ANALYSIS : Ghamidi, scripture and hermeneutics Naqib Hamid In an age of emotional polemics and empty sermons in the name

e of religion, Ghamidi is an inspiring figure who seeks to educate his audience in a nondogmatic Islam, which is rooted in the Quran The month of Ramazan is approaching. It is the month in which the revelation of the Quran began on the Holy Prophet (PBUH). It is also the month when many Muslims around the world reconnect, so to speak, to religion and spirituality and try to ponder the meaning of their Holy Scripture. This article seeks to explain the exegetical approach to the Muslim Scripture adopted by the Quranic scholar, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi. In contrast to the exegetical approach, which views the Quran as being an atomistic collection of verses, i.e. each verse being interpreted alone, Ghamidi is of the view that the Quran is not a shapeless book in which surahs are haphazardly arranged but rather that it possesses deep structural and thematic coherence. And it is this coherence that gives meaning to the verses. In taking such an approach, Ghamidi has followed the principles of Quranic interpretation laid down by what has now come to be known as the Farahi school of Quranic exegesis. This view to interpret the Quran while taking into account the structural and thematic coherence found in the surahs and verses was adopted in present times as an exegetical principle firstly by Hamiduddin Farahi (18631930), an erudite scholar of religion and a master of the classical Arabic and Hebrew languages. Later, his extraordinary student, Amin Ahsan Islahi (19041997) wrote Tadabbur-i-Quran, a comprehensive Urdu exegesis based on this approach. Islahi was also the mentor of Ghamidi. Ghamidi believes it is this coherence in the Quran that makes it a document having one definite meaning and, which resolves all differences of interpretation. Therefore this can help overcome the disputes over the meaning of verses held by the various Muslim schools of thought. Thus in interpreting the Quran, Ghamidi gives an overwhelming importance to context. He states, No Quranic verse or hadith should be seen in isolation. Context-free interpretation is the biggest cause of religious problems. The 114 surahs of the Quran are arranged into seven groups, with each group carrying a central theme, beginning with a surah revealed in Mecca and ending at one or more surahs revealed at Madina. Briefly, these are group one from Surah Fatihah till Surah Maidah; group two from Surah Anam till Surah Tawbah; group three from Surah Yunus till Surah Nur; group four from Surah Furqan till Surah Ahzab; group five from Surah Saba till Surah Hujurat; group six from Surah Qaf till Surah Tahrim and finally, group seven from Surah Mulk till Surah Nas. According to the coherence theory, the fundamental unit of meaning in the Quran is the surah and not the individual verse as widely believed. The surahs of the Quran are not disconnected but are rather arranged in pairs in each group, with very few exceptions. The first surah, Fatiha, serves as a kind of preamble of the Scripture. An important overarching theme in Ghamidis hermeneutics is the concept of rasul (messenger) and his indhar (warning) to the people he has been sent to. In contrast to the

popular view that the designation of rasul is that of a nabi (prophet), who is bestowed with a revealed Scripture by God, Ghamidi suggests that rasul means a prophet who was sent as a divine court on Earth. People are given punishment by that court right here in the world if they disobey the divine message after the Truth has been made perfectly clear to them after successive stages of warning. These stages include the phases when the rasul performs indhar on his close companions and affiliates and later, to the wider public up to the time that the truth has been communicated with such clarity that no one among its addressees is left with an excuse to deny it. Then lastly comes the phase of migration and acquittal in which a rasul decides the fate of his addressees and implements the judgment of God on them in this very world. The subject matter of the Quran is Muhammads indhar, says Ghamidi, and in saying so, he makes clear how the Quran when viewed as a narrative of the indhar performed by the Last Prophet of God to Humanity a task achieved in the broad daylight of recorded history can be vividly established as the biggest proof of revealed religion. This different hermeneutical approach, in turn, has led to occasions where Ghamidis opinion differs considerably from the conventional, traditional opinion, including his views on freedom of religion, Islamic punishments, jihad, relations with non-Muslims, the second coming of Jesus, tasawwuf, democracy, to name only a few. His taking an academic and unemotional approach to sensitive topics like the reform of blasphemy laws in Pakistan has often led to a furore by conventional clerics who are not ready to listen to any different interpretations of religion than those they personally adhere to. Moreover, his unflinching stance on terrorist acts in the name of Islam being completely unlawful has led him to come into confrontation with radical groups across the country. For someone trained in the principle and motto, abide by the truth even if your shadow deserts you, life cannot be easy. The struggle to pave the way for a different interpretive approach to the scripture, and the associated Muslim life-world, has come at a great expense. In October 2010, the Taliban assassinated Dr Muhammad Faruq Khan, a renowned religious scholar and a disciple of Ghamidi. A psychiatrist by profession, Dr Khan was working towards establishing a programme for reforming suicide bombers and extremists in Swat and bringing them back into the mainstream. Ghamidi himself had to leave Pakistan in 2010 and settle in exile in Malaysia after extremists had made it impossible for him to live in his home country. Religions get lost as people do, wrote Franz Kafka. In an age of emotional polemics and empty sermons in the name of religion, Ghamidi is an inspiring figure who seeks to educate his audience in a non-dogmatic Islam, which is rooted in the Quran. It practises and authenticates the sayings of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), purifying it of the myths, folktales, legends and rhetoric that now pass in the name of Muslim religion. The writer teaches Sociology at the University College Lahore (UCL) and can be reached at naqibhamid@gmail.com
Source: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp? page=2012%5C07%5C17%5Cstory_17-7-2012_pg3_6