Understanding the Quran

Among the well known features of the Quranic text are its repetitions.

The primary purpose of that feature is to stress some important pillars of belief 

25:50"And certainly We have repeated this to them that they may be mindful, but the greater number of men do not consent to aught except denying". 

The first objective of that literary feature is thus enhancing man's remembrance of Allah 39:23. It also is a way of explaining itself 

17:41"We have explained (things) in various (ways) in this Quran". 

According to the Quran therefore, its master exegete is none but the Book itself, explaining itself 75:19,16:89. The Prophet is its second exegete and interpreter 3:164,16:44,62:2. There are reported cases of the prophet using verses of the Quran to explain other verses 

"When the Verse:-- 'Those who believe and mix not their belief with wrong.' was revealed, the Muslims felt it very hard on them and said, "O Allah's Messenger! Who amongst us does not do wrong to himself?" He replied, "The Verse does not mean this. But that (wrong) means to associate others in worship to Allah: Don't you listen to what Luqman said to his son when he was advising him," O my son! Join not others in worship with Allah. Verily joining others in worship with Allah is a great wrong indeed 31:13".

The Quran being primarily self-explanatory establishes from the onset 2 conditions for its proper understanding; the importance of considering the context of a verse and the fact that the Book is one integral whole; every verse and sentence has an intimate bearing on other verses and sentences, all of them clarifying and amplifying one another. Consequently, its real meaning can be grasped only if we correlate every one of its statements with what has been stated elsewhere in a different context. A full picture of its ideas can be appreciated by means of cross-references. 

Allah warns the prophet, in the context of exposing the followers of previous scriptures for their transgressions, not to withhold anything of what he is commanded to convey, or else it would be as if he did not convey the entirety of the message from beginning to end 

5:67"O Messenger, announce that which has been revealed to you from your Lord, and if you do not, then you have not conveyed His message. And Allah will protect you from the people. Indeed, Allah does not guide the disbelieving people". 

This holistic approach was considered by the earliest Quran scholars, down to the contemporary ones. This means the Quran and its meaning isnt locked to the common man's comprehension, provided it is effectively pondered upon. Al-Tabari for example states that the Quran has 3 kinds of material: that which is only known to God, but irrelevant to hermeneutics, that which only the Prophet could explain, but extremely marginal, and that which any knowledgeable person of Arabic language can explain, practically all of the Quran. Al-Tabari included a chapter even refuting the position of those who claimed that only the Prophet can interpret the Quran. As a side note, the tafsir section in Bukhari includes many interpretations without isnad, and that are not even those of Muhammad, his Companions, or his Followers.

 

A note on the Tafsir literature. 

Hundreds of Quran commentaries were written during the long history of Islam. Most are now lost and only partially survive either as incomplete manuscripts or quoted in other tafsir works. This is because tafsir is a genealogical literary genre. It has always been dependent on an ancient inherited corpus of material. This inherited corpus constituted a core that was continuously cited. It is important to add that this core itself was born in a different environment than that of the Quran's composition. In a matter of a few decades following the prophet's death, the scholars of Islam were studying the Quran in Palestinian and Babylonian centers of learning next to Jewish and Christian experts on rabbinic and patristic texts. The successive scholars of Islam that inherited that core added to it, refined, reassessed or simply rejected it. This occurred anytime a new commentator read his own dogma into a passage. What was purposefully discarded still was determinative since it was foundational. This core was ascribed to individual authorities who were invoked to legitimize a specific interpretation, even if that particular interpretation seemed shaky when scrutinised closely. But this hierarchy of authorities was in constant shuffle, because their authority to interpret the Quran was in constant challenge by other centres of authorities; like jurists, reformists, theologians and more particularly linguists. In medieval Islam, the linguists voiced their own opinions in disregard to what the authorities in tafsir had to say. This general principle in regards to tafsir literature applies to the 3 main exegetical currents, the Sufi core, the Sunni inherited core and the Shi'i core. These were not always distinct but coexisted and competed, and at many times fused into a coherent unit.

Here is an example of how a core of material was inherited in tafsir works. Ibn Abbas' commentaries on the Quran is one of the most cited. Yet that work itsef is composed of multiple early authorities. Later, and well after al-Tabari, al-Zajjaj would become as essential a component of the tafsir core as Ibn Abbas was, thus becoming a defining part of the tafsir corpus. This shows the evolving nature of the tafsir core. Al-Tabari’s commentary didnt become an essential component of the tafsir core prior to the modern era and the publication of his work in 1905. Today, ibn Kathir far surpasses even the likes of al Tabari yet his ascent in the Islamic world is quite recent. His work was even almost forgotten, until discovered and reintroduced in the 19th century. Ibn Kathir also drew mainly from al-Zamakhsahri, al-Qurtubi and al-Razi, who themselves drew from earlier works. For instance al-Qurtubi quotes from al-Thaʿlabi. In more modern times, Tafsir efforts have more and more disregarded, criticized and refuted many facets of the inherited exegetical tradition. But this was and is done using the same philological tools at the disposal of the medieval and ancient exegetes. The same approach was adopted by the earliest works that reported, discussed, selected, discarded previous views, as Attabari does for instance.  

Al-Ghazzali lists 4 main obstacles in understanding the meaning of the Quran; exaggerated focus on the correct pronunciation of the text, dogmatic adherence to a madhhab, state of sin, pride and attachment to worldly passions, not admitting of there being additional meanings than those transmitted from earlier generations like Ibn Abbas or Ibn Masud.

As a further note on a particular angle of interpretation; the meaning of the Quran is not dependant on a commentator's projection of his own understanding of nature. Science is a field in constant reevaluation, and thus is not part of the exegetical tools of a mufassir. If however a commentator chooses to integrate it in his reading of a passage, then a commentator today, using the same tools available to his predecessors, added with current knowledge of nature, can supersede older interpretations in which the commentator projects his outdated scientific knowledge.  

Among the most skilful commentators of our times are the likes of ibn Ashur or Tabataba'i. The Quran allows such endeavour because it isnt a text whose meaning and applicability is locked in time. And that is why the Muslims have not attached much importance to transmitting the minute detailed meaning of every passage, from the prophet and his companions, but they have instead focused on transmitting the text of the Quran itself. It was always the purpose of the Quran and its sharia to be adaptable across time and space. That is why we have very few reports by the prophet giving his interpretation of the Quran. We are not talking of the core messages which are agreed upon, but of passages with multilayered meanings and implications, whose interpretations are open depending on the socio-cultural background or even the scientific knowledge of its contemporaries. These passages are open to many interpretations so long as they do not contradict the firm and unambiguous verses, which the Quran calls muhkam. Again, the Quran itself states that certain verses are more ambiguous and open to disagreement whilst others are decisive and clear. 

It is these supposedly "obscure" parts of the book, that most modern critics of Islam use to build their theories on the origins of the Quran. They begin by discrediting the oral transmission process of the Quran based on the presence of these "blind spots" of Quranic exegisis. They think this constitutes proof that the oral transmission chain was broken, hence the absence of a consensus on the meaning of these passages. These critics then dismiss centuries of accumulated Muslim scholarship, debates on all levels of the religion, textual, historical, sectarian, juristic, exegetical, theological, that led to the conclusions Muslims hold today as regards the Quran's authenticity, and all this, despite their awareness of various layers of meaning to certain passages. The critics then propose readings based on emendation of the text, changing letters and words so as to prove that "their" reading is more in line with what they individually think the message of a specific passage should be. The effortless cohesive theological structure of the text, the intricate connections between all of its passages and words is irrelevant and not worth considering. What is primordial is that their "improved" reading be violently forced into the text so as to integrate the Quran in the wider socio-religious context in which they suppose it came. The main purpose being the find their holy grail, to reveal the underlying sources that inspired it. The end result is an incoherent new book that has nothing to do with the original, with sometimes theological implications that Muslims of the past and today would never agree with. But in their minds, the purpose has been accomplished. The uniqueness of the Quran as a religious text orally transmitted, is now a pious legend, regardless of the thousands around the world in our own time doing just that, emulating their predecessors. 

The reality of the matter is that as a result of that revisionist approach to the Quran, all these critics converge on the same grounds; they do not know how the Quran originated, where it came from, and when it first appeared, how and in what language it was written, what form it first took, who was the first audience, how was it transmitted from one generation to another, especially in its early years, when, how, and by whom it was codified. These are all basic issues taken for granted by scholars dealing with other texts, much older than the Quran. Muslim tradition has for long resolved all these issues. Recent critical scholarship will eventually go back to the initial, much more constructive approach of pionneers in the field, by considering the historicity of the events agreed upon over the centuries by the Muslim scholars, and then try and build up their claims, whatever these might be. The Quran in many places is like a live transcript of a religious community being established. It reflects the context in which it was revealed and that is why the controversial methodology of stripping it from the historical context that the authentic Muslim sources have described for it results in inability to ascertain its context of revelation. 

Another similar helpless situation in which the revisionists have put themselves in, but are now progressively back pedaling from, is due to the dismissal of the near totality of the pre-Islamic poetry corpus as unreliable. This left scholars virtually nothing with which to compare the Quran. Western Islamicists were then left with the limitation of etymological studies in order to derive the original, more proper, and of course extremely biased meaning of its words. They began digging for cognates from common Semitic languages like Hebrew or Syriac, presuming that the vocabulary of the Quran is misused and derivative. Its theology too was seen as defective, due to borrowing from Judaism and Christianity, and was thus similarily in need of reinterpretation.