The Quran 101
By Ibrahim Mahmood • Jun 23rd, 2009 • Category: Misc, Worth A Second Look • 46 CommentsI have often read that the Quran should not be read without the guidance of a learned moulvi. It has also been written that by reading the Quran without such guidance one can become ‘gumrah’ and may forever lose his soul to the devil. So, being an eternal rebel and a reader, I decided to take this risk. Whether I lost my soul or not, I leave for you guys to decide but I would definitely like to share why I consider this Book to be truly sacred and a gift from God to mankind.
First of all, it was very puzzling for me to think that a book which was meant to challenge the intellect of a nomad sitting right in the middle of a desert almost 1500 years ago cannot be understood by a modern man, is it so complicated? If a man is at risk of losing his soul by reading it, then why make it public? If I do accept that it is complicated then why did our Prophet (SW) and his companions took so much pain to compile and write it down? Why did they not allow it to be passed from one generation to the next verbally? What secret things have been written in it which only a moulvi can decipher and I cannot?
As I cannot tell you what I lost by reading the Quran, I want to share with you what I gained from it:
• In sharp contrast to what we have been told, in so many places in the Quran, Allah tells us to THINK about His creations and see things around us because in His creations we will find clues which all point to a presence of a single Supreme Entity; Himself. So when Allah is asking us to think then, why do we close our minds and label everything unconventional as “un-Islamic”?
• Every time I go back and read the Quran again, it opens some new avenues for me to think. Every single time I read it, it seems that I am reading it for the first time. It always gives me something new to ponder. No other book till date has given me this feeling.
• The Quran is based on simple facts; I have yet to find a single Ayat which can be termed as disputable or refutable. The Quran is solely based on logic. Here, I dare others to read and find something which they can claim as controversial.
• In so many Ayats, a single incident has been described and always from a different angle in order to highlight a different aspect. This is the true beauty of the Quran.
It is about time that we realize that the Quran starts from the word Iqra (read). Now if I lookup the word “read” in the dictionary, it means “interpret written material”, “learn something by reading”, “understand something intuitively”, “give particular interpretation to something”. So now you tell me, do we really “read” the Quran?
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Hi Ibrahim,
A very thought provoking post.Few will comment on it.I think what u say about THINK and find TRUTH yourself will be abhorrent to Maulvies and their followers. Ijihad is the word
Ibrahim:
This is exactly what I feel. For us Moslems, there is Quran for guidance and there are the sayings of the Holy Prophet (PBUH). Moslems are in no way under any obligation to follow any Mullah or his interpretation.
As far as I have understood Islam, there is no justification for any clergy or Moulvi system in Islam.
Islam is a universal religion which transcends all boundaries of race and culture, and the message of GOD is clear and simple for any literate human being to understand.
Faith is purely a personal matter. It is all up to us ourselves to interpret the Quran ourselves and learn the true message of our religion.
It is half baked Moulvis who wrongly interpret our religion, to match their own obsolete Schools of thought.
And then, there are Islamists, who twist religious teachings for purely political purposes.
It must be noted that being a Moslem and being an Islamist are two fundamentally different things. The difference between Moslems and Islamists is similar to the difference between Jews and Zionists, or Christians and ‘Knight Templars’ (which of course do not exist now).
Johann: I’m a somewhat practising Moslem and the more I learn about my religion, the more I come to hate Fanatic Moulvis who advocate all sorts of violence in the name of GOD.
ibrahim
your points are many time discussed in women dars culture in our society but our women folks who are responsible of brought of a Muslim child are almost unaware of true words of Islam mentioned in Quran. Now al huda like groups have started giving awareness to these house folks but really practically I am not seeing any kind of true spirit of Islam on them and their kids.After dars they regularly watch Indian dramas and movies and then try to become copy cat these theme in their life styles.I am quite assure after reading exact theme of Quran that you become free of materialistic desires and our human side becomes very strong but these attitudes are becoming very rare in our routine daily lives clearly showing that we are not grabbing true islamic spirit that mostly empahsised, brotherhood, equality and justice.
So I think we have to adopt some modern ways of presenting Quran and its true teachings ,that worth more than arabic words in it.
Is this right that a person gets GUMRAH if read and understand Quran himself. I read Quran with translation and explanation. No doubt it changed my life a lot. Today I can see visualize things in broader prospective.
I don’t know how people gets narrow minded after reading this holy book Quran. How they becomes extremists and becomes a leech of the society or I should blame the society for all this. Islam is not a rigid religion but narrow minds projected it like this in society.
Emaan (Faith) is the main thing to hold permanently. Although Faith can not be fixed at one level. It goes up and down but better to keep refreshing it and trying to keep it at upper level. Most of our Muslims lacks this one thing and struggling in this life and will struggle in next life too.
May Allah bless us wisdom and intellect to understand His commandments and follow them with blind faith.
saleem
This is still a no no reality to accept and our people who dont know Arabic as their language should first prefer to understand Quran in their local languages.Here all credit goes to govt which imposed rote culture in our system of education in rural and under developed areas and let people to grow their religious attitude under literate characters of maluvi.
I think our new generation is showing much better trends than old one and opting to learn Quarnic teaching through their concepts but what I found in them is its actual demonstrations in their actual lives.Mostly Quranic teaching lead them to have long beard, fully covered wives, head to toe and somehow rigid attitudes towards non Islamic norms that are found in our culture.Their greed for materialistic desires are as such, their love for country is quite nominal and they always opt to go to any good destination for good future by leaving behind their family relations/responsibilities in helpless ways
Nazia: One can always read the translation in English and Urdu. The Moulvi System has to be disbanded at all costs!
Nazia:
One should only read the Translation of Holy Quran, and in my opinion, should not read explanations provided by so called religious scholars.
The explanations are merely the interpretation of Mullahs. One need to form one’s own interpretation on the basis of what one understands from the translation.
maluvi system is a strong web and controlling our 80% of population.
You know how family planning was prohibited in swat and nearby areas by specific groups to increase their population for war games.
It was done by these paid maluvis to spread harassed culture in our valleys against family planning.
So this Moulvi System has to be disbanded.
No need for Moulvi system in a Modern Democratic Moslem Society.
The first step in disbanding Moulvi System is to Ban all Extremist Entities like Jamat Islami, JUI etc from national politics, as was done in Turkey.
DEMOCRACY AND MULLAHISM CAN’T EXIST SIDE BY SIDE!
MULLAHS ARE A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!
Translation of Quran is not an easy job as it is some kind of Arabic poetry and dialect is very different to spoken Arab language.Sometime Its sometime clashes with existing culture of different communties on the matter of veil culture, marital and divorce issues, money and property matters so we have to go for translation.
Example is like that that in our shia comunity property or money is directly inherited to female child but in sunnis and wahibis in case of daughters only, the cousins of deceased can take share as per Islamic law.So both depict different picture on Islamic teachings.It is only one example ,there are many more that create confusions if we dont go into its depths.
Discuss matters in reality .These maulvis are strongly funded/protected by our modern army men who are popular for their wine and woman hobbies.They truly divided our nation into two groups.For poor and common citizens who covers the 80% population maluvi class is promoted and for elite class O and A level net work is provided.So see who will rule the Pakistan under typical hypocrite leadership.There is no kamal ata turk still found around us so no body can forecast any miraculous change in near future.
Please don’t mention name of some cartoon like character in this regard as it will again start messy business there.
There already exist Translations of the Holy Quran for centuries, which are accepted by all Moslem communities. All agree on the translation. The only difference arises when Mullahs of each community interpret the translation of Quran differently and give their own explanation
Nazia:
don’t try to provoke me by insulting our great national leader. Let’s avoid confrontation as it always ends in bitterness.
Your accusations on army are senseless.
The real issue is lack of literacy. I’ve seldom seen educated people follow Moulvis. The major problem is also of Pan-Islamists lurking around us, such as Jamat Islam, JUI, etc etc, whose even educated by hypocrite leaders try to promote their own interpretations of religion which have totally nothing to do with Islam.
As far as I have understood Islam, there is no justification for any clergy or Moulvi system in Islam.
And then there are educated people like you, who never condemn Moulvi System and Jamat Islami etcv, but rather always direct their anger due to frustrations on Moderate Democratically Elected Leaders and Pillars of our Democratic State! Its a pitiful scenario indeed. Think over it nazia.
I always, think and practically act as per my words without any fear in my mind.
My accusations on our military performance are mostly based on my personal observation and not from books or news channels.
You also believe on history that till 1970s we have very less dominance of maluvi culture in our system.Thy hypocrites military rulers developed these monsters around us.Who are JI and JUI ?extremist of saudi culture funded by ISI under saudi funds.
Dont tell your leader as national any way but surely you can call him leader of karachi or runaway leader as it suits him more as per his actions.
I am not provoking you just telling the realities it is you always offend on hearing truth
Who is resposible of lack of literacy.if you dont want o blame military then how can you deny realites that 38 years out of 62 in which dictator was directly handling state affairs.
We took no time to spent 1.5 bn $ on this war game in two months.Can you calculate how much we spent on the education of those people in last 15 years who are now eradicating by power of guns.
This is again fauji damagh management who want to only treat them with mortars, shells and air raids.As nothing like modernization is ever planned for our deprived people of Pakistan,try to study the management of some modern arab leaders that how badly they discouraged the mullah culture on their region and they are successful in creating peace at least in their domain.Iran, syria, UAE, morocco are in this list.
Who is responsible of lack of literacy.if you dont want o blame military then how can you deny such realty that 38 years out of 62 in which dictator was directly handling our state affairs.
We took no time to spent 1.5 bn $ on this war game in two months.Can you calculate how much we spent on the education of those people in last 15 years who are now being eradicated by power of guns.
This is again fauji damagh management who want to only treat them with mortars, shells and air raids.As nothing like modernization is ever planned for our deprived people of Pakistan,try to study the management of some modern arab leaders that how badly they discouraged the mullah culture on their region and they are successful in creating peace at least in their domain Libya.Iran, syria, UAE, morocco are in this list.
You are caught in a time warp. Yes the policies adopted by our military regime in the 1980s were disasterous.
But now that our government and the military establishment are striving to undo the wrongs of the past, why are you always critisizing the good work being done?? You beat about bush all the time. Do you have any better solution?
Don’t utter a word against any democratic leader. Altaf Hussain is a popular democratic leader loved by millions. His party is one of the main components of Federal Government, the Sindh Provincial Government. There is even presence of MQM in AZAD KASHMIR Assembly, and this region is roughly a 1000 KM north of Karachi. What would you say about this?
It is people like you who don’t let democracy take root in the country, by vilifying elected leaders, democratic political parties and democratic institutions. When democratic system is wraped up by the military, you people turn the other way around.
Accept the reality instead of your senseless blame game!
The word is ‘criticizing’ instead of ‘critisizing’ in my last comment
sorry for the typographical mistake!
Where is your leader,Where he lives? Where he shows his practical work.Where he comes to interact with his people.Where is his hidden talent when one time he shakes hand with military dictator and second time for typical feud and corrupt businsess man inthe name of democracy for getting some ministires in NA and PA .
I think you live in UK but you forget I am poor Pakistani and looking for my leaders who can come and work with us , live with us so he/she can see our real problems.