Since the early centuries of Islam, scholars have sought to mine the wealth of its meanings by developing a variety of different methods of hermeneutics.
There are many challenges of addressing modern day human rights, women and minority groups through the traditional hermeneutical model.
Hermeneutics is the basis of all scriptural interpretations, and in the context of Islam, often includes vital tools, such as tafsir, and exegesis to aid in analyses of the Qur’an.
The tools used for hermeneutical dissection range from the hadith reports, in traditional interpretation, to things like taqwa, and a more contemporary, liberating approach.
[1]: 778 Peter Heath posed in 1989 that "the modern study of Islamic hermeneutics is in its infancy"; in response, Jean Jacques Waardenburg proposed five questions and issues that a study of a possible hermeneutics of Islam would have to deal with: Tafsir as described by Andrew Rippin "is the humanization of the divine word and the divinization of the human spirit.
"[3]: 177 Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im suggests "Hermeneutics may be defined as the art or science of interpretation, especially for scriptural texts.
"[4]: 155 Amina Wadud defines the hermeneutical model as being, "concerned with three aspects of the text, in order to support its conclusions: 1.
Al-Tabari's traditional approach to interpretation relies heavily on the Hadith reports as a tool for clarification when the Qur'an presents a mutishabihat (ambiguous verse).
Abdulla Galadari proposed a method for Qur'anic hermeneutics that takes into account intertextual polysemy in establishing inner-Qur'anic and intra-Qur'anic-Biblical allusions by looking into the polysemous nature of the Arabic terms used and how they are related to its usage in other instances.
[8] A hermeneutic approach to Islam and human rights due to legal or ethical considerations must acknowledge the idea of historical and cultural change.
Thus they argue for a high degree of freedom for the modern Muslim scholar in determining what is mutable (changeable) and immutable (unchangeable) in the area of ethico-legal content.
The use of abrogation for clarification and abandoning rigid interpretation from previous hermeneutic scholars loosely encompasses Saeed's approach.
Zayn R. Kassam touches on this by mentioning that, "Muslim women's praxis, particularly the hopes, possibilities, and challenges that accompany this scholarly textual reinterpretation, remains under-researched".
[11]: 94 Due to this type of interpretation being under-researched, many women in Islamic communities are still oppressed despite the changing of modern society.
Modern Qur’anic hermeneutics has been influenced by the changing position and view of women in the Muslim world and increasing numbers of study and interpretations of the text itself.
Mohammed Arkoun further expands on this thought explaining, "There are concrete examples how authority and power are conquered, monopolized and translated, not in the theoretical classical frameworks, but in a more simplified vocabulary, accessible to the illiterate peasants, mountain-dwellers and nomads.
Zayn R. Kassam adds to this by stating that, “The discursive hermeneutics of Qur’anic tafsir is a strategy born of necessity and the unwavering belief in the unfulfilled promise of gender egalitarianism in Islam”.
In other words, Ali explains that, "Queer theoretical interventions, then, have relevance for social life: challenging the presumed coherence and sacred nature of existing oppressive norms allows other forms of being and relating to emerge and flourish" [13](91).
[citation needed] Generally speaking Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im suggest that "the diversity of Sunni, Shi'a, and Sufi Muslims schools of thought signify differences in the hermeneutical framework."
More specifically, "Among Muslims, three broad approaches may be identified in relation to the interpretation of ethico-legal content of the Qur'an in the modern period: Textualist, Semi-textualist and Contextualist" according to Abdullah Saeed.
(“The thrust of my argument, therefore, is towards a more flexible approach to interpretation of these texts by taking into consideration both the socio-historical context of the Quran at the time of revelation in the first/seventh century and the contemporary concerns and needs of Muslims today.