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go back in one way or another to the ayats of the Qur’an. Thus, the Qur’an has always remained the main evidence base for all the theological and reli- gious-philosophical statements of the prominent Muslim thinker. Relatively recently, in January 2019, the list of sources that allow us to get acquainted with the peculiarities of Bigiev’s understanding and translation of the Qur’an has been supplemented by another valuable document. This is a Qur’anic study, which in its Turkish version is entitled “Kur’an-ı Kerime dair araştırmalar” (“Studies on the Precious Qur’an”). The publications under this title were published in 1949 in 26 issues of journal “Yeni Selâmet” (No. 12/80 to No. 37/165). This work covers the following topics: the Prophet and his Companions; the Qur’an and the Mushaf; memorization and writing of the Qur’an; the history of Qur’an collection and writing; the order of Suras according to the chronology of their revelation, etc. We offer to your attention the translation of the fragment of this work. The translation from the Old Tatar is by A. G. Khayrutdinov.

Ahmad Wahib

THE UPHEAVAL IN ISLAMIC THINKING

Ahmad Wahib (1942–1973) was an Indonesian thinker and a prominent representative of the Islamic renewal movement. In the last years of his life Wahib kept a diary, which was discovered only after his death. It was published by Djohan Effendi and Ismed Natsir under the title “The Upheaval in Islamic Thinking” (1981). The diary caused quite a stir, not least because of its criticism of the religious establishment and its condemnation of the “reactionary and primitive” attitude of fellow students toward the problems of modernity. It is Wahib’s diary that is the main source of information about his views on Islam, the Renewal movement, and the social situation in Indonesia. In addition to the classical problems of Islamic thought, Wahib’s diary contains a special dimension that can be characterized as a version of Islamic personalism or even existentialism. Staying on religious ground, Wahib comes as close as possible to a purely philosophical questioning. Wahib is paradoxical. His diary is a living thought. Here the existence of God is both assumed and questioned; the powers of reason are both broad and limited; faith is intertwined with reason; adherence to Islam is combined with a rejection of every kind of authority and “tradition,” etc.

We offer for your attention the Russian translation of all the philosophically significant fragments of the diary, constituting about half of the original edition (the other fragments are devoted to the “Renewal Group” and private questions of Indonesian life). The translation from the Indonesian is by T. F. o. Gadzhiev.

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J. Pink

STRIVING FOR A NEW EXEGESIS OF THE QUR’AN

The article discusses Muslim attempts to develop innovative hermeneutical models for understanding the Qurʾan. It analyses the beginnings of reform in the XVIII and mid-XIX centuries and the sustained efforts, starting in the late XIX century, to bring the interpretation of the Qur’an in line with ideas of rationalism and modernism. On this basis, the chapter presents an overview of the most important modern hermeneutical approaches to the Qur’an, some of which focus on its literary qualities, its historical context, its major themes, or its main goals, while others emphasize the Qurʾān’s inimitability in new ways or seek to expose its immediate relevance for contemporary believers. The development of these new ideas, which have often provoked severe criticism, is situated in the structural context of the emergence of colonial and nation states, mass alphabetization, and new media.

M. Arkoun

HOW TO READ QUR’AN TODAY

This publication is a translation of the first and second chapters of Mohammed Arkoun’s “Readings of the Qur’an” (Lectures du Coran, 1982). These chapters are devoted to the deconstruction of classical hermeneutical strategies and approaches to the Qur’an, which, according to Arkoun, are similar to the Sancta Doctrina in Catholicism. The goal of the Algerian intellectual is to integrate the Qur’an into the general theoretical and methodological framework of understanding the phenomena of Scripture and revelation, which has been developed over the past centuries by the Christian and Jewish traditions in the West. A positive hermeneutic agenda, says Arkoun, must be based on recent developments in theology, the social sciences and the humanities, as well as take into account the results of philosophical research carried out by Western thinkers, especially in the XX century. In this context, the question of the meaning of Scripture becomes key. Noting that any claim to a definitive and exhaustive understanding of the meaning of revelation is unwarranted and dangerous, Arkoun suggests distinguishing between several points of comprehension of the meaning of the Qur’an — linguistic, anthropological and historical. The linguistic approach is based on the fact that the meaning of the individual conceptual and semantic units of the Qur’anic text must be grasped not on the basis of the relations these units

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enter into in certain fragments of the text (inductive approach), but on the basis of the meaning these units receive at the level of the text as a whole — taking into account its inherent system of internal relations. From studying the structure of the Qur’anic language, Arkoun moves on to its anthropology and concludes that the language of the Qur’an has a mythical structure, like the language of the Old and New Testaments (while emphasizing the difference between these languages). Arkoun then moves on to an analysis of the historical moment — the scope and limits of all possible ways of historically conditioned interpretations of the Qur’an. The second chapter of the book, “The Problem of the Divine Authenticity of the Qur’an,” is thematically adjacent to this analysis. In this chapter, Arkoun formulates the old problem of exegesis of Scripture — the question of the authenticity of the text under study. The Algerian thinker shows that the question of the authenticity of the Qur’an must be posed and unfolded today on entirely new grounds, since it is one of the central issues both in the context of the Islamic tradition and in the broader perspective of the renewal of religious thought in general. The translation from the French is by G. V. Valiev.

K. Bauer

EMOTION IN THE QUR’AN: AN OVERVIEW

In the Western academic study of the Qur’an, very little has been written about emotion. The studies that do acknowledge the power of emotion tend to concentrate on emotion as a response to the text’s aesthetics. And yet emotion is a central part of the Qur’an: fostering the correct emotions is a part of pietistic practice, emotion helps to convince believers to act as they should, and emotional words and incidents bring unity to this synoptic text.

This article has four parts. It begins by reviewing approaches that have been taken in History and Biblical studies, in order to clarify the nature of emotions. I argue that emotions are universal but that they have socially constructed elements and a social function. Also, control of emotions can be as revealing as emotional expression. Part Two describes the overall message of emotions in the Qur’an. Humans must cultivate God-fearingness, while God bestows mercy/compassion and love, or anger and displeasure. Believers are distinguished by their emotional sensitivity to God’s word, and their ability to form an emotional attachment to God, and thus emotional control is a key pietistic practice. In Part Three, I propose a new method for analysing emotion within Qur’anic suras, which is to trace emotional plots. This method involves identifying the emotional journey undertaken or described in a passage of text. Part Four examines the resonance that is created by the use of specific emotion words in different suras.

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H.Algar

Q.21: 78–9: A QUR’ANIC BASIS FOR IJTIHĀD?

The article deals with the verses Q. 21: 78–79. Verse 78 of Surat al-Anbiyā relates a deliverance of judgement by Dāwūd and Sulaymān concerning the matter of a field into which sheep belonging to persons unnamed had strayed at night, causing damage to the crop. As is almost always the case with Qur’anic narratives concerning the prophets, the mufassirūn and still more the authors of books belonging to the genre of qisas al-anbiyā’ offer a rich variety of partially conflicting detail concerning the matter and the way in which it was resolved. Of greater exegetical interest, however, is a conclusion apparently to be drawn from the stories concerning verse 78 once they are combined with the opening words of the succeeding verse (‘and We inspired in Sulaymān understanding of the matter’): that Dāwūd and Sulaymān offered differing judgements and that it was the judgement of the latter that proved correct, despite his tender years. This has drawn many mufassirūn to suggest that the two prophets in question were engaged in ijtihād, the result of the father’s ijtihād being erroneous and that of his son’s correct. Insofar as ijtihād can yield only zann, a supposition of correctness, its attribution to prophets is, however, viewed by other exegetes as problematical.

N. V. Efremova

AVICENNIAN THEOLOGIZATION

OF THE METAPHYSICS OF ARISTOTLE

The essay is devoted to the development of metaphysical / philosophical theology in the work of the greatest classic of Muslim philosophy, Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037). The primary focus is on the philosopher’s efforts to reform Aristotelianism from the perspective of Islamic monotheism. In addition to the philosophical justification of God’s being as a creator (i.e., the producing cause of beings, and not only a target cause), His unity (denying both numerical multiplicity and inner composition) and the main affirming/cataphatic attributes, the Avicenna version of cosmogenesis, theodicy, prophetology and eschatology (or rather, soteriology) — immortality of soul and its afterlife fate — is presented here.

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D. Howard

BERGSON AND THE MUSLIMS

This publication is a chapter from American scholar D. Howard’s book “Being Human in Islam: The Impact of the Evolutionary Worldview” (2011), which deals with the reception by Islamic thinkers, especially Muhammad Iqbal, of the heritage of French philosopher Henri Bergson. Howard asks the question of what motivated Iqbal’s appeal to Bergson’s philosophy: was he seeking in Islamic thought the precursors of an evolutionist approach or, conversely, was he seeking to reorient Islam toward evolutionism? The author gives the following answer: both statements are partly true. Iqbal unambiguously identifies Bergson’s “life impulse” with God and consistently constructs precisely the Islamic theological scheme, denying the identification of the cosmos and God. The main point of divergence between Iqbal and Bergson is seen by the American researcher in the question of the duality of the self: it appears to Iqbal as an anthropological flaw with which a Muslim cannot come to terms. Howard examines other thinkers as well, such as Mohammed Aziz Lahbabi (1922–1993), whose elitist personalism lacks practicality of judgment and whose application of a scrupulously developed scheme of intersubjectivity to the Islamic tradition has proved, in Howard’s view, too ambitious a project that never reached its logical conclusion. The American researcher also analyzes Turkish Bergsonism, noting that it followed an entirely different path, since here the thought of the French philosopher was used not to develop a modernization project or theological schemes, but to offer an alternative to the chosen course of modernization, and in this case Bergson’s vitalism was in the service of the conservative wing of Turkish political life. For the Egyptian thinker Muhammad Haykal (1888–1956), however, Bergson’s philosophy was a powerful confirmation of the anticipated decline of the West and revival of the East. Haykal saw Bergson as the leader of the “spiritualists” of Europe. The Iranian intellectual and revolutionary theorist Ali Shariati (1933–1977) agreed with Bergson on a radically dualistic interpretation of man: man is an incessant movement from inferior nature to divine nature, and thus his duality will never find final resolution. Finally, the chapter examines the Senegalese mathematician and philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne (b. 1955), who admired Iqbal and, through him, adopted Bergsonism. For Diagne, Bergsonian Islam is a “Promethean” endeavor involving radical renewal. The analysis leads Howard to the paradoxical conclusion that, by and large, Bergson proved to be a paralyzing rather than a progressive force for Islam, and that his ideas could hardly have contributed to a reformist consensus among Muslims comparable to the effect they had among Catholic thinkers.

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V. I. Vovchenko

WITTGENSTEIN AND ISLAMIC ETHICS:

THE INTERPRETATION OF INTENTION

The article contains an analysis of the idea of intention in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It evaluates capabilities of his conception in the development of Ethics in the “Islamic context”. Author shows that Wittgenstein’s conception reveals a remarkable similarity to the fundamental assumption of Islamic Ethics, that is to direct connection (bind, cohesion, connectedness) between intention and action. It is shown that an adequate understanding of this connection requires consideration of the Wittgensteinian idea of internal relations. It is proved that intention is not a manifestation of a “soul substance”, “perception” or “feeling”. Interpretation of “intention” provides additional refinement while defining specific intention ad hoc. In conclusion author puts forward a hypothesis asserting utility of late Wittgenstein’s conception in the development of Islamic ethical theory.

H. Hanafi

OUR CIVILIZATIONAL POSITION

Hassan Hanafi (b. 1935) is a prominent contemporary Egyptian thinker and publicist and former dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at Cairo University (1988–1994). Hanafi’s dissertation “Exegesis of Phenomenology” (1977), which defended the applied value of intuitionism to the study and philosophical understanding of Muslim culture, brought him worldwide fame.

Hanafi’s following work, a paper delivered by the author at the First Arab Philosophical Congress in 1982 and published in Philosophical Studies in 1987, outlines the scholar’s cultural theory. According to the philosopher, contemporary Arab-Muslim culture is undergoing a severe crisis of self-determination. Hanafi is convinced that the revival of the classic heritage in the 19th and 20th centuries did the Ummah more harm than good: in each initiative of the traditionalists the inquisitive researcher discerns a replication of obsolete schemes of thought and behaviour that have lost their meaning throughout Islam’s centuries-long history. The position of Westerners, however, is no better: trying to join the cultural world of Europe, the latter, like conservatives, reduce cultural creativity to the sum of dead concepts that have no relation to the realities of today. Both traditionalists and advocates of Western rationalism, the professor notes, use the same herme-

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neutic strategies and do not even try to understand what and how exactly creates the unique face of culture. Only by defining the essence of the civilizational type and understanding its relation to its own heritage, to other cultures and to the actual sociocultural process, will the Muslim community be able to find a recipe for long-awaited reforms and genuine revival.

“Our Civilizational Position” is a manifesto, the result of many years of Hana- fi’s reflections on the fate of Eastern and Western civilizations. His four-volume work “Heritage and Renewal”, nine-volume work “From Imitation to Creativity”, and monumental “Muslim Studies” — these and many other books are devoted to the development of a qualitatively new methodology, allowing the humanities of the new generation to move from Oriental Studies to “Western Studies” and from the phenomenology of culture to systematic historiosophy. Considering the dialectical struggle between the Arab self and the Western Other, Hanafi is forced to admit the following fact: the contemporary Muslim world wanders in the maze of epigonism only because earlier, in the heat of medieval religious and political battles, the Islamic genius had lost sight of the freedom of speculation. Like the Iraqi existentialist al-Jubran (b. 1971), the Egyptian writer accuses the ideologues of “victorious theology” of political self-interest, which has hopelessly distorted not only the object of faith, but the very way of thinking of the heirs of the first Muslims. However, if the political process of the VIII–XI centuries ended with the decline of Arab thought, the political and cultural process of the XXI century should, according to the author’s plan, return the Ummah lost creativity, crystallizing in new theologemes and a new, balanced attitude to all three components of the autochthonous civilization position, the position that puts an end to both European expansion and the Arab fear of applied philosophy, “the philosophy of life”.

S. Yu. Boroday, D.V. Mukhetdinov

ISLAMIC THOUGHT: AN INVITATION TO THEMATIC READING

The article reviews the main topics of the yearbook “Islamic Thought: Tradition and Modernity” and has been prepared in connection with its fifth anniversary. Over the past five years the general concept of the Yearbook has remained unchanged: coverage of Arab-Muslim renewal thought, achievements of Russian religiousphilosophical school, and the most topical problems of contemporary Islamic studies. Over these years, a large number of works have been published, both authored and translated; translations from Arabic, English, French, Indonesian, and Tatar-Ot- toman have been made, all of which appeared in Russian for the first time, and both classical Muslim thinkers and contemporary thinkers and Islamic scholars are represented. In 2019 a new project grew out of the yearbook project — a series of

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editions of “Revival and Renewal” (al-Islah wa-l-tа̄jdīd), within the framework of which the translation of 30 books and the preparation of three authors’ monographs are planned so far; the series concept involves the coverage of the works of the most prominent Muslim modernists and neomodernists of the XIX–XXI centuries. All editions have scientific prefaces and explanations, but despite this, the reader may be confused by this volume of literature, which is not surprising in light of the fact that most of the authors in question appear in Russian for the first time, and some are barely represented in other European languages as well.

In order to avoid such a situation, this article has been prepared. In it the author tries to show the thematic unity of the majority of the publications printed in the five volumes of the Yearbook, the unity which results from the focus of the project’s architects on the contemporary renewal movement (Neomodernism) and the problems associated with it. After a brief introduction, which sketches out in the most general and schematic way the context of the emergence of the Renewal movement, ten paragraphs are presented, dealing with the following topics: the general concept of Neomodernism and the approaches of individual thinkers; the critique of Islamic reason; the religious status of the Sunnah and Hadith; new ideas in Fiqh; religious pluralism and soteriology; comparative philosophy; Islamic feminism; Sufi hermeneutics of the Qur’an. The purpose of this article is to show the relationship between the works published in the five issues of the Yearbook and to give a brief overview of them, at the same time referring the reader to current Islamic literature on the topic. In the tenth paragraph, the article also presents a critical analysis of the phenomenon of the Renewal movement in its contemporary version — an analysis which can indicate the weaknesses of this movement and outline a possible overcoming of conceptual difficulties. This paragraph notes that Neomodernism is gradually transforming from a living thought into an ideological construct with its dogmas and non-reflexive provisions. Its weaknesses include: 1) insufficient attention to the peculiarities of the situation of modernity; 2) lack of comprehension of the relation between the ethical and the legal; 3) lack of a theory of the ethical; 4) insufficient attention to the procedure of thematization of values; 5) lack of an institutionalization strategy. The conclusion provides a productive critique of Neomodernism and paves the way for its further development.

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