The Reception of Toshihiko Izutsu's Qur'anic Studies in the Muslim World: With Special Reference to Turkish Qur'anic Scholarship

Abstract

The works of Toshihiko Izutsu have enjoyed academic and popular supremacy ever since their publication, especially in Turkey. Up until the 1990's, his works were not subjected to any serious criticism by Muslim scholars. Instead, there was a tendency to accept a view of Izutsu as an exceptional scholar who was extremely sympathetic to Muslim traditions and the Qur'an, which he read sensitively, and who sought to give a complete, unprejudiced picture of Islam on the basis of his semantic analysis of the Qur'anic text, which he (in contrast to many orientalists) always allowed the Qur'an to speak for itself. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, although many continued to admire Izutsu's achievements, criticisms began to be directed at his works, concentrating on different aspects of Izutsu's methodology and findings, and questions were raised about the authenticity and suitability of his analysis. This article explores the reactions to Izutsu's works in Turkish Qur'anic scholarship, but also questions why it is that Muslim scholars have tended to accept his works uncritically.