Of all the tragedies that befell the
Muslims – which include the storm of Tartars from the east1,
and the scramble of European scavengers from the west2
– difficult as it may seem to grade them in order of the extent their being
catastrophic, tragic and mortal, I find it convenient to place the wastage
of the meaning of the Holy Qur’an foremost. The cornerstone of their
faith, their prime motivation for all goodness and their chief weapon of
defense against the incursions of Lucifer, was, with the passage of time,
relegated to the status of chants and spells3,
where only sounds mattered, not the meaning. The loss of meaning was the
result of a composite effort, though the corrupters did not have the doubtful
advantage of mutual consultation.
In the early fourth century, after
the perfection of God’s words, some found difficulty in encompass the light
of Faith within the dark cloak of mysticism4.
They resolved the difficulty by transmitting the meanings of the Holy Book
in an esoteric form. In their attempt to find the Hidden Meaning of the
text, such far fetched and bizarre meaning were brought out that ‘push
the author to a state of inferiority complex’ because such meanings
he never intended. With arrant insolence, they disturbed the musical harmony
between words and their meaning. The winged words of the book were spurred
to fly high till they were out of sight5.
Ironically, this was construed as an achievement, in which they rejoiced
like a child who had laid hands on a new toy that jingles with arrhythmic
painful sounds of all sorts. Fortunately, each of them built his own edifice
of hidden meaning, till the overwhelming number and variety of their constructions
was lost in a jungle of buildings, and the people forgot all of them.
When the jurists approached the book,
they brought it down to the level of a compendium of Roman Laws and imposed
upon themselves the ambiance of a court room, interpreting it with the
minds of advocates and attorneys, who battle to win the case, even if the
client is destroyed6.
The scholastics and theologians, equipped
with the sickle and knife of cold Aristotelian logic, mutilated the text
with insensate cruelty to prove the truth of the teachings of the First
Master and in their zeal to prove sectarian theses, scarred the moral fiber
of a purifying discourse. Their work provided yet another instance of the
human proclivity to draw out and extract with overgrown nails from a painting
whatever helps prove their thesis, even if it leaves the painting foul
and disfigured7.
As if all this were not enough, many
well meaning commentators degenerated into a new mode of exegeses. This,
in time, became the most effective means to hide and distort the true intended
meaning of the scripture. These commentators deserve a somewhat detailed
treatment.
They picked the text to pieces. They
began to analyze the verses and words of the text, after dismembering the
unity of a text8 which is
like a picture masterly painted – symmetrical, complete, convincing, just
and beautiful. The Holy Book is the finest example of construction with
the greatest degree of originalityp9.
Its totality was destroyed and its unity fragmented. Unfortunately the
splendid construction and thematic coherence of the Book has been picked
to pieces by the men who studied it most carefully and should presumably
have admired it most. Failing utterly to appreciate the perfect design
and startling unity of the Book, they understood and presented this well
woven piece of unprecedented embroidery as an ugly collage of patchwork,
created in a sordid sartorial process. They never hesitated to divorce
the words and sentences from the beautiful construction or to discover
multiple meanings for each sentence. It became fashionable to present the
startled laity with forty, fifty or a hundred conflicting meanings a verse
is pregnant with10. With
twenty meanings for each sentence, and all of them considered valid, we
have a right to be scandalized!! The conglomerate of meanings they heaped
up in the process was fascinating as a game and miserable as exegesis.
But it was hardly surprising. A lone word, plucked from the bosom of the
parent text, is left to the vagaries of the commentator and can be interpreted
variously, leaving the anarchy of meaning to rage for centuries. The chief
weapon of those who tried to pick the book to pieces was ignorance – ignorance
of the language and the style of the Most High and the diction of the times
in which it was revealed11.
The Holy Qur’an has been termed
as a Book by its author, and not as an ill-organized collection of scattered
golden maxims. We can present it as the most coherent and thematic discourse,
though most original in its organization. And this we must do with indomitable
pride, authority and definiteness. They say it was compiled later by mortal
human beings. I argue that such a high degree of consistency and flow of
sequence would have proved impossible without the pen of the author himself.
The wonders of the internal arrangement
of the Holy Book never cease to amaze. There is such a parallelism among
the twin chapters that it could not have missed the attention of a careful
reader skilled in the art of interpreting revealed scriptures and immersed
in the classical Arabic of the Prophet’s days. Instead of the advanced
techniques of modern literature, the style, language and diction of the
pre-Islamic Arabia are useful here. The way the units of this discourse
dovetail into each other, and the beauty with which, after a number of
digressions, a single unified idea is thrown up by every chapter, was shown
by a number of insightful people but the difficult and mind consuming hours
that were required to understand and investigate turned out to be too oppressive
for most of the commentators. The Holy Book invites and then so deeply
familiarizes the reader with its melody and the high and low tones, that
it becomes possible to point out where a tone has been dropped to avoid
a clutter of words, give depth to the text and strike at the objective
directly. Such intentionally missing phrases and clauses are to be understood
and brought out in translation and commentary.
The different techniques of raising
the discourse till it reaches the pinnacle or coming down in pleasing pace
till the discourse reaches its very foundation should be noted. The book
addresses the Prophet (sws) with intimacy and then may shift the focus
of its address to others, sometimes to patronize and felicitate the believers
and sometimes to show its distaste to the hypocrites. The choice of words
and the aura thus created, immediately points out the situation at hand
and the stage of the Prophet’s life that is the subject of Divine words.
Words are employed in their conspicuous meanings and, far from puzzling
and flummoxing usage, clarity of meaning is achieved in its highest form.
The Holy Qur’an thus appears to be ‘a perfume, which only had to
be stirred for the scent to spread to the heavens and earth’12.
But this stirring requires the noise of Hell to awaken the Muslim clergy
from its dogmatic slumbers.
Another example is the way many rhyming
verses of the Holy Qur’an end with names and attributes of Allah.
Many orientalists consider these verse endings superfluous and tend to
explain these away as decorative trappings of an epic style. None of the
Muslim commentators dare say this, although their works reflect that they
too do not attach any significance to this usage in the Holy Qur’an,
which betrays the opinion they share with the orientalist. The names of
Allah appear as adjectives which search out the quintessence of the beauty
and perfection of his attributes. It has been shown with convincing reasons
that such usage is not a compulsion of rhyming. What is so remarkable is
the fact that each time an attributive name of God appears at the end of
the verse, the selection of a particular Divine Attribute is deeply linked
with the problem at hand and the failure to understand this relationship
veils the meaning of the verse13.
I am only hinting at a few of the
delicacies of the Qur’anic style here, and not attempting to give
a comprehensive list. Surely there are many other aspects of the unique
style of the Divine Book, which in these later days of literature we are
too sophisticated to note with wonder, or not to note at all.
I mourn the wastage of the essence
and meaning of the scripture. I mourn because the Divine Book was brutally
subjected to Hellenistic ideals, mystic goals, sectarian purposes and legal
battles. Above all, for centuries the literary and thematic unity of the
Book was dismembered and served up piecemeal to the boys of religious schools,
myself included.
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