Islam and Literalism: Literal Meaning and Interpretation in Islamic Legal Theory

by Robert Gleave

Literal meaning is what a text means in itself, regardless of what its author intends to convey or the reader understands to be its message. The idea of literal meaning, together with insights from modern semantic and pragmatic philosophers, informs this reading of Islamic legal hermeneutics. Robert Gleave explores various competing notions of literal meaning, linked to both theological doctrine and historical developments. The idea of a text’s literal meaning that rules over human attempts to understand God’s message has become an element in discussions about who has the authority to interpret the revelatory texts, and how they can identify this meaning. This has resulted in a series of debates over the processing of legal meaning amongst modern Muslim legal theorists, which centre on the importance of defining, identifying and promulgating the literal meaning of the central texts of Islam.

Genres: Islam, Philosophy, Law, Religion

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 2012

Reviews

[Arman Firman · Rating 5 out of 5]

anything connected with language gives me pain, so this was a hard book for me. It's an important study by Robert Gleave. Muslims need to study these things. Sometimes it gets hard to understand 'what a text really means'.

Ahmed el-Shamsi has pointed out some mistakes in the book. Of course the author himself has written in the introduction that the has some shortcomongs. This doesn't take away much from the book.

Gleave discusses sunni and shi'i both. I've skipped the shi'i parts. And the reader may need to know that this work builds upon the previous works of yunis ali, weiss and vishanoff.