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The Qur'ān: Modern Muslim Interpretations . By Massino

Campanini. Translated by Caroline Higgitt. London and New
York: Routledge, 2011. Pp. vi+149. £65.0....

Article  in  Journal of Qur anic Studies · June 2013

DOI: 10.3366/jqs.2013.0102

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 Book Reviews

The Qur’ān: Modern Muslim Interpretations. By Massino Campanini. Translated

by Caroline Higgitt. London and New York: Routledge, 2011. Pp. vi + 149. £65.00
(HB), £18.99 (PB).

Originally published in Italian in 2008, this four-chapter work examines contemporary

hermeneutical interpretations of the Qur’an in the Muslim world and the West,
specifically in the traditionalist (Salafī) and liberalist circles.1 Issues such as
democracy, human rights and gender issues have engendered new approaches in
the study of the Islamic perspectives, and indeed the Qur’anic text, and it is the
various treatments of these issues, among others, as reflected in the works of
the authors discussed that is examined in this title. In a recent publication on the
interpretive tradition of the Qur’an, Ziauddin Sardar avers that the glory and bane of
the Book lie in its traditional interpretations by principles which, however repellent or
unprogressive they might seem, must still remain the starting point for contemporary
interpretations that take social and other changes into account.2

Chapter One, ‘Traditional Commentary’ (pp. 8–41) polarises modern, ‘orthodox’

tafsīr tradition into Salafī and neo-Salafī models. For the latter, the exegetical
exertions of Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī (1903–83), Muḥammad Ibn ʿĀshūr
(1879–1973), Maḥmūd Shaltūt (1893–1963), Shaykh Muḥammad al-Ghazzālī
(1916–96) and Muḥammad Mutwallī al-Shaʿrāwī (1911–98) are examined. For the
former, al-Manār3 by Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) and his alter ego Rashīd
Riḍā (1865–1935), and the pedagogical al-Shihāb by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Bin Bādīs
(1889–1940) are illustrated. Whatever the differences between the two, argues
Campanini, traditional tafsīr works are heavily indebted to the principle of the
authority of the early authors on whose materials and models they draw (p. 34). The
chapter also discusses the four principles of Salafism. According to our author,
the Salafī approach in tafsīr was to ‘construct the Qur’an’, that is, ‘to use it as an
underpinning for thought, as a source of theological and moral teachings that would
be useful in helping the Islamic peoples know how to come to terms with modernity’
(p. 13). This perspective is somewhat specious and defective, as it presupposes that
Islam is antithetical to modernity or that the concept is inherently alien to the Qur’an
itself. In my view, what the Salafī and traditionalist commentative traditions of the
Qur’an sought to do was not to ‘construct’ the Qur’an, but rather to (re)interpret it

Journal of Qur’anic Studies 15.2 (2013): 183–203

Edinburgh University Press
# Centre of Islamic Studies, SOAS
www.euppublishing.com/jqs
184 Journal of Qur’anic Studies

through analytic and catalytic hermeneutical instruments in order to Islamise

‘modernity’. Modernity, in the sense of Western grand narratives of enlightenment,
democracy, secularism, human rights, science and technology, and gender issues is, in
my view, not incompatible with the larger Islamic scriptural and extra-scriptural
discourse, as some Western writers and academics along with their Muslim apologists,
for example Muhammad Arkoun (1928–2010) (p. 50), seem to be suggesting,
according to our author. One shortcoming in a dominant contemporary, Western,
humanist, discursive tradition is to view modernity as a monolithic concept which is
identifiable only with Western ideals and values, although some other perspectives.
have shown that there are indeed ‘modernities’ within and across cultures.4

Chapter Two, ‘The Qur’ān as Text, Discourse and Structure’ (pp. 42–90), examines
the Qur’an as a literary text, its historicity, its thematic interpretations, and its
relationship to the nazm theory.5 Amin al-Khūlī’s proposition of the treatment of the
Qur’an as any other text to which critical, literary, historical, linguistic and
sociological rules and standards should be applied6 found illustrious exponents in
Muhammad Khalafallah (1916–98), the proponent of affabulation-narrative and
artistic theory, ʿĀʾisha bt ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (Bint al-Shātiʾ, 1913–98) who strongly
argues for the application of rhetorical and linguistic touchstones, and Nasr Hamid
Abu Zayd (1942–2010), the most controversial of them all for his ‘historicist’
approach (p. 54). Muhammad Arkoun, also noted for his historicist and
deconstructivist perspective, argues for a division between Qur’anic and Islamic
fact, a perspective in which Campanini rightly finds some pitfalls (pp. 50–2), as it is
more of a philosophical arm-twisting discourse than an analytical explication.
Abdullah Saeed, the advocate of the contextual approach which allows for flexibility
and adaptation of the text to modern needs, is also discussed. The essence of the
contextualist perspective is that the meaning of a Qur’anic expression need not be
limited to the divine thought (mens auctoris), but rather, extended to the sense of the
text (mens lectoris), as contextualised by the reader.7 The ‘phenomenicist’ (p. 66)
Malik Bennabi (1905–73), and the Maghribī historiographer Mohamed Talbi
(b. 1912, noted for his characterisation of capital punishment in the light of
modernity as anti-Qur’anic, p. 68) are also discussed here, as is Mohammad Mojtahed
Shabestari (b. 1939), who was much influenced by ‘fathers’ of hermeneutics, Maḥmūd
Muḥammad Ṭāhā (1909–85),8 discussed in this chapter in the context of al-Khūlī’s
textual and historical paradigms. One other aspect examined in this chapter relates to
thematic interpretations of the Qur’an, for which the efforts of Hassan Hanafi
(b. 1935), and Fazlur Rahman (1919–88) stand out. The former is noted for calling for
the ‘anthropologisation of theology’, that is, translating the language of religion (i.e.
the Qur’an) into the human language of liberation (modernity) (p. 73), while the latter,
critical of the traditional, philosophical, mystical and ‘atomistic’ approaches to
Qur’anic interpretation (p. 77), is remarkable for his ‘functional’ characterisation of
 Book Reviews 185

God in regard to human ethics and the concrete unity of the Qur’an, a perspective that
informs his system of semantic categorisation and explication. Muhammad Abdel
Haleem’s thematic approach, which holds Fazlur Rahman as a point of reference, is
also highlighted as hinging on a dualism of contextualisation and intertextuality of the
suras,9 the ultimate aim of which ‘discourses’ are theistic and moralistic (p. 82). The
issue of the relationship of the Qur’an to the naẓm (‘structure’) principle as exposited
by ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078 and reflected in the much more recent
exegetical discussions by Abū’l-ʿAlāʾ al-Mawdūdī (1903–79), Amīn Aḥṣan Islāhī
(1906–97) and Muḥammad Shahrūr (b. 1938) is the final issue highlighted in this
chapter.

Chapter Three, ‘Radical Exegesis of the Qur’ān: Sayyid Qutb’ (pp. 91–104), the
shortest of all the chapters in size but not in substance, illustrates the Islamist-jihadist
approach and style of Quṭb (1900–66), an approach which is firmly grounded in his
principle of social justice and expounded in his Maʿālim al-ṭarīq and tafsīr work
Fī ẓilāl al-Qurʾān.10 This is compared to al-Mawdūdī’s ethical and mildly political
model. Chapter Four, ‘The Qur’ān and the Hermeneutics of Liberation’ (pp. 105–22),
analyses a discursive tradition that has the ‘chief aim of bringing about justice
between human beings and freeing all those that are oppressed from their chains’
(p. 108). Sayyid Quṭb is cited as the Sunnī exponent of the liberation theology through
Qur’anic hermeneutics, while two eminent ayatollahs, namely Mahmūd Taleqāni and
Murtadā Mutahharī are given as the Shīʿī voices in this perspective which also
interprets jihād as a war of defence and resistance to aggression. Farid Esack, a living
exponent of this tendency and a robust critic of the revisionist interpretive discourse of
John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone and miriam cooke, proposes six hermeneutic keys
by which Qur’an can serve as an effective instrument of liberation theology in theory
and in practice. The influence of his socio-political background in the cosmos of racial
marginalisation in apartheid South Africa is quite obvious in his model. Feminist
readings of the Qur’an as represented by the Moroccan Fatima Mernessi, the Lebanese
ʿAlaf Ḥakīm, and the Afro-American Amina Wadud is also discussed in this chapter.
It is worth noting that Campanini rightly adjudges Wadud’s analyses as a contribution
to ‘gender studies’ (p. 117) rather than a real hermeneutic on the Qur’an, some of
which texts and topoi are disingenuously interpreted anyway by her to suit her
feminist tendencies. The appendix (pp. 123–7) discusses other areas of the exegetical
tradition of the Qur’an, particularly in other sites of the Islamic world, namely, in
Turkey and Indonesia,11 and establishes how the influences of Abu Zayd and Fazlur
Rahman have impacted on the interpretive traditions in ‘other’ Islamic centres.

By and large, this is a useful and an enlightening effort. But a fundamental analytical
flaw is the suggestion that the expansion of Islamic communities in the West will
likely lead to a ‘theological’ revision of Islam and some forms of secularisation (p. 3).
This is a cynical reading of the universalism of the faith from which the special status
 186 Journal of Qur’anic Studies

of the Qur’an among the faithful derived in the first place. Also, there is a minor glitch
in the Arabic quotation ‘mā anzala min … bi-tawqīt ilāhi’ (p. 28), where the right
reading should be ‘… bi-tawqīf …’, and the title of ʿAbduh’s Risālat al-tawḥīd should
rightly be translated as ‘Epistle on Unity’ and not ‘Theology of Unity’ (p. 130, n. 21);
otherwise this is an excellent introductory work on the modern tafsīr tradition which
would be useful to students and general readers alike.

AMIDU OLALEKAN SANNI

DOI: 10.3366/jqs.2013.0102

NOTES
1 Among more recent works on Salafism are: Roel Meijer (ed), Global Salafīsm: Islam’s New
Religious Movement (London: Hurst & Co., 2009); Henri Lauzière, ‘The Construction of
Salafiyya: Reconsidering Salafism from the Perspective of Conceptual History’, International
Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42:3 (2010), pp. 369–89; Itzchak Weismann, ‘Genealogies
of Fundamentalism: Salafī Discourse in Nineteenth-Century Baghdad’, British Journal of
Middle Eastern Studies 36:2 (2009), pp. 267–80.
2 Ziauddin Sardar, Reading the Qur’ān (London: Hurst & Co, 2011), p. 24.
3 The foundational materials for which are rooted in the journal al-ʿUrwat al-wuthqā.
4 See Amidu Sanni ‘Rethinking and Repackaging Islamic Studies in Sub-Saharan Africa:
Responses to Modernity and Globalization – The Nigerian Example’ in Roziah Omar et al.
(eds), Proceedings IAS-AEI International Conference. New Horizons in Islamic Area Studies.
Islamic Scholarship across Cultures & Continents (Kuala Lumpur: Asia-Europe Institute
University of Malaya, 2010), pp. 50–66.
5 See Hussein Abdul-Raof, Arabic Rhetoric: A Pragmatic Analysis (London and New York:
Routledge, 2006), pp. 47–50.
6 Al-Khūlī’s 1961 thesis on this, namely, Manāhij al-tajdīd fī’l-naḥw wa’l-balāgha wa’l-tafsīr
wa’l-adab has been re-examined in M. Nur Kholis Setiawan, ‘Liberal Thought in Qur’ānic
Studies: Tracing Humanistic Approach in Sacred Text in Islamic Scholarship’, al-Jāmiʿah 45:1
(2007), pp. 1–28.
7 For more on the contextual approach, see Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai and Michael
Marx (eds), The Qurʾān in Context. Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic
Milieu (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), especially part two.
8 For more on whom see my review of Edward Thomas, Islam’s Perfect Stranger: The Life of
Mahmud Muhammad Taha – Reformer of Sudan (London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010), in
Journal of Islamic Studies 24:1 (2013), pp. 101–4.
9 For more on which, see Stefan Wild (ed.), Self-Referentiality in the Qur’ān (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2006).
10 See Badmus Lanre Yusuf, Sayyid Qutb: A Study of His Tafsir (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book
Trust, 2010).
11 For more on this, see Johanna Pink, ‘Tradition and Ideology in Contemporary Sunnite
Qur’ānic Exegesis: Qur’ānic Commentaries from the Arab World, Turkey, and Indonesia and
their Interpretations of Qur’ān 5: 51’, Die Welt des Islams 50:1 (2010), pp. 3–59.
§

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