He starts out the chapter with an important statement: The foundationists who backed up the abrogation doctrine, have themselves set a rule of deduction that "if there are other explanations, an abrogation claim is unnecessary." Al-Jabri extrapolates that rule to say that if there are other interpretations of 2:106 and 16:101 that do not back up the abrogation doctrine, then the doctrine is unnecessary
I am as anti-abrogation as the next guy
but I respectfully disagree with Al-Jabri's line of reasoning here.
1. The abrogation doctrine is neither necessary nor unnecessary. It is either true or false. It cannot be false but we adopt it out of necessity, and it cannot be true but we dismiss it as unnecessary.
2. The burden of proof for the
existence of abrogation is neither higher nor lower than the burden of proof of other conclusions taken from the Quran. The higher burden of proof is for declaring a
specific verse abrogated, since the overwhelming assumption a priori is that each verse is authoritative.
3. The fact that 2:106 has other plausible interpretations that do not support the abrogation doctrine means that 2:106 cannot be taken as
evidence for the abrogation doctrine.