Understanding the Qur’ān
The first step to understanding the Qur’ān is understanding its language. The language has the same meaning for a text as the bodily features have for a human being. The essential existence of a text lies in its meaning, as that of a human being in his or her spirit. The bodily features are the externalized form which the spirit of a human being has taken on, and therefore serve as a mirror in which to see into his or her character. It is like this that the language and styles of the Qur’ān are the form of its meaning and therefore cannot be separated from it.
The second step to understanding the Qur’ān is penetrating its meaning, which requires practicing it in daily life. Although its language constitutes its outerform and structure, and is therefore very important in penetrating its meaning, restriction to its language in understanding the Qur’ān means restriction to the form or formalism. One can penetrate the meaning of the Qur’ān, in which its essential existence lies, through his or her “heart,” which is the seat of his/her spirit. This requires that the heart should be purified by refraining from sins and evils, doing the necessary acts of worship, and living a pious life.
The Qur’ān is, in the words of the late Professor Haluk Nurbaki, a Turkish scientist, “like a rose which continuously grows petals in the womb of time.”
As sciences develop and contribute to penetrate through its depths of meaning, the Qur’ān blooms more and more and grows younger and fresher. This is why, besides having sufficient knowledge of topics such as “abrogation of laws, laws and principles dependent on certain conditions and unconditional, general and particular rules, and the occasions on which the verses were revealed,” knowing the general principles of natural sciences is also of great importance. In addition, since it is the Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, who received the Qur’ān and taught and practiced it first of all in daily life as an in fallible authority, knowing his Sunnah, the way he practiced the Qur’ān, and the example he set in living Islam, is indispensable to understanding the Qur’ān.
The Qur’ān is not a book of sciences, nor a book of history, nor a book of morality, only. Nor is it a book in the sense that the word “book” signifies. It is a book to be practiced; it came to guide people to truth, to educate people both intellectually and spiritually, and to govern their life in both the individual and social realm. Therefore, it can be understood by practicing it in the daily life.
This point can be better understood when we consider that the Qur’ān was not revealed on one occasion only; it was revealed on many diverse occasions during the 23 years of Muhammad’s prophethood. Separating the Qur’ān and our practical lives means reducing the Qur’ān to being only a book to be read. It does not unfold itself much to those who approach it as if it were only a book to “read.”
Another point to stress concerning the understanding of the Qur’ān is this:
The Qur’ān is a book of a moderate size and, at first glance, contains repetitions.
However, it declares that there is nothing “wet or dry” that is not recorded in a “Manifest Book,” that is, in the Qur’ān itself (6: 59). As stated in a prophetic saying, it contains the history of previous peoples, the tidings of those to come after its revelation, and the solutions to the disagreements between people.
It addresses all levels of understanding and knowledge in all places at all times, and satisfies them.
Hundreds of interpreters who have written commentaries on it during the 14 centuries of Islam have derived different meanings from it, but none of them has ever claimed that he or she has been able to comprehend the whole of it.
Thousands of jurists have inferred laws from it and based their juridical reasoning on it, but no one among them has ever asserted that he or she has been able to infer all the laws contained in it or understand all the reasons behind its injunctions and prohibitions.
All the pure, exacting scholars who have been able to “marry” the mind and heart; all the revivers – the greatest, saintly scholars who have come at certain times to revive and restore Islam – have found their ways in it; all saints have derived from it their sources of inspiration and ways of purification; and all the paths of Sufism have depended on it.
But like a source of water which increases as it flows, it has remained as if untouched. It is due to its miraculous eloquence that the Qur’ān has such depth and richness of meaning. One of the elements on which the Qur’ān’s eloquence is based is its creative style, rich in the arts. It frequently speaks in parables and adopts a figurative, symbolic rhetoric using metaphors and similes. This is natural because it contains knowledge of all things and addresses all levels of understanding and knowledge.
Ignoring the symbolic and artistic style of the Qur’ān, in mere contentment with the outward meaning of its expressions, caused the appearance of a superficial, narrow-minded current called Zāhiriyah.
Just the opposite this is another current called Bātiniyah (esotericism), which searches for the whole of truth in symbols in negligence of the outward meaning of the expressions. Both currents are harmful. The middle way is always preferable.