Mojtahed Shabestari’s Theological Approaches to Qur’an

NOTES FROM THE IIIT CONFERENCE ON APPROACHING THE QUR’AN AND SUNNAH #8

[This is the eighth in a series of my notes on the International Institute of Islamic Thought conference on approaching the Qur’an and Sunnah held in Herndon, VA. These notes are raw material for an edited report I will write on the conference later and represent my perception of the discussion. The proceedings will be published by IIIT at a later time. The Minaret of Freedom Institute thanks IIIT for the grant that makes the publication of these notes possible. Responsibility for any errors in the notes is mine alone.]

Session 8, Moderator: Imtiyaz Yusuf
Paper Presentation by Ahmad Kazemi Mousavi
“Mojtahed Shabestari’s Theological Approaches to Qur’an”

Mojtahed Shabestari Sayyid Muhammad, even before Saroush, called for hermeneutical reading of Sharia. Each word in a text has a presupposed meaning to the reader. The presuppositions of those reading “heaven and earth” a thousand years ago is different from ours, so we have a pre-judgment when we read the holy texts. In Islamic tradition we have tafsir and tawîl, but none of these were concerned with presuppositions or immediate intentions beyond those of the lawgiver. Without hermeneutics no legal methodology involving theory can take place. The methodology involved tools appropriate to spoken text. The meanings derived by the fuquha deal with things like metaspace, metaphysics, or literal meanings rather than maqâsid. Munâsiba is based on necessities, needs and tâsiyât, which are not enough. Nafs ul amri. Theory of kalâm Allah all belong to history. More than 800 years have passed since Muslims produced a new theory and the old ones do not fit to our present circumstances.

What is meant by khâliq ul `âdir?  For Ibn Sina all the prophets are connected to the active intellect, which transmits a meaning from God heard by the prophets in a what is metaphorically called God’s word. It is beyond the laws of causality, which are created by God. Ashari’s position is the eternal truths are kalâm Allah, which are part of God’s essence. Ibn Arabi’s view is that the Qur’an is God’s word for the Prophet but for others it is only God’s word if it produces a similar Prophetic experience, not for everyone. Then revelation is a continuous phenomenon, a continuous experience. Only the lawgiving experience was completed by the Prophet. This is a summary taken from Shabestari.

Shabestari does not seethe traditional literal interpretation to be flexible enough to take into account external realities. Modern semantics takes meaning of words as a tool to speak about changing, not fixed, realities. Usûl al-fiqh stems from Greek philosophy. Shabestari bases faith on the association of divinity with free will. He identifies human existence with freedom of mind. Subjectivity is a human agency. Fiqhi tradition didn’t work with human agency. We talked about Sufism. The master is in charge not only of the murîd’s finances but his psychology. The murîd must report his dreams to the master. Shabestari’s conception of freedom of conscience does not allow for sanctity of religious knowledge. Sharia, Qur’an are sacred, but the fiqh, which id only the human understanding of the Sharia is not.

Respect for religious figures is the only source of “sanctity” for religious figure, but this is human and not divine in origin. In his later writings he claims the wording of the Qur’an is the product of revelation, not revelation itself. The words ayat and ayât occur in the Qur’an over 400 times. The legal part of the Qur’an is only one fourth of it. Legal interpretation of the Qur’an is the interpretation of later jurists. Why did law become the queen of Islamic science? For the companions establishing the rituals was the focus. Under the Umayyids, with the rise of Mutazila and the Sufis, Islamic law arose to stabilize the society.  Not only law, but also conduct and ritual are part of Sharia.

Words are a system of expression based on speaker, audience, content, community of language, and context and presuppositions. The Prophet did not say the words of the Qur’an are not his words.

Louay Safi: But the Qur’an does say that.

Mousavi: The outlook of the Qur’an is that all humans should be able to understand the observable reality and live as monotheists without coercion.

Imtiyaz Yusuf: In a discussion of hermeneutics in India a speaker rose and asked, “What harmonium are you talking about?”

Discussant 1: Aisha Musa

What implications do his views have for verses with specific legal ramifications like the prohibition of pork? Does the notion that the wording of the Qur’an is Muhammad’s imply that it is like sunnah?

Mousavi: We also have hadith al-qudsi.

Musa: What is active intellect and divine absolutism? What is the distinction between freedom of conscience and faith?

Mousavi: Freedom of mind is part of the being of the human being.

Discussant 2: Mahmoud Ayoub

The masjid in Hamburg, which Shabestari attended, was neither Sunni nor Shia, belonging to everyone, and even had a Zaidi imam at one point. Once you start from the supposition that religion is feeling (Ger.: “gefuhl”) then you can go in many different directions. The active intellect is not the highest source in the Aristotelian tradition. Fazlur Rahman has argued that it is both God’s word and Muhammad’s. Often God is telling Muhammad what to say, but I am concerned with to what degree is the Qur’an the work of Muhammad, and I accept that “the faithful spirit wrote it down to your heart.” This is about nazûl. We can maybe argue that the Prophet received Qur’an in more than one mode.  Then what do we do with lailat-ul-qadr? I do not accept the classical commentaries, which make no sense. There must be another meaning. Also in surah furqan “We sent it down on a blessed night.” It seems to me most of the Hamburg school took from German scholarship what I call tentativeness. What makes Shias different from Sunnis is the Imamate appointed by God. Calling them learned scholars brings all that into question. It is interesting how the very conservative government in Iran coexists with this radical imamology. I see it as healthy. At least there is talk. Our problem in the Muslim world is that there are some things about which we have not been allowed to talk.

Response by Ahmad Kazemi Mousavi

Generalities and particularities are all terms relating to spoken language, not written language.

Louay Safi: There are other distinctions between the words of the Prophet and the word of God. “On us is the task of collecting it and reciting it.” If you want to know how Muhammad speaks, that is the hadith. Then every word of the Qur’an is free of the choices of Prophet Muhammad. For a long time Muslims were locked into the Greek philosophy, but by the time of Fakhruddin ar-Razi they used the particular and general to do away with the notion of aql al fa’I. The Hegelian idea of absolute knowledge cannot be fit into the Qur’anic view since Hegel sees absolute knowledge as the end of history achieved in the German state.

Mousavi: The presuppositions of Hegel are part of our problem. We are in the West, speaking the English language. Western knowledge affects our presuppositions. Qur’an didn’t say forget about time and space.

Ahmad: I would concede the Qur’an is the word of Muhammad in one sense: that the Spirit dictated to Muhammad words that would be meaningful to him.

Abubaker Al-Shingieti: When I think of the experience of wahiyy, and of the maqsad, and the Qur’an revealed in Arabic, to me the question is wrong. We cannot comprehend the nature of revelation, we can only relate to the Prophet’s accounts of it. Going into the nature of revelation goes into speculation.

Khaleel Muhammad: How do the rest of the Shia ulama view Shabestari?

Mousavi: He is well respected in Iran among the intellectuals. He is unknown by the masses. He was not excommunicated but he dismissed his turban himself in order to avoid persecution by the religious elites.

Ayoub: There is evidence in the Qur’an to speak of a heavenly tablet or source of revelation that is the source of all scripture. God confirms or effaces whatever he wishes because with him is the heavenly book that transcends the earthly Qur’an. Mutazila and Asharites both concluded that God is a speaker above all. It also implies revelation is universal and not limited to a single mode. I think Shabestari is a bit too tentative because of the German influence.

Hisham Altalib: The answer to the question of whose words are the Qur’an is in sura al haqqat: “tanzîlun min rabil`alaamîn.” This is verily the word of an honored messenger sent down ….”

Mousavi: The Message is from Lord of the Worlds, the words are from messenger meaning Muhammad.

Ayoub: I do not go so far as to say the words are from Muhammad, but I say Muhammad is not just a tape recorder.

Safi: This is one of those questions that cannot be answered by taking a single verse. The Qur’an challenges people at a time of the peak of its poetic development to produce even one surah like it.

Ahmad: Based on verses quoted by Hisham Altalib, the messenger may also be Jibril. Also in spoken word vs. written word is the fact that this is “qur’anun karîm fi kitabun maknûn” (56:77-78) significant? It is a recitation in a book rather than a book.

Ayoub: Were the presuppositions Ptolemaic or Babylonian when the Qur’an talks about seven heavens and seven earths? The “True Qur’an” is the Qur’an that is recited. It is authentic and beyond question because it has been transmitted through the centuries without change.  When the Qur’an says Kitâb it is not always talking about a book between two covers. We must think of the Babylonian view of the tablets of destiny or the book of life that somehow enters into our history. We are not talking about a book, but a message.

Mousavi: Shabestari was not a marja, but he is a mujtahid.

Ahmad: Babylonian presuppositions make more sense than Ptolemaic since the reference is to seven heavens rather than nine, but I wouldn’t call that conclusive because I take the “seven” here nit literally, but symbolical, to mean “complete.”

Hisham: But can’t the words “Mountains as pegs” be taken literally?

Ahmad: One can interpret these words in a way consistent with modern science, but I would stop short of saying that is the plain literal meaning of the text.

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
www.minaret.org


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