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The Qurn as Scripture

The term Qurn, most often translated as reading or recital, has been linked etymologically to
Syriac qeryn (scripture reading, lection) and to Hebrew miqra (recitation, scripture). Some Muslim commentators
have also proposed that it comes from the Arabic verb qarana, to put together or bind together, thus giving the
approximate translation of a coherent recital or a scripture bound in the form of a book. As a verbal noun (mad ar)
of the form fuln, qurn carries the connotation of a continuous reading or eternal lection that is recited and
heard over and over. In this sense, it is understood both as a spiritual touchstone and a literary archetype. As a
title, al-Qurn refers to the revelation (tanzl) sent down (unzila) by God to the prophet Muhammad over a period of
twenty-two years (610632 CE). In its more universal connotation, it is the self-expressed ummal-kitb or paradigm of
divine communication (13.39). For all Muslims, the Qurn is the quintessential scripture of Islam.
The term the Noble Qurn (al-Qurn al-Karm, 56.77) is often used to stress the extraordinary nature of this text.
Since its divine source makes the Qurn a sacred and therefore unique form of communication, its meaningfulness
is dependent on the prior acceptance of a faith claim that posits specific assumptions about its historical and
metahistorical contexts. Consequently, the Qurn's significance for the pious Muslim is entirely different from that
seen by the non-Muslim or Islamic secularist. Because each and every written word and recited sound of the
scripture is revered by believers in Islam as part of a divine lection, an interpretation of the Qurn solely according to
the canons of literary criticism or philology can only do violence to the revelation in terms of its meaning to its
audience. For this reason, many scholars in the West have ceased speculating on the actual origins of the Qurn
or the historicity of its text and have devoted themselves instead to evaluating the Qurn's undeniable surplus of
meaning in a combination of literary, cultural, and historical contexts.
As a communication from God, the Qurn is the prime theophany of Islam. Because its text consists of divine rather
than human speech (kalm Allh, 9:6), its significance for Muslims is similar to that of the logos (divine word) in
Christianity. However, unlike the normative Christian view of the Bible as a divinely inspired discourse (but closely
akin to Jewish attitudes concerning the holiness of scripture), the words of the Qurn are regarded by most Muslims
as divine in and of themselves. Although the fully divine nature of Qurnic speech is difficult for the secular reader
to understand, the importance of this concept should not be underestimated. Modern Muslims still demonstrate their
reverence for the Qurn by approaching it in a state of ritual purity. At times it may also be treated as a prized artifact
as evidenced by the production of hand-decorated, calligraphic copies (mas h if) and the popularity of Middle-

Period Qurn manuscripts in collections of Islamic art. Sfs have long regarded the Qurn as a paradigm for all of
God's communication with his creation. In the thirteenth century the great Andalusian mystic Ibn Arab (d. 1240)
organized the entirety of Al-futh t al-Makkyah (The Meccan Inspirations), his magnum opus, in conformity with the
discourses and signs of the divine text.

Structure.
The text of the Qurn is divided into 114 segments or srahs (Ar., srah; pl. suwr), each of which contains from
three to 286 or 287 yt (sg., yah). Although it has been common for Westerners to translate yah as verse, this is
misleading. In the first place, the biblical concept of chapter and verse does not fully apply to the Qurn.
Particularly in the case of the longer segments, the surahs may not always discuss themes whose consistency is
easily apparent from title to finalyah. Indeed, the names of the surahs themselves may refer only obliquely to the
main point of the discourse, and in several cases they have been changed at different times in Islamic history. This
process continues even today, despite the increased standardization brought about by the mass printing of official
renditions. Surah 17, for example, might be called Ban Isrl (Children of Israel) in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, while
in Egypt and Iran it is likely to be known as al-Isr (The Night Journey). Each of these names refers to a different
theme discussed in the same srah. Furthermore, while it is certainly correct to view the Qurn as a collection of
divine discourses, a single surah may contain more than one discourse. On other occasions (as in the story of
Ms/Moses), the same discourse may be continued in two or more noncontiguous srahs.

The most important reason for not referring to yah as verse, however, comes from the Qurn's own use of the
term. The words yah or yt are employed nearly four hundred times throughout the text. Most
frequently, yah refers to evidences (thr) in nature that demonstrate the existence of God. At other times it may
refer to a miracle confirming the truth of a prophet's message, a revealed message (tanzl) in general, or even a
fundamental point in a particular surah's discourse. Because of its multivalency, yah can be seen to correspond
quite closely to the concept of sign in Saussurean linguistics. An important proof of this assertion lies in the fact that
sign (almah) is the most commonly accepted synonym for yah in Ibn Manzr's (d. 1311/12)Lisn al-Arab and
other influential lexicons of the Islamic Middle Period.

When inscribed in a written Qurn or recited on a believer's tongue, yah is best understood as a statement in the
speech of God. The totality of these statements, along with a number of non-Qurnic inspirations known as h adth
quds (holy reports), constitute the divine speech (parole) as revealed to the prophet Muhammad. Yet each
statement of the Qurn was also revealed as a remembrance or recollection (dhikr or dhikr, 38:8), whose
purpose is to awaken human beings and cause them to look up from the written or recited text, so that they may see
the existence of God through his creation. In this case, each yah of the Qurn is also a signin the symbolic or
semiotic sensethat points to another level of reality that in turn reaffirms the message of revelation. The believer
who seeks to develop a sense of the sacred must thus learn two distinct levels of language (langue) at the same

timethe Arabic text of the Qurn itself and the language of nature, which is also a manifestation of the speech of
God. God created the world as a book; his revelations descended to Earth and were compiled into a book; therefore,
the human being must learn to read the world as a book. This aspect of spiritual intellection is exemplified in the
Qurn by the figures of Ibrhm/Abraham, who discerned the One God in the multiplicity of heavenly phenomena
(6:7579), and Sulaymn/Solomon, who was inspired to understand the discourse of the birds (mantiq altayr,
27:16).

Theology and Anthropology.

As an expression of theology, the Qurn is first and foremost a demonstration (bayn) of the existence of God. In
this guise it acts as a criterion of discernment (furqn or mzn): And We gave Moses the Book and the furqn so
that you might be guided (2.55). This discernmentthe same as that given to Muhammad, Abraham, Jesus, and all
the other biblical and non-biblical prophets mentioned in the Qurnleads humankind to perceive a single, absolute
truth (the only noncontingent reality) that transcends the world of phenomena. This truth is God, whose essence,
being unique and exalted, lies beyond the limits of human imagination: Say: He is Allh the Only; Allh the Perfect
beyond compare; He gives not birth, nor is He begotten, and He is, in Himself, not dependent on anything (112). This
purely monotheistic expression of divine simplicity is complemented, however, by a more monistic image of a
complex deity who is immanent in the world by virtue of being the source of existence itself: He is the First and the
Last, the Outward and the Inward; And He is the Knower of every thing (57:3). Between these two poles of
monotheism and monism stands tawh d, the recognition of transcendent oneness that constitutes the theological
premise of Islam and the fundamental message of the Qurnic discourse.
Despite the radically monotheistic nature of Islamic theology, the discourse about God in the Qurn fluctuates
repeatedly between transcendence and immanence, the abstract and the concrete, the logical and the analogical:
God is one and not a trinity (5:75); lord of the east and the west (55:17); he sends rain and revives the earth (29:63);
his face will abide forever (55:27). Out of these distinctions arises the tradition of the ninety-nine asm Allh alh usn or excellent names of God (7:180), which for later Muslim thinkers expressed the discursive field in
whichtawh d was conceptualized. The central or medial figure who straddles these perspectives (and in Sufism
actualizes the excellent names according to his or her ability and destiny) is the human being (insn, masc. pl. ns,
fem. pl. nis). The Qurn's use of this generic term demonstrates that both men and women are rational and
ethically responsible creatures who occupy an intermediate position in respect to all the oppositions (e.g., true and
false, necessary and contingent, or real and unreal) that characterize the Qurnic discourse. As such, the most
meaningful duty in the life of every person is to submit the ego and intellect to the criterion (furqn) of manifest truth
as given in the divine revelation. This act of choice, in turn, is the furqn that separates islm (surrender and
submission to the one God) from kufr (covering up or denying the reality and moral implications of islm).
[ee Asm al-husn, al-.]
Human accountability is epitomized in the Qurn by a generic covenant (33:72) in which preexistent humanity,
despite its creaturely limitations, assumes responsibility for the heavens and the earth. This moral and ecological

commitment constitutes another furqn by which human actions are assessed. Also called God's covenant (ahd
Allh, 2:27), this pact was created to distinguish male and female hypocrites (munfiqn) and those lost in contingent
reality (mushrikn) from the believers (muminn) who maintain their trust in the absolute (33:73). The human being
who trusts in God and is true to God's trust by not breaking this covenant in thought, word, or deed actualizes God's
vicegerency (khilfah, 2:3033), through which one is able to exercise choice and maintain covenantal responsibility.
The society made up of such believing individuals thus constitutes a normative or axial community (ummatan
wasatan), which acts collectively as a witness to the truth (2:143). This society appears in history as a community in
a state of surrender to God (ummah muslimah, 2:128) and is exemplified in its penultimate form by the paradigmatic
ummah created by the prophet Muhammad and his companions in Medina (622632 CE).

Qurn and Bible.

References in the Qurn to the stories of biblical and extrabiblical prophets and their communities must be viewed
from the perspective of the ummah muslimah in order to become intelligible to the Western reader. The historical
discourses of the Qurn are linked together thematically rather than chronologically, and thus the revelatory concept
of the book or divine communication (kitb) employed in this text has more in common with the genre of wisdom
traditions (cf., al-Kitb al-akm [X, 1]) than with that of European historiography or Aristotle's Poetics. For this reason
students of Islam whose view of scripture is based on Judeo-Christian models are likely to be confused or even put
off by what at first seems to be an incoherent scattering of biblical accounts and apocrypha. If, however, the text of
the Qurn is read according to its own instructions to Christians and Jewsas a reminder (dhikr) and reaffirmation
(mus addiq) of universal truths and the essential points of biblical discourse (5:4448)its lack of historical detail
becomes less of a problem, and the logic of the Qurn's self-described complementarity to previous revelations
(41:43) is easier to understand. As with every other sign, the purpose of a biblical reminder is to stimulate intellectual
awareness, not to provide an exhaustive discussion of a particular person or topic. In the Qurn these reminders
revolve around the quintessential unity of the Abrahamic tradition and include exemplary and cautionary narratives
detailing humanity's acceptance or rejection of the divine message.
Despite the Qurn's apparent advocacy of an inter-textual approach to scriptural analysis (5:4751), a later
preoccupation with abrogation (naskh) made the comparative study of revelation more difficult at precisely the time
(ninth century CE) when the vocalization of the consonantal text of the Qurn fixed its discourse so that a true
hermeneutic could become possible. The jurist al-Shfi's (d. 820) insistence that the Qurn was the primary source
(as l) for Islamic law meant that its prescriptive (muh kam) yt abrogated similar statutes in the Hebrew Bible and the
Christian Gospels. Subsequent scholars expanded on al-Shfi's comments and claimed that the words of the
Qurn constituted a blanket abrogation of the texts of all previous holy books. This opinion was reinforced by the
doctrine of the inimitability of the Qurn (ijz al-Qurn). Originating as part of a debate over the Qurn's
challenge to unbelievers to produce a work of comparable eloquence and substance (2:23), by the time of the
theologian al-Bqilln (d. 1013) this concept had evolved into the idea that the Qurn was completely unlike
anything that had been revealed before. As a result, contemporary Muslim arguments against the doctrines of other

peoples of the book (ahl al-kitb) still tend to recycle earlier polemics against Christianity and Judaism that are
found in the Qurn itself or in the works of Middle-Period theologians. Only rarely does a Muslim exegete overcome
the influence of tradition and undertake a serious study of modern Judaism or post-Reformation Christianity. This is
even more the case in regard to polytheistic or nontheistic scriptural traditions, such as those of China and India.

Translations.
A hallmark of twentieth-century exegesis (tafsr) is the translation of the Qurn into local and regional vernaculars. As
early as the eighth century the jurist Ab H anfah (d. 767) claimed that it was permissible for non-Arabic speakers to
recite al-Ftih ah, the opening surah of the Qurn, in Persian. Although other jurists disputed this view as
contradicting the Qurn's own assertion of its Arabic linguistic identity (cf. 12:2, 16:23), a nativist (shub) cultural
revival on the Iranian plateau led to Persian translations of the complete text by the eleventh century. These works,
however, did not have ritual value. The consensus of ulam has long held that a direct translation of divine speech
is impossible. Vernacular editions of the Qurn are thus classified as commentaries or interpretations
(tafsr or tafhm) to distinguish them from the Arabic original. This monadist opinion was authoritatively reaffirmed in
the present century by the Syrian Pan-Islamist Muhammad Rashd Rid (d. 1935), who strongly rebutted Kemalist
attempts to make Turkish a language of worship in the 1920s.

Important contemporary translations of the Qurn include those of the Indian modernist Abdullh Ysuf Al (in
English), the Pakistani reformer and politician Sayyid Ab al-Al Mawdd (in Urdu), and the Indonesian scholar,
poet, and independence activist Hamka (in Bahasa Indonesia). In each of these cases the purpose of translation was
twofold: to promote the related causes of Islamic preaching (dawah) and reform by making the text of the Qurn
accessible to non-Arabic-speaking audiences, and to counteract translations of the Qurn in vernacular or European
languages by non-Muslim missionaries and orientalist scholars working for colonial regimes. Of the translators
mentioned above, Ysuf Al is the least inclined to believe that rendering the words of God into another language
implies a decisive departure from the original text. Although he asserts that his desire is to provide an English
interpretation (tafsr) of the Qurn, the final product (variously entitled The Glorious Quran, The oly Quran,
or The oly Qur-an, 1934) is more commonly thought of by Muslims as an annotated translation rather than an
exegetical workper se. This is primarily because the commentaries are introduced as footnotes or bracketed additions
to the translated text. In fact, Ysuf Al's avowed goal of making English itself an Islamic language has very nearly
been realized. His work is at present the most widely available Qurn translation in English and forms the basis of
the semiofficial Mus h af al-Madnah al-Nabawyahprinted in Saudi Arabia in 1990.

Mawdd's Tafhm al-Qurn (19421979), although superficially similar to Ysuf Al's work, is indisputably an
example of tafsr. In both his rendering of the original Arabic into Urdu and his extended discussions of each surah,
the author's explicit intent is to amplify and clarify a unitary Islamic message for dawah purposes. Part of this
clarification entails transforming the structure of the Qurn into paragraphs rather than leaving its text (either in

Arabic or Urdu) in the traditional single-yah format. This innovation is coupled with an analysis of the divine
revelation according to the doctrines of the Jamat-i Islm, which Mawdd founded in 1941. According to this
party's point of view, the Qurn is both a revolutionary manifesto and a manual for missionaries; its message calls
for the reconstruction of human society into an ideologically motivated community of virtue and social activism. As
such, its text provides a blueprint for transcending sectarian and legalistic divisions and uniting humanity into a single
brotherhood. As an implicitly political work,Tafhm al-Qurn has much in common with F z ill al-Qurn, an equally
influential tafsr in Arabic by the Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Qut b (d. 1966). See MAWDD, SAYYID AB AL-AL.
Vernacular translations of the Qurn in Southeast Asia first appeared in the 1920s but did not become fully accepted
until the 1960s. In most texts the vernacular rendition (in Bahasa Melayu, Indonesian, Sundanese, or Javanese)
follows or is parallel to the Arabic original of each yah and is referred to as an interpretation
(Malay, terjemah, tafsr). Prefatory discussions are commonly added, and exegetical material is usually found in the
form of extended footnotes, as in Ysuf Al's and Mawdd's translations. Tafsr al-Azhar, the translation and
exegesis by the West Sumatran scholar and Indonesian independence activist Hamka (Hadji Abdul Malik Karim
Amrullah, d. 1981) is notable because of its nationalistic tone. Written in Bahasa Indonesia, this important work is a
semi-official tafsr of the Indonesian Muhammadiyah organization and has been widely disseminated throughout the
Malay-speaking world. Hamka is distinctive among Southeast Asian commentators for his use of interlineal exegesis
(a technique common in the Arabic tradition) and his reliance upon recent Indonesian history to illustrate specific
points in the Qurnic discourse. See HAMKA.

Modern Arabic Exegesis.

Modern exegesis of the Qurn begins with the writings of Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905), an Egyptian essayist,
jurisconsult, founder of the Salafyah movement, and rector of al-Azhar University in Cairo. Abduh's exegetical
corpus consists of four works: Tafsr al-ftih ah (1901), Tafsr srat al-as r (1903), Tafsr Juz amma (19221923),
and the twelve-volume Tafsr al-Qurn al-akm (sometimes called Tafsr al-manr, 19271935), which was
completed after his death by Rashd Rid. As a neotraditionalist scholar who felt an affinity for Mutazil rationalism,
Abduh was influential in reviving the earlier genre of reason-based exegesis (tafsr bil-ray), which except for the
writings of certain Sfs had lain dormant for centuries. Also an avowed Spenserian social evolutionist, he saw the
regulatory yt of the Qurn as corresponding to natural law, and he characterized the process of evolution as part
of God's sunnah (sunnat Allh, 48:23) or unchangeable pattern of conduct. He generally rejected the possibility of
miracles as contradicting this principle but excepted the Qurn, whose miraculous uniqueness serves to awaken
human reason to the truth of Muhammad's prophecy. Claiming to follow the noted theologian al-Ghazl (d. 1111),
Abduh asserted that even the ambiguous (mutashbiht) yt should be open to analysis using the tools of modern
thought. Once Islam was understood through the light of modern knowledge, the rectification of religious practice
demanded that Muslims also take on the reformation of society as a whole. As a justification for this position Abduh
cited the first part ofyah13:11: God will never change the condition of a people until they change what is in
themselves. See ABDUH, MUHAMMAD.]

A direct successor to the Abduh-Ridtafsr is Sayyid Qut b's (d. 1966) Fz ill al-Qurn (In the Shade of the Qurn).
Written for the most part between 1954 and 1964 during the author's longest period of imprisonment, this
posthumously published work adopts many of the positionsboth explicit and implicitof Abduh's earlier tafsr. This
reflects the fact that Qut b's mentor, the Egyptian reformist and political activist H asan al-Bann (d. 1949), was a
student of Abduh's disciple Muhammad Rashd Rid. Like its predecessor, F z ill al-Qurn is also an example
of tafsr bi al-ray. Despite numerous appeals to the precedent of the Prophet and his companions, Sayyid Qut b
rivaled Abduh in his faith in modern science as a universal criterion for knowledge, going so far as to quote British
scientific journals in his exegesis. Both authors also distinguished themselves as advocates of social and intellectual
reform and were equally fond of citing yah13.11 as a justification for sociopolitical activism.
Sayyid Qut b differed from his predecessor, however, over the degree to which change dictates compromise with
alien sociocultural systems. Although Abduh maintained a traditional aura of legitimacy as an Islamic scholar and
jurisconsult, he was also a political accommodationist who regarded British administration and scientific positivism as
evolutionary advances over a decayed and ignorant Muslim society. Sayyid Qut b by contrast, as a member of the
Muslim Brotherhood, was a committed anticolonialist and anti-imperialist who sought to revive a Qurn-based
Islamic system (al-niz m al-Islm) that remained true to the cultural and social values established by God and
Muslim consensus. While fully modern in his belief in the unitary message of the Qurn and skeptical of the
accuracy of many prophetic traditions (h adth), Sayyid Qut b nonetheless rejected the examples of both the Uniteds
States and the Soviet Union as societies where man is either made a commodity or reduced to little more than a
machine. Western imperialism, he asserted, had created a new ignorance (jhilyah) in the Muslim world, where an
original, faith-based consciousness of God (taqw) was replaced by a jhil consciousness characterized by
immorality, political corruption, and a servile reliance on Western paradigms. As the title to his tafsr, In the hade of
the Qurn, indicates, the Qurn serves Muslims not only as a source of guidance but also as a refuge from
destructive influences. See QUt B, SAYYID.

Apart from translation, the most important hallmark of modern exegesis of the Qurn has been the tendency to view
each surah as a unified discourse. In itself this approach is not new. As early as the eleventh century it was followed
by the influential Sf al-Qushayr (d. 1073) in his exegesisLat if al-ishrt (The Subtleties of Symbolism). In the
following century the Andalusian legist Ab Bakr ibn al-Arab (d. 1148) bemoaned the lack of interest in intratextual
hermeneutics (ilm al-munsabt), and the subject was brought up again in the fourteenth-century tafsr of Badr alDn al-Zarakhsh (d. 1391). Until the twentieth century, however, such opinions were rare, and the usual approach
was to view each surah as an atomistic collection of discontinuous narratives. In recent times Western attacks on the
coherence of the Qurn have led to an apologetic defense of the text that vindicates its present structure by
demonstrating the existence of thematic unities.

Although this approach is now followed by most modern commentators, one of the clearest examples of ilm almunsabt can be found in Al-mzn f tafsr al-Qurn (The Balance of Judgment in the Exegesis of the Qurn,

19731974), an influential Sh tafsr in Arabic by the noted Iranian philosopher and theologian Sayyid Muhammad
H usayn al-Tabt ab (d. 1981). He begins his exegesis of each surah by identifying its central theme, which he calls
its purpose or intent (gharad). This theme is discovered by examining the surah's opening, its end, and the general
flow of discourse. The actual commentary is then divided into subtexts, which correspond to discursive changes in
the divine speech.

It is important to note, however, that Tabt ab does not impose an artificial unity on the Qurn, nor does he
conceive of his exegesis as an example of tafsr bi al-ray. As a scholastic theologian and strict follower of
the us l (source-oriented) jurisprudential tradition of Twelver or Imm Shiism, he prefers to let the Qurn explain
itself by itself (tafsr al-Qurn bil-Qurn) following a statement of Imam Al: One part of the Qurn explains
another, and one part witnesses to the other. Rejecting the concept of reason-based exegesis as a matter of
principle, Tabt ab first tries to explain ambiguous yt by syllogistically referring to others whose meaning is
apparent. Next he turns to the extensive corpus of exegetical traditions left behind by the Sh imams. When using a
purely scholastic approach, as in his discussions of grammatical points, semantics, or human nature, Tabt ab
takes great pains to ensure that his conclusions are in overall agreement with the consensus of previous Imm
scholarship. See TABt AB, MUhAMMAD hUSAYN.

Qurn and Modernism.

In recent years the Qurn has become a touchstone for controversy as well as piety. Nowhere has this been more
the case than in modernist polemics, many of whose practitioners view the Qurn through the lens of ideological
precommitment. Particularly prominent is the debate over the empowerment of Muslim women, who have become
both combatants and prize in the struggle between Western critics of Islam and their Muslim opponents. A recent
discussion of the Qurn from a womanist point of view is Amina Wadud's Qurn and Woman (1992). First published
in Malaysia, it is presently used as a manifesto by the Sisters in Islam movement in that country. In her approach to
the Qurn the American Wadud attempts to lay the groundwork for nontraditionaltafsr from a scripturally legitimate
perspective. Borrowing heavily from the semantic analyses of the Japanese Qurnic scholar Toshihiko Izutsu and
the modernist exegesis of the Pakistani Islamicist Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988), she postulates a distinction between the
historically and culturally contextualized prior text of the Qurn and a wider metatext that conveys a more tolerant
and universalistic worldview. Her conclusion is that while the Qurn indeed acknowledges functional gender
distinctions based on biology, it does not propose essential or culturally universal roles for males and females. In fact,
the assignment of gender distinctions based on early Arabian precedent would eliminate the transcendental nature of
the Qurn by reducing it to a culturally specific set of discourses. Wadud argues her point by demonstrating the
Qurn's stress on the primal equality of men and women, examining the issue of equity in the afterlife, and
semantically analyzing Qurn-based legal terminology relating to women and the family.

Another use of the concept of prior text, although with very different results, can be found in Al-rislah al-thniyah
min al-Islm (The Second Message of Islam) by the radical Sudanese modernist Mahmd Muhammad Th (d.
1985). Essential to Th's doctrine is a distinction between two categories of the prophet Muhammad's followers
the muslim (one who submits himself fully to God) and the mumin (one who acknowledges the truth of the Qurn
and the Prophet's message). During Muhammad's lifetime the Prophet himself was the only true muslim, since he
alone could submit himself to God completely. For this reason the community that the Prophet created in Medina was
composed only of muminnthose who followed the historically and culturally contextualized example of
Muhammad. This early stage of faith (mn) is exemplified by the Medinan surahs of the Qurn and constitutes the
first message of Islam. As a formal religious tradition, it is characterized by the sharah. Because it reflected its era
and culture, however, the resulting nation of believers was unsuited to modern social and intellectual conditions.

The coming age of islm, by contrast, will be characterized by humankind's readiness to comprehend fully the
universal message of the Qurn, which appears in the Meccan revelations. Not limited by an outdated prior text
like the Medinan surahs, which modern conditions have abrogated, the Islam of the Meccan period is open-ended
and subject to further elaboration. Consequently, the nation of Muslims born under the influence of this era will be
one of tolerance, gender equality, social democracy, and a science-oriented approach to knowledge. Not content to
be bound by the sunnah, Th, the teacher (ustdh) of this second message of Islam, affirms the continuity of
divine guidance by proclaiming himself a post-Muhammadan messenger (rasl): one to whom God granted
understanding from the Qurn and is authorized to speak (p. 42).

Surprisingly, given the radical and even heretical nature of Th's doctrine, it still reflects exegetical issues that have
occupied practitioners of tafsr since the very beginnings of the genre. Although the universality of the
prophetic sunnah is seldom debated, the question of its applicability to contemporary conditions has always been
important. The historical study of Qurn exegesis continually reveals how much the discipline of tafsr depends on
prior methodologies. Muhammad Abduh's and Sayyid Qut b's reliance ontafsr bi al-ray, for example, reprises the
approach utilized by the influential Middle-Period commentator al-Tabar (d. 923). Even Amina Wadud's undeniably
modern use of semantic and prior text analyses echoes more mystically minded commentators such as Ibn Arab
and al-Qushayr. Undoubtedly certain methodologies, such as translation and intratextual hermeneutics, have
become more prominent in recent times; this is only natural given the increasingly non-Middle-Eastern demographic
profile of the Muslim world and the resulting demand for a crosscultural discourse. Yet the very fact that many new
commentaries recall previous approaches highlights the authority of tradition in Islam and the continued selfreferentiality of Muslim exegesis. After all that has been accomplished, one threshold of Qurnically legitimate
exegesis remains to be crosseda systematically comparative approach to scriptural analysis.

Apart from the approaches to the Qurn referred to above, the late twentieth century has seen the flourishing of a
variety of new ideas in the area of Qurnic interpretation. One of the broad trends associated with such ideas is what

we may refer to as contextualist (as opposed to textualist). The textualist trend remains the most widely adopted
approach by the interpreters of the Qurn to this day. Textualists rely on a referential theory of meaning to determine
the meaning of the Qurn, drawing mainly on linguistic rather than social or historical analysis. Scholars who follow
this trend often believe that the language of the Qurn has concrete, unchanging references, and therefore the
meaning and relevance that a Qurnic text had upon its revelation still hold for the contemporary context.

The contextualist trend, broadly speaking, adopts the view that the textual study of the Qurn must be accompanied
by knowledge of the social, cultural and political conditions of the time of revelation. Contextualists engage not only in
linguistic analysis, but also adopt approaches from alternative fields such as hermeneutics and literary theory. In
general, the scholarship of contextualists is often associated with a form of Islamic reformism. For many
contextualists, meaning is dependent upon the socio-historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts of the text.
Contextualists further argue that subjective factors will always intervene in our understandings, that is, the interpreter
cannot approach the text without certain experiences, values, beliefs, and presuppositions influencing their
understanding (Esack, pp. 7377). This approach appears to be more relevant in relation to the interpretation of the
ethical-legal texts of the Qurn. In the following we will briefly look at four scholars who could be considered part of
such a trend (although they themselves might not use the label contextualist to refer to their work): Fazlur Rahman,
Mohammad Arkoun, Mohamad Shahrour, and Khaled Abou El Fadl.

Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988), a Pakistani-American scholar, spent most of his adult life studying and teaching in the U.K.,
Canada, Pakistan, and the U.S. Rahman firmly believed that one of the primary purposes of the Qurn was to create
a society based on justice. He saw the prophet Muhammad as a social reformist who sought to empower the poor,
the weak, and vulnerable. He viewed the Qurn as a source from which ethical principles could be derived rather
than a book of laws. For instance, Rahman argued that the practice of family law in Islamic history had not accorded
females the equal rights to which they appear to be entitled based on the Prophet's example and teachings of the
Qurn.

Rahman's primary contribution to the debate on the Qurn in the twentieth century was his position that in order to
understand the Qurn, Muslims must move away from reductionist and formulaic approaches to the Qurn, which
do not recognize its social, historical, and linguistic context. His emphasis on the context of revelation has had a far
reaching influence on contemporary Muslim debates on key issues such as human rights, women's rights, and social
justice. Rahman argued that without being aware of the social and political conditions of the society in which the
Qurn was revealed, one could not understand fully its message. Thus the emphasis on the context.

Mohammad Arkoun (b. 1928) is culturally Berber, French, and Arabic and is a pioneering scholar of contemporary
Islamic thought and Qurnic studies in particular. Arkoun is not generally respected by traditionalist Muslim scholars,
due to his rather secularist approach to analysis of the Qurn and the apparent influence of intellectuals such as

Derrida, Baudrillard, and Foucault on his work (Gnther, p. 137). A key element of Arkoun's thinking is his questioning
of Islamic orthodoxy, and his view that orthodoxy is equivalent to an ideology and is thus subject to a historical
process. Orthodoxy involves a learned culture, which is steeped in writing and which is expressed through the state.
This orthodoxy is opposed by a heterodoxy, which facilitates a popular (and populist) culture, which makes use of
(the freer, less stable) orality and is present within (or creates) a segmented society (Gnther, p. 141).

Mohamad Shahrour (b. 1938), a Syrian civil engineer and self-taught scholar of Islam, has written extensively on
Islam and the Qurn. He argues that contemporary Muslims need to reconsider and question the meaning and
relevance of Islam's foundation texts. Essential to Shahrour's thought is his differentiation between the divine and the
human understanding of the divine reality. He argues that, owing to developments in knowledge, contemporary
scholars are much better placed than those in the past to understand the divine will. As such, Shahrour seeks to
create a new framework and methodology for understanding the Qurn, and to this end has created his own
categories for approaching the Qurn (Christmann, pp. 267269). He questions the established patterns of reading
the Qurn. The method by which Shahrour proposes to do this is called defamiliarization, which involves the
explicit wish to undermine the well-established canon of interpretations and to suggest alternative ways of reading a
text. Shahrour wants his readers to understand the Qurn as if the Prophet has just died and informed us of this
book, thus approaching the Qurn as if reading it for the first time. (Christmann, pp. 263264). For him, the Qurn
must be approached in a manner relevant to contemporary concerns and needs of Muslims today.

Khaled Abou El Fadl (b. 1958) is a leading scholar of Islamic law and a traditionally trained Muslim jurist. His major
work, peaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women, seeks to address the role of the authoritative
reader of religious texts, challenging the way in which self-proclaimed scholars of the Qurn, particularly in modern
times, assume the role of God. He argues that in many cases, such scholars displace God's authority, which he
describes as an act of despotism. (Abou El Fadl, p. 265). Abou El Fadl highlights the importance of focusing on the
interaction between the author of the Qurn (God) and the reader, and the authoritative reader's responsibility, by
virtue of this special position as interpreter of the text, to act as a faithful agent for the principal (God), and refrain
from imposing their own subjective opinions unless they are clearly stated. The framing of a debate in this manner
which highlights the subjectivity of the reader's positionis clearly an attack on those who speak in God's name by
claiming the supposed authenticity and infallibility of literalist or textualist approaches. He also promotes the idea
that there are many possible interpretations of the Qurn, and opposes the views of conservative scholars who claim
a monopoly on the interpretation of the Qurn. Abou El Fadl suggests that Muslim scholars and interpreters of the
Qurn should use an approach that is rooted in the traditions of Islam and the Muslim experience. His
recommendation is that Muslim scholars should start with the Muslim experience and consider how such discourses
might be utilized in its service.

These new ideas have generated heated debates among Mulsims about the meaning and relevance of the Qurn
and how that can be ascertained. With influences from a wide range of areas from semiotics to hermeneutics on
modern scholarship of the Qurn, particularly among Muslims, we are more likely to see an added intensity in these
debates.

See also TAFSR.

Bibliography

Abou El Fadl, Khaled. peaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women. Oxford: Oneworld,
2001. The author looks at the role of the authoritative reader of the Qurn, challenging the way in which selfproclaimed scholars of the Qurn assume the role of God.

Ayoub, Mahmoud M.The Quran and its Interpreters, vol. 1.Albany: State University of New York Press,
1984. Synopsis of Middle Period exegeses of the Qurn through surah 3(l Imrn). The introduction covers the
history of tafsr. A second volume was published in 1992.

Chodkiewicz, Michel. An Ocean without hore: Ibn Arabi, the Book, and the Law. Translated by David
Streight. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. Superb discussion of the Sf approach to the
Qurn in Ibn al-Arab's Al-Futh t al-Makkyah.

Christmann, Andreas. The form is permanent, but the content moves: the Quranic text and its
interpretation(s) in Mohamad Shahrour's al-Kitb wal-Quran. In Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Quran,
edited by Suha Taji-Farouki, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 263286. A good introduction to
Shahrour's ideas about the Quran.

Cragg, Kenneth. The Pen and the Faith: Eight Modern Muslim Writers and the Qurn. London: Allen &
Unwin, 1985. Introduction to the importance of the Qurn in modern Islamic thought, for the nonspecialist.

Esack, Farid, Quran, Liberalism and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious olidarity Against
Oppression, Oxford: Oneworld, 1997. Esack provides an alternative view of the Qurn in relation to modern
concepts of liberalism and pluralism.

Gthe, Helmut. The Qurn and Its Exegesis: elected Texts with Classical and Modern Muslim
Interpretations. Translated and edited by Alford T. Welch. Berkeley, 1976. Thematic exposition of classical and
modern tafsr, more useful for its examples than for a history of the genre.

Greifenhagen, F. V.Traduttore Traditore: An Analysis of the History of English Translations of the

Qurn.Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations3.2 (December 1992): 274291. Excellent overview of polemical
and nonpolemical translations in English, with a very useful bibliography.

Gunthur, Ursula, Mohammad Arkoun: towards a radical rethinking of Islamic thought. In Modern Muslim
Intellectuals and the Qurn, edited by Suha Taji-Farouki. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 125 167.
A good introduction to Arkoun's ideas about the Qurn.

Hawting, G. R., and Abdul-Kader A. Shareef, eds.Approaches to the Qurn. London and New York:
Routledge, 1993. Useful overview of traditional and modern approaches to exegesis.

Izutsu, Toshihiko. God and Man in the Koran: emantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung. Tokyo: Keio
Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1964. One of the classics of Qurnic studies, and the best semantic
analysis of this text written in the modern period.

Jeffery, Arthur. The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurn. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007. Classic philological
study of Qurnic terminology as it relates to other religions and cultural systems originally published in 1938.
Especially useful for the advanced student of Arabic.

Jeffery, Arthur, ed.Materials for the istory of the Text of the Qurn: The Old Codices. New York: AMS
Press, 1975. The only in-depth study of variations in the Qurnic text in early Islamic history. Originally
published in 1937; requires knowledge of Arabic.

Mawdd, Sayyid Ab al-Al. Towards Understanding the Qurn. Translated by Zafar Ishaq Ansari.
Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1988. Excellent English translation of Tafhm al-Qurn, by the director of the
Islamic Research Institute in Pakistan.

McAuliffe, Jane Dammen. Qurnic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis. Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Interesting study of the portrayal of Christians and Christianity
in the Qurn.

Qut b, Sayyid. In the hade of the Qurn.Vol. 30. Translated by M. Adil Salahi and Ashur A. Shamis.
London: MWH, 1979. Competent translation of the last part of F ill al-Qurn.

Rahman, Fazlur. Major Themes of the Qurn. Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980. One of the
better modernist approaches to the Qurn, best read as an apologetic response to polemical scholarship.

Saeed, Abdullah. Interpreting the Quran: Towards a Contemporary Approach, Abingdon, UK and New York:
Routledge, 2006 It provides some ideas for interpreting the Qurn's ethical-legal texts within a contextualist
framework.

Tabt ab, Muhammad H usayn.The Qurn in Islam: Its Impact and Influence on the the Life of Muslims.
London: Zahra, 1987. Discussion of Tabt ab's tafsr methodology and a useful introduction to Imm Sh
exegesis. His Tafsr al-Mzn is presently being translated into English.

Th, Mahmd Muhammad. The econd Message of Islam. Translated and edited by Abd Allhi Ahmad
An-Nam. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1987. t hs exegesis is considered to be radical and
heretical by many.

Wadud, Amina. Quran and Woman. 2d ed.New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. The most effective
Muslim response to the feminist critique of Islam yet written.

Welch, Alford T, and J. D. Pearson. k urn. In Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 5, pp. 400432.
Leiden: Brill, 1960. Useful introduction to the history of the Qurn for the nonspecialist, although the philological
and Orientalist approach of its author is outdated.

Vincent J. Cornell Updated by Abdullah Saeed