Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on Tafsir, Ta'wil, Quranic Hermeneutic Discourses:: A Linguistic Perspective

Recently, development of Quranic Studies has been followed and directed by the progress of the social sciences, especially linguistic, semantic, and hermeneutic. To examine the text of the Quran from literary and linguistic point of view has attracted modernist researchers to this field. Nasr Hāmid Abū Zayd, for instance, says that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this kind of approach is the prospective approach in the future. According to him, Islamic studies and Quranic studies are based on the text. The studies of the Quran as a linguistic text bring us to use linguistic and literary studies. Thus, Nasr Hāmid Abū Zayd adopts and employs the latest theories of linguistic, semiotic, and hermeneutic in his study of the Qur'ān. This research is to discuss and focus on some important questions such as what is Nasr Hāmid Abū Zayd’s explanation about the interpretation of the text in the Quran by using a linguistic perspective? how does he employ this approach in interpreting the Quran? and what are the effects of employing the linguistic approach in contemporary Quranic studies?