Faculty candidate discusses modern, mainstream interpretation of Quran

While the bulk of Islamic scholarship today remains within a mainstream interpretation of the Quran, extreme positions have been taken by those who hope to nurture profound changes, either liberal or conservative, in the Islamic world.\nBoth the reformist and fundamentalist schools of thought have broken free from the established traditions of Quran interpretation, or "tafsir," which in the past was practiced by religious scholars, Walid Saleh, assistant professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Toronto, said in a lecture Monday night. \nSaleh is a candidate for a faculty position in IU's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.\n"Tafsir is now practiced by any personality who claims to have an interpretation of what Islam is all about," he said.\nQuranic interpretation is normally understood as falling into either the medieval or the modern period, but this is a false dichotomy, Saleh said during his talk, titled "Royalties on Interpretation: A Medievalist Outlook on Modern Islamic Debates on the Quran." \nThe so-called "medieval" tradition continued into the 20th century, and the writings of several scholars of the early Islamic period who remained unknown even a century ago have been resurrected by more radical scholars in recent decades.\nSaleh said the practice of Quran interpretation today positions an "encyclopedic" tradition against a "salafi," or fundamentalist, strain of thought. The former maintains an awareness of developments in the intellectual history of tafsir, while the latter returns to the earliest schools of thought in Quran interpretation.\n"The current developments are neither unique nor unpredictable in light of the long history of tafsir," he said. "Ultimately ... the salafi model is unable to sustain critique which surely will be mounted."\nModern political leaders are strongly interested in promoting certain schools of interpretation and have funded the publication of tafsir commentary to this end, Saleh said. \nFor example, in 1982, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia published an edition of the Quran including commentary to promote the more conservative Saudi version of Islamic orthodoxy. This royal edition rivaled a similar project undertaken by the late King Fuad of Egypt in 1924, prior to that country's revolution. Ultimately, the Saudi royal edition proved more popular than the more liberal Egyptian version, reflecting the spread in the twentieth century of a more fundamentalist sentiment in the Islamic world, he said. \nIn a similar case, the royal family of Jordan has published the world's only comprehensive catalogue of all Quran commentaries. A foundation run by the current king's uncle maintains the definitive online source for Quran commentary, www.altafsir.com. \n"Jordan is a very poor country, but it is willing to invest the expense of publications, the upkeep of the Web site, and so on in order to promote an anti-salafi message," he said.\nSaleh's lecture was presented to an audience of students and faculty interested in issues of religion and politics in Islam. \n"It was fascinating," said graduate student Faraz Sheikh. "This is a very understudied field, and this was quite an original explanation of the evolution of Islamic thinking, rather than just talking about a 'medieval' period followed one day by a 'modern' period. I've studied tafsir and hadn't thought about its place in Islamic intellectual history before."\nA second candidate for the Arabic and Islamic studies faculty position, Louay Safi, will present "Calls for Implementing Islamic Law in Modern Society: A Cross-Cultural and Diachronic Examination" from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Friday in the Maple Room of the Indiana Memorial Union.