This article reconstructs the semantic field of tazkiyah al-nafs in the Qur’an as a conceptual foundation for Islamic psychology. It addresses a methodological problem in contemporary Islamic psychological discourse: tazkiyah is often used as a normative or therapeutic concept before its Qur’anic semantic structure has been carefully mapped. Combining thematic exegesis (tafsīr mauḍūʻī) with semantic-field analysis, the article examines the root z-k-w, its morphological distribution, contextual anchor loci, oppositional relations, and exegetical corroboration. It identifies QS al-Syams (91):7–10 as the primary structural locus of the field, where nafs, taqwā–fujūr, tazkiyah–tadsiyah, and falāḥ–khaibah are arranged in a layered moral structure. The study argues that tazkiyah cannot be reduced to purification alone. While taṭhīr primarily denotes the removal of impurity, tazkiyah includes purification and exceeds it through cultivation, growth, moral elevation, and teleological orientation toward falāḥ. By distinguishing tazkiyah from related concepts such as taṭhīr, taubah, and iṣlāḥ, the article offers a more precise Qur’anic account of moral formation. Its contribution is therefore pre-clinical and conceptual: it provides a Qur’anic semantic foundation for Islamic psychology without claiming to establish a finalized therapeutic model.
This article examines the evolution of translation ideology in the 2019 edition of the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs’ Qur’an translation (Qur’an Kemenag) by comparing it with the 1965, 1971, 1989–1990, and 2002 editions. It also compares selected renderings with Indonesian translations by M. Quraish Shihab and Muhammad Thalib and, where relevant, the English translations of Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Marmaduke Pickthall. Using comparative textual analysis, the study evaluates translation method, diction, language style, and the treatment of verses with political and theological implications. The analysis finds that the 2019 edition gives greater priority to domestication than to foreignization, particularly through contextual equivalents and explanatory notes. This orientation differs from the stronger foreignizing tendency of the earliest edition. In politically contested verses, especially those involving awliyāʾ and qawwāmūn, the 2019 edition adopts more contextual and politically moderate renderings than earlier editions. In verses concerning divine attributes, its explanatory notes generally accord with Ashʿarī theology, the dominant theological orientation among Indonesian Muslims. Overall, the 2019 edition is more informative and context-sensitive than its predecessors. Its development illustrates how an official Qur’an translation negotiates linguistic accessibility, state responsibility, political contestation, and theological plurality.
This article examines debates over the khabarī (scriptural) divine attributes in early Qur’anic exegesis through a case study of Muqātil b. Sulaymān al-Balkhī (d. 150/767). Framed by the analytical dyad of text and context, it asks how anthropomorphic and corporealist readings emerged in the first/early second century AH and what cultural matrices shaped them. Methodologically, the study combines a historical‑inductive reading of Muqātil’s tafsīr in its primary textual witnesses, a deconstructive analysis of his interpretive system, and a critical analytical comparison of selected motifs—corporeality, istiwāʾ as “sitting,” the throne and its bearers, the kursī, and the Adam creation narrative. The findings suggest that literalist anthropomorphic exegesis crystallized in the multilingual eastern Islamic lands, especially Khurāsān/Central Asia, where local religious traditions and “Eastern” theological imaginaries plausibly informed the reception of Qur’anic descriptions of God; this influence is advanced as a text and context based hypothesis rather than a claim of demonstrable direct borrowing. The article also maps early scholarly critiques that problematized Muqātil’s approach in tafsīr and ḥadīth. By foregrounding intertextuality and acculturation, the study offers a methodological pathway for linking early exegetical discourse to its socio‑cultural environments and reassessing the genealogy of anthropomorphism in formative tafsīr.
Despite extensive debates on ḥūr in Qur’anic exegesis, the imagery of paradise is still frequently read through patriarchal assumptions that reduce female figures to sensual reward and obscure the Qur’an’s ethical and ecological horizon. This article aims to critique patriarchal readings of ḥūr as feminized paradisiacal reward and to propose a khalīfah–mīzān-guided eco-tafsīr that reorients Qur’anic “beauty” toward gender and ecological justice. The study uses qualitative, text-based research through comparative hermeneutical tafsīr analysis of Qur’anic passages on ḥūr and related ethical principles (khalīfah and mīzān), employing lexical–semantic analysis, close reading, and cross-tafsīr comparison. The findings show that patriarchal interpretations are sustained by an androcentric dualism that separates humans from nature and legitimizes domination, whereas a khalīfah–mīzān framework enables a relational reading that affirms women’s subjectivity and shifts beauty away from commodification toward ecological intimacy. Overall, this approach offers a text-grounded pathway for reading paradise imagery as an ethical horizon that integrates gender justice with ecological responsibility.
Purpose oriented readings of the Qur’an often articulated through maqāṣid (objectives) have become increasingly visible in reform-oriented discourse, yet the scholarly status of maqāṣid Al-Qur’an remains contested and still in the making. Against this backdrop, Al-Hidāyāt Al-Qur’aniyyah, a large institutional initiative affiliated with Umm Al-QuraUniversity, proposes a guidance centered (hudā) program that systematizes verse level “guidance” (hidāyāt) as actionable outputs. This article offers a contrastive comparison between hudā and maqāṣid centered programs using a qualitative, text centered approach. The primary corpus is Al-Hidāyāt Al-Qur’aniyyah: Dirāsah Ta’shīliyyah (Vols. I–II), read as the project’s programmatic self-articulation; the comparator corpus is maqāṣid Qur’ān programmatic literature, with particular reference to Al-Maqāṣid Al-Kubrā li-l-Qur’ān, which distinguishes major objectives from detailed Guidance (tafṣīlī/ʿamalī). The findings reconstruct four epistemological patterns in Al-Hidāyāt, hudā as telos, non-operationalization of a maqāṣid hierarchy, Salaf authorized epistemic layering, and an applicative output genre and show, via the comparator’s own taxonomy, how maqāṣid and hidāyāt differ in object of inquiry, scale, inferential routes, and extensibility. A worked textual example (Q 2:275–279) demonstrates how each program scales normative output from the same passage. The article contributes a comparator grounded framework for studying teleological competition in contemporary Qur’anic hermeneutics and highlights the growing role of institutional infrastructures in shaping exegetical authority.
