08:47 PM
Monday, March 11, 2024
Books – Amr Saleh:
Dr. said. Muhammad Salem Abu Assi, Professor of Interpretation and former Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Al-Azhar University: The search for a new interpretation of the Holy Qur’an preoccupied the thinker and religious scholar Muhammad Abduh, because interpretation before Sheikh Muhammad Abduh was written by scholars for scholars to read, addressing themselves, not the general public.
Abu Assi added, during his meeting with the journalist, Dr. Muhammad Al-Baz, on the “Chapters of the Qur’an” program broadcast on the “Extra News” channel: The interpretation is a gathering of grammatical, rhetorical, morphological, jurisprudential, fundamentalist, and philosophical information, each one transmitting from the other, and placing this in the book. Then Muhammad sensed Abdo, may God have mercy on him, said that intellectuals, civilians, and the general public cannot understand the Holy Qur’an because it is the interpretation of an elite, so he said, “We need a new interpretation of the Qur’an,” and four years later, Professor Farid Wajdi began.
Salem Abu Assi added: We are in dire need of a new interpretation of the Qur’an, because many scholars tried to search for a new interpretation of the Qur’an, and at the forefront of them was Imam Muhammad Abduh, but he stopped in his interpretation at Surat An-Nisa.
He added: His student, Rashid Reda, was attending his lessons at Al-Azhar, and he used to write and review with him, and Rashid Reda completed it after him, that is, he quoted from Imam Muhammad Abduh verse 125 of Surat An-Nisa, and Rashid Rida began approximately and reached Surah Yusuf, verse 157.”
He added: “But the school was the same. He took from this approach and method of interpretation, and Farid Wajdi came after 4 years and asked the same question, and wrote in his book “The Mushaf Al-Mufassal” that we need a new interpretation that suits civilians and intellectuals, as the issue is old and new, and those who remain have tried. From the school of Muhammad Abduh through Sheikh Shaltut and before him Sheikh Muhammad Mustafa Al-Maraghi, and after them Sheikh Al-Bahi, they write in the same way as Sheikh Muhammad Abduh, but no one completed it.”
He pointed out that Imam Al-Maraghi interpreted the verses of some surahs on the occasion of the month of Ramadan, and he interpreted the days of the king, and Sheikh Shaltut interpreted the first ten parts of the Holy Qur’an, and Al-Bahi also did not complete an interpretation of the Holy Qur’an, so the question remains: Is the search for a new interpretation of the Holy Qur’an a scientific overstep or Even religiously a new old question.
He continued: “Perhaps we in this era are more in need of a new explanation than in the previous era, because science in this era is different from the first. The advancement of technologies, communications, knowledge, and sciences that have appeared in our era makes us more in need of an explanation than in the previous era, and those who come after us will come after us.” It needs more, and therefore the best interpretation of the Qur’an is time, because the Qur’an is a book for all of time, and the Qur’an is the speech of God or the last word to the worlds, so the Qur’an will remain in existence until the Day of Judgment, for life is changing, and the Qur’an is the book of eternity. Are problems eternal? Or are problems renewed? The demands are that the Qur’an answer these problems. It is true that a large part of the old problems are present, as hypocrisy is hypocrisy, disbelief is disbelief, and so on.