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xxxviiiintroductionThis is the reason why the verses of al-qur"§n and the verses of ummal-kit§b are not separated in the Qur"an (or the Book as Shahrur callsit), but combined. The significance of this aspect lies in the fact thatit reverses the current Islamist trend to apply the most rigid interpretationsof sharÊ#a law in the name of applying God’s law againstman-made law (implying ‘what humans find suitable, not God’) byhis conviction that there should not be one sharÊ#a rule that is incompatiblewith the higher values and overarching principles of al-qur"§n,that is, the eternal laws of nature and humanity as shared by themajority of people at a given period of time in history, and al-isl§m,the universally valid code of ethical practice that is immutable andeven indisputable.Although Shahrur mentions a number of exegetical principlesthat he applied in his reading of the Qur"an (e.g. nonsynonymity,nonabrogation), the actual proposed process of interpretation—schematizedin the format of a triple movement model—can be summarizedas follows:1. The first movement consists of approaching the Qur"an with acognitive understanding of reality that is deeply rooted in the mostadvanced discourse on nature, cosmos, and human society. Onceapproached in this way, it follows that any reading of any verse inthe text must never contradict either human reason (as fed by scientificdata from the humanities, social and natural sciences) orempirical reality (that is, globally available to human perception).This implies that the study of empirical data derived from objectivereality must always precede the study of concrete passages of thequr"anic text. It also implies that existing commentaries on theQur"an which lack the contemporary episteme and fail to considerthe most recent discoveries (and this by default includes the tafsÊrwork of medieval scholarship) are to be barred from any consultation.Most important, however, is that contemporary readings ofthe Qur"an regard as irrelevant historic al-critical studies of theQur"an and any attempt to ask what the text meant to the originalreaders in seventh-century Arabia. To use Shahrur’s analogy, whatthe frescos in the Vatican meant for the viewers in sixth-centuryRome is rather irrelevant in comparison to the question of howthey are perceived today. Following his conviction that one mustalways read the Qur"an “as if it was revealed last night” and hisphilosophical premise that the content of al-qur"§n is always contemporary(being part of God’s objective Being which irreversibly