From understanding to the interpretation Qur'an: A comparative glance at the views of Mohammad Hossein Tabātabāi and Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari

It is essential to address the challenges of modernist theories in the interpretation of the Qur'an in recent times from a scholarly perspective. In this article, the fundamental principles of understanding and interpreting the Qur'an are described and compared from the stance of Mohammad Hossein Tabātabāi and Mohammad Mujtahid Shabestari, as the representatives of the traditional and modern approaches to the Qur'an, respectively. The findings of the research suggest that such principles in their views in four major categories of the role of the author, text, exegete and context of understanding and interpreting the Qur'an have 11 overlapping points and 13 differences, which exhibit 45% homogeneity and 55% divergence in their stances. The main overlapping dimensions in their ideas is "the role of intentionality and extraction of meaning by the author", "semantic links and comprehensibility of the Qur'an", "the necessity of textual investigation ", and "the role of context and conditions of revelation in understanding the Qur'an". Moreover, they have conflicting views in the "metaphysical or human nature of Qur'anic language", "the stability of the text meaning or its readability", "semantic or hermeneutic study of the Qur'an to discover the author’s intention", "the role of the hermeneutic circle" and "the role of investigation, previous knowledge and expectation of the exegetes in the process of understanding and interpreting the Qur'an".