Locating the system of meaning of a subject being studied in the Qur’an

METHODOLOGY FOR STUDY OF THE QUR'AN 

by Sheikh Imran Nazar Hosein

www.imranhosein.org

Locating the system of meaning 
of a subject being studied in the Qur’ān

In the same way that the stars in the sky cannot function as lamps for us unless and until we study, understand and grasp the pattern in which they are inter-connected, so too the verses of the Qur’ān have to be studied and understood to locate the pattern with which they are inter-connected in order for us to discover their true meaning. Maulānā Dr. Muhammad (s) Fazlur Rahmān Ansārī, the author of the great 2-volume work on the Qur’ān entitled "The Qur’anic Foundations and Structure of Muslim Society", has described that pattern as the system of meaning of the subject:   

Now, besides consistency,  the conformability of the Holy Qur’ān in its various parts,  as mentioned in the above verse, brings us to the logic of theoretic consciousness,  which, too, is inherent in the holy book, even as the logic of religious consciousness is enshrined therein.  

The conformability, however, signifies, in the estimation of the best Qur’anic authorities, not only uniformity of teaching but also the principle that all the verses of the holy book are inter-related as parts of an intelligible system – whereby the existence of a system of meaning in the Holy Qur’ān is positively established, as also the technique of the exposition of that system.  

 (QFSMS, Vol. 1 p. 111.) 

Not everyone is a mariner with knowledge of navigation through the stars; so too only scholars of Islam would devote the effort for study of the system of meaning of a subject dealt with in the Qur’ān. That system of meaning cannot be grasped without the simultaneous application of both external study and internal insight. The Qur’ān has described this integration of external and internal knowledge as Majma’a al-Bahrain (i.e., the meeting of the two oceans), and the model of such scholarship was depicted in the person of someone called Khidr who bore an uncanny epistemological resemblance to Nabī ‘Isa (Jesus (a). (See my book entitled In Search of Khidr’s Footprints in Ākhir al-Zamān).    

Source: Sheikh Imran Nazar Hosein

to be continued .....