Ahmad Farouk Musa || 14 January 2025
Asad’s Qur’ānic Hermeneutics
“The Most Gracious has imparted this Qur’an [unto man]. He has created man: He has imparted unto him articulate thought and speech”
[Sura ar-Rahmān; 55:1-4] (Asad, 2013, p. 986)
If we were to understand about the entire hermeneutical approach of Muhammad Asad, it lies in the assertion that every Qur’ānic statement is directed to man’s reason and must, therefore, be comprehensible either in its literal sense or allegorically. This was clearly explained in the Foreword to The Message (Asad, 2013, pp. xv-xxiii). The Qur’ān can only be understood if it is read thoughtfully, as one integral whole, and not as a mere collection of moral maxims, stories or disjointed laws. It is God who reveals the Qur’ān and it is Him who bestows upon man the ability to understand it. Asad insisted that the Qur’ān is read, as “it ought to be read” and it becomes, “its own best commentary.”
“Thus, when We recite it, follow thou its wording [with all thy mind] and then, behold, it will be for Us to make its meaning clear”
[Sura al-Qiyāma; 75:18-19] (Asad, 2013, p. 1093).
In interpreting the Qur’ān, Asad asserted that apart from linguistic considerations, there were two fundamental rules of interpretation he tried to observe consistently. His basic approach is grounded in the belief that all the Qur’ānic injunctions and exhortations (the ethical message) are all interrelated and should be viewed together as an exposition of an ethical doctrine in which every verse and sentence has an intimate bearing on other verses and sentences. This is the concept of at-Tafsīr al-Qur’ān bil Qur’ān (the exegesis of the Qur’ān with the Qur’ān) where the verses, all of them, clarify and amplify one another. Consequently, its real meaning can be grasped only if we correlate every one of its statements with what has been stated elsewhere, and try to explain its ideas by means of frequent cross-references (Asad, 2013, p. xxii). That is why reading of The Message must be done when we have the entire Qur’an in hand i.e. The Message, due to its heavy cross-referencing. Whenever this rule is faithfully followed, we realize that the Qur’ān is, in the words of Muhammad Abduh, “its own best commentary” (Asad, 2013, p. xx).
Secondly, no part of the Qur’ān should be viewed from a purely “historical” point of view. The Qur’ān provides general principles that are presented for sermonic and didactic purposes. This means, for instance, that its references to historical circumstances and events should not be taken literally as constituting a factual record, but as being illustrations of the human condition (Asad, 2013, p. xxii). I think at this juncture, it would be good if we can view one simple example. In Sura al-Burūj; Sura 85:1-21 (The Great Constellations), Asad denies the story has any correlation with Abraham’s experience with his idolatrous contemporaries, or the Biblical legend of Nebuchadnezzar’s attempt to burn pious Israelites, or the persecution of the Christians of Najran by the Yemeni King or the apocryphal of a Zoroastrian King who burnt his defiant subjects (Asad, 2013, pp. 1126-1128). To him, as a matter of fact, the anonymity of the evildoers shows us we have a parable and not an allusion to a historical event. The pit of fire is a metaphor for the persecution of the believers by the unbelievers, a phenomenon not restricted to any time, or any particular people, but recurring in many forms and many degrees of intensity throughout human history (Asad, 2013, pp. 1126-1127 fn).
Moreover, as he points out, the underlying purpose of a verse and its relevance to the ultimate message of the Qur’ān should not be clouded by the preoccupation of classical commentators with the historical occasion when a particular verse was revealed. The classical mufassir (interpreter or commentator) sometimes lost sight of the purport of the verse in their unwarranted details to embellish the Qur’ānic narrative. To him, one needs to be clear about the Qur’ānic perspective and its message.
Asad is of the view that in the interpretations, and especially of such narratives as the science of creation, one should be able to understand from the modern scientific disciplines. This would not make people to look at the scriptures as anti-intellectual or anti-science. The main reason is for making such narratives comprehensible to people of the modern era. Let us look at Sura aṭ-Ṭāriq; 86: 5-7 to make this point clearer. In these verses, Muhammad Asad translated as:
LET MAN, then, observe out of what he has been created:
he has been created out of a seminal fluid
issuing from between the loins [of man], and the pelvic arch [of woman]
(Asad, 2013, pp. 1129-1130)
In his commentary in the footnotes, Asad uses pelvic arch for the translation tarā-ib (Asad, 2013, pp. 1129-1130). This is more consistent with the scientific fact that the ovaries are located in between the pelvic bones rather than the ribs, which are also flat bones, similar to the pelvic bones. This is something which is often neglected by many mufassir despite living in the scientific age.
Muhammad Asad’s emphasis on the rationality of Islam went hand in hand with his intellectual approach to religion. This is in tandem with the approach of Muhammad Abduh who developed a belief system based on reason. In the words of Abduh: “religion must be accounted as a friend to science, pushing man to investigate the secrets of existence, summoning him to respect the established truths and to depend on them in his moral life and conduct” (Salleh, 2003, pp.133-142).[1]
One final point to emphasise, although it might not be relevant to our discourse, is that the Qur’ān tells us clearly that many of its passages and expressions must be understood in an allegorical sense, and not simply literal, for the simple reason that, being intended for human understanding, they could not have been conveyed to us in any other way. That is, if we disregard the possibility of some of the verses of the Qur’ān were supposed to be understood allegorically, and if we only take every Qur’ānic verse in its literal sense, we would be offending against the very spirit of the divine writ (Asad, 2013, pp. 1179-1181). Given that the metaphysical ideas of religion relate to al-ghayb (a realm which is beyond the reach of human perception), the only way they could be successfully conveyed to us is through loan–images derived from our actual—physical or mental—experiences (Asad, 2013, pp. 1179); or using the words of az-Zamakhshari – which was heavily quoted by Muhammad Asad in his commentary – on verse 35 from Sura ar-Ra’d (Asad, 2013, pp. 439-440),
“…through a parabolic illustration, by means of something which we know from our experience, of something that is beyond the reach of our perception” [tamthilan li-mā ghāba ‘annā bi-mā nushahid]” (Asad, 2013, pp. 439-440 fn).
And this is the innermost purport of the term and concept of al-mutasyābihāt (the ambiguous) as used in the Qur’ān.
Conclusion
Muhammad Asad had a colourful life. His brilliance is evident in his translation and explanation of the compilation of ahādith in Sahih Bukhari (although most of his works were destroyed during the commotion from the India-Pakistan partition) and his magnificent translation of the Qur’ān which conformed the modernists’ agenda. He is a person who has committed his entire life to the rejuvenation of Islam and to the renaissance of the Muslim umma and civilization. His other books basically touched on issues relevant to the Muslims in the contemporary age. Although some of his ideas changed as we observed in the later edition of Islam at the Crossroads for example, it only shows that Asad is a pragmatic scholar who is not rigid in his thought and ready to evolve when the situation changes. That is why we believe that his stand in his book Principles of State and Government in Islam would also change when looking at the current discourse of political Islam in the Islamic world. Whether we are ready to accept his call and the call of the other Muslim reformers to abandon taqlid and to instead utilise both ‘aql (reason) and naql (revelation) in understanding our religion is yet to be seen. But one thing is certain: Asad has left a very profound mark on our thinking with his work. May he get the best reward from Allah in the hereafter.
Endnotes:
[1] See also Musa, Ahmad Farouk. Speech on The Message of the Qur’an by Muhammad Asad 2009. Securities Commission, Mont Kiara. Available at: https://irfront.org/post/speech-delivered-by-dr-ahmad-farouk-musa-on-muhammad-asad-146 (Accessed on 27 July 2024).
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Dato’ Dr Ahmad Farouk Musa is an academic and researcher at the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia. He has a PhD in Surgery from Monash University Australia and Masters of Medicine in Surgery from Universiti Sains Malaysia. He is also a Founder and Director at the Islamic Renaissance Front, Kuala Lumpur, a think tank focusing on islah (reform) and tajdid (renewal) in Islam. This essay was initially published by a SCOPUS-Indexed Intellectual Discourse at: https://doi.org/10.31436/id.v32i2
