Dr. Shabir, welcome to
"Let the Quran Speak." - Pleasure as usual. - You know Dr. Shabir,
when we read books, we often read a book from the
beginning to the end, right? There's a plot, it kind of
develops and builds as it goes and then it ends. With the Quran,
when you open it, it can be a little bit
confusing to somebody because when you open it, there are little
pieces everywhere, like little bits of stories. And there doesn't seem to be
any chronological order, right. And certain themes are
repeated over and over within the Quran. For example, the day of
judgment, good deeds. So how do you explain that? Why does the Quran seem
so jumbled to a reader? - So, we can expect many
different things from the Quran and the Quran is a physical
book with so many verses and the one book cannot do all. I mean, maybe think of the
Quran as a be all and end all like this is our stopping point. This is the knowledge from
God, and this is all we need. But at the same time, it has
its physical limitations. It's only that many pages. And so it cannot do everything
that we would like it to do. So there has to
be a choice here. Is it gonna be in
chronological order? In which case, it starts out with the birth of the Prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon Him, like the gospels do
in the case of Jesus. And then it ends up
with His passing away. And we know that that's the
cessation of the revelation. That's the complete book. And we have year one,
He got this year two, He got that year three and so
on, and the continual flow. But then that chronological
sequence may not give us the topical arrangement that your question seems
to presuppose that we need because maybe what happens in
year one is about one topic. And then year two is
about another topic. But year three, the previous
topic comes back again because occasion
seems to demand it. And so either you're gonna have
a chronological arrangement or you're gonna have
a topical arrangement. So let's say we go with
a topical arrangement. That too is possible. I mean, with God, all
things are possible, right? God could have given it to us
in any way that God decides. But by God obviously
making a choice here, like, let's say He gives
us a topical arrangement. So the first 100 pages
we're dealing with marriage. And then the next 100
pages we're dealing with let's say
politics, and so on. So we go on
systematically like that. So that may mean that
an important topic, like let's say belief in God, maybe that will be
the first 100 pages because we need to know belief
in God before anything else. Before marriage even, you
need to believe in God before you do anything else. But it may mean that after
you've read the first 100 pages about belief in God, and then you have gone
on to other things like marriage and politics
and warfare, even, it may be that by the
time you come to warfare, you're not thinking
anymore about belief in God because the last time you
read about belief in God was 400 pages before this. You're getting down to
the end of the Quran and maybe you'll commit
acts of aggression in war, which would be contrary
to your belief in God and your devoutness
to God and so on, and then after you commit
those acts of aggression, that's when you will eventually
another 100 pages later, come back to reminders
about belief in God. - So does this
mean that the Quran was not meant to be read
chronologically then? Like from beginning to end? - Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't
answer your question directly by saying what was meant because to say what
was meant would mean that I'm getting into
the mind of God here and knowing what He meant. But what I can say is
one of the benefits of the Quran being in the
arrangement as it is now, is that the topics may
appear to be jumbled, to use a term from
your question. And, of course, I know you
didn't invent the term, but non Muslims have said,
when they read the Quran, this is what they find it. Some have even described
it as more than jumbled. - I know.
- They use other descriptions. - It's a bit confusing
'cause you open the book and you kind of expect. You have an expectation
of something and then it doesn't end up
fitting your expectation. - That's right, that's right. Like, I mean, we must be honest in that we've all gone to school and we know that if you
open a biology textbook it's gonna deal with biology. If you open a chemistry textbook it's gonna deal with chemistry. And not only that,
if you're dealing with biology as an example, then it's gonna
go systematically. Like it's gonna deal with
let's say plant life and then insects and then birds, and it's gonna deal with
fish, and then, you know? But when it's dealing with fish, it's not gonna go
back to plant life. Right?
- Yeah. - You're gonna talk
about one thing at time and deal with it
systematically, thoroughly, and then you just move on. So we're accustomed to
reading books like this. That's how we expect
books to be arranged. Let me come to the Quran,
it seems different. So one of the benefits though of this kind of let's
say jumbled arrangement is that let's say you decide, I'm gonna read a page
a day of the Quran and maybe the only time I'll
be sure that I get this done is at breakfast maybe while
I'm crunching an apple, holding it with one hand, holding the Quran
with the other hand, and I'm gonna read my page here. It's not the best way. The best way that Muslims knows. - Most people don't eat while
they're reading Quran, right? - Yeah, I mean the best
way to read the Quran as Muslims know is a devout way. You get ready,
you wash yourself, you sit down quietly,
you're going to meditate and you're going
to read the Quran as an act of devotion, right? But I'm talking
about the quick way in the life of a busy person who otherwise would not
have read the Quran. So you're crunching your
apple, holding it with one hand and you're holding the
Quran with the other one. You're gonna read your page. Now in that page, probably you will get
statements about belief in God, which is great because
your whole day now is gonna be filled
with the idea, almost like a a piece of
music that's in your head and you can't get
it out of your head. So, you read the Quran,
you have mention of God, you have mention of
the life hereafter, which is our ultimate goal. So you're reminded
during the day that it's not all
about this world. Don't go rob, cheat
and steal from people because it's just not worth it. This is only the temporary
gains of this life. And if you gain by elicit
means you're gonna be punished in the life hereafter
as a result. So you're reminded of God, you're reminded of
the life hereafter, you're reminded to perhaps about the rights of
God's creatures on you. You're reminded of so many
different and essential features of the Muslim life. So that wherever you're
reading in the Quran, you'll find this mixture and combination of
very good teachings. So was it meant to be
read systematically? Well, there are different
levels of readership. One is this level
that I just described, the life of a busy person
just wanna read a page a day and you wanna capture in
a nutshell from that page, what the Quran is all about. It cannot be just
simply one subject because it'll be like
dealing with fish and you don't realize
that there is plant life. So that's for let's
say an average person, but then there are
scholars in every community and scholars will take
it to the next level. Scholars will wanna know, okay, systematically, what
does the Quran say about God? So we wanna find
all of the passages everywhere in the Quran
that deal with God and only about God so
we can focus on that and get a definitive result as to what the Quran
teaches about God or about marriage
or about sexuality or about warfare or about
so many umpteen subjects. Somebody may want to
actually approach it from a chronological
point of view. They may wanna say, "All
right, let's study the life of the Prophet Muhammad,
in whom be peace, who was the recipient
of this revelation and see how the
revelation fits in with various phases in His life. So scholars do that. They want to know, okay,
which parts of the Quran were revealed in the earlier
phase of the Prophet's life. For example, when He was in
Mecca and in His hometown, and then which part of
the Quran was revealed in the latter phase of His life
after He migrated to Medina. And so this gives us a
better sense of the evolution of thought within the lifetime
of the Prophet Muhammad, on whom be peace. How was the Quran
impacting on Him and how was the Quranic
revelation reflective of changes within the community
over a couple of decades of the Prophet's career? - Dr. Shabir, when
I look at the Quran I wonder, are there other,
does it fit into a genre of other texts that existed
around the same time, in terms of its style and it's lack of
chronological sort of order. - I haven't seen
anyone describing the
Quran's resemblance to other writings of
the time on this score. I mean, people have tried
to compare the Quran with poetry from the time. And, of course, we know
of previous writings like the Christian scriptures
and Jewish scriptures. And a lot of these writings
tend to be chronological, but when we come to things
like poetry, like for example, in the Psalms, there is no
chronology really in the Psalms. The Psalms, there are a
collection of 150 of them, and they are praises of
God, cantillations, songs. So they reach out
to God in prayer. Much of the Quran is
actually like that. But when the Quran
comes to talk about, and tell us the stories
of previous prophets and nations and so on,
here we might've expected and it would have been
useful to us in one way to get a chronological account. But the Quran seems to
work on the assumption that people already
know these stories and they'll know where
to find the stories. And there's no need
really for the Quran to recount the story
from the inception. There was only one
exception to this where the Quran
gives us a complete
recounting of the story. That's in Surah Yusuf,
12th chapter of the Quran, recounting the story of Joseph. Why the story of
Joseph in particular, it may be because if one looks
at the previous scriptures regarding the story of
Joseph, one finds it confusing because it is said
on the one hand that his brothers
threw him in the well, and he was picked up
by the Midianites. Then it was said that
no, it's the Ishmaelites who picked him up. So it's kind of confusing,
like who picked him up? The reason it became
confusing we know now, Richard Elliott Friedman
has written a book called "The Bible With
Sources Revealed." And he has given
us color codings to show the various sources
that went into the composition of the Torah in which the
story of Joseph is found. And it seems that
it is the result of the combination
of various sources that has given us this
kind of overlapping and repetitive
story about Joseph in which there
are contradictions
between the stories resulting in either
these people taking them from the well or the other
people taking them from the well and so on. So it seems that with
this story in particular, the Quran has given us the
kind of chronological sequence so we can make sense of
the story as a whole. But in other cases, the
Quran doesn't need to do this because we know where
to find the stories and we know the basic story. We just need to know the
moral from the story. What should we walk away
with from that story? And this is where the
Quran steps in to say, this is the moral,
this is the teaching, this is what you
should be guided to. - All right, we'll
leave it at that. Thank you, Dr. Shabir. - You're welcome.
