Rationalist Hermeneutics: A Study of Muhammad Asad’s Translation and Commentary of the Qur'ān

The Message of the Qurʾān (TMOQ) by Muḥammad Asad (formerly Leopold Weiss, d. 1992) ranks among one of the major influential works of translations and exegetical literature in the contemporary period. It employs a hermeneutical method which critically positions reason or independent thinking (ijtihād) as the interpretive key in unlocking Qurʾān’s intended “message.”

As such, its rationalist orientation stands not only as a worthy hermeneutical method which generates a clearer understanding of the Islamic worldview. It also serves as a critique to Islamic traditionalism (taqlīd) which privileges the deductions and conclusions of the past as the arbiter of the affairs of the present. Expectedly, TMOQ also draws criticism as applying excessive Western-like rationalism, the likes of which, they say, has evoked the excesses of some intellectually intemperate Muʿtazilis of the Classical Islamic period.

This dissertation is an in-depth study of Asad’s magnum opus, The Message of the Qurʾān. It mines the latter for any clue or marker which explains its rationalist orientation. It closely analyzes select verses from TMOQ which convey or illustrate the author’s basic dynamic of translation and interpretation.

In particular, it identifies some sources of interpretation and hermeneutical methods. It also contextualizes its praxis of translation within the discourse of current theories translations. Moreover, this dissertation also argues that an attempt at a comprehensive understanding of TMOQ is, at best, haphazard and incomplete if it ignores a subjectivist and contextualist investigation of the life’s journey of its author -- especially his conversion from Judaism to Islam. Thus, Chapter One portrays “The Making of a Translator.”