A Closer Look at the Qur’an (1/2)

“Iqra.” This command, meaning “Read,” was the first word revealed of the Qur’an to Muhammad in the year 610 C.E. He was sitting in a mountain cave, just outside the city of Mecca, thinking about the meaning of things, when a brilliant flash of light overcame him. A hidden voice commanded him to read. Its tone was both frightening and compelling. But Muhammad was an illiterate. He never learned how to read, so he meekly answered, “I can’t read.” Suddenly, he felt himself being squeezed so that the very breath seemed to rush out of him. When he could bear it no longer, the commanding voice repeated once more, “Read.” Confused about what to do, Muhammad protested, “But I can’t read!” The same crushing feeling overwhelmed him, and he could hardly stand it when the pressure was released and the voice ordered a third time, “Read.” Muhammad, not wanting another bout with the pain, answered, “What should I read?”

The voice began to recite melodious-sounding words:
“Read in the Name of your Lord Who created humans from a clinging [zygote]. Read for your Lord is the Most Generous. He taught people by the pen what they didn’t know before.” (Qur’an, Surah Al-‘Alaq, 96:1–5) Muhammad ran home scared and begged his wife, Khadijah, to comfort him. But the revelation was no apparition or evil omen, as he had thought. Khadijah told him that God would never let harm come to him on account of his honesty and generosity. She didn’t know how right she was.

For the next 23 years he would receive revelations from God, carried by the archangel Gabriel. These revelations constitute the Qur’an, a name that literally means the Reading or the Recital. The Qur’an was given orally to Muhammad, and he would ask people to write down the verses as he dictated them. The Qur’an was, therefore, not revealed all at once. In fact, it grew larger over time until the last month of Muhammad’s life when it took its final form of 114 chapters called surahs, each surah of varying length. The surahs comprise over 6,600 verses called ayahs that cover a wide variety of subjects. Sometimes whole surahs were revealed together; other times groups of ayahs would come, and Muhammad would tell people in which surah to include them. (Muslims believe that he made the arrangement of all chapters and verses under the direction of the archangel Gabriel.)

The revelations usually concerned issues at hand. When Muhammad was in Mecca, where his new followers were struggling to develop a strong foundation for their faith, the content revolved around monotheism, virtuous living, and the eventual triumph of Islam, even though it was a persecuted religion. Later in Medina, when Islam had become settled into the life of the city, laws and social dictates were the core of the message. Sometimes non-Muslims would challenge Muhammad to talk about arcane subjects that they knew he wouldn’t know anything about, and suddenly a revelation would come explaining the matter. For example, a group of people in Medina asked him about Joseph and his adventures in Egypt, trying to stump him. An entire chapter of over a hundred verses (called Surah Yusuf) was revealed right there in answer.

Muhammad described four ways in which he received revelations from God. The first was through dreams at night, when the verses of the Qur’an were implanted in his mind. The second was through instantaneous revelations in his heart during the day. The third way, which he said was the hardest to bear, was foreshadowed by a loud ringing sound in his ears and then the verses would flow. The last way involved the archangel Gabriel appearing as a man, sometimes visible to other people and sometimes not, who would then instruct Muhammad in what to say. God never appeared to Muhammad, for Islam says that God is too Exalted to show Himself all the time.

It Is Written:
“You, [Muhammad,] never read a book before this nor have you ever written one with your own hand. Had you done either of these then the quibblers would have had legitimate reasons to suspect it.” (Qur’an, Surah Al-‘Ankabut, 29:48)

Style and Content
One of the many features of the Qur’an that Muslims consider miraculous is its style.

Muhammad was not known to be a man of poetry before the Qur’an began to flow from his lips. He also never participated in the oral poetry contests that were a mainstay of life throughout Arabia. Yet this same man suddenly began to recite what is still considered today to be the greatest book in the Arabic language. The use of lucidly phrased metaphors, the flow of the text, and the engaging syntax are held up as the highest standard for Arabic lexicographers, and no other book is so highly esteemed from a grammarian’s standpoint.

How is the Qur’an’s unique style expressed? To answer this question, we need to look at two areas presentation and content. The Qur’an employs a variety of literary mechanisms, from straight line-by-line or metered rhyming to flowing prose and passionate essays.[1]

Through a skilled mixture of the different techniques, the listener is taken on a rapturous ride through feelings, thoughts, emotions, and dreams. The opening verses of Chapter 36 of the Qur’an provide an example. In this surah, entitled Ya- Seen, we read the opening verses in transliteration. The underlined words show the repetition of sounds:

Ya Seen. Wal Qur’anil Hakeem. Innaka lamin al Mursaleen. ‘Alaa siratim Mustaqeem.

Tanzilul ‘azeezil Raheem. Le tunzera qawman ma unthera aba-uhum fa hum ghawfiloon.

La qad haqqal qawlu ‘alaa ak tharihim fahum la yu-minoon.

If you noticed the transition from one rhyme to another, you can see how the Qur’an can continually engage the ear of its listeners with something fresh and new. For this reason, Muslims never consider a translation of the Qur’an as equal to the Arabic text. The Qur’an itself makes a note of this unique style and its purpose when it declares that it is a book that is easy to remember. In longer passages you will find quite a lot of transition in style over the course of many different topics. (Although some Western scholars have criticized this literary technique, it is in fact one of the strengths of the Qur’an, distinguishing it from all other Holy Books.) When the Qur’an is recited out loud by a skilled reader, its beauty can move listeners to tears. (Qur’an reciting contests are held every year all over the Muslim world with the most important ones being in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.)

The second miraculous aspect of the Qur’an concerns its content. The Qur’an covers a variety of subjects, including religious doctrine, law, social values, morality, history, prophets and their struggles, philosophy, and science. Without containing a single unified narrative on any of those subjects, the Qur’an skillfully weaves components of each into self-contained chapters that reference one and then the other to provide coherent essays appealing to a variety of listeners.

Muhammad never went to school. During his life, he never read a book, nor was he ever tutored or engaged in learning of any kind. Then suddenly, when he turned 40 years old, the epitome of eloquence flows from his tongue? This is quite inexplicable[2].

Only a century ago, Western scholars of Islam were claiming that Muhammad had epilepsy (which is not true) and that the Qur’an came during seizures. Do epileptics conjure rapturous poems and essays in such states? Other Westerners have charged that Muhammad made up the Qur’an, though they can’t explain how. But as Dr. Maurice Bucaille observed, in refuting those who have suggested that Muhammad wrote the Qur’an himself,

“How could a man, from being illiterate, become the most important author, in terms of literary merits, in the whole of Arabic literature?” Muslims would say that it is no less than direct revelation from God.