Review of Adis Duderija, Constructing a Religiously Ideal “Believer” and “Woman” in Islam: Neo-traditional Salafi and Progressive Muslims’ Methods of Interpretation

Abstract

Adis Duderija provides a great service to Islamic studies scholars in his painstaking analysis of the interpretive approaches (manahij) of contemporary ‘neo-traditional’ Salafis and ‘progressive’ Muslims vis-a-vis the Qur’an and Sunna. First tracing the historical lineage of each group’s interpretive frameworks, Duderija outlines the details of their respective methods with particular attention to their stances on: the nature of the Qur’an’s language and revelation; the relationship between the Qur’an’s meaning and its historical context; the place of reason and ethical valuation in Qur’anic interpretation; the suitability of thematic approaches to Qur’anic interpretation; and the definition and scope of the Sunna. He then goes on to examine how each group’s interpretive stances translate specifically into their different conceptualizations of ideal Muslim womanhood and definitions of a ‘Believer’ (as opposed to the religious ‘Other’). In the first half of his book, Duderija argues that neo-traditional Salafi (NTS) thought is the contemporary incarnation of the pre-modern ahl-hadith school of thought, as the former draws heavily upon the works of a select group of premodern scholars deemed to be strict followers of ahl-hadith methods. NTS thinkers tend to equate the Sunna with the written text of the sahih hadith (to the exclusion of orally transmitted knowledge and practices), and they insist that all legitimate religious knowledge is taken only from the text of Qur’an and sahih hadith. They advocate total adherence to the word of the Qur’an and sahih hadith alone, and as such, the only legitimate interpretation of the Qur’an is exclusively hadith-based and free of the intervention of human reason; thus any other interpretational methodologies applied to the Qur’an are by definition illegitimate. For NTS thinkers, the Cont Islam (2014) 8:75–78 DOI 10.1007/s11562-012-0213-z