The Context Of Inter-Religious Relations In The Writing Of Tafsir Al-Mishbah

Abstract

This article discusses the important role of Tafsir Al-Misbah in describing the response of its author, M. Quraish Shihab, to the context of inter-religious life currently happening in the environment he lived in when he wrote this work, both when he was in Egypt and in Indonesia. Using socio-historic method, this article will see how the context of religious scope influence contemporary mufassir (interpreter) in writing the Tafsir al-Misbah. Meanwhile, to discover M. Quraish Shihab’s thoughts, this article will use hermeneutic method. From thereon, this article aims at proving the theories suggested by Goldziher (1983), Hassan Hanafi (1988) and Farid Esack (1997) on the interrelatedness between context and interpretation, both the contexts of texts, interpreter and his historicity, and even political interest.