The Rise of Neo-Modernism and Contextual Approach to Qurʼānic Interpretation by Neo-Modernist Scholars

Abstract

The scholarly study of the holy Qurʼān has seen an unprecedented development in the last few decades and a great number of volumes have been produced addressing a diverse range of issues. The modern trends in Qurʼānic interpretation are based on a hypothetical, linguistic and scientific approach to develop a rationalistic interpretation of the Qurʼānic text. In this era of changing circumstances and significantly varying situations, there is an intense need to understand the nature of interpretation and the approaches employed to understand the Qurʼānic text. This library-based research aims to explore the views of several prominent neo-modern scholars in support of the contextual approach to Qur’ānic interpretation. Towards this, the main focus of this research is to understand the trends and transformations in the history of contextualization, especially taking into consideration the issues of gender equality and freedom of religion and apostasy. The research shows that early and neo modern Muslim scholars held a new ideology of Qurʼānic interpretation based on the contextual approach to tackle the challenges that emerge with the demographic, economic, political and social changes of the modern world.