Reflections on Jamaat-e-Islami’s Event ‘Turn towards Quran’

By Mohammad Ali, New Age Islam

17 October 2022

Muslim Scholars Must Come Together To Devise A Robust Approach to Understanding the Quran and Spreading Its Teachings in the Contemporary World

Main Points:

1.    In this essay, I offer my views on Jamaat-e-Islami’s recently launched campaign, ‘Turn towards Quran.

2.    This essay criticizes the wishful thinking of Muslim scholars who believe that the simple reading of the Quran can bring about a drastic change in Muslim society.

3.    This essay argues for an alternative, yet rigorous engagement with the Quran.

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The Jamaat-e-Islami Hind conducted an event on October 13, 2022, to inaugurate a ten-day-long countrywide campaign for encouraging people to get close to the Quran. Three scholars were invited to address the gathering, Maulana Sayyid Sharafat Ali Nadvi, Bhopal, Maulana Muhammad Arshad Farooqi, Deoband, and Maulana Zishan Ahmad Misbahi, Allahabad. At the outset of the event, the objectives of the campaign were announced. It was said that the purpose of this campaign was to invite laypeople to read the Quran along with its translations and exegeses so that they could achieve more than a recitational ritual of the Quran. It was insisted that the campaign would approach people and scholars beyond sectarian boundaries, asserting that the Quran is the focal point of the Muslim community. It was also announced that the Quran was entrusted to all people, not just Muslims.

However, it is Muslim’s responsibility to spread its message within and beyond their communities. Even though the idea is noble and can help dilute sectarian differences, this is not an easy task since every sect in India has its own ‘bona fide’ translations and exegeses of the Quran. While the efforts should be appreciated, convincing Indian Muslims across the sects to eschew their sectarian biases in order to join Jamaat-e-Islami’s campaign will require more than just a campaign. I attended the event and in the following paragraphs, I intend to write my observations.

While stating their objectives, the organizers did elaborate on their plans for leading the campaign, but they did not explain what they expected to gain by doing so. Their concerns about organizing such a campaign can be explained by a statement or notion that I found written in a handout that was distributed there.

The statement proposes the idea that until Muslims clung onto the Quran and sought its guidance, they attained glory and dominated the world. But as they abstained from doing so, they started suffering loss and degradation. As much as this notion is captivating and seems to be the solution to the complex question of the decline and downfall of Muslims, and the question of their revival, it is also naïve to think that by only reading the Quran, Muslims can revive their lost glory. It is possible that by reading the Quran, laypeople could obtain a certain level of spirituality. But it requires a robust intellectual system to benefit from the study of the Quran. Muslim religious organizations in India have failed to provide such a system.

With the rise of sectarianism in India, Indian madrasas and religious organizations started developing on sectarian lines. They surrounded themselves with interpretations of the Quran and other scriptures propounded by their founding figures over a century ago. In madrasas and religious circles, students are taught the text accompanied by a pre-described meaning or an interpretation of it. This pedagogy fixates the minds of the students and makes them unable to think beyond those lines.

The interpretations that the students learn in their adolescence teach them that so and so can only be the sole interpretation, hence, discrediting other possible interpretations of the text. Prof. Ebrahim Moosa in his article, Textuality in Muslim Imagination: from authority to metaphoricity, sheds light on the case and explains the consequences of such understanding. He writes, ‘authentic narratives are textual statements, nass (pl: nusus). Nusus in themselves constitute transmitted knowledge. Textuality is limited to the community of users. The relationship of the text with ‘other’ ideological communities and the rest of the world is neither seriously accounted for nor valued in traditional approaches to the text.’ (60) The understanding of the Quran of an ideological community, say, Barelvi, is discredited by the other ideological community, say, Deobandi. This is the result of sectarianism in India.

Another problem with reading the text of the Quran is binding its meaning with the opinions of classical scholars. There is no denying that the opinions of the scholars of the classical period are essential to understand the text. However, that should not be considered to be the end of it, that is, the search for finding the meaning in the text should look for beyond the classical exegetes. Ghazali in his magnum opus, in his Ihyā al-Ulūm, argued for a scientific interpretation of the Quran that should provide guidance to its followers. He chastised those who argued against it and insisted on a literal understanding of the Quran. But, of course, a new interpretation, as he said, must follow a certain set of principles to arrive at its conclusions.

It must also be pointed out that no new interpretation bereft of the current knowledge can be useful. An atomistic reading of the Quran or Sunnah shying away from the modern knowledge traditions will place all the efforts in jeopardy. Therefore, organizations like Jamaat-e-Islami and madrasas should understand that Muslims in the past did not attain civilizational glory by merely reading the Quran. But they did so by making its meanings relevant to their living reality. What we can learn from the previous generations is to take inspiration from the Quran to make it sensible to our own reality. This is the challenge that we face today and in order to answer that, Muslim scholars must come together to devise a robust approach to understanding the Quran and spreading its teachings in the contemporary world.

While I was disappointed at listening to the invited scholars who, I think, were supposed to enlighten the audience with their thoughts on how such a campaign should be led and what they should expect from it. Instead, they, with the exception of Zishan Misbahi, I will come to that later, delivered long sermons emphasizing how much reward one can expect by reading a single word of the Quran. It was frustrating to see some big names on the stage who were unable to express constructive thoughts. The Indian Muslim community has been suffering from defunct leadership and wishful sermons for a long period of time.

In this moment of despair, I believe that there is still hope from the younger generations of Ulama who are capable of steering the Indian Muslims to the right course—a course that cannot be charted by some mindless sermons, but rather by serious thinking. At the event, I found Zishan Misbahi’s address interesting as he quoted Ghazali at length on the levels of studying and contemplating on the Quran. In his speech, Misbahi stressed two points that I think are important in terms of the modern interpretations of the Quran. The first point is to distinguish between the text of the Quran and the understanding of it by a scholar. The text and its understanding cannot be considered equal. It is significant because, as I highlighted earlier, Muslims divided by sects believe that only the understanding of their own groups of Ulama can be regarded as true. Not only do they believe it to be true but also they try to impose it on others. This feeds further into the existing discord. Therefore, in order to free ourselves from sectarian prejudices concerning our approach to the Quran, Misbahi asserted, we need to view the interpretations of the Quran as a probable outcome of the research of a scholar, not as a final product. And if another scholar engages in the study of the Quran or other Islamic texts, it is possible that he can draw different results. Neither of them should be regarded as the final truth. What Muslims should do is to see which of them the best-suited interpretation for them.

Another point that I extracted from Misbahi’s speech is about the abrogation of some of the Quranic verses. The Quran contains several verses dealing with the right to religious freedom, peace, coexistence, etc. These are the values that form the backbone of modern societies. However, the societal system in the past did not allow them to thrive. During the time when the classical interpretations of the Quran took place, several scholars ruled that verses, almost 250, talking about religious freedom, etc., had been abrogated. They cited many reasons, the dominance of Islam and Muslims being one of them. Misbahi argued that modern scholars should evaluate those interpretations afresh and contend with their validity.For example, verses 2:256 and 109:6 had been considered abrogated. But Misbahi maintains that such interpretations hold no authority today.

There is an academic approach, called hermeneutical historicism, which analyses a text within its historical context. It poses a set of questions to determine why the text was written. But I do not think that Misbahi was thinking in a historicist framework. He did say that those interpretations of the Quran were developed at a time when Muslims were dominating the world and that is why these interpretations demonstrate a sense of confidence and self-glorification. But as that is no longer the case, he said it would be more appropriate if we adopt the lesser or subsidiary opinion regarding the issue of abrogation of those verses.  This approach would indeed solve many problems such as the charge of the death penalty against apostasy, but this is not a permanent solution. Misbahi's approach asks for cherry-picking the subsidiary opinions of classical scholars. If the condition reverses, the same approach would allow scholars to revive the discarded mainstream position on the issue of abrogation.

Teaching laypeople the Quran and urging them to read it with translations, or choosing one opinion of the classical scholars over the other can be helpful, but for now. But Muslims should also focus on developing intellectual tools that help them translate the message of the Quran as per their own living conditions.

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Mohammad Ali has been a madrasa student. He has also participated in a three-year program of the “Madrasa Discourses,” a program for madrasa graduates initiated by the University of Notre Dame, USA. Currently, he is a Ph.D. Scholar at the Department of Islamic Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. His areas of interest include Muslim intellectual history, Muslim philosophy, Ilm-al-Kalam, Muslim sectarian conflicts, and madrasa discourses.

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