Humanistic Qurʼanic Studies of Fazlur Rahman

Abstract

The present article focuses on explaining F. Rahman’s humanist and historical approach to the Quran. Pakistani thinker criticizes the concept of Quran as “uncreated” as it was established in the Islamic world after the rejection of Mu‘tazila. He states that in this view Quran is separated from the actual history and lives of people and thus cannot become the spiritual guidance it is supposed to be. The author demonstrates that F. Rahman continues the Neomodernist tendency in Islam and creatively employs the ideas of his predecessors. In particular, he does not argue with the revelationist idea of the Quran, but he urges to analyze it in context of historical revelation and consider the situational nature of particular physical articulation of ayahs performed by the Prophet. Author also notes that in order to perform a novel interpretation of Quran F. Rahman has to rethink the traditionalist legalistic ordinances for believers as they are set to regulate life only externally. Rahman also criticizes atomistic method, which implies separation of the Quran and its meaning from all the other Quranic ideas, and strives for holistic method in hermeneutics of Quran. Historical critique applied to the Quran by F. Rahman serves to understand it in its historicity, and in doing so clarifies the embodiment of universal ethical concepts in particular instances.