ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter is intended to clarify the main issues directly related and fundamental to the subject of this study. The primordial and central position of the Quran in Islam is inextricably connected to the directness of its revelation to the Prophet as the unaltered literal Word of God revealed in the highest form of Arabic. This created an eternal link between the holy unchangeable text of the Quran and Arabic with its linguistic parameters. The role of the Arabic language, its diachronic development, reaching its status quo with the deep diglossia, which characterizes the modern Arabic-speaking world, are all factors significantly involved in the interpretation (tafsı-r) tradition, in both its classical and modern methods. Therefore, the analysis of the intricate connection between the “linguistic” and the “religious” in the development of the tafsı-r methodology, and the role of human intellect in forming this connection, will constitute a necessary threshold to delve into the Muslim views on pluralism and democracy. In the first section, I will analyze the relationship between religion and language in general and between Islam and Arabic language in particular. This is meant primarily to clarify the variety of linguistic levels with regard to approaching the holy texts. More specifically, the particularities of Arabic in its written and spoken forms, the degree of acquaintance with its classical eloquence vastly present in the Quranic text and in the Prophetic sayings, and the high linguistic level of the classical Islamic literature compared to the contemporary lingual situation are all essential to understand the interpretive process in Islam. As already mentioned in the Introduction, I will focus on Arabic as a tafsı-r-tool and not per se as a language. While attempting to analyze the implications of language in the interpretive
tradition in Islam, we need also to explore the boundaries of the role of human Muslim intellect in the tafsı-r process between narration and (re-)interpretation. This will be the subject of the second section. Examples from early Muslim history, where companions of the Prophet reflected upon the Quranic text from the ostensible (z.a-hir) meaning, and other examples where the most eminent among them dared not to interpret the Quran based on personal opinion, show the tension between the Divine Word and the human intellect.
