Reconstructing Laylat al-Qadr: Spiritual–Existential Hermeneutics in Shaykh ‘Ala Muhammad Mustafa Na‘imah’s Qur’anic Exegesis

Abstract

This article deals with the tradition of Laylat al-Qadr occurring in al-Hayah at-Tayyibah ma‘a al-Qur’an by Shaykh ‘Ala Muhammad Mustafa Na‘imah, the Quranic commentary that reconstructs the meaning of this special day historically as an institutionalized (classical, and later modern) human-existential, compulsory for any significance to emerge for what befell a contextually-defined Muslim-Universe. Laylat al-Qadr has been classically understood as the night during one of the last ten days of Ramadan that carries enormous spiritual merit and rewards greater than a thousand months. This interpretation has engendered a largely ritualistic and chronological understanding of the idea, while its existential and spiritual dimensions remain inadequately studied in contemporary Qur’anic studies. The objectives of this study are to explain the methodological construction of Na‘imah’s tafsir, examine the deconstruction process he conducts on the temporal paradigm of Laylat al-Qadr, and expose his tafsir interpretation into contemporary hermeneutics. MethodsThis is a qualitative library research. The primary data is taken from al-Hayah at-Tayyibah ma‘a al-Qur’an and the secondary sources include classical and modern tafsir works, credible journal articles, and studies on Qur’anic hermeneutics as well as Sufi exegesis. The methodology involves content analysis and comparative approaches to the data. The results show that Na‘imah re-forms Laylat al-Qadr as not just a temporal occasion, but also a spatial-experiential reality whose parameters determine less by time and space than the spiritual-fnality of an individual to receive divine light. His interpretation is grounded in a Sufi-hermeneutical framework integrating linguistic, intertextual, philosophical, and symbolic approaches. This study demonstrates an epistemological shift in contemporary tafsir from textual to contextual and existential paradigms, thereby contributing to the development of Qur’anic hermeneutics and contemporary Sufi exegesis