Understanding the Qurʾanic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age

Conclusion: Qurʾanic Hermeneutics in the Modern Age

conclusion qurʾanic hermeneutics in the modern age Familiarity is risky. It may bring the illusion that we have comprehended the world around us. By breaking into such familiarity, miracle stories can invite the reader into a world of wonder, gratitude, and discovery. Yet the miracle stories themselves, and the Qurʾanic text that contains them, can also become too familiar. This book was meant to make such narratives worthy of note once again by highlighting their potentially far-reaching repercussions. Indeed, the case of miracle stories in the Qurʾan discloses the complexity of scriptural interpretation in the modern age. By analyzing samples from Qurʾanic reception history and connecting them with modern debates on miracles and epistemology, this book illustrated how a site of apparent conflict between faith and reason, or revelation and science, can become a venue for a fruitful exchange between them. At the core of this book’s analysis, there has been a deceptively simple question addressed to the Qurʾanic text: “What do you want us to do?” To be sure, inquiring about the implications of a text is not an innovation of modern hermeneutics; any serious reader of the scriptures in any age must have raised such a question of relevance in various ways. In the case of the Qurʾan, as Walid Saleh pointed out, it was a frequent perception in the exegetical tradition that “whoever may be the addressee in any particular verse, the Qurʾan was seen ultimately to carry a message, a lesson or warning. The reader always expected a moral to be learned, and this was conclusion 165 an expectation that predetermined the mode of reading.”1 Even verses that seemed to address Prophet Muhammad in the singular second-person pronoun could be read as having relevance for all readers who were open to receiving guidance.2 Other passages, especially those that were understood to contain commandments—such as guidelines for prayer, fasting, marriage , inheritance, diet, and so on—were read very closely to bring out their implications for sacred law, the sharia. Indeed, in contemporary studies of Qurʾanic interpretation, the issues related to reinterpreting the sharia are very popular. This book raised such questions of implication with regard to a Qurʾanic motif that typically falls outside the scope of Islamic law, sharia, and also seems utterly inapplicable to everyday life. By paying attention not only to what the interpreters say about these miracle passages but also to what implications were at stake for them, we have uncovered an intriguing range of implications of miracle stories. Indeed, our engagement with the reception history yielded fascinating results. We have witnessed how scriptural texts that seem irrelevant or absurd to many readers at first glance may turn out to be meaningful. To be sure, it was clear from the outset that the case of miracles in the Qurʾan presented a special circumstance. Not only did the Qurʾanic miracle stories raise important questions about the relevance of sacred texts, but they also seemed to be at odds with the overall Qurʾanic discourse, which criticized the demand for miracles and emphasized reflection on nature. As we turned to two classical Muslim interpreters, Ghazali and Ibn Rushd, we discovered that this apparent contradiction was pregnant with profound insights. In Ibn Rushd’s approach, such a perception of the apparent tension in the Qurʾan was palpable. As someone from the “demonstrative class,” Ibn Rushd saw the Qurʾanic references to nature as relevant, as they supported inquiry into nature and allowed him to recognize that there is divine wisdom and purpose manifested in the natural order. In contrast, he did not find Qurʾanic miracle stories very exciting and suggested that they be passed over in silence, with no apparent implications for a serious thinker. According to him, accepting the possibility of interruption in natural causality was too costly. For Ibn Rushd, a literal reading of miracle stories implied that our reasoning and science were useless, that there was no link between our minds and the world “out there,” and no point in being certain about anything. While Ibn Rushd did not directly answer our question of what to do with these narratives, or how to reconcile the nature passages 166 contemporary connections with miracle passages in the Qurʾan, his attitude was helpful in clarifying what these texts may not imply for someone who wishes...