A Critical Analytical and Inductive Study of the Suspicion of the Historicity of the Religious Text

Abstract

The present paper critically examines the modernist claim of the historicity of the religious text, a contention that has produced considerable epistemological disruption within contemporary Islamic thought. Advocates of historicity argue that the Qur’an must be read as a product of its socio-historical context, thereby undermining its transhistorical authority and reducing it to a discursive artifact. Such a perspective has contributed to distorted understandings of Islam among certain audiences, where Qur’anic engagement is displaced from its formative and foundational role into a practice of mere recitation, pursued primarily for spiritual reward rather than intellectual or cultural grounding.

The study traces pivotal trajectories in the evolution of Qur’anic discourse and systematically analyzes the evidentiary constructs advanced by proponents of historicity. In response, it develops a twofold critique: a detailed refutation of specific arguments and a holistic reassessment of the broader hermeneutical framework that sustains this paradigm. The findings reveal that the historicist reading not only marginalizes the Qur’an’s epistemic centrality but also attempts to assimilate it to other sacred corpora that have been reduced to symbolic relics devoid of normative efficacy.

By situating this debate within the wider field of modern hermeneutics, the research underscores the necessity of reclaiming the Qur’anic selfhood and reaffirming its discourses as genuine truth-bearing propositions. In doing so, it contributes to current discussions on the intersection of modernity, textual authority, and Islamic epistemology.