Building Qur’anic Plurality

Alqur’an is a text which is rich in symbol and metaphor, and therefore it is open to multiple interpretation. The Alqur’an text with its 6660 verses and 144 sura has been interpreted into thousands of books of tafseer (interpretation). The number of mufassir (interpreters) who are engaged in using different methods and interpretations are similarly uncountable.


We recognize three main theories in the study of texts: the world of the author, the world of the reader, and the world of the text. When text is “codified” in the form of a book for instance, it detaches itself from the “trap” of the author. It becomes an adventure with its own will.

Alqur’an is a text which is rich in symbol and metaphor, and therefore it is open to multiple interpretation. The Alqur’an text with its 6660 verses and 144 sura has been interpreted into thousands of books of tafseer (interpretation). The number of mufassir (interpreters) who are engaged in using different methods and interpretations are similarly uncountable.

As has been analyzed by many mufassir, the ideology and tendency of mufassir as well as tafseer methodology determines the outcome of an inclusive tafseer or vice versa. Or in Piscatori’s wordings, the raw material of Alqur’an is multi-interpretative. It means that alqur’an is like a feast from God which provides various “dishes”, “rice” and “drinks”. The Alqur’an has also always been utilized to legitimate dictatorships and democracies, monarchies and republics, exclusivism and inclusivism, oppression and emancipation and so on.

Our task is how to present the inclusive Alqur’an while at the same time honoring pluralism and democracy, by lifting the neglected verses and those that have been hidden. The methodology of Tafseer must be renewed too in light of the contexts faced by the Muslim community today. Plurality is a divine reality where God intentionally creates different humans, tribes and nations, with different language and skin color (Q.S Hud: 118-119, Q.S Ruum: 22, Q.S al-Hujurat: 13, Q.S Maidah 46-48). God has never distinguished the primordial origin of the human according to race or any other category.

by: Burhanuddin