METHODOLOGY FOR STUDY OF THE QUR'AN
by Sheikh Imran Nazar Hosein
Eternal literary excellence of text of Qur’ān
with no revision ever necessary
Another miraculous feature or characteristic of the Qur’ān is that books which were written a few hundred years ago can hardly be understood today unless literary form, grammar, vocabulary, etc., are revised and modernized. This is so regardless of the language in which they were written, since languages are constantly evolving with new vocabulary being introduced and words becoming obsolete. Even the rules of grammar are always changing. Also, no one can deny that even languages have become obsolete. As a consequence, a standard work which presents the best literary form of a language is seldom, if ever, to be found in a text that is a few hundred years old. English is an excellent example of such a language. Readers may wish to visit the internet website http: //www.bl. uk/ englishtimeline to see what the English language looked like just four or five hundred years ago.
Literary taste has also been constantly changing – more so in this modern age than ever before in history – and readers become more interested in that which is modern when compared with that which belonged to an age and a social clime far removed from modernity. But the Qur’ān, which came into the world more than fourteen hundred years ago, while addressing an immediate audience of largely illiterate desert Arabs in far-away Arabia, is not only readily and universally understood today, but has also miraculously retained its status over this long period of time as the supreme literary work in the Arabic language. Countless millions of Muslims, hailing from all over the world – ranging from the most educated, cultured and sophisticated to the barely literate and unrefined – have been reciting the whole Qur’ān in Arabic from cover to cover at least once every month. No other book in the world has ever enjoyed such a miraculous status to be so easily readable in its original text, and to be read and enjoyed so often, again in its original text, that is more than fourteen hundred years old.
No one has ever attempted to modernize the language of the Qur’ān, or to edit it to make it easier to understand in this age. The Qur’ān is read, understood and enjoyed today with exactly the same text with which it was read, understood and enjoyed these last fourteen hundred years – without the change of even a single word or letter. This is indeed a miracle which confirms its status as divine revelation. While it remains sadly true that most Arabs no longer speak proper Arabic – having replaced it with local dialects which sometimes cannot be understood by other Arabs, the Arabic of the Qur’ān has continued to be used in the sermons delivered all through history, and to this day, in the Arabic-speaking world in the important weekly congregational prayer known as Salāt al-Jumu’ah.
Undiminished literary attraction of the Qur’ān
But what is also miraculous is that millions of mankind living in the modern age have a passionate interest in studying and understanding as ancient a book as the Qur’ān. Indeed, as the count-down to the end of history accelerates, interest in the study of the Qur’ān is constantly increasing – hence the importance of books like this which teach methodology for study of the Qur’ān.
to be continued .....
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