From Tafaqquh to Indhār: Reconstructing Social Responsibility in Islamic Education through Qs. Al-Taubah [9]: 122

Abstract

Tafaqquh fī al-dīn in Q.S. al-Tawbah [9]:122 is often understood as the obligation to deepen religious knowledge; however, such a reading does not adequately explain where knowledge is directed once intellectual depth has been attained. This issue is significant because an educational system that measures achievement primarily through the accumulation of knowledge risks producing forms of specialization that are epistemically strong but socially detached. This study therefore reconstructs tafaqquh as an epistemic construct that connects depth of knowledge with collective life. Employing library research, tafsīr al-mawḍūʿī, and Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics, Q.S. al-Tawbah [9]:122 is read intertextually alongside Q.S. al-Zumar [39]:9, al-Mujādilah [58]:11, Fāṭir [35]:28, Āli ʿImrān [3]:104, al-Naḥl [16]:125, and al-ʿAṣr [103]:1–3, and subsequently brought into dialogue with the thought of Edward Said, Jürgen Habermas, and Jacques Rancière. The findings demonstrate that tafaqquh is not merely knowledge acquisition but constitutes epistemic depth: the capacity to understand and assess complex matters profoundly while remaining socially oriented from the outset. This orientation is marked by rujūʿ to the qawm and enacted through inżār, whereby expertise does not culminate in individual authority but is returned to the community as a shared epistemic resource. Meanwhile, yaḥżarūn indicates the social objective of this process, namely the cultivation of collective awareness and collective epistemic capacity. These findings lead to the reconstruction of the Qur’anic public intellectual as a figure who differs not only from the specialist and professional expert, but also reconfigures the modern notion of the public intellectual: publicness is not primarily defined by participation in public debate, but by the inherent responsibility of knowledge to return to, warn, and strengthen the community’s capacity to interpret reality. Accordingly, this study proposes a paradigm shift from knowledge acquisition to knowledge as social responsibility, providing a conceptual basis for rethinking Islamic education and Muslim intellectual ethics.