A Neurodiversity-Informed Reading of Moses in the Qur'ān

This article examines the Qur’ānic narrative of Moses through a neurodiversity-informed interpretive lens, with particular attention to emotional intensity, attentional variation, communicative vulnerability, urgency, and support-seeking. Drawing on qualitative textual analysis of Qur’ānic passages across multiple sūrahs, the study places recurring narrative traits in dialogue with contemporary psychological discussions of cognitive and emotional difference, especially frameworks associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The aim is not retrospective diagnosis, but interpretive comparison: to explore whether modern neurodiversity concepts can illuminate dimensions of human complexity already present in the text. Across three narrative phases - before prophethood, at the moment of revelation, and throughout leadership - the analysis finds continuity in Moses’ temperament alongside increasing moral purpose, relational support, and divine guidance, suggesting a developmental vision in which difference is not resolved but progressively oriented. The article argues that religious narratives can function as cultural resources for neurodiversity advocacy, offering non-deficit frameworks for cognitive and emotional difference that carry moral authority within specific communities. Applied to the Muslim context, this reading contributes to less pathologizing ways of speaking about neurodivergence in Muslim mental health discourse, offering practitioners and communities a scripturally grounded, non-deficit vocabulary for cognitive and emotional difference that honors both psychological insight and theological integrity. Keywords: Qur’ān; neurodiversity; ADHD; Islam; mental health; stigma