In this post, I am going to be dealing with parts of the Quran that are difficult to come to terms with for those who want to live with a progressive moral set and follow the no harm principle. These are also parts of the Quran that critics usually use to attack Muslims. So before doing that, let us first appreciate these beautiful verses. From Surah Al-Hujurat: “O mankind, indeed we have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted.”. Surah Ash-Sharh: “So truly where there is hardship there is also ease”.

Quran as a discourse

There is a distinction between the Quran as a scripture and the Quran as a discourse [1]. The Quran as a discourse is a conversation between the prophet Muhammed (P.B.U.H), the believers and unbelievers of the time, and the divine. This conversation is a process of arguing, debating, and agreeing on issues. It is the discourse that is holy, not the text itself which is a silent record. The scripture as we know it today was codified after the prophets death by the Caliph and companion of the prophet, Uthman ( May Allah be pleased with him ) who burnt other variants. When we fail to remember the Quran is a discourse, we become slaves of literalism and idolise scripture.

The Quran (Surah Nuh 4:11) states that women should get a half of the inheritance of a man, and that the testimony of one man is worth the testimony of two women. The Quran as scripture outlook leads to taking this as a literal ruling, but taking Quran as a discourse we see an attempt to persuade the 7th century Arabs of the time to actually consider the opinions of women, and to allocate them at least some inheritance. This was in a time where new born daughters were at risk of being buried in the dessert. The literal ruling is considered sexist in modern times but it was probably a compromise with the community. Change does not happen over night, and doing things slowly and in stages seems to be a common pattern in Islam. This is shown by the Quran not being revealed overnight, but over a period of 23 years. The overarching intention of the discourse is to give women more rights. The modern consequent of this is to have equal rights. We should be looking at the intention of the discourse between the revelation and the community of the time rather than the literalistic meaning.

The Quran states that slaves should be treated fairly, that it is good to free slaves, and that it is permissible to have sex with slaves. The intention of the discourse here is not to introduce slavery into the community, it already existed. It is to make the treatment of slaves better. That is the intention of the discourse. Therefore, when reading the Quran we should not take away that slavery is ok, but instead take away that the situation should be made fairer, the most moral conclusion from that discourse that has been accepted in modern times is to ban slavery.

But what about when we can’t make it work?

What about when we find something that is incompatible with our morals, and we can not find any underlying idea that pushes for greater morals as in the example of the inheritance of women? Reject it. You heard me correctly. This does not mean sticking our heads in the sand and pretending it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean that we reject the Quran itself. It just means we are playing a role in the discourse. We instead acknowledge that it was part of the discourse on what makes a moral society by 7th century standards. When we read the Quran we become a party in that discourse, and therefore we have the right to say no, this is abhorrent and not fit for societies in the 21st century.

Let us look at the following verse which may trouble you. Surah An-Nur Verse 2: “The [unmarried] woman or [unmarried] man found guilty of sexual intercourse - lash each one of them with a hundred lashes, and do not be taken by pity for them in the religion of Allah, if you should believe in Allah and the Last Day. And let a group of the believers witness their punishment.” When dealing with such a verse there are three camps of Muslims:

1. Those who accept it as a literal ruling to be applied in the modern day under a legitimate Islamic State.

2. Those who desperately try to justify it by playing mental gymnastics. This commonly involves looking for different meanings of words that differ from the meanings that have been accepted by the majority of Arabs for hundreds of years.

3. Those who understand the verse to be applicable to the discourse at the time with 7th century peoples who lack the advanced moral compass we have today and therefore reject it.

We do not need to speak about the fist camp, we must be patient and wait for their condition to change whilst setting a good example. The second camp are in a sad state. There is nothing wrong with looking for hidden and metaphorical meanings, as long as you are being honest with others and more importantly yourself. But, if you are constantly jumping through hoops and making things up to justify things that don’t look right, you will eventually grow tired of your own incoherence. At that stage most people either regress to fundamentalism or drift away from their Islamic identity, some becoming ex-muslims. These are the hipsters who look at a verse and say “No brother, actually the root word of this means that, and the kasra is missing, and therefore what it says it means isn’t actually what it means, but instead it means a tree that has been born of a seed that has been excreted by an animal”. If you are in this camp, I beg you to visit the third camp and drink tea with us. Here our religious belief is completely consistent with living with modern progressive values, without the hypocrisy. This is the only camp which has a chance of reforming societies and contributing to the development of Muslim civilisation.

I advocate for the third camp. It is practiced by millions of Muslims around the world but sadly rarely articulated or encouraged. I reject the verse above as a ruling, as it is incompatible with my conscience and moral compass, and I hope that it is also incompatible with yours. This doesn’t take me out of the fold of Islam, I am simply taking part in the discourse that is the Quran. This doesn’t make my prayers any less meaningful, or negatively affect my relationship with God.

There is something interesting about the third camp. We are disliked by both anti-muslim bigots and fundamental Daeshi mentality Muslims alike. The anti-muslim bigots try to make us look bad by presenting hadiths and versus about whipping fornicators, executing apostates, and stoning. When we respond with, “yes those exist, but we Muslims accept these as dated rulings and don’t follow them”, the anti-muslim bigot suddenly loses his cannon fodder and has nothing left to attack us with. They hate us as we do not fit into their modal of the Muslim who is incompatible with liberal values. On the other hand, you have the Daeshi mentality Muslims who hate us for not taking everything literally. The anti-muslim bigots love these fundamentalists as they fit the mould for their propaganda. The irony. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, “Never be extreme regarding religion. Many nations have been destroyed before you only because of extremism in religion.”

Sources

[1] - Humanistic hermeneutics of the Quran - Nasr Abu Zayd. I fist encountered the idea of Qu'ran as a discourse here so I must attribute it. Although the thoughts expressed in the second half of the post are not the views of that author (Allah yarhamo). If you are interested in a more academic read about the Qu'ran as a discourse I recommend this 60 page read.

