Move not your tongue with it, [O Muhammad], to hasten with recitation of the Qur’an. Indeed, upon Us is its collection [in your heart] and [to make possible] its recitation. So when We have recited it [through Gabriel], then follow its recitation. Then upon Us is its clarification [to you]. (75:16-19)
I was always confused by these verses – not for their content, but because of how and where they’re located. These four verses, seemingly about God’s assurance to the Prophet that He has personally taken responsibility for the Qur’an’s memorization and collection, are placed smack-dab in the middle of a Surah which has nothing to do with this topic. Surah Qiyamah, as the name suggests, is about the description of the Day of Judgment – with tangential references to the people’s thoughts and reactions about the day. All forty of its verses, with the exception of the four verses quoted above, seem to develop a coherent, seamless idea about the Last Day, its horrors, and its imminence. The verses on the memorization of the Qur’an abruptly interrupt this flowing discourse – intruding, it seems, on an organized, regular pattern.
This came up again and again when I tried to read the translation of the Qur’an. I often had a very hard time understanding how the verses of the Qur’an connect. Especially in the larger Surahs, seemingly unrelated verses appeared out of nowhere. The progression of ideas was often difficult to follow. There didn’t seem to be any specific theme that characterized a passage. In short, the Qur’an was very different from what someone would normally expect from literature.
This is how things used to be – until, of course, I learned about the existence of a PhD dissertation by Dr. Salwa El-Awa on linguistic coherence in the Qur’an. Her entire thesis is focused on two medium-length Surahs of the Qur’an – Ahzab and Qiyamah (numbered 33 and 75, respectively) – and she painstakingly analyzes every verbal cue, every literary nuance to demonstrate how these seemingly disconnected pieces of discourse actually express a coherent progression of ideas. Her analysis of Surah Qiyamah, the Surah I had particular trouble understanding, is especially impressive – she dedicates page after page discussing the prepositions kalla and bal, which are important clues in understanding the Surah’s structure. Apart from her book, there are multiple works on coherence among verses in the Qur’an available in English. Of them, Michael Sells’ Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations, Michel Cuypers’ Composition of the Qur’an, and Raymond Farrin’s Structure and Qur’anic Interpretation deserve special mention.
I also had trouble understanding the significance of the placement of Surahs in the Qur’an. Why is Surah Fatiha the first Surah, and why does Surah Baqara follow it? Why does ‘Ali Imran follow Surah Baqara? Clearly, the arrangement isn’t chronological, or based on length, or based on topic development. The Surahs in the Qur’an don’t follow the arrangement one would expect from chapters in a book. Later I came across a beautiful book by Professor Neal Robinson, entitled Discovering the Qur’an: A Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text, where there are valuable chapters dedicated to this problem. Another work discussing the same issue would be Mustansir Mir’s Coherence in the Qur’an.
We as Muslims depend substantially on the Hadith of the Prophet to know the details of our religion – be it theology, ethics, law, or rituals. Many people often question the historical validity of the Hadith literature. Sure, Muslims believe this literature to have been preserved faithfully throughout countless generations – but is there really any historical weight to its authenticity? As it turns out, Dr. Mustafa ‘Azami wrote a 500+ page book on the topic entitled Studies in Early Hadith Literature. The extensiveness of his research is evidenced, among other things, by the rich bibliographies and appendices, as well as the rare manuscripts he had to reference. Other people to have written on the issue include Jonathan Brown and Harald Motzki, among several others.
And then I had questions about human evolution and how to reconcile it with Islamic beliefs, whereupon I found wonderful books like Islam and Biological Evolution by David Solomon Jalajel and Who Was Adam? by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross. I had difficulty reconciling human free will with God’s foreknowledge of our choices, and found the answers in Michael Murray and Michael Rea’s Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. I was swayed by New Atheists and their constant claim of there being no evidence for God’s existence, and I found a multitude of top-tier academic publications detailing the various lines of evidences for God’s existence, among them an anthology of essays entitled Blackwell Companion for Natural Theology (edited by William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland), Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer, Towards a Renewed Case for Theism by Emanuel Rutten, The Existence of God by Richard Swinburne……I’m not sure if this list even has an end.
The point I’m trying to make here is this.
It’s not uncommon these days to find people with questions or doubts about Islam or religion in general. As it happens, our society is not equipped to adequately address these concerns. Rare is the local Imam who knows enough about biological evolution to satisfy the college kid struggling to reconcile between science and his religious belief. As far as I know, by the time our parents were growing up, – homosexuality was an absurdly alien concept. So it’s no wonder that our elders would be at a loss as to how to explain the putative contradiction between human rights and religion when it comes to the legalization of gay marriage. It’s common to find people with these questions, but the expertise or know-how to adequately tackle them is rare. This is just how things are.
Faced with this reality, many people – mostly young’uns – get afraid and frustrated. Doubt about one’s religion is a very scary thing to face. The human psyche is averse to uncertainty as it is, and if that uncertainty is about one’s entire worldview – it’s enough to plunge someone into an existential crisis. And when they find no one around them can address these doubts properly – a profound feeling of helplessness appears. This is why doubts about Islam almost always lead to psychological problems of one stripe or another – most commonly anxiety disorder or depression.
My message to these struggling souls is as follows. Most of you folks have very little idea as regards the amount of research that has been done, and is being done, on the issues you have questions about. It’s overwhelmingly likely that no matter what your question is, entire books have been published on it from some of the world’s best universities or publishing presses. In other words, it’s not that new research is required in order to answer your questions. Rather, the research has most probably already been done, and all that’s left to do is for you to read it.
Many people find this very difficult to believe (which is why I chose to begin the article with a number of examples). Their sentiment goes something like this – I have looked around thoroughly, asked as many people as possible, and no one seems to have as much as a sliver of a clue as to how to address these problems. Whatever “research” you are talking about that would address my questions simply isn’t there, as far as I’m concerned.
This sentiment fails to take into account how academia exactly operates. In today’s times, academics and laypeople occupy different planes of existence. One of the problems of the modern age is the stratification of literature. Back in the Victorian ages, all scholarly material could be accessed by scholars and laity alike. Newton’s Opticks or Darwin’s Origin of Species could be understood and appreciated both by the educated layman, as well as scholars of physics and zoology. In modern times however, due to the explosive increase in scientific data, things have changed. Scholars of each discipline and sub-discipline have developed terminology comprehensible only to that particular field. A paper on molecular biology would read like Chinese to, say, a sociology student. As a result, academic readership has become considerably restricted. This academia-laity hierarchy is what is at least partially responsible for our lack of access to this more advanced, and important, literature.
Solution to this problem would require a two-fold effort. First, the people who have these problems need to show a little more maturity. Instead of becoming frustrated at the first sight of doubt about Islam, they should realize that today’s world is set up in such a way that acquiring answers to these problems might be very difficult. As such, the only way to find answers is to make a commitment to sincerely look for and study the relevant material. Even if you are not in the habit of reading, even if your English isn’t very good, even if the academic literature seems hard to chew at first – you should have the motivation and maturity to make progress with the belief that this is the only way your problem can be solved. If you could chomp through pounds and pounds of textbooks to finish 16 years of Bangladeshi education, you can most certainly dedicate a few weeks to adapt your palate to books that would answer your religious questions. If you are sincere about your doubts, motivation would come naturally.
Second, there should be a real effort on part of the Muslim community to act as “mediators” between the academics on one hand, and the laity on the other. If, say, the data about the coherence of Surah Baqara were readily available in popular Islamic books or websites, instead of being tucked away within the confines of doctorate dissertations, I (and many other folks) would presumably haved a much easier time reading and appreciating the Qur’an. As it turns out, though, things in this connection are looking up. For example, recently we’ve been seeing the emergence of an internet scholarly movement, in the form of youtube clips and podcasts, to familiarize people with the literary qualities of the Qur’an. Led especially by Nouman Ali Khan and Abdul Nasir Jangda, there’s a concerted focus to get people to appreciate not only the content, but also the literature of the Qur’an, without having to know much Arabic. Additionally, we’ve seen issues being discussed by mainstream scholars that not too long ago were considered taboo. Scientifically educated lectures and articles on issues like evolution and homosexuality are becoming more and more common. The Madina University and Yale-educated scholar, Dr. Yasir Qadhi, is playing an especially prominent role in acting as a “mediator” to deliver advanced scholarly knowledge to the people on the internet. Recently he finished a series on the Prophetic biography (spanning more than 100 episodes), and one of his key focuses was the Islamophobic objections to the Prophet’s character and how to answer them thoroughly. These are all positive signs.
To end this article, I will point to some books on important topics people usually have questions about.
Existence of God – Besides what was mentioned above, Natural Signs and the Knowledge of God by Stephen C. Evans, Consciousness and the Existence of God by J. P. Moreland, Universes by Leslie, The Cell’s Design by Fazale Rana, etc.
Biological Evolution – Besides what was mentioned above, More than a Monkey by Jeffry Tomkins, Bones of Contention by Marvin Lubenow, Design of Life by Jonathan Wells and William Dembski, Origins of Life by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, etc.
Qur’an’s literature – Besides what was mentioned above, Repetition and Narrative Structure of Surah Al-Baqara by Nevin Reda, Literary Structures of Religious Meaning edited by Issa J. Boulatta, Understanding the Qur’an: Themes and Style by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, Exploring the Qur’an by Hussein Abdul-Raof, etc.
Islamic Law – Misquoting Muhammad by Jonathan Brown, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence by Muhammad Hashim Kamali, Shari’ah Law: An Introduction by Muhammad Hashim Kamali, An Introduction to Islamic Law by Wael Hallaq, etc.
Science-religion conflict – God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? by John Lennox, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism by Alvin Plantinga, etc.
The historicity of the stories in the Qur’an– On the Reliability of the Old Testament by Kenneth Kitchen, The Mystery of the Crucifixion by Louay Fatoohi, Mystery of Israel in Ancient Egypt by Louay Fatoohi, etc.
Historical preservation of Qur’an and Hadith – Besides what was mentioned above, The History of the Qur’anic Text from Revelation to Compilation by Mustafa ‘Azami, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World by Jonathan Brown, The Origins of Islamic Jurisprudence by Harald Motzki, etc.
Homosexuality – A Queer thing Happened to America by Michael Brown, etc.
I believe that will be enough for now. Happy reading!
