ABSTRACT
Islam has often been presented or perceived, in the West and even by some Muslims, as a fixed template religion which can hardly keep pace with a developing and changing worldly context. Despite the great deal of Arabic and Islamic literature on the topic of Islam in changing contexts, the problem of the conflict between certain Islamic principles and some modern global notions still persists. My aim in this book is to examine and analyze the concept of diachronic development and variability of time and place within the Islamic tradition and the relevant Muslim views which can frame the debates on pluralism and democracy in a modern Islamic context. Specifically, these views will be approached in light of their respective classical and modern Muslim interpretations of the source texts. Moreover, I try to give a clear idea about the changeable and the unchangeable in Islam through an explanation of the parameters of the tradition of exegesis (tafsı-r) and how these are utilized in the field of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). The main themes discussed in this book – diachronic development, pluralism
and democracy – follow a sequence which helps to structure my critical approach from the generic to the more specific. I have chosen to focus on the concepts of pluralism and democracy as they comprise the most salient challenges that emerge in the modern and contemporary discourse concerning the conformity of Islam with the developing and changing socio-political human context. Speaking about interpretation in Islam, the Arabic language and its diachronic adaptability to both text and context form an essential access to all the issues examined here. Therefore, the study begins with a discussion of the linguistic intricacies related to the process of interpretation in Islam and the impact of the variability of the Arabic language on the conceptualization of classical notions in modern contexts. Concepts evolve, change and are constantly conceived in a certain linguistic and cultural sphere which determines the way we approach them. This is a crucial starting point in order to conclude a certain Islamic view which emanates from a plethora of texts and theological approaches and permeates the contemporary Islamic discourse on the boundaries of adapting to a developing world where pluralism and democracy are
principal values. It should be clear that it is not my intention here to approach Arabic per se as a language but rather as a tafsı-r-tool. What follows in this introduction is an attempt to survey the object, content,
approaches and methods of this book. I touch briefly and not deeply on the topics discussed because these will be handled in more depth throughout the following chapters. Furthermore, the reader of this work is expected at the end to have a deeper idea about how far Islamic thought can find ways to cope with different challenges, such as modernity, pluralism and democracy, in their updated contexts. Of course, to cope with these challenges does not imply that we have to put some aspects of Islam in a moratorium. The question is more about whether Islam has the dynamics and mechanisms to do this or not. It is beyond the scope of this book to relativize or even ignore the authority of the Islamic main sources, the Quran and the Sunnah. It aspires rather to clarify the tensions and congruences between the revelational and the rational, the text and the context, the limits and the horizons of contextualization in Islam, as these emanate from the Islamic interpretive tradition.
