Towards a humanistic approach to the Quran: new direction in contemporary Islamic thought

ABSTRACT

Historically, Muslim orthodoxy has regarded the Quran as God’s Word dictated to Muhammad through the mediation of the Angel Gabriel, and has thus maintained the corresponding argument that the Prophet played no role in shaping the content of the Quranic revelations. This paper discusses a project of what I shall refer to as ‘reforming theology’ within contemporary Islamic scholarship which stands in contrast to the dominant orthodox view of revelation and the nature of the Quran. In particular, the paper examines how several contemporary Muslim scholars, namely Fazlur Rahman (from Pakistan), Abdolkarim Soroush and Muhammad Mujtahed Shabestari (from Iran) and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (from Egypt), challenge the widely accepted idea about the Quran being the literal Word of God. The paper argues that the project of these scholars represents a radically new direction in Islamic theology because of its strong emphasis on the human side of the Quran. It also shows that the implications of these scholars’ re-examination of traditional theories of revelation are not only limited to theological matters, or specifically the communicative relationship between God and His Prophet, but also have a number of consequences for the practice of exegesis.

KEYWORDS:

• Islam
• revelation
• Quran
• humanistic approach

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Some traditional accounts considered the Angel Gabriel a physical being that was not only visible to the Prophet, but was also be seen by some companions of the Prophet on specific occasions. In some of these accounts, Gabriel is reported to have appeared in white clothes and with black hair. In the collection of Bukhari, it is reported that the angel of revelation was visible on one occasion to Umm Salama, one of the Prophet’s wives. For details of this view of revelation see Webb 2005, 278–9 and Madigan 2005, 442.

2. Muʿtazilism was a rationalist school of thought that came into being during the first half of the eighth century and flourished for a few centuries.

3. Ahmad Khan argues that there can be no interpolated angelic figure between God and the Prophet (Troll 1978, 185). See also Troll 1978, 282–4. Further, embracing a neo-Platonic position regarding God and His relationship with the world, Ahmad Khan argues that revelation has a continuous nature (Troll 1978, 293).

4. Al-Rausafi argues that the Quran is the speech of Muhammad, who possessed great intelligence and imaginative power. It was this extraordinary talent of the Prophet that enabled him to transform his waḥy into what became the Quranic text. (For details of his work see Khalidi 2009, 292–3.)

5. Fyzee (1963, 109–10) argues that in the Quran, God does not speak directly; rather, it is Muhammad who speaks with divine authorization.

6. Dashti argues that the Quran was not literally revealed to the Prophet, but spoken through Muhammad’s human faculties (Dashti 1994).

7. For instance, while Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naʿim, the Sudanese scholar of Islam, sought to reform the sharia in the light of human rights and modern democracy, he never challenged the established traditional account of revelation. For him, ‘the full text of the Quran (is)…the literal and final word of God’ (Naim 1990, 19). In this sense, he believes that revelation and the Quran do not have any human dimensions: ‘every word and letter of the Quran is direct revelation…To doubt the direct and totally divine nature of any part of the text of the Quran is to cease to be a Muslim’ (Naim 1990, 196).

8. Shabestari’s ideas about revelation were originally published in Madrasah Quarterly in Iran.