MUSLIM QURʾĀNIC

INTERPRETATION TODAY
MEDIA, GENEALOGIES
AND INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITIES

Johanna Pink
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© Johanna Pink 2019

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Names: Pink, Johanna, author.
Title: Muslim Qur’ānic interpretation today : media, genealogies and
interpretive communities / Johanna Pink.
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Qur’ānic studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
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 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ix

PROLOGUE: THE CONTESTED QURʾĀN 1

INTRODUCTION 5
Qurʾānic interpretation today: Tensions and power fields ................................... 5
This book’s approach ...................................................................................... 7

1
THE NEW CENTRALITY OF THE QURʾĀNIC MESSAGE 14
The place of the Qurʾān in premodern Muslim societies................................... 14
The shift to the centre ................................................................................... 17
Pedagogy and guidance (hidāya):
an Indonesian comic book on Q. 49:12 ................................................... 21
Ambiguity, disambiguation and guidance ....................................................... 24
Translation and daʿwa: a protestantisation of the Qurʾān? ................................ 26
Televangelism and daʿwa: ʿAmr Khālid (b. 1967, Egypt) on Q. 23:1–11 .... 29

2
RECONSTITUTING THE EXEGETICAL TRADITION 35
A genealogical tradition ................................................................................ 35
The ʿulamāʾ as bearers of the tradition ........................................................... 38
An ʿālim continuing the tradition of tafsīr:
Muhammad Quraish Shihab (b. 1944, Indonesia) on Q. 95:1–3 ................. 40
A Salafi paradigm ........................................................................................ 48
Reshaping the tradition: Shaykh al-Mubarakpuri’s Tafsir Ibn Kathir
(Abridged) (India/Saudi Arabia) on Q. 38:21–25 ..................................... 52
Present-day Salafi exegesis ........................................................................... 61
Takfīr: Seyfuddin El-Muvahhid’s
Davetçinin Tefsiri (Turkey/?) on Q. 4:116 ............................................... 66
Exegetical traditions as a resource ................................................................. 71
Condensing the tradition: ʿĀʾiḍ b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qarnī
(b. 1959, Saudi Arabia) on Q. 9:112 ........................................................ 72

3
MEDIA 81
Media transformations: from manuscripts to print and beyond ......................... 81
Layers of media: Abdolali Bazargan (b. 1943; Iran/US) on Q. 103:3 .......... 85
Visual dimensions ........................................................................................ 94
Tafsīr in pictures: H. Abdul Mustaqim (b. 1972, Indonesia) on Q. 104 ....... 95
Preaching and media: audio-visual representations and the internet ................ 100
From television to YouTube: Audio-visual interpretations of the Fātiḥa ... 103
YouTube exegetes on Q. 1:6–7 .....................................................................111
Ḥasan b. Farḥān al-Mālikī (b. 1970, Saudi Arabia) on Q. 1:6–7 ................113

4
MODERNISM AND ITS PARADIGMS 125
Modernism and other labels ........................................................................ 125
Maqāṣid, or the Qurʾān’s higher aims .......................................................... 128
Historical contextualisation and its sources .................................................. 131
Tafsīr in the order of revelation ................................................................... 134
Reading the Qurʾān in its chronological arrangement:
Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī (1935–2010, Morocco) on Q. 109 ................ 136
Abrogation (naskh) and its opponents .......................................................... 141
Chronology, context, semantics:
Talip Özdeş (b. 1954, Turkey) on Q. 16:101 .......................................... 143
Semantics and the ‘literal meaning’ ............................................................. 150
Literary exegesis ........................................................................................ 151
Thematic tafsīr (tafsīr mawḍūʿī) .................................................................. 153
Tafsīr al‑Qurʾān bi’l‑Qurʾān ....................................................................... 154
The contested Sunna: from ḥadīth-based exegesis to Qurʾānism ..................... 155
A Qurʾānist approach: Aḥmad Ṣubḥī Manṣūr
(b. 1949, Egypt/USA) on Q. 2:221 ........................................................ 158

5
IN DEFENCE OF A PERFECT SCRIPTURE: THE QURʾĀN AS A
HOLISTIC SYSTEM 172
Defending polygamy: Karīmān Ḥamza (b. 1942, Egypt) on Q. 4:3 .......... 172
Islamist Qurʾānic interpretation ................................................................... 181
The ‘system’ (naẓm) and structure of the Qurʾān ........................................... 185
The sacralisation of the Qurʾān’s canonical arrangement:
ʿAmr Khālid on the structure of the Qurʾān and the unity of sūras .......... 187
ʿAmr Khālid on Sūra al-Nisāʾ (Q. 4)..................................................... 189
Science and the iʿjāz paradigm .................................................................... 191
The scientific iʿjāz: Miracles of Quran on Q. 27:18 ................................ 197

6
THE GLOBAL QURʾĀN IN A DIVERSE WORLD 202
Negotiating the boundaries of Islamicness through the Qurʾān:
Ali Adil Atalay ‘Vaktidolu’ (b. 1936, Turkey) on Q. 2:21 ........................ 202
Centre, periphery and hierarchies of language .............................................. 207
Nation states .............................................................................................. 210
State building: the Indonesian Ministry of Religion on Q. 12:54–5.......... 214
Sunni and Shiʿi Islam ................................................................................. 218
Sufism ...................................................................................................... 223
A female Sufi shaykh: Cemâlnur Sargut (b. 1952, Turkey) on Q. 112 ....... 225
New Islamic communities........................................................................... 229
The Ahmadiyya and the death of Jesus: Disputes over Q. 3:55 ................ 231

7
CLASHES AND FAULT LINES 244
Gender, queerness and the Qurʾān ............................................................... 244
Debates on same-sex marriage: Mun’im Sirry
(b. 1973, Indonesia) on the story of Lot ................................................. 247
Causes for conflict ..................................................................................... 257
Doubt versus certainty: Aḥmad Khayrī al-ʿUmarī (b. 1970, Iraq)
on Q. 21:51–56 and his critics .............................................................. 259
Postmodern uncertainties and subjective approaches ..................................... 265
Subjectivity and Qurʾānic interpretation in a Muslim
intellectual’s blog: Hakan Turan (b. 1979, Germany) on Q. 5:51 ............. 269

EPILOGUE: THE QURʾĀN, TEXTUAL INTERPRETATION AND

AUTHORITY, OR: MAY HUSBANDS BEAT THEIR WIVES? 284

Bibliography 296
Index 316
Index of Qurʾānic Citations 323
 PROLOGUE: THE CONTESTED QURʾĀN

In 2005, Muḥammad Sayf al-Dīn Ṭāhā, an Egyptian accountant working

in a Gulf state, submitted a six-volume Qurʾānic commentary, or tafsīr, to
the Islamic Research Council of al-Azhar, the highest Sunni institution of
Egypt, in order to obtain approval for publication. He had taken approxi-
mately twenty years to write it. The result consisted of 28,000 lines of verse
because it was a tafsīr in poetry – a format for which, Sayf al-Dīn believed,
the time was ripe. The following is one of the only two short samples that
became known to the public because an Egyptian magazine reported on the
case of this tafsīr in 2009.1 It is the commentary on Q. 9:93:
‫علَ ٰى‬ َ ‫علَى الَّذِينَ يَ ْست َأ ْ ِذنُونَكَ َو ُه ْم أ َ ْغنِيَا ُء َرضُوا ِبأَن يَ ُكونُوا َم َع ْالخ ََوالِفِ َو‬
َّ ‫طبَ َع‬
َ ُ‫للا‬ َّ ‫ِإنَّ َما ال‬
َ ‫س ِبي ُل‬
﴾۹۳﴿ َ‫قُلُوبِ ِه ْم فَ ُه ْم َل يَ ْعلَ ُمون‬

(93) The ones open to blame are those who asked you for exemption
despite their wealth, and who preferred to be with those who stay behind.
God has sealed their hearts; they do not understand.

On this verse, Sayf al-Dīn Ṭāhā wrote:

‫علــى من كانــوا قوما ً موســرينا‬ ‫ولكــن الحســاب وكل وقــت‬

‫فياويــل لهــم مــن خائرينــا‬ ‫أتــوا يســتأذنونك فــى قعــود‬
‫لهــم خســئوا وصــاروا مدمرينا‬ ‫أرادوا مــع النســاء يطــول مكث‬
‫فمــا كانــوا لخيــر قابلينــا‬ ‫علــى قلــب لهــم إنــا طبعنــا‬
‫مــن التنزيــل يومــا ً مبصرينــا‬ ‫ومــا كانــوا ألضــواء ونــور‬

God’s judgment comes down on those with might

who, despite all their riches, refuse to fight.
Coming to you, for exemption they plead.
Woe unto them, they are weaklings indeed!
A long life they wanted and with the women to stay,
but their lives were destroyed; they were chased away.
Their hearts we have tightly sealed,
the good tidings remain from them concealed.
And revelation with its light
is forever hidden from their sight.2
2 Muslim Qurʾānic Interpretation Today

It took the Islamic Research Council four years to come to a decision

which, after some initial dissent, was negative and upheld by a court. After
that, the author seems to have made no further attempt to publish this work
or any other. The reasons the Council members gave for rejecting the book
varied, but none of the ʿulamāʾ, or religious scholars, involved ever claimed
that the content of the tafsīr was theologically problematic, let alone hereti-
cal. Rather, they criticised the bad style of poetry which uses a traditional
Arabic metre.3 The concluding report used that fact to accuse the author of
transforming the Qurʾān’s meaning into a superficial and formalistic pattern
of metre and rhyme without any artistic value. As such, it deforms and
defaces the Qurʾān which amounts to an insult of God. Besides, the reports
said, the book does not constitute a work of tafsīr and should therefore not
be called that because it does not contribute anything to the understanding
of the Qurʾān’s meaning.4 This assessment is slightly surprising in view of
the fact that even a translation adds to understanding the Qurʾān’s meaning
and is therefore called tafsīr in many non-Arabic contexts, for example in
Southeast Asia.
In 2016, the well-established Egyptian journalist Muḥammad al-Bāz
took up the case as the twenty-first episode of his Ramadan series The
Qurʾān in Egypt. The series was published in the print and online newspa-
per al‑Bawāba, for which he served as editor-in-chief, and shortly thereaf-
ter all thirty episodes were printed as a book under the same title.5 All in
all, the series strove to write a comprehensive story of the modern and con-
temporary interpretation of the Qurʾān in Egypt. Some of its components
are surprising and unusual, such as the chapters on the interpretation of the
Qurʾān through music and film. What is striking about this book, though,
is not only the unconventional, but extremely plausible attempt to situate
the Qurʾān in the specific context of a modern nation state, but also the
eminently political character of the narrative. Al-Bāz is clearly not in love
with the Muslim Brotherhood, but writing at a time at which the Muslim
Brotherhood was completely banned in Egypt, he is much more concerned
with al-Azhar. Already in the title of the third episode, he asks: ‘Why are
the Azhar shaykhs afraid of a contemporary interpretation of the Qurʾān?’
Indeed, Sayf al-Dīn Ṭāhā’s case raises many questions that point to
the importance of notions of authority and legitimacy in writing about
the Qurʾān. Would the work have been deemed acceptable if it had been
written in masterful poetry? Would it have been approved if the author had
belonged to the ʿulamāʾ or would they have excluded him from their ranks?
Would he have fared better if he had not called his work tafsīr? What, then,
are the boundaries of tafsīr? What conditions do a work and its author have
to fulfil in order to be allowed to carry that title? And, finally, how would
 Prologue 3

any of this have been different if it had happened in another country with
different structures of religious authority?
In the case of the failed poet-exegete, al-Bāz surmises that there are
several underlying reasons for the opposition of the shaykhs, other than a
disapproval of bad poetry: a general fear of innovation; an attempt to prevent
anyone from outside the field of the ʿulamāʾ to encroach upon their terri-
tory, especially in unconventional ways that might raise attention; and also
the fear that the Qurʾān and poetry could in any way be associated with each
other while the Qurʾān clearly states that it is not the word of a poet (Q. 36:69,
69:41). That fear is indeed a powerful motive. It had similar consequences for
an Indonesian Qurʾān translator whose verse-by-verse typesetting choices
were deemed too close to poetry by the religious establishment.6 On the other
hand, rhymed Qurʾān translations are published and sold in Turkey.7 This
has much to do with the fact that their authors come from religious groups
that are outside the field of Sunni orthodoxy anyway. They also skilfully
deploy the powerful Turkish-nationalist discourse as a legitimising factor.
The case of Sayf al-Dīn, the thwarted poet, and al-Bāz’s portrayal of the
Qurʾān in Egypt clearly show the importance of local power structures to the
interpretation of the Qurʾān and to the dissemination of such interpretations.
Sometimes, even transnational power structures are invoked when the legit-
imacy of an interpretive approach is contested. Thus, in 2012, two Saudi-
Salafi websites erroneously reported that the rhymed tafsīr was finally going
to be printed – with money from Saudi Arabia’s Shiʿi arch-enemy, Iran.8
The ʿulamāʾ are still a powerful status group. But they can only exert that
power if the state or the society they live in grant them the right to do so; if
their pronouncements carry some weight and are considered authoritative
expressions of Islam either by the government or by substantial segments
of the population. Even when that is the case, though – and it most certainly
is in Egypt – it is becoming harder for any type of religious establishment
to control the plurality of approaches to the Qurʾān. The field is globalising,
and if one country does not offer the liberty to write certain things about
the Qurʾān, others will do so. It is increasingly difficult for governments
to bar access to such ideas, not least because of the internet. Thus, plural-
isation is happening, often because of external pressures. Certain topics,
such as global human rights discourses, might be dominant enough to exert
pressure to seek justification for Qurʾānic statements that do not seem to
conform to them; and specific groups exert pressure in order to achieve such
conformity. It is this complex web of power structures and tensions, local as
well as global, that this book seeks to elucidate.
4 Muslim Qurʾānic Interpretation Today

NOTES
1. Al-Sibāʿī, ‘Qaṣāʾid shiʿr’.
2. Al-Sibāʿī, ‘Qaṣāʾid shiʿr’; Bāz, Al‑Qurʾān fī Miṣr, 190.
3. The excerpt follows the model of a classical Arabic qaṣīda where each verse con-
sists of two halves, the second of which carries the rhyme. The metre used is wāfir.
4. Al-Bāz, Al‑Qurʾān fī Miṣr, 191–193.
5. Al-Bāz, Al‑Qurʾān fī Miṣr.
6. Rahman, ‘The Controversy around H. B. Jassin’.
7. See page 202, ‘Negotiating the boundaries of Islamicness through the Qurʾān: Ali
Adil Atalay ‘Vaktidolu’ (b. 1936, Turkey) on Q. 2:21’.
8. Al-Barbarī, ‘Īrān takhtariq al-Azhar al-sharīf’; al-ʿAnqāʿ, ‘Īrān takhtariq al-Azhar
al-sharīf’.
 INTRODUCTION

QURʾĀNIC INTERPRETATION TODAY:

TENSIONS AND POWER FIELDS1

As the case of Egypt’s thwarted poet-exegete has shown, Qurʾānic inter-

pretation today is embedded in power structures, and it is also beset by ten-
sions: tensions between localising and globalising forces; tensions between
hierarchical and egalitarian social ideals; and tensions between the quest for
new approaches and the claim for authority raised by defenders of exegeti-
cal traditions.
In Islamic bookstores in Cairo, when asking for recent commentaries
on the Qurʾān, the almost uniform answer is ‘Why should they be recent?’
coupled with a recommendation of the fourteenth-century exegete Ibn
Kathīr. Islamic book sellers in Amman, on the other hand, praise the ‘sim-
plified commentary on the Qurʾān’ (tafsīr muyassar) by the Saudi preacher
ʿĀʾiḍ b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qarnī as the most authoritative contemporary work –
a work that, in the author’s words, aims at avoiding ‘speculation’ and aca-
demic discussion.
At the same time, such ‘speculation’ and academic discussions take place
all over the world. The Iraqi dentist Aḥmad Khayrī al-ʿUmarī recently pro-
posed a ‘Qurʾānic compass’ as a medium for developing new perspectives
on the world and overthrowing outdated traditions while the American
Muslim theologian Aysha A. Hidayatullah, in a thoughtful book, discusses
feminist approaches to the Qurʾān, their limits and how those might be
transcended.
Such works, of course, have little mass appeal. When searching for more
popular presentations of the Qurʾān, a visit to an Indonesian bookstore
exposes tables of colourful Qurʾān editions complete with translation – a
genre of exegesis that is rarely recognised as such by its readers. Beside
them are a plethora of books that promote the Qurʾān as a guide to success,
both in the afterlife and in a very material sense, promising a career, wealth
and happy marriages based on the Qurʾān’s guidance.
Books, though, are generally not the locus of mass appeal. Popular
preachers draw huge crowds, and their audiences are multiplied by appear-
ances on television and YouTube. The internet has become hugely influen-
tial. Written as well as audio-visual sources available on the internet are so
easily accessible that it might have become the most important exegetical
6 Muslim Qurʾānic Interpretation Today

resource to many. For example, when a group of young female Muslims in

the German city of Freiburg meet for their regular Qurʾān study circle, they
cite the above-mentioned Ibn Kathīr as an authority alongside the modern-
ist Muhammad Asad, both of whom wrote Qurʾānic commentaries that have
been translated into various languages and are available online. They look
up the occurrence of Qurʾānic terms in an internet database with unprece-
dented ease; and they rely heavily on YouTube videos, ranging from Turkish
preachers to the English-speaking Nouman Ali Khan, some of whose talks
on the interpretation of the Qurʾān receive several hundred thousand views.
Based on all these resources, they discuss their own views on the Qurʾānic
text in immediate personal interaction.
The internet does not only provide access to Qurʾān-related information
and sermons, it also provides Muslims with a space to discuss questions
of interpretation without the need for direct physical contact and without
a necessity to reveal their identity. For example, an Ahl al-Ḥadīth message
board features a message by an anonymous Muslim who was intrigued by
two nearly identical statements in the Qurʾān that only differ by one incon-
sequential-seeming word, and he decided to ask other board members for
their opinion on the issue. This opened a lengthy discussion between many
users, none of whom appear to be scholars, about whether this word has a
specific purpose, whether or not it makes any difference to the meaning,
what the purpose might be and what proofs there are of this.2
All these are contemporary expressions of Muslim Qurʾānic interpreta-
tion. Describing them as ‘modern’, though, as is often done, might be mis-
leading; at the very least, the term ‘modern’ is not a meaningful descriptor.
After all, some contemporary Muslims promote approaches to the Qurʾān
that they frame as distinctly traditional, even anti-modern; and yet, they
often use modern technologies in order to gain followers worldwide. Due to
such uses of new media and also due to large-scale migration movements,
discourses on the Qurʾān have an increasingly global dimension, yet at the
same time, the local embeddedness of many Qurʾānic interpretations is hard
to overlook.
How should we make sense, then, of such an ambiguous, broad and con-
flicting phenomenon? Rather than trying to sidestep, marginalise or smooth
over the tensions mentioned above, this book aims to focus on them and
identify their causes. At first glance, the main source of conflict lies in
divergent views of how the Qurʾān should be interpreted, which techniques
and methods are legitimate and how they should be applied. Such views,
however, do not emerge in a vacuum. They are embedded in value systems
that prioritise certain larger themes over others and frame the Qurʾānic text
in a specific way. For example, a committed defender of egalitarianism
will find little of value in the Qurʾānic commentaries written by premodern
 Introduction 7

scholars whose thought was shaped by a hierarchical society. Conversely,

a believer in the precedence of early opinions over more recent ones will
not be interested in ‘new’, ‘fresh’ or ‘modern’ approaches to the Qurʾān, but
rather emphasise the authority of Islam’s premodern intellectual heritage.
The notion of authority is central to this book. Conflicts over the inter-
pretation of the Qurʾān always touch upon the question who has the author-
ity to talk about the Qurʾān and in what way. Qurʾānic interpretation takes
place in power fields. It is not merely about the things that are being said or
written; it is just as much, sometimes more so, about the person who says
them, the reasons for which they are said, the place in which they are said or
published and the opposing parties against whom they are directed. Further-
more, it is about the – imagined or real – recipients of that message. Who
are they? Why and how are they supposed to gain access to that message?
How is it mediated, and how do media shape the form and contents of the
message? Who has control of that media? That last question again leads us
to the issue of power.
Not in every case might the existence of power fields and power strug-
gles be as obvious as in the case of the Egyptian poet whose efforts were
suppressed by a powerful religious institution. Power relations might not
seem particularly important to a Muslim academic who holds a faculty posi-
tion and may freely publish his works. Even then, however, that work is
produced in specific structural conditions that determine the limits of what
may be written, its style, its potential for publication and career advance-
ment and its reception. The nation state and its institutions are always part
of these structural conditions today, as are national and global media and the
audiences they create. If an author attacks the Qurʾān as a violent and patri-
archal scripture, the reactions in Muslim-majority societies are just as fore-
seeable as those in European and North American societies. In both cases,
they are made possible, or at the very least multiplied, by mass media. At
the beginning of the twenty-first century it is safe to assume that the authors
of exegetical works anticipate such effects and take them into account.

THIS BOOK’S APPROACH

This book wants to illuminate the context in which contemporary Qurʾānic

interpretation takes place and explain how that context shapes the style
and contents of exegesis. It will highlight important themes, arguments
and methods in present-day approaches to the Qurʾān. It will examine the
exegetical involvement of an increasingly diverse array of Muslims and
Muslim communities and the conflicts that it causes. Finally, it will take
8 Muslim Qurʾānic Interpretation Today

none of these phenomena as a given, but seek to show where they come
from, adding historical depths to the analysis.
In addition to giving an overview of the most important trends, histori-
cal antecedents and conditions that shape contemporary Muslim approaches
to the Qurʾān, this book substantiates its arguments with an array of case
studies of concrete exegetical sources that have been chosen because they
illustrate and represent particular phenomena, discourses, communities,
exegetical methods, aims or media. They also introduce authentic Muslim
exegetical voices into what is otherwise an analytical description.
The sources this book engages with are very recent, dating from the mid-
2000s to 2016. The focus, thus, is on the present.3 At the same time, the per-
spective I take on present-day sources is a distinctly historical one. I have
been inspired by an approach that Michel Foucault called a ‘history of the
present’ and summarised as follows: ‘I set out from a problem expressed
in the terms current today and I try to work out its genealogy’.4 In order
to make sense of the field of contemporary Qurʾānic interpretation which
makes use of historical precedents in many complex ways, the notion of
genealogy seems to me to be analytically more useful than, for example, a
simplistic paradigm of continuity and change. A genealogical approach is
based on a certain scepticism towards writings of history that favour rup-
tures, innovations and transformations – in short, ‘change’ – over continu-
ity and that portray change as the irreconcilable antagonist of continuity. In
fact, in the history of Qurʾānic exegesis, continuities might be more impor-
tant than in many other fields. The genre of the Qurʾānic commentary has
not been called a ‘genealogical tradition’5 for nothing since it favours inter-
pretations that are traceable to previous authorities over opinions presented
as new. The continuing importance of the premodern commentary tradi-
tion in present times is a perfect example of the paradoxical nature of the
continuity-and-change paradigm: the mere fact that a premodern work of
scholarship has been printed and thus converted into a mass commodity
signifies not only a remarkable continuity, but also a fundamental change
in its function.
In any case, contemporary Muslim Qurʾānic interpretation cannot be
reduced to the genre of the Qurʾānic commentary, and the genealogical
nature of that genre is not the only, and not even the main, reason for pur-
suing a genealogical approach. The main advantage of that approach is the
fact that it does not focus on ‘origins’ as much as it tries to take stock of
present phenomena and developments and to identify the power struggles,
fault lines and concrete decisions they result from. It does not reduce the
present to an organic and inevitable outcome of historical processes or to
a set of continuities and discontinuities derived from a comparison with an
imagined ‘original state’. Rather, it…
 Introduction 9

traces how contemporary practices and institutions emerged out of spe-

cific struggles, conflicts, alliances, and exercises of power…The idea…
is to trace the erratic and discontinuous process whereby the past became
the present: an often aleatory path of descent and emergence that sug-
gests the contingency of the present and the openness of the future…
Genealogy’s aim is to trace the struggles, displacements and processes of
repurposing out of which contemporary practices emerged…6

My analysis of contemporary Muslim interpretations of the Qurʾān, thus, is

an attempt, first, to describe the main forms, concerns and structural con-
ditions in which they appear and, second, to understand the genealogy of
these trends and conditions, outlining their emergence, their development
and their relevance to specific actors.
In other words, I look at contemporary Muslim engagement with the
Qurʾān as part of an ongoing discursive tradition.7 That discursive tradition,
much in line with the genealogical approach to history described above,
is neither uniform nor unchanging; it undergoes transformations, shifts
and possibly even ruptures, but it also retains a core set of symbols and
resources. The question that interests me is what meaning and what function
such symbols and resources assume for contemporary Muslims who read
and interpret their sacred scripture. In that sense, a contemporary transla-
tion of the fourteenth-century Qurʾānic commentary by Ibn Kathīr is just as
worthy of consideration as a bold and innovative work of feminist exegesis
– indeed, I try to avoid this type of dichotomy as much as possible because
it is my contention that it obscures more than it does explain anything.
In my analysis and choice of source texts I have tried to select, from
among the huge and diverse contemporary Muslim discourse on the Qurʾān,
such themes and questions that, to me, seemed to be recurrent and perva-
sive. For example, why is it that Ibn Kathīr is so important as a premodern
source – important enough to have been translated into multiple languages?
On the topic of language: what impact do Qurʾān translations have on the
ways in which Muslims today understand the Qurʾān? Why is the Qurʾān’s
view on gender relations such a ubiquitous subject of debate? How do new
media shape the way in which the Qurʾān is negotiated? Why and how do
so many exegetes use scientific language and paradigms in their Qurʾānic
interpretations? What parts of the exegetical tradition have become contro-
versial, marginalised or ignored?
In answering such questions, I have aimed to take stock of the full variety
of contributions to contemporary exegetical debates, starting with those
erudite exegetical works that are the most common subject of research, but
also including the vastly influential Qurʾānic interpretations produced by
preachers, teachers, devout lay Muslims and journalists in various types of
media, including videos and comic books. These might not always be of the
10 Muslim Qurʾānic Interpretation Today

highest intellectual and academic rank, and some of their authors might be
little-known or even anonymous, but they are vital means through which
many Muslims today negotiate the meaning and importance of their sacred
scripture, and thus worthy of scholarly attention.
The field I am looking at is vast, and setting some limitations is unavoid-
able. One explicit and important condition that I am setting is that I will
only look at texts – in the broader sense of the word, including oral utter-
ances and comic strips – that aim at interpreting specific segments of the
Qurʾān. These texts need not be complete commentaries on the Qurʾān, but
they need to say something about at least one concrete verse or exegetical
problem. Thus, I will not discuss general hermeneutical theories although
I will, of course, mention them where they are relevant to understanding a
particular interpretive approach.8
The structure of this book is unique in that each chapter contains a number
of case studies that are based on a wide array of recent exegetical sources
and which substantiate the main topics and arguments under consideration.
Some of the sources are originally in English; most of them I have trans-
lated from other languages, specifically, Indonesian, Arabic, Turkish and
German. A small amount of material has been translated from Persian and
French.9 Each source text is preceded by a brief introduction into the exe-
getical work it is taken from and the exegete’s background, as well as the
Qurʾānic verse it comments on in Arabic and English.10
While engaging with these source texts, I repeatedly entered into conver-
sations with their authors. This raised the question, for me, to what extent I
want to take sides in the exegetical debates I am writing about, and whether
it is even feasible not to take sides. After all, Foucault’s proposal to write
the history of present-day institutions was not a mere exercise in historical
analysis. Rather, it had a distinctly critical impetus. He was convinced that
the analysis of genealogies has the potential to shake up unquestioned ideas
of normalcy, naturalness and normativity and to demonstrate the extent to
which present-day institutions are a product of power relations. This criti-
cal intention raises problems for me as a non-Muslim scholarly observer.
Having been trained as a German Islamicist, I tend to consider it neither my
role nor my purpose to be an active participant in Muslim religious debates.
However, in today’s globalised world, I am not writing in a hermetic field
in which would-be objective non-Muslim academic observers interact with
each other exclusively, nor would it be desirable to reconstruct such her-
metic fields. Through my interactions with contemporary Muslim exegetes,
I came to realise that I cannot write on a contemporary discourse without
becoming part of it. The least I could do, under the circumstances, was to
make a conscious effort not to limit myself to such approaches that I per-
sonally empathise or agree with. Rather, I strove to select a diverse array of
 Introduction 11

sources that convey an impression of the manifold contemporary perspec-

tives on the Qurʾān and the conditions that shape them.
It was also important to me to think carefully about the terminology I use
to describe various exegetical approaches. Terms such as ‘conservative’,
‘progressive’, ‘liberal’, ‘modern’, ‘traditional’ and ‘Salafi’ abound. Some
of them are used as self-descriptors, some as labels that might have posi-
tive or negative connotations and some for analytical purposes. Many of
them are problematic because of the inherent value they ascribe to particu-
lar positions. Furthermore, the fact that a number of exegetical approaches
are closely connected not only to an intellectual framework, but also to
specific social groups is often neglected when attaching labels to them.
Finally, the analytical value especially of dichotomous categories such as
‘conservative’ versus ‘modern’ is questionable. For example, an exegete
might take up gender concepts from early-twentieth century reformers such
as Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) whose thought is typically considered
‘modern’ but was also embedded in an extremely patriarchal society. This
might result in an exegetical work that strongly promotes providing girls
with an education, but is at the same time adamant that a woman’s place is
in the home, offering evidence from modern brain research to substantiate
the argument. Is this, then, a ‘modern’ or a ‘conservative’ position? None
of these descriptors would be quite fitting and none of them would be par-
ticularly meaningful.
I have decided to largely operate with the following categories. They are
characterised not only by a shared general idea of how the Qurʾān should be
read, although with a fair amount of variety and overlap, but also by specific
genealogies which will be explained at detail throughout the chapters of this
book and substantiated by exegetical source texts.
The ʿulamāʾ or religious scholars are an important status group and, by
and large, embody the continuation of the scholarly tradition of tafsīr. It
is entirely possible for an ʿālim to develop innovative ideas but propos-
ing these ideas in an established form and genre will greatly enhance their
chances of being recognised as an important contribution to scholarship.11
Modernists propose Qurʾānic interpretations that explicitly aim to make
the Qurʾān compatible with the conditions of modern societies and to sepa-
rate today’s understanding of the Qurʾān from that of the premodern exeget-
ical tradition. This is usually achieved by methods that place great emphasis
on historical contextualisation and on the Qurʾān’s aims, rather than the
literal meaning of specific utterances and norms.12
Islamists consider Islam a holistic way of life (manhaj) or system
(niẓām), and the Qurʾān the perfect representation of that holistic way of
life. Therefore, they emphasise the Qurʾān’s relevance for individual believ-
12 Muslim Qurʾānic Interpretation Today

ers not only with respect to faith, but also on an emotional and practical
level.13
Salafis are scripturalists who consider the Qurʾān and the Sunna the only
authoritative sources of religion. They advocate a literal reading, resulting
in a way of life that follows the beliefs and practices of an imagined original
Islamic community in the age of the Prophet and his companions. Salafis,
in principle, deny the authority of later scholars although there are, in fact,
some scholars whom they tend to grant a high degree of authority for having
applied a Salafi methodology.14
Postmodern approaches are a rather recent phenomenon and quite rare.
Their proponents often share the concerns of modernists, but are highly
critical to any claim to having identified the true meaning of the Qurʾān.
Rather, they emphasise the subjectivity of any reading of the Qurʾān. They
explicitly consider it legitimate to take external factors into account when
interpreting the scripture, such as the exegete’s conscience or overarching
social values.15
This book strives to cover this wide variety of approaches, as well as the
agents behind them and their genealogy. It treats Qurʾānic exegesis as an
intellectual phenomenon that happens in a specific social context in which
individual interpretations are pushed to prominence or marginalised. In
order to understand this, one has to recognise their embeddedness into a
network of local and global power relations and the role of modern media.
In sum, this book should be read as a spotlight on a specific period of time, a
time of considerable transformations, some of them strikingly obvious and
some of them rarely noted.

NOTES
1. I thank Gerard van de Bruinhorst for bringing to my attention the notion that Qurʾānic
exegesis is embedded in power fields and for substantiating it so convincingly.
For a related case study, see van de Bruinhorst, ‘“I Didn’t Want to Write This”’.
2. Ḥijābī ʿAffāfī et al., ‘Mā al-farq’.
3. Readers interested in a more long-term account of modern Qurʾānic exegesis have
a number of other commendable studies and collections to choose from. See espe-
cially Baljon, Modern Muslim Koran Interpretation; Campanini, The Qur’an:
Modern Muslim Interpretations; Ennaifer, Les commentaires coraniques contem‑
porains; Jansen, The Interpretation of the Koran in Modern Egypt; Taji-Farouki,
Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qurʼan; Wielandt, ‘Exegesis of the Qur’an:
Early Modern and Contemporary’.
4. Garland, ‘What is a “history of the Present”?’, 367.
5. Saleh, The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition, 16.
6. Garland, ‘What is a “history of the Present”?’, 372–373.
7. For the notion of Islam as a discursive tradition, see Asad, The Idea of an Anthro‑
pology of Islam.
 Introduction 13

8. For readers interested in hermeneutical theory, Campanini, The Qur’an: Modern

Muslim Interpretations, might be a useful introduction.
9. In my translations of the source texts into English, I have avoided shortening the
texts wherever possible. In a few cases, inevitably, the texts had to be shortened.
In such cases I have indicated the contents of the missing segments. I have slightly
adapted the translations to the technical conventions generally used throughout
this book, for example by limiting eulogy, by giving sura numbers instead of
names, and by using a consistent system of transliteration unless the text was orig-
inally in English in which case I have reproduced it as closely as possible. I have
also occasionally added life dates and other short explanations in square brackets.
10. The English translations of the Qurʾānic verses discussed in the text samples are
the ones contained in the source text if that source text is originally in English. If it
is originally in a language that is neither Arabic nor English and contains a Qurʾān
translation, I have tried to provide an English translation that captures the choices
made by the authors of the source text. If the source text does not provide a Qurʾān
translation, as is the case with sources that are originally in Arabic, the translation
is my own. In those cases, my aim is to translate in such a way that the exegetical
problems discussed in the source text become comprehensible. I have drawn on a
number of existing English translations in the process. These are: Abdel Haleem,
The Qur’an: A New Translation; Ali, Qur’ān; Arberry, The Koran Interpreted;
Asad, The Message of the Qurʾān; Droge, The Qurʼān; Jones, The Qurʼān; Nasr,
The Study Quran.
11. See page 38, ‘The ʿulamāʾ as bearers of the tradition’.
12. See page 125, ‘Modernism and its paradigms’.
13. See page 181, ‘Islamist Qurʾānic interpretation’.
14. See page 48, ‘A Salafi paradigm’, and page 61, ‘Present-day Salafi exegesis’.
15. See page 265, ‘Postmodern uncertainties and subjective approaches’.