The modernist current of understanding the Holy Quran in Tunisia; Case study: A review of Mohammad Talbi's interpretive method

The currents of understanding the Holy Quran in contemporary Tunisia are the result of the intersection of the two currents of reformism and modernity formed in the Sufi environment and it is divided into two general branches, traditionalists and modernists. Dr. Mohamed Talbi(1921-2017) a Tunisian Quranic Muslim thinker after being educated in a Sufi environment and pursuing higher education in French academic circles, relying on historical expertise and using new methods of historical, anthropological and semantic analysis, he was able to play an important role in establishing a modernist understanding of the Qur'an in contemporary Tunisia; Modernism, text-basing, interpretability and desecration of the Salafi understanding are the most important principles and his most prominent intellectual-philosophical, humanist and Orientalist tendencies in theorizing the understanding of the Qur'an. Interpretation of Qur'anic verses related to topics such as religious freedom, the Islamic Ummah, the political system, the dialogue of religions, and the beating of women are numerous in numerous Arabic and French works by Talbi. His method of understanding the Qur'an was welcomed by modernists, especially academics, but traditionalists considered his research method to be alien to the science of Islamic law.