Reclaiming Islam’s Interpretive Richness: Why Progressive Thought is Deeply Islamic

By Adis Duderija, New Age Islam 14 August 2025 In an age grappling with profound global challenges, from geopolitical complexities to rapid technological advancements, Muslims worldwide find themselves facing an unprecedented plethora of ethical, moral, and theological conundrums concerning their religio-cultural heritage (turāth). Across the Muslim world, from diverse academic circles to the volatile landscape of social media, there are vastly different, and at times, symmetrically opposing responses to these issues, each staunchly asserting its claim to be firmly Islamic. The rise of extremist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram has thrown into sharp relief the urgent need to conceptually understand, assess, and evaluate these competing normative claims of “the Islamic”. How can we navigate this bewildering array of interpretations and determine what genuinely constitutes “Islamic” thought? In my recently published academic book chapter, I tackle this crucial question by employing the conceptual tools developed by Shahab Ahmed in his seminal book, What is Islam: The Importance of being Islamic. My central task in the chapter was to examine whether the approach of progressive Islam, often questioned by critics as unIslamic, is indeed consistent with Ahmed’s comprehensive understanding of Islam. I argue that not only is progressive Islam demonstrably “Islamic” when viewed through Ahmed’s illuminating lens, but it also represents a powerful reinvigoration of once dominant metaphysical, epistemological and hermeneutical currents that existed in certain forms of pre-modern Islam. The Progressive Vision: A Modern Expression of Enduring Values For over a decade and a half, I have dedicated much of my academic careerto developing and articulating the theoretical underpinnings of progressive Islam, producing academic books, chapters, and articles on the subject. Beyond the proverbial ivory tower, I have at times, passionately championed the merits of progressive Islam in non-academic circles, striving to persuade critics that this approach has firm roots in the Islamic interpretive tradition. My conviction stems from the belief that progressive Islam has a lot to offer to contemporary Muslims in terms of revitalising the best aspects of their turāth that allows them to feel at home, ethically and intellectually, in today’s globalised world. A few Muslim scholars, both academic and traditional, have dismissed my approach as more or less ‘unIslamic’, arguing that it is not faithful to the Islamic tradition and/or that it radically departs from it. Much of this criticism, it is important to note, is disseminated through informal channels like social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. However, the implications of this debate extend far beyond academic discourse, touching upon public issues such as gender, human rights, Muslim and non-Muslim relations, religious pluralism, Hadith/Sunna, areas where progressive Muslim “scholar-activists”often work towards creating change at grassroots levels. The emergence of progressive Muslim thought is a product of modern times, particularly influenced by globalisation, which has seriously disrupted and contested the interpretive authority of traditionally educated Muslim scholars. This disruption has given rise to a transnational Muslim public sphere, fostering dialogue, new discursive communities, and identities rooted in the universal principles of the Muslim experience. Within this dynamic space, progressive Muslim scholar-activists are key players, engaging in a “multiple critique” that simultaneously challenges “fundamentalist” Muslim discourse on issues like modernity, human rights, gender, justice, and democracy, while also critically engaging with mainstream Western socio-political and legal theories, and certain secular Enlightenment assumptions that underpin them. These proponents of progressive Muslim thought are found globally, in both Muslim-majority (e.g., Indonesia, Morocco, Iran) and Muslim-minority contexts (e.g., South Africa, North America), spanning both Sunni and Shiʿi traditions. Prominent figures include Hassan Hanafi, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Ziba-Mir Hosseini, Ebrahim Moosa, Kecia Ali, Amina Wadud, and Abdullah Saeed, among many others. These scholar-activists are actively “rethinking both the theological and ethico-legal dimensions of the ‘mainstream’ approaches to the Islamic foundational sources and the Islamic interpretive tradition creatively utilising and adapting its language, concepts, theories, and sources in the light of the modern episteme”. In its most general terms, the approach of progressive Islamto the Islamic interpretive tradition is characterized by several key features: • Welcoming creative, critical, and innovative thought based on epistemological openness and methodological fluidity. • A form of Islamic liberation theology. • Consistency with contemporary approaches to gender justice. • A human rights-based approach to Islamic tradition. • Based on rationalist and contextualist approaches to Islamic theology and ethics. • Affirming religious pluralism. • An Islamic process-relational theology. Shahab Ahmed’s Revelatory Map: Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text To understand why progressive Islam aligns with a comprehensive understanding of what is “Islamic,” we must delve into Shahab Ahmed’s innovative conceptualization of Islam. Ahmed’s work provides a framework for analytically and conceptually comprehending the “various practices, beliefs, values, and ideas espoused by Muslims that, at times, can be contradictory but have been normatively and coherently considered as Islamic”. He illustrates this “coherent contradiction” through the historical period known as the “Balkans-to-Bengal complex” (approximately 1350-1850), which he identifies as the “dominant paradigm of conceptualisation of Islam” for half a millennium, shaping the thought, conduct, and values of elites and masses alike. Ahmed’s reconceptualization begins with the idea that Islam is fundamentally about the “hermeneutical engagement of (the Muslim) Self with Revelation for the process of meaning-making”. Revelation, in this framework, is the object or source of meaning. This engagement has profound implications for understanding source, truth, agency, method, interpretation, and process, resonating closely with my own approach to theorising progressive Islam ( that predates Ahmed’s book) . Crucially, Ahmed expands the idea of Revelation beyond scripture alone. He argues that “the act of Revelation to Muhammad plus the product of text of Revelation to Muhammad does not encompass and is not co-extensive or co-substantial with the full idea or phenomenon or reality of Revelation to Muhammad”. Instead, Ahmed introduces a tripartite understanding of Revelation: 1. Pre-Text of Revelation: This refers to the “Unseen Reality” or “reality of Revelation” (ʿālam Al-Ghayb), which is the ultimate source of Revelation and “ontologically prior to and alethically (i.e. as regards truth) larger than the textual product of the Revelation”. While all Muslims agree on the existence of this ultimate truth, they “disagreement about the epistemologies and methodologies of accessing and knowing the Truth of the Pre-Text, namely without a Text, via the Text or only in the Text”. For instance, Islamic philosophers and Sufis “deemphasised the Text in their hermeneutical engagement with Revelation for knowing Divine Truth,” considering the truth of the Pre-Text and the Text as “different isotopes of the same Truth”. In contrast, Islamic jurists “emphasised the Text,” while theologians found themselves in a middle ground. 2. Text of Revelation: This is the conventional understanding of Revelation—the textual product, the scripture itself (e.g., the Qur’an). 3. Con-Text of Revelation: This is perhaps the most expansive and crucial element. Con-Text is defined as the “body of meaning” and “an entire vocabulary” of meanings of Revelation that have been “engendered over the course of Islamic history”. It is the historical outcome of hermeneutical engagement with Revelation at any given point in time. Con-Text encompasses a vast array of elements, including “epistemologies, interpretations, identities, persons and places, structures of authority, textualities and inter-textualities, motifs, symbols, values, meaningful questions and meaningful answers, agreements and disagreements, emotions and affinities and affects, aesthetics, modes of saying, doing and being, and other truth-claims and components of existential exploration and meaning-making in terms of Islam that Muslims acting as Muslims have produced and to which Muslims acting as Muslims have attached themselves”. Importantly, Con-Text is not limited to texts or textual discourse; it includes “practices, both individual and collective, that have meaning in terms of Islam”. It is, in essence, “the full historical vocabulary of Islam at any given moment”. Crucially, the contents of Con-Text are not extraneous to Islam; they can be “genealogically traced back to a particular Pre-Text – Text hermeneutical relationship”. Ahmed asserts that Con-Text is not just a product but also “itself a source of Revelation,” and that “to undertake a hermeneutical engagement with Revelation is necessarily to engage with Con-Text”. All three elements—Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text—form an “inseparable and intertwined” “Revelatory matrix”. Ahmed further distinguishes between Con-Text in toto (the entire historical vocabulary, including inactive elements) and Con-Text in loco (that which is actively present in a particular context). A Methodological Divide: Progressive Islam versus Mainstream Sunnism The profound differences between progressive Islam and mainstream Sunni Islam become apparent when examining their interpretational methodologies (Manhaj). These differencesextend to their approaches to Uṣūl Al-Fiqh (legal methodology), the validity of modern sciences in interpreting primary sources, and their overall engagement with the broader Islamic interpretive tradition. Qur’anic Interpretation: Mainstream Sunni Islam is “heavily philological,” restricting interpretations largely to the “observable linguistic features of the Qurʾān text” through analysis of Arabic grammar, syntax, and morphology. It regards the Qur’an as the “verbatim Word of God,” ontologically distinct from human language, with its meaning independent of the Prophet Muhammad’s psychological make-up or prophetic experience. Consequently, mainstream Sunni interpretation “significantly marginalises, for hermeneutical purposes, the historical context” of revelation and reception, often universalizing “historically particular meaning”. This approach largely assumes readers can perceive “authorial intent” and recover an “objective meaning” of the text, leading to the idea of “only one or very limited scope of correct interpretation(s)”. In stark contrast, progressive Islam adopts a “highly contextualist” and “critical-historical” approach to scriptural hermeneutics. It recognizes the Qur’an’s language as “socio-culturally contingent” for exegetical purposes, subject to interpretation methods applicable to “any humanly produced text”. It views the nature of revelation as “closely intertwined with the mind and the phenomenological experience of the Prophet Muhammad,” implying that the Qur’anic text has a historical dimension and its meaning is often “strongly conditioned by the cultural contexts” of its revelation and reception. Progressive Muslim methodology emphasises that readers cannot recover authorial intent “in a completely objective fashion”; rather, readers, with their own backgrounds and inclinations, “actively participate in producing the text’s meaning(s)”. While the text’s form is fixed, its meaning is not fixed by the author, and its significance is “contextually dependent and liable to change,” allowing for a “larger number of reasonable interpretations”. To ensure interpretational soundness, progressive Islam emphasizes the role of “communities of interpretation”. Concept of Sunna: Mainstream Sunni Islam widely affirms the “exegetical supremacy” of “prophetic sunna,” equating it “entirely and solely” with “sound hadith texts”. This textual conception means that recourse to sunna for exegesis is constrained by the textual corpus of hadith, with interpretive reasoning primarily for selecting and evaluating individual hadith reports, not for defining sunna itself as an exegetical device. Conversely, progressive Islam is “premised on a meta-textual conception of the prophetic sunna,” more in line with how Sunna was understoodduring the formative period of Islamic thought. It does not “conflate the concept of Sunna with the concept of hadith as text”. Beyond traditional hadith sciences, progressive Muslim thought employs “several additional methodological mechanisms to arrive at normative Sunna, including modern rationality and epistemology”. Its sunna methodologyshares the same emphasis on “contextualisation and historicity” as its approach to the Qur’an. Role of Reason and Ethics: Mainstream Sunni thought heavily restricts the role of reason to its analogical form, ensuring all ethico-legal interpretations are linked to textual evidence. If no direct text exists, efforts are made to find an indirectly pertinent text for analogical interpretation. This is premised on the assumption that ethico-legal knowledge must always be derived from revelation, and humans cannot independently determine what is ethically or legally right, leading to “ethical voluntarism”. Progressive Muslim thought, on the other hand, emphasises the importance of reason in Islamic theology, ethics, and legal theory. It asserts that human reason can “independently make ethical judgements,” with revelation serving to “remind people of their ethical obligations”. Thus, progressive Islam is based on “ethical objectivism” and a “decidedly rationalist theology”. Legalism vs. Ethico-Religious Vision: Mainstream Sunni Islam exhibits “strong legalistic interpretational tendencies,” inferring a legalistic dimension to vast parts of the Qur’an and sunna, even interpreting broadly ethical or didactic exhortations as “positive legal injunctions”. This approach is heavily underpinned by a legalistic ethos. Progressive Islam is “premised on the idea that the Qurʾān and Sunna are primarily kerygmatic and ethico-religious in their concern,” with their legal aspects being “peripheral to its broader ethical vision and subject to change as societal conditions change”. Progressive Muslim thought holds that interpretations of the Qur’an and sunna “ought to evolve with evolving ethical values by means of reason – keeping in mind, however, that the Islamic reason and Islamic ethics are still firmly anchored in a decidedly Islamic religious cosmology”. Epistemology and Tradition: Mainstream Sunni epistemology is “entirely pre-modern” and akin to “naïve realism”. It relies on “transmitted sciences (Al-ʿulūm Al-Naqliyya),” which are given epistemological priority over rational sciences (al-ʿulūm al-ʿaqliyya). The “historico-empirical strain” is transmission-based, emphasizing hadith reports, while the “juristic-rational strain” uses non-textual knowledge to extrapolate truths from revealed texts, limiting intellectual exercise to skills derived from the revealed texts. Progressive Islam’s pre-modern epistemic predecessors are “Islamic speculative theologians (Mutakallimūn) and philosophers (Falāsifa),” a group Ahmed associates with the “philosopher-Sufi paradigm”. These groups, particularly the Muʿtazila rationalist theology school, engaged in “pure rational dialectics (jadal),” made judgments based on “reasoned arguments,” espoused “ethical objectivism,” and “emphasized the authority of rational argument in defining religious dogma and belief”. Modern predecessors include 20th-century reformist-modernist Islamic intellectual currents, notably Fazlur Rahman. Crucially, progressive Islam “is informed by the late modernity’s epistemological and hermeneutical canon and critically incorporates it into its own approach to and understanding of the Islamic religious-cultural heritage”. A Legacy Reinvigorated: The Islamic Roots of Progressive Thought Far from being a radical departure, progressive Islam ,therefore, should be considered as representing a profound “reinvigoration, and epistemological updating” of an interpretational paradigm underpinning the ‘Balkans-to-Bengal complex’ (termed borrowed from Ahmed) that was dominant before the rise of what Ahmed terms “modern Islam”. This earlier paradigm, identified as the “philosophical-Sufi/Sufi-philosophical amalgam,” included luminaries such as Ibn Sina, Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi, Hafez, Amir Khusraw, Nasir al-Din Tusi, Al-Farabi, and Ibn al-ʿArabi. Their understanding of Islam, which emphasised reason and inner truth over textualist Islam , held sway for five centuries (1350–1850). Progressive Muslim thought’s affinity with historical intellectual currents is further evident in its adoption and adaptation of elements from “European Romantic Criticism/Philosophy”. Like scholars such as G.B. Vico and J.G. von Herder, progressive Islam promotes a “comprehensive contextualisation and humanisation of religion and sacred texts,” shifting from immutable theological truths to a historicist understanding of theology. This includes recognizing the “literariness” of Scripture while affirming its connection to something beyond history, treating sacred texts with the same literary methods as other socio-culturally produced texts, operating at the “intersection between the ahistorical, pre-modern theological vertical “axes” and that of the time-bound, contextual horizontal axes”. Moreover, progressive Islam’s engagement with (late/post) modern episteme is deeply considered. It rejects the mainstream Sunni assumption of history’s “regressive character” and Islamic tradition’s “stagnant nature”. Instead, progressive Muslims view tradition as “dynamic and constructed,” subject to “expansion and contraction,” seeing religion as “evolving alongside humanity’s reason” rather than being frozen by a single, immutable understanding. This interpretational awareness leads to an emphasis on critically examining the epistemological and methodological dimensions of inherited interpretational models of primary texts. Progressive Muslim thought considers tradition as “complex and multi-faceted,” a “rich dense tapestry” woven from “competing interpretations,” all constitutive of its unique design. This means tradition is seen as a “result of a fluid exchange of ideas,” acknowledging a “wide spectrum of interpretations” inherent to it, and thus “subject to vicissitudes of human history and therefore never complete or flawless”. Hence, the Islamic tradition is understood as a “tradition-in-becoming,” where authenticity is a “creative and critical process that does not a priori privilege the sacred past over the present and imposing it onto the future”. This approach fosters a “dialectical relationship between the past and the present,” studying tradition in light of contemporary problems, questions, and needs, and conceiving the believer’s relationship with tradition as a dialogue beginning with their own subjectivities, ensuring Islamic tradition remains alive and relevant across epochs. A defining characteristic is “criticality”. Progressive Muslims engage seriously with the “full spectrum of Islamic thought and practices,” considering themselves “critical traditionalists” who “constantly interrogate tradition and strive to ask productive questions”. They do not claim an “epistemological rupture and a clean break from the Islamic scholarly tradition”. As Jahanbakhsh, using the term “Neo-rationalists” for progressive Muslims, notes, they advocate an Islam that “draws upon ‘the rich religious, ethical, and intellectual heritage but is responsive in a positive and serious sense to the imperatives of modern human values’“. Their approach also prominently features rationalism, advocating a “new rationalist theology” to serve as a basis for “legal and juristic reform,” welcoming “critical rationalism as a way of empowering one’s faith and making it relevant to present and ever-changing contexts”. This is coupled with “epistemological or methodological pluralism,” a willingness to “adopt and incorporate sources of knowledge and methods outside of the traditional Islamic sciences and affirm their potentially normative status, such as that of secular humanism and feminist thought”. Progressive Muslims engagewith modernity not as something to be imitated wholesale, as some classical modernist Muslim thinkers did. They are acutely aware of modernity’s “epistemological ruptures” and its profound effects on pre-modern thought systems, but they distinguish between these “modern systems of thinking and being” and their “actual outward manifestations in the Western societies known as modernisation”. Their engagement is characterized by “critical and selective adoption and adaption of modern ideas and concepts in contemporary Muslim discourses”. They are critical of the “meta-narratives underpinning classical modernity and the Age of Enlightenment,” such as universal, legislative, secular, and objective reason, and advocate for a “moderate post-modernism where truth is sought in a dialectical relationship between revelation, reason and the socio-historical context in which both are embedded”. They subscribe to a “cultural theory of modernity,” envisioning “multiple alternative ‘modernities’“ that can arise within different civilizational contexts, including Muslim-majority societies. The Verdict: Unmistakably Islamic Having examined the approach of progressive Islam through the lens of Shahab Ahmed’s conceptualization of Islam as “meaning-making for the self in terms of hermeneutical engagement with Revelation as Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text,” we are now in a position to answer the central question: Is progressive Islam “Islamic” in the “Ahmedinian” sense? I hope that I have demonstrated to the reader that the answer should be a resounding “yes”!. Progressive Muslim thought, with its rationalist and ethically objectivist approach, affirms that the “truth of Revelation is not only a subset of a larger Truth of Pre-Text but that it is also contingent upon the truth of the Pre-Text via an epistemology that is not textually dependent”. In their engagement with Revelation, progressive thinkers “hermeneutically privileges the Pre-Text over the Text,” a distinct contrast to mainstream Sunni Islam, which “strongly hermeneutically favours not only the Text but also considers only the textual means of knowing the Pre-Text as epistemologically legitimate”. This emphasis on non-textual epistemologies of Pre-Text aligns progressive Islam with historical Islamic philosophical traditions, such as those of Falāsifa like Ibn Sina. Furthermore, progressive Islam’s approach to Con-Text demonstrates its inherent “Islamic” nature within Ahmed’s framework. Given its commitment to “epistemological pluralism and epistemological openness” and its conscious integration of “the modern epistemic condition,” progressive Islam’s “Con-Text in toto and Con-Text in loco are broader and richer compared to that of mainstream Sunni Islam”. This expansive Con-Text provides progressive Islam with “many more ‘potential point[s] of hermeneutical entry and a potential point of hermeneutical departure for engagement with Revelation,’“ enabling it to provide and store a “broader pool of meanings of what Islam was, is, or can be”. The proponents and architects of progressive Muslim thought are demonstrably “deeply engaged in the hermeneutical engagement with Revelation as Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text”. An Enduring Legacy for a Globalized Age Progressive Islam, defined by its comprehensive interpretative framework, its dynamic understanding of history and tradition, and its critical engagement with modernity, does not conform to Ahmed’s definition of “modern Islam”. Instead, it is, in effect, a vibrant “reinvigoration, and epistemological updating of the interpretational paradigm underpinning the ‘Balkans-to-Bengal complex’ that once dominated Islamic thought. Progressive Islam offers a robust, historically grounded, and intellectually dynamic pathway for contemporary Muslims. By demonstrating its deep roots in a broader, more expansive understanding of Islamic tradition, the one that encompasses the philosophical and mystical as well as the textual, through Shahab Ahmed’s lens, unequivocally establishes the profound “Islamic” legitimacy of progressive Muslim thought. In a world yearning for ethical clarity and intellectual coherence, progressive Islam not only revitalises the best aspects of Islamic heritage but also empowers Muslimsto “feel at home, ethically and intellectually, in today’s globalised world”, proving that a forward-looking, critically engaged Islam is, in fact, an authentic and vital expression of its timeless essence. ------ Adis Duderija (Ph.D) is Associate Professor in the Study of Islam and Society, School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia. He has published extensively on Islamic intellectual tradition and is series editor of a new book series :Islam and Process-Relational Thought ( Routledge) . His forthcoming book is titled Islam and Constructive Interreligious Engagement (Bloomsbury 2026). You can check out his personal website here: https://dradisduderija.com/ URL: https://www.newageislam.com/debating-islam/interpretive-progressive-thought-deeply-islamic/d/136491 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism