the qur'anic hermeneutic of nasr hamid abu zayd

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Department of Letters and Philosophy

Western interpretation and Qur’anic Hermeneutics in the thought of N.H. Abu Zayd

Maria Elena Gottarelli

A.Y. 2013-2014

Index

1 Why Qur’anic hermeneutics? 1

2 N.H. Abu Zayd 3

2.1 A lifetime with Islam ..................................................................................................... 3

2.2 N.H. Abu Zayd’s theoretical innovation ........................................................................ 6

2.2.1 Historic contextualization and linguistic analysis ............................................. 6

2.2.2 Dialogic dimension ........................................................................................... 9

3 The Qur’an and Islam 18

3.1 Different interpretations of the Qur’an ........................................................................... 18

3.2 The two dimensions of the Qur’an ................................................................................. 24

4 Western hermeneutics and the Qur’an 32

4.1 Outlines of hermeneutics, a brief history ....................................................................... 32

4.2 N.H. Abu Zayd reads H.G. Gadamer ............................................................................. 37

4.3 N.H. Abu Zayd reads P. Ricoeur .................................................................................... 47

5 Annexes and final considerations 54

5.1 Theoretical considerations: N.H. Abu Zayd and hermeneutics, criticisms ................... 54

5.2 Political considerations: A world without rules ............................................................ 58

6 Conclusion 65

3

7 Bibliography 66

7.1 Works by N.H. Abu Zayd .............................................................................................. 66

7.2 Further sources ............................................................................................................... 66

7.3 Critical literature ............................................................................................................ 67

4

1 Why Qur’anic hermeneutics?

This research will highlight one man’s attempt to go against the predominant ideas within the

historical and cultural context he lived in. Qur’anic hermeneutics may perhaps appear to be a bizarre

expression even in the eyes of certain “experts” in the ambit of Arabic and Islamic studies, yet it

actually represents a thought trend which was born very early on in Muslim culture and found, with

N.H Abu Zayd, a new formulation, one that is more mature and interesting for inhabitants of the

opposite geographic longitude, the western one. This theory can be interpreted as the transposition of

a typically western matrix within a foreign terrain, i.e. Arabic and Muslim culture.

With his Qur’anic hermeneutics proposal, Abu Zayd challenged the closed and obscurantist

mentality which had (and still has) such great relevance in his historical and geographic context, and

offered a different – although not entirely new – conception of his culture and of its fundamental

text, the Qur’an. According to this theory, the Holy Book of Islam can and should be the object of

in-depth scientific and linguistic studies, given that it appeared in a specific historical period and

was determined by the period in question, on both a cultural and linguistic level. Thus, Abu Zayd

claims that the Qur’an should no longer be studied only by theologians and jurists, who very often have

no other goal than to manipulate it according to their aims. The idea of a literal understanding of the

Qur’an, or of parts of it, should be abandoned, as it is void of scientific and philosophical

foundation. By making use of the powerful linguistic and historical tools he had acquired by studying

western hermeneutics, Abu Zayd formulated the thesis that was to be the origin of all his misfortunes,

as well as of his fully deserved fame: the thesis of the Qur’an’s historicity. I will analyze this aspect

in detail over the course of the chapters of this work. For the moment, suffice it to say that it was on

this historicity – and thus, in a certain sense, on this situational nature – of the Qur’an that the

Egyptian philosopher based the legitimacy of an application of interpretation to the Holy Text,

which, precisely due to its nature as a text, demands to be understood, interpreted. But interpretation

– and this is the fundamental contribution of hermeneutics – does not lead to subjectivism and

relativism, which would be contrary to any conception of Holy Texts, but rather to the

1

2 CHAPTER 1. WHY QUR’ANIC HERMENEUTICS ?

formation of a new type of Truth, one that is historical and protean, yet no less convincing. In

hermeneutics (as we will see further on), Truth does not derive from the author’s mere intention, nor is

it deposited between the lines of a book, ready to be comprehended: on the contrary, it is to be found in

the different forms of interpretation of the text and it is born from the meeting between the sender and

the receiver of the message. Therefore interpretation is the unavoidable path toward any Truth. And

further still, no Truth can be achieved without interpretation.

In analyzing the themes I have so far only hinted at, I will first of all observe the contributions

which Abu Zayd’s hermeneutic approach has made to Qur’anic studies: we will therefore see how

Abu Zayd’s theoretical innovation mainly develops in two directions, the former aiming to achieve a

historical and linguistic conception of the Qur’an and the latter regarding its consideration as a

“discourse” rather than a “text”. The first chapter of this work is dedicated to an analysis of these

aspects. In the second chapter I will address the Qur’an in Abu Zayd’s specific conception of the text;

thus, a first section dedicated to the various interpretations of the Book within Muslim history will

precede a second section focused on the two dimensions of the Qur’an in the thought of N.H. Abu

Zayd. The question of the relation between the universal and the particular will emerge in this

context, leading us to the threshold of hermeneutics. The third chapter is dedicated to this field of

studies: after brief references to the history of the discipline, I will construct a double comparison,

first between Abu Zayd and Gadamer, and then between Abu Zayd and Ricoeur.

The fourth chapter is dedicated to final considerations, from both a theoretical and political point

of view; we will therefore also be able to listen to the voices of Abu Zayd’s opponents (due to

length restrictions, I have selected only two from the vast range offered by critics of the author)

and to address the urgent needs of the current political situation.

Naturally, first of all, I intend to narrate the life of this Egyptian polygraph philosopher.

2 N.H. Abu Zayd

2.1 A lifetime with Islam

Our narration of the life of N.H. Abu Zayd will refer to the text Una vita con l'Islam1, edited by

Navid Kermani. In this work, Abu Zayd revisits the main phases of his existence, from birth to his

painful years of exile in the Netherlands. The first and most striking element in this series of

accounts is the openness of the narration, the light-hearted and not once sarcastic irony through

which this Egyptian thinker relates even the darkest moments of his life.

N.H. Abu Zayd was born in a small village on the delta of the Nile called Quhafa, located

between Cairo and Alexandria. His date of birth is set approximately as July 10th 1943; the

uncertainty derives from the fact that, at the time, in order to register the birth of a child, parents

would have to travel to the regional capital and register the census. However, when families lived in

a village such as Zayd’s, and the cost of transport was so high, they would always wait a few days

before starting to travel: if the child was to die prematurely, they would therefore avoid a useless

journey; this is why, once they had reached their destination, parents could often no longer

remember the exact birthdate of their child. During the first years of his life, Abu Zayd learnt to

understand the reality of his village; he attended the local Qur’anic school, the kuttab, where students

learnt the Qur’an and the alphabet by heart. Abu Zayd fell in love with the Qur’an very early on, by

observing his mother during her prayers at home, and proved to be a model student at school. At the

age of eight, he was already capable of reciting the entire Qur’an by heart.

At the age of fourteen he lost his father. Concerning this experience, Abu Zayd said very little,

limiting his account to the fact that

1 N.H. Abu Zayd, Una vita con l'Islam, Ed, II Mulino, Milan, 2004

3

4 CAPITOLO 2. N.H. ABU ZAYD

When my father died, I did not cry. I lost my voice. 2

When the time came to leave the kuttab, Abu Zayd enjoyed the privilege of being allowed to

continue his studies in a Christian school. Having become more mature, and feeling to urge to

participate in the contemporary political situation, he sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood,

frequented Marxist circles and began to write poetry. At the time, he was also employed in the field

of radio communications.

I was thrilled by the idea that all men, young and old, poor and rich, were the same. I

found it incredible to be allowed to address the headmaster as “brother”. Furthermore, I

never heard the Muslim Brothers I met in the village speak badly of Christians or other

religious communities. They were only angry with colonialists3

In 1961, Abu Zayd travelled to Cairo for the first time

For people coming from a village, Cairo is immense, an octopus, a frightening

monster.4

A few years later, he finally fulfilled his dream of enrolling in the University of Cairo, where he

initially chose to study Letters. However, he soon realized that within this discipline he would never

be allowed to study the Qur’an freely, a need he was beginning to feel as increasingly profound;

thus, after obtaining his three-year degree, he decided to re-direct his studies and chose rhetoric as

main discipline. The title of his dissertation was The Qur’anic metaphor in the Mutatila, which,

besides being his Masters’ thesis, was also his first intellectual work. The elaboration of this text

was very important for the development of Abu Zayd’s thought, given that it was in this occasion

that he first realized that

2 Ibidem, p.31 3 Ibidem, p.58 4 Ibidem, p.103

2.1. A LIFETIME WITH ISLAM 5

The Qur’an had become the scenario for a political and social battle, led with the

weaponry of theology, i.e. with concepts, definitions, dogmas.5

In 1977, the political and social crisis due to the "bread riots" also caused a crisis in Abu Zayd’s

life: he felt constrained in an anguishing reality which no longer allowed him to continue in his

studies. He therefore managed to obtain a scholarship in the United States, from the University

of Philadelphia, where he was to study ethnography and the methods of empirical research. This

is the moment in which Abu Zayd first discovered the great classics of contemporary western

hermeneutics, above all Truth and Method by H.G. Gadamer.

Having returned to Egypt in 1989, with noticeably enriched cultural and epistemological

expertise, he returned to teaching, an activity he had already practiced before leaving, although he

had never obtained his own chair; the first few years were happy ones for the Egyptian philosopher

who however soon realized that, during his absence, things had changed and that the wind of

Islamism had become far stronger than before in the delta of the Nile; at the threshold of 1993, he

was accused of heresy. His (and his ideas’) accusers were to be found in the multitude of

traditionalists, dogmatists and filo-Islamists whose ranks were increasing on a daily basis, due to

the historical and cultural situation. Thus began in Abu Zayd’s life a sad period, one that was

destined to last for the rest of his existence. Yet this is also the time when Abu Zayd met the woman

who would become his second wife and the sole love of his life, Ibtihal. After marrying, the couple

immediately had to start battling against the many injurious accusations against Abu Zayd. Things

worsened after the report written by a prestigious Cairo University professor, 'Abd as-Sabur Shahin,

who declared that the entire thought and body of work by Abu Zayd were anti-religious and

unacceptable; as a consequence of this report, Abu Zayd was denied the chair he had requested for the

following year. This irretrievably compromised his university career, besides undermining his

authority in the eyes of the students. During those difficult years, Abu Zayd was forced to suffer the

consequences of the decline of the Egyptian university system, which was falling to its lowest points.

When he was almost unable to carry out his profession any longer, he discovered that – unbeknown

to him – the tribunal had instituted a 5 Ibidem, p.123

6 CHAPTER 2 N.H. ABU ZAYD

trial against him to promote a compulsory divorce between himself and Ibtihal. The accusation’s thesis

was that Abu Zayd, as an apostate and thus non-Muslim, had no right to remain married to a Muslim

woman according to Egyptian laws. This travesty forced Abu Zayd and Ibtihal to abandon Egypt. The

last chapter of Abu Zayd’s biography is entitled "Exile is a non-place" and describes, in melancholic

tones, the Egyptian philosopher’s ambivalent feelings for his homeland, which he felt had fed him

but later betrayed him, and which he could never stop loving, despite all that had happened. Abu

Zayd spent his last years teaching in the University of Leida, in the Netherlands, where he certainly

had pleasant times with his beloved books and new students, with whom he was always available

and open-minded to the point of resembling a father-figure. He died on July 5th 2010, having never

returned to his country. I would like to conclude this paragraph by quoting a phrase by Abu Zayd to

explain his alleged “atheism”

There is something within me, it makes no difference if one calls it certainty or light of

God, and every great work of art such as a film, a painting, a musical composition, a

poem or a story makes me feel it even more strongly, and makes me remark: "La ilaha

illa-Ilah - Allahu akbar" - "There is no God but God - God is the greatest!"6

2.2 N.H. Abu Zayd’s theoretical innovation

2.2.1 Historical contextualization and linguistic analysis

In the first pages of a collection of essays written by Abu Zayd and entitled Islam and history7, we can

read these words by the Egyptian author:

That which a given culture perceives as absolute truth, is not absolute if not in relation

with that same culture. The goal of scientific research, in particular in the

6 Ibidem, p.216 7 N.H.Abu Zayd, Islam e storia, critica del discorso religioso, Ed. Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 2002

2.2. N.H. ABU ZAYD’S THEORETICAL INNOVATION 7

anthropological field, does not consist of an attitude of affirmation or refusal, but of an analysis of data conducted within its same cultural ambit.8

The need to study a text, any text, from a historical and linguistic point of view, should surprise no

one. This is where the problem of interpretation, one of the central items of this study, finds its vital

source and inspiration, this clear need is what gives birth to both exegesis and hermeneutics.

However, at the heart of this apparently innocent statement (the need to study and interpret texts)

hides a snare which will serve as stimuli for my research. What happens when we are no longer

referring to a literary text, but to the particular type of texts that represent the Revealed Truth of

monotheistic religions? The question is poignant. What is the relation between culture and

religions? Which one is the product of the other? Finally, how should we interpret the entrance of

the Absolute upon the stages of history? All these queries have been part of cultures and nations ever

since the birth of monotheistic faiths, with their specific holy texts and consequent claims of

absoluteness with regards to other religions. Arabic and Muslim culture, however, is particularly

interesting on this level because, in its conception of the text and of objectivity, it poses unprecedented

questions.

The innovative force of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd’s position cannot be understood without knowledge

of the premises of Muslim faith. Among these, one of the most striking is the principle of the eternity

of the Qur’an and of its co-eternity with regards to God. Because it is the Word of God, it represents

an attribute of his, and is therefore part of his Essence. This first statement is followed by the theses

of the insuperability of the Qur’an and of the need to follow its teachings to the letter in light of

their divine statute. This point of view has become so predominant in the Islamic world that the

community of believers has forgotten that it is in itself no more than an interpretation of the Holy

Text of Islam. Abu Zayd, in turn, assumes a very different position. First of all, he supports a thesis

that could be defined as formativeness of the Qur’an, with reference to Pareyson: the Qur’an is

undoubtedly an original text, yet it still remains a text, which is both the product of a culture

(specifically the Arabic culture of the VII century) and the producer of unprecedented cultural

forms. According to Abu Zayd, the holy text therefore enters its cultural environment so

8 Ibidem, p.23


profoundly that it carries the strength to modify it. Our philosopher is convinced that this does not

contrast, in any way, with the assumption that the Qur’an originates from God, as it simply

indicates God’s choice to speak to man in human terms, thus in history and time. This thesis is

demonstrated by the very structure of the Qur’an, which – first of all – is written in Arab, a

human language, and secondly narrates events of specific communities which existed in Meccan

environments during the VII century, the century in which the Qur’an itself was formed. Stating

that the Qur’an responds to the needs of a certain culture and time is not scandalous, in Abu

Zayd’s opinion, but simply truthful; nor is it strange that its responses are adequate for the

mentality of that time; how could its recipients have understood it otherwise? What is strange,

on the other hand, is that this has impeded modern and contemporary theologians and jurists

from interpreting the text in new ways, adequate for the changing historical circumstances.

Independently from each person’s beliefs, historical background explains why

Islam was founded specifically in that moment and in that region. Indeed it offered

an answer to the Arabs’ insistent questions concerning economic, political, social

and religious arguments.9

These initial considerations by Abu Zayd immediately reveal his double formation, Arabic and

Muslim yet open to western currents of the contemporary theory of interpretation. In particular, it is

interesting to observe how Abu Zayd appears to solve quite seamlessly (although with some

shortcomings, as we will see further on) the question of the relation between the universal and the

particular in history. The universal – in ways that will become clearer further on – is considered no

more than a historical truth, and cannot be conceived if not within the history of effect (paraphrasing

Gadamer), i.e. in that process which leads to a temporal event being continually reformulated by the

meanings assigned to it by its various interpretations. In the same way, the Qur’an is treated as both

an epistemological and spiritual device, in which the complementary concepts of text and culture

compensate each other. In simpler words, the Qur’an is, in Abu Zayd’s thought, the final fundament

of a culture, the Arabic and Muslim one, but as a fundament it is 9 Ibidem, p.25


not accessible in its integral form. Paradoxically, Abu Zayd thinks that the fundamentalist literalism of

the ulemas represents a profound lack of respect towards Islam, because it monopolizes that which,

per definition, cannot be monopolized: the interpretation of the Truth. 2.2.2 Dialogic dimension Another important aspect of Abu Zayd’s thought, one that furthermore is strongly indicative of its

evolution and of its essence as a thought in progress, regards the dialogic dimension of the Qur’an.

If in Islam and history the Egyptian thinker essentially treated the Qur’an as a text, founding his

reflections on the premise that the Qur’an fully corresponds to this definition, in a later essay10 he

changed his register and began supporting the need for Qur’anic studies to shift from a textual

conception to a dialogic and discursive dimension. Only by considering the Qur’an as a discourse

can we truly understand it, thus avoiding the ideological and political manipulations which have

characterized a large part of Muslim history

Therefore, first of all, Abu Zayd enlightens readers with regards to the transmission modalities

of the Qur’an, which was not issued in written form until the dawn of the third generation of

caliphs, for almost entirely political reasons. During the whole previous period, a chronological

arc that lasted circa one century, the Qur’an was passed on in oral form and memorized. During

this period it was passed on through recitation, to the extent that the root of al-Qur'an means oral

recitation. Thus, in its origins, the Qur’an appeared as a progressive revelation, inspired by God and

passed on by one man to his followers, who in turn were to pass it on to their kin. This progressive

revelation, which took place over the course of 23 years, slowly manifested as a collection of

discourses, which Muhammad reported and which sometimes consisted of generic exhortations,

while in other occasions they responded to specific questions posed by the Meccan community, first,

and the Medinese one, later. This collection of discourses then flowed into the single discourse now

known as the Qur’anic text, whose parts were grouped together and organized after the demise of the

Prophet, according to an order based on the length of the Suras rather than on chronological

elements. Once it became an actual text under the caliphate of Uthman,

10 N.H.Abu Zayd, Rethinking the Qur'an: Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics. Utrecht: Humanistics University Press, 2004; Italian translation by P.Branca and M.Campanini, Utrecht, 2004


the Qur’an was often used during political disputes, and quite commonly verses were used to defeat

adversaries, often through a distortion of their sense. However, according to Abu Zayd, this

approach transforms the Muslim community’s Text par excellence into a collection of legalistic

norms. If we add to this the disarming pretension of considering those same norms as valid 14

centuries later, and within a completely different historical and cultural context, the damage is

integral. The following are Abu Zayd’s exact words, which I find far more expressive than any

further reflection on my part:

It is not enough to invoke modern hermeneutics for the purpose of justifying the

historicity, and therefore relativity, of all types of understanding [...] These defective

approaches produce hermeneutics that are either polemic or apologetic. In other words,

treating the Qur’an as a text, and as a text alone, always gives birth to totalitarian or

authoritarian interpretations which share the pretension of being able to achieve absolute

truth. Any new approach to the Qur’an (both from an academic point of view and in

terms of daily life interactions with the Text) which does not start from a

reconsideration of its basic nature as alive – given that it is a ‘discourse’ – will be

unable to produce a democratic interpretation.11

Undoubtedly, Abu Zayd’s hermeneutic approach can be observed also in this case: following

in Gadamer’s trails, when raising questions concerning the nature of Truth, he founds the

objectivity of knowledge on its inter-subjectivity. Discourse is, in its inmost dialectics,

intrinsically inter-subjective and gives birth to a gnosiological approach that is very different

than classic intentionality, which reproduces itself in a finished and Cartesian subject oriented

towards a transparent, clear and distinct object. On the contrary, in the typically discursive and

dialectic perspective of hermeneutics, the definitions of knowing subject and known object are

complementary and, we could say, the polarities should be observed together, specified in a

process which is as long as the History of mankind. By founding Muslim society on the

Qur’anic text and by transporting the text’s vision into a dialogic dimension – characterized

by its inter-subjective nature – not only does Abu Zayd revolutionize the common way in

which we are used to addressing the Arabic and Muslim society,

11 Ibidem, pag.147


he also takes a noteworthy step against fundamentalisms. A discursive and dialogic interpretation of

the Qur’an is indeed faithful to the universalistic pretension of this text, which, despite having been

written and passed on in Arab language and the fact that it mainly addresses Muslims, demands to be

valid for all men, regardless of their time and of their ethnicity. On the basis of this thesis, together

with Gadamer’s reflections – which I will explore in depth further on – it is possible to found the

objectivity of the Qur’an precisely on its inter-subjectivity. The Qur’an’s universalistic pretension

informs us that the validity of its norms cannot be based on a single (as well as arbitrary)

interpretation, but should be based on the fact that those norms can be extended to all men.

Discursive participation, therefore, is not an accessory element of the Qur’an, but characterizes its

inmost nature. Given that – as we have observed – the dialogic and discursive nature of the Qur’an

represents a moment of capital importance for the thought of Abu Zayd, as it founds the objectivity

of the Qur’anic norms on their inter-subjectivity, we need to analyze the location in which this

thesis was developed and discussed. In his essay Rethinking the Qur'an: Towards a Humanistic

Hermeneutics, Abu Zayd exposes his vision of the Qur’an as a discourse, proving its polyphonic

nature. By referring to M. Arkoun (who had also inspired P. Ricoeur), Abu Zayd recognizes in the

Qur’an a unit of grammatical structures within a communicative field constituted by:

• I (the speaker)

• you -singular (the messenger)

• you -plural (the community of believers, sometimes non-believers – both Meccan pagans and

Jews or Christians)12

these grammatical voices, as Abu Zayd calls them, are the protagonists of the Qur’anic discourse

and usually correspond to:

• God : first person

• Muhammad : second person

• community: third person.

12 Ibidem, p.153


However, Abu Zayd tells us that, just as in any authentic multi-voice dialogue, these roles may

interchange, and thus sometimes the I/speaker is Muhammad, or the community of believers speaking

to God who therefore becomes the second singular person You. This is the case in the opening Sura

of the Qur’an, al-Fatiha, which has a capital degree of importance within Muslim prayer (the

believer pronounces it no less than 17 times per day).

It is interesting to observe how the recitation of the al-Fatiha Sura in prayer can be

considered as an invocation asking God to answer. Here the word of God, the Qur’an, is

the word of man addressing God, who therefore becomes the recipient of a discourse he

answers within a dialogic dynamic which can, in its own right, be considered proof of the

‘discursive’ nature of the Qur’an.13

This interchangeability of the parts and this plasticity, both typical of the Qur’anic discourse, can also

be found in the fact that the dialogue is not always the same as itself but, just as in reality, changes

according to circumstances and manifests itself, in different moments, as a form of asking, answering,

exhorting, admonishing and so on. The example reported by Abu Zayd for the purpose of proving that

the dialogic nature of the Qur’an is not an invention, is an eloquent one. It concerns the well-known

episode in which God admonishes Muhammad just like a disappointed father would do with his son.

The occasion is the meeting between the Prophet and a group of rich and influent Qurayshites, for

the purpose of gaining their support and making them into allies for the Community of believers.

Too taken by this meeting, Muhammad fails to pay attention to a blind man who has come to ask for

his advice. The Qur’an addresses very harsh words to the Prophet due to this shortcoming. The

severity of God’s judgment towards Muhammad’s action is reflected in the use of the third person,

used by God to place a wall between himself and his prophet, and thus to show his disdainful

detachment:

He frowned and turned away his face

Because there came to him the blind man.

But what would make you perceive that perhaps he might be purified

13 Ibidem, p.157


Or be reminded and the remembrance would benefit him?

The reproach-filled interrogation then transforms into a direct reprimand, tracing a comparison

between those who approach the Prophet seeking knowledge and those who do so out of

haughtiness:

As for he who thinks himself without need,

to him you give attention,

and not upon you (is any blame) if he will not be purified,

but as for he who came to you striving and fearful

from him you are distracted. (Q. 80: 1-10)

The dialogic dimension of the Qur’an is not limited to its internal structure, but concerns also the

relation the text institutes with external reality. Let us therefore analyze in detail the modalities via

which the Qur’an institutes a discourse with the “Other than Itself”.

(A) WITH POLYTHEISTS14

In the relation with polytheists, the only existing dialogue is the one between the divine I and the

You/Muhammad and his community (or vice versa). The Qur’an allows no negotiation with

polytheists, while God is very clear when he refers to idolaters as “Disbelievers”. The Sura al-Ikhlas

includes the following divine order:

Say: O disbelievers, I do not worship what you worship, nor are you worshippers of

what I worship, nor will I be a worshipper of what you worship, nor will you be

worshippers of what I worship. For you is your religion, and for me is my religion.

(Q.109, Sura of the "Disbelievers")

Thus, the attitude towards polytheists allows for no dialogue/negotiation but, on the contrary,

promotes a closure and distancing which are constantly reaffirmed in the Qur’an by

14 Ibidem


the oppositions "you will not... and I will not...". At most, the only possible form of “dialogue”

with polytheists is a dispute which may, for example, give way to certain important theses of

Muslim tradition such as the one concerning the inimitability of the Qur’an.

(B) WITH BELIEVERS (or People of the Book)15

This other form, or rather other type, of dialogue-dispute regards the relation with believers and

follows the scheme of the question: "You will be asked..." in order to multiply the occasions for

replying: on wine and the maysir (Q. 2: 219), on orphans (Q. 2: 222), on food (Q. 5: 3) etc. Thus,

the dialogue with the People of the Book (Christians and Jews), differently than the one with

polytheists, is characterized by negotiation in reciprocal difference. Indeed, we must keep in mind

that the Muslim religion was born within the Jewish and Christian cultural humus and that it had to

confront these two great traditions ever since its birth. The affinity between Islam and

Judaism/Christianity is so deep that the former does not take a position of clear contrast regarding

the latters, but rather envisions itself their completion and confirmation. Jewish and Christian

prophets are the prophets of Islam, which, according to Muslims, carries the message already

divulged by the Torah and by the Gospels, but in its final form. On a historical and political level

this attitude is clear: born in the VII century in a territory where the influence of the two great

monotheisms was strongly rooted (the Arabic peninsula), Islam had to refer, in certain aspects, to

both these traditions. It is true that the Bedouins of Arabia had a rather vague and indefinite

knowledge of Judaism and Christianity, which derived from their commerce travels along the routes

connecting East and West. Here is where Christian monks (probably heretic and fugitive ones) could

meet Bedouin caravans and, in front of a fire and some warm wine, would share stories about Jesus,

his mother Myriam and many others. From a historical point of view, these elements of koinè had a

profound impact on the birth of the Muslim religion and this aspect should always be kept in mind

when we study religions or simply come across certain disquieting journalistic banners: in the end,

we are not disquieted by the Muslims’ diversity, but by their similarity to us.

15 Ibidem, p.161


(B1) THE DIALOGUE WITH CHRISTIANS: FROM NEGOTIATION TO DISPUTE16

A dialogue with Christians and seeking their recognition were, at the time of Muhammad, quite

frequent things. Keeping in mind the personal story of the Prophet, we cannot forget how, during

the period of the first apparitions of the Angel, having become convinced that he was going insane,

he had asked for advice from Waraqa Ibn Nawfal, a Christian priest whose opinion was held in great

consideration by Khadija, Muhammad’s first and beloved wife. And therefore the first recognition

Muhammad received came precisely from this Christian priest. This fact is strongly indicative of the

original relation Islam instituted with “the other who is us”. Suffice it to say that the first credit sought

out by Muhammad was not from a member of his community, but from someone belonging to a

different set of beliefs than the one for which Muhammad would become the main spokesman shortly

after. And it is also important to note how Ibn Nawfal, in turn, granted Muhammad such credit. On

the other hand Islam, at the beginning, showed a degree of wisdom and foresight it would now

appear to have forgotten in many of its manifestations; thus, it was able to recognize the

unavoidability of a discussion in its attempt to promulgate a universal message. However, we

must highlight that this discussion with Christianity was not always solved in terms of pacific

negotiation. Other cases exist, in which the outcome resulted in a dispute or even a conflict.

There is no agreement between the two traditions concerning the human-divine nature of Christ.

Islam is well-disposed with regards to assigning a prominent role to Jesus within the Book, yet his

nature, although perfect, is not accepted as divine. Last of the Prophets before Muhammad and

therefore a figure much beloved by God and all believers, he is however considered no more than a

man. Alongside his double nature, Muslims also deny that he was crucified and that he resuscitated,

and believe that he was instead substituted on the Cross by a lookalike. These divergences from

Christianity derive from the firmness with which Islam declares the uniqueness of God (tawhid),

constantly reaffirmed within the entire Qur’an and especially in the opening verses. The un-

negotiable question – concerning the divinity of the Messiah and his being the son of God – makes

it possible to attribute the denomination “polytheists” to Christians.

(B2) THE DIALOGUE WITH JEWS: FROM NEGOTIATION AND DISPUTE

16 Ivi, pag.173


TO WAR17

As observed previously, early Islam tried to build a dialogue with its Jewish and Christian

“neighbors”. However, if the relation with Christians, with the exclusion of rare exceptions,

was not characterized by major conflicts, with regards to Jews things immediately proved to be

more complex. During his peregrinations and his campaigns, Muhammad had always sought to

open a breach within the firm monotheistic traditions of Arabia, to the extent that his journey to

Yatrib was motivated by the impossibility for him to continue living in close contact with the

aggressive Qurayshite tribes, which were making life increasingly difficult for the Muslims. For the

Prophet, this pilgrimage was therefore the occasion for a new start in a new land, where

monotheistic tradition was already firmly rooted. Initially things seemed to go for the better and

the dialogue, much craved by the Muslims, appeared to be possible. The "pact" or "constitution of

Medina” implied a sort of “equality and reciprocal recognition” between the newly arrived people –

the Muslims – and the sedentary tribes consisting of polytheists and, above all, Jews.

The framework of this equality included freedom for everyone to practice their own cult,

a fact which paved the way to agreeing that all the parts involved would support one

another to defend Medina against attacks from any internal enemy.18

Thus, when the Muslims arrived in Medina, it was natural for them to integrate within their tradition

and rituals certain practices that were typical of Jews, such as the direction of prayer (qibla) towards

Jerusalem. One could have expected Muhammad’s preaching to be favorably welcomed by Jews,

also in light of undeniably similar elements between the two traditions, above all concerning the

Uniqueness of God (tawhid). However, these expectations did not come true and what began was

instead a dispute which slowly turned into a war. According to Abu Zayd, who in this case is faithful

to the most credited Muslim historiography,

It is possible to say that the modification of the direction of the qibla from the Holy Home

[Jerusalem] to the Mecca represents the first explicit moment of distinction and separation.

17 Ibidem, p. 183 18 Ibidem


despite the fact that, before the outburst of the armed conflict, there were many

occasions in which [the Qur’anic discourse] limited itself to “remembering” God’s

benefits in favor of Jews, benefits they now denied.19

Overlooking aspects that are excessively sectorial for this work, what we need to note is the

contribution made by Abu Zayd to Qur’anic hermeneutics. The theoretical innovation by this author

consists, in my opinion, in the two factors I underlined: historical contextualization and linguistic

analysis with regards to the Qur’an as a text, identification of the particular dialogic structures

within the Qur’an with regards to its interpretation as a discourse. I believe these are the founding

aspects of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd’s Qur’anic hermeneutics, at least with regards to the sources I was

able to consult.

19 Ivi, pag. 185

3 The Qur’an and Islam

3.1 Different interpretations of the Qur’an

We have observed how, in Abu Zayd’s thought, the interpretation of the Qur’an solely as a text is

not considered beneficial because it leads to the literalist deviations that are typical of both

theological and juridical schools contemporary to the thinker. From an integral examination of Abu

Zayd’s work we have learnt that the Qur’an is indeed a text – and as such, analyzable on a

historical and linguistic level – yet it is never only a text, given its evolution and late literal

transposal; thus the inmost nature of the Qur’an is discursive and dialogic.

I believe this second aspect, more than the former, determines the applicability of more

contemporary western hermeneutics to Qur’anic studies (as demonstrated by H.G. Gadamer’s

appreciation of Platonic dialectics and his belief that Truth can only be found within a circle

instituted by a concise game of questions/answers). In the afore-quoted contribution by Abu Zayd,

part of a vaster speech held in Utrecht on May 27th 2004, and later published under the title

Rethinking the Qur'an: Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics, the Egyptian philosopher recalls the

history of the literalist interpretation of the Qur’an from its most ancient origins, and shows how and

why it developed, for which purposes and what its consequences were. This reconstruction is useful

if we wish to understand the double nature of the Qur’an in Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd’s thought, the

subject of the next section of my work.

The origins of the problem lie in the well-known battle fought in 657 at Siffin between the

cousin of Muhammad Ali, at the time fourth caliph, and the tribes which opposed him - supported

also by the young wife of the Prophet Aisha - who claimed their right to the caliphate, which they

had been usurped of, in their opinion, by Ali. As we know,

the battle was going in Ali’s favor, when 'Amr son of al-'As advised his ally

18

3.1. DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS OF THE QUR’AN 19

Mu' awiya to order his soldiers to lift copies of the Qur’an on the tip of their swords.

This was not a sign of surrender, but an invitation to solve the dispute by consulting the

Holy Text. The fighters, worn out at that point of the battle, ended the clash. Incited by

his allies, Ali accepted Mu' awiya’s proposal and to nominate, among those who had

remained neutral between the two factions, an arbiter to represent him. Ali’s supporters

were totally convinced of his good right to the title of caliph and the ones who knew the

Qur’an better were among those most fervently advising Ali to accept the arbitrate. The

two representatives of the contenders were to consult the entire text of the Qur’an in

search of a solution.20

Pretty soon, however, not finding a single applicable verse within the Qur’an, Ali realized his

mistake and decided to take up battle once more, convinced that this was the only way God’s will

would be fulfilled. The rival army, now in a position of advantage, ended up winning and obtained

power by defeating Ali and moving the Muslim Capital far from its homeland, to Damascus, where

the shining age of the Ommayyads began.

Abu Zayd meticulously reports this event as he intends to highlight the true reasons why, since

very early on, verses would be recited in search of their pure sense. These reasons were essentially

political and aimed to obtain some personal benefit. The strategy used by Ali’s adversaries was a

subtle one: just as they were about to capitulate, they managed to obtain a truce by using the Holy

Text and exploiting it for their goals. Even Ali’s decision to return to battle was referred to words

from the Text (precisely to verse 9 of the Sura al-Hujurat, the rooms):

"And if two factions among the believers should fight, then make settlement between them. But

if one of them oppresses the other, then fight against the one that oppresses until it returns to

the ordinance of Allah. And if it returns, then make settlement between them in justice and act

justly. Indeed, Allah loves those who act justly".

20 N.H. Abu Zayd, Rethinking the Qur'an: Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics, (Italian translation by Paolo Branca and Massimo Campanini), p.216

20 CHAPTER 3. THE QUR’AN AND ISLAM

According to Abu Zayd, this was the first moment in which the Qur’an started to be considered

exclusively as a text, a direction that dominated the history of most of the Muslim exegesis. This was

the birth point of what Abu Zayd defines the typical obsession of his culture: a search for the purity of

the divine word via a study of the Qur’an which, consequently, aims to eliminate any contradictions, to

the detriment of a vaster and more authentic understanding of its sense. Indeed, if the Qur’an is

intended as the direct Word of God, co-essential and co-eternal to him, clearly all contradictions that

may be found within it must be eliminated or led back to a unitary sense, because it is impossible

that God would contradict himself.

These issues led to the birth of different positions concerning Qur’anic interpretation. In one of

his first works21, Abu Zayd examines the different methodologies adopted by theologians to

comment the Qur’an as a ‘text’. On one hand is the intellectual front Abu Zayd implicitly claims to

belong to, the Mutazilites. The central thesis of the Mutazilite orientation is the “created” nature of

the Qur’an. On the basis of this assumption, they underlined the need to study the Holy Text

from a historical and linguistic point of view: although it derives from God, it was

communicated to mankind during a certain historical period and in a specific language, Arab.

The Mutazilites’ was the first actual Muslim theological school. It was constituted during a period of

great intellectual fermentation, at the dawn of the Abbasid dynasty, and was adopted between 833

and 848 as official doctrine by the caliph al-Ma'mun and by his successor, al-Mu'tasim22. The

adversaries of the Mutazilites, destined to prevail within the Arabic cultural world, opposed the

eternal and “non-created” nature of the Qur’an. These adversaries also supported a rigid

anthropomorphism and categorically refuted the metaphoric function of certain images from the

Qur’an, such as the “hands” of God or the Throne he sits upon, which they considered to be true to

the letter. The central element of this multi-centennial debate lies in the fact that these apparently

theological and academic disputes had a strong impact on the policies adopted over the course of

time by ruling classes, thus schematically identifying the Mutazilite spirit with democracy and a

liberalism that is open to freedom of thought and opinion,

21 N.H. Abu Zayd, Rationalism in Exegesis: A Study of the Problem of Metaphor in the Writing of the Mutazilites, Beirut and Casablanca (various reprints) 22 Paolo Branca, Introduzione all'Islam, Edizioni San Paolo, 2011, p.130


and traditionalism with tout-court fundamentalism. This dichotomy was far from its solution in Abu

Zayd’s opinion. Among the various currents which gave birth to Qur’anic interpretation (however

always interpreted merely as a text), it is important to also acknowledge the so-called middle path

(compared to the rationalism of the Mutazilite school and the dogmatic and literalist traditionalism of

the Hanbalites). This middle path was founded by Shafi'i in the ambit of jurisprudence, while

Ash'ari was its founder in the dogmatic field. Abu Zayd dedicates an entire chapter to Shafi'ism

within his text Islam and history23, highlighting how this particular doctrine established the

foundations of Islamic law that are still considered valid today. According to Shafi'i, Muslim

jurisprudence derives from four essential sources:

• The Qur’an

• The Sunnah

• Consensus (igma)

• Analogic reasoning (qiyas)24

The sense of this classification is chronological and hierarchical; thus the Qur’an is the main

and highest source of law, upon which Tradition (Sunnah) is founded; in turn the Sunnah can

legitimize – when indications from these first two sources are not sufficiently clear – an

interpretative principle based first of all on a consensus between theologians and scholars and, if

even this proves to be insufficient, a (very limited, in any case) free space which, by referring to

an analogy between an event reported in the Qur’an or in the Sunnah and a current one, can

attempt to define a norm that is compliant with Muslim principles.

Highlighting the terms of this debate helps us both to show how Muslims lived and still “live”

their fundamental Text, and to underline – and this is truly an important aspect – the fact that the

Qur’an is not just the founding text of a religion, but of a community, from a political, social and

economic point of view. A characteristic of Islam that cannot be found in early Christianity is that

it provided both religious and political unity to 23 N.H.Abu Zayd, Islam e storia, crìtica del discorso religioso, Bollati Boringhieri Saggi, 2002, pp.86-114 24 Ibidem, p.88


a human group that was previously organized in a tribal system. The birth of the Arab society as a

community took place with Islam. I believe this point allows us to understand the bellicose nature of

certain verses and the reason why such a large part of the Qur’an concentrates on laws: the Muslims,

led by Muhammad, faced the challenge of simultaneously affirming themselves on a religious, but

also political and economic level, and of confronting the Medina- and Mecca-based Jews and

Christians, two fully recognized and consolidated civilizations.

In any case, going back to the doctrinal disputes we were previously discussing, the element

which all the aforementioned currents agreed on can be found in verse 7 of Sura 3 of the Qur’an,

Al' Imam

It is He who has sent down to you, the Book; in it are verses (that are) precise - they are

the foundation of the Book - and others unspecific. As for those in whose hearts is

deviation, they will follow that of it which is unspecific, seeking discord and seeking an

(incorrect) interpretation. And no one knows its interpretation except Allah. But those

firm in knowledge say, "We believe in it. All is from our Lord." And no one will be

reminded except those of understanding.

Thus God himself declares that his Word is not always crystal clear, and that it includes

allegorical parts which believers are to interpret, while the non-allegorical verses are

undisputable and constitute the Mother of the Book. However how should one distinguish the

former ones from the latter? On this aspect, despite studies concerning the Muslim Holy Text,

not even a minimal form of agreement has ever been achieved. Thus, on a dogmatic and

theological level, the principle of solid verses ad allegorical verses has been used to justify

preferences for one interpretation rather than another, while in the field of law, the principle

of repeal has prevailed. This principle, based on the chronology of Qur’anic verses, establishes

that when two norms contradict each other, the one that was revealed later in time should be

considered as the valid one. Yet, given that no unanimous agreement exists on the chronology

of the Suras, this principle has proven equally ineffective for the formation of a definitive

solution.25

25 N.H. Abu Zayd, Rethinking the Qur'an: Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics, p.136-137


Abu Zayd enters this debate by claiming that

Both categories were unable to understand that what appeared contradictory in their

eyes, and thus in need of an interpretation in order to eliminate the problem, was just

part of a progressiveness and gradualness which is incomprehensible if one does not

refer to the Qur’an as a ‘discourse’, and to its dialogic/colloquial/controversialist

rhythm, which requires choices, reception, refusal, etc.26

Massimo Campanini, an eminent oriental studies scholar and the editor of an important essay we

will refer to later on27 explains that:

It is possible to find, within the Qur’an, both instigations to war and instigations to peace.

In Abu Zayd’s thought, this does not mean that the Qur’an is a totally pacific or

totally bellicose text, but that the various verses which refer to peace and war were

revealed as responses to specific historical circumstances of Muhammad’s experience

as a prophet and of the affirmation of Islam as a religion.28

Summarizing the elements we have observed up until now, Abu Zayd’s position concerning the

interpretation of the Qur’an is a dual one: on one hand, the philosopher claims that it should be

treated literally as a text; on this level, the Qur’an must be studied linguistically, historically and by

using the modern tools of contemporary semiotics and hermeneutics. According to Abu Zayd – and

to the tradition of Mutazilite teachings, the Qur’an is a cultural and linguistic product.

On the other hand, in its inmost nature, the Qur’an cannot be reduced merely to a text,

because this would facilitate its manipulations by different juridical and political factions (as

indeed has occurred): on the contrary, we need to accept an interpretation of the Qur’an as a

discourse. In doing so, the scholar is discharged from the heavy task of mechanically eliminating all

contradictions he will find in the Suras, which he will instead study according to a progressive and

synoptic interpretation. I believe that these two aspects of Abu Zayd’s thought co-imply one another

and it is precisely 26 Ibidem 27 Massimo Campanini, Qur'anic Hermeneutics and Political Hegemony: Reformation of Islamic Thought, The Muslim World, Jan 2009 28 N.H.Abu Zayd, Testo Sacro e Libertà, per una lettura critica del Corano, I libri di Reset, Edizione Marsilio, Venice, 2012, p.13


this consideration of the Qur’an also as something Other than a text – which therefore transcends the

mere text – which legitimizes the historical and linguistic approach of Islam and history which,

otherwise, would lead to Abu Zayd’s efforts be catalogued as a form of cultural historicism and

relativism.

3.2 The two dimensions of the Qur’an

By following Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd’s thought, we have arrived at the threshold of the profound

meaning of his Qur’anic hermeneutics. Within a few steps, we will be ready to observe, via a series

of concrete examples, how these work in an approach to the text, from an operative point of view.

First, however, we must highlight another, perhaps slightly overlooked so far, aspect. Abu Zayd’s

challenge and the intent which pervades all his works consist of the effort of demonstrating Islam’s

incompatibility with the needs of modernity and the possibility, via a critical approach, of aligning

all Islamic jurisprudence with the principles of democratic and liberal Constitutions. In Abu Zayd,

as in other well-known Muslim thinkers who preceded him, a sincere attachment to his traditions co-

exists with the desire that those traditions may respond positively to modern times. Embracing

democracy and liberal thought, for Abu Zayd, M. Abduh, M. Arkoun and many others, does not

mean betraying one’s Arab and Muslim identity. Thus, Abu Zayd’s thought can be seen as an attempt

to build a dialogue between different cultures while respecting their reciprocal identities, which are

and remain different. This must always be kept in mind when analyzing the theoretical thought of

this intellectual figure, whose philosophical efforts are constantly aimed at the accomplishment of a

practical goal.

After this premise, the time has come to focus on the two dimensions of the Holy Text in Abu

Zayd’s thought. These two dimensions respectively concern the field of the universal (which every

holy text addresses, in its own way) and that of the particular (which every holy text must somehow

refer to, despite its pretensions). In order to further analyze this aspect, the text we will refer to is

Holy Text and freedom29. Here we can observe that, although Abu Zayd does not actually make

declarations concerning the Qur’an’s essential nature30, he envisions this text as agent on two levels.

29 N.H.Abu Zayd, Testo Sacro e libertà, Marsilio Editori, with the contribution of DIALOGUESONCIVILIZATION, Reset., 2012 30 Ibidem, p.93

3.2. THE TWO DIMENSIONS OF THE QUR’AN 25

The first, universal (or vertical), concerns the Word of God in the moment and form in which it

descended upon the Prophet; with regards to this level, Abu Zayd suspends his analytic studies,

because in his opinion no disagreement exists concerning the fact that God cannot be studied

scientifically. However, what interests Abu Zayd is the other level on which the divine word

manifests itself, the particular (or horizontal) level, which has a typically human nature, given that, in

his words,

he who listens [to the divine word] is a human being, the chosen language is a human

language and it is addressed to listeners.31

Thanks to this fundamental distinction, Abu Zayd gains both the possibility to carry out a

historical and linguistic analysis of the Qur’an, as well as the possibility to never lose sight of the

ever-active field of the universal, which is needed by the divine word in order not to be

historicized. This is where, for the first time, we encounter Abu Zayd’s authentic hermeneutic

effort, which consists of a conciliation between the Absolute – which maintains, by itself, the Holy

Text’s transcendent and trans-historical dimension – and the Particular-Historical-Relative, which is

equally indispensable to avoid a text becoming a sort of Truth incarnate, void of human aspects,

detached from history and time. If this is the case, it is necessary to describe how these two

dimensions actually co-exist, act and interact within the canonic discourse. Although Abu Zayd

does not make clear statements in this regard, the analysis featured in certain passages of Holy Text

and freedom may suggest a few answers. These are the Egyptian philosopher’s words featured on

page one of the first chapter:

My activity as a scholar of Islam falls under the sign of a scrupulous research of the

elements of novelty introduced by the Qur’an, of all the ways of existence and action

which did not exist before Muhammad received the Revelation. [... ] I firmly believe

that those who think that everything included in the Qur’an is binding and should be

followed to the letter and with a spirit of obedience, go against the Word of God.32

31 Ibidem, p.97 32 Ibidem, p.33


In these words we can recognize the originality of the approach chosen by Abu Zayd, who is less

interested in ascertaining what the Law of God establishes or which verses abrogate others, than in

understanding the specific way in which the Qur’an entered the pre-Islamic Arab society and

changed it. Only by discovering which aspects were revolutionized by the Qur’an can we come closer

to the profound meaning of this Text, beyond different and – in any case – limited interpretations. At

this point, Abu Zayd describes the main feats of pre-Islamic Arab society, an essentially tribal

society with an ethic code based on the principle of obedience to the clan an individual belonged to.

The Qur’an, on the other hand, introduced a series of norms and values that strongly contradict the

Bedouin tribal code and, as a consequence, considers the previous period to be the gahiliyya (age of

ignorance). According to Abu Zayd, a reading of the classical Islamic thought should consist of a

critical exercise. What we need to note, for example concerning the punishment of crimes, is that the

Qur’an introduces a principle of equity according to which everyone is entitled to his/her own and

those who commit crimes should be subjected to a proportionate punishment. This principle of

justice, absent in pre-Muslim society (based on hierarchic laws) is, to all intents and purposes, a

Qur’anic novelty, as it did not exist before the Prophet’s preaching. The different modalities to punish

crimes, on the contrary, despite being included in a few passages of the Qur’anic penal law (known as

hudud), are, in Abu Zayd’s opinion, specifically referred to the historical period, precedent to the

advent of the Holy Text, and thus modifiable by nature.

The hudud do not reflect divine commandments. The concept of eye for an eye, the

amputation of the thief’s hand, death for those who change religion are all practices

which were in use either before the advent of the Qur’an or were introduced after its

Revelation. These are not punishments introduced by the Qur’an, and if a punishment

was not introduced by the Holy Text, it cannot be considered Qur’anic. The Qur’an

adopts specific types of punishment that were in use within pre-Islamic cultures, in order

to result credible in the civilization of the time. The punishment of crimes is a Qur’anic

principle, yet is it right to consider as “Qur’anic”, and thus binding for the community

of believers, a form of punishment integrated within the body of the text yet introduced

by another source? [... ] Contemporary society has every right – and even the duty – to

punish crimes in a more


humane fashion. All this does not mean violating the Word of God in any way.33

The distinctive code of the Qur’an, in Abu Zayd’s opinion, is the great consideration this text

attributes to the principle of justice, to the extent that – according to the philosopher – this is the

central value implied by the Word of God. God spoke to the Arabs in order to teach justice to a

society which did not know it. As an absolute principle wanted by God, justice is valid in every age

and every place, while the laws via which it is applied are always related to their particular historical

period, and therefore may change. Following examples offered by Abu Zayd, this means that:

• When the purpose is defense of life, to be pursued in any case, the legal expedient for its

actuation is to ban arbitrary homicide.

• When the purpose is defense of health, the legal expedient for its actuation is to ban the

consumption of alcoholic beverages.

• When the purpose is defense of property, the legal expedient for its actuation is to condemn

theft.

And so on. Many other types of absolute purposes are present in the Qur’an and were regulated with

norms stipulated directly after the Revelation. For example, the Qur’an promotes the defense of

religion. Yet it establishes no earthly punishment for those who abandon Islam. The death penalty for

those who turn their back on Islam was introduced during a later age as a tool for the conservation of

regional power34. If this was truly the case, the repudiation of the Qur’an by those who proclaimed

themselves its main custodians, i.e. fundamentalists, appears evermore evident. Their often mistaken

interpretations caused the suppression of the profound meaning of the message carried by this text to

a newly born civilization, a message implying greater justice, freedom and rights, and favored the

divinization of certain contingent norms aimed at the actualization of this very message. Thus, the

Qur’an is not referred to, for example, because it proclaims an equality of possessions, but to

legitimize the amputation of a thief’s hand. According to Abu Zayd, this is an authentic betrayal of

the Holy Text and of its original sense.

33 Ibidem, p.34 34 Ibidem


We will refer to another enlightening example for our final conclusions, the one regarding women.

The condition of women in the Muslim world is currently a very topical question. There is no doubt

that in certain Arab countries, above all in recent times, women live in a state of submission and

prostration unworthy of any human society. This fact is hastily traced back to the intrinsic nature of

Muslim culture and religion, a position gladly accepted by western media and fundamentalists -

whose strength derives precisely from this type of misunderstandings - alike. As underlined by Amin

Maalouf in his book A world without rules35, J.W.Bush and Osama Bin Laden spoke the same

language. Yet, asks Abu Zayd, are the inferiority of women to men, their submission and conception

as properties of their husbands truly principles featured in the Holy Text? What is the Qur’an’s

position with regards to polygamy? Abu Zayd’s answers are unprecedented.

During my research, I have come to the conclusion that the Qur’an is not in favor of

polygamy.36

Here we see how Abu Zayd discusses a position that is undoubtedly unusual for us (but even for many

Muslims). Let us quote the philosopher once more

By applying my studies to the question of women, I noticed that it belongs perfectly

within the concepts of justice and liberty, two essential purposes of the Qur’an.37

The fourth chapter of the Qur’an is entitled simply "Women" and begins as follows:

O mankind, fear your Lord, who created you from one soul and created from it its mate

and dispersed from both of them many men and women. (Q. 4:1)

This verse reveals the unity of human beings and of the human race. Men and women were created

from a single soul.

35 A. Maalouf, Un mondo senza regole, Edizione Bompiani, 2011 36 Ibidem, p.44 37 Ibidem, p.42


Regarding the case of polygamy, Abu Zayd claims that interpreting this practice as part of the

Revelation would be a mistake. If we follow the reasoning described above, polygamy was not

introduced by the Prophet’s preaching, but existed in pre-Islamic society and should therefore not be

classified as a Qur’anic custom. If we analyze the terms in which the Qur’an refers to polygamy, this

custom appears in a totally different way: the verse that is most often referred to in order to

legitimize polygamy is the one that actually refers to the looking after of orphans following the

battle of Uhud in 625. This conflict had caused a conspicuous loss of soldiers, thus leaving many

widows and orphans in its wake. To remedy this situation, the Qur’an announces its favor towards

polygamy, and formulates the following recommendation:

And give to the orphans their properties and do not substitute the defective [of your own]

for the good [of theirs]. And do not consume their properties into your own. Indeed, that is

ever a great sin. And if you fear that you will not deal justly with the orphan girls, then

marry those that please you of [other] women, two or three or four. But if you fear that

you will not be just, then [marry only] one or those your right hand possesses. That is

more suitable that you may not incline [to injustice]. (Q. 4:2-3)

The sense of these verses, according to Abu Zayd, is far from a legitimization of polygamy as an

unmodifiable Qur’anic institution; on the contrary, polygamy is used as an expedient to achieve the

goal of the protection of orphans (which is in turn a truly Qur’anic principle)38. Furthermore, the

question of heritage, illustrated by Abu Zayd further on in his text, provides us with some

additional elements. In pre-Islamic society, women were considered inferior to men in every

sense, society was organized in a purely patriarchal way and no system of inherited rights existed.

The Qur’an, despite the fact that it was entering the cultural terrain described above, introduces an

element of novelty:

Allah instructs you concerning your children: for the male, what is equal to the share

of two females. But if there are [only] daughters, two or more, for them is two thirds

of one's estate. And if there is only one, for her is half. And for one's parents, to each

one of them is a sixth of his estate if he left children. But if he had no children and

the parents [alone] inherit from him, then for his mother is one third.

38 A. Maalouf, Un mondo senza regole, Edizione Bompiani, 2011


And if he had brothers [or sisters], for his mother is a sixth, after any bequest he [may

have] made or debt. Your parents or your children - you know not which of them are

nearest to you in benefit. [These shares are] an obligation [imposed] by Allah.

Indeed, Allah is ever Knowing and Wise. (Q. 4:11)

According to Abu Zayd, a correct interpretation of this passage cannot avoid knowledge of the

historical context it belonged to. This point of view overturns the verses’ intuitive sense: the goal of

the passage, indeed, is not to affirm the hereditary rights of women, but to limit those of men39.

Once again, the goal pursued by the Qur’an is equality between men and women and therefore a state

of greater justice, while the hereditary quantum women are entitled to is no more than an expedient

to pursue the final goal of greater justice, and is therefore relative. Once again, historical

contextualization is the decisive element which allows us to understand the meaning of a

Qur’anic passage: in relation to the Meccan ambit of the seventh century, proclaiming that women

are entitled to one half of a man’s heritage was a way to emancipate them, given that previously they

were entitled to nothing. Therefore, use of that passage to absolutize the specific norm, adopted to

achieve the goal above, is simply a repudiation of the Qur’an. Abu Zayd observes that:

"for the male, what is equal to the share of two females". The structure of the verse

emphasizes the part referred to men, not the part regarding women. What if the phrase

had been constructed differently, for example as follows: "Women must inherit half of

the part assigned to men”? This would have resulted in a different semantic reading.40

These lines reveal the full innovative nature of Abu Zayd’s thought, which uses hermeneutics’

semantic, semiotic and linguistic tools to understand the Qur’an, and comes to point of unveiling a

new sense. Only through this application can we correctly approach the Word of God; the Word of

God calls for our interpretative intervention. If abandoned to absolutism, it loses sense and is

betrayed. Qur’anic recitation is an appeal to human intervention, and man, with all the tools at his

avail, is called to freely place himself at the service of the word of God



by assigning it a sense that does not betray it. This is the important task of the intellectual but also

concerns every believer, according to Abu Zayd.

I would like to conclude this chapter with a schematic image which attempts to summarize what

I have observed so far. We have seen how, in Holy Text and Freedom, Abu Zayd’s application of

hermeneutics to the Qur’an emerges; we then analyzed his attempt to recover, on one hand, the

“lost universal” of the Qur’an and, thanks to this, to shine new light on the Qur’an’s particular-

historical-relative, avoiding absolutisms and distortions. Therefore the Qur’an institutes three

levels of values. Let us take, as an example, the question of women’s heritage – exposed above –

and apply it to our three-dimensional scheme. We will obtain:

• Religious dimension: "God created you from one soul and created from it its mate and

dispersed from both of them many men and women. (Q. 4:1)

• Ethic dimension: Women share the same dignity as men and deserve equal recognition.

• Legal dimension: Women are entitled to one half of a man’s heritage.

Out of these three dimensions, the most human one is the second. Hermeneutics acts on the level of

the practical/ethic dimension and then manifests – depending on the historical age – in the legal

dimension and in a series of modifiable and reviewable regulations. The religious dimension concerns

the absolute divine principle which must inform all other human dimensions. The ethic dimension

therefore reflects the divine one in human sense. According to the interpretation assigned to the

ethic/religious dimension, from a legal point of view, mankind’s laws will be just or unjust. Both

types, however, never have an absolute validity and must always be observed in light of their

historical and cultural period.

4 Western hermeneutics and the Qur’an

4.1 Outlines of hermeneutics, a brief history

The problem of textual interpretation, i.e. the need to recover a text’s meaning by translating its

signs on a semiotic and semantic level, is as ancient as the use of writing. In this sense,

hermeneutics as an interpretative practice was born in ancient times. However, if taken from a

strictly disciplinary point of view, as a conscious interpretative methodology or theory,

hermeneutics is a typically modern theme. I will therefore attempt to briefly and schematically

outline the main elements of the development of this discipline, showing how, over the course of

its multi-secular existence, it went from being an “auxiliary art” to a “universal theory of human

existence”. This is the essential character of hermeneutics, which was first discussed in Sein una

Zeìt: as M. Heidegger claimed, interpretation “influences” the existential decisions and stories of

individuals and communities.

Apparently, the term “hermeneutics” derives from the Greek hermeneueìn, a verb which,

referred to the Olympian god Hermes, indicated the act of delivering a message. However, although

this is now the most accredited derivation, Kerényi states that this is an a posteriori construction, and

that the original sense of hermeneutics simply consists of the “effectiveness of linguistic expression”.

(A) PREHISTORY

As we have observed, in its most accredited interpretation, hermeneutics is not actually born as

an interpretative method, but is connected to the experience of delivering messages, and

therefore regards transmission via a medium rather than the reception of the message. Allegedly,

the first man to raise the problem of interpretation in classic Greece was Plato, who assigned it a

mostly negative meaning in light of its mediation-related character. "To be a hermenéus in Plato’s

world always meant: to hold second or even [...]

32

4.1. OUTLINES OF HERMENEUTICS, A BRIEF HISTORY 33

third place." (Keréni 1963, 134)

This classification of hermeneutics, which places it close to mimetic arts and rhetoric,

was destined to be greatly successful. From this point of view, it would appear to

confirm hermeneutics’ self-interpretation as a secondary and marginal technique which

progressively qualified in philosophical terms only in recent times, from Romanticism

onwards.41

This vicinity and con-generic nature of hermeneutics with regards to so-called “secondary arts”, and

rhetoric in particular, characterized the entire proto-history of this discipline, also partially

influencing its later developments, to the extent that, as stated by Gedsetzer, "it appears suitable to

interpret the current hermeneutic phase as a rebirth of rhetoric in a new epistemological role”.

Certainly, it was no coincidence that when Abu Zayd had to select his studies itinerary in the

University of Cairo, he chose rhetoric arts rather than Islamic studies. The turning point, in this first

phase of the development of hermeneutics, can be identified in the birth of philology during the

Hellenistic age. During this particular historical period, indeed, the recovery of ancient works such

as Homer had stimulated an increase in interpretative and, above all, philological arts, for the

purpose of relating past words to current times. In this transposal, however, one of the key codes of

western hermeneutics was still missing, i.e. consciousness concerning temporal distance.

Thus, the problem of temporal distance, which presented itself in facts via the changing of

linguistic customs, was a premise but failed to achieve a reflective awareness - given that

it was immediately avoided via an updating-centered intent, which confirmed the canonic

nature and validity of the text by substituting words that were no longer comprehensible

with other ones that were used at the time.42

We can therefore state that, in an initial moment, awareness of temporal distance (which could only

reach its more mature form through a philosophy of history) remained implicit in favor of

hermeneutics’ updating intent and its attempt to recover the sensus litteralis of ancient texts.

41 M. Ferraris, Storia dell'ermeneutica, Ed. Bompiani, Milan, 2008 42 Ibidem, p.14

34 CHAPTER 4. WESTERN HERMENEUTICS AND THE QUR’AN

(B) THE AGE OF PATRISTICS

Starting in the Middle Ages, hermeneutics adopted an element which would characterize it up until

its more mature phase in modern times: its utilization within the biblical ambit. We must however

underline that problems posed by the interpretation of the Bible were at least partially different

than those raised by a reading of classic works: to presuppose the divine inspiration of poets is

very different than addressing a text which, according to the dogma, was inspired by God and

whose substantiating and more-than-cultural value is superior to that of literary tradition. The

particular type of text addressed by linguistic and scientific studies in the ambit of Patristics

acquired an institutive role towards the historical community. This means that, within this cultural

context, the interpreted and studied Scripture instituted a circle in which the text, confirmed by the

community, in turn confirmed the community itself. Thus, the role of the Scripture came to be so

central that all other types of studies – linguistic, historical or scientific – were reduced to a

marginal status and their claims to validity were circumscribed to the epistemic horizon delineated

by the Scripture itself.

Fully secular historical and scientific research were reduced to the spiritual horizon of the

Scripture. Interpretation’s ‘piety’ is insufficient or rather interpretation is never truly ‘pious’ if the

relation of the tropology to the allegory and to history is not solid, if the context is not respected,

if relations are established between too disparate things, (de Lubac, 1959-64, 69). This is how

the interpretation of the Scripture becomes the result of the overall paideia, which holds

within it the entire knowledge of Middle Ages mankind.43

The dignity and autonomy of secular knowledge, sacrificed during the Middle Ages, were to be

reclaimed by Humanism.

(C) HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION

Starting from the first half of the XV century, humanity entered a historical period that proved to be

extremely fertile for the development of interpretative arts, and therefore also for hermeneutics. The

first aspect we need to highlight consists of the fact that, for the first time, awareness of the

phenomenon of

43 Ibidem, p.24


temporal distance was made explicit and addressed. And this is the main characteristic of the

recovery of classic texts in the humanistic period. In previous ages, classic texts were known, yet

their autonomy was limited to their concordance or discordance with regards to the Sacred

Scripture. The pagan had no dignity in itself, yet could acquire it if inscribable within the biblical

and sacred horizon. This is not true for the humanistic age, when thinkers such as Petrarca,

Salutati and Boccaccio aimed to breathe new life into classic and pagan works via awareness of the

distance between themselves and those works, in an attempt to place them in their correct

historical, cultural and linguistic context, outside of which no text or work of art can truly be

understood. This is Humanism’s fundamental contribution to hermeneutics, and a careful

examination will reveal the similarity between these aspects and the claims made by N.H. Abu

Zayd, who I believe may be considered a “humanist of his times”. The attempt to re-locate classic

texts in their period of incubation and birth reveals a love and dedication - towards those texts -

which undoubtedly go beyond the canons of the Middle Ages and, in general, of the so-called

“dark” ages. Salutati claimed that precisely this scrupulous restauration is what allows to transcend

the texts and interrogate them with regards to themes that go beyond the cultural and historical

boundaries of their authors. Therefore, restauration is the key for actualization. If early Humanism

had shed doubt on the unquestioned authority of the Holy Text, demanding the autonomy of other

non-holy texts belonging to the classic western tradition, ecclesial authority suffered the effects of

another serious blow with the Protestant and Calvinist Reformations. The canonic interpretation

provided by the Catholic Church was heavily attacked by the 95 Lutheran theses displayed in

Wittemberg. The nucleus of Lutheran claims consisted in the Sola Scriptum principle, according to

which

[... ] each believer must turn to the Scripture, which is clear and comprehensible in itself,

and not to the ecclesial hierarchy: the Biblical Scripture is the sole depositary of faith-

related truths, not the Church.44

Starting from these claims, we can trace a few comparisons with the Islamic question.

44 Ibidem, p.37


Is it licit, we may ask ourselves, to consider Abu Zayd the Luther of Islam? On the basis of the texts

by the Egyptian philosopher I have analyzed so far, I think not. Obviously noteworthy points of

contact exist between Lutheran Protestantism and Zayd’s progressivist and liberal thought. The first

of these similarities is certainly a call to reason, obscured by blind servitude towards a tradition

intended as authority. Overall, Abu Zayd’s work is centered precisely on the attempt to return the

Umma, the community of believers, to a no longer marginal role in Qur’anic interpretation. Abu

Zayd states that believers should rebel against the bottlenecks imposed by jurists in order to achieve

an ampler vision of the Word of God (kalam). In the Egyptian philosopher’s thought, as in Luther,

the time has come to re-think the Scripture; this must take place through what the philosopher

himself defines a humanistic hermeneutics (cfr: Rethinking the Qur'an: Towards a Humanistic

Hermeneutics). Yet, while in Luther’s thought we can observe the birth of a dichotomy between the

authority of a tradition (the ecclesiastic one) which it aimed to overturn in favor of a form of reason

which is entitled to the final word concerning the Scripture, in Abu Zayd this does not take place.

The acritical and literalist interpretations promoted by the ulemas must be rejected, but in Abu

Zayd this works in favor of – and not against – authentic Muslim tradition, whose history and

original meaning need to be recovered. Thus, while in Luther the divine word is already clear in

itself and therefore needs no superior authority to interpret it for believers, in Abu Zayd the

opposite is true: the Divine Word, transmitted by Gabriel to Muhammad in the VII century, cannot

be abandoned to itself, but needs to be re-comprehended and re-interpreted by a community that,

precisely by activating this practice, assumes its own authority.

(D) MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY PERIOD

During the modern age, the history of hermeneutics came to a turning point. With Schleiermacher

began the universalization process of this discipline, one that would lead it to acquire the

physiognomy it has maintained up until contemporary times. Initially restricted to the area of

interpretation of ancient texts and scholarly exegesis, hermeneutic practice was extended by

Schleiermarcher to all types of texts whose meaning is not immediately evident due to some

form of distance (be it linguistic, historical, psychological etc.). This universalization process of

hermeneutics, which was extended in Dilthey to the totality of historical-spiritual knowledge, was

further developed in the thought of Heidegger, where knowledge presents itself as

4.2. N.H. ABU ZAYD READS H. G. GADAMER 37

one of the constitutive structures of the Being, whose being-in-the-world is always accompanied

by an understanding (or pre-understanding) of the world, incarnate in the language each

individual disposes of. In particular, in Being and Time, one of the milestones of hermeneutic

thought, Heidegger claims that interpretation is the articulation or internal development of

understanding, through which "comprehension, by comprehending, takes possession of that which it

has comprehended”. Heidegger was an explicit reference for Gadamer, the most relevant figure in

contemporary hermeneutics and the thinker who contributed more than anybody else to making

hermeneutics not merely a technical discourse regarding the modalities of understanding, but a

general philosophical theory concerning man and being. Abu Zayd refers, in particular, to this final

phase of western hermeneutics for the purpose of reading the Holy Text of Islam under a new light,

as respectfully as possible towards Arabic and Muslim tradition. Let us now see how this took

place, by observing Abu Zayd’s approach to two giants of contemporary hermeneutics, Gadamer

and Ricoeur.

4.2 N.H. Abu Zayd reads H.G. Gadamer

1977 was a crucial year in the life of N.H. Abu Zayd; the journey to America he undertook that

year marked an irreversible turning point in his life as an intellectual, and also his teaching career

would be unavoidably changed by it. It was in the University of Philadelphia that the Egyptian

philosopher first discovered western hermeneutics, which allowed him not only to deepen and enrich

his studies on Qur’anic interpretation, but also to build a bridge between two cultures which appear

simultaneously distant yet extremely close, the Arab-Muslim one and the western one.

Within his biography A life with Islam45, Abu Zayd narrates that he had come in contact with the

mystic philosophy of Ibn Arabi shortly before departing for the journey and that this had raised

within him the question regarding what the English translation might be for ta'wil, a fundamental

concept in the thought of this original Sufi philosopher.

Should I have sought under the term interpretation? Some professors suggested



That I should search under suprainterpretatìon or ultrainterpretatìon. Yet results were

disappointing. Hasan Hanafi said: hermeneutics! It was exactly what I was looking for.46

Besides studying Ibn Arabi (who also strongly influenced Abu Zayd’s thought), during his time at

the University of Philadelphia, Abu Zayd also discovered the most relevant exponent of contemporary

hermeneutics, H.G. Gadamer. The analysis of the fundamental text by this great philosopher, Truth

and Method, was certainly not void of moments of impasse for Abu Zayd, who immediately realized

that a new world and exciting possibilities were disclosing before his eyes, but also that he was

missing the instruments to fully grasp them. He understood that, in order to understand Gadamer, he

would first have to undertake a preliminary study of western hermeneutics, from its origins up to

Gadamer, with in-depth analyses of more recent results.

For the first time I came to know anthropology. I read Levi-Strauss, Saussure and

studied the debate on structuralism. And alongside all these great experiences I

encountered Gadamer’s work. After just a few pages I understood that I had finally

found what I was seeking. As my reading progressed, however, I realized that I was

missing the basic knowledge to be able to understand it. I therefore turned to

hermeneutics’ classics. I started with the Greeks, I met Schleiermacher and came to W.

Dilthey and Martin Heidegger; I then returned to Gadamer and proceeded with P.

Ricoeur [...] I was gradually realizing that the world I had found so foreign because I did

not know its concepts and terms was becoming ever more my own world. And suddenly

in this world I found Ibn Arabi.47

During the time spent at the University of Philadelphia, thanks to a comparative study of Gadamer

and Ibn-Arabi, Abu Zayd realized how fragile the borders between western and eastern culture

actually were. He came to know the relation instituted by hermeneutics between text and reader as

well as the interpretative nature of truth, up to the point when he asked himself the fatidic question:

in the context of

46 Ibidem, p.l27 47 Ibidem


Intentional knowledge, i.e. in the relation we institute between our inner I who knows and the

known object, what is the relation of truth between the two?

Where is the truth? Is it in the I or in the external world, in the reader or in the text?

Or is it to be found in the interaction between the two?48

The problem, posed in these terms, is hermeneutic on an epistemological level.

In this section, I will try to analyze the relation between the most important work in western

hermeneutics, Truth and Method, and the thought of N.H. Abu Zayd. The next section will instead be

dedicated to a comparison of the Egyptian philosopher’s work and Paul Ricoeur. Despite the fact that,

in the texts I was able to recover, I did not encounter a direct critique by Abu Zayd concerning these

two western thinkers, knowledge of their thought is implied in most of his work, as Abu Zayd himself

openly declared within his biography. I hope this is sufficient to legitimize my interpretative effort.

In Truth and Method49 Gadamer sets the goal of exposing the conditions for the possibility of

understanding. By referring to Heidegger but by urbanizing his philosophy (quoting Habermas’s

appropriate expression)50, Gadamer marries the anti-scientist and anti-positivist thesis of the

impossibility to achieve an objectively certain truth. In every intentional relation, understanding also

manifests in the form of a circle where the two poles are represented by the knowing subject and the

known object. Thus, the truth of understanding is configured as dialogic and interpretative, because it

is born from a relation. Yet what is the modality of this understanding? Referring once again to

Heidegger, Gadamer’s response is that the form of every type of knowledge is irremediably and

exclusively linguistic. Gadamer explains this concept with the following expression:

"the original linguistic nature of the human being-in-the-world”.

Therefore not just every form of understanding and every truth, but also human experience in its

entirety, share a linguistic nature. The above because – referring once more to Heidegger -

Gadamer deems that the Being 48 Ibidem, p.l29 49 H.G. Gadamer, Verità e Metodo, edited by G. Vattimo, Foreword by G. Reale, Ed. Bompiani, 2000/2014, Milan 50 M. Ferraris, Storia dell'Ermeneutica, Ed. Bompiani, 2008, Milan


(Man) exists in the world within the modality of understanding, i.e. of the eminently human

form of existence. In the first part of his major work, which is preparatory with regards to the

second one and cannot be ignored, despite the fact that it does not directly concern our study,

Gadamer supports the thesis of the extra-method nature of truth51. By assuming a critical position

with regards to Hegelian monologism and the epistemological and scientist doctrines which had

dominated the beginning of the century, Gadamer supports a different and more original

interpretation of the manifestation of Truth. In this case, the goal of the philosopher is to rehabilitate

all those disciplines that positivism and neo-empiricism had labelled as non-methodical, thus

alienating them from all fields of knowledge. The first of these disciplines is aesthetics, whose field

of action had been restricted to that of genius and irrationality, of passionate movements of the soul

which have nothing to do with the rigorous ambit of knowledge.

Therefore, the first part of Truth and Method is dedicated to the recovery of the cognitive role

of art as a different and more original type of knowledge than in positivist and neo-empiricist

methods. In art, indeed, a relation is built between the subject and the object (the work of art)

which, far from being merely mimetic and reproductive, creates new forms and, above all, new

life experiences.

Aesthetic experience does not end in a disenchantment, as happens in the case of

dream and illusion. It is and remains fundamentally certain of the truth of its "object".

[... ] To say that art is an encounter with truth is equivalent to saying that in the

experience of art we observe the actuation of an experience which truly modifies those

who live it.52

In Gadamer’s thought this is sufficient to return art to the cognitive status it had been denied by

scientist nineteenth century philosophies.

The second part of Truth and Method is more directly related to my study, given that it addresses

the analysis of historiographic experience and of the historicity of understanding in general; this is

where the author exposes the aforementioned hermeneutic circle. These considerations by Gadamer

were very influential for Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd’s thought.

51 H.G. Gadamer, Verità e Metodo, edited by G. Vattimo, Foreword by G. Reale, Ed. Bompiani, 2000/2014, Milan, p. XXXII

52Ibidem, p.XXXV


The important premise for the next few reflections is that, also in this second section, Gadamer’s

thought should be read as a clear opposition to the traditional, enlightened and scientist vision of

modernity. It is also worth noting that these anti-scientist claims do not aim towards an anti-

cognitivist relativism, but, more profoundly, tend to the recovery of a new and more original sense

of Truth, somewhat anticipated by Heidegger’s Kehre.

We question how hermeneutics, once freed from the hindrances of the concept of

objectivity derived from sciences, was able to recognize the historicity of understanding

in its correct extent.53

Starting from a re-reading of Heidegger, Gadamer exposes his thought concerning the interpretative

and circular nature of understanding. This interpretative nature is motivated by the role played by pre-

comprehensions within the dynamics of knowledge. By criticizing the ingenuous enlightened velleity

of a “pure” approach to knowledge, thus void of preconceptions and pre-cognitions, Gadamer

reappraises tradition and prejudice on a hermeneutical level. If, as previously claimed by Heidegger,

our pre-comprehensions cannot be eliminated and even constitute the condition for any possibility

to know, the role of prejudices loses the negative sense it had been assigned by enlightened

thinkers. Therefore, the hermeneutic circle instituted by Heidegger takes on a positive meaning and

does not constitute, in itself, a limitation. If it is true that every approach to a text (historical, literary,

poetic...) cannot avoid the pre-comprehensions and prejudices which constitute the reader’s starting

terrain, it is equally true that these preconceptions must not remain withdrawn: they need to be put to

the test by the text.

Interpretation starts with preconceptions that are progressively replaced by more

adequate concepts. [... ] Understanding comes to its authentic possibility only if the

presuppositions it starts from are not arbitrary.54



The result is a problematic, yet fertile, relation between text and reader, where the latter must be

hermeneutically open towards the former. Indeed, the text always produces a collision in which the

words of the author “challenge” the reader’s preconceptions; the reader, in turn, must be aware of his

unavoidable prejudices and be open to modifying them.

He who wants to understand a text must be prepared to allow it to say something to

him. Therefore a hermeneutically educated knowledge must be preliminarily sensitive

with regards to the alterity of the text.55

Therefore, not prejudices in themselves, but those we are not aware of are what makes us deaf to

the voice of the text. Enlightenment’s hope to eliminate prejudices is in itself a prejudice whose

goal is to overturn tradition. At this point, Gadamer addresses the revaluation of authority and

tradition which directly interests our study. The general tendency of Enlightenment is precisely to

not acknowledge any authority and to decide everything before the tribunal of reason. Thus, neither

the Sacred Scripture nor other traditional sources are valid authorities: the only truly valid source of

authority is reason. (Kant, What is Enlightenment?). In opposition to the spirit of Enlightenment

Gadamer therefore formulates his original historic hermeneutics, by virtue of which a reappraisal of

the concepts of prejudice and authority becomes necessary: these concepts are co-essential for the

cognitive process in light of its structural finiteness. The acknowledgment of the situational reality in

which we are always – and have always been – immersed is not an accidental condition for the

authenticity of understanding. Thus Gadamer asks:

is it really true that being within traditions means first of all to be submitted to prejudices

and to suffer a limitation of freedom? Or rather isn’t human existence itself, even in its

most free of forms, limited and conditioned in multiple ways? If this is true, the ideal of an

absolute reason is not a possibility for historical humanity. Reason exists for us only as

real and historical reason; this means that it is not its own owner, but is always

subordinated to the given situations in which

55 Ibidem, p.557


it acts.56

Gadamer then concludes that

Thus, the individual’s prejudices are more constitutive of the historical reality than his

judgments are.57

However, in Gadamer, the doctrine of the historicity of understanding is not exhausted in its

reappraisal of prejudices and of tradition, given that these refer only to the part of the subject. The

object, be it a text or history, carries a complexity which still needs to be analyzed. The conclusive

paragraph of the second section of Truth and Method is therefore dedicated to the well-known

doctrine of the "Wirkungsgeschichte", or the History of Effects. According to this principle, the

history we study is not a stable and imperishable monolithic edifice, but, to the contrary, our

understanding of a historical event is soaked in all the interpretations assigned to that particular

event. The history of mankind is not a definitive recipe book: it more closely resembles a novel

which, despite remaining the same, lives and changes within the interpretations it is assigned. No

immediateness exists in approaching an artwork or a historical event. Immediateness is the utopia of

enlightened rationalism, which is definitively overcome in Gadamer. Indeed:

To be historical means to never resolve in self transparency58

Narration and re-narration build history, so that when we address a historical event or a work of art

we are immediately also immersed in its Wirkungsgeschichte. According to Gadamer, this is

unavoidable.

When, starting from the historical distance which characterizes and determines our

hermeneutic situation in its entirety, we strive to understand a given historical situation,

we are always already subjected to the effects of the Wirkungsgeschichte.59

56 Ibidem 57 Ibidem, p.573 58 Ibidem, p.625 59 Ibidem, p.621


Ultimately, the result of this process is the fusion of horizons, which consists of the moment in which

the finite horizon (the present), characterized by our pre-comprehensions, merges with the horizon of

a historical event and gives birth to a new interpretation. And so on.

How should we evaluate the elements which have emerged within the more general level of our

study? What role do all these doctrines play in the thought of our Egyptian philosopher? In Islam and

history, at the very beginning of the text, Abu Zayd faces the question of the relation between the

Muslim cultural patrimony and the theme of renewal. During most of his life, Abu Zayd was forced

to defend himself against accusations by those who envisioned his interpretative effort concerning

the Qur’an as a betrayal of tradition. I believe this attitude on the part of traditionalists is both

similar and opposite when compared with the enlightened and rationalist tradition criticized by

Gadamer. In both cases we find a repudiation of the relation between present and past, yet while the

Enlightenment placed the past under accusation and discredited it in the name of the omnivalent

tribunal of reason, traditionalism crystalizes and absolutizes it. Today, Muslim reality is stuck in an

intellectual impasse in which we can observe an attempt to revive a utopian past through its own

oblivion. The relation between present and past, in the eyes of traditionalists and rigid dogmatists,

should remain exclusively reproductive and imitational. This can only lead to a sclerotization of this

culture and to a form of odium sui which has become particularly evident in our times. Those who

attempt to say something new, and to revive tradition through a dialogue with it, are accused of

apostasy. In truth, what emerges from Gadamer’s studies and was used – unsuccessfully - in his own

defense by Abu Zayd is that tradition and innovation are part of a single process, the historical one;

they constitute the two poles of a circle. If inserted in this more general framework, the bloody

conflict between Mutazilites and innovators on one side, and Hanbalites and traditionalists on the

other, has no reason to exist.

Finally, I identified a third theme in which the thoughts of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Gadamer

come close to each other. I am speaking of Gadamer’s doctrine of the original nature of

questioning. In this context, the cues for a reflection also on a practical and political level are truly

inviting. In his foreword to Truth and Method, Giovanni Reale reports a few extracts from an

interview he conducted with Gadamer in 1996, concerning Platonic dialectics. In response to a series

of specifications posed by the (recently deceased) Italian philosopher, Gadamer stated the following:

"From my perspective, Plato always fascinated me,


and I find myself very close to him, in the fact that he insisted on the dialectics of question and

answer"60. Indeed, within his works, an entire section is dedicated to the relation dialectics institute

between question and answer and to the superiority of questioning, in light of its directionality. To

question, claims Gadamer – who in turn refers to Plato -, is a dialectic art which cannot be taught

and alone can make the emergence of a sense, and thus of a truth, possible. If hermeneutic truth is

founded on the art of discussing, what to say about all the literary traditions in which this original

importance of dialogue appears to have gone lost? It is precisely here, says Gadamer that the

fundamental role of interpretation comes into its own, in its task of re-building a dialogue via

the relation between reader and text (which we addressed above). The art of dialectics, states

Gadamer, is the art of building concepts alongside the interlocutor within the unity of a certain

perspective.

Indeed this characterizes dialogue as opposed to the rigid form of written enunciation: in

the dialogue, language, via question and answer, giving and receiving, counter position

and coincidence of opinions, realizes this communication of sense which later, in the

form of literary tradition, will constitute the specific object of the hermeneutical effort.

Therefore the fact that hermeneutics is conceived as a coming to dialogue with the text is

something more than a pure metaphor, it is a memory of the text’s original nature. The fact

that the interpretation which carries out this operation is fulfilled in language does not

signify a transposal to a foreign medium, on the contrary it indicates the reconstitution of

the original communication. The object communicated in literary form is therefore

recovered, from the alienation it finds itself in, to the alive present of the dialogue, whose

original form is always that of questioning and answering. 61

I deem that Abu Zayd’s passage from considering the Qur’an as a 'text' to envisioning it as a

'discourse' fits perfectly within this framework. The Qur’an, as described by Abu Zayd, following in

the footsteps of other illustrious exponents of Muslim reformism (above all M. Arkoun) corresponds

quite precisely to Gadamer’s theory. He speaks of a text whose inmost nature is dialogic and

60 G.Reale, "Introduzione", Ibidem, p.21, p.129 61 Ibidem, p.759


whose literary transposal indeed took place quite late in history. A text, therefore, described by

Abu Zayd as 'alive' because it is capable of addressing its interlocutors by turning them into active

agents in God’s discourse, and by not reducing them to mere drones, capable only of mechanically

repeating dead words. In different words than his own, Abu Zayd’s exhortation could be read as:

"in order for the Word of God to truly touch your heart, interpret it". Abu Zayd calls his community

to be the carrier of an authentic message, he invites Muslims to experience a true sense of belonging

to their tradition; this form of belonging to one’s cultural patrimony, described by Abu Zayd,

perfectly coincides with the concept of tradition in Gadamer, which is not static but dynamic, as

observed above. ‘Listening’ to a text in order to understand it, means to interpret it; it is worth

stressing that this Interpretation is never arbitrary as long as the hermeneutic circle remains fluid, i.e.

as long as the reader’s pre-comprehensions and prejudices are tested by the Interpretation of the text.

Although Abu Zayd does not use the same terms as Gadamer (how could he, given the profound

diversity between the traditions of the two authors?) the concept he expresses in his works is exactly

the same one.

Let us conclude this section with a few considerations on the practical implications of what we have

observed so far. Gadamer reveals the unavoidability of Interpretation in all intentional approaches.

However – as previously underlined – this does not lead to relativism. How is this truly possible?

Once we admit the unavoidability of cultural diversity and the need for interpretation, how and

where are we to find a firm principle of universality? I believe this question can be answered as

follows:

if universal culture does not exist, a cultural universality does however manifest itself, in

which the many inestimable cultures are communicable.62

Furthermore, if it is true that a universal interpretation of truth cannot be determined, we can

however note the universal hermeneutic nature of understanding. This is the true nature of the

concrete (or hermeneutic) universal by virtue of which, despite the fact that no culture can claim to

have obtained an absolute truth,

62 F.Botturi, Universalismo e multiculturalismo, in F. Botturi - F. Totaro (edited by), Universalismo ed etica pubblica, "Annuario di Etica" / 3, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2006, p. 125

4.3. N.H. ABU ZAYD READS P. RICOEUR 47

each culture is equally entitled to such a pretension and to adopt its best justifications in order to

make its claims valid with regards to all other cultures. If this theoretical principle were to be put

into practice and regulated by public institutions, its result would be democracy.

4.3 N.H. Abu Zayd reads P. Ricoeur

P. Ricoeur is another philosopher whose thought had a noteworthy influence on Abu Zayd’s

Qur’anic hermeneutics. Given the vastness of this intellectual’s work, I have selected a series of

defined regions in his thought which I find illustrate his positions better than others. I will therefore

address the well-known theory of Ricoeur’s text and later analyze the more mature phase of his

thought, focusing on the problem of subjective identity and its intrinsic relation with alterity. As we

have already repeatedly highlighted, the leitmotiv of Abu Zayd’s Islam and history is the

consideration of the Qur’an as a text. The first part of this section therefore aims to highlight the

points of contact between the theory of Ricoeur’s text and Abu Zayd’s theory; from this point of

view, the influence of the former on the latter will prove to be undeniable. We will start by saying

that P. Ricoeur, despite proceeding in Gadamer’s hermeneutic tradition, profoundly re-elaborates it in

order to place himself in a position of criticism and rupture with regards to certain aspects. This is true

for this philosopher’s consideration of the relation between explaining and understanding, which had

already been highlighted by Gadamer but with results Ricoeur found to be unconvincing. In his

opinion, these two moments needed to return to the organic nature which had gone lost in Gadamer.

In Truth and Method, claims Ricoeur, this relation lives in the dynamics of opposition, i.e.: the

veritative moment of understanding is opposed to the methodic moment of explanation, to the

extent that rather than Truth and Method, Gadamer’s work should have been titled "Truth or

Method", in the sense of an aut-aut63. In this regard, P. Ricoeur states the following:

Strictly speaking, only the explanation is methodic. The understanding is

63 G.Fornero and S.Tassinari, Le filosofie del Novecento


instead the non-methodic moment which, in the sciences of interpretation, is composed

through the methodic moment of the explanation. In turn, the explanation carries out

the understanding on an analytic level.64

Hence Ricouer’s well-known motto stating that more explanation leads to better understanding.

Ricouer’s hermeneutic epistemology therefore attempts to build a mediation between explaining

and understanding by proving their complementarity; among the privileged havens for the

emergence of this complementarity, a key role is occupied by the text, to the point that

hermeneutics are operationally defined as textual interpretation work (this also takes place in Abu

Zayd’s work). What is very interesting to observe is how Ricoeur considers the act of reading as an

act of mediation, i.e. a sort of bridge between two worlds, the world of the text and the world of the

reader. Between the two is a relation of complementarity and independence. The literary work,

according to Ricoeur, is able to transcend both its psychological and sociological conditions, and is

therefore also able to adapt (not without significance-based residues) to different historical and

cultural conditions. And this takes place precisely by virtue of that independence which Ricoeur

claims the reader enjoys: as an active agent, the reader is entitled to interpret the text and to confer

new meaning to it. Reading is therefore configured as a work of de-contextualization and re-

contextualization; once again, as in Gadamer, transparency and immediateness remain the paradise

lost of hermeneutics. This is because the writer is absent when we read, and therefore his original

will is irretrievable in its authentic purity. This happens, in Abu Zayd’s thought, even in the case of

the Holy Text which, although sacred, is still a text and can therefore be considered – just like all

other texts – a literary and cultural product (and this is the point that the most relevant criticisms

aimed at Abu Zayd focused on; criticisms that were not always inadequate ones, in my personal

opinion).

I believe we may legitimately claim that ultimately religious texts constitute a series of

linguistic texts just like all others and that their divine origin in no way imposes a

specific method of study, adequate to their non-human nature.65 64 P. Ricoeur, Dal testo all'azione, saggi di ermeneutica, Jaca Book, Milan, 1989, p. 92 65 N.H.Abu Zayd, Islam e storia, critica del discorso religioso, Bollati Boringhieri Saggi, 2002, p.63


In light of these lines, what Ricoeur says about literary texts is perfectly applicable to Abu Zayd’s

thought. However, if we proceed more in depth, we may ask: what founds this emancipation of

the reader with regards to the written text? What is the foundation of the reader’s interpretative

freedom? In Ricoeur this corresponds to the distanciation phenomenon which involves every

literary product. Differently than what happens in the dialogic context, where a face-to-face takes

place, the written discourse gives birth to an audience which extends to anybody who knows how

to read66 and which goes beyond the time in which the text was written. This process of extension and

distanciation is the foundation for both the autonomy of the text and the legitimacy of its

interpretation. We re-encounter this phenomenon, in different terms and forms, in the thought of our

Egyptian philosopher, specifically when he speaks of the three levels of significance of the Qur’anic

text. The first level consists of the so-called values of testimony, which cannot be the object of any

interpretation due to their nature; the second level consists of the metaphoric values; the third

consists of the values obtained through an extension process starting from original purposes, in

accordance to the way the socio-cultural context allows them to be understood.67

The part in which Abu Zayd describes this last level of significance reveals his closeness to

Ricoeur. Let us expand on this theme. On this level, differently than the other two, the extension

process sets in motion the interpretative work because certain values that were considered to be

valid in a past historical context need to be transposed to the current situation; according to Abu

Zayd, this requires the use of the linguistic, semantic and semiotic tools offered by hermeneutics.

In other words, the distanciation phenomenon described by Ricoeur is what Abu Zayd believes to

legitimize the interpretative effort; as we can see, there is no misalignment from the French

philosopher’s position. Thus, Abu Zayd exposes his work method in this field, which

Will not be founded on the technique of analogic reasoning (qiyas) the jurists are so

fond of, but on the distinction between sense and meaning, well known by all those who

work on textual analysis, however inserting some modifications to better adapt it

66 P. Ricoeur, Dal testo all'azione, p.151 67 N.H.Abu Zayd, Islam e storia, critica del discorso religioso, Bollati Boringhieri Saggi, 2002, p.67


to the nature of the texts I will take into consideration.68

In Abu Zayd, the relation between sense and meaning is interesting because it is based precisely on

temporality. The difference between the two develops on a dual dimension. The first level says that

sense has a historical character which forbids us from determining it if not by scrupulously studying

both the linguistic and extra-linguistic context of reference. In other terms, the sense consists of the

immediate interpretation of texts as a result of the analysis of the linguistic structures in function

within a given culture; the meaning, instead, non-independent from sense, has a contemporary

character, as it is the result of a reading deferred in time from the moment of the text’s preparation.

Thus, if we try to explain this relation with an image, while sense is the source which, although

irretrievable, guarantees that the water of a stream will always be the water of that particular stream,

meaning is like the water flowing along its various stretches. The second dimension, which

somewhat descends from the first one, reveals that sense has a certain stability, while meaning is

fluid, variable according to the reading perspectives and parameters, although it is usually calibrated

on the basis of sense. Therefore, as in Heidegger, sense coincides with the historicity of a text, with

the time of a text, and despite being irretrievable it informs all later meanings. If this is true – and it

certainly is for Abu Zayd -

That which we intend as meaning has nothing to do with the universal purposes the

jurists speak of. [... ] Obviously the criteria for evaluating the movement imprinted by

the Qur’anic text and its orientation will necessarily have to be current criteria, which is

the same as saying that the meaning will never be determined only in relation to the

sense, but also on the basis of contemporary reality.69

This becomes even clearer if we keep in mind the objectivation effort which, in Ricoeur, is created

through writing. The world of the text, indeed, suffers a process due to which its reality, reflected

and transported within the world of the reader, is objectivated but also, in a certain sense, modified.

This is the eminently hermeneutic role of interpretation and this is how we go from explanation to



understanding and, also, how sense takes form in meaning. Finally, I would like to highlight the

implicit element of these reflections that is interesting on a practical level: the relation between

writer and reader, between world of the text and current world, produces – on the basis of temporal

distanciation – a relation of double liberation, in which the autonomy of the text is accompanied by

the autonomy of the reader, who is called to an active intervention with regards to the alterity

represented by the literary text. Interpretation, although not anarchic because sensible (i.e. referred

to the sense), is free from the rigid nature of the previously said and of the forever the same. Just

as the world of the reader is changed by reading the text - which offers new existential

possibilities-, so is the text changed by the reader, on the basis of his interpretation. This relation

of liberation leads us up to the threshold of Ethics.

And precisely the ethic dimension is the argument of this second section, in which I will analyze

the theory of subjectivity in Ricoeur, by referring in particular to his work Oneself as another70. In

this complex series of studies P. Ricoeur, starting from an initially grammatical analysis of personal

pronouns and moving on to the phenomenological and hermeneutic aspect of personality, proves the

fallacy of Cartesian philosophies, by claiming that subjective identity has a complex nature. In

Oneself as another Ricoeur’s reflective philosophy reaches its most mature phase, claiming that the

subject, by reflecting on himself, discovers in the very heart of his identity a principle of alterity

which is constitutive for his being (Alterity at the heart of oneself). Therefore, in Ricoeur, alterity

plays a fundamental role for subjective constitution, and this is true on at least two levels. The

principle of alterity which stalls the reassuring mechanism of the founding self-transparency of the

Cartesian Cogito can initially be found precisely in the hermeneutic phase of self-analysis and of the

return to oneself; indeed, on the basis of the different meaning of the Latin terms used to designate

the identical - idem and ipse-, P. Ricoeur makes a distinction between two great personal or

collective identity categories: the permanence of character (idem) and the maintenance of one’s self

(ipse)71, while the idem represents the identical (meme) to one’s self, the ipse represents its alterity

(soi). In other terms, while the ipse designates the I exposed to the world and to life, the I which I

am now but was not ten years ago, the I which is constituted by the experiences I live and the

choices I make, the idem consists of the sameness of the I, i.e. of that deep and rooted aspect

70 P. Ricoeur, Sé come un Altro, edited by D. Iannotta, Jaka Book, Milan, 2011 71 A.Finkielkraut, Un cuore intelligente, Ed. Adelphi, Milan, 2011, p.73


which groups together the different parts of lived experience in order to ensure that, no matter how

far we compromise in existence and how much we allow life to change us, we still remain the same

as ten years ago: that I, no matter how deeply transformed, is equally still the same I. Therefore, in

this last case, we are speaking of a principle of private subjective unity, without which all that

would be left of a subject is Hume’s bundle of impressions. The other point of view in which we

can recognize a principle of alterity in the heart of oneself regards the ipse, which is not

autonomous in its self-constitution but, on the contrary, is formed and born from a comparison with

the Other. Alongside Buber and Levinas, Ricoeur belongs to that group of philosophers and thinkers

who placed inter-subjectivity within identity itself, which is the same as saying that no identity can

exist without alterity, but also that alterity precedes and anticipates identity. Thus the Other plays a

fundamental and unavoidable role for the constitution of subjective identity. These reflections are

the basis for Ricoeur’s theory of recognition as a “hyper asset” that no identity, be it subjective or

cultural, can do without. The need for recognition is at the heart of human hope because – as

previously observed – alterity is not in front of subjective identity, but pervades and institutes it.

This is why the path of self-reflection and of the return to oneself – in the Cartesian Cogito a

transparent and founding certainty – transforms into the uneven and unstable terrain of

hermeneutics of the self, where the subject is daunted both by awareness of himself, on one hand,

and by his incapacity to envision himself integrally, on the other. Thus the hermeneutic horizon is

delineated, but, as underlined by D. Jervolino, turns out to be not the "serene land where sense is

donated, but the uneven and violent land where sense is questioned, apparent certainties are

contested, illusions are unmasked and rival hermeneutics battle in a never-ending struggle".

Within this horizon, finitude stands out as a disproportion of the human being, as an

inadequacy of any solution intended as final, as an impossibility of absolute

foundation.72

We are interested in understanding how the theory exposed above concerns contemporary

society’s Muslim world. It is quite clear that the Arab-Muslim civilization is suffering a cultural and

collective identity crisis,

72 P. Ricoeur, Sé come un Altro, edited by D. Iannotta, Jaka Book, Milan, 2011, p. 18


which appears to be caused, as claimed by Abu Zayd himself, by both an incorrect interpretation of

the self and a failure to acknowledge the so-called “other societies” (which means us, as inhabitants of

the western world). With regards to the first aspect, it is as if within the Muslim culture (at least

during the past few decades) a sort of flattening of the identity-ipse onto the identity-idem has taken

place; this folding onto itself manifests itself not just on a cultural or political level, but also on a

personal and experiential one. A large part of the Arab Muslim society, lacking the cultural and

political recognition every society and every human being need, has folded onto itself in the

desperate (and vain) attempt to repeat an idem which, once separated from the ipse, simply does not

function. Those who, within the Muslim society, proclaim the need for a return to original purity

in order to stand up to the West-enemy, essentially fall into a vicious circle which can lead to the

negation of themselves. Abu Zayd is fully aware of this when, in his many articles, he claims that

Muslims must stop seeing modernity as some sort of “scary monster” that is alternative to Islam,

and should instead cautiously and consciously open up towards the social, cultural, political and

technological developments of the contemporary world.

5 Annexes and final considerations

5.1 Theoretical considerations: N.H. Abu Zayd and hermeneutics, criticisms

So far, our considerations have led us to the heart of Abu Zayd’s Qur’anic hermeneutics; yet this

research would remain arbitrary – or at least incomplete – if it were to forget to listen to the other

side of the story, i.e. the opponents of our philosopher. As we previously stated, criticisms by

Zayd’s enemies often revealed the narrow-mindedness and fanaticism that were typical of their

times; however, this is not true in every case. The problems which emerge in the relation with Abu

Zayd’s thought are mostly theological ones and regard the statute of the Qur’anic text which, as we

have observed, transformed over the course of time into a dogma of Sunnite orthodoxy: for the

believer, the Qur’an is an Attribute of God, eternal, absolute, co-essential to His nature, and

conserved in the Well preserved tablet. When he denies this aspect, Abu Zayd places himself in

clear contrast with his tradition, and thus faces various types of risk. From a philosophical point of

view, indeed, we may question if what is true for the text in Gadamer and Ricoeur can truly also be

applied to a religious text. When referring to a sacred text, can we still claim that the universal is to

be found in its different interpretations? Is the removal of authority operated on the Qur’an by Abu

Zayd, who interprets it as a cultural product equal to all others, not perhaps excessive? Let us observe

in detail the claims made by some of his main critics.

(A) THE FANATICISM OF SHAHIN

'Abd al-Sabur Shahin is doubtlessly the first and most passionate opponent of N.H. Abu Zayd. A

professor in the University of Cairo where also Abu Zayd taught, he is a regular frequenter of the

Mosque of 'Amr Ibn al-As, in old Cairo. As reported by Fauzi M. Najjar within the British Journal

of Middle Studies73

73 Fauzi M. Najjar (2000), Islamic Fundamentalism and the Intellectuals: The case of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, British Journal of Middle Studies, 27:2, pp. 177-200

54

5.1. THEORETIC CONSIDERATIONS: ABU ZAYD AND HERMENEUTICS, CRITICISMS 55

His report is coloured by his fundamentalist religious outlook.74

The expressions used by this professor to define Abu Zayd’s work are deeply revelatory of his

partisanship: idioms such as 'cultural AIDS' and ‘secularist Marxism aimed at the conscious

destruction of the Muslim community of Egypt’ recur within his reportage which led to Abu Zayd

being denied a chair in the University.

The candidate, Shahin added, belongs to a gang of writers who believe in 'intellectual

terrorism'.75

Certainly, the element which most worried Shahin and ignited his dissent was Abu Zayd’s belief that

"the moment has come for us [Arabs and Muslims] to re-examine our conditions and liberate

ourselves not only from the authority of religious texts, but also from every power which impedes

human progress. We must do so now, and immediately, before we are wiped away by the flood"76.

"Yet what does Abu Zayd have in mind for the Muslim community, now that he has removed the

power of the Qur’an and of the Sunna?" Asks Shahin. In his opinion, indeed, Abu Zayd’s criticisms

of the Muslim world (such as contemporary religious thought’s incapacity to separate religion from

society and the state) are a deliberate attack against Islam. Another aspect that Shahin considers to be

intolerable in Abu Zayd’s thought consists of his conviction that "the mythical perception of an

eternal nature of the Qur’an remains alive within our culture”. From Shahin’s point of view, the fact

that Abu Zayd considers the Qur’an as a mythical work is not tolerable. Certainly Abu Zayd’s

thought does include strong secularizing and rationalist urges, yet Shahin’s vision is arbitrary

because he only grasps certain determined aspects of our author, which he absolutizes and distorts,

interpreting them as a form of secularism, atheism and refusal of Islam.

A defender of Abu Zayd against Shahin’s injurious accusations is Khalafallah, who stated that

Zayd’s researches are far from being arbitrary and are always the result

74 Ibidem, p.179 75 Ibidem 76 Ibidem, p.180

56 CHAPTER 5. ANNEXES AND FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

of in-depth historical and linguistic studies. In the case of Abu Zayd’s considerations on Shafi'i, for

example, Shahin’s criticisms cannot be considered valid, given that Abu Zayd does not consider

Shafi'i as a person but only with regards to his mediation role between naql and 'aql (tradition and

innovation).

He concluded that Shahin's report was unscientific, and ideologically biased, while Abu

Zayd's research is scholarly and objective.77

(B) CONSIDERATIONS BY DR. MUHAMMAD 'IMARA

Among all other critics of Abu Zayd, I found 'Imara’s position particularly interesting; his claims,

although in contrast with Abu Zayd’s vision, are at least founded ones. During the trial against Abu

Zayd, many accusations against him emerged, including – for example – his (alleged) apostasy, the

fact that he considered the Qur’an as a mere cultural product, the fact that he did not respect the

divine nature of the Sunna, that he denied the universality of Muslim religion, that he promoted

emancipation from, and even abandonment of, the Holy Text of Islam, and so on. Two factions

formed around these accusations. On one side were the liberals, who defended Abu Zayd and his

right to freedom of thought and expression; on the other side were the conservatives, who instead

defended the holiness and irrefutable nature of certain principles of the Qur’an, regarding which no

disagreement should be admitted. Among the latter was Dr. Muhammad 'Imara, a very prolific writer

who envisioned Abu Zayd’s thought as a form of Muslim Marxism and defined his thought as "a

Marxist analysis of the Holy Text of Islam”78. According to 'Imara, the Marxist vision which states

that

The cognitive horizon of a historical group is determined by the nature of its economic

and social structures and structure and super-structure interact in a complex dialectic79



is applied by Abu Zayd not only to historical events, but also to the birth of the Muslim religious

thought.

Abu Zayd not only adopts the marxian methodology, but he also defends it against the

'religion discourse'.80

According to ‘Imara, Abu Zayd proves his dialectic materialism when he interprets tha Qur’an as a

linguistic and cultural product and its birth as a strictly historical event. Thus, Abu Zayd’s materialism

consists of his consideration of the Qur’an as a text equal to others written over the course of 23

years; therefore, according to this perspective, "thought does not precede reality, but coincides with

a reflection of reality”. 'Imara does not contest our philosopher because of his consideration of the

Qur’an as a linguistic product given that he sees no contradiction between the Holy Text being

simultaneously considered a linguistic text and a divine-born one; what 'Imara seriously contests is

Abu Zayd’s claim that the Qur’an was transformed into a human text at the moment of its

revelation. In 'Imara’s thought, indeed, the Qur’an is the Word of God, not a human creation. This

is an article of Muslim faith and as such cannot be contested.

God revealed the Qur'an in Arabic, which is part of his structure, essence, and reality.

Yet Abu Zayd refuses to accept it as true.81

Thus, according to 'Imara, Abu Zayd’s thought follows two main trends: philosophical materialism

and positivist methodology. In Abu Zayd, claims 'Imara, we find a vision in which religious

thought is based on a mythical conception of existence which gives birth to the self-

consciousness of a particular cultural group which, for this very reason, changes with its

development and the mutation of historical circumstances. Thus, Abu Zayd’s thought denies the

Qur’an’s trans-historicity, its transcendence and universality,

80 Ibidem 81 Ibidem, p.197


by virtue of the fact that the Qur’an, as a cultural and historical product, is culturally and

historically determined and, consequently, relativized. I find that 'Imara’s accusations against Abu

Zayd are certainly incisive and well-constructed, although they remain debatable. Obviously we

could further discuss the question of the co-existence of universal and particular in Abu Zayd’s

thought (to greater extent than in the third chapter of this work), but this is not the most suitable

place for that reflection. A last noteworthy aspect concerning the various criticisms against Abu

consists of the difference between Shahin’s attitude, on one hand, and 'Imara’s, on the other. While

the former’s often lacks a supporting philosophical argumentation and ends up attacking Abu Zayd

also on a political and personal level, in 'Imara not only are the considerations more cautious and

well-constructed, but (and above all) this thinker’s criticisms never evade the intellectual field.

Indeed, Dr. 'Imara openly claims that he disagrees with the majority of Abu Zayd’s statements, yet

also that these disputes cannot invade the personal life of a man, cannot become the reason for

social alienation, and must remain circumscribed within the academic and theoretical field. I

believe that this democratic example coming from the conservative environment is encouraging and

highlights the fact that, once again, facile super-impositions can be circumvented by avoiding a

confusion between traditionalist/conservative thought (whose claims can be more than reasonable)

and fundamentalist attitudes.

5.2 Political considerations: A world without rules

In this section, I will mainly refer to Abu Zayd’s work entitled Reformation of Islamic Thought, a

critical historical analysis82; here our philosopher adopts a simultaneously diachronic and

synchronic vision of the history of the Muslim world, analyzing its internal diversity and multiform

manifestations, and later questioning the reasons behind contemporary events, above all in the Arab

peninsula.

One of the first aspects highlighted by Abu Zayd is precisely internal diversity.

82 N.H.Abu Zayd, Reformatìon of'Islamìc Thought, a criticai historical analysis, Scientiflc Council for Govemment Policy (WRR), Amsterdam University Press

5.2. POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS: A WORLD WITHOUT RULES 59

In the often hasty interpretations formulated with regards to the Muslim world, there is a tendency to

envision it as a single monolith, to the point of completely identifying it with its latest (and

unprecedented) fundamentalist deviations. In truth, this is intrinsically wrong: it is sufficient to

think that Muslims in the world cover a territory which has extended, over the course of history,

from Spain and Morocco all the way to Indonesia. Keeping this factor in mind – a fundamental

aspect for an objective vision of Islam – we can build a comparison between the results of this

culture and religion in the various geographic areas where they developed. This not only allows us

to realize that an alterity factor is internal to the Muslim world (given the many and diverse forms it

took on), but also leads us to pose the fatidic and embarrassing question: why was fundamentalism

born – at least in its complete form – in the Arabic peninsula and not, for example, in the Far East?

This research – similarly to all other studies sharing the pretension of being informed – must be

based on historical and geo-political factors. Given that I think that Abu Zayd’s direction (regarding

these themes) is already quite clear, we must specify that his reflections on a political level are not

aimed at identifying a culprit or a scapegoat, but aspire to an acknowledgement of events which may

allow men to avoid the same mistakes in the future. The colonialist aggressiveness of the British and

Americans towards Arab countries during the XIX and XX century certainly clarifies many aspects

of the problems we suffer today, yet, as claimed by A. Maalouf in A world without rules, the West

should not over-indulge in assigning itself the entire responsibility for contemporary facts because

this attitude would essentially manifest itself as the other side of that "egocentrism" which all too

often has characterized our way of relating to the Muslim world. If it is true that fundamentalist

tendencies already existed in the Muslim world from late modernity onwards, it is equally

undeniable that the western attitude towards Muslims ended up feeding those dangerous sparks.

Alas, nowadays, things are far from different.

Unfortunately, the present state of the world affairs gives both traditionalists and

extremists, not to mention radicals and fundamentalists, a more powerful position then

they might have ever


dreamt of. 83

I will not analyze in detail the cases examined by Abu Zayd in the first part of this work (in which

the philosopher takes India and Indonesia as examples in order to prove how, in those cultures, a

democratically oriented development of Islam was possible), given that I prefer to observe other

questions that are closer to the spirit of my research. I will therefore only examine three

particularly explicative themes, such as: the problem of identity (1), the question of secularity (2)

and, finally, the relation between Islam, Sharia, Democracy and Human Rights (3).

1- The XIX century marks the date when relations between the western and eastern world were

reprised after a long period of silence. The Napoleonic invasion of Egypt inaugurated the rebirth of

these relations. In that period, the Muslim world was going through an age of backwardness due to the

closure of interpretative schools of the Holy Text and to the dominance of a generally orthodox,

traditionalist and obscurantist vision. The arrival of westerners in Egypt and later in most of the Arab

peninsula caused Muslims to observe their world under a new light. Within just a few years, indeed,

the French launched a series of technological, scientific and cultural improvements in the eastern

world, often with good results, which led to Egyptians and Arabs wondering why all those

discoveries and all that progress were coming from foreigners.

Why was it that they were able to make progress while we became so backward?84

And, further on:

Why is it that we, who were the masters of the world for centuries, became so weak and

vulnerable, as to fall under the rule and the control of Western power?85

83 Ivi, pag.11 84 Ivi, pag.21 85 Ibidem


In these questions lies what Abu Zayd calls the challenge of modernity. The progress carried by the

XIX century into the Muslim world did not only stimulate scientific research, it also led Muslims to

re-possess and re-negotiate the fundaments of their culture, i.e. the Qur’an, the Sunna and,

consequently, the meaning of Islam. This process was initially met by a wave of enthusiasm, and

many Egyptian and eastern scholars left for the colonizing countries in order to learn all such

novelties directly on the field. However, this positivity was short-lasted because soon the

colonizers began to envision Muslims as the cause of their own decline, and to identify the

Muslim world as only Muslim, ignoring all the sub-categories it comprises, such as Muslim-

Indians, Indonesians, Arabs and so on. In the passive acceptance of this vision of itself (a vision

which masks a true repudiation), the Muslim identity fell into a crisis.

Such internalization of a reduced identity created an identity crisis.86

According to Abu Zayd, from this moment on the history of relations between West and East became

based on reciprocal repudiations. In this sense, the West is particularly responsible for having

initially denied the Muslim world the variety it comprises, for having colonized and often exploited

it and finally for having identified the most extreme reactions against this aggressive attitude with

Islam itself. If we interpret the aforementioned pages, we can conclude that the Muslim world was

denied, over the course of the past two centuries, the recognition of identity which constitutes the

primary good for both single individuals and communities. The results of a relation between cultures

based only on dynamics of power and suppression are now clearer than ever.

2-A problem which has held a grip on Muslim culture ever since its origins is the problem of

secularity, i.e. the possibility to institute a borderline between what is spiritual and concerns

religion and what is temporal and concerns the life of society and of the state. In this sense,

Christianity represents

86 Ivi, pag.22


a “virtuous example”, given that the principle of secularity, which modern democracies are so fond

of, is featured in Jesus’s teaching render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the

things that are God’s. Despite Christian history’s travails, this principle ultimately led to the

auspicated results, finally ratified with the II Vatican Council. Muslim history, instead, is

characterized by a very different connotation ever since its origins. As we have repeatedly observed,

the Qur’anic revelation did not merely lead to the birth of a new set of beliefs, but to the genesis of a

new community, which based its strength precisely and uniquely on its credo. Muhammad was a

political leader, but his authority derived from God. And the same was true for the caliphs, who

enjoyed the same divine “enlightenment” due to their being his successors. Yet Abu Zayd wonders

how, and if, it is possible to introduce a secular principle within the contemporary Muslim world.

This is possible, he claims, by starting from a distinction between religion and religious thought.

With regards to religion in the stricter sense, according to Abu Zayd it concerns the field of ethics

and of individual behavior and should not concern, as indicated by a large part of the contemporary

religious discourse, the economic and political ambit.

Secularism is not opposed to religion, rather it is the true safeguard of the freedom of

religion, belief and thought... it is the true safeguard of civil society, without which it

would not exist. [... ] Secularism is in essence the true interpretation and scientific

understanding of religion and not what the hypocrites claim, that it separates religion from

life. Contemporary religious discourse, intentionally and maliciously, confuses

separation of church and state with separation of religion from society and life.

Separation of religion from society is an illusion propagated by the religious discourse in


its war against secularism.87

On the question of the secularization of laity, Abu Zayd appears to have a very clear mindset. The fact

that religion is separated from the state does not mean it cannot be a part of civil society. Secularization

and laity therefore would appear to generate the existential space for religion itself, a space within

which freedom of thought and opinion must always be safeguarded. The problem that rises at this

point leads us to address the last question of this work: if this is the state of affairs, what is the

relationship between the Sharia and Human Rights? Is the Sharia perhaps not a Divine Law which

demands to be valid in every moment and every condition? Yet certain impositions of the Sharia are

in clear opposition to democracy... how can this dilemma be addressed?

3-When he addresses this question, Abu Zayd refers to two authors who deeply influenced his

thought and his hermeneutics. These are the aforementioned M.Arkoun and the Sudan-born

Abdullah an-Naim. Referring to Arkoun, Abu Zayd claims he has set the goal for himself of proving

the incompatibility of Islam with modernity. Within his treatise Rethinking Islam, Common

Questions, Uncommon Answers, Arkoun enunciates the need to re-think not the meaning but the

statute of the Qur’an. M. Arkoun does not see the Qur’an originally as a text but as a “fact” or

event which involved the Prophet at a certain point of his life. Following this event, over the

course of the years and of centuries, the Muslim community (or rather the Muslim cultures)

operated an appropriation (this terminology is derived from Gadamer) of the Qur’anic phenomenon

according to various modalities and diverse types of needs. In particular such needs conditioned the

canonization effort by ancient scholars and jurists, who suppressed certain norms in favor of others or,

linguistically, opted for one vocalization rather than another and therefore modified the sense of entire

verses.

The whole exegetical tradition is a process of appropriation of this 'fact' by the

various factions of the Muslim Community.88

87 British Journal of Middle Studies, p.185 88 N.H. Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought, p.85


Thus, following in Arkoun’s footsteps, Abu Zayd claims that, given that this appropriation always

existed and always took place, Muslims are entitled to re-examine the Sharia in order to make it

become compliant with the democratic principles required by the contemporary world. The relation

between Sharia and Human Rights was addressed by an-Naim, who stated that the Sharia needs to be

readapted according to the canons of International Law. An-Naim, like Arkoun and Abu Zayd,

belongs to the Muslim thought current oriented towards a renewal of Islam via its rethinking. In

order to achieve this goal, claims an-Naim, there is no need to distort the meaning of the Qur’anic

norms or of the Qur’an itself: on the contrary, only the sources need to be re-examined and

transposed to a modern context. This does not necessarily lead to a distortion - that should be

avoided (because it could give birth to rebates) - as long as the distinction, promoted by Abu Zayd,

between sense and meaning is maintained.

6 Conclusions

I hope my work has been able to display how reformist and liberal thought is far from extinct in the

Muslim world. The Qur’anic hermeneutics of the author I chose to examine represents just one of

the many attempts by Islam to build a dialogue both with itself and with our western tradition. In

this new hermeneutics proposed by Abu Zayd, the effort of rethinking one’s identity is never an end

in itself but always sets the goal of a dialogue with the Other. This effort includes the thoughts of a

vast amount of thinkers who, even from within the specificity of their cultural environment, be it

eastern or western, proclaim the need for a truly inter-cultural dialogue. The diversity of cultures and

the incommunicability of certain aspects are not an unsurmountable deviation nor do they represent –

at least not necessarily – an obstacle. The challenge is to see cultures – all cultures – not as closed

edifices or unchangeable self-sufficient monoliths, but as living organisms which, in light of their

organic nature, are open to change. As stated by S. Benhabib in his book The claims of culture89,

what distinguishes an alive culture from one that risks extinction is precisely its openness to changes

and to adapting to new and unprecedented circumstances. Given that cultures are destined to come

into contact with each other, their borders must necessarily be fluid and negotiable. The fact that a

culture is open to re-examine itself, on the basis of both internal and external criticisms, should not

be seen as its weakness, but, on the contrary, as its vital strength. Therefore, all in all, the

fundamentalists’ stubbornness in proclaiming a need to return to allegedly glorious origins, and to

intend all of tradition as an unmodifiable entity, represents nothing less than Islam’s desperation.

Being faithful to one’s past does not necessarily mean repudiating the present.

"We must be ancient and modern at the same time”.

89 S.Benhabib, La rivendicazione dell'identità culturale, uguaglianza e diversità nell'era globale, Ed.Il Mulino, Lavis (Trent), 2010

65

7 Bibliography

7.1 Works by N.H. Abu Zayd

N.H. Abu Zayd, Una vita con l'Islam, a cura di N.Kermani, Ed, II Mulino, Milan, 2004

N.H. Abu Zayd, Islam e storia, critica del discorso religioso, Ed. Bollati Boringhieri, Turin,

2002,

N.H. Abu Zayd, Un nuovo approccio al Corano: dal 'testo' al discorso. Verso un'ermeneutica

umanistica, Italian translated by P. Branca and M. Campanini

N.H. Abu Zayd, L'Esegesi di orientamento razionale: analisi del concetto di metafora presso i

Mu 'taziliti, Centro culturale arabo, Beirut-Casablanca (various reprints)

N.H. Abu Zayd, Testo Sacro e Libertà, per una lettura critica del Corano, I libri di Reset,

Edizione Marsilio, Venice, 2012

N.H. Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought, a critical historical analysis, Scientific

Council for Government Policy (WRR), Amsterdam University Press

N.H. Abu Zayd, Rethinking the Qur'an: Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics, Utrecht,

The Netherlands, 2004.

7.2 Other sources

Paolo Branca, Introduzione all'Islam, Edizioni San Paolo, 2011

A.Maalouf, Un mondo senza regole, Edizione Bompiani, 2011

M. Ferraris, Storia dell'ermeneutica, Ed. Bompiani, Milan, 2008,

66

7.3. CRITICAL LITERATURE 67

G. Fornero and S. Tassinari, Le filosofie del Novecento, vol.2, Ed. Bruno Mondadori, Milan,

2002

H.G. Gadamer, Verità e Metodo, a cura di G. Vattimo, Introduction by G. Reale, Ed. Bompiani,

2000/2014, Milan

M. Ferraris, Storia dell'Ermeneutica, Ed. Bompiani, 2008, Milan

F.Botturi, Universalismo e multiculturalismo, in F. Botturi - F. Totaro (edited by), Universalismo

ed etica pubblica, "Annuario di Etica" /3, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2006

P. Ricoeur, Dal testo all'azione, saggi di ermeneutica, Jaca Book, Milan, 1989

P. Ricoeur, Sé come un Altro, edited by D. Iannotta, Jaka Book, Milan, 2011

A.Finkielkraut, Un cuore intelligente, Ed. Adelphi, Milan, 2011

S.Benhabib, La rivendicazione dell'identità culturale, uguaglianza e diversità nell'era globale,

Ed.Il Mulino, Lavis (Trent),2010

F.Botturi, La generazione del bene, gratuità ed esperienza morale, Ed.Vita & Pensiero, Milan,

2011

7.3 Critical literature

M. Campanini, Qur'anic Hermeneutics and Political Hegemony: Reformation of Islamic

Thought, The Muslim World, Jan 2009, Oxford

Fauzi M. Najjar, Islamic Fundamentalism and the Intellectuals: The case of Nasr Hamid Abu

Zayd, British Journal of Middle Studies, 2000, 27:2, 177-200

Navid Kermani, Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an, Oxford University Press, in

association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, edited by Suha Tajii-Farouki, London, 2004

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Department of Letters and Philosophy

Western interpretation and Qur’anic Hermeneutics in the thought of N.H. Abu Zayd

Maria Elena Gottarelli

A.Y. 2013-2014

Index

1 Why Qur’anic hermeneutics? 1

2 N.H. Abu Zayd 3

2.1 A lifetime with Islam ..................................................................................................... 3

2.2 N.H. Abu Zayd’s theoretical innovation ........................................................................ 6

2.2.1 Historic contextualization and linguistic analysis ............................................. 6

2.2.2 Dialogic dimension ........................................................................................... 9

3 The Qur’an and Islam 18

3.1 Different interpretations of the Qur’an ........................................................................... 18

3.2 The two dimensions of the Qur’an ................................................................................. 24

4 Western hermeneutics and the Qur’an 32

4.1 Outlines of hermeneutics, a brief history ....................................................................... 32

4.2 N.H. Abu Zayd reads H.G. Gadamer ............................................................................. 37

4.3 N.H. Abu Zayd reads P. Ricoeur .................................................................................... 47

5 Annexes and final considerations 54

5.1 Theoretical considerations: N.H. Abu Zayd and hermeneutics, criticisms ................... 54

5.2 Political considerations: A world without rules ............................................................ 58

6 Conclusion 65

3

7 Bibliography 66

7.1 Works by N.H. Abu Zayd .............................................................................................. 66

7.2 Further sources ............................................................................................................... 66

7.3 Critical literature ............................................................................................................ 67

4

1 Why Qur’anic hermeneutics?

This research will highlight one man’s attempt to go against the predominant ideas within the

historical and cultural context he lived in. Qur’anic hermeneutics may perhaps appear to be a bizarre

expression even in the eyes of certain “experts” in the ambit of Arabic and Islamic studies, yet it

actually represents a thought trend which was born very early on in Muslim culture and found, with

N.H Abu Zayd, a new formulation, one that is more mature and interesting for inhabitants of the

opposite geographic longitude, the western one. This theory can be interpreted as the transposition of

a typically western matrix within a foreign terrain, i.e. Arabic and Muslim culture.

With his Qur’anic hermeneutics proposal, Abu Zayd challenged the closed and obscurantist

mentality which had (and still has) such great relevance in his historical and geographic context, and

offered a different – although not entirely new – conception of his culture and of its fundamental

text, the Qur’an. According to this theory, the Holy Book of Islam can and should be the object of

in-depth scientific and linguistic studies, given that it appeared in a specific historical period and

was determined by the period in question, on both a cultural and linguistic level. Thus, Abu Zayd

claims that the Qur’an should no longer be studied only by theologians and jurists, who very often have

no other goal than to manipulate it according to their aims. The idea of a literal understanding of the

Qur’an, or of parts of it, should be abandoned, as it is void of scientific and philosophical

foundation. By making use of the powerful linguistic and historical tools he had acquired by studying

western hermeneutics, Abu Zayd formulated the thesis that was to be the origin of all his misfortunes,

as well as of his fully deserved fame: the thesis of the Qur’an’s historicity. I will analyze this aspect

in detail over the course of the chapters of this work. For the moment, suffice it to say that it was on

this historicity – and thus, in a certain sense, on this situational nature – of the Qur’an that the

Egyptian philosopher based the legitimacy of an application of interpretation to the Holy Text,

which, precisely due to its nature as a text, demands to be understood, interpreted. But interpretation

– and this is the fundamental contribution of hermeneutics – does not lead to subjectivism and

relativism, which would be contrary to any conception of Holy Texts, but rather to the

1

2 CHAPTER 1. WHY QUR’ANIC HERMENEUTICS ?

formation of a new type of Truth, one that is historical and protean, yet no less convincing. In

hermeneutics (as we will see further on), Truth does not derive from the author’s mere intention, nor is

it deposited between the lines of a book, ready to be comprehended: on the contrary, it is to be found in

the different forms of interpretation of the text and it is born from the meeting between the sender and

the receiver of the message. Therefore interpretation is the unavoidable path toward any Truth. And

further still, no Truth can be achieved without interpretation.

In analyzing the themes I have so far only hinted at, I will first of all observe the contributions

which Abu Zayd’s hermeneutic approach has made to Qur’anic studies: we will therefore see how

Abu Zayd’s theoretical innovation mainly develops in two directions, the former aiming to achieve a

historical and linguistic conception of the Qur’an and the latter regarding its consideration as a

“discourse” rather than a “text”. The first chapter of this work is dedicated to an analysis of these

aspects. In the second chapter I will address the Qur’an in Abu Zayd’s specific conception of the text;

thus, a first section dedicated to the various interpretations of the Book within Muslim history will

precede a second section focused on the two dimensions of the Qur’an in the thought of N.H. Abu

Zayd. The question of the relation between the universal and the particular will emerge in this

context, leading us to the threshold of hermeneutics. The third chapter is dedicated to this field of

studies: after brief references to the history of the discipline, I will construct a double comparison,

first between Abu Zayd and Gadamer, and then between Abu Zayd and Ricoeur.

The fourth chapter is dedicated to final considerations, from both a theoretical and political point

of view; we will therefore also be able to listen to the voices of Abu Zayd’s opponents (due to

length restrictions, I have selected only two from the vast range offered by critics of the author)

and to address the urgent needs of the current political situation.

Naturally, first of all, I intend to narrate the life of this Egyptian polygraph philosopher.

2 N.H. Abu Zayd

2.1 A lifetime with Islam

Our narration of the life of N.H. Abu Zayd will refer to the text Una vita con l'Islam1, edited by

Navid Kermani. In this work, Abu Zayd revisits the main phases of his existence, from birth to his

painful years of exile in the Netherlands. The first and most striking element in this series of

accounts is the openness of the narration, the light-hearted and not once sarcastic irony through

which this Egyptian thinker relates even the darkest moments of his life.

N.H. Abu Zayd was born in a small village on the delta of the Nile called Quhafa, located

between Cairo and Alexandria. His date of birth is set approximately as July 10th 1943; the

uncertainty derives from the fact that, at the time, in order to register the birth of a child, parents

would have to travel to the regional capital and register the census. However, when families lived in

a village such as Zayd’s, and the cost of transport was so high, they would always wait a few days

before starting to travel: if the child was to die prematurely, they would therefore avoid a useless

journey; this is why, once they had reached their destination, parents could often no longer

remember the exact birthdate of their child. During the first years of his life, Abu Zayd learnt to

understand the reality of his village; he attended the local Qur’anic school, the kuttab, where students

learnt the Qur’an and the alphabet by heart. Abu Zayd fell in love with the Qur’an very early on, by

observing his mother during her prayers at home, and proved to be a model student at school. At the

age of eight, he was already capable of reciting the entire Qur’an by heart.

At the age of fourteen he lost his father. Concerning this experience, Abu Zayd said very little,

limiting his account to the fact that


3

4 CAPITOLO 2. N.H. ABU ZAYD

When my father died, I did not cry. I lost my voice. 2

When the time came to leave the kuttab, Abu Zayd enjoyed the privilege of being allowed to

continue his studies in a Christian school. Having become more mature, and feeling to urge to

participate in the contemporary political situation, he sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood,

frequented Marxist circles and began to write poetry. At the time, he was also employed in the field

of radio communications.

I was thrilled by the idea that all men, young and old, poor and rich, were the same. I

found it incredible to be allowed to address the headmaster as “brother”. Furthermore, I

never heard the Muslim Brothers I met in the village speak badly of Christians or other

religious communities. They were only angry with colonialists3

In 1961, Abu Zayd travelled to Cairo for the first time

For people coming from a village, Cairo is immense, an octopus, a frightening

monster.4

A few years later, he finally fulfilled his dream of enrolling in the University of Cairo, where he

initially chose to study Letters. However, he soon realized that within this discipline he would never

be allowed to study the Qur’an freely, a need he was beginning to feel as increasingly profound;

thus, after obtaining his three-year degree, he decided to re-direct his studies and chose rhetoric as

main discipline. The title of his dissertation was The Qur’anic metaphor in the Mutatila, which,

besides being his Masters’ thesis, was also his first intellectual work. The elaboration of this text

was very important for the development of Abu Zayd’s thought, given that it was in this occasion

that he first realized that


2.1. A LIFETIME WITH ISLAM 5

The Qur’an had become the scenario for a political and social battle, led with the

weaponry of theology, i.e. with concepts, definitions, dogmas.5

In 1977, the political and social crisis due to the "bread riots" also caused a crisis in Abu Zayd’s

life: he felt constrained in an anguishing reality which no longer allowed him to continue in his

studies. He therefore managed to obtain a scholarship in the United States, from the University

of Philadelphia, where he was to study ethnography and the methods of empirical research. This

is the moment in which Abu Zayd first discovered the great classics of contemporary western

hermeneutics, above all Truth and Method by H.G. Gadamer.

Having returned to Egypt in 1989, with noticeably enriched cultural and epistemological

expertise, he returned to teaching, an activity he had already practiced before leaving, although he

had never obtained his own chair; the first few years were happy ones for the Egyptian philosopher

who however soon realized that, during his absence, things had changed and that the wind of

Islamism had become far stronger than before in the delta of the Nile; at the threshold of 1993, he

was accused of heresy. His (and his ideas’) accusers were to be found in the multitude of

traditionalists, dogmatists and filo-Islamists whose ranks were increasing on a daily basis, due to

the historical and cultural situation. Thus began in Abu Zayd’s life a sad period, one that was

destined to last for the rest of his existence. Yet this is also the time when Abu Zayd met the woman

who would become his second wife and the sole love of his life, Ibtihal. After marrying, the couple

immediately had to start battling against the many injurious accusations against Abu Zayd. Things

worsened after the report written by a prestigious Cairo University professor, 'Abd as-Sabur Shahin,

who declared that the entire thought and body of work by Abu Zayd were anti-religious and

unacceptable; as a consequence of this report, Abu Zayd was denied the chair he had requested for the

following year. This irretrievably compromised his university career, besides undermining his

authority in the eyes of the students. During those difficult years, Abu Zayd was forced to suffer the

consequences of the decline of the Egyptian university system, which was falling to its lowest points.

When he was almost unable to carry out his profession any longer, he discovered that – unbeknown

to him – the tribunal had instituted a 5 Ibidem, p.123


trial against him to promote a compulsory divorce between himself and Ibtihal. The accusation’s thesis

was that Abu Zayd, as an apostate and thus non-Muslim, had no right to remain married to a Muslim

woman according to Egyptian laws. This travesty forced Abu Zayd and Ibtihal to abandon Egypt. The

last chapter of Abu Zayd’s biography is entitled "Exile is a non-place" and describes, in melancholic

tones, the Egyptian philosopher’s ambivalent feelings for his homeland, which he felt had fed him

but later betrayed him, and which he could never stop loving, despite all that had happened. Abu

Zayd spent his last years teaching in the University of Leida, in the Netherlands, where he certainly

had pleasant times with his beloved books and new students, with whom he was always available

and open-minded to the point of resembling a father-figure. He died on July 5th 2010, having never

returned to his country. I would like to conclude this paragraph by quoting a phrase by Abu Zayd to

explain his alleged “atheism”

There is something within me, it makes no difference if one calls it certainty or light of

God, and every great work of art such as a film, a painting, a musical composition, a

poem or a story makes me feel it even more strongly, and makes me remark: "La ilaha

illa-Ilah - Allahu akbar" - "There is no God but God - God is the greatest!"6

2.2 N.H. Abu Zayd’s theoretical innovation

2.2.1 Historical contextualization and linguistic analysis

In the first pages of a collection of essays written by Abu Zayd and entitled Islam and history7, we can

read these words by the Egyptian author:

That which a given culture perceives as absolute truth, is not absolute if not in relation

with that same culture. The goal of scientific research, in particular in the

6 Ibidem, p.216 7 N.H.Abu Zayd, Islam e storia, critica del discorso religioso, Ed. Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 2002


anthropological field, does not consist of an attitude of affirmation or refusal, but of an analysis of data conducted within its same cultural ambit.8

The need to study a text, any text, from a historical and linguistic point of view, should surprise no

one. This is where the problem of interpretation, one of the central items of this study, finds its vital

source and inspiration, this clear need is what gives birth to both exegesis and hermeneutics.

However, at the heart of this apparently innocent statement (the need to study and interpret texts)

hides a snare which will serve as stimuli for my research. What happens when we are no longer

referring to a literary text, but to the particular type of texts that represent the Revealed Truth of

monotheistic religions? The question is poignant. What is the relation between culture and

religions? Which one is the product of the other? Finally, how should we interpret the entrance of

the Absolute upon the stages of history? All these queries have been part of cultures and nations ever

since the birth of monotheistic faiths, with their specific holy texts and consequent claims of

absoluteness with regards to other religions. Arabic and Muslim culture, however, is particularly

interesting on this level because, in its conception of the text and of objectivity, it poses unprecedented

questions.

The innovative force of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd’s position cannot be understood without knowledge

of the premises of Muslim faith. Among these, one of the most striking is the principle of the eternity

of the Qur’an and of its co-eternity with regards to God. Because it is the Word of God, it represents

an attribute of his, and is therefore part of his Essence. This first statement is followed by the theses

of the insuperability of the Qur’an and of the need to follow its teachings to the letter in light of

their divine statute. This point of view has become so predominant in the Islamic world that the

community of believers has forgotten that it is in itself no more than an interpretation of the Holy

Text of Islam. Abu Zayd, in turn, assumes a very different position. First of all, he supports a thesis

that could be defined as formativeness of the Qur’an, with reference to Pareyson: the Qur’an is

undoubtedly an original text, yet it still remains a text, which is both the product of a culture

(specifically the Arabic culture of the VII century) and the producer of unprecedented cultural

forms. According to Abu Zayd, the holy text therefore enters its cultural environment so

8 Ibidem, p.23