Why Reading The Qur’an Matters In Today’s Unsettled Times
An interpretation freed from the dead weight of classical commentaries.
By Meenakshi Chawla:
We live in an unsettled and unsettling world. Religion is at once a personal value and a public stance — it is at an uncertain juncture in these unsettled times. At the heart of present uncertainties and perceived future impossibilities is a book — the Qur’an, the sacred text of Islam.
What is read as the Qur’an and how it is interpreted by people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, contributes to contemporary debates, positions, arguments and fears. To that end, Reading The Qur’an by Ziauddin Sardar is an invaluable resource. Written with conviction and a humility born of study and reflection, the book attempts to demystify the message of the Qur’an and its significance today.
The message of the Qur’an is not easy to grasp. Unlike other books, it has no conventional start or finish; it appears full of repetitions and internal contradictions. But on closer examination, an internal logic emerges. Written in ‘a heightened form of Arabic, language of great beauty with the power to move listeners’, Qur’anic Arabic has a particular structure: it locks every word with every other in the text, and places it in a precise location in the entire text. The interlocking is seen as testimony to its divine origin.
To interpret an abstruse text such as this in English translation can only be a task for a committed believer — Sardar is not found wanting in faith! His focus is on relevance and ‘what guidance it provides for contemporary problems, how it seeks to promote a life of virtue and righteousness’.
Reading the Qur’an is organised thematically, and that helps the uninitiated reader to follow the thread of its historicity from medieval times to the present — how changing times call for a fresh outlook, new ways of reading the eternal sacred text of Islam. For that is what the Qur’an asks its readers to do — enquire, question and examine. The sacred text demands a receptive heart and mind, and expects substantial effort — no easy answers emerge from the book. But to the malleable reader, it provides a fresh understanding of our ethical and moral dilemmas, as well as the meaning of our lives on earth.
Sardar brings forth a certain facet of the sacred text again and again in different ways, and that is ‘the “Word of God” is not beyond question; only through questioning the text can we tease out possible answers to our moral dilemmas. This is precisely why one of the most insistent commands in the Qur’an is to think and reflect’.
Sardar lays before the reader — perhaps here he targets primarily the non-Muslim reader — the structural beauty of the Qur’an, its lack of a strict chronology, and the importance of sound, or a ‘musical symphony’. It is illuminating that the first word of the revelation was ‘Iqra’ (‘Read’), to which the Prophet replied ‘I cannot’. But the Prophet repeated orally each revelation to his growing tribe of followers and recited it in prayers.
…the “Word of God” is not beyond question; only through questioning the text can we tease out possible answers to our moral dilemmas.
The Qur’an was revealed in instalments over 23 years from A.D. 610 to 632. The innate beauty of the language enabled the community to memorise the sounds, and to this day, millions of devout Muslims commit the Qur’an to memory. For non-Muslims engaging with the text of Qur’an, the changing voice is a concern. The speaker is God — but it confuses readers when the speaker changes from ‘I’ to ‘We’ to ‘He’. Why? How? The author explains these apparent aberrations as also the fact that there is an internal logic to the Qur’an, a higher logic than the Aristotelian logic the West has propagated and that we are familiar, rather comfortable, with.
As just another ordinary reader completely unfamiliar with the text of the Qur’an, I found it helpful that Sardar draws upon other scholars’ views through their translations and interpretations. He has drawn upon the earliest translations, for instance, The Alcoran of Mahomet (Alexander Ross, 1649); The Koran: Commonly called the Alkoran of Mohammed (George Sale, 1734) to more recent ones like The Koran (N. J. Dawood, 1956) of which Sardar disapproves because he believes the translation ‘projects the Qur’an as a violent and sexist text’ and The Holy Qur’an: Translation and Commentary (Yusuf Ali, 1934–37).
This engagement with various interpretations and translations makes the sacred text come alive to the needs of a changing world, a world woefully short of spiritual capital, a world fast losing its ethical moorings in the face of multi-hued adversities. That is the true power of the word of God.
For this work, the author synthesises a number of translations and picks the translation that has the ‘most lucid language, shorn of archaic form’ to convey the sense of the verse under discussion. The author also does not adhere to the traditional method of interpreting the Qur’an verse by verse, and ‘atomise the Sacred Text’. He examines the verses in the context of the whole, ‘questioning the interrelationship within and between the verses’ and thus embarking on a ‘deeper understanding of the logic behind the structure of the text’.
Part One: Overview provides the framework within which the remaining sections unfold as well as the historical backdrop of the revelation of the Book.
Part Two: By Way of Tradition goes through the Al-Fatiha and Al-Baqara. The opening sura, Al-Fatiha, is known to Muslims as Umm al Kitab, ‘Mother of the Book’. Al-Baqara is the longest chapter in the Holy Book and covers a wide range of subjects that Sardar takes up in separate chapters (for instance, Paradise, Children of Israel, Law of Equity, War and Peace, Arguing with God and more). It provides an overview of what the Qur’an means as a spiritual and practical guide to humankind.
The author describes it as a seeker: ‘…to read each verse, each passage in relation to each other and in the context of the whole, to remember at each instant, with each word, that there is nothing in isolation and that everything that is being said is constantly referring to past, present and future.’ The sura ends with a prayer that emphasises human frailties — forgetfulness, erroneous judgement and unintentional error. The Holy Book promises hope — always there is hope of forgiveness and God’s mercy and guidance.
The Holy Book promises hope — always there is hope of forgiveness and God’s mercy and guidance.
In Part Three: Themes and Concepts, the author employs substantial dexterity of analysis and thought to present the teachings of the Holy Book in context, since the ‘multiple distinct contexts the Qur’an addresses’ escape the average reader. Each verse, the author argues, must be read in its context — a verse cannot be divorced from its context, in order to grasp its meaning and true significance. Thereafter, interpretation is a singularly individual effort and again, as a general reader, I found Sardar’s interpretation most enlightening and enriching.
The thirteen chapters in this section of the book range from Prophets and Revelation, Truth and Plurality, Reason and Knowledge to Reading and Writing. The ideas put forth are powerful and stir the intellect to reach further than it can see.
In the chapter on Ethics and Morality, the author discusses human virtues of patience, humility and moderation — universal qualities that most of us were taught by our parents and that we have discarded as incongruous with a life of competitive materialistic appropriation and advancement. The ideas themselves are deceptively simple, but ‘reading’ them with Sardar as it were, rejuvenates a fraying moral fabric and revives faith in simple things.
The most important concept in the Qur’an is ‘tawheed’, or the unity of God.
The most important concept in the Qur’an is ‘tawheed’, or the unity of God. ‘God according to the Qur’an is One and the absolute possessor of the universe.’ The idea of ‘tawheed’ extends to nature — there is Divine purpose in its creation. Thus the Qur’anic term for nature is ‘created order’; all nature is a ‘sign’ of God and thus, sacred.
Part Four: Contemporary Topics engages with subjects and views that are highly divisive and arouse passions around the world — homosexuality, the veil, suicide and the Shari‘a.
So, is the veil sanctioned by the Qur’an? The author explains that the term associated with the veil is ‘hijab’ meaning a curtain, screen or partition, and occurs eight times in the Sacred Text. The author further explains that in none of the verses is hijab used in quite the way as understood by modern societies around the world — the Middle East, Indian subcontinent or Arabia.
In the Qur’an, the word is used as ‘raiment of righteousness’ (as in the Yusuf Ali translation). Sardar elaborates: ‘This raiment of righteousness, counterposed to any actual garments one wears, is a moral condition, a state of mind and of being.’
On suicide, assisted or otherwise, the author categorically states that ‘life is sacred; so it cannot be ranked. All life, whatever its quality, according to the Qur’an, is equally valid and valuable. …it is a journey that must reach its natural conclusion.’ And this brings the reader face to face with the suicide bomber and his abhorrent act. Sardar is scathing in his criticism of ‘suicide bombing’, and reaffirms that ‘the notion that the bomber is heading straight for paradise is perverse.’
Interpreting a religious text is always fraught with the risk of being burdened by personal prejudices — traditional discourses, historical framework and contexts too bear upon such an exercise. All this and more is of even greater import in the case of the Holy Qur’an.
The author irons out these creases in the manner of a true believer. ‘If you approach the Qur’an with the view that it has nothing to say to you, that it is an outdated historical text, then the questions you will ask will yield nothing of importance. If it is interrogated with a view to finding faults, then your questions echo your own prejudices. … To produce genuine insight, we need a higher order of questions… . Simplistic questions generate simplistic answers; complex questions would lead to a more holistic and deeper understanding of the Sacred Text.’
The sentiment essentially sums up his ahistorical interpretation of the Holy Book, freed from the dead weight of classical commentaries. On the other hand, in his hands, the Qur’an and its teachings serve as building blocks for the future — a transformative force that guides people and societies of the future.
About the author: Meenakshi Chawla is a writer of short stories and poetry. She also translates works from Urdu to English, and is an avid reader of religious philosophy, especially works on Sufism.
