ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Hermeneutical Foundations for Islamic Social Sciences Islamic Hermeneutics ======================= Now we can turn to the question of whether we should expect an Islamic hermeneutics to be governed by any distinctive principles of its own. We might begin with the idea of a religious or "sacred" hermeneutics, and then try to narrow this down further to an Islamic and then a Shi'ite hermeneutics.

Most writing on religious hermeneutics is about how to interpret religious texts or other phenomena. Thus, we have, for example, the work on hermeneutics and theology of Rudolf Bultmann, which attempts to "demythologize" our interpretation of religious texts and events.

The demythologizing program proposed by Bultmann is designed to show how a plausible reading of scripture can be given that strips away from it what a modern sensibility would find incredible.[^1] A diametrically opposed view of how to interpret scripture is proposed by Alvin Plantinga, who favors an interpretation based on principles of faith, and argues that this need not involve one in any fallacious question begging.[^2] In addition to advice about how to read scripture, however, both Bultmann and Plantinga also offer suggestions about the proper manner in which to interpret things, such as history and other cultures, in accordance with religious beliefs, which we might call "religious hermeneutics." Bultmann follows Heidegger and suggests an existentialist hermeneutics in which one's own existence is risked through the activity of interpretation.

By risking one's existence, what Bultmann seems to have in mind is to allow oneself to be affected by what one interprets in unforeseeable ways. Hermeneutics is seen as a way of questioning the object of inquiry, whether a text, a work of art, or historical events.

To operate with a religious hermeneutics is to allow oneself to be guided by religious ideas when one poses questions, ….as when one asks, for example, about "salvation," or about the "meaning" of one's personal life or of history, or about the norms of moral action and of order in human community, and the like.. The point, then, is not to eliminate the preunderstanding but to risk it, to raise it to the level of consciousness, and to test it critically in understanding the text.

In short, in questioning the text one must allow oneself to be questioned by the text and to give heed to its claim.