Revelation: Principles And Tools 2/2

The Qur’an includes various kinds of teaching. Full of oft-repeated stories from the accomplished cycle of prophecy, the Text makes it possible for the heart and mind to deduce, almost naturally, universal principles and truths on the human and ethical levels: faith in the Only One, the shared origin and destiny of humanity, the demand for truth and justice, essential diversity and its consequent necessary respect, the constant presence of adversity and deceit, the duty to resist and to reform. There is no need for contextualization here, or when it comes to the verses that explicitly lay down Muslim rites and practice: prayer, fasting, and so on. The Text calls the mind to look further than accidents of space and time and to set these teachings beyond all contingency.

But there are verses that are quite different in nature, particularly most of those that deal with social matters (al-muamalat). In this area, the Text almost never allows itself, alone, to lay down a universal principle: it is the human mind that derives both absolute and relative principles, as appropriate, from the Text and from the reality of the context in which it was revealed. In setting out the specificity of these verses, we understand better the importance of remembering that the Revelation was elaborated in time and space, over twenty-three years, in a certain context, expressed in pronouncements affected by circumstance, open to evolution, accessible to reason in a historical setting.

Being fully conscious of the difference in nature among these teachings, the ulama have gradually established a categorization of verses, precise rules for deducing norms, and various methodologies to deal with different subjects of study (e.g., religious practices, social matters, morality). This is a work of rational analysis a posteriori necessitated by the different levels of expression in the Qur’an and with the aim of determining clearly the extent of the latitude permitted for interpretation. It is out of this work that the “Islamic sciences” were born, as classically defined from the tenth century, particularly in the area of law and jurisprudence. The multiple rules elaborated in the “science of the fundamentals of law” (ilm usul al-fiqh) have as their objective to lay down rules of interpretation and distinct methodological principles and to fix a clear framework for the exercise of critical interpretation (al-ijtihad). We must be clear that this work has not been done arbitrarily: a logical series of objective guidelines explain the proposed categorizations, norms, and methodologies worked out (including the Text itself; the Prophetic tradition; the grammar, semantics, and morphology of the Arabic language; and logic) and makes transparent the internal coherence of the Islamic universe of reference on the ethical and legal planes.

Certain verses (actually a minority) leave no scope for interpretation, or at least only a very narrow one. But the great majority demand real interpretative effort, and that on several levels: the meaning of the words, the general meaning of the instruction, the context in which it was revealed, the universal aspect of the principle (and consequently the temporal aspect of the manner of its application), its logical setting within the global meaning of the Qur’anic message and the Prophetic traditions (Sunna), and so on. It goes without saying that such work requires that the interpreter, the scholar (especially the specialist), be equipped with religious knowledge, but also that he have the ability to transfer these teachings into a new context, in a new era, and with a meticulous concern to stay faithful to the universal and general principles while studying how rules may be modified and adapted to the contingent, the contextual, or, even more broadly, the cultural situation.

In fact, it is human intelligence that deduces and determines the universal at the heart of the scriptural source. Guided and sometimes limited by the Text itself and by the objective parameters of its mode of expression (the believer remains aware that it is the final Revelation to which respect and faithfulness are due), reason has the task of establishing rules and methods of reading the Text to identify and distinguish the essential principles (al-usul) from secondary injunctions (al-furu), the explicit from the implicit, the general from the particular, and so on. The final purpose of this critical work on the Text itself (and on the Sunna in the same way) is to determine how much room is available for critical work based on the Text (al-ijtihad) to reply to new questions raised in the course of history and to new social realities. Reason functioning in time thus acquires the means to gain access to the eternity of the revealed Text.

It is appropriate to mention that it is essentially the ways of reading the Qur’an that distinguish the various trends of thought among Muslims, both Sunnis and Shiis. Beyond the dualistic and simplistic divisions set up between the “moderates” and the “fundamentalists” (and one never knows very well whether these reflect strictly religious or more generally political positions, or both indescribably confused), we find a diversity of readings of the Qur’an that can be attributed principally to the greater or lesser role the human intellect is allowed to play and, consequently, to the scope for interpretation that is permitted as an integral part of the Islamic field of reference. Here we have a key that allows us, on the basis of the internal logic of the Islamic system, and on a strictly religious plane, better to understand the differences, the justifications, and the possible points of convergence among the various lines of thought.