Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society
PART 3
THE QUR’ANIC REVELATION
Chapter 1
THE
Qur’ân: A REVEALED BOOK
THE CLAIM TO REVELATION:
The Holy Prophet Muhammad (in whom God’s Blessings and Peace
abide!) was un-lettered, not knowing how to read and write, because he had
received no formal education in any degree from anyone. The historical
testimony in this respect is complete and thorough, even as the Qur’anic
Revelation contains the proclamation addressed to him and meant to emphasize to
his opponents the Divine source of the profound Wisdom that was flowing from
his sacred lips:
“And you (O Muhammad!) did not recite
any book before this (i.e., knew not how to read), nor were you (able) to
transcribe one with your right hand (i.e., knew not the art of writing).
Otherwise, indeed, those who talk baseless things (against your Divine Mission)
could have (some excuse for having) doubted (the revealed character of the Qur’an).”
(39:48).
The Holy Prophet’s sole teacher was
God, and no one else:
“. . . and Allah has revealed to you
(O Muhammad!) the Book and the Wisdom, and has taught you what you knew not;
and Allah’s Grace unto you is immense.”
(4:113).
Thus, the Holy Qur’an is not the product of the Holy
Prophet’s speculation and thinking. Rather, every word of that Book is the Word
of God which was communicated to him through the process of Revelation:
“(This is) the revelation of the Book
(i.e., the Qur’an in which there is no (ground for) doubt,—(a Book) from the
Lord of the Worlds. Will they say: ‘he has forged it’? Nay, it is the Truth
from your Lord …” (32:2).
“Blessed is He (i.e., Allah) Who sent
down the Criterion (i.e., the Qur’an) to His servant (Muhammad), that he may be
a Warner to all the creatures.” (25:1).
“Say (O Muhammad!): The (Qur’an) has
been sent down by Him Who knows the Mystery (that is) in the heavens and the
earth…” (25:6).
“But A11ah bears witness that what He
has revealed to you (O Muhammad!) He has revealed from His (own) Knowledge; and
the angels bear witness (also); but enough is Allah for a witness.” (5:166).[1]
Indeed, the
Holy Qur’an calls itself the “Speech of God” (9:6) and the “most excellent
Discourse”, “sent down gradually by Allah” (39:23), communicated to the Holy
Prophet Muhammad (Peace be on him!) not as mere ‘inspiration’ but as the
“Arabic Qur’an” (12:2)—as Recitation
“in plain Arabic language” (24:195), through the process of Prophetic
Revelation (42:7; etc.) which was the
same as in the case of the previous Divine Messengers from Adam to Jesus (Peace
be upon nature them!) (42:3), and which descended upon the “heart” of the Holy
Prophet not metaphorically but literally, namely, in the form of language in
which it was subsequently transcribed by the Scribes.
Being the
revealed Word of God, it imparts knowledge which is immune from all
possibilities of doubt (2:2), all types of crookedness (17:1), every form of
discrepancy (4:82), and the faintest taint of evil (26:210). On the positive
side, it is the embodiment of Truth and the Balanced Thought together with the
Balanced Way of Life (42:17); it is Blessed (with Holiness) (6:155), it is the
Light that is Manifest (4:174), whose function is to lead forth humanity from
the spiritual and moral darkness into the light of the achievement of human
destiny (14:1), it is the Healing which cures the very basis of spiritual and
bein moral ailments (10:57); it is Mercy and Glad Tidings to those who follow
it faithfully (16: 89); and it is the Criterion which distinguishes clearly the
right from the wrong, the good from the evil, the true from the false (2:185);
it is the Guide for all humanity (2:185), which imparts detailed and
comprehensive guidance in all matters wherein human reason can possibly fail in
any measure and in any manner (6:114; 16:89); and, imparting new knowledge as
it does (2:151), it emphasises that all unbiased persons dedicated to knowledge
are bound to uphold its truth at the time of its revelation (34:6), and to
attest it, in later ages, as the horizons of human knowledge expand further and
further (41:53).
THE PHENOMENON OF PROPHETIC
REVELATION:
The Prophetic Revelation has nothing to do with the natural
mental processes that relate to the human brain. It does not consist even of
intuitional flashes like those experienced by certain eminent scientists and
thinkers in respect of the discoveries of certain facts of knowledge. It is not
just an inspiration of notions and ideas. Namely, it is not merely an
‘internal’ and subjective fact with no ‘external’ and objective dimension.
Rather, it is a concrete objective phenomenon— though, of course, supernatural
or metaphysical in character. It is ‘God’s Speech’ communicated at the highest
level.
Of course, God’s Speech (kalÉm) is not of the same nature as
the human speech. For, God is Transcendent in His Being, so also in the nature
of His Attributes (30:27). That does not imply, however, the impossibility of
communication between Him and His creatures. Rather, to the contrary. Because,
it is He Who alone is the Fountainhead: not only of existence but also of
guidance for every particle of the cosmos:—as the One Who, ‘encompasses all
things’ (41:54), and Who is, in the case of Man, ‘closer to him than his
jugular vein’ (50:16).
God’s Speech is communicated to different things in Creation
in the form suitable to their function, the goal being the guidance of those
things (8:12; 16:68; 41:12; 99:5). Human beings, not belonging to the category
of the Prophets and Messengers, have also been the beneficiaries of this Divine
blessing in the form of a subjective guidance in terms of inspiration (5:3;
20:38; 28:7). In their case, however, it was purely a personal affair.
It appears as if the higher the calibre and the function of
anything in the cosmos, the higher, in the sense of more explicit, is the form
of manifestation or expression for God’s Speech, and the lower the calibre of
anything the less its capability to accommodate that manifestation of the
Divine Speech which relates to a higher level. Thus, the Speech of God may
express itself to an inorganic object or a plant in the form of ‘sensation’
appropriate to it, to an animal in the form of inner ‘perception’, to a human
being not falling under the category of a Prophet and a Messenger in the form
of ‘conception’. But in the case of those human beings who were chosen by God
to be His Prophets and Messengers and whose function consequently was, not to
obtain stray guidance for themselves, but to be the recipients of a
full-fledged philosophy of life and a comprehensive code of practical guidance
for establishing the Divine Order in the life of humanity, reason leads us to the
truth that the Speech of God should have expressed itself through the highest
medium—the medium of language, and not through implicit and vague media of
inner ‘sensation’, ‘perception’ and ‘conception’. Thus, although none of the
human languages is the ‘language of God, the Speech of God has expressed or
manifested itself in all the human languages through the Divinely-inspired
Teachers who arose in all the communities of the world, in one era or the
other, since the time of the Holy Prophet Adam to the advent of the Holy
Prophet Muhammad—who came as the last and the final—(May God’s Blessings be on
all of them!) (14:4). There is nothing, in fact, in literal Revelation to the
Divine Messengers that may discount it philosophically or scientifically as impossible
or even as improbable, provided we do not reduce that phenomenon to the
category of the natural phenomena.
[1] We have quoted here just a few verses off-hand. Actually, the Holy
Qur’ān is replete with statements that proclaim explicitly that it is, in its
entirety, the revealed Word of God.
to be continued . . . . .
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