Let Us Know the Quran Better [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Let Us Know the Quran Better

by Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari

The means for establishing the messengerhood of the Prophet of Islam are
those we have already expounded. The conditions and clear signs which must
exist in every bearer of a heavenly message must be shown to exist also in
the Prophet of Islam.

Prophethood and messengerhood are closely and inseparably linked to the
miracle that proves the relationship of the claimant to prophethood with
the supra-natural realm; the miracle is the clearest and most objective
evidence that disarms those who would illogically deny prophethood, for it
demonstrates that the claim of the Prophet is founded on a reality.

All the Prophets had but a single aim in fulfilling their Divine
missions; their teachings are all of a similar type, notwithstanding the
peculiarities of the mission of each, and the truths they expounded
concerning the supra-natural realm differ only with respect to the degree
of detail. It is true that there are differences with regard to acts of
worship and social dealings; a common principle is implemented in
differing ways that take into consideration the specific characteristics
of each age and represent an evolutionary process.

It appears that one of the reasons for the variation in miracles is
that in the times of earlier Prophets, people were inclined to believe
only on the basis of material observations of visible objects that lacked
any spiritual content. The fetters imposed on human thought by the seers
and sages of those times caused people's attention to be limited to a
particular realm, which, in turn, was the most significant factor in
separating them from God and causing their minds to stagnate. The
destruction of such a limited mode of thought was therefore of necessity a
principal aim of the Prophets.

The Prophets were entrusted by God with the duty of attacking this
source of error by confronting the seers and soothsayers with deeds of a
type similar to that which they performed, but enjoying a special
advantage that placed them beyond the reach of all competition. By the
power of the miracle they negated and destroyed that particular cause of
the human beings' separation from God-the concentration of their attention
on the dazzling acts performed by the soothsayers of the age which
enslaved their spirits. By demonstrating their own miracles and setting
forth the realistic principles of Divine religion, they opened the doors
of guidance, growth, and development toward perfection, and linked all
dimensions of human life and activity to God. All of this survives from
the real nature of the miracle.

The Prophet of Islam began conveying his heavenly message in the midst
of a society where people's minds revolved exclusively around eloquent
speech and the composition of beautiful and attractive poetry and literary
excellence. Precisely this concentration on a field of activity that
cannot be counted among the basic and vital concerns of the human being
was an important factor in prolonging the stagnation of thought and lack
of attention to the source of all existence.

Under these conditions, God equipped His Prophet with a weapon, the
Quran, that apparently belonged to the same category as the literary works
of the age but possessed unique and astonishing characteristics that were
beyond the capacity of the human being to reproduce.

The Quran's sweetness of speech, the attraction exerted by the verses
of God's book, filled the hearts of the Arabs with new feeling and
perception. Their deep attention was drawn to this Divine trust that had
come to them, this inimitable work. Fully versed as they were in the arts
and subtleties of rhetoric, they realized that the extraordinary eloquence
of the Quran was beyond the power of man to produce. It was impossible for
someone to hear the Quran and understand its meaning without being
profoundly affected by its power to attract. From the beginning of
revelation, the Quran was, then, the most important factor in bringing the
human being to God's religion.

Moreover, if the Prophet of Islam had performed some miracle other than
the Quran, it would have had no meaning for that people, given their
mental structure. The path would have been open for all kinds of doubt and
hesitation. But the Arabs of that age who were addressed by the Quran
could never have any doubts about its extraordinary eloquence, for they
were well aware of all the mysteries of rhetoric and had living among them
masters of language and literary composition.

At the same time, since the Quran is intended to be an eternal miracle,
revealed to make science and learning blossom among humanbeings, it is
also a scientific miracle. It has expounded, in the most eloquent fashion,
truths of a metaphysical nature together with everything that touches,
however slightly, on the happiness of wretchedness of the human being.
Although those who are not acquainted with the Arabic language cannot
fully appreciate its miraculousness, they can perceive the miraculous
nature of the meanings and truths it contains.

The limitation in time of the miracles performed by the earlier
Prophets was an indication of the impermanence of their religions and the
laws that they brought. By contrast, the miracle attesting to the
prophethood fo the Prophet of Islam cannot be temporally limited, because
his message is universal and represents the culmination of all preceding
religions; his prophethood requires an eternal miracle, a brilliant and
eloquent proof of its immortality.

A permanent message must display to mankind a permanent and everlasting
miracle, one which advances with time, so that just as it offered
convincing proof to people of the past, it may do the same to people of
the future. A short-lived miracle that is imperceptible to later
generations cannot be a source of reference or judgment for the future.

For this reason, the Quran is presented as a permanent and everlasting
miracle, the final manifestation of God's revelation. The Quran itself
says: "The true and well-formulated message of your Lord has now been
completed, and none is able to change it." (6:115)

>From the very first day when he presented his religion as a
universal school of thought, the influence of which was not to be
contained by geographical or ethnic boundaries, the Prophet of Islam
displayed this proof of his messengerhood to the whole of mankind, as a
living proof that his mission and the revolutionary movement he
inaugurated represented the final chapter in the history of prophetic
missions and movements.

The Quran does not represent an ideological weapon for temporary use in
moving from an inferior social system to a superior one at a given stage
in history; it represents the permanent ideology of the human being living
in the social and intellectual order of Islam.

The miracle accompanying the mission of the beloved Prophet of Islam
brings to an end all the previous messages, limited as they were to a
certain time. In its unique style, the Quran provides the human being with
all necessary guidance by means of either recalling the circumstances
leading to the revelation of various verses or of recounting of historical
narratives or of describing the events that took place during the life of
the Prophet, or by means of various similes and comparisons that touch on
the different concerns of human life and guide the human being in the
direction of higher degrees. By analyzing the stories and events contained
in the Quran, which include also a distinctively Quranic mode of Judgment,
it is possible to deduce certain general principles.

Although the gradual and orderly descent of the Quranic revelation was
regarded as a defect by superficial and ignorant people, it should, in
fact, be recognized as a principal factor in the triumph of the Prophet's
message, given the conditions of the age and the events with which he was
confronted.

Just as chronic diseases require long-term treatment, a continuous
struggle against the factors that constantly prevent the human being from
perceiving the truths of existence and stand in the way of his growth and
development must be grounded on a firm ideational basis and a
comprehensive social organization. Only then will it be able to implement
its goals over a period of time and guide human beings to its ultimate
purposc their liberation from self-alienation.

Solutions whose efficacy does not transcend events limited in time and
space will be unable to solve the problems of the human being. Islam
represents the only system which is able to answer those problems because
of the attention it pays to all phenomena.

For Muslims, the miraculousness of the Quran is a matter of religious
belief; for scholars and researchers, it is a matter of scientific belief.
The Quran possesses a remarkable comprehensiveness and richness, with
respect to its worldview and scientific content, and its ability to guide
the individual and society. There are still many matters contained in the
Quran that call for investigation and await discovery by further research.

The Extraordinary Richness of the Quran

The Quran represents the principal source of all researches concerning
the Islamic school of thought. Moreover, in every age and every part of
the world, it can serve as the basis for a developed and free society
which enables all the hidden capacities and potentials of the human being
to blossom in all their dimensions; it lays down a path to the ideal
society and the government of God.

More than fourteen centuries have passed since the revelation of the
Quran. Throughout this period, mankind has undergone numerous changes, and
passing through repeated stages of development and growth, it has attained
a more comprehensive awareness of the mysteries of creation. Nonetheless,
the Quran has at all times retained its proud and dignified presence on
the stage of human history.

When this miracle first came into existence, at a time when the
foundations of human thought had not fully developed, it served to prove
categorically the messengerhood of the Prophet of Islam. In the present
age, as the human being discovers in the treasure house of the Quran, more
and more remarkable indications, commensurate with his own growth in
perception, knowledge and civilization, the Quran still stands as a
permanent historical miracle and a living universal proof for the veracity
of the Seal of the Prophets. The increase in the volume of human knowledge
and the opening up of new horizons of thought have given us the chance to
benefit more fully from the Quran than past generations.

If the Quran had been able to establish itself only during a certain
segment of time and in a limited spatial environment, it would not have
been able thus miraculously to advance together with time. The reason for
the eternal vitality and authenticity of the Quran is that it has always
been a source for spiritual guidance and command in the face of the
changing events of time.

History bears witness that the emergence of the Seal of the Prophets
and his mode of activity within society marked the beginning of a new
stage in human thought and ratiocination and in the development and
expansion of the will and independence of the human being. For in his
growth to maturity, the human being now advanced in his investigations
from the stage of mere observation to that of thought; an exact and
profound examination of phenomena took the place of simplistic assumption.
All this is indicated by the fact that the human beings' acceptance of
true faith was no longer on the basis of miracles involving supranatural
or extraordinary phenomena, as was the case with the mission of previous
Prophets.

Human beings turning to faith on the basis of knowledge and
thoughtsomething to which the Quran repeatedly invites human
belngsrepresents in itself the miracle wrought by the heavenly message of
Islam. Reliance on sensory miracles would not have been compatible with
the nature of the final Divine message and its aim of liberating the human
being and fostering the growth of his intellect. God, therefore, prepared
the human being in the course of many thousands of years to receive the
final guidance.

Our investigations of the Quran can be of value only when we empty our
minds of all pre-existing notions and attitudes, because fanatical
convictions concerning the contents of the Quran will yield nothing but
mental stagnation and immobility. This is a pitfall that every alert and
fair-minded researcher must seek to avoid.

It is an undeniable reality that the Quran is too elevated a book to be
the product of ideas held by a group of scholars. It is even more
impossible for it to have been produced by a single individual or to have
been borrowed by him from other sources, particularly an individual who
was unlettered, had not even studied, and had grown up in the degenerate
environment of the Arabian peninsula at that time, an environment which
was totally alien to science and philosophy.

When we consider the system and program of action proposed by the Quran
for the uplift of the human being and compare it with the laws and systems
of the past, we realize that it borrowed nothing from them and bore no
resemblance to them. It represents an entirely new phenomenon, original
and unprecedented in its fundamental nature, and among its lofty aims are
the transformation of human societies and their restructuring on the basis
of justice, equality, and freedom for the oppressed and deprived masses.

The Quran speaks in detail of the history of earlier Prophets and their
communities, referring constantly to the events that occurred during their
careers. When we encounter the narratives contained in the Quran, the
events that it relates, we are brought into direct contact with reality,
in an unparalleled fashion. Every reference they contain, direct and
indirect, acquaints us with the very substance of truth. It is, then,
totally impossible that the narratives of the Quran should have been
borrowed from the Torah or the Gospels. The Quran always presents the
stories of the Prophets in a positive framework by changing and modifying
them so as to purge them of unworthy excesses and elements contrary to
pure monotheism, reason, and sound religious thinking. A copying would
have resulted in mere imitation, and would have been entirely negative.

Dr. Murice Bucaille, the French scholar, expresses himself as follows
on this point: 'In the West, Jews, Christians and Atheists are unanimous
in stating (without a scrap of evidence, however) that Muhammad wrote the
Quran or had it written as an imitation of the Bible. It is claimed that
stories of religious history in the Quran resume Biblical stories. This
attitude is as thoughtless as saying that Jesus Himself duped His
contemporaries by drawing inspiration from the Old Testament during His
preachings: the whole of Matthew's Gospel is based on this continuation of
the Old Testament.... What expert in exegesis would dream of depriving
Jesus of his status as God's envoy for this reason?

"The existence of such an enormous difference between the Biblical
description and the data in the Quran concerning the Creation is worth
underlining once again on account of the totally gratuitous accusations
leveled against Muhammad since the beginnings of Islam to the effect that
he copied the Biblical descriptions. As far as the Creation is concerned,
this accusation is totally unfounded. How could a man living fourteen
hundred years ago have made corrections to the existing description to
such an extent that he eliminated scientifically inaccurate material and,
on his own initiative, made statements that science has been able to verih
only in the present day? This hypothesis is completely untenable. The
description of the Creation given in the Quran is quite different from the
one in the Bible."

Taking these factors into consideration, no truth-loving individual can
conceive of an origin other than Divine revelation for the Ouran which is
not only a book, but also a proof of messengerhood and a manifestation of
the miraculousness that supported the Prophet.

The Quran thus came to be the profound, brilliant and eternal miracle
of God's Messenger enabling the teachings and laws of Islam to retain
their validity through time. The Divine commands and instructions were
made manifest in phrases and sentences that were marked by miraculousness,
thus implementing God's will for the preservation of religion when faced
with the assaults of rancorous enemies and for the frustration of their
conspiracies.

Through the permanence and stability of the mould in which God's
Commands are uniquely set, these enemies who would reach out against them
in order to change and distort them are permanently prevented from
attaining their goal; the eternal teachings and laws of God will last
throughout time, immune from change or distortion.

Another aspect of the miraculousness of the Quran which has had a great
effect is the revolutionary transformation it brought about in human
civilization. A matter calling for serious attention in the study of Islam
is the fact that it received no assistance from factors extemal to itself
when it began to create the nucleus of a universal society out of a
scattered and disunited people that lacked all science and free thought
and did not even seek to unify its constituent tribes; and when it began,
moreover, to found a uniquely, vast and spiritual civilization. All the
factors for changing the world, for putting forward an international law
with the slogan of unity among races, peoples, and social classes, for
creating a movement for the liberation of thought and the ennobling of
knowledge, were derived from the very text of the Quran, from the culture
that emerged from the Quran and from the Islamic order. Islam never relied
on a government or a power situated outside the society it had itself
brought into being.

Even the aggressors who attacked the Islamic lands and triumphed over
the Muslims, thanks to their military superiority, lost their dominance in
the end when they were confronted with the spiritual power of Islam, and
they adopted the religion of the people theyihad conquered. This history
of nations does not record any other example of a victorious aggressor
adopting the religion of the people it had defeated.

Complete Reference:
The Seal of the Prophets and His Message

Lessons on
Islamic Doctrine

Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari

Translated by
Hamid Algar - I.E.C