Because the Quran is not a linear book in the way that for instance if you open the bible it will begin in Genesis it literally begins 'in the beginning' and then you have the narrative, you have the Jewish people as a central part of that narrative, but it's really begin with the story of humanity with the first mother and father of all us, Adam and Hawa and then it gives you the 5 book of the tanakh which is what we called the Taurah and then there's a linear sequence and then you have the new testament according to the christian tradition, the jews tradision doesn't really like the idea of the 'new testament' because they don't see it as 'old testament' there's no abrogation for them and so. But with the Christian they have the new testament which is also a narrative if you look at it, in fact some people will point it out that it actually follows like a traditional greek play in it sequence and then you have in the latter part of it you have this remarkable letters, the Paul writes to different people and luke and others, the apostle, I mean it's quit extraordinary things in there and it end with revelation which is John of Patmos has these revelation in exile on this island in Greece and see this kind of end of time scenario, so it begins in the beginning it end with the book of revelation which is when everything unfold at the end so, the Quran, when the Quran was revealed and we see it as Muslim, we see it as the 'last testament', it comes as a final testament from Allah, the last dispensation for humanity and that in our understanding on our tradition it abrogate the previous one it doesn't nagate the truth that are in them but it says that this is the finale testament for humanity and then it called everybody to it allowing them the option to stay outside of it. So, because it's a non-linear book, for many people, expecially western people when they go into it, they find it very confusing and this is, we find this in carlyle, when he did hero worship in victorian England, he chose as the Hero, the prophet Muhammad S.A.W which is scandalous at that time because he didn't choose Jesus for instance, but in there he talk about how difficult it was for him to read the Quran, and he said, if this is this remarkable book wheredo we put the elliot or the odyssey, in other words, its doesn't follow any pattern well, that's I think partly a testamony to the truth to the Quran, that it is not like any other books, because it is uniquely among the revealed books. It is the one that is directly from God, so even Jews and Christian understand that the bible and the new testament are inspire words, so there're inspired by God. So there's a wahy but it's human being that it's transmitted through them, that's why they find discrepancy and other thing in them that didn't really bother them from that perspective because they understand that the scribe can make mistakes and things like that. So they don't have the same understanding that we have, where's the Quran itself comes directly from God to the prophet S.A.W and the prophet is merely a conduit for this revelation, so its coming through him to us and so if we define the Quran according to the usuli scholars and there's two type of usul in our tradition, there's usuluddin and usululfikh. Usuluddin is related to aqidah or creed or 'what we believe', and in our tradition the Quran, in sunni tradition the Quran, is, in other words it's the indication of that utterance is convey that is eternal with Allah, so that is a very difficult part of kalam or the tradisional dialectical theology that I'm not gonna go into, do that's one way to intrepreted it but the way the fuqaha intrepreted, in this from Siddiq Abdullah Al Haj Ibrahim, one of the great Mauritanian usuli scholar, he said that the Quran was, it is an utterance that was revealed to the prophet Muhammad S.A.W in order to incapacitated creation in other words as a miraculous book that could not be replicated and as a means of devotion, Ta'abbud. Now, one of the interesting thing about ta'abbud is that the word in arabic to recite the Quran which is how we do devotion with the Quran is tilawah like, 'those who recite the book', tilawah is we recite the book and do it with its due, and so for the mujawwad, person whos doing tajweed that mean like to give every letter its due and its circumstantial due, so like idgham is circumstantial due, not every situation the و, (wau) you have idgham and the letters in idgham a simulation like yarmaloon. So for the mujawwad that was what that's mean but for the faqih, tilawah also means follow, so it means to recite but it also mean to follow or to do what the Quran is telling you to do, so the moon when it follow the sun, so tilawah mean to recite and to follow so when you reciting the book of Allah as it should be recited mean you also following it, so it's not just simply reciting it but also following it. So you're reciting it with your tongue, you're believing it in your heart and you're acting according to it with your arkan. Now, because it's a non-linear book
and I'll just give you one example of something very fascinating about the Quran. The jews have a lots of stories in their book, in fact the bible is read as a literature now. There're many people that will read bible as a literature not even believing that it's a revelation but it's a fascinating book with great stories. The Quran, when some of the sahabah came and complained about not having stories like the Jews have stories, the twelve surah Yusuf is revealed. Yusuf is like a biblicle story. It's a completely intact narative in the Quran, the only chapter in the entire Quran that is similar and to me as if God was saying, 'I can do that' like 'I can do a book like that, I'd already done that, but this is different.' like this book is different. So the extraordinary aspect of the Quran to me, is that there is a verse in the Quran where Allah S.W.T says,
فَلَۤا أُقْسِمُ بِمَوَاقِعِ النُّجُومِۙوَإِنَّهُ لَقَسَمٌ لَوْ تَعْلَمُونَ عَظ۪يمٌۙ إِنَّهُ لَقُرْاٰنٌ كَر۪يمٌ
(Al-Wāqi‘ah 56:75–77)
I swear by the position of the stars, and this is a vast oath, if you, but knew and this is a generous Quran.
When I lived in the sahara desert, I used to go every night, we look up in the sky and it had the most clear sky in the world because there's no like polution and the numbers of star that you can see was just astronomical and it was so extraordinary too look up at the night sky but if you don't know anything about the stars, it just look like a jumble of light up in the heaven and it doesn't look like there's any order. They just look like, but the was a man there that I lived with who use to teach me about the stars, so he show me the night that this is thurayya, and this is al-jabbar, and this is al-jafi, and he will show me, and then, he will say, this one emerges on this date on the horizon and this one on this date and this one indicates this season, he had a complete knowledge of the night sky and overtime I got to understand the night sky in a completely different way because most people grow up in environment where there's no stars anymore like you might see a few stars but, they don't see stars anymore. The Quran is like that, if you look at the way Thomas Carlyle look at it, it just a jumble of light, Astaghfirullah for even saying that, but that was what it appears to be to people, it appears as if a jumble of this amazing light that flashing without any cohesion, but, if you have the time and pasion to study the book, you'll begin to see this incredibly deep pattern in the book. So it's a very much the opposite of, in the western tradition where book have an outward cohesion but if you begin to study them deeper the often fall apart this was disconstruction is all about and the Quran is the opposite, outwardly, it looks like its doesn't have the cohesion but the deeper you study it, the more clear the order come, and so what I wanted to do in this shot series of lectures is look through the lens of one of the great Andalusian exegete, ibn Juzayy al-Kalbi, and I'm gonna talk also a liltle bit about Imam Al-Ghazali's theory of Al-Jawahir Imam Al-Ghazali also has interesting theory of the Quran to help people understand the nature of the Quran, the deep structure of the Quran.
By Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, from Session 1 Gateway to God's Book (zaytuna college yt channel)
