Five types of Knowledge

 My Dear Readers,

السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

As-salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. (May the Peace, Mercy and Blessings of Allah be upon you)

بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

 

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ نَسْتَعِينُهُ وَنَسْتَغْفِرُهُ وَنَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنْ شُرُورِ أَنْفُسِنَا وَسَيِّئَاتِ أَعْمَالِنَا مَنْ يَهْدِهِ اللَّهُ فَلاَ مُضِلَّ لَهُ وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلاَ هَادِيَ لَهُ

وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ

(See end note in the first post)

(See Note below)

Five Types of Knowledge we can derive from Al-Qur'an

In al-Fawz al-Kabīr fī Uṣūl al-Tafsīr, one of his well-known works on Qur'anic studies, Shah Waliullah Dehlavi, presents five principal kinds of knowledge contained in the Qur’an. I have attempted a loose translation here:

 

 عِلْمُ الْأَحْكَامِ 

 The Knowledge of Legal Rulings

 
This is the knowledge of what is obligatory, recommended, permitted, disliked, and prohibited, whether in acts of worship, social dealings, communal life, or civic order. It is especially the concern of jurists.  

 

 عِلْمُ الْجَدَلِ 

 The Knowledge of Debate, Persuasion and Refutation

This concerns disputation with false beliefs and the refutation of deviant claims, especially those associated with Jews, Christians, polytheists, and hypocrites. It is especially the concern of theologians and those who call others to Islam. 
 

 عِلْمُ التَّذْكِيرِ بِآلَاءِ اللَّهِ 

 

The Knowledge of Reminding People of Allah’s Blessings

This is the knowledge of Allah’s favors, the signs of His power in creation, and the manifestation of His divine attributes—everything that helps guide the human being to recognize the Creator rightly.

 عِلْمُ التَّذْكِيرِ بِأَيَّامِ اللَّهِ 

 

The Knowledge of Reminding People of  Divine Intervention (literally: the Days of Allah )

This is the knowledge of the events Allah has brought about in history: the honoring of the obedient, the punishment of the guilty, the stories of the Prophets, and the histories of earlier peoples, so that human beings may take warning and learn.   

 عِلْمُ التَّذْكِيرِ بِالْمَوْتِ وَمَا بَعْدَ الْمَوْتِ 

 

The Knowledge of Death and What Comes After It

This is the knowledge of what takes place at death and beyond it: resurrection, gathering, reckoning, the balance, Paradise, and Hell.  

 

 May Allah guide us, and help us be on the right path.

 آمیـــــــــــــن  یارب العالمین

وَٱللَّهُ أَعۡلَم

 Wa Allahu 'Alam (And Allah is the All-Knowing)

Note:

This post starts with the well known opening lines of at least one of Prophet Muhammad's ﷺ  sermon. Al-Nisaa’i (May Allah have mercy on him) reported in his Sunan al-Nisaa’i: Kitaab al-Jumu’ah (Click Here) that ‘Abd-Allah ibn Mas’ud (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ taught us the Khutbah Haajah .

Starting to read the quran

 My Dear Readers,

السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

As-salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. (May the Peace, Mercy and Blessings of Allah be upon you)

بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

 

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ نَسْتَعِينُهُ وَنَسْتَغْفِرُهُ وَنَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنْ شُرُورِ أَنْفُسِنَا وَسَيِّئَاتِ أَعْمَالِنَا مَنْ يَهْدِهِ اللَّهُ فَلاَ مُضِلَّ لَهُ وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلاَ هَادِيَ لَهُ

وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ

(See end note in the first post)

(See Note below)

Starting to read the Qur'an?

To read any book, there requires a certain discipline and respect. More so when we are talking about the Qur'an, which believing Muslims hold to be the speech of God Almighty.

Let us first look at how the Qur'an itself advises us to read it:

Al-A'raf (The Heights) (7:204)  (audio)

    وَإِذَا قُرِىءَ الْقُرْآنُ فَاسْتَمِعُواْ لَهُ وَأَنصِتُواْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُرْحَمُونَ  

7:204 Hence, when the Qur'an is recited, hearken unto it, and listen in silence, so that you might be graced with [God's] mercy."

To interpret the Qur'an is not a task that can be done by any ordinary person, it needs a command over a wide variety of subjects, and hence it should not be treated lightly.  And the topic of the post is not how to interpret the Qur'an, but how to begin the journey towards understanding the Qur'an.

To approach the Qur'an in order to understand it and implement it in our lives, the journey starts with the intention and effort in that direction, for Allah promises us in Al-'Ankabut (The Spider)(audio):

وَالَّذِينَ جَاهَدُوا فِينَا لَنَهْدِيَنَّهُمْ سُبُلَنَا وَإِنَّ اللَّهَ لَمَعَ الْمُحْسِنِينَ

29:69 But as for those who strive in Our cause -We shall most certainly guide them onto paths that lead unto Us:  for, behold, God is indeed with the doers of good

The next step after the intention is the frequent recitation and contemplation about the meaning, as we are urged in the following ayah(audio):
  

أَفَلَا يَتَدَبَّرُونَ الْقُرْآنَ أَمْ عَلَى قُلُوبٍ أَقْفَالُهَا

47:24 Will they not, then, ponder over this Qur’an? - or are there locks upon their hearts?

In our journey to the Qur'an, we might have come across an argument that poses a quandary, a catch-22 situation if you please:

"You don't have sufficient knowledge to understand the Qur'an" (and you cannot gain this knowledge until you understand the Qur'an).  

Something like when some of us might have experienced applying for our first job, companies would need a minimum experience, and there was no way of gaining experience till you landed your first job.

It is the opinion of the writer of the blog that these are merely hurdles. They should not stop us from our goal of approaching the Qur'an with the intent of understanding it, and applying it in our lives.

A basic step which most of the non-Arabic speaking Muslims would already know is that you should pick up a well-known translation of the language you are most comfortable with. You can check websites like http://www.islamicity.com/quransearch/ .

For those who dare to venture further, you can read a tafsir (plural tafasir) or exegesis. There are lots of them available, translated in English as well for example at http://www.altafsir.com/ .

Translations and exegesis can offer us insights, but they are not the Qur'an. There is a famous anecdote about someone who questioned Al-Suyuti on what is the difference between Qur'an and its tafsir in Arabic? He answered that the difference between the Qur'an and its tafsir is the difference between Allah and His creation, which mildly put means, you cannot compare them.

The best way to learn the Qur'an is to develop a dynamic and ongoing relationship with it. However, bear in mind that starting there, you would have started a process that will never end. Relationship with the Qur'an is something that is to be cultivated till our last conscious breath, and it is never over.

It is recommended that we should start our journey to the Qur'an with a basic understanding of classical or Qur'anic Arabic, to make it easy, as is indicated by the Qur'an itself:(audio):
  

فَإِنَّمَا يَسَّرْنَاهُ بِلِسَانِكَ لِتُبَشِّرَ بِهِ الْمُتَّقِينَ وَتُنذِرَ بِهِ قَوْمًا لُّدًّا

19:97 and only to this end have We made this [divine writ] easy to understand, in thine own tongue, [O Prophet,] so that thou might convey thereby a glad tiding to the God-conscious, and warn thereby those who are given to [futile] contention:

To learn Arabic you can access many good resources, such as http://drvaniya.com/ or  http://www.madinaharabic.com/

Lastly, in order to read the Qur'an, we might want to know that there are four elements of any given text of the Qur'an as we know it:
1. The consonantal text of the Qur'an not including the short vowels , but including the long vowels (ي,و, ا) (ref). This conforms to  الرسم العُثماني (al-rasm al-uthmani) or the Uthmanic orthography:

2. The second component is the dots or diacritical marks of the Qur'an (الإعجام), which were reportedly added first by Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali, to help non-Arabs to read the Qur'an correctly,and were later standardized to its current form by Al-Khalil Al-Farahidi
 

3. The third component is the short vowels (الضبط) :

4. The fourth and last component is the signs for pausing or continuing or in other words punctuation marks (علامات الوقف):

May Allah guide us, and help us be on the right path. 

 آمیـــــــــــــن  یارب العالمین

وَٱللَّهُ أَعۡلَم

 Wa Allahu 'Alam (And Allah is the All-Knowing)

Note:

This post starts with the well known opening lines of at least one of Prophet Muhammad's ﷺ  sermon. Al-Nisaa’i (May Allah have mercy on him) reported in his Sunan al-Nisaa’i: Kitaab al-Jumu’ah (Click Here) that ‘Abd-Allah ibn Mas’ud (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ taught us the Khutbah Haajah .

Islahi on Nazm Al-Qur'an

 My Dear Readers,

السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

As-salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. (May the Peace, Mercy and Blessings of Allah be upon you)

بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

 

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ نَسْتَعِينُهُ وَنَسْتَغْفِرُهُ وَنَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنْ شُرُورِ أَنْفُسِنَا وَسَيِّئَاتِ أَعْمَالِنَا مَنْ يَهْدِهِ اللَّهُ فَلاَ مُضِلَّ لَهُ وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلاَ هَادِيَ لَهُ

وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ

(See end note in the first post)

(See Note below)

About Nazm Al-Qur'an
Throughout the history of Qur'anic studies, there have been numerous approaches towards exegesis (tafseer), historical, linguistic, rational etc to name a few.  In the opinion of this blogger, all of the approaches have their own merits, and insha Allah, God willing, we will be able to look at each approach and its resulting exegeses (tafaseer).

Today, for starters, we will look at an approach that has been demonstrated more recently by the late Amin Ahsan Islahi in his magnum opus the Tadabbur-i-Qur'an, which is an immensely valuable contribution in the field of Qur'anic studies.

This monumental tafseer rests on the principle of nazm-al-Qur'an, or the idea of inherent thematic and structural coherence in the Qur'an. However, this approach is fraught with challenges, as Islahi laments in the foreword to Tadabbur:

"Coherence is a must for any work of high quality. Therefore it is surprising that a group of exegetes would hold an opinion that a miraculous and wonderful book such as the Qur'an to be devoid of any coherence. That one surah (chapter) would not be related to another, nor would ayat (verses/signs) in the same surah be related to each other. What is more surprising that the same group would contend that the verses in the chapters are organized without any forethought, and the same goes for arrangement of chapters in the Qur'an.

Although any serious student of Qur'anic exegesis would know that the placement of ayah within a surah, and the arrangement of surahs in the Qur'an was Divinely Inspired, and arranged in presence of the Prophet (ﷺ) himself, although the arrangements into ajza' (pl of Juz)/Siparah, was done much later.

On the other hand, the proponents of nazm, or coherence, have always been present among the rank and file of mufassireen (exegetes). For example, Al-Suyuti quotes in his book Al-Itqān fi ‘Ulum Al-Qur’an (which has been translated as The Perfect Guide to the Sciences of the Qur'an):

 "Abu Ja'far bin al-Zubayr has written a book on this topic, titled Al Burhan fi Munasabat Tarteeb Al-Suwar , and so has Burhanuddin Abu al-Hasan al-Baqai, in his Nadhmu al-Durar fi Tanasub al-Ayat wa al-Suwar"

Al-Suyuti himself considers the knowledge of structure and coherence extremely important, but admits that its difficulty deters many exegetes from it. He further states that Al-Razi has spent considerable effort in expounding such knowledge due to his belief that much wisdom is hidden in the coherence, themes and structure of the Qur'an.

Another exegete who has attempted to do a coherent exegesis is al-Mahaimi, in his work Tabseer al-Rahman wa tayseer al mannan, popularly known as tafseer al-Mahaimi."

However, it is clear that the challenges in exegesis using nazm as an approach are of immense magnitude, and most of the works in this area are still wanting.The late Farahi, restarted efforts in this area in an organized way, and the results were there for all to see. It is unfortunate that he was unable to replicate his success throughout the entire Qur'an, thereby achieving a complete Tafseer, as he left for his heavenly abode prior to that. Islahi, a student of Farahi, has attempted to follow his teacher in this methodology, and after a period of 20 odd years, and 6000 odd pages presented to us his life's work based on the concept of nazm-al-Qur'an.

In the opinion of this blogger, the effort is immense and the contribution is unparalleled, and hence definitely worth a read.  For those familiar with the Urdu language, it is available as Tadabbur-i-Qur'an, and some of it is available in the English language as well.

May Allah guide us, and help us be on the right path. 

 آمیـــــــــــــن  یارب العالمین

وَٱللَّهُ أَعۡلَم

 Wa Allahu 'Alam (And Allah is the All-Knowing)

Note:

This post starts with the well known opening lines of at least one of Prophet Muhammad's ﷺ  sermon. Al-Nisaa’i (May Allah have mercy on him) reported in his Sunan al-Nisaa’i: Kitaab al-Jumu’ah (Click Here) that ‘Abd-Allah ibn Mas’ud (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ taught us the Khutbah Haajah .

Why another blog on Learning the Qur'an?

 My Dear Readers,

السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

As-salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. (May the Peace, Mercy and Blessings of Allah be upon you)

بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

 

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ نَسْتَعِينُهُ وَنَسْتَغْفِرُهُ وَنَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنْ شُرُورِ أَنْفُسِنَا وَسَيِّئَاتِ أَعْمَالِنَا مَنْ يَهْدِهِ اللَّهُ فَلاَ مُضِلَّ لَهُ وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلاَ هَادِيَ لَهُ

وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ

(See end note in the first post)

(See Note below)

The Intention Behind this Blog

As a Muslim, it is imperative that we understand the teachings of Islam properly, and the way to start is by learning the Qur'an.


There are two hadith from Bukhari, that I would like to share, which basically extol the virtues of learning the Qur'an and teaching it:

 

The Prophet ﷺ reportedly said, "The best among you (Muslims) are those who learn the Qur'an and teach it." (Click Here to see the hadith)

In another narration, the Prophet ﷺ reportedly said, "The most superior among you (Muslims) are those who learn the Qur'an and teach it."  (Click Here to see the hadith)


I would love to learn the Qur'an, and there are so many good efforts around the world to learn from, may Allah bless all those involved.

I find the following websites particularly helpful:
https://www.islamicity.org/quran/ 
http://www.quranexplorer.com/
http://corpus.quran.com/
http://www.altafsir.com/

And of course Ikram Hawramani's comprehensive site: 

https://hawramani.com/  

There have been many efforts to share the knowledge of Qur'an and its tafseer (exegesis) for the English speaking audience. It is truly overwhelming, humbling and it goes to show the love and devotion of all concerned.

In this blog I would like to compile my notes from all these efforts, insha Allah with references, that will help my own journey, and hopefully can offer some benefit, however trivial, to other learners like me.

May Allah guide us, and help us be on the right path.

 آمیـــــــــــــن  یارب العالمین

وَٱللَّهُ أَعۡلَم

 Wa Allahu 'Alam (And Allah is the All-Knowing)

Note:

This post starts with the well known opening lines of at least one of Prophet Muhammad's ﷺ  sermon. Al-Nisaa’i (May Allah have mercy on him) reported in his Sunan al-Nisaa’i: Kitaab al-Jumu’ah (Click Here) that ‘Abd-Allah ibn Mas’ud (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ taught us the Khutbah Haajah .