Are spiritual things...

Are spiritual things, and the spirit is a development of the matter, or let us say, a property of the matter; legislation of those laws is the manifestation of a special social genius, who ordains them after healthy and fruitful contemplation, in order to establish a good and progressive society. They have further said: One cannot have confidence in the traditions because many are spurious; only those traditions may be relied upon which are in conformity with the Book.

As for the Book itself, one should not explain it in the light of the old philosophy and theories, because they were not based on observations and tests-they were just a sort of mental exercise, which has been totally discredited now by modern science. The best, rather the only, way is to explain the Quran with the help of other Quranic verses -except where the science has asserted something, which is relevant to it.

This, in short, is what they have written, or what necessarily follows from their total reliance on tests and observations. We are not concerned here with the question of whether their scientific principles and philosophic dicta can be accepted as the foundation of the Quran’s exegesis.

But it should be pointed out here that the objection which they have levelled against the ancient exegeses -that theirs was only an adaptation and not the explanation- is equally true about their own method; they too say that the Quran and its realities must be made to conform with the scientific theories. If not so, then why do they insist that the academic theories should be treated as true foundations of exegesis from which no deviation could be allowed?

This method improves nothing on the discredited method of the ancients. If you look at all the above-mentioned ways of exegesis, you will find that all of them suffer from a most serious defect: They impose the results of academic or philosophic arguments on the Quranic meanings; they make the Quran conform to an extraneous idea.

In this way, explanation turns into adaptation, realities of the Quran are explained away as allegories and its manifest meanings are sacrificed for so-called “interpretations”. As we mentioned in the beginning, the Quran introduces itself as the guide for the worlds [1] ; the manifest light [2] , and the explanation of everything [3] .