The Qur’an Only approach is, in the end, not a solution to the prison of tradition. It is only a selective reliance on it. None of these intellectuals has achieved a systematic break with the past or reread the Qur’an apart from it. This may well be impossible. Deeply anticlerical, inspired by the Mutazila rationalists of the ninth century and committed to broad Qur’anic principles rather than a concrete and detailed Shariah, the general Qur’an Only trend is an expression of a desire for an Islam compliant with modern rationalism and Western sensibilities. It is the product of how a particular
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