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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2621 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 20, 2026

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So, what are you reading?

I finished Nasr Abu Zayd's Rethinking the Qur'an: Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics. It's a short essay, but very valuable.

It is not only a question of contextualization, which is pivotal in discourse analysis, but more than that it is what the discourse tells about the context and how. Now, the question is which is historical and which is universal, a question that keeps all the modern liberal Muslim scholars of the Qur'an busy. Being confined to the Qur'an as 'text' alone, the conservatives win at the end of the day. When the liberals, for example, emphasize 'togetherness' as the universal eliminating the 'hostility' limiting its meaning to the negative past the conservatives will apply the principle of 'abrogation' to historicize 'togetherness' as abrogated and will universalize 'hostility', as the abrogat [sic]. In the present context of unsolved Palestinian-Israeli trauma, whose hermeneutics or meaning is valid? The winner is sure to be the meaning of ghetto, separation and isolation, the meaning of Mr. Sharon's wall.

Zayd's hope is to fight against that outcome in Middle East/Western relations, which 'hostility' he sees as being supported by the adapting of Islam to resistance.

I appreciate the idea, but I don’t think you can take the corpus of Islam and remove the hostility simply because it’s central to the foundation of the religion. Muhammad was a warlord. He conquered a territory which he then governed. There are lots of references in the Quran and Hadith to wars, rules of war, and historical battles. This is unavoidable, much like it’s unavoidable to say that Moses and Joshua had wars of conquest in the Torah. What changed for Judaism was that it had later revelations that encouraged peace and getting along with other tribes. Unless you have a second Quran, you’re stuck with the book and traditions you have written.

I've seen at least a few reasons for doubting that perspective. For example, Quran 5:48:

...To each of you [Jews, Christians, Muslims] We have ordained a code of law and a way of life. If Allah had willed, He would have made you one community, but His Will is to test you with what He has given each of you. So compete with one another in doing good. To Allah you will all return, then He will inform you of the truth regarding your differences.

Of course, there are passages contradicting or seeming to contradict this. Zayd's perspective is an attempt to find a new means of interpretation which can tilt towards the 'togetherness', and I'm not convinced that such efforts will bear no fruit.

But for me the question is less what Allah intended, as I'm not a Muslim, but what practical effect Islam has had on the world, and what it might still contribute. For example, Islam probably had a large hand in Guru Nanak's "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim" in Sikhism, as it is one possible interpretation of the unity of God and the importance of intention over outward appearance.

Speculatively, I recall an old passage in Abramelin, one of the grimoires of my youth:

For it is an indubitable and evident thing that he who is born Christian, Jew, Pagan, Turk, Infidel, or whatever religion it may be, can arrive at the perfection of this Work or Art and become a Master, but he who hath abandoned his natural Law, and embraced another religion opposed to his own, can never arrive at the summit of this Sacred Science.

I am beginning to wonder if this way of thinking is actually in part Islamic in origin. Though I will admit that these are at present vague and poorly supported thoughts.

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