Al Qur’an; A Product of History? (Nasrullah)

This paper was written as a dialectic response to a statement coming from a notorious Indonesian scholar, Professor Komaruddin Hidayat several years ago. In one of his famous remarks he once said that the Muslim’s most important source of creed, the Qur’an, was a product of history. Despite the controversies and disagreements that it’ caused among many Muslim’s intellectuals I somehow believe that this statement deserves an in-depth thought and, if necessary, a proportional counter idea instead of premature and seemingly rushed judgment on behalf of defense against secular ideas towards Islam’s pillar of faith. This piece of writing is only an attempt to look at this issue in a – hopefully-  proportional way.

I personally have never tried to find a clarification of Mr. Komaruddin Hidayat’s notion of Qur’an as a product of history either by himself or other sources. Therefore this short writing tries to dig it in through as objective perspective as possible. I assume Mr. Komaruddin might mean that Al Qur’an was composition of revelation which had not existed before it was sent to Muhammad saw. In other words Al Qur’an was - like everything else- bound to a particular time line of history in which the occurrence could be traced within certain period of time. This opinion makes more sense if Mr. Komaruddin added the mushaf which is the physical-bundled form of revelation into the definition of Al Qur’an- making it physical as well as spiritual realm. If this is what he means by Al Qur’an being a historical product I personally have no problem of it due to the point of objectivity that it proposes.

But as we read some of the works of contemporary notorious liberal Muslim intellectuals in Indonesia — in which Mr. Komaruddin Hidayat by some people is categorized in — we could go further to assume that what he means by Al Qur’an being a product of history does not stop at the definition mentioned earlier. It is reasonable enough to say Mr. Komaruddin might mean that Al Qur’an was largely bound to the social condition of the Arabs in Mecca and Medina where Prophet Muhammad SAW lived during the time of revelation. Therefore a massive re-interpretation of Qur’an is needed in order to make its’ teaching work in today’s context. 

In my opinion, this could be true if the Qur’an explained things such as laws (Islamic jurisprudence or fiqh) or ethics in very specific manners concerning the situation of the jahili arabs — and we know that Qur’an did not do that). We could find Qur’an talking about very few things like those who can benefit from parents when they pass away or women that may or may not be married in a very specific way but leave a sense of universality in aspects such as law, attitude towards parents and felIow human beings, war and peace, slavery, nature and science, women and many others. It is obvious that social phenomenon such as slavery did not take place in the time of the prophet only or exclusively within the Arab society. Instead it could be found since - or even before -the Babylonian time to the modern American and European culture. We can still even argue that the seemingly specific verses of the Qur’an such as the categorization of women to marry or not have a sense of universality because it is a common sense and acknowledged by any culture in any period of time.