A response to an article published in THE HINDU ***************************************************************** The recent article published in one of the leading Indian daily The Hindu has criticized one of the fundamental aspects of Islam and Muslims that is the interpretation of its religious sources - the Quran and the ahadith. The article (Islam and its interpretations ) can be accessed at: thehindu/opinion/lead/islam-and-its-interpretations/article6455101.ece While this article has given many people ample opportunity to criticize Islam, it also points out the fundamental issue behind sectarianism, such a great difference in opinion among the Muslims, extremism and basically the reason which makes Islam appear to be difficult and confusing among commoners. We thank the author for bringing that out. However, we consider it a problem of wrong approach by Muslims rather than some fundamental issue with the Islamic sources themselves. The author writes in his article: To be fair, it is not entirely the fault of interpreters, and in this I include those who wilfully misinterpret it to promote their sectarian or extremist ideas. The potential for misinterpretation and misunderstanding lies in Islamic theology itself. The Koranic text is a minefield of ambiguity, allowing people to cherry-pick its equivocal and often contradictory verses to back their argument. Similarly, it is easy to manipulate Hadith (a compilation of Prophet Mohammad’s sayings and teachings), another major source of legitimacy for Islamic acts. This is because they are too numerous, were pronounced in vastly different situations, and compiled many years after his death with the result that their precise meaning was frequently lost in translation. Sometimes they were quoted outside the original context. They are routinely plucked out of context to support bizarre claims. This issue pointed by the author, in our opinion, is not due to the text of the Quran but rather due to the approach followed by many scholars in the interpretation of Quran. The dominant methodology followed by many of our scholars has been to pick a verse or a group of verses and then interpret them in the light of ahadith literature and the opinion of the past scholars. The language of Quran, the style of Quranic Arabic, the coherence of the Quranic text, the prime topic under discussion in the surah and the relationship of the surah with the adjacent surahs are most often not considered as a tool for the interpretation of the Quran. This has led to myriad of the different interpretations we find in the Quran. It is not very difficult to see that for any text - whether human written or divine, it is the coherence of the text which forms the supreme principle in determining the intentionality of the text. Tadabbur-i-Quran by Imam Amin Ahasan Islahi and Al-Bayan by Javed Ahamd Ghamidi are two exegesis of Quran which employ the above mentioned principles as well in addition to the other principles commonly used by our scholars in the interpretation of the Quran Similarly, for the hadith literature, many of it are collections of narratives which are devoid of the context in which the Prophet originally said it. Also we might find many mutually conflicting or different ahadith related to the same topic. Thus, the ahadith can serve as source of interpretation only when they are viewed collectively under the light of the Quran. Since, the sequence and the arrangement of the Quran was done by the Prophet sws himself under the command of Allah we must turn first towards it for getting the context and then towards the secondary sources. The author also writes: The way out is for an Islamic equivalent of the New Testament. Learned Islamic scholars need to put their heads together and present basic scriptures in a manner that the meaning and context of every “aayt” and every Hadith is made unambiguously clear, leaving no room for misinterpretation or misrepresentation. This annotated text should then be declared as the authorised version of Islamic beliefs. Otherwise, we will continue to struggle to understand what real Islam is while leaving the field open for fanatics to distort it at will. We differ from the author regarding this that Muslims need something equivalent to the new Testament. Islam is the religion from the Creator and the Sustainer of the world and similarly the Quran too is His final testament. When we follow the proper approach for the interpretation of its sources based on common sense and knowledge, we will find most of the ambiguities fading away. The very negligible difference of opinion which would remain is due to the fact that we are humans and these small differences which would finally remain are also a test from Allah. We would recommend the readers to go through the following material: Common Misconceptions about Islam: The Qur’an is an Incoherent Book by Dr. Shehzad Saleem monthly-renaissance/issue/content.aspx?id=16 Interpretation of the Quran almawridindia.org/article-categories/the-holy-qur-an Principles of Understanding the Ḥadīth almawridindia.org/article-categories/hadith/13-principles-of-understanding-the-h-adith Meezan by Javed Ahmad Ghamidi amazon/Islam-Comprehensive-Javed-Ahmad-Ghamidi-ebook/dp/B009BA67HA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1412240480&sr=8-2&keywords=javed+ghamidi Hard copy of Meezan can be bought from the official website of the Al-Mawrid Hind Foundation almawridindia.org/menu-for-book-listing/product/1-islam-a-comprehensive-introduction-by-javed-ahmad-ghamidi Some misconceptions regarding Jihad and war can be cleared by. amazon/Playing-God-Misreading-Divine-Practice-ebook/dp/B009CBFWOW/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1412240552&sr=1-6
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 09:22:41 +0000
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