Aristotle's categories and Mushkil al-Qur'ān

The holy book of the Islamic faith, the Qur'an, is considered an unquestionable book according to its own description and the acceptance of its followers. The objections raised against this claim have led to the emergence of a field of study known as " Mushkil al-Qur'ān". The essence of this field relies on the knowledge, experience, and interpretive abilities of the defending scholars. As a result, the explanations have sometimes included subjective evaluations, leading to inconsistent interpretations and multiple interpretations of a single verse. Due to these and similar reasons, claims of contradictions continue to persist and attract the attention of researchers. The fundamental impulse behind this study is to develop a method that utilizes the possibilities of the field of Logic, which establishes the principles of correct thinking. The method aims to determine logical criteria, perform categorical comparisons between propositions, and develop an easily applicable approach. The research text is structured in three sections. The first section explores the basic principles of logic, concepts, the five universals, and Aristotle's categories. The second section introduces the Mushkil al-Qur'ān field, where the newly developed method will be applied. Both sections aim to provide a fundamental understanding of the topics while avoiding unnecessary details and analyses that might deviate from the main objective, thus creating a sufficient foundation for the final section. In the third section, the theoretical explanation of the solution method is provided based on the established criteria derived from the first section. Furthermore, practical examples are presented to illustrate the application of the method on selected verses. Conceptual examinations have been conducted, drawing from Izutsu's theory of semantic fields in his work "God and Man in the Qur'an," to clarify the meanings of certain words that have caused contradictions. The target set of the developed method consists of the verses provided under the heading "Semantic Reasons" in the second section. It has been observed that the criteria are generally applicable, produce comprehensible outputs, and lead to solutions in the examined examples. Additionally, it has been noted that the obtained information mostly aligns with the interpretations of commentators. Thus, the method has achieved accurate results both in terms of logical reasoning and from a religious perspective. Despite all possible errors and shortcomings in the study, it has been concluded that the Categorical Analysis Method, being the first and original approach in the history of Qur'anic interpretation, will be beneficial due to its capacity to allow for the verification of the generated output.