Fundamentalist Islam gets around the problem of wandering and different human interpretations changing the tradition out of recognition, by rigid literalism. Some fundamentalists here do so, too e.g Bapists of the Bob Jones variety. There are varying degrees of commitment to literalism in other Protestant denominations.
Some of the more liberal denominations just let wandering human interpretations work their will, but the result is often little better than the latest fad dressed up with a few out of context quotes. Fundamentalists here dislike that and regard the result as lacking in religious legitimacy, as just the random opinions of falliable people. Instead of modifying a tradition, tradition evaporates and you just get trendy opinion. Fear of the same sort of thing is one reason fundamentalists versions of Islam are popular.
Between these two positions there is another one possible, avoiding literalism on the one hand, and anything goes trendiness on the other. Avoiding the first necessarily implies someone can interpret the literal text, trying to preserve what is essential, but authorized to reject outdated aspects. Someone must have this authority. Avoiding the second, anything goes, necessarily imples limits on this authority, in terms of the questions decided, who decides, etc. So the authority to interpret must be limited rather than unlimited.
Summing up the previous paragraph, a limited authority to interpret away from literal meanings is the necessary condition of a flexible tradition. No such authority means no flexibility. No limits on it means no tradition. Between stagnation and aimless drift lies the option of regular reform, but reform requires definite but limited authority.
In Christendom, the catholic church has claimed such an authority and specifically vested it in a hierarchy of offices. With some questions left to bishops, others to the Pope, and the largest changes to a general council of bishops. The hierarchy filters changes proposed by theologians, the clergy, involved laymen, etc. Some other denominations agree that such an authority is needed, but disagree on who ought to exercise it (bishops, all clergy, congregations, etc). Sometimes only minor matters of church governance are covered by such authority, sometimes it extends to theological dogma.
Now, in Sunni Islam there is no hierarchy. There isn't even a legal distinction between clergy and laymen. Those thought of as "clergy" are simply the learned, religious scholars, or judges of traditional Islamic law. In practice these form a seperate body, referred to as the "ulama", but someone is a member of the ulama not by formal office, but merely because the term describes him. Shiites are different on this score, being led by ayatollahs with definite perogatives, like bishops. But for Sunnis, there is just a loose grouping of the learned, and everybody else.
So there is a difficulty about where a power to interpret can be lodged. If left to every Sunni, the result would probably not be the maintenance of a tradition. And those at all interested in Sunni Islam are generally interested in maintaining a tradition. Rather than being "liberal" and trendy like some "mainline", left-leaning denominations of protestant Christians, they'd just be secular or only marginally religious. So the reforming, interpreting authority can't be left to everyone, and there is no formal hierarchy to exercise it, as there is for catholics.
Where then does the interpreting power belong? That is the question Rahman is trying to address. Only a satisfactory answer to that question - one satisfactory to those for whom religious legitimacy and maintaining a tradition are important - can break the hold of rigid literalism among Sunni theologians. If they have to choose between literalism and chaos, they will choose literalism. If they have to choose between literalism as Sunnis, and a hierarchy as Shiites, they will choose to remain Sunnis and thus to remain literalists. What is needed is a non-literalist Sunni option, and that means some way for Sunnis to exercise an authority to interpret, without a hierarchy to do it for them and without licence for individual opinion to dissolve everything.
Rahman finds a basis for such an authority, and a means of exercising it, by examining the history of Islam, and the way things were dealt with before there was much to be so literalist about. In the early period after the Prophet, all of the later machinery of Islamic orthodoxy was in process of construction, rather than already existing as a received law. By necessity, the believers of that time exercised a sort of legislating power, as they settled a hundred questions raised by the changing condition of Islam in the world.
In terms of my analysis above, understand this is before the time of Al-Ghazali. Men were still confident in the power of human reason. Philosophy had not come in claiming "ownership" of such reasoning, in support of proposition that seemed doubtful. Skepticism about human reason had not yet been reached for as a sort of ward against such intrusions. Men reasoned confidently, with their own natural faith in their ability to find out the truth.
So what did they do? They did not listen to outsiders but legislated for themselves, of course. Only the voices of believing Muslims were listened to on questions of internal Muslim government and traditions. And they appealed to the moral examples in both the Koran, and in oral traditions about actions of Muhammad or his companions (Hadith, later written down). But they made these appeals not based on any literalism, but reasoning by analogy from the moral principle they saw in these sources. And then they settled such questions by an effective consensus among the learned. Which did not need to be total - some dissenters made no difference. And the process did not have to be formalized into parliaments, like Christian general councils. Islamic judges referred to consensus and precedent, in a sort of common law.
Rahman essentially argues that the authority so exercised back then was legitimate, was not any sort of usurpation or corruption of an imagined literalist purity. And the same sort of procedure provides a safe and legitimate place for the authority to interpret, including the authority to modify literalist readings, to drop outdated views, to preserve the best moral sense of the examples of the tradtion without being tied to literalism, the particular practices, rules, punishments of the 10th century, etc.
Incidentally, an analogy to a famous case in the 19th century may help some to see the sort of issues involved. Cardinal Newman switched from the Anglican to the Catholic church over basically the same point. As an Anglican, he had argued that the Catholic Church had innovated in doctrine and that it was proper to appeal against it to the authority of tradition, especially to the tradition of the early church fathers.
When he went and looked, however, he found that the church fathers themselves did not make as much of tradition as he did. They couldn't; they had too many questions to settle about which no traditions yet existed. What he found was the church fathers themselves appealed not to tradition but to consensus among the members of the church. This authorized innovation when it was substantially agreed upon.
Newman found that he was appealing by tradition to traditional authorities, but those authorities themselves told him to trust consensus rather than tradition, and not to fear innovation. They appealed themselves to the statement in the New Testament that a gathering of Christians would be guided, not left alone, and reasoned that what Christians agreed upon was thus worthy of trust, whether traditional, literalist, or not.
Newman decided (rightly or wrongly, I am merely relating how he saw the question) that this meant the method of the Catholics in allowing innovation was safe, and that his previous reasons for rejecting it, based on what he had imagined about the importance of tradition, was untenable.
Rahman has a similar piece of scriptural authority for his ideas about consensus among believers and an authority to innovate. Muhammad stated that "the community of believers will not agree on an error". The debator's point turns on whether an agreement needs to be total for this saying to apply, since the literalist can always say -he- doesn't agree with interpretion X. But assuming a substantial consensus is all that is meant, this authorizes innovation, if the body of believing Muslims agrees on the innovation. It allows reform through a kind of democracy or consent.
The particular passage in my earlier remarks that had you wondering, was about all of this. Rahman's approach is opposed by some fundamentalist Muslims because they fear it would leave the tradition too much adrift, compared to literalism. To them he offers three safeguards against undo chaos. One, it is the opinion of faithful Muslims that is to be considered, not those of every ideologue of some trendy outlook. Two, they are to reason by analogy from the writings of the Koran and the Hadith, trying to preserve the moral principle involved in a given passage, not to simply make things up as their private opinions. And three, there has to be a substantial consensus, more than a majority, of the learned in favor of an interpretation, for it to be considered authoritative.
So if most faithful Muslims are willing to set aside the literal meaning of some passage, not to overturn its moral meaning but to adapt it to modern times, they may ignore a literal meaning. This then becomes a legal precedent to which other Islamic judges can and should appeal, when deciding similar issues. A common law, consent based process of debate among scholars, should adapt Islam to the modern world. And should be accorded greater weight than literalism.
The underlying moral idea, in my opinion quite sound, is that the morals of a devout populace are a safer place to look for justice than dead letter a thousand years old. But this is not an easy decision for many to make. Bob Jones style Christian fundamentalists here are not willing to make it. In a judicial context, not everyone is willing to allow the principle in matters of our constitutional law. It is at bottom nothing less than the question of whether men govern their laws or their laws govern them. Which is the question of whether they are truly free, under a law of liberty, bound by what their consciences demand of themselves - or not.
Those who would use dead letter to claim rule over millions and direct their actions toward their own enemies, are not sympathetic to this approach. It is, in my opinion, the critical issue in the coming struggle within the Islamic world. How Islam faces and deals with modernity will depend on this queston. How the rest of the world lives with Islam will depend on the answer the Islamic world gives.
Fazlur Rahman saw all of this. The scholars have not been idle as this storm brewed. He knew what the critical issue was and is, why it was there, what in Islamic history stood in the way and what can favor, the answer that he regarded as preferable and essential. He proposed his solution out of a profound love of his own faith, and a desire to save it from a course he considered ruinous. Whether he will be listened to now, is the question. We should do what we can to see that his approach is at least respectfully considered.
I hope this is interesting.
I don't expect you to have all the answers to this question, but any insight into this question (or secretagent's question), I'm sure will be note worthy.
I've been hearing a lot of really bad stuff about Islam recently. As a non-interventionist (temporary war monger), some of the material I've recently been presented with, I'm finding quite disturbing. I do not want to become a permanent war monger. That's one of the reasons I found your post interesting.
Your reply #12 is quite helpful. Thankyou.