Moroccan researcher Nada Naji edited the factors of religious extremism among those affiliated with extremist Islamic movements or influenced by their ideology, by analyzing the phenomenon, reviewing the citations on which extremists relied, and by analyzing the data she reached through field research and interviews with psychologists and social specialists, and meetings with former extremists. They did intellectual revisions.
She explained that one of the characteristics of extremism in kinetic Islam is that it mixes the religious, political and social, as it interferes with individual freedoms, as well as in the state’s policies and economic relations, and even in the banking system itself, and supports every idea or proposition with Quranic verses and prophetic hadiths, which gives practices a color. And a religious legal formula that justifies transgressions and crimes, which portrays the Islamic religion, according to some, in the image of a bloody religion that subsists on slaughter, killing and captivity.
Naji believes that the renewal jurisprudence and revisions – although their aim is humanitarian and aspiring to renew the religious discourse, and to revise the Islamic heritage, from interpretations that affect the image of Islam and Muslims on the one hand, and the security of citizens inside and outside Islamic countries on the other hand – but they remain insufficient, as we find Some of them do not fit into the context of the verses, and others fall into an attempt to justify at the expense of historical data.
And she goes to the fact that the Qur’anic text is full of verses that urge fighting and killing, supported by evidence from the history of the battles fought by the Prophet and his companions, explaining that dealing with the verses with interpretations may deviate from their linguistic limits, building and meaning, such as dealing with them is limited, if we strip them from the rationale its spatial and temporal reality.
A new methodology was proposed in dealing with religious texts by providing contemporary interpretations, based mainly on observing the diversity and difference of verses, from the perspective of their function and purpose. God Almighty did not reveal His verses in vain, but He revealed them for certain reasons, the purpose of which differs according to the context and the nature of religious discourse, and according to its social and doctrinal role.
Naji asserts that the Qur’an is comprehensive in terms of its touch on all aspects of a Muslim’s life, and in terms of its framing of it, and it is valid for every time and place, in terms of the importance of what it brought to the Muslim in all ages and wherever he was, but the application needs to realize the goals, as not all of the Qur’an is prohibitions and orders, but it has meanings and purposes that are deeper than that.
And I aspired to deal with the verses according to their contexts, some of them necessitate action, which are the verses of obligations and matters of faith and worship, and verses that require submission and ratification, and they talk about the afterlife and what happens in it, and verses that focus on specific cases, in special circumstances and conditions, that require – by virtue of changing circumstances and changing Conditions – Re-reading them, in the light of developments in the reality of the Muslim man, a reading that enables him to keep pace with his era and engage in it culturally and scientifically, locally and internationally without hindrance, and far from referring the present to the past.
I blessed the efforts of most of the innovators in the religious discourse, by their call for the need to review the Islamic heritage as it is a heritage, and to avoid extremism in religion, and the necessity of avoiding any interpretation that is far from the moral context that aims to advance humanity and human values, and to promote tolerance and coexistence between religions, cultures, nations, and individuals, but it is It affirms the recognition of the historical facts that Muslims knew during and after the period of the Prophet of Islam, and its return to its historical context and the conditions of tribal life that Muslims lived at the time.
I aspired to read in harmony with the era of the state, institutions, international relations, and human rights charters, to reconcile with changes, and to read religion in a way that is capable of absorbing the principle of development, responding to the present, and anticipating the future. This is the proof of the saying: “The Qur’an is valid for every time and place,” as validity means compatibility with different eras and societies, and it contradicts the Muslim’s clinging to the facts of the first Hijri centuries and adherence to referring to them.
Presented by: Ali Al-Rubai @Al_ARobai