"Nay, whosoever submits his face to God, while being virtuous, shall have his reward with his Lord. No fear shall come upon them; nor shall they grieve."
Quran 2:112
When we break our fast tonight we will have reached the end of another Ramadan. I can't believe this is already my fourth. My initial plan was that I would reserve either this specific blog post or the one from the following day to reflect upon what I've learned this year, but, as usual, my plans went awry. Well, I guess sort of went awry, because as I consider this passage it does say something about the experience of Ramadan, and especially this Ramadan. This is drawn from the second surah, usually rendered as "The Cow," which is by far the longest surah in the entire Quran. It comprises something like a a twelfth of the entire Quran. As we've discussed, with the exception of "al-Fatihah," the first surah, the Quran generally runs from longest to shortest, with "The Cow" (technically, al-Baqarah) featuring 286 verses and the 114th having only 6 verses (and short ones at that).
I chose this particular verse because I found myself growing quite emotional as I reread it. Partially, of course, that related to the beauty of the underlying message. To me this is another of those wonderful Quranic verses that speaks to the universality of God and faith, that is, that there are a thousand paths to God. However, I suspect that this is a minority opinion, at least according to the commentary associated with it in the Study Quran. I reread my notes (often difficult because my hand writing is uniformly bad, especially true in the wee small hours of the morning during Ramadan) and I had written: "g - to me this just seems to be about sincere belief, and should therefore be universal." I often start a note with "g" if I'm mainly talking to myself; not certain why I do it, but I have for as long as I can remember. Some commentators, however, suggested that in this case "submits his face to God" speaks to the act of touching your forehead to the ground during prostration, and that would make it more specific to Islam. Undeniably this is true, but, per usual, I'm reading it more metaphorically and thus a more general call for submitting to God. Clearly, an Islamic scholar is better positioned to make that call, but the Quran enjoins us to "think" not "regurgitate" so I don't feel that bad about going further afield. Either way you read it, I would still argue that the call to sincere submission and the leading of a virtuous life are universal.
This reason why this, at least in my small, tired brain, related to Ramadan is that it's exactly the sort of passage that makes me emotional at the end of Ramadan. It could be something as simple as I'm so exhausted that I'm more emotional (as we all tend to be when we're at the end of our tether), and maybe that's part of the whole "plan" for Ramadan. If we're supposed to overcome our own greedy ego then maybe one way to do it is just to wear it out. More specifically to this Ramadan, I think this particular verse spoke to me in that more and more I see the message of toleration and universality throughout the Quran and the faith. Are there clunkers in both which allow for the opposite to occur, but I think you have to actively search for them and foreground them, and to do that it reflects your own prejudices.
Quran 2:112
When we break our fast tonight we will have reached the end of another Ramadan. I can't believe this is already my fourth. My initial plan was that I would reserve either this specific blog post or the one from the following day to reflect upon what I've learned this year, but, as usual, my plans went awry. Well, I guess sort of went awry, because as I consider this passage it does say something about the experience of Ramadan, and especially this Ramadan. This is drawn from the second surah, usually rendered as "The Cow," which is by far the longest surah in the entire Quran. It comprises something like a a twelfth of the entire Quran. As we've discussed, with the exception of "al-Fatihah," the first surah, the Quran generally runs from longest to shortest, with "The Cow" (technically, al-Baqarah) featuring 286 verses and the 114th having only 6 verses (and short ones at that).
I chose this particular verse because I found myself growing quite emotional as I reread it. Partially, of course, that related to the beauty of the underlying message. To me this is another of those wonderful Quranic verses that speaks to the universality of God and faith, that is, that there are a thousand paths to God. However, I suspect that this is a minority opinion, at least according to the commentary associated with it in the Study Quran. I reread my notes (often difficult because my hand writing is uniformly bad, especially true in the wee small hours of the morning during Ramadan) and I had written: "g - to me this just seems to be about sincere belief, and should therefore be universal." I often start a note with "g" if I'm mainly talking to myself; not certain why I do it, but I have for as long as I can remember. Some commentators, however, suggested that in this case "submits his face to God" speaks to the act of touching your forehead to the ground during prostration, and that would make it more specific to Islam. Undeniably this is true, but, per usual, I'm reading it more metaphorically and thus a more general call for submitting to God. Clearly, an Islamic scholar is better positioned to make that call, but the Quran enjoins us to "think" not "regurgitate" so I don't feel that bad about going further afield. Either way you read it, I would still argue that the call to sincere submission and the leading of a virtuous life are universal.
This reason why this, at least in my small, tired brain, related to Ramadan is that it's exactly the sort of passage that makes me emotional at the end of Ramadan. It could be something as simple as I'm so exhausted that I'm more emotional (as we all tend to be when we're at the end of our tether), and maybe that's part of the whole "plan" for Ramadan. If we're supposed to overcome our own greedy ego then maybe one way to do it is just to wear it out. More specifically to this Ramadan, I think this particular verse spoke to me in that more and more I see the message of toleration and universality throughout the Quran and the faith. Are there clunkers in both which allow for the opposite to occur, but I think you have to actively search for them and foreground them, and to do that it reflects your own prejudices.
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