As the month of Ramdhan has arrived, we as a Muslim society are ready to utilize it best to become more spiritual and make use of the month to get most return out of it. One of the foremost though in any Muslim’s mind is to read the Qur’an atleast once apart from the mandatory fasting and get the most benefit out of this month.
So as the month approached I kept thinking what should be a better approach to the Qur’an! Why are there so many criticisms on it by some people who are not part of this religion? So to really understand the Qur’an, I decided, first I have to accept their critical view and under go a complete reorientation in my approach. I came out of the approach of “do not question your religion, just follow it else your faith will become weak” to “until you do not question you will never understand and if you do not understand, your faith will not be in right direction”.
I got many answers to my critical mind from the Qur’an itself. I stopped carrying my baggage of being born a Muslim but took a scholarly approach to understanding it. By carrying the baggage of being a born a Muslim, I mean I left my traditional approach which has the three Fs in it fiqa, fatwa and faith. This did open my eyes to what the Qur’an tells us about itself and how to approach it.
First of all the Qur’an does accept that there are many verses in the Book that have different meanings, some have clear cut fundamental meaning and the others symbolic (3:7). So it has advised us to read this with the best meaning and interpretation that our mind can best intercept (39:18; 7:145). We should accept the fact that exegeists of the Qur’an or people who try to comprehend it are human being, despite their best effort to be very fair, tend to get influenced by their environment in which they have been born and thus it is not possible for them to not bring those thoughts of their own that culture, surrounding, education to influence the translation and understanding. Thus the fundamental and the symbolical meaning differentiation do become tough, but then we have to get the best meaning for which we should not just stand back and be relaxed with one exegesis but be open to read and understand all and derive our own best meaning.
The best way to approach the Book and engage with it is by not just picking up a verse and concluding in pieces (15:89-93) but reading it intra-textually and holistically to grasp the full meaning as the whole of the Qur’an is from Allah (3:7). By intra-textually, I mean trying to look at all the verses in the Book that talks about the issue or related topics and by holistically, I mean to analyze each of the verses looking into the circumstances under which it was revealed and to whom it is being addressed. In age of our time we are lucky to have technology which can make these easily available on our figure tips.
Qur’an says that it is clear and consistent does not mean that our own understanding of it can be also very clear when we do not keep the broad perspective in mind. The Book does point towards this by showing us the historical evidence by relating to the people of Moses who quoted things out of context from their Book which gave a shift to the meaning from their rightful place (5:13; 4:46). These are the historical incidents given in the Qur’an to make us aware, that people of the books before us did make these mistakes. There are many verses in the Qur’an that warns us against such influences (2:78-79) to start looking for the meaning and verse which suits us our own thinking and desire instead of understanding the whole of Qur’an.
If we want we can write a book defending slavery by quoting selected verse here and there instead of reading all the verses on it with direct and symbolic meaning. But if we analyze the verses looking at the context and time frame when they were revealed and other verse about just system, we can conclude that Qur’an was encouraging not slavery but its phasing out. Similarly we can refute the claim made by many about promoting polygamy, illicit sex (even the concubines) and use of terrorism in the name of Islam.
So this Ramdhan let us try to not only read the Qur’an but to understand it. Let us engage ourselves with the Qur’an!
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