Social, Ethical, Political, and Policy Implications Of Interpretations Of Islam’s Foundational Text: The Qur’an

SESSION II — Mahmoud Hussein

(Adel Rifaat and Bahgat El Nadi), Authors (Egypt/France)

Over the course of Islam’s history, Rifaat began, religious conformity has too often stifled intellectual curiosity. Unfortunately, in world opinion it is widely assumed that this is an intrinsic quality of Islam. Yet the current state dates only to the last 30 years and followed a period of great intellectual and political progress in the Muslim world. During this “Muslim Renaissance,” thinkers were freed from the literalist interpretations that had bound them for years. It paved the way for the national liberation movements that characterized the first half of the 20th Century in the Muslim world, during which the region’s emergent middle classes adopted a political discourse of secular rationalism. Yet after a period of economic and social gains, the progressive momentum gave way to corruption and unequal development. From the 1980s, the tide turned and the religious orthodoxy that had waned during years of secularization took hold once again.

Rifaat assessed the current situation thus: in this new century, Muslims are inextricably drawn into the orbit of globalization where their only hope for success is to adapt by regaining intellectual freedom and mastering the tools of criticism and innovation. However, fundamentalist thought, which counteracts those needs, is again dominant. In the face of this dilemma, Rifaat stressed the importance of recent reformist thought, which furnishes the tools necessary to address the modern world.

Rifaat honored the recently deceased thinkers Arkoun and Abu Zayd, and welcomed symposium panelist Charfi as a preeminent representative of their school of thought. He praised their representation of Islam as both a divine message and a human story, thereby lighting a path for believers to combine faith in God with knowledge of the world.

Such thinking, Rifaat said, is considered by dogmatists to be an affront to the sacred nature of revelation because it connects the divine with temporal events. Dogmatists react violently to the idea that a text of revelation was influenced by its historical context. Fundamentalists refuse to debate the reformers regarding these objections, instead condemning the reformers’ interpretive methodologies as illegitimate.

Rifaat described Mahmoud Hussein’s recent work as a powerful defense of reformist thought against such attacks, since it exposes the historicity of the Qur’an without relying on “illegitimate,” profane disciplines. Their critique uses the testimony of the Companions of the Prophet — a source unassailable by traditional standards of exegesis. By relating a Qur’anic verse to the reported circumstances of its revelation, they prove that the historicity of revelation is not imposed from the outside, but is contained within the Qur’an and is the very will of God.

Rifaat expanded on this conclusion by elaborating three related findings. First, the Qur’an distinguishes God from his Word; while God transcends time, his Word is time–bound and linked to the context in which it was revealed. Second, the Word of God is not presented in monologue, but through exchanges between heaven and earth. God dialogues in real time, through the Prophet, with the first community of Muslims. Third, God does not weigh each of his revelations equally but has truths of different orders: absolute and relative, perpetual and circumstantial.

In light of these conclusions, Rifaat asked rhetorically how literalist dogma was able to impose itself despite counterfactual evidence in the Qur’an? In answer, Rifaat described the process of the Qur’an’s revelation, which took place intermittently over the course of 22 years, in changing circumstances, and touched on a diverse range of topics. The Prophet and Companions memorized these revelations through recitation. Only after the Prophet’s death was the Qur’an systematically committed to writing. Under the Caliph Uthmann, verses were standardized and grouped in a single volume, the mushaf. Their grouping was ordered not by chronology of revelation but by length of verse, creating problems for the text’s intelligibility. Yet the literalist approach treats the order of verses as if decreed by God, and the text is traditionally studied in strictly that order, verse by verse.

Rifaat described this approach as severing any causal link between verse and the circumstances of revelation. In the absence of such connections, many verses are difficult or impossible to decipher. The difficulty of finding meaning is a feature in the earliest Qur’anic commentaries and in all schools of interpretation. From the beginning, it was clear that the context of revelation held the key to understanding, and efforts were made to reconstruct those circumstances by gathering the testimony of the Companions. This material, called al–asbab nuzul, is used by all exegetes and actually constitutes its own branch of exegesis.

Given this tradition, Rifaat asked, how do literalists justify their reliance on temporal events while rejecting a connection between the Word of God and human time? In fact, Rifaat argued, they failed to explain the contradiction and merely issued decrees justifying their approach. Thus their work is premised on an a priori belief that the Word of God transcends time, though they are unable to explain the logic of the argument.

Rifaat dismissed this position as outmoded. If one reads the Qur’an using those same external sources, it is possible to use the testimony of the Companions to rationally rediscover the connection between text and context. The verses become more than phrases to be recited in order: they are moments of revelation connected by temporal continuity.

Rifaat acknowledged that the chronicles of companion testimony contain contradictory accounts, and are of debatable veracity. Rifaat argued that their analysis, then, is a task for historians rather than religious scholars, who accept the authoritativeness of all hadith without question. Rifaat explained that they are nevertheless significant — not because they are necessarily accurate, but because they constitute a critical mass of evidence regarding the historicity of the revelation. Most importantly, literalists cannot object to their use.

Rifaat’s examples showed that the Qur’an has a clear time dimension in which moments are relational; some are more important than others; and a subsequent event may override a precedent. God is both always right, and yet says contradictory things. Rifaat resolved this seeming dilemma by emphasizing the historicity of God’s declarations. God’s interventions exist in time, making truths relative and contingent on particular but changing circumstances. Therefore, Qur’anic verses cannot be read as though they all have the same weight, and are absolute and eternal, for God made them situational. Lessons and inspiration can always be found in verses, but they are not mandatory lessons for all times and places. Jettisoning the literalist assumptions about the Qur’an frees believers to read it not as a set of commandments and prohibitions, but as a guide to help find God’s way on the path of life.

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