The Truth of the Qur’an Series

Introduction

Part 1 – The Qur’an is Beyond a Book:

Part 2: The Qur’an is Beyond Time

Simultaneous Totality

Towards Taqwah Series

Towards Taqwah: Applying Reflection into Action



Lessons from the Qur’an Series

A Lesson from the Qur’an: Two of Our Principles in Action

To Follow Below

In the name of God most merciful, most compassionate



Thus far in my work on this blog, I have explored the nature of the Qur’an, and I have begun to touch up the further implications, of what we might be able to use it to say about our current reality, as well as the Reality to come, using the principles I have established. I have been doing this within my main series, which I have called The Truth of the Qur’an, for which you can find links above to the discussions I have developed thus far.

I have also taken time aside apply these musings in a more practical way by suggesting how it might be possible to use our findings to heighten our worship of Allah in our prayer and recitals of the Qur’an. I did this in a post I entitled Towards Taqwah, and God-willing I intend to continue taking time every once in a while to demonstrate potential applications of our discussions to directly heighten our worship of God. I will be doing this (as well as conducting general reflections on worship and achieving taqwah, or piety), in the second series of this blog, which I will continue calling Towards Taqwah, and for the first entry of which you can also find a link above.

Today, insha’Allah, I mean to introduce a third series, which just like Towards Taqwah, will tie in directly to my main Truth of the Qur’an series. It will use ideas and principles developed within that series as a basis for its discussions, but also, in some cases- such as today- it will further develop some of these ideas, as well.

I will be calling this series Lessons from the Qur’an, and within it, insha’Allah, I will be looking straight to the text of the Qur’an to draw out lessons, that are spelled out so very clearly for us within it, but which we are often too happy to let slide without learning from them.

Sometimes the discussions I will be undertaking within this Lessons from the Qur’an series will be independent of any of my other discussions – and sometimes, they will tie in directly to what I am discussing in my main series- just like today’s first post will, insha’Allah.

Today’s discussion draws on two main principles which I have established before: the principle of Ongoing Revelation (introduced here), and the principle of Simultaneous Totality (introduced here). Though I would recommend reading through their original introductions, I will nevertheless include brief summaries of them below (and you can also read brief summaries of all the core principles, as I establish them, in the sidebar to the right).

So then- let us begin!

My discussion today focuses entirely around a single Ayah, from Surat Taha:

“High above all is Allah, the King, the Truth! Be not in haste with the Qur’an before its revelation to thee is completed, but say, “O my Lord! advance me in knowledge.”



[ Surat Taha, 20:114]

In the first reading, it would seem quite clear that this Ayah addresses only the Prophet, unto whom the Revelation was being made, or at best the Muslims of the time, whom he was relaying this revelation to.

In this understanding, at best, we can learn from it the general virtue of patience, and the du’a with which we can ask our Lord for His favour in bestowing knowledge upon us.

But I think, perhaps, there may be more than this that we can interpret.

In fact, I think this Ayah applies to any reader of the Qur’an, and is, in essence, a reminder to all of us that the Qur’an is a complete document- and that its message only properly understood by taking into account all of the Book as a whole, rather than Ayahs and quotations read individually and taken out of context.

For those of you who have read my work thus far on this blog, this may already be starting to sound familiar.

The Principle of Ongoing Revelation

I believe it is possible to say that, in some sense, the Qur’an is constantly being revealed, to every reader as they read through it- obviously, in this it is not a Revelation on par with the one the Prophet received, when the Qur’an was first revealed to him by God- but all the same, it is nevertheless possible to understand our reading of the Qur’an as a form of lesser revelation, as it were.

This applies especially to those reading the Qur’an for the first few times, to whom the words are still new and unknown, and thus are being in some way revealed to their hearts- but even to those of us who have read the Qur’an many times, in its depth and breadth, we always somehow find something new, that either we have not noticed before, or perhaps not understood before. The act of reading from the Qur’an is almost always revelatory- something new jumps out at you, or you begin to understand something you did not before, or you begin to see certain things in different ways.

Even for those who know the Qur’an entirely by heart, it may yet be possible for something new to reveal itself.

As we read through its text, we can often find the experience revelatory, and thus the words that speak of the revelation to the prophet, in some strange way feel like they apply to us as well, and indeed to every other person to ever read its words. It does not feel like reading mere pages from a book, but rather, it feels like some deeper meaning is revealing itself to us.

This experience is strongest, I think, when we find new meanings- or even, when we find things we had not remembered the Qur’an speaking of, or commanding- and thus in these cases, we feel like we are being given a new command, and we strive in those moments to take it entirely to heart: just as the first Muslims did, when first hearing the Ayahs of the Qur’an.

This, in brief, is the Principle of Ongoing Revelation. I first introduced it here, for those interested in reading further on it and understanding it within the context of the rest of that article (which discusses some of the elements that make the Qur’an more than just a book- and Ongoing Revelation is one of them).

Indeed, if we are reluctant to accept that this Ayah (20:114), might also be referring to us as its readers, and not just the Prophet and his people, we can do as it advises: instead of relying upon it alone, we can look to other Ayahs as well.

(This is) a book sent down to you. Therefore, your heart must not be straitened because of it. (It is revealed to you) so that you may warn through it, and it may be an advice for the believers.

[Al-A’araf, 7:2]

Here, in Ayah 7:2, we see how the Qur’an speaks of itself: as a text sent both to Muhammad, to warn the people of earth, as well as preserved for us to read ourselves. In this sense, as per the words of the Qur’an itself, the Qur’an has two principle targets: the first is the Prophet Muhammad, to then use its words to warn- and the second target, is the text of the Qur’an itself being advice for the believers.

In this sense, we can understand there to be two basic layers to its words: in the first instance, the words are meant directly for the Prophet, to use them to warn us- whereas the second layer is the existence of these words, both during the Prophet’s lifetime and after his death, for us to read from directly, and thus, to be addressed by directly.

Thus, considering this in mind- we might be able to say with a little more confidence, that the message of Ayah 20:114, that we are discussing today, is twofold: firstly to the Prophet and through him, his people- not to hasten in interpretation before the Prophet receives the entirety of the Revelation- and secondly, to the rest of us Muslims since that time, the message is to not hasten to interpretation before we have read and understood the entirety of the Qur’an- or, in other words, have had its entirety revealed to us, too.

Thus, then, with this in mind, it becomes easy to see a new way of interpreting this Ayah: we ourselves, just like the Prophet first foremost, and the first Muslims after him- we must be patient and not rush to interpretations- nor to actions- before the entirety of the Qur’an is revealed to us. That is to say, before we take on board its entire message, we must not rush to hasty conclusions regarding anything on the basis of just a single Ayah, but rather we must understood it in the context of all the other Ayahs that speak of the same matter.

In short, if we consider our own reading of the Qur’an as some kind of revelation, then we can understand this Ayah to be commanding us to do one simple thing: we can only begin to understand the Qur’an, when we consider its entirety at once.

This might sound familiar.

The Principle of Simultaneous Totality

Indeed, if we accept the assumptions made thus far- that our own reading of the Qur’an is a form of personal revelation, on a smaller, individual scale- and thus that this particular Ayah is commanding us therefore to consider the entirety of the Qur’an, and not rush off to conclusions on the basis of only small chunks of it- then what we have here, is nothing short of evidence for the notion of Simultaneous Totality: the very topic of my previous post on this blog.

In short, Simultaneous Totality is part of the notion that the Qur’an, in its Timelessness, holds certain Timeless properties- regarding Simultaneous Totality, it is specifically that the Qur’an all exists entirely in the same instant, and not as a progression in time, from beginning to middle to end. Rather, it is a book that is manifested all at once- and this is the reason that we are able to open it at any page whatsoever, and begin to read, without losing a single portion of its meaning, like we would if we opened literally any other book on earth from the middle and not the start.

Thus, Simultaneous Totality state two things in particular: the first, is that in every Ayah of the Qur’an, there exists in some way or other, the entirety of the Qur’ans message. Its message then, is deeply embedded within every passage, and so you are able to get a sense of the core of the Qur’an’s meaning even from merely a short passage.

But the second half of Simultaneous Totality, in particular, is what concerns us here. And that is: you are only able to begin to fully appreciate the Qur’ans message by considering it all at once.

That is to say, you cannot understand the deepest meaning of a single Ayah or passage from reading it alone- but rather, you need to consider every other Ayah and passage that speak of the same subject as the one you are reading, or else you will fall short (to an even more extreme degree, we might say that every single Ayah of the Qur’an cannot be understood without also bearing in mind every single other Ayah).

I first introduced this principle in the previous post of my blog, which you can read here for a more elaborate discussion (and indeed, in some sense, today’s post is a sequel to the one linked here).

Our Principles in Action

Let us now return to the Ayah which we are discussing today, and take into consideration these two principles: Ongoing Revelation, which suggests that the Qur’an is constantly being revealed to us, and Simultaneous Totality, which suggests that the Qur’an’s central message exists in every Ayah, but its entire meaning can only be understood as a whole, as a full revelation, and through a single Ayah or passage.

“High above all is Allah, the King, the Truth! Be not in haste with the Qur’an before its revelation to thee is completed, but say, “O my Lord! advance me in knowledge.”

[Surat Taha, 20:114]

Now it becomes very clear what this Ayah may be telling us: we should not read every individual Ayah, before our own individual “revelation” is completed- before we have read the Qur’an from start to finish, and considered its total contents, rather than stopping at every Ayah on an individual basis and trying to glean a full knowledge from it. The Qur’an functions as a whole, and can only be fully understood in its entirety.

Thus, it would seem, that there may well be Qur’anic evidence for the validity Simultaneous Totality, in addition to the analytical proof of its basis- and indeed, some proof, of sorts, too, for Ongoing Revelation, if we consider therefore that the revelation that this Ayah speaks of is the revelation of its text and meaning to us- us who read from it.

In some sense, Simultaneous Totality is an aspect of the Timelessness of the Qur’an (as I discuss in the original post on it): indeed, it would seem to make sense that, if we consider the possibility that the Qur’an comes from outside of Time itself, then that would also be the place where is most easily read, too: outside of Time– where we might hold in mind every word of it, from the start to the end, at the same time. From where we might see the full sum of its contents in the same instant.

To some degree, this is what Simultaneous Totality- and more importantly, this Ayah, is commanding us to do: consider the entirety of the Qur’an, before making any decisions, undertaking any interpretations, or taking any actions. And so, the fullest satisfaction of this command, would be to consider the Qur’an from outside of Time- where might be able to see its full message in the same instant.

We of course, do not have such a luxury, but it is, also, lest we forget, a Book sent to us, mankind, specifically, and thus even though to God surely belong the entirety of its secrets, all the same it is a Book intended for our guidance, and which we thus will be able to understand- to some degree- from our own reality.

And so what we can do, even if we cannot leave Time, is to look at the Qur’an in the closest way we can to Timelessness: by considering it as a whole. We cannot keep the entire contents of it fully in mind in the same instant, but what we can do is hold in mind more than a single Ayah. What we can do is stop at every Ayah we wish to understand, write it down, and continue to read until we find other Ayahs on the same theme, and then consider them all together.

We cannot keep the entire content of the Qur’an at the forefront of our minds all the time. But we can keep it in the backs of our minds, by learning every word of it by heart, and thus have some form of access to every part of it.

We cannot keep the entire content of the content at the forefront of our minds all the time- but we can keep at the forefront of our minds the principle: Let us not rush to interpret an individual Ayah without considering its context in terms of the entirety of the Qur’an.

This, I believe, is a very possible interpretation for this Ayah- and, I believe, it is one that is in harmony with the principle of Simultaneous Totality, and which also might suggest that there is indeed a possible truth, too, to the notion of Ongoing Revelation.

What we have achieved, today, then, was not only attempt to explain the first Ayah in this first post of the Lessons from the Qur’an series, and take on board its message: but in doing so, we also managed to gather more possible evidence for two of our core principles.

Even more beautifully, the potential evidence for one of them- Ongoing Revelation- was achieved by trying to understand the central Ayah (20:114) in light of another Ayah (7:4), which then allowed us to consider that the revelation that our central Ayah speaks of can be considered personal revelation, and thus part of the principle of Ongoing Revelation.

And of course, that is exactly what the central message of 20:114 seems to be: that to understand the Qur’an, what we must do is precisely what we did here to understand this particular Ayah itself: not consider it by itself, but rather in light of the Qur’an as a whole, and as such, in light of the other Ayahs within it.

And what, if we accept this as the message of the Ayah, does that sound like?

It sounds a great deal like our other core principle- Simultaneous Totality: that, in some part because of its Timelessness, we can envision the Qur’an as existing most perfectly when considered as a complete, self-contained whole- when considering its entire message at once.

We used the notions of Ongoing Revelation and Simultaneous Totality together to understand this Ayah- and what we found, was it might be saying that both Ongoing Revelation and Simultaneous Totality are precisely what we should be using to understand it- and by extension, the Qur’an as a whole.

Taking It Further

What we did here, was explain the message of the central Ayah by following its own advice: we did not rush to consider its meaning by itself, but rather, used another Ayah from the Qur’an to shed more light on its possible meanings.

In this case, we only used a single other Ayah. But actually, to strain for the most wisdom we are able to reach, we would need to do even more than this: we would need to consider every other Ayah in the Qur’an that addresses this subject, or any similar subject, and by considering the entire sum of them, only then will we be able to begin to understand this- or any- Ayah.

It is no easy ask- but then, this is no simple thing that we strive to do: and it is no simple thing that which we strive to gain more understanding of.

It would take a huge effort to understand even a single Ayah, if we must consider the entire sum of the Qur’an in order to do so- but to me, to even begin to understand a Book sent from God, should take no less effort at all.

Lessons from the Qur’an

So what have we learned today from the Qur’an? From a single Ayah, we have learned much.

“ High above all is Allah, the King, the Truth!

God, Allah, is above all, and stands above all- He is both the King and the Truth. The Ruler, and the Reality. He is the Truth, and His words are the Truth. This ties in to the third segment of this Ayah: God is above all- the King and the Truth, and thus must all knowledge come from Him.

“Be not in haste with the Qur’an before its revelation to thee is completed”

Here we saw that this Ayah might speak, to some degree, about a revelation to us, the completion of which we must await before we can begin to understand the fullest meanings- in essence, this means consider the entirety of the Qur’an before considering that you have understood any of its individual meanings. This is the Qur’an as a Whole- what I have called Simultaneous Totality.

“but say, “O my Lord! advance me in knowledge”.



Do not be content with thinking that you know everything there is to be known, but ask always God that you be advanced in knowledge, and in piety, for there is always more that you do not know, and there is always more that God can grace you with learning. Whether it is more of the Qur’an itself that we must endeavour to learn, so that we might understand better the topic at hand, or whether it is any other other knowledge that we seek, we must always know that it is God- who is above all, who is the King, and who is the Truth- who bestows it upon us, and Him we must for knowledge. We must always seek to be advanced in knowledge from Him, and never be content with what we think we have learned.

The final words of this Ayah, as they applied first to the Prophet, so too apply to us- and so, to me: and so I can do nothing but say the same prayer: my Lord, advance me in Knowledge, and guide my hand to Righteousness and my mouth to Truth, and let me by your Grace not speak any injustice of your Words and of the Qur’an.

Any injustice I speak is from my own error, and any Truth I speak is from You alone. You are free from imperfection and I am riddled with it, and thus I can only pray for you to guide me to truth and advance me in knowledge, or else I am of those who are lost.

Forgive me any untruth and injustice I have uttered, and let me not stray nor cause others to stray in my words, and guide me to the straight and righteous path, if it so pleaseth You.

Al-Hamdu-li-Lahi Rabbil-A’alameen.