"Among them are those who listen unto thee. Then when they depart from thee they say to those who have been given knowledge, 'What did he say?' Is they whose hearts God has sealed and who followed their caprices."
Quran 47:16
This passage is drawn from the surah entitled "Muhammad," which is one of only times that the Prophet is mentioned by name in the Quran (more on that later). On the surface level this revelation specifically relates to the hypocrites who would feign attention while listening to Muhammad. As is often the case, there's also a broader message, and the obstacles that one faces when reciting or reading the Quran. As Nasr tells us in the commentary, "This verse can also be understood as a message to believers that they must be attentive when reciting the Quran, lest they hear the words but do not understand them or heed their meaning." Nasr references al-Ghazzali's Revival of the Religious Sciences and lays out four specific obstacles:
"confining their focus to the correct pronunciation of the letters of the Quran"
"dogmatic adherence to a particular school of thought (madhhab)"
"persistence in sin or being characterized by pride and worldly passions"
"and reading the outward commentary on the Quran and thinking that the Quran contains only those meanings that have been transmitted from early commentators such as Ibn Abbas, Ibn Mas'ud, and the like."
See, I think you could take this even more broadly as a commentary on the things that keep anyone, no matter whether you're reciting or simply learning, and no matter the faith, from breaking through. To me the first admonition speaks to that clash between the internal and external aspects of the faith. I had some at the mosque one time tell me that if your prayers weren't in Arabic then they didn't count, to which I simply responded, "stop it." Yes, I desperately want to learn Arabic, but do I think that God only speaks Arabic? Of course not, that's absurd. The Marxist in me thinks that everything is politicized, and a statement like that might also simply relate to a desire (probably not even intended by the speaker) of insuring the influence of the Arabic world inside of a rapidly expanding and diversifying Islamic universe. More generally, when we're so fixated on the appearance (and sound) of something it's awfully easy to lose the inner meaning, or, more pointedly, lose the desire to even search for the deeper meaning. Secondly, being too dogmatic and narrow-minded is always a detriment to studying anything. As we often opine in Heroines & Heroes, a theory will take you where it wants to take you. One of the most important lesson I've learned from reading Nasr's Heart of Islam and the Study Quran is the incredible diversity of the Islamic world, and if all of these different intellectual schools of thought have been arguing about certain passages for fourteen centuries for a reason. You really have to keep an open mind, and constantly remind yourself that the "correct" answer is not always found through one lens. Thirdly, well, see most of the mistakes I make in approaching my study, and not simply of the Quran. And finally, there is always a deeper meaning. I would argue that the single biggest misconception that I had about Islam before I started studying it was that the religion was terribly, terribly literal; think radical Protestant literal. Yes, there are schools of thought within Islam that are very literal, but they are just one branch, and they are widely outnumbered by schools of thought that take a more nuanced and metaphoric read. However, even if you're on that side of things, you still need to read a variety of commentaries to get a more balanced picture.
Quran 47:16
This passage is drawn from the surah entitled "Muhammad," which is one of only times that the Prophet is mentioned by name in the Quran (more on that later). On the surface level this revelation specifically relates to the hypocrites who would feign attention while listening to Muhammad. As is often the case, there's also a broader message, and the obstacles that one faces when reciting or reading the Quran. As Nasr tells us in the commentary, "This verse can also be understood as a message to believers that they must be attentive when reciting the Quran, lest they hear the words but do not understand them or heed their meaning." Nasr references al-Ghazzali's Revival of the Religious Sciences and lays out four specific obstacles:
"confining their focus to the correct pronunciation of the letters of the Quran"
"dogmatic adherence to a particular school of thought (madhhab)"
"persistence in sin or being characterized by pride and worldly passions"
"and reading the outward commentary on the Quran and thinking that the Quran contains only those meanings that have been transmitted from early commentators such as Ibn Abbas, Ibn Mas'ud, and the like."
See, I think you could take this even more broadly as a commentary on the things that keep anyone, no matter whether you're reciting or simply learning, and no matter the faith, from breaking through. To me the first admonition speaks to that clash between the internal and external aspects of the faith. I had some at the mosque one time tell me that if your prayers weren't in Arabic then they didn't count, to which I simply responded, "stop it." Yes, I desperately want to learn Arabic, but do I think that God only speaks Arabic? Of course not, that's absurd. The Marxist in me thinks that everything is politicized, and a statement like that might also simply relate to a desire (probably not even intended by the speaker) of insuring the influence of the Arabic world inside of a rapidly expanding and diversifying Islamic universe. More generally, when we're so fixated on the appearance (and sound) of something it's awfully easy to lose the inner meaning, or, more pointedly, lose the desire to even search for the deeper meaning. Secondly, being too dogmatic and narrow-minded is always a detriment to studying anything. As we often opine in Heroines & Heroes, a theory will take you where it wants to take you. One of the most important lesson I've learned from reading Nasr's Heart of Islam and the Study Quran is the incredible diversity of the Islamic world, and if all of these different intellectual schools of thought have been arguing about certain passages for fourteen centuries for a reason. You really have to keep an open mind, and constantly remind yourself that the "correct" answer is not always found through one lens. Thirdly, well, see most of the mistakes I make in approaching my study, and not simply of the Quran. And finally, there is always a deeper meaning. I would argue that the single biggest misconception that I had about Islam before I started studying it was that the religion was terribly, terribly literal; think radical Protestant literal. Yes, there are schools of thought within Islam that are very literal, but they are just one branch, and they are widely outnumbered by schools of thought that take a more nuanced and metaphoric read. However, even if you're on that side of things, you still need to read a variety of commentaries to get a more balanced picture.
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