Excerpts from my incomplete book for your perusal, I felt like sharing with you all.
If you ask any Muslim “what are the constituents of ‘ISLAM’” - the almost usual answer shall be that “Islam” comprises of the divine book Al-Quran, God’s message to mankind and the Hadith, the traditions attributed to the prophet Muhammad. We have become so much used to this idea that we never make the slightest effort to find out if it is in accordance with logic or reality or for that matter even with the Quran, “the divine book of Muslims” they all hold dear. Even to look at slightly different direction from their idea or belief is considered an unpardonable sin. However there is one thing with which we all must agree that every religion must qualify on the basis of certainty and not on speculation or conjecture or belief or the consensus of majority.
“But most of them follow nothing but conjecture: conjecture is no substitute for facts. Verily God is well aware of all that they do.” - Yunus 10:36. – Traditional translation.
And if you obey most of those upon the earth, they will mislead you from the way of Allah. They follow not except assumption, and they are not but falsifying. – 6:116 - TT
And when it is said to them, "Follow what Allah has revealed," they say, "Rather, we will follow that which we found our fathers doing." Even though their fathers understood nothing, nor were they guided? – Al-Baqarah 2:170 - TT
Now we have to evaluate ourselves keeping the above verses in mind; whether we are on the side of majority who follow nothing but conjecture or we follow our fathers who understood nothing, nor were they guided. In both these cases, according to above verse of Quran we are misguided or on the wrong path. One thing is clear from the Quran’s point of view that we don’t have to follow the herd mentality by following the majority; neither should we follow our fathers / family or what the scholar understands.
The people who call themselves as Quran alone followers blindly follow translations either based on Hadith based dictionaries or shaan-e-Nuzool or on some preconceived concept of some scholars rather than applying their own common sense by referring the lexicons of the language in which Quran is revealed. It is common sense that if we want to translate any book or an article of foreign language in local language we would refer to the dictionaries and grammar book of those language. But when it comes to translating Arabic Quran the irony is that we refer to stories written by Persians adversaries whose hidden agenda was to confine the meaning of Arabic words in order to distort the wonderful message of the Arabic Quran.
The first step to know the truth is to know or recognize falsehood. If we are content with our beliefs then we won’t to able to think beyond our beliefs. Our sensual organs won’t entertain the new information or line of thinking to make an impression on our already established beliefs.
If you were raised in a belief system where accepting new idea is categorically denied, you need to come to terms with that. Your mind is going to block any attempts of getting anything new which clashes with your already established beliefs because you’ve been programmed to believe that there is no other truth other than your own belief. And we are very confident about it. In order to accept new thinking we have to clean the old beliefs; we cannot fill a cup which is already full.
I finally figured it out why “Muslims don't understand Quran.
They believe that Quran is a very complicated text which needs knowledge of several sciences and that can be only decoded by prophet and his companions or those scholars who have graduated from religious school called madrasa.
Their “Scholars” have told them that if they pronounce the Arabic words properly it is sufficient, and this art of tajweed can enchant Allah their deity. And in return He can fulfill all their wishes; as a result they to do nothing except work on their tajweed and memorization of verses. Total emphasize is on pronunciation [Tajweed] as little mistake in pronunciation can fail their plan to please Allah. It is like a secret magic spell that is very hard to pronounce so they are always working on their pronunciation or recitation to open the gates of “paradise”.
Some are disheartened by the fact that they cannot pronounce and understand the Quran by themselves so it is better to copy their scholar’s work so they avoid it and follow a translated version of Quran combined with Hadith, Sunna and Tafsir.
So when you ask them, "Did you read, understand the Quran?" Their reply always will be, "yes”, but the fact is they have understood what their scholars have interpreted. They accept it blindly with no intention to verify them, in other words, there's no need for Quran now or understand the Quran independently.
So when you tell them that "your elders got it wrong" they are ready to insult you, kill you, hurt you in any way they can. They think that by doing so they are defending Quran but the fact is they don’t know anything about Quran and actually they are defending their respective scholar’s perspective of the Quran.
If we are rejecting everything then the million dollar question is - then what and how to follow the Quran?
Follow, what has been revealed to you from your Consciousness [Rabb] and do not follow besides Him any Aulia [protecting friends]. Little do you heed? Al-A’raaf 7:3
Being an ardent fan of the Quran, my job became more rigorous and challenging after knowing that I cannot follow the majority plus the elders and the friends or teachers because they follows only conjecture and they are away from the facts. After knowing this I realized that finding the right path is a lone journey and majority from the community, family and friends will always be adverse to this path. Now the problem is how to know the right path without even following any teacher or authority or Aulia? Wali is singular of Aulia, which means authority, command over, superintendent, commander governor, Judge, magistrate etc. The above verse of the Quran alludes that we just have to follow our Rabb; our collective consciousness which is not easy and very little or small or few could actually be able to heed it. In fact the word قَلِيلاً in verse 7:3 represents very few or near to one; one of its meaning is top most part of the mountain. In simple words the Quran is actually instructing us to use our own mind or inherent script [Al-Kitab] but it’s the most difficult thing to do. The easiest part is to get influenced by someone or follow some readymade information without getting involved in the difficult process of thinking.
How to follow our Rabb / Consciousness? And who will teach that?
As regards to “Quran” it has been repeatedly said:
Surah Ar-Rehman 55:1- 4
(1) The Greatest Self Nourisher (Rehman). (2) It is He who taught the Quran. (3) He has evolved the one who socialize. (4) He has taught him to distinguish….
Surah Al-Qiyamah 75: 17-19
(17) Indeed! It is upon Us to assess it and to express it (18) So when it is expressed, then follow its expression (19) Then indeed! It is upon us to explain it.
Relying totally on the above verses I made Rehman as my teacher and began my journey to understand the essence of the Noble Quran. I just followed the inspiration I got from my Rabb / Consciousness (6:106) (7:203) (10:15) (10:109) (12:109) (18:27) (33:2) (34:50). Quran is the messenger or the word of the messenger (69:40-43) (81:19) who is talking to us through all these verses that we have to follow the inspiration from our Rabb.
Now it was a challenge for me to find out the answers to all my valid doubts which were troubling me. The Rabb helped me in finding all my queries without getting influenced from any other text or source other than the Quran. Nevertheless I took the help of the classical dictionaries of the Arabic language to understand the right essence of the meaning of the words while I relied mainly on the context to create the right essence of the message. This may sound foolish or complacent, but trust me it is only possible if we shut off all the external and internal voices and let the Rehman inside us nourish us by speaking to us (78:37 - 38), that moment is the real establishment of Salat or connection. The process of salat is very tough (2:45) and every creature is aware of this, including birds and animals (24:41) but unfortunately very few among us know how to connect with their Rabb. Serious obedience is the only way to get connected with the Rabb.
I know you will find my book and the interpretation of the verses of the Quran very peculiar because it is different from normal presentation. Nobody in my knowledge has attempted to explain the Quran in a way which will make every thinking Muslims to think again and again about their beliefs. I request the reader to please read the book slowly as each and every chapter is important and complete the book before coming to any conclusion.
While interpreting the verses of the Quran, for me the context of the message and sequence of the verses is of utmost importance. All the meanings and the root words were decided after studying thoroughly the context and the theme of the subject of each chapter plus the theme of the entire Quran.
It is important to bear in mind while reading this book that this is a non fictional book. Any comparison with other reputed book of the same genre may confuse you as this book has a complete new understanding and approach to understand Quran. This book has the potential to change one’s thought process if the reader reads it with an open mind and thinks for himself without taking help of any conventional resources. Quran is the book of wisdom, it’s the book of insight it’s the book which can make the difference to your life.
Please note – this effort is made in order to generalize the message of the Quran to the entire mankind and to clear many misconceptions related to this noble book called Quran. The message of the Quran deals with human psychology but the clerics of Islamic religion have restricted this book to Arab traditional stories and their rituals, thus depriving the world of its immense classical knowledge in the field of psychology.
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