Blindspot!
From Issue: 1058 [Read full issue]
Re-engage
The fact that an interpretation is unreasonable or speculative does not mean that it is authoritarian or despotic. The unreasonableness of an interpretation is partly a function of its lack of persuasiveness within the interpretive community that the text has helped to form. Reasonableness or unreasonableness, however, is not determined solely by the interpretive community but by the interaction between the reader or readers and the text. This means that an individual from within the interpretive community can rightfully argue that the interpretive community has not respected the integrity of the text or has adopted an unreasonable interpretation of the text. Meaning does not reside either comfortably or permanently in the text, reader, or interpretive community. Determinations of meaning can never be immutable or infallible. The fact that the interpretive community might have reached a point of consensus over the meaning of the text should be given considerable weight by a reasonable reader, but it can never be decisively determinative of any issue. A reasonable reader endowed with the humility of self-restraint would take very seriously the fact that so many other readers chose a particular interpretation of the text. The duty of comprehensiveness and diligence would require the reader who is considering disagreeing with the interpretive community to seriously study and reflect upon the conclusion of that community. But deferring absolutely and without thought to any interpretive community violates the requirement of honesty. An unmitigated deference to an interpretive community effectively means that, as far as the dissenting reader is concerned, the interpretive community becomes the permanent and exclusive representative of the text and perhaps the Divine Will. Respecting the integrity and independence of the text and respecting the absolute autonomy of the Divine means that no interpretive community or individual can forever foreclose the possibility of re-engaging and re-examining the text or the Divine Will.
The Divine Will is the ultimate source of all authority and the authoritative is whatever the reader (or agent) is willing to defer to and is willing to treat as an exclusionary factor in all relevant determinations. Accordingly, for a believer in the juristic paradigms, the instructions containing the indicators of God's Will are authoritative (i.e. the Quran and Sunnah). Furthermore, any interpretive community or individual that bases itself on the deciphering and understanding of the Divine instructions is authoritative as long as the believer is willing to trust that such a community or individual has discharged its obligations of honesty, self-restraint, diligence, comprehensiveness, and reasonableness. Authoritativeness is a function of deferment of judgment based on the conditions of trust. This is the normative process of authoritativeness in Islam.
Compiled From:
"Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women" - Khaled Abou El Fadl