A Closer Look at the Qur’an (1/2)

[ابوالوليد المسلم]

A Closer Look at the Qur’an (1/2)

Yahiya Emerick





“Iqra.” This command, meaning “Read,” was the first word revealed of the Qur’an to Muhammad in the year 610 C.E. He was sitting in a mountain cave, just outside the city of Mecca, thinking about the meaning of things, when a brilliant flash of light overcame him. A hidden voice commanded him to read. Its tone was both frightening and compelling. But Muhammad was an illiterate. He never learned how to read, so he meekly answered, “I can’t read.” Suddenly, he felt himself being squeezed so that the very breath seemed to rush out of him. When he could bear it no longer, the commanding voice repeated once more, “Read.” Confused about what to do, Muhammad protested, “But I can’t read!” The same crushing feeling overwhelmed him, and he could hardly stand it when the pressure was released and the voice ordered a third time, “Read.” Muhammad, not wanting another bout with the pain, answered, “What should I read?”

The voice began to recite melodious-sounding words:
“Read in the Name of your Lord Who created humans from a clinging [zygote]. Read for your Lord is the Most Generous. He taught people by the pen what they didn’t know before.” (Qur’an, Surah Al-‘Alaq, 96:1–5) Muhammad ran home scared and begged his wife, Khadijah, to comfort him. But the revelation was no apparition or evil omen, as he had thought. Khadijah told him that God would never let harm come to him on account of his honesty and generosity. She didn’t know how right she was.

For the next 23 years he would receive revelations from God, carried by the archangel Gabriel. These revelations constitute the Qur’an, a name that literally means the Reading or the Recital. The Qur’an was given orally to Muhammad, and he would ask people to write down the verses as he dictated them. The Qur’an was, therefore, not revealed all at once. In fact, it grew larger over time until the last month of Muhammad’s life when it took its final form of 114 chapters called surahs, each surah of varying length. The surahs comprise over 6,600 verses called ayahs that cover a wide variety of subjects. Sometimes whole surahs were revealed together; other times groups of ayahs would come, and Muhammad would tell people in which surah to include them. (Muslims believe that he made the arrangement of all chapters and verses under the direction of the archangel Gabriel.)

The revelations usually concerned issues at hand. When Muhammad was in Mecca, where his new followers were struggling to develop a strong foundation for their faith, the content revolved around monotheism, virtuous living, and the eventual triumph of Islam, even though it was a persecuted religion. Later in Medina, when Islam had become settled into the life of the city, laws and social dictates were the core of the message. Sometimes non-Muslims would challenge Muhammad to talk about arcane subjects that they knew he wouldn’t know anything about, and suddenly a revelation would come explaining the matter. For example, a group of people in Medina asked him about Joseph and his adventures in Egypt, trying to stump him. An entire chapter of over a hundred verses (called Surah Yusuf) was revealed right there in answer.

Muhammad described four ways in which he received revelations from God. The first was through dreams at night, when the verses of the Qur’an were implanted in his mind. The second was through instantaneous revelations in his heart during the day. The third way, which he said was the hardest to bear, was foreshadowed by a loud ringing sound in his ears and then the verses would flow. The last way involved the archangel Gabriel appearing as a man, sometimes visible to other people and sometimes not, who would then instruct Muhammad in what to say. God never appeared to Muhammad, for Islam says that God is too Exalted to show Himself all the time.

It Is Written:
“You, [Muhammad,] never read a book before this nor have you ever written one with your own hand. Had you done either of these then the quibblers would have had legitimate reasons to suspect it.” (Qur’an, Surah Al-‘Ankabut, 29:48)

Style and Content
One of the many features of the Qur’an that Muslims consider miraculous is its style.

Muhammad was not known to be a man of poetry before the Qur’an began to flow from his lips. He also never participated in the oral poetry contests that were a mainstay of life throughout Arabia. Yet this same man suddenly began to recite what is still considered today to be the greatest book in the Arabic ********. The use of lucidly phrased ****phors, the flow of the text, and the engaging syntax are held up as the highest standard for Arabic lexicographers, and no other book is so highly esteemed from a grammarian’s standpoint.

How is the Qur’an’s unique style expressed? To answer this question, we need to look at two areas presentation and content. The Qur’an employs a variety of literary mechanisms, from straight line-by-line or metered rhyming to flowing prose and passionate essays.[1]

Through a skilled mixture of the different techniques, the listener is taken on a rapturous ride through feelings, thoughts, emotions, and dreams. The opening verses of Chapter 36 of the Qur’an provide an example. In this surah, entitled Ya- Seen, we read the opening verses in transliteration. The underlined words show the repetition of sounds:

Ya Seen. Wal Qur’anil Hakeem. Innaka lamin al Mursaleen. ‘Alaa siratim Mustaqeem.
Tanzilul ‘azeezil Raheem. Le tunzera qawman ma unthera aba-uhum fa hum ghawfiloon.
La qad haqqal qawlu ‘alaa ak tharihim fahum la yu-minoon.

If you noticed the transition from one rhyme to another, you can see how the Qur’an can continually engage the ear of its listeners with something fresh and new. For this reason, Muslims never consider a translation of the Qur’an as equal to the Arabic text. The Qur’an itself makes a note of this unique style and its purpose when it declares that it is a book that is easy to remember. In longer passages you will find quite a lot of transition in style over the course of many different topics. (Although some Western scholars have criticized this literary technique, it is in fact one of the strengths of the Qur’an, distinguishing it from all other Holy Books.) When the Qur’an is recited out loud by a skilled reader, its beauty can move listeners to tears. (Qur’an reciting contests are held every year all over the Muslim world with the most important ones being in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.)

The second miraculous aspect of the Qur’an concerns its content. The Qur’an covers a variety of subjects, including religious doctrine, law, social values, morality, history, prophets and their struggles, philosophy, and science. Without containing a single unified narrative on any of those subjects, the Qur’an skillfully weaves components of each into self-contained chapters that reference one and then the other to provide coherent essays appealing to a variety of listeners.

Muhammad never went to school. During his life, he never read a book, nor was he ever tutored or engaged in learning of any kind. Then suddenly, when he turned 40 years old, the epitome of eloquence flows from his tongue? This is quite inexplicable[2].

Only a century ago, Western scholars of Islam were claiming that Muhammad had epilepsy (which is not true) and that the Qur’an came during seizures. Do epileptics conjure rapturous poems and essays in such states? Other Westerners have charged that Muhammad made up the Qur’an, though they can’t explain how. But as Dr. Maurice Bucaille observed, in refuting those who have suggested that Muhammad wrote the Qur’an himself,

“How could a man, from being illiterate, become the most important author, in terms of literary merits, in the whole of Arabic literature?” Muslims would say that it is no less than direct revelation from God.

[1] The Arabic alphabet is not written in Latin characters and contains sounds which have no *****alent in English such as “gha,” “kha,” and “Qa.” Transliterations, or writing the literal sounds of one ******** in the letters of another, is necessary to understand how Arabic sounds are pronounced.

[2] One of the most adept poets of the Arabs, Tufayl ibn Amr Ad-Dawsi, wanted to investigate what he had heard about Muhammad and the Qur’an, so he went to Mecca and asked Muhammad to recite some of it to him. After listening to it he exclaimed, “I swear by God, I have never heard such beautiful words before.”

[ابوالوليد المسلم]

A Closer Look at the Qur’an (2/2)

Yahiya Emerick

Meccan and Medinan Revelations
The verses of the Qur’an are divided into two main categories based on the period of the Prophet’s mission in which they were revealed. The first 13 years of prophethood were spent in Mecca, a hostile environment for the Muslims in which the reigning idolaters made life miserable for the new religion and its followers. The second period began with the Hijrah, or migration to Medina, when Islam became the dominant force in city politics and thus was no longer directly under fire.
Meccan revelations, as they are called, center on two main themes: confronting backward Arab tribal customs and pointing out the foolishness of idolatry. Some of the customs that the Qur’an spoke out against are as follows:
* Burying unwanted baby girls alive (infanticide)
* Believing in superstition and practicing witchcraft
* Men inheriting their widowed mothers as wives of their own
-Blindly following tradition for its own sake
The campaign against idolatry was especially urgent because the Qur’anic revelations were making it increasingly clear that the shrine of Abraham, the Ka’bah, was no place to store 360 tribal idols. Mecca was so decadent that idolaters often circled the Ka’bah naked, paying homage to their idols. The Qur’an mentioned specifically three gods that the Arabs worshipped and called such practices idiocy. Instead of praying to lesser gods for daily benefits and luck, Islam asserted, why not pray to the only true God, Allah?
Understandably, the Meccans didn’t take kindly to Muhammad’s preaching and teaching, and they began to harass the Muslims daily. Muhammad was often punched and shoved in the streets. Once he was almost strangled to death by an irate Meccan near the Ka’bah. Other Muslims were brutally tortured, and a few were murdered.
(The first martyr of Islam was a woman who refused to go back to idol worship.)
Consequently, Meccan revelations also contain the stories of past prophets who suffered hardships; this was a way to show Muhammad and his followers that others also endured rough times, but God’s help eventually saved them.
Medinan revelations, or those delivered to Muhammad after he and his followers escaped Mecca, were concerned with how to build an Islamic society. The values and manners of Islam and the particulars of Islamic Law grew in importance and application.
Verses regulating inheritance, marriage and divorce, the conduct of statecraft, civil laws, and criminal punishments made an appearance. An extensive collection of verses on relations with Jews and Christians was given as well. It was also during this period that alcoholic beverages were made illegal. But by this time Muslims were so staunch in their faith that they had no problem in smashing their wine vessels in the streets. This is one Prohibition that didn’t fail.

The Compilation
The Qur’an was an oral message given to Muhammad through the archangel Gabriel. Muhammad himself couldn’t write, so he asked his literate followers to be his secretaries. Even in the earliest days of Mecca, the Qur’an was being recorded. Paper was unknown in Arabia at that time, so the materials used consisted of Egyptian parchment, leather scrolls, and the shoulder blades of camels (which were sort of like large slates). During the Medinan period, the entire collection of written surahs was kept in a large leather bag in the possession of the Prophet. At one time the Prophet had over 20 secretaries writing down his words.
There was no need to put everything together in book form because the tradition established by the Prophet was for people to memorize as much of the Qur’an by heart as possible. By the time of the Prophet’s death, hundreds of people had memorized the entire book in its properly arranged order. Nearly everyone else knew at least significant portions by heart. And with the Prophet’s emphasis on literacy, more people than ever before were learning how to read and write, so written pages of Qur’anic verse began to circulate far and wide.
During the rule of the first Muslim caliph, Abu Bakr, a rebellion arose in southern Arabia, and during one battle over 70 of the most prominent memorizers were killed.
Umar ibn al Khattab, one of the top companions of Muhammad, prevailed upon Abu Bakr to prepare the Qur’an in a single book form so that its proper order and reading would never be lost. This was done under the meticulous supervision of the Prophet’s chief secretary, Zayd bin Thabit, who was able to utilize newly introduced paper products from China.
Later on, during the rule of the third Muslim caliph, Usman ibn Affan, non-Arab converts began arguing about the proper way to pronounce the verses of the Qur’an. They even began writing personal copies incorporating their own variant spellings and pronunciations of words. The problem became so serious that some of the old-time companions of the Prophet thought the Qur’an might be lost in a sea of competing versions.
Usman acted decisively and ordered that the official edition, prepared in the time of his predecessor, Abu Bakr, be duplicated and one copy of it sent to every major Muslim city. From there, scribes could make further copies, so all controversies and disagreements would be laid to rest. All the faulty copies people had made themselves were to be burned so that only the authentic edition would circulate.
A facsimile of a page from the world’s oldest surviving Qur’an, prepared by the order of Caliph Usman circa 655 C.E. Two copies of those Usmani Qur’ans, as they are called, exist to this day in museums in Turkey and Tashkent. They have exactly the same text as any Arabic Qur’an today.
To those who have suggested that the Qur’an we have today is not completely in line with the one Muhammad recited, the reply is simple: All of the people who were involved in recording the Qur’an both during and after Muhammad’s time were memorizers of the book. In addition, there were hundreds of other such people who would have noticed any alterations in the text. Among Muhammad’s thousands of surviving companions, there was never any controversy on this issue.

Major Themes of the Qur’an
The Qur’an has three major themes:
1. The absolute authority of God
2. The accountability of humans for their deeds
3.The impermanence of this life
Each theme is expressed in a forceful way using parables, examples, references to past peoples or prophets, and logic.
Fully one third of the verses of the Qur’an relate to issues concerning the next life and what people will find after death. Another third of the verses deal with prophets, interfaith issues, and the human experience, while the final third cover subjects ranging from law to personal and social obligations. All of these different themes appear at different places throughout the whole scripture.