QUR’ANIC HERMENEUTICS

The Qur’an is a revelation that Allah conveyed to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) through the intermediary of the Angel Jibrīl (Gabriel). In simple terms, the sequence of revelation delivered by Allah to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), until it reached us in the form of the codified Qur’anic text, can be outlined as follows:

1. Allah’s primordial idea.
2. Revelation conveyed to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him).
3. Transmission of information by the Messenger of Allah to his Companions.
4. The Companions recorded the information from the Messenger of Allah without punctuation or diacritical marks.
5. Under the coordination of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, the Companions undertook the codification and the addition of orthographic markers.
6. A complete codification in the form of the text that we receive today.

What has reached us today is the text itself—the outermost manifestation—which we perceive visually and audibly. It is this outer text (in the form of Qur’anic verses) that contains the “primordial idea of Allah” that must be understood.

Thus, the text we read is a representation of Allah’s primordial idea. In other words, the text functions as a form, while its content is the primordial divine idea itself. Consequently, understanding the Qur’anic text can begin by examining each word through a process of “textual analysis,” in order to uncover the “primordial ideas” embedded within the text.

From this illustration, we can also understand that the text is a representation of the primordial idea; therefore, by understanding the text, we are expected to understand the primordial idea it conveys. At this point, as an analytical aid, we require knowledge of semiotics—the science of signs—so that a form of “human abstraction” may be constructed that aligns with, or runs parallel to, “divine abstraction,” leading us toward asymptotic truth.

Problematics of Translation Methods

Language constitutes one of the main factors that make it difficult for Indonesian society to understand the Qur’an, as not everyone is willing or able to master the Arabic language. For this reason, the Qur’an has been translated into Indonesian to facilitate public understanding.

According to the official website of the Indonesian Ministry of Industry (www.kemenperin.go.id), translation (or language transfer) is the interpretation of the meaning of a text from a source language in order to produce an equivalent text in a target language that communicates a similar message. However, since translation often focuses primarily on finding lexical equivalents, several problems may arise.

a. Reduction of Meaning (Especially in Equivalent Words)

As discussed earlier, words—whether spoken or written—serve as representations of reality, both empirical and abstract. In the process of translation, the chosen equivalent word sometimes fails to represent the meaning in its entirety. In other words, the equivalent term may not be capable of carrying all the semantic dimensions of the source language into the target language. This results in a reduction of meaning.

For example, when translating the word al-kitāb (الْكِتَابُ) as “printed book” a problem arises when encountering Qur’anic verses that contain the term al-kitāb, because the reader will consistently refer only to the meaning “printed book” This leads to a reduction of meaning in our abstraction of al-kitāb, which in fact possesses a broader semantic range than merely “printed book”

b. Shift of Meaning (Especially in Loanwords)

In translation, we also frequently encounter errors in interpreting meaning, particularly with loanwords. When an equivalent term cannot be found to translate an Arabic word into Indonesian, the word is often directly absorbed, sometimes retaining a similar phonetic form. Unfortunately, many Arabic loanwords in Indonesian develop abstract meanings that differ from their original meanings.

One example is the word al-idhn (الْإِذْنُ). In Arabic, al-idhn announcements, statements, edicts, proclamations which have certain conditions so that the announcement/statement occurs, for example President Sukarno made a proclamation, this can be done if the conditions for the proclamation are realized including agreement, complete, objective. This divergence in abstraction inevitably leads to confusion when interpreting Qur’anic verses that employ the term al-idhn.

@AbuMusa2025