The Quran and Us

My Dear Readers,

السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ 

As-salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. (May the Peace, Mercy and Blessings of Allah be upon you)

بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ نَسْتَعِينُهُ وَنَسْتَغْفِرُهُ وَنَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنْ شُرُورِ أَنْفُسِنَا وَسَيِّئَاتِ أَعْمَالِنَا مَنْ يَهْدِهِ اللَّهُ فَلاَ مُضِلَّ لَهُ وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلاَ هَادِيَ لَهُ
وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ

(See end note in the first post)

The Qur'an and Us

الَر كِتَابٌ أَنزَلْنَاهُ إِلَيْكَ لِتُخْرِجَ النَّاسَ مِنَ الظُّلُمَاتِ إِلَى النُّورِ بِإِذْنِ رَبِّهِمْ إِلَى صِرَاطِ الْعَزِيزِ الْحَمِيدِ

Alif. Lam. Ra. This is a Divine Writ which We have sent down unto thee, so that thou might bring mankind, by their Sustainer’s leave, out of layers of darkness into the light, and onto the path of the Almighty, the One worthy of all praise.

اللَّهُ نَزَّلَ أَحْسَنَ الْحَدِيثِ كِتَابًا مُّتَشَابِهًا مَّثَانِيَ تَقْشَعِرُّ مِنْهُ جُلُودُ الَّذِينَ يَخْشَوْنَ رَبَّهُمْ ثُمَّ تَلِينُ جُلُودُهُمْ وَقُلُوبُهُمْ إِلَى ذِكْرِ اللَّهِ

Allah has sent down the best of speech: a Book coherent within itself, repeating the truth in manifold forms, whereat the skins of those who stand in awe of their Lord tremble, and then their skins and hearts soften to the remembrance of Allah.

These two descriptions are enough to tell us what the Qur'an is, and what it is not. It is not a text for decoration. It is not a cultural inheritance to be kissed, wrapped, placed on a shelf, and then left there. Nor is it merely a sourcebook from which information is extracted. It is a Divine address whose purpose is transformation. It came to move people from one state into another: from darkness to light, from heedlessness to remembrance, from fragmentation to inner order, from the slavery of the nafs to the freedom of servitude before Allah.

That is why the Qur'an does not describe itself only as guidance, but also as أَحْسَنَ الْحَدِيثِ — the best of speech. To understand something of this, I would like to share two telling anecdotes.

The first concerns Labīd, among the great poets of the Arabs, a man whose verse commanded awe even in the age of eloquence. Yet after embracing Islam, when Sayyidina 'Umar (رضي الله عنه) asked him to recite some poetry, Labīd began reciting Surah al-Baqarah. When reminded that poetry had been requested, he replied in effect that Allah had replaced poetry for him with al-Baqarah and Aal 'Imran. This is not merely a story of piety. It is a statement about rank. When the heart truly tastes the Qur'an, other speech falls into its proper place.

Another report mentions that an Arab once heard the Qur'an being recited and went down in prostration. When asked why he had done so, he replied that he was prostrating before the eloquence of this speech. Even a heart not yet trained in technical tafsir could still recognize that this was not ordinary discourse. It bore another light.

Not a book among books

I have long felt that there is great significance in rendering كِتَاب here not merely as “book” but as “Divine Writ.” A book, in common usage, is one object among many objects. It can be read casually, consulted selectively, and set aside indifferently. The Qur'an resists such flattening.

It does not enter the world merely to inform. It enters to unveil, to judge, to heal, to reorder, to purify, and to raise. The old alchemists dreamed of a philosopher’s stone that could turn base metal into gold. If one were to borrow that image only loosely, one could say that the Qur'an came to transform base men into noble souls. Even that comparison is inadequate, because the Qur'an is not magic, nor is it metaphor only. It is sacred address.

Iqbal captured something of this when he wrote: 

فاش گویم آنچه در دل مضمر است
این کتابی نیست چیزی دیگر است

I will say openly what lay hidden in my heart:
This is not a book — it is something else.

This “something else” does not mean that the Qur'an ceases to be language. Rather, it means that Divine speech cannot be approached with the same inward posture with which one approaches ordinary writing. Ja'far ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq (رضي الله عنه) is reported to have said:

والله لقد تجلى الله عز وجل لخلقه في كلامه ولكنهم لا يبصرون

By Allah, Allah has manifested Himself to His creation through His words, but they do not see.

Whatever one says about the depth of that statement, its warning is plain enough: many recite, many hear, many memorize, and yet few truly see.

The Qur'an was sent to be lived

This article is not chiefly about tafsir in the technical sense, for the classical treasury is full of precious works, and one may spend a lifetime benefiting from them. Rather, what concerns me here is something more urgent for our condition: how to form a living relationship with the Qur'an, so that it becomes a force of transformation in our lives.

The real miracle of the Prophet ﷺ was not only that the Qur'an was revealed to him, but that through him the Qur'an descended into character, conduct, community, and civilization. Men who had wandered in tribal darkness were turned into carriers of light. In that sense, the first generation became walking witnesses to the Qur'an.

Nothing expresses this more beautifully than the well-known statement of Sayyidah 'Aishah (رضي الله عنها) concerning the Messenger of Allah ﷺ:

فَإِنَّ خُلُقَ نَبِيِّ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ كَانَ الْقُرْآنَ

Verily, the character of the Prophet ﷺ was the Qur'an.

That is the measure. The Qur'an had not merely passed through his tongue. It had permeated his being.

How the first generation learned it

It is here that we must pause and ask ourselves a painful question: why did the Qur'an transform them so deeply, while it so often leaves us comparatively unchanged?

Part of the answer lies in the way they learned it.

'Abdullah ibn Mas'ud (رضي الله عنه) said:

كَانَ الرَّجُلُ مِنَّا إِذَا تَعَلَّمَ عَشْرَ آيَاتٍ ، لَمْ يُجَاوِزْهُنَّ حَتَّى يَعْرِفَ مَعَانِيَهُنَّ وَالْعَمَلَ بِهِنَّ

When one of us learned ten verses, he would not move beyond them until he understood their meanings and acted by them.

And Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (رحمه الله), transmitting from those who taught them the Qur'an, says that they used to learn ten verses from the Prophet ﷺ and would not go ahead until they had put those verses into practice. Thus, they learned knowledge and action together.

This is a very different model from our prevailing one. We often separate recitation from reflection, reflection from submission, and submission from action. We praise fluency, speed, melody, and retention, but we do not always ask the harder question: has the Qur'an altered my speech, my anger, my appetites, my choices, my relationships, my loneliness, my spending, my ambitions?

There is also a frightening warning in the tradition that the majority of the hypocrites of this ummah will be among its readers, meaning those who recite but do not live by what they recite. And Ibn Mas'ud (رضي الله عنه) also observed with piercing insight that for the early generation it was difficult to memorize the Qur'an but easy to act upon it, whereas a time would come when memorization would become easier, but acting by it harder.

I do not mention these reports to discourage recitation. God forbid. Rather, I mention them because recitation without surrender can become evidence against us. The Qur'an is either a proof for us or a proof against us.

Tilawah is more than sound

For this reason, I have often felt that translating tilawah simply as “recitation” does not fully exhaust the meaning. Recitation is part of it, certainly, but not the whole of it. The Qur'an itself says:

وَالْقَمَرِ إِذَا تَلَاهَا

And by the moon as it follows her.

The moon here does not merely “mention” the sun. It follows and reflects it. There is sequence, imitation, and visible correspondence. In that sense, true tilawah of the Qur'an is not complete when the tongue has finished. It is complete when the life begins to follow.

This, in my view, is where we have often failed to do justice to the Qur'an. We have recited it beautifully, preserved it carefully, printed it widely, memorized it in great numbers, and displayed it prominently — yet the Qur'an seeks something more demanding and more beautiful: that it should become visible in us.

Until the Qur'an reflects in our dealings, our priorities, our patience, our modesty, our truthfulness, our courage, and our mercy, we have not yet answered its call fully.

Our tragedy is not absence, but estrangement

The tragedy of the Muslim today is not that the Qur'an is unavailable to him. It is that it is near in form and distant in effect. We carry a living Book and yet often live like men spiritually scattered.

Iqbal grieved this condition with remarkable force: 

گر تو میخواهی مسلمان زیستن
نیست ممکن جز بقرآن زیستن

If you desire to live as a Muslim,
it is not possible except by living through the Qur'an.

And elsewhere he laments that one may fall low through estrangement from the Qur'an, even while holding a living Book close to one’s breast. That image is painfully accurate for our times. We are not starving for access. We are starving for surrender.

What is required from us now?

What then should we do?

Perhaps we begin by slowing down. By taking fewer verses and taking them more seriously. By refusing to move on too quickly. By reading not merely to finish a portion, but to allow a portion to question us. By asking, after every passage: what does this demand from me? What in me resists it? What in my habits must die so that something Qur'anic may live?

We must restore adab before the Qur'an, but also honesty before it. The Qur'an is not honored only by kissing it. It is honored by obedience. It is not honored only by reciting it in a pleasing voice. It is honored by letting it interrupt our self-deception. It is not honored only by memorizing its words. It is honored when those words become judgement upon our vanity, comfort for our grief, discipline for our tongues, and light for our decisions.

If the character of the Prophet ﷺ was the Qur'an, then every one of us must ask: what portion of the Qur'an has entered my character?

Conclusion

To conclude, I would like to share a du'a narrated from Anas bin Malik (رضي الله عنه), which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ taught to Sayyidah Fatimah (رضي الله عنها):

يَا حَيُّ يَا قَيُّومُ بِرَحْمَتِكَ أَسْتَغِيثُ، أَصْلِحْ لِي شَأْنِي كُلَّهُ وَلَا تَكِلْنِي إِلَى نَفْسِي طَرْفَةَ عَيْنٍ

O Ever-Living, O Self-Subsisting! By Your mercy I seek help. Set right for me all of my affairs, and do not leave me to my own self even for the blink of an eye.

May Allah bless us with hearts that do not merely admire the Qur'an from afar, but be guided by it to transform our lives.  Let us allow the Quran to the heart of our Lebenswelt, transforming it from a text into the daily, lived reality of our community. May He make the Qur'an the spring of our hearts, the light of our chests, the remover of our grief, and the guide of our conduct. May He save us from being among those who recite much and change little. And may He bless us with even a small share of those whose lives bear witness that they have been touched by His Book. Aameen.

والله أعلم
Wa Allahu 'Alam (And Allah is the All-Knowing)