"And indeed We have made the Quran easy to remember; so is there any who remembers?"
Quran 54:22
This passage, drawn from al-Qamar, the 54th surah, here rendered as "The Moon," brings together a couple themes that have been running through my commentary lately. Muslims will sometimes propose that while Islam is not necessarily an easy faith to faith, it's an easy faith to understand. I think I would definitely agree on both fronts. In many ways I am a very simple man (I'm from Indiana, after all) and the more I study the Quran and the ahadith the more I think the faith is simple, at least in regards to what really matters: there are enough trappings of the faith to keep your busy for a lifetime, but the essentials of how you're supposed to treat others is more manageable. The notion that the Quran, and the faith, are easy to understand is presented as a gift from God, but here you also have the lament that even considering this fact/gift few people actually remember it.
And this is where it ties more directly to a point I was making about our emphasis on memorizing as compared to studying/analyzing/understanding the faith. In the related commentary in the Study Quran Nasr quotes a famous hadith: "The best among you are those who learn the Quran and teach it to others." My father, is is early attempt to try and convince me to be a physician (or, as he would opine when comparing that choice to the one I made, "a serious doctor"), would quote the famous line from the medical field: see one, do one, teach one. It may be true for aspiring doctors and nurses, but I would argue it's also true in regards to faith. When we're simply memorizing something are we truly learning it? The final point of the old medical school bromide, "teach one," implies that if you know a procedure well enough to actually teach it then you truly know it. However, to get to that point you have to have passed through "see one" and "do one." If we place such tremendous emphasis on memorizing the Quran, but also sometimes discourage the more difficult discussions associated with the Quran and faith, are we insuring that we never get past the "see one" phase? That's not what I think our faith should be about. There has been a centuries long history of arguing and debating about the different possible interpretations of Quranic passages, as much as the Wahhabis might try and squelch that practice, and the concept of kalam, or speculative theology was, and still should be, an essential part of Islam. Moreover, isn't this what the Prophet was saying in, "The best among you are those who learn the Quran and teach it to others"? You can't teach it unless you truly know it, and that means living it and experimenting with it. That said, in the preparatory words before every Friday prayer we're warned that all innovations lead to the hellfire. While an innovation that leads leads to polytheism would, by definition be bad, can we also take that admonition too generally and too definitively and shut down all reflection?
Quran 54:22
This passage, drawn from al-Qamar, the 54th surah, here rendered as "The Moon," brings together a couple themes that have been running through my commentary lately. Muslims will sometimes propose that while Islam is not necessarily an easy faith to faith, it's an easy faith to understand. I think I would definitely agree on both fronts. In many ways I am a very simple man (I'm from Indiana, after all) and the more I study the Quran and the ahadith the more I think the faith is simple, at least in regards to what really matters: there are enough trappings of the faith to keep your busy for a lifetime, but the essentials of how you're supposed to treat others is more manageable. The notion that the Quran, and the faith, are easy to understand is presented as a gift from God, but here you also have the lament that even considering this fact/gift few people actually remember it.
And this is where it ties more directly to a point I was making about our emphasis on memorizing as compared to studying/analyzing/understanding the faith. In the related commentary in the Study Quran Nasr quotes a famous hadith: "The best among you are those who learn the Quran and teach it to others." My father, is is early attempt to try and convince me to be a physician (or, as he would opine when comparing that choice to the one I made, "a serious doctor"), would quote the famous line from the medical field: see one, do one, teach one. It may be true for aspiring doctors and nurses, but I would argue it's also true in regards to faith. When we're simply memorizing something are we truly learning it? The final point of the old medical school bromide, "teach one," implies that if you know a procedure well enough to actually teach it then you truly know it. However, to get to that point you have to have passed through "see one" and "do one." If we place such tremendous emphasis on memorizing the Quran, but also sometimes discourage the more difficult discussions associated with the Quran and faith, are we insuring that we never get past the "see one" phase? That's not what I think our faith should be about. There has been a centuries long history of arguing and debating about the different possible interpretations of Quranic passages, as much as the Wahhabis might try and squelch that practice, and the concept of kalam, or speculative theology was, and still should be, an essential part of Islam. Moreover, isn't this what the Prophet was saying in, "The best among you are those who learn the Quran and teach it to others"? You can't teach it unless you truly know it, and that means living it and experimenting with it. That said, in the preparatory words before every Friday prayer we're warned that all innovations lead to the hellfire. While an innovation that leads leads to polytheism would, by definition be bad, can we also take that admonition too generally and too definitively and shut down all reflection?
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