The Place of Tolerance in Islam Quotes

“In contemporary Islam, the problem is not the text, but the reader. In most cases, the Islamic heritage is lost between analytically competent readers who are woefully incapable of penetrating the classical texts and readers who can decipher the classical texts, but who live in a time warp and are largely oblivious to the hermeneutic and analytic strategies of modern scholars. Put simply, the first group is equipped to handle modernity, but not the classical tradition, while the second group is in precisely the opposite position. This dilemma ought to be recognized as the real tragedy of modern Islamic scholarship.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Place of Tolerance in Islam

“At times, interpreters of the tradition completely missed the moral point of the Qur’anic message and generated determinations that locked the Qur’an into a short-sighted and inadequate sphere of meaning. But I think Wadud also makes a significant point here. As Muslims, we adhere to the religious conviction that the morality of the Qur’an will always exceed the morality of its interpreters. In other words, I do not believe that human beings can claim to have understood the message of the Qur’an perfectly and completely. Falling short of the Qur’an’s moral message is inevitable, but is also an impetus to engage in a never-ending dynamic of moral exploration and interpretation.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Place of Tolerance in Islam