A Case Study of Patriarchy and Slavery: The Hermeneutical Importance of Qurʾānic Assumptions in the Development of a Values-Based and Purposive Qurʾān-Sunna Hermeneutic

Abstract

When engaging in the process of developing a Qurʾānic hermeneutic1 and Islamic legal theory (usūl ul-fiqh), generations upon generations of Islamic legal theorists (usuliyyūn), jurists (fuqahāʾ), and exegetes (mufassirūn) have primarily concerned themselves with questions of what the Qurʾān has to say on a particular issue or theme but not what the Qurʾān tacitly assumes to be normative as understood by its direct audience and as evident in the Qurʾān’s content. They did not fully recognize the interpretational implications of the Qurʾānic presuppositions present in its discourse, especially in relation to developing a Qurʾānic hermeneutic and Islamic legal theory whose most powerful hermeneutical tool would entail an ethico-religious values- and purposive (maqāṣid)2-based approach to interpretation of the Qurʾān and the Sunna and the purposive nature of Islamic law and its philosophy.3 By an ethico-religious values-based approach, I mean a broader hermeneutical method that stipulates that the actual nature and character of the Qurʾān-Sunna discourse is hermeneutically best served and privileges its own interpretation on the basis of certain principles such as justice, righteousness, and equality, as based on the ethically objective nature of these values.4