GJAT | DECEMBER 2017 | VOL 7 ISSUE 2 | 51 ISSN : 2232-0474 | E-ISSN : 2232-0482 www.gjat.my Demythologizing the Qur’an Rethinking Revelation Through Naskh al-Qur’an Roslan Abdul-Rahim Pusat Bahasa dan Pengajian Asasi, Universiti Sultan Azlan Shah Kuala Kangsar, Perak, Malaysia Tel: +6019-7534512 E-Mail: [email protected] Abstract At the interpretive and more practical level, it influences the way the law may be understood This article posits two important claims. One and applied in Islam. Most importantly, at is that naskh al-Qur’an is a real and actual the philosophical level, it demythologizes the phenomenon. Early sources from the Muslim Qur’an. classical era have been cited to justify this claim. The other is that, the notion and theory of naskh This paper is a preliminary attempt at reassessing al-Qur’an allow for our rethinking of revelation the notion of wahy in Islam. It proposes a in Islam. paradigm shift in the way we look at the Qur’an and the way we understand revelation in Islam. The theoretical discourse of Naskh al-Qur’an hinges on the basic idea and principle of the Keywords: Wahy; Nakh al-Qur’an; Qur’anic legal annulment of the law contained in or abrogation; re-revelation; revelatory alignment; implied by a particular Qur’anic verse that has revelatory adaptation since been declared as abrogated. While the Qur’anic theory of abrogation may be about Introduction the law, in essence, it is as much about the meanings and dynamics of revelation in Islam. Demythologization is a stylized terminology that Various processes may be identified with the has acquired its early significance in modern theory of naskh. Most notably are the processes Biblical scholarship. Its currency could be traced of “re-revelation” and “revelatory alignment”. back to the German Protestant New-Testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), Re-revelation, or revelatory revision or who first introduced the term in the context realignment is something to be appreciated. of Biblical hermeneutics. By distinguishing These terms imply adaptation. Through between Historie (“objective, factual accounts of highlighting textual instances in the Qur’an, historical events”) and Geschichte (“the meaning this paper intends to demonstrate that Qur’anic that people choose to give to those events”), revelation apparently came down not in isolation Bultmann appropriated ‘demythologization’ in but in tandem with the interests and altering order to render the interpretation of the New dynamics of an emerging and developing Testament free from so-called ‘pre-scientific’ community. imageries (Jean-Loup Seban, 1998). Since ‘demythologization’ presupposes our dealing This idea of revelatory adaptation has far with “mythology” or “myth”, it signifies reaching consequences. At the theological our attempt at the “decoding of myth or the level, it impacts on the current established reinterpretation of ancient mythical patterns of notion of the immutability of the Qur’an. It thought” found in a text, into “contemporary in turn signifies the significance of naskh in thought patterns” (Alfred Glenn, 1973: 73). determining the direction of fiqh and tafsir, and In other words, while demythologization may in revealing to us the theological nature of wahy. be understood as an act of deconstruction This journal is a member of and subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) GJAT | DECEMBER 2017 | VOL 7 ISSUE 2 | 52 ISSN : 2232-0474 | E-ISSN : 2232-0482 www.gjat.my or a demythification, in essence, it is simply cultural and intellectual baggage that connotes reinterpretation. Reinterpretation is significant the kind of conditions that have confronted and becomes necessary if only because meanings the Christians in their biblical hermeneutical embedded in historical texts require extraction tradition. Both the Qur’an and the Bible had and translation in terms that are credible and separate and distinct experiences and traditions understandable to us today. in their conception and developmental histories. Two things however need to be borne in mind On the contrary, ‘demythologization’ is here in our use of “demythologization” within the used simply as a loose term to imply both the context of this paper. The first is that,mythology act and the process of treating and rendering is used here to mean what Karen Armstrong the Qur’an as a text that is both divine and describes as “the imaginative expression of mundane in nature rather than letting it be religious truths,” (1994: xxii; 2000: 9 ff.). In regarded as strictly “other-worldly” and “un- this sense, it has a very positive connotation. in-touch” with the events that took place during Bultmann shares this idea. Myth, to him, is the history of its descent the way it has been important and that it expresses truth. But the rigidly understood and treated today. To every truth we find in myth, he intimates, is “clothed Muslim, the Qur’an is certainly divine, and as in the symbolic language of ancient thought- such, transcendent, for the simple fact that it patterns.” Not unlike Hans Georg Gadamer, is a direct revelation from God. This notion is Bultmann further argues that inasmuch as indisputable and taken for granted. It is for this myth is important, demythologization or that the Qur’an has been rigidly construed as reinterpretation is necessary in order that immutable and untouchable. What is less realized modern man could “grasp its truth” (Glenn, and therefore unfortunately unappreciated is ibid.). This assumption appears logical to him the fact that the Qur’an is nevertheless also given that truth is unchanging. On the other mundane for the very earthly dimension that hand, humans and their historical situations in characterizes its developmental history. In this which they apprehend truth change (Glenn, 76; last sense, the use of ‘demythologization’ as a Gadamer, 1998: 267-74). technical terminology in our dealing with the Qur’an presupposes the fluidity in the way the The idea of truth as something unchanging may Qur’an should have been theologically and equally be applied to divine truth. Yet divine philosophically understood. It presupposes as truth demands of itself something more than well that our existing framework of theological just ‘simple truth’. It gives us the direct sense interpretation and understanding of revelation of timelessness and normativeness. At the same in Islam requires our reappraisal and re- time however, scriptural texts from where divine appreciation. truths are derived and apprehended have to be This paper intends to show that the Qur’an, interpreted according to contemporary thought- as a repository of divine revelation in Islam, pattern, lest their meanings become obscure, and is much more fluid in nature and character the truth for which we seek eludes us. What it than the Muslims had ever given it credit. The means here is that, demythologization in relation present attempt is exploratory and preliminary in to sacred texts refers to and emphasizes less nature, but it seeks to demonstrate such fluidity of the mythical nature of the texts, but more through the argument of naskh al-Qur’an of the need to apprehend and embrace the and the history and nature of the text of the truths that are to be found in them, and that Qur’an. As far as naskh goes, this paper argues this could only be achieved through unpacking that the phenomenon of naskh al-Qur’an is a and deconstructing the mythological narratives. historical reality and that its occurrence speaks for the flexible nature of revelation orwahy in Secondly, by demythologization, this paper Islam, and that naskh in the Qur’an could be does not purport to bog itself down with the traced back to the origin and development of This journal is a member of and subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) GJAT | DECEMBER 2017 | VOL 7 ISSUE 2 | 53 ISSN : 2232-0474 | E-ISSN : 2232-0482 www.gjat.my the Muslim literary genre on naskh and our (1980) receives a widely acclaimed recognition study of the alleged instances of naskh. As among scholars, mentions that a great many for the history and nature of the text of the scholar have written monographs on naskh. Qur’an, it will be shown that the Qur’an permits Names like Abu ‘Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam (d. itself to be grounded and associated with the 224/839), Abu Dawud Sulayman ibn al-Ash‘ath mundane situations on the ground during the al-Sijistani (d. 275/888), Abu Bakr Muhammad process and development of its revelation more b. al-Qasim al-Anbari (d. 328/939), Abu Ja‘far than Muslims today would allow and give it Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Nahhas (d. 338/949), latitude. What is important as an outcome of this Abu Muhammad Makki b. Abi Talib al-Qaysi modest study is the impact that the shift in our (d. 437/1045) and Muhammad b. ‘Abd Allah interpretation and understanding of revelation ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 543/1148), are some of the will have on our appreciation of the Qur’an and foremost early authorities on naskh (Suyuti, the Islamic law today. v.2, 20-7). The Theory of Naskh al-Qur’an Slightly more than a century earlier, his predecessor, Badr al-Din Muhammad b. ‘Abd The much celebrated 11th Century Benedictine Allah al-Zarkashi (d. 793/1391), to whom al- monk and Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Anselm Suyuti was indebted for his Itqan, also cites of Aosta (1033–1109), famous for his ontological Qatadah ibn Di‘amah al-Sadusi (d. 117/735), argument about the existence of God, once ‘Abd Allah ibn Sallamah b. Nasr al-Baghdadi, conceptualized that “God is something than otherwise known as Hibat Allah ibn Sallamah which nothing greater can be thought.” Through (d.