[Book Review] The Qur’an and the Just Society by Ramon Harvey | Part I | Reviewed by Arnold Yasin Mol

Ramon Harvey. The Qur’an and the Just Society (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018). 276 pages. $125,- hardcopy, $39.95 paperback. | Reviewed by Arnold Yasin Mol.

This article is part I of the book review, reflecting on Ramon Harvey’s methodology. Part II will analyze his proposed interpretations of the Qurʾānic verses.

The Qur’an and the Just Society is an important attempt towards providing a hermeneutics of continuity as a response to what Ramon Harvey[1] calls, “the Qur’anic pledge for perpetual relevance.” In modern thought, it is religion, the search for meaning, which makes us humans unique within the realm of life. The Qurʾān, as a religious text, is therefore a text that represents our uniqueness; it defines us as homo religiosus. Therefore, the pursuit for a perpetual Qurʾānic relevance could also be seen as a pursuit for what makes us humans relevant. In classical thought, human uniqueness was defined by our intellect, and more importantly, by our capability for virtue. Religion was a vehicle to guide people towards the highest virtues of truth and justice. Religion helped us to be truly human, to be homo ethicus. Reading the Qurʾān as an ethical text is therefore reading it exactly how classical tradition understood it to be read. It is reading it according to why the Qurʾān was revealed to mankind, {We sent Our messengers with clear signs…so that people could uphold justice} (Q. 57:25). Harvey’s attempt towards a hermeneutics of continuity synthesizes both the modern and classical concept of human uniqueness by providing an ethical reading of the Qurʾān which is meaningful to modern humans.

His book explores the ethical structure of the ‘just society’ within the Qur’an. The establishment of justice within Muslim civilization, which from the start integrated religious pluralism, is a central focus of the Qurʾān. Monotheism is not simply a theological construct, but an ethical one as well. As expressed in verse Q. 3:18, {Allah witnesses that there is no deity except Him, and [so do] the angels and those of knowledge – [that He is] maintaining [creation] in justice. There is no deity except Him, the Exalted in Might, the Wise}. Harvey constructs a theological and hermeneutic framework to explore this revealed concept of justice within its socio-historical context and hopes thereby to lay the foundations for future contemporary articulations of Qur’anic ethics.

Each chapter explores the ethical structure of the Qurʾān’s vision of a ‘just society.’  It starts with an elaborate introduction to the concept of ethics and theology, hermeneutics, and how these are linked to the historicity of the Qurʾān. It then explores three forms of justice: political justice as expressed in politics, peace, and war, distributive justice as expressed in trade, alms, marriage, and inheritance, and corrective justice, as expressed in rulings relating to public and private crimes

Each chapter explores the ethical structure of the Qurʾān’s vision of a ‘just society.’  It starts with an elaborate introduction to the concept of ethics and theology, hermeneutics, and how these are linked to the historicity of the Qurʾān. It then explores three forms of justice: political justice as expressed in politics, peace, and war, distributive justice as expressed in trade, alms, marriage, and inheritance, and corrective justice, as expressed in rulings relating to public and private crimes.

The Qur’an and the Just Society builds on both earlier modern works, especially Fazlur Rahman’s Themes of the Qur’an, and a broad reading of the classical Sunnī interpretive tradition, with an emphasis on the Ḥanafī-Māturīdī school of thought. The book, which is an adaption of his doctoral thesis, is a clear representation of Harvey’s own intellectual training within modern academic and traditional Islamic studies. Rahman’s small work belonged to a modernistic trend within Qurʾānic exegesis, the concept of a thematic reading (al-tafsīr al-mawūʿī) which summarizes sections of the text to selective dominant themes.[2] This trend fits within a post-modern tendency towards reducing the almost endless diversity of the world into perennial meanings which do not define but overarch the world. Meaning must not confront, but embrace the world. Post-modern virtue is not about truth and justice, but about tolerance and freedom. We see a similar modernistic trend in relation to Islamic jurisprudence whereby the broad and diverse scope of Sharīʿa rulings and philosophy of law is reduced to the five objectives (maqāid al-sharīʿa), preserving religion, life, mind, wealth, and family. Classically, these objectives were used as yardsticks to determine if derived rulings did not cause harm to these essential elements of human existence. But in much of modern Muslim thought these objectives themselves have become the source to derive new rulings or to label secular laws as ‘Islamic,’ changing its function as a humanistic hermeneutic to a moral philosophy, and thereby replacing the Sharīʿa and its source texts.[3] Thematic readings are not only ‘thin descriptions,’ but can also be reductions of the impact scope of traditional religion in modern human life. Thematic readings can therefore represent either a hermeneutic of continuity or discontinuity.[4] Rahman (d. 1988), as Younus Y. Mirza’s article beautifully points out, pursued an intentional hermeneutics of discontinuity, an epistemological break with the past, whereby he explained the Qurʾān “without the use of any of the traditional commentaries used in classical Islamic education, applying his own Qurʾānic hermeneutics.”[5] Harvey on the other hand pursues a hermeneutic of continuity by linking past and present and shows that classical and modern humans can read the Qurʾān from a singular ethical worldview. He does this by providing a natural law reading of the social justice themes, whereby the ontology of natural law ethics becomes the shared ethical cosmology of classical and modern man. As God created mankind as a singular community, it means they can share a singular ethical cosmology (Harvey, p. 192). And it is this central element that differentiates his exegetical reading from other modernistic readings.

“Harvey on the other hand pursues a hermeneutic of continuity by linking past and present and shows that classical and modern readers can read the Qurʾān from a singular ethical world view.”

Modern Qurʾān hermeneutics as proposed by Rahman, and also other modern thinkers such as Abdullah Saeed, and Nasr Abu Zayd (d. 2009), generally see the literal text of the Qurʾān as conflicting with ‘modern values’ and use historical hermeneutics to salvage the text’s divine intent. God only sounds outdated because He had to deal with an outdated society. Understanding His intent within that outdated society will unveil timeless values that we also pursue today, and so we do not have to feel apologetic about being modern. Classical genres mainly had their own content structure and premises in which source texts (i.e. Qurʾān and Sunna) were used as supportive texts, such as in religious ethical works as al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī’s (d. 452/1060) Kitāb al-dharīʿa ilā makārim al-sharīʿ(The Book of Means to the Noble Virtues of the Revealed Law) and al-Ghazālī’s (d. 504/1111) Mīzān al-ʿamal.[6] In modern thematic genres the source text is taken as a premise on its own as a way to claim ‘objective’ meanings. Historical hermeneutics is by itself a sufficient ‘theology’ to read the text. Harvey is aware of this hermeneutical fallacy and tries to avoid it by discussing different premise ‘flavours’ that have developed within Islamic thought, and deliberately advocates for the dialectical theology developed by the classical Sunnī theologianAbū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 944) as the hermeneutical lens with which to read the source text.

Although Harvey links his project to the modern Qurʾān hermeneutics of Rahman and Saeed (Harvey, pp. 3, 53), his main pursuit is to prove that the Qurʾān can be read from a natural law perspective, which according to him was the classical perspective already proposed by al-Māturīdī (Harvey, pp. 28-42). Al-Māturīdī viewed these natural law ethics as grounded in divine wisdom (al-ikma), and therefore an internal divine ethical criteria (i.e. soft moral realism). His theology was therefore always seen as a middle ground between the Muʿtazila, who believed ethical criteria exist apart from God (i.e. hard moral realism), and the Ashʿarī who believe that ethics are revealed concepts and only apply to humans (i.e. voluntarism). Harvey synthesizes Māturīdī’s and modern hermeneutics into what he calls a ‘neo-Māturīdism’[7] wherein the natural law ethics that underlie the Qurʾānic commands are defined as ikmas, the divine wisdoms and reasoning of the text (Harvey, pp. 27, 38, 41-42, 61-63).

“Although Harvey links his project to the modern Qurʾān hermeneutics of Rahman and Saeed (Harvey, pp. 3, 53), his main pursuit is to prove that the Qurʾān can be read from a natural law perspective, which according to him was the classical perspective already proposed by al-Māturīdī (Harvey, pp. 28-42).”

By synthesizing classical and modern hermeneutics it becomes difficult for Harvey to identify his place within the tafsīr tradition, even though he emphasizes that he makes wide use of it and does not work independently from it (Harvey, pp. 4-5). Although thematic exegesis is a new genre, it is part of the tafsīr tradition simply because it provides linguistic, intra-textual and theological meaning to a select number of Qurʾān verses. But the majority of thematic works generally summarize the Qurʾān in the same subjects as dialectical theology (ʿilm al-kalām): Creation, God, mankind, ethics, prophethood. Harvey’s enterprise on the other hand covers verses that are also generally covered within the genre of legal exegesis (akām al-Qurʾān), a fact I will analyze in part II of this review. Harvey does not use hermeneutics as a form of theology, he connects it to a classical theology which provides both a cosmology and morality as the frame for the hermeneutical glasses. Through this he takes ownership of his hermeneutical baggage and horizon, but also shows that connecting his hermeneutics to a classical tradition does not mean the interpretive enterprise is not open-ended. With The Qur’an and the Just Society, Harvey provides a holistic ethical reading, but more importantly, he shows that a hermeneutics of continuity is worth pursuing. Maybe in a few centuries from now his work will be read in the same way I read, for example, al-Jaṣṣāṣ(d. 981) or Mullajeevan (d. 1718)’s legal exegesis today, as part of a innovative but continued interpretive tradition.

“With The Qur’an and the Just Society, Harvey provides a holistic ethical reading, but more importantly, he shows that a hermeneutics of continuity is worth pursuing.”

Arnold Yasin Mol is a researcher at the Institute for the Revival of Traditional Islamic Sciences (IRTIS.org.uk) where he studies traditional Islamic sciences (dars-i niāmī). As of 2019-2020 he is also a PhD candidate (Leiden University) with a thesis on ethics and the tafsīr tradition. He lectures and publishes for multiple institutes and organizations. To learn more about his scholarship, see: https://arnoldmol.academia.edu.

[1] Ramon Harvey is the Aziz Foundation Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Ebrahim College (London), and also teaches at Cambridge Muslim College. His website is: https://ramonharvey.com.

[2] On al-tafsīr al-mawūʿī, see: Johanna Pink, “Striving for a New Exegesis of the Qurʾān”, Oxford Handbook Online (Oxford, 2014).

[3] On classical and modern concepts of the maqāid al-sharīʿa, see: Jasser Auda, Maqasid Al-Shariah As Philosophy Of Islamic Law (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2010).

[4] The concepts of hermeneutics of continuity and discontinuity are originally used within Catholic discussions on Vatican II in how the council, especially concerning its embrace of modern human rights discourse, represents a break with the Catholic tradition. I have used it here in relation to the Islamic tradition and human rights. For discussion on the hermeneutics and Vatican II, see: Kurt Martens. “Dignitatis Humanae: A Hermeneutic Perspective on Religious Freedom as Interpreted by the Roman Catholic Church”, in Hermeneutics, Scriptual Politics, and Human Rights: Between Text and Context (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 150-151. For the dichotomy between liberalism and traditionalism within Islamic hermeneutics, see: Amjad M. Mohammed, Muslims in Non-Muslim Lands: A Legal Study With Application (UK: Islamic Texts Society, 2013), 25-46.

[5] Alparslan Açıkgenç, as cited in: Younus Y. Mirza, “A Confessional Scholar: Fazlur Rahman and the Origins of his “Major Themes of the Qur’an””, The Maydan, 2019. https://www.themaydan.com/2019/08/a-confessional-scholar-fazlur-rahman-and-the-origins-of-his-major-themes-of-the-quran/.

[6] On these, see: Yasien Mohammed, “The Duties of the Teacher: Al-Iṣfahānī’s Dharīʿaas a Source of Inspiration for al-Ghazālī’s Mīzān al-ʿAmal” in Islam and Rationality: The Impact of al-Ghazālī Papers Collected on His 900th Anniversary, Georges Tamer Ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 1:186-206.

[7] Harvey has stated through personal communication that his next book (OUP, expected 2020/2021) will expand on his concept of neo-Māturīdism.