Revising interpretation of Qur'an

6-2-2001 | IslamWeb

Question:

One Muslim leader wants the Ulama' to revise the interpretation of the Al-Qur'an suitable with the particular period. What was your FATWAS' IN THIS MATTER?

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Answer:

Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds; and blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions.
If you mean, dear brother, the lawfulness of writing simpler versions of the interpretations of Qur'an with a language that could be understood by people nowadays, we believe there is no harm in doing so provided that the person sticks to the method and procedure that were used by the Salaf (good ancestors) in interpreting the Qur'an. This procedure includes explaining the Qur'an by the Qur'an or by the Hadith or from a linguistic point of view taking into account the different ways of recitation of the Qur'an as well as the rules of Islam fundamentals. There are good new interpretations that followed what we described earlier like the interpretation by the Sheik Abdur Rahman Al Saadi.
But if you mean the calls that come from some people wanting to interpret the Qur'an through the modern western methods of interpretations, this is forbidden as such approaches were set up to interpret literary works of human beings, and the Qur'an is from Allah. On the other hand, such approaches are based on critiques and neglect of the Ummah's inherited knowledge from the good ancestors about the Qur'anic sciences. A quick look at these new approaches and their practical results shows that their opinions are not Islamic and are clear disbelief. For example, they say that Jinns and Angles represent the bad and good in the person's life. One of them "Nasr Abu Zaid" goes further to say that the Qur'an is good only for the period when it was revealed and not for contemporary times and many additional nonsensical sayings, calling for the modernization of interpretation.
Allah knows best.