today, reflecting continuity with the past. Those
of al-Tabari, Ibn Kathir, the two Jalals, and al-Bay-
dawi are especially popular among Sunnis, as are
medieval commentaries focusing on quranic laws.
Moreover, some modern editions of the Quran are
published with abbreviated commentary drawn
from these sources in the margins. Some modern
interpreters rely on the traditional commentaries,
but proponents of Islamic renewal and reform
have composed new works of tafsir, seeking to
adapt their understandings of the Quran to the
challenges and opportunities offered by moder-
nity. Others have proposed new principles for
interpreting the word of God, a development that
has caused some consternation among tradition-
ally minded Muslims.
The first of the modern commentaries is Tafsir
al-Manar by m
Uhammad
r
ashid
r
ida
(d. 1935)
and m
Uhammad
a
bdUh
(d. 1905), first published
in installments in Al-Manar (The Beacon), a
periodical that embodied the modernist program
of Abduh and his students. This work, although
it only treated select passages of the text, was a
modern version of the tafsir bi’l-ray approach to
commentary. Rashid Rida claimed that it was writ-
ten without consulting the classical books of tafsir
so as ensure its compatibility with modern thought
and science. The miraculous elements were mini-
mized for the sake of underscoring the Quran’s
rationality. The Indian reformer s
ayyid
a
hmad
k
han
(d. 1898) had proposed a similar approach
to the Quran earlier in response to the downfall of
the m
Ughal
d
ynasty
in 1857 at the hands of the
British. The scientific approach to tafsir became
even more pronounced in the works of Tantawi
Jawhari (d. 1940), an Egyptian scholar, Abd al-
Hamid ibn Badis (d. 1940), an Algerian scholar
and nationalist, and Muhammad Husayn Tabata-
bai (d. 1982), an Iranian Shii scholar. Other tafsirs
written to demonstrate the Quran’s agreement with
modern rationality were those of Mustafa Maraghi
(d. 1952) and Mahmud Shaltut (d. 1963), both
disciples of Abduh and shaykhs of al-Azhar in
Egypt. Several English translations of the Quran
have appeared with modernist commentary, such
as those of Yusuf Ali (d. 1953) and Muhammad
Asad (d. 1992). These include references to Abduh
and Rashid Rida, but also make overt use of classi-
cal Sunni commentaries and the hadith. An unfin-
ished Urdu commentary by a
bU
al
-k
alam
a
zad
(d. 1958) also took a modernist approach—one
that emphasized religious pluralism, particularly
among Muslims and Hindus, and was inspired by
European history of religions scholarship.
Modern Quran commentaries have also
been written by two of the leading ideologists of
i
slamism
—s
ayyid
q
Utb
(d. 1966) of the Egyptian
m
Uslim
b
rotherhood
and a
bU
al
-a
la
m
aWdUdi
(d. 1979) of Pakistan’s J
amaat
-
i
i
slami
. Qutb’s
commentary, Fi zilal al-Quran (In the Shade of the
Quran, 6 volumes) was written in Egypt during his
years of imprisonment and torture for alleged con-
spiracy against Jamal Abd al-Nasir’s government in
the 1950s and 60s. In it he constructed a religio-
political vision of the righteous struggle (
Jihad
)
of God’s true believers against the anti-Islamic
West and the forces of disbelief and tyranny at
work within Muslim society, which he called the
“Jahiliyya society,” thus drawing a parallel between
the present day and the era of “ignorance” that
prevailed when Islam first appeared in the seventh
century. Qutb let his own response to the Quran
dominate his commentary, paying scant attention
to older commentators and methods. Mawdudi’s
Urdu commentary, Tafhim al-Quran (Understand-
ing the Quran, 6 volumes), began to be written
in 1942, just before India’s partition, and was not
completed until 1972. Mawdudi’s interpretation,
unlike that of Qutb, was not shaped by impris-
onment, but by his involvement in partition and
post-partition politics, first in India, then in Paki-
stan. In his reading of the Quran he offered a vision
of a perfect, universal Islamic society governed by
God’s law. Although opposed to European pow-
ers and secular values, he took a more gradualist,
democratic approach than did Qutb to political
action, believing in the eventual establishment of
an Islamic “theo-democracy.”
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