**1. In Search of the Lasting Good Things**

Contemporary Muslims find themselves between two eras that are increasingly becoming distant from each other: the time of the Prophet Muh. ammad and his Companions and modern time with its questions and challenges. According to Islamic doctrine, Muh. ammad is not the founder of Islam but a reformer, just as other Prophets before him were. The "Seal of the Prophets", (Q 33, 40), did not seal the bond between Earth and Heaven, which continues to exist through the religious experience and the exegesis, the renewed understanding of God's Word and Will. To move from one period to another using a renovated translation is a vital need for faith. To guarantee an exegetical process faithful to the necessities of the two epochs, the believer needs to take recourse to an ensemble of subjective and objective conditions, which are the focus of this article. Let us first take an example from the Qur" an¯ concerning one historical gap:

Do not marry [women] who associate [partners with God] until they believe: a believing slave woman is certainly better than a woman who associates, even though she may please you. And do not give your women in marriage to [men] who associate until they believe: a believing slave is certainly better than [a man] who associates, even though he may please you. (Q 2, 221)<sup>1</sup>

The verse raises a problem that contemporary Muslims encounter when confronted with the challenge of modernity. They are faced with a text revealed fifteen centuries ago in linguistic, cultural, social, economic and political contexts that differ substantially from the current circumstances. Slavery, for example, is no longer acceptable today. It is seen as one of the worst historical tragedies, even though our world still contains hidden forms of enslavement. Religions and Scriptures, including the Bible and the Qur" an, did not ¯ eliminate slavery, but, at best, they prepared the path towards liberation, leaving the final decision to man and his economic development and culture; however, historical attempts to justify and defend slavery in the name of God existed.

**Citation:** Mokrani, Adnane. 2022. Islamic Hermeneutics of Nonviolence: Key Concepts and Methodological Steps. *Religions* 13: 295. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel13040295

Academic Editors: Ephraim Meir, Ed Noort, Louise du Toit and Wolfgang Palaver

Received: 30 December 2021 Accepted: 23 March 2022 Published: 29 March 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Anyone who takes modernity seriously is aware of the challenges caused by the time gap. As for the traditional or conservative believer, whoever contents himself with the pre-modern interpretations considers the historical forms to be the true guarantee of the Scripture's value, without which it would hold no sense. Or he might prefer to be selective, avoiding the prickly topics, given that they are "exceptional", in this way refuting slavery and accepting polygamy (Q 4, 3) and a non-egalitarian inheritance (Q 4, 11, 176).

Slavery is a clear example that concerns the gap between past and present. The urgent question is: How can this verse speak to me here and now? Is the text definitively obsolete and caduc? In this case, its value today would be merely historical. Perhaps this would be a particularly extreme modernist perspective, selecting those elements of the text that are still "valuable" and rejecting those elements that go against the grain of the march of time. A more coherent approach would rather pay attention to the entire text than be selective. From the religious point of view, we have no access to a *revised* edition of the Qur" an. It ¯ is entirely the "Word of God", even if not all the verses have the same value. The Qur" an¯ itself criticizes selective reading:

Do you then believe in one part of the book and reject the rest? (Q 2, 85)

It is inevitable to have to make a distinction between the value itself and the historical form in which the value was revealed for the first time in order to avoid an arbitrary selection or a literalist reading. In other terms, the distinction between the essential and the accidental is the first condition for modern faithfulness. This distinction itself is an act of interpretation that should not be merely a compromise of adaptation to the pressure of modernity.

(Q 2, 221) could tell us today that the value of the human being does not depend on his or her social class but on what he or she has in the heart and conscience. The text used the social categories of the time as an illustrative example that conveys the idea. The holistic liberation of the human being is a moral finality and a hermeneutical horizon that will be gradually discovered in the course of history, despite regressions.

#### **2. New Hermeneutics for New Theologies**

The key challenge for new Islamic theologies is mainly hermeneutical, that is to say, by creating new Islamic theologies that try to resolve the problems that have emerged from modernity, such as the theology of religious pluralism, nonviolence theology, feminist theology and liberation theology. They can be considered a single theology having different facets. Religious exclusivism can be transformed into violence, as violence against women is at the heart of feminist theology, which offers new tools for the theology of religious pluralism (cf. Tanner 2014). The integral theology of religious diversity is nonviolent, ecological, feminist, and interreligious at the same time. Those who accept diversity are reconciled with themselves and the social and natural environment in which they live.

Nonviolence cannot be reduced to political activism in resisting colonialism or dictatorship. Instead, it is an all-inclusive way of thinking and living that requires disarming theology. Theology can be an expression or an instrument of power. Nonviolent theology aims to liberate theology from power ambitions and to orient it to the service of all humanity, in particular the poor and the oppressed. In this case, religion's mission is seen as an act of humanization and liberation from all forms of violence. Nonviolent liberation is not a mere social movement of external change: it departs first of all from an inner transformation and conversion. This means that all these theologies require a mystical dimension. Mystical theology and hermeneutics are an essential part of this project for reform.

As mentioned above, theologians are interested in the theological meaning of the Qur" an, which goes beyond the historical forms. The text speaks not only to its original ¯ audience but to the present and it opens horizons for the future. It is meaningful for me in my new historical context. The theologian is interested precisely in the historical *passage* of meaningfulness between the past generations and the current ones, as cultural mediation and translation. This constructive mediation is the theologian's challenging function and mission. The Qur" anic text, historically and currently, is interpreted in different, even ¯ conflictual ways. "Qur" anic interpretation takes place in power fields" ( ¯ Pink 2019, p. 7) and is used to justify contradictory tendencies and ideologies:

> Violent verses/Nonviolent verses Pluralistic verses/Exclusivist verses Egalitarian verses/Patriarchal verses

#### **3. Faith Assumptions and General Principles**

Before discussing the attempts to resolve the hermeneutical contradictions mentioned, let us consider some presuppositions and principles from the believer's point of view. They are fundamental principles highlighting the text's status and function.

#### *3.1. The Author's Wisdom and the Text's Unity*

Faith in God's Unity is reflected in the assumption of text's unity, as this verse indicates:

Will they not think about this Qur"an? If it had been from anyone other than God, ¯ they would have found much inconsistency in it. (Q 4, 82)

The pressing question is: What is it that permits the belief in the existence of the pearl within the shell? How can Muslims believe in a meaning that transcends historical and cultural limits? It is the faith in the Author's Wisdom and Guidance. It is an act of faith that makes the believer both a worshipper and a seeker of knowledge. Behind the words lie the Creator's Word that the believer intends to understand and follow in order to become an active tool of it in life and history, the living word on Earth. This faith requires that the believing reader does not content himself or herself with a fragmentary reading, given that the Will of God is diffused throughout the entire text, albeit to differing degrees. The principle of "hermeneutical charity" tends to harmonize what seems contradictory. The bridge between the first historical moment of revelation and the present day is the faith that the text is "the Word of God" and that this Word concerns living persons, here and now. If this were not so, the importance of the text would be enclosed in a literal, aesthetic, or historical value. It would lose its religious significance as a force that transforms human beings and deepens their humanity.

Literary masterpieces of profound humanity possess something of that contagious and stimulating power. Literature can be a liberating force when faced with the hegemony of totalitarian thought. The treasures of world literature retain their power of influence over all sorts of readers from vastly different eras and cultures. Hence, the Scripture impacts uniquely and durably more than all other texts; however, it is legitimate to ask: to what degree is the holy text an instrument of liberation and a tool for intensifying our conception of humanity, or is it an obstacle to freedom? Freedom can be a hermeneutical criterion when divine guidance is understood as liberation, not manipulation or subjugation. The interpretation cannot be identified with divine guidance. It is simply a human attempt to understand it, an effort that can be improved and modified. Identifying one's interpretation with God's guidance is the first step towards fundamentalism and religious authoritarianism.

#### *3.2. The Text's Nature and Function*

Ambiguities that have deviated from the text's spiritual function as a nourisher of religious experience are often linked to definitions of the text and the ideas conceived of its aim. The Qur" an is not a book of legislation or history, or philosophy, even if it does contain ¯ historical, legislative, and philosophical elements, amongst others. It is fundamentally a book of guidance, according to how the Qur" an describes itself: ¯

This is the Book in which there is no doubt, a guide for the righteous. (Q 2, 2)

Guidance is at once its identity and function. It plays a directing and educational role in clarifying the path to God; however, this light does not replace the path of the believer. It cannot in any way replace the believer's spiritual experience and ethical consciousness in his or her individual way of being and living in the presence of God.

Khaled Abou El Fadl problematizes the question in ethical terms:

If by the standards of age and place, or the standards of human moral development, traditions lead to *wakhz al-d. am¯ır* (the unsettling or disturbing of the conscience), the least a Muslim can do is to pause to reflect about the place and implications of these traditions. If we assume that the human *fit.rah* (intuition) is socially and historically limited, it will necessarily be changing and evolving. Consequently, what will disturb the conscience in one context will not necessarily do the same in another. Nevertheless, if a Muslim's conscience is disturbed, the least that would be theologically expected from thinking beings who carry the burden of free will, accountability and God's trust is to take a reflective pause [ ... ] The duties of honesty, self-restraint, diligence, comprehensiveness, and reasonableness demand that a Muslim make a serious inquiry into the origin, structure, and symbolism of the authorial enterprise that produced the tradition before simply waiving it away and proceeding on his merry way. (Abou El Fadl 2003, p. 213).<sup>2</sup>

Abou El Fadl's reflection concerning the Sunna is extendible to the Qur"an itself, as ¯ the historical and ethical challenges are the same. He is aware of conservative Muslims' objections that see a sign of the anarchic and antireligious in this critical attitude. "This is not an invitation to the exercise of whimsy and feel-good determinations" (Abou El Fadl 2003, p. 213), he said. The core of the question is the understanding of religious obedience, as mentioned by this verse:

When God and His Messenger have decided on a matter that concerns them, it is not fitting for any believing man or woman to claim freedom of choice in that matter: whoever disobeys God and His Messenger is far astray. (Q 33, 36)

The question is not obeying God and His messenger, a shared fundamental doctrine, but rather understanding the divine Will and interpreting the revelation. A mechanical and literalist understanding can be a betrayal of this sublime Will, and above all, God's Will cannot be reduced to practical and juridical commands. It is more than orthopraxis; it is a question of inner transformation that makes the believer have no other will than that of God. Guidance cannot be reduced to "what to do". Instead, it is primarily "how to be", an existential conversion and the purification and change of the heart. Apparent deeds and actions are only the external expression of the inner state. Historically, Islamic law, *fiqh*, holds a dominant position in Islamic knowledge, which is still present and influential in Islamic institutions and religious public opinion today. The situation has become more complex with the interference of political and ideological factors, which see in the Qur" an a ¯ political program or the "constitution" of a desired or effective "Islamic" state.

In the Qur"anic text, which is composed of 6235 verses, there are no more than 500 ¯ juridical verses, and the most accurate number is around 350 (Kamali 2008, p. 19). The boundaries between the moral and juridical are not always clear. The principal aspect of the Qur" an, the stories of the Prophets, represents instead almost a quarter of the ¯ Qur" an, 1453 verses ( ¯ Gilliot 2003). Their function is often seen as consolidating the Prophet, educating children, or an abrogated history of pre-Islamic generations. The reconsideration of the Qur" anic narratives enhances the awareness of the unity of the text and its function. ¯ Narration is an essential tool in transforming minds and souls from inside through creative imagination.

Sufism had the privilege of reconsidering the stories of the Prophets, noting that they contained a rich symbolic discourse, a mystical theology, rather than simply being decorative annexes. The juridical approach, in its extreme form, transforms life into a series of commands that cover life in all its aspects and details, from birth to death. Without a holistic meaning or a spiritual experience, the juridical hegemony constitutes a risk for a healthy religious life, precisely due to its lack of freedom and imagination.
