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muhammad shahrur’s life and workxxxix2.3.‘progresses’ and ‘becomes’), the readers cannot but access the textfrom the historical position they occupy. This is to reverse thetraditional exegetical dogma which states that the closer the interpretersare to the semantics of the revelatory event in seventhcenturyArabia, the more authoritative their interpretationbecomes. In Shahrur’s approach, the exact opposite is true.The second movement consists of attaching the most recent content/meaningavailable to the immutable format of the qur"anictext. This proceeds in two steps. The first step consists of creatingal-tash§buh, lit. ‘likeness’, between what is currently shared as universallyaccepted theories about nature/society and the verses ofal-qur§n. If both appear to be incompatible, judgement is to besuspended until further research results in more insights, up to apoint in history when incompatibility no longer occurs. Inasmuchas objective reality cannot be faulted, no verse of the al-qur"§n canever be considered incorrect. The second step is to assess the compatibilityof the legal verses with the currently applied value systemsand universally accepted codes of conduct. If these ethicalnorms are still within the legal boundaries, that is, God’s limits,their mor al-legal requirements determine how the aÈk§m verses ofumm al-kit§b are to be interpreted. If the aÈk§m rules contradictuniversally accepted standards of behaviour, the latter must takeprecedence over the former and annul them. The model for thissecond step is to be found in MuÈammad’s sunna, in that MuÈammadapplied the aÈk§m rules for what was then shared as ethicallyand legally acceptable. It implies, however, that if the sunna contradictswhat is today globally accepted as ethical and legal standards(e.g., human rights), none of the actual content ofMuÈammad’s sunna must be applied today. Whereas human rightsare universal, the sunna is not, as it is deeply rooted in the historicalcontingencies of seventh-century Arabia. This implies that theapplication of Islamic law cannot be done purely by an internalrevision of the Islamic legal tradition ( al-fiqh), as it is primarilybased on MuÈammad’s sunna and thus epistemologically locatedin the past, but rather from outside it (using the parameters of civillaw and parliamentary legislation).The third movement is then to move away from the text and returnto the nontextual side of objective existence and change humanbehaviour, state legislation, and political administration in the lightof what is compatible with the ethical requirements of al-isl§m.