Reading the Qur'an in the Twenty-First Century

A Contextualist Approach

Abdullah Saeed

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317974147
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Reading the Qur'an in the Twenty-First Century considers the development of Qur'anic interpretation and highlights modern debates around new approaches to interpretation. It explores how Muslims from various theological, legal, socio-political and philosophical backgrounds think about the meaning and relevance of the Qur'an, and how their ideas apply in the contemporary world. The book:

• reflects on one of the most dominant approaches to interpretation in the pre-modern period, textualism, and the reaction to that in Muslim feminist readings of the Qur'an today
• covers issues such as identifying the hierarchical nature of Qur'anic values, the criteria for the use of hadith in interpretation, fluidity of meaning and ways of ensuring a degree of stability in interpretation
• examines key Qur'anic passages and compares pre-modern and modern interpretations to show the evolving nature of interpretation. Examples discussed include: the authority of men over women, the death of Jesus, shura and democracy, and riba and interest

Abdullah Saeed provides a practical guide for interpretation and presents the principal ideas of a contextualist approach, which situates the original message of the Qur'an in its wider social, political, cultural, economic and intellectual context. He advocates a more flexible method of interpretation that gives due recognition to earlier interpretations of the Qur'an while also being aware of changing conditions and the need to approach the Qur'an afresh today.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Part I

Background and examples of contextualism

Past and present

1 Introduction and modern emphases in Qur’anic interpretation

This book makes the case for a contextualist approach to interpreting the Qur’an. It also provides, broadly speaking, a theoretical and practical guide for undertaking contextualist interpretation. The contextualist approach reads the Qur’an in light of the historical context of its revelation and subsequent interpretation. In doing so, it strives to understand the underlying objectives and spirit of the Qur’an and thereby highlights the ongoing relevance of the Qur’an to our own time. A contextualist interpretation seeks not to reduce but to expand the contemporary significance of Qur’anic teachings.

In making the case for the contextualist approach, this book explores a perspective on Qur’anic interpretation in which there is widespread interest, particularly among Muslims. Many basic ideas associated with this contextualist approach already exist – and the literature is growing. In this book, I bring together many of these ideas, skilfully advanced by other scholars, and place them in a coherent, easily accessible system. In doing so, I also incorporate a wide range of my own ideas, which I hope will enrich the current debate and clarify some of the difficult issues associated with a contextualist approach.

Contextualism provides a critical alternative for contemporary Muslims to textualism, the dominant mode of interpretation of the Qur’an today. Textu-alism ranges on a continuum from approaches that place an almost exclusive reliance on the literal meaning of the Qur’anic text (“hard textualism”) to perspectives that take some contextual elements into account and so provide a degree of interpretive flexibility (“soft textualism”). As I discuss briefly in Chapter 15 (Epilogue), there are a number of political, intellectual, and cultural reasons for the prominence and popularity of a textualist (particularly the “hard textualist”) approach to the interpretation of the Qur’an today.

A textualist approach that relies largely on the “literal” meaning of the text, with some consideration given to the complexities of practical application, has been the chief approach within the tafsīr (Qur’anic exegesis) tradition, particularly regarding ethico-legal texts, and in the Islamic juristic literature (fiqh). But in all its forms, a textualist reading fails to do full justice to certain texts it interprets. The result is that those texts of the Qur’an are viewed as irrelevant to many of the vexing problems contemporary Muslim societies face, or are applied inappropriately, in ways that distort basic Qur’anic principles. This should be considered a strong justification for embarking on an approach to interpretation that emphasises the continuing relevance of all Qur’anic texts to the twenty-first century.

Contrary to the hard textualists’ position that new ideas or approaches to the interpretation of the Qur’an are un-Islamic or even anti-Islamic, I argue throughout the book that a contextualist approach is very Islamic, and is in fact rooted in the tradition. There are many such ideas in the Islamic juristic and Qur’anic exegetical literature which attempt to relate the Qur’anic texts and their teachings to the changing circumstances and contexts, even though there is no systematic contextualist approach as such in that literature. Both jurists and Qur’an commentators attempted to understand the circumstances in which particular Qur’anic texts were revealed as well as the specific people those texts were addressing and the time of the revelation. Even in the first century of Islam, immediately after the death of the Prophet, figures like Umar b. al-Khattab (d. 23/644), the second caliph, interpreted a range of Qur’anic texts in a manner that could be considered “contextualist”. Umar understood Qur’anic revelations in terms of their fundamental principles or objectives and, critically, his understanding was highly contextual.

Such ideas remain at the heart of the contextualist approach to the interpretation today as well. But the contextualist approach of today takes this idea of context much further and develops a method of interpretation based on the notion of context both of the time of revelation and of the twenty-first century.

When presenting arguments in favour of a contextualist interpretation of the Qur’an, I do not argue for a wholesale rejection of the authority of premodern Muslim scholarship, theology, or law. Instead, this book should be considered a contribution to the evolving scholarship on the Qur’an that assigns greater emphasis to the idea of a contextually relevant reading of the Qur’an. I argue that a contextualist approach provides a valid method of interpreting the Qur’an: one that gives due recognition to earlier approaches to interpretation while also being aware of changing circumstances and social, political, and cultural conditions which need to be considered before any interpretation of the Qur’an may be deemed contemporary and more importantly relevant as well.

Key ideas of a contextualist approach

Contextualists place great hermeneutic value on the historical context in which the Qur’an was revealed – the early seventh century ce – and subsequently interpreted. They argue that scholars should be highly sensitive to the social, political, economic, intellectual, and cultural circumstances of the revelation, as well as the setting in which interpretation occurred in the past and occurs today. Contextualists thus tend to see the Qur’an as a source of practical guidelines. They believe that these guidelines should be implemented in new ways whenever changing circumstances warrant them, and so long as these novel implementations do not impinge on the “fundamentals” of Islam.¹

Central to the contextualist approach is the idea of context. Context is a broad concept which may include, for instance, the linguistic context, and also what I call the “macro-context”. The linguistic context is related to the way a particular phrase, sentence, or short text is situated within a larger text. Usually, this involves situating the text in question within the texts that immediately precede or follow it. This type of context, while important for getting a basic understanding of what the text is conveying, is not the primary focus of the contextualist. Instead, more interesting and useful for a contextualist is what I call the “macro context”. This refers to the social, political, economic, cultural, and intellectual settings of the Qur’anic text under consideration. The macro context considers also the place in which the revelation occurred and the people to whom it was addressed. In addition it includes the ideas, assumptions, values, beliefs, religious customs, and cultural norms that existed at the time. An understanding of these elements is important to the process of interpretation, as the Qur’an responded to, interacted with, and praised or rejected these contextual connections.

The purpose of studying the macro context is to obtain a reasonably good sense of the overall setting in which the particular Qur’anic text was given and to understand how the “meaning” of the text was related to that setting. We can term this context of revelation as “macro context 1”. Equally important is the macro context of the present period, that is, the context in which the act of interpretation is occurring today. We can term this “macro context 2”. This context also has various elements, which include: the period in which the interpreter is living; the physical places in which society functions; contemporary cultural and religious norms; political ideas; economic institutions and ideas; and other systems, values, and norms. This context also includes the kinds of educational, economic, and political opportunities that are available, and the protection of the various rights that are afforded in modern societies.

For the contextualist, it is important to compare the two macro contexts as thoroughly as possible, in order to “translate” the meaning of the Qur’anic text from macro context 1 to macro context 2 without bypassing the context of the intervening periods. This involves drawing a close connection between the Qur’anic text at the time of the revelation and the context of the time of interpretation, without divorcing either context from the other. The connecting elements for these are the intervening historical periods. These can be understood in terms of the ideas, scholarship, and interpretations that have continuously adapted the Qur’an to emerging contexts. I term this the “connector context”. Without the connector context, it would not be possible to link macro context 1 and macro context 2. The intermediary role of the connector context demonstrates how successive generations of Muslims have applied the Qur’anic text and its norms to their lives. In a sense, the accumulated tradition, experience, and practice are always there to help the interpreter to connect with the context of the Qur’an at the time of revelation. With this framework, it is possible to read the Qur’an in a way that emphasises its ongoing relevance to society in the present and to the generations that will follow.

It is worth noting that many parts of the Qur’an do not require a con-textualist reading, as they are immediately relevant to different contexts. Thus, only certain texts need to be read contextually. The historically oriented texts that occupy such a large portion of the Qur’an, for example, do not usually require a contextualist reading. These historically oriented texts could reasonably be expected to contain many specific details in order to make sense of the events, figures, and concerns to which the Qur’an is making reference. However, the Qur’an on the whole does not provide such specific details about places, people, or events. Nor is it concerned with presenting the life story of the prophets or even of the Prophet Muhammad. The historical references in the Qur’an, almost always, do not refer to dates or place names. The Qur’an has a tendency to avoid those specifics and often uses such narratives to expound universal ideas and values. For instance, the story of the creation of the universe and of Adam is concerned with God’s creative power, which can be understood as such in any context. Similarly, the story of Moses and Pharaoh highlights the idea that ultimately good overcomes evil. Such broad ideas and lessons can be readily understood from the text, and applied within a wide range of contexts, cultures, times, and places, as they tend to be universal in nature. These may be considered as the trans-historical or universal aspects of the Qur’ anic text.

Other text types, such as those related to theological concerns related to God or those that relate to the afterlife are also not context-dependent or culturally specific. Most such texts can be immediately read, understood, and applied within a whole range of different contexts in different times, places, and circumstances. Believers can easily relate to them regardless of their specific contexts. For instance, the Qur’an has a number of texts that discuss God’s names and attributes and show how God relates to creation. The Qur’an discusses life after death and accountability. It talks about universal ethical and moral values such as honesty. The Qur’an also contains a range of texts about “Unseen” (ghayb) which refer to a world that exists beyond human experience. Although some difficulties have arisen in the modern period in relation to a number of these texts, perhaps because of our contemporary understanding of the communities or figures that are alluded to in the Qur’an or our scientific take on the nature of the universe and life on earth, these texts by their very nature do not seem to at...