The Hermeneutics of Miracle: Evolution, Eloquence, and the Critique of Scientific Exegesis in the Literary School of tafsīr. Part I: From Muḥammad ʿAbduh to Amīn al-Khūlī

Abstract

One of the earliest and more enduring modern critiques of scientific exegesis of the Qur'an (al-tafsīr al-ʿilmī) emerges out of the literary school of tafsīr. First advanced by Amīn al-Khūlī in the 1930s and later elaborated by Bint al-Shāṭiʾ, the main premise of their critique is that, first and foremost, a modern hermeneutic appropriate for the Qur'an's textuality must develop from the linguistic and literary traditions of Arabic. This paper focuses on al-Khūlī, situating his critique in the broader context of Muḥammad ʿAbduh's hermeneutic legacy. First, it examines ʿAbduh's reconfiguration of the premodern conception of the Qur'an's miraculousness, and its impact on al-Khūlī's efforts to renew a literary-aesthetic appreciation of the Qur'an's miracle and experiment with the notion of its extraordinary psychological effect. Secondly, based on an enquiry into a number of his writings, the paper demonstrates that al-Khūlī's approach also reflects a faithful espousal of ʿAbduh's ideas about science, and that his literary contribution to the question of the Qur'an's miracle is emphatically configured through a scientific—primarily evolutionary—outlook. In the course of the paper, it becomes apparent that even al-Khūlī's critique of scientific exegesis is largely derived from his evolutionary epistemology. The main contention of this paper is that al-Khūlī's commitment to science was philosophical, but his critique of scientific exegesis was methodological. And it is only by interrogating these aspects of his thought together that we come to understand the underlying hermeneutic assumptions which inform his objections to scientific exegesis.