Reading the Qur’an Contextually

Abstract

On June 6, 2013, at the IIIT headquarters in Herndon, VA, Abdulla Saeed

(Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Melbourne,

Australia), spoke to the audience about how a “contextualist” reading

of the Qur’an is becoming popular among those Muslims who are often referred

to as “progressives,” “ijtihadis,” or “contextualists.”

Saeed began his presentation by defining context, which he said goes hand

in hand with text, in two ways: (1) the linguistic context of the text in which

the verse actually functions and (2) the macro-context of the text, which encompasses

the social, politicial, economic, intellectual, and cultural milieux in

which a particular text functions. But despite the importance of this latter approach,

many Qur’anic scholars do not use it because they have traditionally

been far more interested in a word for word analysis, examining particular

phrases, and maybe providing some explanations in light of hadith or juristic

understandings. Thus it has never really been part of the tafs¥r tradition. The

science of asbOEb al-nuz´l (the occasions of the revelation) is of some help, but

only gives a rather limited and insufficient understanding of the context.

He then moved to what he terms the textualist and contextualist approaches.

People who follow the first one are very focused on the text’s linguistic

meaning and see it as the basis – and maybe the only way – to

understanding the text. Those who follow the second one are more interested

in keeping an eye on the linguistic meaning as well as the macro-context in

which the text functions. A grey area, which can be thought of as a continuum,

exists between them ...