The Enduring Quest for Meaning — or the Refusal to Accept Clarity
By Naseer Ahmed, New Age Islam
10 October 2025
They Twist Their Tongues With The Book — And Call It Scholarship
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Abstract
Ashrof’s “The Enduring Quest for Meaning in the Muhkamat” endures only because distortionists refuse to accept what the Qur’an itself declares — that the Muhkamat are clear, unambiguous, and require no interpretation. The quest continues not out of reverence, but resistance to clarity. This article distinguishes between meaning and implementation: while divine meaning is fixed and self-evident, implementation allows discretion without twisting the text. Revisiting ʿAli’s exchange with the Khawarij and the Qur’an’s moral principles of moderation, it shows that moral flexibility in Islam arises from faithful application — not interpretive tampering.
1. Meaning Is Not Implementation
Interpretation is often deliberate distortion, and nowhere is this clearer than in how modernists like Ashrof approach the Qur’an. The text says what it says — but the reader wants it to say something else.
Ashrof commits a subtle but fatal confusion: he mixes up meaning with implementation. To make his case, he cites the episode where ʿAli ibn Abi Talib responded to the Khawarij’s slogan, “Inna Al-Ḥukm Li-Llah” (“All rule belongs to God”). The Khawarij were right in phrase but wrong in purpose: they weaponised a true statement for a false cause. ʿAli never suggested that the meaning of the verse was uncertain — only that they were misusing it. He corrected their implementation, not their interpretation.
Meaning belongs to God and is expressed unambiguously in the Muhkamat. Human beings, in applying those meanings, have room for judgment — but not for distortion. To implement prudently is not to reinterpret. The Qur’an’s meaning is immutable; its application can vary. The historical decisions of Muslims in implementation are examples of Ijtihad (discretion), not Ta’wil (reinterpretation).
2. The False Dilemma of Rigidity vs. Flexibility
Ashrof sets up a false dilemma: that to preserve the clarity of the Muhkamat is to be rigid, and to be flexible is to reinterpret. This is a deception dressed up as sophistication. The Qur’an’s clarity does not make its application rigid; it simply anchors it in moral and logical consistency.
Morality, at its core, may be defined as that which promotes the maximum good for both the individual and for society. A society flourishes only when individuals first take reasonable care of themselves before taking care of others — balance, not self-denial, is the moral ideal.
The Qur’an lays down this principle with remarkable clarity:
(7:31) O Children of Adam! Wear your beautiful apparel at every time and place of prayer; eat and drink, but waste not by excess, for Allah loves not the wasters.
(2:215) They ask thee what they should spend (in charity). Say: Whatever ye spend that is good, is for parents and kindred and orphans and those in want and for wayfarers. And whatever ye do that is good, Allah knoweth it well.
(17:29) Make not thy hand tied (like a miser’s) to thy neck, nor stretch it forth to its utmost reach, so that thou become blameworthy and destitute.
The message is simple and profound:
Enjoy Allah’s blessings — eat, drink, wear, and live well — but do not waste. Exercise moderation. Give in charity what is beyond your needs, but neither hoard miserly nor impoverish yourself in the name of generosity.
These verses leave wide room for legitimate variation — differences in lifestyle shaped by culture, environment, and upbringing.
I once read an anecdote that beautifully illustrates this relativity. The author narrated an encounter between two friends, John and Max. Looking out of Max’s office window, John noticed an expensive sports car parked outside and asked whose it was. Max replied, “My son’s.” Later, as they left together in Max’s modest sedan, John remarked on the contrast. Max smiled: “Well, his father is a billionaire; my father was middle-class.”
Was the son wasteful? Perhaps — but Allah recognizes that there cannot be a single standard for all. “Reasonableness” is always relative to means, circumstances, and custom.
The Qur’an affirms this principle explicitly:
(2:241) For divorced women, maintenance (should be provided) on a reasonable scale. This is a duty on the righteous.
(65:7) Let the man of means spend according to his means, and the man whose resources are restricted, let him spend according to what Allah has given him. Allah puts no burden on any soul beyond what He has given it.
“Reasonable” thus needs no juristic definition — it is a moving standard, varying with income, station, and context. The moral principle is constant; the implementation, flexible.
Even in matters of belief, kufr (rejection) is relative to one’s knowledge and conviction. Polytheism, an unforgivable sin for those who know monotheism, cannot be equally unforgivable for those raised in polytheistic traditions; for them, it is condemned not as a faith-crime, but as a deviation from reason.
The Qur’an’s plain moral clarity does not suffocate flexibility; it grounds it in reason.
3. The Fallacy of “The Fallacy of Plain Meaning”
Ashrof claims that “plain meaning” is a fallacy and “literalism” a tyranny. But if plain meaning is a fallacy, then all meaning is. Language itself rests on the assumption that words convey stable sense. If no text can mean what it says, then communication is impossible — not only between man and God, but between man and man.
Why then even write? Why argue? Why publish articles at all — if the words one uses are destined to dissolve into endless ambiguity?
Ashrof’s argument is therefore self-defeating: a philosophy of language that abolishes its own possibility. He saws off the very branch on which he sits.
And what of divine speech? If “plain meaning” is impossible, then either God is incapable of speaking clearly, or humans are incapable of understanding. Both are blasphemous assumptions. The Qur’an affirms the opposite:
“We have made the Qur’an easy to understand and remember; is there any who will take heed?” (54:17)
The problem is not that divine speech is obscure — it is that interpreters will not stop twisting their tongues around it.
4. The Interpreter’s Temptation
Every generation produces those who, dissatisfied with what the Qur’an actually says, claim that “it must mean something deeper.” Their scholarship begins with suspicion — that divine speech cannot be plain. Ashrof’s “enduring quest” is simply the latest form of this suspicion, where clarity is seen as an obstacle to intellectual freedom.
But this is not scholarship; it is rebellion masked as reflection.
The Qur’an anticipated such tendencies:
“As for those in whose hearts is deviation, they follow what is allegorical, seeking discord and seeking their own interpretation.” (3:7)
The verse continues by describing the Muhkamat as “the foundation of the Book.” That foundation exists precisely so that no one may distort divine law while pretending to “reform” it.
When Ashrof argues that the Muhkamat exhibit “semantic flexibility,” he mistakes moral depth for semantic ambiguity. The Qur’an’s moral richness lies in its principles, not in the instability of its language. It speaks plainly — but to those willing to listen plainly.
5. Meaning Is Divine, Implementation Human
To preserve divine clarity does not mean to deny human agency. On the contrary, the Qur’an expects believers to exercise judgment — but always within the moral and semantic boundaries of revelation. Unless a verse binds to strict compliance with the letter and spirit of the law, discretion is permissible in how one implements it.
The historic examples where the Prophet or his companions chose contextually adapted actions are not reinterpretations of the verse, but implementations faithful to its purpose. They show that moral flexibility lies in the realm of practice, not in tampering with meaning.
Thus, the enduring challenge is not to “seek” meaning — the meaning is already clear — but to act upon it sincerely, without manipulating the text to justify our preferences.
6. Conclusion: The Enduring Refusal
The so-called “enduring quest for meaning” is, in truth, an enduring refusal to accept meaning. It is the scholar’s version of the Khawarij’s slogan — a true phrase turned to false purpose. To keep the Qur’an perpetually “open to interpretation” is to keep oneself perpetually safe from obedience.
The Muhkamat do not require new interpreters; they require honest believers. The real task is not to reinterpret divine clarity, but to live it.
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A frequent contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Naseer Ahmed is an independent researcher and Quran-centric thinker whose work bridges faith, reason, and contemporary knowledge systems. Through a method rooted in intra-Quranic analysis and scientific coherence, the author has offered ground-breaking interpretations that challenge traditional dogma while staying firmly within the Quran’s framework.
His work represents a bold, reasoned, and deeply reverent attempt to revive the Quran’s message in a language the modern world can test and trust.
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/debating-islam/enduring-quest-meaning-refusal-clarity/d/137182
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