in different religious traditions; if we use English for a matter of <br />
convenience, the name is God in the three well-known religions. <br />
Then the second question is, &quot;do scholars have to approve that religion, by definition, is a way <br />
of creating a peaceful individual state of mind, and, consequently, establishing a peaceful <br />
society? The basic doctrine of the &quot;Creator&quot;, the Lord of the universe, the Mighty and Merciful, <br />
the Omniscience, and the Omnipotent is to explain to man where he stands in this unknown <br />
universe. The essential message is to tell man that he is not lonely, his existence is not in <br />
vain; that there is a 'meaning' in his life on earth. This meaning could only be attained and <br />
reach its full manifestation through communal and social life. <br />
On the top of the agenda of every religion is the establishment of just society. Social justice is <br />
based on the fact that all humans are equal in God's eye; they are all dignified by the very fact <br />
that each of them represents in a unique way the 'image' of God. Shall I say that 'peace' is <br />
then an essential component of any religious decree? Whether it refers to a state of mind or <br />
denotes an essential condition of social life it is strongly connected to a certain mode of belief. <br />
2-Religions and History: <br />
The third question is, 'is it religion that always determines and shapes social life, or is it also <br />
shaped by and interpreted in a certain socio-historical context? In order to approach <br />
answering such a question a clear distinction has to be made between the original sociohistorical <br />
context of a given religion and its development(s) through its socio-historical journey <br />
up till present. Judaism, for example, was to set free the people of Israel and to unify the <br />
tribes under one religious and political leadership. It was so necessary to advocate the notion <br />
of &lsquo;the chosen people&rsquo; alongside so many symbols of exclusive identity, such as circumcision. <br />
2 <br />
Christianity, on the other hand, was to reform Judaism from its materialistic orientation by <br />
emphasizing spirituality. &lsquo;I did not come to change the law&rsquo; Jesus says, &lsquo;but to bring the <br />
people of Israel back to the right path&rsquo;. The claim that the temple was turned to a market <br />
place gave justification to the new message. As for Islam, according to the Qur&rsquo;an, it was not <br />
a new religion; it is the same religion of Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, and Moses. See, for <br />
example Qur'an, 57:26 - 29. <br />
Through the long journey of every religion in history, layers of interpretation and reinterpretation, <br />
or rather interpretation and counter-interpretation are accumulated around the <br />
original texts to the extent that the original socio-historical context is veiled. But fortunately <br />
this creates multiplicity of trends of thought within every religion, multiplicity that constitute <br />
plurality emphasizing different aspects of it. Our target as scholars of religion and believers <br />
also is to emphasize by all possible means this empirical fact; religion is what the believers <br />
make out of its original sources. Scriptures do not speak by themselves; they speak out <br />
through the voice of the believers. I might even go further to claim that even God speaks <br />
through man; His divine discourse is, therefore, man made after all. The religious meaning is <br />
either apt to be stagnated or allowed to be progressed and transformed in time and place. It <br />
all depends on the socio-political and historical conditions of any given community. <br />
In our modern era it became essential to present an understanding and explanation of <br />
religion, which explicate the universal dimension and critically explain the limited significance <br />
of its historical dimension. The problem with 'fundamentalism' as a mode of exclusive way of <br />
thinking that could automatically lead to violence and terrorism, is that it explicate only the <br />
historical dimension of a certain religion and present it as the eternal religious truth. As I <br />
mentioned earlier religion is expressed in a scripture, which means human languages, the <br />
carrier of its historical and cultural background. Nevertheless, these languages contain the <br />
divine revelation of God, which means that these languages signify more than they convey. <br />
The literal interpretation adopted essentially by the fundamentalist groups in every religion is <br />
absolutely humanizing the divine message by claiming the historical as eternal. For the <br />
suggested hermeneutics of religious texts it should not take the other extreme, absolutely <br />
divining every passage; it should rather apply analytical methodology to differentiate between <br />
the 'universal' and the 'historical' tying to preserve the essential equilibrium in the sphere of <br />
religion. <br />
3-Some Observations about Islam: <br />
Some people in the Netherlands, some politicians as well as some of the elite, emphatically <br />
deny the existence of any other mode of Islam than the literalist, legalist, and the most radical <br />
Islam. Well, denying existence does not prove non-existence. As for myself, I do not deny the <br />
existence of that radical Islam; it does exist everywhere. Its existence, however, does not <br />
imply the non-existence of other modes of Islamic understanding called 'moderate' and/or <br />
'liberal'. This mode does exist also everywhere; it did exist as well as early as the 9th century <br />
&ndash;second century of the Islamic calendar. I will limit my discussion in this article to the issue of <br />
the Qur'an which is hotly debated in the media. <br />
At the beginning, the theological debate focused on the nature of the Qur'an &ndash;the speech of <br />
God- and the proper approach to understand it. The discussion centred upon the question <br />
whether the Qur&rsquo;&sect;n was created at a precise moment in history, or was eternal and part of the <br />
divine essence. Rational theologians, called the Mu`tazila, challenged the notion of the <br />
Qur'&sect;n as the &quot;eternal&quot; word of God. They argued that the Qur'an is a speech action which <br />
implies the existence of addressee and the need for a code of communication to be <br />
comprehended by the addressee. The language of the Qur'an, Arabic, is the human language <br />
adopted by God to reveal His message to the Arabs. It is to be understood by reflection and <br />
rational knowledge through the application of textual linguistic methodology. <br />
In the Classical era (9th-12th century), a great variety of schools of interpretation existed: <br />
philological, theological, philosophical as well as mystical and juridical. <br />
3 <br />
New interpretation never stopped in the history of Islam since then, even if some were <br />
condemned by the authorities. Until now, it is an ongoing, albeit difficult, process. <br />
The dominance of the most radical dogma about the Qur'an is connected to the decay of <br />
Islamic civilization because of the Mongol invasion of Baghdad (1258) and the crusade. The <br />
political power fell in the hands of military groups which despised intellectual research. The <br />
orthodox theology became the adopted political ideology of most Muslim states because it <br />
emphasizes &quot;obedience&quot; as a religious obligatory duty. The elitist clergy, allied with the <br />
political power, closed &ldquo;the gate of rational reflection&rdquo; (ijith&sect;d) in the face of the public and <br />
kept it as a privilege for the religious elite. <br />
At the beginning of the 19th century, as Western countries colonized the Muslim world, a new <br />
wave of exegesis emerged to meet the challenge of modernity by two basic ways, either to <br />
reopen the meaning or to adhere to tradition. In my published research conducted for the <br />
WRR, I made a monograph of the process of Islamic Reformation from the 18th century until <br />
now; it available at the website, so I don't have to repeat here what I explained there. <br />
I would like now to address certain issues connected to the meaning of the Qur'an. What I am <br />
going to say is not entirely my own personal reflection, but it is a mode of understanding <br />
which is shared by the majority of Muslim modernist scholar &ndash;males as well as females- all <br />
over the world. They may employ different approaches, formulate different analytical <br />
methodology or use different vocabularies, but the mode of understanding and the domain of <br />
'meaning' is the same. <br />
First of all, all the liberal and modernist Muslim intellectual believe that one of the major and <br />
very important objectives of Islam is the establishment of human rational conduct and <br />
understanding instead of blindly following tradition and copying the past, an attitude which is <br />
labelled in the Qur'an as &quot;j&sect;hiliyya&quot;, literally 'paganism' and some times translated as <br />
'ignorance'. <br />
Secondly, applying historical critical approach in analysing the Qur&rsquo;an would show its richness <br />
and complexity both as a text and a discourse, and would, subsequently, show how it has <br />
been reduced to just a 'book of law' or a 'book of science' by the `ulama's who pretend to <br />
follow it literally. If everything mentioned in the Qur&rsquo;an is to be literally followed as a divine <br />
law, Muslims should re-institute &lsquo;slavery&rsquo; as socioeconomic system. It is mentioned in the <br />
Qur&rsquo;an, isn&rsquo;t it? <br />
Recontextualization of religions and reconstructing their meaning accordingly is an essential <br />
procedure to bring them together in order to activate the power of faith in the right direction, <br />
the benefit and welfare, not only of all human, but also of all beings on earth. <br />
Caux, 15/08/2007</p>