The hermeneutics of the Qur’an and the Hadith

A scholar of Islamic law has argued that as it developed, Islamic law is textualist rather than positivist in nature; it seeks to ‘safeguard God’s law against the encroachments of human law-making’ by emphasizing the absolute supremacy of the legal texts (the Quran and the Hadith) as the only authoritative and binding legal sources.⁴ As such, Islamic jurisprudence is primarily expository and exegetical.

The discussion below explains how an independent Muslim jurist (i.e. a jurist who does not follow the fixed legal views of any particular school of Islamic law), a jurist facing an issue that has not been resolved in his school, or a jurist investigating a case that has not been the subject of consensus (ijma ‘) among previous scholars, would typically deal with the Qur’an and the Hadith as legal sources. This will be followed by a more detailed discussion of a case study that illustrates the complexities of the Qur’an and the Hadith as both inde­pendent and complementary legal sources and offers a glimpse of the kind of considerations that Muslim scholars may have taken into account when interpreting these textual sources of Islamic law.

When faced with a legal question, a Muslim jurist begins with collecting relevant pieces of evidence from the two textual sources of Islamic law, starting with the Quran and moving on to the Hadith. More often than not, this jurist would face two related problems: a possible ambiguity in one or both of these sources, or a (presumably apparent) contradiction among the various pieces of textual evidence that he (usually “he”) identifies. To deal with these two problems of ambiguity and contradiction, that scholar would have to make use of a wide range of hermeneutic tools. The following are examples of these problems and tools.

Starting with the Qur’an, a frequent problem that jurists regularly face is the exact scope of Quranic terms and statements. For example, according to Q. 4:23 (Forbidden to you [for marriage] your mothers, daughters, sisters... foster mothers, foster sisters...), foster moth­ers cannot be taken as wives by the babies whom they suckle. This verse raises a number of questions, foremost among which is the amount of suckling or the number of suckling sessions needed to establish a foster relationship, as well as how much milk is needed in each case. A ‘literal’ reading of this verse may suggest that even if a drop of milk passes through a baby’s mouth to his stomach, he becomes a foster son for the woman who has breast-fed him.

Expectedly, however, Muslim jurists wondered if that situation was similar to the case of a boy who was breast-fed reguraly by a woman. Another question would be whether the milk has to be directly suckled by the baby rather than squeezed into a cup, for instance, from which the baby drinks. A third question would be whether the suckling person has to be a baby, rather than a toddler or even an adult. There are other questions that could be asked about this verse, but these hopefully suffice to demonstrate the ‘ambiguity’ that Muslim scholars may find when they deal with Quranic evidence due to the un-specificity of its scope.

Another kind of ambiguity that jurists may face when dealing with the Qur’an is the indication of its imperatives; that is, what does an imperative (do!) exactly mean, absent any specific evidence? The three possible answers to this question are obligation, recommenda­tion or permission. The imperative mode of verbs is potentially ambiguous because, without any internal or external evidence, it can, in and of itself, indicate any of these senses. For example, Q. 2:282 — which happens to be the longest verse in the Qur’an, known as the ‘Debt Verse’ — says: ‘O you who believe, when you contract a debt for a fixed term, record it in writing.’ In addition to questions about the value of the debt meant in the verse (which again has to do with the issue of scope), an obvious question would be whether the addressees have to, are recommended to or are only permitted to record the debt in writing. Disagree­ment over the indications of Quranic imperatives has divided Muslim jurists over numerous theoretical as well as substantive issues. Similarly, we may add, a Quranic proscription (do not!), absent any evidence, may indicate complete prohibition or a mere recommendation to avoid something. Unlike the imperative, however, a proscription cannot denote the neutral category of permission.

Being another textual source of Islamic law, the Hadith is not free of its own ambiguities, although Prophetic traditions tend to be straightforward in their meaning, which, interest­ingly, led some scholars to question their authenticity. A classic example of a controversy that arises out of a Prophetic tradition is the religious tax (zakat) imposed on livestock. In a tradition the Prophet is reported to have said that tax is due on livestock grazing in natural pasturage (sd'ima). A question that arises from this tradition is whether the tax is also due on livestock fed by its owner (and, accordingly, cost him more than the first category of live­stock). Those who believe in the so-called argumentum a contrario hold that the argument from this tradition that non-grazing livestock is not subject to the religious tax is a valid inference.

Muslim jurists have dealt with the linguistic challenges of the Quran and the Hadith us­ing various tools. In the case of the Qur’an, most of these tools are external to the Quranic text itself, although there are cases where a Quranic verse is taken to explain the meaning of another. (It is noteworthy that, holding that ‘the Qur’an explains itself’, some jurists insist on explaining Quranic statements by internal Quranic evidence before resorting to evidence external to it.) In the case of the Hadith as an independent source of Islamic law, ambiguities in the Prophet’s statements are frequently settled by reference to his own practice. As a legal source complementing the Qur’an, however, the Hadith is itself one of the most important tools that are used to deal with Quranic ambiguities. We will discuss later an example that illustrates how evidence from the Hadith is used in dealing with ambiguities that arise from Quranic statements, although we do not lack instances where the evidence from the Hadith seemed to contradict the Qur anic evidence on a particular case (thus complicating the issue rather than resolving it), or instances where some traditions contradicted other traditions dealing with the same subject (confirming, once more, scepticism on the origin of traditions). For now, we discuss two other tools used in Quranic exegesis: the ‘causes of revelation’ (asbab al-nuzul) and abrogation (naskh).

Presuming that the occasion which prompted the revelation of a certain Quranic verse can provide clues for the intended meaning of this verse, Muslim jurists have compiled works that preserve reports about those occasions.

Incidentally, this verse prompted a debate on another issue that may not be intended by the verse. Muslim jurists are divided between those who believe that only virgin girls cannot enter into a marriage without the consent of their guardians, whereas previously married women (divorcees or widows) can, and those who believe that any woman cannot get mar­ried without the consent of her guardian. The second group of jurists refer to Q. 2:232 for support, for the verse seems to imply that even non-virgin women still need their guardian’s approval; otherwise, the women in the report could simply have re-married their divorcee even if their guardian did not approve of the marriage. A possible interpretation, of course, is that although a woman could do that in principle, she still did not want to go against her guardian. We may wonder, however, how it was possible for Muslim jurists to debate this particular point, given that the verse is clear in that guardians should not prevent women from re-marrying their ex-husbands.

Another tool that jurists employ in interpreting the Quran is abrogation (naskh). Ac­cording to this, God has changed some of His laws when He revealed the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad over 22 years. Accordingly, if two Quranic verses appear to be in sharp contradiction to each other and cannot be reconciled, a jurist can assume that one of them must have abrogated the other. The challenge here is to know which verse is abrogated and which abrogating. The Quran itself is not helpful here because its chapters (suras) and verses (ayas) were not recorded according to the order of their revelation. (It is believed that every time he came to the Prophet with a new revelation, Gabriel would tell him about the exact location of that revelation in the Qur’an, which could be anywhere.) Reports from early authorities (such as the Prophet Muhammad’s Companions and their followers, the tdbi'un) are not usually decisive here, which is why abrogation was and remains a contentious issue among jurists, and those who accept it (the majority) regularly disagree on the verses that each of them believe were abrogated.¹⁰

A classical example of abrogation is Q. 2:184: ‘And for those who can do it [i.e. fast during the month of Ramadan, but do not fast] is a ransom, the feeding of a poor person.’ From re­ports about the time when Muslims began to fast during Ramadan, we learn that fasting was optional. Those who are capable of fasting but do not want to fast can feed a poor man for ev­ery day of Ramadan in which they do not fast. This option was later abrogated by Q. 2:185, ‘And whosoever of you is present in the month, let him fast it.’ Now, every Muslim has to fast all days of Ramadan and cannot choose not to fast in return for feeding a poor person.¹¹ Another oft-cited example of abrogation is Q. 3:43: ‘O you who believe, do not approach prayer when you are drunken’, a verse that jurists unanimously agreed has been abrogated by Q. 5:90, ‘O you who believe, intoxicants and gambling... are an abomination of Satan’s work, so leave it aside that you may be successful.’ According to the first verse, Muslims can drink provided that they are not drunk at the times of the five daily prayers. After the reve­lation of the latter verse, they are not allowed to consume intoxicants at any time, according to the dominant view in Islamic jurisprudence.¹² It must be pointed out that reports about the causes of revelation of certain verses or of the abrogation of other verses can and have been rejected by some jurists and accepted by others. The rejection of these reports is based on the same ground that led some jurists to reject traditions transmitted by single transmitters — that is, the authenticity of these reports are only probable at a time when they are used to interpret Quranic verses (qualifying them at times and contradicting them at other times) that may otherwise appear clear in meaning. Against the view predominant in Sunni Islam, some jurists, in early and modern Islamic history, have insisted that traditions and reports that significantly qualify or contradict a Qur anic verse must be rejected as unauthentic.

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