Al-Ghali provides nice analysis of this abrogation claim on pages 177-183 of
his book. Here are the highlights.
...
- He elaborates on the liberal use of the word نسخ by early Muslims as he argues against the many narrations claiming abrogation in this case, and says that some may mean abrogation of the understanding of the verse at the time, since the Sahaba followed 73:1-4 without being required to. Interesting point.
Exactly what I was arguing in
this topic (64:16/3:102). One of the benefits I see from the revelation of 3:102 the way it was revealed, i.e., without elaboration, was exactly what happened: Some Muslims interpret revelations in a way that overburdens them and forget that God has repeatedly said elsewhere in the Quran that He wants for believers ease, not hardship. It's a lesson for all Muslims to examine the entire Quran to understand it, not to take one verse and jump to a conclusion from it. And isn't that lesson applicable to the abrogation dogma as well?
I maintain that this explanation of Al-Ghaali of what naskh means, applies by extrapolation to all corrections God makes to what people said or did. Among those corrections is to reveal the Quran in order to correct the falsehood inserted by the Jews into the Torah. Thus, when we say the Quran abrogated the Torah, what we ought to say is the Quran abrogated
the Old Testament in order to
resurrect the Torah. This is similar to the verse,
That is why the word naskh was used in 2:106, IMHO. It is the only word in Arabic that means both confirmation and annulment!
Love the other points too that Al-Ghaali raised.