Background:

Dr. Naṣr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd (10.7.1943–5.7.2010) was an Egyptian Qurʾānic thinker and scholar. He is famous for his contextual interpretations of the Qurʾān, which sparked a lot of controversy amongst fundamentalist Islamic thinkers. In May 1992, Abū Zayd was in a position to get a promotion from associate professor to full professor at Cairo University, but this was refused following the revising of his academic work by the university's committee. The months that followed, several traditional Islamic thinkers came together and filed a lawsuit against Abū Zayd, including Dr. ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr Shāhīn – who was a member of the university's committee – and Shaykh Yūsuf al-Badrī, based on his academic work on the Qurʾān. The court declared Abū Zayd an apostate and even forced him to divorce his wife Dr. Ibtihāl Yūnis, as under Sharīʿah Law, a Muslim woman is forbidden from marrying a non-Muslim man. Succeeding Abū Zayd’s case in court, he continuously received death threats and received round the clock security, which included personal body guards but also protection around his house. 

On 23 July 1995, and 13 days after the interview was conducted, Abū Zayd and his wife fled Egypt.

Side A:

Egypt, according to Abū Zayd, is a Shāfiʿī (one of the four schools of Islamic law in Sunni Islam) country in terms of jurisprudence, with the exception of family affairs in the rule of law. Abū Zayd’s line of work is based on analysing Shāfiʿī as a discourse rather than as fiqh. Shaykh al-Shāfiʿī – the founder of the school of Islamic law – has not been thoroughly analysed, and is treated by traditionalists as a sacred imām. Abū Zayd challenges such mainstream views by analysing Shaykh al-Shāfiʿī and his work in a particular context and as historical rather than sacred because in de facto Shaykh al-Shāfiʿī was human. It seems to Abū Zayd that this folk understanding, which is literally following Shaykh al-Shāfiʿī’ ideas word for word, has crept into the field of academics. This new methodology of understanding Shāfiʿī as a contextual discourse rather has angered many traditional Islamic thinkers, who accused Abū Zayd of apostasy.

Abū Zayd believes that anyone who claims that every aspect in individual and social life should be regulated by religion is against his thoughts because Abū Zayd believes that holy texts should be interpreted contextually before they are applied. Those who abide to the literal interpretation of the Qurʾān are against such ideas (i.e. al-Jamāʿah al-Islāmiyya and the Muslim Brotherhood).