Ethics in the Qurʾān and the Tafsīr Tradition

This book is about the articulation of ethics in the Qurʾān and the tafsīr tradition. Based on an examination of several apparently problematic Qurʾānic narrative pericopes and how the exegetes grappled with them, the book demonstrates that the moral world of the Qurʾān is polyvalent and non-linear, owing, above all, to its intrinsic ethical antinomies and textual ambiguities. That is, the book contends that paradox and uncertainty are both constituents of the Qurʾān’s ethical architectonics, and that through these constituents the Qurʾān charts a system of ethics that seeks to tread in the midst of a non-ideal world rife with uncertainty.
The book also argues that the tafsīr tradition tends to erode the hermeneutical openness of the Qurʾān and, thereby, limits the Qurʾān’s ethical potential. The book, thus, advances our understanding of Qurʾānic ethics and contributes to the field of tafsīr studies and to the scholarship on Qurʾānic hermeneutics.

Tareq Hesham Moqbel is a Research Fellow at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, and an Associate Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. His work addresses the Qurʾān—its reading traditions, interpretation, and continuity with the Bible.