The Koran Cannot Be Its Own Interpreter

Perpetual Internecine Conflict

We have been re-reading Alfred Guillaume's Islam (Baltimore: Penguin, 1956).  It is well dated now and in many ways serves as a curio.  The author's hope for the future of Islam based upon certain modernising efforts he had observed in his lifetime has now been well and truly dashed by events in our generation.  But in other ways, Guillaume's volume remains relevant.

Some things stand out.  Islam's epistemological foundation is deeply compromised.  The text of the Koran is arranged in an arbitrary fashion,

. . . on the purely mechanical plan of putting the longest chapters first and the shortest last . . . (Ibid., p.58)

so that there is no certainty about which particular passages correspond to what time in the life of Muhammad.

. . . scholars, eastern and western alike, have been busy for centuries in trying to determine to what period of the prophet's ministry a particular sura belongs.  The problem is further complicated by the inclusion of verses which must have been spoken at Medina in suras which begin in Mecca. (Ibid.)

Why might this be a fatal problem?
  Well, the Koran itself teaches (and almost everyone in the Islamic world holds) that a large number of verses are superseded or abrogated by later revelations.  But there is no way of knowing for certain which are the older and which the later revelations.  The apparent contradictions in the text remain insuperable.  Other authorities outside the text of Koran must be relied upon to determine which texts have been abrogated, and which are the later and, therefore, perpetually authoritative.  These other authorities are, therefore, necessarily higher and the Koran is a subsidiary and lesser authority.  The Koran, in other words, cannot be its own interpreter in any infallible or certain sense.  It is a wax nose, subject to later traditions and opinions.  Those traditions function practically as Islam's highest authority.

Authority in Islam devolves to the imams, which means that the meaning, intent, and application of the Koran is whatever an imam says it is, which is to say that one who desires to be a faithful and true Islamic believer really has no authority higher than that of the particular teacher or teachers he has chosen to follow.  There is no infallible certainty on which passages of the Koran abide, and which have been abrogated.  And there are thousands of subsequent contradictory traditions to choose from either to ignore or justify accepting a particular teaching. 

One consequence is that Islam will always devolve to be at war with itself.  The only way to restrain the inevitable internecine conflict is for a particular interpretation or sect to maintain political control by force and suppress all contrary sects and teachings.  Until the next revolt, or suicide bomb, or invasion.  The only way Islam can survive over the long term is for its adherents not to take it seriously.  Which is to say, Islam can  succeed only to its own destruction.