Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

Islam after Empire 7 1What Mahmud and Shahrur have articulated in the contemporary Arabworld, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi articulated some decades before in Tu r k e y. Asdid Jamal al-Din and Muhammad Abduh before him, Nursi insisted on beingable to read the sacred text with some flexibility of interpretation, and—vitally—he insisted on understanding the relationship of the text to the reader.“Since the Qur’an,” he wrote, “proceeds from all-encompassing knowledge, allits [literal as well as allegorical] meanings may be intended. It cannot be restrictedto one or two meanings like man’s speech, the product of his limitedmind and individual will” (quoted in Voll 1999, 255–256). In opposition to approachesthat seek single and exclusively true interpretations of divine intent,this sort of approach emphasizes pluralism. For Shahrur as well,[c]hange and flux are . . . one of God’s laws of nature. Human societies areevolving societies. From this derives the necessity constantly to reinterpret thelegislative verses of the Qur’an in order to embody these principles as accuratelyas possible in reality.Since the interpretation of legislative verses and their application is a humana c t i v i t y, it is fallible and can only be relatively right. What is valid for one era maybe irrelevant to another in spite of the fact that the sanctity of the legislativeverses is eternal. For this reason, no human interpretation or practice ought tobe accepted without discussion as it carries relative historical characteristics andwill vary from one period to another, and differ from one society to another.(Shahrur 2000)As a general philosophy of applying revelation to human life, this approachis not terribly different from either those of Muhammad Abduh in the nineteenthcentury or those of the original schools of legal thought developed duringthe eighth and ninth centuries, all of which faced the necessity of adaptingexisting knowledge to new circumstances. What is new is the issue of personnel.In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Middle East and the wider Islamicworld are experiencing a reformation of thought and practice in whichpious engineers, physicians, literature scholars, government employees, andothers can bring to the public new insights, new questions, new issues, andnew interpretations of their religious heritage. That this results in conflictsboth physical and intellectual is not surprising. After all, the century after theProtestant Reformation in Europe was also a confused, troubled, and sometimesbloody time. But the widening of interpretive horizons and the growingparticipation of ordinary people in self-conscious discussions and negotiationsover the meaning and significance of Islam in the modern world can bringconvergences as well. Whether the future of Middle Eastern Islam belongs tothose who believe democracy is a corrupt philosophy that marginalizes God orto those who see it, rather, as part of God’s own plan for humanity, whether it