Critical Reading of Interrogation and its Application in Shahid Sadr’s Viewpoint concerning the History Traditions in the Qur’an

Lack of new and developed methods in impression from the Holy Qur’an and religious sources is one of the basic shortcomings of religious studies, especially theorization, for solving the present day problems. Shahid Sadr is among the few eminent scholars who have spoken of a relatively new method and, with an exclusive explanation of thematic interpretation, gives it an extraordinary characteristic. This article deals with critical reading of “interrogation” (istinṭāq) [lit. inquiry from the Qu’an] in thematic interpretation and “its application in the theory of history traditions in the Qur’an”. The article examines “interrogation” as only one of the procedures and processes of the thematic interpretation and theorization based on the Qur’an; and do not regard it as the whole thematic interpretation. It is aimed at explanation of interrogation and its components in Shahid Sadr’s thematic interpretation and pursuit of the extent with which it is applied in the theory of history traditions. The article answers two major questions: 1. What are the components of interrogation in Shahid Sadr’s thematic interpretation? 2. To what extent has the mentioned component been used in the theory of history traditions? The research is carried out with the method of text analysis. It is to be explained that we face two texts; a text that speaks of thematic interpretation and the theory of history traditions, and the text of the Holy Qur’an according to which the theoretician organizes his theory on the basis of its denotations. Analysis of the Qur’anic denotations is based on the method of legal reasoning (ijtihād) in Qur’anic literal denotation. Countless works have been written about Shahid Sadr’s thematic interpretation. The difference of the approach used in this article with them is in that, firstly – only a few of the mentioned works have briefly relied on Shahid Sadr’s thematic interpretation method; secondly, none of them have organized Shahid Sadr’s thematic interpretation method in a conceptual model; thirdly, they would not examine the process of interrogation and the extent of its application in theorization.