The Modernist Approach to the Prophetic Sunnah Muhammad Shahrour´s Thesis: A Presentation and Critique

Abstract

Innovation in Islamic thought as a way to bridge the gap between the Islamic and western worlds has always been considered as one of the controversial issues among the Islamic elites. Endeavors and approaches to innovate the Islamic heritage were diverse and modeled to stem either from within the religion and only through its tools or from the western civilization and through its ideals. This article is an attempt to understand one of the most eminent, 21st-century, modernist projects which advocates the renewal and innovation of Islamic thought through a reinterpretation and, hence, a contemporary understanding of the Islamic fundamentals in the light of western epistemological values. Muhammad Shahrour´s thesis on the prophetic Sunnah has provoked a massive and wide-ranging contemporary intellectual controversy. The beautifully-modeled thesis has raised serious questions and has aimed at reshaping our concept towards the status of the Sunnah through minimizing and reducing its role in the daily lives of contemporary Muslims.  We aim here at both displaying and criticizing Shahrour´s perspective through de-structuring its evidentiary foundations, on the one hand (an analysis and critique of the book: "Al-Kitab Wal Quran"), and through spotting its shortcomings and anomalies as well as the contradictions into its fabric. As to the exterior sources, we have noted the critical foundations and principles espoused by Shahrour to deconstruct the Sunnah, through his attempt to inspire the current, contemporary Islamic applications, mainly prevailing in the orientalist thinking, and to use western critical and materialistic approaches, including among others, philology and historicism. We have also noted the position statement of Islamic scholars, and their radically critical views on Shahrour´s thesis, stressing that early Muslims were initially aware of such issues to which they offered innovative solutions.