Fazlur Rahman
To apply the Qur’an today, first understand what its rules meant in their own time, then carry their moral principles into the present.
Placement
Pakistani scholar of Avicenna who taught in Chicago: a “double movement” reads the Qur’an’s moral principles from their historical context and applies them anew to the present.
Key ideas
- Double movement hermeneutic
- Qur’anic ethics
- Islam and modernity
Influence
Influenced by 4
Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
influenced by
Fazlur Rahman wrote his Oxford doctorate on Avicenna’s psychology, published Avicenna’s Psychology (1952) and edited the De anima of the Book of the Cure (1959). F. Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology (1952); Avicenna’s De Anima (1959)
Evidence: AI draft
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) › 980–1037
Mulla Sadra
influenced by
Fazlur Rahman’s The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra (1975) gave a systematic account of his doctrines of existence, substantial motion and the soul. F. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi) (1975)
Evidence: AI draft
Mulla Sadra › c. 1572–1640
Shah Waliullah
influenced by ✓
Fazlur Rahman saw Shah Waliullah as a forerunner of modern Islamic reform, above all for explaining the revealed law through its purposes (Islam, 1966). F. Rahman, Islam (1966); Revival and Reform in Islam, ed. E. Moosa (2000)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Shah Waliullah › 1703–1762
Muhammad Iqbal
influenced by ✓
Fazlur Rahman continued Iqbal’s project of rethinking Islam in modern terms, including his call for renewed ijtihad, and discussed his Reconstruction in Islam and Modernity (1982). F. Rahman, Islam and Modernity (1982); M. Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Muhammad Iqbal › 1877–1938
Influenced 2
Asma Barlas
influenced
Barlas’s reading of the Qur’an as a whole and in its historical context, against the authority of secondary texts, takes up Fazlur Rahman’s hermeneutics; the connection is documented in studies of her method. A. Barlas, Believing Women in Islam (2002); review in American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences; theses Bergen (2013) and Leiden (2020)
Evidence: AI draft
Asma Barlas › b. 1950
Amina Wadud
influenced
In Qur’an and Woman (1992) Wadud adopted Fazlur Rahman’s hermeneutics: each verse is read in its historical context and in the light of the Quran’s overall principles. A. Wadud, Qur’an and Woman (1992); F. Rahman, Islam and Modernity (1982)
Evidence: AI draft
Amina Wadud › b. 1952
Works
Islamic thought and education must be renewed by a “double movement” – from the present to the Qur’an’s historical context and back.
Position
Rahman sought an Islamic renewal that was neither secularist nor fundamentalist. The Qur’an, he argued, responded to concrete situations in seventh-century Arabia; its lasting moral principles – justice, equality, care for the weak – must be distilled from that context and applied anew to the present. This “double movement” would let Muslims change rules, for instance on women’s status, while staying faithful to revelation. He held that the Qur’an is wholly the word of God and, in an ordinary sense, wholly the word of Muhammad – a claim that caused uproar in Pakistan. He also wrote on Avicenna and Mulla Sadra; his students carried his ideas to Indonesia and Turkey.
Life & context
Fazlur Rahman was born in 1919 in the Hazara district of British India, now Pakistan, and learned the Islamic sciences from his father, a Deoband-trained scholar. He studied Arabic in Lahore and earned a doctorate at Oxford in 1949 with a thesis on Avicenna’s psychology. After Durham and McGill he headed Pakistan’s Islamic Research Institute, resigned in 1968 amid protests, and taught in Chicago until his death in 1988.
Further main works
- Avicenna’s Psychology (1952)
- Major Themes of the Qur’an (1980)
As of November 2026 · Sources · Improve this page · How Agora is made