IV.

The Koran’s Importance and Interpretation

The Koran has been accepted by most Muslims as the word of God in a literal sense. It is, therefore, at the centre of Islam and is comparable to the Torah for Jews or the figure of Jesus for Christians. The obligatory daily prayers include the recitation of passages from the Koran, and traditional education involved learning it by heart. It is regarded by Muslims as one of the two main sources of Islamic law (the other being the Sunna, the divinely guided behaviour and practice of the prophet and, for the Shiites, of the Imams).

Nevertheless, it should not be thought that the Koran is the whole of Islam, even though some Muslims have claimed so. It is also difficult to accept the claim sometimes made that the Koran represents “true Islam” as distinct from what are seen as the accretions or even corruptions of human origin contained within traditional Muslim teaching. Without the tradition of interpretation which accompanies it, much of it would be difficult to understand. Even the view that it contains a series of revelations made to Muhammad depends on the tradition, for that teaching is not stated unambiguously in the text of the Koran itself.

The interpretation of the Koran (traditionally known as tafsir) is a field of Muslim scholarship which has continued from the time when the text first established itself as scripture for Muslims down to modern times. Numerous books have been produced on the subject. We have a few commentaries attributed to scholars of the first three centuries of Islam but the earliest major work of tafsir is that by al-Tabari (died 923). This work goes through the Koran verse by verse and offers a variety of the opinions of earlier and contemporary scholars regarding such things as vocalization, grammar, lexicography, ethical and moral interpretation, and the relationship of the text to the life of Muhammad. The various views are reported without comment although al-Tabari often indicates which of them he prefers.

Many later commentaries follow the procedure used by al-Tabari but others become simpler and shorter by selecting only certain verses for commentary, limiting themselves to only one or a few selected interpretations, or specialising on one topic, such as the Koranic vocabulary which was regarded as especially difficult.

Much of the work of interpretation is concerned with the “occasions of revelation”. The individual verses and groups of verses are related to the life of Muhammad and are understood as having been revealed in connection with specific incidents in his life or to solve particular problems which he faced. Thus the text is understood as having an immediate context in the life of Muhammad as well as a more universal and timeless significance.

Some modern non-Muslim scholars have felt that elements in the life of Muhammad have been created by the elaboration of certain Koranic verses. The process has been described as midrashic because of its similarity to the way in which Jewish tradition created the Midrash stories about biblical figures, by creative elaboration of the text of the Bible. If this is so, then to explain the Koran by reference to the biography of the Prophet would involve a circular method of reasoning.

The tradition of tafsir has often reflected divergences and trends within Islam. Shiite interpretation of particular verses has often differed radically from that of the Sunnis, finding, for instance, references to the special status of Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Imams in the Koranic verses. In recent times both reforming “modernists” and “fundamentalists” have interpreted the text in ways which conform with their own viewpoints. Some have sought to show that the Koran is not only in conformity with many of the ideas of modern science but actually prefigures them. It is the often opaque nature of the Koranic text itself which makes such divergent approaches possible.