Auron ka hai Payaam aur, mera Payaam aur hai, Ishq key dardmand ka tarz-e-kalaam aur hai! (Iqbal)
I never considered myself a fan of anyone or anything in all my life. Not film stars or other celebrities; not sports or other teams; not anyone or anything of any kind. In fact, in the context of the lose use of this word in modern times I consider that label “fan” somewhat derogatory and insulting when someone calls me a “fan” of someone or something. But when it comes to the Qur’ān, Allahu Akbar, I am a fan. No buts or ifs or reservations of any kind. I have, over the past years, become a fan of the Qur’ān in every possible way you can think of.
“Spiritual” would be too lofty a title to put on it when it comes to my experiences with the Qur’ān. For, I am perhaps the most ordinary and least spiritual of all human beings. “Rational” at least comes close to capturing in some ways the touchstone of the method of early and ongoing inquisitiveness, evaluation and interrogation that I took to the understanding of the Qur’ān.
Imagine not just my surprise, but how puzzled and intrigued I must have been, when I found that the Qur’ān, far from frowning upon me for my critical approach, and for my endless questioning and interrogating of it, seemed to accept and even welcome and encourage my scepticism.
Over and over again, I went toe-to-toe with the Qur’ān. And the Qur’ān let me. Evidently this was not in any way a distinction I had earned. Clearly it was a grace that was somehow bestowed upon me. The Qur’ān drew me to it and held me tight.
And the world was never the same for me again. I saw through and in the glorious light of the Qur’ān things I had never suspected existed – answers for which I had been searching for decades and not just for years; answers for which I had knocked on every door and sat at every set of feet.
Now when I talked about the Qur’ān, it was not about what others said, it was about what I saw. And all our Dars and Tafsir sessions thereafter became not about giving lectures to people about the Qur’ān and its miraculous Aayats, but about showing and sharing with people what the Qur’ān was magnanimous to show and share at a particular time and place. No comments or lectures were needed.
What the Qur’ān wanted to share and show was in plain sight for all to see.
With one condition, it seemed to me, that appeared to hold in most instances: liman alqas sam’a wa huwa shaheed – caring and paying attention and being there one hundred per cent.
Every Aayat now became one hundred percent miracle and one hundred percent proof that no way this book could have been the product of a human mind. This was no longer a matter of belief or faith, but a simple and clear matter of self-evident fact and reality visible to the naked eye.
WALKING IN THE VISTAS OF THE QUR’ĀN
The Qur’ān blew my mind, as they say, when I found it full of questions, statements and remonstrations such as the following: Don’t you see, the Qur’ān asked repeatedly. Can’t you think, the Qur’ān challenged time and again. Why can’t you understand, the Qur’ān cajoled and teased. Don’t you get it, what is wrong with you, the Qur’ān remonstrated. Go ahead and check things out, the Qur’ān encouraged. Do you have padlocks on your hearts that you are so completely incapable of thinking straight or understanding the simplest and the most elementary of things, the Qur’ān asked.
Let us assume for a moment, said the Qur’ān most disarmingly and in a most conciliatory fashion, as if trying to negotiate the best deal it could get out of us mortals. Let us assume, the Qur’ān said, that this Qur’ān is really from God, let us just make that assumption for a moment and then let us talk about it. The Qur’ān made this offer as if it was talking to the most stubborn and unreasonable children; as if it had some stake at the outcome; as if the Qur’ān did not want a foolish, headstrong and stubborn humanity to lose out, to fail; as if the Qur’ān were vested in our wellbeing and success.
And then there were places, issues and moments when the Qur’ān was totally unbending. In those places, the Qur’ān said at its most magisterial best: if you all thought that this man, Muhammad, (Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam), made this whole thing up, why don’t you try and produce a document of comparable merit – or at least a small portion of such a document? Thus the Qur’ān inexorably threw down the gauntlet. It raised the bar beyond what anyone imagined possible.
In this context, to say “Put up or shut up” will be a trivialisation and vulgarisation of the grand and yet most fair and frank challenge that the Qur’ān made to all bull-headed humans who acted more out of arrogance and malice than out of rationality and a spirit of inquiry. And yet that is what it seemed to be. And lo and behold, 1400 years and yet the Qur’ān towers astride the horizons of time and space awaiting a proper response to its challenge.
And then there were times when the Qur’ān demanded in the most cool, calm, fair, dispassionate and professorial manner, why can’t you examine the empirical evidence before you – evidence of your own senses – that is out there in front of you and then in the light of that evidence come to your own conclusions, one way or the other?
Why can’t you analytically evaluate the arguments that are put forth by all parties to this debate and then decide for yourself, the Qur’ān suggested? And so on and so forth, as they say. The Qur’ān, a beacon of rationality and logic? The Qur’ān, a tower of analytical thinking? The Qur’ān, the inventor par excellence, centuries before Bacon and others, of the empirical method of scientific observation and analysis?
Quote-Unquote a so-called 7th-century “religious” book reading like a 21st-century science manual? Unbelievable! Impossible! These and many other similar things blew my mind away. And I had no choice but to end up as a fan of the Qur’ān the way I did.
I try to read it as much as I can. I spend hours, days, years, thinking about it. I try to understand what little I can of its meaning as well as of its implications in practical life.
And my heart dances like the daffodils as Wordsworth would say whenever the Qur’ān throws a crumb of its bounty and a bit of its light or Noor in my direction, which it does in the direction of all those who come to it on bended knees, bowed heads and with a beggar’s bowl in their hands.
So, I am a fan of the Qur’ān. Absolutely, unconditionally. No question about it.
Even though the fact is, as I said earlier, I came to the Qur’ān questioning it closely and wrestling with it on every count. At least so I thought.
Little did I realize that it was not me, but the Qur’ān, that was in command, every step of the way. And in total and complete command and control was the one whose immortal and eternal word the Qur’ān is. It was they who were in charge of the situation all the time. Not poor little ignorant foolish mortal me, full of holes in every part and prone to err on the drop of every hat.
So, there is no cure for an ailing heart or a sick mind like the cure of the Qur’ān. Nor is there a solution to human affairs, both individual and collective, better than the solution offered by the Qur’ān.
But the ongoing challenge is for human minds in every age, clime, culture and place to have the intelligence and the wisdom – Hikmat – to grasp it and work out its details.
That is why the Qur’ān says: Wa man yu’tal hikmata, faqad ootiya khairan katheera – that is, Hikmat is a lot of good stuff to have as a blessing from God Almighty.
And provided of course human souls have been touched by the divine flame leaping out of the words of the Qur’ān. Man-yahdillah fa-huwal muhtadi, is how the Qur’ān frames the broader paradigm.