In “Jihad and the Modern World” on page 407, Dr. Sherman Jackson states that “Muslims will have to avoid the fallacy of assuming that the realities of yesterday pass automatically into today or that the factual or historical assessments of the Muslims of the past constitute authoritative doctrines that are binding on the Muslims of the present.”
In Islam, the Quran is considered to be the eternal word of God. Is Dr. Jackson’s statement contradictory to this belief or can Muslims who agree with Dr. Jackson consider the Quran to be the eternal word of God while acknowledging that times change and certain instructions have to be reinterpreted while considering the original context?
Although I don’t believe the Bible is the eternal word of God in the same way Muslims understand this about the Quran, I am familiar with a similar method of interpretation when it comes to the Torah. For an example, sometimes nonreligious people ask me why I wear mixed fabrics. The simple answer is that I look at the reason for why this law was made. If the reason applies to today, I follow it. If the reason no longer applies, I don’t have to follow it. Mixed fabrics were forbidden because it was a style of clothing that polytheists wore. Today, everyone wears mixed fabrics and it has nothing to do with being a polytheist or a monotheist. This is why the law, at first glance, doesn’t make sense to us.
When it comes to the Quran, do you think that extremism comes from not understanding the context and believing that the world is in the same state of war as it was when the Quran was revealed?