THE DISCOURSE OF RENEWAL: ASSESSING FAZLUR RAHMAN’S HERMENEUTICS AND ITS CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE

Central to any thriving society are questions of ethics and law, and how (and if) these questions are met with appropriate responses. Such thoughts will necessarily lead to a deliberation of whether ethics and law are divinely ordained, or if we, as human beings with the capacity to think and to conceptualise, are its sole creators. Fazlur Rahman, an Islamic reformist thinker, has called for the gates of ijtihād (independent reasoning) to be opened again. The context for this opening is a response to the rigidity of interpretations made by jurists (both traditional and contemporary, primarily of the Sunni orthodoxy2; deemed to represent the ‘original’ Islam), on matters of Sharī’a; generally believed to be Divine Law. The purposes of this chapter are varied. We do not intend to agree nor disagree with Rahman’s interpretative propositions, but to (i) provide a brief context of his argument for reform as well as the theological underpinnings which guide it. Next, and in order to develop a preliminary understanding of Rahman’s hermeneutics, (ii) we shall engage with his ‘Double-Movement Theory’, as well as its possible advantages and pitfalls. A brief comparison with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s phenomenologically influenced hermeneutics is made here. It is our belief that Rahman did not mind if one agrees with him or not; for what is of utmost importance is a ‘rediscovery’ of Islam and its inherent beauty and order, which is definitely not a perpetuation of intellectual sterility.