Introduction

Because Qur'anic textual analysis will be a prominent part of this website, it is insightful to consider a "simple" example in English. Consider that the following sentence is the ONLY textual information an interpreter has: "Get me a glass of water."

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Analysis of the sentence and its words

Words

There are six written words. One verb - Get, a pronoun - me, an article - a, two nouns - glass, water; and a preposition - of. There is one or two unwritten words. Because the verb is a command, the person(s) being commanded must be interpreted to be there. This will be either singular 'You get me a glass of water,' or plural 'You all get me a glass of water.' Note 'you' and 'you all' are not written but they are required because the written word "Get" necessitates them.

Context

The words set up a context in which there is a Speaker - indicated by "me," and person(s) being spoken to (call them a Listener) - indicated by the unwritten 'you' or 'you all.' It can be inferred from this context that the speaker desires the Listener to get them a glass of water. The words do not convey the reason, importance, or priority for this request - the analyst of this sentence MUST assume what these are. In order to make this assumption, they have to consider meaning, sense and usage of the words. Let's start with the nouns.

Glass: is it generally 'container' or is it specifically "glass?" I.e., would a cup, bottle, bucket, pot, cupped hands, sponge soaked with water, etc. fulfill this command?

Water: is it generally any liquid or specifically liquid H2O? I.e. would juice, tea, coffee, soapy H2O, etc. fulfill this command. Does it have to be liquid would solid H2O - ice fulfill the command? Would a closed glass containing steam?

The reader should begin to see the implications of only having the six words as a textual source - at face value you might have thought 'the Listener should just get the speaker a glass of water', but clearly you have no basis for that except that a non-textual assumption (preconceived notion, bias, worldview, etc.) had to have been made. Let's continue with the verb.

Get: Does it convey that the Listener is the one who must get it or can they ask someone else to go get it? Does it convey when it should be gotten - immediately or later? Again, a non-textual assumption will have to be made.

Maybe if there were just some additional words in the text, we can validate these assumptions and answer the reason, importance and priority questions but there are not. What if the text had the additional words "I'm thirsty," or "I need to finish the experiment," "it'll catch on fire?" But these additional words are not there - it's just the six words, finite, unchangeable and all that the analyst has.

Conclusions

Therefore, as an analyst and interpreter of this text, what would you conclude the Listener should do? For any answer to this, how confident (a probability value) are you that is correct - i.e. consistent with the text? How confident are you that if another analyst concludes something else that they are more or less consistent with the text? If you're the Listener, what would you do?

By Allah's mercy to us, The Qur'an is 77,801+ finite, unchangeable words. This is a universe of contexts, meaning, sense and usage of words; and therefore, a universe of conclusions that can be made. But the assumptions, preconceived notions, biases, worldviews, culture, socio-political realities, etc. of the interpreter will always be intertwined with these conclusion. This fact means, that it is what and how Allah intends humans to interact with and act upon His book - a call to all generations which we must respond to today.