A Rejoinder to Adis Duderija’s Article: The Concept of Wisdom in the Qur'an

 

By Naseer Ahmed, New Age Islam

14 November 2025

Adis,
Your article The Concept of Wisdom in the Qur'an attempts to stretch Hikmah into an amorphous composite of “wisdom traditions,” late-antique moral discourse, Syriac Christian influences, and pre-Islamic sapiential culture. It reads the Qur’an through an academic filter that treats revelation as a derivative text shaped by its environment.

This approach misrepresents what Hikmah is in the Qur’an and misunderstands its relationship to Kitab. Three clarifications are essential.

1. Hikmah Is Never Independent of Kitab

The Qur’an couples al-Kitab and al-Hikmah 29 times, always within a single theological framework.

“He teaches them the Kitab and the Hikmah.”
(2:129; 2:151; 3:164; 62:2)

The structure is consistent:

• Kitāb = the command
• Hikmah = the reasoning, the moral logic behind the command

Nothing in the Qur’an supports the notion that Hikmah is an autonomous or pre-Islamic reservoir of “natural morality.” It is always contextualised within revelation—not outside it.

Your effort to locate Hikmah in late-antique moral discourse contradicts Qur’anic usage. The Qur’an never treats Hikmah as an independent ethical tradition. It is a dimension of revealed guidance, not a competing source.

2. Luqmān and Ya‘qūb Do Not Support Your Claim

You rely heavily on Luqmān as proof that Hikmah predates revelation or draws from extra-Qur’anic traditions. This is simply incorrect. Luqmān’s counsel—Tawhid, gratitude, humility, moral discipline, accountability—is indistinguishable from Qur’anic teaching.

Exactly the same with Prophet Ya‘qūb advising his sons (2:132–133):

“Do not die except in a state of submission to Allah.”

Nothing in either example suggests a separate moral universe feeding into Islam. The Qur’an uses these exemplars because their teachings are already aligned with divine revelation. The Qur’an confirms wisdom; it does not borrow it.

Your interpretation reverses the epistemic flow:

• You assume external traditions → shape Qur’anic Hikmah.
• The Qur’an asserts divine revelation → affirms universal truths where they exist.

These are opposites.

3. Hikmah Is the “Why,” Not an Alternative “What”

Your article blurs the distinction between:

• the meaning of a command, and
• the wisdom behind it.

The Qur’an issues commands (what to do).
Hikmah illuminates the rationale (why it is right).
Tafsīr articulates that rationale without changing it.

Early scriptures were largely prescriptive:
“Do not lie, steal, kill.” No explanation, no context.

The wisdom behind those norms became clear only through lived experience. Later scriptures, including the Qur’an, contain both:

• the rule, and
• the embedded moral logic—sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit.

A clear example: 4:15–16

The asymmetry is obvious:

• 4:15: Women guilty of Fahishah are confined until death or until “Allah ordains another way.”
• 4:16: Two men committing the same act face a lighter and reform-oriented penalty.

The difference is striking, and the Qur’an offers no explicit rationale. It obliges us to think.

The explanation is straightforward once you drop modern ideological filters:
Female reproductive capacity is limited and biologically irreplaceable. Male virility is not. A small number of males can sustain a population; but a reduction in female fertility has immediate demographic consequences, especially in early societies constantly threatened by war, famine, and disease. Female homosexuality, in that milieu, represented a direct loss of reproductive potential. Male homosexuality, by contrast, had negligible demographic impact.

Thus the harsher censure in 4:15 is tied to evolutionary and civilizational risk, not moral panic. And the verse itself signals that the ruling is provisional—“until Allah ordains another way”—explicitly leaving the door open for revision once survival is not at stake. That naturally brings it in line with 4:16 in later contexts.

This is pure Hikmah:
the why behind the what, derived through logical reflection from the text itself.

Your article avoids such Qur’an-based reasoning, preferring speculative historical parallels.

4. Your Turn to External Wisdom Traditions Is Methodologically Unnecessary

Half your article traces supposed links to:

• Proverbs
• Sirach
• Wisdom of Solomon
• Patristic moral theology
• Syriac Christianity
• Pre-Islamic Arab sages
• Late-antique natural law schools

None of this is grounded in Qur’anic argument. It is imported through secular academic methodology.

The Qur’an itself states:

“This Qur’an is not such as could be produced by anyone besides Allah.” (10:37)

Your approach reverses this claim:

• You treat the Qur’an as a derivative text embedded in late-antique discourse.
• The Qur’an positions itself as the criterion (furqān) that evaluates and corrects earlier discourses.

The two positions are mutually exclusive.

5. Accessibility Is Not Independence

You conclude that Hikmah represents “universally accessible moral insight.”

True—but irrelevant to your claim.

Accessibility does not mean independence.
Being recognisable is not the same as being authored outside revelation.

The Qur’an asserts that humans can recognise truth once revealed—not that they generate it autonomously.

Hikmah is illumination, not rival legislation.

6. The Qur’anic Model, Stated Clearly

• Kitāb: the normative command
• Hikmah: the rationale behind it
• Tafsīr: articulation of that rationale

Hikmah deepens understanding. It does not alter meaning, introduce new norms, or elevate external traditions as co-equal sources.

This is why Luqmān and Ya‘qūb reinforce Qur’anic morality—they do not supply alternative moral grammars.

Your argument confuses the universality of moral truth with the multiplicity of moral sources. These are not the same. The Qur’an accepts the first and rejects the second.

7. The Fundamental Flaw: Secularisation Masquerading as Scholarship

Your article heavily depends on a Western academic framework, including the PhD thesis you cite. That itself reveals the problem.

Modern academic methodology cannot study revelation as revelation.
It must secularise it—treat it as:

• literature,
• historical discourse,
• anthropological artefact,
• intertextual compilation.

Once this assumption is embedded, the conclusions are predetermined:

• The Qur’an becomes an “engagement” with wisdom traditions, not a revelation correcting them.
• It becomes a text shaped by environment, not a text shaping humanity.
• It becomes a synthesis of moral discourses, not the furqān.

This method cannot yield the Qur’anic worldview because it refuses to adopt its epistemology.

Academics may produce citations, linguistic parallels, and historical conjectures—but none of it leads to understanding the Qur’an as guidance. Their method prevents them from hearing the text on its own terms.

This is why such work has no relevance for believers. It studies the Qur’an as an object, not as a command.

Conclusion

Your article expands Hikmah beyond the Qur’anic framework, relies on external traditions the Qur’an neither affirms nor requires, and applies a secular academic approach that predetermines its conclusions. The Qur’anic model is far clearer, far more coherent, and entirely internal:

• Kitab gives the command.
• Hikmah reveals its rationale.
• Tafsīr clarifies without altering.

Everything else—your intertextual parallels, antique wisdom literature, endless external references—is unnecessary scaffolding that distracts from the Qur’an’s own definitions.

The Qur’an does not borrow wisdom traditions.
It judges them.

And Hikmah is not a parallel source of ethics.
It is the illumination of divine command—nothing more, nothing less.

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Naseer Ahmed writes on Qur’anic theology, moral philosophy, and the historical record of Islamic civilisation.

 

URL:   https://www.newageislam.com/debating-islam/adis-duderija-concept-wisdom-quran/d/137632

 

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