مقاصدی تفسیر: تصور کی وضاحت اور اصطلاح کی تعریف

By Dr. Ahmed Mohamed Ali Abouseif, President of the American Imams Academy.

How many people read the Qur'an seeking a ruling, and how few read it seeking wisdom! How many ask, "What did God command?" and how few add, "And why did He command it?" Between the two questions lies a great distance — the distance between carrying the verse in your memory and being carried by the verse to its intent. So let us begin — as the Qur'an begins — from a verse, not from a definition:

"And there is for you in legal retribution [the saving of] life, O people of understanding." [al-Baqara: 179]

What springs to mind is an apparent juristic ruling: the legitimacy of retribution (qiṣāṣ). Yet the verse holds something deeper than the ruling; it answers, by itself, a question we have not yet asked: why was retribution legislated? And the answer is a single word: "life." The objective of retribution is not the taking of a soul, but the preservation of souls and the deterrence of the aggressor before he aggresses. Reflect on the precision of the Qur'anic expression: it placed within retribution — outwardly a death — a life; for the knowledge that the aggressor will face retribution restrains souls from shedding blood, so people live in security. This move from the question "What is the ruling?" to the question "What is the objective?" is the heart of what we call objective-based tafsīr (al-tafsīr al-maqāṣidī). Before we delve into its history, its figures, and its fruits, we must clarify its concept and define its term, for it is the key to the whole series; no edifice stands soundly upon a vague, unsteady term.

First: "Objectives" in Language

"Maqāṣid" is the plural of maqṣid, from the root (q-ṣ-d), which revolves around closely related meanings united by a single origin. Among them is the straightness of a path; a "qāṣid road" is one that is straight and easy. Among them is heading toward a thing and approaching it; one says "I intended (qaṣadtu) such-and-such," meaning I turned to it deliberately. Among them is moderation and the absence of excess; hence His saying, "And be moderate in your pace" [Luqmān: 19], i.e., be balanced and moderate; and "and among them is one moderate (muqtaṣid)," i.e., balanced and measured.

So qaṣd, in its linguistic origin, is heading toward a goal upon a straight, balanced path. This linguistic meaning illuminates the term profoundly, for it gathers three things: the existence of a goal that is intended, the straightness of the path leading to it, and moderation in the journey without excess or neglect. Thus "maqṣid" became the goal toward which one heads, and "maqāṣid" are the goals and wisdoms sought from speech, action, or a ruling. And when annexed to the Qur'an, they become: the goals and wisdoms God intended in sending down His Book and legislating its rulings.

Second: Objective-Based Tafsīr as a Technical Term

Moving from language to technical usage, objective-based tafsīr may be defined as: examining the Qur'an to expound the wisdoms and goals for which it was revealed and for which its rulings were legislated, alongside uncovering the meanings of its words and broadening their linguistic significations. In a complementary phrasing offered by some researchers: it is the examination and investigation of the objectives of the texts and the interests intended by their rulings, then interpreting them and extracting their meanings and implications in accordance with the objectives and interests that become apparent — without contrivance or distortion.

The final two restrictions — "without contrivance or distortion" — are essential to the definition, not redundant; they exclude from the objective-based method any meanings loaded onto a verse that it cannot bear, or any whims projected onto it in the name of objectives. Objective-based tafsīr is discipline, not licentiousness; depth, not contrivance. Note, too, that the definition did not make objectives a substitute for the linguistic meaning, but paired it with it: "alongside uncovering the meanings of its words." The objective is a branch of the meaning, and the meaning is its root; whoever seeks the objective before securing the meaning has reversed the order and built upon no foundation.

Third: From Understanding the Word to Understanding the Objective

To bring the concept closer, reflect on His saying concerning prayer:

"Indeed, prayer prohibits immorality and wrongdoing." [al-ʿAnkabūt: 45]

The literal understanding stops at the ruling: prayer is an obligation with a specific form, known pillars, and defined times. The objective-based understanding adds to that an exposition of the goal stated in the verse itself: that prayer was legislated to yield in the worshipper a restraint from immorality and wrongdoing, and a living connection with God, as in His saying, "and establish prayer for My remembrance" [Ṭā Hā: 14]. So whoever establishes prayer with its pillars yet it does not restrain him from immorality or wrongdoing has performed its form and missed part of its objective; his task is to review his humility and presence, not to abandon prayer.

Here a crucial principle emerges that this project repeats: objective-based tafsīr neither abolishes the apparent sense of the word nor drops the ruling; rather it connects it to its spirit and goal. It is neither a rigid literalism that empties worship of its objective, nor a dissolution of the ruling under the pretext of attaining the objective. Both extremes are errors: one who prays without spirit, and one who claims the intent is "the heart's remembrance" and so abandons prayer. The correct path joins form and spirit: a ruling performed, and an objective kept present.

Fourth: An Independent Science or a Method of Inquiry?

A natural question arises: is objective-based tafsīr a self-standing science with its own subject and questions, or a method of inquiry used within general tafsīr? Some researchers held that it has become a nascent science with its own rules, controls, and terminology; others held that it is a color or current among the modes of tafsīr. The nearest view reconciles both: it is an interpretive method that matured and crystallized until it became an ample, self-standing current, drawing its principles from two great tributaries: the science of the objectives of the Sharia, which the legal theorists (uṣūliyyūn) established, and the Qur'anic sciences and the rules of tafsīr.

It is thus not a substitute for tafsīr by transmission (bi-l-maʾthūr), nor for linguistic and rhetorical tafsīr; rather it complements them and crowns their course, for it begins where they end: it sets out from the sound meaning established by the people of language and transmission, then takes a further step toward the objective sought from that meaning. The relation between it and the other modes of tafsīr is one of integration, not competition; of building, not demolition.

Fifth: General Objectives and Particular Objectives

The inquiry of objective-based tafsīr is ordered into two integrated levels. The first: the great general objectives for which the entire Qur'an was sent down — such as guiding people, rectifying belief, purifying souls, establishing justice, and developing the earth with good. The second: the particular objectives of a specific sūra, or a group of verses, or a single ruling — such as the objective of purity from the verses of ablution, and the objective of chastity from the verses of veiling and seeking permission.

Objective-based tafsīr attends to both levels together, reading the particular in light of the universal and illuminating the particular by the universal, so that the understanding of a verse does not deviate from the comprehensive objectives of the Qur'an. This linking of the particular and the universal is among the most precise features of the method, for it guards against a deviant understanding of a verse that clashes with the Qur'an's general spirit, and grants the reader a unified, coherent conception rather than a scattered understanding.

An Applied Example: The Objective of Fasting

Let us apply the concept to an act of worship we live each year. God said:

"Fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may become mindful of God." [al-Baqara: 183]

The ruling in the verse is apparent: the obligation of fasting. But the verse did not leave us at the ruling; it concluded with its stated objective: "that you may become mindful of God." Fasting is not merely abstaining from food and drink, but a school that nurtures God-consciousness and the awareness of God in private and in public. Whoever fasts, restraining his stomach but not restraining his tongue and limbs from the forbidden, has attained the form of the worship and missed its greatest objective; hence the hadith reported by al-Bukhārī: "Whoever does not abandon false speech and acting upon it, God has no need of his abandoning his food and drink." This understanding generates in the Muslim's heart a practical question that accompanies every act of worship he performs: what did God intend to be realized in me through this worship? By this question alone, worship moves from an outward motion to an effect upon the heart and conduct.

This is followed by the second article: "Objective-Based Tafsīr and Its Siblings: A Distinction That Removes Confusion."

| A takeaway for life: Read every verse with two questions, not one: "What does the verse say?" then "Why did it say it?" The first opens the meaning to you; the second opens the objective. Try this week with a verse you have memorized: write its ruling on one line, and the goal it seeks from you on another — and you will find recitation transformed from letters performed into guidance lived. | |---|