Despite centuries of scholarly contributions on the Quran, we still find ourselves today in a very difficult moment; at a point at which unprecedented numbers of Muslims find the Quran to be unrelatable in both its wording and in how it has been explained. Existing approaches to interpretation offer little to fall upon when they encounter a verse which appears to go against their deeply held ethical sensibilities, often leaving them with little choice other than to suffer in silence, leave in protest, or master the art of spiritual disassociation.
In response to these challenges, this work attempts to arrive at new approach to reading and understanding the Quran. It presents a hermeneutical framework, derived from the wording of the Quran itself, through which verses are categorised according to the presence and absence of pronouns used to refer to God and to specific audiences. In this work, first in its series, this new framework is used to identify verses containing principles which can be described as definitive; timeless, universal, and applicable regardless of context.