Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

GOD’ S WAY t 163
ambiguity or contradiction, on the face of the text. All else must be
extracted from beneath the received words.
Very little of the Quran was given over to what might be thought
of as legal matters: by one count, only 350 verses, or somewhat
less than 3 percent of the received quranic text, is legal in content.
These verses have been further broken down, with some disagreement
on details, into 140 on the regulation of prayer, fasting,
pilgrimage, and the like, 70 on questions of personal status (marriage,
divorce, inheritance, etc.), 70 more on commercial transactions
(sales, loans, usury), 30 on crimes and punishments, another
30 on justice, and a final 10 on economic matters. This is merely a
material description. Nor are all these verses in the form of explicit
commands or prohibitions, and there are overlaps and even contradictions
among them, the latter of which have to be resolved
either by exegetical harmonizing, that is, by showing that the contradictions
are only apparent, or else by invoking the principle of
abrogation, whereby, as we have seen, a later command cancels an
earlier (contradictory) one.
Instruction from On High: The Prophetic Reports
There was more to Islam than the Quran, as it turned out. Muhammad,
like Jesus, spoke with authority, not his own, to be sure,
but God’s and, at times, with God’s very own words. The Quran
was understood by Muhammad’s followers as the ipsissima verba
Dei, and we must assume that in this case too God’s Prophet both
volunteered and was requested to explain the sometimes opaque
meaning of God’s words and will, and even to give direction in
other matters that were treated more generally, or perhaps not at
all, in the Scripture. Muhammad, it is not difficult to believe, was
Islam’s first and most authoritative exegete and jurisprudent. Nor
is it unreasonable to imagine that his respectful and perhaps awestruck
contemporaries remembered his words of personal guidance
and explanations with some of the same fervor and fidelity as
they remembered his announcement of the words of God.
We can only guess how the Muslims conducted their legal affairs