In 1992, Mehdi Bazargan, an
Iranian lay Muslim intellectual,
expressed a new theological opinion on
one of the most important issues that
has been the concern of Muslim thinkers
and interpreters of the Quran: the
purpose of the mission of the prophets.
He said that the only purpose of the
prophetic mission was to inform people
about God and the afterlife, and that
religion is for securing the happiness
of human beings in the next life. He
based his opinion on the following verse
of the Quran:
He it is who hath sent
among the unlettered ones a messenger of
their own, to recite unto them His
revelation and to make them grow, and to
teach them the scripture and wisdom,
though heretofore they were indeed in
error manifest (Jom‘eh: 2).
Bazargan’s opinion met with
three different reactions: The first
reaction came from Traditionalist
scholars, who were mostly clerics and
strongly opposed his opinion. In
newspapers, journals, and Friday prayer
sermons, they tried to show that his
opinion was in opposition to Islam, that
is to say, it was that of a Kafir. The
second reaction came from Bazargan’s own
political group, his friends and
fellow-thinkers, members of a
religio-political group known as the
‘Iran Liberation Movement’. Although
they remained loyal to Bazargan until
the end of his life, they did not accept
his new opinion. The third reaction came
from Abdolkarim Soroush, who accepted
the opinion but also criticized it and
expanded it.
Before describing
Bazargan’s views, let me introduce him
briefly. Born in 1907, Bazargan was a
French–educated engineer, and a
long-time pro-democracy activist. While
studying in France he voluntarily
entered the French Army and fought
against Nazi Germany. He co-founded the
Iran Liberation Movement in 1961, and
was imprisoned several times before the
1979 Revolution. Immediately after the
revolution succeeded, Ayatollah Khomeini
asked Bazargan to form a provisional
government, and thus he became the first
post-revolutionary prime minister. In
1980, during the referendum about the
Constitution, Bazargan tried
unsuccessfully to have the word
“democratic” kept in the title of the
new regime, declaring that he believed
in an “Islamic democratic republic”, not
an “Islamic republic”. He resigned
within a year, complaining that radical
clerics were undermining his government.
He died in 1995.
Bazargan’s intellectual
production can be divided into two
periods. In the first period, like other
reformers, he tried to prove that the
main mission of the prophets was to
direct people’s affairs in this world.
His writings and political struggles
were all geared to this objective. This
period forms the larger part of his
life. In the second period, which
consists of the last 8 years of his
life, Bazargan changed his mind and took
the following opinion: the main mission
of prophets was to inform people about
God and the next life. It was not the
prophets’ mission to teach people how to
manage society, or what kind of
government to have. That is to say, it
is not necessary for Muslims to refer to
the Quran in order to discover laws for
politics, economics and society, or
theories of mathematics or natural
sciences, and so on. To discover these
laws, Muslims, like non-Muslims, must
refer to collective reason; that is, to
rely on achievements in the fields of
science and philosophy.
The question whether the
main mission of the prophets was to
secure happiness in this life or the
next life is a new question to which
interpreters of the Quran and Muslim
reformists have started to pay attention
in the last century. In fact, the
question belongs to the modern world. In
the past, none of the interpreters of
the Quran even posed this question. It
appeared evident to them that Islam
directs people’s life both in this world
and the next. To them, the social
precepts and regulations in the Quran
seemed sufficient for managing and
governing societies that were not as
complex as modern ones.
But science, technology,
philosophy, psychology, sociology and
economics faced Muslims with new
questions. They found themselves unable
to provide answers for these on the
basis of their religious teachings. On
the one hand, in the face of the
progress of the West, they felt
backwardness; and on the other hand,
they were worried about losing their
identity to the domineering West. These
two factors, that is, a feeling of
backwardness and the problem of
identity, caused Muslims to look for a
solution; and eventually some of them
found the Quran to be the best weapon
for fighting this problem. They started
to interpret the Quran from a new
perspective. I stress the word “weapon”,
because this approach to the Quran,
which at first had only an academic
aspect, eventually gave rise to
violence. Later on, this approach gave
some Muslims a real weapon for holding
on to power.
This period saw the start
of efforts by Muslim reformers, who were
mostly interpreters of the Quran, to
reconcile tradition and modernity. From
their point of view, the reason for the
backwardness of Muslims was that they
had removed the Quran from their daily
life and only recited it, and they had
not been thinking about the verses of
the Quran. For instance, according to
Jamaleddin Afghani, if Muslims had
explored the Quran, they would have
progressed as the West had done. We can
say that the project of rationalising
and secularising Islam started in this
period, and has continued until now.
This period also saw the
expansion of Quranic studies;
outstanding interpreters appeared, such
as Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida, Tantawi,
Mostafa al Maraghi, and in Iran Mahmud
Taleghani, and Muhammad Taghi Shariati
and so on. These interpreters had two
presuppositions: First, there is no
conflict or contradiction between the
Quran and new human achievements in
science and philosophy. Secondly, the
Quran can fulfil all the needs of human
beings in the modern world, and provides
answers to all questions in all aspects
of life.
These early interpreters
drew attention to 3 kinds of Quranic
verses:
First, those concerning
magic (sehr), Satan (sheitan), Angels
(mala’ek) and Jinns. Thinking these
concepts unsuited to the modern human
sense of rationality, and considering
them superstitious, some of these
interpreters focused on the linguistic
dimension of the Quran. They said that
the language of the Quran in these
verses is metaphorical and allegorical,
and we should not look for literal
meaning in them. Muhammad Abduh, the
most distinguished commentator of this
period, rejects the impact of magic in
the universe and takes it as a metaphor.
For example, Sura Falaq,
verse 4, which has been seen as
referring to magical power:
Say: I seek refuge in the
Lord of the Daybreak,
From the evil of that which
He created;
From the evil of the darkness when it is
intense,
And from the evil of malignant
witchcraft,
Abduh says that ‘malignant
witchcraft’ refers to those people who
through their evil deeds try to incite
distrust among friends and to create
distance between them. He considered the
Hadith (narrations) in Bukhari’s
collection that confirmed the existence
of magic to be weak. Other commentators
of this period also take a critical
attitude to Hadith. Unlike early
commentators, such as Tabari, who rely
on Hadith for understanding every
Quranic verse, an interpreter like Abduh
simply considers many Hadith to be weak,
and puts them aside.
So, we can say, this period
marks the beginning of the priority of
reason over Hadith (‘aql over naql).
The seed of this approach is found in
the Tafsir of Fakhreddin Razi and
Zamakhshari, but in the past, the
criterion for commentary by someone like
Fakhreddin Razi is reason in the
Aristotelian sense, while in modern
times the criterion is reason in a
positivistic and scientific sense.
This is evident in the way
Abduh approaches the Meccan Sura Fil and
tries to provide a rational and
scientific explanation:
Hast thou not seen how thy
Lord dealt with the owners of the
Elephant?
Did He not bring their stratagem to
naught,
And send against them swarms of flying
creatures (tairan ababil),
Which pelted them with stones of baked
clay,
And made them like green crops devoured
(by cattle)?
Whereas previous
interpreters regarded this a miracle,
Abduh says that the swarms of flying
creatures (tairan ababil) were a kind of
bacterial agent that destroyed the
soldiers of Abrahah (the Abyssinian
governor seeking to capture Mecca in the
year the Prophet was born).[1]
Likewise, with Satan and the Angels,
Abduh believed that these are inner
powers that draw people towards evil
deeds or good deeds. We cannot see
interpretations like these in the first
period of Tafsir. For example, Tabari
makes no effort to give any other
interpretation of these verses apart
from the literal sense that was current
in the culture at the time of the
Prophet; for him, belief in magic, Satan
and Jinns did not violate his sense of
rationality.
The second type of verses
that modern interpreters have focused on
are those verse that relate to plants,
wind, and natural phenomena in general.
Here they tried to show that these
verses were not incompatible with modern
sciences, and in fact that new
scientific discoveries and theories have
their roots in the Quran. One of the
acknowledged interpreters of this
period, Al-Tantawi, author of Al-Javaher
fi Tafsir Al-Quran, sees the Quran as a
scientific book and tries to reconcile
Quranic verses with scientific
knowledge.
Finally, we come to verses
concerning government and social
regulations. According to these
commentators, the Quran invites Muslims
to establish an Islamic government. They
believe that rules and regulations
required for government are found in the
Quran. In their opinion, as the Prophet
governed a state, so Muslims too must do
so. Therefore, they offer new
interpretations of this kind of verses.
For example, Jamaleddin Afghani, who
interpreted only a few verses, rejects
polygamy and argues that this rule was
specific to the Prophet’s time. These
commentators tried to show that these
social regulations were in accordance
with the culture of the Prophet’s time,
and they are not applicable to all
times.
Therefore, one salient
characteristic of the work of these
commentators and reformers is that they
are attentive to the cultural context in
which the verses of the Quran were
revealed. By the end of the 20th
century, more attention was paid to this
issue. Muslim reformers divided the
rulings (ahkam) in the Quran into two
kinds: emza’i (endorsed) and ta’sisi
(legislated). They emphasized that the
Prophet established few new laws and
norms, and endorsed many of the existing
laws and norms of his time. That is to
say, the Prophet legislated some laws
and affirmed or accepted others that
were current in Arab society, as he saw
them not to be in conflict with his
mission. According to these new
reformers, these kinds of laws and
regulations are changeable, not
immutable. Abdolkarim Soroush goes as
far as to say that all the social
regulations of Islam, even those that
are found in the Quran, can be changed.
In fact, Shah Nematollah Vali, an Indian
Muslim of the 18th century, in his book
Hojjat ol-balagha, had already argued
that many social regulations, such as
khums and zakat, are changeable.
With this background, I’ll
come back to Iran, which is the focus of
my study. Mahmood Taleghani, author of a
book of Tafsir named Partovi az Qur’an
(A Ray from the Quran), was influenced
by Muhammad Abduh, and like him, had a
worldly orientation in Tafsir. Taleqani
was opposed to the Shah, was imprisoned
and wrote his book in prison. He didn’t
provide a commentary on the whole Quran,
but only on a few Suras from the
beginning and some from the end.
Ali Shariati is another
Iranian Muslim reformer who also opposed
the Shah and did all he could to provide
a new reading of the Quran and to
redefine Islam. Many young people who
participated in the Islamic revolution
were among his followers. Although we
cannot regard him as an interpreter of
the Quran, he too subscribed to the view
that the mission of the Prophet was to
secure people’s happiness in this life.
He put the emphasis on Jihad and Islamic
government and his work eventually
contributed to the ideologization of
religion, which became dominant when
Ayatollah Khomeini’s came to power.
As I already said, the
commentators early in the 20th century
believed that the Quran has answers to
all questions and needs of human beings.
This attitude gradually led to the
opinion that we Muslims don’t need other
people or countries, as the Quran is
enough for us and we have the truth.
This opinion led to the emergence of
ideological interpretations of Islam.
The book, Fi Zilal al-Quran (In the
Shadow of the Quran) by Sayyid Qutb, is
the first ideological Tafsir. One of the
important characteristics of ideological
Tafsir is an emphasis on identity,
power, and jihad against unbelievers.
They took the early wars or jihad of
Muslims against jaheliyat (pre-Islamic
society) as their model, and argued for
a struggle against “the Jaheliyat of the
20th Century”
But the 1979 Revolution in
Iran and the establishment of an
ideological government became the best
means for waking up some Islamic
reformers. It changed the presupposition
that had ruled the thought of Muslim
interpreters for a century, as reformers
such as Mehdi Bazargan came to realize
that the same Quran that was a weapon
for guarding Muslim identity is now used
as a weapon for gaining and keeping
power. It was in this context that
Bazargan stated his new opinion: the
Prophet’s mission was not to create a
government or to regulate the affairs of
this world, but to tell people of the
existence of God and the other world.
We can see a similar shift
in presuppositions in the Arab world,
but unlike in Iran, the shift was not
openly acknowledged. Examples of
non-ideological Tafsir are the books of
Ahmad Khalafallah, especially Al-Fann
al-Qisasi fi’l-Quran al-Karim (The Art
of Story-telling in the Quran) and Nasr
Hamed Abu Zeid’s work.
In my view, two factors are
responsible for an explicit
acknowledgment of the shift from
this-worldly to other-worldly Tafsir in
Iran
The first is the
establishment of an Islamic government.
This was the utopia of the early
20th-century Muslim reformers, a dream
that was held for a long time. They
thought that, with the establishment of
an Islamic government, all obstacles to
enforcing Islamic rulings and precepts
would be removed and all human needs
would be fulfilled. That is why at the
beginning of the Revolution in Iran some
spoke of Islamic sociology, Islamic
economy, and Islamic agriculture and so
on. But once an Islamic government was
created, the flaws in that line of
thinking became apparent.
The second factor has to do
with the creation of a theoretical
system that was not only hermeneutical
but also philosophical/theological at
the same time. I mean, the system whose
foundations Soroush began to lay in
1979, resulting in 1990 in his book
entitled: Qabz o Bast-e Teorik-e
Shari‘at (The Expansion and Contraction
of the Sharia). He developed his ideas
in his later books.
As I said earlier, Soroush
accepted Bazargan’s opinion but also
offered a criticism, which I want to
discuss now. According to Soroush, the
reason why Bazargan’s critics would not
accept his opinion, and yet they
couldn’t convince him, was that both
sides offered intra-religious arguments,
namely, they used the Quran and Hadith.
But the question whether religion is for
this world or the other one is an
extra-religious one, and goes back to
our expectations of religion. Soroush
approached the issue through our
“expectations of religion”. He said
that, before someone accepts a religion,
that is when he or she is trying to
learn about a religion and has not
accepted it, one of the important
questions that arises for this person
is: “What are my expectations of
religion?” or “Does this religion meet
my expectations or not. I might have
this expectation that religion secures
my wellbeing in this life, or that it
should inform me about God and the other
world and introduce me to a bigger
world. Or I might have the expectation
that it secures my happiness both in
this world and the other. This is an
extra-religious question. We cannot
expect religion to provide us an answer.
Answers to this question – whether they
are argued on a rational basis or not –
must be sought outside religion. By
outside religion, I mean through human
reason and other sources that we have at
our disposal; in a nutshell, collective
reason.”
The issue of “our
expectations of religion” is a subject
that belongs, on the one hand, to the
field of hermeneutics; on the other
hand, it belongs to the philosophy of
religion. When we want to understand or
interpret a text, our expectations of
the text will be a frame for
understanding the text; we understand
that text within the bounds of our
expectations. This is a matter for
hermeneutics. But when we speak about
the rationality or non-rationality of a
religion, our expectations will be a
frame for regarding that religion as
rational or non-rational. The issue of
“our expectations of religion” exactly
goes back to the functions of religion.
What are the functions of religion? That
is to say, which of our needs does
religion fulfil? These are matters
related to the philosophy of religion.
The philosophy of religion is a
second-order discipline, that is to say
it is a discipline that examines
religion from outside the religion. A
person who wants to know about a
religion and then decide whether to
accept it or not, enters the field of
philosophy of religion. In sum, the
philosophy of religion is a discipline
that investigates religion rationally.
Soroush defines the
question of “our expectations of
religion” as follows: We can have two
kinds of expectations: maximalist and
minimalist. The maximalist expectation
is the same expectation that reformists
and interpreters had in this past
century. They expected Islam to fulfil
all the needs of humankind and to
regulate their affairs in this world.
But the minimalist expectation is to
have fewer expectation of religion.
But what is this minimalist
expectation in Soroush’s view? At first,
Soroush used to say that, if Muslims say
that the Quran contains social and
criminal injunctions, such as those
relating to the required number of
witnessed in court, the ban on usury, or
cutting of a thief’s hand, and so on,
this means that, for them, Islam wants
to regulate their affairs in this world.
In response to these Muslims, it can be
said that these laws and injunctions are
not enough to manage a society in modern
times, and we need more laws. If the
Quran has introduced laws, they are few,
and this shows that Islam pays attention
to this world only minimally, and has
left the rest to human beings. This
shows that the mission of the Prophet
was not concerned with such matters.
In recent years, Soroush no
longer speaks of even this minimum. It
seems that he has changed his opinion
and believes that all social regulations
in Quran are changeable or can be put
aside - although those in the realm of
‘ibadat are more resistant to change
since they are more orientated towards
the hereafter. His emphasis on the term
“all social regulations” no longer
allows for this-worldly expectations
from religion. Thus we can have only two
expectations: to satisfy the human need
for eternity and to inform humankind of
the existence of a God with specific
qualities. The functions of religion are
these two things; and religion gives
these two things to people.
Those who opposed this
opinion felt that it leaves little for
religion and diminishes its importance.
They didn’t realize that these functions
are of utmost importance. The issue of
eternity is an important concern of
humankind. Kierkegaard, the 19th-century
Danish Christian existentialist
philosopher, deals with the subject of
eternity in his books. And Miguel de
Unamuno, a Jewish existentialist
philosopher from Spain, in his book The
Tragic Sense of Life, writes about the
concern for eternity and demonstrates
the human need for being eternal.
In short, Soroush limits
religion to a personal relationship with
God and declares that politics,
sciences, ethic and law are independent
from religion. One can say that
secularizing of Islam came to a climax
in Soroush’s view. He repeatedly
declares that Islam is a secular
religion, and that more than other
religions it contains the seeds of
secularity.
Let me conclude by
summarizing my argument.
In the 20th century, Muslim
thinkers and reformers sought
secularized and rationalized
interpretations of Islam, but they
adopted two very different approaches in
their interpretation of the Quran, based
on two radically different
understandings of the purpose of
religion. The early reformers held that
the mission of Islam was to secure
happiness of people in this world, which
led them to adopt a this-worldly
orientation in their Tafsir, holding
that the Quran contains all kinds of
knowledge, including modern science. For
example, they believed that the law of
Gravity that Newton discovered had
already been mentioned in the Quran, but
Muslims had failed to discover it
earlier as they had neglected the Quran
and also failed to use their reason to
understand the Quran. In their view, it
was wrong to assume that the Quran
provides only spiritual guidance for
Muslim, with the aim of happiness the
next world.
This approach to Islam was
dominant in the thought of the Muslim
reformers until the last two decades of
the 20th century. At the end of the
century, we witness a shift in
approaches to secularization and
rationalization. This change is very
important. The new reformers also sought
to secularise Islam, but in a very
different sense: that is, they tried to
show that no social, political or
economic laws and theories are found in
Quran. It was not the Prophet’s main
mission to resolve people’s economic,
social and political problems in this
world, but to introduce and explain God
and the next world. That is, God wants
to change people’s orientation, He wants
people to know that the universe is
expanded not limited. Of course, in the
new reformers’ view, this attitude to
the universe will also affect people’s
life in this world. The most important
effect is serenity and peace of mind. In
their opinion, religion does not aim to
replace reason, so people must use
reason in order to improve their lives
in this world, which means understanding
and interpreting the Quran in such a way
as to discover how to know God and the
next life and to ensure happiness in the
next world.
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