
priestly class. Moreover, the Qur’an is a revelation totally compatible with
reason and it appeals to reason. Nurcholish
regards modernity as synonymous with rationalism, and Islam as a religion par
excellence built on rationality. Reason and revelation are interdependent.
Reason and faith go hand in hand, they cannot be separated. Reason by itself
cannot provide adequate guidance for humankind without revelation (the Qur’an).
The challenge facing Muslims in the modern world is to recover the rational
dimension of Islam that has become overlaid with habit and custom over the
centuries.
For
Nurcholish,
contextualization involves relating Qur’anic logia to
two contexts: one is the time and circumstances of the Prophet when it was
revealed, the other is the contemporary for which its guidance is needed, the
situation in which today’s ‘receptors’ of the text encounter it. His starting
point is that the Qur’an is closely bound to the seventh century Hijaz,
and its content includes the challenges faced by the Prophet and his community
at that time. This is a significant shift away from the traditional
understanding of Qur’anic revelation. While classical
tafsir and fiqh scholars
were equally aware that the Qur’an was revealed in Arabic to an Arab prophet,
they did not acknowledge the corollary that the Qur’an had to be understood as
a historical text. Nurcholish
believed that this distinction was critical. Traditionists argued that a
ruling should not be regarded as ‘specific’ in application simply because a
circumstance of revelation related it to a particular situation. It was tacitly
understood that a ruling was general and the onus of proof was on establishing
that it was not. Nurcholish believed the opposite was
true. For him, rulings were specific to time and place, and the onus of proof was
on establishing that the rulings were general.
In
Indonesia, Nurcholish
observed divisions between Muslim communities over trivial matters like whether
or not the intention for the prayer should be made orally or mentally,
something that was bitterly contested between traditionists and reformists.
Contextualization was his weapon of choice to put an end to such absurdities
and tackle more serious problems like the relationship between Islam and other
religions, and the death penalty for apostasy. Nurcholish
believed that the application of a law is determined by the reason for which it
is prescribed, and if the reason changes, then the application of the law also
needs to change. He cited the example of Umar refusing to allow Arab soldiers
or clans to treat conquered land as part of the spoils of war, even though the
Qur’an did not distinguish land from other booty. Umar believed that property
was the permanent possession of a conquered community. Nurcholish
explained that Umar based his judgment on the sense of social justice in the
Qur’an as a whole. Umar showed awareness for the community he ruled and had an
ethical sense that took precedence over any ad hoc applications of legal
prescriptions, i.e., he demonstrated a profound understanding of the spirit of
the religion. Nurcholish also questioned the law
of inheritance and why a daughter today should only receive half the share of a
son regardless of circumstances. At an international conference, Nurcholish
challenged a Saudi delegate who spoke in defense of the death penalty for
apostasy. He (Nurcholish) concluded that it is God
(not the state) Who will pass judgment on apostasy
based on the following verses.
One who seeks other than Islam as a religion, it will not
be accepted from him, and in the hereafter, he will be among the losers.(Q3:85)
Whoever believes, let him
believe, and whoever rejects belief, let him reject it. We have prepared for
those who do evil a fire that envelops them.(Q:18:29)
Nurcholish showed that the
Qur’an, when properly understood, is universalistic and accommodating of other
religions, which also lead to salvation. He cited Ibn
Rushd
who maintained that all religions were equal, and all were valid paths to God. Nurcholish
felt that once tawhid
(monotheism) was understood as an inclusive, overarching concept, within which
every religion has a place, there is no scope for any one religion to claim
superiority over another, let alone wage war in defense of its unique claim to
truth.2
Amina Wadud’s hermeneutics of the
Qur’an: women rereading sacred texts
(Asma
Barlas)
Amina Wadud
was born into a Methodist family in 1952 in Bethesda, Maryland. Her family was
impoverished and she faced discrimination on account of being both black and
female. Wadud
found Islam during her university career. She took the shahada (declaration of faith)
in 1972 and is the only female scholar profiled in Suha’s
book. Wadud
completed her Ph.D. in Islamic and Arabic Studies at the University of Michigan
in 1988, having received a Master’s degree in Near Eastern Studies from the
same institution. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Education from the
University of Pennsylvania. After completing her doctorate, Wadud
taught at the International Islamic University in Malaysia until 1992. She now
teaches in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Virginia
Commonwealth University. Wadud’s fight for
women’s rights makes her very popular among many Muslim women, which means that
she has been ostracized by the largely conservative segments of Muslim society.
Instead of being discouraged, she appreciates the differences between Islam and
Muslims on one hand, and her own ethical and intellectual choices on the other.
She knows that tranquility and belonging can only be found with God and that
strength lies in recognizing that as God’s khalifa (vice-regent, plural: khulafa), a
person ‘cannot sit on the sidelines in the face of injustice and still be
recognized as fully Muslim,’ so she continues to argue against the injustice of
projecting sexual oppression and inequality into the Qur’an despite the
personal cost to herself.
Like
Fazlur
Rahman,
Wadud
believes that reading the Qur’an piecemeal and in a decontextualized way
ignores its internal coherence and results in failure to understand its broad
principles. Furthermore, most exegetes end up generalizing specific Qur’anic
injunctions, which Wadud believes is
particularly oppressive to women as some of the most harmful restrictions
against them result ‘from interpreting Qur’anic solutions
for particular problems as if they were universal principles.’ Wadud
provides several examples of this including how the exegetes have interpreted
the Qur’anic
provisions on dress codes. She clarifies:
The Qur’an establishes a universal notion regarding
matters of dress and asserts that ‘the dress of piety is the best.’ However, shari’ah
(Islamic law) uses the Qur’anic
references to particular seventh century Arabian styles of dress as the
basis of its legal conclusion regarding modesty. Consequently wearing a
particular item of dress (for example, the head-covering / hijab) is deemed an appropriate demonstration of modesty.
Universalizing
the veil, Wadud
argues, thus also universalizes the ‘culturally and economically determined
demonstrations of modesty’ in seventh century Arab society, thus
imparting a cultural specificity to the Qur’an’s teachings. For Wadud,
ideas of modesty vary among cultures, and taking the approach of universalizing
seventh century Arab culture actually limits the application of the Qur’anic
teachings. Wadud
believes that what the Qur’an teaches and what we need to understand is the
‘principle of modesty … not the veiling and seclusion which were manifestations
particular to [the Arab] context.’ She further argues that even though the
Qur’an offers universal moral guidance, the ‘mere fact that [it] was revealed
in seventh century Arabia when the Arabs held certain perceptions and
misconceptions about women and were involved in certain lewd practices against
them resulted in some injunctions specific to that culture.’
Of
course Wadud
is not alone in emphasizing the relationship between the Qur’anic
text and the circumstances of its revelation (contexts). Faruq
Sherif
notes that many ayas
(verses) ‘relate to a particular time and place’ and several of the Qur’an’s
penal provisions were aimed at conditions of seventh century Arabia such
that it would be a ‘lamentable anachronism’ to treat them as binding today. The
challenge for every new Muslim generation is to ‘understand the principles
intended by the particulars [since the] principles are eternal and can be
applied in various social contexts.’ The Qur’an itself ‘provides, either
explicitly or implicitly, the rationales behind [its] solutions and rulings,
from which one can deduce general
principles.’ As Rahman also
argues, the Qur’an ‘occurred in the light of history and against a
socio-historical background [and is] a response to it.’ In fact, it is
‘God’s response through Muhammad’s mind (this latter factor has been radically
underplayed by the Islamic orthodoxy) to a historical situation (a factor
likewise drastically restricted by the Islamic orthodoxy in a real
understanding of the Qur’an).’ As such, ‘to make the Qur’an immune from history
would be to make its own history irrelevant,’ and would also impede the process
of its ‘creative repossession’ by later Muslim generations.
Silencing
women’s voices, Wadud argues, prevents them from
developing a ‘holistic understanding of what it means to be Muslim’ and keeps
them from experiencing the full breadth of ‘Islamic potentiality’ since it only
allows men to ‘determine legitimacy.’ She points out that while men and women
are equal in Islam, they are distinct from one another, so their experiences
are also distinct. Muslim men have usurped the right to tell women how to be
women, and with their patriarchal readings of the Qur’an, have thus denied them
the Qur’anic
designation of equality and determining how to be God’s vice-regents on earth. Wadud
embraces the modern hermeneutic insight that reading is subjective and
incomplete, a fact that Muslims overlook when it comes to traditional tafsir. This
allows her to free the Qur’an of its (anti-women) misreadings
while also permitting her to argue in favor of some readings and against
others. Hermeneutics as a discipline rests on the premise that ‘while multiple
readings are not per se mutually exclusive, not all interpretations are thereby
equal.’ Wadud
notes that if anyone were to depart today from the Qur’an’s letter in order to
adhere to its spirit, they ‘would be considered a heretic.’ She believes this
is because Muslims ‘lack faith in the possibility that the Qur’anic
whole could yield something greater than its parts.’
Therefore
Wadud’s
own reading of the Qur’an is meant to arrive at an understanding of its ethos
and spirit and not merely its letter. For instance, Abdolkarim
Soroush
holds that while ‘the last religion is already here … the last understanding of
religion has not yet arrived.’ This is why ‘revivalists’ periodically need to
rehabilitate religious thought, correct misunderstandings, and redirect
‘religion towards its essence.’ Wadud challenges
the arrogance of men who demand respect and dignity for themselves while
denying the same for women simply because they are women. She particularly
rejects the false justification of such arrogance through narrow
interpretations or misinterpretations of the Qur’anic
text, namely interpretations which ignore the basic principles of justice,
equality, and common humanity that the Qur’an teaches. Had Muslims learned to
extend such Qur’anic principles to their lives,
she observes, they could have ‘evolved into leading examples of humane and just
social systems.’ Instead, what Muslim men have done is fostered a witch-hunt
mentality that looks for inherent evil in women, justifying constraints on
their every move. At the core of Wadud’s reading
of the Qur’an is the claim that it does not teach the concept of male
ontological superiority and of female inferiority or subordination to men. Wadud
continues her fight against misogyny, and when it comes to Qur’anic
hermeneutics, she remains a pioneer in the field and the most influential.3
Mohammed Arkoun: towards a radical
rethinking of Islamic thought
(Ursula Gunther)
Mohammed
Arkoun
(1928-2010) was a Berber who was born in Taourit Mimoun
in Algeria. He grew up in a poor background and his family led a traditional
and religious life. He left primary school in Kabylia
at the age of nine to join his father who owned a grocery shop in Ain-el-Arba,
a wealthy village of French settlers east of Oran. It was here that he
experienced culture shock and was confronted with discrimination and contempt
for being neither an Arabophone nor
Francophone, and this played a formative role in his outlook on life. He had to
learn two languages at the same time in order to achieve social status and to
be able to communicate outside the Berber regions. Thanks to an uncle, Arkoun
did not become a grocer and was able to get a good education, being one of the
few Muslims attending a French school. He went on to study Arabic literature in
Algiers. On the eve of the war of independence, Arkoun
left Algeria for France to register for study at the Sorbonne University. In
1970, Arkoun
submitted his Doctoral dissertation on Miskawayh and
Arab humanism in the tenth century. He held a chair of Islamic
History of Ideas at the University of Vincennes and then at Sorbonne. In 1980
he was offered a professorship at Sorbonne Nouvelle including the Deanship of
Arabic and Islamic History of Ideas. He has been awarded the highest French
honors and received the prize of Levi Della Vida.
Arkoun describes himself as
the combination of a researcher and thinker or a ‘reflective researcher,’ i.e.,
a critical thinker applying modern methods of humanities and social sciences in
order to analyze Islamic thought according to a philosophical critique. He
focuses on the hermeneutics of sacred texts, i.e., texts declared to be sacred
and as such, providing meaning and transcendence. His approach is
simultaneously historical, philosophical, and anthropological, and should not
be confused with a general critique of religion as such. Instead he tries to
unravel the unthought
and unthinkable within Islamic
thought in order to open up new horizons, while leaving the fixed scope of
religion and religious dogmatics
undisturbed, but at the same time, pleading for a rethinking. Arkoun
never composed a muqaddima
or prologue to his critique, however, his approach includes a radical rethinking
of Islam as a cultural and religious system, which gives rise to a general
critique of epistemology. Hence it necessarily follows that a philosophical
perspective should be adopted in combination with an anthropological and
historical approach. Such a framework provides the possibility of leaving aside
theological and dogmatic ‘a priories,’ and enables the scholar to focus on
philosophical and mental structures regarding Islamic reason. The next step is
to embed these in the corresponding social, historical, and socio-cultural
context, in order to provide documentation of a dialectic interrelationship. Arkoun
considers Islamic reason as a specific manifestation of reason in general and a
branch of religious reason in particular.
Despite
increasing interest in Arkoun’s work,
only one translation of his writings exists in English to date: Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncommon
Answers. Arkoun impresses through his
diversity and his extensive knowledge of both the Arab-Muslim and the
Occidental-Christian culture and history of thought including recent discourses
in social sciences and humanities, all coupled with a sharp awareness of
overlapping and comprehensive correlations. Furthermore, he is talented at
forging exceptional links which at times are daring and radically challenging.
Finally, he has courageously pursued his visionary ideas about how to approach
Islam beyond the borders established by any kind of orthodoxy. In this, he has disregarded the serious consequences for his
position as a scholar, being attacked or ignored both by his colleagues within
Islamic Studies, and by representatives of the orthodoxy in the Muslim world.
Only in the course of the last decade has he received acknowledgement and
recognition and is now regarded not only as challenging but also as an
innovative vanguard in the field of Islamic Studies.
The
majority of authors criticize Arkoun’s complex
and elusive expressions, abundant terminology, and lack of systemization.
Additionally, a profound knowledge of recent discourses and innovations in the
field of social sciences and humanities are indispensable to fully appreciate Arkoun’s
work. There are additional difficulties arising from Arkoun’s
failure to provide a systematic overview for his readers, which places the onus
on them to acquire the relevant knowledge by consulting applicable articles.
Instead of putting already formulated concepts and suggestions in concrete form
and applying them, Arkoun elaborates
his theses and adds more questions without providing answers. Despite this
criticism, authors also show considerable approval for Arkoun’s
works. He is described as a pioneer in the deconstruction of political Islam
and for reconciliation of a hermeneutics of Islam with the political discourse
of modernity; a liberal interpreter of Islam, a critic of orientalism searching
for a modern ijtihad;
the most important Francophone Muslim scholar in the field of Islamic Studies,
a liberal thinker contributing to a different image of Islam, and as someone
who breaks the monopoly of traditional and neopatriarchal
interpretation of Islamic history and the Qur’an.
While
Arkoun’s
contributions are regarded as innovative, important, and challenging, the
scholarly community has not really taken up the challenge inherent in his
approach, including his critique of Islamic Studies. According to Arkoun,
the notion of orthodoxy is ‘one of the keys to rethink the whole theology of
Islam.’ Therefore a thorough analysis of orthodoxy is a prerequisite for an
approach beyond dogmatic enclosure.
Orthodoxy is defined as the
system of beliefs and mythological representations through which, and with
which, a given social group perceives and constructs its own history. … In this
context, orthodoxy can also be defined as the system of values which functions primarily to guarantee the protection
and the security of the group. That is why any orthodoxy is necessarily an
ideological vision overwhelmingly oriented toward the subjective interest of
the group to which it belongs. But the group considered as a ‘collective
consciousness’ is never aware of its
subjective, biased use of history; it sees its ‘orthodoxy’ as a genuine
expression of its identity.
Thus the notion of orthodoxy is always used in a
theological sense, yet has never been thought
in a historical sense; however, it is daring to point out that it is the result
of a slow historical process of selection, elimination and diffusion of names,
works, schools, ideas according to the objectives aimed at in each case by the
group, community, and power in place. This is how tradition is formed that
works like a security system for the religious or national community.
It
is important to recognize that orthodoxy is a phenomenon that occurs not only
in the field of religion but also in other fields, for instance in language,
literature or historiography. However, religious orthodoxy plays a prominent
role; firstly, for holding the monopoly of definition and interpretation with
regard to the sacred texts; and secondly, for establishing the interconnection
of theology with ethical-judicial concepts through the systemization of ‘ilm al-usul
(principles of jurisprudence). This in turn results in intensifying the
dogmatic enclosure and in defining the sphere of Islamic reason and its limits.
Arkoun
believes that whatever was forbidden historically or politically needs to be
explored, which may eventually lead to a liberation of
Islamic thought.
Of
all of the scholars profiled in Suha’s book, Arkoun’s
ideas are probably the most difficult to grasp. This is due to a lack of
systemization of his thoughts in general and his concepts in particular. It
also requires that a scholar be well-versed in Arkoun’s
terminology, the achievements of social sciences, and Islamic history.
Nevertheless, Arkoun’s contribution to the study
of Islam is unique for several reasons. First it is a holistic approach that
replaces conventional analyses, while at the same time refraining from
employing polarizing analytical categories, and focusing on a radical plurality
of meaning and complexity. Second is its radical call for a departure from the
cognitive bounds established by any kind of orthodoxy.
Third, it includes a critical revision of reason as such, and calls into
question the achievements of modernity and its hegemonic character. Fourth, it
aims at an integration of ‘Islam and Muslim culture into a global critical
theory of knowledge and values.’4
From
revelation to interpretation: Nasr Hamid
Abu Zayd
and the literary study of the Qur’an
(Navid
Kermani)
Nasr
Hamid Abu Zayd
(1943-2010) was born in the village of Quhafa near the
lower Egyptian provincial city of Tanta. Abu Zayd
was a devout student of the Qur’an from a young age, a qari (reciter of the Qur’an) and
hafiz (one who memorizes the entire
Qur’an), and able to recite the Qur’an verbatim at the age of eight. Abu Zayd
joined the Muslim Brotherhood and was briefly imprisoned at the age of eleven
in 1954. After leaving school and up to the 1960s, he worked as a technician to
provide for his family following his father’s death. He was influenced by the
writings of Sayyid Qutb,
who was executed in 1966. Abu Zayd began to
study literature at Cairo University, specializing in Islamic Studies. In 1976,
he received his Master’s degree from the Arabic Studies Faculty at Cairo
University. He went on to lecture and study at the American University in Cairo
and at the University of Pennsylvania. By 1981, Abu Zayd
had completed a doctorate at the University of Cairo, and he worked as a
visiting lecturer at Osaka University in Japan from 1985 to 1989. He returned
to Egypt and took a position as ‘Assistant Professor in Islamic and Rhetorical
Studies’ at Cairo University. In spring 1993, ‘Abd
al-Sabur
Shahin,
a professor at the Cairo Dar al-‘Ulum, publicly
denounced Abu Zayd as an apostate, which blocked
his promotion to the post of full professor. There were attempts to nullify his
marriage based on the argument that Islamic law forbids a marriage between a
Muslim woman and an apostate. To make matters worse, a group of professors at
Al-Azhar
University, the theological center of Egypt, called for Abu Zayd’s
execution. As a result, Abu Zayd was forced
into exile with his wife and from the winter of 1995 / 96,
he was professor of Islamic Studies at Leiden University in Holland.
In
Abu Zayd’s
view, the outstanding civilizing role of the Qur’an makes Arab culture ‘a
culture of the text.’ Arab culture, he argues, was spawned by ‘man’s confrontation
with reality, and his dialogue with the text.’ To define Arab-Islamic
civilization as a culture of the text implies that it is also a culture of
interpretation; the language of the Qur’an – like any other text – is not
‘self-explanatory, since any understanding of the text and its meaning depends
on the intellectual and cultural horizon of the reader.’ As such, the message
of the text can only be revealed by its interpreters. If the
Qur’an supposes a person who interprets, or in linguistic terms, ‘decodes’ it,
then text and interpretation, nass
and ta’wil, are
bound to be inextricably linked. Abu Zayd
deliberately and consistently used the term ta’wil instead of the more
common term tafsir
in order to emphasize the share of the human intellect in the act of
interpretation, as opposed to a hermeneutical approach which gives priority to
the narrated traditions in understanding the text. For Abu Zayd,
the interpretative act goes beyond mere explanation or commentary, for without
it the Qur’an would be a meaningless text, simply an ‘object with intrinsic
value’ but devoid of any message for humankind.
The [Qur’anic] text
changed from the very first moment – that is, when the Prophet recited it at
the moment of its revelation – from its existence as a divine text (nass ilahi), and
became something understandable, a human text (nass insani),
because it changed from revelation to interpretation (li-annahu
tahawwala
min al-tanzil
ila
al- ta’wil).
The Prophet’s understanding of the text is one of the
first phases of movement resulting from the text’s connection with the human
intellect.
Abu
Zayd
pointed out that if the information conveyed by the text varies according to
the reader’s personal as well as his cultural and social horizons, then the
essence of the message conveyed by the Qur’an to a twentieth century
reader must vary from the informaton conveyed to a Muslim in the seventh, eighth, or eleventh century. Abu Zayd
strongly condemned belief in one single, precise, and valid interpretation of
the Qur’an handed down by the Prophet for all times:
Such a claim [that the Prophet’s understanding is sacred]
leads to a kind of polytheism, because it equates the Absolute with the
relative and the constant with the transient; and, more specifically, because
it equates the Divine Intent with the human understanding of this Intent, even
in the case of the Messenger’s understanding. It is a
claim that leads to an idolization of a conferral of sainthood upon the
Prophet, by concealing the Truth that he was a human, and by failing to present
clearly enough the fact that he was merely a prophet.
In
Abu Zayd’s
view, an individual’s interpretation is never absolute; it is always relative,
since the information in the divine message varies according to whoever
receives it. Three key themes emerge from Abu Zayd’s
work: (1) to trace the various interpretations and historical settings of the
single Qur’anic
text from the early days of Islam up to the present; (2) to demonstrate the
‘interpretational diveristy’ (al-ta’addud
al-ta’wili)
that exists within Islamic tradition; and (3), to show how this diversity has
been increasingly neglected across Islamic history. Abu Zayd
criticized what he described as ‘the hold of reactionary thought over
tradition,’ which has often marginalized or banished critical, rational,
heterodox, and mystical tendencies from the ‘paradise of Islam and the Arabic
language,’ while reducing Islamic cultural history to politically conservative,
traditional theology. This simplification advocates pure memorizing and
repetition, without grasping the deeper levels of meaning in the text. Abu Zayd’s
research and writings focused on how to achieve a scientific understanding of
the Qur’an, and how to brush aside layers of ideological interpretation in
order to unearth the historical reality of the text. He argued that it is
necessary to focus on the historical context of the revelation if we hope to
distinguish between its historical meaning (ma’na) and its broader, enduring
significance (maghza).
Inspired
by Toshihiko Izutsu’s pioneering work, Abu Zayd
also believed that by transmitting the Qur’an in Arabic, God had adopted a
human language and the culture that had produced this language. Hence the
Qur’an, Abu Zayd argued, is the product of a
particular culture. Like Abu Zayd, Amin al-Khuli,
who developed a literary exegesis of the Qur’an at the University of Cairo,
also stressed the role of the interpreter:
The person who interprets a
text, especially when it is a literary text, colors it with his interpretation
and his understanding. The personality of an individual who seeks to understand
an expression limits the conceptual level of that expression. It is he who
determines the intellectual horizon and who extends sense and intention to the
expression. The interpreter does all this in accordance with his conceptual
level and in the framework of his intellectual horizon, for he can never leave
behind or step beyond his personality. One will not be able to understand a
text without extending one’s thoughts and one’s intellect to it.
Amin
al-Khuli
described the Qur’an as the greatest book and the most spectacular literary
work in the Arabic language. Abu Zayd reiterated
the same views:
I treat the Qur’an as a text in the Arabic language that
the Muslim as well as the Christian or atheist should study, because the Arab
culture is united in it, and because it is still able to influence other texts
in this culture. It is a text that took up the pre-Islamic texts and that all
texts after it have taken up, even those that are produced today. I venerate
the Qur’an more than all the salafis
(fundamentalists). The salafis
limit it to the role of prescription (halal)
and proscription (haram). This is in
spite of the fact that it is also a text that has been productive for the arts.
The visual arts thus arose from the Qur’anic text,
for the most important art is the art of calligraphy. The vocal arts arose from
the art of reciting the Qur’an – all classical singers in the Arab culture
began with Qur’anic
recitation. How did this diversity of meanings and indications, this presence
on all levels, become transformed? I enjoy listening to a recitation of the
Qur’an. How much remains hidden because of the limitation to prescription and
proscription! In reality, no one enjoys the Qur’an. We read the Qur’an and are
afraid, or dream of Paradise. We transform the Qur’an into a text that provides
incentives, and intimidates. Into a stick and a carrot.
I want to liberate the Qur’an from this prison, so that it is productive again
for the essence of the culture and of the arts, which are strangled in our
society.
Abu
Zayd’s
critique argued for a plurality of exegesis, and he rejected claims that link
Islam to one, eternally valid interpretation:
This is a statement that is disproved by the history of
Islam, the history that witnessed a diversity of trends, currents, and groups
that arose from societal, economic, and political reasons, and formed their
standpoints by interpreting and trying to understand the texts. Whatever the intentions of one book or the other, this insistence
on the existence of a single Islam and the rejection of the plurality that
actually exists leads to two results. The first is a single, unchanging
understanding of Islam, an understanding impervious to the influence of the movement
of history and the differences between societies, not to mention the influence
of the diversity of groups that take form within a single society, due to the
differences between their interests. The second result is that this unchanging
understanding is possessed by a group of people – the theologians exclusively –
and that the members of this group are considered to be free of the arrogance
and the natural bias of humans.
Abu
Zayd
gave an example when the Prophet’s companion ‘Abd
Allah ibn
‘Abbas (who bears the title of interpreter of the Qur’an and scholar of the
community) explained thunder as ‘an angel who drives the clouds before him with
a silver catapult’ based on the hadith
compilations (and a statement supposedly traced backed to the Prophet), adding
that none of the Muslims grasped this as an absolute, holy, religious meaning
which scientific research must not conflict. The Muslims understood that the
explanations for natural and human phenomena are not found in religious texts,
but are left to the activity of human reason, which develops continually in
order to discover the horizons of humanity and nature. Abu Zayd
condemned the ‘creation of a priesthood’ which claims
to ‘understand true Islam’ in order to confine ‘the power of interpretation and
commentary to this circle.’ In their view, the theologian has the sole right of
interpretation, contrary to Islamic doctrine, which rejects a ‘sacred power or
priesthood.’ Furthermore, these theologians venture into an area of “speaking
in the name of God,” which eventually leads to the appointment of a certain
species of human being who claim to have a monopoly on comprehension,
explanation, commentary, and interpretation, and thus feel that they alone are
entitled to speak about God. Abu Zayd believed
that this monopolization contradicts the Qur’anic message,
since this exclusivity negates the importance of human reason, and contradicts
the tradition of understanding revelation in the Islamic world. He criticized
the frequent contemporary calls for the Islamization not
only of law, but of literature, art, and knowledge in general. He argued that
during the Prophet’s lifetime, religious and secular affairs were kept quite
separate. The most interesting aspect of Abu Zayd’s
work appears to be his attempt – based on a profound knowledge of the
traditional religious sciences – to adapt the findings of modern linguistics
and the theories of philosophical hermeneutics to his analysis of the Qur’an
and Islamic theology. There are other scholars who hold similar views,
indicating that the field of Qur’anic studies
in the Islamic world is becoming increasingly diverse and reflective.5
Post-revolutionary
Islamic modernity in Iran: the intersubjective
hermeneutics of
Mohamad Mojtahed Shabestari
(Farzin
Vahdat)
Mohamad Mojtahed
Shabestari
was born in 1936 in Shabestar, a
district of Tabriz in Iran. He received a traditional seminary education at
Qom, where he lived from 1950 to 1968. He became interested in modern and non-religious
fields of inquiry. From 1970 to 1979, he was the director of the Islamic Centre
at Hamburg, West Germany. Shabestari became
fluent in German and well-versed in the German theological and philosophical
tradition of scholarship. He is a professor of theology at Tehran University
and established a reputation as a progressive cleric, interested in the place
of Muslims in the modern world. Shabestari enjoys
a large following among the youth of Iran, especially college students, many of
whom come from religious backgrounds and seek a new interpretation of religion
that is compatible with the exigencies of a modern society.
Referring
to existential conditions such as history, language, society, and the [human]
body, as four sources of human unfreedom, Shabestari
has called for a migration from a ‘self’ caught in these ‘prisons’ toward
divinity:
Islam is a ‘total (re)orientation,’ and when there is a
reorientation, there is an emerging from the ‘self,’ a migration from the self,
a travel from the self to the Other. It is our self
from which we must migrate, the self which constitutes the dimensions of human
identity; the historical self, social self, and the linguistic self. Humans are
limited by four ‘dimensions’ in which they normally live: history, society,
body, and language. The role of divine revelation is to open another horizon
and, without negating the four [existential] dimensions, to make them
transparent, traversing the human toward God. To be certain, this transcendence
is always accompanied by dust and is never completely transparent.
At
the same time, Shabestari warned against notions of
humans becoming God-like in the process of historical development. He advocates
that our understanding of revelation must be viewed in terms of a hermeneutic
exercise, and that this understanding is not a fixed category. He posited that
every text is a hidden reality that has to be revealed through interpretation.
The meaning of the text is produced in the act of interpretation. In reality,
the text comes to speak by means of interpretation, and pours out what it
contains inside. As Shabestari puts
it:
Verses do not speak by themselves. It is the interpreter
(mufassir) who
raises a question first, and then seeks its meaning by interpreting different
verses. Wherefrom does the interpreter derive his basic assumptions? His
question contains basic assumptions that are not derived from the Qur’an
itself, but from various [human] sources of knowledge.
One
of the radical corollaries of Shabestari’s
hermeneutic approach is his advocacy that knowing God is impossible without a
body of human-based knowledge. Knowing God and His prophets throughout the ages
has not been possible except via human knowledge and the episteme of the
specific period. Everyone who engages in understanding and interpreting
utilizes the intellectual foundations derived from the human sources of
knowledge available during the epoch in which they live. Since knowledge
continuously grows with time, it is inevitable that our understanding of
revelation will expand with intellectual progress. However, Shabestari
does make a distinction between what is eternal and fixed, and what is subject
to change in religion. He believes that only the general and broad principles
fall into the fixed and eternal category, and specific precepts and rules, for
the most part, belong to the realm of ‘change.’ Shabestari
maintains that there are no given preferences in the political sphere and all
that Islam emphasizes is the principle of justice. The Qur’an does not consider
it within its purview to determine the form of the state and methods of ruling;
rather it establishes the fundamental values of governing. Shabestari
alludes that he concurs with some Islamic theologians and fuqaha that the general and
principal purposes established by the Prophet and Shari’ah may be confined to the
following: ‘The protection of persons (nufus),
intellects (‘uqul),
lineages (ansab),
properties, and religion.’
Sciences
such as modern anthropology, philosophy, sociology, history, economics,
political science, and psychology are all necessary to inform the foundational
assumptions in fiqh.
Traditional philosophy is inadequate in achieving the task of distinguishing
between the fixed and eternal principles, and the rules and precepts that are
subject to change. Shabestari
believes that human knowledge can never penetrate the depth of divine
existence, but this does not mean that human knowledge is to be denied when it
comes to the ultimate truth. According to him, every message is addressed to a
specific receiver and the meaning of the message transpires in the interplay
between both the sender and the receiver. Therefore in understanding divine
revelation, both sides of the message, God and human, are equally crucial
entities. Shabestari
criticized those who claim that fiqh
can provide the answer for all problems that Muslims encounter in modernity.
This denies the ability of human knowledge to organize society and sets
religion against reason. He explains that those who hold such views always consider
the relation between God and humans in terms of opposition and domination from
above, while in Islamic mystical tradition (‘irfan),
this relation is one of ‘love.’ This means that Islamic revelation should not
be pitted against human achievements in civilization and culture. As Shabestari
puts it:
In sum, the Qur’an had declared that it did not come to
nullify human culture and civilization. On the contrary, it came to give a new
impetus to the existing [human achievements] in the direction of monotheism (tawhid). In
the early centuries of Islam, a group of fanatic and benighted people appeared
who, by denying the entire human knowledge and heritage, claimed all principles
and procedures in life must only be derived from the exoteric dimensions of the
Book and the Sunnah.
But the Muslims did not submit to this shortsightedness, and the dignity of
human sciences and knowledge was preserved. Had this not happened, there would
not be a trace of Islamic culture and civilization today.
Shabestari has grounded his
understanding of the notion of faith firmly in freedom of thought and free
human will. He presented four approaches toward the concept of faith in Islamic
tradition. According to the first approach, what he refers to as the Ash’ari
doctrine, the truth of faith is the profession of belief in God and the
prophets as well as divine decrees based on sincere feelings. In the second
approach, espoused by the Mu’tazila, the
essence of faith is comprised of ‘action based on responsibility.’ According to
this formulation, faith stems from innate human rationality that makes us
capable of distinguishing between good and evil, and charges us with duty and
responsibility. The third approach is that of the Islamic philosophers, for
whom the truth of faith is expressed as ‘gnosis’ (ma’rifa) and philosophical
knowledge of the ‘realities in the sphere of being.’ Proponents of this view
believe that faith consists of human evolution towards a state of contemplative
perfection. And lastly, Islamic mystics have interpreted faith as ‘embracing (iqbal) God
and turning away from non-God.’
As
civilizations undergo changes, the political institutions of the Muslims
societies must also assume new forms. Shabestari is critical
of institutionalized religion and maintains that when religion is
institutionalized, the peril of it negating the human looms large:
When religion is institutionalized, the danger appears
that man is negated by the institution. Why? Because when religion
is institutionalized, God’s ‘absoluteness’ is denied. With the
institutionalization of religion, God is confined … within the closure of the
Church or Mosque. God thus is eclipsed, and when He is eclipsed, man no longer
finds himself before an absolute God, but before a God that is confined and
reified. Under these circumstances man is negated and when man is negated, God
is experienced as anti-freedom.
God’s
legislation is primarily the enactment of general, but eternal value systems.
God is the fountainhead of the ethical principles, which leaves room for human
decisions such as “framing laws.” This way, the possibility of change in
divinely inspired laws and regulations is not ruled out, while the divine
values themselves do not change. Shabestari
concludes that laws by themselves are not sacred, even though they might have
been legislated in conformity with general religious values. He also considers
state and political institutions as ‘civil’ as opposed to ‘religious’ in
nature.6
Mohamed Talbi on understanding the
Qur’an
(Ronald L. Nettler)
Mohamed
Talbi
is one of the most prominent Muslim modernist thinkers of the twentieth
century. Born in Tunis in 1921, he received a traditional Islamic education of
the madrasa type as well as secular studies. In 1947 he went to Paris for doctoral studies in
Islamic history. From his Tunisian tradition-centered and somewhat Sufi Islamic
background, itself no doubt somewhat influenced by European intellectual
trends, Talbi’s
European experience was crucial in his later development, and he had a
distinguished dual career as a historian of medieval North Africa and as a
Muslim modernist thinker. Talbi has been
particularly prominent for his developed conception of a religious pluralism
derived from Islamic history and tradition. His main claim for this pluralism
is that it is an integral part of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition. For Talbi,
pluralism basically means respect of all parties for the views of others, in a
context of intellectual and religious freedom. This mutual respect (ihtiram mutabadal)
provides a basis for true dialogue (hiwar)
which is the cornerstone of religious and intellectual pluralism. In addition
to pluralism, Talbi’s thought contains a number of
other main ideas which for him are also prominent and integrally associated
with Islam. Salient among these are freedom, the notion of Islam as apolitical,
and equality of status for women.
In
Talbi’s
view, freedom is an inherent and inalienable right of any individual in
society. Essential to Islam, freedom is the absence of human coercive forces
which would arbitrarily limit individual decisions and choices. According to Talbi,
coercion by either governmental or religious authority would be central as the
major potential threats to freedom. He argues against the idea of any
particular Islamic governmental form. In his view, all such ideas and attempts
to implement them are false. Islam has no intrinsic political principle or
organization. Any ‘Islamic’ political claims made on behalf of certain
ideologies and governments have been wrong and misguided. Islam is mainly a
revealed system of belief, piety, and worship, not a polity. In light of
Islam’s inherent liberal values and practices such as freedom, love, tolerance,
and pluralism, it may be inferred that Islam prefers a government which
exemplifies these values, and as it happens, democracy in our time is just that
system and should be viewed (for now) as the best political system for Muslims,
despite its human imperfections. However, democracy is still not an Islamic governmental form and one day
there could very well be another type of political system that is better suited
to the expression of Islam’s liberal features.
An
issue close to Talbi’s heart is the status of
women. He argues that Islam, at its inception, immensely ameliorated the
suffering of women. The Islamic ethos is greatly sympathetic to women and
equates their status with men. Talbi believes
that the Qur’anic
verse (3:34) dealing with the chastisement of women has to be understood in
context. He explains that God’s intentions in revealing the verse was not to
provide a continuing divine sanction for striking women, but to reduce tensions
in Medina around the issue of treatment of women. Talbi
said that this issue had threatened to cause civil strife between the Muslim
parties who differed on it, and God’s intention in revealing the verse was to
provide a temporary concession to
those who preferred harsher treatment of women. This was meant to prevent the
building tensions from shaking the very foundations of the new Muslim
community. The Prophet’s ‘feminist’ inclinations would subsequently guide the
community towards God’s true intention concerning this problem: equality and
kind treatment of women.
The
Qur’anic
values which Talbi cites as a true Islam for our
time reflect that universality of revelation and human nature are one. He
believes that the great religions are all built on this same foundation, and
the pluralism he sees as being deeply implicit within the religions is now more
than ever urgently required for the good of this world. Talbi’s
ideas and methods are highly Qur’anic in
origin, conception, and application. For Talbi, all
intellectual and spiritual roads lead back to the Qur’an. Just as he believes
that Islam does not sanction the punishment of women by beating and abusing
them, in the same way, he addresses the problem of apostasy and freedom of
belief. Islam is a religion promoting religious freedom and there is no trace
of the [later, traditional] legal judgment concerning apostasy in the Qur’an
itself. Talbi
argues that the legal judgment (death) for apostasy is a product of historical
conditions in which apostasy was considered as treachery against the homeland
during war time.
Talbi prefers intentional
reading to analogical reasoning (qiyas),
without rejecting analogy in all circumstances. He believes that analogy is
inappropriate and unable to solve all of the problems of modernity and the
issues of our present life. He further adds that analogical reasoning is devoid
of a dynamic dimension, approaching the present by way of analogy with the
past. It is a past-oriented understanding of the sacred text, dealing
haphazardly with the present, within models of the past, and striving to force
the present to conform to archaic models. This is something that leads to
blocking any vision of progress and to a rejection of modernity. He cites
another example (slavery), which neither Islam or any other religion
prohibited. Talbi believes that the orientation
of the Qur’anic
text is with regard to freeing slaves, and even though the abolition of slavery
is not in agreement with the letter of the text, its orientation, i.e.,
abolition of slavery, is the Law-Giver’s intent. The text, therefore, works
within the Islamic orientation, though no verse seeks to forbid slavery. That
is because to nullify and prohibit slavery in the historical and human
conditions which accompanied the revelation would have been ahead of its time.
For
Talbi,
his interpretative method involves three approaches. The historical reading
puts Qur’anic
passages in their historical contexts to provide the situation of revelation,
and the human reading would consider the special human peculiarities seen in
that situation. The intentional reading, incorporating the findings of the
other two dimensions, brings us to the goal: ascertaining the intentions of the
Law-Giver in revealing the passage under review. The unity of these three
dimensions is clear: the meaning common to them all is that the Qur’an may best
be understood in its context, in order to discern God’s true intentions and
meaning in His revelations to us. ‘Literal meanings,’ taken out of context and
seen as applicable in all times and places, are often inappropriate and may
even contradict God’s true intentions or misconceive them. The ongoing
‘intellectual crisis’ of Islam in the modern era, as Talbi
sees and defines this, in his view requires a penetration of the ideas in the
Qur’an which reveal the true intentions of the Law-Giver. This would break the
logjam of retrogressive literal reading and pernicious attempts at their
application. The result would be ‘the Islamization of
modernity and the modernization of Islam.’7
Huseyin Atay’s approach to
understanding the Qur’an
(Osman Tastan)
Huseyin Atay
was born in 1930 in Guneyce in
Northern Eastern Anatolia, Turkey on the edge of the Black Sea. He began
recitation of the Qur’an and its memorization in his early childhood, and had
memorized the entire Qur’an before he reached the age of 15. He took private
Arabic grammar lessons from Haci Hasip
Efendi
while studying in Kadirga Primary School in Istanbul.
He continued these lessons under Mustafa Asim Haci
Bilaloglu
while attending Kumkapi Middle School. Upon
completion of middle school, he took lessons in various Islamic disciplines
from Mustafa Gumulcineli for three years. He
moved to Baghdad to attend high school, and graduated from the Faculty of Shari’ah in
Baghdad. He began his academic career back in Turkey at the Faculty of Divinity
in Ankara University as a Research Assistant in Islamic Philosophy, and
completed his Ph.D. thesis in 1960. Following this, Atay
assumed the post of Associate Professor, and became full Professor at the same
Faculty in 1974. Atay has a long and distinguished
career as a Professor and has published numerous works on various subjects in
the field of Islamic Studies.
Atay nurtured an
aspiration for understanding the Qur’an in a progressive manner. He grasped the
notion that nothing escapes being interpreted, and that there was both a
possibility and an indispensable need to engage in interpretation towards a
progressive Islamic thinking. Atay dared to
understand the Qur’an directly through his own analysis of its text, in a bid
to free his mind from any convoluted textbook discourse. Atay
refutes belief in qadar
(fate) by demonstrating that there is no evidence supporting it in the Qur’an.
In Atay’s
view, the word qadar,
based on references to various Qur’anic verses:
6:91, 13:26, 54:12 and 49, 56:60, 25:2, 20:40, and 42:27, means limit,
criterion, proportion, or plan. There is no indication that it signifies a
compulsory fate of the individual or society. While everything is within God’s
knowledge, there is no written qadar
that preempts the will and freedom of a person. Atay
argues that the reason Sunni Islam included qadar in the body of principles
of faith lies in ‘Abdallah Ibn
‘Umar’s defense of it against some who claimed that there was no qadar, and
that things happened by chance. As such, in 1960 Atay
reduced the principles of faith from six (belief in God, the angels, the holy
books, the prophets, the Hereafter, and qadar)
to five with the removal of qadar.
Discussing the authority of reason compared to the hadith narrations, Atay opted for
reason. He stresses that in principle, the Mu’tazila
did not accept hadith as a proper
source for matters of belief / creed. Other scholars like Abu Hanifa,
al-Maturidi,
and al-Ash’ari
did not easily accept hadith either
for the same reason, unless a hadith
was proven to be mutawatir,
i.e., narrated by a large generality of people at each link. Atay
believes that the significance of reason trumps the hadith in serious matters such as creed, and plays a supervisory
role against false attributions to the Prophet.
The
legitimacy of a religious opinion, in Atay’s view, is
related to a trio of interdependent sources: reason, the Qur’an, and the
situation [context]. Atay believes
that reason as a source of legitimacy is on par with the Qur’an itself as he
notes:
The main sources of Islam are reason and the Qur’an. The
words and acts of the Prophet Muhammad amount to examples in practice,
methodology, interpretation, and explanation, or exegesis of these two sources.
These examples may change according to different times, places, individuals, or
societies. Taking the Prophet Muhammad as the model does not mean repeating
literally what he did or imitating him; it should mean rather producing
examples, in order to achieve goals in the interest of people.
When
it comes to naskh
(abrogation), Atay does not recognize the theory
and explicitly rejects it. He considers the entire Qur’anic
text to be valid for all times, and there is nothing redundant in the Qur’an.
If the theory of abrogation is accepted, then the scope of the Qur’anic
text will be limited. In line with his rejection of naskh, Atay
is disinclined to understand the Qur’an via a historical contextualization of
the text. He disagrees with Fazlur Rahman’s
view that if, hypothetically speaking, the Qur’an is read by a man in the North
Pole who speaks Arabic but has no knowledge of Arabia / Arabic culture at the
time of its revelation, this man would not be able to understand the Qur’an
properly. Rahman believed that it is necessary to
understand the social and historical context of the Arab society in order to
understand the Qur’an, as it came into existence within a certain course of
history and culture. In contrast to Rahman, Atay
believes in liberating the reader’s mind from historical and traditional culture,
which in fact obscures a genuine understanding of the Qur’an.
In
favor of a new understanding of Islam, Atay endeavors to
explain the reasons for stagnation in Islamic thought. He identifies the shift
from the logic of induction to that of deduction in the Muslim world as the
reason for decline in Islamic thought. He posits that the Qur’an itself in
verse 39:18 proposes the induction methodology:
Those who listen to
the word and follow the best (meaning) in it. Those are the ones
God has guided, and those are the ones endowed with understanding.
In
pursuing his argument in this context, Atay articulates
the contrast between the Hanafi and Shafi’i
schools of law in terms of the former being pro-induction and the latter
pro-deduction. He adds that Hanafis first
studied specific cases and then wrote about their methods. In contrast, the Shafi’is
first established their methodological rules and then dealt with specific cases
on the basis of these rules. Atay asserts that
these two methods were employed in contrast to each other until the eleventh
century, at which point the Shafi’i
methodology began to dominate. This is also the juncture at which the decline
in Islamic thought started. The Shafi’i method of
deduction, Atay
posits, leads to an authoritarian mentality as it is driven by imposing rules,
rather than pursuing changing interests in changing cases. He cites three
verses to show the significance that the Qur’an attaches to reason:
… They have hearts wherewith they understand not, eyes
wherewith they see not, and ears wherewith they hear not. They are like cattle,
– nay more misguided: for they are heedless (of warning). (7:179)
For the worst of
beasts in the sight of God are the deaf and the dumb – those who understand
not.
(8:22)
… And He will place doubt (or obscurity) on those who
will not understand. (10:100)
With
his critique of taqlid
(contrasted with ijtihad
and the free use of reason), Atay blames the fuqaha for
creating a formalism in religious thought and their interpretations, resulting
in difficulty in approaching and understanding the Qur’an. He wants to free
peoples’ minds from the perception that the Qur’an is something that is sacred
and unapproachable. Atay provides an
analysis showing that the traditionally held view that the Qur’an could not be
touched without ablution does not refer to the text of the Qur’an available to
us, but to the Qur’an in the lawh mahfuz (see
Q85:21-22), which transcends the physical world in which we live. Atay
advocates that we liberate our minds from what we carry in the way of history
and culture, so that we might arrive at a proper understanding of the Qur’an.
There
are three perceptions of religion in the Muslim world as Atay
observes. First is the religion of the people, comprising popular traditions
and culture. Second is the religion of the scholars, made up from the
literature of fourteen centuries, plus narrations from scholars, including the
generation of the Prophet’s Companions. Third
is the religion of the Qur’an, which is expressed by the Qur’an itself. The
religion of the people differs from that of the scholars, and the religion of
the scholars differs in part from that of the Qur’an. Atay
refutes both what he calls the religion of the people and that of the scholars,
in order to prove that the religion of the Qur’an must be understood as clearly
distinct from non-Qur’anic traditional perceptions.
For example, in the case of divorce, Atay believes
that the fuqaha
entrusted the right of divorce to the husband and thus neglected the Qur’an’s
proposed egalitarian procedure for divorce. He further adds that the fuqaha were
overwhelmed by the patriarchal culture and existing practice of divorce, and
were not able to properly formulate the Qur’anic
principle of equality between husband and wife, as regulated in the Qur’aninc
verses dealing with divorce. Atay also seeks
to avoid theft in society without resorting to the amputation of hands, thus
giving priority to the ends rather than the means. The punitive letter of the
Qur’an is thus proclaimed valid, while in practice it is given almost no chance
of application.8
The
form is permanent, but the content moves: the Qur’anic
text and its interpretation(s) in
Mohamad Shahrour’s al-Kitab
wal-Qur’an
(Andreas Christmann)
Mohamad Shahrour
was born in 1938 in the Salihiyya quarter
of Damascus, Syria. The norm at the time was to attend the local kuttab and madrasa, but his father opted instead to
send him to the primary and secondary state school in al-Midan
in the southern suburb of Damascus. In 1957 he went to Saratow
(near Moscow) to study Civil Engineering until 1964. In 1968, he went abroad to
the University College in Dublin for his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in soil
mechanics and foundation engineering. As a Professor of Civil Engineering at
the University of Damascus from 1972 to 1999, Shahrour
never achieved formal training or a certificate in the Islamic Sciences. The
way he gained knowledge in the diverse disciplines of the Islamic Sciences is
that of an autodidact. Shahrour studied
the Islamic heritage (turath)
with the hope of finding a way out of the political and intellectual crisis. He
was disillusioned with the madrasiyya
mentality, which he feels is expressed in the regressive reiteration of ancient
school traditions (including the Mu’tazila) that
prevent real innovative solutions to the dilemma of Arab Muslims.
The
appropriate term for Shahrour’s
approach to Qur’anic studies can be described as
de-familiarization, a process in which language is used in such a way that it
attracts attention and is perceived as uncommon. This undermines the
well-established canon of interpretations and suggests alternative ways of
reading a text. Shahrour wants his readers to
understand the Qur’an as though the Prophet has just died and informed us of
this book, as if seeing it for the first time. This challenges traditional
perspectives of the Qur’an, which he regards as corrupted by ‘inherited dubious
axioms’ of the Islamic discourse. The most obvious thing in Shahrour’s
attempt to undermine the mufassir
and faqih is that
he does not belong to any of those professions. He is an unwelcome intruder in
the field of Islamic Studies and faced mass opposition from the majority of
professional specialists, who accused him of being paid by foreign / Zionist
organizations to undermine the Qur’anic
authority and unity of the ummah,
being one of the lost sheep of Marxism in the gardens of Islam, creating a
completely new religion, plagiarism, or having committed an unforgiveable act
of dilettantism in the field of Qur’anic
exegesis. Shahrour
believes these accusations are all typical strategies to avoid any serious,
innovative discussion within the Islamic Sciences. Even sympathetic scholars
like Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, who
advocated change and reform in Islam, criticized Shahrour’s
methodological naiveté.
In
stressing the necessity to keep an epistemological openness despite the
overwhelming importance of the Arabic-Islamic heritage (turath), Shahrour’s
approach is strictly contemporary.
The main thrust of this argument is that it is directed towards situating the Qur’anic
interpretation within the larger framework of human knowledge in general, and
in particular, within the context of modern philosophy and linguistics, and
with reference to his qualifications as an engineer, of mathematics and the
natural sciences. Shahrour sees a crucial distinction
that must be made between two different forms of any religious discourse: there
is divine reality, immutable, eternal, and absolute at one level; and at
another level there is the human understanding of that divine reality, about
which there is nothing divine, and which is changeable, partial, and relative.
The latter is a constant process of evolving and perfecting since it is a
product of interaction with the intellectual paradigms of specific human
societies. Furthermore, the human capacity to grasp the complexities of the
divine will increases with the progress of scientific achievements. With this
notion, Shahrour
concludes that contemporary attempts at interpreting the sacred realm are more advanced
and better equipped than previous Islamic scholarship throughout the centuries.
The
textual, linguistic form is the divine word of Allah, which is eternally valid
and immutable, whereas its actual content is materialized by its readers, whose
context is changing from one generation to the next, thereby establishing a
constantly moving content. Shahrour’s notion
of the Qur’an’s uniqueness is this dialectical relationship between permanence
and movement, stability and progress, and objectivity and subjectivity. The
problem with Shahrour’s overt break with the
past, as several of his critics have observed, is that he does not apply the
same strict criteria to the other historical persons whom he quotes as a kind
of alternative canon of authority, e.g., al-Jurjani,
Abu Jinni, and al-Farisi. Shahrour
was compelled to leave this epistemological problem unresolved unless he wanted
to base his work on no authority whatsoever. Similar to what Sir Isaac Newton
did with his scientific findings that changed the religious doctrines of the
Christian church,
Shahrour
destroyed the unquestioned paradigms of Islamic scholarship with his new terms
and concepts, which are indigestible for the traditional scholar and
incomprehensible for the lay Muslim reader.
Because
Shahrour
suspends any exegetical remarks by other scholars (which are important only as
part of the turath),
and because he does not contextualize the meaning of the Qur’an through its
historical origin (only the form is historical, the content is moving, i.e.,
contemporary), his resultant readings are unique and have a taste of
arbitrariness. Shahrour’s division of the
revelatory process of the Qur’an into two distinct categories with two
different contents and separate chronological sequences runs counter to
mainstream opinion, which states that the whole Qur’an was sent down first from
the ‘preserved tablet’ to the lowest heaven of this world (in the laylat al-qadr or night
of power, traditionally observed as the 27th night of Ramadan), and
then revealed to the Prophet Muhammad gradually over a period of 23 years until
his death. While the Ash’aris and Mu’tazils
differ over the question of whether the Qur’an was preserved in Heaven
uncreated since eternity or created for the purpose of revelation, neither position
has ever questioned the unity of the Qur’an. However, for Shahrour,
a distinction is absolutely fundamental for a correct understanding of the Qur’anic
text. For him, the first category is the revelation of al-Qur’an, which contains the mustashabihat (ambiguous,
equivocal) verses of Muhammad’s prophethood. The
second category is the revelation of the Umm-al-Kitab, which contains the
muhkamat (distinct, clear)
verses of Muhammad’s messengerhood, together with the Tafsil al-Kitab and al-Sab’ al-Mathani.
The first type is revealed from the lawh mahfuz / imam mubin,
transformed into Arabic and then transmitted via Jibril
(Gabriel) to the Prophet, whereas the second type is given directly from Allah
and stored in Muhammad’s heart without any intermediary.
There
are three important implications of this division of the Qur’an into two
separate parts:
1. Shahrour
does not want to identify himself wholly with either the Ash’ari
or the Mu’tazili
schools. According to his model, only one section of the text (al-Qur’an) represents the lawh mahfuz, the
‘uncreated, ever-existing, and everlasting truth,’ which humans are unable to
fully understand in rational terms (the Ash’ari position).
The other sections of the text represent those verses whose exact verbal
formulation and meaning are ‘created’ in the light of the historical context of
revelation, and are thus subject to rational investigation (the Mu’tazili
position). Shahrour
appears to support the Mu’tazili
position through his insistence that the muhkamat
verses do not form part of the eternally existing al-haqq
(truth), since they are subject to alteration (tabdil), to the exercise of
independent judgment (ijtihad)
in the endeavor to understand them, and to rational investigation into their revelational
circumstances (asbab al-nuzul).
2. Through
his distinction between inzal
(the process of changing a matter outside the human mind from something
unperceived to something perceived) and tanzil
(the process of objective, other-human communication – reception by humans is
uncertain, impossible, or unintended), Shahrour avoids
acknowledging any spatial dimension of revelation. In traditional exegesis, the
two recognized sources of revelation, the ‘preserved tablet’ or Allah’s throne
(‘arsh Allah),
were either interpreted in a literal sense or metaphorically, reflecting again
the Ash’ari-Mu’tazili
divide. However, in both interpretations, ‘revelation’ is conceptualized as a
process of ‘coming down’ to earth from high above (the Heavens). This concept
clearly imparts a spatial meaning to the term nazala in all its derivations.
For Shahrour,
this traditional notion is unacceptable, given his horizontally designed model of divine-human communication.
3. Shahrour
challenges the traditional concept that the first and complete revelation of
the Qur’an occurred during one night (laylat al-qadr).
Furthermore, he denies the possibility that one can identify Qur’anic
verses as either naskh
(abrogating) or mansukh
(abrogated); no objective law can ever be abrogated.
The
uniqueness and originality of Shahrour’s
approach to the interpretation of the Qur’an lies in its conspicuous break with
any agreement or contract – textually, linguistically, methodologically –
pertaining to the tafsir
genre. His proposal to virtually separate the Qur’an into two completely
different texts (nubuwwa / risala) is in
itself a radical revocation of the dominant consensus. Moreover, his assignment
of the two parts of the text, firstly to two separate sources of origin (lawh mahfuz / ‘ilm
Allah), secondly to two different modes of linguistic structure and code (tashabuh / ghayr tashabuh),
and thirdly to two different forms of reception and interpretation (ta’wil / ijtihad), is
by and large only to be found in marginal and minority positions within the
history of tafsir.
Shahrour
also maintains that religion and politics should remain separate since a fusion
of the two would be detrimental to the process of interpreting the Qur’an, given
that all humans, regardless of creed, participate in the process of
interpretation.9
Modern
intellectuals, Islam, and the Qur’an: the example of Sadiq Nayhum
(Suha
Taji-Farouki)
Sadiq Nayhum
(1937-1994) was born in Benghazi, Libya. He attended the local mosque Qur’an
school, and Arabic primary and secondary schools in Benghazi. He graduated from
school in 1957, majoring in Arabic at the Department of Arabic Language in the
Faculty of Arts and Education at the Libyan University. He was among one of the
first few small classes to graduate from the university in 1961 with honors,
remaining with the Department as a teaching assistant. In 1965 he took up a
scholarship he was awarded and left for Cairo University, spending some time on
higher studies but eventually leaving without a degree. A widespread story
maintains that the university refused to examine his doctoral work in
comparative religion because it was hostile to Islam and possibly heretical.
The same narrative has it that he enrolled in the University of Munich, where
he was eventually awarded a Ph.D. in comparative religion, proceeding on to
further research in Arizona, a teaching post in comparative religion at the
University of Helsinki, and finally at the University of Geneva. Reliable
sources claim, however, that Nayhum never
obtained a doctorate from any university and claims of an academic career must
be taken with a pinch of salt.
Nayhum’s concern with Islam
specifically is to uphold the rights of the oppressed. He feels that religion,
unlike politics, addresses the people themselves, rather than (state)
institutions. According to Nayhum, Islam
upholds a definition of the oppressed that encompasses the entire human family.
The advent of Islam saw the institution of an administrative system founded on
a challenge to the logic of force: it aimed to ‘liberate the people’s paradise
from the law of the jungle.’ The duty of jihad
(defined in this context as the fight to defend the oppressed) was made
applicable to humanity as a whole, obligating every individual to defend the
collective law. Nayhum argues that democracy can be
guaranteed only if the people possess a constitutional voice, such that they
oversee both the legislative and administrative process. Islam brought a
distinctive paradigm for collective administration. Its system reflects two
fundamental principles: the illegitimacy of mediation (wisata), and the notion that
Islam embraces, and undertakes to coexist positively with other faiths.
The
arch-villain in Nayhum’s reading of Islamic history
is Mu’awiya.
He transformed Islam into an Islamic fiqh
without an administrative apparatus: the institutionalization of the
professional army and the installation of a caliph as deputized representative
of all Muslims marked its final demise. The Muslims became divided into
political factions disguised as fiqh
schools, destroying the integrity of the community and its collective
authority. Losing the quality that sets religion apart from politics, Islam was
stripped of its capacity to preserve the rights of the oppressed. As Nayhum
puts it:
The Muslim world was turned upside down from Mu’awiya’s
time. It remains inverted today, although Muslims remain unaware of this. Hence
the jami’ (community) is absent, and the age of
the Rightly-Guided Caliphs has ended. The administration has been taken out of
the community’s hands, and the majority has lost the right to decision-making.
The principle of personal responsibility has been suspended. The state has
taken control of bayt mal al-Muslimin
(the Muslim treasury), the mujahid
(one who struggles) has lost his weapons, and the citizen no longer has a right
to justice.
From the time of Mu’awiya
until the twentieth century, Nayhum maintains
that the fuqaha
have written about human rights, while administrations the Muslim world over
remained ignorant of them, and neglected in particular the rights of the
vulnerable. Having repudiated the Islamic system of collective rule, Nayhum
posits that the Umayyad rulers had transferred their administrative systems
from Byzantium. Since the Qur’an called for Byzantium’s overthrow, and it was
too dangerous to impound the Qur’an, the Umayyad Caliph set about the discovery
of an alternative ‘Qur’an.’ The hadith served this purpose: as a source
of legislation, it provided the Caliph with ‘a fiqhi way out.’ Nayhum
rejects the hadith as a source of
legislation. He argues that it was used to confer the status of successor to
God’s Messenger, and hence legitimate rights in administrative and judicial affairs
on an ‘Umayyad Caliph who had not been elected by the majority.’ The real
purpose of the science of hadith was
indeed to grant the fuqaha
authority to legislate on behalf of the majority. Nayhum
faults al-Shafi’i
for excluding the people’s authority from the sources of legislation, arguing
that Muslims only discovered this ‘fateful error’ after the rise of democracies
in the West. The result was that the Islamic fiqh turned its back on the only
legitimate authority, and sought its solutions in the Companions’ sayings. This
led to the rise of countless schools of fiqh
as the voice of the majority disappeared behind that of the fuqaha and Islam became
thoroughly fragmented.
The appeal of Nayhum’s
thesis lies in its literary style, accessibility, and the simple yet persuasive
eloquence of its exposition. Its relevance is exemplified in its plea to the
people to shake off the yoke of contemporary feudalists in the Arab-Muslim
world, against a backdrop of unjust regimes and oppressive states. Nayhum
had no part in established Islamic communities of meaning. His projection of
the original message of Islam and his critical reading of Islamic history
entail a wholesale dismissal of all post-Qur’anic Islamic
authorities, including the hadith, fiqh,
and tafsir. His
views concerning the hadith and fiqh are that
they are a ‘satanic alliance’ with feudal power aimed at silencing the voice of
the people. As far as tafsir
goes, he attacked what he described as its claim to constitute ‘a sacred
knowledge that is beyond criticism.’ Arguing that the Qur’an is not a ‘coded’
book and does not require a ‘science’ for its interpretation, Nayhum
insists that it is simply a call to establish the collective law, with the
mission of destroying the feudal system. He argues that Islam came with the aim
of liberating people from state oppression, and effectively projects the Qur’anic
text as a manifesto for universal liberty and freedom.10
Works Cited
1. Taji-Farouki,
Suha.
“Modern Muslim
Intellectuals and the Qur'an” (Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon
Street, Oxford, Great Britain, 2010). p. 37-66
2. Ibid.
p. 67-96
3. Ibid.
p. 97-123
4. Ibid.
p. 125-167
5. Ibid.
p. 169-192
6. Ibid.
p. 193-224
7. Ibid.
p. 225-239
8. Ibid.
p. 241-262
9. Ibid.
p. 263-295
10. Ibid. p. 297-332
Posted August 2, 2013